Flash

Michael Totten is back, and from northern Iraq this time around.

Mr. Totten is one of four bloggers I've ever supported financially.

Worth much, MUCH more than I paid, every time.

Nobody Knows

What the world will look like in two weeks.

I feel a change on the wind.

Don't know what it could be, though. Not a clue.

I'm refreshing our water stores tonight, and we are laying in more canned stuff.

Chester Thinks...

... about a lot of different options playing out in Lebanon:

"Hence the Israeli dilemma: Hezbollah cannot be destroyed unless its facilities, camps and logistics dumps in the Beka'a are destroyed. To create a buffer zone in south Lebanon is only to cause Hezbollah to seek longer-range rockets or missiles in the future. But, a ground assault to destroy that logistics infrastructure requires that the risk of Syrian interference be mitigated somehow. There are many ways to do so."

It's a damned good post, and the comments make for a very intriguing read. My opinion is down near the bottom of the thread.

Required Reading

From Grim's Hall:

"Such a complete failure to understand America is not reasonable. No culture on earth has such a complete hatred of the idea of failure. Indeed, if there is any common culture that can be called American at all, it would have to be the culture of success -- the notion that a man should take care of himself, and that his failure to do so was a moral as well as a practical failure."

Read the rest here.

I haven't commented much on the current situation. History says that irreconciable differences between neighbors are always resolved by war. We are here, and war is now.

I think that events have come to the point I've been looking for for decades. Reality has finally narrowed down the options available to us regarding confronting fundamentalist Islam threat - despite the best efforts of lotus eaters across the west to try to frame this situation as some sort of disagreement between equals.

If good v. evil is too utopic, or just isn't acceptable, try light v. dark. We are here, and war is now.

(via Argghhh!)

Odds and Ends on Saturday

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Zarqawi's Message Of The Day 8 June 2006

End.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.