Friday, October 28, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Testing Times
I was schlumping through my news safari and found a "What General Are You" test on The Corner. Thanks, Mr. Goldberg.
Ulysses S. Grant
You scored 62 Wisdom, 58 Tactics, 65 Guts, and 59 Ruthlessness!
Like you, Grant went about the distasteful business of war realistically and grimly. His courage as a commander of forces and his powers of organization and administration made him the outstanding Northern general. Grant, though, had no problem throwing away lives on huge sieges of heavily defended positions. At times, Union casualties under Grant were over double that of the Confederacy. However, Grant was notably wise in supporting good commanders, especially Sheridan , William T. Sherman , and George H. Thomas. Made a full general in 1866, he was the first U.S. citizen to hold that rank.
Grant was a quartermaster during the Mexican War. A supply guy.
In his first battle as supreme commander of the Union Army Grant lead the Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan River, intent on destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. Combat was joined in a densely forested area known simply as "The Wilderness" and raged for six days and nights. The battle was fought first by regiments, then battalions, and finally fragments of companies and confused stragglers in burning summer heat and in nights lit by forest fires. Wounded men of both sides burned to death in the fires, and their screams figure prominently in diary and historical accounts of the battle.
When Grant finally began assembling his men on the far side of the Wilderness they were exhausted, filthy, and dispirited. In his first battle, he had lost thousands of men, and Lee had withdrawn a short distance and entrenched in the hopes that Grant would reprise the mistakes of Fredericksburg.
The Army of the Potomac had fought for four years across the same bloody strip of ground between Richmond and Washington, D.C.. Even when they managed to win a battle, the soldiers had always been ordered back to the District by their timid commanders. Much more often, the preceding springs of war had opened with grand Union offensives that ended in disgraceful shambles and ignominious defeats.
For four years, the Confederacy had whipped the Federals in battle and watched them march away.
Grant changed that. Upon reorganizing the bulk of his army, he laid a holding force on the entrenchments in front of him and issued the order to advance right, along Lee's lines. The Commander's Intent was published: the objective remained to find a flank or a weakness, and then attack with the maximum concentration of force with the objective of destroying the Army of Northern Virginia.
The Army of the Potomac raised a cheer. There were very few green recruits in the Army of the Potomac by the spring of 1864. They were veterans - many who had reenlisted after their first three year term - who knew full well what battle meant, even if the horrors to come in 1864 and 1865 eventually eclipsed what had passed before. Those men had fought under MacClellan, Hooker, and Burnside, only to be committed piecemeal to fights that would have been won had they been lead properly. They had fought and beaten Lee at Gettysberg in July of 1863, under Meade, only to watch the Confederates withdraw to fight another day.
They cheered, knowing that victory was in reach. And knowing the price that would likely be paid.
Grant fought a war of attrition because he knew that the Union could not lose the war except by refusing to use its power without restraint or remorse. He knew that the Confederacy had able leaders, but was incapable of fielding or equipping armies as was the North.
He also knew that there is nothing more contemptible in leadership than refusing to do the duty necessary to win.
The war we fight today began over thirty years ago. That a majority of us belatedly realized it was actually in progress only after the enemy managed to hit us at home is a sad testament of our complacency.
The anti-American crowd is celebrating an artificial data point today. 2000 is just a number. It doesn't mean anything at all when stacked up against the numbers of fallen over the last three decades, except this:
Those fallen men and women were fighting back.
The ones who remain in the fight are depending on us to stay the course until the job is done. For the next little while we have a leader who will do what is necessary to win. They are the most magnificent Americans of this generation. I give thanks for them every single day.
Will we do our part?
UPDATE: Bum link to the NRO Corner fixed.
I wrote the above post in about an hour, then walked away for an hour, then came back and diced/shuffled/cut/pasted/reworded for about fifteen minutes. The result: the cream got tossed out with the curds. Doesn't it just make you want to tear your hair out when you edit out the main point of a long essay?
Grant not only knew he had the tools at hand to win - he also knew, implicitly, the soul of the enemy. He knew that the landed southern aristocracy had to be destroyed. Until the self-annointed feudal lords of cotton quit leading their serfs into battle, there would always be a next battle. He and Sherman exchanged letters on this subject, and they make fascinating reading. They discussed many possible outcomes to the war, ranging from political collapse on the part of the North to a decades-long insurgency threat to be faced if the war ended any other way than unconditional surrender on the part of the south.
Democracy can work anywhere - once you've prepped the field. For it to work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond, we still have to kill quite a few more Islamic Jeff Davis's and Nathan Bedford Forrests.
Ulysses S. Grant
You scored 62 Wisdom, 58 Tactics, 65 Guts, and 59 Ruthlessness!
Like you, Grant went about the distasteful business of war realistically and grimly. His courage as a commander of forces and his powers of organization and administration made him the outstanding Northern general. Grant, though, had no problem throwing away lives on huge sieges of heavily defended positions. At times, Union casualties under Grant were over double that of the Confederacy. However, Grant was notably wise in supporting good commanders, especially Sheridan , William T. Sherman , and George H. Thomas. Made a full general in 1866, he was the first U.S. citizen to hold that rank.
Grant was a quartermaster during the Mexican War. A supply guy.
In his first battle as supreme commander of the Union Army Grant lead the Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan River, intent on destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. Combat was joined in a densely forested area known simply as "The Wilderness" and raged for six days and nights. The battle was fought first by regiments, then battalions, and finally fragments of companies and confused stragglers in burning summer heat and in nights lit by forest fires. Wounded men of both sides burned to death in the fires, and their screams figure prominently in diary and historical accounts of the battle.
When Grant finally began assembling his men on the far side of the Wilderness they were exhausted, filthy, and dispirited. In his first battle, he had lost thousands of men, and Lee had withdrawn a short distance and entrenched in the hopes that Grant would reprise the mistakes of Fredericksburg.
The Army of the Potomac had fought for four years across the same bloody strip of ground between Richmond and Washington, D.C.. Even when they managed to win a battle, the soldiers had always been ordered back to the District by their timid commanders. Much more often, the preceding springs of war had opened with grand Union offensives that ended in disgraceful shambles and ignominious defeats.
For four years, the Confederacy had whipped the Federals in battle and watched them march away.
Grant changed that. Upon reorganizing the bulk of his army, he laid a holding force on the entrenchments in front of him and issued the order to advance right, along Lee's lines. The Commander's Intent was published: the objective remained to find a flank or a weakness, and then attack with the maximum concentration of force with the objective of destroying the Army of Northern Virginia.
The Army of the Potomac raised a cheer. There were very few green recruits in the Army of the Potomac by the spring of 1864. They were veterans - many who had reenlisted after their first three year term - who knew full well what battle meant, even if the horrors to come in 1864 and 1865 eventually eclipsed what had passed before. Those men had fought under MacClellan, Hooker, and Burnside, only to be committed piecemeal to fights that would have been won had they been lead properly. They had fought and beaten Lee at Gettysberg in July of 1863, under Meade, only to watch the Confederates withdraw to fight another day.
They cheered, knowing that victory was in reach. And knowing the price that would likely be paid.
Grant fought a war of attrition because he knew that the Union could not lose the war except by refusing to use its power without restraint or remorse. He knew that the Confederacy had able leaders, but was incapable of fielding or equipping armies as was the North.
He also knew that there is nothing more contemptible in leadership than refusing to do the duty necessary to win.
The war we fight today began over thirty years ago. That a majority of us belatedly realized it was actually in progress only after the enemy managed to hit us at home is a sad testament of our complacency.
The anti-American crowd is celebrating an artificial data point today. 2000 is just a number. It doesn't mean anything at all when stacked up against the numbers of fallen over the last three decades, except this:
Those fallen men and women were fighting back.
The ones who remain in the fight are depending on us to stay the course until the job is done. For the next little while we have a leader who will do what is necessary to win. They are the most magnificent Americans of this generation. I give thanks for them every single day.
Will we do our part?
UPDATE: Bum link to the NRO Corner fixed.
I wrote the above post in about an hour, then walked away for an hour, then came back and diced/shuffled/cut/pasted/reworded for about fifteen minutes. The result: the cream got tossed out with the curds. Doesn't it just make you want to tear your hair out when you edit out the main point of a long essay?
Grant not only knew he had the tools at hand to win - he also knew, implicitly, the soul of the enemy. He knew that the landed southern aristocracy had to be destroyed. Until the self-annointed feudal lords of cotton quit leading their serfs into battle, there would always be a next battle. He and Sherman exchanged letters on this subject, and they make fascinating reading. They discussed many possible outcomes to the war, ranging from political collapse on the part of the North to a decades-long insurgency threat to be faced if the war ended any other way than unconditional surrender on the part of the south.
Democracy can work anywhere - once you've prepped the field. For it to work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond, we still have to kill quite a few more Islamic Jeff Davis's and Nathan Bedford Forrests.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Saturday (Feels Like Sunday)
We came home from the Tabby Mountain hunting area after ten o'clock last night. I had forgotten the stove, and neither Oldest Goddess nor I had brought our gloves.
The plan was to return this morning, charging hard up Provo Canyon at six a.m., but it was not to be.
When I woke at five a.m. this morning, my morning constitutional down the hallway to the bathroom became a death march. The alarm chirped at 0530.
ME: Woot! Hunting! First things first, though, just have to mosey down the hall for a moment.
LEGS: Good morning. Hope your plans for the day don't include us. Right OR left.
ME: ?!
LEGS: We did some math last night. Now on any given work day, we expect to carry you an average of six miles on the clock over a period of eight to ten hours. Care to guess what the average has been on your four hunting days?
ME: ?!
LEGS: Be that way if you want. The working figure we have is an average of ten - with a daily vertical change value of between 1500 and 2000 feet. Why can't you road hunt like all those other people?
ME: What union are you guys with?
LEGS: Meh. How about you slip into the Nikes, mow the lawn, wash some clothes, and maybe spend some time with Mom today? BTW, you get a free pass to the bathroom - but if you touch those boots get ready to learn how to walk on your hands.
ME: Hey, I just put new insoles in on Wednesday. Doesn't that mean anything?
LEGS: When your feet come out of coma we'll ask them what they think. If we can hear what they have to say over the screaming of your knees.
ME: I promised the Oldest Goddess...
LEGS: Take a peek in Youngest Godesses' room down the hall. Oldest Goddess is sleeping there tonight, since she didn't feel like doing the stairs down to her room...
ME: Alright. You win. How about Sunday? One last trip out, and we'll camp over the tanks I found? The one at the top of the canyon? The spot that has a road right to it if you come up the other side?
LEGS: *whisperarguemumble* From Wednesday? The ledge that's three miles and seven hundred feet higher than where you parked the Mighty Burb? Journey Boy? Master of land navigation, maps, and shit?
ME: Yes. But there IS a road on the other side.
LEGS: We want thirty minutes in the shower after mowing the lawn. Oh, and feet want two hours of sock time while you read in bed tonight. Do that, and it's a deal.
ME: I'll throw in ice on the knees for Sunday night, too.
LEGS: (laughing) You think you have a CHOICE?
Friday was a beautiful hunting day. We met a wonderful bunch of folks who use the elk hunt as their family reunion week. They come from all over the Uintah Basin and set up a laager of tents, RV's, and horse trailers. After introductions, we worked out where everyone was going to hunt, the better to maximize everyone's chances of seeing animals while staying safe.
Yes, there was a bit of walking, too, but even with that it was a beautiful day. No joy on seeing much wildlife, though, but we will be out tomorrow for the last day of the hunt.
The plan was to return this morning, charging hard up Provo Canyon at six a.m., but it was not to be.
When I woke at five a.m. this morning, my morning constitutional down the hallway to the bathroom became a death march. The alarm chirped at 0530.
ME: Woot! Hunting! First things first, though, just have to mosey down the hall for a moment.
LEGS: Good morning. Hope your plans for the day don't include us. Right OR left.
ME: ?!
LEGS: We did some math last night. Now on any given work day, we expect to carry you an average of six miles on the clock over a period of eight to ten hours. Care to guess what the average has been on your four hunting days?
ME: ?!
LEGS: Be that way if you want. The working figure we have is an average of ten - with a daily vertical change value of between 1500 and 2000 feet. Why can't you road hunt like all those other people?
ME: What union are you guys with?
LEGS: Meh. How about you slip into the Nikes, mow the lawn, wash some clothes, and maybe spend some time with Mom today? BTW, you get a free pass to the bathroom - but if you touch those boots get ready to learn how to walk on your hands.
ME: Hey, I just put new insoles in on Wednesday. Doesn't that mean anything?
LEGS: When your feet come out of coma we'll ask them what they think. If we can hear what they have to say over the screaming of your knees.
ME: I promised the Oldest Goddess...
LEGS: Take a peek in Youngest Godesses' room down the hall. Oldest Goddess is sleeping there tonight, since she didn't feel like doing the stairs down to her room...
ME: Alright. You win. How about Sunday? One last trip out, and we'll camp over the tanks I found? The one at the top of the canyon? The spot that has a road right to it if you come up the other side?
LEGS: *whisperarguemumble* From Wednesday? The ledge that's three miles and seven hundred feet higher than where you parked the Mighty Burb? Journey Boy? Master of land navigation, maps, and shit?
ME: Yes. But there IS a road on the other side.
LEGS: We want thirty minutes in the shower after mowing the lawn. Oh, and feet want two hours of sock time while you read in bed tonight. Do that, and it's a deal.
ME: I'll throw in ice on the knees for Sunday night, too.
LEGS: (laughing) You think you have a CHOICE?
Friday was a beautiful hunting day. We met a wonderful bunch of folks who use the elk hunt as their family reunion week. They come from all over the Uintah Basin and set up a laager of tents, RV's, and horse trailers. After introductions, we worked out where everyone was going to hunt, the better to maximize everyone's chances of seeing animals while staying safe.
Yes, there was a bit of walking, too, but even with that it was a beautiful day. No joy on seeing much wildlife, though, but we will be out tomorrow for the last day of the hunt.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Too Much Happening...
Work. Winter coming. The elk hunt.
I am a little overtasked to make even a pretense of keeping up with my own blog. However, here's the FIRST PHOTO to appear here on Three Rounds Brisk:
And just because you don't know us (Tmj and the Oldest Goddess), here's another pic, this time of Andy and Mary getting ready to hit the field:
We spent last weekend around Strawberry Resevoir along with about ten thousand of our fellow Utahns. I went out to another area near Tabiona on Tuesday and saw one middling bull and several cow and anterless elk. Mary and I are heading back that way tomorrow, equipped with some good books (me) and homework (her) to spend a little quality time overwatching a tasty canyon I found.
More to come.
I am a little overtasked to make even a pretense of keeping up with my own blog. However, here's the FIRST PHOTO to appear here on Three Rounds Brisk:
And just because you don't know us (Tmj and the Oldest Goddess), here's another pic, this time of Andy and Mary getting ready to hit the field:
We spent last weekend around Strawberry Resevoir along with about ten thousand of our fellow Utahns. I went out to another area near Tabiona on Tuesday and saw one middling bull and several cow and anterless elk. Mary and I are heading back that way tomorrow, equipped with some good books (me) and homework (her) to spend a little quality time overwatching a tasty canyon I found.
More to come.
Friday, October 07, 2005
The Call Of The Wild
Last night about this time I was tinkering around downstairs in The Gun Room.
It's a small space where I keep my hobbies corralled. I think the last time I thought of "doing something" with the space, it measured out at about ten by eleven feet. Big enough for a reloading bench, some book shelves, a rack for the antique guns that don't fit in the safe, and some fishing poles. Then there's the tech library, the leather stuff, and some camping gear...
Like I said, just tinkering. I purchased new scope rings for my Remington 700 back in September, and after having to resort to a drill press to get the old ones off I had walked away from the project. I finished tidying up, giving a glance at the rifle and scattered scope hardware. The elk hunt is in October - and back in the spring I had even put up a sheet of paper with "October 20" smack over the middle of my main bench, right between the Dillon Press and John Wayne's picture.
This morning my boss asked me if I needed any time off for the elk hunt. I told him that I was going to decide by the middle of next week if I wanted more than the weekend in which to hunt. That's when he clued me in - opening day is TOMORROW.
I work with and for some really great people. I was home by eleven a.m., got the scope mounted by noon, and had rounded up the essential hunt stuff by three p.m. when oldest Goddess arrived home from school. We blazed up to Salt Lake and zeroed up the Remington and my beloved old Swede at the Lee Kay Center - zeroed up quite well, thank you. An update will follow with a pic of the targets.
Oldest Goddess doesn't like recoil. She's got enough discipline to concentrate on the front sight or the crosshair until the rifle's report surprises her, though, and she shot quite well enough for me to be confident in her to hit her mark in the field.
(Tech Note: I have thousands of dollars invested in reloading equipment, tools, and components. And I buy .30'06 Winchester Silvertips in 180gr for elk. Inexpensive, superb accuracy, and they don't have as much recoil as my own 165gr load for deer.)
I do not like opening day in Utah. Something about that first glimmer of dawn coupled with the smell of musk on the wind turns normally sedate Utahns into walk-ons for the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. We will get into the Strawberry Ridge area before lunch tomorrow and probably just concentrate on getting away from the road and up on a high spot we found last year.
Oldest Goddess drove us part of the way back from Lee Kay. ON THE HIGHWAY. In TRAFFIC. And past a nasty ACCIDENT. I was largely unmoved, except that I caught myself thinking in CAPS when I felt she needed ADVICE.
She's a great kid... who is rapidly leaving any hint of "kid" far, far behind.
Time to round up the rest of the gear and throw it in the back of the Mighty Burb.
Liver and onions for Sunday brunch, if we are lucky.
It's a small space where I keep my hobbies corralled. I think the last time I thought of "doing something" with the space, it measured out at about ten by eleven feet. Big enough for a reloading bench, some book shelves, a rack for the antique guns that don't fit in the safe, and some fishing poles. Then there's the tech library, the leather stuff, and some camping gear...
Like I said, just tinkering. I purchased new scope rings for my Remington 700 back in September, and after having to resort to a drill press to get the old ones off I had walked away from the project. I finished tidying up, giving a glance at the rifle and scattered scope hardware. The elk hunt is in October - and back in the spring I had even put up a sheet of paper with "October 20" smack over the middle of my main bench, right between the Dillon Press and John Wayne's picture.
This morning my boss asked me if I needed any time off for the elk hunt. I told him that I was going to decide by the middle of next week if I wanted more than the weekend in which to hunt. That's when he clued me in - opening day is TOMORROW.
I work with and for some really great people. I was home by eleven a.m., got the scope mounted by noon, and had rounded up the essential hunt stuff by three p.m. when oldest Goddess arrived home from school. We blazed up to Salt Lake and zeroed up the Remington and my beloved old Swede at the Lee Kay Center - zeroed up quite well, thank you. An update will follow with a pic of the targets.
Oldest Goddess doesn't like recoil. She's got enough discipline to concentrate on the front sight or the crosshair until the rifle's report surprises her, though, and she shot quite well enough for me to be confident in her to hit her mark in the field.
(Tech Note: I have thousands of dollars invested in reloading equipment, tools, and components. And I buy .30'06 Winchester Silvertips in 180gr for elk. Inexpensive, superb accuracy, and they don't have as much recoil as my own 165gr load for deer.)
I do not like opening day in Utah. Something about that first glimmer of dawn coupled with the smell of musk on the wind turns normally sedate Utahns into walk-ons for the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. We will get into the Strawberry Ridge area before lunch tomorrow and probably just concentrate on getting away from the road and up on a high spot we found last year.
Oldest Goddess drove us part of the way back from Lee Kay. ON THE HIGHWAY. In TRAFFIC. And past a nasty ACCIDENT. I was largely unmoved, except that I caught myself thinking in CAPS when I felt she needed ADVICE.
She's a great kid... who is rapidly leaving any hint of "kid" far, far behind.
Time to round up the rest of the gear and throw it in the back of the Mighty Burb.
Liver and onions for Sunday brunch, if we are lucky.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Miers
I'm with these guys for now.
The worst thing Bush has done in his tenure is sign CFR. That was probably a move he made on the advice of counselors who were positive that the Court would pick up the slack. The link takes you to Instapundit, who is quoting a George F. Will column that I mostly disagree with - but Mr. Will is mostly right on the CFR portion.
I've not noticed much slack emanating from the Oval Office since, except for the lack of leadership in attempting to corral Republican wimpishness, profligate spending, and securing our borders. Making headway on those fronts truly requires the dedicated service of statesmen, and Bush is saddled with legacy Republicans. I see it as a matter of managing finite resources; unless Frist and Hastert grow some testicles or even better resign their leadership positions to spend more time with their families, I doubt much will change on the day-to-day level.
The President has won both his elections. He is changing the world to a better place one dead terrorist, one freed country at a time. Not to put too fine a point on it, the executive branch is doing all the heavy lifting on that end. I believe that the congress isn't all that hip to having to do their jobs as legislators; they've become willing accomplices in passing uncomfortable issues to the Star Chamber instead of doing their jobs.
I believe that Bush's selections to the Court are predicated on returning the responsibility of writing laws back to the legislature. Not in overturning any particular laws, but in fixing the institution of the court before it does any more damage to our nation.
The nicest thing said about Ms. Miers so far has come from Harry Reid. I believe that Democratic opposition to Ms. Miers will be perfunctory; only time will tell how silly the Republicans might get before she's confirmed.
Odds are good Bush will have at least one more seat to fill, too. As far as Reid's initial remarks are concerned... how is it a guy from Nevada, of all places, can be such a lousy poker player? This is the longest game in politics, these court picks. Where the left in this country is concerned, it's like what Rocky said: they "ain't got nothin'left" without an activist court to write laws that can't make it through legislative debate and compromise.
The long game. No wonder the mouth foamers on both sides are out. Too many of them are thinking in terms of news cycles when the real time frame here can only be measured in decades.
Freedom for a quarter of the world and returning constitutional rigor to the best damned justice - NOT legal - system on the planet.
The effects of his judicial picks will tie or beat the impact of the war when history measures this administration. I hope I live long enough to see how it all plays out.
The worst thing Bush has done in his tenure is sign CFR. That was probably a move he made on the advice of counselors who were positive that the Court would pick up the slack. The link takes you to Instapundit, who is quoting a George F. Will column that I mostly disagree with - but Mr. Will is mostly right on the CFR portion.
I've not noticed much slack emanating from the Oval Office since, except for the lack of leadership in attempting to corral Republican wimpishness, profligate spending, and securing our borders. Making headway on those fronts truly requires the dedicated service of statesmen, and Bush is saddled with legacy Republicans. I see it as a matter of managing finite resources; unless Frist and Hastert grow some testicles or even better resign their leadership positions to spend more time with their families, I doubt much will change on the day-to-day level.
The President has won both his elections. He is changing the world to a better place one dead terrorist, one freed country at a time. Not to put too fine a point on it, the executive branch is doing all the heavy lifting on that end. I believe that the congress isn't all that hip to having to do their jobs as legislators; they've become willing accomplices in passing uncomfortable issues to the Star Chamber instead of doing their jobs.
I believe that Bush's selections to the Court are predicated on returning the responsibility of writing laws back to the legislature. Not in overturning any particular laws, but in fixing the institution of the court before it does any more damage to our nation.
The nicest thing said about Ms. Miers so far has come from Harry Reid. I believe that Democratic opposition to Ms. Miers will be perfunctory; only time will tell how silly the Republicans might get before she's confirmed.
Odds are good Bush will have at least one more seat to fill, too. As far as Reid's initial remarks are concerned... how is it a guy from Nevada, of all places, can be such a lousy poker player? This is the longest game in politics, these court picks. Where the left in this country is concerned, it's like what Rocky said: they "ain't got nothin'left" without an activist court to write laws that can't make it through legislative debate and compromise.
The long game. No wonder the mouth foamers on both sides are out. Too many of them are thinking in terms of news cycles when the real time frame here can only be measured in decades.
Freedom for a quarter of the world and returning constitutional rigor to the best damned justice - NOT legal - system on the planet.
The effects of his judicial picks will tie or beat the impact of the war when history measures this administration. I hope I live long enough to see how it all plays out.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Waypoints
I just signed my oldest daughter's driver's license learner permit.
Old age is creeping up on me.
Old age is creeping up on me.
Saturday's Coffee
I am winterizing the Team's sprawling compound this weekend. Swamp cooler, firewood, replenishing the water storage, washing blankets and such.
I saw this over at Captain's Quarters during my morning coffee break:
"Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces a serious investigation into his finances after apparently directing the sale of stock while his assets supposedly remained in a blind trust -- and dumping family-business stock just before the bottom dropped out."
The Captain's post raises some interesting questions. Commenter larwyn provides a link to Tigerhawk's blog that contains what may well be exculpatory information in Frist's favor. I don't know, and will wait for things to shake out over the next few days and weeks.
This is what I put up about the Honorable Senator Frist (and by extension the Republican majority):
"I've had it with Frist, and whether or not this story will develop legs or not is neither here nor there.
The Republican caucus has shown the fiscal discipline of a sailor hitting Subic Bay with three months pay (edit: burning a hole in their jumpers), and there's no end in sight due to the current leadership vacuum that seems to define the top tiers of the caucus.
Republicans. They win running as conservatives then govern like Democrats.
I've gotten tired of supporting Republicans who can't seem to understand what "majority" means.
If Bush fails to (a) nominate a strong constitutionalist jurist for O'Connor's seat and (b) is incapable of leading the Rep caucus in REAL spending cuts to counterbalance the Katrina/Rita PorkFest, then its time to start looking hard at other options for 2006 and 2008.
That the Democrats are patently, spectacularly, unfit for public service even as dogcatchers is no excuse for the behaviour of the Republicans the last five years. None. Asking for my support based soley on the fact that Democrats are even worse is a losing proposition.
Another Perot figure could well rise out of the discontent spreading among conservatives; I doubt whoever it might be could win, but even a ten percent draw could deliver the White House back to the Dems.
Two years is a long time. There's still time to change directions but without new leadership in both houses I just don't see any improvement at all."
I'm getting a little concerned about 2006. And by 2008 there may well be enough dissatisfied conservatives that sit out the election to really screw things up.
The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.
UPDATE: Fixed the link to Captain's Quarters
I saw this over at Captain's Quarters during my morning coffee break:
"Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces a serious investigation into his finances after apparently directing the sale of stock while his assets supposedly remained in a blind trust -- and dumping family-business stock just before the bottom dropped out."
The Captain's post raises some interesting questions. Commenter larwyn provides a link to Tigerhawk's blog that contains what may well be exculpatory information in Frist's favor. I don't know, and will wait for things to shake out over the next few days and weeks.
This is what I put up about the Honorable Senator Frist (and by extension the Republican majority):
"I've had it with Frist, and whether or not this story will develop legs or not is neither here nor there.
The Republican caucus has shown the fiscal discipline of a sailor hitting Subic Bay with three months pay (edit: burning a hole in their jumpers), and there's no end in sight due to the current leadership vacuum that seems to define the top tiers of the caucus.
Republicans. They win running as conservatives then govern like Democrats.
I've gotten tired of supporting Republicans who can't seem to understand what "majority" means.
If Bush fails to (a) nominate a strong constitutionalist jurist for O'Connor's seat and (b) is incapable of leading the Rep caucus in REAL spending cuts to counterbalance the Katrina/Rita PorkFest, then its time to start looking hard at other options for 2006 and 2008.
That the Democrats are patently, spectacularly, unfit for public service even as dogcatchers is no excuse for the behaviour of the Republicans the last five years. None. Asking for my support based soley on the fact that Democrats are even worse is a losing proposition.
Another Perot figure could well rise out of the discontent spreading among conservatives; I doubt whoever it might be could win, but even a ten percent draw could deliver the White House back to the Dems.
Two years is a long time. There's still time to change directions but without new leadership in both houses I just don't see any improvement at all."
I'm getting a little concerned about 2006. And by 2008 there may well be enough dissatisfied conservatives that sit out the election to really screw things up.
The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.
UPDATE: Fixed the link to Captain's Quarters
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Trust But Verify
It's late on Sunday, and I'm not sure if I believe this or not.
"The North "promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks."
If the agreement includes sufficient transparency, via nothing less than unrestricted inspections, this is good news.
And if the Norks have agreed to such a regimen, well, that's pretty good work on the part of McChimpyBushitler, ain't it?
The Norks haven't gotten around to mentioning any agreements yet. Maybe they are waiting on advice on how to phrase the press release.
(Via Drudge)
UPDATE 2115 19 September: The Norks never change.
"The North "promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks."
If the agreement includes sufficient transparency, via nothing less than unrestricted inspections, this is good news.
And if the Norks have agreed to such a regimen, well, that's pretty good work on the part of McChimpyBushitler, ain't it?
The Norks haven't gotten around to mentioning any agreements yet. Maybe they are waiting on advice on how to phrase the press release.
(Via Drudge)
UPDATE 2115 19 September: The Norks never change.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Points Of Perception
I listen to thePacifica Radio Network on my way home. Our local speak-truth-to-power station is KRCL out of Salt Lake. If I get to the end of my day and it hasn't been as crappy as it could have been I make sure to tune in for "Democracy Now". Just the thing to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine autumn afternoon.
In the run-up to their recap of the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing for Judge Roberts, Amy Goodman and some guy whose name I didn't get maundered on about Dem primary politics in New York City and then moved on (no pun intended) to discuss statements made today by Michael Brown, who recently resigned as head of FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I will not paraphrase their conversation; I couldn't afford to pay that much attention to them. A trip to the corner store in Provo traffic is a life or death matter when BYU is in session. If you can imagine the witch scene from Macbeth, except there's only two witches and one of them is a querulous guy with a Brooklyn accent and the other one is the lady who shouts at you in the grocery line when you don't stack your cans separately from your refrigerated items, you know what I was listening to.
I got the impression that Mr. Brown had damned the Feds in general and the administration in detail.
(Disclosure: Anyone here who has listened to Pacifica knows that the threshold for coverage IS damning the (Republican) Feds in general, and the administration in detail. No news here...)
I got home and whipped my time card off to the other members of my team and then rang up Instapundit and found this post that in general confirms my general take on the response to Katrina. I checked Drudge next, and saw this article covering the statements Mr. Brown made today.
please read the whole thing. I make it a point to run through any Times product verbatim once, then go back and read it again, ignoring the editorial content presented as news.
Some graphs that jumped out at me:
"In his first extensive interview since resigning as FEMA director on Monday under intense criticism, Mr. Brown declined to blame President Bush or the White House for his removal or for the flawed response.
"I truly believed the White House was not at fault here," he said."
Where did Goodman find any indictment on the part of Brown?
"The account also suggests that responsibility for the failure may go well beyond Mr. Brown, who has been widely pilloried as an inexperienced manager who previously oversaw horse show judges."
That one is for people who didn't want to read the entire article. This is editorializing combined with a puerile cheap shot from where I stand. To me Brown's story seems to illustrate more his dilemma as a bureaucrat caught between a wholly ineffective local political infrastructure and his higher headquarters at DHS and the administration who, in my opinion, were caught flatfooted by the total lack of competence at the state and local levels.
You have to read all the way to the bottom of the page for the best stuff, though:
"Mr. Brown acknowledged that he had been criticized for not ordering a complete evacuation or calling in federal troops sooner. But he said the storm made it hard to communicate and assess the situation."
I'd dearly love to find a transcript of the press conference or interview this article was based on. Mr. Brown doesn't have the authority to order evacuations, nor does FEMA appear in any chain of command for deploying troops.
I believe that if fault for failure is ever fairly assigned, the onus can only land in Louisiana. The federal response was just that - a RESPONSE conforming to the requests (or lack thereof) that should have come in timely fashion from the state.
All the bullshit about the Army Corps of Engineers blowing up levees, Bush hating black folks, and the Feds/FEMA in some way being responsible for New Orleans and Louisiana chucking their emergency response plans doesn't even rise above the background noise of Left politics any more, for me. Recovery response in this case meant getting hundreds of thousands of displaced persons rescued or relocated, moving in tons of supplies and personnel into a flattened, flooded area slightly larger than the UK, and then wading through the moonbats and their media folks anxious to find the next cross on which to hang GW. It was never going to happen overnight, and has so far played out better than I expected.
In the run-up to their recap of the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing for Judge Roberts, Amy Goodman and some guy whose name I didn't get maundered on about Dem primary politics in New York City and then moved on (no pun intended) to discuss statements made today by Michael Brown, who recently resigned as head of FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I will not paraphrase their conversation; I couldn't afford to pay that much attention to them. A trip to the corner store in Provo traffic is a life or death matter when BYU is in session. If you can imagine the witch scene from Macbeth, except there's only two witches and one of them is a querulous guy with a Brooklyn accent and the other one is the lady who shouts at you in the grocery line when you don't stack your cans separately from your refrigerated items, you know what I was listening to.
I got the impression that Mr. Brown had damned the Feds in general and the administration in detail.
(Disclosure: Anyone here who has listened to Pacifica knows that the threshold for coverage IS damning the (Republican) Feds in general, and the administration in detail. No news here...)
I got home and whipped my time card off to the other members of my team and then rang up Instapundit and found this post that in general confirms my general take on the response to Katrina. I checked Drudge next, and saw this article covering the statements Mr. Brown made today.
please read the whole thing. I make it a point to run through any Times product verbatim once, then go back and read it again, ignoring the editorial content presented as news.
Some graphs that jumped out at me:
"In his first extensive interview since resigning as FEMA director on Monday under intense criticism, Mr. Brown declined to blame President Bush or the White House for his removal or for the flawed response.
"I truly believed the White House was not at fault here," he said."
Where did Goodman find any indictment on the part of Brown?
"The account also suggests that responsibility for the failure may go well beyond Mr. Brown, who has been widely pilloried as an inexperienced manager who previously oversaw horse show judges."
That one is for people who didn't want to read the entire article. This is editorializing combined with a puerile cheap shot from where I stand. To me Brown's story seems to illustrate more his dilemma as a bureaucrat caught between a wholly ineffective local political infrastructure and his higher headquarters at DHS and the administration who, in my opinion, were caught flatfooted by the total lack of competence at the state and local levels.
You have to read all the way to the bottom of the page for the best stuff, though:
"Mr. Brown acknowledged that he had been criticized for not ordering a complete evacuation or calling in federal troops sooner. But he said the storm made it hard to communicate and assess the situation."
I'd dearly love to find a transcript of the press conference or interview this article was based on. Mr. Brown doesn't have the authority to order evacuations, nor does FEMA appear in any chain of command for deploying troops.
I believe that if fault for failure is ever fairly assigned, the onus can only land in Louisiana. The federal response was just that - a RESPONSE conforming to the requests (or lack thereof) that should have come in timely fashion from the state.
All the bullshit about the Army Corps of Engineers blowing up levees, Bush hating black folks, and the Feds/FEMA in some way being responsible for New Orleans and Louisiana chucking their emergency response plans doesn't even rise above the background noise of Left politics any more, for me. Recovery response in this case meant getting hundreds of thousands of displaced persons rescued or relocated, moving in tons of supplies and personnel into a flattened, flooded area slightly larger than the UK, and then wading through the moonbats and their media folks anxious to find the next cross on which to hang GW. It was never going to happen overnight, and has so far played out better than I expected.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Live By The Moonbat, Die By The Moonbat
Looks like one of my least-favorite senators has a PR problem.
If Diane Feinstein isn't left enough for the the base, what's left of the national Democratic party?
I predict the winner of the 2008 Dem primaries will be the one who wears a kheffiya for the debates.
If Diane Feinstein isn't left enough for the the base, what's left of the national Democratic party?
I predict the winner of the 2008 Dem primaries will be the one who wears a kheffiya for the debates.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
This Day
Fall is here. We no longer sleep with all the windows open at night. It is still and cool outside, with the bright light falling on leaves that have just begun to dry and fade. Last night my daughter got home from her first Homecoming dance after midnight, so the Team slept in this morning. Mom and Dad didn't really wait up, of course; we just happened to have good books to read.
She was beautiful in her midnight blue satin dress. She wore a silver filigree band over the crown of her head, and strand of fine silver beads were woven through her jet black hair. I'm sure there's a fashion term for the effect, but it wasn't a tiara and I'm certainly no Mr. Blackwell to pull the right word out of the bag. Her date was one of the neighbor kids - one of my former scouts even, from back in the day when our LDS ward drafted me for assistant scoutmaster duties with the twelve year olds.
Talk about "in my wildest dreams"...
She's making pancakes now. It's Sunday and that's what she always does. Last night was a rite of passage, and she said as much this morning while thanking us for the dress and recounting the experiences of pictures and dancing and the silly or embarrassing things that happened to her or around her.
But now it's time for pancakes. Because that is what we do on a Sunday.
Four years ago today was also a brilliantly clear and cool morning. On that Tuesday we were involved in last minute packing for a cross country trip to say a final goodbye to my wife's mother. Services were to be held Thursday in the family church in Burlington, Vermont, and then we'd all go up to the most beautiful hillside in that most beautiful northeastern state and lay her ashes to rest among the plots containing her neighbors and ancestors going back almost three hundred years.
The kids and mom were in the living room putting the last items in their carry-on bags. The TV at the end of the coffee table was probably tuned to Nick or Disney; I don't know.
I was on our bed contemplating a cat nap when my wife literally dragged me to my feet. I was coming out of my doze quickly but still spinning up when I began to understand what she was asking me.
"What kind of bomb did that? What happened?"
I came through the kitchen into the living room. The TV sat on the entertainment center, framed between the still heads of my daughters. The Twin Towers filled the screen - the one on the right scarred by a smoking hole near the top third of the building.
I'm a surveyor. I've staked out a dozen or so commercial buildings, plus bridges, dams, and highways. Nothing on the scale of a genuine skyscraper of course, but I knew just enough about the design of the WTC to confuse the hell out of myself in those first few seconds. The WTC was built with the mass of the structural support in the walls of the building - soaring vertical steel columns spaced narrowly and then tied to floor pans for rigidity. The gaping wound in that building traversed four or five floors - which meant that whatever kind of bomb had been used must have been massive to have punched through so many floors. I wondered why there were any windows left on the floor where the bomb had to have been. The spaces inside the floors were huge and open; what office walls did exist were aesthetic, not structural. The majority of the spaces in there had to be cube farms. Were there multiple bombs? Maybe smuggled in as copiers or computers or office supplies? Blast follows least resistance... so why one big hole and intact windows on each side? The noise from the TV was just that - noise. The commentators were reporting an explosion and ad libbing while they tried to catch up.
"What kind of bomb? What kind of bomb?" My daughters hadn't moved since I came into the room.
Then the second 767 flashed into view, in a skidding bank to port, and disappeared behind the other tower. A blink of awful silent stillness and then the eruption of smoke, flame, and glass filled the screen.
I told my wife "We are at war". And then I cried with my family.
There were other awful moments in that awful day. My girls figured out where the airplanes had come from in less than an hour - and that some had been hijacked from Boston, which was to have been one of our connections. The urge to fight back - to reject the terrorists' goals - drove both my wife and I to head into work shortly after noon. I was on the way to a construction site in my work truck when the President's second statement was broadcast.
The thought struck me that had things gone differently, I could just have well been listening to Al Gore.
I pulled over and threw up.
I've always known that I live in an embarrassment of riches. Random chance placing me here in America has been the greatest blessing a person could ever hope for. Those that feel differently are free to do so. "Free" as in so shielded from the potential of their convictions that they can embrace agendas tantamount to suicide if they should ever be fulfilled.
What a country, eh?
I will continue to do those things that a citizen must do to support and defend our nation, and hope that enough of my fellow citizens do the same. Lincoln was right when he predicted that if we ever fell it would be a failure from within and not the result of some foreign attack.
Jihadis can only kill us. Should we ever lose our liberty, it will be by our own hand and no other's.
It's time for pancakes. Y'all have a fine day.
She was beautiful in her midnight blue satin dress. She wore a silver filigree band over the crown of her head, and strand of fine silver beads were woven through her jet black hair. I'm sure there's a fashion term for the effect, but it wasn't a tiara and I'm certainly no Mr. Blackwell to pull the right word out of the bag. Her date was one of the neighbor kids - one of my former scouts even, from back in the day when our LDS ward drafted me for assistant scoutmaster duties with the twelve year olds.
Talk about "in my wildest dreams"...
She's making pancakes now. It's Sunday and that's what she always does. Last night was a rite of passage, and she said as much this morning while thanking us for the dress and recounting the experiences of pictures and dancing and the silly or embarrassing things that happened to her or around her.
But now it's time for pancakes. Because that is what we do on a Sunday.
Four years ago today was also a brilliantly clear and cool morning. On that Tuesday we were involved in last minute packing for a cross country trip to say a final goodbye to my wife's mother. Services were to be held Thursday in the family church in Burlington, Vermont, and then we'd all go up to the most beautiful hillside in that most beautiful northeastern state and lay her ashes to rest among the plots containing her neighbors and ancestors going back almost three hundred years.
The kids and mom were in the living room putting the last items in their carry-on bags. The TV at the end of the coffee table was probably tuned to Nick or Disney; I don't know.
I was on our bed contemplating a cat nap when my wife literally dragged me to my feet. I was coming out of my doze quickly but still spinning up when I began to understand what she was asking me.
"What kind of bomb did that? What happened?"
I came through the kitchen into the living room. The TV sat on the entertainment center, framed between the still heads of my daughters. The Twin Towers filled the screen - the one on the right scarred by a smoking hole near the top third of the building.
I'm a surveyor. I've staked out a dozen or so commercial buildings, plus bridges, dams, and highways. Nothing on the scale of a genuine skyscraper of course, but I knew just enough about the design of the WTC to confuse the hell out of myself in those first few seconds. The WTC was built with the mass of the structural support in the walls of the building - soaring vertical steel columns spaced narrowly and then tied to floor pans for rigidity. The gaping wound in that building traversed four or five floors - which meant that whatever kind of bomb had been used must have been massive to have punched through so many floors. I wondered why there were any windows left on the floor where the bomb had to have been. The spaces inside the floors were huge and open; what office walls did exist were aesthetic, not structural. The majority of the spaces in there had to be cube farms. Were there multiple bombs? Maybe smuggled in as copiers or computers or office supplies? Blast follows least resistance... so why one big hole and intact windows on each side? The noise from the TV was just that - noise. The commentators were reporting an explosion and ad libbing while they tried to catch up.
"What kind of bomb? What kind of bomb?" My daughters hadn't moved since I came into the room.
Then the second 767 flashed into view, in a skidding bank to port, and disappeared behind the other tower. A blink of awful silent stillness and then the eruption of smoke, flame, and glass filled the screen.
I told my wife "We are at war". And then I cried with my family.
There were other awful moments in that awful day. My girls figured out where the airplanes had come from in less than an hour - and that some had been hijacked from Boston, which was to have been one of our connections. The urge to fight back - to reject the terrorists' goals - drove both my wife and I to head into work shortly after noon. I was on the way to a construction site in my work truck when the President's second statement was broadcast.
The thought struck me that had things gone differently, I could just have well been listening to Al Gore.
I pulled over and threw up.
I've always known that I live in an embarrassment of riches. Random chance placing me here in America has been the greatest blessing a person could ever hope for. Those that feel differently are free to do so. "Free" as in so shielded from the potential of their convictions that they can embrace agendas tantamount to suicide if they should ever be fulfilled.
What a country, eh?
I will continue to do those things that a citizen must do to support and defend our nation, and hope that enough of my fellow citizens do the same. Lincoln was right when he predicted that if we ever fell it would be a failure from within and not the result of some foreign attack.
Jihadis can only kill us. Should we ever lose our liberty, it will be by our own hand and no other's.
It's time for pancakes. Y'all have a fine day.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Current Events
I posted this comment on American Digest:
I watched the increasingly insane statements emanating from the party of reality coalesce into a full court press of blinding hate by mid-last week. I didn't figure out exactly what the driving PR objective was until Bill Whittle published "Tribes".
Remember that four or five week period right after 9/11? Establishment Democrats and liberals waited with dread the demand of a unified American public for retribution on those responsible for the attacks on our cities... and accountability from those who allowed the primary individual behind those attacks to have run free after so many ignored opportunities to apprehend or simply kill him.
We were one people there for a brief shining moment - excepting creatures like Sontag, Chomsky, Moore, McKinney, et al - and the potential for political backlash was so great that Patriot, DHS, and a land war in Afghanistan shot through both sides of congress without a blink.
By the time we actually got into the meat of removing the Taliban, we lost that unity of purpose. Media sniping, the realization that the core of the Democrat base is closer to al Qaeda than Al the union plumber in affection for democracy and defense of the country made it imperative for those who like DC jobs to say what that base wanted to hear.
With Katrina we had a chance to pull together again - but with a weather event there is no one behind the tragedy to seek vengeance on, to focus on, but rather only the prospect of hard work and expensive effort ahead, as with all other historical natural disasters we have experienced as a nation.
We could dig in and do the right thing, and it would be good, and it would be a moment to be proud of. What's Left of the left still owns most of the cameras and barrels of ink, and that shit just wasn't going to be allowed to happen again.
Now our public view into the efforts to help the victims eerily parallels the coverage of the war in Iraq. Turn on any channel, read any column, and you'll wade through vicious second guessing tempered with editorial opinion purveyed as hard news long, long before you get any hard data on tons of supplies, numbers of rescuers, or restoration of services. Thank goodness for Blogs is all I can say.
A great city is on the cusp of destruction and many other smaller communities have been damaged or wiped out entirely. Hundreds of thousands of our citizens are displaced or are yet marooned and awaiting relief. Now is the time to get the job done as best we can, yet the focus of the left remains zeroed on destroying one man, regardless of the cost to the fabric of our society, to the victims on our Gulf shore, the lives of our troops engaged against the veil of evil that is fundamentalist Islam, or the fate of the mere chance of representative democracy rising from the barbarism that is the at rest state of most of the Muslim arc of nations.
I heard mentioned a Gallup poll today that noted that only 13% of the sample blamed bush for the disaster. Had to search out the report and read all the way to the bottom to find that stat, though.
I think thirteen percent would probably be the number for people who think the CIA piloted the 9/11 aircraft, too.
I hope the news cycle rolls over pretty quick; their best effort doesn't seem to be selling the product. Again. Still.
Have mistakes been made, opportunities squandered, and chances missed over the last week? Yes. Hell yes, and there are individuals and agencies that should be held to account for their performance or lack thereof. We who follow the news too closely are uncomfortably aware of shortcomings in planning, failures in execution, and stark incompetence on display in any direction we care to look.
That still doesn't change the fact that a storm blew in from the Gulf, like a thousand times before, and we have a huge task ahead of us.
How much harder is the Left willing to make this? They've turned this tragedy into an aberration that Jerry Springer wouldn't air.
Oprah Winfrey stood in the middle of a domed stadium three hundred miles away from the disaster, surrounded by people resting on cots, trying on clothes, eating hot food, being checked by doctors... people who were abandoned by their local elected officials, people who were rescued and transported by complete strangers (many volunteers), and Oprah advised them to ask for an apology from the nation.
To Hell with you, ma'am. And all the other bottom feeders trying to play this out as a political game.
I watched the increasingly insane statements emanating from the party of reality coalesce into a full court press of blinding hate by mid-last week. I didn't figure out exactly what the driving PR objective was until Bill Whittle published "Tribes".
Remember that four or five week period right after 9/11? Establishment Democrats and liberals waited with dread the demand of a unified American public for retribution on those responsible for the attacks on our cities... and accountability from those who allowed the primary individual behind those attacks to have run free after so many ignored opportunities to apprehend or simply kill him.
We were one people there for a brief shining moment - excepting creatures like Sontag, Chomsky, Moore, McKinney, et al - and the potential for political backlash was so great that Patriot, DHS, and a land war in Afghanistan shot through both sides of congress without a blink.
By the time we actually got into the meat of removing the Taliban, we lost that unity of purpose. Media sniping, the realization that the core of the Democrat base is closer to al Qaeda than Al the union plumber in affection for democracy and defense of the country made it imperative for those who like DC jobs to say what that base wanted to hear.
With Katrina we had a chance to pull together again - but with a weather event there is no one behind the tragedy to seek vengeance on, to focus on, but rather only the prospect of hard work and expensive effort ahead, as with all other historical natural disasters we have experienced as a nation.
We could dig in and do the right thing, and it would be good, and it would be a moment to be proud of. What's Left of the left still owns most of the cameras and barrels of ink, and that shit just wasn't going to be allowed to happen again.
Now our public view into the efforts to help the victims eerily parallels the coverage of the war in Iraq. Turn on any channel, read any column, and you'll wade through vicious second guessing tempered with editorial opinion purveyed as hard news long, long before you get any hard data on tons of supplies, numbers of rescuers, or restoration of services. Thank goodness for Blogs is all I can say.
A great city is on the cusp of destruction and many other smaller communities have been damaged or wiped out entirely. Hundreds of thousands of our citizens are displaced or are yet marooned and awaiting relief. Now is the time to get the job done as best we can, yet the focus of the left remains zeroed on destroying one man, regardless of the cost to the fabric of our society, to the victims on our Gulf shore, the lives of our troops engaged against the veil of evil that is fundamentalist Islam, or the fate of the mere chance of representative democracy rising from the barbarism that is the at rest state of most of the Muslim arc of nations.
I heard mentioned a Gallup poll today that noted that only 13% of the sample blamed bush for the disaster. Had to search out the report and read all the way to the bottom to find that stat, though.
I think thirteen percent would probably be the number for people who think the CIA piloted the 9/11 aircraft, too.
I hope the news cycle rolls over pretty quick; their best effort doesn't seem to be selling the product. Again. Still.
Have mistakes been made, opportunities squandered, and chances missed over the last week? Yes. Hell yes, and there are individuals and agencies that should be held to account for their performance or lack thereof. We who follow the news too closely are uncomfortably aware of shortcomings in planning, failures in execution, and stark incompetence on display in any direction we care to look.
That still doesn't change the fact that a storm blew in from the Gulf, like a thousand times before, and we have a huge task ahead of us.
How much harder is the Left willing to make this? They've turned this tragedy into an aberration that Jerry Springer wouldn't air.
Oprah Winfrey stood in the middle of a domed stadium three hundred miles away from the disaster, surrounded by people resting on cots, trying on clothes, eating hot food, being checked by doctors... people who were abandoned by their local elected officials, people who were rescued and transported by complete strangers (many volunteers), and Oprah advised them to ask for an apology from the nation.
To Hell with you, ma'am. And all the other bottom feeders trying to play this out as a political game.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
I Couldn't Find A Cathedral
So I pinned this to Dennis's door:
Dennis -
I have been working like a slave (well paid, though) for the last six months and have almost ceased blogging or commenting on the blogs of others. I still spend an hour or more a day staying up to speed..but as time has gone on the question "to what end?" keeps coming up.
An arena of ideas requires arguments and principled positions that can be debated and judged on merit. Healthy representative democracy should always benefit from debate; what has evolved over the last decade or so is less a debate than a battle of the bands. National discourse (and the bulk of that is still firmly in hands of MSM, make no mistake) is retrenchment by the left to feigned outrage and slogans.
Bush Derangement Syndrome has been accepted as the foundational philosophy of the Left.
The rise of the web has diluted the power of legacy media and political activists to manage public opinion. It has put source materials like the whole texts of speeches, public records, and accounts of individual experts or eyewitnesses to events in the hands of the people who actually decide public policy - voters.
The trend toward conservative majorities is no accident. It's the manifestation of a market responding to better data. And by "conservative" I don't nearly mean the hyperbolic label defined by what's left of the Left - I mean people who vote in their own self interest before any larger agenda.
We are trained by a lifetime of public relations campaigns to guage propriety as being that which is applauded publicly. The rise of blogs - especially on the Right - strikes me as a case of water findng its own level.
The Left is losing elections, and has been for most of my adult life. But since the MSM is invested in the pursuit of big government, antireligious, social engineering, race pimping, populist interests they find themselves adrift when what they write or televise doesn't result in the political landscape they consider "normal".
They still equate volume with relevance: so too do a lot of people on the Right. So we end up with a grundle of self-publishing individuals who invest tremendous amounts of time and effort in following the narrative and getting their opinions into the mix on a daily basis. Yes, there is a vital need to deny injection of falsity into debate, and for that the blogosphere's "fact checking" function is an undeniable factor... but when is enough enough?
I can't blog on politics any more. In truth I had little enough hope that debate was a productive pursuit with the Other Side long before 9/11. Commenting and blogging was exhilirating at first... but truly I think too many of us take ourselves too seriously. Now we have arrived at a point in time where the remnants of the other national party and the entire weight of their media and intelligentsia exist only to destroy one single political opponent who isn't even an election threat anymore. This driving obsession denies any peripheral consideration such as war, natural disasters, looming collapse of social programs, and lately has brought the inflaming of racial, regional, and economic divisions to a new low... and most importantly, they have emphatically abandoned any pretense at the necessity of a political party to provide reasons for voters to support them.
As long as they fail to apreciate that it's elections that count much more than the opinions of the NYT editorial board, my political broadsides will probably be confined to choices on a ballot.
I doubt I'll lack good company, and lots of it.
Dennis -
I have been working like a slave (well paid, though) for the last six months and have almost ceased blogging or commenting on the blogs of others. I still spend an hour or more a day staying up to speed..but as time has gone on the question "to what end?" keeps coming up.
An arena of ideas requires arguments and principled positions that can be debated and judged on merit. Healthy representative democracy should always benefit from debate; what has evolved over the last decade or so is less a debate than a battle of the bands. National discourse (and the bulk of that is still firmly in hands of MSM, make no mistake) is retrenchment by the left to feigned outrage and slogans.
Bush Derangement Syndrome has been accepted as the foundational philosophy of the Left.
The rise of the web has diluted the power of legacy media and political activists to manage public opinion. It has put source materials like the whole texts of speeches, public records, and accounts of individual experts or eyewitnesses to events in the hands of the people who actually decide public policy - voters.
The trend toward conservative majorities is no accident. It's the manifestation of a market responding to better data. And by "conservative" I don't nearly mean the hyperbolic label defined by what's left of the Left - I mean people who vote in their own self interest before any larger agenda.
We are trained by a lifetime of public relations campaigns to guage propriety as being that which is applauded publicly. The rise of blogs - especially on the Right - strikes me as a case of water findng its own level.
The Left is losing elections, and has been for most of my adult life. But since the MSM is invested in the pursuit of big government, antireligious, social engineering, race pimping, populist interests they find themselves adrift when what they write or televise doesn't result in the political landscape they consider "normal".
They still equate volume with relevance: so too do a lot of people on the Right. So we end up with a grundle of self-publishing individuals who invest tremendous amounts of time and effort in following the narrative and getting their opinions into the mix on a daily basis. Yes, there is a vital need to deny injection of falsity into debate, and for that the blogosphere's "fact checking" function is an undeniable factor... but when is enough enough?
I can't blog on politics any more. In truth I had little enough hope that debate was a productive pursuit with the Other Side long before 9/11. Commenting and blogging was exhilirating at first... but truly I think too many of us take ourselves too seriously. Now we have arrived at a point in time where the remnants of the other national party and the entire weight of their media and intelligentsia exist only to destroy one single political opponent who isn't even an election threat anymore. This driving obsession denies any peripheral consideration such as war, natural disasters, looming collapse of social programs, and lately has brought the inflaming of racial, regional, and economic divisions to a new low... and most importantly, they have emphatically abandoned any pretense at the necessity of a political party to provide reasons for voters to support them.
As long as they fail to apreciate that it's elections that count much more than the opinions of the NYT editorial board, my political broadsides will probably be confined to choices on a ballot.
I doubt I'll lack good company, and lots of it.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
8/18/87
That was a good day.
Tomorrow marks eighteen years with the One True Love.
We are spending four days at the Las Vegas Hilton to celebrate.
Calling that roommate service in San Diego was the best move I ever made.
Thanks, Susan!
Tomorrow marks eighteen years with the One True Love.
We are spending four days at the Las Vegas Hilton to celebrate.
Calling that roommate service in San Diego was the best move I ever made.
Thanks, Susan!
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Random Shots
I put a comment up on a Medienkritic post in reply to another commenter's query why "...Republicans in particular and their fellow travellors (sic) at the Pentagon are so afraid of China?".
We live in interesting times.
(via Ann Althouse, guest blogging at Instapundit)
We live in interesting times.
(via Ann Althouse, guest blogging at Instapundit)
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
How About Some Good News?
I don't have much good to say about the french these days - but reading this story caused me to take pause.
"As many as 43 people suffered minor injuries in the 4:03 p.m. crash landing of Air France Flight 358 from Paris — the first time an Airbus A340 had crashed in its 13 years of commercial service."
Minor injuries? In a crash that left the aircraft in pieces at the bottom of a ravine? No fatalities?
Thirteen years of crash free service?
Good job, Jacques.
"As many as 43 people suffered minor injuries in the 4:03 p.m. crash landing of Air France Flight 358 from Paris — the first time an Airbus A340 had crashed in its 13 years of commercial service."
Minor injuries? In a crash that left the aircraft in pieces at the bottom of a ravine? No fatalities?
Thirteen years of crash free service?
Good job, Jacques.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Current Interest
I'm watching Mount Saint Helens.
Down the page there is a link that takes you to real time webicorders. Very good stuff.
There have been several earthquakes in the 3+ range there over the last week. The current seismic activity recalls flow noise displays I saw on sonar once upon a time. Rockfalls, ash, and steam, oh my.
Down the page there is a link that takes you to real time webicorders. Very good stuff.
There have been several earthquakes in the 3+ range there over the last week. The current seismic activity recalls flow noise displays I saw on sonar once upon a time. Rockfalls, ash, and steam, oh my.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
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