I'm Not Dead Yet...

A lame Python reference is better than none right?

It is official: Confederate Yankee is now (though it always sort of was) a red-state blog. North Carolina is now my official base of operations, and you know what that means... live hurricane blogging! And a whole new crop of politicians to harrass... life is good.

Sorta.

After a relaxing 1,220 mile round trip over the weekend from NC, to NY, and finally back to NC, I'm home. Or as close to "home" as it will be until my daughter finishes school and she and my wife can finally follow me down in six weeks. Without them, no place is home. Once they get here for good and we're finally moved in to our new place 4th of July weekend, life indeed will be good. Until then, life will be exhausting, and a bit of an unknown.

Madre y padre have let me bunk up in a spare room until my new place is ready, and so I'll have nice 168-mile round-trip commute five days a week until July 1.

I should have been a trucker.

The commute, as you may imagine, is to my new job. I start tomorrow. I won't blog about that much, if at all. Blogging about work tends to get people in trouble, as I've seen on more than one occasion.

Anyhoo, while I adjust to my new schedule, blogging will be sporadic and light. I'm not dead yet, but getting used to dancing to a new tune.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Un-Unemployed

Now I have the honor of saying, with sadistic glee, the scariest sentence in the English language:

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Avenger Red Six Rolls Back Into Action

After a well-deserved break, Silver Star-winning milblogger Neil Prakash is back in his Abrams turret at Armor Geddon, pouring out the gritty details of what the battle for Fallujah was really like from someone who experienced it.

Carpe Bonum did an excellent bit of public service and created an article index of Avenger Red Six's experiences in the assault on Fallujah from November 5-12, 2004. Future articles in the series seem imminent.

A sample:

"Red 6, Phantom 6. I want you to move to a position where you can observe the city. Ramrod 6 wants you to call for indirect. Adjust your first round. After that, it's ‘Fire for effect. Drop 50, fire for effect. Drop 50, fire for effect. And just keep doing that until someone tells you to stop, Got it?"

Yeah I got it alright. Wipe out a grid square. The task force commander wanted me to level the city.

Milblogging don't get much more tense than Armor Geddon.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Blogger For Hire

In the event some hiring manager types are reading this, I'd like to mention that I am looking for a job in RTP, North Carolina, preferably a position that takes advantage of my technical writing education and experience, and my background in web design, marketing, and usability.

I would also like to help companies interested in developing blog strategies for customer service, media relations, internal communications, and damage control, in addition to helping them set up acceptable-use blogging policies for their employees.

I can be contacted at confederateyankee@hotmail.com.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Roger & Me (and the United Nations), Part Deux

A wonderful quality of stupid people (from a blogger's perspective) is their inability to shut up when they've already lost the argument.

The folks at UN Dispatch come back for more abuse as they attempt to save face for their disastrous attempt to go after blogger Roger L. Simon for his attention to the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal.

The John Kerry fanboys write:

Not surprisingly, our previous post about Roger L. Simon's hyper-focus on the Oil-for-Food controversy elicited a strong response from the UN's blog critics.

And not unexpectedly, the responses were largely dismissive, derisive, and betrayed a shallow reading of the original post.

One is forced to remind UN Dispatch that their original post was dismissive (of the gravity of the Oil-for-Food scandal), derisive (of Roger and his choice of subject matter), and betrayed a number of shallow spots at UN Dispatch, including an understanding of the magnitude of the Oil-For-Food Scandal and its newsworthiness, and understanding of the way the news cycle works, and a general misunderstanding of the workings of the blogosphere.

Simon and literally hundreds of other bloggers and members of the international news media are on the Oil-For-Food scandal because it is perhaps the greatest example of international organized crime in the history of the world. Period.

This crime spans the world, potentially breaches thousands of laws in dozens of countries, and trades billions of dollars for power, at the expense of who-knows-how-many thousands dead.

20% of his time is too much? I'd argue the rest of us aren't paying enough attention to the scandal.

The authors then go on to condemn this blog among others:

Finally, an unfortunate reaction from some bloggers is their willingness to simply shrug off the examples of UN-related issues listed in the original post. It's clear that many of these bloggers have become accustomed to knee-jerk attacks and are unwilling (or unable) to engage in a reasoned debate.

Want a reasoned debate? Name the topic, and fire the opening salvo. I'm waiting.

Notice that UN Dispatch does not attempt to debunk any of the comments made by any of the bloggers they disagree with, Confederate Yankee included. Apparently, readers of UN Dispatch are supposed to simply believe them and disagree with us, simply because they...

Well, they don't exactly say why we should see things their way (perhaps they have a plan?). We just should, you know?

UN Dispatch ends this sad post with:

For the record, we'll re-post the issues we think warrant attention and let readers decide:

Newsflash: They already did.

Once again, the UN turns a blind eye to things they would rather not see.

Update: I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Roger & Me (and the United Nations)

Poor Roger L. Simon.

Screen writer, blogger, and one of the founders of Pajamas Media (full disclosure: I've signed on to PJ Media as well), Roger is being attacked by a United Nations blog run by a couple of John Kerry fanboys.

Simon's crime?

20% of Roger L. Simon's blog entries during the month of April make reference to the Oil-for-Food controversy.

0% of Roger L. Simon's blog entries during April make reference to the following UN-related issues:

They then go on to list a bunch of issues that that think build the case for how successful the United Nations is, apparently in an attempt to show that Roger is unfair. Let's look at some of these, shall we? I'll use their links of "successes" from their blog, and then comment as it seems appropriate.

Tackling the threat of transnational organized crime

After reading of the massive amounts of corruption I've read about involving the Oil-For-Food scandal and kickbacks involving the French, the Russians, and various UN diplomats and hangers-on including the UN chairman's own family, I think the UN could rightly be defined as "trasnational organized crime" itself, couldn' it?

Are they trying to debunk Simon's claim, or are they piling-on themselves?

Shipping supplies to millions of Iraqi schoolchildren

This was instead of shipping freedom to Iraq, which the United States eventually did (against UN wishes). Unfortunately, the delay left more than a few Iraqi schoolchildren in mass graves still being discovered.

Controlling the Marburg virus

If UN peacekeeping was worth a damn, perhaps Angola wouldn't have been at war for decades and their hospitals might have been better prepared to handle a disease easily contained by basic protective measures. Through apathy, the UN helped create conditions that made the outbreak so severe.

Again fanboys, you aren't helping your cause too much...

Building thousands of homes for tsunami victims

The UN contributed $36 million to build (they haven't actually built them mind you, but they will) 9,000 homes. That is nice, but the victims are still homeless five months later while UN officials live in air-conditioned hotels and drink imported wine with local teen hookers. Doubt that? Read The Diplomad, blogged by men who we actually there to see the UN's ineffectiveness and corruption among the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

BTW, how much do you want to bet that the bulk of that $36 million was part of the more than $500 billion contributed by the people of the United States?

Partnering with the private sector to meet humanitarian needs

I didn't actually read this link, but it sounds like it could be describing more UN sexual abuse of children. I can see Pierre crying out, "Hey Lay-deez... I'll give you twenty francs and a food voucher if you'll let me borrow your daughter to satisfy the "humanitarian needs" of my "private sector."

Reducing child mortality rates

Again, didn't read the link, but the answer is simple.

Keep children away from AIDS-infested UN pedophiles.

Of course, it might also have been nice if the UN stepped in in Rwanda, or Darfur, or Bosnia, or... well you get the picture. Stopping genocide (which involves children) is a pretty effective way to combat child mortality rates. Perhaps they should try it sometime.

Rehabilitating Iraq's marshlands

Yep, just as soon as they dig up all those Kurds that Saddam gassed, shot, and bombed while the UN turned a blind eye, the marshes can return to its pristine natural state.

There are more examples provided by the fanboys, but you get the picture. You can splash all the perfume you want on a turd, but it doesn't change it's basic composition.

U.N.-Loved Update: The UN stooges actually decided to spoonfeed this gem of a story to more established bloggers via email. Can you believe their stupidity? I had to find out about it on my own. I guess I need to get more famouser.

And yes I was an English major... why do you ask?

Update: They just keep coming back for more.

This is an archive post. Please visit the main page for more.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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IMAO: Cat Blog?

There is something to be said for great parody blogs.

Though this isn't half-bad, either. Besides, it's about as close as I've gotten to be on Frank J.'s blogroll so far...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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