Offering commentary on current developments and controversies in politics, religion, philosophy, science, education and anything else which attracts our interest.
The problems and difficulties faced by the Taliban in Afghanistan continue to mount. An article at Strategy Page explains why. Here's the lede:
The massive movement of intelligence gathering and analyzing forces from Iraq to Afghanistan in the last two years is paying off by cutting Taliban supplies of weapons, and money. More and more captured (often from dead Taliban) weapons and ammunition is of poor quality. Explosives, even the stuff made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer, is harder to get, and often used in smaller quantities in order to make more roadside bombs.
That, in turn, is just getting more Taliban killed, including many more leaders. That's because the largely illiterate Taliban have fewer skilled people for tasks like planting bombs (and rigging them to go off on cue). Guys who get promoted often find themselves one of the few people who knows how to rig a bomb, so they have to go out on the bomb planting missions.
These are increasingly more dangerous because the Americans have more UAVs, along with camera towers and aerostats (tethered blimps) that can see for long distances, day or night and in any weather. It's not just that the cameras can pick up some guys planting a bomb (and call in an air strike), but can detect suspicious movement of any kind.
There's much more at the link about how difficult things are getting for the Talibs in Afghanistan and why. Check it out.
I don't know what's more outrageous, what this boneheaded Rand Paul supporter did to this woman, or the attempt by MSNBC talking heads to blame Glenn Beck and other talk radio hosts for his actions. In any case, the man has been condignly fired. The woman was a provocateur, to be sure, but that's not an excuse for this sort of treatment. She apparently needed to be restrained, but once she was on the ground, stepping on her was gratuitous and excessive.
The edited video makes it look like the man repeatedly stomped on the woman (he didn't), but just placing his foot on her shoulder was bad enough. Indeed, it's about as bad as Joy Behar on The View calling Sharron Angle a moron, evil, and a bitch (three times) and insisting that she's going to hell:
Anyway, the stomper has since apologized, but his behavior has no place in a civil polity and should not be tolerated in our political debates. The Paul campaign was right to sever their ties to the guy. Now, if only the Democrats would sever their ties to Joy Behar, or, for that matter, the SEIU thugs who beat and kicked Kenneth Gladney at a town hall meeting in August of 2009.