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john mccain — fraud and traitor
John McCain: War Hero or North Vietnam's Go-To Collaborator?
From Glory Boy to PW Songbird
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However….two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not “name rank and serial number, or kill me,” as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of US pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships. (5)
So McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention. That’s not anything too contemptible. And who among us civilians is to judge someone in the position?
On the other hand, according to one source, McCain’s collaboration may have had very real consequences. Retired Army Colonel Earl Hopper, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contends that the information that McCain divulged classified information North Vietnam used to hone their air defense system.
Hopper’s son, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Earl Pearson Hopper was, like McCain, shot down over North Vietnam. Hopper the younger, however, was declared “Missing in Action.” Stemming from the loss of his son, the elder Hopper co-founded the National League of Families, an organization devoted to the return of Vietnam War POWs.
According to the elder Hopper, McCain told his North Vietnamese captors, “highly classified information, the most important of which was the package routes, which were routes used to bomb North Vietnam. He gave in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn… he gave them what primary targets the United States was interested in.” Hopper contends that the information McCain provided allowed the North Vietnamese to adjust their air-defenses. As result, Hopper claims, the US lost sixty percent more aircraft and in 1968, “called off the bombing of North Vietnam, because of the information McCain had given to them.” 6
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photography
Pictures from the Hengduan Range in Tibet from before WWII.
Old Picture
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Hengduan Range stands on the southeast corner of Tibet Plateau at the intersection of estern Tibet Autonimous region, western Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. It has an average elevation of 2000-6000 meters with its highest peak Mt. Gongga(7556 m),which is the king of mountains in Sichuan province and also known as Minya Konka.
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thanks to Heading East
just who is in charge?
Army Shows Its Colors
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The Army's public affairs office publishes a daily roundup of Army-related news called "Stand To" -- named for the set of procedures combat units do just prior to dawn, when they go to full alert for a possible enemy attack. The daily wrapup contains links to mainstream media articles, Army press releases, foreign media stories and blogs. It's similar to the Defense Department's Early Bird -- but much briefer, and obviously more focused on the Army.
Tuesday's edition contained an entry under "WHAT'S BEING SAID IN BLOGS" that struck me as unusual -- both for its headline and its patent political bias:
Obama: World peace thru surrender (KDIHH)
The link goes to a milblog called "Knee Deep in the Hooah." The author is a former Army officer whose son is serving in Iraq now. After citing a column on some curious Pentagon planning for an Obama administration, he goes on to write:
Roger that Redleg six, throwing away all ammo now and preparing to surrender ... Redleg five, out.
After all, what better time to surrender than when we are winning? The article cited above also includes a Youtube link so that you can see the end for yourself in the end makers own words. Sure. This is all old news for those of us who care. But it still ticks me off anyway. So I thought to myself,"Why not share the wealth?" Now I can be ticked off in good company. Enjoy.
Mr.Hooah!, out.
Seriously? Have any of these people actually read the Obama defense policy papers or speeches -- or are they simply going on what they hear on Fox News and the Limbaugh network?
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thanks to The Huffington Post
Or maybe they should read the US Constitution. The civilians are in charge. The military needs to be cut down to size.
father's day
I enjoyed an early Father's Day dinner with two of my kids, Katie and Robby. My third kid Jenny (she thinks she is the first kid, says she was the only one that had been an only child) lives in Fort Carson , Colorado, so I suppose she has an excuse. She did contribute with a present. Jenny and Katie gave me board games. They want to come over for game night. We will have to do that. Robby gave me an autographed Roy Rogers CD. Not the cowboy Roy Rogers. The blues Roy Rogers. It was his live CD Live! at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Big Room. Roy played at Mukilteo Coffee where Robby works. Roy wants to come back with Norton Buffalo. Not to be missed.
We had dinner at Cafe Langley. I had the Mediterranean Fish Stew. Yum!
After dinner Katie and I retired to the Dog House Tavern for a pint of Guiness. Double Yum! It was a needed attitude adjustment.
economy
Why It’s Worse Than You Think
For months, economic Pollyannas have looked beyond the dismal headlines and promised a quick recovery in the second half. They're dead wrong.
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The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which inspired a 394-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Friday, was the latest in a run of bad news. Auto sales, the largest retailing sector in the U.S., were off 10.7 percent in May from the year before. And housing? Ugh. Nationwide, according to the Case-Shiller Index, home prices in the first quarter fell 14 percent.
Yet hope springs eternal that the second half will be better than the first. Economists polled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in May believe the economy will grow at an annual rate of 1.7 percent and 1.8 percent in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that "home sales and prices in most of the country will improve during the second half of 2008." (Yun is the Little Orphan Annie of forecasters. He's always sure the sun will come out tomorrow.) Last month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said, "We expect to see a faster pace of economic growth before the end of the year."
The cause for optimism: the U.S. has called in the economic cavalry, which has responded in textbook fashion. The Federal Reserve has aggressively cut interest rates, bringing the Federal Funds rate down from 5.25 percent last September to 2 percent. Earlier this spring, Congress and President Bush, in a rare moment of bipartisan accord, passed a stimulus package, which will shove nearly $100 billion into the pockets of American consumers by mid-July.
But this downturn is likely to last longer than the eight-month-long recession of 2001. While the U.S. financial system processes popped stock bubbles quickly, it has always taken longer to hack through the overhang of bad debt. The head winds that drove the economy into this dead calm— a housing and credit crisis, and rising energy and food prices—have strengthened rather than let up in recent months. To aggravate matters, the twin crises that dominate the financial news—a credit crunch and the global commodity boom—are blunting the stimulus efforts. As a result, the consumer-driven economy may not bounce back as rapidly as it did in the fraught months after 9/11.
As it seeks to regain its footing in the second half, the U.S. economy faces two significant obstacles, neither of which was evident in 2001. The first is entirely homegrown: the self-inflicted wounds of the promiscuous extension and abuse of credit in the housing and financial sectors. The second is a global phenomenon that has comparatively little to do with American behavior: rampant inflation in commodities such as oil, food and steel. These trends have conspired to inflict genuine economic pain and deflate consumer confidence. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index in May slumped to a 16-year low.
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thanks to The Huffington Post
5x7
I ran across this post at Large Format Photography Forum. Some interesting perspectives on using large format in advertising and the different formats.
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I'm crawling out of the advertising woodwork to add my bit on LF photography. There was another side to LF. Forget Yellowstone, great names and cherry-wood. In the beginning there was the process printer. He had to take your transparency, mask it, shoot the separations, mask again (in register) and contact print the plates. Better 8x10 than 6x6. So advertising campaigns were shot on 8x10
In the sixties, where I began, the ad agencies, JWT, McCann, Y&R, Ogilvy and others bought their way into Europe. Food and soap powder which previously was sold out of the sack by weight was starting to be sold in boxes with brand names. Ok, I am generalising, but here goes. The agencies came in with english-speaking Creative Directors who liked things done the way things were done in NY and London. Things were done on 8x10. It kind of separated the men from the boys.
The agencies had another reason for requiring 8x10 - the all-important Client Presentation. Again, forget definition, tonal range, art. The transparency was mounted in a large black passpartout and held up to the window by an Account Executive. It had prestige. Anything smaller than 8x10 couldn't make it. Sometimes the trannies were sent off to London to make dye-transfers for retouching and more was spent on post-production than on the shoot.
An Art Director wouldn't look at your portfolio if it wasn't in 8x10. When he did look, he held the trannies up to the window too. (ADs did use a light box; after the shoot, with a loupe, for nit-picking) In forty years I never got to shoot a colour negative. The system started to colapse in the eighties when Art Kane turned up with 35mm kodachromes.
[...]
4x5 was for pack-shots, the products at the bottom of the page next to the body-copy. Product Managers would grumble at the small size and produce a loupe to check the label (yes, they carried a loupe to presentations).
Then there was 5x7, 13x18cm over here. It was like there was some sort of class prejudice. 13x18 was for commercial photography, furniture, kitchen catalogs. They shot negative colour film and sold prints for salesman portfolios. 8x10 and 4x5 was ok, 13x18 was not ok. We would have been a bit ashamed to bring a 13x18 into an agency.
Things change and I grew up. I tried a Technika 13x18 in 1982 and thought what the hell and never looked back. For the next two decades I made a career out of 13x18, doing traditional still-life - my way, orthogonal and all in focus. The format is a perfect match for table-top. 13x18 got me a couple of Art Directors Club golds and a Clio. I didn't need more than limited movement and an 180mm lens. Also - no polaroid, no problem. The Linhof was too heavy to carry around outdoors so I build a half-plate box for landscape. See it here: http://web.mac.com/cjbroadbent/Site/fivebyseven.html
My humble advice to first-time large-formatters is - You don't need big contortions. You do need to be sure the front end is square on. (Have a look at a 'Non Folding Field Camera'). Use just one lens, no longer than the width of the film. Get the back-end plumb square, raise and drop the front at will, but tilt it hardly at all. Scheimpflug is for the birds.
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He has some wonderful still lifes taken with the 5x7.
Bits & Pieces
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And he has fixed focus 5x7 box camera that he built.
My Hassle-Free 5x7
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I have a tiny 90mm Wollensak lens that will cover 5x7. A box like this would be perfect. I can use the ground glass back from my Burke & James 5x7. Just what I need! Another project.
america the beautiful
Old Dogs and Hard Time
"I'm a Goddamned Magnet for Bad Luck"
by Joe Bageant
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Late at night through my window by the computer I can see my neighbor Stokes bicycling at 10 pm to the local convenience store to buy groceries. Not only is that an expensive way to feed one's self, but it is the only way for old Stokes to cop some grubs without getting thrown in jail. Seriously. As a convicted sex offender, he is not allowed to come in proximity with young women in a supermarket checkout line. Nor is he allowed to visit a park, or even his own grandchild, even though he is not a child molester by the court's own admission. He is not allowed to drink a beer. In fact, he is not even allowed to read Playboy Magazine.
A dozen or so years ago Stokes, now 66 with a gray ponytail, an altogether gentle soul who labors under the illusion he looks like Willie Nelson, (and even has a framed photo of Willie on his wall to invite comparison). Got caught by police in a, shall we say, "a vehicular sexual incident" with a married woman. They were both drunk, big deal. That happens in beer joints. To make a long story short, by the time they got to court the lady’s testimony was that it was all against her will, which being a married woman, solved a lot of problems for her. That resulted in Stokes being convicted as a sex offender while his public defender all but slept through the trial.
To make matters worse, Stokes had an unregistered handgun stashed in his car. Stupid, I know, but rednecks are often like that, and I'd be willing to bet there are more unregistered handguns guns than registered ones around here. This may horrify urban liberals, but legal or not, it is the common practice of tens of thousands of people down here in the southern climes of our great nation. Not to mention common nationwide to many thousands more cab drivers, night clerks, hotel parking valets, bill collectors, repo men, single women and god only knows how many others. At any rate, thanks to the gun which he never touched, Stokes was prosecuted for armed abduction for sexual purposes, and did ten years.
He’s been out for years now. But he was released into an entirely different world than he left -- one which seems scripted by Adam Smith and Hanging Judge Roy Bean. As a convicted felon, he has been released from prison to serve a new sentence … to serve time as a profit center for our economy. In truth, he has been one from the day he was charged.
He’s been out for years now. But he was released into an entirely different world than he left -- one which seems scripted by Adam Smith and Hanging Judge Roy Bean. As a convicted felon, he has been released from prison to serve a new sentence … to serve time as a profit center for our economy. In truth, he has been one from the day he was charged.
Now I am not about to screech here that our prison system is anywhere near that created by Uncle Joe Stalin. We do not have nine million people in it and we do not get sent there for being late for work at the factory, our factories having been outsourced. However, after 1929 Stalin’s prison camps were transformed to an economic machine. And in order to fulfill the camps’ economic goals, more and more prisoners were required, just as more prisoners are required to fulfill the investor goals of Corrections Corporation of America, Geo Group. In any case, convictions are profitable and the more of them there are the more money both private interests and the state take in.
That in itself is way the hell past just being strange. But throw in the term sex offender and get on the registered sex offender list (which seems to be mostly filled with Johns who solicited prostitutes, though you'd never know it by the way they name the offense) and it all gets really weird. Chilling even. This is partly because of the taboo and stigma associated, but mostly for the bizarre monitoring rules, and the money involved in enforcement. For example Stokes, must pay a couple hundred a month for counseling, group therapy and so on, until they tell him he can stop doing so. This therapy mainly amounts to listening to the stories of more serious offenders such as child molesters even though he is not one, but being treated by law as if he were. Such is the fate of being legally shackled to any of dozens of types of "certified sex offender treatment providers," an ever expanding industry they tell me.
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naked camera
I stripped off the old vulcanite on my Zorki Standard. I also removed the speed mechanism cover. Taking it down to the bare essentials. I have a Flickr set on the Zorki Standard. I probably will recover it but I like the all metal look.
oil
The Varying Impact of Gas Prices
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thanks to The Agonist
Oil Prices Raise Cost of Making Range of Goods
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Surging oil prices are beginning to cut into the profits of a wide range of American businesses, pushing many to raise prices and maneuver aggressively to offset the rising cost of merchandise made from petroleum.
Airlines, package shippers and car owners are no longer the only ones being squeezed by the ever-mounting price of oil, which shot up almost $11 a barrel on Friday alone, to $138.54, a record.
Companies that make hard goods using raw materials derived from oil, like tires, toiletries, plastic packaging and computer screens, are watching their costs skyrocket, and they find themselves forced into unpleasant choices: Should they raise prices, shift to less costly procedures, cut workers, or all three?
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update
Heloooo! Anyone still out there? There is an inverse relationship between the number of blog entries and shit going on in my life. Not many blog entries lately.
First, my mom is doing much better from her bout with pneumonia. She left the hospital Wednesday for a nursing home. The nursing home may just be a temporary stay. They have physical therapy available to help get her mobile again. If she can use her walker then she will be able to move back to the assisted living house. If not, she will stay at the nursing home. Her world keeps getting smaller and smaller.
We visited Zoe's mom on Tuesday. It was about 2 1/2 weeks ago that she fell on her face and broke her nose. Her face was looking much better. She was in good spirits but her language skills keep degrading from her Alzheimer's.
I still haven't loaded all my software back on to my computer after my hard drive crashed. I hope to have that done this weekend. My old email wasn't recovered (a mixed blessing) but my data files were. Unfortunately, all my links that I've been saving up for here are gone. And everything is in the wrong place. It slows me down. Slowly I'm putting things back right or adjusting to the new. Hopefully regular programming will ensue.
mom
My mom, Doris, is doing much better. She was sitting up and talking when Zoe and I saw her yesterday. We got her laughing. We called today and the nurse said she was doing much better and could go home tomorrow. That's the good part. Unfortunately we are not sure where home is going to be. She has been living in an assisted living house. She has been able to walk and could get around by herself with the aid of a walker. Her legs and knees have been hurting more and more and just recently she hasn't been able to get up by herself and needs a wheelchair. The problem with where she lives is they can't get her into the wheelchair. They aren't strong enough. She is going to have to go to a nursing home where she can get more care. That is something my brother Terry is taking care of. This sucks.
update: My daughter Katie visited mom this evening. Apparently mom will be getting some physical therapy to get her walking again. That would be a very,very good thing. I need to find out more.
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