The Unwanted Blog

Networks Mostly Mute on Democratic Scandals

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): The Chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Rangel coughed up $75,000 in unpaid back taxes on rental income last year. The House ethics committee is investigating whether Rangel fulfilled all of his disclosure requirements related to that property, among other issues. In June, the panel launched another investigation of whether a Caribbean trip Rangel and four other Democrats took amounted to an improper gift.

None of these issues were mentioned on ABC, CBS or NBC this year, although Rangel was featured as a talking head in a number of morning and evening news stories. On March 19, the CBS Evening News included a Rangel soundbite in a story on congressional outrage over the AIG bonuses: “Stop the thievery at taxpayers’ expense!” The next night, CBS had another clip of Rangel railing, “Stop the thievery!,” but no mention of the chairman’s ethics problems.

From Reuters:

Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.

“Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran,” FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.

He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.

The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD.

“In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq,” according to the documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute.

WMDs were not the only reason for taking down Saddam, and were likely not the primary motivator.  But since 2003, the lack of WMDs has been the single biggest club that the Left has used to bash the US, declaring with dreary regularity that since no WMDs were found that clearly meant that “Bush lied.” While it has been long substantiated that Bush didn’t lie, this new information helps explain who was truly at fault for the intelligence failures in Iraq: Saddam Hussein.

Could better intelligence have changed history? Yeah, probably. But with the government taking heat for not preventing 9-11, Iraq making every effort to show that they actually had active WMD programs was simply an intolerable situation. The Bush administration is therefore no more morally at fault here than would be a cop who arrests a convicted child molestor who’s just pretending to stalk children.

If you want to hate Bush, fine. But do it for honest reasons, like the fact that he paved the way for Obama to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship by not cutting spending and government, but instead growing govenment via stimulus bills and the prescription drug program.

OK, this contest is a bit different. For starters, the winnings: $150 worth of APR and/or Drawings & Documents downloads. Rather higher than usual. Secondly: no time limit. Thirdly: I have no friggen’ clue what the hell this is.

So the rules are simple: tell me what the hell this is. It was a display model that was auctioned off online some years back, with, IIRC, some reference to it being an X-15 related design. In order to win, you have to not only tell me what it is… you have to back it up. Scans or photocopies of official reports, diagrams, artwork, whatever, that spell it out. The first person to do so wins.
A secondary prize of $75 worth of APR/D&D downloads for the first person who can provide multiple good, clear photos of this model.

Feel free to spread this one around, folks. I doubt I’m the only one who has been wondering over this thing for years.

If you have info, either comment or send an email here:

At first I thought that this would be another one that should be fairly easy for someone to at least get in the general vicinity, but when I looked it up, I didn’t find what I thought I would… so this might be a tricky one. $35 worth of downloads from either APR or Drawings & Docs to whoever can *accurately* ID this vehicle. I’ll leave it up until Sunday or so, or until someone nails it.

PS: if you have trouble commenting, either send me an email or TRY HARDER. Whichever one works…

OK, I know it’s irrational to apply human standards  (in particular, modern conventional US standards) to non-humans, such as cats. But sometimes the weirdness gets pretty overpowering.

Huh.

From the Mail Online:

 

Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous countries.

…

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677. 

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609. 

Damn. The US is even behind Canada. What they hell is that about?

More from the first day at the Grand Canyon.

For issue V2N5 of Aerospace Projects Review, I am going to run a companion article to Dennis Jenkins’ piece on the Convair Aerospaceplane design. The new article will describe a number of the competing designs, including but not limited to:

Lockheed CL-510

Boeing Model 832/879

Douglas Model 2235

Martin Astroplane

Republic Mach 25

I have drawings galore to illustrate this article, and I will be creating new line drawings as well. But I have nothing really “eye catching.” I haven’t the skills to create good color art, but a lot of other people do… so I’m looking for help here. The best I can do is offer a year’s subscription to APR, along with the eternal glory and possible job offers that may come from having your art published in APR. So if you think you’d like to create artwork (at a minimum, same-scale side views of the above-mentioned six concepts; possibly also isometrics, perspective views, beauty passes, etc.), please send a sample of your previous work to this email address:

Assuming a number of prospective artists sign up (and hey, who wouldn’t?), in a week or so I’ll pick a few of the most promising, and send one the ASP concepts along to see what you can do. And some time after that I’ll boil it down to one or two winners. The winners will have seveal months to complete the art.

A rarity, to be sure.

Well, so much for that… Yesterday I went down to Ogden and cleaned out my failed bid at income.

Omens only mean something when they come as a surprise. Omens of doom when you’re fully aware that doom is immanent just don’t have the impact. Nevertheless, yesterday as I was leaving town, heading towards Ogden, I noticed that the local emergency departments were going bonkers… police cars, fire trucks and ambulances heading every which way at high speed. Got a few miles south on I-15, and I saw where they were all congregating:

This was the only meaningful photo I took of the incident… photograpy while driving ain’t exactly the safest thing in the world. But as I passed, I couldn’t tell what all the hubbub was about… lots of emergency vehicles, but no wrecks. Finally, *just* as I was passing through, I caught a hint of the source of the trouble: just barely visible off the road to the right was the roof of a large RV. Apparently an RV had gone off the road, and the “ditch” was rather deep (at least 13 or so feet). Judging from the flotsam at the side of the road in the photo above, i’d guess that the RV and another vehicle tangled and went off the side.