Gee, what a surprise.

Professor Death has a ginormous roundup of links pertaining to the Hoekstra/Santorum announcement yesterday regarding the 500 chemical rounds, and a link this morning to some speculation from Chester. I'm not surprised that this isn't getting any coverage from the MSM, and frankly I expect this to have zero impact on the people who have been whinging for the last five years that there aren't any WMD and therefore we should pull out now so the Iraqi children can get back to flying kites, cuddling puppies, being shot, dying in chemical attacks and all the other happy things they did when that benevolent old fellow Saddam Hussein was in charge. After all, there weren't any reappraisals, agonsized or otherwise, when the troops found a shell full of sarin gas attached to an IED back in 2004, so why should we expect any now?

Also, it appears that "Mad Jack" Murtha may have gotten a bad case of sticky fingers when it comes to defense appropriations. This would appear to answer Jack Kelly's question: "Has he become senile? Or was he always that stupid?" Another reason to hope Diana Irey boots him out of office this fall.

In other news, I'm feeling under the weather somewhat and might be fighting off an infection. This would screw up this weekend's plans more than a little, but we'll see how it all works out.

Made a move this morning that hopefully will improve my fantasy team, dropping Carlos Guillen in favor of rookie phenom Jason Bartlett. I don't expect Bartlett to keep hitting over .400, of course, but Guillen's been in a slump lately. I'm also dithering over whether to bring back Brad Radke, but that's going to depend on whether Tony Armas is actually injured, I think.

Today's one of my rare busy days at work, since it's time to balance the internal billing here at the Evil Banking Neighbor, but I'm going to make the effort to get out this afternoon and hit the Farmers' Market. I want some tomatoes, and maybe some more fruit. Maybe.

Gee, what a surprise.

Professor Death has a ginormous roundup of links pertaining to the Hoekstra/Santorum announcement yesterday regarding the 500 chemical rounds, and a link this morning to some speculation from Chester. I'm not surprised that this isn't getting any coverage from the MSM, and frankly I expect this to have zero impact on the people who have been whinging for the last five years that there aren't any WMD and therefore we should pull out now so the Iraqi children can get back to flying kites, cuddling puppies, being shot, dying in chemical attacks and all the other happy things they did when that benevolent old fellow Saddam Hussein was in charge. After all, there weren't any reappraisals, agonsized or otherwise, when the troops found a shell full of sarin gas attached to an IED back in 2004, so why should we expect any now?

Also, it appears that "Mad Jack" Murtha may have gotten a bad case of sticky fingers when it comes to defense appropriations. This would appear to answer Jack Kelly's question: "Has he become senile? Or was he always that stupid?" Another reason to hope Diana Irey boots him out of office this fall.

In other news, I'm feeling under the weather somewhat and might be fighting off an infection. This would screw up this weekend's plans more than a little, but we'll see how it all works out.

Made a move this morning that hopefully will improve my fantasy team, dropping Carlos Guillen in favor of rookie phenom Jason Bartlett. I don't expect Bartlett to keep hitting over .400, of course, but Guillen's been in a slump lately. I'm also dithering over whether to bring back Brad Radke, but that's going to depend on whether Tony Armas is actually injured, I think.

Today's one of my rare busy days at work, since it's time to balance the internal billing here at the Evil Banking Neighbor, but I'm going to make the effort to get out this afternoon and hit the Farmers' Market. I want some tomatoes, and maybe some more fruit. Maybe.

Useful information

Those of you who have been in the military or know people who have been probably already know about these myths. Those of you who don't mind find the post informative. In passing, I should note that Canadians serving in the US military isn't all that unusual; I knew a couple when I was going through the language school back in the day.

Via Kate's blog.

Useful information

Those of you who have been in the military or know people who have been probably already know about these myths. Those of you who don't mind find the post informative. In passing, I should note that Canadians serving in the US military isn't all that unusual; I knew a couple when I was going through the language school back in the day.

Via Kate's blog.

Officers on the right, enlisted all over the place...as usual

Wow, two posts on military sociology in the same day. That doesn't happen here too often!
First, a series of posts by Mystery Pollster keying off this Peggy Noonan column, which claimed there weren't a lot of social conservatives in the ranks of the career military. The first post talks about the lack of polling data, the second one makes use of information helpfully provided by readers to show that Noonan is off base when she talks about officers, and finally this post talks about enlisted attitudes in the Army and refers to a study by West Point instructor Jason Dempsey, who adds his comments to the post. This last article includes a link to an interesting New Yorker article about Dempsey and Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki.

The bottom line, for those of you too hurried/lazy to actually follow the links, is that the studies confirm my experience: the Army officers tend to be more politically conservative in the sense that they attend church more often, are more supportive of conservative social policies such as retaining the death penalty, RKBA, prayer in schools, and outlawing abortion. Dempsey's analysis is well worth reading - he draws a very important distinction between short-timers and career soldiers, a distinction which any veteran will tell you is critical when it comes to these sorts of things.

Via Instapundit, who links to the last post in the series.

Officers on the right, enlisted all over the place...as usual

Wow, two posts on military sociology in the same day. That doesn't happen here too often!
First, a series of posts by Mystery Pollster keying off this Peggy Noonan column, which claimed there weren't a lot of social conservatives in the ranks of the career military. The first post talks about the lack of polling data, the second one makes use of information helpfully provided by readers to show that Noonan is off base when she talks about officers, and finally this post talks about enlisted attitudes in the Army and refers to a study by West Point instructor Jason Dempsey, who adds his comments to the post. This last article includes a link to an interesting New Yorker article about Dempsey and Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki.

The bottom line, for those of you too hurried/lazy to actually follow the links, is that the studies confirm my experience: the Army officers tend to be more politically conservative in the sense that they attend church more often, are more supportive of conservative social policies such as retaining the death penalty, RKBA, prayer in schools, and outlawing abortion. Dempsey's analysis is well worth reading - he draws a very important distinction between short-timers and career soldiers, a distinction which any veteran will tell you is critical when it comes to these sorts of things.

Via Instapundit, who links to the last post in the series.

Shiny.

I think I know what I want for Christmas. Or my birthday. Hell, I might not be able to wait that long - the boxed game has been out since the week of the 12th. I'm very interested in seeing what the 130 new scenarios are, to say nothing of the improved scenario builder...but until everything else gets straightened out, I better just putter along with The Operational Art of War: A Century of War. It runs well enough on the Deskpro and Cowzilla.

Shiny.

I think I know what I want for Christmas. Or my birthday. Hell, I might not be able to wait that long - the boxed game has been out since the week of the 12th. I'm very interested in seeing what the 130 new scenarios are, to say nothing of the improved scenario builder...but until everything else gets straightened out, I better just putter along with The Operational Art of War: A Century of War. It runs well enough on the Deskpro and Cowzilla.