She knows where the bodies are buried.

And she'd tell you, too, if the Army hadn't fired her.

According to a July 10 article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post,

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When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

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Why? Well, apparently she did her job too well.

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Just 10 days on the job, she was handling media coverage for the burial of a Marine colonel who had been killed in Iraq when she noticed that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery's deputy superintendent, had moved the media area 50 yards away from the service, obstructing the photographs and making the service inaudible.

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An April 24 article by the Washington Sketch about the incident caught the attention of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and it was after his office began to inquire as to the incident and about any change in policy that Gray began experiencing what seems to be a classic case of abuse and harassment.

Read the full article. It's quite illuminating -- and further evidence that sometimes it doesn't help to know where the bodies are buried: the culture of corruption that has become a trademark of the George W. Bush Administration and the GOP's last eight years of influence still prevails, and any displays of competence by staff will be punished accordingly. Swiftly, decisively and with a modicum of typical bullying.

This is an Open Thread.

Hat-tip Keys for the initial pointer to this piece.

As far as foreign policy goes, at least the Domino Effect has the potential for outstanding visuals. Unfortunately, many of those who enthusiastically support it with regard to a policy of intervention may not be so quick to adopt it as a master theory applicable to other concepts and issues -- for example, the impact of global climate change on global stability...

And now, just to ensure that the whole row of howler monkeys in the back of the bus is kept properly stimulated, here's one for the unevolved:

Darwin must be smiling.

This is an Open Thread.

One of the great myths of American childhood is the premise of Santa Claus, living at the North Pole and coming to all the good little girls and boys on Christmas.

Another great American myth, courtesy of the Republican party and climate change deniers world-wide, is that global warming isn't happening.

Now, due to the herculean efforts of the Freeway Blogger, those two myths have collided head-on in a two-sign series.

The first sign reads "If you think telling kids there's no Santa is hard," and the second reads "Try telling them there's no North Pole."

Ouch.

This is an Open Thread.

Anyone who recognizes the logo above already has an idea about how to debunk rumors, urban legends and claims of internet spam-bots that shill untold millions and lies by the dozen.

Anyone not familiar with it should right-click the image and open the site it points to -- Snopes.com -- in another tab, and get familiar with it.

During this election season, in particular, that site will come in handy.

Another site that will come in handy is this one:

Talking about "stimulus plans" for the economy, for alternative energy development and the national infrastructure is, well, stimulating. Check out the following article from TruthOut -- t r u t h o u t >> Green Stimulus: Let's Try Again by Dean Baker, Truthout | Perspective, published Tuesday 27 May 2008. Good points, good suggestions -- here's an excerpt:

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These are good forms of stimuli that can increase demand while addressing immediate needs, but we should also think of the long-term. Specifically, we should find forms of stimuli that can get the economy on a more energy-efficient path.

[...snip...]

We should also begin to lay the infrastructure for an energy-efficient economy. This will mean more efficient power plants and transmission lines, increased used of trains and mass transit, and, of course, promoting alternative energy sources. [...snip...] a good stimulus package will not only provide a temporary boost to the economy, it can also help set us on this course toward an energy-efficient economy.

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What's your take?

This is an Open Thread.

The title of the article says it all: Iran strike an unattractive last resort: Bolton

That's like George W. Bush saying that "war is a last resort" for Iraq, when he'd already decided ahead of time that nothing would stop his little adventure. He came into office in 2001 and on the day after his inauguration, the Veep was holding council with major oil and energy companies over a map of Iraq that had been marked up to divvy the oil fields among the participants.

What did Bolton actually say?

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"The use of military force is an extremely unattractive option and only to be used as a last resort," he said, adding he would favor regime change.

Bolton said the elements for regime change were present in Iran -- the economy was in difficulties, young Iranians could see the possibility of a different life and there were ethnic tensions within the country.

But he added that the United Nations and its allies had not done enough to bring about the required change.

"I wish that we had had a much more vigorous policy five years ago," he said.

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Of course, "regime change" is a nicely amorphous term, lacking enough substance that anything could be said to have failed the benchmark.

For Iran, "regime change" is not an option. Neither is giving up nuclear enrichment, which international inspectors repeated said appear to be only for peaceful use.

Just like they used to say that Iraq had no WMDs.

Just before Bush invaded anyway. But this time, Bush doesn't want to invade Iran. He and his fellows simply want to blast it back to the Stone Age, just like they threatened to do to Pakistan. They've been intending to for a long time now.

This is an Open Thread.

The title of James Howard Kunstler's Sunday piece in the Washington Post is an eye-opening attention-grabber: Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster. He starts off with a major kick to the pants:

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Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

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What's he getting at? Read the article. It's two pages -- you can get a really good idea of the concept, however, if you take a look at rba's morning blurb called Bring 'em on down the road.

Here's a hint: there's a degree of psychological greenwashing going on around here. We need to truly revamp our systems if we are to achieve true advancement, understanding and mastery of our fate, which is ultimately tied to how we live, conduct business, treat our environment and each other.

It's a cradle-to-cradle sort of thinking.

Mishima's Saturday World News is up.

This is an Open Thread.

Happy Saturday, everyone!

What's new?

On the McCain front, there's this tidbit:

McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, May 9, 2008; Page A01

PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

[...more at link in title...]

Hat-tip kubla000 of DailyKos.

What a surprise, a land deal benefitting a backer, courtesy of Mr. Keating Five himself. Nothing like consistency when it comes to the GOP SOP.

Speaking of "consistency" in terms of the GOP and Bush Republicans, there's more:

From last week, yet still strikingly relevant:

Police grapple for clues after a truck careered off the expressway and through a bus shelter under the elevated train tracks. The truck ended up wedged inside a stairwell leading from the station's street-level entrance.

Two people died and at least twenty-one (21) were injured in the incident, which occurred at the Red Line Cermak-Chinatown stop shortly after 5 p.m. in Chinatown, on Friday, April 25th.

This qualifies as yet another type of "transportation cost" in the modern world.

In a story published on Friday, April 25 by REUTERS, writer Julie Steenhuysen informs us of a study by Ohio State University research scientists that recently appeared in the journal Science:

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The findings cast doubt on the widely used practice among elementary and middle schools in the United States and elsewhere of using friendly, concrete examples to teach abstract math concepts.
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The study found that students who learned math concepts using abstract symbols first fared better than those who learned the concepts using real-world examples,¹ and that the abstract-first students were better able to apply the concepts to a variety of situations.

Researcher Jennifer Kaminski stated that this doesn't mean real-world examples or story problems should just go away, however. According to Kaminski, story problems provide a a method for testing whether a student has mastered the abstract concept.

This is an Open Thread.

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Footnotes
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1. Real-world examples described in the article included using marbles for discussing probability or "story problems" ('a train leaves Chicago at 3:00...') to teach other abstract concepts.