Performance evaluation on Friday morning:
It went quite well this time. The scoring system has been drastically refined in that the numerical rankings don't blindside people like me who are more used to seeing percentile rankings. In the world of my current employer, fifty percent is average.
I did comfortably better than that. We'll see about pay the next check.
Oh, and after the pleasurable interview I had a mas aggravating day up on the site. I had FOUR crews with specific jobs all lined out, and that schedule was scrapped before we even got the base set up. Just goes to show that there are never really any laurels to rest on in this world. We adjusted and overcame, and today...
Saturday Drive:
I was up before seven with Mrs. Tmj and we decided to take a drive in the mountains. There was an airshow up in Heber and she's never even seen my company's office(s), much less my project site. The weather was perfect for the airshow. Wispy high clouds provided great contrast to pick out the different aerobats doing their thing and we took a few good photos. I spoke with a man who trained B 25 bomber pilots during the war, and the pilot of a restored Mig 15 that is actually based in Heber.
We strolled on up between Kamas and Park City via the rural back way through Francis and spent almost an hour driving around my project. The Mrs. noted the prolific presence of survey stakes, and how they are adorned with flagging all the colors of the rainbow. Roads, buildings, utilities, oh my...
She doesn't think I'm nuts anymore. She KNOWS I'm nuts.
We looped down Parley's Canyon to Salt Lake City after visiting the project. Coming through Salt Lake valley always prompts a few shopping sidetrips and today was pretty productive. I've gotten into old military surplus rifles in a modest way over the last couple of years. Big 5 has a relationship with SAMCO international and they run sales every month or so on different flavors of old military rifles. I have already checked out the stock in their Utah county stores for the special they are running on U.S. marked Lee Enfield rifles, but had found out that their Sandy stores were showing four in stock. The ones in Utah county were in pretty ropy condition, but then again that's to be expected for the price.
Mrs. Tmj approved the stop since I "just wanted to look". Oh my goodness...
The weapon they had on the display was dinged, dark, and had some pretty serious corrosion issues. The clerk confirmed he had two more left, in boxes, and brought 'em out. Remember "just wanted to look", now. The first rifle out of the box was mostly cosmoline-free. Wood clean and tight, one nickel-sized ding on the rightside forestock. U.S. ordnance markings on the receiver, top of the barrel, and stamped on the bolt. Beautiful - and I mean the best I've seen on any war production Enfield - bright bore and clean crown, two groove rifling with no discernible pitting and a chamber showing nothing in the way of "Enfield throat", which is a common problem because of the wide use of corrosive ammo in Brit weapons. Nice clean stamps for "U.S. Property" and "SMLE Mk..." .
And the bolt serial number matched the one stamped on the receiver. A truly nice specimen.
*****AND MRS. TMJ HAS JUST READ THIS OVER MY SHOULDER AND DIRECTED, "OH, JUST PUT THE DAMNED THING ON LAYAWAY! BUT ONLY AFTER WE GO WATCH "PIRATES" TOGETHER TOMORROW MORNING."******
Oy. Am I a lucky guy, or what?
I cooked sausages on the grill for supper. I think the rest of the evening is going to be spent finding one more pair of brass hooks to fit on the MilSurp rack down in the gun room.
Right after I clean up the kitchen, take out the trash, and kiss the wife.
Goodnight, all.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Aftermath
Yesterday's barbeque was another great day with friends. Beautiful, just beautiful.
Please check out Mrs. Tmj's account here.
Ribs were great. Weather was semi-clement but didn't interfere beyond moving some socializing (and eating) inside for a short while.
Cannon shooting was GREAT! (Again, see above link).
I did performance art yesterday - "Dominant Male Lion After Eating Wildebeast". I think I slept in my lawn chair for an hour or two. This through the hubbub of twenty kids, a dozen adults, and the nonstop pyro happening in the culdesac. I'm told I conducted a spirited discourse on the history of the Declaration, but shucks if I can remember.
My daughters and their friends were OUT IN FRONT of all the "hide from the weather" and "clean up the trash" stuff. I am getting old, I am Iam....
I have my annual employee review tomorrow at 0615. I'm intrigued as to how the company is going to approach this, this time around. Back in December they used a system that graded me at ...well, hell, it's too embarassing to say. They were attempting to grade with an eye to "encourage improvement"*. The best I can say is that when I read the numerical score (1-100 scale) I wondered why I was employed there. The value was about two orders of magnitude lower than anything I thought would have been accurate.
But they couldn't identify where I should improve. Funny, that.
More on this later.
* or discourage discussions about compensation.
Please check out Mrs. Tmj's account here.
Ribs were great. Weather was semi-clement but didn't interfere beyond moving some socializing (and eating) inside for a short while.
Cannon shooting was GREAT! (Again, see above link).
I did performance art yesterday - "Dominant Male Lion After Eating Wildebeast". I think I slept in my lawn chair for an hour or two. This through the hubbub of twenty kids, a dozen adults, and the nonstop pyro happening in the culdesac. I'm told I conducted a spirited discourse on the history of the Declaration, but shucks if I can remember.
My daughters and their friends were OUT IN FRONT of all the "hide from the weather" and "clean up the trash" stuff. I am getting old, I am Iam....
I have my annual employee review tomorrow at 0615. I'm intrigued as to how the company is going to approach this, this time around. Back in December they used a system that graded me at ...well, hell, it's too embarassing to say. They were attempting to grade with an eye to "encourage improvement"*. The best I can say is that when I read the numerical score (1-100 scale) I wondered why I was employed there. The value was about two orders of magnitude lower than anything I thought would have been accurate.
But they couldn't identify where I should improve. Funny, that.
* or discourage discussions about compensation.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Happy Birthday, America
This one day every year I extend a public prayer:
God bless our nation, and keep our people and leaders safe and wise. We are just men, but given time and opportunity to rise above our weaknesses we have wrought the most free nation on the earth. We owe more than any one of us can pay for this blessing.
God bless our Soldiers, Sailors, Coasties, Airmen, and Marines, and keep them safe and victorious.
God keep and bless you all. Amen.
And now I'm off to cook ribs - about six hours of mesquite smoke. Dutch oven cherry cobbler w/whipped cream for desert. Cannon shooting at five in Cherry Hill Park. Do stop by and say hi if you are in the area.
That is all.
God bless our nation, and keep our people and leaders safe and wise. We are just men, but given time and opportunity to rise above our weaknesses we have wrought the most free nation on the earth. We owe more than any one of us can pay for this blessing.
God bless our Soldiers, Sailors, Coasties, Airmen, and Marines, and keep them safe and victorious.
God keep and bless you all. Amen.
And now I'm off to cook ribs - about six hours of mesquite smoke. Dutch oven cherry cobbler w/whipped cream for desert. Cannon shooting at five in Cherry Hill Park. Do stop by and say hi if you are in the area.
That is all.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Saturday Pre Fourth of July
Not much to blog about these days; just too damned busy getting ready for important stuff like celebrating our independence from England.
Israel? I think they have decided that victory is the answer to their problems. Hope the Jordanians and Egyptians have a lot of spare hotel rooms.
What about "return to flight" for the space shuttle? I hope everything works, but we are a long time past needing a replacement system. I've got NASA TV running live now - just an hour and change to go, barring weather.
Anyway, here we are getting ready for our Independence Day celebration: a culdesac barbeque we've held since around 1992 or 93. I have yet to clean the garage and the ribs are still in the cold case down at Sam's Club. We plan to start socializing around two, eat at three, and shoot cannon in Cherry Hill Park (the south end), after five.
If you are in the area, please stop by to say hi and enjoy a rib or two. Email for directions to the house, please.
Israel? I think they have decided that victory is the answer to their problems. Hope the Jordanians and Egyptians have a lot of spare hotel rooms.
What about "return to flight" for the space shuttle? I hope everything works, but we are a long time past needing a replacement system. I've got NASA TV running live now - just an hour and change to go, barring weather.
Anyway, here we are getting ready for our Independence Day celebration: a culdesac barbeque we've held since around 1992 or 93. I have yet to clean the garage and the ribs are still in the cold case down at Sam's Club. We plan to start socializing around two, eat at three, and shoot cannon in Cherry Hill Park (the south end), after five.
If you are in the area, please stop by to say hi and enjoy a rib or two. Email for directions to the house, please.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Progress
Item: The Supremes followed law and precedent and ruled that the President overstepped his authority by establishing military tribunals for terrorists.
That they referred to Geneva in how prisoners - in this case individuals who are clearly illegal combatants under Geneva - should be treated is probably going to be revisited under seperate brief just shortly after ...
Item: The Supremes didn't even hint at relief. This Court contains a majority of constitutionalist jurists. Not conservative - constitutionalist. This matter is going to the Congress. That body that was established to solve critical issues through legislation but has for a long time now often retired behind judges cloaks or cynically acquiesced to executive orders, instead, when the issues were... complicated.
Four months before elections now. Less, actually.
So who is serious about prosecuting this war? Who will put down in law just what price illegal combatants will pay when they wage war against Americans? What will the debate look like?
Item: Karl Rove, you maginificent bastard*!
* He'll get credit, at least from the enemy.
That they referred to Geneva in how prisoners - in this case individuals who are clearly illegal combatants under Geneva - should be treated is probably going to be revisited under seperate brief just shortly after ...
Item: The Supremes didn't even hint at relief. This Court contains a majority of constitutionalist jurists. Not conservative - constitutionalist. This matter is going to the Congress. That body that was established to solve critical issues through legislation but has for a long time now often retired behind judges cloaks or cynically acquiesced to executive orders, instead, when the issues were... complicated.
Four months before elections now. Less, actually.
So who is serious about prosecuting this war? Who will put down in law just what price illegal combatants will pay when they wage war against Americans? What will the debate look like?
Item: Karl Rove, you maginificent bastard*!
* He'll get credit, at least from the enemy.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Confluence Leads to Cusp
Happy Sunday, random traveler. It's an achingly beautiful day here in Utah. Blue skies, ninety degrees, and a whisper of a breeze that cools sufficient for comfort as long as you've got a shred of shade to relax in.
We live in wondrous times. I am grateful to be aware of and part of just how wondrous they truly are, one day at a time.
The twenty second day of June 2006 marked the sixth anniversary of my last beer. The past six years haven't been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, much less without challenges and stresses, but at least I've been alive during the time. Knowledge is thought to be a curse by some; our reality based polity has certainly gone out of their way to avoid the burden, with ample support from their putative leadership and chosen information portals.
Back in 2001 I watched and listened along with millions of other people as we finally entered combat in the Long War against militant Islam. I told Mrs. Tmj that we were at war the moment we watched the second WTC strike.
I also told her I don't know if we have what it takes to win. That's still very much an open question.
Back in 2001 the enemy attacked based on a lot of perceptions, some valid and others wildly off. Our flagship media told the world on a daily basis that our presidency was illegitimate, that our economy was in shambles, and that our civil liberties were vanishing - none of which were true then, and are most certainly not true even today. The enemy also had observed literally decades of non-response to their best efforts at striking us. Embassy bombings, bombing the WTC the first time around, the COLE incident in Yemen, Somalia, and all the random murders that pass for diplomatic discourse when Islamists are involved... even the widely circulated OBL declaration of war on the infidel world failed to provoke any meaningful response from us. They thought that our leadership was paralyzed, and that our people wouldn't fight.
The decade of the nineties seemed to demonstrate that domestic U.S. political considerations were perceived by most office holders to trump national security cold, and worse, national honor and credibility were tossed where inconvenient allies such as the Kurds or Israelis were concerned. That the jihadis overreached in their analysis is a fact - but it's on open question on just how far. Post 9/11, the situation remains in flux still, sadly.
Our self-proclaimed progressives and their hostage Democrat party are committed to defeat. Not because our cause is unjust, nor because our enemy is by any stretch a victim of any policy of ours. The Democrats cannot win national elections when the economy is robust, when people can work and save and succeed on their own, when citizens base their relationships on character and not color, and when the citizenry sees foreign threats as direct and personal dangers to their family's' lives.
They see beating one political opponent - Bush, who can't even run for office again - as important enough to repeat the disasters that marked the end of Vietnam. They will again serve up millions of former allies for reeducation and murder. They will abandon a satellite battlefield and millions of allies not to an evil, if mostly rational, state that was even then teetering on the brink of ideological and economic stagnation, but instead to an ascendant international cult of mystic madness that will be funded by the free world's own energy purchases for decades to come.
Now in 2006 we have a robust economy to the point that employers can't fill the jobs they have open, but you couldn't tell it from cursory reading of newspapers or watching TV. Iraq has an elected government, as does Afghanistan; both countries are seeing violence on a daily basis but the enemy can only resist - never win - unless we leave before the governments of those two countries are ready to provide their own security. Bush's numbers are down. Regardless of whether they are down because people think he's not doing enough to fight the war, or because we are fighting the war, is never discussed by MSM. Flagship MSM, in alliance with political opponents to the president within various government agencies, is sabotaging our best intelligence weapons against the enemy. The Democrats are now public that we are the enemy, and not the jihadis. MSM also reports that we can't handle North Korea if push comes to shove - because we are too busy elsewhere - which is unmitigated bullshit. Handle, yes, without cost and pain, no, especially to central South Korea, but since conflict = defeat to the MSM, the story continues to be told. But Reuters and AP and Time and the NYT are all over stories quoting Republicans that we can't get by without direct talks with the Norks.
Iran won't be allowed a nuclear arsenal by this administration. DoD's recent statements linking Iran's security services to the Iraqi insurgency must be a clear signal that we are about to begin taking steps to bring down the mullahs. They know we can do it, too...
It seems to me we are about due for an attack here at home, or at least the jihadis will give it their best shot. Confluence again - we have elections coming this November, and I fear the jihadis still don't understand that what works in Spain won't work here at all. But they've got nothing else to try. Maybe they feel beholden to their best allies. They should.
We are in a war that will end only with the annihilation of Islam as a state religion in any country on the planet. In the end, that is what it took to kill Nazism and Japanese militarism. The fact that militant Islam is so decentralized, and so psychotic, means that the threat will manifest in random murder more often than mass casualty attacks just means that it will take still more time for the civilized world to recognize and embrace the one path that will lead to victory, then peace.
It's a beautiful day here. I hope that yours is, too.
We live in wondrous times. I am grateful to be aware of and part of just how wondrous they truly are, one day at a time.
The twenty second day of June 2006 marked the sixth anniversary of my last beer. The past six years haven't been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, much less without challenges and stresses, but at least I've been alive during the time. Knowledge is thought to be a curse by some; our reality based polity has certainly gone out of their way to avoid the burden, with ample support from their putative leadership and chosen information portals.
Back in 2001 I watched and listened along with millions of other people as we finally entered combat in the Long War against militant Islam. I told Mrs. Tmj that we were at war the moment we watched the second WTC strike.
I also told her I don't know if we have what it takes to win. That's still very much an open question.
Back in 2001 the enemy attacked based on a lot of perceptions, some valid and others wildly off. Our flagship media told the world on a daily basis that our presidency was illegitimate, that our economy was in shambles, and that our civil liberties were vanishing - none of which were true then, and are most certainly not true even today. The enemy also had observed literally decades of non-response to their best efforts at striking us. Embassy bombings, bombing the WTC the first time around, the COLE incident in Yemen, Somalia, and all the random murders that pass for diplomatic discourse when Islamists are involved... even the widely circulated OBL declaration of war on the infidel world failed to provoke any meaningful response from us. They thought that our leadership was paralyzed, and that our people wouldn't fight.
The decade of the nineties seemed to demonstrate that domestic U.S. political considerations were perceived by most office holders to trump national security cold, and worse, national honor and credibility were tossed where inconvenient allies such as the Kurds or Israelis were concerned. That the jihadis overreached in their analysis is a fact - but it's on open question on just how far. Post 9/11, the situation remains in flux still, sadly.
Our self-proclaimed progressives and their hostage Democrat party are committed to defeat. Not because our cause is unjust, nor because our enemy is by any stretch a victim of any policy of ours. The Democrats cannot win national elections when the economy is robust, when people can work and save and succeed on their own, when citizens base their relationships on character and not color, and when the citizenry sees foreign threats as direct and personal dangers to their family's' lives.
They see beating one political opponent - Bush, who can't even run for office again - as important enough to repeat the disasters that marked the end of Vietnam. They will again serve up millions of former allies for reeducation and murder. They will abandon a satellite battlefield and millions of allies not to an evil, if mostly rational, state that was even then teetering on the brink of ideological and economic stagnation, but instead to an ascendant international cult of mystic madness that will be funded by the free world's own energy purchases for decades to come.
Now in 2006 we have a robust economy to the point that employers can't fill the jobs they have open, but you couldn't tell it from cursory reading of newspapers or watching TV. Iraq has an elected government, as does Afghanistan; both countries are seeing violence on a daily basis but the enemy can only resist - never win - unless we leave before the governments of those two countries are ready to provide their own security. Bush's numbers are down. Regardless of whether they are down because people think he's not doing enough to fight the war, or because we are fighting the war, is never discussed by MSM. Flagship MSM, in alliance with political opponents to the president within various government agencies, is sabotaging our best intelligence weapons against the enemy. The Democrats are now public that we are the enemy, and not the jihadis. MSM also reports that we can't handle North Korea if push comes to shove - because we are too busy elsewhere - which is unmitigated bullshit. Handle, yes, without cost and pain, no, especially to central South Korea, but since conflict = defeat to the MSM, the story continues to be told. But Reuters and AP and Time and the NYT are all over stories quoting Republicans that we can't get by without direct talks with the Norks.
Iran won't be allowed a nuclear arsenal by this administration. DoD's recent statements linking Iran's security services to the Iraqi insurgency must be a clear signal that we are about to begin taking steps to bring down the mullahs. They know we can do it, too...
It seems to me we are about due for an attack here at home, or at least the jihadis will give it their best shot. Confluence again - we have elections coming this November, and I fear the jihadis still don't understand that what works in Spain won't work here at all. But they've got nothing else to try. Maybe they feel beholden to their best allies. They should.
We are in a war that will end only with the annihilation of Islam as a state religion in any country on the planet. In the end, that is what it took to kill Nazism and Japanese militarism. The fact that militant Islam is so decentralized, and so psychotic, means that the threat will manifest in random murder more often than mass casualty attacks just means that it will take still more time for the civilized world to recognize and embrace the one path that will lead to victory, then peace.
It's a beautiful day here. I hope that yours is, too.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Heads Up!
Bill Whittle has a new post up.
"We are not blind, and we are not crippled, and the world is not a novel or a treatise or a theory or a manifesto. It exists. We can go look for ourselves. And on the way up, when those desperate elitist bastards start clutching at your ankles and implore you to stay below where it’s safe and argue some more…be sure to kick those sons of bitches right in the teeth. Their blind obedience to their Big Ideas have killed more people in history than anything except disease. Boot to the the teeth, I say."
Too bad we won't really fight until thousands more die on the "intellectuals'" tab, though. All luxuries come with a price; we foot the bill for intelligentsia devoid of intellect and their host, the higher education industry, which is more concerned with maintaining dogma than any Inquisition that ever set out to supress a Galileo or Copernicus.
We live in wondrous times. Interesting times. Dangerous times.
(via The Geek With A .45)
"We are not blind, and we are not crippled, and the world is not a novel or a treatise or a theory or a manifesto. It exists. We can go look for ourselves. And on the way up, when those desperate elitist bastards start clutching at your ankles and implore you to stay below where it’s safe and argue some more…be sure to kick those sons of bitches right in the teeth. Their blind obedience to their Big Ideas have killed more people in history than anything except disease. Boot to the the teeth, I say."
Too bad we won't really fight until thousands more die on the "intellectuals'" tab, though. All luxuries come with a price; we foot the bill for intelligentsia devoid of intellect and their host, the higher education industry, which is more concerned with maintaining dogma than any Inquisition that ever set out to supress a Galileo or Copernicus.
We live in wondrous times. Interesting times. Dangerous times.
(via The Geek With A .45)
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Range Date
I am going to be at the Lee Kay Hunter Education Center in West Valley City, Utah from 0800 to about noon this Saturday (3 June). Mrs. Tmj, The Goddesses, and some family/work friends and their friends will be in attendance. We will be shooting everything from .22 to 8mm Mauser and I'm bringing enough ammo for everybody to get a lick in.
We'll be shooting on both the pistol and centerfire rifle ranges. If you would like to partake, just show up and look behind the firing line for a wheeled wooden cart stuffed with rifles. I will be on the firing point in front of that, or coaching near it. I'll be wearing a khaki vest with a Springfield Armory patch on the back. Ask for Andy.
Bring your own hearing/eye protection, or buy it at the check in desk. The same goes for targets - but I prefer NRA 100 YD smallbore bullseye targets over what the range sells. I recommend a long sleeve shirt or jacket if you intend to shoot high power rifle from their benches - the concrete can tear up your elbows even when shooting from bags.
We'll be shooting on both the pistol and centerfire rifle ranges. If you would like to partake, just show up and look behind the firing line for a wheeled wooden cart stuffed with rifles. I will be on the firing point in front of that, or coaching near it. I'll be wearing a khaki vest with a Springfield Armory patch on the back. Ask for Andy.
Bring your own hearing/eye protection, or buy it at the check in desk. The same goes for targets - but I prefer NRA 100 YD smallbore bullseye targets over what the range sells. I recommend a long sleeve shirt or jacket if you intend to shoot high power rifle from their benches - the concrete can tear up your elbows even when shooting from bags.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Mother's Day
The beautiful young girl offered me coffee. The first taste peeled back many years...
"I finally met the Turk one moonless night. His caravan was camped at a nameless oasis at the mouth of a wahdi many miles east of Marakesh. He had no love for me, but his hatred for Dar Mahmoud was deeper than any well. He poured syrupy black coffee into tiny cups with his own hand, splashing the inky brew over the rim of mine onto the saucer. A spoon would almost stand in my cup. The Sahara wind cooled as it blew in across the oasis and made the fug in the tent almost pleasant. I relaxed and listened with half an ear to the Turk recite Mahmoud's crimes, real and imagined, and to what the Turk proposed he and I would do to mete out justice. And garner profit at the same time, of course..."
"Dad, I know it's strong, o.k.? There's half and half in the fridge."
Mom got waffles with strawberries this morning, and a sewing machine one cut below industrial grade with which to make the curtains she's been planning on "just as soon as I can get this tensioning problem fixed" with her old machine.
I'm off to watch "Serenity" with her. Remember, treat your mother well!
"I finally met the Turk one moonless night. His caravan was camped at a nameless oasis at the mouth of a wahdi many miles east of Marakesh. He had no love for me, but his hatred for Dar Mahmoud was deeper than any well. He poured syrupy black coffee into tiny cups with his own hand, splashing the inky brew over the rim of mine onto the saucer. A spoon would almost stand in my cup. The Sahara wind cooled as it blew in across the oasis and made the fug in the tent almost pleasant. I relaxed and listened with half an ear to the Turk recite Mahmoud's crimes, real and imagined, and to what the Turk proposed he and I would do to mete out justice. And garner profit at the same time, of course..."
"Dad, I know it's strong, o.k.? There's half and half in the fridge."
Mom got waffles with strawberries this morning, and a sewing machine one cut below industrial grade with which to make the curtains she's been planning on "just as soon as I can get this tensioning problem fixed" with her old machine.
I'm off to watch "Serenity" with her. Remember, treat your mother well!
Hurry Hurry Hurry
Politics:
Voted for Cannon and Hatch yesterday, at the convention. Voted Cannon twice - runoff with Jacobs in June.
I spent forty minutes on the phone with Mr. Cannon on Thursday night, got my questions answered, got some context (with references to applicable sources) to some particularly egregious soundbites attributed to Mr. Cannon, and made my call. We'll see how things play out in the runoff election.
Oh, and in the body of the linked article there is this:
"Overall, it was not a happy convention as former U.S. Rep. Enid Greene, now state party vice chairwoman, was loudly booed and shouted at as she tried to conduct a morning vote on a controversial party constitutional amendment."
The amendment in question was supposed to clarify which level of the party, state or county, had primacy in determining how delegates were chosen. I think the language was amphorous, at best, and voted against the measure on that basis. But to call the entire convention "unhappy" was inaccurate. The calls and boos from the floor were from a few hundred out of over three thousand attendees - probably the same folks who were handing out the "No New World Order" and "Stop Being Duped About Terror" handouts in front of the hall. One of Senator Hatch's opponents ran soley to get his seven minutes at the podium to condemn the "sexual and physical torture" at Abu Grhaib and Gitmo. Go figure.
An interesting day.
Voted for Cannon and Hatch yesterday, at the convention. Voted Cannon twice - runoff with Jacobs in June.
I spent forty minutes on the phone with Mr. Cannon on Thursday night, got my questions answered, got some context (with references to applicable sources) to some particularly egregious soundbites attributed to Mr. Cannon, and made my call. We'll see how things play out in the runoff election.
Oh, and in the body of the linked article there is this:
"Overall, it was not a happy convention as former U.S. Rep. Enid Greene, now state party vice chairwoman, was loudly booed and shouted at as she tried to conduct a morning vote on a controversial party constitutional amendment."
The amendment in question was supposed to clarify which level of the party, state or county, had primacy in determining how delegates were chosen. I think the language was amphorous, at best, and voted against the measure on that basis. But to call the entire convention "unhappy" was inaccurate. The calls and boos from the floor were from a few hundred out of over three thousand attendees - probably the same folks who were handing out the "No New World Order" and "Stop Being Duped About Terror" handouts in front of the hall. One of Senator Hatch's opponents ran soley to get his seven minutes at the podium to condemn the "sexual and physical torture" at Abu Grhaib and Gitmo. Go figure.
An interesting day.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Well, Howdy!
I'm not blogging much these days.
It's ten minutes to nine in the evening as I write this. I got home from work fifty minutes ago. I'll leave the house tomorrow at five thirty a.m., as usual.
It's going to be a beautiful project when it's done, four or five years down the road.
Politics:
I attended a candidates debate between Cannon, Cook, and Jacob last Saturday night. As of this moment, I see no good reason to return Mr. Cannon, and by extension the majority of Republican multi-term incumbents, to Washington. Mr. Cannon let drop a line in the debate that effectively removed him from consideration for my support:
"We can't deport twelve million illegals."
No, we can't. But we can sure as hell disincentivize employers hiring them, concurrent with reforming our INS to effectively deal with a LEGAL immigrant population. NO amnesty, NO worker program, NO "it can't be done". They don't have work, they deport themselves. Then we talk about legal entry.
He doesn't see border security as a priority - that's my considered opinion, not a quote of his. It's just the impression that I get.
I hope that Republican state nominating convention delegates across the country feel exactly the same way, too.
I am not worried that conservatives will stay home and allow the Democrats majorities in either house. If you have to choose between a flighty baby sitter who runs up long distance bills on your home phone and orders movies on your cable network or John Wayne Gacy, the choice is simple. Staying home is not an option, and neither are third parties.
BUT I think there's a whisper of fear running through Republican staff offices as nominating season approaches. I hope there is. The party has behaved abominably with the trust it has been afforded, and there has got to be some way of correcting the trend despite incumbency, short of shooting the damned horse by allowing Democrats any chance at national power.
Home:
The new windows rock. My sprinkler system didn't erupt into fountains when I tripped the valve; after fixing the two bum sprinkler heads, I now have a chance at keeping the rolling plains around my house somewhat green this year.
Family:
Each day Mrs. Tmj leaves her software QA job just like Sherman left Atlanta. The code boys and girls at her company have NEVER dealt with a woman who loves to break software as much as my lady does.
The kids are all passing their classes. Oldest Goddess gets her driver's license this week or next. Youngest Goddess is pushing hard for a room remodel - floor to ceiling in a black/pink motif.
I still have plantar fasciitis, but the Columbia boot company is going to see one of my C-notes real, real soon and I hope the situation improves after that.
Blogs:
You must read Protein Wisdom (and donate, if you think it's worth it - it's fundraising time there) and American Digest DAILY.
O.K., daily - please. Great stuff, both places.
And now - y'all have a fine night, and a better tomorrow.
We live, after all, in wondrous times.
It's ten minutes to nine in the evening as I write this. I got home from work fifty minutes ago. I'll leave the house tomorrow at five thirty a.m., as usual.
It's going to be a beautiful project when it's done, four or five years down the road.
Politics:
I attended a candidates debate between Cannon, Cook, and Jacob last Saturday night. As of this moment, I see no good reason to return Mr. Cannon, and by extension the majority of Republican multi-term incumbents, to Washington. Mr. Cannon let drop a line in the debate that effectively removed him from consideration for my support:
"We can't deport twelve million illegals."
No, we can't. But we can sure as hell disincentivize employers hiring them, concurrent with reforming our INS to effectively deal with a LEGAL immigrant population. NO amnesty, NO worker program, NO "it can't be done". They don't have work, they deport themselves. Then we talk about legal entry.
He doesn't see border security as a priority - that's my considered opinion, not a quote of his. It's just the impression that I get.
I hope that Republican state nominating convention delegates across the country feel exactly the same way, too.
I am not worried that conservatives will stay home and allow the Democrats majorities in either house. If you have to choose between a flighty baby sitter who runs up long distance bills on your home phone and orders movies on your cable network or John Wayne Gacy, the choice is simple. Staying home is not an option, and neither are third parties.
BUT I think there's a whisper of fear running through Republican staff offices as nominating season approaches. I hope there is. The party has behaved abominably with the trust it has been afforded, and there has got to be some way of correcting the trend despite incumbency, short of shooting the damned horse by allowing Democrats any chance at national power.
Home:
The new windows rock. My sprinkler system didn't erupt into fountains when I tripped the valve; after fixing the two bum sprinkler heads, I now have a chance at keeping the rolling plains around my house somewhat green this year.
Family:
Each day Mrs. Tmj leaves her software QA job just like Sherman left Atlanta. The code boys and girls at her company have NEVER dealt with a woman who loves to break software as much as my lady does.
The kids are all passing their classes. Oldest Goddess gets her driver's license this week or next. Youngest Goddess is pushing hard for a room remodel - floor to ceiling in a black/pink motif.
I still have plantar fasciitis, but the Columbia boot company is going to see one of my C-notes real, real soon and I hope the situation improves after that.
Blogs:
You must read Protein Wisdom (and donate, if you think it's worth it - it's fundraising time there) and American Digest DAILY.
O.K., daily - please. Great stuff, both places.
And now - y'all have a fine night, and a better tomorrow.
We live, after all, in wondrous times.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Saturday Random
Yet another sixty hour week out on the job is in the books. No blizzard this week. The snow is almost gone from all but the shadiest slopes. We have two herds of deer in residence now - almost fifty of them altogether. Two nesting pairs of Golden eagles have returned to their favorite power poles and have begun improving their massive nests. Redtail hawks, a few falcons, and the buzzards are back, as well. I haven't been across the highway to the north to check on the lynx I saw up there last year, but the head Real Estate Professional on the project claims to have seen a big cat carrying a rabbit into the bushes up there. The ants and bees are returning, too. Soon it will be time to slide the snake gaiters on over my boots. This is rattlesnake country.
I have purchased this year's silly surveying hat. Mom burned last year's edition in the fireplace.
The contractor is placing subgrade material on the roads we installed utilities in all winter long.
Health is much improved except for this plantar fasciitis thing happening in my right heel. If you've never had this problem, go and drive a 6d box nail through a scrap pine board and then jump off a table, driving the point into your right heel. Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it feels like the first half hour of my day. Last spring it was both heels, so I'm ahead of the game. Getting old sucks.
I have two crews on site every day now. I usually run with two rodmen and work the roads, and have the other two man crew cover other stuff like setting property corners, staking out buildings, mapping, and whatever else will keep the client happy.
The grounds crew for the golf course and the landscapers all showed up on Monday. The number of vehicles onsite has tripled or quadrupled. We also have increasing numbers of high-end private and client-owned SUV's showing up in construction areas as the Real Estate season cranks up.
On the home front, we eagerly await Monday which is when the contractor shows up at Team headquarters to install our new vinyl windows. We are cleaning house and clearing the areas around the windows so the contractors can work. Today is beautiful. I'm going to spend four hours or so laying down soil amendments and fertilizer in the yard and cleaning out and prepping the front flower bed for Mom's choice of flowers.
Mom got promoted at work which is not bad for being on the job for four months. The Goddesses and our foster Goddess are passing all their classes.
I hope your world is looking up, too.
I have purchased this year's silly surveying hat. Mom burned last year's edition in the fireplace.
The contractor is placing subgrade material on the roads we installed utilities in all winter long.
Health is much improved except for this plantar fasciitis thing happening in my right heel. If you've never had this problem, go and drive a 6d box nail through a scrap pine board and then jump off a table, driving the point into your right heel. Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it feels like the first half hour of my day. Last spring it was both heels, so I'm ahead of the game. Getting old sucks.
I have two crews on site every day now. I usually run with two rodmen and work the roads, and have the other two man crew cover other stuff like setting property corners, staking out buildings, mapping, and whatever else will keep the client happy.
The grounds crew for the golf course and the landscapers all showed up on Monday. The number of vehicles onsite has tripled or quadrupled. We also have increasing numbers of high-end private and client-owned SUV's showing up in construction areas as the Real Estate season cranks up.
On the home front, we eagerly await Monday which is when the contractor shows up at Team headquarters to install our new vinyl windows. We are cleaning house and clearing the areas around the windows so the contractors can work. Today is beautiful. I'm going to spend four hours or so laying down soil amendments and fertilizer in the yard and cleaning out and prepping the front flower bed for Mom's choice of flowers.
Mom got promoted at work which is not bad for being on the job for four months. The Goddesses and our foster Goddess are passing all their classes.
I hope your world is looking up, too.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Range Report: 98k (8mm Mauser) Mauser (Russian Capture)
(The following is a comment I left on one of Kim DuToit's forums.)
I took the stripped Kar98 up to Lee Kay yesterday, along with a stack of other iron, and shot for zero at 100 yards.
Kim DuToit groups the 8mm in the family of “manly calibers”, and rightfully so. I brought all my gear (bags, notebook, spotting scope, eyepatch) except for a the stout longsleeve denim shirt I usually wear in lieu of a shooting jacket. First round downrage I tore a patch of skin off my right elbow on the concrete table and got a love tap from the stock under my right eye; tshirt + slick steel buttplate is a crappy combination. Most military rifles I have fired are designed to be shot while wearing bulky combat clothing, and thus have a relatively short length of pull - the Lee Enfield carbines are the worst fitting rifles I’ve come across for this - and the Kar stock length is not a lot better.
I spread a blanket on the back of the table and got down to business. Nine further rounds, and still nothing on paper. The three gents on the tables around me (all shooting milsurps, too, btw) let me know I was high, off the paper, and that it was common for Euro bolties to be TWO FEET above aiming point at one hundred yards. Seems that Euroes aimed at beltlines, and two feet high was considered an effective method for getting hits out to three hundred yards from zero. There are resources that offer replacement front sight blades to correct point of aim to point of impact, and I will look them up by the by…
Feh. We think it’s better to hit where we aim, they just think of hitting. No wonder the Germans were shocked when the Marines showed up in the trenches in 1917.
I placed a four inch round flourescent orange sticker on the frame two feet below the centers of my bullseye targets (NRA 100 yd smallbore) and got back to it. Four inches is tough for fortyfive year old eyes to see, but they got the job done well enough. Windage was very close to center - an inch right if anything, and I put the next twenty rounds in a rectangle about five inches wide and a foot tall, on the lower half of the targets. I think the front sight height correction could be made for a foot and a half, vice two feet. I don’t like the trigger much, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. My barrel band tried to travel, too, but I think that may be a function of the wood being slick and bare for refinishing. I’ll probably build up the wood with putty underneath the band until it’s a stout, hammer tap fit to get it on.
I shot my Swede and K31 afterward with decent result - both shoot close to point of aim at hundred meter sight settings. My elbow was hamburger by the end of the strings, even with the blanket, and I woke up with a vestigal black eye this morning. I was too beat up to even think of the Garand and shooting the Bushmaster would have meant another rifle to clean for no good purpose - that one is a tack driver and already zeroed.
My next purchases are going to be an adjustable front rest, some industrial non-skid adhesive strips for my steel buttplate stocks, and a shooting jacket with padded elbows and shoulders.
I shot a dimegroup with another shooter’s new, scoped Ruger boltie in 7mm WSM, at a hundred. It didn’t seem to me to be as punishing as the traditional magnum (but I’ve never been a fan of recoil, anyway), but it was enough to finish me for the day.
I took the stripped Kar98 up to Lee Kay yesterday, along with a stack of other iron, and shot for zero at 100 yards.
Kim DuToit groups the 8mm in the family of “manly calibers”, and rightfully so. I brought all my gear (bags, notebook, spotting scope, eyepatch) except for a the stout longsleeve denim shirt I usually wear in lieu of a shooting jacket. First round downrage I tore a patch of skin off my right elbow on the concrete table and got a love tap from the stock under my right eye; tshirt + slick steel buttplate is a crappy combination. Most military rifles I have fired are designed to be shot while wearing bulky combat clothing, and thus have a relatively short length of pull - the Lee Enfield carbines are the worst fitting rifles I’ve come across for this - and the Kar stock length is not a lot better.
I spread a blanket on the back of the table and got down to business. Nine further rounds, and still nothing on paper. The three gents on the tables around me (all shooting milsurps, too, btw) let me know I was high, off the paper, and that it was common for Euro bolties to be TWO FEET above aiming point at one hundred yards. Seems that Euroes aimed at beltlines, and two feet high was considered an effective method for getting hits out to three hundred yards from zero. There are resources that offer replacement front sight blades to correct point of aim to point of impact, and I will look them up by the by…
Feh. We think it’s better to hit where we aim, they just think of hitting. No wonder the Germans were shocked when the Marines showed up in the trenches in 1917.
I placed a four inch round flourescent orange sticker on the frame two feet below the centers of my bullseye targets (NRA 100 yd smallbore) and got back to it. Four inches is tough for fortyfive year old eyes to see, but they got the job done well enough. Windage was very close to center - an inch right if anything, and I put the next twenty rounds in a rectangle about five inches wide and a foot tall, on the lower half of the targets. I think the front sight height correction could be made for a foot and a half, vice two feet. I don’t like the trigger much, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. My barrel band tried to travel, too, but I think that may be a function of the wood being slick and bare for refinishing. I’ll probably build up the wood with putty underneath the band until it’s a stout, hammer tap fit to get it on.
I shot my Swede and K31 afterward with decent result - both shoot close to point of aim at hundred meter sight settings. My elbow was hamburger by the end of the strings, even with the blanket, and I woke up with a vestigal black eye this morning. I was too beat up to even think of the Garand and shooting the Bushmaster would have meant another rifle to clean for no good purpose - that one is a tack driver and already zeroed.
My next purchases are going to be an adjustable front rest, some industrial non-skid adhesive strips for my steel buttplate stocks, and a shooting jacket with padded elbows and shoulders.
I shot a dimegroup with another shooter’s new, scoped Ruger boltie in 7mm WSM, at a hundred. It didn’t seem to me to be as punishing as the traditional magnum (but I’ve never been a fan of recoil, anyway), but it was enough to finish me for the day.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
On This Day
in 1981 I was celebrating my twentieth birthday on the island of Okinawa, Japan. The Far East Radio network was wall to wall with the news of the attempted assassination of President Reagan. One of the reporters we heard a lot from was Sam Donaldson. I have always found his delivery annoying.
This morning when the numbers on my bedside clock radio kicked (no, they don't do that anymore - it's all digital these days) over to five a.m. the first words out of the speaker were those I had heard spoken by Mr. Donaldson all those years ago.
I heard that voice reporting "there has been an attack on the president" and my eyes snapped wide open. I felt a moment of confusion; the ceiling above me was not the institutional light puke green of a concrete squadbay (Marine speak for "barracks") but instead textured drywall, and holy Moses I was big as a house... and who was this woman next to me???...
Time passes.
I have been stopping at the same convenience store on my way out of West Valley City every morning since December. I know the employees and manager by first name, and only have to pay for my coffee every third or fourth time.
This morning the manager of the store overheard one of my fellow surveyors wishing me happy birthday, and we started talking about how fast the years go by. She just turned forty five herself a week ago. I mentioned the gestalt I got from the morning radio broadcast and she did a Lon Chaney werewolf in the moonlight thing on me:
"I sure wish that somebody would shoot that (*&^^%!!( #$^ sonofa(*&@ we've got now!"
From affable acquaintance to full blown BDS in two seconds. Eyes bulging, lips white, and a great red rush that ran up her neck and exploded across her cheeks.
"You mean that, don't you? You really do."
"Hey, I'm SORRY if your a REPUBLICAN but somebody should... "
I put my morning muffin back on the rack. The coffee cup was already filled, and I didn't feel like dumping it in the sink with her in such a state. So I went to the counter and paid (had to insist) and walked out.
I guess I have to start carrying a thermos again. Oh, and I won't be buying thirty gallons of fuel there every third day, either.
Folks like her hated Uncle Ronnie, too. The same hate, and for all sorts of reasons, but in the end they hated him for being right where it counted. And winning. I reckon that's how Bush will end up, too, when the serious books are finally written.
Trying day at work; in my experience working on your birthday always boils down to either a cake walk or a shit sandwich. Today I got the double hoagie special. Arrived home with the sunset to a Happy Birthday Chorus from my family in the driveway, and went out to Sizzler for a great dinner. We were too full to eat any birthday cake but it will still be there tomorrow.
I'm a lucky guy. It was a beaut of a day and now I'm off to bed.
This morning when the numbers on my bedside clock radio kicked (no, they don't do that anymore - it's all digital these days) over to five a.m. the first words out of the speaker were those I had heard spoken by Mr. Donaldson all those years ago.
I heard that voice reporting "there has been an attack on the president" and my eyes snapped wide open. I felt a moment of confusion; the ceiling above me was not the institutional light puke green of a concrete squadbay (Marine speak for "barracks") but instead textured drywall, and holy Moses I was big as a house... and who was this woman next to me???...
Time passes.
I have been stopping at the same convenience store on my way out of West Valley City every morning since December. I know the employees and manager by first name, and only have to pay for my coffee every third or fourth time.
This morning the manager of the store overheard one of my fellow surveyors wishing me happy birthday, and we started talking about how fast the years go by. She just turned forty five herself a week ago. I mentioned the gestalt I got from the morning radio broadcast and she did a Lon Chaney werewolf in the moonlight thing on me:
"I sure wish that somebody would shoot that (*&^^%!!( #$^ sonofa(*&@ we've got now!"
From affable acquaintance to full blown BDS in two seconds. Eyes bulging, lips white, and a great red rush that ran up her neck and exploded across her cheeks.
"You mean that, don't you? You really do."
"Hey, I'm SORRY if your a REPUBLICAN but somebody should... "
I put my morning muffin back on the rack. The coffee cup was already filled, and I didn't feel like dumping it in the sink with her in such a state. So I went to the counter and paid (had to insist) and walked out.
I guess I have to start carrying a thermos again. Oh, and I won't be buying thirty gallons of fuel there every third day, either.
Folks like her hated Uncle Ronnie, too. The same hate, and for all sorts of reasons, but in the end they hated him for being right where it counted. And winning. I reckon that's how Bush will end up, too, when the serious books are finally written.
Trying day at work; in my experience working on your birthday always boils down to either a cake walk or a shit sandwich. Today I got the double hoagie special. Arrived home with the sunset to a Happy Birthday Chorus from my family in the driveway, and went out to Sizzler for a great dinner. We were too full to eat any birthday cake but it will still be there tomorrow.
I'm a lucky guy. It was a beaut of a day and now I'm off to bed.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Interestingly Enough
The Town Hall was held at the Provo City Library which is located in the refurbished Brigham Young Academy, which was the institution that preceded Brigham Young University. There were over a hundred people in attendance. Mr. Hatch hit the threshold at 1400 sharp and opened the meeting by thanking us for giving up a fine Saturday afternoon to show up for politics.
Senator Hatch mentioned blogs during both the open Town Hall and the by-invitation dessert meeting afterward. He recommended Powerline and Hugh Hewitt in particular, and Michelle Malkin was mentioned as well. As far as media goes, his statements surprised me a bit. Not much subtlety or temporizing in "The media dislikes conservatives and hates this president". He proposed that blog impact has little to do with the agenda of any single blog; rather, the self-correction and fact checking between widely disparate blogs improves the quality of information available to those who actively follow current events.
But he was up front that is was nice to have friends in blog places, none the less.
Questions from the crowd ranged from border security to if Harry Reid still attended church. Laughs on the latter question, and laughs on the Senator's reply to same. Mr. Hatch and Mr. Reid are both LDS, as were probably ninety five percent of the folks in attendance. Hatch said that Mr. Reid did indeed attend, and that we should consider for a moment the constituency Mr. Reid was trying to represent. That brought a moment of pin-drop silence and some thoughtful shaking of heads.
(I agree that trying to stay in front of the Left must be a frustrating chore. Cat herding would be easier. But that still doesn't affect my personal conviction that Harry Reid and his party are a threat to the country on a level that Al Qaeda could only dream of being...)
Economic issues affecting Utah were discussed at length. Without a senior senator in Washington, Utah would probably have already lost the Utah Test and Training Range to the environmentalists, and with it Hill AFB. Ditto access to a huge bulk of our public lands as well - big state feds (not to mention a recent president) have always looked toward western states to give up land as gestures to the Greens. On those same lines, the Senator detailed his opposition to storing high level radioactive wastes in Utah. He has been in the Senate since before Yucca Mountain, Nevada was put forward as a repository site, and decried the Democrats' decision to use the facility for political posturing AFTER all the billions have been spent in studying, planning, and building the facility. The crux of the matter is that the first state that willingly accepts interstate delivery of highlevel wastes will be THE state that handles the rest. Politically and in terms of permits, costs, and the very real and pressing need to secure unsafe sites that now exist across the country, it just can't work out any other way. Mr. Hatch mentioned "other alternatives" in process for dealing with materials in situ; no details were given but I believe he may have been alluding to vitrification, a method shot down by Jimmy Carter at the behest of environmentalists. Instead of encasing tons of waste in glass, we now store the bulk of spent fuel roads in above-ground water tanks. And those tanks are failing.
Energy policy was discussed. Senator Hatch pointed out that Canada represents our first, largest supplier of imported petroleum products. Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming together have three or four times as much oil in shale as do the Canadians in their tar sands, and technology is coming on line that makes recovery of shale oil only slightly more expensive than it is for tar sand now. He stated that biofuels, hydrogen, and ethanol only make sense in the long term if there is clean energy available to produce them, and that means expanding our nuclear generating capability. France was used as a data point here: they get almost seventy percent of their electrical power from nuclear generation now. ANWR, too, was mentioned. Hatch pointed out that the surface acreage to be explored was smaller than Provo.
Illegal immigration and border security were discussed at length, both separately and as the same issue. Senator Hatch was adamant that the President's guest worker program was not amnesty; I don't think the room bought it. I know I didn't.
Near the end of the allotted hour the senator called for any questions on the domestic surveillance issue. He explained the timeline of the program, and the congressional oversight/periodic review that had been built into the system at its inception. He was adamant that the program has effective in the war and has not violated any citizens' civil rights. He expressed surprise that there hadn't been any so far. A gentleman standing in the aisle next to me asked why the program hadn't been legislated via congress. Senator Hatch replied that at its inception, the administration had presented it as in keeping with the execution of the President's Article II powers during wartime, and supported by precedents from Lincoln to Roosevelt (FDR). Hatch also stated that he was convinced that any move to legislate at this time would simply degenerate into political theater on the part of the minority - he further pointed out that no serious court challenge to domestic surveillance was being pursued in spite of all the media noise on the subject - and predicted that courts would come down on the side of Article II if push came to shove.
After the meeting ended the gentleman who asked the FISA question and I met in the hall and talked further on the details of the issue. One of the staffers stopped by to chat, and shortly after we were both invited up to the dessert meeting.
And that is for tomorrow's post.
Senator Hatch mentioned blogs during both the open Town Hall and the by-invitation dessert meeting afterward. He recommended Powerline and Hugh Hewitt in particular, and Michelle Malkin was mentioned as well. As far as media goes, his statements surprised me a bit. Not much subtlety or temporizing in "The media dislikes conservatives and hates this president". He proposed that blog impact has little to do with the agenda of any single blog; rather, the self-correction and fact checking between widely disparate blogs improves the quality of information available to those who actively follow current events.
But he was up front that is was nice to have friends in blog places, none the less.
Questions from the crowd ranged from border security to if Harry Reid still attended church. Laughs on the latter question, and laughs on the Senator's reply to same. Mr. Hatch and Mr. Reid are both LDS, as were probably ninety five percent of the folks in attendance. Hatch said that Mr. Reid did indeed attend, and that we should consider for a moment the constituency Mr. Reid was trying to represent. That brought a moment of pin-drop silence and some thoughtful shaking of heads.
(I agree that trying to stay in front of the Left must be a frustrating chore. Cat herding would be easier. But that still doesn't affect my personal conviction that Harry Reid and his party are a threat to the country on a level that Al Qaeda could only dream of being...)
Economic issues affecting Utah were discussed at length. Without a senior senator in Washington, Utah would probably have already lost the Utah Test and Training Range to the environmentalists, and with it Hill AFB. Ditto access to a huge bulk of our public lands as well - big state feds (not to mention a recent president) have always looked toward western states to give up land as gestures to the Greens. On those same lines, the Senator detailed his opposition to storing high level radioactive wastes in Utah. He has been in the Senate since before Yucca Mountain, Nevada was put forward as a repository site, and decried the Democrats' decision to use the facility for political posturing AFTER all the billions have been spent in studying, planning, and building the facility. The crux of the matter is that the first state that willingly accepts interstate delivery of highlevel wastes will be THE state that handles the rest. Politically and in terms of permits, costs, and the very real and pressing need to secure unsafe sites that now exist across the country, it just can't work out any other way. Mr. Hatch mentioned "other alternatives" in process for dealing with materials in situ; no details were given but I believe he may have been alluding to vitrification, a method shot down by Jimmy Carter at the behest of environmentalists. Instead of encasing tons of waste in glass, we now store the bulk of spent fuel roads in above-ground water tanks. And those tanks are failing.
Energy policy was discussed. Senator Hatch pointed out that Canada represents our first, largest supplier of imported petroleum products. Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming together have three or four times as much oil in shale as do the Canadians in their tar sands, and technology is coming on line that makes recovery of shale oil only slightly more expensive than it is for tar sand now. He stated that biofuels, hydrogen, and ethanol only make sense in the long term if there is clean energy available to produce them, and that means expanding our nuclear generating capability. France was used as a data point here: they get almost seventy percent of their electrical power from nuclear generation now. ANWR, too, was mentioned. Hatch pointed out that the surface acreage to be explored was smaller than Provo.
Illegal immigration and border security were discussed at length, both separately and as the same issue. Senator Hatch was adamant that the President's guest worker program was not amnesty; I don't think the room bought it. I know I didn't.
Near the end of the allotted hour the senator called for any questions on the domestic surveillance issue. He explained the timeline of the program, and the congressional oversight/periodic review that had been built into the system at its inception. He was adamant that the program has effective in the war and has not violated any citizens' civil rights. He expressed surprise that there hadn't been any so far. A gentleman standing in the aisle next to me asked why the program hadn't been legislated via congress. Senator Hatch replied that at its inception, the administration had presented it as in keeping with the execution of the President's Article II powers during wartime, and supported by precedents from Lincoln to Roosevelt (FDR). Hatch also stated that he was convinced that any move to legislate at this time would simply degenerate into political theater on the part of the minority - he further pointed out that no serious court challenge to domestic surveillance was being pursued in spite of all the media noise on the subject - and predicted that courts would come down on the side of Article II if push came to shove.
After the meeting ended the gentleman who asked the FISA question and I met in the hall and talked further on the details of the issue. One of the staffers stopped by to chat, and shortly after we were both invited up to the dessert meeting.
And that is for tomorrow's post.
Springtime And Gunfire. Plus Treachery And Politics, Too!
I've been almost manic since yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday, a brilliant clear Friday, I did not head up the road to Salt Lake nor did I drive up Parley's Canyon to the job. I did not set up my GPS set with the rising sun. I didn't call my queue of contractors (which caused them all to call me before eight a.m.). There was no rush to record newly-constructed sewer or water connections. No staking hundreds of feet of line for blasting or for construction. I did not visit Lot 7 in Pod X2 to replace the stakes that the excavator had blown out while the form crew stood waiting. I did not wade through crotch deep snow setting rebar with caps on rear property corners. I did not drive my F-150 over house-high piles of freshly shattered rock in the wake of a D9N Caterpillar bulldozer in order to get from one end of the project to the other.
I stayed home. The contractor came and measured my windows for vinyl replacements. We cleaned the living room and kitchen. My garage - MY garage - is navigable without guides and bearers! So is the driveway where I park my work rig; an hour with shovel, broom and hose to remove the dried mud shed there over the past winter. The infinitely better half and I signed powers of attorney to serve as guardian for a friend's daughter to attend high school down here with our girls instead of the blackboard jungle she dropped out of in Salt Lake. We ordered a new dresser for our guest room for her use; it should be at the warehouse to pick up as soon as I finish this post.
I visited my local gun store during a break in the action. They've finally got a selection of Kar-98 German Mausers in stock, almost all of them WW2 production. I pointed out to the proprietor that some of them were cartouched for Kriegsmarine (Navy) contracts and should be worth a little more than the others to collectors, even if the Nazi Waffenbrink markings had all been stamped out. I wouldn't have a Swastika stamped weapon in my home, anyway, but some people like that sort of thing. That got me a twenty buck discount should I wish to buy one of the others.
A passing knowledge of history can be profitable in ways other than making good political choices.
Closed the day by meeting with my surveying partner up at Doug's Shooting Sports indoor range in West Valley. Some days you shoot smooth, accurate, and safe. Others you manage not to hurt yourself or anybody else. I did o.k. keeping most of the rounds on paper but never really got comfortable. I'm almost a year into my latest glasses and my right eye is the one changing with age. Grrrrr... so I coached the kid on the line next to me on rifle. He was there with his dad to practice for his Shooter's Safety range test (probably up at Lee Kay right now, matter of fact) and was fighting his rifle more than shooting it.
He went from shotgun pattern down to a consistent three - inch group over the course of the next half hour or so. If given the choice between a bad rest and no rest, shoot offhand, and aim with your feet whenever possible. His dad asked who I worked for (I was wearing a polo with our company logo on the sleeve) and it turns out dad is an engineer and works closely with one of the owners of my company! Small world, and it never hurts to give a good impression.
On the treachery side , we have the perfidious Russians aiding Saddam Hussein during OIF. I guess Pootey Poot isn't all that much of a friend after all. Hell, he'll probably get his own log-in at The Huffington Post.
And for politics I have a two o'clock Town Hall with Senator Hatch down in Provo.
Y'all have a fine one.
Yesterday, a brilliant clear Friday, I did not head up the road to Salt Lake nor did I drive up Parley's Canyon to the job. I did not set up my GPS set with the rising sun. I didn't call my queue of contractors (which caused them all to call me before eight a.m.). There was no rush to record newly-constructed sewer or water connections. No staking hundreds of feet of line for blasting or for construction. I did not visit Lot 7 in Pod X2 to replace the stakes that the excavator had blown out while the form crew stood waiting. I did not wade through crotch deep snow setting rebar with caps on rear property corners. I did not drive my F-150 over house-high piles of freshly shattered rock in the wake of a D9N Caterpillar bulldozer in order to get from one end of the project to the other.
I stayed home. The contractor came and measured my windows for vinyl replacements. We cleaned the living room and kitchen. My garage - MY garage - is navigable without guides and bearers! So is the driveway where I park my work rig; an hour with shovel, broom and hose to remove the dried mud shed there over the past winter. The infinitely better half and I signed powers of attorney to serve as guardian for a friend's daughter to attend high school down here with our girls instead of the blackboard jungle she dropped out of in Salt Lake. We ordered a new dresser for our guest room for her use; it should be at the warehouse to pick up as soon as I finish this post.
I visited my local gun store during a break in the action. They've finally got a selection of Kar-98 German Mausers in stock, almost all of them WW2 production. I pointed out to the proprietor that some of them were cartouched for Kriegsmarine (Navy) contracts and should be worth a little more than the others to collectors, even if the Nazi Waffenbrink markings had all been stamped out. I wouldn't have a Swastika stamped weapon in my home, anyway, but some people like that sort of thing. That got me a twenty buck discount should I wish to buy one of the others.
A passing knowledge of history can be profitable in ways other than making good political choices.
Closed the day by meeting with my surveying partner up at Doug's Shooting Sports indoor range in West Valley. Some days you shoot smooth, accurate, and safe. Others you manage not to hurt yourself or anybody else. I did o.k. keeping most of the rounds on paper but never really got comfortable. I'm almost a year into my latest glasses and my right eye is the one changing with age. Grrrrr... so I coached the kid on the line next to me on rifle. He was there with his dad to practice for his Shooter's Safety range test (probably up at Lee Kay right now, matter of fact) and was fighting his rifle more than shooting it.
He went from shotgun pattern down to a consistent three - inch group over the course of the next half hour or so. If given the choice between a bad rest and no rest, shoot offhand, and aim with your feet whenever possible. His dad asked who I worked for (I was wearing a polo with our company logo on the sleeve) and it turns out dad is an engineer and works closely with one of the owners of my company! Small world, and it never hurts to give a good impression.
On the treachery side , we have the perfidious Russians aiding Saddam Hussein during OIF. I guess Pootey Poot isn't all that much of a friend after all. Hell, he'll probably get his own log-in at The Huffington Post.
And for politics I have a two o'clock Town Hall with Senator Hatch down in Provo.
Y'all have a fine one.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Duty.
Straw boater, with red/white/blue bunting hatband. Check.
Navy blazer, wool/silk, with U.S. colors lapel pin. Check.
Dark blue Oxford button-down shirt, new regimental tie in scarlet, utility green, and gold, gold Marine Corps emblem tie tack.
Check.
Blue slacks, shade to be determined after consulting with my handler (thirteen year old daughter), with black belt or suspenders.
Black street service Oxford with new ortho inserts and comfy black socks.
Laptop from the wife or oldest Goddess. May go with PDA if venue isn't wireless-equipped.
Mark calendar: 28 April, Payson High School: State Republican Convention.
I have been elected as one of four delegates from my Republican precinct to attend the state convention. I will be casting votes for our federal house and senate races.
The incumbents are Congressman Chris Cannon and Senator Orrin Hatch. My three fellow delegates are our precinct chair, vice chair, and a gentleman who runs his own public relations/marketing outfit. All have literally decades of experience in politics, local, state, and national.
I have a lot of homework to do. I am honored to have been chosen.
Navy blazer, wool/silk, with U.S. colors lapel pin. Check.
Dark blue Oxford button-down shirt, new regimental tie in scarlet, utility green, and gold, gold Marine Corps emblem tie tack.
Check.
Blue slacks, shade to be determined after consulting with my handler (thirteen year old daughter), with black belt or suspenders.
Black street service Oxford with new ortho inserts and comfy black socks.
Laptop from the wife or oldest Goddess. May go with PDA if venue isn't wireless-equipped.
Mark calendar: 28 April, Payson High School: State Republican Convention.
I have been elected as one of four delegates from my Republican precinct to attend the state convention. I will be casting votes for our federal house and senate races.
The incumbents are Congressman Chris Cannon and Senator Orrin Hatch. My three fellow delegates are our precinct chair, vice chair, and a gentleman who runs his own public relations/marketing outfit. All have literally decades of experience in politics, local, state, and national.
I have a lot of homework to do. I am honored to have been chosen.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Mundane
In other news, last Friday I ran two crews out on my project. We staked a thousand feet of road for blast: curbs, storm drain, water and sewer mains and services. We mark the locations to be shot with two foot tall grade stakes laid out on fifty foot stations in tangents, twentyfive in curves. The end result is a multicolored forest of stakes. You can drive down the middle of the road in a truck, or even a grader if you fold the blade as close as you can.
But you can't do anything else with the road until after the blasters do their thing and the grading contractor comes in and cleans up the overburden.
We've got a foot of snow in the valley since last night. The mountains surely got more. I truly don't want to replace those stakes.
I spent a few hours at a rock and mineral show down in Spanish Fork yesterday. I paid a buck to run a pan of gold-bearing sand. I talked with the proprietor of a prospecting shop while I worked the light stuff off the top.
He's working a claim out on the Nevada/Utah line. He brought that up just when as I arrived at the moment when you tap your ring against the rim of the almost-empty pan to "jump" the gold out of the remaining tablespoon of black sand. He's looking for help, on a shares basis.
No real prospector ever forgets the first time he found color in a pan. Not a one. And folks who truly have the bug get a pleasurable echo every time it happens ,too, even if they are standing over a trough in an exhibit hall and not squatting in a stream twenty miles back up the mountain.
More on this later. I've got to go clean my work truck and GPS set and then get our documents together for our tax guy.
But you can't do anything else with the road until after the blasters do their thing and the grading contractor comes in and cleans up the overburden.
We've got a foot of snow in the valley since last night. The mountains surely got more. I truly don't want to replace those stakes.
I spent a few hours at a rock and mineral show down in Spanish Fork yesterday. I paid a buck to run a pan of gold-bearing sand. I talked with the proprietor of a prospecting shop while I worked the light stuff off the top.
He's working a claim out on the Nevada/Utah line. He brought that up just when as I arrived at the moment when you tap your ring against the rim of the almost-empty pan to "jump" the gold out of the remaining tablespoon of black sand. He's looking for help, on a shares basis.
No real prospector ever forgets the first time he found color in a pan. Not a one. And folks who truly have the bug get a pleasurable echo every time it happens ,too, even if they are standing over a trough in an exhibit hall and not squatting in a stream twenty miles back up the mountain.
More on this later. I've got to go clean my work truck and GPS set and then get our documents together for our tax guy.
Reading For A Snowy Day
Wretchard is all over the aftermath of Operation Swarmer. He ends his post with a truth that applies far, far beyond what has happened to the jihadis in Iraq:
"The enemy in reading the leading newspapers of the West remained ignorant of the doom descending upon their heads, confirmed in their eventual victory even as catastrophe overwhelmed them. Thank you MSM."
Hollywood. Democrats. Jihadis. All are connected by a common tendency to believe their own press releases.
"The enemy in reading the leading newspapers of the West remained ignorant of the doom descending upon their heads, confirmed in their eventual victory even as catastrophe overwhelmed them. Thank you MSM."
Hollywood. Democrats. Jihadis. All are connected by a common tendency to believe their own press releases.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
Trolling
for DU votes.
I may just go out and buy another rifle. Or two. I'm collecting milsurps and have my eye on an SMLE Mk4 right at the moment...granted, it's rather ratty, and a bolty...
Nah. Maybe something evil.
No. REALLY evil.
Hell and death; there's already one in my safe!
I guess I'll just have to settle for buying some more hi-cap mags for my pistols. And maybe reload some more rounds for the M1 Garand. Mom needs a small frame 9mm for carry, too...
Spring is sprung here in Utah. No, really it has. Ignore the blizzard conditions on my jobsite and the low double-digit overnight temps here at the house and you can almost hear the buds ripening on the trees.
Just as soon as I can see at least two hundred yards in any direction, I'm taking the rifles across the lake to get the dust out of the bores.
I may just go out and buy another rifle. Or two. I'm collecting milsurps and have my eye on an SMLE Mk4 right at the moment...granted, it's rather ratty, and a bolty...
Nah. Maybe something evil.
No. REALLY evil.
Hell and death; there's already one in my safe!
I guess I'll just have to settle for buying some more hi-cap mags for my pistols. And maybe reload some more rounds for the M1 Garand. Mom needs a small frame 9mm for carry, too...
Spring is sprung here in Utah. No, really it has. Ignore the blizzard conditions on my jobsite and the low double-digit overnight temps here at the house and you can almost hear the buds ripening on the trees.
Just as soon as I can see at least two hundred yards in any direction, I'm taking the rifles across the lake to get the dust out of the bores.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Old News.
Iranians have been killing Americans with bombs since 1983.
ABC has a story up about the shaped charge/copper jet IED's that Iran has been smuggling into Iraq:
"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."
Mr. Clark, it's not hard at all if you think that defeating Islamofascist terror comes a distant second to winning house races.
This news came out months ago. The linked article mentions Ocotober of last year as when the deadlier Iranian imports began showing up. Dan Darling at Winds of Change wrote an excellent post detailing Iranian involvement. This was from August 2005:
"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.
The officials say the shipment contained dozens of "shaped charges" manufactured recently. Shaped charges are especially lethal because they’re designed to concentrate and direct a more powerful blast into a small area."
Read all the links.
Why the resurgence of interest by ABC? Don't know. If Iran attempting to subvert our efforts in Iraq is a valid causus belli, we should have gone to Tehran in 2004. As it stands now, a sizeable minority within the government have no interest at all in pursuing terrorists where they live, anywhere in the world.
(via Captain's Quarters)
ABC has a story up about the shaped charge/copper jet IED's that Iran has been smuggling into Iraq:
"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."
Mr. Clark, it's not hard at all if you think that defeating Islamofascist terror comes a distant second to winning house races.
This news came out months ago. The linked article mentions Ocotober of last year as when the deadlier Iranian imports began showing up. Dan Darling at Winds of Change wrote an excellent post detailing Iranian involvement. This was from August 2005:
"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.
The officials say the shipment contained dozens of "shaped charges" manufactured recently. Shaped charges are especially lethal because they’re designed to concentrate and direct a more powerful blast into a small area."
Read all the links.
Why the resurgence of interest by ABC? Don't know. If Iran attempting to subvert our efforts in Iraq is a valid causus belli, we should have gone to Tehran in 2004. As it stands now, a sizeable minority within the government have no interest at all in pursuing terrorists where they live, anywhere in the world.
(via Captain's Quarters)
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Shucks
It's been almost a month. I better do an events dump to clue in anyone who wanders by here...
1. Bronchitis since December.
2. Averaging sixty hours a week on the job. Yes, I work outside, in Utah. The base elevation for my project is 6500 feet.
3. Emergency room visit first week of February. Was forced to admit "yes, chest does hurt". Result: Left side cardiac catheterization that day, endoscopy exam the next. Diagnosis: pre-ulcerous conditions in stomach. Result: drugs. Lots of drugs.
4. GP visit one week later, after fainting in the shower after a coughing spell. Diagnosis: bronchitis (still) and sinus infection. Result: more drugs; steroidal inhaler, cough suppressants (pill and liquid), antibiotic pills the size of .38 special cartridges.
5. We've had three visits from window contractors. Each one has provided a bid for replacing the existing seventeen aluminum storm windows we use to heat our neighborhood. Bids have ranged from astronomical to merely daunting, so far.
4. Youngest Goddess turned thirteen on the 25th and had her party here at the house. Fifteen eighth graders. Oldest Goddess turned sixteen two days later, and we had her party here on Friday the third, with eighteen highschoolers.
5. Externally, I've watched the cartoon flap, Cheneygate, the mosque bombings, the latest iteration of Bush-killed-New Orleans, Iran's march to nuclear arms, and Terry Taliban Goes To Yale, all with an increasing sense of detachment.
I've decided that a sad majority of Americans aren't serious about fighting this war. Not yet. It doesn't help that media, Hollywood, and The Democrats are still willfully blind to the threat beyond opportunities for them to exploit for personal gain. The administration's strategy has worked well enough to prevent another 9/11 so far. The opposition (beyond the previously mentioned) has wisely invested most of its domestic efforts in media moves.
And that's o.k. We'll arrive at the 2006 midterms with a Republican caucus fearing righteous revolt by their base. The Democrat caucus continues operating in an abject vacuum of ideas or principles, and will be even more beholden to their base.
For what it's worth, I think we'll see Iraq stabilize enough over the next six months that we move a lot of troops out of theater. The remaining coalition units will be dispersed widely throughout the country. Less of a strategic target when the ultimate suicide bombing begins.
Will we strike at Iran before then? I have my doubts. The smart move would be a coordinated air and ground mission conducted within the next two weeks... but the decision may have been made to allow the Iranians to conduct a test, first. A pragmatic political decision, but inherent in such is the acceptance that the inevitable conflict with Iran will be nuclear.
9/11 wasn't enough to mobilize the West. Well, we'll not have that pesky WMD argument the next time around.
The price of victory is going to be more than anyone dared think. Sad, that.
Posts will continue to be infrequent, and will probably be more of the "I cleaned my garage today" flavor than any political or strategic musings. I am in better shape now than since before Christmas but find that concentrating on tasks I can actually lay hands on makes me feel better than beating my head against a wall.
Have a fine one. I'm off to the garage.
1. Bronchitis since December.
2. Averaging sixty hours a week on the job. Yes, I work outside, in Utah. The base elevation for my project is 6500 feet.
3. Emergency room visit first week of February. Was forced to admit "yes, chest does hurt". Result: Left side cardiac catheterization that day, endoscopy exam the next. Diagnosis: pre-ulcerous conditions in stomach. Result: drugs. Lots of drugs.
4. GP visit one week later, after fainting in the shower after a coughing spell. Diagnosis: bronchitis (still) and sinus infection. Result: more drugs; steroidal inhaler, cough suppressants (pill and liquid), antibiotic pills the size of .38 special cartridges.
5. We've had three visits from window contractors. Each one has provided a bid for replacing the existing seventeen aluminum storm windows we use to heat our neighborhood. Bids have ranged from astronomical to merely daunting, so far.
4. Youngest Goddess turned thirteen on the 25th and had her party here at the house. Fifteen eighth graders. Oldest Goddess turned sixteen two days later, and we had her party here on Friday the third, with eighteen highschoolers.
5. Externally, I've watched the cartoon flap, Cheneygate, the mosque bombings, the latest iteration of Bush-killed-New Orleans, Iran's march to nuclear arms, and Terry Taliban Goes To Yale, all with an increasing sense of detachment.
I've decided that a sad majority of Americans aren't serious about fighting this war. Not yet. It doesn't help that media, Hollywood, and The Democrats are still willfully blind to the threat beyond opportunities for them to exploit for personal gain. The administration's strategy has worked well enough to prevent another 9/11 so far. The opposition (beyond the previously mentioned) has wisely invested most of its domestic efforts in media moves.
And that's o.k. We'll arrive at the 2006 midterms with a Republican caucus fearing righteous revolt by their base. The Democrat caucus continues operating in an abject vacuum of ideas or principles, and will be even more beholden to their base.
For what it's worth, I think we'll see Iraq stabilize enough over the next six months that we move a lot of troops out of theater. The remaining coalition units will be dispersed widely throughout the country. Less of a strategic target when the ultimate suicide bombing begins.
Will we strike at Iran before then? I have my doubts. The smart move would be a coordinated air and ground mission conducted within the next two weeks... but the decision may have been made to allow the Iranians to conduct a test, first. A pragmatic political decision, but inherent in such is the acceptance that the inevitable conflict with Iran will be nuclear.
9/11 wasn't enough to mobilize the West. Well, we'll not have that pesky WMD argument the next time around.
The price of victory is going to be more than anyone dared think. Sad, that.
Posts will continue to be infrequent, and will probably be more of the "I cleaned my garage today" flavor than any political or strategic musings. I am in better shape now than since before Christmas but find that concentrating on tasks I can actually lay hands on makes me feel better than beating my head against a wall.
Have a fine one. I'm off to the garage.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Cross Traffic: The Officers' Club: Meanwhile Back in Iran
There's an interesting post up at Officers' Club by a Mr. Charlie Munn. It it, he opines on what a possible scenario for an Israeli attack on Iran would look like:
"The attack would definitely be a single, massive air strike the likes of which the MidEast has never seen. Here is how I think it would go down. It is widely believed that Iran is out of range of Israeli fighters and bombers. The range problem could be ameliorated by mid-air re-fuelers, but that would cause problems. Israel only has 5 KC-130 re-fuelers, and the idea of refueling over enemy airspace would complicate an already complicated plan. The solution to this problem is to establish forward landing areas close to Iran, in order to “leap-frog” into Iran. This would, of course, be an act of war against (speculating here) either Saudi Arabia or Syria.
I believe that the Israelis would attempt to bypass Turkish, and Iraqi airspace. They would have to either seize an airfield, or construct one themselves. Paratroopers would insert into the area, secure the airfield, and set up a defensive perimeter. Then the transport aircraft would begin to land and set up a FARP (forward area re-arm/re-fuel point). I assume we’ll have passed the “international incident” by this point, and all out war will be declared by one (or many countries against Israel."
I disagreed. It can't be done the way the author proposes. Too elaborate, too exposed, and most of all it is predicated on Israel abandoning control of its immediate airspace for several days (even assuming the IDF doesn't suffer crushing losses executing the strikes) exactly at the moment its neighbors will be determined to attack. All that risk, both military and political, to achieve only a delay in the mullahs' quest for what they (the mullahs) consider the ultimate weapons? The law of diminishing returns looms large here.
No way - and I give my opinion why in my post.
"The attack would definitely be a single, massive air strike the likes of which the MidEast has never seen. Here is how I think it would go down. It is widely believed that Iran is out of range of Israeli fighters and bombers. The range problem could be ameliorated by mid-air re-fuelers, but that would cause problems. Israel only has 5 KC-130 re-fuelers, and the idea of refueling over enemy airspace would complicate an already complicated plan. The solution to this problem is to establish forward landing areas close to Iran, in order to “leap-frog” into Iran. This would, of course, be an act of war against (speculating here) either Saudi Arabia or Syria.
I believe that the Israelis would attempt to bypass Turkish, and Iraqi airspace. They would have to either seize an airfield, or construct one themselves. Paratroopers would insert into the area, secure the airfield, and set up a defensive perimeter. Then the transport aircraft would begin to land and set up a FARP (forward area re-arm/re-fuel point). I assume we’ll have passed the “international incident” by this point, and all out war will be declared by one (or many countries against Israel."
I disagreed. It can't be done the way the author proposes. Too elaborate, too exposed, and most of all it is predicated on Israel abandoning control of its immediate airspace for several days (even assuming the IDF doesn't suffer crushing losses executing the strikes) exactly at the moment its neighbors will be determined to attack. All that risk, both military and political, to achieve only a delay in the mullahs' quest for what they (the mullahs) consider the ultimate weapons? The law of diminishing returns looms large here.
No way - and I give my opinion why in my post.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Required Reading
A fine Monday morning essay by Victor Davis Hanson:
"It is not the capability but the will power of the Europeans that has been missing in this war so far. But while pundits argue over whether the European demographic crisis, lack of faith, stalled economy, or multiculturalism are at the root of the continent’s impotence, we should never forget that if aroused and pushed, a rearmed and powerful Europe could still be at the side of the United States in joint efforts against the jihadists."
Read it all.
(via Instapundit, and there are more good links in his post, too.)
"It is not the capability but the will power of the Europeans that has been missing in this war so far. But while pundits argue over whether the European demographic crisis, lack of faith, stalled economy, or multiculturalism are at the root of the continent’s impotence, we should never forget that if aroused and pushed, a rearmed and powerful Europe could still be at the side of the United States in joint efforts against the jihadists."
Read it all.
(via Instapundit, and there are more good links in his post, too.)
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Parallels
I am reading "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman. It is the best book I've ever read where people, diplomacy, ambitions, agendas, and mistakes are all combined to explain the origins of the first industrial war.
I can't help but be chagrined that the next one may finally kick off because of cartoons.
Maybe it's just a sign of the times.
I can't help but be chagrined that the next one may finally kick off because of cartoons.
Maybe it's just a sign of the times.
Cartoons and Consequences
Is the progressive Left intellectually incapable of recognising the threat posed by Islamist terror? Or is it just habit they side with anyone who isn't white, conservative, and Christian?
If it was just them I wouldn't be that torn up. But they still comprise such a huge minority of the American polity (and sadly, majorities in much of European societies) they may just be enough of a distraction to enable the jihadis to commit even more tremendous, unthinkable acts before we finally own up to the work before us.
There is no muslim Martin Luther in the offing. Even if there were, the contemporary powers that be in the Muslim world would not let one live if he (or she) appeared.
The duty of the United States government to the people is to provide security. The threat from Islamic terror is about as far removed from arguments about what level of entitlements and pork should be considered "security" or even general welfare as it can be.
I don't think that the Islamofascists can win this fight. I am certain that the more time we let pass before acting forcefully to end the fight will only increase the eventual cost. I'd like to see us get it right, just once, when faced with a world war.
Must we destroy Islam? No. But we must arrive at a point where people using Islam as a causus belli no longer pose a threat. Europe may already be lost. I have no interest in seeing my daughters or their kids ever shedding blood "over there" in another babysitting exercise. We must act now to prevent the possibility of that ever happening again.
We didn't have to kill all the Germans. Nor all the Japanese. But we killed as many as it took to stop the fight AND preserve our freedom. We didn't kill hardly any Soviets, but the Soviets were operating on a political agenda - not a mystic morass of suicide and murder.
We are wasting time. Time that will be paid for in lives.
Faster, please.
(apologies to Mr. Ledeen for using his postscript)
If it was just them I wouldn't be that torn up. But they still comprise such a huge minority of the American polity (and sadly, majorities in much of European societies) they may just be enough of a distraction to enable the jihadis to commit even more tremendous, unthinkable acts before we finally own up to the work before us.
There is no muslim Martin Luther in the offing. Even if there were, the contemporary powers that be in the Muslim world would not let one live if he (or she) appeared.
The duty of the United States government to the people is to provide security. The threat from Islamic terror is about as far removed from arguments about what level of entitlements and pork should be considered "security" or even general welfare as it can be.
I don't think that the Islamofascists can win this fight. I am certain that the more time we let pass before acting forcefully to end the fight will only increase the eventual cost. I'd like to see us get it right, just once, when faced with a world war.
Must we destroy Islam? No. But we must arrive at a point where people using Islam as a causus belli no longer pose a threat. Europe may already be lost. I have no interest in seeing my daughters or their kids ever shedding blood "over there" in another babysitting exercise. We must act now to prevent the possibility of that ever happening again.
We didn't have to kill all the Germans. Nor all the Japanese. But we killed as many as it took to stop the fight AND preserve our freedom. We didn't kill hardly any Soviets, but the Soviets were operating on a political agenda - not a mystic morass of suicide and murder.
We are wasting time. Time that will be paid for in lives.
Faster, please.
(apologies to Mr. Ledeen for using his postscript)
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Things Happen
It's bad enough just having to walk into an emergency room.
What follows after you admit "Yes, the nitro did make me feel better" is orders of magnitude worse.
I am not made of iron.
More later when I feel better.
Update: 1500 2 Feb: Endoscopy results show inflamation and a few minor ulcers; the doc says that that condition could well account for my chest discomfort. Good news, all in all. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday. Mrs. Tmj is heading out to fill a prescription and pick up a medicinal pulled pork sandwich.
I ought to be a hundred percent by Monday.
What follows after you admit "Yes, the nitro did make me feel better" is orders of magnitude worse.
I am not made of iron.
More later when I feel better.
Update: 1500 2 Feb: Endoscopy results show inflamation and a few minor ulcers; the doc says that that condition could well account for my chest discomfort. Good news, all in all. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday. Mrs. Tmj is heading out to fill a prescription and pick up a medicinal pulled pork sandwich.
I ought to be a hundred percent by Monday.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
...But Not For Thee!
Just a glimpse into my Sunday afternoon news safari:
"I think it's important for us as women and feminists to not let this statement be made without any sort of resistance,'' said Jane, 24. "I want to let them know they can't come in and just do and say what they want."
Gotta love those progressives. I feel MY civil rights being championed. Don't you?
(via The Corner on National Review Online)
"I think it's important for us as women and feminists to not let this statement be made without any sort of resistance,'' said Jane, 24. "I want to let them know they can't come in and just do and say what they want."
Gotta love those progressives. I feel MY civil rights being championed. Don't you?
(via The Corner on National Review Online)
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Saturday Required Reading
1. Scroll down and read my "In Our Time" post.
2. Go to American Digest and read Van der Luen's repost of Joe Katz's excellent essay.
3. Read the comments, and follow the link provided by commenter Spartacus.
The war between Western civilization and Islam has been hot for half a century. Very soon it will become something our grandparents will instantly recognize: total war.
The only question I have is how many millions we are prepared to lose before we decide to fight. Five thousand plus and counting KIA since 2001 and we aren't near ready yet.
I have heard it said "We can't kill a billion people". Strangely enough, nobody ever wonders if the Islamists have any doubts along those lines.
2. Go to American Digest and read Van der Luen's repost of Joe Katz's excellent essay.
3. Read the comments, and follow the link provided by commenter Spartacus.
The war between Western civilization and Islam has been hot for half a century. Very soon it will become something our grandparents will instantly recognize: total war.
The only question I have is how many millions we are prepared to lose before we decide to fight. Five thousand plus and counting KIA since 2001 and we aren't near ready yet.
I have heard it said "We can't kill a billion people". Strangely enough, nobody ever wonders if the Islamists have any doubts along those lines.
White What?
"They took people at face value," writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right."
That's how civilized men treat anyone - white, black, brown, yellow, or any combination of flavors. Not should treat, but simply how business is done out here in the howling wilderness west of Manhattan.
I've always been white (my Sioux ancestry fraction included) trash to the New York Times. I tend to not vote democrat.
Ms. Vincent's book sounds like an interesting read.
(via Instapundit)
That's how civilized men treat anyone - white, black, brown, yellow, or any combination of flavors. Not should treat, but simply how business is done out here in the howling wilderness west of Manhattan.
I've always been white (my Sioux ancestry fraction included) trash to the New York Times. I tend to not vote democrat.
Ms. Vincent's book sounds like an interesting read.
(via Instapundit)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Troubled Times
The Others waited with their leader in the lee of the sunken road. Some smoked. They talked quietly (as quietly as the rising wind allowed) of the things rough men in rough places will always talk about. The only other sound was the stamping of their heavy, muddy boots as they unconsciously fought off the piercing cold. They wore bulky clothes, gloves, and a dozen different hats between the ten of them. From time to time they would look over at the man they waited for, hoping he would pick up his staff and show the way.
There was much, much work to be done. They waited in the cold.
The man was tired. His staff, spattered with mud, was propped against the bench almost as an afterthought. He had grappled with many trying and subtle puzzles for too many hours under the lowering gray sky. The bitterly cold wind buffeted him as he bent over his workbench and split his attention between solving the riddle before him and preserving his pencil, papers, and notes. The storm was approaching so quickly but the answer continued to escape him. He could feel the damp in his scarred hands and the wrist he'd broken so long ago twinged as the horizon shrank under a bar of steel colored clouds.
The scrolls offered no answers. Even his box of numbers, so often the key to untangling the knottiest of problems, served only as a paperweight in this moment of vexation. His silent staff trembled in the rising wind. Vanity goaded him to tidy it whenever opportunity offered. In this time and place so marked by disorder and casual filth the white luster of the staff stood as his icon for the order that was meant to come.
Nothing. The lines and columns of careful ciphers mocked him. Their sums and products climaxed into silent gibberish. The careful effort and attention of hours had come to naught. He checked the figures and drawings, and checked again as the howling wind tore at the pages and the first hard spatters of frozen rain beat down on his back. He looked at one page and another and another and then the answer leapt out: the scrolls were flawed - on a vexingly simple point - but the failing was only now apparent after time had run out and the storm was upon him.
His anger was instant and white hot. Sweeping the sodden scrolls and pages of notes and careful calculations into a ball in one hand and grasping the shabby staff in the other he scrambled, stumbling, to the top of the streaming bank to face the full force of the blinding snow. He howled obscenities into the wind, his face purple with rage.
The others watched in silence as the man screamed at the storm. Finally he fell silent, spent, and slumped against his staff. He let slip the useless papers and they scattered and quickly disappeared downwind into the formless white oblivion that had become the world.
Finally, the leader of the others stepped forward.
"I guess this means I can't get the sewer past the 10"X10"X14" tee, the proposed power vault, and the natural gas crossing without putting in another manhole, right?"
And how was YOUR day?
There was much, much work to be done. They waited in the cold.
The man was tired. His staff, spattered with mud, was propped against the bench almost as an afterthought. He had grappled with many trying and subtle puzzles for too many hours under the lowering gray sky. The bitterly cold wind buffeted him as he bent over his workbench and split his attention between solving the riddle before him and preserving his pencil, papers, and notes. The storm was approaching so quickly but the answer continued to escape him. He could feel the damp in his scarred hands and the wrist he'd broken so long ago twinged as the horizon shrank under a bar of steel colored clouds.
The scrolls offered no answers. Even his box of numbers, so often the key to untangling the knottiest of problems, served only as a paperweight in this moment of vexation. His silent staff trembled in the rising wind. Vanity goaded him to tidy it whenever opportunity offered. In this time and place so marked by disorder and casual filth the white luster of the staff stood as his icon for the order that was meant to come.
Nothing. The lines and columns of careful ciphers mocked him. Their sums and products climaxed into silent gibberish. The careful effort and attention of hours had come to naught. He checked the figures and drawings, and checked again as the howling wind tore at the pages and the first hard spatters of frozen rain beat down on his back. He looked at one page and another and another and then the answer leapt out: the scrolls were flawed - on a vexingly simple point - but the failing was only now apparent after time had run out and the storm was upon him.
His anger was instant and white hot. Sweeping the sodden scrolls and pages of notes and careful calculations into a ball in one hand and grasping the shabby staff in the other he scrambled, stumbling, to the top of the streaming bank to face the full force of the blinding snow. He howled obscenities into the wind, his face purple with rage.
The others watched in silence as the man screamed at the storm. Finally he fell silent, spent, and slumped against his staff. He let slip the useless papers and they scattered and quickly disappeared downwind into the formless white oblivion that had become the world.
Finally, the leader of the others stepped forward.
"I guess this means I can't get the sewer past the 10"X10"X14" tee, the proposed power vault, and the natural gas crossing without putting in another manhole, right?"
And how was YOUR day?
Sunday, January 15, 2006
In Our Time
We stand at the dawn of history, you and I.
Well, not exactly dawn. Not if we want to be completely honest. It's just after noon, mountain standard time, here in Utah. That doesn't change the fact that what happened five minutes back (sausage, eggs, toast, and coffee, if you must know) is immutable fact and unchangeable as far as it is in our power to change anything.
One of the ongoing crises taking up bandwidth these days revolves around the Iranian march to offensive nuclear capability:
"Iran's "red line" step in Western eyes was removing IAEA seals to access equipment that purifies uranium, a key component in nuclear power or, if enriched to a higher level, in weaponry."
The mullahs and their hand-picked "president" are intent on pulling out every stop to give progressive multiculturalist westerners a chance to assist in their own annihilation:
"Why are you damaging the good name of the security council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked. 'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you object and resort to threats."
Our weapons have been on the shelf for fifty years, with two exceptions of combat that ended a world war and others for testing.
If somebody - specifically the french - had exercised force on a bullet/infantry scale in 1936 when Hitler reoccupied Rhineland, there probably wouldn't have been a mushroom cloud over Trinity site in 1945. Probably is as close as I can say - history takes many paths. But without a megalomaniac like Hitler the leadership of Nazi Germany would certainly have dissolved into bickering criminal fiefdoms.
Consider the situation in Iran. Their president is merely the figurehead chosen by the mullahs. There is no popular majority support for either him or the mullahs, nor is their much pretence of one. What to do...what to do?
Kicking the Wehrmacht out of the Rhur would have destroyed Hitler's facade of invulnerability in 1936. The failure on the part of france (possessor of the largest army on the planet at that time) to crush what amounted to battalion-sized military invasion was the top step of the rapid descent into appeasement, paralysis, and complacency that marked the beginning of the German march to World War II: involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Krystal Nacht, occupation of Austria, "Peace in our time" at Munich, the von Ribbentrop/Molotov non-aggression pact with the Soviets, the invasion of Czechoslovakia (violating the Munich agreement), and finally the invasion of Poland... which triggered mutual assistance treaties ala 1914.
Jeff Goldstein posts on an article speculating on a possible 2007 war.
Belmont Club weighs in as well:
"Both the regime in Teheran and Washington are like Olympic wrestlers grappling within a narrowly bounded mat. The instant anyone should step or be forced outside the mat the buzzer will sound and a new and deadlier match will begin. Unfortunately the boundaries of the arena are invisible to both sides. How far can America push Iran? How far can Iran push America? Iran has the advantage of knowing that the US will stop short of overt military action against them -- for the time being. But it has the disadvantage of not knowing how far it can let Al Qaeda and Hezbollah go without bringing down the spectators from the stands."
And lastly, but closest to my own take, is Victor Davis Hanson:
"Finally, the public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come."
I believe that history pivots on the actions of individuals. The "Great Man" theory is mentioned as being out of favor in the linked Wiki entry... but they explain "out of favor" being based on:
"In general there is a belief that history which only follows around "great men", especially when "greatness" is determined primarily by political status, is a shallow view of the past, and additionally one which excludes entire groups of people from being part of "history", including labor forces, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, and, as the name "Great men" would suggest, women. As such, "Great man history" is, within the historical profession today, usually used as a pejorative term."
Just because they don't like the implications or possible focus of the Great Man school doesn't make them right. Societies move on inertia.
Only individuals take the hard roads as a wilfull act.
In my opinion, George W. Bush is one of history's great men. The conventional wisdoms that run behind or through the above linked articles seems to range from "Iran won't act until after 2008" - thus begging the question "what then?" to "Military action is physically/politically impossible at this time" to which I say bullshit.
On one side we have a mullahocracy figureheaded by a suicide bomber waiting only for his special bomb. On the other we have the elected representative of the world's foremost republic, a leader already on record as stating that there will not be a nuclear armed Iran.
(UPDATE:) We have the history of missed opportunities of the twentieth century, and the subsequent costs, as a backdrop. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Mohammed wrote the Koran. RTFM, as they say in customer support...(end UPDATE).
I am convinced that we will move militarily against Iran before the end of this spring. The targets will be leadership and military infrastructure. We will occupy key sites within Iran. Beyond that, I don't have a clue.
Discuss? All one or two of you, I mean. Lol...
Well, not exactly dawn. Not if we want to be completely honest. It's just after noon, mountain standard time, here in Utah. That doesn't change the fact that what happened five minutes back (sausage, eggs, toast, and coffee, if you must know) is immutable fact and unchangeable as far as it is in our power to change anything.
One of the ongoing crises taking up bandwidth these days revolves around the Iranian march to offensive nuclear capability:
"Iran's "red line" step in Western eyes was removing IAEA seals to access equipment that purifies uranium, a key component in nuclear power or, if enriched to a higher level, in weaponry."
The mullahs and their hand-picked "president" are intent on pulling out every stop to give progressive multiculturalist westerners a chance to assist in their own annihilation:
"Why are you damaging the good name of the security council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked. 'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you object and resort to threats."
Our weapons have been on the shelf for fifty years, with two exceptions of combat that ended a world war and others for testing.
If somebody - specifically the french - had exercised force on a bullet/infantry scale in 1936 when Hitler reoccupied Rhineland, there probably wouldn't have been a mushroom cloud over Trinity site in 1945. Probably is as close as I can say - history takes many paths. But without a megalomaniac like Hitler the leadership of Nazi Germany would certainly have dissolved into bickering criminal fiefdoms.
Consider the situation in Iran. Their president is merely the figurehead chosen by the mullahs. There is no popular majority support for either him or the mullahs, nor is their much pretence of one. What to do...what to do?
Kicking the Wehrmacht out of the Rhur would have destroyed Hitler's facade of invulnerability in 1936. The failure on the part of france (possessor of the largest army on the planet at that time) to crush what amounted to battalion-sized military invasion was the top step of the rapid descent into appeasement, paralysis, and complacency that marked the beginning of the German march to World War II: involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Krystal Nacht, occupation of Austria, "Peace in our time" at Munich, the von Ribbentrop/Molotov non-aggression pact with the Soviets, the invasion of Czechoslovakia (violating the Munich agreement), and finally the invasion of Poland... which triggered mutual assistance treaties ala 1914.
Jeff Goldstein posts on an article speculating on a possible 2007 war.
Belmont Club weighs in as well:
"Both the regime in Teheran and Washington are like Olympic wrestlers grappling within a narrowly bounded mat. The instant anyone should step or be forced outside the mat the buzzer will sound and a new and deadlier match will begin. Unfortunately the boundaries of the arena are invisible to both sides. How far can America push Iran? How far can Iran push America? Iran has the advantage of knowing that the US will stop short of overt military action against them -- for the time being. But it has the disadvantage of not knowing how far it can let Al Qaeda and Hezbollah go without bringing down the spectators from the stands."
And lastly, but closest to my own take, is Victor Davis Hanson:
"Finally, the public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come."
I believe that history pivots on the actions of individuals. The "Great Man" theory is mentioned as being out of favor in the linked Wiki entry... but they explain "out of favor" being based on:
"In general there is a belief that history which only follows around "great men", especially when "greatness" is determined primarily by political status, is a shallow view of the past, and additionally one which excludes entire groups of people from being part of "history", including labor forces, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, and, as the name "Great men" would suggest, women. As such, "Great man history" is, within the historical profession today, usually used as a pejorative term."
Just because they don't like the implications or possible focus of the Great Man school doesn't make them right. Societies move on inertia.
Only individuals take the hard roads as a wilfull act.
In my opinion, George W. Bush is one of history's great men. The conventional wisdoms that run behind or through the above linked articles seems to range from "Iran won't act until after 2008" - thus begging the question "what then?" to "Military action is physically/politically impossible at this time" to which I say bullshit.
On one side we have a mullahocracy figureheaded by a suicide bomber waiting only for his special bomb. On the other we have the elected representative of the world's foremost republic, a leader already on record as stating that there will not be a nuclear armed Iran.
(UPDATE:) We have the history of missed opportunities of the twentieth century, and the subsequent costs, as a backdrop. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Mohammed wrote the Koran. RTFM, as they say in customer support...(end UPDATE).
I am convinced that we will move militarily against Iran before the end of this spring. The targets will be leadership and military infrastructure. We will occupy key sites within Iran. Beyond that, I don't have a clue.
Discuss? All one or two of you, I mean. Lol...
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Happy New Year
I don't have much to say as 2005 comes to an end. It has been a good year, on balance, for the Team.
Tonight Mrs. Tmj and I are home alone. The Goddesses have social commitments and it will be just mom and I watching the ball drop at midnight.
Used to be I'd pull the cannon out and fire a blank round at the stroke, but there are just too many old folks with weak hearts in the neighborhood and it's raining too much to make a pull down to the park worth it.
Old age may be creeping up on me.
I don't have any resolutions this year. There's much I can do to improve; I'll let you know how things go (if only intermittently) as the new year unrolls.
Predictions for the next year:
1. Iran and Syria will be under new management, Iran first. I see a spring strike against Iran's nuclear infrastructure and other critical military assets.
2. Republicans pick up two or three house seats, and at least two senate seats. They don't deserve either, but more Red staters will vote to keep democrats out than doctrinaire conservative Republicans will stay home in protest of the disgraceful lack of leadership and discipline on display in the current caucus.
2a. Please PLEASE replace Frist.
3. There will be multiple indictments in the NSA leak case, and more than a few pleas.
3a. One of the pleas will be made by a sitting democratic congressmen/senator.
3b. Indicted FS or CIA professionals won't be offered deals. There will be a message sent.
4. Photo I.D. will be required for the 2008 general elections. This prediction is based on the widespread fraud to come in November of 2006, which will set standards of deceit and chicanery that Mayor Daley or LBJ would blush to even consider.
5. Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will lose their leadership positions before summer.
5a. In the event this doesn't happen, increase the numbers in prediction number two by at least two house seats.
6. The U.S. economy will cool off about a percentage point worth of GDP during the winter months. By March, Paul Krugman will announce the looming end of running water and flush toilets. TmjUtah and millions of other small investors will see that column and invest in blue chips, small caps, and index funds and realize double - digit gains by October. Shucks, it worked last year...
7. Hybrid cars will become more popular but battery replacement costs will begin to become a factor in resale value. This fact will go underreported.
8. Michael Yon will not receive the Pulitzer Prize. Damn it.
9. Kofi Anaan will retire to be dictator of a small African country. Possibly Berkley.
10. The EU economy will contract four percent. At least four percent, as far as anybody will be able to tell, given the way they do accounting over there.
Tonight Mrs. Tmj and I are home alone. The Goddesses have social commitments and it will be just mom and I watching the ball drop at midnight.
Used to be I'd pull the cannon out and fire a blank round at the stroke, but there are just too many old folks with weak hearts in the neighborhood and it's raining too much to make a pull down to the park worth it.
Old age may be creeping up on me.
I don't have any resolutions this year. There's much I can do to improve; I'll let you know how things go (if only intermittently) as the new year unrolls.
Predictions for the next year:
1. Iran and Syria will be under new management, Iran first. I see a spring strike against Iran's nuclear infrastructure and other critical military assets.
2. Republicans pick up two or three house seats, and at least two senate seats. They don't deserve either, but more Red staters will vote to keep democrats out than doctrinaire conservative Republicans will stay home in protest of the disgraceful lack of leadership and discipline on display in the current caucus.
2a. Please PLEASE replace Frist.
3. There will be multiple indictments in the NSA leak case, and more than a few pleas.
3a. One of the pleas will be made by a sitting democratic congressmen/senator.
3b. Indicted FS or CIA professionals won't be offered deals. There will be a message sent.
4. Photo I.D. will be required for the 2008 general elections. This prediction is based on the widespread fraud to come in November of 2006, which will set standards of deceit and chicanery that Mayor Daley or LBJ would blush to even consider.
5. Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will lose their leadership positions before summer.
5a. In the event this doesn't happen, increase the numbers in prediction number two by at least two house seats.
6. The U.S. economy will cool off about a percentage point worth of GDP during the winter months. By March, Paul Krugman will announce the looming end of running water and flush toilets. TmjUtah and millions of other small investors will see that column and invest in blue chips, small caps, and index funds and realize double - digit gains by October. Shucks, it worked last year...
7. Hybrid cars will become more popular but battery replacement costs will begin to become a factor in resale value. This fact will go underreported.
8. Michael Yon will not receive the Pulitzer Prize. Damn it.
9. Kofi Anaan will retire to be dictator of a small African country. Possibly Berkley.
10. The EU economy will contract four percent. At least four percent, as far as anybody will be able to tell, given the way they do accounting over there.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
A Message From The East
We've been here two days.
The family is great. The women have been cooking since they crossed the threshold. The garage is the designated cold room, and inside there on a groaning table sits seven kinds of pie, a spread of foil-covered casserole platters, and bottles of soda, beer, soy milk, and eggnog.
The skies are clear, tempatures fair. We have about six inches of snow left on the lawn from last week's storm. Rain forecast for tomorrow.
All the presents are bought. We will be wrapping tonight, but there are NO bicycles to assemble. The snake has been fed. There are no youngers still pensive of Doing The Wrong Thing and somehow causing Santa to pass us by.
This house is full of love, none the less. All except the corner where the dining tables are shoved together in an "L" shape. That's where the Uno game is going hot and heavy, and sometimes the nieces and nephews learn new words. All in good fun, though. "You BASTARD!" can in fact be said in the holiday spirit.
Notes:
(1) I've seen more "Bush 04" stickers here than I ever did in Utah.
(2) The only sidewalk argument I've seen outside a mall was between two folks standing behind a car plastered with "No More BUSHit" stickers and a full-poster board panel "Bush Must GO!!!" sign in the back window.
Most unhappy folk. Dropping the "F" bomb and not following up with the blow is such bad form. Words mean things.
(3) Ended up behind a car on the 3 with a bumper-length bumpersticker. It read "Hey, peaceniks: You're supposed to support OUR troops, not the other side, you ungrateful bastards!" - plus a smaller one on the window that read "No oil for pacifists".
I LIKE New Hampshire. I haven't been able to run down Mark Steyn yet, but I understand he travels a lot.
Mrs. Tmj and I are taking a drive up the coast on Monday unless the weather just crushes us.
Merry Christmas!
The family is great. The women have been cooking since they crossed the threshold. The garage is the designated cold room, and inside there on a groaning table sits seven kinds of pie, a spread of foil-covered casserole platters, and bottles of soda, beer, soy milk, and eggnog.
The skies are clear, tempatures fair. We have about six inches of snow left on the lawn from last week's storm. Rain forecast for tomorrow.
All the presents are bought. We will be wrapping tonight, but there are NO bicycles to assemble. The snake has been fed. There are no youngers still pensive of Doing The Wrong Thing and somehow causing Santa to pass us by.
This house is full of love, none the less. All except the corner where the dining tables are shoved together in an "L" shape. That's where the Uno game is going hot and heavy, and sometimes the nieces and nephews learn new words. All in good fun, though. "You BASTARD!" can in fact be said in the holiday spirit.
Notes:
(1) I've seen more "Bush 04" stickers here than I ever did in Utah.
(2) The only sidewalk argument I've seen outside a mall was between two folks standing behind a car plastered with "No More BUSHit" stickers and a full-poster board panel "Bush Must GO!!!" sign in the back window.
Most unhappy folk. Dropping the "F" bomb and not following up with the blow is such bad form. Words mean things.
(3) Ended up behind a car on the 3 with a bumper-length bumpersticker. It read "Hey, peaceniks: You're supposed to support OUR troops, not the other side, you ungrateful bastards!" - plus a smaller one on the window that read "No oil for pacifists".
I LIKE New Hampshire. I haven't been able to run down Mark Steyn yet, but I understand he travels a lot.
Mrs. Tmj and I are taking a drive up the coast on Monday unless the weather just crushes us.
Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
We are LEAVING!!
Until the 28th, we'll be in Nashua, NH*, celebrating Christmas with the extended clan.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
*TmjUtah needs meds anywhere east of Denver!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
*TmjUtah needs meds anywhere east of Denver!
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Required Reading
Mark Steyn, this time around:
"And no, I'm not questioning their patriotism. Honestly, who can be bothered questioning anything so footling as Howard Dean's patriotism? If you're a Democratic patriot and you're outraged by my linking your party to the "insurgents," take it up with your leaders: They're the ones who've over-invested the party in American failure. And instead of being angry at me you should be ashamed of them."
I don't think we'll know just how much self-inflicted damage the Dems have sustained until 2006. That's what democracy is about - accountability.
(via Lucianne.com)
"And no, I'm not questioning their patriotism. Honestly, who can be bothered questioning anything so footling as Howard Dean's patriotism? If you're a Democratic patriot and you're outraged by my linking your party to the "insurgents," take it up with your leaders: They're the ones who've over-invested the party in American failure. And instead of being angry at me you should be ashamed of them."
I don't think we'll know just how much self-inflicted damage the Dems have sustained until 2006. That's what democracy is about - accountability.
(via Lucianne.com)
Monday, December 12, 2005
Elsewhere
There's an interesting post up at Captain's Quarters.
Seems an article got published on Salon, authored by a self-described teacher of radical philosophy. He questions whether or not it's time for him to sack up and declare the revolution.
What utter crap.
Please read the Captain's post on the subject. He has extensive quotes from the subscription-only article.
My comment on his thread follows (there's a grundle of good ones there):
ol·i·gar·chy Audio pronunciation of "Oligarchy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (l-gärk, l-)
n. pl. ol·i·gar·chies
1.
1. Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.
2. Those making up such a government.
2. A state governed by a few persons.
(from Dictionary.com)
Mr. Tennis didn't pick up a dictionary before he reached for the vaseline.
Mr. Bush is a member of what could be regarded as a politically dynastic family.
I guess the Kennedy's could be thought of that way, too.
Al Gore's dad was a senator. Is Al Gore an oligarch?
Where does the power come from? That's the question.
In my book, it's not power that matters in American politics. It's the responsibility of office - and the periodic accountability to the governed and the continuous process of checks and balances of the system on the holders of the offices in question.
Mr. Tennis isn't a revolutionary in waiting. He doesn't live in an oligarchy. He is a member of a political movement that has lost the trust and support of electoral majorities across the nation.
He is, in short, a loser.
The adult response to losing on any given Sunday is to get up on Monday resolved to identify what factors led to failure in the past contest and to prepare for the next opportunity to succeed. This demands honesty and objective clarity... which is where the wheels fall off for folks like Mr. Tennis.
The Democrats/Left/Progressives/Herd o' Cats that comprises Mr. Tennis fellow travellers persist in bringing flawed product to the marketplace of ideas.
Americans don't want income redistribution. They don't think that male/white/religious automatically equals chauvinist/racist/snake dancer. They don't think that the bulk of American History belongs in the text of an indictment from some UN/Hague court. They like to keep most of what they earn - and they would like to see what they do pay in taxes spent efficiently and wisely. They want freedom of religion - not from religion. Americans like clean air and water. They don't like being told they are terrorists for driving a certain class of motor vehicle. Americans don't really care what Hollywood, high profile university icons, race pimps,or media has to say about .... well, frankly, anything, if it can' t be verified via source documents or stands up to historical scrutiny.
Americans don't want whiners. We don't want good intentions in a vacuum of results. And we certainly don't want people like Howard Dean near sharp objects, much less the levers of national responsibility. We want clear stands on issues, independent of whether or not women and minorities will be most affected. Or if "the children" are going to get a special slice.
Oh, and we want to be defended when we are attacked. We want to take the fight to the enemy, where the enemy lives, and make sure that he NEVER forgets the experience.
We are one nation, forged out of the achievements and constant,continuing potential of the many - the result of the sum of individual freedom striving toward our own definition of happiness, repeated across hundreds of millions of lives every day stretching back more than two centuries.
The Democrats seek victims. We are better than three decades worth of elections into trying to make the point that we need leaders, not nannies. The shrill, empty bloviating as typified by Mr. Tennis' submission has been long common on Left blogs/Indie media sites/The Nation; it is remarkable here only in that it surfaced on Salon, and surfaced now, on the eve of Iraq's parliamentary elections.
The 'fringe' has been the heart and soul of the Democrat party since 2000. Losers, and bereft of the maturity to look at themselves for a fraction of a second to honestly ask "why?" they loose under this free market of elections and ideas. They lose elections... so they question the legitimacy not only of certain races, but now they are moving the argument to the legitimacy of elections at all.
Because they lose.
Screw 'em. I rather think that "direct action" will continue to be under-attended marches, point vandalism, and freak shows ala Cindy Sheehan. But if they want to formally line up against democracy with al Q and take it to the streets - they will be the visiting team.
And they'll lose.
Seems an article got published on Salon, authored by a self-described teacher of radical philosophy. He questions whether or not it's time for him to sack up and declare the revolution.
What utter crap.
Please read the Captain's post on the subject. He has extensive quotes from the subscription-only article.
My comment on his thread follows (there's a grundle of good ones there):
ol·i·gar·chy Audio pronunciation of "Oligarchy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (l-gärk, l-)
n. pl. ol·i·gar·chies
1.
1. Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.
2. Those making up such a government.
2. A state governed by a few persons.
(from Dictionary.com)
Mr. Tennis didn't pick up a dictionary before he reached for the vaseline.
Mr. Bush is a member of what could be regarded as a politically dynastic family.
I guess the Kennedy's could be thought of that way, too.
Al Gore's dad was a senator. Is Al Gore an oligarch?
Where does the power come from? That's the question.
In my book, it's not power that matters in American politics. It's the responsibility of office - and the periodic accountability to the governed and the continuous process of checks and balances of the system on the holders of the offices in question.
Mr. Tennis isn't a revolutionary in waiting. He doesn't live in an oligarchy. He is a member of a political movement that has lost the trust and support of electoral majorities across the nation.
He is, in short, a loser.
The adult response to losing on any given Sunday is to get up on Monday resolved to identify what factors led to failure in the past contest and to prepare for the next opportunity to succeed. This demands honesty and objective clarity... which is where the wheels fall off for folks like Mr. Tennis.
The Democrats/Left/Progressives/Herd o' Cats that comprises Mr. Tennis fellow travellers persist in bringing flawed product to the marketplace of ideas.
Americans don't want income redistribution. They don't think that male/white/religious automatically equals chauvinist/racist/snake dancer. They don't think that the bulk of American History belongs in the text of an indictment from some UN/Hague court. They like to keep most of what they earn - and they would like to see what they do pay in taxes spent efficiently and wisely. They want freedom of religion - not from religion. Americans like clean air and water. They don't like being told they are terrorists for driving a certain class of motor vehicle. Americans don't really care what Hollywood, high profile university icons, race pimps,or media has to say about .... well, frankly, anything, if it can' t be verified via source documents or stands up to historical scrutiny.
Americans don't want whiners. We don't want good intentions in a vacuum of results. And we certainly don't want people like Howard Dean near sharp objects, much less the levers of national responsibility. We want clear stands on issues, independent of whether or not women and minorities will be most affected. Or if "the children" are going to get a special slice.
Oh, and we want to be defended when we are attacked. We want to take the fight to the enemy, where the enemy lives, and make sure that he NEVER forgets the experience.
We are one nation, forged out of the achievements and constant,continuing potential of the many - the result of the sum of individual freedom striving toward our own definition of happiness, repeated across hundreds of millions of lives every day stretching back more than two centuries.
The Democrats seek victims. We are better than three decades worth of elections into trying to make the point that we need leaders, not nannies. The shrill, empty bloviating as typified by Mr. Tennis' submission has been long common on Left blogs/Indie media sites/The Nation; it is remarkable here only in that it surfaced on Salon, and surfaced now, on the eve of Iraq's parliamentary elections.
The 'fringe' has been the heart and soul of the Democrat party since 2000. Losers, and bereft of the maturity to look at themselves for a fraction of a second to honestly ask "why?" they loose under this free market of elections and ideas. They lose elections... so they question the legitimacy not only of certain races, but now they are moving the argument to the legitimacy of elections at all.
Because they lose.
Screw 'em. I rather think that "direct action" will continue to be under-attended marches, point vandalism, and freak shows ala Cindy Sheehan. But if they want to formally line up against democracy with al Q and take it to the streets - they will be the visiting team.
And they'll lose.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Sick Call
I don't know what's wrong with me, but I've been in decline for about two weeks and it finally caught up with me yesterday.
Looking back on my posts of the last week, even I can see more rough edges than usual; bad sentences, mixed tenses, the whole nine yards. See?
That I lack the ability to clearly ariticulate my thoughts in no way changes the fact that the Democratic Party has become a pathetic group of third-best choices for any problem. I am muddled, in pain, and exhausted. I worry that a sizeable minority of my fellow Americans are clearly incapable of pouring piss out of a boot, else they would not have come to be represented by such a constellation of losers as is their current crop. My disgust at the craven behaviour by the Republican majorities in both houses is just icing at the cake.
But at least the Republicans fight.
The latest chapter in bad faith Democrat pontificating comes from Sen. Daniel Inoyue, senior Democratic senator from Hawaii and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in World War II:
"The Republican Party’s latest ad is a shameful and disgusting attempt to distract the American people from the problems in Iraq."
Shameful? Disgusting? What about your own party chair declaring the war lost? Or you r pathetic colleague's blithe assertion that our troops are terrorists? Your party is become a greater threat to democracy than the current terrorists, and to be honest, more insidious and lethal over time than the enemy you fought against and for which you were awarded our nation's highest honor.
McKinney. Clinton. Dean. Pelosi. Reid. Wexler. Leahy. Kennedy. Boxer. Feinstein. Kerry. Murtha. And now Inoyue. They all shriek loudest when their own words are quoted. Losers. I cannot imagine any of those names affixed to a Declaration of Independence, or a Constitution written by people that would be free. Now manifestoes - they'd line up for an opportunity to sign one of those.
On December 15, the people of Iraq will vote for their first permament, constitutional government. This event has been made possible by the leadership of the United States and the actions of our, and our allies, armed forces. In the face of fanatic and sometimes suicidal resistance by former Baathists, foreign jihadists, and the Democrat Party, the people of Iraq are taking their third huge step toward a future without dictators.
Go read this at Powerline.
John's last paragraph expresses exactly what I have been trying to say for the last two weeks, and does it superbly.
(via Powerline)
Looking back on my posts of the last week, even I can see more rough edges than usual; bad sentences, mixed tenses, the whole nine yards. See?
That I lack the ability to clearly ariticulate my thoughts in no way changes the fact that the Democratic Party has become a pathetic group of third-best choices for any problem. I am muddled, in pain, and exhausted. I worry that a sizeable minority of my fellow Americans are clearly incapable of pouring piss out of a boot, else they would not have come to be represented by such a constellation of losers as is their current crop. My disgust at the craven behaviour by the Republican majorities in both houses is just icing at the cake.
But at least the Republicans fight.
The latest chapter in bad faith Democrat pontificating comes from Sen. Daniel Inoyue, senior Democratic senator from Hawaii and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in World War II:
"The Republican Party’s latest ad is a shameful and disgusting attempt to distract the American people from the problems in Iraq."
Shameful? Disgusting? What about your own party chair declaring the war lost? Or you r pathetic colleague's blithe assertion that our troops are terrorists? Your party is become a greater threat to democracy than the current terrorists, and to be honest, more insidious and lethal over time than the enemy you fought against and for which you were awarded our nation's highest honor.
McKinney. Clinton. Dean. Pelosi. Reid. Wexler. Leahy. Kennedy. Boxer. Feinstein. Kerry. Murtha. And now Inoyue. They all shriek loudest when their own words are quoted. Losers. I cannot imagine any of those names affixed to a Declaration of Independence, or a Constitution written by people that would be free. Now manifestoes - they'd line up for an opportunity to sign one of those.
On December 15, the people of Iraq will vote for their first permament, constitutional government. This event has been made possible by the leadership of the United States and the actions of our, and our allies, armed forces. In the face of fanatic and sometimes suicidal resistance by former Baathists, foreign jihadists, and the Democrat Party, the people of Iraq are taking their third huge step toward a future without dictators.
Go read this at Powerline.
John's last paragraph expresses exactly what I have been trying to say for the last two weeks, and does it superbly.
(via Powerline)
Friday, December 09, 2005
Sins of Omission
Bubba's back in the news:
"MONTREAL ( [al] AFP) - Former US president
Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem."
and later:
"To loud cheers from an audience of thousands of delegates and green activists, Clinton said: "I liked the Kyoto Protocol. I helped to write it. And I signed it."
As did Al Gore, too. I forget which release; I think it was Gore v3.2b (pre earthtones/alphamale).
Question for the class: What is the relevance of the number "0" to this story?
The answer is here, in the paragraph headed "Position of the United States".
What a country. We can afford TWO former presidents more damaging to the nation after they are out of office than they were when they were in. And that's a pretty high bar for these two gents.
Only in America.
"MONTREAL ( [al] AFP) - Former US president
Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem."
and later:
"To loud cheers from an audience of thousands of delegates and green activists, Clinton said: "I liked the Kyoto Protocol. I helped to write it. And I signed it."
As did Al Gore, too. I forget which release; I think it was Gore v3.2b (pre earthtones/alphamale).
Question for the class: What is the relevance of the number "0" to this story?
The answer is here, in the paragraph headed "Position of the United States".
What a country. We can afford TWO former presidents more damaging to the nation after they are out of office than they were when they were in. And that's a pretty high bar for these two gents.
Only in America.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Cold Day
It's a cold day here in Utah. Snow and ice and a tough day in the field for me.
Things are chilly over at Jeff Goldstein's Protein Wisdom, too. I posted the first and last paragraphs of the following essay on his thread:
What's the ability to determine the origin of a nuclear weapon based on its isotope signature going to do for the hundreds/thousands/millions of dead people whose ashes that material will had to have been gleaned from?
I fully expect to wake up some fine morning (maybe this spring - maybe sooner) and find out that U.S. forces have bombed multiple sites in the nation of Iran and have troops ON THE GROUND in several locations.
As has been noted before, Bush has stated that Iran will not be allowed to produce or possess nuclear weapons. Not "shouldn't be" or "we oppose" but "will NOT be allowed".
We think in terms of politics, polls, and PR way too often. That's not what we have a government for. The Iranian mullahocracy is the executive arm of world terror. Saudis and a grundle of other barbarian regimes may write checks and send excess manpower off to jihad, but the organizing entity - from the top down - is the government of the nation of Iran. If the Iraqis win, the game is over for those in search of establishing any caliphate.
The Democrats have been losing elections yet remaining viable via entrenched PR for most of my adult life. Their core beliefs - or what passes for core beliefs depending on the makeup of the loose coalition of narrow interest groups fighting for power - pivot on income redistribution, identity politics, state control of critical industries (healthcare, pensions, energy, etc), and multicultural/postmodern templates that debase notions such as good character, honesty, piety, and patriotism as antiquated concepts that need to be quashed. They seek to dismantle the judiciary's role of interpeter of law and instead create a fiat legislative third branch.
The top of the party believes in nothing but getting that office another two or six years or maybe picking off the presidency. They'll pit one neighborhood against another, one ethnicity against another, one income group against another, or even side with foreign aggressors, as they are currently doing regarding the war.
They appeal and cultivate the sizable minority of Americans who embrace the concept that the cause of their own perceived want or failure can always be assigned outside of their own personal responsibility. Whatever amphorous agendas they propose today are indistinguishable to those that marked my teen years: malaise, a struggling economy, and a sad, sputtering failure to finish the bright beginnings of the civil rights era. I remember Social Security debates as far back as my junior high school years - and the Dems owned the house and senate at the time, yet failed to do more than talk. As a middling-teen, I couldn't square how a country that came so far in two hundred years, and had just finished winning WW2 less than a generation before I was born, could get beat in a tiny hole like Vietnam. A cutting part of it all was an absence of pride, and even more deadly, an absence of hope. The worst was that some people -important and PR-famous people- were saying we deserved to be miserable because of our previous successes.
Not hard to glom on to "shining city on a hill" after an adolescence marked by the seventies, let me tell you what.
I build stuff. Rather, the work I do is critical in getting stuff built. Shit doesn't just happen. The Soviet Union didn't collapse. I am proud that my years spent in uniform helped in a miniscule part to beat the Soviets into the dustbin of history. It was hard work, sometimes dangerous, often monotonous, but necessary to see the objective achieved.
Democrats don't build stuff. They are a parasite on the fuzzy ass of freedom. Fecund and bloated, and hopefully about ready to fall off, but they do still possess the ability to poison the host. They willfully pretend that tomorrow doesn't have to happen. Listen to replays of morning - after - election coverage from any of the last five or six national elections. Election day is a moment of decision all too rare. The bedrock evidence in lost races, seats, and governorships of their continuing decline are made to fade against the voluminous, shrill, biased pop culture/media that tries so hard to define a reality that just doesn't exist anymore - at least not for the Democrats and their herd of cats.
People who measure their lives by news cycles are horribly unsafe to allow anywhere near adult institutions. Get them their own blogs, or maybe their own coffeehouses or drumcircles - but keep them away from the institutions that are supposed to keep us free and our families safe. Please. 2006 is coming - do your part.
The only reasons that Iran has for developing nuclear weapons are to increase its ability to export terror from behind a nuclear threat, or, since we are dealing with fanatics, to carry out a genocidal attack on the nation of Israel, and possibly us or nations aligned with us such as Britain, Australia, or Japan. Suicidal, you say?
A democratic Iraq - unquestionably sovereign, economically viable, and politically functional across the tribes and ethnicities within the country - is a death sentence for jihadism. A nation of free Arabs, finally broken free of the shame generated by subservience to despots over the centuries, will become the epicenter of a pan-Arab reformation that can avert the climactic last confrontation between Islam and Western civilization.
That's the stakes on the table, folks.
G.W. Bush and his cabinet know it. I'm pretty sure that the concept never makes it past the daily morning turns on the mechanism that stretches Nancy Pelosi's face over her skull. The leader of the Democrat Party? I don't think he thinks at all anymore, if he ever did. He's a caricature of the stereotypical "little guy" - and I don't believe he ever got past "yeargh".
So I think that someday in the not too distant future, probably between CNN's coverage of Pam Anderson's latest boob job and a story on how low unemployment adversely effects women and minorities, we'll get a bulletin letting us know that at least one part of our polity still understands the world we live in and is willing, and able, to do the heavy lifting necessary to keep us free, and at least as safe as can be hoped for in a very troubled world.
Impeachment, you say? Excessive force? Unilateral? We, with all our bickering and faults, still successfully practice constitutional government. We, of all the industrialized world, are the standard of economic productivity and stability, even execution of justice, and so rich we can even afford democrats.
We are the single most sought after immigration destination on the planet. All people, all colors, all creeds, from everywhere - come here. Many die trying. Look through the noise - through the yearghs - and see the beauty that we are become. We must protect this shining city on a hill. Do not doubt that the barbarians are at the very gates.
With great power comes great responsibility. Bush understands that. I believe he'll act when necessary - and if even the IAEA says the balloonis going up, time is short indeed.
Things are chilly over at Jeff Goldstein's Protein Wisdom, too. I posted the first and last paragraphs of the following essay on his thread:
What's the ability to determine the origin of a nuclear weapon based on its isotope signature going to do for the hundreds/thousands/millions of dead people whose ashes that material will had to have been gleaned from?
I fully expect to wake up some fine morning (maybe this spring - maybe sooner) and find out that U.S. forces have bombed multiple sites in the nation of Iran and have troops ON THE GROUND in several locations.
As has been noted before, Bush has stated that Iran will not be allowed to produce or possess nuclear weapons. Not "shouldn't be" or "we oppose" but "will NOT be allowed".
We think in terms of politics, polls, and PR way too often. That's not what we have a government for. The Iranian mullahocracy is the executive arm of world terror. Saudis and a grundle of other barbarian regimes may write checks and send excess manpower off to jihad, but the organizing entity - from the top down - is the government of the nation of Iran. If the Iraqis win, the game is over for those in search of establishing any caliphate.
The Democrats have been losing elections yet remaining viable via entrenched PR for most of my adult life. Their core beliefs - or what passes for core beliefs depending on the makeup of the loose coalition of narrow interest groups fighting for power - pivot on income redistribution, identity politics, state control of critical industries (healthcare, pensions, energy, etc), and multicultural/postmodern templates that debase notions such as good character, honesty, piety, and patriotism as antiquated concepts that need to be quashed. They seek to dismantle the judiciary's role of interpeter of law and instead create a fiat legislative third branch.
The top of the party believes in nothing but getting that office another two or six years or maybe picking off the presidency. They'll pit one neighborhood against another, one ethnicity against another, one income group against another, or even side with foreign aggressors, as they are currently doing regarding the war.
They appeal and cultivate the sizable minority of Americans who embrace the concept that the cause of their own perceived want or failure can always be assigned outside of their own personal responsibility. Whatever amphorous agendas they propose today are indistinguishable to those that marked my teen years: malaise, a struggling economy, and a sad, sputtering failure to finish the bright beginnings of the civil rights era. I remember Social Security debates as far back as my junior high school years - and the Dems owned the house and senate at the time, yet failed to do more than talk. As a middling-teen, I couldn't square how a country that came so far in two hundred years, and had just finished winning WW2 less than a generation before I was born, could get beat in a tiny hole like Vietnam. A cutting part of it all was an absence of pride, and even more deadly, an absence of hope. The worst was that some people -important and PR-famous people- were saying we deserved to be miserable because of our previous successes.
Not hard to glom on to "shining city on a hill" after an adolescence marked by the seventies, let me tell you what.
I build stuff. Rather, the work I do is critical in getting stuff built. Shit doesn't just happen. The Soviet Union didn't collapse. I am proud that my years spent in uniform helped in a miniscule part to beat the Soviets into the dustbin of history. It was hard work, sometimes dangerous, often monotonous, but necessary to see the objective achieved.
Democrats don't build stuff. They are a parasite on the fuzzy ass of freedom. Fecund and bloated, and hopefully about ready to fall off, but they do still possess the ability to poison the host. They willfully pretend that tomorrow doesn't have to happen. Listen to replays of morning - after - election coverage from any of the last five or six national elections. Election day is a moment of decision all too rare. The bedrock evidence in lost races, seats, and governorships of their continuing decline are made to fade against the voluminous, shrill, biased pop culture/media that tries so hard to define a reality that just doesn't exist anymore - at least not for the Democrats and their herd of cats.
People who measure their lives by news cycles are horribly unsafe to allow anywhere near adult institutions. Get them their own blogs, or maybe their own coffeehouses or drumcircles - but keep them away from the institutions that are supposed to keep us free and our families safe. Please. 2006 is coming - do your part.
The only reasons that Iran has for developing nuclear weapons are to increase its ability to export terror from behind a nuclear threat, or, since we are dealing with fanatics, to carry out a genocidal attack on the nation of Israel, and possibly us or nations aligned with us such as Britain, Australia, or Japan. Suicidal, you say?
A democratic Iraq - unquestionably sovereign, economically viable, and politically functional across the tribes and ethnicities within the country - is a death sentence for jihadism. A nation of free Arabs, finally broken free of the shame generated by subservience to despots over the centuries, will become the epicenter of a pan-Arab reformation that can avert the climactic last confrontation between Islam and Western civilization.
That's the stakes on the table, folks.
G.W. Bush and his cabinet know it. I'm pretty sure that the concept never makes it past the daily morning turns on the mechanism that stretches Nancy Pelosi's face over her skull. The leader of the Democrat Party? I don't think he thinks at all anymore, if he ever did. He's a caricature of the stereotypical "little guy" - and I don't believe he ever got past "yeargh".
So I think that someday in the not too distant future, probably between CNN's coverage of Pam Anderson's latest boob job and a story on how low unemployment adversely effects women and minorities, we'll get a bulletin letting us know that at least one part of our polity still understands the world we live in and is willing, and able, to do the heavy lifting necessary to keep us free, and at least as safe as can be hoped for in a very troubled world.
Impeachment, you say? Excessive force? Unilateral? We, with all our bickering and faults, still successfully practice constitutional government. We, of all the industrialized world, are the standard of economic productivity and stability, even execution of justice, and so rich we can even afford democrats.
We are the single most sought after immigration destination on the planet. All people, all colors, all creeds, from everywhere - come here. Many die trying. Look through the noise - through the yearghs - and see the beauty that we are become. We must protect this shining city on a hill. Do not doubt that the barbarians are at the very gates.
With great power comes great responsibility. Bush understands that. I believe he'll act when necessary - and if even the IAEA says the balloonis going up, time is short indeed.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Technical Difficulties
Sunday, December 04, 2005
RFI: GPS
I use a Trimble GPS base/rover suite every day I go to work.
I know nothing about hand held units. I know how they work, and I've got some word - of - mouth on precisions that are possible, but I dont' know jack about brands.
We are flying to Boston then driving to Nashua, NH for a Christmas family reunion.
We are looking for a color screen GPS that can upload mappacks and be programmed for specific routes. It would be nice if it came bundled with a vehicle bracket and external antenna. I like rechargeable units, not batteries. Price range is flexible but I don't want to spend more than four hundred dollars.
I'm googling now, and will ask around at work tomorrow. Any input would be appreciated.
I know nothing about hand held units. I know how they work, and I've got some word - of - mouth on precisions that are possible, but I dont' know jack about brands.
We are flying to Boston then driving to Nashua, NH for a Christmas family reunion.
We are looking for a color screen GPS that can upload mappacks and be programmed for specific routes. It would be nice if it came bundled with a vehicle bracket and external antenna. I like rechargeable units, not batteries. Price range is flexible but I don't want to spend more than four hundred dollars.
I'm googling now, and will ask around at work tomorrow. Any input would be appreciated.
Required Reading On Cleanup Sunday
We're leaving for New Hampshire in three weeks. I've done four loads of laundry and cleaned two bathrooms, and am moving out to the kitchen next.
Take some time to read Mr. Steyn's latest thoughts:
"So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again."
That last line is important. Seems to me that over time the Democrats have established a pattern of committing to particularly disastrous talking points just prior to administration successes. The latest "cut & run" crop of nonsense may well join "worst economy since Hoover", "brutal Afghan winter", and "Bush lied" entries on the shelf marked "Stupid Things Said By Democrats: 2000 - XXXX".
(Via: Powerline)
Take some time to read Mr. Steyn's latest thoughts:
"So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again."
That last line is important. Seems to me that over time the Democrats have established a pattern of committing to particularly disastrous talking points just prior to administration successes. The latest "cut & run" crop of nonsense may well join "worst economy since Hoover", "brutal Afghan winter", and "Bush lied" entries on the shelf marked "Stupid Things Said By Democrats: 2000 - XXXX".
(Via: Powerline)
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Friday Night Last
I'm not going to edit anything on the previous post.
What you do in rage is yours, warts and all. That was all me.
Had a heck of a work week; winter has indeed arrived. Daily temps are low double digits except at dawn when we are setting up. Then it's really cold.
We've kicked some serious ass on this project. We being everyone from the landscapers to the Real Estate Professionals (REP, hereafter) and everyone including our happy few surveyors in between. I work better when I'm wound up sometimes. The last four days of last week were all of that.
I reward myself for work well done. Friday night I visited our local Barnes & Noble to pick up a book. I spotted my favorite local Leftist on the way in. He was sitting in the Starbucks corner, immersed in an earnest discussion with two folks I'd not seen before.
Call them Jerry Garcia and Mama Cass. That ought to be enough to let you know what the stage looked like.
I met My Favorite Leftist (MFL) three years ago, give or take, in this same Starbucks. His bio includes a stint in the Vietnam era army (DIA, no RVN tour), documentarian, writer of fiction and political commentary, eco activism, political activism, apartchik in the local Democrat party (until just recently), and the last time I saw him he was heading back to school for a masters in writing.
I bought the book, and gave him a wave as I was heading out the door. At that moment his guests stood up and made "See ya later" motions. MFL turned half way to face me and I saw that he was wearing a Che shirt. The one with "Hasta La Victoria Siempre" under the little bastard's picture.
I told you already that it's been a trying week. I just stood there and smiled until the white rage dissipated. I'm sure it only took a moment or two, but surely felf like forever.
I went over to the table - feeling this horrible smile on my face, not knowing WTF I had in mind to do. I was purely along for the ride - somebody else was pulling the levers right then. I was beaming. And bouncing in on the balls of my feet like a teenager. Or Muhammed Ali getting ready for work.
What follows is all paraphrase. I don't carry a tape or digital recorder but they might just have to change:
"How you doing, MFL?"
"Just fine, sir, just fine. I've left the Democrats. At least the ones in Utah. They are beyond saving."
Me: "???"
"They just don't get what we are going to have to do to win this war. Real progressives are committed to seeing freedom in Iraq, and we won't stand for any party that puts itself above that goal." His eyes were like marbles and he was sweating.
"MFL... (I had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing behind my eyes by now, and my smile was MINE and so big it hurt)... so if I understand you correctly, the hard Chomsky Left of Utah doesn't want anything to do with the Democrat party? Does this mean that Bush was right?"
Insert five minutes of capitalist crimes against indigenous populations, Bush's ties to Saudi cronies, the pending impeachment of Bush for lying, a sidetrack into why he's not a Sierra Club member since the fires of last summer - seems he thinks that controlled burns are o.k.; not to save any f*cking houses, mind you, but for the wildlife - and he just had to make that mighty step of not paying dues any more.
I still had the smile.
"MFL, why do you wear that shirt?"
"Che said these words leading REVOLUTIONARIES who were killing SIX THOUSAND of Batista's troops while Castro made speeches. He believed in action!"
"You really think he really killed six k in battle? If I remember correctly, Batista kind of forfeited the game early. How many priests, teachers, and other 'enemies of the revolution' go in that KIA total, MFL?"
MFL says, "He should have killed the boards of the corporations who supported Batis.."
And I laughed at him. Heads did turn. I haven't laughed so hard since the One True Love overdosed on wassabi at the Chinese Gourmet buffet.
"Good luck on the masters, MFL. NYU? Great school, I hear. And for writing, no less. I'm sure you'll get a fair hearing for your ideas there. Yes sirree. And too bad those Democrats just can't seem to keep your respect. You want the war won... but want Bush impeached for starting it. Good plan! Speak truth to power, always, and thanks for making my week."
The Left knows the Democrat party is dead. Now if we can just keep the zombies from hooking up with the dead of Cook County in 2006. Maybe we can drive a stake through the heart of our enemy's greatest weapon.
Related issues being discussed here and here.
What you do in rage is yours, warts and all. That was all me.
Had a heck of a work week; winter has indeed arrived. Daily temps are low double digits except at dawn when we are setting up. Then it's really cold.
We've kicked some serious ass on this project. We being everyone from the landscapers to the Real Estate Professionals (REP, hereafter) and everyone including our happy few surveyors in between. I work better when I'm wound up sometimes. The last four days of last week were all of that.
I reward myself for work well done. Friday night I visited our local Barnes & Noble to pick up a book. I spotted my favorite local Leftist on the way in. He was sitting in the Starbucks corner, immersed in an earnest discussion with two folks I'd not seen before.
Call them Jerry Garcia and Mama Cass. That ought to be enough to let you know what the stage looked like.
I met My Favorite Leftist (MFL) three years ago, give or take, in this same Starbucks. His bio includes a stint in the Vietnam era army (DIA, no RVN tour), documentarian, writer of fiction and political commentary, eco activism, political activism, apartchik in the local Democrat party (until just recently), and the last time I saw him he was heading back to school for a masters in writing.
I bought the book, and gave him a wave as I was heading out the door. At that moment his guests stood up and made "See ya later" motions. MFL turned half way to face me and I saw that he was wearing a Che shirt. The one with "Hasta La Victoria Siempre" under the little bastard's picture.
I told you already that it's been a trying week. I just stood there and smiled until the white rage dissipated. I'm sure it only took a moment or two, but surely felf like forever.
I went over to the table - feeling this horrible smile on my face, not knowing WTF I had in mind to do. I was purely along for the ride - somebody else was pulling the levers right then. I was beaming. And bouncing in on the balls of my feet like a teenager. Or Muhammed Ali getting ready for work.
What follows is all paraphrase. I don't carry a tape or digital recorder but they might just have to change:
"How you doing, MFL?"
"Just fine, sir, just fine. I've left the Democrats. At least the ones in Utah. They are beyond saving."
Me: "???"
"They just don't get what we are going to have to do to win this war. Real progressives are committed to seeing freedom in Iraq, and we won't stand for any party that puts itself above that goal." His eyes were like marbles and he was sweating.
"MFL... (I had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing behind my eyes by now, and my smile was MINE and so big it hurt)... so if I understand you correctly, the hard Chomsky Left of Utah doesn't want anything to do with the Democrat party? Does this mean that Bush was right?"
Insert five minutes of capitalist crimes against indigenous populations, Bush's ties to Saudi cronies, the pending impeachment of Bush for lying, a sidetrack into why he's not a Sierra Club member since the fires of last summer - seems he thinks that controlled burns are o.k.; not to save any f*cking houses, mind you, but for the wildlife - and he just had to make that mighty step of not paying dues any more.
I still had the smile.
"MFL, why do you wear that shirt?"
"Che said these words leading REVOLUTIONARIES who were killing SIX THOUSAND of Batista's troops while Castro made speeches. He believed in action!"
"You really think he really killed six k in battle? If I remember correctly, Batista kind of forfeited the game early. How many priests, teachers, and other 'enemies of the revolution' go in that KIA total, MFL?"
MFL says, "He should have killed the boards of the corporations who supported Batis.."
And I laughed at him. Heads did turn. I haven't laughed so hard since the One True Love overdosed on wassabi at the Chinese Gourmet buffet.
"Good luck on the masters, MFL. NYU? Great school, I hear. And for writing, no less. I'm sure you'll get a fair hearing for your ideas there. Yes sirree. And too bad those Democrats just can't seem to keep your respect. You want the war won... but want Bush impeached for starting it. Good plan! Speak truth to power, always, and thanks for making my week."
The Left knows the Democrat party is dead. Now if we can just keep the zombies from hooking up with the dead of Cook County in 2006. Maybe we can drive a stake through the heart of our enemy's greatest weapon.
Related issues being discussed here and here.
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