Big Sky Cairn

In celebration, enjoy the top selling single in Germany, Schnuffel (Kuschel Song).

It is always good to idly speculate that the Bush White House is behind everything. I found it particulary charming that Obama’s camp initially fired off this gem regarding the passport incident;

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, called for a complete investigation.

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” Burton said. “Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.”

Turns out it was not Department officials, but employees of Obama’s intelligence advisor.

Travis Bird bowled two perfect 300 games in a row, which is actually pretty awesome.  Like the hole-in-one, a 300 game is a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment.  Two is awe-inspiring.  I wonder if being awesome at bowling is big with the ladies…

Personally, I’m happy if I break into triple digits when I bowl, and usually my thumb ends up hurting.  Suffice to say I don’t know much about bowling and specifically how it’s scored.  So here’s my question.

If instead of bowling ten frames, Travis had been able to bowl twenty, and in each of those 20 frames (plus the bonus frames at the end) he bowled a strike, what would his score have been?

Anyone?

As the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus seems to be positioning himself in a place to take credit should the economy improve.  If the economy is within his realm of influence, doesn’t that suggest that the downturn is also his fault?

It is a good day today. Montanans will not be treated like second class citizens due to REAL ID.

Hopefully the State remembers who did, and did not, help in this situation. Cannot say I am surprised about how the deadlock was resolved. Attorney General McGrath acted like an elected public official and did what was right for Montana. Maybe this will be a lesson to our other officials that you do not need to step up on a soapbox in order to help your constituents.

The Governor did say it best though;

“It was becoming the theater of the absurd,” the governor said.

This whole “showdown” had become absurd as illustrated by the content of McGrath’s letter. The letter stated that Montana had no intention of complying with REAL ID, and indeed Montana cannot legally comply with the Act. Yet, DHS accepted the letter because they are in a rush not to create a bureaucratic nightmare for themselves. I am sure the thought of training 30,000+ airport screenings on which ID’s can be accepted and which cannot is not appealing to Chertoff. The feds did not want a showdown with the states anymore than the states wanted a showdown.

So you have to wonder what, if anything, the Governor’s rhetoric did? For me, this whole episode illustrates everything that is wrong with our current Governor. This issue should not have been a divisive confrontation. Every single member of the Montana Legislature voted to opt out of REAL ID. Montana’s congressional delegation worked to delay REAL ID, whether through cutting funding for the program as Rehberg did last year, or through a letter to the Secretary as the Senators did. Most importantly, DHS did not want to go forward with the May 11th deadline because they are not in a position to enforce it. Good ole Schweitzer cannot have cooperation, so he decides to go and pick a fight, either out of ignorance that everyone is with him, or arrogance that he has to see his name in the paper.

Regardless, the situation is resolved. Now the focus should turn to how should Congress implement the 9/11 recommendation to require more secure government issued identification without putting an unfunded mandate on the states.

Finally, an open-ended question, where does the state go from here? I am not a legal scholar by any means, but I am curious if the law passed by the Montana Legislature prohibits the state from adopting security requirements for driver’s licenses found in REAL ID, but the requirements are instituted independent of the federal act.

Welcome to Big Sky Cairn Wufgar, and thank you for the introductory venom:

See that middle finger waving there? That’s for you, Wiley.

I didn’t leave myself “an exit strategy”. I was dead serious. That’s called integrity. Look into the concept, you insulting pissant.

You know, I bet Wulfgar is a decent guy in person - but you’d never know it from how he acts on the internet. Anytime I feel like I’m upset, all I have to do is go read the subject lines on my RSS Reader for A Chicken Is Not Pillage and perspective snaps me right back into a good mood - you know by comparison.

Update: I didn’t notice that Wulfgar was so proud of his juvenile name-calling that he posted it on his own site too.  In the same breath that Wulfgar calls me stupid, he presumes that the only way that his vote could be “purchased” is with a cash transaction complete with a neat little receipt.  The odds of that happening are precisely zero; a strategy of direct vote-buying would require that Baucus have to interact with a bunch of Montanans for that strategy to work.  There’s a reason he moved to DC to get away from the dirty masses of Montana.

What will happen is that Baucus will use his massive stash of out-of-state resources to buy tons of air time on radio, television, the internet and anywhere else he can find it.  That airtime will, in effect, buy back the votes of the far-left that Baucus has alienated in order to remain electable in a moderate-to-conservative state like Montana.  At the end of the day, when Wulfgar titles a post “Why I Won’t Be Voting For Baucus In November” I’m willing to put money on the fact that with Baucus’ money he will not have too hard a time changing Wulfgar’s mind.

Fortunately, this isn’t a purely ethereal debate.  While what Wulfgar does in the voting booth will always be private, but we’ll be able to track his support or lack of support for Baucus on his blog.  Someone will be right and someone will be wrong.  Smart money says he’ll be listing reasons to vote for Baucus by October.

There are so many reasons not to vote for someone as offensive as Max Baucus.

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that there were One Million Reasons not to vote for Max. Even with that many reasons, Baucus would still have more than $8 in out-of-state money per reason to spend diverting attention away from those reasons.

Let me put that another way. Let’s say that every in-state dollar that Baucus has is a reason to vote for him and every out-of-state dollar that he has is a reason to vote against him. Well, come election day there would be 9 reasons not to vote for him for every 1 reason to support him.

Fortunately for Max, a lot of his most liberal supporters are willing to overlook years of “betrayal.” They make bold statements about not voting for him, but they always give themselves an exit strategy:

Because my experience of Max is leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Trust is waning. Perhaps before November, Max will get that back. But it’s gonna take some real serious promises, and I’m not feeling very giving right now.

The question is, will Max have enough money to buy back their votes? My bet is that he will.

I remember once I was engaged in a stand-off on the Kamchatka - Alaska border. I was pretty strongly entrenched on the North American side of the Bering Straight and my opponent was on the Asian side. Both of us had invested a significant number of troops to the border in an effort to discourage the other party from invading. Unfortunately for my friend and foe, he was trying to gain control of Asia - a daunting task - and an offensive from Africa had just steam-rolled into his back yard as deep as India. He needed to fortify Siam in order to protect his control in Australia.

And so, my Kamchatkan friend made a fatal error. He had invested too much into the defense of the Bering Strait border to simply give it up, and so in an effort to keep me at bay, he split his force in half, sending half South toward Siam and leaving the other half to freeze in Kamchatka. I’m sure you know how I reacted.

Suddenly, I had twice the force as he did. My casualties would still be great, but a victory was assured and strategic control of the region was at stake (a fortification in Kamchatka is much better than one in Alaska for protecting North America). And so I attacked, and of course, I won. A stand-off was escalated to a hot war because one side altered the strategic decision calculus by removing half of his force.

The lesson was that a partial withdrawal - a slow draw-down of force is a political action with dire tactical consequences for the fighting men and women.  It’s a sure way to lose.

Of course, Jim Hunt’s previously discussed post about his “Responsible Plan” for defeat withdrawal in Iraq leans heavily on the opinions of retired generals and military types, who are much more informed about tactics than I am, right? The interesting thing about retired generals is that they are retired. No one is inviting them to tactical or strategic briefings anymore. The Pentagon isn’t making sure they have the most current data on enemy movements and objectives. They aren’t piped into our intelligence-gathering apparatus. They cannot have a sense of the plan beyond what the people on the ground in Iraq have decided is appropriate and safe to share with the press - and therefore the enemy. And most of them seem to be espousing their military plans from the comfort of their home libraries thousands of miles away from the theater of conflict. I guess my point is that while I totally appreciate their service, when it comes to credibility on the specific situation in Iraq, I’m not sure a retired general has much more credibility than someone who plays a lot of RISK.

I play a lot of RISK.

Most of Jim Hunt’s position on Iraq is actually someone else’s position, but I think this part might be his (after all, it uses quotation marks):

This war has claimed the lives of four thousand of our best and brightest, left tens of thousands more seriously injured, and costs taxpayers billions of dollars a week. We must start bringing our troops home, hand over the security of the country to the Iraqis, and end our role policing this bloody civil war.

So, let me see if I understand the proposed tactics here. Hunt wants to end the war; but not all at once. He wants to slowly draw down the troops leaving fewer and fewer to defend themselves against a growing enemy. Sounds like a partial withdrawal - a political action with dire tactical consequences for the fighting men and women. A great way to sacrifice even more of our best and brightest.

Like my friend in Kamchatka learned, when you slowly withdraw troops from a hostile region, things go pretty badly for those left behind once the critical bulk of your force is gone. As soon as the enemy feels they are assured a victory, attrition no longer matters and you invite attack. That why you either win the battle or withdraw completely and immediately. Playing the middle ground is a politician’s prerogative and that’s why we try to keep politicians from running the military.

Finally, Hunt adds this little beauty:

We must change our irresponsible tactics and actions, ensure Iraq is stable, and then leave.”

Well shoot. Is this all we have to do?

I don’t mean to pester, but isn’t that the current plan? Make sure Iraq is stable before we leave. Jim, be honest now. Did you borrow that from a speech by George W?

Overall, do you see what I’m driving at here? Hunt’s trying to play politics with Iraq, but he’s not doing a very good job. 1) He’s borrowing someone else’s ideas, 2) He’s mistaking “goals” for a “plan”, 3) His idea of a change in strategy is actually quite dangerous and will ultimately undermine stability while costing the lives of American soldiers, 4) His requirement of stability before withdrawal is exactly the same as the status quo and he offers no specifics for why his ideas will be better.

It’s bracket time - the only time I care about basketball (at any level) every year.  I’m rooting for the Pac-10 this year, although I picked North Carolina to win it all.

And, yes, I may be breaking the law.  Arrest me.

Jim Hunt - remember, he’s the trial lawyer who was the 7th choice for the Democrats to challenge Denny Rehberg - has a blog. And his latest post is about “his” “plan” for defeat withdrawal in Iraq. I put “his” in quotes because it’s not really his plan so much as it’s the plan of an organization apparently operated out of Washington, DC (is the “me too, me too” approach really what we want out of a leader?) and I put “plan” in quotes because it’s more of a set of goals than a plan.

Someone running for Federal office has a plan for withdrawal in Iraq supported by retired military types? Gee, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Here:

Some of our best retired generals who understand the situation in Iraq have argued that an exit strategy for American troops from Iraq by the end of 2006 is feasible and in the best interests of America.

The President and the U.S. Congress need to put a successful exit strategy in place to bring our troops home. Additionally, we need to consider redeploying some of these troops to Afghanistan and other critical fronts in the War on Terror.

The time has simply come for us to have a plan in Iraq so that our nation can turn its attention, and its economic and military resources, toward pressing economic and homeland security needs.

Oh well, I’m sure this time they really mean it.