So, What Besides Voting Republican Is A Crime In Hollywood?

I was not going to comment on the arrest of Roman Polanski on this blog because I do not like to curse on this blog and the actions of the Hollywood elite flocking to this pervert's defense makes me want to emit a long, loud and colorful string of ugly words.

I did not grow up in Hollywood's country. I grew up in a country where the protection of children was every one's job. Didn't have children? Still your job to hep protect them. Remember that country? A country where every year a few people would drown leaping into the water trying to save a child.

Those people, had they lived would have refused the name of hero, just as did those who jumped in and saved the kid and survived. Ordinary people who grew up on the rules and the first rule was save the children. The second rule was women and children first. The third rule was something along the line of first my family, then my country, then me.

I miss that country. They called it the United States of America. Anyone seen her? She seems to be missing. Keep an eye on your milk cartons, maybe we'll see her picture.

Roman Polanski plead guilty. In the Grand Jury testimony his victim stated that he forcibly raped and sodomized her and, in an action that should have all of Hollywood screaming for his scalp, didn't use a condom. Yet none of this bothers Hollywood.

Hollywood is claiming judicial misconduct in this case. Now I don't know about the country Hollywood lives in but the United States of America has ways where a person can get redress from judicial misconduct and it does not include skipping the country and living in luxury for well over thirty years.

If there is judicial misconduct one gets redress by appealing, not running. Nor am I sure there was judicial misconduct. I do not know how they work a plea bargain in whatever country Hollywood is in but here in Texas the defense attorneys sit down with the folks from the prosecutor's office and work out a deal, then they take it to the judge who can, though (s)he usually doesn't completely throw the whole thing out.

Funny, though. If the judge throws the plea agreement out the accused may change his plea. The jurisdictions I am familiar with are not even allowed to bring the abortive plea agreement up at trial.

Hollywood is claiming that the victim "looked older than 13" and that her stage mother threw her at an unsuspecting Polanski. The truth, a concept Hollywood has trouble with, is that, since the girl was underage, Polanski had to get her mother to sign a release. Actually, three releases, one for Polanski, one for the mother and girl and one for record. Each of these had the girl's age of thirteen on it. Now this is not a case of hand grenades or horseshoes where close earns points, the girl was thirteen when the age of consent was 16. I believe it is eighteen now there.

This was not even close. Now, admittedly I've seen some teenaged girls that were actually pretty buxom and I have, on occasion, privately wondered how their fathers let them out like that. I've learned not to say anything because of the large percentage of young women who do not have functional fathers.

Still, it is impossible for Polanski to have made a mistake. The very fact that he had to have that release showed him that the girl was not fair game. So the other main argument the Polanski fans are using is phony. This should be no surprise considering who those Polanski fans are.

I do not understand leftists. They stand around claiming that us evil right wingers are against women and that only they can be trusted to watch out for women's interests. Except when Teddy Kennedy leaves one to die slowly in a submerged car and then spends an entire career treating women like dog poop he accidentally stepped in. And except for Bill Clinton who made the entire left switch courses on a dime from there is no permissible sexual contact between a powerful man and a powerless woman to it's a private matter. The left makes these course changes so seamlessly that the only way to notice they've changed course is to dig the old newspapers out of the trash and try to read them through the bacon grease and coffee grounds. You cannot even tell a lefty that you don't understand the change because the lefty will deny ever changing course and if you actually have saved something they've written they will immediately emit a huge cloud of words on how that Lieutenant Commander at the Tailhook party is so much more powerful than the President of the United States of America. That torrent of words will not convince you, of course, it does not even convince the lefty. All it does is make you sick of trying to talk to that lefty.

And now we have Whoopi Goldberg saying, on national TV no less, that feeding Champagne and Qualude to a thirteen year old girl, then forcibly raping and sodomizing her isn't rape rape. It's something else but not rape rape. Actually Whoopi is right only not the way she means, it's not rape rape but rape sodomy. The question in my mind is just how many times in a row did Woopi's momma drop her on the head on that concrete floor? Here is another question I have about Whoopi. To be on a talk show shouldn't she be taught simple English? Rape rape. It wasn't rape rape. You realize, of course, that they PAY this woman to say things like this. Rape rape. No wonder I have a headache and my butt is sore from sitting.

Update: In the comments Sparrow reminded me that I managed to get the age of consent backwards in my post. When Polanski drugged and raped, then anally raped that thirteen year old girl the age of consent was eighteen. It was later, probably at the request of Hollywood stars, lowered to sixteen.

Lord, You Can Take Me Home Now, If You Wish

The Lord can take me home anytime as He sees fit. Of course that has always been true but now I have tasted Heaven.

I tried the Pioneer Woman's steak sauce, a (literally) heart stopping experience. If I ate this more than once per month my arteries would be closed beyond repair and my backside would be two axe handles across. And my butt and my arms and legs are the only part of me that's still skinny. I used to have to dance around in the shower just to get wet enough for the soap.

I did not have a ribeye in the freezer so I settled(!) for a big ol' sirloin steak. Then a big yellow onion and a half stick of real butter. Lead me not into temptation...Oh, never mind right this second.

Slice up the onion and put it in the frying pan over high heat with the melted butter. Stir it around until it is nicely brown and caramelized. I'm not even sure what that means but Rhee said it and I have yet to catch her in a lie, I have caught her trying to kill me with recipes, though.

Anyhow, once those onions are nice and brown and (I hope caramelized, whatever that is) reduce the heat to simmer and then add three quarters to a full cup of heavy (whipping) cream. Listen! Do you hear the sound of arteries clogging?

Stir this around while the sauce reduces by about half. Meanwhile the steak is cooking. Rhee uses one of those fancy griddles with ribs and cooks the steak on the stovetop with (help me Lord!) more butter.I broiled mine. Without added butter. I mean I'd like to live until, I dunno, Christmas? Maybe even until Josiah is in his late teens and the girls all notice those eyes.

When the cream, butter and onion sauce has reduced by about half it is time to put a half cup of crumbled Bleu Cheese. My local supermarket sells Bleu Cheese (is this supposed to be capitalized?) in five ounce packages. Since five ounces is just over a half cup I gave each dog a couple of the larger chunks, poured it in and continued to stir around until the cheese is melted and well mixed.

Now put it on a plate and place the cooked steak on it. Oh my! Someone help me!

In my defense, if such is possible, I used much less sour cream, butter and sharp cheddar cheese than I normally do. If my bite of potato was too bare I scooped up a tad of Rhee's Sinful Sauce with it.

I think the next time I try this I will make fix some kind of vegetable medley and no potato. Oh, and that steak and baked potato were two meals, over two days. I am, even if married, not that suicidal.

Anyhow, oh lord it was good. The only downside, beside making me into a gluttonous pig, is that when I went to microwave the leftovers there was a thick layer of melted butter over all the sauce and I could not figure out how to stir it back in. Of course this was no major problem, it worked fine for dipping a forkful of potato. And Cochise' Apache Princess did not complain a bit about the plate with steak scraps, leftover sauce and the separated out butter on that plate. I should have bemembered to shoot a pic or two of her doing the prewash cycle.

I am not quite sure how Rhee plans on getting into Heaven after spreading recipes like this, nor I for helping to publicize them. I do hope He will forgive us and bear in that great mind that I will be exercising this gluttonous recipe rarely.

I do fear, slightly, that after this my normal marinade of lemon pepper, garlic and soy sauce will seem inadequate. Please, everyone note that I make no claim of originality for this sauce, all I did was follow Rhee's directions. Will y'all be kind enough to not tell Linda Lou or her husband that I am now in love again?

Nose Water And Other Adventures

Please note, women will be somewhat grossed out by this entry. Still, any woman who has a son or who owns a husband, or someday hopes to own a husband should pay attention.

Shortly after we moved out here to our retirement home my sinuses closed up. From that day in 1998 until now it's been a big deal if I could breathe from one and a half nostril, mostly if I wanted air it was breathe through my mouth. I comforted myself in knowing that real men didn't need that breathing stuff.

I've been thinking about one of those humidifiers but we go for weeks at a time with the humidity at around 90% and it doesn't help. Then I started seeing little blurbs about sinus irrigation and Neti Pots.

I kept reading about things like that and then I remembered the times I went to sea. Y'all all know that I crossed the Pacific Ocean on LSD, right? Yes I did, on the USS Oak Hill, LSD 7. Anyhow, when I was at sea or even on the coast I could breathe just fine. So I decided to get a Neti Pot. There are many different brands of these things, since I wasn't sure about the whole thing I bought the cheap one at Wally World.

Now what we do with a Neti Pot is to fill it with salt water, stick the spout up one nostril and pour the salt water into that nostril while bending deep over the sink while making "kha-kha" sounds with the head turned so the spout nostril is on the high side.. The water will run out the other nostril. Girls will, of course, hate this. Boys (and us overgrown boys, too) will think it's cool.

The first step is to boil water and let it cool. Since we live where the water gets cut off for no apparent reason we keep several jugs of water around, some of that filtered water we pay for, some plain tap water in case we need to flush the terlets during one of these silly outages and now some boiled water. Now if it is only going to be used for boys and men, take a marksalot and label the jug "NOSE WATER" Boys and men will think this is cool. If girls and women will also use it, just mark it as boiled water. The instructions say to use only plain, not Iodized Salt, I haven't tried that yet as the box carried about a bazillion little premeasured packets of stuff that makes for the perfect mix of Isotonic wash. Please don't ask me what Isotonic is. The directions also say that we can mix two packages per pot to make a Hypertonic wash. The directions do not tell me what hypertonic is or why I should want to, though.

I've been using this thing for well under a week and can already breathe much better. The literature, both on the web and in the box, says that using these things also helps prevent colds and flu as well as all kinds of allergies. I don't worry much about colds, I go out to the supermarket maybe twice a week and always wash my hands when coming home but for the folks with kids in school...

Anyhow, ladies, after you see how much better your son or husband is breathing, you might want to try it yourself. I suspect that women and girls won't think it's quite so cool to watch the water flow from a nostril.
r> After I bought the Neti Pot (who is Neti?) I then read, in the directions inside the pot, that the same company NeilMed makes the same thing in with a squeeze bottle that is supposed be work even better because as one squeezes the bottle the Isotonic (don't I just sound all scientifical?) solution has a better chance to blast loose the awful stuff clogging the breathing apperatus.

Our little Bingo is driving himself crazy with itching. Does anyone know a good doggie shampoo that is good anti-itch stuff? It isn't just him itching and scratching of course, it's trying to sleep with a little itchy Pug.

If your stomach is strong enough you might step over to Michell Malkin's or Patterico's site and see how the lefties are trying to excuse Roman Polanski and excoriate the Swiss for busting him for drugging raping and sodomizing that thirteen year old girl, then pleading the case down some and then fleeing the country. I guess the lefties think the only crime worthy of punishment is voting Republican.

Update. I dunno how I got those paragraphs in bold but it's bedtime and I'm too tired to care. I probably did something silly. Imagine that.

Where To Go Now, The 21st Century Civil Rights Movement, One Man's Opinion.

On one very important part of the struggle, the Civil Rights Movement is an unqualified success. Let's face it, if it is even thought that a public figure is racist, it's over. Naturally, there is some leeway there. The only 9e(?)Klansman in the Senate is allowed to say n****r a couple of times on national TV but, for some reason no one understands continues on as The Conscious of the Senate. Meanwhile the nation's First Black President, Bill Clinton, is savaged because he backed his wife in the primaries. His wife, BTW was savaged by the Party That Supports Women because she ran against Barry. Go figure.

Still, even liberals are not immune, ask that Imus feller.Silly Imus, thought he could use the same language blacks do.

Today's civil rights establishment is going backwards, I think. It's hard to see what real good they are doing, it's a shame, too, there is much good left to do. Let's face it, most of the problems facing black Americans has little or nothing to do with white Americans keeping them down.

If today's civil rights establishment wanted to make black Americans lives better than to enrich themselves here are a few places to start:

First look at where living conditions for black Americans happen to be worst. Strange, that is the inner cities where the Democrats have had iron rule for more than three quarters of a century.

Cut themselves loose from the Democrats. The Democrats of today need do nothing for black Americans, they don't have to. Since nine out of ten black Americans who vote pull the D lever anyway the Democrats don't bother, expending their political capitol and effort on other constituent groups. Meanwhile Republicans don't try, why should we? It's not like black Americans would reward us. Suppose it was different? Suppose 40% of black Americans voted Democrat, 40% voted Republican and the other 20% switched, kinda like the rest of America votes?

Instead of one Party doing nothing for them because they don't have to and the other Party because it does no good, both Parties would be fighting for the votes of one eighth of the electorate.

And that's about the end of what politics can do. The rest is up to the community itself. A good first step is to demand that the children of the black communities actually get an education. It is not white kids beating up black children for acting white for using proper English and for doing homework. It is not white racists refusing to hire people who cannot read, write or make change. Can't do the job? You either will not get hired or will not keep the job. No education means living poor for the rest of your life.

Unmarried motherhood. This problem is just not in the black community of course, it's everywhere. There are actually far more white than black children born out of wedlock, it still hurts the black community more as the white community is much larger. The civil rights establishment should join forces with the feminist and educational establishments and present a united front.

Now I don't much care if a thirty year old lawyer making a bazillion bucks a year decides to go with the artificial insemination and no husband, or the Murphy Brown types. The teenagers who decide to get pregnant so "someone will love them" is a different story entirely. If only as part of this constant sex education kids would actually have to spend a few twenty-four hour periods being the "parents" of newborns and infants, things would turn around in a hurry.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not preaching a religion here, merely something practical. Want to end poverty in three simple steps? Step one: Graduate from High School. Step Two: Avoid drugs. Step three: Get and stay married.

That's it. Note that it is graduate High School, not Law School, not a Doctorate, not even a Bachelor's Degree. Not that a higher degree won't help, if it's a degree in something useful. I don't understand why so many folks go into Black Studies or Woman's Studies. I would imagine I'd have to study real hard to be black but the kids I see going into Black Studies seem to have already passed. And I have a wife and daughter, neither of them have ever taken Woman's Studies, both of them are pretty darned good at being women, too. Now I could understand Woman Studies if it were guys going there, we don't exactly know what makes 'em tick.

Truth is, those sets of courses are called Angry Studies. Here is a clue to anyone advising young people...tell them to study Engineering, business or something else that pays. No one is going to pay a young person with a shiny new degree in black studies to stand around being black. No one is going to pay someone to sit at a desk and be a studied chicano. And if a girl graduates with a degree in Woman's Studies, forget that idea about being happily married.

Everyone doesn't need to go to college, as a matter of fact many would do much better going to trade school. Price the per hour cost of a plumber or an electrician. How about that feller that installs hardwood floors and carpets. Or that woman that took the courses to become a skilled secretary or, for that matter, an electrician. As college gets more and more expensive and the course materiel gets ever more frivolous trade schools look better and better. But I digress again. To avoid poverty. Graduate. Stay off drugs. Get and stay married. Now that I've solved the problems, my next post should be lighter.

Race, Progress And Failures

I was born right about the time Harry Truman desegregated the Armed Services. About that same time the lid of the post Civil War pressure cooker was about to blow off.Southern Politics was especially ready to blow.

In those days elections in November didn't matter much, it was all about the Democrat Primaries. From dogcatcher to Senator or Governor, win the Primary and the Donk was in.

Right about the year of my birth a young veteran named George Corley Wallace ran for office the first time. One of the planks in his platform was equal rights for black Americans. Meanwhile millions of black Americans had returned from the Services and duty in WW2.

Now we all know that the Services were segregated then, many black Americans sent into menial, but necessary jobs. Not all, of course. We know about the Tuskeegee Arimen, those black pilots who served heroically in the air. Most of us have forgotten the Tank Destroyer outfits that filled the front lines battling Germany's Panzers, and winning. We know about the Red Ball Express, running everything from bullets to beans, and most especially gasoline, all over France and Germany, often pushing destroyed trucks with dead drivers off the road so the convoy could grind on. We forget that many US Infantry Divisions in the Italian Campaign were black soldiers with (mostly) white officers.

These young veterans came home wanting what was theirs, the piece of America that they too had fought for. Most everybody my age remembers that, the trouble is there are a lot, a LOT of people born later who do not remember. Instead they get their ideas about that time from a very suspect source, the media.

During that time the segregation was caused by only one thing, really, the desire to keep wages down. Working class whites were kept in line by the the constant threat "I'll give your job to a n****r". Today, of course, no one says this, instead it's "I'll ship your IT job to India, your manufacturing job to Singapore," etc. That, my friends, is progress.

That threat, between 1866 and the 1970s was the root of animosity between the races. On one side were a people denied those jobs at all and on the other side, those kept at bare subsistence wages, living in fear for their meager livelihoods.

Today, of course, we have idiots publishing magazine covers about "is your baby racist?" back then it was very common for black and white children to play together until going to the segregated schools. This is important, it shows that racism is taught. Racism is simply fear. Southerners were taught racism like Yankee working class folks were taught to hate the Irish and the Poles, not to mention, the blacks.

Fear of The Other. It's pretty old. Genghis Khan riding out of the deserts of Central Asia, the Cossacks roaring out of the Steppes, the Apache slaughtering the Navajo, Chaka Zulu slaughtering everyone he came up against, an old old story.

Today we Americans, of any race, should not fear any of The Other. If our laughable "intelligence agencies" were not busy fighting each other and political administrations they disagreed with, we should be able to swat down any foreign threat in short order. Note, please, that we were losing men and women in Iraq only because we were trying to make a net change in that society. We could just as easily killed everyone and gone about our business. We lost those troops because we were trying to be good guys. Please note, I tend to digress, this is not one of those times. We have no reason to have to fear the other now. It might be ugly but we can literally prevent any other "tribe" from hurting us.

Back to the dawn of the modern civil rights era. It's kind of funny, back then there were huge problems the black community faced, one of them they did not have was unwed motherhood. It was not so very long ago that the rate for white people having children out of wedlock was higher than that of black folks.

This little factoid does not have a lot to do with civil rights per se, it does have much to do with poverty and crime. The left is constantly agonising over our high rate of incarceration and poverty. Well, the most obvious predictor of poverty and incarceration is unwed parents. Naturally, mention this around liberals and they get a horrible case of the vapors and start screeching about how you hate women, minorities and children and want to return women to barefoot and pregnant. Which is odd since we, when we mention this, are trying to help women and children of all races, as well as society. I will refrain from trying to guess why the segments of society closely aligned with the political left seem most interested in promoting illegitimacy, that is for another time. Still, it's strange that as actual racism in America is lessened, we get faced with two thirds of black Americans and around a quarter of white Americans born out of wedlock. It does keep prison guards in business, I reckon.

Anyhow, back to the Democrat Primaries of my childhood. There were two keys to the southern ones, populist and racist. If this combination seems strange to you, well, me too. Anyhow, or late friend George C. Wallace ran on an equal opportunity, let's build our little piece of Alabama up for all ticket. His opponent had lots of money from those interested in keeping wages low and campaigned by shouting "N****R! N****R! N****R! Wallace lost. He swore then, "I'll never be outn****red again. And he wasn't. It was not until he was out of politics and near the end of his life that he publicly recanted his segregationist career. From my perspective the problem with Wallace was not his segregationist political career, which I do not now believe was heartfelt but his failure to improve Alabama's economy. Others may disagree, many probably will but I can take a lot of bluster if every one's income and standard of living is climbing fast. Alas, neither white nor black did well.

Today we have come a very long way. When I was a boy and the KKK wanted to march, everybody trembled in fear. Today if we want to see fear, tell the KKK that, just after they've formed for their march, oh yeah, the police there are going off duty and the next shift has to cover something else.

It's kind of funny, really, the KKK now has a membership running somewhere between three and six thousand, nationwide. The only white racial groups that are growing in membership are those prison gangs, they are, of course, formed against the black and brown gangs. Want to end those, figure out how to stop unwed pregnancies. As far as the white racist groups having nothing to do with prison gangs, we've far more people warning us about racism than we do racists. When was the last time we had a noose incident or a car scratching or painting of racial slurs that wasn't done by the alleged victim, wanting to call attention to the problem?

We hear about the dangers of those NeoNazi groups, the total number, again outside the prison gangs, is even smaller than the KKK. Yet there are reinforced Regiments of groups fighting them. Again, let them go march and then, in the middle of the march, have the police detail inform them the police are called elsewhere. See just how fearsome they are!

The great civil rights crime of the last thirty years was the horrible dragging death of James Byrd. The crime was awful, no doubt about it. Yet those three peckerwoods were caught and convicted. To save time and trouble the three were given the choice, first one to roll over gets life without parole. The other two got the death penalty.

Naturally, the civil rights establishment then sallied forth with the statement that Governor Bush' refusal to support hate legislation was proof that He, and Texas, were somehow condoning Mr. Byrd's murder. Of course, most of us in Texas, even most Dems are still scratching our heads over that one. Maybe we were supposed to shoot them up with something to knock them out, then go through the process again for real? Maybe give that other one two life sentences, each without parole?

I would feel a lot better if the civil rights establishment would do two things. the first is to realise that it is not 1956 anymore. More importantly, stop being an arm of the Democrat Party. The Democrats are not doing anything for you, they don't have to. The Republicans actually do things, not for the black families but for families. We Republicans will not go out of our way specifically for blacks because it doesn't matter, no matter what we do, we are The Enemy. Same with Hispanics. When Governor of Texas one of George W. Bush' proudest moments was when he led the fight to bring running water and sewers to those border colonias along our side of the Rio Grande.

Now, this is long enough already so I'm going to close this entry. If there is no giant civil rights march outside my house I will put in my suggestions on where the civil rights movement should go. Those should go over like a pregnant pole vaulter.

Busy Few Days

It's been a busy couple of days and I have been neglecting doing any writing. Nothing is wrong, the usual payday errands one day followed by a Doc's appointment the next with a grandson's birthday party this evening. Gas prices what they are we just wandered about the fringes of Dallas from the late morning appointment to the late afternoon party.

Note to anyone old enough to remember the Reagan Administration. If you go to a child's birthday party at Mac Donald's, sneak some earplugs in your ears. They do not believe in soundproofing and the screeching echos!

Texas Railroad Commissioner (The position is a heck of a lot more important than it sounds, the TRC regulates oil production, among other things) Michael Williams has a great article on race in the Austin American Statesman Mr. Williams who happens to be black is running for the US Senate. I'm supporting him, not because f his race or gender but because he would be a relief from the RINO that holds the seat now. The funny thing is, Senator Hutchinson used to be a strong Republican. I guess it is true, hanging around Washington, DC just kills Republicans after a while. I guess it's the way a strong Republican is a social outcast up there so, after a few years they "moderate" and become exactly like the people we sent them up to fight.

Anyhow, look at Mr. Williams' article. I think it's what Mr. Obama should have said and I am going to try to respond to it from my own perpective. This will probably take a day or two. Wish me luck on that, a dead ringer for a white guy talking about race.

Poland And Other Stories

I was flipping around the Blogosphere and seeing all these folks wondering why Obama is pulling our protection away from Poland, one of America's staunchest allies. Aside from the fact that Obama is not and has not had any interest in America's traditional allies, (see Britain and Israel) there is the minor detail of Obama being mostly interested in domestic politics. Obama is a creature of Chicago politics. The Polish American community is a strong part of Chicago politics, vying with the black community for power, patronage and influence. Obama, with his domestic view of politics does not mind hurting Poland and, being a leftist, does not care about potential deaths. Please quit thinking that leftists care whether actual human beings live or die, read their writings. The left is all about how humanity is a plague upon Holy Mother Gaia and how there are way to many of us.

There is much angst about overpopulation on the left, their arguments are not how we should live and be well, how we should feed our billions but whether the human population should be one billion, five hundred million or less. The left never speaks aloud how they're going to reach this nirvana of low population, nor who gets to choose. The left simply assumes that they will choose.

Somehow the left will manage to kill off all the evil white people and most of the black and brown, while they sit, triumphantly in their beautiful coastal cities, kings and queens of all they survey. Since about one tenth of one percent of leftists know how to do little unimportant things like run a power station or grow food I'm not sure exactly how that will work. Not to mention that their side is not the side that has the guns. Every time I mention that, though, the left screeches that I'm making threats. Um, no, I'm just pointing out the obvious. Not that many lefty types can see the obvious. Otherwise they'd know that ending the United States military power will mean that their buds in the Jihadist movement would kill them. Lefties sure are smart, just ask them.

Speaking of smart lefties, did anyone notice Obama campaigning on cutting our deployed nuclear weapon count from thousands to hundreds? Maybe I just missed it, after all, I only spend twelve to sixteen hours a day on the 'net reading mostly political blogs. Now, y'all will have to pardon me for being a pore dumb redneck but it seems that with Iran nuking up, the Norks testing nukes, all such a great surprise to our CIA, perhaps us turning loose of our nukes might just be a tad mistimed. Never might be a better time for us to get rid of our nukes. Now, if we were to get rid of many of our nukes by setting them off over places like Qom and North Korea, fine, I'd go for that. Just just to throw them out like the "clunkers" they "glassed", should we not talk about this? Should we not have an election cycle or two where one side says lets cut way back and the other side says lets not? Instead we had an election cycle where most Dems that were not in absolutely safe House districts running to the right of their Republican opponents and Obama running as a centrist.

Obama and the rest of the left live in this dream world they have created in their heads. A dream world where we get rid of missile defense and nukes, then when the killing starts it will not be them and their children. The believe that after all of the things they are working for (but won't tell us about) not only will they still be running things. No, not only will they still be running things after all of those "wrong" people are dead, but that there will still be farmers growing food, people running power plants and mechanics fixing their new hybrid cars. Oh yeah, and auto companies making them. Dream worlders.

It is bad enough that we let people like the Obamas run loose, uninstitutionalized, we've elected him to high office.

Now, of course, Obama is trying to figure out a way to bail on Afghanistan, after campaigning on it being the now central front in the War, only it's not a war anymore. All those guys and gals wearing funny clothes carrying M16s? Those are not Soldiers, Marines and Airmen, they're Overseas Contigency Operators. (I hope that the men and women on those big gray canoes are still Sailors, though) So unimportant that when Obambi went to bestow the Medal of Honor on the family of Jared C. Monti, Michelle wore a party dress and Obambi a tie to match it. No clue, these people have no clue about the men and women of the military, nor their families.

We might as well get used to it, we have a new strategy in our Overseas Contingency Operations. One which will kill as many snuffies as possible* while making absolutely sure that no victory is possible. As a matter of fact we'll soon have liberals loudly proclaim that there is no such thing as victory. Or are libs already proclaiming that?

* Are Infantry troops still called Snuffies?

I Am Preparing To Weigh 350 Pounds And Rising

One of my little pleasures is just clicking on random commenter's names as I click my way around the Intertubez. I find a lot of blogs that I never want to go back to, I find a lot of other blogs that are just flat out great reading.

I often click away from a really great blog without remembering to put it into my bookmarks, then wishing I remembered anything but how informative, fun or otherwise valuable it was.

Yesterday I clicked on a site that is a recipe site, plus. This is a site that is informative about recipes but there are a lot of those. In addition to being informative, it's also fun. The writing is so skilled that I just dream I could write like that. She writes so well that I stayed up all night reading her stuff, so well that I enjoyed reading about stuff I did not care about, finding myself caring and worrying.

Just about anyone can write about what interests me and I'll enjoy it, this young woman is better than that. I am probably the last person in the world to not know about Ree Drummond the Pioneer Woman. I'm pretty sure that the whole Blogosphere has this site in their bookmarks but no one told me about it because it's a plot!

Or maybe y'all are just trying to save me. I look at these recipes and I'm pretty sure that if I eat them for or five times a week the Fire Department will have to use the jaws of life to open the doorways up enough for me to get out the doors.

I stayed up all night reading her blog, again, reading subjects that bore the pants off me, normally. Her story of how a city girl, stopping at her parents small town, country club home for a while as she moved from her LA home to her Chicago law school and further big city life was suddenly derailed when she met a rancher and accidentally fell in love, threw her plans out the window and became a country girl, living twenty-five miles outside the resume speed sign of small town America is poetry. I could not stop reading this romance and folks, I do not read romances. I read westerns. I read action novels. I read political books and I read books on shooting and ballistics. I do not read romances. I am not planning to start reading romances. I am not particularly in touch with my feminine side, I think I got a postcard from it back in 1992 or so but I do not read romances.

So my explanation for this is just flat out great writing. Or maybe Linda Lou has been grinding up her hormone pills and mixing 'em into my coffee. Hmmm.

Anyhow, this seems to be a pretty popular blog, I know this because there are like 400 comments on some posts, there were 168, so far on the latest post, again, something that ordinarily not bother to read. Her photography is as good as her writing, her recipes frighten me. I think if her husband would allow it I'd move up there and offer to have her babies if she'd feed me. Anyhow, if my link id lame, she'll be on my sidebar. If you already know, just point and laugh. If, BTW, you don't know, go there. Go there now. Read the recipes, look at the pictures. Even if you don't cook the recipes, the picures will show you what heaven might be like where we can eat whatever we wish and not worry about needing a block and tackle and five men with crowbars to get out of our chairs.

So, ACORN Offers To Help With Child Sex Slavery.

Okay, O'Keefe and Giles have caught five (so far) ACORN office staffers that seem eager to help with child sex slavery. Now leftists may quibble but it's really pretty simple, if one is willing to help put under aged children into a house of prostitution, that is child sex slavery. Sorry. No matter how many big words one wants to use, no matter how high the political office, helping to put under aged girls into a house of prostitution is aiding and abetting child sex slavery. I don't know about you but I am against child sex slavery. As a grandfather I will fight to protect my grandchildren from falling prey to those that traffic in child sex slavery and, if I come up on someone else's grandchildren I would have to appoint myself as an honorary godfather and try to do something about it. You see, there are a lot of duties involved in being an adult, the number one duty is to protect children. Period. If it's my life or a child's, well, I've had a pretty good run, except for that convincing Ann Coulter that an affair with an older man thing.

Thing is, Giles and O'Keefe didn't seem to have much trouble. These ACORN workers did not act surprised that anyone would suggest such a despicable thing as running under aged girls up from El Salvador to be enslaved in their cathouse. It was like business as usual for these offices. So, we wonder how many real pimps and hookers have gone through these offices.

Hence my surprise at the seven US Senators and 75 US Representatives voting to keep funding ACORN. Follow me here:

ACORN offices are seen to be willing to aid and abet child sex slavery.

Americans, through their duly elected representatives have passed laws against child sex slavery. Therefore, it is the consensus that America and Americans are against child sex slavery. Otherwise the law would be repealed and underage prostitution would not be underground as it is now.

Therefor, in this case, a vote to cut off funds to ACORN is a vote against child sex slavery. Conversely a vote to keep funding this outfit is a vote FOR child sex slavery. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against sex. If I remember correctly I even used to like it. (sigh)

As a matter of fact I won't even rail against prostitution. Not after being in the Service on a lot of foreign shores during the '60s. Now I do believe that prostitution corrodes the souls some but I also remember that Jesus himself was pals with (but not a customer of) Mary Magdalene. One thing, though, in my wild days I did not look for children. But I digress.

So, who voted in favor of child sex slavery? I'm no expert on Congress, I know my Rep, both Senators and a few others, either because they are in the leadership, are in the news a lot or are close to me. I see that Eddie Bernice Johnson, of Dallas voted for aiding and abetting child sex slavery. As did that embarrassment to humanity from the LA area, I'm (thankfully) drawing a blank on her name. Get this, women who are the daughters of slaves voting pro child sex slavery.

Think about that a minute. Hundreds of thousands died to end slavery. More died to end the sway of the Klu Klux Klan and bring full citizenship to the great grandchildren of slaves. And here they are, the sons and daughters of the civil rights movement, voting for child sex slavery.

That shaking you feel is not Chris Mathew's leg this time, it's Frederick Douglass and Abe Lincoln, it's John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe and the thousands and thousands of Union troopers who thought they did join up to end slavery. Yes and it's Booker T. Washington and the Tenth and Eleventh Cavalry, it's Harry Truman who desegregated the military, it's Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, whirling like dervishes in their graves because of all of the black and, yes, white politicians voting in favor of child sex slavery. It is enough to make me throw up a little in my mouth.

I must go now and cry for my country.

ACORN And The Workers, That's Loyalty

I don't know much about ACORN, I live in the country where the communities are too small to be organized. That's why there were few Obama votes out here, we don't think community organiser is a job.

So, I read that ACORN is suspending operations in a headline, then I read that they are simply not seeing any new "clients" while the hold an internal review. Yep, that'll work. How many years did it take for them to figure out that the founder's brother embezzled most of a million bucks from them? I mean this was back before Obama started throwing trillions of dollars like I throw nickels, too.

Anyway, just before I found that out I was bemused by ACORN's other antics. As each of those recordings showed up by those brave young people doing the job that the news media is supposed to do, the ACORN bosses screeched about ENTRAPMENT!! Doctored tapes!!! Our workers were just leading them on!!! Blah blah. Then, oddly enough, ACORN fired these innocent workers. That's odd, if an organization is claiming that the workers did nothing wrong, those workers are not fired because firing them is an admission that they are guilty. And if the workers in several offices are guilty, that establishes a "pattern of wrongdoing". I'm no lawyer, I do have some standards, but even I know this.

This is, of course, nothing new. One of the first things I learned in the Service is the old "loyalty up, loyalty down" slogan. Simply put, if a leader, from Corporal to President, is not loyal to the men and women under him, they will not be loyal to him. The left does not understand this, and it seems, never has. Look at Stalin and Trotsky or other of the thousands of people loyal to him that died, either with the famous pistol bullet in the back of the head or worked to death in the Gulags.

Look at Hitler and the night of the long knives.

This country has a similar, although less bloody, history. Many of the kids in the antiwar left ended up locked up, addicted or just plain ruined by the drugs. The leaders? Well, we know about Bill Ayers. Jerry Rubin died wealthy, although a scofflaw to his death. Had he walked to the street corner and waited for the light to change, he would not have been run over while trying to jaywalk on a six lane LA street. At least the other YIPPEE founder, Abbie Hoffman had the decency to swallow 150 barbiturate pills and go out the way he told others to live. He was the minority, though.

Ah well, most of the lefty leaders are wealthy while spending their time on the top story of that famous two story outhouse, while the followers go to the first story.

How wealthy are the top level bosses of ACORN? I have no idea but since they could hide a near million dollar embezzlement from 2000 to 2008 there must be a powerful lot of money floating around that outfit. So, tell me, why are the communities they are trying to organize so poor?

My, it must be like the millions of dollars Obama and Ayers spent to improve education in Chicago. Seems that of all those Annenberg Foundation dollars they spent went to their mostly crooked buddies and the Chicago schools are not one jot better. Imagine that. Now Obama is doing to America what he once did for Chicago schools.

Oh, anybody know what kind of car the boss of SEIU rides around in? Bet ten dollars that it isn't a battered old '89 Chevy.

Update: I'm also told ACORN, although integral in the formation of SEIU, has resisted all attempts of it's workers to unionize. Sooner or later some of these workers will blow the lid off ACORN. It probably would have already happened if the legacy media were not a wholly owned subsidiary of the far left.

Does Anyone Know...

I have a few questions bouncing around in my bald head and I kind of hope there are a couple of people with some information.

Let's start with some guy named Donald Somethingorother who runs a blog titled, I believe, American Power. I do not know the guy, nor do I read his blog. He only comes up on my radar when he does something inexplicable. The first time he popped up was when he posted that "keyhole" video of that woman sports reporter, I think she works for ESPN, I don't follow anything but NASCAR anymore so I do not know the young woman.

A few Bloggers I respect took issue with this and I agree with them. There are a lot of places on the 'net to see women without clothes on, why show a woman who had this keyhole movie taken against her will? Donald Whathisname claims that because the woman works in a public medium, the movie is news. Well, yes, that this movie was made is news. The movie itself isn't news, it's just evidence. Donald is too smart to understand that. So he covers it up in a cloud of meaningless words.

Donald's latest escapade is posting the pictures of that young serviceman killed in Afghanistan. Again, he claims it to be news. I can just see an old movie where the gruff old cigar chomping editor screams out "Stop the presses! New Headline!" Young Men Get Killed In War!

Of course, Donald's action is not the first mystery in this story. This picture, or series of pictures was taken by an Associated Press photog embedded with that outfit. One of the things that one must do to gain an embed slot is agree to and sign a list of rules. High up on that list is no identifiable pictures of dead and wounded troops with express permission of those troops. The reporter/photographer gave her word. Then AP gave it's word. Then they broke that word.

I'm not the smartest guy in town but I know what a news organization has to sell. They can put people in places that we cannot be and tell us what happened. How do we know they're telling the truth? Well, we only have their word and the word of other reporters who were there. And we now know exactly what AP's word is worth. I do not understand why the stockholders of that corporation haven't formed a lynch mob and gone after that bunch.

Enter Donald again, posting one or more of those pictures on the grounds that that young man was a public figure. And, of course, that it was news. Now it was a long time since I swore the oath of enlistment but I don't remember a single word in it about me being a public figure. It said things like preserve and defend the Constitution and obey all lawful orders but there was nothing in it about public figure. And again, young men dying, well, here is some news, we're now losing young women, too. And neither of those are news. So, what is Donald's motivation?

Two times in the last couple-three months he does something many of us think is despicable, why? The people who called him on it get a big cloud of words. Words that are much like an Obama speech, they sound soothing but on careful reading mean very little. I first thought it was something simple like he wants to draw traffic. That doesn't really make sense though. Who wants to see the movie of the sports newsperson? Mostly, perverts. Who wants to see the picture of that young man dying with his leg blown off, as well as other injuries? To put it simply, ghouls. There is, quite simply, no good reason to post pictures of that young man's death. I would like more hits on my little blog here. I do not want perverts and ghouls as my readership, though.

Why do it? I don't know, unless Donald himself is a pervert and ghoul. I could be wrong but that's how it looks from here.

Now, a complete change of subject: Does anyone know what happened to Jennifer Martinez? She was blogging at A Collection of Thoughts and she was changing websites about the time I had my stroke and I lost track. I cannot find where she's writing now by googling her name and, unfortunately, that is the limit of my mad cumputer skilz.

Robert Stacy McCain

Seems that Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs fame has now called out RS McCain as a racist, with short snippets of quotes, quotes when they are put out more fully seem not racist at all. One quote, which seems more problematical is actually from someone else entirely.

I wish someone would try that with me, in a slightly different way. Why with short snippets of me and longer quotes from other people entirely I could be a well known math genius, a financial guru and who knows what else. Then with somebody smart to write the speeches I could hit the lecture circuit and be famous!

Oddly, Mr. McCain is also faulted because some of his articles have been found in publications that some on the left do not like. Now y'all must pardon me for being a pore dumb redneck (it's not really our necks that are red, it's the reflection off the back of our ears) but RS McCain writes for a living. he has six children to support. I do not know but I suspect that he'd write something for the Devil's own magazine if he could pick the subject.

Look, seriously, I'm real tired of this flinging around of nasty accusations based on lies and snippets. I don't know Stacy. I value his reporting. He does the job that reporters are supposed to do. I would not know Charles Johnson if he ran up and bit me on the butt. (He'd better not, I'm armed) I have at least seen pictures of RS McCain, including that one of him in a speedo. As an aside, be careful on the internet. It's easy to see things better left unseen and once seen cannot ever be unseen.

However, other that that unfortunate picture, Stacy is all right in my book. Where Mr. Johnson has slipped back into the hive mind of the left. Anyone who does not agree with Mr. Johnson is an enemy, even if that person otherwise agrees in many other areas.

If this slips into a full scale blog war, I'm siding with Stacy. Mr. Johnson can't start out with putting someone else' words in Stacy's mouth and win me onto his side. Nor is Mr. Johnson perfect, the language he uses on his own blog toward Saudi Arabians can be considered racist by many who want to hang Mr. McCain to a sour apple tree.

Now in fairness, I defended, in this blog, Ann Coulter for saying some of the same things and using some of the same terms. We are at war, whether or not some segments of our political "elite" think so. In war it is necessary to do some ugly things to human beings. It is a heck of a lot easier to drop bombs on "Krauts" rather than Germans who could be cousins to that nice Mr. Wassermann who ran the butcher shop down the street.

I understand dehumanisation, It's important to those pulling triggers, dropping bombs and now sending Hellfire missiles off of drones. Without that dehumanisation we may easily hesitate to pull the trigger and end up dying ourselves or causing deaths in our own ranks.

Now because that dehumanisation is needed doesn't make it right, really, it's just a trick we use to try to come home alive from whatever silly predicament our civilian and military leadership got us into this time. Note that I do not use the terms I did back then for the Viet Namese who chose the different side. During WW2 my parents used what is now considered an ugly term for the Japanese and we moved from island to island killing and being killed. We then rained death from the skies on them while they did their very best to rain death and destruction on us. Fast forward a few decades and my parents loved their Japanese American son in law. Only he's not Japanese American, he is American. He has grandparents or great grandparents who came from those islands, he is as American as I am.

So, here is a guy, Charles Johnson, who is loudly accusing another guy, RS McCain of wanting to dehumanise certain people while loudly dehumanising certain other people himself. While I believe Mr. Johnson's language regarding our Arab and Muslim brethren and sistren can be forgiven considering the quasi state of war, perhaps it would be a far better thing if Mr. Johnson let someone else fling those particular accusations around.

If I had any money I would hit Stacy's tipjar just because of these accusations. As it is I can just offer my support.

The Million Kid March On 9/12

I could not make it to Washington, DC, my pension check won't go near that far. I would have liked to go but it just wasn't in the cards. Instead we took a drive in the rain to the north of Dallas suburb where the million kid march was held.

I wish I understood persactly what it is about city folks that makes them unable to drive on the freeway without stopping for no apparent reason, in traffic, in the raid. Dear city people. If you maintain a decent space between your car and the car in front, those folks trying to merge into traffic can do so. And it is not a death insult for someone to merge in front of you. When someone is trying to pull on the freeway, let them. Someday you might want to merge onto a freeway. Dear other city people: when trying to merge on the freeway, do not go to the end of the onramp and stop. If you must stop, stop down where you can accelerate to traffic speed and look for a hole that will be there when you get to speed.

So we got there alive, only two scare the pants off near wrecks, we were actually a tad early. A short prayer of thanks and in we went.

The first Uh-oh was that, while we weren't around, Josiah went into that shy phase of childhood. Instead of a hug we got: run away! Hide! Mmmph! The good Lord should not allow kids to hide from Gramps.

Anyhow we got in, the kids had set up one of those little bouncy "castles" and a good thing, too. Seems that the Lord had decided to bring rain to Texas for a few days. The roof on the patio was barely big enough to keep the rain off. Without the bouncy castle the house would have been destroyed down to the slab.

William still wants to be the star of the show. Josiah is cute as a bug, unless he gets some awful affliction he will be the bane of fathers with daughters in a little over a decade. And Karson, when last seen was just taking a few steps and then, plump! Down on his bottom. Now he's walking like a seasoned infantryman.

Karson's main problem began when he got fascinated by the green bow on one of the presents and got his hand slapped the third time he took it off the package. The tears rolled even after I promised he could have it after the presents were opened. And I thought I had such an honest face.

The million kid march started really well with the cutting and serving of the cake. The cake was a lot fancier than we used to get back in the 1950s, featuring some cartoon kid I never heard of. When I tried to organize a chant about keep your hands off my health care it turned into Happy Birthday.

Oh well, too soon it was over and homeward we went. Because, in spite of a big piece of birthday cake, my stomach was flapping, we stopped at Taco Bueno on the way home. One of the few downsides to living in the country is that there are few good fast food joints anywhere near.

We got home to two frantic Pugs and a soaking wet German Shepherd that got to stay in the backyard until it was almost time for Linda Lou to go to bed. CAP is certainly the last big dog of my life, I shoud not have bought her as a puppy but she loves us too much, and vice versa, for us to send her to German shepherd Rescue.

A Stop On The Underground Railroad?

I went over to Atlas Shrugs again, via the wonderful sidebar widget on Cynthia Yockey's site giving the last four titles of dozens of blogs. I wish I were knowledgeable enough to do such things but Blogspot is about the best I can do, computerwise.

I do believe it's time to start thinking about a modern version of the fabled underground railroads of the pre Civil War days. Seems that the moderate Muslims of Ohio still want to either kill Rifqa Bary or send her into slavery in Pakistan. Either option should be totally unacceptable to Americans.

I'm not exactly sure how but we need to set up an underground railroad for those threatened by the ummah. We have about a bazillion illegals running around this country, why can't someone get to the people supplying all those fake IDs?

I'm not quite sure how long a young person would want to hide out in our spare bedroom but it might just be better than becoming suddenly dead. Even if the young person had to move the piles of books off the bed in there.

I'm pretty sure that it would be pretty difficult for the bad guys to come up my little three house street unnoticed since the dogs have hysterics if someone walks or drives anywhere close. I'm also pretty sure that between the rifles and the buckshot anyone with evil intentions might regret coming here.

I'm pretty sure that there are at least a few million of us, with a spare bedroom and a few pounds of buckshot where those trying to escape the moderate Muslims can hide. Is there anyone smart enough to set it up?

It's 9/10 Again In America. What A Shame

Eight years ago I was sitting at the computer on my day off from what turned out to be my last job. I was on a shooting and hunting bulletin board (I had no idea what a blog was) drinking my morning coffee and getting ready to go to the shooting range.

Someone posted something about an airplane flying into a building in New York City, on the handloading section of the shooting and hunting BBS, no less. I was wondering WTF but didn't think too much of it, after all a B-25 flew into the Empire State Building back during WW2. But every time I looked up there were more and more responses to that post so I clicked on it. I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane fly into the other tower.

That sealed it for me, I knew right then that it was war. I mean, sure, one plane could be an accident, although it'd be hard to fathom a modern airliner's crew making that sort of error, but two? I stayed glued to the TV for a couple-three hours, until Linda Lou chased me off the TV and out of the house, she could not stand seeing the same tape rolled over and over any longer.

So I drove to the shootin' range, the highways were pretty well deserted, except oddly, the gas stations which were overflowing. It does not take much to overload our infrastructure and some trouble half a continent away can do just that.

Since I was too tuned to the TV at home I stopped at a Schlotzy's for a humongus sammich, and then drove in to the range. I did not shoot the rifle very well, I was too angry for tight groups. With the handguns I was my normal (?) self.

The only thing unusual about that range Tuesday was that only about half of the regulars were there and that the folks in charge mostly let us work out the cease fires between us. Tuesday was my usual range day back then, it was seldom crowded and those of us who were there were either retired or folks who worked oddball shifts. Well, there was one more unusual thing, we spent a lot of time running into the range shack where the portable TV kept us up to date with every new rumor.

One of the things I'll never forget is the crowds of medical people waiting for the injured to come. There were several pictures over that day and I could see the dejection as they realized that there was going to be no flood of injured because they were all dead. All those years of education, all those hours of planning for just such an emergency and there was no use for them that awful, beautiful fall day.

There are still pictures in my mind from that day. I remember the people jumping from the upper floors, cut off from walking down the stairs by the fire that was rushing up and giving them only the choice between burning or jumping. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, that one couple comes into my mind, the way they held hands as they jumped and how that camera followed them down, their hands separated and they fell to their deaths. As that film plays in my head I wonder. Who were they? Husband and wife? Lovers? Just friends from the office? Strangers driven into an impossible choice finding courage in each other, just for a moment? Only they knew and only God knows.

Another thing I remember, although not a picture) is how the body count kept getting smaller and smaller. It started out at upwards of twenty thousand and just kept shrinking. Too bad it didn't shrink more. One of the reasons we lost so many firefighters is that the structural beams of the WTC had no asbestos wrapping. I don't know that it made all the difference but asbestos works a lot better than what replaced it. So, would it have kept the buildings from pancaking until the firefighters put those fires out? Since none of the government and we're all going to live forever if we just removed these harmful things crowd ever mention it, probably. And, judging from the unusually high numbers of sickness among the rescue folks digging through the rubble, removing the asbestos didn't help anyone. Figures.

The rage and fear has faded among most of America. Too many have forgotten the "Palestinians" dancing in the streets. Too many have forgotten that liberal reporter having his head sawn off with a dull knife, on camera. Of course liberals now think they're safe. Too many now believe that it was all about George Bush, even though the planning started during the Clinton Administration.

This amnesia will do nothing but bring on another attack. Will it come with one of Iran's nukes?

Scattershooting While Wondering Whatever Happened To Smedley Butler

Not much going on here on the peaceful shores of Lake Tawakoni, not even quite as much boating, it's a bit cooler because of Algore's glowbull warming. The fisherpeople are out, of course, but not so many of the people just running around at sixty miles per hour on the water, running around in circles. Or maybe the boats have all been repo'd.

I've been alternating, eating large bowls of my ham and lima beans with rye bread and then something, anything else. That's the downside to being married to Linda Lou and having all the kids far away, a big pot of beans lasts forever. I got some turkey pastrami and have been eating pastrami on rye and potato salad, too. I am curious, though. All these folks spending a bunch of money on colon cleansers. Why don't they just buy a two pound bag o' lima beans, the butt end ot a football ham and a couple of onions?

Of course with International Bacon Day this weekend I didn't just eat turkey pastrami on rye and ham and lima beans. I made poor Linda Lou make me bacon and eggs. I can scramble eggs just fine, I can even boil eggs, I cannot fry eggs and that's the only way I like eggs with bacon. Now with slices of ham I like my eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese. Put the cheese in until there is way too much, then add some more cheese. With sausage I can swing both ways.

For some reason I am unable to turn eggs over while frying them. I dunno if it's the Parkinsons or just clumsiness, I've never had much luck with flipping eggs. So I make Linda Lou do it and she grows lazier each day.

Seems good ol' Van Jones has bit the dust, to the total surprise of those getting their "news" from the NYT and it's cohorts at ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. According to those "news" agencies Van was doing just fine, no one at all knew he was a "truther" and no one knew he was slightly to the left of Vladimir Illich Lenin, notrthat Gateway Pundit caught him out on it and Glen Beck poured on the coal oil. No, to the consumers of the mainstream media none of this ever happened.

There is a little something I need to get off my chest. I'm a veteran. I served in wartime in a combat zone. This does not make me a hero, just a guy that did a difficult job for a few years way back when he was young. In my day most men and women in the Services, even during that war, never fired a weapon at a human. Nor did many get shot at. We were not heroes. Just young men far from home with very low pay.

It's been a very long time since I put on Uncle's Suit. It's almost the average life expectancy of many African and Asian nations, now. It still grates on me, though, calling every Tom, Dick and Mary in Uncle's Suit a hero. Oh well, it still grates seeing all those troopies wandering around in their work clothes. In my day we had to wear a somewhat more formal uniform off base.

I believe that the "everybody is a hero" drill is a reaction to how so many treated us during the Southeast Asian War Games. Well, it's an overreaction. You will know the heroes when you see them. They'll be getting off the airplane from the cargo hold. They'll be the ones wearing that shiny aluminum box, under a blanket of stars and stripes.

So I was fooling around reading about some old campaigns and noticed some mention of Old Gimlet Eye, Smedley Butler. General Butler lied about his age when he ran away from the Quaker School he was attending to enlist in the Marine Corps at 16. He somehow was commissioned a Lieutenant at that tender age and was sent to Gitmo during the Spanish American War.

He was one of the very few men who received the Medal of Honor twice. Oddly, in spite of those medals and combat service in Latin America, the Philippines and China and being a Brigadier General at the young age of 37 he was refused a combat command in France during WW1. Later, when he was the senior Major General in the Corps he was refused the honor of being promoted to Major General Commandant of the corps. Interesting factoid, it wasn't until WW2 that there were any Marines promoted past Major General. At any rate, after being passed over he retired in 1931. He then went on the lecture circuit and wrote a short book, maybe closer to booklet entitled War Is A Racket.

Old Gimlet Eye became an Isolationist. He figured we had two oceans to protect us and that if we didn't stick our noses everywhere we need not fear attacks. He wanted a rule saying that our Navy had to stay within two hundred miles of our coastline with our airplanes allowed five hundred miles out. He may have been right. It's too late to do it now, though, not after WW2. Half the world already hates us, if we pulled back now it would be far worse than it is now.

He did have a good idea or two, though. My favorite is that no one, no Congresscritter, no industrialist supplying anything to the military, no President and no Military Officer could make more than the takehome pay of the private soldier.

That is a reform I'd like to see. We'd still be able to fight wars, they'd just be the ones we're really serious about. And I suspect our troopers would be better paid.

On What Authority?

So I start my daily trek through the Intertubez and one of the first things I see is Robert Stacey McCain getting kind of exercised about this Obama character wanting to address all of the Nation's public school students on September the eighth.

Seems he wants them to take notes. I'm curious. I've read the Constitution several times and see nothing in it that gives any President the right to demand anyone listen to him. Nor is there a clause allowing him to tell people to take notes.

I keep reading that document and the powers given the President are quite limited. His power over education is even more limited. I'm assuming that, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Services he could tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take notes, or for that matter, a PFC at Fort Riley.

Students, though, is another story. The responsibility for public school students still belongs first to the parents and then to the employees of the local, elected school boards. The President of the United States of America has other duties, The only schoolchildren he has any right to speak to, without the parent's permission are his two daughters, Malaria and Smallpox or whatever their names are. I'm not supposed to know his kid's names, he's not supposed to know mine.

Anyhow this really makes me want to have a long look at this constitutional scholar's grades. If the constitutional scholar in chief would just take a look at the document giving him the power he has he'd realise that he has no power to demand anyone not in the military or working in the executive branch of the federal government listen to him, much less take notes. He might also learn that we do not have Czars in our constitutional republic. I'm not persactly sure where they still have Czars or how they are appointed, probably through birth like in Russia pre1917 but if Czars are legal anywhere, Obama is welcome to go there.

Here is the last thing I don't understand. School boards are made up of elected officials, mostly very jealous of their prerogatives. So, why are they going along with this constitutional scholar in chief trying to take their authority? Why don't they just put out the word to turn the TVs off?