The Daily Radar

Katrina fiascos cost us $2 billion

There is the hotel owner from Sugar Land, Texas, who has been charged with submitting $232,000 worth of bills for phantom victims. There are the 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast who apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered almost half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Army base in Alabama that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

Government at its worst? People at their worst? Maybe somewhere in between, or a combination of both. I think the Age of American Handouts is almost over. The high expense and continued rampant abuse of taxpayer largesse is unsustainable.

Blogger Rob @ Gut Rumbles has passed away

Rob aka Acidman wasn’t writing for everyone. He always wrote for himself and to himself. I loved his honesty, even when we didn’t agree. More often than not, he said things I thought before I could say them. Sometimes he made me think about things from a different perspective. His journey here is over. Goodbye and Godspeed to a fellow blogger.

Rob’s obituary:

Robert Marion Smith, age 54, died Wednesday at his home in Rincon. The Harlan County, KY native had lived in Savannah for a number of years before moving to Rincon several years ago. Rob was a lifelong musician, song writer and performer and was retired from Kerr McGee.

Our time here is short. I’ll try to use what’s left of mine wisely.

Iraq and National Reconciliation

Bill Roggio is talking about Iraqi reconciliation.

The Iraqi government’s offer of reconciliation should not be viewed in isolation, but in context with recent developments in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is attempting to fulfill his pledge to restore order to the violence wracked nation. The Iraqi government has an opportunity to capitalize on the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The death of Zarqawi and follow on operations to dismantle al-Qaeda in Iraq’s network gives the domestic, nationalist insurgent groups cover for their past activities. As al-Qaeda in Iraq remains in the spotlight, the lesser insurgent groups can claim al-Qaeda is the real perpetrator of the most heinous crimes, while they merely fought the “occupation forces.

Still a long road ahead. I’m optimistic about Maliki as the right man for the job. Iraq is increasingly going to be an Iraqi story, and that’s how it should be.

Iraqis say US exit plan should await security

“I want the Americans to leave as soon as possible, so the reason to attack Iraqi troops will end, because insurgents are always accusing us of being agents and supporting these foreign troops,” a first lieutenant of Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Monday, while commanding a checkpoint on Baghdad’s airport road.

“Before they leave, they should destroy the [sectarian] militias and make sure the security elements are strong,” says the officer. “I don’t want them to leave completely; they should stay in bases. But if they don’t lower their numbers, we will pressure them to do so.”

I can understand why Iraqis want us gone. I can also understand why they don’t want us gone too soon. I hope they know that we want to leave as much as they want us gone. It’s just a matter of dealing with the evil cancer infecting their country first. We are going to be fighting that cancer for a long time in many places.

School Moves to Fire 9/11 Essayist Churchill

Phil DiStefano, interim chancellor of the Boulder campus, delivered a notice of recommended termination to ethnic studies professor Ward L. Churchill on Monday morning. DiStefano said the professor was being fired for shoddy research and for plagiarism, and the university said it considered Churchill’s reference to World Trade Center workers as “little Eichmanns” to be free speech.

Hmm. He’s not being fired for free speech, but it was the free speech that got the spotlight pointed in his direction. University politics are just as intense and nasty as government politics. Ward Churchill should have known better. His shady past and misrepresentations are pretty blatant though:

In 1966, Churchill was drafted into the United States Army. On his 1980 resume, Churchill said he served as a public-information specialist who “wrote and edited the battalion newsletter and wrote news releases.”^[6] In a 1987 article on Churchill, the Denver Post reported that Churchill went to paratrooper school, then volunteered for Vietnam and served a 10-month tour as “a LURP” [sic], one of a six-man team sent out on Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol to track down North Vietnamese.^[7]. Military records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that Churchill was trained as a projectionist and light truck driver, and give no indication that he went to paratrooper school or trained for LRRP.^[8]

I wonder if Churchill will be able to find a job driving trucks or working in a movie theater? He’ll probably have a hard time finding any high profile jobs with that nasty Wikipedia entry and all the public discussion of his personal history.