Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Late again today…this is becoming a habit of late (pun intended). However, the reason I’m posting later than normal isn’t due to my staying abed until the late, late morning or early afternoon. No, I’ve been attempting to digest the literally millions of words that have been written over the past 24 hours about Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. When I say “millions of words” I’m not exaggerating in the least. To illustrate: yesterday memeorandum (archived page as of 6/29/2006, 1300 hours EDT) had 97 discrete links to news wire articles, op-eds, TV stories, and blog posts on the subject. Ninety-frickin’-seven…all within hours of the release of the 185 page decision! I submit it’s humanly impossible simply to read all that verbiage, let alone understand it, within the space of a single day. So, one picks and chooses articles, based upon previous experience, trust, and, in some cases, to get a cheap laugh (e.g., Shakespeare's Sister).

That was yesterday. Today’s memeorandum page (6/30/2006, 1330 hrs. EDT) has substantially fewer links. Given that 24 hours have passed, I’m more receptive to opinion and analysis published today, as there’s been a little more time to reflect on the meaning and impact of this decision. Still, I don’t think there’s been near enough time to appreciate the full impact of the decision. We’ll be discussing and debating this subject for months, if not years, into the future.

Another, related, reason I’m late posting. I watched a faculty discussion on Hamdan hosted by the Georgetown Law Center, featuring Neal Katyal (lead plaintiff attorney in the case), Mark Tushnet, Carlos Vazquez, and David Luban. The discussion was on C-SPAN and was quite informative. Since the panel discussion was only over minutes ago, I don’t have a link.

Here are a few links I found useful and informative on the subject.

James Taranto on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in today’s Best of the Web. Excerpts:

Justice Delayed
The Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (link above in HTML or here in PDF) weighs in at 185 pages, and we'll confess we haven't had time to read every word. But here are the major points:

· Although Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the court's primary opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy decided the case. Kennedy joined Stevens and the three other "liberal" justices in some aspects of the case, yielding a 5-3 majority, but declined to join others, producing an inconclusive result on those issues. (Because Chief Justice John Roberts joined the lower-court decision the Supreme Court was overturning, he did not participate in today's ruling but can be assumed to agree with the three dissenters.)

· The Kennedy majority agreed that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which grants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sole jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees, does not strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction in this case, because Hamdan had already filed for the writ when Congress passed the act.

· The Kennedy majority held that the military commission the Pentagon set up to try Hamdan was not authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

· The Stevens plurality wanted to go further and hold that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions--which provides that war crimes trials be conducted by "a regularly constituted court"--requires that Hamdan be present at his trial, even if sensitive intelligence is being aired. But Kennedy thought it unnecessary to reach a conclusion on this question.

· The Stevens plurality also wanted to declare the charge against Hamdan--conspiracy--invalid under international law. Kennedy again saw no reason to reach the question.

The court did not decide that unlawful combatants at Guantanamo are entitled to Geneva Convention protections as either civilians or prisoners of war, only that Common Article 3, which governs "conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the [signatories]," applies--though because of Kennedy's demurral, precisely how it applies is an open question.

(In dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas argued that Common Article 3 does not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda--a position Roberts also took in the lower court's decision [PDF]. Scalia and Thomas, along with Justice Samuel Alito, also take the position that even if Common Article 3 does apply, the commission qualified as "regularly constituted.")

The court also did not hold that the government is under any obligation to release Hamdan. Justice Stevens:

We have assumed . . . the truth of the message implicit in that charge--viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted upon, would cause great harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government's power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities in order to prevent such harm.

For now at least, the court has not mandated that terrorist detainees be granted the rights of either ordinary criminal defendants (who cannot be held indefinitely unless charged and convicted) or prisoners of war (who, among other things, cannot be interrogated).

The chief result of this ruling will be to delay the trials of Guantanamo detainees until Congress or the Pentagon establishes a regime of military commissions that meets the court's approval. For those concerned with the duration of terrorists' captivity--a perverse thing to worry about anyway--there's little to cheer here.

SCOTUSblog has a tremendous amount of information, interpretation, and opinion on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. I found Lyle Denniston’s analysis (Analysis: What Hamdan did not decide) very informative, but as they say, “there’s more…much more.” And Ronald A Cass’ article, “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Common Sense at War” in Real Clear Politics, is also worth the read.

Finally, Curt at Flopping Aces, pretty much sums up my reaction to this ruling:

In the end, while I was mighty pissed when first reading this decision I think this isn’t such a defeat for Bush. All he has to do is go back to Congress and get them to approve of the tribunals. That’s it in a nutshell I believe.

I have other feelings and opinions, but Curt's thoughts are my bottom line, too.

Late Start and a Mini-Rant

Late start again, today. I did something incredibly dumb (what’s new?) last evening: I laid down after dinner to aid the digestive process, fell asleep for a lot longer than is good for me, and was only awakened when SN2 called to give me a “heads-up” about the comment he posted last evening. Well, to make a long story short, I was up until the wee, wee hours this morning. I “lost” my net connection around 2200 last evening, so I spent the quiet hours catching up on my paper-based reading, rather than my usual net-surfing reading. The upshot: rolled out of bed about an hour ago. Thus, light blogging to begin the day. It may or may not get better…

Yesterday I was over at Laurie’s place and shot my mouth off in the comments of her post about a Fort Drum captain who was recently awarded a Bronze Star. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the 27^th Public Affairs Detachment press release:

Capt. Jeremiah O’Connor, 57th Transportation Company commander, was awarded the Bronze Star for his efforts and contributions to Operation Enduring Freedom during a ceremony June 9 at the unit motor pool.

[…]

As deputy joint transportation officer during the deployment, O’Connor coordinated 48 airdrop missions, 364 separate intra-theater missions and 145 rotary missions, and helped move more than 10 million pounds of equipment and supplies. He also received more than 8,000 Soldiers and moved them to their appropriate forward operating bases.

Before I go any further, you should understand I’m not casting aspersions on CPT O’Connor or his accomplishments. My beef is with the military establishment…in this case the Army, but also (and maybe even especially) the Air Force. It’s all about medal creep, or the awarding of medals for everyday accomplishments that, in the past, might have won you an “attaboy” from your commander or supervisor. These days you get a Bronze Star. If you read between the lines of the press release you see CPT O’Connor received his Bronze Star for simply doing his job. To put it another way, the Bronze Star is eighth in the official US Army awards and decorations order of precedence, exceeded by only seven medals. Pretty hot stuff for just “being there.”

This isn’t a new hot-button with me; I’ve written about the proliferation of medals and ribbons before, in this post. The illustration I used to prove my point was of one General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, pictured with a grand total of three ribbons on his service dress. These days you can “earn” three ribbons in the USAF simply by graduating from basic training and shooting expert on the firing range; you get four if you’re really good and are named an “honor graduate” out of basic training (to wit: National Defense Service Medal, Air Force Training Ribbon, Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon, USAF Basic Military Training Honor Graduate Ribbon). And that’s just the beginning…

The Navy and the Marine Corps seem to have kept their collective heads when it comes to awards creep. Want proof? Check out The Boys, with special attention to the fruit salad on their respective chests.

/rant

Second-Hand Smoke

Second-hand smoke from cigarettes. Well, the handwriting is on the wall. The Surgeon General of the U.S. released a study and scientific report yesterday, backed up with multiple documents and press releases, a large scale news conference, and an appearance on PBS’ The News Hour that flatly states second-hand smoke will kill you.

U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today issued a comprehensive scientific report which concludes that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their risk of developing heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent. The finding is of major public health concern due to the fact that nearly half of all nonsmoking Americans are still regularly exposed to secondhand smoke.

The report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, finds that even brief secondhand smoke exposure can cause immediate harm. The report says the only way to protect nonsmokers from the dangerous chemicals in secondhand smoke is to eliminate smoking indoors.

…

“The health effects of secondhand smoke exposure are more pervasive than we previously thought,” said Surgeon General Carmona, vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service. “The scientific evidence is now indisputable: secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults.”

I watched the entire interview with Admiral Carmona on The News Hour and watched the Q&A session after yesterday’s HHS presser. The admiral side-stepped direct questions in both venues as to whether federal anti-smoking laws should be enacted, claiming that isn’t his job. His job, according to the admiral, is to “keep the spotlight on the issue.” While I don’t believe the Feds will ban smoking outright in the immediate future, I do believe there will be a flurry of state and municipal laws banning smoking, not only in public places, but in private space as well. Louisiana has already begun, enacting a law banning smoking in private cars containing children under the age of 13.

State Rep. Gary Smith, D-Norco, author of the bill aimed at protecting children from concentrated secondhand smoke, said the surgeon general's report confirmed the data he and his staff presented to the Legislature supporting his bill.

"This will let the people who were a little bit unsure about what they were doing know they were right in supporting the bill," Smith said. "The primary goal was not to punish anyone but to raise awareness of the public."

Governor Blanco hasn’t signed the bill into law, as yet, but I’m betting she will. How could she not? The Surgeon General has given anti-smoking forces all the ammo they need to further their agenda of eliminating smoking completely. It’s only a matter of time before smoking is prohibited altogether. But, hey…it’s “for the children,” and that’s an argument where no dissent is allowed. Ever.

Score another victory for the Nanny-State. I hate it when this happens.

Second-hand smoke from burning flags. You may have to dodge that, too. The NYT:

WASHINGTON, June 27 — The Senate today fell one vote short of approving a constitutional amendment that would have enabled Congress to ban desecration of the American flag.

The vote was 66 to 34. To pass, the measure needed 67 votes.

Desecrating the American flag is roughly equivalent to pedophilia in my book. It’s a deplorable, despicable, and reprehensible action, so far beneath contempt that I cannot find the words to adequately express my loathing of those who would “express” themselves by burning or otherwise desecrating the flag. Got it? In the final accounting, however, I agree with this man:

"This objectionable expression is obscene, it is painful, it is unpatriotic," said Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii and winner of the Medal of Honor for his service in World War II. "But I believe Americans gave their lives in many wars to make certain all Americans have a right to express themselves, even those who harbor hateful thoughts."

Amending the constitution is serious, serious business, an act that should never be taken lightly, even for so serious a subject as flag desecration. The Senate acted correctly.

Second-hand smoke from burning convictions. The AP has been caught, again. A press release from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works states:

The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled “Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP’s bias and methodology.

AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”

In the interest of full disclosure, the AP should release the names of the “more than 100 top climate researchers” they attempted to contact to review “An Inconvenient Truth.” AP should also name all 19 scientists who gave Gore “five stars for accuracy.” AP claims 19 scientists viewed Gore’s movie, but it only quotes five of them in its article. AP should also release the names of the so-called scientific “skeptics” they claim to have contacted.

The AP article quotes Robert Correll, the chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group. It appears from the article that Correll has a personal relationship with Gore, having viewed the film at a private screening at the invitation of the former Vice President. In addition, Correll’s reported links as an “affiliate” of a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm that provides “expert testimony” in trials and his reported sponsorship by the left-leaning Packard Foundation, were not disclosed by AP.

It ain’t the first time, nor will it be the last.

Second-hand smoke emanating from the ears, or, Lessons-Learned Dept.: I’m pleased to report that Edwards’ Chocolate Silk pie is every bit as good as their Key Lime pie. I’m not nearly as pleased to report the frickin’ pie plates they use are flimsy beyond belief and chocolate silk pie filling is pretty heavy. Yesterday afternoon I reached into the fridge to pull out that delicious pie for a little snack. Unfortunately, I grabbed the pie plate by its empty section (I’d only eaten two slices of the pie), and the pie plate immediately folded up as I withdrew it from the fridge, depositing three-quarters of a chocolate silk pie into my shoes (which are neatly aligned on the floor directly under the fridge). Cream-side down. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to clean out whipped cream, chocolate filling, and flecks of shaved chocolate out of your shoes? I thought not. Boy, was I p!ssed.

Song of the Day

I haven’t posted a song of the day in quite some time... months, even. This particular song fits the day, so I dug out my old Cowboy Junkies CD, popped it into the CD player in the car and listened to it several times while running my errands. It’s a keeper.

Song: Anniversary Song
Artist: Cowboy Junkies
Album: Pale Sun, Crescent Moon
Year: 1993
Source: My Stuff

Makes me think of & etc.: Literally one of the best love songs ever written or recorded. Ever. Not much more to say on the subject.

Lyrics:

Have you ever seen a sight as beautiful
As that of the rain-soaked purple
Of the white birch in spring?

Have you ever felt more fresh or wonderful
Than on a warm fall night
Under a mackerel sky,
The smell of grapes on the wind?

Well I have known all these things
And the joys that they can bring
And Ill share them all for a cup of coffee
And to wear your ring

Have you ever had the pleasure of watching
A quiet winters snow slowly gathering
Like simple moments adding up?

Have you ever satisfied a gut feeling
To follow a dry dirt road thats beckoning you
To the heart of a shimmering summers day?

Well I have known all these things
And the joys that they can bring
And Ill share them all for a cup of coffee
And to wear your ring

And I dont know how I survived those days
Before I held your hand
Well I never thought that I would be the one
To admit that the moon and the sun
Shine so much more brighter when
Seen through two pairs of eyes than
When seen through just one

Have you ever seen a sight as beautiful
As a face in a crowd of people
That lights up just for you?

Have you ever felt more fresh or wonderful
As when you wake
By the side of that boy or girl
Who has pledged their love to you?

Well I have known all these things
And the joys that they can bring
And now every morning theres a cup of coffee
And I wear your ring

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, LOU!

Today is Lou’s 29^th anniversary and she’s posted a great wedding day story. Drop on over to her place and congratulate her!

Tuesday's Treat

I’m really beginning to wonder about C-SPAN. One of Washington Journal’s first guests today was Nomi Prins, a former managing director of Goldman Sachs, brought on to discuss the appointment of Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary. Mr. Paulson begins his Senate confirmation hearings today. Here’s Ms. Prins on Paulson’s appointment:

What first struck me upon news of Paulson's possible appointment was that he's too smart to take on this task, with Bush's approval ratings for his economic policies hovering around 40 percent. Then, I got it. Paulson is Bush's last hurrah--and his last chance. Known as a pragmatic and decisive leader, Paulson will likely be more proactive than Snow, whose sole job essentially was traipsing up to Congress once a year and urging lawmakers to raise the US debt cap by another trillion dollars so we wouldn't default on our interest payments to China.

Bush's economic legacy is a weak dollar (who wants to invest in a country teetering on the brink of default?) and tax cuts for the super-wealthy that have created an outrageous deficit and debt. And that legacy benefits men like Paulson at the expense of middle-class Americans and the working poor. It will be a stretch for him to argue for prudent budgeting, while facing the country's highest national debt ever, without cutting social programs to get there.

Wanna guess where that screed appeared? It’s an excerpt from an editorial in The Nation magazine. Young Ms. Prins has been pontificating on the idiocy of the President’s economic policies for the better part of half an hour as I write and the callers on WJ’s “Democrats” line have been falling all over themselves ooh-ing and ah-ing over this woman’s opinions. I’ll be interested in seeing if WJ’s next guest presents the conservative point of view. (Whoops! Guess not. The next guest is Senator Orrin Hatch, but he’s on to defend and discuss the proposed constitutional amendment to prevent flag desecration , not to discuss Mr. Paulson’s nomination.)

One guest on one program, however, is not indicative of editorial bias. I honestly don’t know what Brian Lamb’s (CEO of and founder of C-SPAN) politics are, and Mr. Lamb takes great pains to keep his personal views hidden. But, as I said upon opening this can of worms, I’m beginning to wonder. Just scan this past weekend’s C-SPAN2 (Book TV) schedule and tell me there’s “balance” in the points of views being broadcast. Yes, there are programs on conservative topics, but to my way of thinking, the liberal POV is over-represented. And I say this as someone who watched about half of this weekend’s offered fare.

The world’s most expensive cities…Mercer Human Resources has released the 2006 edition of its annual “Most Expensive Cities List.” Tops on the list? Moscow. Yep, that Moscow.

Moscow has replaced Tokyo as the world's most expensive city, according to the latest Cost of Living Survey from Mercer Human Resource Consulting, the global leader for HR and related financial advice. Seoul is in second place, climbing three places since last year. Tokyo moves down two positions in the rankings to take third place, followed by Hong Kong. Asuncion in Paraguay remains the least expensive city in the survey.

…

New York remains the most expensive city in North America and climbs three places to 10th position (score 100). Currency appreciation is the main reason for this, although price increases in fuel and certain consumer goods have also contributed to New York's rise in the rankings. Other high-ranking cities include Los Angeles in position 29 (86.7), San Francisco in 34th place (85) and Chicago in 38th position (84.1). Washington DC takes 83rd place (77). Winston Salem is the cheapest US city surveyed, ranked 124th (66.7).

The news release is here, download a list of the Top 50 here (pdf file). Did you catch the reason why New York is more expensive this year? “Currency appreciation,” or code for “good economy.” Imagine that, Ms. Prins.

Sexist automotive commentary? One would think so, simply by reading the title to this op-ed in the WSJ: “Why the New Camaro Will Fail; The war on macho takes its toll.” (Read it quick, it’s old and on it’s way off the “free” pages!) There are pieces and parts of this article that bemoan the loss of automotive “testosterone,” but there’s also a lot more. Excerpt:

Unlike the Mustang--which has always managed to appeal to a broad base of buyers ranging from young women to old men and everyone in between--the Camaro is and always has been a strutting muscle machine. A car for drive-throughs, Friday night cruising, and teenage boys.

That works fine when it's 1969--and young, single guys can still afford to buy (and insure) such a car. It doesn't work so well in today's hamstrung, hyper-regulated and cost-inflated world. Part of what killed the latter-day GTO was its $30k price point. The young (under 30) guys who might want such a car couldn't afford it--and the older guys who could had grown up. They wanted something less goofy. So did their wives. The same problem will surely beset the coming Camaro--unless GM, by some miracle of Enron-esque accounting, figures out a way to sell the thing for less than $25,000.

Allow me a personal observation. SN2 has a vintage Camaro. It’s his Hobby Car and is truly a fire-breathing, testosterone-infused, great beast of an asphalt-ripper, what with its GM crate-motor that puts out 450+ horsepower, plus other after-market mods. I also have a 16 year-old granddaughter who is running SN2 hard to let her make that Camaro her “daily driver.” My granddaughter Amanda, while not exactly a “girly-girl,” isn’t butch, either. She’s pretty much your average 16 year-old young lady. And she wants SN2’s Camaro, and wants it badly. I don’t think that will happen, as SN2 won’t turn a relatively inexperienced young driver loose on the highways with that much brute-force power. A likely alternative is Amanda will get a more modestly-powered used Camaro with, say, a V-6. But the point remains: I know of at least one young lady that would probably buy that new Camaro (could she afford it), in a heartbeat. Hell, I wouldn’t mind driving one, either!

And So Begins the Last Week in June...

Woke up quite early this morning—0400 to be exact—and caught an interesting interview on C-SPAN’s “Q&A.” Q&A is an hour-long interview program, wherein Brian Lamb interviews individuals, and this particular interview was with Jennifer Griffin, Fox News Channel’s Jerusalem correspondent. Ms. Griffin began with Fox as a stringer in Moscow and has been Fox’s “Woman in Jerusalem” for the past six and a half years. This is an amazing woman… graduate of an all-girls Catholic High School, Harvard-educated… she’s been an expat for almost 15 years and has worked in Soweto, South Africa during the apartheid era; Mogadishu, Somalia; Afghanistan, Pakistan; and now Jerusalem. She’s married to Greg Meyer, who is the Jerusalem correspondent for the New York Times. They have two children, both girls (five and three), who were born in Jerusalem. Ms. Griffin, when asked what that most Americans don’t know about Israel, replied

“I think you don’t see how normal it is and I think that’s what’s so surprising. People always ask me how do you raise children there. And I have a three and a five-year-old and they were born there. They were born during the Intifada. I was wearing flack jackets instead of maternity wear at the beginning of the Palestinian uprising. And I can separate my life as a correspondent who is covering at times dangers things and still be at home, sleep in my bed at night and my kids can have a very normal existence there.”

Ms. Griffin was in the U.S. to deliver a high school commencement address at her alma mater. She had the following advice for the graduates:

Well, I was trying to convince them to become whatever – whoever they were and try to give my story as an example of how to find a path that leads you to something that makes you truly happy and where you’re contributing in some way and doing what you love, and that’s the only way to really succeed.

But those – what I really tried to – my main message to them was leave your comfort zone. And I think that goes back to what I did when I took a real risk and went to South Africa after that sophomore year. And I really – that was really uncomfortable and really I didn’t know what I was getting into. And even at that time running around, you know, going into the townships when, you know, people with light skin weren’t going into townships unless they were policemen and they were not welcomed. So it was – it was a really interesting time there.

And I also said – I said to them you never know when you’re going to be a witness to history so make sure you record everything, record, take snapshots of every moment because there have been so many times that I looked back and I think I can’t believe I was there for that and I didn’t record it in some way.

And so I really tried to inspire them to take time off, leave school, get out of school as fast as possible, get out there and just go somewhere. Just go and I think – I think the best thing I ever did was get on that plane and go to Somalia and not wait. And we were only – there were only four journalists at the time – four or five of us in Mogadishu so we owned the story. And it was just AP, Reuters, maybe BBC, but – and a couple of freelance camera people. But – so that was a tremendous education on the job.

I never went to journalism school. I didn’t – I didn’t – and I certainly value education. I loved my high school and college experience. But I do think traveling the world is the best education there is.

Good advice. You can read the whole interview here.

The New York Times is apparently getting a lot of heat from its readers for publicly disclosing the existence of yet another classified program used to track down terrorists and “bring them to justice.” (I hate that term. I prefer “killing terrorists,” but that’s another story.) Executive editor Bill Keller, generally acknowledged as the man who made the ultimate decision to publish the NYT’s latest compromise of classified information, has written a letter to the NYT’s readers explaining his motivations in this decision. “Motivations” is being kind, the letter actually is a series of rationalizations, pure and simple. Mark in Mexico has published an executive summary (with links) of the Right-Side of the blogosphere’s comments and opinions on Keller’s letter, and those comments are predictably (and correctly) highly critical.

Separately, the AP reports:

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

I think it’s past time for an American counterpart to the UK’s Official Secrets Act. Enact this legislation and then prosecute the bastards. To the fullest extent possible.

I had an interesting conversation with SN1 this weekend, wherein I informed him I was considering buying a house in either Clovis or Portales now that Cannon AFB’s future is assured. Surprisingly, he was not surprised. I did get a laugh out of him when I said “But it’s such an admission of defeat!” Some explanation is in order, of course. One always hears “It’s a great place to raise kids!” when asking what a person thinks of Clovis/Portales. I’ve noticed in my travels one always hears this comment when there is little else good to be said about somewhere, anywhere. Given I have every option in the world at the moment regarding where I want to live, it’s somewhat amazing (to me, at least) I’d even think about living here permanently, ergo, “admission of defeat.” There are so many other, more desirable, locations to consider.

Still, I am considering the possibility. “Considering” is far from acting, however.

Low Points

Ah, Sunday. The perigee of my blogging orbit, the nadir of blogging motivation. I’ve noticed I’m not alone in this regard, to wit, Lex posted a couple of re-runs today (quite good, they are!). I considered doing the same, but did not, because my back-pages aren’t nearly as extensive as some, given I’m only in my eighth month of blogging. But if you want to delve into recent history, here’s a post I thought about last evening during the semi-monsoon that swept over P-Town. The connection to the cited post is only weather related, unfortunately. Driving rain coupled with balmy temps, and all that.

It’s not that I lack for blog fodder. I’ve spent the past hour or three making the usual rounds, and found that I’m just not in the mood for essays on the latest media outrage, essays on the war, or even the status of that Inside Tee-Ball story (see below), which is still in play. Even the Carnival of the Insanities left me cold, and that’s fairly unusual.

Now about that rain… As noted above, the rain was monsoon-like in its intensity. It rained so hard for a time I literally could not see across the street. Great sheets of water poured off the roof of El Casa Móvil De Pennington, and the sound of rain hammering my roof drowned (sorry!) out the tee-vee. Rain of this nature is a rare occurrence in some parts of the world; I think I was 18 or perhaps 19 years of age before I experienced rain of tropical intensity, and that was in Biloxi, Mississippi. I’ve since experienced deluges in other places, notably south-east Asia (Thailand and the Philippines), Japan (during a minor typhoon), and here on the High Plains. And I love it. That probably goes without saying, no?

I’ll leave you with this, which is way cool! Graphic illustrations of The Powers of Ten (both positive and negative), from those friendly physicists at CERN. (h/t: Rodger)

We’ll be back to normal in due time…

That Donkey Party

More on the “Inside Tee-Ball” item I posted yesterday. Martin Peretz, The New Republic’s editor-in-chief, responds to the Ranting Kos, and the response is brief enough that I’ll post it in its entirety rather than link it.

A MESSAGE FROM TNR'S LIEBERMAN-LOVING NEOCON OWNER:

Forgive me. But I never read Daily Kos until today. Well, now that I've read it, the first thought that came to me is how illiterate Kos is, just plain illiterate. There has been other not-with-a-pick-axe-but-with-a-bludgeon left-wing journalism in the English speaking world, the American PM, for example, or the British Tribune. If you look them up (they must be some place on the Web), you'll see how elegant surgical argument can be. OK, that's not what the Daily Kos is. Daily Kos is actually a rant, Kos's own rant and then his comrades.

And his rant against us, well, borders on a nut case's. When a high-minded or, rather, high-strung moralist is accused by The New York Times of journalistic hanky-panky and then by TNR of running an ideological censorship bureau, reminiscent of the old Catholic Legion of Decency, he will go off the rails. And he did. "This is what The New Republic had evolved into--just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy." An old professor of mine once warned me against writers who use capital letters for emphasis. Good advice she gave me. Capital letters suggest some imbalance in the mind of their employer. In whose interests has TNR sought "to destroy the new people-powered movement"? Kos answers his own question: "for the sake of its Lieberman-worshipping neo-con owners; that it stands with the National Review and wingnutosphere in their opposition to grassroots Democrats." Don't look at Kos's grammar. He's ranting.

It feels a bit demeaning to defend oneself against Kos. But I am one of the neo-con owners, and I am titular editor-in-chief. So here goes: The New Republic is very much against the Bush tax programs, against Bush Social Security "reform," against cutting the inheritance tax, for radical health care changes, passionate about Gore-type environmentalism, for a woman's entitlement to an abortion, for gay marriage, for an increase in the minimum wage, for pursuing aggressively alternatives to our present reliance on oil and our present tax preferences for gas-guzzling automobiles. We were against the confirmation of Justice Alito. And, institutionally, TNR was against several policies that I favor, including allowing the government more rather than less leeway in ferreting out terrorists and allies of terrorists. From today's newspapers: I see nothing wrong with the feds scrutinizing international monetary exchanges in the dragnet for enemies of not just our civilization but civilization. But TNR is a heterodox institution, a concept Kos surely cannot fathom.

--Martin Peretz

This is getting pretty interesting, and aside from being fun to watch, I believe there’s more than a little significance to this outbreak of internecine warfare. Kos may have started this brouhaha, but I find it encouraging the moderate Left has refused to lie down and “take it.” As I’ve mentioned in the past, there’s a bit of a struggle right now within the Donkey Party, a struggle to make the Dems relevant in American politics once again. The firebrands on the radical Left appear to have hijacked the Donkey Party, and that’s not a good thing. To my way of thinking, the dKos constituency is mostly clue-free 20-somethings and old radical hippies who never succeeded in growing up. TNR’s audience, on the other hand, more closely resembles that hoary old cliché of The Silent Majority. Given that fewer than 15% of the American public actually read blogs, let alone know what they are, I’d venture a guess TNR has a LOT more readers than Kos. At least I hope so…

Anyway. As John Hawkins of Right Wing News so aptly observed…

That's why these efforts to come up with "new ideas" keep failing -- because as Teixeira said, "The old centrist-liberal debate in the party is to some extent dead." What Teixeira didn't say is that the reason that debate isn't as hot is because the centrists lost. There isn't a free spirited debate about ideas happening on the left. Instead, what you find is a lot of Bush bashing and debate about how to beat Republicans. In the minds of most people on the left, the ideas are set -- the only question is, "How do we foist these ideas on a public that doesn't currently want them?" To do that, they've encouraged activism among judges and they consistently lie about the things they really care about in hopes of being able to do a bait-and-switch on the American people when they get into office.

More power to Peretz and those like him, e.g., Peter Beinart. These guys need to take back their party if they want to have more than a snowball’s chance in Hell of taking back the country.

War Story: June 20, 1965

Skyraider ~VS~ MiG-17 (scroll down to mid-page for the story)

Wherein the prop-job pictured above bagged one of these…

h/t: commenter sid at Lex’s place. You really ought to go over and check out Lex’s “toilet bomb” story. With pictures!

Yesterday was quite the relief, weather-wise. Our break from the high 90s – low 100s actually began Thursday, when the high was 90 degrees, or just about average. Yesterday was even better: the high was only 82. The morning was simply lovely – low 60s until around 1100, followed by mid-70s in the early afternoon. I found things to do outside! My AC unit didn’t kick on until after 1400, at which time El Casa Móvil De Pennington is in full sun. As in: broadside. And believe me, that full sun can add up to ten degrees to the indoor temperature, even with “limo-dark” thermal film on the west-facing windows. That’s a feature, not a bug, during the winter months…but in the summer? Ouch.

The break from the heat is supposed to continue today, in fact it’s 73 degrees and dead calm as I write. Perhaps I’ll go for an extended cruise somewhere…anywhere.

Good…no…GREAT…

…news for The High Plains:

ALBUQUERQUE — Cannon Air Force Base, threatened with closure after its F-16 fighter squadrons were ordered elsewhere, will become a special operations base that will train crews to fight the war on terror, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

The Air Force's 16th Special Operations Wing will move to Cannon by October 2007, the state's congressional delegation and Gov. Bill Richardson announced on a conference call.

My first reaction? Great! Now all those jobs won’t be lost, the housing market won’t tank, the base hospital clinic and commissary will remain open… My second reaction? Oh, great. Now I’ll probably never frickin’ leave this place. But, seriously. This is good news.

The transition will start this summer, and the change of command is scheduled for Oct. 1, 2007, said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.

…

… the consensus among those on the conference call was that the eastern New Mexico base probably will gain not only troops but airplanes — going from 72 F-16s currently stationed there to 94 planes of different types.

Cannon is expected to get two types of helicopters, the CH53 and CH47; two gunships, the MC130 and the AC130U; and eventually, the V22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.

The Pentagon said in a later news release Tuesday officials have not determined the exact aircraft mix between Cannon and Hurlburt Field, Fla., where the 16th is currently based. Hurlburt will become the 1st Special Operations Wing and will continue as headquarters of the Air Force Special Operations Command once Cannon takes over the 16th wing designation.

…

The new wing will train at night, using Melrose Bombing Range adjacent to Cannon. Special operations training at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque likewise is conducted at night.

…

The Pentagon had recommended closing the base as part of an effort to streamline the nation's military complex. But the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission said Cannon was valuable and could have a future use.

The commission last August accepted the Pentagon's recommendation to send Cannon's three fighter squadrons elsewhere — but stopped short of closing the base.

Cannon could have shut down if a new mission was not found by Dec. 31, 2009.

With that risk averted, the mood of those on the conference call was exuberant.

…

Closing Cannon — a fixture in the area for 55 years — would have eliminated more than 2,700 jobs at the base and an additional 2,000 indirect jobs, which community and state leaders argued would devastate eastern New Mexico.

Cannon's economic impact was put at $200 million annually.

By one estimate, shuttering the base would have cost one in three jobs in Clovis and nearby Portales; forced the closure of three elementary schools; and sent a booming housing market into a nosedive with the sudden availability of 2,000 vacant homes.

The whole article is here. But there isn’t a lot more, all the meat is above.

Today's Lileks

A blog I read once stated “I don’t link to Lileks. I figure you either read him, or you don’t.” And it’s much the same with me. James is a daily read, and although I’ll suggest you go have a look once in a while, generally I don’t. Today, however, is one of those days where I feel compelled to link him. Today’s entry is worthy of the Screedblog (which you should also check out for his take on the “new” Democrat message), and was prompted by reading a quote from Ang Lee, director of “Brokeback Mountain.” Two grafs:

Well. We always have our catastrophists and hysterics; there will always be people who sit in cafes and bitterly complain about the impending revocations of personal freedoms – and then dutifully go outside to smoke a cigarette in the cold, because that’s the law now. (It would be an act of civil disobedience to light up in the café, but it wouldn’t be cool. Your girlfriend’s sister has asthma.) What’s unique – and maybe I’m wrong; happens daily – is that the entire America experience past and present is now irredeemable. For a while the present was okay, because the right people were in charge, and there was a change we could attain Utopia with the right pieces of legislation. When that was the case, it was understandable to unload on the old benighted past, because that led up to this, and this would absolve the land.

(I never understood why 18th century America was castigated for not manifesting the values of the 20th, even though 18th century America held forth ideas that would be radical to 20th century Africa, and paved the way for those 20th century American values to exist and flourish. We’re always held up to the most peculiar standards. Our motives are base, our freedoms illusory or rationed or insufficient. It matters less that a freedom was granted in 1920; what’s truly illustrative of this rotten house is the fact that it wasn’t granted in 1871. As thought the world has always been free, kings died when the first Caesar was stabbed, Papal bulls since 500 AD have boiled down to “oh, whatev” and the entire world was a grand placid Sweden, where civilized people nibbled on crackers and tried to ignore the rude Yank on the lawn firing off his blunderbuss for no particular reason. You can site a hundred stories about French racism all you like, but it won’t matter because they applauded Josephine Baker’s nightclub routines in Paris in the 20s.)

There are a couple of typos; James acknowledged that he simply “dashed off” today’s entry. Damn, but I wish I could just “dash off” stuff like this. The man is a freakin’ genius.

TGIF All Y'All!

Sweet Jesus, Who’s Side Are They On? The New York Times. Again. This time they unveil a classified global financial transaction monitoring program designed to identify al Qaeda operatives by tracking their finances. This program was instrumental in nabbing Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort. And they were asked by the government, again, not to publish details about this program in the interest of national security. NRO has conservative comment; as does Hot Air. See memeorandum for links to the Left’s views. I refuse to link to the crap I’ve read on the Left this morning. Yes, I AM questioning their patriotism.

This is not a good way to begin my day. Not good at all.

This is just so much “Inside Tee-Ball,” but it is gossipy, and is seriously unflattering (at best; damning at worst) speculation about real GroupThink on the Left-Side of the blogosphere, perpetrated by one Markos Zúniga. Yep, that Kos, proprietor of the Left’s flagship blog. There’s a tempest in a teapot brewing on the Left at the moment, wherein Jason Zengerle of The New Republic’s blog (The Plank) is accusing Kos of manipulating the Left’s message, a la Karl Rove, and intimidating bloggers who don’t toe the party line. And Kos doesn’t like this accusation at all. Witness:

"Ludicrous, all of it, but that's the new rules of the game. TNR and its enablers are feeling the heat of their own irrelevance and this is how they fight it -- by undermining the progressive movement. Zengerle has made common cause with the wingnutosphere, using the laughable "kosola" frame they created and emailing his "scoops" to them for links. This is what the once-proud New Republic has evolved into -- just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy.

If you still hold a subscription to that magazine, it really is time to call it quits. If you see it in a magazine rack, you might as well move it behind the National Review or even NewsMax, since that's who they want to be associated with these days.

He might as well have said “Piss me off, and I’ll tell my millions of minions to cancel their subscriptions to your worthless rag, that’s what I’ll do.” Oh shit, Oh Dear! John Hawkins at Right Wing News has a good summary on this flap and more juicy gossip insight about related dKos matters.

Damn! I love a good food-fight!

No more Mr. Nice Guy…Have you visited Warrant Officer Mike Fay’s blog lately? You should, because Mr. Fay has taken the gloves off. Mr. Fay began by simply posting his art but I think the comments left by various and sundry moonbats knee-jerk Lefties finally got to him. The gloves are off and he’s lobbing more than a few rounds down-range. Good stuff. And Mr. Fay has started another blog, devoted to his non-USMC art. Go visit. (h/t: Laurie)

By the way…Did you know the Air Force is the only service without warrant officers? We used to have them but began eliminating the whole warrant officer structure in 1959 when enlisted grades E-8 and E-9 were created. The last active duty Air Force warrant officer, CWO4 James H. Long, retired in 1980 and the last Air Force Reserve warrant officer, CWO4 Bob Barrow, retired in 1992. Since then, the U.S. Air Force warrant officer ranks, while remaining in existence (per the U.S. Code) have not been used.

I ever-so-briefly entertained the thought of applying for an Army warrant sometime around 1966 or 1967. I actually had the application package in hand and only stopped when I learned Army warrant acquisitions were limited at the time to aviation applicants, specifically helicopter pilots. I couldn’t meet the vision requirements for that program, and it’s probably a good thing.

I have a new love: Edwards Key Lime pie. Damn, it’s good! Not too sweet, not too tart, just about right. Most amazing, for a frozen pie. I used to buy it every so often, in slices, due to limited freezer space. I have since figured out I can eat a whole pie (about 3,600 calories) in three sittings. Me, alone. How decadent.

Big ol’ thunder-boomers, accompanied by lots of rain and God’s Own Light Show, rolled through P-Town last night. I lost my ‘net connection for about 15 minutes, which was predictable, but it came back fairly quickly, which wasn’t predictable at all. We really needed the rain, and it was nice to open up the house after the worst of it was over. Ah! The coolness! The freshness! There’s nothing like the smell of wet earth after a hard rain, nothing. Well, maybe the ocean.

Funny. Sorta.

From my buddy Cath out in SFO…

A tourist walked into a Chinese curio shop in San Francisco. While looking around at the exotic merchandise, he noticed a very lifelike, life-sized, bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag, but was so incredibly striking the tourist decided he must have it.

He took it to the old shop owner and asked, "How much for the bronze rat?

"Ahhh, you have chosen wisely! It is $12 for the rat, $100 for the story," said the wise old Chinaman.

The tourist quickly pulled out twelve dollars. "I'll just take the rat, you can keep the story."

As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, the tourist noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the alleys and sewers and had begun following him down the street. This was a bit disconcerting so he began walking faster. A couple blocks later he looked behind him and saw to his horror the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds, and they began squealing. Sweating now, the tourist began to trot toward the Bay.

Again, after a couple blocks, he looked around only to discover that the rats now numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and coming toward him faster and faster. Terrified, he ran to the edge of the Bay and threw the bronze rat as far as he could into the Bay. Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the Bay after the bronze rat, and were all drowned.

The man ran back to the curio shop in Chinatown.

"Ahhh," said the owner, "You have come back for story?"

"No sir," said the man, "I came back to see if you have a bronze Republican."

And at the bottom of her note, this: “Note from Cath: NO OFFENSE! You're my FAVORITE Sexy Conservatives.”

No offense taken. But, as I told Catherine, if it was anyone else (well, ‘cept for Lori), I would take offense… {big ol' grin!}

PJ, Misplaced Criticism, and Preemption

If you’ve ever looked at my profile you’ll know I list PJ O’Rourke as one of my favorite authors. Mr. O’Rourke is living proof Republicans know how to have Big Fun, and he amply demonstrated this in his book Republican Party Reptile, among others. If you’re “of a certain age” perhaps you remember that PJ was at the National Lampoon in its salad days (i.e., when it was actually funny), joining NL in 1973, advancing to managing editor in 1975, and editor-in-chief in 1978. He left in NL 1981. NL hasn’t been funny since.

I digress. I stumbled on a few “PJ-isms” and thought I’d share a couple with you…here we go!

ACCENTS

A midwestern nasal twang gives listeners the impression that you have lawn ornaments in your yard. The slurs and ellipses of California speech strike the hearer as the first three danger signals of drug abuse in teen-agers. And a New York accent sounds like somebody buggering a goose with an automobile horn.

A Texas accent is safe. Texans are all thought to have money. You can acquire a Texas accent by any of the usual means of getting brain damage.

THE CAT: TODAY'S DOG

Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive, disloyal, and lazy. It's easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it's often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

An interesting column by Joe Galloway in today’s Salt Lake Tribune concerning the fact our “elites” don’t serve in the military. The opening grafs:

WASHINGTON - A new book expands on a familiar subject: the absence of America's elite and its governing class - and their children - from the ranks of our nation's military.
The book is AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service - and How It Hurts Our Country. Its authors, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, didn't embrace the military ethos so much as it embraced them.
Roth-Douquet describes herself as a former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer and Clintonite. She just happened to fall in love with a Marine pilot and married him, she told me, thinking that within a year she would ''turn him around'' and get him out of uniform.
Instead she found herself falling in love with the military life, so much so that this year, when her husband made the list for promotion to colonel, she was delighted because it meant they could have a few more years on active duty.

There’s much more, including the disconcerting fact that only about a third of our CongressCritters are veterans. That one fact, in and of itself, is disturbing, and there are many more disturbing facts in this brief column.

I saw Mr. Schaeffer, one of the co-authors of this book, in an extended interview on C-SPAN2’s Book TV this past weekend. Mr. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and filmmaker, saw his plans for his youngest son - ''top college, good grades, smart jobs . . .'' - go awry when his son enlisted in the Marines after he finished high school. SN1 happened to call during that interview and got an inadvertent earful, probably a lot more than he wanted or needed.

Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. Books like the one Ms. Roth-Douquet and Mr. Schaeffer have written are good things. Very good things, assuming these books reach their target audience, and said audience receives the message and takes it to heart. I’m glad Mr. Schaeffer had his epiphany, I’m glad he’s “converted,” and I’m glad he’s written not one, but three books on this subject.

But.

I found Mr. Schaffer’s attitude and demeanor during the C-SPAN2 interview to be more than a little off-putting. His various anecdotes about his immersion by association into the military culture and the veterans culture came off as the experiences of a detached observer, akin to Margaret Mead’s writings about the indigenous tribes of Borneo, who, in the end, “went native.” What I saw and heard was definitely a double-edged sword. I found myself, on the one hand, saying “Good for You!” while wondering, on the other hand, how someone could be so woefully ignorant of such a large portion of American culture that has always existed, if not literally next door to Mr. Schaeffer, but most certainly down the block or around the corner from his house. I know it’s just me, and I’m absolutely sure Mr. Schaeffer’s motivations are pure; after all, one doesn’t write three books on the subject if one doesn’t believe. Still, throughout the whole interview I couldn’t shake the feeling I was a resident of some Petri dish being observed for the first time. It didn’t feel good at all.

And there you have your misplaced criticism for today.

Several good editorials today on that impending North Korean ICBM test. My two favorites: An Act of War, Not a Test, by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen and If Necessary, Strike and Destroy, by Ashton Carter & William Perry in the Washington Post. The WaPo editorial is written by two former Clinton administration DoD officials. These individuals are right on the mark; we cannot allow the North Koreans to develop, deploy, and/or sell this technology to regimes hostile to the United States. If ever there was a case tailor-made for the Bush Doctrine of preemption, this is it. Kill it on the pad.

It feels like Mississippi outside this morning: 75 degrees with 52% relative humidity as I write. While we’re getting a minor reprieve from the heat today (our forecasted high is “only” 92), the increased humidity will cancel it out. And there are thunderstorms forecasted for later today.

Late Start

This is getting old… I got up around 0730 this morning, put on the coffee, and sat down to check my mail. No internet connection. It’s now 0830 and still no ‘net. This may be a sad statement on my so-called-life, but I view my network connection the same way I view electricity: it’s a necessity. If anything drives me out of P-Town, it’ll be the intermittent nature of my network connection. (My connection came up at 0855—about enough time for the techies to have their coffee and then fix it.)

No reprieve from the heat today. Our high will be around 100 again. Yesterday I told you it rained for about four minutes. What I didn’t tell you was just how quickly that small amount of rain evaporated. We’ve been having a sort of unusual WX combination: high temps and moderately high winds, e.g., 25 mph, steady. When that small cloud drifted over and piddled on us yesterday, the rain evaporated almost as soon as it hit the ground. It was about 98 degrees with brisk winds at the time, so…there was no visible evidence of moisture anywhere ten minutes after the rain quit. It was semi-bizarre to observe.

Lileks has a new addition to his site: (Vintage) Bathing Beauties. The first installments feature period cuties in current-at-the-time bathing wear. The current offering of five high-quality photos begins in 1922, ends in 1940, and is captioned with prose that could only come from James. I do so love The Lileks!

This will be short, seeing as how I got a late start today in my usual turn around the ‘sphere and the news sites. Nothing really piqued my interest on memeorandum—maybe it’s just me, or maybe it really is a slow news day. It all just seemed like the same ol’, same ol’. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Wasted Things

News item:

"Police blotter" is a weekly CNET News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Reports of home computer wiretapping surface in tempestuous New Jersey divorce case.
When: Superior Court of New Jersey ruled June 8.
Outcome: Wife succeeds in raising her share of the settlement in a divorce case.
What happened, according to court documents:

Peter Garfinkel, 41, asked for a divorce from his wife of six years, Lori Garfinkel, 38, in March 2001. They had separated earlier that month, and Lori remained in the marital home with three children under 3 years old.

After her husband started court proceedings for a divorce, Lori Garfinkel filed a counterclaim alleging the following: transmission of sexual disease, negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress and wiretapping.

The wiretapping charges are what make this unfortunate case relevant to Police Blotter. During the trial in state court, the judge dismissed Lori's claims related to sexual disease and emotional distress. But Peter admitted to "wiretapping" Lori's computer.

The description is general: Peter used an unspecified monitoring device to track his wife's computer transactions and record her e-mails. Lori was granted $7,500 on the wiretapping claim.

Overall, though, the trial judge did not find her credible and ruled that she misrepresented her income, assets and expenses. Lori appealed.

A three-judge panel of the Superior Court of New Jersey appeared to side with her. The judges reduced the amount granted to Peter and handed the case back to the trial court for additional proceedings.

This is hardly the first time computer monitoring claims have surfaced in marital spats. As previously reported by CNET News.com, a Florida court ruled last year that a wife who installed spyware on her husband's computer to secretly record evidence of an extramarital affair violated state law.

In addition, makers of key loggers (hardware or software methods of recording keystrokes) are actively marketing their products as ways to expose spousal wrongdoing. KeyGhost's Web site mentions "multimillion-dollar divorce settlements," and the description of BlazingTools Sofware's Perfect Keylogger includes this line: "Are you wondering if your mate is planning a divorce?"

Hmmm. Someone I know very well did this very same thing and (stupidly) confronted the wife with incriminating evidence of her clandestine IM communications with the boyfriend. She moved out the very next morning. In the end, all the keylogger did was accelerate the breakup of the marriage. I don’t know if the act of installing a keylogger on a shared home machine was illegal (in New York) at the time, or not. I do know the woman concerned included “monitoring my communications” in her divorce complaint, in essence taking offense when caught red-handed. There was no monetary penalty or compensation awarded, however.

Crazy world, ain’t it?

Wasted money…

1230 hours: Ran car through car wash in The Big(ger) City^TM. Cost: $10.00

1530 hours: Park maintenance mows my “lawn,” depositing a significant amount of dust on my car. Cost: $10.00

1615 hours: It rains for about four minutes.

1619 hours: My car looks like it hasn’t been washed in two weeks.

{sigh} At least the weeds lawn looks good.

Suspicions confirmed:

In a recent interview with Victory New Hampshire, the citizen activist network, political mastermind Karl Rove was asked how the internet was affecting the political arena. Rove said:

I do also think that the internet has proven to be a more powerful tool on our side than it has been for the other side. It has proven to be a tool on our side to sort of unite Conservatives and have a healthy intra-movement dialogue. But it’s essentially been something that has helped us gain in influence and broaden our appeal. Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger — hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.

In typical leftist fashion, within hours the left-wing blogs proved Rove's point for him. Personal attacks started flying on the popular blogs. ThinkProgress.org, Shakespeare's Sister, The Democratic Daily.com and Raw Story.com. all felt obliged to prove the point themselves.

"F**k you Karl Rove," wa s how Raw Story.com began its studied response. "We are angry and we hate you and your boss as well as the rest of the f***ed up media and crony s*#t we all see all the time in addition to what has become of a once great country going down the tubes!!!!"

It just gets better.

Here's what a concerned citizen had to say at ThinkProgress.com. (Its name cracks me up, because it features neither thinking nor progress.)

"Throwing people like Chris Matthews, Steny Hoyer, Lieberman, and others under the bus is what happens around these places. Hate and anger is what it is all about, calling Republicans and conservatives Nazis, fascists, and all sorts of other lovely things."

Another helpful leftist had this to say: "I wish I could say that I disagree with Dr. Evil on this. The hatred towards the President and the far right is much deserved."

Yet another blog entry weighed in: "Oh yeah, our 'Lefty sites' are going to be made much more difficult to access if the Net is not allowed to remain a level playing field. The Righties got the MSM, and we got the Internet!"

These people think the Right controls the mainstream media, which should give you an idea how out of touch they are. Not only are they haters, they are not too bright either!

I cruise all of the sites mentioned in this article occasionally (once or twice a week, sometimes more), and I can vouch for the fact that the general rhetorical tone in these places is far from civil. Before you say “It’s just as bad on the Right!”, I’ll admit Right-wing rhetoric can get pretty heated and, yeah, insulting, too. But there is a critical difference. The Left in its disparaging comments contends the Right is “evil” (for lack of a better word) or morally deficient. To put it another way, conservatives are infidels, we’re not True Believers. Therefore, being evil, we’re deserving of their hatred. The absolute worst the Right does, on the other hand, is accuse the Left of being stupid, uninformed, or willfully ignorant, conditions that can be corrected, if the accused so desires. The Right allows for redemption. Not so with evil. Evil must be excised, driven out, eliminated. And they call us Fascists. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or both.

(The cited article is in Front Page Magazine)

Clarification: When I say "the Left" above, I mean the Radical Left as exemplified in/on the blogs cited in the Front Page Mag article and their brethren. I do not mean Liberals or folks on the moderate Left. There IS a difference.

Bad News

I came home this afternoon to bad news. The bodies of the two missing soldiers in Iraq have been found and it appears the men were tortured. This event is the lead item at memeorandum at the moment. There are many, many blog posts and several wire reports on this sad news. I’ve read five or six of the blogposts (including some on the Left that just make my blood boil), but none better than what Confederate Yankee has written.

The terrorists of the Mujahedeen Shura Council probably think they have scored a victory, and indeed, in the short-term, they have. They can claim that after three years of war, they finally captured and killed a grand total of three U.S. soldiers. Accounts of the capture and killing of U.S. soldiers will receive a great amount of press worldwide. Arab media will likely present the deaths as a thinly veiled triumph, and the western media will use it as an opportunity to once again call for disengagement, as will many Democrats.

But these killings will not be received favorably by the U.S. military in Iraq, which will likely step up operations to hunt down and destroy terror and insurgent cells operating in this part of Iraq. Though official orders will not be given, perhaps U.S. forces will not be so inclined to take prisoners after this incident. Insurgents and their al Qaeda allies set the tone of giving U.S. forces no quarter when they took prisoners.

They made a huge mistake.

I have nothing to add, other than we pray for the families of these two soldiers.

Carolina Wins It!

Rob Brind'Amour Hoists The Stanley Cup

Congratulations to Carolina and the perennial runner-up comment of “Next Year!” to Edmonton. Carolina has every reason to be proud this morning and Edmonton has absolutely, positively no reason to hang their heads. Last night’s game, and the entire Carolina – Edmonton series, was a fitting finish to the most exciting Stanley Cup play-offs I can remember. What a year! Everything you want to know about last night’s game and the Finals is here.

And you know another one of the great things about hockey? Only four months until the new season begins!

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is… (apologies to Donovan Leitch) Except in this case, there may be a mountain but there is no personal ad. Yahoo! Personals “prohibits contact information” in your personal ad, which, when you think about it, is sorta strange. Yahoo! rejected the original draft of my ad because I included the url of the blog. I figured “what better way to get to know me?” Read the blog, anonymously if you so desire, and if you like what you see, follow up. I rewrote the ad after the initial rejection, excising the url but leaving in the fact I have a blog and included a “hint” on how to find it. Rejected again. OK. I’m not too thick; I get it. There’s also a “delete profile” button on the create/edit profile page. I used it. Screw Yahoo.

Short and sorta sweet this morning. I wanna go get my errands done before it gets too hot to put the top down.

What Are These, Anyway?

(click for larger)

Those nifty little pics above are graphic representations of this blog. I’m not exactly sure what it all means, other than the fact I use a lot of block quotes and include a lot of links. The one intense cluster of orange (block quotes) has me amazed and mystified...

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Want to graph your blog (or other site)? Go here. Be advised: it took about ten minutes to graph EIP. I think it’s worth the wait. And you get slightly different graph picture if you run the applet a second time, as you can tell from the pics. (h/t: Castle of Nannbugg)

Murtha (Again) and Other Stuff

Did They Watch the Same Show? Dept.: Today’s lead item on memeorandum is Congressman Jack Murtha’s appearance yesterday on Meet the Press. Here’s Rachel Sklar at The Huffington Post:

So - I'm going to devote my time to Murtha. Did I mention that he DOMINATED? This was as effective a performance on Meet The Press as I've seen, and demonstrated not only that Murtha is right but that he's good. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he did it expertly. Right off the bat he took the offensive, hammering away at Republican talking points and emphasizing and re-emphasizing his own.

…

It's obviously working - otherwise why else would Karl Rove be on the attack? Calling out Murtha and saying "If Murtha had his way, American troops would've been gone by the end of April and we wouldn't have gotten Zarqawi" and challenging Murtha's suggestion of redeployment outside Iraq - clearly Murtha has hit a nerve. And when he answers, he knows what he's talking about: neither Rove nor Russert are able to score a point, because Murtha knows what he's talking about and isn't trying to fool anyone.

And here’s an excerpt from the Gateway Pundit. The numbers in parens following Murtha’s verbatim comments are items GP feels Murtha could have/should have been challenged on. Immediately below Murtha’s comments are the enumerated challenges; there are 15 in all.

REP. MURTHA: Well, “stay the course” is “stay and pay.” This is the thing that has worried me right along. We’re spending $8 billion dollars a month,(1) $300 million dollars a day. And to give you some perspective of what that means, Gates said, “I’m going to quit the corporation, or I’m going to—less time with the corporation.” Well, you weigh $30 billion dollars. That’s four months of the cost of this war.(2) This port security, if you want to spend more money, it’d would take 47 years the way we’re spending it. Education, the No Child Left Behind,(3) a couple months of the war would pay for that. Whose going to, whose going to pay for this down the road? Our children and grandchildren are paying for this war.(4) And then you have the, the, the emotional strain, the, the, the people who are being hurt.(5)

…

1.) $8 billion dollars a month- Murtha said the war cost $9 billion a month last week, $6 billion a month in December... Now it's $8 billion? Which is it?

2.) ...$30 billion dollars. That’s four months of the cost of this war. (see #1)

3.) No Child Left Behind- Murtha says that he "will restore education funding". The US has increased spending on elementary and secondary education by 41 percent despite the War on Terror!

4.) Children and grandchildren are paying for this war. They are going to pay for the cost of 9-11 too- $639.3 billion - and some 2 million lost jobs.

5.) The people who are being hurt in the war. - There were 2,752 lost on one afternoon on 9-11. There have been 2,503 heroes lost in over three years in Iraq (June 18, 2006).

The whole Gateway Pundit article bears reading. I didn’t watch MTP yesterday, or any of the other Sunday Talking Head shows either, for that matter. I did, however, scan the MTP transcript (mislabeled as “June 11”). There’s really nothing new here, Murtha is saying the same things he’s been saying for the past four or five months, and saying them badly: “we’re losing,” “the war was wrong to begin with,” “redeploy.” In other words, it’s the same ol’ same ol’ Democratic Talking Points, revisited. Notably absent: a viable alternative plan. Redeploy to, say, Okinawa? Froggy, writing at Blackfive, simply invites us to look at the frickin’ map. Yeah, that’ll work! Jeff Goldstein has more…

Here’s an item I meant to blog about this past week but sadly forgot. You may have missed it as it certainly didn’t get much press, but on Thursday President Bush announced the designation of a vast chain of Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a national monument, now the largest marine sanctuary in the world. The whole story, from the transcript of a PBS News Hour interview with two leading environmentalists, is here.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's notable that environmental groups have not often seen eye-to-eye with this president. Today, you did. Today was an exception.

JOSHUA REICHERT: That's true. Today, we put aside these differences and we come together to celebrate what is really a remarkable accomplishment. From both a national and international perspective, this is a landmark conservation event.

A “landmark conservation event.” So much for raping and pillaging Mother Gaia. What the Environmentalists-as-Religion crowd seem to miss is the fact conservatives respect and preserve our environment, and we do so in a sensible and balanced manner. Thursday’s action by the President reinforces that fact. Not that you would notice, eh?

Someone is gonna raise The Stanley Cup tonight. The greatest spectacle in sports begins at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern) on NBC. If you’ve never watched a hockey game this is the one to watch. I guarantee you it doesn’t get any better than this.

The Summer Solstice is still two days away and we’re roasting here on The High Plains. Still. With no relief in sight. What the HELL will summer be like if Spring is this frickin’ hot? Maybe Algore is right, after all. You know I’m kidding about Algore…

Happy Father's Day

That’s me and SN3, taken in Key West, 1998. I rarely write about Son Number Three and I have my reasons—which I won’t go into at this point in time. Another day, perhaps.

I have basically the same message for Father’s Day as I did for Mother’s Day: Call your Old Man. He’ll appreciate it. And for those of you who are fortunate enough to be able to visit with Dad on this day, take him out to dinner, or simply sit on the porch and share a moment or two—count your blessings.

We’re going to Game Seven!

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) -- Shiny streamers drifted down from the rafters. A chunk of raw Alberta meat sailed over the glass. The Edmonton Oilers mobbed their third-string-turned-starting goalie as the crowd chanted, "We want the cup!"

It felt like a championship celebration.

One more win and the Oilers can really get excited.

Edmonton's magical postseason run is heading all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, pushed along by a new group of playoff stars who are proving to be worthy successors to Gretzky, Messier & Co.

Hometown boy Fernando Pisani scored another goal and tough guy Raffi Torres deflected in one of his own, sparking the Oilers to a 4-0 rout Saturday night that wasn't that close.

Edmonton evened the best-of-seven series at three games apiece and moved to the brink of a historic comeback. Only three teams have rallied from a 2-0 deficit to claim the cup. Only one, Toronto in 1942, has overcome a 3-1 hole to win it all.

My hockey season is being maximized, and that’s a good thing. Game Seven in the Stanley Cup Final…fairly unusual, this is. What’s highly unusual is for a team to be down 3-1 in the series and to even survive to play a Game Seven, let alone think about winning it. Consider:

Of the 27 clubs who have trailed 3-1 in the Stanley Cup finals...

• 16 were eliminated in Game 5
• 6 were eliminated in Game 6
• 4 were eliminated in Game 7 (Detroit in 1945, Montreal in 1954, Philadelphia in 1987, Vancouver in 1994)
• 1 captured the Stanley Cup (Toronto in 1942)

Carolina was one goal away from The Cup Wednesday night when Game Five went to overtime. Carolina was on the power play three minutes into overtime; their fans were going nuts when Edmonton’s Fernando Pisani stole the puck at the Edmonton blue line, skated in on Carolina goalie Cam Ward all alone and shot the puck over Ward’s shoulder to win the game. That was the first-ever short-handed overtime goal in the Finals. Silence in the arena — Game Over. Pack up the Cup, we’re going back to Alberta. And then Edmonton wins, again. Monday night’s game is gonna be a doozy!

I did something unusual last evening: I created a Yahoo! Personal ad. It’s “under review” at this point in time, so you won’t be able to see it for a while. I’m still wondering why I did it. I like my life just as it is at the moment, and I have this nagging thought in the back of my mind that introducing an “other” would be more trouble than it would be worth. But (and there’s always a “but,” right?) that thought is at the back of my mind. I suppose the very act of creating the ad is the triumph of optimism over…what? Or it’s simply a stand-alone action: Optimism triumphs. I’ll keep you posted.

Just Another Saturday

That’s my buddy Lee in the pic above. He looks pretty good for a guy pushing 50, doesn’t he? The bike? A 2003 Honda VFR 800 Interceptor. Lee got in pretty late Thursday evening…well after 2300. It was a long day’s ride from Houston to P-Town (15 hours), especially considering the triple-digit temps and high winds we experienced. We had a couple of beers and then drove over to the Big(ger) City^TM around 1:00 a.m. for huevos rancheros at an all-night eatery (P-Town closes down around 2300, the only all-night restaurant is Mickey Dee’s). Lee’s visit was short but sweet. Lots of reminiscing went down, mostly about old flames followed up with “where are they now?” conversations. Ah, lost youth…

Here’s an interesting list, illustrated with album cover art (thumbnails) for The Top 500 Albums of the Last Millennium. The tag line for the list sez “Most significant albums recorded in previous millenium.” Heavy on Beatles and Stones and light on hip-hop (or rap, or whatevah the current term is), with a few surprises. I own nine of the top ten and 55 of the top 100. I looked around the site for a write-up on the criteria used to select the Top 500, found nothing. Same with the “according to who?” question. Still, the list is fun to browse. (h/t: Rodger)

Natalie Maines, quoted in The Telegraph (UK):

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

You’re free to express yourself as you please, Darling Natalie, and I, in turn, am free to not buy your frickin’ music. Ever.

Insulting the President of the United States before an audience on foreign soil is, in my eyes, relatively small potatoes compared to questioning the very concept of patriotism. By making that statement above, Natalie Dear revealed a shocking lack of understanding of one of the most basic American moral values, to wit: personal responsibility to, and respect for, the nation. In a time of war, patriotism may also be defined as the personal obligation to support and defend the country. In other words, patriotism is the deep-seated feeling that what we have…our traditions, our history, our values, our laws, our society…is not only worth defending, it’s something we must defend. And Natalie apparently doesn’t believe that is true.

I suppose our collective memory as a nation is short, because the Chicks new album was number one on the Billboard charts the week after its release. On the other hand, I have read that dates on the Chicks’ current tour are being cancelled due to poor ticket sales, one of those cancelled dates was supposedly in Houston. The fact concerts are being cancelled due to poor sales is good news.

The three Dixie Chicks are still popular, highly visible entertainers. And, like it or not, entertainers are powerful role models in our culture. Entertainers achieve power through sales. Less sales, less power. Poor sales, little or no power. Recording contract cancellations follow, as do interview opportunities, appearances on late night talk shows, and other publicity, thereby denying these people a platform for spreading their views. Patriotism has been under assault for a while; the three Chicks are just part of a small, albeit very vocal group of folks assailing patriotism. I don’t care to support people who denigrate the core values of our country, and I damned sure don’t believe the Chicks’ values in this one specific but important area are worthy of respect or emulation. In this regard the Chicks are not suitable role models, period.

It’s a personal thing for me. I will not ever, ever spend my money to directly or indirectly support views I hold to be reprehensible. And that goes for Neil Young, too.

A Notice of Sorts

Blogging will be light tomorrow and possibly Saturday. My old AF buddy Lee Chung is passing through and will spend tonight, tomorrow, and possibly Saturday in P-Town. Lee and I met in Klamath Falls, Oregon, when we were both stationed at Keno AFS on the eastern side of the Oregon Cascades. The year was 1972, so we go back a ways. Lee still lives in Oregon, but he’s in Corvallis now. The last time I saw Lee was just a little over six years ago, and he was still an enthusiastic partner-in-crime. Coincidentally, this year Lee is on a fairly long bike trip…Corvallis to Houston and back, and lots of points in between. What’s on the agenda? Fat Tire and old man reminiscing. That’s what happens when you get old… No more “three felonies before breakfast” stuff. I’m only half-kidding. They were arguably misdemeanors.

Not Quite Clear on the Concept, End-User Division: I’m what you get when you submit the following query to Google…copied verbatim from Site Meter:

what is the return on income for dilliards department store, in setting their business strategy within the last two years.

No sh*t. I’m the first of (just) two hits for that query. Imagine the disappointment.

Another Quiz, Inconvenient Truths, and Words

Your Five Variable Love Profile

Propensity for Monogamy: Your propensity for monogamy is low. You see love as a gift that you should give to many. It's hard for you to imagine being with one person at at time... Let alone one person for the rest of your life! Experience Level: Your experience level is high. You've loved, lost, and loved again. You have had a wide range of love experiences. And when the real thing comes along, you know it! Dominance: Your dominance is low. This doesn't mean you're a doormat, just balanced. You know a relationship is not about getting your way. And you love to give your sweetie a lot of freedom. Cynicism: Your cynicism is low. You are an eternal optimist when it comes to love and romance. No matter how many times you've been hurt - you're never bitter. You believe in one true love, your perfect soulmate. And if you haven't found true love yet, you know you will soon. Independence: Your independence is low. This doesn't mean you're dependent in relationships.. It does mean that you don't have any problem sharing your life. In your opinion, the best part of being in love is being together.

The Five Variable Love Test

I call Bullshit. I find most of these quizzes quite fun and entertaining; this one is simply annoying. So why am I posting it? Just to see if others reactions are similar to mine. For the record:

My propensity for monogamy is pretty damned high… higher than most, I’d wager. TSMP and I were married for 20 years, and were together for 23. I’d still be married if I had my druthers. And it wasn’t hard at all for me to “imagine being with one person at a time… Let alone for the rest of your (my) life.” I was extremely comfortable with monogamy; it was a natural state. And I’ve always been a serial-lover, that is: one at a time. Now the time may have been pretty short on occasion, but it was still “one at a time.” For what that’s worth.

No quibbles with experience level. I made the most of life before marrying TSMP; I made extensive attempts at getting back in the game after her.

No quibbles with the quiz’s take on my dominance, or lack of same. I do have issues with bondage, though.

My cynicism is high. I am not an eternal optimist when it comes to romance. Au contraire, mon frêre. My glass isn’t half-empty, it’s Sahara-desert dry. With calcite rings. “Never bitter?” Oh, spare me, please. I won’t go down that road, but… (I’m sure you get my drift) I DO believe in the soul mate thingie. Unfortunately that wasn’t a mutually-shared perception. True love found, true love lost, game over.

My independence level is high. Take my word for it.

OK, two agreed areas, three areas in violent disagreement. Ergo, Bullshit. Your mileage may vary, of course. Let me know… (h/t: Cassandra)

Now here’s a very interesting article: Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe. Here are the two lead grafs:

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Say what? Pathetic? Really? You must be joking!

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems." (Ed: these quotes are just the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun. There is much more.)

No, really? But…but… Algore is so earnest, so committed. You’re saying he’s playing fast and loose with his inconvenient truths? G’wan!

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.

My illusions are shattered. Shattered, I tell you. The next thing you’ll tell me is Algore had nothing to do with creating the innernets. Right? I’d expect nothing less from you Doubting Thomases.

By the way, have you read Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear? (Excerpts at the link) Crichton’s novel is the antithesis of “An Inconvenient Truth” and is also the most extensively footnoted work of fiction I’ve ever read, bar none. If you don’t have time to read the novel, you might try Crichton’s speech “Environmentalism as Religion.” I find it interesting that Algore gets tons of publicity over his junk-science movie, yet Crichton got barely a murmur when State of Fear came out, as I recall. But then again, this phenomenon fits in pretty well with Crichton’s thesis. We all better brace ourselves for a slew of unneeded and unwanted “environmental regulations.” I can read the handwriting on the wall.

Hey! Do you sometimes find yourself sorta stymied by the language (not the profanity, we can all deal with that) they use and feel generally out of it while cruising sites like Firedoglake, Shakespeare’s Sister, or dKos? Do those earnest folks throw out terms you’ve never seen or heard in your normal, day-to-day life? Do you feel clue-free when they talk Bushit for Fitzmas? Well, fret no more. Those helpful Lefties actually have compiled an extensive glossary kossary. Now you, too, can understand the code. Here’s MY favorite:

Rethug, Rethuglican
Epithet for Republicans, particularly those who seek to tar and feather any dissenting voice. In terms of maturity, not too different from the corresponding "dimmycrat", but it's ours, goddamnit.

Yep, it’s yours. Lord knows the Left would never “tar and feather any dissenting voice.” Um-hmm.

For some strange reason the HTML provided for the quiz results in extremely wide spacing. I've tried to fix it but cannot. {sigh} I hate it when this happens...

Happy Birthday U.S. Army!

Today is the U.S. Army’s 231^st birthday. Happy Anniversary to all you sojers out there. The picture above is my father, in a U.S. Army Air Corps first lieutenant’s uniform. Gotta acknowledge the roots, ya know! (hat tip to Lex, and thank you to my sister Jo for the picture of Dad.)

Speaking of Lex… he put up a very good mini-rant on Daniel Schorr, NPR’s commentator emeritus, this past Monday. I use the “emeritus” appellation quite facetiously. Schorr is and has always been the quintessential moonbat. Lex nails the guy perfectly.

A very interesting conversation is taking place within the Donkey Party at the moment, and it’s something all Americans should pay close attention to. It’s no secret that Islamic Fundamentalism and our response to it is probably Issue Number One with most Americans. Speaking strictly for myself, I’m pretty much a single-issue voter in this regard. There is absolutely NO way I could ever see politicians like Kerry or Gore leading this nation at this point in time (or any point in time, come to think of it), and national security is the chief reason. There are some Democrats that “get it,” but the Far Left doesn’t seem to. Today’s New York Times (free registration required) has a pretty good editorial on the subject. A couple of quotes, out of order, from the editorial:

That division was on dramatic display before thousands of liberals at a "Take Back America" convention on Tuesday.

…

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, faced boos and shouts of "bring them home" from an audience of liberal Democrats here on Tuesday as she argued against setting a deadline, wading into what she called a "difficult conversation." Thirty minutes later, the same crowd applauded wildly as Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the party's 2004 presidential candidate, implored the Senate to back his call for a six-month deadline for withdrawal, and said he regretted his initial support for the war.

"It is essential to acknowledge that the war was a mistake — to say the simple words that contain more truth than pride," Mr. Kerry said, adding: "It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that resolution."

The Dems are doomed to remain the minority party if they allow the Kossacks and the MoveOn crowd to drive foreign policy in general, and the war against militant Islam, specifically. Further evidence of this wrong-headed thinking is articulated quite nicely by Katrina vanden Heuvel in her editorial (Peter Beinart and the Beltway Crusaders) in The Nation. I can’t remember another person I disagreed with more on this subject. Ever. She is just SO wrong, on so many levels, it boggles the mind. But, that’s the Extreme Left for ya.

Still More Random Notes… After my Zippo was confiscated last week I picked up a very cool disposable lighter at a convenience store outside the Manchester airport. What makes it “cool” is the fact it’s a throw-away piezoelectric butane lighter. I remember when piezoelectric lighters first appeared back in the mid-60s. A friend of mine spent nearly $50.00 for a Dunhill piezo (and it was as beautiful as it was functional) when they first came out, and that was a helluva lot of money back in the day. And now? Throw away piezos for a buck and change. Gotta love technology!

Hot, hot, hot. If you go to the Weather Channel’s Ten Day Forecast for Portales you’ll see we’re in for a run of unbroken, extremely hot weather. I’m considering building an altar to the Gods of Air Conditioning. I can’t think of another crisis that would be as extreme as the failure of my six-year-old AC unit. Talk about impact! Let us pray…

I gotta start taking notes. I know I had more to say today, but I can’t remember exactly what. These random thoughts occur throughout the day, usually appended with “I gotta blog about that.” Then I sit down at they keyboard and those thoughts simply vanish. I hope it’s just simple old-age, and not pre-Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Tuesday's Trivial Trash

Today’s de Rigeur Political Post: There will be massive sadness on the Left today. There is no Fitzmas—not where Karl Rove is concerned, anyway. Or so says Byron York at NRO. In the understatement of the day, York writes:

Rove’s fate has been the subject of intense discussion among critics of the Bush administration. Perhaps foremost among them is former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was the CIA employee at the center of the affair. In August 2003, Wilson vowed to pursue Rove vigorously, saying, “At the end of the day it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”

Sorry, Joe. Maybe next time. In the meantime, I’m sure you can find some consolation over at dKos or Firedoglake.

Hockey: OK, I won’t give up my day job. I already did, anyway. A hockey prognosticator I’m not. Carolina is up three games to one after winning last night in Edmonton, 2-1. If they win at home tomorrow night, Carolina will hoist its’ first-ever Stanley Cup. Edmonton has won five Cups, so I don’t feel too bad for them. I missed games two and three of this series; game two because the Yankees were playing the Red Sox Wednesday night and every bar in New England had that game on, not hockey; and game three because it was played Saturday night and I simply had more important things to do. Gasp! I just admitted there are things more important than the Stanley Cup Finals! I shall attempt to atone for that heresy by pouring the day’s first cup into my 1997 Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Champions coffee cup. (Yeah, I know. 1100 and I’m just now pouring my first cup of coffee. I was up all night again. I do it because I can.)

Maybe you’ve seen the various videos of the reaction one gets when dropping Mentos mints into Diet Coke or Pepsi. The results can be spectacular. On the other hand, it’s worse than you thought… (hat tip: Morgan at House of Eratosthenes)

More Random Notes: Unmentioned in my travel narrative: finding love notes from the TSA in my checked baggage while unpacking. These “Notice of Baggage Inspection” documents are curiously reassuring. These guys are doing something, even if it’s only placing the notices in your bags. Or taking away your lighter. Still p*ssed about that, ya know.

Speaking of which... (the fact TSA confiscated my USS Mason Zippo) I’m now carrying a brand-new, bright chrome, official USS Monterey (CG 61) Zippo. SN2 gifted me with the Monterey lighter this past Christmas, along with a personalized Monterey ball cap. (SN2 was the Chief Engineer on the Monterey before heading off to the Naval War College.)

One of the great things about being a military Dad is I get all sorts of military paraphernalia, including unit ball caps, from my sons’ assignments. This is very cool, especially since my own personal collection of military mementoes is sadly lacking. I’ve left countless Zippos with unit crests in countless bars over the years, and rather than saving my unit ball caps I wore them until they were worn out, and then threw them away. The upshot is all my souvenirs of days gone by are gone — Bye! SN2 is decidedly different. One of the walls of his home office is covered with pristine ball caps from every assignment he’s ever had in the Navy. The first time I saw that display I was overcome with jealousy and pride. Jealousy in the sense he had the presence of mind to save these things and I didn’t, and I was proud of him for the very same reason. Rod Stewart sang “Every Picture Tells a Story,” and it’s the same with unit ball caps. Except the stories are better.

You can never catch up. I spent the better part of the day yesterday trying to catch up on my favorite blogs after a week of not reading. The bottom line: Mission Impossible. My favorite writers are just so damned prolific that “catching up” is like trying to clean out the Augean Stables. And I’m no Hercules.

Airplane reading: I mentioned I wanted to hit Borders in ABQ to get reading material prior to flying. Well, I did, and I did. Except I didn’t buy what was on the list, specifically Bec’s recommendation ("Nomenklatura" by Michael Voslensky), mainly because I couldn’t find it. I bought Mark Bowden’s “Guests of the Ayatollah” instead. The book is a narrative of the 1979 take-over of the US embassy in Tehran and is a real page-turner. Bowden wrote “Blackhawk Down,” and “Guests” is every bit as good. From the Publishers Weekly review:

Bowden's analysis of militant Islam is clear, current and dead-on. The government of Iran, now as then, is a theocracy with a secular face, combining, he writes, "ignorance with absolute conviction." Anyone who thinks a nuclear-armed Iran could be dealt with through Cold War–style containment should read this book. Guests of the Ayatollah is, however, no academic tome, but a briskly written human story told from every conceivable point of view: the captives and their captors; President Carter's inner circle and Carter himself, struggling to negotiate a release and finally ordering an extremely risky rescue mission; the soldiers of Delta Force, whose audacious attempt failed; Iranian political figures under the thumb of the glowering Ayatollah Khomeini; and a cavalcade of diplomats, journalists, secret agents and barmy peace activists, some of whose actions bordered on treason. The cast of characters would do justice to a 19th-century Russian novel.

I was disappointed at being unable to finish the book on the plane(s), only managing to read 419 of 637 pages. Bowden is a remarkable writer, to say the very least. Highly recommended, if you get the chance…

Home Again

The Enchilada Production Line
TFMP, SN2, and Granddaughter Angelina

I got home at oh-dark-thirty this morning, 0440 to be exact. The return trip from Maine was pretty smooth up until the last leg of the flight from Manchester, NH to Albuquerque. The First Mrs. Pennington, SN1, and I left Brunswick on schedule and had an uneventful drive from Brunswick to Manchester. We grabbed some lunch at the airport after turning in the rental car, and then caught the flight from Manchester to Minneapolis-St. Paul. The three of us had a two hour layover in Minneapolis before catching our respective flights to Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. I assume TFMP and SN1 got off on time from MSP; I did not. My departure was delayed an hour due to “problems with one of the doors on the aircraft.” We finally were herded on to the aircraft after much coming and going by the maintenance personnel and perfunctory apologies by the gate crew. Just sayin’, but doesn’t it just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when that happens? The aircraft isn’t safe to fly, and then it is… OK, if you say so. It’s pretty damned hard to hold your breath all the way from Minnesota to New Mexico.

But I digress, as usual. My scheduled arrival into ABQ was originally 2300; the maintenance delay pushed touchdown back until midnight. My granddaughter Felicity and her boyfriend Rene picked me up at the airport and we went back to their place on the northwest side of ABQ where I collected my car, said my thank-yous and good-byes, and hit the road for P-Town at 0130. The drive home was uneventful, albeit a bit slower because it was night time (cruise control set at 80 mph vs. 88 in the daylight). Half the drive between ABQ and P-Town is interstate, the remainder is two-lane roads from Santa Rosa, NM to Portales. It was warm (70 degrees) and clear, perfect weather for a top-down cruise in the moonlight. Surprisingly I had no problems staying awake and alert on the return drive (this also assumes the consumption of much coffee and such), but I did crash almost immediately after putting up the “Happy Birthday TSMP” post, below. I got about six hours of sleep and feel none the worse for wear.

So. Here we are... back to “normal,” whatever that is, after a wonderful time with the family in Maine. The understatement of the day would be "I had a great time!"

Random Notes: A tequila worth checking out: El Jimador. Incredibly smooth and tasty sipping tequila; the shots go down so well it makes you wonder what hit you after the fourth one… Thanks to TFMP for turning me on to this!

Boy, did we ever eat in Maine! TFMP prepared her signature enchiladas (79 of ‘em) and home made chili beans Thursday; Saturday SN2 barbequed tri-tip (a beef loin cut, tender and tasty), along with more enchiladas. Of course there were all the trimmings, including some of the best chili (some call it “salsa”) the world has ever seen. Liquid fire, but oh-so-delicious. All the fixins were hand-carried from California and Utah, including what had to be 25 pounds of tri-tip. Maine isn't known for its Mexican food, ya know. It’s no exaggeration to say TFMP, Grandma Alvarado, SN2, and daughter-in-law Alisa fed over 50 people during the course of the week-end.

I can’t believe I flew all the way to Maine and didn’t eat lobster. Next time.

It rained all day, every day, the whole time I was in Maine. There were occasional breaks in the rain, followed by downpours that punctuated an ever-present sort of misty rain. I saw the sun just once, on Sunday morning just prior to our departure. And it was chilly, too. I think the absolute high temp was 62, and that was a nice break from the triple-digit temps we’ve been experiencing in P-Town. Speaking of Portales, if we received just ten percent of the rain that fell on Brunswick this past week we’d be flooded out. Seriously.

SN2 is not going to Cairo. It looks like he’s going to draw a joint assignment to STRATCOM HQ at Offut AFB, in Omaha. SN2 didn’t appear to be too pleased at the news, but SN1, who spent a couple of years in Omaha, says he’ll like it fine. Confirmation should happen this week. I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, Cairo would be quite exotic and the work would be interesting, to say the least. On the other hand, it’s Cairo. I think Egypt is the next potential fundamentalist Islamic flash-point in the Middle East. So the father in me is glad SN2 and Family won’t be “exposed.” There are a helluva lot less bomb-throwing terrorists in Omaha. And I can drive there, too.

The Graduate

Anastasia Marie Pennington
Brunswick High School Class of 2006
Brunswick, Maine
June 9, 2006

The Second Mrs. Pennington...

Rochester, NY 1998

... is 50 today.

Happy Birthday, Paula. You're an old lady now!

Maine

An interim trip report, of sorts. Son Number One, TFMP, and I arrived in Brunswick early this morning (just after 0100) after the two hour drive from Manchester, New Hampshire. It’s cool, bordering on cold, here in the Great Nor’East. And it’s been raining non-stop since I arrived in Manchester late yesterday afternoon. Quite the change from New Mexico! Water from the sky. What a concept!

Tuesday’s drive from P-Town to ABQ was uneventful and hot. I decided to do the drive top-up, and I’m glad I did. The temp was in the high 80s when I left Portales and eventually hit 100 in Albuquerque. Ya just can’t beat air conditioning when it’s unGodly hot outside…

I stayed with my step-granddaughter and her boyfriend in ABQ Tuesday night; they took me to Tucanos, a Brazilian restaurant, for dinner Tuesday evening and it was wonderful. The dining experience was extraordinary…the wait staff just keep bringing grilled food to your table until you’re sated. Grilled pork, grilled beef, grilled chicken, grilled vegetables, and on and on in a never-ending stream until you say “no mas!” (or the Portugese equivalent). Good margaritas, too.

My travel day Wednesday wasn’t quite as bad as I anticipated, but I DO have a bone to pick with the Transportation Safety Administration. I need to preface this mini-rant with an admission: It’s mostly my fault. I didn’t review the current list of prohibited items before hitting the airport on Wednesday, and as a result my treasured Zippo was confiscated. This wasn’t just any old Zippo, it was a cool brass Zippo with the unit crest and a small picture of the USS Mason, SN2’s old ship. I picked up that Zippo the day the Mason was commissioned in Port Canaveral, Florida. You can’t imagine how angry I was, but I held my tongue. There’s no sense venting on the low-level minions that enforce the rules; they’re just doing their job. But it sure was tempting… I cannot, for the life of me, understand just how one could commandeer a plane using a Zippo. I must be missing something here. Either that, or the rule is FRICKIN’ STUPID.

SN1 and I are guests in the US Navy Visiting Quarters at Brunswick Naval Air Station, and the quarters are pretty nice, for the Navy. (Had to put that qualifier in.) We each have a two-room suite that is pretty good size and fairly new. The only downside to the experience so far is the fact the front desk at the Billeting Office doesn’t sell beer. The Air Force does… Oh well. There are liquor stores in Maine.

It’s still rainy and cold today. I think our high will only be in the mid-50s. An interesting transition, to be sure. Half the temperature of New Mexico. And it’s still raining.

More later, as time permits.

God's Own Sauna

...but it's a DRY sauna. You did see the humidity, right?

Department of Redundancy Department: Redundant only in the sense that if you read this blog you probably read Laurie. And speaking of Laurie, her interview is up and ready for your perusal over at Basil’s place. She’s fond of Marines.

Late Post Today…and Not Much of It, Either. I hit the streets early (for me) this morning to get the last of the chores done before heading out to the Great Nor’East. Laundry. Laundromat. Ugh. But, it’s done, all my washable clothes are clean, and my wide variety of tee shirts are all there for the picking and choosing.

Well, on to my continuing preparations. I will take time out this evening to watch the first game of the Finals. I’ll say it again, just so you can go "nana-nana-booboo" when it’s all over: Edmonton in six, or less.

Ah! Unity!

Here’s an interesting idea…Unity08. And yeah, I’m using the word “interesting” in that vaguely disparaging, not quite approving while not disapproving, sort of way. I saw two spokesmen for the Unity08 movement on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning and was curious enough to check out their web site. The basic premise of Unity08 is to select and elect a bi-partisan ticket for the 2008 presidential election—one Republican and one Democrat. The founders of Unity08 see the internet as the prime mover in this effort; their constituency is supposed to be alienated middle-of-the-road Americans. Here is how they state their goals:

We have set three specific goals, and are exploring how best to achieve them.

1. Goal One is the election of a Unity Ticket for President and Vice-President of the United States in 2008 – headed by a woman and/or man from each major party or by an independent who presents a Unity Team from both parties.

2. Goal Two is for the people themselves to pick that Unity Ticket in the first half of 2008 – via a virtual and secure online convention in which all American voters will be qualified to vote.

3. Goal Three, our minimum goal, is to effect major change and reform in the 2008 national elections by influencing the major parties to adopt the core features of our national agenda. With a group of voters who comprise at least 20% of the national electorate, we feel confident that our voters will decide the 2008 election.

The new ground broken in meeting our goals will include new choices for voters, new opportunities for candidates, and new uses of modern technology as well. In pursuing our goals, we will both follow the law in every instance and seek the opinion of the Federal Elections Commission to interpret the law where we are breaking new ground. (In fact we are currently seeking an FEC advisory opinion to guide our early decisions.)

We are not looking to build a new and permanent party. That might happen, but our objective is to fix the old parties. A Unity Ticket in office for one term or even taking part in just one election can bring new ideas, new integrity and new leaders to the fore.

So…they state they are not trying to be a Third Party, although they also say “that might happen.” I’m not quite sure how one goes about “fixing” the old parties when the old parties seem so diametrically opposed to each other's goals and objectives. It’s extremely difficult for me to envision any two individual Republicans and Democrats “coming together” on a single ticket, given the current state of political (non)cooperation in Washington. But perhaps my way of thinking is illustrative of the old politics-as-usual mindset.

So. Where does Unity08 stand on the issues? I read what they have to say on the subject and my bottom line is: I have no clue. There’s not a lot of substance on the website. Here’s their entire position on “the issues:”

Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues – on which America’s future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues – which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.

In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.

By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.

In our opinion – since the disintegration of the Soviet Union – our political system seems to have focused more attention on the “important issues” than the “crucial issues.” One result: The political parties have been built to address the interests of their “base” but have failed to address the realities that impact most Americans.

That’s it, and that’s all. As one pundit noted: where’s Social Security? Where’s immigration? And what’s this “disappearance of the American Dream” crap? I’ll give Unity08 the benefit of the doubt because it’s still very early days. As an example, Unity08 lists global terrorism as a crucial issue yet they make no effort at all in explaining how they would tackle the issue. Do they agree with the Bush Doctrine? Would they sustain or repudiate it? We have no clue. As I said, it’s still early days, but I want, no, I need specifics.

I agree with a basic, yet unstated, premise of Unity08: there are a lot of disaffected voters in the country, and I’m not talking about the small numbers of folks on the radical right who feel betrayed by Dubya, or the radical fringe Left, who are paralyzed by Bush Derangement Syndrome. I think Unity08 is designed to appeal to the large numbers of Americans in the moderate center, people who don’t believe the current system is serving the nation well, if at all. Check that…it’s not the system so much as it is the idiots working within that system, and by that I mean the congress. I don’t think a “Unity” ticket will fix the congress, unless the leaders on the ticket have the strength to define a national agenda both parties will support and implement. It’s difficult for me to see that happening. I’m not ready to sign up yet, but Unity08 bears watching. And then there’s the one over-riding question: Who gets to be on top?

It looks like I’m getting out of Dodge just in time. The Weather Channel sez P-Town is in for a ten-day run of very high 90s – low 100s. Today: 99. Tomorrow: 102. I can handle — thrive in, even — temps in the low 90s. 100 degree weather wears me down, however. Maine’s cool temps look awfully appealing right now!

The Stanley Cup Finals begin Monday evening — Carolina vs. Edmonton. My money’s on Edmonton. We’ll see. Or maybe we won’t, literally. I’ll get to watch Games one and two, the rest are up in the air for me, schedule-wise. But you can rest assured I’ll find a way to watch, assuming a way is at all possible, as many of the games as I can. Just sayin’.

Saturday

The primary reason I’m going to Maine this coming week is to honor my oldest granddaughter with my presence on the occasion of her High School graduation. This rite of passage demands something dressier than my normal jeans-tee shirt-boat shoes-with-no-socks, and military-baseball-cap attire. So, I went over to the Big(ger) City^TM yesterday to “shop” for new clothes, something I haven’t done in a couple of years. I do have “dress-up” clothes…when I retired I kept two suits (one light gray, one dark blue) for formal occasions such as weddings and funerals. Anastasia’s graduation is neither, to my way of thinking it’s a “business casual” kind of affair. Sport coat, semi-dressy shirt (and maybe, just maybe, a tie), “nice” slacks, yadda, yadda, yadda. I have all of these items in my current wardrobe, but they are, shall we say, “dated.” I was thinking something newer and, God Forgive me, more stylish might be in order.

Alas, I came away empty-handed. Nothing, and I mean nothing, appealed to me, and it wasn’t for lack of looking, either. Perhaps it’s where I live and the general lack of choice when it comes to shopping. Or perhaps it’s what’s being foisted off on the American male in the name of “fashion.” Or maybe it’s just me. I strongly suspect it’s the latter. Be that as it may, I’m still stuck with my aging wardrobe. In other words: Stress.

Why I Worry, Part LXVII: Ever so often I’ll go off on a rant about liberal indoctrination in The Academy. I haven’t done so lately, so I guess it’s time. Via Bookworm, here’s a tale that simply boggles the mind. In essence, it’s sort of a Ward Churchill tale in reverse: a conservative professor who was suspended and then cashiered by DePaul University for…thought crime.

Klocek has lost his teaching position and school-paid health insurance benefits, and faces a bleak future due to his chronic health problems. He is guilty of a thought-crime, challenging the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel mindset which has come to dominate the DePaul campus. Klocek’s challenge to this new campus orthodoxy occurred in a cafeteria during a student activities fair last September. For 15-20 minutes, Klocek, who is Catholic, not Jewish, confronted a group of 8 students manning two tables for the groups Students for Justice in Palestine, and United Muslims Moving Ahead. Klocek says he argued that the materials the groups were disseminating were one-sided. On this, he is indisputably correct. Neither group pretends to provide balanced information on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. That of course, is perfectly understandable and acceptable. These are advocacy groups.

Klocek says the discussion was heated at times, and he admits to raising his voice. He says he told the students that Palestinians were Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza – that they had no unique national historical identity. He challenged one student’s assertion that Israel was behaving like the Nazis. He stated that while most Muslims were not terrorists, pretty much all terrorists these days were Muslim. This statement had originally been made by the manager of an Arab news channel, and had recently been quoted in the Chicago Sun Times. It has the incidental merit of being true.

The whole story is here.

There is good news, though. Professor Klocek will get his day in court. He is suing DePaul University, its president, and (the aptly named) Susanne Dumbleton, Dean of the School of New Learning (Klocek’s immediate supervisor), for defamation. The suit seeks damages against DePaul for maligning Klocek’s integrity and professional competence.

It’s so very ironic that Professor Churchill continues on in his position at Colorado while DePaul fired Professor Klocek almost immediately. Draw you own conclusions about that. As far as I know, Klocek isn’t guilty of plagiarism, either. He just seems to be politically incorrect. And that’s a serious offense to the Liberal Academy.

I was treated to a magnificent spectacle last evening from around sunset until about 8:30. I was out and about during that time and witnessed the beauty and power of God’s Own Light Show. There were massive, and I mean huge, thunderstorms just to the south-southwest of P-Town. When you combine the powerful effect of towering thunderheads, brilliant and frequent, jagged, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning with a New Mexico sunset, you get something to write home about. It’s too bad I didn’t have the camera with me. You’ll just have to take me at my word that the sight was breathtaking. It was the highlight of my day. No rain in Portales, however. Just sound and fury…and supernatural beauty.

Light Blogging Today

I have stuff to do in order to get ready for next week's trip to Maine. I might be back later today or this evening...

Gomen, ne?

International Travel and a Russian War Story

Yesterday’s comment conversation between Sam and me about Russia reminded me that I’ve let my passport expire. (Parenthetical aside: I’m still struggling with terminology here, to wit: how to differentiate between Son Number Two and My Friend Sam. Hopefully when I say “Sam” SN2 will get the meaning and vice-versa.) My passport expired last year and I made a conscious decision not to renew it. And that seems strange, in retrospect, as there are still quite a few things and places remaining on my travel “to do” list. Things such as the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Oktoberfest in Munich, and the pyramids in Egypt. And those are just four items on the “never done” side of the list. There is also a “got to go back” component as well, with places such as the Greek Aegean islands, Cappadocia, and Bangkok at the top of the list, followed by places in Europe too numerous to mention. My decision is doubly-strange when one considers that one of my military retirement benefits is “Space Available” travel to anywhere in the world the USAF flies its cargo aircraft (assuming those same aircraft take passengers. Not all do.). While Space-A travel isn’t free, it’s cheap: five bucks the last time I checked.

It’s not like I pulled my passport out of the drawer, looked at it, and said “Oh, Damn! It expired.” No, I knew the expiration date was approaching and gave considerable thought towards renewing. I decided not to. Why? Simply because I believe there aren’t a lot of places in the world these days where it’s safe for an American to travel, including Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps I’m being irrational; I strongly suspect that’s the case. It pains me to think by giving in to my safety issues I’ve “let the terrorists win.”

I may have to reconsider. SN2 has informed me that one of his assignment possibilities following the Naval War College, and his first choice, is embassy duty in Cairo. I believe SN2 told me the assignment was a two-year tour, and he will take the family. SN1 and I discussed the possibility of SN2 going to Cairo the other night, the fact my passport is dead, and my conflict over whether I should renew if SN2 does proceed to Cairo, or not. SN1’s comment was “How could you not go?” Indeed. We’ll see how this unfolds…

But, back to Russia. My Russian adventure pre-dated digital still cameras, and more’s the pity. I did, however, go out and buy a video camera specifically to record my trip (which was in 1993, not '94 or '95 as I indicated in the comments yesterday), and record it I did, to the tune of eight (or more) 8mm tapes. I edited those 8mm tapes and transferred the results to VHS format and made copies for every team member that asked for one. Perhaps I’ll dig that old tape out and review it for war-story fodder that may or may not be suitable for blogging. I’ll have to go buy a new video cassette player first, though, as the one I have gave up the ghost quite some time ago. In the meantime…

My second, and final, trip to Moscow was to deliver the results of our study and a proposal to the client for implementing our recommendations. Communications, specifically long-distance international phone calls, out of Russia at that point in time were damned near impossible. It was my practice during my traveling days with EDS to phone home every day to let TSMP know I was OK, and (frankly) just to hear her voice. Based upon our communication difficulties during my first trip to Moscow, we agreed that she would initiate the calls and set up a time for her to ring me at my hotel. Paradoxically, incoming international calls always seemed to get through, it was outgoing international calls from Russia that were the problem. So…

Five o’clock in the morning. The phone rings and I think “What the Hell…?” as I fumble for the receiver on the nightstand. I mumble “Hello?” into the phone and hear TSMP on the other end, obviously highly agitated, exclaim “What the Hell is going on over there?”

“What do you mean?” sez I.

“You haven’t HEARD? It’s all over the news!!”

“Wha…?” sez I, still half-asleep and wondering if I’m dreaming, or if this is really real.

“Hang on.”

I grab the remote and turn on the TV. The only English language TV station available in my hotel is the BBC’s World Service, so I flip that on. And what do I see? A BBC correspondent standing in front of the British embassy in Moscow, signing off with “…and it appears Russia is poised on the brink of civil war.” WTF? Which Russia? THIS Russia?

I return to the call with TSMP and try my best to reassure her that I am, in fact, in no danger, not even half-believing what I’m saying…simply because I don’t know. She expresses her concern again and we hang up. I return to the news on the TV, but there’s nothing else about the subject at hand. So, I do what any rational person would do: I went back to sleep.

Fast forward, just to make a long story short. (The whole story is here.) My colleague and I met for breakfast at the usual time later that morning. Surprisingly, he was unaware of what was going on. I told him what little I had learned from the BBC. We agree we’ll go to work and see what our hosts think of the situation. Our hosts, in short, dismissed the whole affair as “politics as usual.” Politics as usual, for me, doesn’t include T-72s parked on every other street corner and busload after busload of troops parked in alleyways all over Moscow. We get on the horn back to EDS headquarters in Texas, using our host’s private line. Our management is much more upset than we are, but the bottom line is “proceed with caution.” So, we did. We finished up our presentations and out-briefs with the client and re-scheduled our flight out of Moscow for the next day, which was Friday, October 1st. On October 3^rd Russian army tanks shelled the White House (Russia’s parliament building) and the crisis was over.

Lots of excitement, eh?