One for the road

The Army gets itself a bitchin' ride. Story here.

A modified Chevrolet Silverado platform fitted with modules of counterterrorism equipment just might be the next big thing for homeland security.

“SmarTruck II is engineered to meet the nontraditional challenges of today’s military,” said Dennis Wend, executive director of the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command’s National Automotive Center (NAC). “It provides built-in flexibility and offensive capability [for a variety of situations].”




I dunno about you, but when I look at this truck, I can only imagine a group of hard-working Homeland Security Joes heading off to the mountains for a relaxing weekend after slugging it out all week doing food-riot urban pacification in major U.S. cities after Bush's tax cut takes effect, crippling the states and giving more tax money to the wealthy families with kids.

But will the Army support terrorism?

About time, I say. It may require registration, blah blah blah.

Ratcheting up the debate over sport utility vehicles, new television commercials suggest that people who buy the vehicles are supporting terrorists. The commercials are so provocative that some television stations are refusing to run them.

Patterned after the commercials that try to discourage drug use by suggesting that profits from illegal drugs go to terrorists, the new commercials say that money for gas needed for S.U.V.'s goes to terrorists. "This is George," a girl's voice says of an oblivious man at a gas station.

"This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V."

A second commercial depicts a series of ordinary Americans saying things like: "I helped hijack an airplane"; "I gave money to a terrorist training camp in a foreign country"; "What if I need to go off-road?"

At the close, the screen is filled with the words: "What is your S.U.V. doing to our national security?"

Here's a related story about TV stations that don't want to run the ads.

It's Your Call

That nifty Tom Tomorrow has a blurb on his blog gleaned from another blog about contacting the White House to register your opinion about Iraq. Well, if Team Bush is truly honest about listening to the voice of the people, all you have to so if call 202-456-1111 between 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST during the week and eventually you'll get connected to a real person. Say "I'm against this war in Iraq and I vote" (or whatever, you can say what you want) and that's it.

Speaking of Team Bush

Okay, I know I'm getting into a rantbot zone with the White House, but I saw this and I have to pass it on. It's about David Frum's new book about his time in the White House as George W. Bush's speechwriter. Frum's credited with inventing "Axis of Evil," and his new tome about the White House's insides is kinda juicy. He saves some dirt for key Bush aides Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, where we learn:

"Rove was a risk taker and an intellectual. Hughes loathed risk and abhorred ideas. Rove was a reader and a questioner -- a curious man, always eager to learn. Hughes rarely read books and distrusted people who did -- anything she did not already know she saw no point in knowing." (emphasis mine)

Distrusted people who read books...that's so damn depressing.