Happy Birthday, Gordie!

79 today. Gordie is one of my heroes, and he’s in the “A” rank, too. Put aside the fact the man is a living legend; that’s a given. He’s just a first-class human being, in every sense of the word. An inspiration, in other words.

But Gordie was all about hockey, and there’s more than one reason his nickname is Mr. Hockey:

Gordie Howe was a skilled player. But, he also was a tough guy who would do whatever it took to succeed on the ice and, apparently, had no idea why he played the way he did. There is something to the "Gordie Howe hat trick" -- a goal, an assist and a fight in a game -- but Howe didn't pay much attention to it. Ironically, Howe achieved the "Gordie Howe hat trick" just once in his career.

There was no rhyme or reason to his game, he was just playing hockey. He was a just a hockey player doing his job.

Frank Mahovlich played with Gordie and Alex Delvecchio in the late 1960s on the last incarnation of the Production Line. With the newly acquired Mahovlich in 1968-69, Howe had his best scoring season in then his 23rd season with 44 goals and 59 assists and topped the 100-point mark for the first time. Nearly four decades later, Mahvolich still looks up to Gordie Howe with profound respect.

"It was great to have Gordie on your side. He was a great competitor and it was easier being on his side than playing against him," recalled the Big M in October 2006. "He kind of dominated the play. When he got on the ice, that puck gravitated to his stick and he set the pace of the game. He could slow the game down, he could speed it; he could do what he liked with it. He was that good."

Read the whole thing. It’ll do ya good.

(photo credit: NHL.com)

Perusing the New York Times...

Yesterday was quite the anomaly, weather-wise. And it was cold, too, what with a high of only 41 degrees. We got a lot of precipitation…in each and every form: snow, sleet, hail, and rain. I love the Weather Channel’s description of conditions when that happens: “wintry mix.” It was that, all right. And today? A high of 71 and bright sunshine…there’s not a cloud to be seen anywhere as I type. Oh, yeah, almost forgot: we had very heavy frost last evening.

Dang. Missed another trend: Video Games Conquer Retirees.

Anxious about the mental cost of aging, older people are turning to games that rely on quick thinking to stimulate brain activity. A step slower than in their youth, they are using digital recreations of bowling, tennis and golf.

Spurred by the popularity of the Nintendo Wii game system among older players, Erickson Retirement Communities, based in Baltimore, which manages 18 campuses around the country with 19,000 total residents, is installing the consoles at each location.

“A step slower…” Well, now… that’s being kind, isn’t it? Perhaps I can understand a video game version of bowling and/or tennis. But show me a golfer who will give up his game in favor of a simulation (barring illness or physical disability) and I’ll eat my hat. We all know a golfer or two and they just have to be among the most fanatical folks in the world when it comes to their sport. Yet again I digress.

SN1 has a Wii. He was going on the other evening while we were on the phone about how utterly cool Wii bowling is. I’ll take his word for it. Games based on motion sensors aside (I’ve not played any), I’ve never gotten in to video games at all. The simple reason: I suck at them. I dropped a pretty good chunk of change on various air combat PC games and controllers when the maid quit (there was all that time to fill), only to give it all away upon discovering I’d never progress beyond the first level, no matter what I did (or didn't do). I got SO frustrated over my inability to “get it” that I was afraid I was going to break something. Something expensive. So out they went, never to be replaced. I really don’t miss them, either. Guess I’m just not a trendy sort o’ guy.

Easy for YOU to say… A Double Standard for the Triply Wed:

But divorce experts say the stigma of serial marriages and divorces is on the wane. It is too early to tell how the idea of a thrice-married first lady may turn off conservative voters, but high divorce rates and longer life spans are making third marriages more common and socially acceptable, sociologists, family therapists and divorce lawyers say.

The article was prompted by the revelation that the current Mrs. Giuilani is on her third marriage. Personally I don’t give a big rat’s butt how many times other folks have been down the aisle, but as for me? I refuse…repeat: refuse…to be a three-time loser.

I know: never say “never.” But, in this case it’s a pretty safe bet.

While we’re on about affairs of the heart, this is amusing: It’s Not You, It’s Your Apartment. Seriously, it IS amusing.

Spring is here and the restaurants will soon be filled with anxious and hopeful couples, ordering wine, dusting off their most luminous lies, thinking they might finally have found love. Then they will see their dates’ homes for the first time. And suddenly some of them will realize that they cannot be with this person a moment longer — or at the very latest, because that wine was not cheap, beyond the next morning. A few whose homes have been romantic deal breakers may, like Mr. Podell, know what went wrong and choose to ignore it, seeing their apartments as a reflection of their brave refusal to bow to conventional taste.

“There have been at least 40 women who’ve said, why do you live here?” he says.

I can relate. Living in an RV is a romantic deal-breaker of magnificent proportions. That and not having a bed. But look at it this way: it’s an iron-clad insurance policy against becoming a three-time loser.

Ain’t that America… “Too Busy to Notice You’re Too Busy.” Ah, a classic whine, this is:

In our busy, busy world, however, I sometimes feel as if I am the odd one out. Although those who are overworked and overwhelmed complain ceaselessly, it is often with an undertone of boastfulness; the hidden message is that I’m so busy because I’m so important.

[…]

Of course, it is not just in the work force that people are madly busy. Many people I know, who might be able to enjoy some downtime because their children are in school and they do not have paying jobs, pile errands on top of volunteering on top of working out on top of, well, you name it. When the children get out of school, they race from one activity to another, and if at some point life seems to calm down, then it is time to take on a big construction project, get a dog or have another baby.

Nancy Reagan’s exhortation comes to mind here: “Just say ‘No!’” Ah, but that’s oh-so-easily said, not-so-easily done. I have some experience here, in that I used to be among the terminally busy. Nowadays I’m much more like Randy Bachman, as he sang in that classic ol’ Bachman-Turner Overdrive song:

People see you having fun
Just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It's the work that we avoid
And we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day

But I’m still a slave to e-mail. Some things just don’t change.

Today’s Pic: Me, back in the day when I was terminally busy. The pic was taken around 2000 hrs; note that it’s dark outside. And that’s the way life was: dark when I arrived, dark when I left. Terminally busy, in other words.

San Francisco. October, 2000.

Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?

I certainly hope not. I’m not up for a replay of last Friday, thank you. I can deal with cold, rainy, and damp… but getting airborne in El Casa Móvil De Pennington just ain’t my kinda fun.

If you view the larger “closer to home” radar pic you can see Floyd, where Jenny lives. And note that sleet and snow ain’t too far away.

On a side note…I was watching the WX Channel last evening just before bedtime and noted they said we were victimized by 67 tornadoes across six states on Wednesday. I searched for an on-line article to quote but couldn’t find one. At any rate, as surprising as it may seem, 67 tornadoes isn’t the record for March outbreaks…last year was, with 70+ (76, if memory serves, which it often doesn’t).

Opinions and Editorials...

This is pretty interesting…From an op-ed in yesterday’s Der Speigel (“Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs”), one of Germany’s leading publications:

We've known just what they're like for a long time. The 19th-century German author Karl May taught us about the American Wild West, and Karl Marx warned us about unbridled capitalism. Besides, we've all been there at least once -- on vacation, of course. Be it in California or Florida (that's where you get the best deals on rental cars, you know), we can see right through the Americans.

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.

Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course -- from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil.

[…]

Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.

Not so safe

Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant. Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women's underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.

That last line pretty much says it all. Our kinder and gentler nature has just made America into a muscle-bound version of Rodney Dangerfield…we “don’t get no respect.” For all our inherent evil, the world understands there’s no penalty and little risk of retribution if you tweak our nose. No, you’ve got to kill 3,000 of us at a single go before we’ll kick your ass. And even then the outcome isn’t certain…especially if your tactics are to run, hide, and slowly bleed us… inflicting death and humiliation using the old Chinese “death by a thousand cuts.”

But, back to the op-ed. Given a choice between being loved or being feared, I’ll take fear every damned time. It seems to work pretty well for the mullahs, doesn’t it?

(h/t: Lex)

Charles Krauthammer, writing in today’s WaPo:

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.

Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one whose presence in Afghanistan (or some cave on the border) presumably makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that "the most . . . serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, has declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era."

This, in part, is Mr. Krauthammer’s response to fuzzy Democratic thinking, to wit: “Let’s end the Iraq war so we can concentrate on the real war: Afghanistan.” The enduring mystery (to me) is Krauthammer’s logic and the points he makes all seem so obvious. But, obviously (sorry!) it’s not. At least not to Democrats, anyway.

Speaking of Democrats…As part of an op-ed (Pork Goes to War) the NYT has a great graphic illustrating the types and dollar amounts of pork included in the supplemental appropriations bills passed by the Senate and House:

Despite their campaign talk about earmark reform last fall, the new Democratic leadership shamelessly used pork to buy votes — before the vote, Representatives Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Peter DeFazio of Oregon acknowledged that add-ons for their districts would influence their decisions.

The heavyweights also led by example: the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, added $20 million to eradicate Mormon crickets, and David Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, came away with $283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract Program.

This chart (PDF), which is a partial list of some of the most egregious earmarks, shows that the new bosses are already feeding at the trough, and “war pork” threatens to sink their fiscal credibility.

The pdf is informative, if nothing else. This bill deserves a veto on financial grounds alone, no matter how much of the pork survives the House-Senate reconciliation process. The Iraq “timetable” is just a veto-sweetener.

News you can use…101 Fantastic Freebies, from PC World. I’ve chosen to link the Reader’s Choice section of this article, but there are alphabetical lists of all 101 items and more. I use several of these “freeware” apps, most notably g-mail, Nullsoft Winamp (a cool player that turns the ‘puter into my oh-so-expensive radio) and Ad-Aware SE…an anti-spyware app. There’s lots of great free stuff out there.

Today’s Pic: Detail on a sculpture of an Indian woman that stands just off the Plaza in Taos. I posted a full view of the sculpture back in September of last year…here. As always, click for larger.

Taos. May, 2004.

Today's Pic

A bit of whimsy from seven years ago this month. I was wandering around Space Center Houston (not to be confused with the Johnson Space Center) when this particular display caught my eye. I titled this photo “My Riding Buddy” and used it to illustrate an edition of The Trailer Trash Report, an e-newsletter I put together and mailed to friends and family when I first hit the road. Blogs, as such, didn’t exist back in 2000. And neither did ubiquitous network connectivity. It was hard enough finding a network connection to get my e-mail and upload my newsletters; maintaining a blog on the road would have been next to impossible. Ain’t progress grand?

Houston. March, 2000.

US No Longer the World's Technology Leader?

“US 'no longer technology king'.” That, according to a report issued by the World Economic Forum, as reported by the BBC.

The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

The US is now ranked seventh in the body's league (sic) table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations.

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said.

I’m not sure what sort of wholesale political and regulatory deterioration we experienced last year, but the “net neutrality” debate couldn’t have helped any. But, I digress. Last year the WEF’s annual report on technology listed the US as number one; this year we’ve slipped to number seven. Who’s Number One? Here’s the top ten:

NETWORKED READINESS INDEX RANKINGS 2006 (2005)
1: Denmark (3)
2: Sweden (8)
3: Singapore (2)
4: Finland (5)
5: Switzerland (9)
6: Netherlands (12)
7: US (1)
8: Iceland (4)
9: UK (10)
10: Norway (13)

Why is Denmark Number One?

"Denmark, in particular, has benefited from the very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory environment and large availability of e-government services," said Irene Mia, senior economist at World Economic Forum.

I’m not picking on Denmark, but what does “…very effective government e-leadership…” and “large availability of e-government services” really mean, I wonder? I dunno about you, but I’ll take products and/or services from Microsoft, Apple, Boeing, and General Electric…just to name a few…over “e-government services” any day. I just did a quick mental inventory on the technology in El Casa Móvil De Pennington and there’s not a single example of anything from the top six countries on that list (I used to own a Nokia—Finland—cell phone, however).

And…in a rather mysterious turn of events, today’s BBC article conflicts with an article published this past Tuesday that said, among other things:

The US has regained first place in an annual global league table of countries making most extensive and constructive use of computers and the internet.

America has topped the latest Networked Readiness Index from the World Economic Forum, winning back its top position from this year's number two, Singapore.

Note that both BBC articles quote the “Networked Readiness Index.” Which one is wrong, one wonders? At any rate… consider the report’s source (the World Economic Forum) and who conducted it (“Insead, the Paris-based business school”) when accepting or rejecting its conclusions.

Outside the Beltway has more discussion, including links to the Global Information Technology Report resource page.

More Dining Out Stuff

Today’s Pic: SN1 sends along a pic of himself and Madam Vice (he was Mr. Vice) at the grog bowl during a recent Hill AFB Dining Out. No other details available…you might could ask questions, if you have any, in the comments. No promises about answers, though.

March, 2007.
(USAF Photo)

Another Record

Making the playoffs: Who has the longest active streak in professional sports? Hint: it ain’t the Yankees, but if you guessed Yankees, you’re close.

NEW YORK -- The Detroit Red Wings have clinched a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 16th consecutive season, the latest milestone for a franchise that has set a standard for sustained excellence not only in the National Hockey League but for all of North American major pro sports. The New York Yankees, who have qualified for the Major League Baseball playoffs in each of the past 12 seasons, have the next-longest streak.

In addition, the Red Wings reached the 100-point mark last Thursday, marking their seventh consecutive season of 100 points or more and surpassing the stretch of six such seasons amassed by the Edmonton Oilers during the Wayne Gretzky era from 1981-82 through 1986-87. The Montreal Canadiens, who recorded an NHL-record eight consecutive 100-point seasons from 1974-75 through 1981-82, are the only NHL team with a longer streak.

Naysayers could (and probably will) remark that “everyone makes the playoffs” in the NHL. This is somewhat true compared to the other major sports, in that 16 of the 30 NHL teams qualify for post-season play under the current system. But that ain’t everyone, now, is it? But, more to the point, the linked article explains the “hows and whys” of the Red Wings' success…which boils down to management continuity, smart(est) drafting (even though the Wings have only had one top-20 pick since 1992), and good trades. In other words: a supremely well-managed team with lots of talent.

But making the playoffs doesn’t guarantee anything (read that: Stanley Cup), as the last few seasons early exits have shown. Let’s hope it’s different this year…

AAR

Augh. Up all night. Again. “Sleeping in shifts” would be a more appropriate term, actually. My head hit the pillow around 2130 last evening or thereabouts and I awoke around 0200. And stayed awake until 0530. The smart thing to do would have been to put today’s post up early…but Noooo. When 0530 rolled around I was well and truly tired, too tired to write anything…meaningful or otherwise. The good news is I slept well, once I got to sleep “for good.”

And now I find myself behind the power curve. A strange statement, that. How can one be “behind the power curve” if one has no responsibilities beyond those that are self-imposed? The answer, or the best answer I can muster, is residual Type A behavior.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

A Very Brief AAR… Which stands for “After Action Report,” a misnomer if there ever was one, in this case. Mainly because there was no action yesterday beyond the normal rhythms of life: Get up, drink coffee, make the rounds, do chores, fix meals, clean up, recreate (Tee Vee, a little light music, reading), bed. I gave an ever-so-brief nod towards “my special day” in that I cooked (as opposed to nuked) dinner…kielbasa simmered in half a bottle of Fat Tire and sauerkraut…and enjoyed the last of the Partagas stash in conjunction with three fingers of single malt, both taken outside in the warm evening air.

Extra added attraction: The Wings were on Versus last night and beat Anaheim, 1-0 in a great defensive struggle. A much different game than the classic I posted about yesterday, but entertaining none the less. The win moved the Wings into a three-way tie for first overall in the league, along with division rival Nashville and the Buffalo Sabres.

Today’s Pic: More from the Family Archives. This lady is Estelle Wood, my maternal grandmother. The photo was taken sometime in the 1920s and that is an educated guess, at best. One would assume the photo was taken in Atlanta as my grandmother was born, raised, and lived her entire life in that city.

A Day to Remember...

...for lots of reasons. This being among the best:

A simmering rivalry bubbled over in a game for the ages 10 years ago.

On March 26, 1997, while the Colorado Avalanche and the Detroit Red Wings were positioning themselves for the upcoming NHL playoffs, bad blood from the previous postseason boiled into unadulterated fury at Joe Louis Arena. The teams combined for nine fights, 11 goals, 39 penalties, 148 penalty minutes, one hat trick, one "turtle" and two Stanley Cup champion goalies duking it out in an overtime thriller.

[…]

In a 2004 poll on the Red Wings' Web site, fans overwhelmingly voted this ultra-memorable game their favorite in the team's recent history, ahead of overtime playoff thrillers and Stanley Cup-clinching victories.

Good choice, Hockeytown.

Read the whole thing, even if you’re not a hockey fan. The story is a great one, hockey or no, and there are links to videos of some of the memorable ...uh... altercations. If you are a hockey fan?

Priceless.

What a birthday present that was! I did manage to watch the game although I wasn’t in Detroit. This was back in the day when the NHL’s TV contract was with a viable network (read that as: ESPN).

Photo: Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon mix it up. What’s unusual is they’re both goalies. Rare, that. Photo credit: ESPN.

The Recent Past

Today’s Pic: “Former Happy Days, Part Deux.” Three years ago, today. From left to right: Grandson Sean, SN1, the ex-girlfriend, daughter-in-law Erma, granddaughter Felicity.

The occasion? My 59^th birthday BBQ.

Great weather for March, eh?

Clovis, NM.

Dining Out

Mike posted a series of excellent pics and a story about the Dining Out he attended recently. He cuts a fine figure in his Class A's, he does!

Reading Mike’s post and looking at his pictures fired off some long-dormant synapses in the ol’ brain. The Dining In is an old military tradition. I went looking for a little bit of a little background for you…

In a very rare occurrence, the Wiki lets me down. Their entries for Dining In/Dining Out are pretty danged poor, to say the least. There are better descriptions here and here (pdf).

As an example, the wiki says absolutely nothing about The Grog Bowl, which, although watered down considerably from the Days of Yore, remains a central fixture of the Dining In/Out. One can devine the purpose of The Grog Bowl from the following:

The following rules will be strictly enforced. Violations will result in punitive action by the President of the Mess. He will be assisted by Mr.Vice and Madam Vice, who have in their possession a bottomless "Grog" bowl.

Break a rule (and there are many!), “win” a trip to The Grog Bowl. And here are the Rules of Engagement for The Grog Bowl:

Persons being directed to the grog bowl will:

1. Without talking, proceed directly to the grog bowl.
2. Station thyself in front of the grog bowl facing the head table.
3. Salute the President of the Mess.
4. Pour thyself a full cup of grog; about face, raise cup and state "To the Mess."
5. Drink the contents of the cup without removing [the bowl] from thy lips.
6. Show the cup to be empty by turning it upside down over thy head; remove cup.
7. About face; replace cup; about face again; salute the President of the Mess; return to thy seat.

Omission of any of the above steps will demand a repetition of the entire procedure.

Back in the day the contents of the Grog Bowl were designed expressly to be semi-lethal, in an alcoholic “you can’t partake of the Grog without getting seriously impaired” sort of way. Today? Not so much.

The contents of the grog bowl are best left to the imagination of the planning committee. The contents should be non-alcoholic as to not dampen the spirits and participation of those individuals who, for religious or personal reasons, do not consume alcoholic beverages. It is permissible to have two grog bowls, one alcoholic and one non-alcoholic.

I’ve seen (and imbibed) amazing alcoholic concoctions in those bowls and survived to tell the tale(s), none of which are forthcoming. Be glad!

Oh, by the way, about those long-dormant synapses… I was Mr. Vice at my NCO Academy Dining Out in 1977. Without going into any detail (OPSEC and memory-failure being the two chief reasons) I’ll simply say “A Good Time was had by ALL!” A memorable evening in each and every aspect.

Some days I really miss the Air Force.

Photos and More

Clovis tornado damage…photos here; pictures and narrative here. The damage appears to be more extensive than yesterday’s initial article in the Clovis/Portales News-Tribune seemed to indicate. I haven’t been over to the Big(ger) City^TM since the tornado and likely won’t be over that way until the middle of the coming week. So…no personal reports. I prefer to stay out of the way while people clean up and get their lives back in order.

There are more t-storms in the forecast today. Let’s hope today’s storms are more of the garden variety than the exciting variety. Excitement doesn’t rank high on my list of favorable emotions these days, especially when it’s paired with weather.

Speaking of photos: Iraq, thru the eyes of an American Soldier. Excellent photography, and a well-done site. (h/t: Chap)

George Will has a column in today’s WaPo that’s drawing a lot of comment throughout the ‘sphere: Anger Is All The Rage (nice play on words, that):

Many people who loathe George W. Bush have adopted what Peter Wood describes as "ecstatic anger as a mode of political action." Anger often is, Wood says, "a spectacle to be witnessed by an appreciative audience, not an attempt to win over the uncommitted."

Wood, an anthropologist and author of "A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now," says the new anger "often has the look-at-me character of performance art." His book is a convincing, hence depressing, explanation of "anger chic" -- of why anger has become an all-purpose emotional stance. It has achieved prestige and become "a credential for group membership." As a result, "Americans have been flattening their emotional range into an angry monotone."

Anyone who’s ever visited any of the prominent Lefty blogs recognizes the truth in Peter Wood’s statement about anger as “spectacle,” and the appreciative audiences the spectacle attracts. Not that the Right is immune or refuses to play the anger game. There are several prominent Right-Wing blogs I rarely frequent because I don’t like their tone…and my key reasons are anger and its close associate, insult. Both are counter-productive to rational discourse and (in my opinion) are off-putting.

So. I’ll give you three links to further thoughts on Will’s essay…the first being EIP fave Ed Morrissey, the second is moderate voice Joe Gandleman, and the third is moonbat extraordinaire Maha. All three are worth the read. And it’s no coincidence I listed them in order of my personal preferences. Captain Ed made me think, as did Gandelman, and Maha just made me laugh. But Hey! Laughter is good, nu?

Today’s Pic: More from the archives. This time it’s YrHmblScrb and his great-grandmother standing next to Dad’s pride ‘n’ joy: The Fabulous Hudson Hornet.

During 1952 Hornets driven by Marshall Teague, Herb Thomas and Tim Flock won 27 NASCAR races driving for the Hudson team. In AAA racing, Teague drove a stock Hornet that he called the Fabulous Hudson Hornet to 14 wins during the season. This brought the Hornet's season record to 40 wins in 48 events, a winning percentage of 83%, a remarkable feat for a six-cylinder car.

I come by my gear-head tendencies naturally, or put another way, “it’s in the genes.” My father was a BIG Hudson fan, owning three of the things. And he drove them hard. So much so, in fact, that the words I remember most from my childhood motor outings with my parents are these: “Buck! Slow down!” It’s amazing just how varied in tone that simple admonishment could be…ranging from a dry statement to a cry of sheer terror. Meanwhile, in the back seat, my sister and I just held on…

(Yeah, Dad was Buck, too.)

Sacramento, CA. Circa 1951.

Wild!

It was a wild, wild, night: Tornado slams Clovis. But no one was killed, Thank God.

The worst tornado in Clovis’ history struck the city’s southeast side Friday night, leaving more than a dozen injured and possibly hundreds of homes damaged.

No deaths were reported, but officials said at least three patients at Plains Regional Medical Center were listed in critical condition.

Rescue workers were still searching storm-ravaged homes early this morning in search of injured or trapped residents. Details related to damage were not immediately available.

“We don’t know what we’re dealing with until the sun comes up and the lights come on,” said Clovis police spokesman Jim Schoeffel at a news conference late Friday night.

The tornado, wrapped in heavy rains, hit the city at 7:54 p.m., the National Weather Service reported, about 20 minutes after tornado sirens warned of danger. Debris was strewn across U.S. Highway 70 and officials quickly closed the road and urged sightseers to stay away. It remained closed early this morning.

[…]

At least five tornadoes were spotted in the area before Clovis was hit, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Chuck Jones. Jason Boggs, a storm spotter from Amarillo, said he saw the twister that likely hit Clovis while it was still in Roosevelt County. He estimated it was one-half mile, but said he believes it was not that wide when it struck Clovis.

[…]

Portales received heavy rain, but no injuries were reported and no ambulance calls were made related to the weather, Portales Police Capt. Lonnie Berry said.

It could have been worse, as it’s said.

This morning dawned clear and cool, with bright blue skies and lots of puddles. We DID get some rain last evening, and lots of it. I think the next time we have a weather episode like this I’m gonna head over to the hospital with a book. It was very stupid of me to just stay put last evening. You’d think I would have learned by now, eh?

The Weather Channel and several local (i.e., Albuquerque) stations are still AWOL on the cable system as I write (1000 hrs). I noted in the comments to “Look What’s Headed…” that the WX Channel went belly-up last evening just as the second wave of storms moved through the area. I’m still pretty pi$$ed that the management at Cox Cable couldn’t be bothered to call someone out last evening and restore the satellite feed that’s (obviously) gone bad. The WX Channel is not just a luxury during severe weather, it’s a necessity. Shame on Cox Cable.

(Note: WX Channel restored sometime after 1100 hrs. That means it was out for well over 12 hours. And I pay $50.00 per month for this?)

Words that will fall on deaf ears:

If the goal of peace demonstrators is to influence public opinion and encourage an end to the war, the activists must connect with their fellow citizens — not repel them.

Most of the people who marched on Sunday fully understand this. And by singling out the few who didn’t, we don’t intend to place thousands of demonstrators under one label. But the actions of a few do create a public perception that at least some advocates for peace are anti-American, anti-police and far out of step with mainstream values.

The anti-war demonstrators who behaved responsibly this past weekend have an obligation to denounce — and distance themselves from — those protesters who purposefully offend others and consequently destroy the intended message of peace.

This from the Portland, OR Tribune. Portland isn’t exactly a conservative hotbed, but then again, it ain’t SFO, either. There are some truly disgusting details in this op-ed, details I won’t quote here.

From the Guardian (UK)… Supreme court ban on liberal party wipes out opposition to Putin.

Russia's next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow yesterday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections.

Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticises President Vladimir Putin.

The move against Russia's opposition came as pro-democracy activists prepared for the latest in a series of anti-government rallies that have infuriated Russia's hardline authorities.

[…]

The Kremlin argues that its new electoral law - which says that all political parties must have 50,000 members and be represented in half of Russia's provinces - is meant to streamline Russia's untidy political scene. Critics say the legislation is designed to kill off smaller parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Captain Ed is calling Putin “Tsar Vlad I.” Appropriate, I’d say. Putin’s outspoken opponents die mysteriously worldwide, the government shuts down independent media, and opposition parties are outlawed…things are looking pretty dark in Russia. I’m just not ready for Cold War Redux, yanno? But it looks like that’s what we’re gonna get.

Krauthammer on Gonzales:

Alberto Gonzales has to go. I say this with no pleasure — he’s a decent and honorable man — and without the slightest expectation that his departure will blunt the Democratic assault on the Bush administration over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. In fact, it will probably inflame their bloodlust, which is why the president might want to hang on to Gonzales at least through this crisis. That might be tactically wise. But in time, and the sooner the better, Gonzales must resign.

It’s not a question of probity, but of competence. Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it.

The linked article was published yesterday in National Review Online. The story gets even worse today, what with “new” documentation indicating Gonzales was deliberately deceptive about his role in the US attorney firings.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with senior aides on Nov. 27 to review a plan to fire a group of U.S. attorneys, according to documents released last night, a disclosure that contradicts Gonzales's previous statement that he was not involved in "any discussions" about the dismissals.

[…]

Documents detailing the previously undisclosed meeting appear to conflict with remarks by Gonzales at a March 13 news conference in which he portrayed himself as a CEO who had delegated to Sampson responsibility for the particulars of firing eight U.S. attorneys.

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," Gonzales said.

Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic when I say AG Gonzales was “deliberately deceptive,” but what else can one think? Can one even entertain the notion the Attorney General of the United States’ memory is so bad that he can’t recall sitting in a conference room for an hour with his staff in a meeting whose subject appears to be these firings? Well, you could believe his memory is that bad, but if that’s the case the man needs medical attention.

Once again, I’ll defer to Mr. Morrissey:

Have we had enough yet? I understand the argument that if we allow the Democrats to bounce Gonzales, they'll just aim for more, but Gonzales made himself the target here with what looks like blatant deception. I don't think we do ourselves any good by defending the serially changing stories coming out of Gonzales' inept administration at Justice. One cannot support an Attorney General who misleads Congress, allows his staffers to mislead Congress, and deceives the American people, regardless of whether an R or a D follows his name or the majority control of Congress.

When the story broke about the NSA terrorist surveillance program, Bush did not hide behind a morphable definition of "is" or "involved". He stood at the podium and told the press that he damned well did order the surveillance program and that he broke no laws in doing so. In that manner, he turned the leak into a net positive, showing that he had the courage of his convictions and that he intended nothing more than the security of the nation.

What he said.

Deceptive, inept, and incompetent. Time to go, Al.

Today’s Pic: SN3 and Grandson Sean at a Texas rest area just across the TX-LA state line. Kids just love to pose, God Bless 'em.

April, 2004.

Look What's Headed Our Way...

The weather outside is pretty wild at the moment. Dark gray, swirling, towering clouds driven rapidly across the sky by a very brisk breeze…it’s a warm breeze, too. If you check SE NM in the larger version of the map, you'll see a Meso-cell with clouds topping out at 55K feet, moving NNE at speeds of 31 mph. That's aimed right at P-Town...

Ah, Spring! It looks to be an interesting sort of evening in these parts.

Update: 1527 hrs. That cell is gonna track well to the east of us (you too, Jenny!). But the one behind it? Jury's out.

Calling In Well

When all else fails, Scott and James (usually) deliver. James isn’t all that great today, what with a rant about a malfunctioning new fridge that, save the colorful language, is just average for Mr. Lileks (I should be so “average”). On the other hand, Mr. Ott is pretty good today:

Army Desertions Rise to Near All-Time Average
by Scott Ott

(2007-03-23) — The Pentagon today admitted that, due to the Bush administration’s hugely unpopular war in Iraq, desertions from the Army have increased in each of the last two years, reaching almost 75 percent of pre-war levels.

According to a story in The New York Times, citing a National Public Radio report, the Pentagon has miscalculated desertion figures in recent years, in part because the Defense Department inexplicably misplaced personnel records during what officials called an “isolated incident at the office” on September 11, 2001.

His best line, however, is at the very end. “Fair use” prevents me from posting the whole thing, but I’m sure you’ll go read. Right?

And then there’s this…an op-ed from the WaPo:

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.

Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than $20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill -- for whatever reason -- will be voting to require that all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops who would remain behind.

The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Yet the leadership is ready to piece together the votes necessary to force a fateful turn in the war by using tactics usually dedicated to highway bills or the Army Corps of Engineers budget. The legislation pays more heed to a handful of peanut farmers than to the 24 million Iraqis who are living through a maelstrom initiated by the United States, the outcome of which could shape the future of the Middle East for decades.

I know: politics as usual. Happens all the time, right? Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. It’s the way things get done in the real world. Still and even…I’ve not seen an example of political behavior lately that’s more reprehensible or more disgusting. It will be most interesting to see which representatives take the bait and sell the country out to get peanut storage, among other things. Damn.

But…kudos to the WaPo for taking a principled position on this issue. I hope they manage to shame those reps that just might be willing to eat the bacon. Fat chance.

Today’s Pic: An example of an art time has passed by: the hand-colored portrait. This particular example is a photo of my sister and me, circa 1957 in Ankara, Turkey. I was 12, my sister was six. Interestingly, the artist didn’t know the shirt I was wearing was tan, not green as colored. My Mom was furious with the results, my Dad much less so. It’s strange how one can remember the angst associated with an event, but not the event itself. I have absolutely NO recollection of sitting for this picture, but I well remember my Mom’s outrage over the color of my shirt. I don’t think she ever got over it!

Short post today. I thought about calling in well* but decided against it. But on the whole? I need a mental health day.

* “calling in well” is when you just feel too good to go to work. Some people can pull this off, some can’t.

Catching Up

So…during the first “drain and refill” operation after taking today’s pic I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the roof vent in my bathroom was wide open during that tropical rain squall that blew over El Casa Móvil De Pennington this morning. Which, of course, led to an impromptu mopping up operation. I now have a spotless (but still soggy) “facility.” It’s truly amazing just how much water can pour through a 12-inch square opening in the roof in such a short time. “Stupidity R Us…”

It’s pi$ing down rain as I type, yet again. But: the vent is closed now. This is a good thing.

Captain Ed, writing in response to this article in the NYT:

The Democrats thought they rode to power on a wave of anti-war sentiment, but they have discovered that their victory had much more to do with Republican failures than with Democratic platforms. Most of their new members come from center-right districts where Democratic messages about corruption and abuses resonated -- but where they see Congress' role in Iraq as limited at best. Boren represents a typical Democratic pickup district in that respect.

Now that the Democratic leadership has gone on record as wanting to limit options for victory in Iraq, Nancy Pelosi and company find that these new representatives will not play along with them. The Blue Dogs understand that timetables represent nothing more than defunding efforts under another name. They will not vote for anything that smells of defeat and retreat, and their numbers indicate that the Democratic supplemental -- even filled with hometown pork for those on the fence -- will likely fail.

[…]

On top of that, the Out of Iraq caucus threatens the bill on the Left because it gets too cute with its defunding efforts. The Left wants a clean break -- complete defunding and an end to the deployment now. Maxine Waters has assumed the leadership of this faction, and her threat to withhold support of the supplemental would also doom the bill on just that basis alone. The Democrats have only a fifteen-seat majority, and while they may get a handful of Republicans to cross the aisle for this bill, they cannot hope to make up for the losses from the Blue Dogs and the antiwar caucus.

A lot of us have been writing that the “mandate” on the war, as claimed by Madame Speaker and Harry Reid, is ephemeral at best, and non-existent outside of the ultra-Liberal Left wing of the Democratic party, at worst. And Representative Boren (more or less) proves that point. Thank the Lord for those Blue Dog Dems. I suppose I should offer thanks for the twisted logic and/or rationale being used by the “Out of Iraq” caucus against this bill, too. But I just can’t.

Both Captain Ed and that NYT articles are worth your time…here are the lead grafs from the NYT:

WASHINGTON, March 21 — Representative Dan Boren is a Democrat, but after visiting Iraq last week he announced a decision that puts him at odds with his party’s leaders: he intends to vote against their plan to set a deadline for troops to leave Iraq.

“A timeline, in effect, is cutting off the funds,” said Mr. Boren, a conservative second-term lawmaker whose territory covers the eastern swath of Oklahoma, from the bottom of Kansas to the top of Texas. “That is not the solution.”

His views have barely caused a ripple in his home district, but the House Democratic leadership has been working to keep Mr. Boren’s views from spreading through the party’s jittery conservative wing. At the same time, the leaders are trying to persuade liberals to support the legislation, even though it does not end the war nearly fast enough for their liking.

As the House prepares to vote Friday on a $124 billion Iraq spending bill, which calls for American troops to come home before Labor Day of 2008, an intensely private and anguishing debate has played out for many lawmakers through handwritten letters, telephone calls and conversations. Dozens of representatives have traveled to Iraq, even as antiwar activists staged protests in their district offices or at their homes.

The consternation among Democrats on the left and the right has made the outcome of the vote far less certain than leaders had hoped, particularly after respected figures like Representative John Lewis, a liberal Georgia Democrat, declared his opposition, saying, “I will not and cannot vote for another dollar or another dime to support this war.”

It’s getting pretty danged ugly, ain’t it?

Smash is posting a series of articles (up to Part III, now) about his adventures in infiltration. That would be him as covert operator inside last Saturday’s Moonbat March in Washington. Great writing, great pictures. Great big Brass Ones, too. Moonbats can be violent if provoked, so Smash infiltrated the march with a certain disregard for his safety. Do go read if you haven’t already been.

It didn’t get past me that Algore testified before Congress about global warming climate change yesterday. I watched a lot of his testimony (if you wanna call it that) on C-SPAN last evening, as a matter of fact. And I was pleased as punch that House and Senate Republicans didn’t just give Big Al a pass:

Al Gore, star of an Academy Award-winning film, was in town for a double feature on Capitol Hill yesterday. But instead of giving another screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," the former vice president found himself playing the Clarence Darrow character in "Inherit the Wind."

"You're not just off a little -- you're totally wrong," Joe Barton (Tex.), the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the former vice president at a hearing on global warming yesterday morning.

"One scientist is quoted as saying, 'This is shrill alarmism,' " said Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.). The reviews only grew more savage when Gore crossed over to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in the afternoon for a second hearing. "You've been so extreme in some of your expressions that you're losing some of your own people," announced Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), the committee's ranking Republican and the man who has called man-made global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Senator Inhofe is rapidly becoming one of my heroes where this subject is concerned. He’s outspoken on the issue and brooks no fools, especially world-famous, Academy Award-winning and Nobel-nominee sorts of fools. Algore’s stuff may wash well in Hollyweird, but I’m not too sure how well his message plays on Main Street. Especially when there’s serious economic constraints waiting in the wings if Algore’s recommendations are accepted and implemented. The “freeze” on greenhouse gases is specifically worrisome, from my point of view. It reads and sounds like a freeze on new economic activity…pure and simple. Do we need that? I think not.

Rain on the Roof...

You and me and rain on the roof
Caught up in a summer shower
Dryin' while it soaks the flowers
Maybe we'll be caught for hours
Waitin' out the sun

—John Sebastian & The Lovin’ Spoonful (lyrics)

Today’s Pic: I threw open the door and took this quick snap of rain pounding the roof of my neighbor’s travel trailer. “Apropos of what?” you ask, Gentle Reader? The beautiful noise, GR, the beautiful noise! Rain…hard rain…can be deafening inside an RV. An RV’s roof is in close proximity to your head and it’s flat, both traits conspiring to create a racket in a hard rain that can only be described as cacophony. And so it was for a brief few minutes this morning. I love it.

Too bad it didn’t last all that long…but that’s the way rain happens, here on The High Plains. And now we return to regularly scheduled programming.

Back in a few.

Still Slow, But Passable

In the NYT: House Panel Authorizes Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides

As the war of words escalated, people on both sides acknowledged a legal fight carried political risks. Beth Nolan, who was counsel to President Bill Clinton and twice testified to Congress under subpoena, said she suspected the clash would lead to more negotiations, and not a court fight. “There’s the legal path to the fight and the political path,” she said. “It’s much more likely that you’ll see a political path.”

One would hope. There’s way too much on both parties’ plates—real, serious business, such as getting the supplemental DoD appropriation passed, minus the vote-soliciting pork—than to be mucking around in the political mud. But, just to mix my metaphors, the Dems smell blood in the water. I don’t think they’re gonna back down. So, folks, we appear to be heading towards a side-show of spectacular proportions. {sigh}

News you can use… It Boils Down to This: Cheap Wine Works Fine

And so we came to a new gospel: Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink.

For my generation of home cooks, this line now has the unshakable ring of a commandment. It was the first thing out of the mouth of every expert I interviewed on the subject.

But it is not always helpful in the kitchen. For one thing, short of a wine that is spoiled by age, heat or a compromised cork, there are few that I categorically would not drink. (Although a cooking wine, which is spiked with salt and sometimes preservatives, has never touched my braising pot.)

I’ve been a subscriber to that ol’ saw for years and years and years, having learned it at my Daddy’s knee (Mom, too). And I’ve never purchased anything labeled as “cooking wine.” I don’t know if my parents got it from Julia Child (who is credited by the NYT as establishing the meme), but they probably did. Ms. Child was one of my parents’ minor heroes, and for good reason. I cook with wine a lot, when I cook. And one of the greatest pleasures in so doing is having a glass of the wine I’m using…most often a cheap(er) but pleasing burgundy. So…bottles of cooking wine don’t last long around El Casa Móvil De Pennington.

The linked article is a little too much “inside tee-ball” for my tastes, to wit:

I made the dish three times in one morning: first with a 2000 Barolo ($69.95), next with a 2005 dolcetto d’Alba ($22.95), and finally with a jack-of-all-wines, a Charles Shaw cabernet sauvignon affectionately known to Trader Joe’s shoppers as Two-Buck Chuck. (Introduced at $1.99, the price is up to $2.99 at the Manhattan store.)

I’ve never bought a $70.00 bottle of wine. Ever. (I have bought $50.00+ bottles of single-malt, however.) Still and even, the article is an interesting, if somewhat “out there,” sort of read.

Makes me wonder, though. Would my guests be offended if they knew they were drinking my cooking wine?

More PC excess: Huffing and Puffing - Is smoking a cigarette now enough to give a movie an R rating?

That's only the tip of the Marlboro, though. If every piece of filmed entertainment featuring tobacco usage is to be slapped with an R, the ratings board might want to borrow a trick from the kids and call in a few pizzas and some kegs of Red Bull. They'll have to either airbrush or give the scarlet R letter to the entire Marx Brothers oeuvre and the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby pictures. Also out will be "Meet Me in St. Louis," "Lady and the Tramp," "E.T.," Bugs Bunny cartoons, "The Parent Trap," "Chariots of Fire," "Superman," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "Elf" and the World Series (which should be banned for its tediousness, not its players' incessant tobacco chewing).

Christmas won't be the same without you, Frosty--unless you replace your corn-cob pipe with a stick of Dentyne. And some Grinch had better get to work ridding every children's library of its copy of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ("The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth/And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.")

Good Lord. Has it come to this? Really? Just in case you choose not to follow the link, the proposal to ban smoking in movies was voted down by the MPAA. This time. The prudes are persistent, if not exactly smart, though. Just like Ahnold, “they’ll be baaaack.”

Today’s Pic(s): El Palacio Real, Santa Fe. As the sign says, “…the oldest public building in the United States.” And the haunt of many, many craft vendors. I’ve literally spent hours in the vicinity waiting for my women friends to finish shopping this long, long line…

Santa Fe. June, 2004.
(click for larger. I posted "small" photos coz I wasn't quite sure how long they'd take to upload. If ever.)

Marking Time

Yesterday I opened with “Ah…the coffee is good this morning!” Today? Not so much. I awoke at 0530, stumbled over to the kitchen counter and lit off the pot. I returned to bed to await the steaming results and immediately fell back asleep. Two hours later I was awakened by the beep-beep-beeping of the pot, signifying the automatic shut-off had engaged. Thus: coffee that was two hours old when I poured the first cup.

Yea, I could have poured it out and started anew, but that seems is so wasteful. And that’s not me. So, I just dealt with it. And it was wonderful, compared to the freshest Air Force coffee I ever drank. Gotta keep one’s perspective about things.

The coffee’s not the only thing that’s second-class today. My net connection is having another one of its periodic fits of intermittency. It’s there one minute and gone the next. The net result (ed: groan...) is making the rounds has been slower than slow, I’ve lost and had to retype three comments on various blogs, and have re-booted twice, all to no avail. And although I have made it through my usual and customary reads I’ve yet to begin getting caught up on what’s happening in the world according to the MSM.

Dang, but I hate it when this happens! Hopefully things will get back to normal in a bit.

The Good News? It’s Spring. And it’s a beautiful day, weather-wise. Now give me back my ‘net!

Same...uh...Stuff, Different Day

Ah…the coffee is good this morning! It should go without saying the coffee’s good every morning here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, but it’s seemingly better than usual today. Same coffee, made in the same measure, but somehow different and more vibrant. Could it be my taste buds are recovering from all those years of all that smoke? Possibly.

The coffee may be good today, but the reading is sub-par. Just one example: more, yet still more, about the federal prosecutor firing “scandal,” a scandal that just might take down the Attorney General. As for Gonzales getting the boot, I agree with Mr. Krauthammer:

KRAUTHAMMER: When the boss is -- when the boss says -- is asked about the chances of you escaping his firing you and his answer is "I hope so, you better start packing.

Look, I said earlier, last week, he's a dead man walking, and it's on the grounds of incompetents. He had an easy way to defend the administration on this issue early on. I would not have the president waste his ammunition in defending him now at the beginning he should have said -- Gonzales should have said, was the White House involved in this, if it was, I'm not sure, if it was, so what, it's perfectly legitimate.

The district attorneys are appointed by the president. Election are fought over priorities in law enforcement, we want that to be known by our district attorneys. Every administration ultimately changes over to enforce, those priorities. It's a perfectly legitimate executive function. We don't have anything to hide or be ashamed of. He didn't say that at the beginning, and now it's too late.

Charles is referring to the President’s response yesterday when asked about Gonzales’ future. I’d be cleaning out my desk too, if my boss said something even remotely similar regarding my prospects for continued employment. As Mr. Krauthammer says, it’s all about “incompetents.” (That’s an easily-explained error in transcription, btw.) I’m simply aghast at the incompetence displayed by Alberto and his staff in this brouhaha. This whole thing could have been cut off at the knees if Gonzales had simply said “so, what?” when the Left began shouting. Incompetence. Gross incompetence. One cannot imagine, say, the Nixon White House (or even the Clinton White House, for that matter) being such rank amateurs.

Dubya needs a win…any sort of win…and soon. There’s just too damned much bad news these days.

This may be a small win for Dubya, the US, and the world at large: Russia Gives Iran Ultimatum on Enrichment:

PARIS, Mar. 18 — Russia has informed Iran that it will withhold nuclear fuel for Iran’s nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council, European, American and Iranian officials said.

The ultimatum was delivered in Moscow last week by Igor Ivanov, Russia’s Security Council Secretary, to Ali Hosseini Tash, Iran’s deputy chief nuclear negotiator, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a confidential diplomatic exchange between two governments was involved.

For years, President Bush has been pressing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to cut off help to Iran on the nuclear reactor, which is Tehran’s first serious effort to produce nuclear energy and has been highly profitable for Russia. But Mr. Putin has resisted.

Recently, however, Moscow and Tehran have been engaged in a public argument about whether Iran has paid its bills, in a dispute that may explain Russia’s apparent shift. The ultimatum may also reflect Moscow’s increasing displeasure and frustration with Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium at its vast facility at Natanz.

“We’re not sure what mix of commercial and political motives are at play here,” one senior Bush administration official said in Washington. “But clearly the Russians and the Iranians are getting on each other’s nerves — and that’s not all bad.”

“Not all bad,” indeed. I’d say two more things…(a) ‘bout time the Russians got on board and (b) Russia’s threat to withhold fuel probably won’t have any measurable effect on Iranian intransigence. But Captain Ed thinks the Russian threat, if it materializes, may result in Ahmadinejad’s downfall. My first thought is that wouldn’t be all bad, either. My second thought is “be careful what you wish for.”

More potential good news for Dubya: Betraying their base -- the Democrats can do it too:

The GOP grew sweaty and bloated like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat pasta bar, and the voters were right to pry the Republicans' white-knuckled grip from the hot table's sneeze guard.

So here's the ironic part. Suddenly, it looks as if the Democrats are the Republicans on fast-forward. It's early yet, and the Democrats did finish their mini-Contract with America — the so-called first 100 hours — with mixed success on the substance but great fanfare in the media. Yet items like upping the minimum wage and shafting oil companies, although certainly not insubstantial, were primarily symbolic.

The most important issue in the November elections, as every single political observer with a pulse will tell you, was the war in Iraq. The weasel words and euphemisms — "strategic redeployment," "course change," whatever — couldn't conceal the simple fact that the Democrats were elected in large part to end the war. That was certainly how the party's liberal base saw it, then and now.

But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They've completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted — timetables on top of timetables — that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), a cosponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can't explain them.

No kidding. It’s hard to stay on message when there are 17 variants of that particular message, ain’t it?

Speaking of the surge… “THE IRAQ SURGE: WHY IT'S WORKING”

March 20, 2007 -- 'I WALKED down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation." This simple act, Gen. David Petraeus told me, would have been "unthinkable" just a few months ago. "And nobody shot at us," he added.

Petraeus, the new commander managing the "surge" of troops in Iraq, will be the first to caution realism. "Sure we see improvements - major improvements," he said in our interview, "but we still have a long way to go."

What tactics are working? "We got down at the people level and are staying," he said flatly. "Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen."

More intelligence, for example.

Good things come in threes, yes?

This is pretty cool: more customization of your search page from the Googleplex. I’ve set my “theme” to Japanese Tea Garden (see the screenshot on the right, click for larger). I haven’t found any Easter Eggs yet, but Hey! It’s only been 30 minutes or so.

Sad news, via Lileks: Blogger and Left-Coast writer Cathy Seipp is in the hospital with terminal cancer and only has days to live. Ms. Seipp was one of the first blogs I ever read, and I’ll miss her.

Today’s Pic: A red rose in a Houston botanical garden… taken in March, 2000. I forget exactly which botanical garden, so I can’t give you a link. I will give you another Houston link, however. When I went and fetched the MFAH link for yesterday’s post, I came across this: The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800-1920. From the description of the exhibit:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the sole venue in the United States for this sweeping exhibition of French masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition will present 135 works from New York´s Metropolitan Museum´s treasured collection of French painting. The Metropolitan Museum´s French masterpieces are among the best in the world, and are by the greatest artists active in France between 1800 and 1920, with many, such as Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Delacroix, Millet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso, represented by multiple works.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a road-trip. I’m nearly certain about it. The exhibit is running right now, through May 6^th. I can’t miss this…

Four Years On...

ABC News’ counterpoint to yesterday’s good news from The London Times:

March 19, 2007 -- A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever starker sectarian chasm — and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed.

Violence is the cause, its reach vast. Eighty percent of Iraqis report attacks nearby — car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians. It's worst by far in the capital of Baghdad, but by no means confined there.

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” To that please add: American opinion polls. Or rather, opinion polls conducted by Americans.

Here’s an interesting contrast…from the ABC News article:

METHODOLOGY — This poll for ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD was conducted Feb. 25-March 5, 2007, through in-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqi adults, including oversamples in Anbar province, Basra City, Kirkuk and the Sadr City section of Baghdad. The results have a 2.5-point error margin. Field work by D3 Systems of Vienna, Va., and KA Research Ltd. of Istanbul.

And from The Times (UK):

ORB interviewed a nationally representative sample of 5,019 Iraqi adults between February 10-22. The margin of error was +/- 1.4%. (Italics in original text)

Could it be the “oversamples” in Anbar province and Sadr City affected the outcome? Or the fact the sample, however statistically relevant it may be, is half that of the ORB survey? No matter. One can intuit the desired outcome by at least two of the ABC News survey’s sponsors: the Beeb and ABC News. The financial industry always attaches this disclaimer to advertising flogging the wonderfulness of their investment vehicles: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” In the case of ABC News and Auntie the exact opposite is true. Perhaps ABC/BBC need a disclaimer, too. If I may be so bold, let me suggest: “It’s always been bad, it’s bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow. Trust us, we’re the NEWS, and we know.”

Just sayin’.

Kinda sorta related to the above: Michael Barone, writing in Real Clear Politics:

"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.

It’s a good essay, but in the end, it doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, in your heart of hearts. We’re not perfect, this is true. But, at the same time, one gets profoundly tired—sick to death, even—of the “Bash America” crowd. The good news? According to Barone, most people, thinking people, understand the mindset behind the America Bashers and seek alternative views to the krep they’ve been force-fed in school. Let’s hope that doesn’t change…

Good news on the Algore front from John Fund at the WSJ:

The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.

Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous." The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal."

[and, the last paragraph]

Mr. Gore has called the campaign to combat global warming a "moral imperative." But Mr. Gore faces another imperative: to square his sales pitches with the facts and his personal lifestyle to more align with what he advocates that others practice. "Are you ready to change the way you live?" asks Mr. Gore's film. It's time people ask Mr. Gore "Are you ready to change the way you live, as well as the way you lecture the rest of us?"

Read the whole thing…

In the spirit of “equal time,” I give you the link to Shaun Mullen’s “Vietnam, Iraq & A Tale of Two Marches”

October 21, 1967

I am attending the march as an aspiring journalist who will file a story for my college newspaper. But I would be lying if I didn’t say my heart is with the protesters and my opposition to the Vietnam War is driven in part by the possibility that I’ll be drafted once my student deferment ends. (It did. I was. But my subsequent travels in Southeast Asia were in journalist’s mufti.)

March 17, 2007

I have had more than my fill of war and pestilence over four decades as a veteran, reporter and editor. I bleed red, white and blue for my country but do not abide being lied to by its leaders whether it is Vietnam or Iraq. I am at the march because I feel compelled to do more than merely blog on the war and yammer about it with the DF&C over after-dinner single malt Scotches.

The piece is well written and is an interesting contrast between then and now. Draw your own conclusions; I’ve drawn mine.

And…on the other hand, Gerard writes an essay much more in tune with my feelings and attitude about this anniversary:

Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.

Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them that much is certain.

Four years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.

Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

He has a way with words, that man. It’s a good thing envy isn’t fatal. Well, it’s not fatal around El Casa Móvil De Pennington, anyway. Perhaps I should say I suffer from “excess admiration.”

Yeah, that’s it.

{Sigh} Overall, not a very good day. At least my readings haven’t provided a good beginning to the day. I’m going to work to make it better…

Today’s Pic: Spring, seven years ago. Or, one might could call April in Houston “summer.” Folks in other climes would definitely call weather like that found in Houston, in April, “summer,” what with the heat and humidity. Still, it was a great day out.

YrHmblScrb in the statuary garden of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

April 7, 2000.

A Cloudy Yet Pleasant Sunday

The WaPo has a fuzzy account of yesterday’s anti-war protest in Washington:

Organizers, who had predicted tens of thousands of marchers would demonstrate, gave estimates ranging from 15,000 to 30,000. Police no longer provide official estimates of crowd size but informally put it at 10,000 to 20,000, with a smaller but sizable contingent of counter-protesters.

War protest leaders said a large winter storm that hit the Northeast hurt turnout. More than 60 bus loads of protesters who had been scheduled to come from the region canceled their trips Friday night, according to Brian Becker, national coordinator for the Answer Coalition, the event's main sponsor.

It was quickly apparent that the weather had not prevented counter-demonstrators, many in black leather motorcycle jackets, from showing up in force and surrounding all sides of the Wall.

The last paragraph above says counter-demonstrators “turned out in force,” yet elsewhere in the article the WaPo downplays the numbers.

It appears the turnout for yesterday’s counter-protest was good…30,000 people, according to the National Park Service (as reported by Gathering of Eagles). Baron Bodissey at The Gates of Vienna has a good write-up and pictures—less of the moonbat variety and more of normal people—lots of pictures. The Hot Air folks have four-plus pages of photos on Flickr; once again mostly normal folks…but more moonbats (and many more photos) than Gates of Vienna.

Most interesting:

DESPITE sectarian slaughter, ethnic cleansing and suicide bombs, an opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants.

The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war.

Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.

Polls are common here in the US, but they seem to be fairly rare in the Middle East, especially in Iraq. This one is an eye-opener. It’s also pretty good news for the US (and Britain, as noted), in my humble opinion. This little item, in particular, is striking:

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

Just this morning I watched Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher on C-SPAN (no transcript or video available yet) say something to the effect of “A Republican told me recently he thought there was a civil war going on in Iraq. Well, Duh! We’ve known this for two years now.” (I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is accurate.) Perhaps Ms. Tauscher needs to have a few words with some Iraqis. They seem to appreciate our efforts, and their effects, much more than she does.

This is important (to some of us):

The oldest celebrity in hockey not named Chris Chelios celebrates his birthday Sunday when the Stanley Cup turns 115. Short and stout, the little guy has worn his age well and, to our knowledge, Stanley hasn’t had any work done to keep him looking so young. No Botox for him.

Happy Birthday, Stanley! I’m sure you’ll enjoy your summer in Detroit this year. Maybe.

That “maybe” relates to the fact the Wings were Number One overall in the NHL standings going into last night’s game in Vancouver, which they lost, 4-1. Nashville, who were one point behind the Wings going into last night’s games, beat Dallas 3-2 in an ugly game. The Preds are one point ahead of Detroit with ten games left in the season. This is when it gets good...

Look for much more hockey in the coming weeks here at EIP. It’s that time of year!!

Today’s Pic(s): More cherry blossoms. These things only last for a day or three, so you have to get ‘em while you can. Yesterday I gave you a couple of close-up blossom views, today it’s the Big Picture. In terms of the tree - not the file sizes - although the file sizes are quite large, even when re-sized for blog-posting purposes. The tree itself is rather small; I'd estimate about eight to ten feet in height. A young'un, in other words. But she's been here longer than I have...

And for those of you who think I might be turning Japanese on you, what with all the sakura stuff these last two days…well, I have been heavily influenced by Japanese cultural sensibilities. I took away more than a bit from my five years in Nippon. How could I not? There’s a lot to like there. And a lot not to like, as well, but that? T’is another story altogether!

Outside my door (again). Twenty minutes ago (again).
(There's a Green Hornet behind that tree, so be careful!)

Spring!

Today’s Pics: Spring has sprung! A couple of close-ups of the blossoms on the ornamental cherry tree outside my door. These photos are much larger than life; the blossoms are tiny little things…oh-so-delicate, in other words. Kinda like The Second Mrs. Pennington. (Not!)

As always, click for larger. Which, in this case, is highly recommended!

About 20 minutes ago.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, one that promises to be quite warm (83 is the forecast), bright, sunny, and just slightly breezy. The last bit is the best bit. More often than not our best days are marred by gale-force winds. Today? Not so much. At least according to the forecast. We’ll see.

So. The best thing to do with a day like today is to get out in it. The coffee has been drunk, the rounds have been made, and I’ll report there are no outrages in the offing. None here, anyway. Too nice a day to be outraged.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to the Irish, the Irish-Americans, and Irish wanna-bees. All y’all be careful out there and go easy on the green beer, if you’ve a mind to do that sort of thing. I’ll raise a glass today, but the contents will not be green. Sacrilege!

Just Briefly...

About Valerie…

Valerie Plame Gives Committee Secret Decoder Ring
by Scott Ott

(2007-03-16) — Valerie Plame, whose CIA career ended when columnist Robert Novak blew her cover in July 2003, today testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee whose members will receive a special secret decoder ring so they can understand her without revealing sensitive intel in a public forum.

Ms. Plame (aka Valerie Wilson) lived such a secret life that when she and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, appeared in a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine, she was compelled by CIA covert spy protocol to wear dark sunglasses.

The former agent will speak in a top-secret cipher language. Committee members will break the encryption as she speaks using the secret decoder device.

Dang! Somehow I missed the decoder ring thingie. Maybe C-SPAN had some sort of simultaneous translation/decoding technology in play? No matter. I missed half of what she said anyway. Too distracted by that harridan in the background…

Here’s the AP report on her testimony this morning. Take it with a grain lump of salt.

Apropos of nothing, but I’d sure like to see more articles like this. Of course the article fits my personal mindset, temperament, and habits these days. I suppose the money is in the hot spots, so that’s where nearly all the publicity and advertising will go. But how many times in life have you found yourself in a strange place (i.e., city) where you wanted to find a nice little, quiet, comfortable bar where you could have a conversation with someone without shouting to be heard? In my case, that’s happened a LOT. Quiet little upscale watering holes do exist, but they sure can be difficult to find. Perry’s is such a place and was the default watering hole for that ol’ gang of mine… primarily because it was near my place of business in SFO. We were there every Friday evening, unless were at the “other place,” which is/was the quintessential dive bar.

Ah… dive bars. Another genre entirely, but they tend to be quiet. This place (the reviews are amusing and somewhat accurate), referenced above, was right around the corner from my office in SFO (a two minute walk, even if you tarried a bit), and was one of my absolute favorites at the time. They had the most bizarre lingerie show I’ve ever seen (every Wednesday), but that’s another story entirely.

I'll Be Late - Start Without Me

Today’s Pic: Posting will be late today. I’m engrossed in Valerie Plame’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee, which is in progress as I type. And that’s the subject of “Today’s Pic.” Not Plame’s testimony, but rather: “Stupid Code Pink Tricks.” I don’t have sophisticated frame-grabbing video technology; this is just a quick grab-shot with my camera.

Note the woman in the background with the cleverly hand-lettered “Impeach Bush Now” tee shirt. This twit has been standing quietly in the range of the camera covering Plame for at least 15 minutes now. I’m surprised (a) the twit hasn’t been asked to leave or (b) C-SPAN doesn’t change camera angles.

Whatever.

(PS: Plame is a fox!)

In the News...

Daniel Henninger has a great op-ed in today’s WSJ: The Walter Reed Fiasco; The Army fired the one guy who can fix it. Excerpts:

Last week, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came forward to announce the speaker's perspective on the manifest problems at Walter Reed: "The American people spoke clearly in the November elections that they wanted accountability and oversight. Under the Republican Congress it has been almost nonexistent, and you can certainly see that with what occurred at Walter Reed." No, you cannot see that. Rep. John Tierney, a Massachusetts Democrat, added that "we should have known all this before."

But all this was known before, though not by Reps. Pelosi and Tierney.

On Feb. 17, 2005--two years ago--GOP Rep. Tom Davis and the government reform committee held a public hearing on the maltreatment of wounded soldiers. The hearing was the culmination of an investigation, begun in 2003, by the committee and the Government Accountability Office. Virtually everything of substance in that Washington Post story was described, in numbing detail, at that hearing two years ago. Two soldiers, Army Sgts. John Allen and Joseph Perez, appeared before the Davis hearing and described their tours through the same hell painted by the Post last month.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, described the problems at Walter Reed in words that should be inscribed on portals across every bridge leading into Washington: "Life every day in this system is like running in hip boots in a swamp." He called it a "bureaucratic morass."

[…]

Into this collapsing "morass" the Army six months ago dropped Maj. Gen. George Weightman, M.D. No ordinary desk-bound doc, George Weightman spent five years in the infantry after graduating in 1973 from West Point. Then he went to medical school. It's a decision that has required him to design medical assistance techniques, in theater, with the troops that entered Saudi Arabia for the first Gulf War, in Honduras with Delta Force (there contracting malaria), in Kosovo as head of the 30th Medical Brigade for all troops in Europe, and in Kuwait training the surgeons and medics who would treat our wounded in Iraq the past four years, a model system. A former Army surgeon who served there with him told me he saw "numerous instances of George cutting through the bureaucracy on the run-up to Baghdad." And this is just the official side of the ledger. One son, also West Point, is on his second Army tour in Iraq, and the other is in the Army's medical school.

Mr. Henninger calls for Gen. Weightman’s reinstatement, and based on the facts presented, I agree. All that’s been done so far by DoD, the Army, and our oh-so-concerned congresscritters (particularly those with a “D” after their name) is to validate the ol’ saw that says “no good deed goes unpunished.” Read the whole thing.

More from the WSJ, this time on that one billion dollar lawsuit Viacom filed against Google and YouTube:

There is undoubtedly some truth to the preceding--hey, free advertising is always nice--but so what? The Jon Stewart clips, as well as the other clips in its complaint, are Viacom's property, not Google's. The former company is entirely entitled to dictate when, where, and under what terms its property be used--and who gets to make money from it in the process. While Viacom is getting free advertising, as a property-owner it gets to choose what free advertising it wants, not have a choice foisted on it.

So, that's it then, right? A property owner has its rights infringed, sues, and sets things straight? Well, not really. Because the real issue here has nothing to do with YouTube.

Consumers have spoken, and they don't like the way that electronic media--whether music, television or movies--is being packaged and sold to them. A decade ago they rebelled against being forced to buy entire CDs when they only wanted the few good tracks, and thus spawned Napster. Today, using YouTube, they are rebelling against being forced to watch entire programs when they only really want the 20-second part of American Idol last night where the contestant forgot the song lyrics and broke down in tears. Or a hockey fight. Or whatever.

I’m a pro-business kinda guy, but in so being I draw the line at stupidity and arrogance on the part of businesses that can’t recognize a trend when it smacks them in the face and—what’s worse— refuse to adapt to change and seek remedies from the courts to protect their old, outdated business models. It appears some CEOs and their management teams think it’s simpler to just lawyer-up, rather than give people what they want. In the immortal words of Robert Zimmerman: “Because something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mister Jones?”

This applies to internet radio, too. (Especially internet radio…which leads me to ask: You have signed the petition, haven’t you?)

Scott Ott does it again…

Clinton: Gen. Pace Owes Apology to Adulterers

by Scott Ott

(2007-03-14) — Former President Bill Clinton today added his voice to the chorus calling for Gen. Peter Pace to apologize for remarks in a recent interview in which he branded some kinds of behavior as “immoral“, and said the military should not condone immorality of any kind.

[…]

Mr. Clinton noted that if the nation had Gen. Pace’s attitude toward adultery just a few years ago, “we would have lost the valiant service of one of history’s greatest commanders in chief.”

“The military desperately needs brave men and women with the character, integrity and dignity that their colleagues can count on in times of war,” said Mr. Clinton, “But Gen. Pace essentially hung out a sign that says, ‘adulterers, homosexuals and liars need not apply.’”

“Essentially?” Howzabout specifically? Just sayin’.

Mr. Ott was good yesterday, too. To wit:

Pelosi War Plan Guards Against Risk of Victory

by Scott Ott

(2007-03-13) — The Democrat timeline for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq is designed to protect the United States against what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls “the threat and consequences of victory.”

The California lawmaker told reporters today that while Republicans focus on how the Democrat proposal undermines the troops and leads inevitably to defeat, “few have paused to consider the risk of victory.”

“A major triumph in the war on terror in Iraq would cause immeasurable political upheaval in the United States,” said Rep. Pelosi. “Unemployment would increase, especially among career politicians who opposed the president’s strategy. Countless millions of dollars would be wasted on doomed political campaigns.”

“…immeasurable political upheaval in the United States…” Oh, My, Yes. We need some of that. And I believe we’ll get some, providing Madame Speaker continues down the path she’s chosen…

I’m sorry, but you ARE high:

The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about “friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,” in 1972, he was not referring to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question, lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling you get after a nice hike, perhaps.

[…]

“A lot of people probably think it’s already the state song,” said Richard Grant, a spokesman for the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.

[…]

“It’s certainly going to appeal to a lot of young people,” Mr. Grant said. “It’s just a cool thing to take a rock song and make it the official song.”

Colorado just named John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” as the state’s second official state song (the first is “Where the Columbines Grow”). Yeah, naming “Rocky Mountain High” as the state’s official song will appeal to lots of young 50- and 60-year-olds; real “young people” …anyone under 30… probably neither know nor care who John Denver was. He’s been dead for ten years and was playing third-rate venues at age 53 at the time of his death. And, to be blunt about it: RMH is NOT a “rock song,” it’s schlock. It’s middling, run-of-the-mill schlock…nothing exceptional as far as schlock goes, but not worse either. I’ve hated that song for years. Nothing makes me change the station or hit the mute button quicker than to hear John Deutschendorf Denver’s whiny voice singing anything. Anything at all. Gah!

Today’s Pic: Another series of Mom pics from the digital archive. This time it looks like the top two photos were taken at the same time as yesterday’s “Mom and Me” pics, as she’s wearing the same outfit. I think the third pic was taken at the Mather AFB (or perhaps McClellan AFB, Dad was stationed at both places) Officers Club pool, circa 1952. I know the bottom photo was taken in Tijuana, sometime in the early 50s.

As always, click for larger.

It's ALL Good. Or So They Say, and "They" May Be Right.

Michael Yon’s new column is up. Mr. Yon talks of the news media, old and new, and their relationship with the war, the public, and the military. In so doing he has a few good words for the MSM and reveals his new relationship with Fox News:

Behind me I heard several NBC crewmembers talking with Craig White. I did not know Craig, but he was talking about an American Colonel I had the honor of getting to know, Colonel Stephen Twitty. The way Craig and the others were talking, Twitty sounded like he walks on water. According to some soldiers who know him, he does. Craig had been embedded with Twitty previously, and wanted to try to see him again. That was the opening I needed to interject that I’d just spent a month in Mosul with Twitty’s people in the 2-7 CAV. Later when I emailed the news up to Mosul, Twitty gave high praise to NBC. And when I watched Brian Williams and Richard Engle and General Downing do live interviews, everything they said was consistent with what I am seeing on the ground. Brian and Richard both clearly were concerned to get it right.

[…]

This week, journalists are all around this area—ABC, Fox, New York Times, Associated Press, The Telegraph, Stars & Stripes (DoD publication) and others, all flagships—but where are the bloggers? Prohibitive costs, very high risks, and an increasingly shrinking market for the work probably contribute to the poor showing. Will the blog-world still maintain the attack on coverage from the mainstream media? Instead of looking for mistakes in some coverage, the common cause might be better served by well-informed bloggers searching all sources for the reports that get it right and driving readers to those.

[…]

Readers who came to this website via a link on the front page of the Fox News website are beneficiaries of one example of this cooperation. Fox News is on the cutting edge of this new wave. In the coming months Fox will post excerpts of my latest dispatches that link to the complete versions here. While Fox uses their resources to penetrate the murk here in Iraq, I will maintain independence and the net effect is more readers will see more of the situation on the ground.

There’s much more, of course. Mr. Yon’s comments are pretty much spot-on. He’s a voice I trust, but certainly not the only one. It’s good to know Mr. Yon thinks there are quite a few MSM types that are working hard to “get it right.” Forgive me, but I’d find it pretty hard to make that sort of positive value judgment if I hadn’t heard it from Michael. Maybe I’ve just seen too much Wolf Blitzer and not enough Brian Williams.

I wish I had more days like yesterday. It was almost as if I had one of those “Easy Buttons” Staples goes on about. The weather was pretty decent, my interaction with government bureaucracy was better than one could hope for, the external hard drive I bought worked with no intervention on my part (real plug ‘n’ play), the backup software I installed worked as advertised (albeit slowly), the commissary had everything I needed, and there were no check-out lines. Anywhere. Which, come to think on it, there almost never is a line at the Cannon AFB commissary, unlike large bases where long lines are a chronic problem. I feel a digression coming on, but I won’t. Digress.

The best thing about yesterday was the experience at the Social Security office. If the rest of the gub’mint worked as well as the Social Security Administration we’d have significantly fewer problems, IMHO. (Parenthetical comment: the fact the system is going broke isn’t the Agency’s fault. Don’t go there.)

Mr. Andy Chavez, the guy who took care of me yesterday, was thoroughly prepared for our meeting, courteous, knowledgeable, and didn’t seem disgruntled in any way…unlike most government employees who tend to communicate a vague feeling of resentment at your mere presence. Think “DMV.” The other thing that struck me was the system’s efficiency. The Agency’s record of my lifetime earnings was accurate. Given the Agency sends each of us an annual record of our earnings and one’s estimated SS benefits, along with an address and a simple process for contacting them if you have a dispute is probably a key to that efficiency. The Agency also has a good web site with real, useful information, as opposed to self-promotion. One can obtain and download a comprehensive benefits calculator at their web site, which I did. And that calculator is pretty accurate, too, or at least it was in my case. My “approved” benefit and the benefit I thought I’d be getting were within one dollar of each other. Amazing, that! In other words, the Agency set my expectations before I even contacted them. It helped that I was prepared and had done my homework. But the Agency gave me the tools (the annual letter, the benefits calculator) to do my homework. Impressive. And I’m not being sarcastic. Not at all.

All in all, a very positive and reassuring experience. Lord knows we need more of those when interacting with the gub’mint.

Now…about that back-up software. Eight hours, 39 minutes and 38 seconds to backup 66.5 Gb of data in 89,711 files. Not all that bad, I suppose, but if I learned anything at all, it’s to schedule back-ups for the dead of night. Coz while one can use the ‘puter while one is backing up, it’s painfully slow. But Hey! At least I’m finally backed up. I knocked on wood before typing this and will do the same after I’m done: I’ve never experienced a hard drive failure. Never ever, neither at work nor at home. That might be some sort of record…given my 20+ years of PC use.

What he said:

I mean that's one of the joys of blogging. I'm my own assignment editor.

Look there's lots of news everyday. And sometimes that is all I do because the stories are interesting and enjoyable to write about. Face it ... when it comes to writing I'm a sort of hedonist. I do what I like.

On other days I may be in a bizarre mood or a humorous mood or even a contemplative mood and I look for other items of interest that reflect those moods. But I have no idea from one day to the next what I'll be writing about the following day.

Another thing which I find amusing is when I'm accused of not being 'fair'. I can't say this enough - I'm not fair. I don't try to be fair.

I came across those words of wisdom whilst reading all about the scandal du jour, which I won’t comment on, because (a) like Orrin Kerr, I know very little about it and (b) from what little I do know, today’s scandal seems to be a fabricated Left-Wing target of opportunity. I just wish the administration weren’t so damned good at creating those targets. Just sayin’.

Today’s Pic: More from the scanned photo archives, thanks once again to The Second Mrs. Pennington. This time it’s YrHmblScrb in the arms of his mother. Note the way Mom’s dressed; pretty spiffy, ain't she? I find myself channeling Mr. Lileks in this regard from time to time. He and I are alike in at least one respect, and that would be our mutual fondness for the (perceived) virtues of the past, styles and manners being just two aspects of our admiration for times gone by.

As usual, click for larger.

Atlanta, Georgia. Sometime in 1945.

New Guy on the Block plus Random Guilty Feelings

Here’s a new milblog that is much, much more than worth your time to read: This Veteran’s Life. Written anonymously by a guy who goes by the nom-de-plume of @WR, it’s an insider’s tale of life as an outpatient at Walter Reed. An ounce of eyewitness commentary is worth SO much more than a pound of MSM writing. Do go.

(h/t: Kris, in New England…posting at The Flight Deck.)

So. Back from the the Big(ger) City^TM. Mission accomplished, and it was as painless as painless can be. Absolutely NO hassles what-so-ever. None. My first geezer check should be deposited in my bank account on May 23^rd. Social Security is paid in arrears, and you must be 62 years of age for the full month to receive benefits. And that’s OK with me.

So, again. I received a piece of startling news during the application process. Our Dear Uncle Sam is a generous man, indeed. It turns out that SN3, by virtue of his age and parentage (that would be a reference to me) is entitled to something known as the “Auxiliary Child Benefit,” which means: money. To the tune of approximately $900.00 per month. The very act of my drawing SS benefits is all that is needed for SN3 to qualify for his benefit. Assuming TSMP applies, of course. And she will. We’ve already exchanged e-mails on the subject.

I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand: “free” money. I use scare quotes for many reasons, and I’ll assume you understand. No one turns down free money, and this amount of money is not inconsequential. On the other hand, is it moral to take money when one is not in need of…um…assistance? One can say “you earned it,” and that may (or may not) be true. But, there’s still this nagging thought that isn’t quite fully-formed as I write. And it’s not a good thought.

And now I must install a new external hard-drive and back-up software I bought while I was over in the Big(ger) City^TM. This ought to be fun…

Auugh!

I slept poorly last night. I suspect it’s because I have an appointment over in the Big(ger) City^TM this morning, an appointment I (a) don’t want to miss because it’s (b) very important business. Which tends to make sleep fitful. Put aside the fact I’m completely prepared, which is to say all the necessary documentation has long been retrieved from the archives and put in a conspicuous place to be picked up as I walk out the door. Strangely enough, all the documentation…my birth certificate, DD Forms 214 from each and every enlistment, check book…was exactly where it should have been. There were no frantic searches, no missing yet required pieces of paper, nothing. Preparation, such as it was, was a piece of cake. So why didn’t I sleep well?

Deep psychological issues, I fear. My appointment today signals one of the transitions to life’s end-game. I’m about to officially enter geezerhood.

I’m applying for Social Security.

Today’s Pic: From the archives of another sort. This is my Mom at (I’m guessing) age ten or so, which would date the photo from about 1935. Late in our marriage The Second Mrs. Pennington launched a project to scan old family photos; she completed about ten percent of what were in the archives before she went off to do bigger and better things.

Quite the costume Mom's wearing, ain't it? One wonders what the occasion and its associated back-story were. I'm thinking "dance school." All proper young ladies in that place (Atlanta) and time (early twentieth century) simply had to be schooled the arts, nu? And she was that. A great dancer!

And now... off to the Big(ger) City^TM !

Awash

So… back safely from my foray into P-Town, which is literally awash, as I suspected. Journeying through P-Town during or just after a major rainstorm gives the Green Hornet a better water-tightness test than running it through the car wash. (It passed the test, in case you’re wondering.) There were at least two times when I thought a Duck would be more appropriate than a Hornet (Green, one each) for navigating the canals streets of P-Town.

Now about that fiber connection. It’s a tale of woe and slippage due to weather (the ice and snow we had in December and January) and problems with the fiber itself. According to the lady I spoke with at Yucca Telecom there were (unspecified) problems with the fiber which stopped installation and forced “some” re-work. Stuff happens with large scale wiring projects like this, and I know from personal experience. Still and even I’d be less than honest if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I am.

But I have an application in hand for a fiber connection which should be delivered towards the end of May or the first part of June, at the latest. A TWO MEGABIT connection, which is a five-fold increase over the (theoretical) 384 Kbps connection I have today.

I can’t wait. But I will.

Fiascoes in Three Takes

You can say that again! From the WSJ:

Just when President Bush seemed to have beaten back the Congressional defeatists on Iraq, along comes his own Justice Department to undermine some hard-won antiterror policy gains. The incompetence at Justice is getting to be expensive for Presidential power.

[…]

Some of the reaction on Capitol Hill has been typically overwrought, and the IG's audit found no evidence of intentional or criminal misuse. As a matter of law, such subpoenas are only allowed to seek certain kinds of records such as phone logs and travel information. This isn't a case of J. Edgar Hoover snooping on political enemies.

Nonetheless, the management lapses have done significant harm by allowing critics to claim that all such subpoenas should be barred. FBI Director Robert Mueller has acknowledged the foul-ups and says he's responsible, but it's astonishing that he didn't undertake his own audit much earlier. Those of us who have supported expanded government power to prevent another terror attack have done so with the expectation that the FBI and Justice will have processes in place that limit potential abuses. Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales both claimed that they did.

This is another fiasco for the FBI, which may simply be incapable of effective counterterrorism. Every independent group that has looked into the FBI--including the Robb-Silberman commission--has found that the agency is failing in that duty. Whatever discipline is handed out for this latest foul-up, the country needs to debate again whether domestic antiterror functions should be taken from the FBI and given to a new agency modeled after Britain's MI5.

MI5. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a call for a new federal agency modeled on MI5; in fact, I’ve made the same sort of calls in the past. The idea is a good one except for one thing: time. It takes time to stand up a new bureaucracy, it takes time to pick and choose the personnel who will staff it, and it takes time to integrate that agency into the existing, over-large and largely inept federal intelligence community. And that’s probably the reason there’s been little or no movement on the idea. We simply do not have the luxury of time…the threat is too great and the proposed task is much too large.

Still and even, something must be done. The FBI seems immune to change, or, if not immune, incredibly resistant. Their information systems are 1970s vintage and their procedures, from all indications, are pretty much from that era, as well. I don’t believe decapitating DoJ by firing Gonzales (who does seem to deserve it) and Mueller is the answer. And I’m waaay out of my depth and area of expertise to suggest an alternate course. But I will say one thing: watching both Mssrs Gonzales and Mueller thrash about while trying to restore confidence in DoJ is painful. And that’s understating the case.

Captain Ed, as usual, has more.

Hell freezes over, SoCal edition:

AFTER WEEKS OF internal strife, House Democrats have brought forth their proposal for forcing President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2008. The plan is an unruly mess: bad public policy, bad precedent and bad politics. If the legislation passes, Bush says he'll veto it, as well he should.

It was one thing for the House to pass a nonbinding vote of disapproval. It's quite another for it to set out a detailed timetable with specific benchmarks and conditions for the continuation of the conflict. Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower had been forced to adhere to a congressional war plan in scheduling the Normandy landings or if, in 1863, President Lincoln had been forced by Congress to conclude the Civil War the following year. This is the worst kind of congressional meddling in military strategy.

[…]

By interfering with the discretion of the commander in chief and military leaders in order to fulfill domestic political needs, Congress undermines whatever prospects remain of a successful outcome. It's absurd for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to try to micromanage the conflict, and the evolution of Iraqi society, with arbitrary timetables and benchmarks.

Well, OK, they’re only stating the obvious. Still, that’s a big leap for The LA Times, nu? And you know they aren’t…uh…exactly overwhelmed with their new-found common sense. Nope. They absolutely, positively, have to get their licks in on Dubya. Which they do (“Bush's wartime leadership does not inspire much confidence. But...”). And of course, there’s that inference that the Dems need to “just do it,” as in: cut off funding for the war. Or rescind the authorization to use force in Iraq. They are the LA Times, after all.

At any rate, here’s hoping Madame Speaker reads and heeds the primary thrust of the op-ed: “Quit meddling!” Faint hope, that.

Related (sorta) stuff at Don Surber’s place: “Lefties Eat Their Own.” Excerpts:

A bunch of lefty protesters gathered Sunday outside the home of a government official to demand that the U.S. cut off funding for the war in Iraq, the AP reported. The official’s name: Nancy Pelosi.

[…]

But we are dealing with people who are never satisfied with anything. They are a small group of people; AP reported there are twice as many conservatives as there are liberals (via James Joyner). They prefer looking from the outside in. Now that they are inside, they turn on their own.

This is political suicide. Jonestown really is applicable. That cult began in California and was praised by Jane Fonda. Noted the AP of this new group, “Organizers count more than 140 arrests so far nationwide. Most involve charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct.”

Hmmm. On the one hand we have the LAT. On the other: moonbats.

Your move, Madame Speaker.

I don’t normally read Malkin (for the same reason I don’t read Coulter: too much bomb-throwing). But this is rich:

First, Democrat Rep. David Obey spanks "idiot liberals." Now, Democrat presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is calling out the cowards who won't debate on Fox News. Punchy!

I did the Obey thing in a previous post. But Kucinich? Speaking up for Fox News (sorta, if you kinda squint)? Who’d a thunk it?

Once again, I’ll quote Mr. Morrisey, this time on Democrats, Fox News and Kucinich:

Or, as I said earlier, how can we trust these men and women to defend the United States and stand up to Iran, North Korea, and Osama bin Laden when they run screeching from Roger Ailes and Fox's viewers?

Memo to Democrats: When Dennis Kucinich has to scold you for lacking courage, you need a serious search-and-rescue for your party's stones.

What he said!!

And now I have to go see a man about a horse fast internet connection. I’m going to pay my ISP bill in person this month rather than mail it in, because I want to know what’s up with this fiber connection I was supposed to get sometime in January. Now that it’s mid-March. Enquiring minds wanna know, as it’s said…

Rain. And Lots of It.

Still making the rounds, but today is gonna look like this. It’s been raining non-stop since I awoke about an hour and a half ago, and the wind is out of the east. Which is highly unusual for P-Town since the prevailing winds are out of the west. But…rain is good. I’ve been noticing lately that our neck of the woods isn’t included in the draught monitor segments broadcast by the WX Channel. We had a lot of rain this past fall, and I’m guessing our deficit has been made up. That’s unusual, too!

September, 2006.

Back in a bit…

Time Changes, Yet Marches On

So. Didja reset the clocks? I’m in a sort of low-level daze, and will be in that state for a few days. I hated the time change back in the day. I was always an early guy at work and usually rolled out of bed at 0430 every morning. Moving the clock ahead effectively moved my get-out-of-bed time to 0330, and that’s waaaay too damned early for any human being to get up. That first week of daylight savings time was always very hard for me. Not so much, these days. And that’s a good thing…

More on General Ali Reza Asgari, the Iranian who defected to the West last week, from The Times (UK):

AN Iranian general who defected to the West last month had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip, according to Iranian sources.

This weekend Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari, 63, the former deputy defence minister, is understood to be undergoing debriefing at a Nato base in Germany after he escaped from Iran, followed by his family.

[…]

According to the Iranian sources, the escape took several months to arrange. At least 10 close members of his family had to flee the country. Asgari has two sons, a daughter and several grandchildren and it is believed that all, including his daughters-in-law, are now out of Iran. Their final destination is unknown.

Wow. This reads like a John Le Carré novel. Getting someone’s entire family out of a police state is a complicated and dangerous affair for everyone involved. The man must be valuable, indeed, to risk an operation of this scope. And we (the general public) will probably never know what this really means. As for me, I’m simply glad the man defected and hope the European/American intelligence agencies use the information they obtain wisely. Read that as: to the Mullahs' GREAT detriment.

Pretty small, in the Grand Scheme of Things, yet important to some of us:

Internet radio stations are warning they could be forced off the air by a big increase in the royalties they pay to play music.

The warning comes after a decision by a US copyright body to increase royalty payments for music via the net.

Commercial webcasters in the US now face the prospect of paying more than twice as much for every track they play.

Frequent readers are aware I’m a BIG fan of Radio Paradise (see the sidebar). It pains me, considerably, to think RP might be driven out of business by such an arbitrary and ill-considered action by the frickin’ gubmint. But it ain’t just the gubmint. Oh, No…it ain’t. Enter the proverbial “special interests:”

There has been much discussion about how unfair these rates are, but our listeners find one fact particularly apalling: while Internet stations like ours are being told they must pay royalty fees that exceed their income, sometimes by several times over, FM stations - including those owned by media conglomerates like Clear Channel - pay nothing at all!

Yes, both FM stations and Internet stations pay royalties to songwriters and/or music publishers. But the royalties in question are owed to the owners of performance copyrights, which means, in most cases, record companies - and to them, FM stations pay nothing at all.

How is it possible for such a massive disparity to exist?

[…]

We are at a fork in the road. Down one path is a radio universe populated entirely by large corporations, who can either afford the legal firepower necessary to negotiate a reasonable settlement with the music industry (such as the satellite radio companies have done) or can afford to offer Internet radio as a “loss leader” (as Yahoo and AOL do).

Down the other fork we are presented with a universe of choices, freely available to all, produced by people who truly love and value what they are doing - including user-programmed channels such as those offered by lala.com, “discovery” channels such as those available at Pandora, and who knows what else in the coming years. None of those choices are viable under the new rate structure, and that would be a tremendous loss for all involved.

That’s Bill from RP, writing in an essay on Save Our Internet Radio. He speaks the truth when he says we’re “at a fork in the road.” I, for one, would simply hate to see my choices diminished, and I most certainly will not go back to commercial radio. Commercial radio lost it, years ago, to be blunt. Satellite radio is an alternative, but satellite radio isn’t nearly as eclectic or entertaining as internet radio. Although I tend to listen solely to RP, I do venture further a field on occasion. Especially when Bill goes off on a whiny sensitive singer jag….but I digress.

So. Is there anything to be done? Well, yes. Yes, there is, in a small way: Sign the online petition and open letter to the US Congress. I signed this morning and joined 14,867 other individuals who think this royalty thing is grossly unfair and a threat to our pursuit of happiness. I hope all y’all agree and sign the petition. Do it for the children!

Bedouins:

A new breed of worker, fueled by caffeine and using the tools of modern technology, is flourishing in the coffeehouses of San Francisco. Roaming from cafe to cafe and borrowing a name from the nomadic Arabs who wandered freely in the desert, they've come to be known as "bedouins."

San Francisco's modern-day bedouins are typically armed with laptops and cell phones, paying for their office space and Internet access by buying coffee and muffins.

"In 'Lawrence of Arabia,' the bedouins always felt like they were on the warpath. They had greater cause," said Niall Kennedy, a 27-year-old San Franciscan who quit his day job at Microsoft Corp. to run his own Web company, Patrick Media, out of cafes and a rented desk. "At a startup, you're always on the go, plowing ahead, with some higher cause driving you."

San Francisco's bedouins see themselves changing the nature of the workplace, if not the world at large.

Most interesting. I get the feeling that I know at least one Bedouin. The law of averages makes this possibility almost a certainty, given I worked in the IT industry (as did nearly all my friends/associates) whilst living in SFO. This wouldn’t be me, but I can relate.

From an e-mail sent by my buddy Ed in Florida:

What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?
Mechanical engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets.

True, that! {insert smiley face here}

Today’s Pic(s): Arguably the most exciting day ever around El Casa Móvil De Pennington. To make a long story short, I was dozing on the couch on a lazy summer’s afternoon when I (finally) hear all sorts of commotion outside. I say “finally,” because it took me a while to realize things weren’t as they should be… the AC droning away in the foreground effectively masked sounds from the outside. That, coupled with the fact the TV volume has to be set on "ear-splitting" to drown out the AC. So, anyway...I raise my shades to see the trailer next door blazing away as the good guys from the Portales Fire Department methodically dealt with it. Of course, the first thing I do is grab the camera and begin shooting. It was only later I realized I should have run, not walked to the nearest exit and got the Hell away…far away…from the fire. Propane tanks, and all that.

The Fire Department came back later that same day night and put the fire out again. It seems like they missed a hot spot the first time around…and the trailer ignited again in the middle of the night. Too much excitement…

August, 2005.

Plane Pr0n

Just to get started on a Saturday... Plane Pr0n! The vid is billed as being from Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB, NV. There is no other detail. Lotsa F-15s, F-16s, the odd A-10, and a flash (or two) of German AF Tornadoes and Royal Navy Harriers.

(h/t: The Tailhook Association's Daily Briefing site)

Hunters, Killers, and Losers (Not Necessarily in That Order)

Chris Muir, of Day By Day fame, writes of his trip to Iraq (at Bill Roggio’s place):

People here will tell you they are mostly afraid of one thing-that we will leave soon, like we have since Vietnam, Somalia, etc., and that they will then be at the mercy of the terrorists who seep in from Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia. A self-fulfilling circle, helped out vastly by our 'anti-war' citizens back home, who ironically enable wars as this by forcing constant US retreats through our political process. People here - real people, not 'Jamil Husseins' - want us here to give them time to reform their society.

I speculate this is one of the reasons I observed such high morale in our soldiers here. They are wanted here, unlike, say, in San Francisco. But, I digress.

“…unlike, say, in San Francisco.” Nice snark! The piece is short, but good. (h/t: Chap)

Gerard sez all there is to say about this lil news item:

Headline of the Democrats' hot new press release: SENATE DEMOCRATS ANNOUNCE JOINT RESOLUTION TO TRANSITION THE MISSION IN IRAQ

"Transition the mission." Has a nice lilt to it, doesn't it?

Beats "Let's cruise to lose," or "We'll pout until you pull out," or "Trick or treat... smell my feet... give me something good to eat."

Yes, this is probably number 13, or 14, or 15, or 16 in the Dems attempts to run without running, but at this point who is counting. Their attempts to fully manage failure will continue. As they say in the National Parks, "Once a bear gets hooked on garbage there's no cure."

Actually, this is SenConLosePlan 07-17, according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: There's 16 of them. There was the Biden resolution, then there was the Levin resolution, then there was the Reed-Pelosi resolution, the Murtha plan, the Biden-Levin resolution, the Conrad Funding Cut, there was a waiver plan, a Timeline plan, a Feingold resolution, an Obama resolution, a Clinton resolution, a Dodd resolution, a Kennedy resolution, a Feinstein resolution, a Byrd resolution, a Kerry resolution. And today would make No. 17.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

From last evening’s panel discussion on the subject by the Fox All-Stars; transcript here. (via RCP)

My Lord, but Congress seems to have more OpPlan specialists than the Pentagon. And they’re busy as all get-out (ahem), too!

More on that IRGC general who apparently defected to the West:

A former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guard has left his country and is cooperating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization, according to a senior U.S. official.

Ali Rez Asgari disappeared last month during a visit to Turkey. Iranian officials suggested yesterday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is willingly cooperating. He did not divulge Asgari's whereabouts or specify who is questioning him, but made clear that the information Asgari is offering is fully available to U.S. intelligence.

But then there’s this short blurb from Fox:

TEHRAN, Iran — A former Iranian deputy defense minister who disappeared from Turkey last month is not cooperating with Western intelligence agencies and his whereabouts remain a mystery, a U.S. official told FOX News Thursday.

My money’s on the WaPo’s story. Other sources agree.

NPR has a good interview with Col. Austin Bay: 'Embrace the Suck' and More Military Speak. I learned more than a lil bit from this article. Slang isn’t permanent; it evolves and changes according to time and place. And my “time and place” in the military is in the distant past, so much so that it almost seems pre-historic, at times. I’m a lil bit better after reading Col. Bay’s update.

Good news in today’s Telegraph (UK)…if true:

America is stepping up its hunt for Osama bin Laden by dispatching additional CIA operatives and paramilitary officers to Pakistan to kill or capture the al-Qa'eda leader.

US officials said that the mission is intended to intensify the pressure on the terrorist leader, who turns 50 tomorrow, and perhaps force him into making a mistake. He is widely believed to be hiding in the region bordering Afghanistan.

Satellite photographs and details of communications intercepts were given to President Musharraf of Pakistan last week by Stephen Kappes, deputy director of the CIA, as part of a strategy to persuade him to give US intelligence agencies more assistance.

Now wouldn’t it be neat if uninvited guests showed up at Osama’s birthday party tomorrow and provided free fireworks for the occasion?

“Idiot Liberals:”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) berated a woman who approached him in a Congressional corridor, claiming that “idiot liberals” don’t understand the war supplemental spending bill process.

The altercation was videotaped and posted on www.youtube.com .

“We’re trying to use the supplemental to end the war,” Obey said. “You can’t end the war if you’re going against the supplemental. It’s time these idiot liberals understood that.”

Well, now. That’s just a bit strong, nu? But not, perhaps, as strong as this (a comment to this post, and there’s more in the same incredibly stupid vein):

Stop defending these (5.00 / 2) (#2)
by Che's Lounge on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 10:32:38 AM EST

PRICKS!!!

Don't end this war by a thousand cuts, END THIS WAR NOW!!

Stop enabling the enablers. Obey's logic is as twisted as a strand of DNA.

Stop the war there, so we don't start a war here.

“…start a war here?” WTF does that mean? Or is this comment simply justification for Rep. Obey’s rather pithy observation? You decide…

Today’s Pic: SN3 on the bridge of USS Mason. Alternative title: “Deep in Enemy Territory.” The Boy’s affinity for all things Navy is simply alarming.

Port Canaveral, FL. April, 2003.

Of Fighters and Pig Books

Clue-free: I was watching Washington Journal this morning while making the rounds. A Mr. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, was on…speaking about CAGW’s annual report on government waste, strangely enough. The report (The Pig Book) is smaller than usual this year, due to the moratorium on ear-marks. But…what caught my ear (remember, I’m reading at the same time and I’m male) was Mr. Schatz saying the F-22 is included in this year’s report. “We don’t need it,” sez Mr. Schatz, “because it was designed to fight the old USSR. The Cold War is over.” I go back to my reading. Then some clown calls in and I hear that “the military doesn’t even want the F-22, it’s only in the budget because of the collusion between Congress and the military-industrial complex.” Our Dear Mr. Schatz nods sagely up and down and lets the clown prattle on without correcting the many errors in fact the idiot was making.

I grabbed the remote and changed over to the WX Channel.

So. I got curious later and went looking for source documentation on this F-22 thingie at CAGW’s web site. Here’s what the Pig Book says about the F-22:

$1,190,000,000 for full funding of 20 F-22A fighter jets; this barrel of pork is so big that Congress will not even spend it all in one year. The bill funds 20 F-22s per year until 2009. The F-22 was originally designed as an air superiority fighter for use against the Soviet Air Force. Before Congress put the ink on the check, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent a 13-page letter on June 20, 2006 to then-House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young urging Congress to stop funding this program due to its high cost and the fact that the aircraft is out of date. The GAO said, “DOD has not demonstrated the need or value for making further investments in the F-22A program.” The GAO also noted that the F-22s “are not sufficient to be effective in the current and future national security environment.” There are 22 test F-35 aircrafts that are more modern, effective, and cheaper. In 2003, Popular Science reported the F-22 had a price tag of $120 million each while the F-35 cost $35 million. In June 2006, the GAO report raised the F-22’s numbers, concluding that the multi-year contract would drive per-plane costs up to $183 million from $166 million. The F-35 made its maiden flight in December 2006. Apparently, the F-22 will be stopped only when pigs can fly. (Emphasis mine on the dumb-ass points)

I think the Air Force might disagree with this. Maybe. Here’s Lt. Gen Ray Johns, quoted in this month’s Air Force Magazine:

Buying the new fighters is “critical,” according to Lt. Gen. Raymond E. Johns Jr., deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs.

“While extending the service life of legacy aircraft meets some niche requirements,” they will find it increasingly tough to get past modern integrated air defense systems, Johns said.

“It’s critical that we keep production of our fifth generation fighters on track, ensuring sufficient quantities” to preserve the US edge in air combat, he said.

Nevertheless, there just aren’t enough F-22s or F-35s on order to meet all the Air Force’s commitments, which for the fighter force involves the ability to fight up to two nearly simultaneous major theater wars as well as ensuring sovereignty over US airspace.

[…]

The QDR also specified 183 F-22s, versus the Air Force’s long-validated requirement for 381. All agree the smaller figure was driven by monetary constraints and not by strategy.

“We still need and want 381,” Johns said, but he said the lower figure is “not ... a crisis to me” because the decision on whether to go beyond 183 will take place beyond the current planning cycle, in 2010. The Air Force succeeded in winning Congressional approval to buy the F-22 on a multiyear contract basis, getting three lots of 20 each. In Fiscal 2010, when the multiyear expires, the Air Force hopes to get approval to buy at least 20 more. The decision point will come beyond the term of the Bush Administration, which set the 183 limit.

The USAF is “extending the lives of 1980s vintage fighters” (F-15, F-16, A-10) in order to compensate for not getting the fighters we need. Some of the ‘80s fighters’ lives will be extended until 2030, making our fighter aircrews go to war in 50-year-old airframes. Now there’s a confidence-inspiring move.

I’m all for cutting real pork. But organizations such as CAGW don’t do themselves any favors, nor do they gain support, by advocating cuts in military programs when it’s patently obvious they don’t know what the Hell they’re talking about. And especially when they throw around bogus numbers to substantiate their points. Specifically: regarding the cost of the F-22 vs. the F-35:

In 2014, when production reaches about 21 airplanes per month, the F-35A will cost $48 million a copy. The F-35B and F-35C will cost $62 million and $63 million, respectively. By comparison, the Eurofighter Typhoon—probably JSF’s closest foreign competitor—costs more than $95 million and the F-22 is expected to come in at an average of about $120 million by the time production winds up in 2010.

CAGW overstates the F-22 costs and the F-35 costs are understated. But Hey! You substantiate your points however you can. Popular Science is a great authority on fighter procurement, I suppose. God only knows how much better they are than, say, USAF generals who are responsible for fighting the nation’s air wars and ensuring our front-line fighters are world-class.

(About the image: Titled "Hunters" this piece of art was created by Ken Chandler and downloaded from the official USAF web site. You can download the hi-res version of this painting here.)

Site Meter Issues?

Sometimes I wonder about Site Meter. They’ve been having problems of late, and Laurie recently suspected her Site Meter had gone away completely (and it had – for a while). They’ve been getting slower, and slower, and slower …sometimes to the point where they are completely inaccessible, as demonstrated by this message I received while trying to check my traffic just right now:

The page cannot be displayed

The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site's configured capacity.

---

Please try the following:

· Click the Refresh button, or try again later.

· If this error persists, contact the Web site administrator to inform them that this error continues to occur for this URL address.

HTTP Error 500.13 - Server error: Web server is too busy.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

I hope they clear it up. Especially since I sprang for the pay version last November.

Car Ad w/No Comment

Conviction, Defection, Insertion...

Today’s Big, BIG News is the Libby verdict. Actually, it was yesterday, but because I usually only blog once or twice a day it will be today, for all intents and purposes.

Since I’ve only been following this story haphazardly I don’t have a whole helluva lot to say about it, except that I agree with the WSJ:

The word "guilty" had barely crossed the airwaves yesterday in the perjury case of Scooter Libby before critics were calling it proof that President Bush "lied us into war" and demanding that Dick Cheney be strung up next. Maybe now Mr. Bush will realize that this case was always a political fight over Iraq and do the right thing by pardoning Mr. Libby.

The conviction is certainly a travesty of justice, though that is not the jury's fault. The 11 men and women were faced with confusing evidence of conflicting memories in a case that never should have been brought. In the end, they were persuaded more by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's story line that Mr. Libby, a former aide to Mr. Cheney, had lied to a grand jury about what he knew when about the status of CIA official Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson.

The most interesting thing about this whole affair is there was no crime committed until the special prosecutor’s investigation began, as Libby was convicted for lying to a grand jury. No special prosecutor, no grand jury, no crime. Pretty damned sad, if you ask me…which, of course, you didn’t. Ask, that is.

Still, one wonders what Hamsher, Hardin, and their various partners-in-crime (quite the world-class Leftie rant, there, at least as far as word count goes) are going to do in future, now that their whole raison d’être is gone. Do ya think they’ll fold up the tent and go home, now that the show is (nearly, save appeals) over?

Nah. Me neither. Because there’s just so much to be outraged over!

On the other hand, Libby’s conviction may have “larger consequences.” I use the scare quotes because…well…some in the Republican party just might be experiencing a twinge of apprehension. Captain Ed discusses:

However, Cheney and his office will have to answer a lot of questions over the next few weeks, and perhaps some of those may be in Congress. The Libby conviction will present a major distraction for at least a while, and the Republicans will have to answer for it in the next election. That's not a demand by me, but just a cold, hard, political reality. Libby lied to investigators who were probing the administration, and he was not some junior flunky at a folding table. Libby was an inner-circle man, and this will hurt. A lot.

Good stuff there, if one is interested in examining tea leaves or goat entrails.

This isn’t just good news, it’s frickin’ GREAT news…

A RETIRED Iranian general who went missing in Turkey last month has defected and sought asylum in the US, according to a well-connected Arabic newspaper published in London.

The newspaper, al-Shark al-Awsat, cited "high-profile" sources saying former Iranian deputy defence minister and Revolutionary Guard commander Ali Reza Asghari had gone over to the West.

Reports from Istanbul that General Asghari's family had also disappeared in Turkey support the likelihood that he defected rather than was kidnapped by either the CIA or by Israel's Mossad, as has been speculated. The general went missing from his Istanbul hotel a month ago.

Iranian authorities, who have been silent on the disappearance until this week, claim he has been abducted. "It is likely Asghari has been abducted by Western intelligence services," said Iran's top police officer, General Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam.

Defection of such a high-ranking figure would leave no external enemy to blame and would be seen as a rejection of the Islamic state by someone who well knows its inner workings.

If it’s true. Ya never know. Still, one hopes it’s true because the general would be a veritable intelligence gold mine, not to mention The Mother of All Embarrassments to Tehran. Much more here, including this:

Soon after his disappearance was discovered, Iran dispatched an operations team to Ankara to help the Turkish authorities to look for him. At the same time, a public relations campaign was launched with Iranian minister Mottaki has doing his best to downplay Asgari’s importance as an official in order to reduce the damage to the Iranian government’s image.

He wasn’t fooling anyone. It is clear that Asgari is a man privy to numerous secrets which Iran desperately does not want revealed. As well as being a former deputy defence Minister, Asgari was also a General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). The IRGC, more than any other branch of Iran’s armed forces, is aware of, and has access to Iran’s nuclear program. Its members are in charge of monitoring and protecting Iran’s nuclear installations, and scientists.

Wow. This is sooo much better than talking about Scooter, nu?

And this is pretty danged funny:

Ordinarily I try to come down on the side of law enforcement when it comes to homeland security. But this time DHS has crossed the line. Evidently, they are harassing decent people who simply want to exercise their right to board airplanes with magnets up their butt.

According to Reuters, Atlantic City resident Fadhel al-Maliki was searched while trying to board a plane, and they found the suspicious iron in his rectum, where--let's be honest--it wasn't bothering anybody. Except maybe Mr. al-Maliki. I have to ask. Is Islamism this guy's problem, or is it just that he's from Jersey?

Fadhel al-Maliki...isn't that the skinny guy who played the doctor on the coincidentally named show, Deep Space Nine? I wouldn't be too surprised if that guy turned out to have random pieces of hardware up his rear end. But that's a matter of personal choice, as the ACLU would surely tell you. It's one thing if he had a phaser up there and was running around bending over at people in the name of Allah. It's another if it's a purely recreational item, such as an Emmy award or a plastic Dr. Bashir action figure.

Steve does some great good things with words and dumb stuff from time to time, but this one is a classic… The real news story as at the “up their butt” link.

Today’s Pic: Another shot of SN3 taken at the Mickey Dee Play Palace. Note the tee shirt...

You don’t wanna know just how many shots I took that day. Or rather, I don’t want to tell you. Embarrassment, ya know.

Still in South Florida. Still March, 1998.

Just a Little Bit Cynical...

I’m projecting here, but Bec asked in the comments if I thought Bob Dole and Donna Shalala were good choices to head up the presidential commission that will tar and feather the usual suspects investigate the military health care scandal. The short answer: yes. The long, and cynical, answer follows. Oh, and the “projecting” bit? I’m projecting that Bec, and possibly others, are wondering why I haven’t commented on the Walter Reed thingie. That’s part and parcel of the long answer…

First: the caveats.

• In my 22-year Air Force career I never was shot at, let alone wounded. So it goes without saying I never spent any lengthy amount of time within the tender embrace of the military health system, let alone undergo numerous operations and months, if not years, of physical therapy.
• I was always subject to the Air Force’s health care system, save for the one-year period of time I spent in an AF tenant unit on an Army post. Say what you will, but I believe the stereotype of the USAF providing better people-care than our sister services. Just sayin’.
• I have never entered a Veterans Administration (VA) medical facility except as a visitor. So, by definition, I’m not qualified to render any sort of first-hand judgment on the quality, or lack thereof, of VA care. Their reputation isn’t sterling, however. Once again, just sayin’.
• The current scandal is less about the VA and more about the military. But the scandal will grow to include the VA, much sooner than later.

The military and the VA…especially the VA…have long-standing reputations (deserved or not) for providing mediocre health care to their clients. And “mediocre” may be too kind. There are, and have been, periodic scandals about abuse, neglect, incompetence, malpractice, and various other evils surrounding the military medical establishment as long as those organizations have been in existence. If you missed them, you haven’t been paying attention, or you’re very young. I myself am way too young to remember the earliest scandals, which began shortly after the Civil War. But the scandals come close on the heels of the nation’s latest war. The Biggie for my generation was the Agent Orange scandal and the associated lawsuits filed by veterans (and others) long and tortuous path through the courts.

Enter the cynicism. The military’s health care system will always be plagued by scandal, simply because it’s part of a large bureaucracy. And bureaucracies are the bane of modern existence, as we all know. As an example, does anyone really believe the average DMV will ever get fixed in our lifetime, or the lifetimes of our great-great-grandchildren? If so, then you also harbor hopes about the military medical system. I’m not equating the functions of the medical system and those of the DMV, they are apples and oranges, except for the fact they are both large bureaucracies and as such are subject to the immutable laws of nature, specifically the Law of Inertia. But can one expect meaningful change from another Commission? I think not. But we’ll do it. We’ll Commission. Yet again.

There will be much gnashing and thrashing. There will be lots…too much…blame-mongering and finger pointing for political gain. It’s already begun.

In hearings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee at Walter Reed Hospital, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) said that veterans and their families are "flooding us with complaints" and that "this may be the tip of the iceberg of what is going on all around the country."

And, citing a litany of news stories and congressional reports, Waxman threw doubt on claims by the Army's higher-ups that they were surprised by the Post's disclosures two weeks ago.

"They said, 'We never knew things were out of hand.' " Waxman said. "I have a stack of reports and articles that sounded the alarm bells."

I watched part of those hearings on C-SPAN yesterday. While not all of the proceedings were marked by blatant political posturing, there was enough if it to turn one’s stomach. Surprised?

So. What to do? I’m not advocating a “business as usual” approach. By all means, bring on the commission(s). Air it out. Make your recommendations. Do your absolute BEST to implement the recommendations and thereby ensure we’ll never see a scandal like this again. Until this war is over, that is, and the military recedes into obscurity until the next war. By "obscurity" I mean the military will become a wasteful use of funds that could be better used to stamp out drug abuse or protect Spotted Owls. That's just the way things work in America.

I could say more on this subject, but I think you get my drift. I’ll end on a positive note: My past and present experiences with the Air Force Medical Corps have been nothing short of superlative. The fact that I’m getting old and have (not to mention will need) direct access to the medical folks at Cannon AFB is one of, if not the, principal reasons I stay docked in Portales. I only wish every other military person and veteran had it as good as I do.

A Lazy Sort of Tuesday

Chap posted a great read today, all about Chief Ken Joyner, Submariner.

In 1950 America was segregated and unequal, though in New York there was token integration. Very naïve in the knowledge of racist treatment in the United States I went to 90 Church Street, the Federal Building in New York City. Raising my right hand and vowing to protect and defend, my Navy life began. Having passed the pre-requisite tests, unbeknownst to me I qualified with a group of pioneers. “The New Navy” Black men were being assembled to integrate the Navy for all men.

Read the whole thing. Courage comes in many forms, not the least of which is overcoming adversity the likes of which most people have never known.

Sometimes things work out like you want them to, or, at the very least, you find you’ve avoided a dicey situation or an outright catastrophe. Such was the case this morning when I awoke to find the propane gauge had reached the “Call Cortez Gas” level. And so I called. Only to hear the lovely Estella tell me that Albert just got his truck back yesterday after a week of downtime to have a new clutch installed. I think I posted about the trials and tribulations of finding an alternate supplier when Cortez is…uh…indisposed. The bottom line: it’s purt near impossible. But the state of my tank (full, diminishing to Call Cortez) just happened to coincide with Cortez’ downtime.

In which case: Thank You, Lord!

I’m still drinking coffee and making the rounds. And here it is: nearly noon. Damn but this retirement gig is stressful! {insert smiley face here}

Today’s Pic: Oh Hell…let’s do another Baby Pic. Coz…when all else fails, baby pictures don’t. Fail, that is. Bobby, aka SN3, in one of Micky Dee’s Play Palaces, somewhere in South Florida. Key Largo, I think, but wouldn’t bet my life on it.

March, 1998.

Apologies

Every time I try to talk to you
I get tongue-tied
Seems like everything I say to you
Comes out wrong and never comes out right

–Chad Kroeger (w/Santana)
(30 sec sample and lyrics here)

Writer’s block. Blog ennui. Whatever. But everything I write these past few days “comes out wrong and never comes out right.” At least it seems that way. As an example, one post that shouldn’t have made the cut was that DUI thing I put up day before yesterday. I had bad feelings about it, even after the third editing pass, yet posted it anyway. Suffice to say “it didn’t come out right.” And that’s an understatement!

Being blocked is a strange thing for me. Back in the day when I literally wrote for a living I was rarely blocked, although it did happen occasionally. In most cases (but not all) the block was clearly traceable and explained by the fact I didn’t understand what I was trying to say. The cure was to revisit the subject and learn more, often by talking it over with a subject matter expert. Once I achieved “understanding” the words flowed freely, if not eloquently. Eloquence came with editing, but it came.

I should note that “writing for a living,” in my case means writing and editing technical proposals, most often in response to a “Request for Proposal,” or RFP. The writing involved a mixture of describing technical solutions to specific problems and the “benefits” of our clearly superior solution vis-à-vis the solution(s) of our competitor(s). All under deadline pressure. And one never has enough time, for one reason or another. But hey! It was fun, in a bizarre sort of way, and I loved it.

But that was then. I’m at a loss to identify why I’m having such a hard time these past few days. I write for real fun now (not bizarre fun), it’s not work. Or at least it’s not supposed to be “work,” the way I see it. Yet writing is difficult, and writing well can be damned difficult. One can string words together fairly easily, but organizing those words into coherent thought is hard. It gets harder when one tries to be entertaining as well as informative.

It’s said that “we are our own worst critics,” and that may be part of what’s in play here. I really don’t know, but I’m working on finding out. In the mean time…please accept my apologies for the reduced output. Both of you.

Today’s Pic(s): From last Fall’s San Antonio trip. I was quite taken by this gas fountain in the courtyard of Pat O’Brien’s San Antonio store and took more than a few pictures of it, at least two of which I posted to the blog. But I missed the transaction going on in the right hand side of these pics as I snapped the fountain. Until this morning. Judging from the body language on display, one has the feeling that everything turned out quite well, nu?

October, 2006.

Help Needed

Laurie over at Soldiers’ Angels NY posted a plea from an Army spouse at Fort Benning GA yesterday:

I am writing on behalf of the military tornado victims of Thursday night's storm in Columbus, GA beside Fort Benning. The housing shortages and inadequate housing at Fort Benning causes many military families to look off base for housing. While the base did not receive much damage in this recent storm, many houses of military families off base were impacted.

These families are in desperate need of help and are falling between the cracks in the system. Inexplicably, they are not receiving requested help from the Red Cross, Military One Source, or United Way. Each of these organizations has suggested calling one of the others.

It’s not just Fort Benning, either. Army families at Fort Rucker in Alabama were also hit hard by those horrible tornadoes this past week.

Laurie has the details and a Paypal link. If you can spare a few dollars you should get on over to Laurie’s and pony up. To say this is a "good cause" would be redundant in the extreme…

Real Plane Pr0n

So…I was doing some cleaning up on the ‘puter (file maintenance, review-move-save-delete, you know…the usual) and I came across this ol’ pic I’d saved in the way-back (October 2003): REAL Plane Pr0n. Well, sorta.

I wonder what sort of uniforms the stews flight attendants wear on that blue plane?

Taxing Subjects and The Last Drip

OK…this is really politically incorrect. But, I agree.

Americans drink and Americans drive, and sometime they do both in the same evening. This can cause problems, although in the vast majority of instances it doesn't. That's why it's not against the law to drink and drive. It is against the law to drink too much and drive, as it should be. In other words, it's OK to drink and drive up to a point. The public policy debate centers on where that point is defined under the law.

Just a small part of a reasoned rebuttal to a hare-brained idea, to wit: Colorado Rep. Joel Judd’s (D-Denver), proposal to “…pull your license for five years for a first DUI offense and 20 years for a second - even if there were no damage or injuries involved.” Aside from rejecting Rep. Judd’s proposed bill the author discusses how the gubmint measures impairment:

It used to be set at a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.10 percent. Under political pressure from groups like MADD, the level was tightened to 0.08. Single-minded zealots, like MADD, would like to tighten the standard even more. (In Sweden, it's 0.02.) They argue that, "Even if it would save only one life, wouldn't it be worth it?" The rational answer to that question is, "not necessarily." There would be no end to paranoid, risk-averse, nannyist control of your life if that were the only criterion for any law or public policy.

I think the 0.10 percent is a reasonable standard. The wiki, for what it’s worth, defines a 0.10 BAC standard in this manner:

Number of drinks: 5… BAC: .10 -.15… Effect: Person obviously intoxicated, delirium.

And I have a problem with that, because that rather loose definition doesn’t specify (1) Five drinks over what period of time? (2) Five drinks consumed by a 225 pound male, or a 110 pound woman? And (3) the variance between .10 and .15 is huge, and “delirium” as a result of five drinks seems a bit hyperbolic! My objections to the wiki’s definitions aside, I still think 0.10 is reasonable.

Like the author of the Rocky Mountain News article, I’m not advocating drunk-driving. I’m simply saying there’s no rational reason to make a felon out of me if I’ve had two glasses of wine with dinner and a drink after… over, say, a three hour period of time…and then drive home. I’m not impaired at that level of consumption. And most other folks aren’t, either. If you “blow” 0.10 under those circumstances (making a DUI conviction technically feasible), should you lose your license for five years, assuming it’s a first offense? I think not. (I don’t really know if my example—two glasses of wine and a beer—would result in a 0.10 BAC; I’m assuming.)

Just sayin’.

Here’s an article worth saving…or at least the links herein are worth noting, especially if you’re in the job market: How Much Should You Be Paid? There are also a few fun facts:

PayScale, which gets about a third of the traffic that Salary.com does, says it has information on jobs not usually found in corporate salary surveys like pornographic film actor (average salary: $63,275), rabbi (average salary: $98,610) and crossing guard (average hourly wage: $9.21), but so far no chick sexers, mimes or bloggers are in its roster. “We don’t get many boiler makers, but we get the jobs that are out there in volume,” Mr. Giordano said.

Hmmm. The fringe benefits in at least one of those “jobs not usually found in corporate salary surveys” are considerable. But then, so are the risks. But I digress.

I know I left a considerable amount of money on the table when I took my first job after I got out of the Air Force. I also know it took me damned near five years to recover. When you start low, you remain behind the power curve, no matter how many raises you get. I only wish there had been web sites like Salary.com when I went looking for my first job out of the military.

Speaking of money…here’s an interesting article on the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is gonna start hitting a lot of folks in the very near future, unless Congress does something about it.

If April 15 looms before you like a bad dream, we offer this troubling insight – next year may be a full-blown nightmare. That is, unless Congress kills the alternative minimum tax.

This insidious tax hike will slap an average $3,000 onto the bills of 23.4 million mostly middle-class families this year. In 2006, it nipped just 3.5 million taxpayers, because lawmakers temporarily raised an exemption.

But like a zombie, the tax is back, lurching toward the middle class to reverse the Bush tax cuts. And this levy loves children: It kicks in at $52,000 for couples with five kids. That's just a notch above San Diego's median income of $46,000, by the way. Childless couples escape the tax until their income reaches $75,000.

If this seems unjust, blame the stale Democratic war on the “rich.”

The article goes on to say it’s ironic that the current Democratic-controlled Congress are the ones who will have to do something to relieve Americans, middle-class Americans, of this egregious and unparalleled-in-the-Western-World tax. And, as one might suspect, the editors aren’t hopeful that change will actually happen.

Which reminds me: I gotta start thinking about taxes. April 15^th happens next month. Aiiiiieeee!

Today’s Pic: Another view of that oh-so-fascinating drip (to me, anyway, but as all y’all should know by now: I’m easily amused). This pic is 100% resolution but considerably cropped. I told you I took 17 pictures of this thing. But this pic will be the last one I’ll post. Aren’t you glad?

Click for larger, of course.

Nostalgia Attack

In today’s Bleat…a tip o’ the hat to the late, great, gone— but most certainly NOT forgotten— Strategic Air Command:

They're having a big Peace Prize assembly in a week, and asked if any parents would like to design the T-Shirts. I volunteered.

Alas, My domestic associates nixed the first design:

Hey, peace is their profession! Oh, all right. (grumble.) So I came up with the generic Earth with the word PEACE in Copperplate, since that’s the typeface the school uses for all its newsletters, but it looked rather stark, and seemed to imply OR ELSE. I did not use a peace sign, which has too many irritating connotations.

I liked James’ first draft better than the final design, which you can see at the link. And the "Peace is their profession" bit? Comes from the old SAC motto: "Peace is Our Profession." And it most certainly was. Moscow lived in absolute frickin' fear of SAC's heavy bombers and ICBMs, back in the day.

Has it really been 15 years since SAC absorbed its sister command, TAC, and morphed into Air Combat Command? Why, yes. Yes, it has been that long. And actually, if truth be told, TAC did the acquiring, not SAC—the proof is in the ACC organization coat of arms, which is nothing more than the old TAC patch with “Air Combat Command” in lieu of “Tactical Air Command.” The ascension of the Fighter Mafia, and all that. And I won’t even mention ADC, since they were essentially non-players in the grand scheme of things, what with being folded into TAC in the late ‘70s. (Note: I use “Fighter Mafia” not in this sense, but in the context of fighter pilots who became senior USAF officers and prevailed in the budgetary wars, as opposed to the generals in the manned bomber/ICBM community. Money equals power, ergo TAC won out over SAC. Just keepin’ things clear, ya know.) (Further parenthetical nonsense: if you chase the ADC link, you’ll learn something about where I spent the greatest part of my military career. But not near enough. The many radar sites I was assigned to during my career were…ahem…under the radar, for the most part. Most people in the Air Force, let alone the population at large, were unaware of their existence. I toiled in obscurity…)

{sigh} I’ve turned into an old man, waxing nostalgic for what once was. Sometimes it bees like that.

Another Late, Late Night/Early Morning

So. I found this last evening in a comments forum at RP, of all places:

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Here we go...

If you're here, you probably know what I am about to do, but here's the synopsis:
- From Aug 1 - Oct 9 2006 I will ride a motorcycle around China
- I'll be traveling with George Bourassa, Mike Barkelew, and David Poh
- George convinced a Chinese motorcycle company, Qingqi, to sponsor this ride
- Our route begins and ends in Jinan, Shandong province and will likely stretch as far west as Sichuan, on the Tibetan plateau
- Qingqi wants our photos and footage to turn into an advertising campaign
- I hope to post to this blog regularly to keep people apprised of our progress
...stay tuned!

The first entry on the blog is above; the last entry is on October 6, 2006. In between there are lots of photos and a very interesting narrative! Four guys, four dual-purpose bikes, China, and Tibet. Now there’s an adventure for ya!

Would you believe it’s 1140 and I’m just now finishing that first cup? S’true, Gentle Reader. Another one of those late, late nights, which ended around 0400 this morning. This time I was up into the early hours reading the blog, above. Time well-spent, in this case. T’isn’t always so.

Today’s Pic: The Roosevelt County courthouse in the dead of night. Or would that be in the wee small hours? Choose your favorite term for 0330 hrs in the morning, coz that’s when I took the pic. Most places are “eerily quiet” at this hour; Portales is much, much more so. I wandered around in the middle of the street (literally) for half an hour taking pictures, with neither a car nor a soul to drive one to be seen or heard…anywhere. For other views of the courthouse taken during this early morning outing, go here and here.

July, 2005.

Potty Mouth

I know. I said I was going. But there’s that last cup of coffee to finish and whilst doing so, I came across this:

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Suspicions confirmed! The Left wins the potty-mouth-in-print derby, by a wide margin. And there's blog-by-blog word counts, too. I (heart) technology!

More Gore and... Trolls!

Gore Redux… Gerard:

Many in the last few days have been at pains to point out THE HYPOCRISY! of private jets, mega-mansions, international rock concerts that save the planet by polluting it, and the myriad other sins against the Holy Gaia (Blessed be Her Name, amen). But if you do, pace please, you do not have the long view of a future Waterworld worse than the movie of the same name because there shall be no Kevin Costner in it. Your mortal sin is only that you have not quaffed from the shroom cup and had "the vision."

Our New Saints have had this vision. It has been extracted from their Book of Climate Revelations like crystal meth from cold pills, and we should not gainsay it simply because their generation absorbed enough pyschoactive chemicals over the decades to gobstop a pod of blue whales. What if they did? What if all this is some bizarre vision; some acid-flashforward? Is it any less a vision for having "consensus science" behind it.

I say that we should honor their shared hallucinations, that we should not take away one iota of a scintilla of a jot of their monumental self-esteem. After all, the rich, famous and deranged have feelings too. Besides, we no longer institutionalize people who "see dead planets." We just check them into rehab for the afternoon.

OK, I’ll get off this subject, eventually. But Gerard is just so damned eloquent on the subject! I’d be remiss if I failed to link. And you’ll be remiss and a lil bit poorer if you don’t go…

I said I’d get off this eventually. But not before pointing you to Iowahawk, who has the answer:

Earn Eco-Salvation the Quick and Easy Iowahawk Way

Are you concerned that your profligate personal lifestyle is harming the environment? Losing sleep over the long-term ecological damage resulting from those greenhouse gases constantly emitted by your family, your cars, your pets, and your shrubbery? Do you want to become carbon-neutral, but just don't know how?

Well rejoice, sinner! Carbon atonement is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Malibu set -- with the Iowahawk EcoPals Network! This unique new system lets you, the average Joe planet rapist, cleanse your tortured psyche of the stain of enviro-guilt for as little as $9.95 per year! If enough of you follow this simple three step program, we can save the world for our children -- who will soon be frolicking with healthy polar bears atop Earth's reforested glaciers. Act now before it's too late!

Lotsa good links, too, including some previously encountered right here at EIP. But, I’m not nearly as funny. Don’t forget to download one of the bumper stickers, just to make sure everyone knows you’re environmentally-correct. It’s the least you can do.

Trolls Beware! We know who you are…or we can damned well find out! The troll phenomenon is one of the more interesting annoying things about blogging. Trolls are nearly always anonymous. Trolls are very nearly always rude, at best. At their worst they can be deranged. The interesting thing, to me, is how stupid trolls are in their presumption of anonymity. In other words, the simplistic and very fallible logic is as follows: “If I use a pseudonym, no one will know who I am.” Wrong, Sparky. Just follow the “find out” link above and see just how much one can uncover about anyone…just by looking.

I get very, very few trolls here at EIP (Thank God) because I’m very, very small in the whole scheme of things. Small is good, sometimes. (h/t: Lex, who had an interesting encounter with the subject über-troll.)

Very abbreviated rounds today. I have to go run some errands, and the day grows short. So I’d best “get with the program,” as we used to say back in the day.

Whatzit?

Wha’izzit? (click for larger)

A (badly) hand-blown wine goblet, perhaps? Something else? Scroll down…

…

…

…

…

Nope! It’s just a bubble-drip, for lack of a better term. I thought it was pretty cool, which may or may not be a reflection on the quality of my life. You decide.

And now it’s off to make the rounds. Back in a bit.