Definitely worth considering.

Were I Hillary's most trusted advisor, I might suggest she go off to a very private retreat, with no electronic communications, and send the next several days reading biographies of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

LBJ was magnificently qualified for the Senate, but as Majority Leader, not Vice-President. While I recognize almost anyone is a better orator than the Decider, LBJ faced unfortunate comparison to JFK as an inspirational leader. He could hammer out amazing compromises in the back offices of the Senate, but that's a different skill set than needed in a great President.

Aside from splitting the Democratic and Independent vote, I see a floor fight between Obama and Clinton becoming a classic example of rising to the level of incompetence. Obama, in his turn, is probably not the ideal Senate leader.

Posted at February 8, 2008 11:16 AM in response to Obama for President. Hillary for "Prime Minister"

Right on the Levis.

If I read the tax material correctly, 501(c)(4) are tax-deductible, can make political statements, but cannot endorse. 527 are not deductible, are nonprofit, and can endorse.

Posted at February 7, 2008 9:28 PM in response to 501(c)(3) and political status question

As I understand some of the precedents, faith-based organizations have, especially in this administration, a bit more leeway based on the Establishment Clause.

The specific case I came across was Code Pink, starting from the aboutus.org website, which appears to be a data broker about nonprofits. There is an umbrella funding organization called ETINA. Andrew Beath, about whom I know nothing other than the data at ETINA and Earthways, does seem to be the person with financial responsibility, reporting to the IRS. Beath's personal foundation is http://www.earthways.org/ This organization describes its mission as "Natural Resources Conservation and Protection". It describes ETINA as one of the projects it started.

Some of the material about ETINA seems, for want of a better term, odd. A Code Pink funding solicitation asks checks to be made out to ETINA/CODE PINK. At this site, Code Pink describes itself as "a global movement of women for peace...We are a 501-C3 org and your contribution is tax deductible. Our tax exemption number is: 95-4658841."

Posted at February 7, 2008 2:17 PM in response to 501(c)(3) and political status question

Today appears to be the first day that I'm actually able to blog and comment. Perhaps it is a Blog Zen koan that given the use of avatars, I want to delete my image from my bio, but there is no file shown.

One ulterior motive: I've been considering using Movable Type for some of my own sites, and can't say that I'm impressed so far, for the kind of content that I want: mostly technical things. That isn't a reflection on TPMcafe as much as on the software, and perhaps the software release team. Obviously, I'm used to mission-critical software, but the two major changes in software base that I've undergone here have been very painful.

Incidentally, clearing cookies, unless one has third-party software that lets one control single cookies, is just not a viable software fix. Things change, I suppose; no one is asking me to reinstall my operating system. I miss some obedient dinosaurs like OS/MVT/HASP/TSO, when I was in real control.

Posted at February 7, 2008 12:31 PM in response to More Mall Than Coffee House

I shall add my voice to "lose the avatars", although this is more a test to see if I actually can comment.

It was 1970, I suppose, when I sent my first email -- might have been a little before that. While I did do early ARPANET things, I had been in the X.25 networking area, so, when it comes to Before-the-Internet-was-the-Internet, I can say only that I was there, did that, but only have the T-shirt from the Second TCP/IP interoperability conference

As the years progressed, I became more and more involved in core network engineering -- paving the Information Highway, if you will. It struck me, one day, when I was in several serious conversations, that, save for an occasional self-reference, I had no idea what my colleagues looked like. It struck me that this sort of electronic communication was the best realization yet of Martin Luther King's dream of a time when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. In this milieu, character is expressed through words.

It's been amusing, from time to time, when I meet, in biological form, a colleague whom I greatly respect. Sometimes, my mental image was quite correct. On another occasion, expecting to meet the geekiest of UNIX geeks, he turned out to be someone that looked like he spent all his time pumping iron when he wasn't being a surfer god.

So, I'd rather have the chance to be surprised when I meet someone in person, and have my own mental image. Perhaps another analogy is that I've occasionally been asked, by a blind person, if they might "Braille my face", which didn't just inform them, but taught me things.

If these were truly avatars, our seeming could change at will, as with any competent deity of multiple appearances.

(I could say that this was dictated by Rhonda or Mr. Clark, or even Waffles the squirrel. Does anyone really know for sure)?

Posted at February 7, 2008 12:19 PM in response to Words and Pictures

Agree with cscs about the avatar. It takes up too much screen space and doesn't really add value.

Posted at February 3, 2008 1:12 PM in response to This New Site Sucks!

All right, this, in part, was a test. I've learned one thing about the new site from it: the required preview is gone, and, apparently, there's no way to edit your own post.

So, treat this as a continuation.

While some say the military role should not be more than "defend the continental United States against direct attack," that can bring in boondoggles such as the National Ballistic Missile Defense (NBMD) system, also known as the ground-based midcourse intercept system, and sometimes loosely called "Star Wars". Theater ballistic missile defense (TBMD) is quite another animal, with both a better track record in tests and a much more flexible and plausibly useful mission. NBMD, however, is able only to defend against a very limited ICBM attack, which mostly means rogue attacks from North Korea or China (if the latter doesn't fire all its missiles). Iran is far from ICBM capability. Russia could easily overwhelm NBMD.

TBMD can be used against shorter-ranged threats, by both US forces and by allies we trust with it. A good example is protecting Japan against North Korean threats, reducing Israel's paranoia about Iran, or, if both sides were carefully given equal capability, turning down the heat between India and Pakistan.

There are two operational pure US system, SM-3 on ships and PAC-3 on land. SM-3 is somewhat more flexible, but both work. There is also the Arrow, jointly developed with Israel, that complements PAC-3. Israel, for all its trumpeting, has the two-level defense system of Arrow and PAC-3.

Moving to other missions, there are such things as Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO), which have taken place many times. Typically, there's a civil war or coup in a third-world country, the Embassy is under direct threat, and US and allied citizens have no way to get out. NEOs typically secure the embassy, take out the civilians, and, if appropriate, destroy sensitive facilities before the troops leave.

I don't suggest that the US needs to be part of every coalition operation, some of which are of dubious value. Nevertheless, I would prefer to see it be the exception rather than the rule for the US to operate as the sole country in a military action. Ironically, Afghanistan was the first case where a NATO country activated the treaty mutual defense feature as a result of a direct attack. Iraq, however, in no way was a NATO operation.



There are people here, however, that demand massive military cuts, but won't say where they should be, or will say simplistic things like "defend the continental US against direct attack." In that case, Pearl Harbor, get ready for the sequel.

When I've asked for suggestions about roles and missions, I usually get what comes across as a hostile demand that I propose them. Realistically, even a basic set of such is a substantial effort, requires some familiarity with the military to understand, and may not be something that can be drawn up in a blog format that doesn't allow cooperative markup of a document.



So, Vast Listening Audience, is the idea of asking for roles and missions, rather than simplistic military budget cuts, an exercise in blog futility, or perhaps something that can be asked of candidates. In the latter case, there might well be some classified aspects, and there also needs to be contingency plans & resources for things that were not predicted.

Posted at February 3, 2008 1:11 PM in response to Military roles and missions

Andrew told me that I needed to clear cookies to get things to work, which appears to have been the case. Unfortunately, with Firefox and my specific security software, cookies are too much like the Cape Cod Oatmeal variety: you can't just eat/reset one.

Having to log in again at various sites isn't the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, I had a shopping cart partially loaded at Tiger Direct, which is an often very cheap, but often frustrating PC mail order supply -- I lost the cart contents and, unfortunately, some good discounts since their prices change constantly.

There was a time when low-level support technicians would say "reinstall Windows" when anything went wrong. Unfortunately, "clear cookies" can also have major effects.

With Firefox, some security add-ons, such as McAfee, do allow specific cookie controls, but I found it almost impossible to use because it blocked everything by default. To a certain extent, that is good security practice -- if it's reasonably easy to authorize cookies, as "site XXX is asking to send a cookie." McAfee required you go through a complex set of menus to manually enable any cookie.

Growf. I may need the edible kind of cookie.

Posted at February 3, 2008 12:54 PM in response to Hospitality Center

Forgive me if I misconstrue you, but my impression is that you are so committed to the idea that military people lie that you are not open to looking at there being two classes of system. The first, the national BMD, involves blatant misdirection about both the threat against which it is intended to protect, and the singularly unimpressive test results that give no confidence it works. Not only has the Administration insisted in deploying it in Alaska, it is trying to rationalize, with even less sense, its deployment in central Europe.

Theater BMD (TBMD), is a quite different prospect, with 2 US and one joint US-Israeli systems that have shown reasonable performance in tests, and address some plausible scenarios. By plausible scenario, I include the ability to put certain scare tactics to rest, such as North Korea threatening Japan or Iran threatening Israel. TBMD also has the potential of defusing confrontations between such states as India and Pakistan.

Partially due to learning, in Iraq, what did not work, the current generation of TBMD has a much more realistic design and chance of working in some real-world trouble spots. In some of these cases, TBMD may be a very effective alternative to much riskier alternatives, such as threatening attack against Iran. One additional system is clearly in the R&D phase, with the main idea learning better how airborne lasers would work. If that technology does work -- and no one is convinced that it does, which is why it is labeled experimental -- it offers a different kind of defense: stopping a missile in its launch phase, which offers a number of advantages.

If, however, any technical analysis, with a good deal of independent evaluation, is taken as full of lies, there's little point to further discussion.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Posted at January 30, 2008 4:47 PM in response to America Diminished

I don't know what analogy to give, but I am unable to define a reasonably complete set of roles and missions in something that will fit in a brief blog post. It had been my intent to give you a set of actual or extrapolated scenarios, to see if we could agree on at least a set of scenarios, taking place outside the United States, where a military intervention might -- or might not -- be something we agreed was or was not a good idea.

I offered a neutral source of a CRS report, to offer some context for discussion. Those are what I think of as missions, which are intimately intertwined with forces. You don't go and get armored divisions if you expect to be working with supporting reasonable movements in the third world. The word "reasonable" covers societies in which a majority may not regard Jeffersonian democracy as the most desirable thing, which can well apply to a variety of tribal, religious, or Confucianist cultures.

I don't understand the relevance of your analogy in this context. The problem doesn't reduce to "cars over children" in any way that I can understand. Apparently, then, we aren't going to get through to each other. I give up, because I can only think about roles and missions in geopolitical or operational terms. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of many interventions; I think it would be insane to try to go into Darfur, and it was criminal, as distinct from insane, to invade Iraq in 2003.

I suggest we do not assume bad faith on either of our parts, but that we accept we think differently.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Posted at January 30, 2008 3:14 PM in response to America Diminished