William Is Five Years Old Today

William turned five today but because of the work schedule the grandparents got together yesterday for cake and presents.

It won't be many more of these birthdays before his first .22.

We finally got some pictures of Christopher James, I was getting convinced the boy was born with three arms or an extra head, not so. He is a great big boy, though, I'll post some of those pictures and his other three brothers tomorrow, the newest baby in the family for the new year.

Christmas, 2007

So Linda Lou woke me up at five AM to drive up to Plano to watch the kids open presents. It was a special set of Christmas presents for William. His daddy had his Transformers from when he was a child and they were all giftwrapped for William.

We were glad to get home, there ought to be some kind of a law against requireing a retired guy to wake up at five AM.

The next day we got a big rainstorm and, as always happens, we lost the telephone and internet connection. It's back now. So now I get to try to figure out what is going on in Pakistan.

Merry Christmas!

We seem to be fresh out of angels for a Christmas Greeting so we are just trying to make do.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Eddie T. Dog Endorses Fred

I have been watching to campaign for the Republican nomination for President and have decided to go with Fred Thompson. I agree with everything he's put out. And besides, he's got a Bulldog or Pug face. Not that it matters much, by the time we vote here in Texas the nomination is pretty well decided.

Just who decided that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina should have all that power, anyway, and can we fire them? Now I have nothing personally against those States but I do resent that their votes should be more important than mine.

The only gripe seen about Thompson seems to be that he is too lazy for winning the job, the same gripe about Ronald Reagan, if I remember correctly, and he did pretty well. I am not sure I believe anything about Thompson being lazy. We get that information from where? That's right, the lamestream media. Every blogger who mentions Thompson's "laziness" has also railed against the disgusting lack of accuracy and evenhandedness of the media. Yet they believe Fred's "laziness" as if it were spoken by a burning bush on a mountaintop. Hmmm.

I don't know about my second choice. I know that if McCain gets the nomination I'm staying home in November.

NothingTo Say

There is nothing wrong here at the poor farm, I just have nothing to say and no new grandchild or dog pictures.

Not that having nothing to say usually stops me but for now... Oh, if anyone cares it is only about six weeks until Linda Lou gets her first social security check, that's when our after tax income nearly doubles. Then I might have something to say.

Doggie Friday

The dogs have destroyed another piece of furniture, note the duct tape over the hole in the expensive leather recliner.

Eddie had a sweater for the cold, Pugs are not cold weather dogs. The "experts" say that Pugs are inside dogs, I wish they'd told Eddie that, he loves being out with his "little sister", C. A. P. Meanwhile Cochise' Apache Princess doesn't understand why her momma lets Ming and Eddie in the chair with her but won't let the youngest puppy up there. As you can plainly see, C. A. P. is just a little tiny puppy, born to snuggle in the chair with her momma or daddy.

We let Eddie out in the cold with his sweater on, he came in without it. I found it the next day, chewed up and useless. We had to get dogs. We couldn't get a watchgoldfish or a lap snake, no, we had to get dogs.

Omaha

So now it comes to Omaha. A "big city" as Nebraska goes, more crowded states would call it medium sized. I know nothing about Omaha, I drove through it and was told that it's against the law to eat while driving. A 19 year old kid with a rifle seems to have wanted to "go out in style". So he went to the gun free mall with a rifle and started blowing people away.

So now it begins. If we had no guns! If ordinary shoppers had guns! It's because Bush was there!

I grew up around guns. The most common thing in the world was to see a boy, or boys, on bikes with .22s, riding out to plink or hunt small game. Other times of the year it was fish poles or (usually single shot) shotguns. Kids in rural areas brought their guns to school and hunted their way home. High schools had rifle teams.

Nobody shot down crowds of people. What has changed? It isn't the guns, we had guns.Nor was it semi automatic weapons, we had those too. Find a copy of The American Rifleman from before the 1968 Gun Control Act went into effect and price those little M1 Carbines, with 30 round mags. Or M1 Garands. Available by mail with no records in most places. Nobody shot down crowds of people.

Today they'd call out the SWAT Teams if anyone saw three boys riding through town with rifles, and Animal Control because of the dog runnin' alongside. Back then, it was nothing and we didn't shoot crowds of people. Can we PLEASE stop yapping about guns, pro or con and look at what else has changed since I was a boy? We had guns, we didn't shoot crowds of people. Now too many of us do. The guns didn't change, something else did.

The destruction of the family? The ending of spanking? That self esteem nonsense the schools are pushing? The war against masculinity? The war against Christianity? Something is causing this and we are talking about guns.

Well the guns aren't going away. We could pass a law tomorrow making guns illegal, everywhere like in most of Britain. Anybody notice that violent crime, including gun crime, has gone up over there since they passed that law?

People ought to be able to do some Christmas shopping without being blown away. And after we look at that, my Momma used to go to the Dept. Store, leave me in the book section or the toy section, shop and then come get me. Nobody worried. As a matter of fact other parents did the same thing. How come that can't happen these days. Oh, now Linda Lou leaves me in the book section but you can bet that my daughter doesn't leave William. What has changed?

Update: 12/06/07 I must not have been as clear as I try to be. AWTM mentions, in comments, other mass murders in Nebraska. I know about Charlie Starkweather, heck I know about Killin' Jim Miller and Tom Horn, John Wesley Hardin and lots of others who ran up a very large butcher's bill back in the day.

They, however didn't run that bill up all at once. And THAT is different. Teresa, of Technicalities fame, says it's the 24 hour news cycle, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the rest of them. I dunno, back in John Wesley Hardin's day we only had newspapers but John Wesley was certainly famous back then. Far more famous than this kid in Nebraska.

Teresa is partially right, though, these kids want to be famous. And yet I can't remember the names of those losers in Columbine, what kind of fame is that? I remember Lee Harvey Oswald, I do not know the name of that guy in the University of Texas tower. I know I could find it in a matter of minutes now and back before I had this box I would have had to go to the Public Library. Charles Whitman. I wonder if the DIs in Parris Island and San Diego still tell the Boots about Oswald and Whitman when they issue the rifles? By the way, Oswald did it, it wasn't even very good shooting. Oswald only qualified at the very bottom of the pile, a feller that had been a really good shot would have had three different bodies in the morgue in fewer seconds. But I digress.

There have been killers among us since Cain couldn't get along with his brother, Abel. But it was only in 1966 when we started having these all at once murders and, after Whitman, it was a long time until the next one.

Oh, and I blame AlGore for Omaha. If Algore would have kept his fat mouth shut about Glow-ball Worming it would have been hot enough up there in Omaha that the kid wouldn't have been able to hide that AK under his clothes. In a Texas summer it is hard to hide an S&W Chief's Special.

Dear Washington

Hello again, Washington, this is Peter from flyover country. You must not get out here much because I hardly ever hear you talk about anything that has any relationship at all to what is happening out here.

What on earth is this National Intelligence Estimate about Iran? Just exactly what do you mean when you say it is plausible but unlikely that they are working to get nukes? Plausible but unlikely? Looky here, I have grandchildren I would like to see grow up, plausible but unlikely. That means that if millions of Americans die you won't lose your job, right? There is a little something more important than your job.

Washington, have y'all seen the inside of a grocery store lately? Have you seen gas prices? Do you remember how this Gasahol stuff was going to make driving clean and affordable? Funny thing happened, the process of making the ethanol causes far more pollution than gasoline does. Taking all that corn out of the pipeline did more than kludge up the air and making that ethanol took more than all that water. Have you look at what a dozen eggs cost? Have you seen a steak that wasn't paid for by a lobbying firm?

Look we out here in flyover country know that we don't have the campaign contributions that the Agribusiness has and we don't really mind that farmers make a living. We remember, though, that farmers did pretty well feeding the world while the oil companies fuelled it. That worked very well for a lot of years. Now we know that you are used to having things all your way but no matter how many idiot bills you pass the oil companies aren't going to feed us and the farms ain't gonna fill the cars. How about you figure out that the money the agribusiness companies sent you is not going to make up for the votes you won't get. I am just waiting for the people who will rise up and say vote for me and farmers will farm and oil companies will drill. Alcohol will be found in beer and down at the fabled Tequila Mines of Cuervo. Please, get off the Air Force jets and the chauffeur driven cars and get into your own car, fill up the gas tank and go do a little grocery shopping. Do you remember how?

Washington, the minute someone figures out that to win an election all one has to do is run on secure borders, an energy policy that is based on what we have in this world and going to war rarely but once we're in, fighting to win, you are going to be looking for a job.

I can't wait. Love, Peter.

Foer Throws In The Towel.

So, it seems the editor of The New Republic gives up on the Beauchamp stories. A fourteen page attempt to save his own job and not one hint of an apology to the men and women whose honor was trampled.

I served, starting some forty-three years ago, during the days of the draft, during the days of uniformed drug use. Yet even then we liked children and dogs, even then we honored those who wore battle scars. Yes the guy that caught a large piece of scrap metal 'cross the cheeks of his butt got a lot of noise about that amazing scar but it was in good humor and God help someone who wasn't THERE say anything to him. Including some kid with the sand of Parris Island still in his boots.

I've read Patterico, Malkin and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee. I am still surprised at the people bouncing up saying that we are the ones attacking a serving soldier. Beauchamp may well have straightened out and is now serving honorably. I hope so. But he certainly was not serving his country or the men and women of the US Armed Forces with those stories.

Honor still means something to those men and women. I hope Beauchamp has learned to hold his, Franklin Foer has not. Here is something I don't understand. The Franklin Foers of the world feel free to gratuitously insult the people they say are stupid and dangerous, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces but won't say a word against the people going around exploding themselves. The liberals like to prove their "courage" by insulting those sworn to defend them while hiding behind those they insult. The Libs call this speaking truth to power. Franklin Foer wouldn't know truth if it bit him on the ass.