It is election season, time to put the Democrats back in charge so they can begin pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, launch endless investigations into the Bush Administration’s evil misdeeds, and start negotiations with our enemies. You know, our enemies like this guy:

DUBAI (Reuters) - A man believed to be a top al Qaeda militant who escaped from a U.S. jail near Kabul was shown in a new videotape broadcast on Tuesday exhorting followers in Afghanistan to fight on until they attack the White House.

“Allah will not be pleased until we reach the rooftop of the White House,” Abu Yahya al-Libi was shown telling fighters in the tape aired by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

Mr. Yahya al-Libi sounds like a perfectly reasonable fellow. A few concessions are sure to win him over and convince him to leave us alone. Perhaps we could offer a few Jews to be killed in our stead.

But how do we know we can negotiate with him, you ask? It is quite obvious. He cares about his fellow al-Qaeda followers and has instituted a physical fitness program for their well-being.

“You have to get well prepared by starting with exercise, and then you have to learn how to use technology until you are capable of nuclear weapons,” he said.

“New from al-Qaeda Productions, it’s “Sweatin’ to the Jihad!” With guest appearances by Cindy Sheehan and Hugo Chavez demonstrating “Qaeda Crunches,” and a rousing round of “Death to America!” diaphragm exercises led by various Hollywood luminaries, this new video is sure to be a hit in your cave.”

Feel the burn.

Drudge is linking to a special report that Hollywood producer and director David Zucker put together an ad for the GOP.

Yes, you read that right, the GOP.

However, the powers that be have decreed it not ready for primetime viewing because it is way “over the top” (although incredibly funny).

Hmmm: I post, you decide. Should this be shown in TV Land? Would this win any votes?

KTRK-TV has put its “Crime Tracker” on the case of rising crime on Houston’s west side.

It’s the portion of Houston’s west side loosely bordered by the Katy Freeway, the Westpark Tollway, Gessner and the city’s west border. Overall violent crimes are up 4.7 percent for the first eight months of 2006 versus 2005.

The greatest gain — murders. They’re up to 15 from 9 the year before. That’s an increase of nearly 67%. A third of the homicides in this part of town happened near Westpark and the beltway.

Aggravated assaults are also on the rise. They’re up to 380 from 330. That’s an increase of more than 15%.

Rapes are up slightly — 12%.

Let’s see, murder up 67%, assaults up 15%, and rapes up 12%. Was there any good news?

Only robberies have decreased, and only by 4%.

Great, I feel safer already.

By now, everyone has read the reports that the North Korean nuclear test was a dud. I have however read a report that makes me think there might be something else going on, one that strikes me as very disturbing.

When people think of Nuclear Weapons they think big, like the Soviet Tsar Bomba, but there is a class of nuclear weapons that are known as low-yield or variable-yield weapons. They are a bit more difficult to make and maintain and require technologies that are not quite as easy to obtain from the open literature. They usually require the use of different tamper elements or the use of tritium injection. Tritium injection can be problematic because tritium decays into He3 which can poison the reaction and tritium has a half-life of a little over 12 years. So maintaining such a device in a usable state requires constant work.

The Davy Crockett is one such device that had a variable yield from 10-20 tons. This warhead was one of the lightest ever built and weighed only 51 lbs. This extremely low yield is very close to the theoretical minimum for a fission device but is HUGE compared to its size and weight. I have read a report of someone who has seen video of the test, although I have been unable to find the video myself. This person describes the instrumentation trailers being so close to the collapse cone of the test well that had the bomb been any larger, the instrumentation trailers would have fallen into the cone. This gives strong evidence that the North Koreans knew exactly what they were doing and what the design yield was. Everyone seems to think that they would be building a Nagasaki/Trinity type device. But such a device weighs far too much to mount on their Taepo-dong 2 missiles which, as ICBMs go, are exceedingly small. Therefore they have a strong incentive to be looking at variable and low yield devices.

Lightweight low-yield weapons also are ideal as terror weapons so NK would have a secondary market for them. And NK has never developed a weapons system that they have not sold on the open market. Just because our first Plutonium Nuke was a Trinity type implosion device does not mean that it follows that NK would follow our design steps. They have the benefit of knowing where we have been and what technologies we and the Soviets and the Chinese have brought to bear. They may very well leap-frog us. We have not developed a new nuke design in decades due to a lack of political will. They would appear to have no such compunction.

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON 10/5/06

Of six Cy-Fair board members, four have seen NO increase in their appraisals since 2003.

See for yourself (39 page pdf.)

As mentioned by Dan Patrick. [UPDATED-- And Edd Hendee]
Major hat-tip to reader Kevin Lancaster who brought this to our attention.

LST notes (along with Dan)– this isn’t proof in and of itself that something nefarious is going on*… but it does show that they aren’t “feeling the pain” of those of you who are suffering sky-rocketing increases.

UPDATED– The school board meeting where they will be taking the vote on a tax increase takes place tonight at 6 PM, 10300 Jones Rd (mapquest).
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* Edd also kinda notes this, but not too much.

A tit-for-tat censorship battle only leaves all of us less informed.

Funny Girl just “Jumped the Shark”:

Barbra Streisand took a carefully plotted step down from the imperial pedestal she has occupied for decades at Madison Square Garden last night and stumbled. The biggest miscalculation was the appearance, late in the show, of a George W. Bush impersonator (Steve Bridges) who Ms. Streisand, an ardent Democrat, interrogated in a tone that tried to be witty, and failed.

How would the president erase the national debt? Sell Canada; they don’t use half of it, he replied. “If I cared about polls,” he remarked, “I would have run for President of Poland.” And so on.

The tepid segment mercifully ended after the two joined voices for an unfunny spoof of the famous Judy Garland-Streisand duet of “Get Happy,” and “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

[Hat-tip: New York Times]

Wow.

And he was just breaking in that new uniform.
Fox-26’s Isaiah Carey has been keeping his ear to the ground:

A rumor is making its way around the dept: In six months Hurtt will be gone. Deal is already done between Hurtt and White. Councilman Garcia is providing White with names of 4 replacement candidates. White will choose from the list of 4. And in the rumor it was stated it was time for a Hispanic chief.

Adios, MoFo. My vote for a replacement goes to Daryl Gates.

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