The Summertime Blues, Ming The Merciless turns Eleven

I haven't been posting much, there is only so much to say about physical therapy and y'all see the same news I do. The bad news about the physical therapy is that it takes our disposable income away. Our insurance takes care of the bill, unfortunately it does not cover the gas. Remember when we drove for pleasure trips? This year we couldn't even drive to see the wildflowers.

So, gas prices have started to inch down since Dubya's repeal of the offshore drilling ban. Naturally then, the Democrats voted to go home for the rest of the summer rather than allowing a vote to agree or disagree with the President. I suspect that prices will increase. Thanks, Pelosi. The Democrats know that there is no way that this "new technology" (that has yet to be invented) will replace oil, coal and nuclear for years. They know they are killing the economy, and probably more than a few Americans. How many poor folks are unable to afford air conditioning right now. We live in a small house and last months electric bill was over three hundred dollars. Lucky thing we have one room closed.

If we had an honest news media ordinary people would know who to blame here. Instead the Democrats will blame Republicans and the media will slavishly repeat those accusations. According to the Donks there are warehouses full of new technology that Republicans won't allow. That is the whisper, anyhow. Funny thing is, if the Donks would only allow nukes there would be a big jump toward solving the problem. Plug in hybrids? With nukes, sure. Hydrogen power? With nukes to provide the power to make the hydrogen the other problems are far more solvable. Most, if not all, of these new "miracle energy sources" require more energy to make than they provide. That is fine, really, the real electric cars are a way off, trucks even further off. Seems the trouble is building batteries strong enough and long lasting enough to move a semi-load of goods around. So far every battery that looks like it can be scaled up is poisonous to us or the environment.

Someone will eventually solve this, until then it's not like they can put a big ol' windmill on top of a truck. Meanwhile that insufferable as, um pr, um person, yeah that is close, person proposes this humongous bill without one drop of new energy and then has the gall to say that Republicans are preventing the poor from gertting power and fuel. If we only had an honest media.

In real news, Ming had her eleventh birthday. I baked the usual corn muffins with lots of cheese and bacon. The dogs pugged out. Ming is the classic Pug. She eats and sleeps and lays on the deck barking at the dogs 'cross thew street. When she can't see them she barks at the air. Then she gets worn out and needs a nap.

There are a couple of interesting things about my physical therapy. One of the other people in therapy with me is kind of famous, he has been on several TV shows with his very well trained dog. This feller really looks like a cowboy, perhaps because he is. Ropin' and everything. There is another gentleman, somewhat older than I, recovering from a serious stroke. Very serious, they are having to teach him how to walk again. I am keeping my big mouth shut about how, in my stroke I never lost walking and the physical terrorists are using me as an example for recovering from a stroke. I hope it's helping, the guy is in quite a bit of pain trying to teach those muscles how to work again.

I don't like to think about how frightening a stroke is. I have been in a few scary situations in my day, nothing was as frightening as not being able to control my body. The PT types are welcome to exaggerate my stroke as needed if it helps this other guy work through this.

Ain't No Cure

Well, we're in high summer now, we are actually getting hundred degree days out here sometimes, in the big city-blob that is the DFW Metroplex, every day. Please don't blame global warming for this, we had these temps when the nutbags were screeching about the coming ice age. The man made climate change idiots still have not explained the vineyards and farms buried under Greenland's glaciers. It must have been Leif Ericsson's SUV. Or the coal fired electric plants that covered the Earth in 1400 AD.


Meanwhile Algore's Lincoln Town Car Limo sits outside the "all you peasants quit using fossil fuels sppech", idling to keep the air conditioner going for the wife and daughter. Thank you Algore. It costs eighty dollars to fill up the tank on our asexual grandparentmobile (thanks, Bou!) but Algore takes two limos and an SUV to lecture me about saving gas. You may insert the long string of invectives here.

I simply am unable to understand these "scientists" being unable to understand that we have been cycling through changes in the climate since before humans learned to walk upright. I mean if I, who got his education, such as it is, courtesy of the Public Library can see this, why can't they? Nor can I understand why politicians have jumped on this bandwagon. This nonsense is destroying our economy. What do Hairy Reid and SanFran Nan think the great unwashed will do when we've lost our homes and jobs and none of those dire predictions have come true? Rope, lamp post, politician. Some assembly required. Can these morons not see that?

I was wandering teh intertubes and saw where Obambi is now going to give his big Berlin speech at the Seigessaule Monument. This thing was built to commemorate the German victories over American allies, Denmark, Austria and France, then moved and made bigger by Adolf Hitler.


I realise that Obambi badly needs to visit with foreign leaders, his foreign policy chops are sadly lacking, I do not understand why he needs to make speeches to huge crowds of people who cannot vote. I don't really think that American voters will be enthused by someone who can get thousands of Germans wetting their pants at once. My father's generation went through that, it turned out rather badly for tens of millions as I recall. Someone should tell Obambi to stay away from Nazi sites. He COULD have scheduled his speech at the Berlin Airlift Monument, a real symbol of American-German friendship. That would have put too much empathise on people who actually have done something in their lives I suppose.

What about Obambi's new civilian national defense corps? Let's see, I keep my Model '92 Winchester clone loaded and ready here at home. I bring it back from a Cowboy Action Shoot and clean the black powder residue off, adjust the sights and load it with my hot smokeless powder, jacketed hollowpoint ammo. So, everything I can see within two hundred odd yards from me is in my control* if it comes to that. Given Obambi's record I am not sure that is what he means, though.

If anyone cares my physical therapy is progressing. I am starting on the strength exercises, as well as the range of motion exercises, now. I am amazed at how weak I've become. I keep having to remind myself that I am no longer nineteen years old.



* Or will be back in my control when my shoulder heals the rest of the way.

Teapots, Torture and Lazy Pugs

I started work with the physical terrorists this week. Three days a week for the next couple of months, plus home exercises. For now I'm spending about an hour and a half, that should increase as the muscles that got cut up heal. Today I'm still only doing range of motion exercises, eventually I'll be going to the strength ones, too. I'm hoping to get back to shooting cowboy action matches by late September or early October.

The work with the PT folks is mostly just boring. They try their best to avoid pain, the only thing is that there is an ache involved afterwards. Ah well, I'm done until Monday so that should fade.

I finally got my teapot, an original Brown Betty. They come in two, four, six and eight cup versions, I chose the six cup in the original brown color. Or, since it's British, colour. I had read some revies and it seems that the eight cup model tends to chip because it is so heavy when full. People tend to bonk it around.

Anyhow, the thing works as advertised, they claim that the shape makes the water swirl around, helping to steep the tea. I must say that I use less tea for the same amount of water to get the same strength. This versus the teabags in the Mister Coffee.

While I was taking those pics I took a couple of pitures of the world's laziest Pug, Eddie. When he was a puppy he like to be rocket dog. Now he seldom runs.

Can We Win A Major War?

Note: I Shall have to use a little mild profanity in this post. If you can not stand that, move on to the dog pictures.

I am wondering if we can win a war. Oh, I know that military for military we are un matched in the world. Trouble is, the political will is no longer there. My father's generation, now called "The Greatest Generation, fought, and won, the war against The Axis. Oddly, the people calling them The Greatest Generation would put them in prison, today.

In the ETO SS troops were seldom taken prisoners. Instead they were shot. Our Army Air Corps, along with the British Royal Air Force, destroyed whole cities. Our B-17s and B-24s flew by day, dropping high explosives, turning buildings into rubble and destroying the water mains. Then came the Brits, by night, dropping incendiary bombs. So may of the water mains were broken that the Fire Departments were helpless and the cities burned.

On the other side of the world the war was even meaner. Once we got word of how the Japanese were treating our POWs we got ugly. In Guadalcanal we managed to kill one of Admiral Tojo's sons. The Marines and Seabees buried him, of course. Then they put a shell casing partially into his grave with a large funnel. Then they put up a sign. "Take a piss on Tojo's Son!" Companies of replacements were marched there and the company would, in turn, piss down the tube.

I wonder what the penalty for that would be today? Since the Marines quit taking prisoners after the Japanese sent word that a group of them wanted to surrender and then ambushed the patrol that went to take that surrender, how many Marines would escape court martial?

It was more than just the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors, too. The FDR Administration did not fool around with civilians they thought might be disloyal. We all know about the Japanese internment camps. Few, however, know of the hundreds of civilians locked up in mental wards "for the duration". Seems that FDR's Attorney General had discovered that there was no Habeous Corpus for mental patients. That law has since changed, of course. But back then, there was no appeal.

Today, of course, we don't do such things. At this point I am not sure that we should. Thing is, we may need to in the future and I do not think we can.

I also wonder how it is that the alQueda bigwigs can sit in Pakistan and how scumbags can cross borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan to kill our troops. How is it that Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia can send scumbags to kill our troops, plus thousands of civilians in Iraq. Yet we do nothing. Let's step back again to the WW2 generation.

Just before WW2 was the Spanish Civil War. Franco won that war, in no small part because of the help from Germany and Italy. Franco actually sent a small amount of troops to the Russian Front once WW2 started. Hitler and Il Duce wanted more, though. They wanted Franco to close the Straits of Gibraltar. Franco refused for fear of what the Allies would do, and the Allies would have. Does anyone believe than Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill would have allowed such things as we do today? Would one brick stand on another in Tehran or Damascus? Would the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia not be causing a world wide rope shortage as they hanged? Ah, we'd probably have shot them due to the shortage of wood to build gallows. Would not Islamabad be a smoking hole?

I did believe that George Bush was right to try to let Iraq become a democracy. I still believe that. What I do not believe is allowing those other clowns to interfere. Pakistan has nukes but no quick way to get them here. Iran does not have nukes, yet. Syria has nothing but a bunch of ill-armed clowns that cannot stop the Israelis, much less us. Why did we not send a few cruise missiles to the larger cities in those countries in 2004? We could have loaded the first salvo with stink bombs and itching powder with a sweet note about what the next batch would carry. This short guy in Tehran with the ugly suit may be eager to become a martyr. I do not think his bosses are. What would happen over there if they were all scratching and holding their noses while reading about the next time they glow in the dark?

I am not an expert on international relations. I have dealt with my share of bullies. The bosses of these Jihadis make a lot of noise about loving death. Then they dress like women when the US Marine Corps of Army get close. Why is that? Why do they have to find the mentally retarded, the Down's Syndrome patients, children to wear those bomb belts? If they love death so much, why are they hiding?

The military has the courage to end this fight. They certainly have the weapons. We can destroy anyone and anything in this world. What is lacking is the political will. Too many in our political and chattering class (but I repeat myself) care far more about what "the world" thinks of them than about the safety of my grandchildren.

An entire political party has swung to that way of thinking. I do not know why. The Democrats of my parent's generation elected FDR. He was ruthless enough to do whatever it took to achieve victory. The Democrats of my generation elected Jack Murtha, a man ruthless enough to tell any lie to achieve defeat.

Harry Truman dropped the bomb. Bill Clinton dropped his trousers. Today no one seems to remember that the "extraordinary rendition" programs started well before the 2000 election. Everyone has forgotten the Clinton appointee CIA Director that said Saddam's WMD were a slam dunk.

My war was the first one we lost. We did not lose it on the ground. The North Vietnamese were ready to give up after Tet of '68. Then the American Left called that massive defeat they gained a "victory". The American Left is doing the same thing today.

The question is why. Why have so many become willing to accept defeat? My father's generation was much smaller. I believe the total population was less than 140 million. We put 16 million men (and some women) into uniform. We rationed meat and sugar. We rationed gasoline. We didn't need to ration gas, trouble was the Japanese had taken the rubber plantations of Indonesia and Indochina. FDR rationed gas so so many people wouldn't steal tires. We had plenty of gas, we could not make nearly enough tires and fan belts.

Boy Scouts went from house to house collecting aluminum pots and pans for aircraft production. Women painted black lines down the backs of their legs, all the silk was going into parachutes. This in the age where no woman went out of the house without stockings. There were no new cars made, the auto companies were making tanks and airplanes. The Singer Sewing Machine Company and many others were making rifles and pistols.

What has happened?

The most important difference is a loss of cultural confidence. Too many of us simply do not think our culture and country are worth defending. We see oddities like gays at pro Palestinian rallies. It is odd to see them supporting a crowd that takes gay men to the top of tall (for there) buildings and throw them off. We see feminists supporting the culture of "honor killing". Meanwhile these feminists revile those of us who see no honor in the murder of one's daughter or sister.

We have lost control over our education system. Our children are not taught to honor our past. When I was a boy I was certainly taught of the horror of slavery but I was also taught of the fight against it.

Today our children are taught, and rightfully so, of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. Why are they not also taught of the thousands of white people driving their friends, co-workers and employees to and from work and home that made that boycott work? Why?

Today our children are only taught of the peaceful Native Americans beset by the rapacious white man. No child is taught that many tribes held slaves, that there were inter-tribal wars long before the coming of the white man and that rape, murder and theft between tribes was as common here as in Europe? Why?

Today our children are taught of the horror of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are not taught of the number of deaths, both American and Japanese, avoided by the fact that we did not have to invade. Why? Today, every August we see American Mayors apologising for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How come we never hear of Japan apologising for the Death March of Bataan? I remember the veterans who were training for the invasion thanking God for the Atomic Bomb.

In this war we harp on every mistake. In my father's war mistakes happened, the survivors buried their dead and went on. No one fired George Marshall, Ike or Omar Bradley after the breakout at St. Lo was delayed by our bombers getting confused and bombing our own troops in the dust and smoke of the first wave of bombers. No one demanded the resignation of Admiral Nimitz after the planners misjudged the tides at Tarawa leaving Marines to wade a mile through high water. Many of those Marines drowned just by stepping into holes and not being able to get out of their gear quick enough. Many more drowned after getting survivable wounds.

Yet today we have United States Congressmen demanding our Soldiers and Marines be jailed for hoax atrocities. We have Soldiers and Marines with their military careers over after being acquitted of imaginary war crimes.

I do not believe we can win a major war anymore. Too many of us have already surrendered. Nor can I think of what to do. We could hang the faculties of the Universities and most of Hollywood, I suppose, most of one Party and some of the other in Washington. Then, instead of being killed by the Islamists, we could die in prison. What to do? We could not even put a piss tube into Osama's grave anymore.

Bones

It was hot so the dogs got their bones inside. Funny, though, we have yet to hit one hundred degrees F out here this year. I understand Dallas has had a couple of hundred degree days but that is to be expected. All that concrete and asphalt plus a bazillion air conditioners spewing out heat. Thousands of cars stuck in traffic because the Democrats hate roads.

At any rate we usually get into the triple digits in late May or early June. Here it is July. Algore must be flying over in his private jet every day or so, everyplace he goes to warn against global warming gets cold weather, maybe his flyinf over cools things down, too.

Anyhow, the dogs can't read a thermometer, once it's over ninety or so, they want in.

Over the weekend I'll be working on a longish post about today versus the WW2 generation and whether we can actually win a wholesale war.

Let's See If I'm Anti Obambi Enough

Seems that a bunch of anti Obama blogs got flagged as spam the last few days. I doubt I'm one of them, they seem to have been pro-Hillary.So I am only halfway there.

Since I don't have a dog in this fight I might get through.

I am noticing a few of the intellectuals getting worried about the Obambi cult of personality. Seems they often do not end well. Castro, Mussolini, that guy in Germany that we can't name for fear of Godwin's Law, all offered some ill defined "change", all had rabid supporters who had no idea of the plan.

Now I don't know Obambi will be all that bad. Past human experience would seem that the proof should be on him, though. What, precisely kind of change is he planning. How is he going to pay for it? Considering that most of us were doing pretty well up until the Democrats threw the Nation's energy supply and economy off the cliff, how will this change help? Whom will this change hurt?

I would be a lot happier had the Donks asked these questions a year ago.

Update: As you can see I'm not flagged yet, I'm still posting, typing left hand only.