Saturday, August 30, 2008

Housekeeping

I'm not sure what to make of McCain's VP choice, Sarah Palin. More on it as I develop an opinion.

As for Augustawell, I have been having problems with my image server, but that should be geting better soon. I have about a "week's worth" (i.e. seven) of comics written beyond what is posted, but getting them scanned in, colored, and posted takes time.

That is all.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Alan Keyes Successfully Steals Baldwin's Ballot Access

The lawsuit against Keyes was dismissed on a technicality.

However, I have heard that Baldwin will still be eligible as a write-in.

I really, really hate Alan Keyes, and Ed Noonan and Mark Seidenberg, as well. I believe them to be dirty thieves. I originally wrote something a little more graphic here, but I decided to tone it down a little.

That is all.

Ballot Access Maps Updated August 26, 2008

Here ya go.

That is all.

Trouble with Image Hosting

I have some new ballot access maps. As soon as my image hosting service is up again, I will post them.

That is all.

Sorry About Light Posting

And about the elay in Augustawell updates. I have been very busy with family matters, and with getting write-in status for Chuck Baldwin in Maine for the past week or so. I'll try to get another Augustawell up tomorrow, and some more blogging sometime this week if I get a breather.

That is all.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Standardized Testing

The SAT is useless, but the results of the No Child Left Behind math tests are completely valid to base a study about gender equality on.

What exactly is the difference here, other than that one of the tests appears to give the liberals the results they want as regarding equality?

That is all.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Ballot Access

I've been busy, and things are changing quickly. I'll try to update soon.

That is all.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Jack Cashill's Stupidty/Mendacity

Jack Cashill tries to convince us that everything we were told about Iraq in the build-up to war was true, and that the calims of a failure to find WMDs, etc. are lies and deliberate ignorance by the media.

First, he mentions how Richard Butler claimed that Saddam was developing WMD capacity after Butler was booted out of Iraq in 1998. Of course, not mentioned is that Clinton was using the inspections to conduct espionage with the intent of bringing Saddam's government down. Seeing as we are constantly misled about that, it is rather disingenuous to assume that his statement must be trusted.

Secondly, he talks about Spencer Abraham in 2004 claiming that 1.77 tons of uranium had been moved out of Iraq by the U.S. The problem here is that no one denies that Saddam had uranium. The point is, it had been declared to the IAEA, it had been sealed and was not in a weaponized form, and if we had wanted him to get rid of it, we should have demanded that the declared uranium be removed; rather than invading Iraq on the pre-text of developed or developing weapons that we said he was hiding.

Thirdly, he mentions how the media ignored Douglas Feith's book describing the role that WMDs played in us going to war. Of course, that Douglas Feith may not exactly be an honest, unbiased broker is nowhere considered. That eneral Tommy Franks has, er - a colorful way of describing him (warning: language) is not mentioned either. Rather, we are told by Jack Cashill simply that Feith "knew what was going on" (and of course, we presume him to be truthful).

Fourthly, he mentions Iraqi General Georges Sada's claims that the WMDs were ferried to Syria - ignoring, of course, the question of why Saddam would keep those WMDs if he was not going to use them. That this guy might just be trying to get on the good side of the U.S. government by telling it what it wants to hear is not considered.

Fifthly, he mentions that Don Bordenkircher had a lot of prisoners boast of transporting warheads to Syria.

Some of the inmates, Bordenkircher said, "wanted to trade their information for a release from prison and were amenable to showing the locations."

Gosh, what motive could these people have for lying? And of course, if we used enhanced interrogation techniques on them, obviously they would tell us the truth; I mean that is what these techniques are good for, not for getting people to tell us what we want to hear.

Sixthly, he claims that we know where the WMDs are but the U.S. government won't look there. This sounds very much like Michael Ledeen's similar claims, and ultimately relies on believing that the U.S. government is run by people who desperately want to cover up the evidence that would vindicate them.

According to Cashill, the reason why the administration has avoided revelaing that there are WMDs is to keep the bad guys uninformed, apparently so that they won't get to the MD before we have secured Iraq enough to secure it all.

"Sometimes," [George Tenet] writes, "it is even useful to have positive accomplishments misperceived as failures, to throw foreign governments and rogue organizations off the scent."

Yes, this must be it. The Bush administration is so famously competent that is obviously capable of such a misdirection.

The administration's openness about the recent removal of a 550 metric ton yellowcake cache suggests a change in strategy in a newly secure Iraq.

Except that, as references here and here, "the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government. It was legally in Iraq according to international law."

Cashill pretends to deal with this:

To be sure, the major media and the liberal bloggers have done their best to downplay the potency of the material and the political significance of its removal. After all, they tell us, everyone knew the yellowcake was there all along.

Here is an article from 2003 proving that we Hussein was known to possess uranium all along.

From the article: Experts say Tuwaitha, which was sealed off by U.N. inspectors in 1991, holds 500 metric tons of uranium and other radioactive materials that could pose health risks or even a terrorist threat if it gets into the wrong hands.

But Cashill, instead of spending 5 minutes on Google, instead he says:

But the question has to be asked: If everyone knew it was there, why were the Democrats so eager to pull American troops and cede the yellowcake to whoever controlled the ground?

Uh - if it is that dangerous, we should have removed it all much much earlier. Besides, it isn't exactly weapons grade.

The fact that a Canadian uranium producer was willing to pay tens of millions of dollars for the yellowcake suggests its potential for future harm in the hands of al-Qaida or other terrorists.

Yes, all they will need is to set up large, industrial scale nuclear infrastructure. This is why we also need to worry about whether or not Iraq has aluminum or iron reserves; if Al Qaeda gets their hands on those, they might be able to build battleships and aircraft carriers to use against us.

In short, Jack Cashill is caught in at least one obvious lie, so one should be careful about trusting all of his other points, which are largely based on nothing more than Cashill's imputation of trustyworthiness on a bunch of fairly sketchy sources.

That is all.

Monday, August 11, 2008

50th Augustawell Strip is Up!

Please visit the site, and please leave comments, either there or here.

That is all.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Keeping the Ron Paul Revolution Alive

Paul Congress is a good site for those who wish to support Ron Paul-esque candidates.

Here is Ron Paul's Liberty Pac if you would like to support the cause in general without bothering to find specific candidates.

That is all.

Friday, August 01, 2008

New Ballot Access Maps are Up!

UPDATE: Apparently I made an error and made the link to my Augustawell comic strip. It is now fixed. If the link in the blog doesn't work, click the "Ballot Access Maps" links on the sidebar, and it should usually take you to the right place.

Click right here!

That is all.