Coal from the sea..

Collecting coal from the sea

In this photograph taken in 1980 two local people are seen wheeling home bags of coal which they have gleaned from the beach at Easington Colliery, Co Durham, where the coal seams extend five miles out under the sea.  During the coal strike of 1984 which shattered the industry many families relied on sea coal, often collected by their children. Easington Colliery was eventually closed in 1993 (Brian Harris/The Times)

I caught part of a report on retail sales this season, thought I heard that there was an unprecedented lag of 20% this year… but I missed all the details… where and when, for one!  So I went looking for some reports…

I found an auto paint and body chain that claims their numbers are off over 20% for Q2 and Q3 (a six month run ending October 31)… What a shock!… but other than that, the news is all over the place, down some, down a little.  Or more.  Or not.

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Via Angry Arab’s entry….

Bush Doctrine: at Home

“While serving the State Department in several senior capacities over the past four years, I witnessed firsthand the quiet, de facto military takeover of much of the U.S. government. The first assault on civilian government occurred in faraway places — Iraq and Afghanistan — and was, in theory, justified by the exigencies of war.”

Posted by As’ad at 7:23 AM

I got onto this dicey piece in the Wapo:

We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk. …

While serving the State Department in several senior capacities over the past four years, I witnessed firsthand the quiet, de facto military takeover of much of the U.S. government. The first assault on civilian government occurred in faraway places — Iraq and Afghanistan — and was, in theory, justified by the exigencies of war.

He makes quite a few points, related to ways in which we have formed on-the-ground programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, inserting the military, the Pentagon, where it need not be, where State or other agencies would be more appropriate.

The encroachment within America’s borders continued with the military’s increased involvement in domestic surveillance and its attempts to usurp the role of the federal courts in reviewing detainee cases. The Pentagon also resisted ceding any authority over its extensive intelligence operations to the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte — a State Department official who eventually gave up his post to Mike McConnell, a former Navy admiral. The Bush administration also appointed Michael V. Hayden, a four-star Air Force general, to be the director of the CIA. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley saw much of the responsibility for developing and implementing policy on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — surely the national security adviser’s job — given to Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, Bush’s new “war czar.” By 2008, the military was running much of the national security apparatus.

The Pentagon opened a southern front earlier this year when it attempted to dominate the new Merida Initiative, a promising $400 million program to help Mexico battle drug cartels. Despite the admirable efforts of the federal drug czar, John P. Walters, to keep the White House focused on the civilian law-enforcement purpose of the Merida Initiative, the military runs a big chunk of that program as well.

The author offers suggestions to Ob for ways to take the country back from the military. I am not holding my breath.

The last lines are:

In short, he should retake the government before it devours him and us — and return civilian-led government to the people of the United States.