Another One Bites The Dust

In a good way this time. I got another one of my afghan projects for Christmas finished. This is for my ex-son-in-law and his new wife. It's pretty but I'm glad it's done and I can move on to all the other things I need to get finished.

It looks nice and will be something useful as well. I guess you can't ask for anything more than that.

I have had to redo the body of the stuffed dog I am making. I did something stupid and ruined the first one. But that is just one evening's work, so it's not that big a deal. I have also started yet another afghan. This is my next to the last one. From there I need to finish all the things for my granddaughter, and make my daughter's present as well.

This winter I will do something very unusual for me. First, and more important, I'll be working hard to finish Sewmouse's quilt for her. In addition, I plan to make a couple of sweaters and a couple of pair of socks for someone I almost never make anything for......me.

A Wonderful URL

Man, do I have a deal for you. If you're one of those who is inundated with credit card offers in the mail every week, there is a way out. go to this link and you will be able to opt out of receiving this annoying bits of paper for five years. If you wish, you can mail in a form that opts you out permanently.

Note the "s" at the end of HTTP. That's for secure. I just did it and can't wait to see if it actually lowers the numbers of these things I get virtually daily. It would be so nice if it did.

Moving Right Along

I just got back from Michaels, the local craft store, where I picked up the materials to make a cute crocheted basset hound. Thank you Sewmouse for that and the many other patterns you found and sent me.

I checked my Christmas giving list. I was able to delete one of the afghans I was going to send, but the yarn is now redirected to a sweater for my granddaughter. The timing will be tight because I am going to make all of her Christmas gifts this year, which I was not planning to do until very recently. I simply cannot justify buying any toys until this entire recall thing is resolved, and I am convinced that the contaminated Chinese-made toys are already in the warehouses and are going to be sold to us for our kids then recalled after Christmas.

I am nearly finished with one afghan, and have two more to finish by Christmas, plus all of Rachel's gifts. I'm going to be one busy camper for this upcoming season. Still, I have over three months, so if I really work hard, I'll get it all done in time. The little kid stuff can be done at the same time as other things, one small piece at a time, then assembled and stuffed at the last moment. My daughter can help me make some of the plastic canvas things. That should be fun for her as well.

I wish this were not the case, though I admit I'm having fun planning all of this, and will feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when everything is finished. I will be posting pictures of things as they are finished, so everyone can keep track of my progress. Wish me luck people, this is a huge amount of new work that I hadn't counted on having to do. Still, my granddaughter is precious to me, and she's worth the added work. I won't risk poisoning her for corporate profit.

Spin! Spin! Spin!

The Facts

1. At the beginning of the year President Bush proposed a troop surge of approximately 30,000 troops. His stated purpose was to provide additional security on the ground to give the Iraqi government the breathing room it needed to implement some hard diplomatic solutions to Iraq's problems.
   
   
2. At Congress's behest and with Mr. Bush's full and public support, 18 benchmarks were established that would provide a concrete and measurable gauge by which progress toward the stated goals could be measured.
   
   
3. Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki went on television in a widely viewed address to both his nation and the people of the United States and assured us that not only would they fully meet all of the benchmarks, but they would exceed them.
   

The above facts are indisputable. They happened and are easy verified by going back and reading the stories in the press during that time. So now we have the base established. The bottom line is, that according to Congress, Mr. Bush, and Mr. al-Maliki, the only measure of success is whether or not the benchmarks are met. That is all the surge was intended to accomplish.

What Happened?

The "surge" went into Iraq. It was shortly after the surge began that we learned that rather than working on the political reconciliation and other issues as they had promised, the Iraqi government was planning a two-month long holiday at the end of the "surge." This left no appreciable time from when the last of the U.S. troops hit the ground and they were expected to produce the results they promised. While Washington managed to bully them down to only one month of sipping tea and popping bon bons by the pool while our soldiers died, they still managed to accomplish virtually nothing.

Over the past week two reports have surfaced. One states that while the Iraqi army is making some limited progress, it will be from between 12-18 months before they can even begin to assume any sort of leading roll in Iraq's defense. In an interview with those who wrote the report (on Meet The Press) they estimate it will be 3-6 years before this transition can be expected to be completed. The same report concluded that the National Police, run by the Department of the Interior, is so corrupt and so sectarian that it should just be disbanded and reorganized.

The Iraqi government has fulfilled 3 of the 18 benchmarks and has made no progress whatever on the really essential ones. Large blocks of the government and the parliament has resigned or withdrawn because of this lack of will. Ethnic cleansing on the part of the Shiite militias in Baghdad goes on unchecked and nearly 2 million have fled the country. More than that have fled the city as one Sunni neighborhood after another are given the choice of either leaving or being murdered.

Since the beginning of Mr. Bush's "war on terror" (as if you can make a war on either an emotion or a tactic) terrorist incidents worldwide have increased 500%.

Most military leaders point to small and limited improvements on the ground and claim that the "surge" is working. The surge is working only if the Iraqi government has achieved its reconciliation goals and has completed the benchmarks. They have done neither.

The Spin

Mr. Bush, et. al have been been in a frenzy of spinning for the past two weeks. Mr. Bush now claims that any sign, no matter how small, of military progress on the ground is "proof" that the surge is working. Now I grant you if small or measurable success on the ground were the goal Mr. Bush, Congress, and Mr. al-Maliki had named as the indicator of success, then this would be true. Unfortunately however, it is not what they all said would measure success. Only political success would do that and there has been no political movement, much less success.

Most experts on the region agree that without a political solution there is absolutely no way for the U.S. to ever stabilize Iraq. Even now, were all of the foreign fighters to leave today, the levels of violence on the ground would barely abate because they are no longer the problem. Iraq is embroiled in a sectarian civil war. here is no solution to that other than a political one onto which all of the parties sign.

General Petraeus is expected to testify before congress tomorrow, and the ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday. They are expected to spout the party line that the surge is "succeeding" while acknowledging that only a few minor benchmarks have been reached and that no diplomatic moves have been made toward political reconciliation. He is expected to recommend (ala Mr. Bush's orders) that we leave the troops there to die for another six months or so to give the Iraqi government time to work on political solutions. I am positive he will not explain how this is expected to happen and why now when they have utterly failed to regard it as sufficiently important to even stay in session and work.

Mr. Bush and his crew of merry vagabonds continue to insist that the majority of the fighting on the ground right now in Iraq is the result of actions of al-Qaeda members in the country. Every civilian and military expert who has been there over the past six months agree almost to the man that this is not true. The violence now is between various Muslim sects and the divisions within those sects. In Baghdad, for instance, The Shittes are clearing out the Sunnis at a record pace so it's not surprising that when you couple fewer people with more military boots on the ground, the level of violence has gone down in some places there. Overall, however, the death toll of civilians last month exceeded the month before by quite a bit.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line that will be concluded by most reasonable people other than the 29%ers who believe Mr. Bush walks his dog on the lake every morning are as follows:

1. Given the stated purpose of the surge, it has failed. While there are a few small military successes to point to, military success was not why the surge was implemented.
   
   
2. The al-Maliki government either outright lied or misrepresented what progress they could reasonably be expected to achieve in the six months they were given, and that even then they didn't even try to meet the goals.
   
   
3. General Petraeus will concentrate on presenting congress with the rosiest possible picture of the conditions on the ground in Iraq, will lobby for more time, and will studiously ignore the real reason for the surge in the first place. He will pretend that military success on the ground is the reason for the surge.
   
   
4. Congress will conclude that the surge is a failure, but will almost certainly cave in and give Mr. Bush a blank check. All the time making (or trying to make) political hay over Mr. Bush's war, which a few of them honestly wish to continue and perhaps even get worse before the upcoming elections so as to generate a very real anti-Republican backlash.
   
   
   
5. Mr. al-Maliki will go on television sometime toward the end of the week, probably after Mr. Bush gives his blowing sunshine address to the nation either Thursday or Friday, and will appear openly defiant and repeat his offer for us to leave right now and his assertion that they can do just fine thank you without us. I urge the President and congress to take him up on it.

Conclusion

It might sound cynical to some, but I don't feel this dog and pony show will accomplish anything or will change any minds. Mr. Bush will get his blank check and our troops will continue to die. The government of Iraq will fall sometime within the next four months leaving the country in even more chaos than it is currently. The civil war will continue unabated until the country splits into three separate and warring provinces. Finally, we will be there, and we intend to be there, for at least the next five to seven years and probably more. Remember, you heard it here first.

Mattel Arrogance

"Mattel Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Eckert said in an interview that the company discloses problems on its own timetable because it believes both the law and the commission’s enforcement practices are unreasonable. Mattel said it should be able to evaluate hazards internally before alerting any outsiders, regardless of what the law says." Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2007

This is a quote that says more than I believe Mr. Eckert really wanted to say about how Mattel feels about this whole toy recall thing. The Consumer Protection Agency requires that all such discoveries be reported within 24 hours. What he is saying is that he doesn't care about the law; he clearly believes that Mattel is above the law in this instance, but also that he doesn't care that millions of our children are being slowly poisoned while Mattel executives and lawyers dither around trying to find a way to spin this information to their favor.

From everything I've read in the past two days, these recent recalls and toxic toys from China are merely the tip of the iceberg. There will be many many more of these in the coming months, and there is an extremely good chance that Mattel and the other toymakers already know about them, but are delaying the recalls. Again while our children suffer what could be permanent brain damage in the interim.

While thinking about this this morning, I realized something else. The lead-in cycle for toy manufacture, especially when the manufacturing has been sent all the way to China, is quite long. Months I would guess. Many of the toys being currently recalled were intended for this upcoming Christmas season. Then it hit me. I'm willing to bet that Mattel and the other big toy makers are going to put many of the toys that they know are contaminated, but which have not been declared with the CPA and recalled, on the shelves to sell for Christmas. Then, a month or two after Christmas they will "discover" that the toys are contaminated with lead and heaven knows what else, and will issue a big recall. Of course the money will already be in their pockets, and the last quarter earnings reported to Wall Street, so the stock will be much less seriously impacted.

The losers here? Well first and foremost will be our children, who will have all those months (as they had the past many) to become contaminated with lead and other unhealthy substances. Mattel apparently doesn't care about that, despite Mr. Eckert's avowal that he too has children. I will bet none of his children or grandchildren if he has any, were allowed to keep a single one of those toys a minute beyond the day that Mr. Eckert first became aware they were toxic. Too bad he didn't care enough to do that for our children rather than let them ingest this poison for what he admits were months.

I for one will not be purchasing any toy made in China this coming Christmas season. I will also not purchase any toy which I cannot determine the country of origin immediately. Sewmouse has some cute patterns for kids toys that are either knitted or crocheted. I am getting them from her and will make my granddaughter some for Christmas. Then I will make her a cute fuzzy poncho, and a nice knitted sweater. I won't risk poisoning her so Mattel can have a good bottom line.

I urge any parent or grandparent who loves their children to do the same. Don't trust any of the major toy manufacturers. They have already proven themselves willing to endanger our children for their own arrogant and selfish reasons. Buy your toys at craft fairs, from friends and neighbors, make them yourself, or seek out the small toy manufacturers who still operate in this country. You can find them on the Internet. Don't risk poisoning those you love. The toy manufacturers have proven they don't care about these children; it's our job to protect them until this mess is sorted out.

The Depths of Stupidity

There are some sorts of stupidity that seem to defy time and situation. I ran into the same one in two places this past weekend.

You all remember my daughter's ungrateful friend. The one I wrote about a couple of times here. She's the one for whom "thank you" is a difficult concept, and personal responsibility a mystery. She's with a guy right now who will, one day soon, hospitalize her. He becomes more violent and more abusive toward her every time he gets drunk which is several times a week. But that's another story. She has also lost custody of one child who simply didn't like her lifestyle (she was with an abusive lesbian for a while) and voluntarily gave up the custody of her 8 year old son because he was an inconvenience to her new romance. Well, Ms. Bright As Hell, now may be pregnant with Mr. Abusive's child.

It's difficult to believe that in the 21st Century there are still people who don't equate sex and pregnancy and take one of the many avenues of birth control available to anyone. This woman has no more right to bring another child into this world than I do considering marrying Tom Cruise. The difference is that I wouldn't have Tom Cruise. She's too irresponsible to have another child. Yet here she is, potentially pregnant because she was too lazy and too stupid to take a simple precaution.

I said two....remember? Well, the second is my great nephew. He just graduated from high school, was headed off to college, and was going to be the first (possibly only) of that generation to do so and what happens? He gets his girlfriend pregnant. Exactly what part of birth control is such a difficult concept to grasp? It's not as if he wants a kid at this age. It's not as if either of them do, but again we have too lazy, too stupid, and too irresponsible to take simple precautions.
I find it next to impossible to believe that any adult in this country doesn't know about the ready availability of birth control and doesn't realize how thoroughly having a baby when you don't want one can screw up your life. Of course neither of these people who do not believe in birth control believe in abortion either, so one and possibly two more unwanted humans will grace the planet. One will probably be well cared for and loved at some point, but the other will not and will at best be neglected and resented. That's really a bad start for any life.

Rule number one in life is "people are stupid." If you are ever amazed at something someone does, simply refer back to rule number one.