Say Anything Blog

Gang, to see the irrefutable proof that America armed Saddam head over to Froggy’s Dacha.

Incontrovertible evidence that America IS the Great Satan. Go check it out!

I had to laugh on seeing this headline:
Army Misses Recruitment Goal for Second Straight Month

And yet, the numbers quoted seem a bit underwhelming.
“But two defense officials said the Army fell short of its 8,400 goal by about 15 percent — which is more than twice the June shortfall and would mean that roughly 7,000 recruits signed up.”

I am curious as to how many of that 7000 recruits chose a Combat Arms MOS? And why the re-enlist numbers never make it into any of these articles?

And this short fall is just staggering.
“Last month the Army said it recruited 5,101 new soldiers in May, about 7 percent short of its 5,500 goal for that month.” Again, of this 5,101 how many chose Combat Arms MOSs?

If recruiting is falling off, then the numbers of recruits going into combat related MOSs would be affected, would they not? In one direction or the other. And yet, when I read these articles, I see no indication either way.

And nary a word about the poor attainment of minority recruiting by colleges. An issue you would think deserves far more attention, given the crisis in education concerning minority students.

Curious, no?

French president supports Socialist as new IMF chief

” Strauss-Kahn “seems the most fit for the post,” said the president in an interview with the newspaper.

  Noting the former minister shares the same version of the IMF function, Sarkozy said Strauss-Kahn owns the qualities required by the post such as strong credibility, incontestable experience and multilingualism.

  Strauss-Kahn has yet to express his interest in the post.”

And the talkingheads in America call Sark the “Great Moderate Hope” of Europe. As if the IMF has not enough problems already.

h/t to Xinhua. At least someone is paying attention.

“MILF pulls out of search for Italian priest”

I saw this in Xinhua just now and laughed so hard I think I hurt myself.

And it is an actual article.

Would someone on the left please explain to me why none of you care about women’s rights and safety when it does not put money in your purses.

Jail, flogging for Iranian women’s rights activist
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

TEHRAN: Iran has sentenced a women’s rights activist to flogging and almost three years in jail for taking part in a 2006 protest over “discriminatory” laws, the ILNA news agency reported on Tuesday. Delaram Ali was sentenced to 10 lashes and two years and 10 months in jail for “participation in an illegal gathering,” “propaganda against the system” and “disturbing public order,” her lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh told ILNA. Ali was one of the 70 people arrested in June 2006 in a protest at a Tehran square against articles in Iranian law which are seen as discriminating against women. “Delaram Ali’s sentence is too heavy, we will definitely protest the unlawful verdict. A flogging sentence for social and women’s rights activists is against international law,” Sotoudeh said. Several other women were sentenced to jail for taking part in the protest. Around 30 women’s rights activists - arrested while demonstrating outside the court where the five campaigners were standing trial - were detained for several days in March. - AFP

Not a word of support or outrage from NOW or Hillary or Nancy or Elisabeth or Cameron or the Right Honorable Ms Ginsberg.

Shameful does not even come close to a description of the American Women’s Rights proponents.

And does anyone really believe Delaram Ali will actually survive nearly 3 years in an Iranian prison?

In American Thinker there is this article The Incredible Shrinking New York Times which describes the current demise of NYT.

Like some robber baron capitalist of yore, the New York Times is telling the remaining full price readers of its print product that they will pay more and get less, the same message it has been sending advertisers for years. But far from a sign of strength, this move is an indicator that the slow motion business collapse of the New York Times Company may be picking up its pace.

Faced with rapidly waning print media revenue and internet revenues which are growing, but not even close to offsetting the decline of print, the strategic plan of Pinch Sulzberger is failing. He had hoped to replace print profits with skyrocketing electronic publishing revenues, but evidently lacked any concrete notion of how to get from here to there, and overpaid for a niche website in a business increasing ruled by ruthless giant players like Microsoft and Google.

Yesterday, New York Times Company Chief Executive Janet Robinson told investors at a Newspaper Association of America conference in New York that the company would be raising the price of single copy newspapers and home delivery subscriptions. At the same time, the company has suddenly accelerated and apparently made more drastic a previously-announced plan to shrink the physical size of the paper and cut the amount of news provided to readers. It is also speeding the closing of a mammoth Edison, NJ printing plant that was one of Pinch Sulzberger’s first strategic moves, opening in 1992, but which, after the decline of metropolitan circulation during the Pinch years, is now surplus capacity, its presses and skilled workers unnecessary burdens.

However, undaunted by their failing strategies, NYT sails on in shark infested waters and rocky shoals (isn’t that typical for libersls?).  In summary, this statement says it all.

At the Incredible Shrinking New York Times, everything is shrinking except the arrogance of the publisher and liberal editorial staff. Unfortunately, that is the one area of the company where less truly would be more.

And a cookie for the first one that can guess where I was at 07:00 this morning.

No, I was not part of that group of volunteers, I was there to etch a name for a friend of mine who can not travel to DC. Or, more appropriately, won’t.

A grateful Thank You to all those who volunteer each week to clean the VietNam Veterans Memorial.

Booyaa!

Gang, I know there is a bit of, lets just say antipathy, for the French in some quarters. Not at all unjustified, though a tad harsh. So allow me to hip y’all to a righteous frenchy Frenchman, The Dissedent Frogman.

His blog was a bit under the weather for awhile, but he is back in the scrum and smackin’ Islamo-Facist and Euro-Socialist heads with gleeful abandon.

So, don’t be a putz! Go check him out. And don’t be shy, let him know what you think. He’s a big boy, he can take the heat.

I seem to remember someone from the Democrat Party saying some such as that.

Don’t y’all?

This paragraph puts the issue in the light, so to speak.

“First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown,” he continued. “And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Go read the whole article.

And here is the NPR piece. Compare&contrast Friday, here at sayanything. Enjoy!

H/T to FOXNews and NPR, oh, and bloglines.

UPDATE; This just hit one of my news feeds.
This, "It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies.", will get him eviscerated by the left and environazis.

In our rounds to family burial plots in the region I have made it a habit to find the old, seemingly forgotten veterans markers. In doing so we have found headstones dating back to the Revolutionary War, mostly left untended.

Such as

The first two are Civil War veterans, and the stones are no longer legible. We ask people we meet each year if they know anything of them, so far no one does. My mother in law has visited the church that maintains the cemetery and they have no records farther back than 1880.

Several years ago we cleared out around them, they are well into the treeline, and found the bronze flag stands. That first year I put flags there, a VFW post in Mercer County replaced them each year since.

This one

is one of my wifes favorites. He died in 1868, so I believe he had to have been an 1812 or Mexican War vet. There is part of a unit designation on the bottom, my son suggested etching over it with a piece of paper to read it so we will be heading back today.

This one has no marker left, apparently it was a piece of sandstone, now just a lump the bronze placard is stood in.

I encourage as many people as I can to start finding the old graves, the ones sinking into obscurity as the forest and time over takes them. At the least to remember they did live, even if the names are lost.

That is what we are supposed to do on this day.

Rather interesting couple of articles about the same event. And still a ringing silence from our media on this movement.

New rally for Turkish secularism
The crowds in Samsun were smaller than in other protests
Tens of thousands of Turks have massed in the city of Samsun in the latest demonstration in support of secularism.
The crowds waved national flags and chanted slogans opposing any change to Turkey’s secular political model.

The protest in Samsun, a port on the Black Sea, followed huge rallies in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

Turkey’s ruling, Islamist-rooted AK Party has called early elections to end a political stand-off sparked by its nomination of a presidential candidate.

The election, now due to be held on 22 July, was brought forward from November.

Demonstrators say the AK Party has an Islamist agenda to undermine the secular nature of the Turkish republic.

‘No coups’

Police estimated that about 50,000 people attended the rally, Reuters news agency reported.

Last weekend about one million people filled the seafront in the port of Izmir.

 
Many of those in Samsun carried pictures of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the key icon of state secularism.

Samsun was the place where Ataturk launched the country’s war of independence against ruling powers after the end of World War I.

Organiser Turkan Saylan told the crowds that they were in Samsun “to cry out loud that we are against Shariat [Islamic law]”.

“And we are against military coups,” she added, referring to a threat by the country’s military to intervene in favour of the secular system

Presidency problem

The leaders of two of Turkey’s main opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Democratic Left Party (DSP), shared a platform at the Samsun rally.

The two parties have joined forces in an effort to counter the AK Party in the forthcoming elections.

The current crisis was sparked by the AK Party’s attempts to nominate Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to the presidency.

Opposition parties claimed the installation of a man with an Islamist political past would undermine secularism, and blocked attempts to confirm him in the Turkish parliament.

The government eventually withdrew Mr Gul’s nomination and called early elections.

Despite the mass rallies across Turkey, correspondents and opinion polls indicate that the AK Party still remains the country’s most popular.

 

Turks rally for secularism  


Thousands carried the Turkish flag
creating a sea of red [AFP]

 

Tens of thousands of Turks have rallied in the northern city of Samsun in the latest of a series of weekly pro-secular demonstrations against the government ahead of elections.
Television pictures showed protesters on Sunday brandishing Turkish flags and portraits of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secularist founder.
 

One organiser said that between 20,000 and 30,000 people had gathered, boosted by last week’s electoral agreement between centre-left parties against the ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party for the July 22 poll.

 


Deniz Baykal, head of the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), and Zeki Sezer, his counterpart in the Democratic Left party (DSP), were due to attend Sunday’s demonstration together.

The choice of Samsun as the venue for the latest protest was symbolic.

It was in the Black Sea port city 88 years ago that Ataturk launched a liberation movement against the British, French, Italian and Greek troops occupying Turkey after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the first world war.

The rallies began last month after the AKP chose Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, as its candidate for president.

The AKP failed to hold a parliamentary vote making Gul president, as a boycott by the opposition meant a quorum could not be attained.

The existing president is Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Military warning

The turmoil, exacerbated by a warning from the military that it stood ready to defend the secular order, forced Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, to bring legislative elections forward to July 22 from November.

Opinion polls, however, suggest that the AKP is still Turkey’s most popular party.

Despite its Islamist roots, the party has pledged commitment to secularism and carried out reforms that secured the opening of membership talks with the EU and stabilised the economy.

Opponents say the party still harbours Islamist ambitions, pointing at AKP policies such as opposition to a ban on the headscarf in universities and public offices, encouragement of religious schools and a failed attempt to restrict alcohol sales.

Credit to BBC and Al Jazeera.

The world is out there, you just got to go see what is happening in it. And judge for yourself.

60% of Americans support Iraq withdrawal timetable.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua)—Six out of 10 Americans support setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released here Wednesday.

  Additionally, 78 percent of those interviewed said they don’t believe claims by the Bush Administration that U.S. military presence in Iraq is preventing new terrorist attacks.

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua)—Six out of 10 Americans support setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released here Wednesday.

  Additionally, 78 percent of those interviewed said they don’t believe claims by the Bush Administration that U.S. military presence in Iraq is preventing new terrorist attacks.

Most Americans disapprove of Bush’s Iraq veto: poll

The poll, conducted by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN, surveyed1,028 American adults between last Friday and last Sunday.

Some fairly drastic and far reaching conclusions to draw from only 1,028 people, wouldn’t you say? I have tried to get more information from Opinion Research Corp., but they are rather tight lipped about who and where.

And as I type this I see from recent comments that someone beat me to it. Bastiches!! Oh well. Polls are crap, and this one is so obviously biased it is pathetic.

Still going to harass ORC about their methodology.

Here is a Sunday morning wake up for you.

02 May, 2007
Education Goals and Objectives

by Sam Huntington

Some would argue that it is long past the time for evaluating America’s educational goals and objectives, but now that we are confronted with what could be an affront to the sensibilities of New Yorkers in particular, and those who cherish American values generally – the creation of an Arab Academy in Brooklyn – additional discussion and citizen action is warranted.

Read the whole article here.

And let me add a h/t for Angel.
She is all over this story, and not a bad blog either.

Go. Check’em out.

Don’t you just love when Democrat Party starts eating its own?!?
WASHINGTON —  The chairman of a House panel wants to stop hefty bonus payments to senior Veterans Affairs officials until they reduce a severe backlog of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., said Friday he was introducing legislation to place a hold on this year’s bonuses after The Associated Press reported that senior VA officials involved in a budget foul-up which jeopardized veterans’ health care received bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

Ain’t that just classic. No money for doctors, nurses, building maintenance, or disabled veterans. Plenty for non-medical deskjockeys.

This is nothing new. VA has always payed themselves at the expense of veterans.

Read the whole article. I am going to keep trawling, see if this is running anywhere else this low newscycle morning.