Heh

No, wait -- double heh!

A Campaign I'll Endorse

This is a good idea. You're just a few clicks away from sending my NY Post review of Mike Yon's book to your friends, neighbors, and congressional representatives. (They might even buy the book for themselves!)

Campaign Quote of the Day

The other day, the Blog Princess was accused of lending a sense of taste and refinement to what would otherwise be an ugly and undignified brawl. We think it Extremely Important to correct that misapprehension with the utmost alacrity.

This post ought to do the trick.

"I think Chelsea looks better in person and she's got the body and a** of life,"

The Editorial Staff does not care who you are or what your political orientation: this is just plain funny.

But more importantly, we are outraged.

Why, oh why have we never been told we have "the ass of life"? It's almost enough to make us change parties, if only so we can sport really groovy campaign swag like this:

Interesting use of pop culture as persuasive authority. Not sure what the target demographic is. Ron Paul voters, perhaps?

This, on the otter heiny, is just plain disturbing.

Cross posted at VC, where there is an A** of Life Poetry Slam just starting up for the artistically inclined.

If a vehicle is unmanned, does it still have a cockpit?

This will ruffle a few feathers:

Although he praised the U.S. Air Force's contributions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense chief made it clear that more needs to be done. A case in point, he said, is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as the pilotless drones are known. When he was director of the CIA in 1992, Gates recalled, "the Air Force would not co-fund with CIA a vehicle without a pilot," even though it was a "far less risky and far more versatile means of gathering data."

Saying that drones cost much less and can spend more time in the air than piloted planes, Gates called UAVs "ideal for many of today's tasks" and noted that the United States now has more than 5,000 of them, a 25-fold increase since 2001.

"But in my view, we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt," Gates said. "My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield. I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater. Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth."

The Pentagon chief, himself a former Air Force officer in the late 1960s, added: "While we've doubled this capability in recent months, it is still not good enough. And so last week I established a Department of Defense-wide task force . . . to work this problem in the weeks to come, to find more innovative and bold ways to help those whose lives are on the line."

Though some in the Air Force might just be hoping for a more "pilot-friendly" SECDEF next time around, perhaps just a few months down the road.

Speaking of which:

Gates also expressed concern about a proliferation of retired senior military officers who have signed up as advisers to presidential candidates or as media experts. In response to a question, he said he worries that distinctions between active-duty and retired officers "tend to get blurred" and that the public often does not know "whether they're speaking for the institution or for themselves."

"And so if I had one request to all of them, it would be in whatever role they're playing that they make clear that they're not speaking for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marines Corps, or the Department of Defense, but only speaking for themselves," Gates said. He did not identify any advisers or commentators by name.