Current Events Archives

Further Proof that John McCain is a Maverick

Fresh from testifying for his friend Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska, who is on trial for corruption, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Endorses Obama. It seems that McCain chose someone Colin disapproves of for Vice President. Someone who is also from Alaska like his friend Ted Stevens, I think shes the Govenor up there. The name skips my mind at the moment.

It's good to see Colin finally get some good press again. They sure gave him a hard time back when he worked for Bush in the first term, you know back when he gave that big press conference on "Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" and all that Yellowcake controversy. Ah, those were the days, back when a few Jedi mind tricks from Cheney and Rove could make a good man go and do silly things.

Hey, take one guess who it was that gave Secreatary of State Colin Powell a hard time when he was in the Senate Armed Services Committee?

John McCain.

There is something about "Payback" that might be appropriate to mention here. On the other hand, Powell should understand that being a turncoat doesnt mean you will get rehabilitated, it means that no one on either side will trust you anymore. On the third hand, Colin is 72, so I dont think he's looking for a seat in the cabinet. I think hes looking for a way to avoid long drawn out legal battles.

(Synopsis - Changes nothing, neans even less. Obama gets to tout "General Colin Powell, A Republican endorses me!" while overlooking the irony of who it is thats endorsing him. John McCain gets to point out "Whos the more Bush than Bush, Obama or McCain?" Colin Powell has long since passed his "Sell By" date, which was either 1992 or 2002, I cant remember which. Republicans dont like him, Democrats dont trust him. To the "Average Joe" this smells of political opportunism a barely veiled attempt at political rehabilitation. My own sense is he did it because he actually likes Obama, which tells you all you need to know about his political judgment. Summary - a Good General and a poor politician, Powell gets the Ephialtes Award for teamwork in this election. )

Posted @ October 19, 2008 08:55 AM | Current Events | Comments (0) | TrackBack (26)

Character is what you are in the dark

Albert Speer. Opportunist Nazi Dirtbag.

Here is a highly paraphrased and condensed version of memoirs of Albert Speer "Inside the Third Riech" ( Speer was German Minister for Armaments under Nazi Regime): "Sure, I knew Hitler was as crazy as an outhouse rat and what we were doing in the Reich was wrong and totally immoral, but I despite how much I disagreed with Adolph Hitler, I decided not to speak up and to hang out at my office in Berlin for awhile because I knew that there would be a great market for my memoirs after the war. After all, isn't that what its all about? "

Well that was my take anyway. It was the first thing I thought of when I heard some of the things that Scott "Cupcheck" McClellan has written about the Bush Administration.

Sorry Scott. If you were lied to, and you felt that the Administration you worked in as its spokesman was corrupt, out of control and frankly, just plain wrong, then the thing to do would have been to politely resign (as you were free to do at any moment during your service), walk down the street and explain why you did so to the New York Times.

I'm absolutely certain they would have listened to you. The fact that you didnt choose to do that when it supposedly happened to you, tells me volumes, not about the President and his Administration, but about your character. I have to conclude two things, either you are lying now, or you are a coward and an opportunist dirtbag, like someone else I can think of who springs to mind.

Who knows, maybe you are all three, sort of "one stop shopping" for people in need of a low character snivelling little weasel.

Oh, and Scott just to clue you in - nobody likes or trusts an opportunist turncoat no matter what side they are on. People might be smiling and patting you on the back now, but trust me, youve seen the last of anything "confidential" for the rest of your working career.

I hope it was worth it.

Posted @ May 28, 2008 05:08 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | TrackBack (460)

I thought I was being paid by the word!

Chris Hitchens finds that the benefits of writing often depend on whom you are writing for. From The New York Daily News:

"...Be thankful Graydon Carter isn't your boss. The Vanity Fair honcho ordered columnist Christopher Hitchens to get a makeover for the October issue, after which Hitchens felt more like a POW than well-kempt gentleman. The Brit endured six hours of dental rejuvenation and some manscaping thanks to a "sack, back and crack" wax. Says Hitchens: "The combined effect was like being tortured for information you do not possess."

Mr. Carter, if having bad dental hygene and a hairy back works for Chistopher Hitchens, I suggest you stop defurring and root planing Mr. Hitchens and start taking away the dipilatory cremes and toothbrushes from the rest of your staff instead.

Hitchens is an English writer for cryin out loud, he's supposed to look like a walking talking cross between a well used cat scratching post and a naugahyde bean bag chair; it's all part of the image. Pretty people make bad writers simply because they find other things to do with their time than sit by themselves and brood.

It reminds me of a Billy Conolly story. When Billy was being processed for entry into the Territorial Army Parachute Regiment During the exam, the doctor giving him his physical said 'You're not very big downstairs, are you?' to which Connolly retorted, 'I thought we were only going to fight them.'

Posted @ November 08, 2007 12:21 PM | Current Events | Comments (2)

It's all about the boat

Based on the reaction to the last post, by popular demand I present...

The Chesapeake 18, from CLC Boats. This is a "stitch and glue" lightweight kayak that is sold in kit form and you construct on your own. Its made of mohogany wood structure with fiberglass and resin overlays. This particular boat can carry a large person like yours truly with 300 lbs of gear for Sea Kayak camping. It took about 60 hours to complete, with the bulk of the hard labor spent on the cockpit ring and its compound curves and angles.

If you are looking for a fun project thats easy to build and you have the space, I highly recommend this manufacturer. Their support was fantastic and the materials and supplies were of very high quality.

I am by no means a highly skilled woodworker, do not get the idea that you need to be a master carpenter for this to work. Its very simple to construct this boat and requires no more skills than are needed to follow instructions that are no more complicated than making a cake or making a cabinet that you bought at IKEA.

I got this boat because I wanted a Sea Kayak, but I simply could not justify the expense of a hobby that could cost thousands of dollars even for a used kayak. Chesapeake Light Craft offered an outstanding design that looks beautiful ( and handles excellently!) for less than most sit-on-top plastic kayaks cost.

Posted @ August 06, 2007 10:38 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

The Endless Summer: Part XII

Father and Son, afloat in the endless summer of 2007...

Posted @ August 06, 2007 04:17 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

the 'fog of war' transforms into the 'fog of school massacre'

David Maraniss of the Washington Post gives us a true impression of what actually happened at Virginia Tech.

Snip...

"...Perkins and two classmates, Derek O'Dell and Katelyn Carney, ran up to the door and put their feet against it to make sure he could not get back in. They would have used a heavy table, but there were none, and the desks weren't strong enough.

Soon the gunman tried to get back in. The three students pressed against the door with their arms and legs, straining with their lives at stake. Unable to budge the door, the gunman shot through it four times. Splinters flew from the thick wood. The gunman turned away, again. There were more pops, but each one a bit farther away as he moved down the hall. The scene in the classroom "was brutal," Perkins recalled. Most of the students were dead. He saw a few who were bleeding but conscious and tried to save them. He took off his gray hoodie sweat shirt and wrapped it around a male student's leg."

End Snip.

I wonder if I will wake up tommorow to see Mr. Perkins on the front of the newspaper or on NBC being lauded properly and publically as a hero and an example to others in society.

I wonder why I have to wonder.

Posted @ April 19, 2007 02:30 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

If Todays Press covered the “Battle of the bulge”

This just in, We have just received film footage from our contacts with Belgian insurgents fighting against the United States occupation. The footage is of reprisals taken against US troops in the town of ‘Malmedy”. US Officials insist that what they are calling the “Massacre” of US troops is a result of war crimes committed by German Troops under the command of SS-Standartenführer Joachim Peiper.

Our correspondents in Belgium recently caught up with Standartenführer Joachim Peiper at his field encampment in Belgium and he had this to say in response to charges by the US Government:

“You should recognize that after the battles of Normandy my unit was composed mainly of young, fanatical soldiers. A good deal of them had lost their parents, their sisters and brothers during the bombing. They had seen for themselves in Köln thousands of mangled corpses after a terror raid had passed. Their hatred for the enemy was such; I swear it and I could not always keep it under control."

The Standartenführer is saying what has become a theme in public opinion across the continent since what many are now calling the unecessarily Bloody Normandy campaign, that US excesses in the war are the source of the anger against the US Occupation in much of Europe.

While the Official US Government line continues to say that its winning the battle in Europe, it would seem that the recent upswing in American losses since its initial easy win in Normandy during the summer, have resulted in a military and political quagmire that will be very difficult to extract itself from. Polls taken recently indicate that many in the US say that we are in fact, losing the war in Europe and wish to see a change in strategy from the distant and disconnected three term president. As Secretary of War Stimson continues to push for more troops to deal with the Belgian rebellion, very little seems to stem the tide of anger against the Americans as they cross the Belgium countryside. Nearly every town is supporting the insurgents with snipers and on occasion, tanks provided from their cultural and traditional neighbors in Germany.

Opposition party leaders in this country say that our continued presence in Europe will only create more leaders like SS-Standartenführer Joachim Peiper. While they deplore the methods of the SS, Opposition leaders point out that the SS often gains the support of the local populace by public works, such as day care centers, improved public works and factory jobs to improve the lot of the Germanic people. "We may not agree with their choice in leadership, but Herr Hitler is more popular in many parts ofthe world than our own President. That is something our President needs to understand if he is to get the support of the people in this country or in Europe. It goes without saying that there are many people who are willing to support Herr Hitler to the death, and I doubt very much that you can find that sort of support for the President anywhere in the world" said the Leader of the House opposition party.

The founder of this network had this to say recently about the war in Europe:

“Germany didn’t attack us. I don’t know why the hell we are fighting all the way over there when the real fight is in Hawaii! They say Hitler is an evil man who treats people badly, but we had him bottled up in Europe. I was in Europe before The President made us so hated over there by destroying most of it, I was over there for the Olympics. I didn’t see anyone mistreated, I didn’t see any skinny people in camps, from what I saw, things looked like they ran pretty good, I might even say that they ran a damn sight better than things are now. You know when this thing got started, the President didn’t waste any time on going to Congress and ramming through a declaration of war on the emotions of the moment. It was a damn silly thing to do, on December 8th I still hadn’t made up my mind yet just what side I was on. I wanted time to think about it with a clear head, not take a knee jerk reaction to the whole thing”.

We'll be right back after this commercial break with an interview with US General MacArthur who has recently had very unkind things to say about the US Military Strategy of "Europe First".

Posted @ October 28, 2006 02:09 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

The Sullivan Inquisition

Hugh Hewitt had Andrew Sullivan on the air today for 90 minutes. I groaned when I heard that was who was scheduled and I nearly turned it off as a result. Andrew is a single issue voter around which everything rotates. So long as he determines that you agree with him his one issue, everything else is forgiven. Cross him on the one magic issue, and you face "the scorn of Andrew". I'm glad I stayed tuned, because I dont think I've laughed that hard in a good long time.

Here's a summary of what the tone of the show sounded like to me:

Snip.

HH: Hello Andrew, Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

AS: And just what the hell does that mean? You cant try your Jedi mind tricks on me Hugh. Dont try that legal mumbo jumbo game on me you, you supporter of torture. Isnt that right hugh, Torture. Why dont you say it, SAY IT!!!!

HH: Uhhhhm. well I thought that...

AS: Did you now? I mean, did you actually THINK, or did you just THINK that you thought.

HH: Andrew. Relax. Calm down, come back off the ledge of the building, ok? Were friends here, youre trying to sell a book and I'm trying to interview you on it, thats all. No big deal.

AS: Oh you'd like that, wouldnt you, WOULDNT YOU!!! Thats what all you "regessive theists" want; everyone off the ledges where they are "nice and safe" BWHAHAHAHAHHA.

HH: We'll be right back...

End Snip...

It goes on like that for 90 minutes. I'm serious, it goes on like that for a full 90 minutes. Credit has to be given to Mr. Sullivan. I honestly expected he would fold on the first question, which I believe was the super controversial, never to be asked Vulcan Mind meld chant of "Are you a Christian?". Im not sure he ever actually answered what should have been a simple binary question, but his answer revealed to me much more about Andrew Sullivan than a simple "yes or no" would have ever done, which is most unfortunate for Mr. Sullivan.

My sides hurt from laughing.

The Transcript should be up soon. Dont miss it, or the Lileks Parody that Hugh and Jim Lileks did an improvisation of afterwards.

And in case you are wondering, that was me who called in as "Frank From Sacramento". My first call to a radio show - ever.

Good Job Mr. Hewitt. And fair credit given to Mr. Sullivan for staying on the field until the end.

Posted @ October 25, 2006 06:06 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Ted Turner - " I havent made up my mind what side I'm on yet..."

"You know, there are a lot of things about this war that disturb me, and one of them is the attitude that, you know, that was well-expressed by our president. He said it very clearly, he said “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.” And, I had a problem with that because I really hadn’t made my mind up yet. You know, what if you haven’t made your mind up? You know, what if you’re thinking about it, doing some studying, doing some reading. Because this is an important decision to go to war or whether or not to go to war. I mean either you’re with us or against us…that’s pretty black and white. "

Ted Turner - October 2006.

November 1999 - Taliban execution of Women in Kabul Stadium.

Halabja Iraq 1988: Massacre of Civilians by Mustard Gas

Madrid Bombing of Spanish Civlians by Al-queda

London Bombing of British Civlians by Al-queda

American Civilian falling to his death from WTC on September 11th.

Anthrax attacks on American Civilians, government officials in 2001.

Yes Mr. Turner, it really is "that clear" and it really is "black or white", and god damn your coalblack soul for not having the brains or the heart to see what has been made so self evident.

Posted @ October 10, 2006 01:24 PM | Current Events | Comments (2)

A Democrat Civil War?

Now that Moveon.org has decided to 'rush to war' in Connecticut and has begun its ill-advised occupation of the state by "netroots" militants resulting in a Democrat party that seems perched on the edge of an all too predictable 'civil war', I just have to ask:

"When will America begin to pull its support of this slapdash half thought out disaster that once was the political center of this nation?"

( Wow! Writing from boilerplate isnt just easier than actually thinking, its fun too!)

Whats my take on Joe Vs. Ned? Between now and November, lots of screaming and yelling. But in November, Lieberman wins. Between now and then the Democrat whack-wing will start to issue "purity tests" of both the 'rank and file' and the candidates which will turn the Democrat party into a walking zombie from what was once a very great, principled and powerful political party. My guess is that the Democrats actually expected Joe to leave the party. Someone forgot to mention that unlike most Democrat candidates, Joe Leiberman actually has character.

I can't wait to see Democrats try to outdo each other in verbal contests of "I was anti-war before you were..."

Karl Rove couldnt script a better scenario to demonstrate to one and all the utter fecklessness of the Democrat party. No amount of Rovian intrigue could create a better situation to demonstrate to middle American voters just who the Democrat party is, and what they believe.

( "...pay any price, bear any burden in the defense of freedom? yeah, I could've voted for that Democrat candidate. Too bad that sort of language from Democrats is no longer spoken by Democrats, but is under attack - by Democrats!...)

Posted @ August 09, 2006 03:12 PM | Current Events | Comments (2)

A Late Night Call To My Old Friend Victor

Brrriiinnngg.

VF: Hello?

JB: Yes, Ah, is this Doctor Frankenstein’s office? Doctor Victor Frankenstein?

VF: Yes, can I help you?

JB: Doctor Frankenstein, This is Jose Balaguer, health minister of Cuba.

VF: Yes?

JB: Well, ah, well Doctor I’m glad we found you. You see, we have this little problem.

VF: I’m sorry Mr.Balaguer I no longer have a private practice of my own, I haven’t been able to work in the profession since my office was sacked by the people of the village and since I’ve been under investigation for malpractice by the Bavarian Health Directorate. I’m afraid you will have to look elsewhere. Try Kaiser Permanente, I hear they’re good.

JB: Ah, no sir, we aren’t looking for “a doctor” as such. You see Doctor, ah, well how do I put this….

VF: You’d better get to it soon sonny, this is really starting to annoy me.

JB: Well, its just that you have a certain expertise that we here at the, ah, Cuban Health Ministry are very VERY interested in.

VF: You’re not asking for what I think you are asking for are you?

JB: Its just that we understand that you…

VF: Let me guess… let me take a real big whack at this little piñata, ok? You have a sudden need to re-animate the dead, right?

JB: Ah, uh, mmmmm, well yes…

VF: Look. I don’t know how to re-animate the dead. No one does. Let me try to explain this for you ok? Look, here’s what happened – I had this “Girlfriend” once; her name was Mary Shelley. Remember that name because if you ever see this real mopey goth chick with bad mascara sitting the end of the bar one night and you think to yourself, “hey, she looks interesting”. Just don’t go there, ok! Oh sure, she starts off real sweet and things really start to go your way if you know what I mean, but a week later, she’s still at your house only she wont let you open the curtains, only uses candles to light the house, and she doesn’t want to sleep with you until you do a séance to ‘talk to the dead” first. So naturally you try to break it off with her and she starts screaming – and I do mean screaming – about how she “loves you” only she screams it at the top of her lungs out of the upstairs windows and then starts throwing kitchen cutlery at you when you least expect it. So you throw her out of your house. So what does she do next?

She starts stalking you where you work and calling you in the middle of the night and hanging up which is a real hoot the first 400 times it happens or shes chanting some voodoo curse thing over the phone. Real “ooggey-booggey” stuff too. She starts calling all your ex-girlfriends telling them that “thanks to you, they are all barren witches who can't have children anymore”. Then she decides to ruin your credit by using your credit cards to buy Christie Lane Cd’s and having them mailed to your house and signs you up for AOL as well. you know that sort of thing.

Then she starts a blog called “ VictorFrankensteinmustdie.com” and links it to DemocraticUnderground.com as “Bush supporter” and links your email and address as the site owner. Then she starts showing up at all the other in the hospitals and pretending that she’s a creation that you made in lab. I mean it’s just incredible. Now all the other doctors in the area know her as "Mary Shelley" - Victor Frankensteins "Special Friend" wink-wink. Oh yeah, shes special all right, let me tell you.

So you leave town to get the hell of away from her and her legion of "freak friends". You move to a scenic and somewhat isolated Alpine village in Bavaria, hoping to have a little country doctor practice. You know get “back to basics” thing, a little peace and quiet, a scraped knee here and there, remove a set of tonsils now and then.

OH, BUT NOOOOOOO!

Little Miss Mary Shelley isn’t just any creepy goth chick, she’s a freakin creepy goth chick who’s also a writer! So what does she do? Oh yeah man, she conjures her self up a “novel”, sells it to a big publishing house. Only this novel uses your name as the main character. Yeah right “Who knew that Dr. Frankenstein was a real guy” you say, well dude, I’m here to tell you – HE IS. HE IS ME!

Only I'm not the guy in the novel, ok? and who just am I really? Doctor of Cardiology at Boston General Hospital? Son Of Freddie And Betty Frankenstein, from Philadelphia PA, first in my class at medical school for all the good it did me? Oh no, not me! I’m an Idiot! a superconducting “Freak Magnet” who attracts the psycho chicks like Mary Shelley like they are made of out of steel.

Look dude, there is no “monster”. There is no “reanimation of dead flesh”. There is no lab, no “Igor”. She just made up all that crap to get back at me because I had a bad set of beer goggles on one night and now thanks to her, I have to pay for it for the rest of my life. It’s just the sort of thing that makes you want to burn every bed in the world.

I’m sorry man, if you’ve lost someone, that’s a real shame, but there isn’t anything I can do for you.

JB: Well, ah, ummmm. Dr. Frankenstein I just have one other question of you if I may.

VF: What?

JB: Do you have the phone number for a Mr. H.P Lovecraft?

VF: Let me guess Jose, you guys at the “Cuban Health Ministry” don’t get out much, do you?

Click…

Posted @ August 04, 2006 01:10 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Nothing from me?

So, we sit on the edge of an outright real life war in the middle east and no word from yours truly?

Well, as I said before - Im not blogging much right now, I'm working. I'm all over the place as of late and will be for the next few weeks, so the Israeli-Syria-Iran War will just have to wait.

But here's a few quick thoughts:

1. Imagine how this would all be playing out if we hadnt taken the time to go into Iraq. Imagine having Saddam in this process. Imagine Syria in greater control of Lebanon. Imagine SCUDS coming in from the western Iraqi Desert to Jerusalem. Sounds like a hoot doesnt it.

2. This is Iran in action in the world with small simple solid fuel missiles. Now imagine the said same Iran with an atomic bomb.

3. Michael Totten was right when he wrote this post in April.

4. If Hezbollah is allowed to fire missiles into a sovereign state with impunity, what nation is free from this threat from any agrieved party?

5. Firing missiles over a border to kill civilians is no different than flying a bomber over borders to do the same. It is not an act of protest, it is an act of war. Feel free to respond accordingly.

6. Hiding behind intermediaries changes nothing. You allow mischief in your borders, you are as bad as the mischief makers. Fail to secure your borders and someone is likely to secure them for you.

7. Kalishnikovs and Katyushas. Gee, those are Russian words arent they? I dont know the Russian word for "Murdering Death Merchant" but I wish someone would look it up and then shout it at Mr. Putin.

8. If Mexico had crashed jets into the World Trade Center, can anyone guess what our response would have been? Do you think France would have cautioned us and asked for our "restriant"? Ok, Imagine that Belgium decided to get even with France and started firing WWII vintage V-1 'buzz bombs' into Paris. "Surrendering cheese eating monkey" jokes aside, how long would it take for France to send in "the legion" to fix a little annoying cartographic anomoly previously known as the "Belgium"?

9. You know what I like about this? Try and figure exactly what the official Hezbollahs position is here for a second. That they have the right to fire weapons into a soverign nation without fear of reprisal? They asked for that with a straight face? We should just look the other way while they slaughter people right? Fire missiles at will Ali, youre an agrieved party, you have a right to fire missiles at people...

10. The missiles prove that the wall works.

Ok, go enjoy wall-to-wall coverage of the Israeli "Hammer and Anvil" doing its thing to good old Damascus steel. Right I'm off to find out if I can sue Valerie Plame and Ambassador "Munchausen" for wasting my time. I think I've got atleast as good a case as they do.

Posted @ July 13, 2006 08:13 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Your guessing record leaves a little to be desired

June 22nd - South Korea Says Missile Test Not Imminent.

July 4th - North Korea Launches Missiles.

July 8th - Second Long Range Missile Launch Not Imminent.

So based on their track record of prognistication, I'm guessing we have 12 days.

Posted @ July 07, 2006 02:49 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Who's side are you on?

neo-neocon wrote a two part post last month on "Why this war is so hated" and that one post has stuck with me now for over a month. I've probably sat down half a dozen times since then to write my own post of the same idea. I stopped because I kept getting drawn into a syndrome I call "Grand Unified Theory"-itis, where ytou start trying to link together large marco ideas under a one-size-fits-all theory.

I do sincerely believe she is on to something, and its something big. Why do I think that? Well heres a few things that have tipped me over again into the land of "grand unified theory-itis". At the beginning of the week, I read a post on "Nilist in Golf Pants" about " what would todays anti-war protestors have said at the Normady invasion". The post was funny, but the comments were even funnier, but more to the point the illustrated a problem that had been circling my mind for some time, thanks to neo-neocons original thought provoking post. The left responded to this simple joke as if it was a stake in their heart, but that wasnt the only example. Over the last 48 hours, Ive watched the world reaction to the death of the blood thirsty murdering thug Zarqawi in utter amazement. In just 48 hours he hass gone from "just another dead thug" to martydom; and this time it looks like hes on his was to near "che"-like status in the west!. The press are now asking if he wast killed by a bomb but "rather he was possibly murdered by US troops" ( shhh, questions are being raised by locals who say that Zarqawi was stomped to death...) As if this true that it would be a bad thing! Later on this week, I read the the latest posting by Steven Den Beste I knew I was on the right track. Again, not becuase of what he said, but because of the reaction to it.

When we went to war on September 11th, 2001, I was totally prepared that we would have to fight for our lives against the Jihadis. I was not prepared for the fact that most of our fight in the war would end up as a fight against ourselves.

The war on the battlefield is slowly but surely being won, but at the same time I fear that the culture war at home is being lost. It would seem that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is but a symptom of a more deadly and potentially fatal disease.

I have some gardening to tend to and an airshow to go to later today, but I promise a large post on this subject this weekend.

Posted @ June 10, 2006 12:42 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

Because the SecDef is always beloved by all generals and Admirals

My two minute take on Secretary Rumsfeld comes from a bit of advice I was given when I started my career. My first manager told me " You can be beloved by one and all or you can be effective - pick one".

His point was this, if you want to make change, no one is going to like you. No matter how much the clamor for change, they hate it when it happens. If you want to make change in the world, get used to being disliked and hated.

Secretary Rumsfeld is changing the US military from the ground up from a post cold war leviathan into a rapid response force.

Change, political change, change the effects the power centers of Washington, particularly when it effects peoples civil service careers is damn hard work.

Generals and Admirals, while fine people and who are very "nice" are often the people who are most resistant to change. This is why we have a Civilian in charge of the Military. For those of you unfamiliar with Military culture, there is, shall we say a great deal of animosity between those in the Military and those in the Civilian world. Generals and Admirals often find themselves at odds with the civilians in charge of the military, but thats how we do things here in the good old US of A.

What I like most about Rumsfeld is that he is not running for President or selling a book. Its my beleif that he is the most important Secretary of Defense in the history of the job.

I reject this idea that the Secretary of Defense is always universally loved by one and all. Its a tough job and its often thankless difficult work making the Military do the bidding of the civilian world, but it must be done.

Shall we take a moment and look at the careers of other SecDefs?

James Forrestal - First Secretary of Defense .

snip...

"He was a tremendous supporter of naval battle groups centered on aircraft carriers. The newly created Department of the Air Force opposed his plans to build new ones, claiming that operations could be accomplished from ground bases. The conflict between Forrestal and the Air Force was probably the foremost cause of his mental breakdown and ultimate suicide. One year after his suicide his ideas were vindicated by the Korean War, which showed an essential role for aircraft carriers in future wars. The Navy's first supercarrier, USS Forrestal was named in his honor."

So, James Forrestal oversaw the creation of the Air Force, only to have the Air Force turn on him at the very first opportunity. The result is the man comitted suicide.

Ok, how about his replacement.

Louis Johnson - Second Secretary of Defense.

snip...
"Johnson's economy drive, which began on April 23 1949, when he announced cancellation of the 65,000-ton flushdeck aircraft carrier USS United States. The United States Navy had been planning this ship for several years and construction had already begun. Johnson, supported by a majority of the JCS and by President Truman, stressed the need to cut costs. At least by implication, Johnson had scuttled the Navy's hope to participate in strategic air operations through use of the carrier. Abruptly resigning, Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan expressed concern about the future of the United States Marine Corps and naval aviation and about Johnson's unprecedented and arbitrary action so drastically affecting the Navy's operational plans without consulting it.

snip...

"The cancellation of the supercarrier precipitated a bitter controversy between the Navy and the United States Air Force, the so-called "Revolt of the Admirals." The Navy reacted to Johnson's action by questioning, in congressional hearings and other public arenas, the effectiveness of the Air Force's latest strategic bomber, the Convair B-36. The Air Force countered with data supporting the B-36 and minimized the importance of a naval role in future major wars."

Second Sec Def - A House investigation, a "Revolt of the Admirals". It makes Rumsfelds situation look positively rosey, doesnt it?

Shall we say that SecDef McNamara had an easy time of it? Or How about Caspar Weinberger?

My point is this. The Sec Def is a tough gig for anyone, even in peacetime. Secretary Rumsfeld has overseen the successful overthrow of the taliban, and the Hussien Regime and has mobilized and streamlined a military force during wartime without destroying the US economy in the process. Morale amoungst the troops is high and efficiency is at its best in years. If people in Washington dont like him, well that just endears him to me all that much more.

We are winning this war, and we are winning largely becuase of the direction and leadership provided by Secretary Rumsfeld.

Posted @ April 17, 2006 09:51 AM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Just a passing thought...

I spend alot of time thinking about Iran. Because for me, it all started with Iran. Some of us even think it all started long ago, back when they called it "Persia", and we of "the west" were just Greeks.

I had a dream awhile back that I was standing in Athens listening to some half crocked citizen speaking out about why "we greeks really didnt need to fight the persians", that they could be reasoned with if only we would take the time.

And while he talked, a small group of us in the back of the crowd quietly listened, and just as quietly, gathered our tools and sharpened our spears.

In 1979, Iran started the Islamic revolution. They created a state dedicated to the foundation of violent jihad in the world. Where once elaborate rugs had been the Persians most important export, the new Islamic Republic would specialize in another product.

Terror.

Slowly but surely, the Persians have established their own client states in muslim countries with weak dictatorships or rogue nations with no discernable government at all. The Islamic world is rife with prostate nations and subjgated populaces ripe for conversion to the new "Islamic Reich". The offspring of this revolution, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and yes, even Al-queda became the parasites of faltering islamic states; each organization laying its eggs of hate in the dead flesh of the long dead Ottoman and British empires.

Today, they are hell-bent to get their hands on Atomic weapons and once again there are those who council caution and deference to this deadly sworn enemy of all that western civilization has made in the past 4,000 years. Liberal democracy, Womens rights, free speech, Capitalism, Induvidualism, all stand in stark contrast to what is promised by the Islamic revolution.

It seems to me that we've been here before. It makes you wonder why we never learn. My dad once said "every generation faces its own Nazi Reich", and now we have ours. Only it seems like we've seen these guys before. In Marathon. In Guagamela, and a hundred other battlefields across the ancient world.

But my passing thought is this:

Everyone seems to think they have a handle on how long it will take for the Iranians to create an atomic bomb. People who talk about Iran and the bomb, no matter who they are, speak in terms of some feeling of certainty in predicting "how long it will be".

But here is the only thing I can be certain of. Every single example or our "guessing" about a countries atomic bomb development...

Has always been categorically - Incorrect.

Every.
Single.
Time.

"Hitler is building an Atomic bomb" Everyone knew... that Hitler was making an atomic bomb, Einstein himself worried about it.

Only there was no German bomb and almost no nuclear research by the Nazis. We scoured Europe in 1945 and we found almost nothing. We went ahead with our Atomic program anyway...

"It will take decades for the Soviets to get an Atomic Bomb" - Spoken in 1945.

1949. Boom.

"China does not have the economic capabilty to produce an atomic bomb for atleast another 30 years". - spoken in 1960.

1964. Boom.

"India is too poor to have an active nuclear weapons program" - spoken in 1970.

1974. Boom.

In 1998, they would engage in a game of oneups-manship with their Pakistani neighbors. On May 11th and May 13th 1998, the Indians would explode a series of atomic weapons in an attempt to intimidate their rivals. On May 28th, the Pakistanis would respond by exploding their own nuclear weapon. On May 30th, they would demonstrate that it wasnt an elaborate "parlor trick", by demonstrating that they had more than one.

And for the 20 years prior when the Indians and Pakistanis were spending money, building nuclear facilities, training staff, We never knew what was going on. Billions of dollars were spent in reconnisance satellites and listening posts, millions of dollars and decades spent putting agents and spies into their government and military, and for all of that, we had no idea it was going on until it was all over.

This all occured in two countries that we have diplomatic relationships, trade relationships and a history of somewhat friendly governmental relationships. All of those advantages, and we still had no idea!

Now, why are we so absolutely certain that Iran is "years away" from a bomb? What makes us think our guess this time is any better than all the other guesses? Given our track history with guessing how long it will take, and who is capable of what, should we really wait until the Iranians demonstrate their own bomb? or is "intent of building" as good as actually having, when it comes to making our own plans?

Does anyone think that if given half a chance the Islamic Republic will not use the weapon?

Just a passing thought...

Posted @ March 06, 2006 12:43 AM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Notice

The itching, the rash and the sleeplessness have subsided.

After two days down, I now have a 'whopper in the hopper' on the subject of the 'cartoon Jihad' so dig out your kevlar as I'm hopping mad at some of the email I've received over the past week.

Let's just say the "death threats index" has just hopped a notch only this times its not the Kerry or Dean supporters, but the few european Jihadists who are literate and not to happy that I poked fun at them. And remember kids, they arent mad at me because I showed the cartoons - I didnt! they are mad at me because I chose to point out how idiotic the cartoon protestors were when they talk of "our blasphemy", all while killing innocents as part of "their protests", which according to them is not blasphemy so long as they are doing it "in Allhas name".

I know, its confusing but thats what you get when you deal with people who use violence to overcome a deep sense of their own personal impotency and shame, but there you go...

Posted @ February 20, 2006 01:18 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Why We Fight: #305 in the Series

Because Christoper Hitchens is exactly correct.

"We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are:

The grievance of seeing unveiled women.

The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people.

The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law.

The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London.

The grievance of the existence of black African Christian farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur.

The grievance of the existence of homosexuals.

The grievance of music, and of most representational art.

The grievance of the existence of Hinduism.

The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule.

All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way."

Try and remember this list when some hammerhead tries to tell you "its all about the oil..."

Posted @ July 11, 2005 02:29 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

Where’s a Virginian when you need one?

While I’ve been out of the office for the past week on personal business, the French went and demonstrated for all the world to see that they are, in fact, French. It seems that to the French, a Constitution with 448 Articles to make life livable in ‘La belle Europa’ just isn’t over-controlling and smothering enough, they want even more! As it is today, If Martin Luther wanted to nail a copy of the EU constitution to the door; he would need a full size construction quality pneumatic nail gun for the job.

Now, on one hand, I have to admit that I laughed along with the rest of America at the sound of the iceberg of reality hitting the hull of the good ship EU, but on the other hand I’m actually kind of sad. I say this with all possible candor and with complete honesty, I really want the EU to work. I think we need the EU to work. I don’t want a weak Europe, and I think that the EU is not a bad idea; it’s just that it the creation of the EU has been horribly executed.

But, let’s be clear here, making a nation when its populated by Europeans is damn hard work. There’s a reason why the Germans go crazy every 20 years and start ripping into their neighbors gardens with their armies. Europe doesn’t wear the crown of the second most fought over place on the earth after the Levant for nothing. It’s not the weather, the food, or something in the water, it’s the Europeans themselves.

Europe is in big trouble. It is growing at roughly half the rate of the US and its population is dropping faster than Pets.com stock in the year 2000. Its unemployment rate is at levels no one in the US has seen since the Carter Administration, with no sign of that changing anytime soon.

Europeans states have two choices; to do nothing, insist on living in the reflected glory of the past and end up as a failed state like Canada or band together.

Oh, but Canada’s not so bad, is it? Canada was once a proud and virile State, is now like a tottering old folks home resident that cannot remember what day it is. The slow narcotic of socialism has taken its toll on our northern neighbors and like burned out heroin junkies, the effects of the drug will go for years afterwards even if they were to stop their addiction today.

America is in a tough position. It needs a strong Europe, but it cannot interfere lest it be charged with “imperialism”. Yet, we cannot afford another failed state in our midst during the current war against Islamic-fascism. Canada and Mexico, who can’t be bothered to protect their own borders, present too much risk for the US as it is. Russia with its corrupt political situation and easy and ready access to nuclear and biological weapons represents a great threat to the US. The failure of Europe would put the US at further risk, from which we could likely not recover. The European governments have already shown themselves to be easy victims of blackmail and bribery. If the EU were to fall even further down the pipe, its ability to give cover and sanctuary to our enemies would only grow.

There are many in Europe who want be in the EU to act as a counterbalance to America, and they say this as if America were the only threat in the world. I know there are a great many people who really do believe that America is the only threat to world peace, many of them live in the blue states of the US, but most of them live in Europe. To the Socialists and the Communists, it must seem to be the case that the one great remaining free market Capitalist bastion is the only threat to the world, but its not really the case.

Well, if that helps get the European nations to give up some of their sovereignty so they will bind together, then so be it. It doesn’t bother me in the least. I have never felt the slightest threat from the EU, even with De Villepan with his fangs in full display. You want trade protection, ok, we can do that too. You want to charge us with “Genetically Modified Food” and other such crap designed only to keep our goods out of their markets, ok, we can play that game too. We have 200+ years of dealing with European protectionist policies, been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt.

I feel about the EU the way Francis Drake felt about the Spanish Armada, All that firepower doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t have top notch sailors and your ships cant maneuver. The EU, as the people of France have once again demonstrated, can’t maneuver.

So, Just How bad is it for Europe?

America is a country is at war, bearing all of that expense unilaterally. It is also under stress due to its foolish leftist anti-nuclear policies of the 1970’s, which have placed it in the unenviable position of importing a high amount of its fuel from very unstable portions of the world. And yet, it is still growing, and at a rate roughly twice what the unencumbered French and Europeans are doing at the same time. Imagine where we would be if we were not at war, and oil was half its current price? Now, does that help us understand why the Europeans have been somewhat less than helpful in our fighting the war on terror?

But like I said, I really want the EU to be successful. So in that spirit here’s my suggestion for the EU Constitution (Version II).

First, get an Englishman to write your constitution. It worked for us; it can work for you too! President Valery Giscard D’estang? What were you thinking? For gods’ sake, the French can write 2000 pages on the various color of apples without breaking a sweat. Its not getting them to talk that’s the trick, it’s getting them to shut up. You don’t put a Scotsman in the kitchen, you don’t put a Frenchman near a pen and paper, its one of life’s little rules.

Second. This time, instead of writing a constitution that works out every little possible permutation of happiness and then calls them “rights”, lets do this instead; write a constitution that simply limits how far the EU federal government can go. Leave the rest up to people themselves to figure out what they need and what makes them happy. See, when our European forefathers wrote our constitution, they came up with this idea that “rights” came from God, and not men. I know that its offensive for many of todays Europeans to even discuss the idea that there might be something more important than government officials, but there is a lot to be said for that simple idea, whether you believe in a god or not. Our forefathers’ thought that the governments of men were meant to be restrained, and men, being free men, could in fact best take care of themselves. Governments could not give you rights, nor could they guarantee them. Your rights were yours, and the government according to our constitution was explicitly and legally restricted from taking them away from you, as they were not the governments to give in the first place.

Third. Our whole constitution turns on one simple problem. How do you balance the power of the larger States with the smaller States. If the Nation is called the “United States” how can Rhode Island and Virginia sit in equal power when they are most clearly not? More simply put, how can you keep a large State or a group of large States from dominating the rest of the States? In our country, States matter and States have equal representation in at least one half of the legislature. Each State, no matter its size or population only has 2 Senators. Population determines representation in the House of Representatives, but the Senate, the senior house is equal among the states. The Senate also holds say over the executive branch and the foreign policy by requiring that treaties are ratified by the senate (see: Kyoto treaty, and why it will never be ratified by the US)
More important, the Federal Election for President is done by using the Electoral College, which has the effect of mitigating the population impact in the election. In this manner, small States can effectively counter the influence of the larger States by ensuring that the Candidates for President cannot ignore entire States without losing their electoral votes.

In this manner, States can effectively maintain their sovereignty and yet have equal influence in the EU political operations, so in the end France and Germany will not matter more than say, Denmark or Holland.

Look, I don’t want to sound paternalistic, but next time you sit down to draw up a multinational, multiethnic federal government that draws together what were once sovereign states in their own right, try to look at one that exists already, and yet I might add one that is also pretty successful. Not France, but the United States of America.

And people of Europe, please remember: we want you to succeed. We really, really do. When you succeed, Europe will be free of the nightmare of death and destruction that has befallen so many of your ancestors and resulted in the Diaspora that led to the formation of America in the first place. If you fail, it means another generation of American children will go on to populate the graves that surround your battlefields to provide you with your liberty.

For their sake, and for your sake, lets get it right this time, shall we?

Posted @ May 31, 2005 06:36 PM | Current Events | Comments (5)

Hola Compadre!

I always hesitate whenever I think I might want to blog about the issue of immigration, specifically illegal immigration from Central America, which enjoys a special status over all other versions of illegal immigration in many people’s eyes. My stance on immigration is not like most peoples and its such an inflammatory subject that it just leads to lots of screaming and yelling to no good effect, so I always end up setting it aside.

But last month in Los Angeles, some smartass marketing guy from one of the Spanish channels decided this was a great idea.

In response radio station KFI made this billboard.

Now, I have to say I wasn’t really too upset with the spanish stations billboard, I think it spoke to their audience and that’s fine. But I also have to say that I agree completely with the KFI billboard. So I guess its time I roll out my feelings about illegal immigrants so I can explain myself.

Well frankly it comes down to this. I like ‘em and I’m glad to have them. See, I told you it would make you angry. But bear with me for just a minute. I’ve been through the Sonoran desert; I’ve been through Baja before Highway One was paved. Its rough country, and unless you are a serious backcountry type or you’ve got a time machine so you can revisit the old west of the 1880s, you’ve never seen anything like it. To get here, you have to cross it, and you as an illegal immigrant are most likely to do it by foot. In addition to the natural horrors that await you, there are the very worst kind of predators out to kill you, and I don’t mean gila monsters, I mean humans.Before you even get to the border crossing, your chances of being killed or raped is pretty large. Its not easy, and its not pretty, its risky and dangerous and for every one person you see who made it, there are 2 who didn’t. Their bones litter the deserts and shanty towns of the southwest.

Crime on the Mexican border is right out of a Mad Max movie, and its mostly predatory, and if you think the crime is bad on this side of the border from “those darn illegals”, then visit Cuidad Jaurez. I don’t recommend visting by night, this is the very worst neighborhood with the most corrupt police force you can imagine and you are not so much a visitng tourist as a very large target and an easy mark.

Now most people tend to think that all illegal immigrants are Mexicans, but they are not. They are El Salvadorans, Hondurans, Panamanians, Columbians, Ecuadorians and so on. Try to keep that in mind because it will become an important part of my case later.

So what do the folks that cross that horrid country do when they make it to the United States? Go on welfare, sit around all day and hang out? No, they go to work and they work hard and as much as they can when they can. Then what do they do? They send the money home to the family they left behind. This is such a money making operation that the President of Mexico encourages this activity as its Mexico’s best source of tax revenue. If that isn’t the most pathetic thing you’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is, but more on this later.

Illegal immigrants also get to do one thing in the US as non-citizens that their own country hardly allows them to do as citizens. They get to buy property. No questions asked, you plop the money on the table, you get to own a house. We are one of the few countries anywhere where there are no restrictions on the ownership of property.

Now, am I happy that people routinely violate the borders of my country? No, It makes me very angry, but I’m not at all angry at the people who do it.

So who am I angry at? the US Government or the evil “Yankee imperialist” culture? Oh come on, there’s hardly any country in the world where there are less stringent immigration rules. Lets be honest we don’t have any border protection, so why is anyone surprised that it is violated so routinely. If we applied the same security to Macys that is done on our borders does anyone think there would be anything left inside after the first day?

I’m not angry at the folks who come north and I’m not angry at the US government. So who am I angry at? That’s simple, I’m angry with the Government of Mexico. The government of Mexico is a corrupt, pilfering, parasitical class that would even make a right wing republican like myself think that Marxism is not such a bad idea. But Mexico’s government is not just corrupt it’s also incompetent. I can almost forgive corrupt, but I cannot forgive incompetent. Just how incompetent is the Mexican government? Mexico has a nationalized oil company PEMEX. So, How’s it doing now that we are in a worldwide boom for oil? Oh why of course, its going bankrupt! Think about that for a second, a government controlled monopoly on oil going bankrupt in the midst of the biggest boom in history. Obviously, someone isn’t trying very hard are they?

Let’s get on to two other areas that the Mexican government drives me right up the wall about. Mexico’s government actually admonishes the US government for its immigration policy. They act as if they themselves do not have an illegal immigration problem. Those countries that are south of Mexico also invade Mexico’s southern border. Now don’t you even for a second think that the Mexican government turns a blind eye to the immigrants the way our government does. Oh no, they deal with it in ways that would lead to Our impeaching any government official who sanctioned any part of the policy that Mexico has enacted. Mexico’s policies are just one step short of concentration camps and just one step ahead of racial genocide.

The other area that drives me insane is in the foreign ownership of property. Mexico actually has a constitutional provision that outlaws such a thing. Now, imagine if anyone were to even discuss such a thing here, but in Mexico its as much a part of the country’s culture as the snake in the eagles beak in the middle of the Mexican flag.

The message is clear “ foreigners stay out”. So, why is Mexico such a poor country? For starters, foreign investment is not just curtailed, its extinct. You say to yourself “ why wouldn’t it be wonderful to own a condo in the Yucatan or Baja? Fine, but you cant actually own it, you can only lease it, and I sure hope you keep up your payments to the local authorities, or you will see you investment occupied by “squatters” which the government will support rather than protect your property rights as a foreign investor.

And yet again this pack of gangsters who calls itself a government wants to lecture my country on its immigration policy? All I’ve got to say is “Parity”. The next time Presidente Fox lectures President Bush, I want Bush to look him right in the eye and ask for Immigration Parity and property rights for foreigners. Lets put the rights of El Salvadorans who illegally enter Mexico on the same par as Mexicans who enter the US and lets see who's ox gets gored. Lets discuss whether or not as an illegal alien you can own property in the US, when foreign property in mexico is routinely "confiscated" by the government.

So, I can get angry at the folks who come here and make a life for themselves, or I can direct it at whom it really should be aimed at, Mexico’s thieving, lying, criminal political class who have taken a great country of great riches with great people and turned it into a tipped over outhouse and thrid world hell hole all for the sake of feathering their own beds. The only reason Mexico’s government stands and its politicians aren’t routinely lined up against the wall and shot is that its just far easier for the populace to get just get up and leave. After having wrestled with the question of illegal immigration my whole life, I just can’t blame the folks who live there and who want to leave the cesspit that is Central America. If we lived there, you and I would leave too if only to get more guns and come back and finish the job.

I do have one small issue with the folks that do decide to risk it all and come to America. Look guys, I know you have strong feelings for your homeland and I know its really all about “la familia” but whatever country you came from, try to remember that those people threw you out. Your family might love you but the government you left doesn’t care about you, so if you’re going to display the flag of the old country, try to display the American flag too, ok? When you display the Mexican flag on your car, you are showing pride in a government that created the conditions that drove you out, and they don’t want you back. Why is it that you show such loyalty to a government that has killed, maimed and driven you out of your homes and yet for the country that has given you everything and asked so little that you can show such contempt and bad manners?

I don’t ask that you not show the Mexican flag or that you should not be proud of who you are, just try to show the same kind of pride the land that took you in and gives you more benefits of citizenship as an illegal than your own homeland did when you were born there.

Posted @ May 03, 2005 01:04 AM | Current Events | Comments (2)

Zarqawi Eludes Capture; Computer Discovered

From abcnews.com
Iraq's Most Wanted Fugitive on the Run After Leaving Behind Valuable Information

Key Passage:

What the task force did find in the vehicle confirmed suspicions that Zarqawi had just escaped. The official said Zarqawi's computer and 80,000 euros (about $104,000 U.S.) were discovered in the truck.

Finding the computer, said the official, "was a seminal event." It had "a very big hard drive," the official said, and recent pictures of Zarqawi. The official said Zarqawi's driver and a bodyguard were taken into custody.

The senior military official said that they have since learned Zarqawi jumped out of the vehicle when it passed beneath an overpass, presumably to avoid detection from the air, and hid there before running to a safe house in Ramadi.

Reaction:

Point #1: Euros rather than Dollars. Which is interesting as hell to me, but probably not to anyone else. Follow the money....

Point #2: This guy has a cell phone, and someone on our side is leaking info to him.

Point #3: How did they know where the safe house was?

Point #4: General Atomics Corp and the Predator are doing fantastic work, now get a cellphone frequency sniffer on board one of them, will ya?

Conculsion - Hes got 72 hours to make it to the Syrian border. In the words of David Mamet - He's Burnt.

Posted @ April 25, 2005 04:45 PM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Synchronicity

I was in the dentist chair this morning, for a full three hours. The finishing act was to replace my broken crown and bridge.

Picture the scene, me flat on my back, the doctor and her assistant with their fingers jammed in my mouth holding the bridge down while it dries, I'm looking up at the ceiling in pain when all of a sudden over the radio comes Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong singing "What a wonderful world...."

"Oh yeah...."

Back as soon as the pain wears off.

Posted @ April 25, 2005 01:57 PM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Canadian PM to Address Nation on Thursday

On Thursday At 3:45 PDT. Must See TV...
UPDATE: As of Thursday, It's Moved up to 4:00 PDT.

OTTAWA - Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose Liberal government continues to draw heat over the sponsorship scandal, will address the country on Thursday.

Available on CBC Radio Via Web.

"The knee bones connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is connected to the foot bone...Git out yer hankies kids this is going to be a whopper.

UPDATE: Is the Canadian PM about to pull an LBJ? This post makes me think that this is much more unusual than I had thought previously.

Quote: "It is unprecedented without a genuine national emergency," said Catherine Murray, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University.

"If the national emergency is that the government is about to fall, I'm not sure that counts," said Lisa Young, political science professor at the University of Calgary.

She said the Liberal party should pay for the air time if Martin is simply going to try to save his political bacon.

"If it's meant as an attempt to save the Martin government from defeat and then from defeat at the polls, then it's inappropriate," she said. "If it's a partisan political announcement, then the party should be paying."

She said it's an unheard-of tactic for Canada.

"This is not something that we are accustomed to in any way," she said. "This is desperation."

Johnston said Martin is taking a big risk.

"It's got to be an act of desperation," Johnston said. "One wonders if this isn't another Martin misstep.

"Even if you're running out of options, do you want to make it so obvious that you are?"

UPDATE II: Early Release of the prepared speech(EMBARGOED UNTIL 4:00 PDT - MUST CREDIT VARIFRANK):

" Good Evening My Fellow Canadians, I just have one thing to say

Queue music -

Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay, I came to say I must be going.
I'm glad I came, but just the same I must be going.

I'll stay a week or two.
I'll stay the summer through.
But I am telling you that I must be going.

I'll do anything you say.
In fact, I'll even stay!

But I must be going.

This fact I'll emphasize with stress:
I never take a drink unless somebody's buying.

I hate a dirty joke, I do,
unless it's told by someone who knows how to tell it.

So I must be a-going!"

(Groucho Marx appears in the role of the Canadian PM couresty of MGM)

UPDATE III: What-the-hell-was-that? Ok, Harpers now on deck. I smell sulfur...

UPDATE IV: Well I dont care when Martin calls for an election, because Harper is now off and running and for my ears, He's nailing Martins hide to the outhouse door . Nows its BQ's turn.

UPDATE V: BQ backing Harper. Ever heard the saying "Hell hath no wrath like a scored woman"? Same goes for Quebec. Scathing. Next up NPD..

UPDATE VI: NPD must be the silly party of Canada. "People suffering from Smog". Smog? In Canada? Sunny jim, you need to get out of town more often. The NDP guy sounds a hack, ignore appropriately. Now for the after show chew by the pundits...

UPDATE VII: What was Martin thinking? That this was somehow going to help? He swung for the fences and missed big time. There hasn't been this much blood in the water since the USS Indianapolis went down in 1945. Canadian pundit reaction seems to think its toast for the Liberal Party of Canada. They seem to think its only a matter of time before Steven Harper calls for a "No Confidence" vote prior to the end of the Gomery Commission.

UPDATE VIII: 'Canadian Media Pundit' opinion is that this was a badly handled political stunt that will come back to bite him.

UPDATE IX: Public reaction: "The message did not get through..." Apparently, Canadians dont like elections, particularly in the summer, so that plays into the timing of this. The choice seems to be between June and December for the next election. Pundit opinion is that as of this speech,they are already into an election season. I Concur...

UPDATE X: Gasp! Can-pundit just compared Martin to Nixon! D'oh!

Posted @ April 20, 2005 03:14 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Does Europe Hate US?

Last evening, I watched the latest episode of “Tom Friedman Reports” on the Discovery Times Channel. Now, I’m never sure if he actually is a good reporter or its just that the rest of the New York Times staff is so bad that they make him look better than he is, but as a rule, I tend to like him.

The subject of this episode is about something I’ve written about many times, the general state of affairs between Europe and the US.

I’ve been haunted by the show all day.

In this show, Friedman had many small audiences of Europeans and Americans living in Europe to describe the state of affairs between the two societies. It ran the gamut from a WWII French citizen who also served as a GI, to the usual rabble of disaffected youth.

The episode in a nutshell comes down to this:

Taken as a whole, the euros really, really hate George W. Bush in a deep visceral way and they aren’t too sure about us everyday American Folk either.

I thought Friedman did a good job on the show and several points he asked the euro audiences some pretty pointed questions that they clearly were unprepared to answer, but I do wish that he had put forth one statement to the assembled masses of European opinion givers. And that is:

“You know, we don’t have to be your friends”

There seems to be an assumption on both parties that at the end of the day, all will be forgiven and we will go back to the shiny happy days of the past. The first mistake in that idea is this, that the happy days of the past weren’t so happy. Those that think there was once a golden age that we have all just slipped away from are in need of spending a little more time in their history classes. The vast majority of our history with Europe has been spent in strife with one party or the other. It has only been during the wars of the last century that Europe has looked to America as its new best friend.

The euros seem to think we are obligated to be their friends, no matter what their position or behavior towards us. Euros take us very much for granted that after all is said and done that the good ole yanks will just kiss and make up and all will be as it once was.

I’m not so sure.

I was joking with someone the other day that the way things are going, I’m more likely to get mugged for being an American in Paris than I would be as an American in Beirut.

It’s a joke of course, but I don’t think it’s too far off from accurate. I think our new friends may just come from the liberated countries of the Middle East rather than the sedate capitols of Europe.

Europe is now a competitor, nothing more nothing less so its natural that their would be very little room anyway for this idea of “countries as good friends”. To be sure, Europe is acting as we are, in their own self interest, and to that I say, good for them! But I do want to make clear to many people in Europe that there are consequences for your actions. Your governments are going into over time to spin the world’s evils as exclusive effluent from America, but you might want to look a little closer to home.

Europe is very clearly using the WTO as a tool to beat American business into submission, and they are no longer making any bones about it. It is clear that the Green parties of each of the countries in the EU are working overtime to do whatever they can to strangle American business. American business is doings its best to fight back and given a level playing field they are remaining competitive, despite the most dire predictions.

Oops, I guess we are customers of Europe too. Well golly isn’t that interesting. The way I see it, just about everything under the sun can be bought from all over the world now, so tell me, what is it that I have to get from Europe that I cant get from anywhere else at half the price and twice as fast?

Like us, Hate us, burn our flag in protest, our president in effigy, be our guest, we really don’t care either way. Just don’t expect me to be there when the going get tough, and its going to get very tough in the new world of a level playing field. Both Tom Peters and Tom Friedman have made very good points about how the world is changing, and I’m afraid it’s a message that the Euros are missing. Once upon a time, the Germans were the most competitive country on earth. Scads of books were written in the 1980’s telling us Americans how lost it was for us that we couldn’t hope to compete against the big government German machine. Much of the same was said about the Japanese. For my generation, we were taught that Americans couldn’t compete in the world. They were wrong of course, but everyone back then wanted you to believe it. I suspect the same is true today by those who say we can’t compete against the EU.

Let us all be very clear here, the EU wasn’t invented to compete, it was built to protect.

Germany by herself is not much of a factor as a competitive nation anymore. Japan has been in a recession for 10 years. Imagine that, 10 years. Germany has been in double digits unemployment for so long they don’t know what to do to get out. These are not the Germans I remember from the 1980’s. This all just a polite way of saying that I’m not really worried about Europe as a competitor. First of all, you have to have Europeans to compete with and the way their birth rate is going, it’s just a matter of time before what was Europe simply ceases to be anything more than an old folks home.

As we say in flying, the euros seem to be behind the ‘power curve’ economically speaking. Its another way of saying that the euros are writing checks with their mouths that their asses can’t cash.

I like Europe. I like Europeans. But I have some standards on who it is I let call themselves my friends. My standard has always been “ If I had an emergency and I had to deal with a problem out of town, is this someone that I could give my car keys to?”

My friends would take care of the car as if it were their own, and without asking fill the tank for the times they drove it while I was gone. My associates would put it in the driveway and just make sure it didn’t get hurt but they would use it without refilling the gas tank. My neighbors wouldn’t do much at all except make sure it didn’t get broken into.

So, from my eyes, Europe is failing the test of friendship and has now fallen into the mode of either ‘associates’ or worse, just ‘neighbors’. We might be friendly, but we are not friends.

Europe increasingly reminds me of a former girlfriend that used to call at 2:00 in the morning, just to argue with me. This was as if this would somehow remind me of how much I missed her.

All it reminded me of is how glad I was I dumped her.

Posted @ April 12, 2005 08:16 PM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Is Varifrank a sexist pig?

Uh, well, if I am, I don’t mean to be. As the son of a mother, brother of three sisters, husband to a wife and a father of a daughter I can safely say that I’m pretty fond of and often in awe of women. However, several readers and fellow bloggers have written to ask if this post was meant to exclude women, both by my use of the masculine word “Man” instead of the gender neutral “Person” and the fact that all of the people in the list of people who died last week were, ahem, “men”.

Lets deal with the first charge first: Shouldn’t I have said “Person” instead of “Man”?

Maybe...

I just prefer to say “Man” as I consider it gender neutral and dealing with my species and not my sex, as in “mankind” rather than the subject of a great song by Martin Mull. I freely admit that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to the English language, so I will now commit myself to watch my choice of personal pronouns. I grew up in Southern California where the word “Dude” has nothing to do with ranching, and can refer not only to men or women but it can mean just about damn near anything no matter how its used and only depending on the voice inflexion in the sentence. So, not only is there precedence, but once again I get to blame my parents…

Second Charge: Did I purposely exclude women from my list of people who had died in the week prior? Honestly, “scouts honor” here kids, I didn’t “exclude” women from my search, it just worked out that way, I didn’t look for “men only”. I know, it looks suspicious as all get out, but I certainly didn’t set out to go that way.

Here’s a bit of insight on how I went about making the post. I was bugged about the whole Terry Schiavo situation. First off, I didn’t blog about it, because I thought to do so was disrespectful. That was my choice, if you did, that’s ok too, I just didn’t feel comfortable talking about it, frankly I don’t feel like talking about it now either. For the record, you should know that my “living will” says there are three ways I prefer not to be killed, first is being burned to death, the second is being eaten by insects and the third is starvation. Short of those three options you have free reign to do what you think is best if the case arises where you legally get to be the instrument of my death. To me, there was a certain ghoulish voyeurism that overtook the whole sad spectacle and I honestly couldn’t stand to hear another word about it, I’m pained that I even had to write this short passage on the subject. At the same time, I thought there was something about the story that did need to be talked about that wasn’t being discussed. I thought about different angles to attack the story, and I finally decided on the “ Do individuals really matter?” angle that served as the core of the story.

At the same time I was wrestling with not writing about that story, Pope John Paul died. Now, this also bothered me as well as now we suddenly were up to our navels in 24 hour news coverage of the Popes death. Here we had news of the Pontiffs death and the very same news agencies that derided the man just-the-week-before were now praising him to the high heavens, and then of course pleading that the next Pope not be so, well you know, religious. At one point I thought someone was going to put forth the case that the best candidate would be someone with a non judgmental hipster-like swinging personality like, let’s say Dean Martin, rather than a serious man who has given up everything of earthly desire and dedicated his life to working in faith.

Oh damn, I said it again. Look, its not me that did it this time. Catholics insist that only men can be priests, only priests can be Bishops, Archbishops and finally Cardinals and only Cardinals can be nominated to be Pope on the occasion that they find themselves in need of one. So the way it works out is while none of us knows who the new Pope will be, we all know he will be a man. I don’t make the rules here folks, I just live under them. So, don’t heap all your bourgeois suburban gender guilt on me daddy-o.

I like women, I like them a lot. Now to make up for the unintentional slight on the gender that has made my life worthwhile, I will spend some time thinking about a post on women and what they have meant to me.

Can I post about my mom and not cry?

Like Niagara falls baby…Niagara falls…

To honor to my fellow bloggers who happen to be women and who have given me repeated yet undeserved encouragement, I encorage you all to go and read thusly from...

My Favorite Women Bloggers

The Anchoress
Da Goddess
Baldilocks
Red Sugar Muse
Megan Mcardle
Cathouse Chat
Middle Class Mom
Ranten N. Raven
Sissy Willis
Little Miss Attilla
the square slant This lady stopped by the other day to borrow a cup of sugar. Like I said, I'm a lucky guy.

Update: D'oh! Ranten N. Raven - NOT a woman... but visit just the same

Posted @ April 06, 2005 08:23 PM | Current Events | Comments (7)

Dignity

Once upon a time, a friend and I were debating the relative merits of Cuban Socialism. He said to me “ Well, at least these people who you call “oppressed” have the best health care in the Western Hemisphere, that’s something not even you have in this country”.

To which I shockingly responded, “ You know the folks in Attica State Prison get free health care, but I don’t see anyone crawling over the wire and past the guard towers to get in to get it, do you?”

And that pretty much sums up how I think of Socialist Dictatorships. No matter how swell a uniform the dictator wears, he’s really nothing more than a Southern Work Camp Warden. I look at them with the same disdain that Paul Newman did to “the captain” in Cool Hand Luke.

It’s in this psychological context that we will talk about Communist China and its sudden rather odd obsession with Taiwan. I have to admit that I’ve been dumbfounded about why China would be so willing to stomp its feet and get right up in the face with the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan. Rest assured, I don’t think China is fooling around here; I think they are dead serious. Most Asian cultures put a great deal of weight into the idea of ‘saving face’, so when they say they will do something, they will do it, even when it’s a generally bad idea to carry it out, just so they can ‘save face’.

So when China says “ Oh no you wont!” and then a million Taiwanese stand up and say “ Oh yes we will!”, my reaction is the same as it would be if I were in an Oakland biker bar and someone shouted out “ Harleys Suck!” – I’d grab my beer, and quickly get next to the wall or out the back door, because one way or another someone is about to get a baseball bat broken over their head. Communist China cant say “ just kidding, we didn’t know you felt so strongly” and neither will the Nationalists. In some ways we find ourselves in a big world version of the famous Chinese Finger Trap.

But I’ve been puzzled as to “why”? Why is this one country, well off the coast, and well out of the way, why does this place mean so much to China? It’s like the US suddenly getting uppity over the Ontario province of Canada and insisting that they are really part of the US, and any talk of Canadian sovereignty and independence will be met “in strongest terms”. (Can’t you just picture the 30 million Canadian ‘stink fingers’ being displayed if anyone ever said such a stupid thing?)

So I’ve been stuck on this problem for a bit, and then this week I read something that made it all click into place, and I’ll get to that in just a minute. But first, let’s be clear this is not about Taiwan per se, Its about China. China, like all totalitarian governments exists primarily because they can control every aspect of life for their inhabitants. Most importantly, they can control the myths that drive the culture and the definition of the nation. One of those myths is the myth of “One China”.

There are many types of “China”, many provinces, many peoples and many dialects but they are all under control by the Communists. At least that is the story the Communist Chinese needs to be true, and it is true, except for one little place.

Taiwan.

In the words of Professor Philip J. Zimbardo, Taiwan is being a “bad prisoner”. By its very existence, and by its insistence on defiance of Communist Chinese dictates, Taiwan has become the “Cool Hand Luke” of Asia. To the Communist Chinese, this by itself is bad enough; but what’s really bad is the ideas it may give to the rest of “the prisoners”. If they begin to think that perhaps they too should be able to have their own say in affairs, then all hell will surely break loose.

The Communist Chinese do not live in fear of American Firepower; they live in fear of a loss of control. Once upon a time and seemingly out of nowhere, the Chinese lost control for just a moment and in that moment, they nearly lost it all. Do the Chinese fear the Taiwanese military? Hardly. What they really fear is the other provinces “getting ideas” from the nationalists.

Like I said earlier, I was struck by something I read this week and it helped me understand the gravity of the Taiwan situation. This week, I read the story of Lanier Phillips, the first African American Naval Sonar Operator. In his story, he related the racism that had formed the early part of his life and how an incident in Canada brought it to an end. At one point, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Newfoundland. Upon being rescued, Mr. Phillips discovered something he had never been allowed to consider before that time.

Excerpt:

“His entire life, he had been raised to believe that the color of his skin made him somehow inferior to white people. He had been kicked, abused, threatened, and belittled. Even the Navy, his chosen service, reminded him constantly that he was of less importance than his white shipmates. And now, here was a white family - an entire white community - treating him as though the color of his skin didn't matter at all.”

“Lanier has said a thousand times since that his brief encounter with the people of St. Lawrence was a life changing experience. Before that freezing February night in 1942, he had accepted racial discrimination as an inevitable fact of life. He certainly hadn't wanted it or liked it, but he had accepted it. Things had always been that way. How could they be different?

“He wasn't the same man after St. Lawrence. He had seen life as it could be: life as it should be. He knew that he was worthy of fair treatment and respect. He knew that a society could exist in which the color of a person's skin was irrelevant. He had seen that society, walked its streets, and been invited into its homes.”

After the incident in Canada, Mr. Phillips went on to improve his lot in life by insisting that he be treated as a man of equal value and dignity to whites. He had seen that he was not inferior and he would no longer tolerate the sort of inhumane things that had been done in the past to be done to him again. The illusion had been broken and there was no putting it back together. Mr. Phillips had found his dignity as a man, as a human being, and no one was going to take it from him.

You see, here’s where China has a real problem. All along its borders are countries and peoples who are finding the human dignity that comes with Democracy. All around it are people who are no longer finding themselves property of the state and are slowly but surely working their way towards the dignity of citizenship over that of being a subject to the state. You and I may look at this as a wonderful thing but to ‘the captain’, it’s a real big problem. If you cant control your people, if they really think they are people, with real human rights and dignity then how can you keep order? (Oh, and you know what I mean by order, right? The kind of order where “we” are in charge and “they “ do what we tell them, right comrade?)

“The captain” once put down a prison uprising in the Chinese State, but it came very close to bedlam. Back then; the world had never seen a Communist country fall away from control by the state, but that all changed one day in 1989. Today, it’s a very different thing. Today, people in the even the most obscure places are insisting on the right of self-determination. so why not china too? they ask...

You see, its not really about Taiwan independence at all, it’s about basic human dignity. You can’t make someone a slave if they have it, and you cant keep them as a slave if they think they are entitled to it. Once Mr. Lanier Phillips discovered his dignity, his life was never the same. I suspect that millions of Nationalist Chinese are discovering their dignity, but the real question is “How many other Chinese people living under Communist rule are now discovering that they too might be entitled to the dignity that only democracy can provide?”

Because of recent events, because of the memory of the horror (in their mind) of 1989,This thought has to be weighing heavily on the minds of the Communist leaders as they try to sleep in their silk pajamas. Out there on the streets of Beijing, riding their bicycles, sitting in parks, might be millions if not billions of people who might wake up one day very soon and tell “The captain” to get stuffed.

Posted @ March 27, 2005 01:15 AM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Cool...

Mount St. Helens belches steam and ash on Tuesday. View is from Portland Oregon.

Aint that somethin...

Oh, And for my favorite site on the Cascade Volcanos

Posted @ March 09, 2005 05:39 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Six Degrees of Separation

Q: What do Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, The father of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk and the late great Ray Charles all have in common?

Click Here to find out...

Posted @ February 25, 2005 08:28 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

China: A little piece....

( from Springtime for Hitler)

I just want a little "piece"
A little piece of poland, a little piece of france.....

From: China and Japan: The coming conflict

Excerpt:

"...In the early morning of Feb. 9, 2005, Tokyo took an unexpectedly bold action and informed the Chinese that Japan will take formal possession of a tiny archipelago in the Pacific waters -- the Senkaku Islands. Effective immediately, Tokyo announced, the Senkaku would be administered by the Japanese coast guard. "It is time Japan began protecting what is ours," says Makoto Yamazaki, director of the Japan Youth Association, "If our sovereignty is being threatened, we have a right to defend ourselves."

Why did Japan take this action? Apparently the Chinese have been been shopping for real estate in the Pacific. I quickly checked to see whats up with the forever disputed Spratly Islands, and got this:

Vietnam affirms sovereignty over Paracel, Spratly archipelagoes

It appears that the Chinese have built a concrete structure on one of the Spratlys and killed a number of Viet fisherman. For those of you playing the "Pacific Hegemony Home Game" The Viets hate the Chinese, The Chinese hate the Japanese and China doesnt care.

Latest Gulf of Tonkin Incident Reveals China's Imperialist Designs

From Jan 24th:

Vietnam Accuses China of Violating Law After Shooting

Why all the hubub? You know the answer, its all about the ooooiilll....

Oil Fuels G-7 Focus on China, India

Excerpt:

"All this explains why CNOOC Ltd., China's biggest offshore oil and gas company, is pursuing a full takeover of Unocal Corp. It would vault CNOOC above rival PetroChina Co., the nation's biggest oil producer, in efforts to expand production overseas to meet rising demand. Other Chinese companies also have been busily buying up oil-producing assets."

and the kicker....

"G-7 members also know Asia's thirst for oil could get ugly. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for example, has said ``energy security'' in his nation is second only to food security. Observers, meanwhile, are watching territorial disputes between China and Japan over a group of allegedly oil-rich islands. For similar reasons, China and some Southeast Asian nations are bumping heads over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea."

It now appears the Chinese Dragon is now an oil fueled beast with an unquenchible thirst and their neighbors have started to take notice.

ed: I need to get to work on the book on Homesourcing, it might not be an option for much longer...

And what does the world look like in Chinas eyes?

"According to the Chinese government, the U.S. is worried about Chinese economic and political growth, and thus is trying to encircle it with bases and alliances. Chinese nationalists point to its recent support of India (because China has been giving blueprints for nuclear arms to Pakistan), its recognition of Vietnam, its sales of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, its support of Japan as an economic powerhouse, and its support of a unified Korea under Seoul. Likewise, U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan gives them evidence to support their cause against Western dominance, according to one Tsinghua University professor."

UPDATE: On this day in 1942: A Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California. Coincidence? I think not...

Posted @ February 22, 2005 10:58 AM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Ready For Your Close Up?

Were living in a time of great transition. The human world is changing before our eyes in ways our grandfathers could never have imagined. Some of us adjust and sit back and marvel at the majesty of it all, while others cling to a hopeful return to the righteousness of the past like a wet cat locked inside a running shower stall loudly craves a return to dryness.

I’ve been through technology transitions before, so this is nothing new. To me, all technology has the life span of a green banana. It doesn’t surprise me to see change anymore. In fact I’m so jaded that I’m only surprised when I don’t see change. I like change. Most of the time, it works out pretty good. I do have my issues with cell phones, but that’s a rant for another time.

Like I said, things are changing, and changing big. I really hesitated writing this piece because it involves picking on a soft and easy target. This target is a person, but she’s actually more of a totem for a lifestyle that is dying before my eyes.

That lifestyle is “Activist Journalism”, and it’s fading into the past fast and with it fades the career of a particular baby-boomer-Pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist.

Once, long ago, to be a journalist meant having the same prestige as a used car salesman. Respectable men didn’t work as “reporters”, just scam artists and men just this side of the law. Sure, there were a few “writers” as such, but as a rule, kids didn’t go to college saying they wanted to go into the “news” business. It was a knuckle-busting, hard drinking, make no money, all for a little bit of ego stroke kind of business. It was a man’s business, specifically an old mans business a two fisted drinking, smoking, whoring mans business.

She wondered what to do with yourself.

A few years go by. Then one day, a couple of kids just like her who worked at the Washington Post exposed a popular and powerful President in a crime. They became famous. They became more important than the stories they covered. They mattered.

People of her generation began to talk of their role of “Speaking Truth to Power”, exposing corruption and “making to world a better place”. It became intoxicating. She could become famous she told herself, just by writing a few little stories.

She could become an “authority”. She could change government policy, all because you could get hired by a newspaper to write stories. There was no competition; she had the consumer and the publisher right where she wanted them.

She used to march in protests in college, she wanted to change the world, now through the new found world of “Activist Journalism”, she could.

Now she mattered. Now she were important. The world listened to her. They watched her breathlessly help make policy on Sunday morning Political Shows, where the “old men” asked her to appear to give your opinion. She was “speaking truth to power”.

People bought her books. She made up cute names about important people and they had to take it, because she worked for a newspaper, and they didn’t. It was sweet revenge for all the wrongs against her and all of the agrieved "sisterhood".

The people she worked for paid her well, because just by her being associated with them, they made money. It was a great little system they had.

Once upon a time, A person could go to the best schools, get the connections, take a journalism class or two, get out of college, go to work for a newspaper, write a few articles and become famous.

And powerful. That was the best part, Power. In your own hands...

Once upon a time way back when, a person could join a profession who had as one of its goals “Changing the world” and you could. And she did!

She lives in a din of Champaign bubbles, camera lights and the loud hum of stereo speakers at parties. It dulls her to the sound of little feet. The little feet of competition, scuttling across the floor of her finely ordered world where she sits safely at the top.

Once, while she was busy entertaining at a posh party in the Hampton’s, someone across the room said a word she didn’t understand in a sentence she couldn’t comprehend.

“ I read it in a blog…” They said about something that she couldn’t care less about because it wasn’t about her, so how important could it be... she thought to yourself. She kept hearing how your friends were on the “Internet”, but she resisted, it was all so pedestrian. Her admin assistant could do that for her at work, why should she get into the dirty side of it all.

“It gets in the way of my writing”; she said whenever someone asked. Her favorite politcal candidate in the election started to make money off all the little people on this thing called “the internet”. She decided that whatever it was, it was a good thing, but basically, she ignored it.

Her newspaper started an “online edition”. They set up an email so your readers could correspond with her on a story. As long as the checks came in, she didn’t care. She had no more idea what “internet edition” was any more than what the letters “WIC” meant in the milk section of the grocery store. She never checked her email, she had people to do that for her.

Then she heard it again, that little “blog” word. She thought it so passé, but there it was again. Then one day, her editor lost his job because of the effect of this little word she didn’t understand. Apparently, some "blog" caught her boss in a little lie, and told everyone. How could they? and who were they anyway? “This must be the work of the corporate power brokers”. She decided to investigate this "internet thing". She asked her admin about the email account that the paper had set up for her.

“You wont like it” said the admin.

“How can that be? I am loved by one and all!” The admin then explained how readers wrote to tell how often she, the writer, the reporter, the journalist were wrong on so many issues. The admin explained that her fine crafted pieces of journalism were often linked on websites all over the world.

“Well, see, I told you they like me” she said with glee. The admin looked across the top of her glasses at you with a sour persimmon look and shook her face from side to side.

“You don’t understand, they don’t like you, they hate you, they make fun of you every chance they get, and you don’t help with some of the pieces you write, all those cutesy names, its so infantile”.

“Well, it’s the right wing talk radio whackos, of course they hate me!” she said back in angry retort with balled up fists.

“No, its pretty much everyone. I hate to tell you this, but on the Internet, you are a considered a sad joke”.

There, right in the office on that day, she realized something for the first time. She wasn't driving the fastest car in the race, she had just been lapped. The world had passed her by. She were living her life thinking she was Katherine Hepburn, but it turns out, she was really just Norma Desmond.

Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

Norma Desmond: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

In the end, it wasn’t about journalism, it wasn’t about the writing, it was all about her. All that mattered was the satisfaction of her ego. That was her morphine, and when she heard the word "blog" the first time, that was the end of her fix, only she didnt know it at the time.

Like Nora Desmond, Main Stream Media is living in a sad reflective world that no longer exists. They live in the narcotic haze of nostalgia, “for the days gone by” when the world rotated around what they thought. Now, they will start the “death rattle” that occurs when all former authorities and celebrities feel their grip on power falling away from them like a drug addict who cant quite keep their buzz going.

They will sue, berate, belittle, crack and claw. it will get mean and petty. And claw though they might, they will lose, for they have lost already. Main Stream Media can no more hold onto their non-existent authority than the cardinals of Europe could maintain their place after Gutenberg made the press. The world has changed. It's conspired against them. The bill has come due.

The smart ones will adapt. The dumb ones will fade sadly into obscurity, dimly holding out hope for better times,colliding with the sharp corners of reality on the way down the cold cement staircase of life. Some will go sad and pathetically like Walter Winchell did in his last days,after no one would hire him, handing out “newsletters” for 10 cents a piece at Manhattan bars,basking in the reflective glory that was his past or like Nora Desmond, acting only to a room full of shadows as the world has cast its gaze somewhere else.

Joe Gillis: There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.

So true.

Oh but Weep not fellow blogger for the fading baby-boomer-Pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist who once mattered, but does no longer. For someday, in the not too distant future, we too will meet our ego-doom at the hands of an unseen competitive force who is even now scuttling across our floors unheard through the din of our current excitement. Meet it with grace and dignity, because has history has clearly shown us, it happens to everyone.

It will happen to us. Just wait and see.

Be ready for your close up. It will be over before you know it.

Posted @ February 17, 2005 09:52 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

North Korea: A story of mutual betrayal

A very good take on the situation can be found here.

Excerpt:

"South Korea's ambassador to Beijing, Kim Ha-joong, has called on China to apply subtle but effective measures. The North draws almost all of its imports across the border with China.

"What kind of situation could arise, if China, citing maintenance work, were to close just three of its roads simultaneously?" the ambassador was quoted as saying by the South Korean news agency Yonhap."

What kind of situation? I think it was called "The Berlin Crisis - 1949".

Posted @ February 17, 2005 12:08 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

North Korea: Asias Little Indian Casino On the Yalu

BEIJING (Reuters) - China arrested a government official on Sunday who had fled after losing 3.5 million yuan ($423,000) in public funds and borrowed money to gambling at a casino in a North Korea border area, state media reported.

The arrest of Cai Haowen followed a high-profile manhunt and the closure of the Hong Kong-built Emperor Hotel and Casino in a free trade zone of North Korea, across the river from China's Jiling province, where Cai is reported to have gambled.

Original Story Here...

Let me get this straight. Hong Kong Built hotels on the Yalu River? Free Trade Zones? Gambling? Did North Korea become an Indian Reservation? Can we expect to see cigarettes,rubber tomahawks and hand made jewelry being sold from road side stands at low,low prices?

Oops, spoke to soon.

" In Guam, the Secret Service in July uncovered a network selling bogus North Korean-made pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, and $100 bills. In June, French customs seized more than 11,000 fake parts for Nokia Corp. (NOK ) cell phones -- batteries, covers, and more."

Man, that place is like the nexus of the weird. Barstow-on-the-yalu.

Posted @ February 14, 2005 09:02 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Kim Watch: Day 4.

Here are Four scenarios that have been put forth for the sudden announcement from North Korea that they have "nukes".

Theory 1: Brinkmanship
Theory 2: Heat from the US
Theory 3: Lack of concessions
Theory 4: Pressure on Kim

Details can be found here.

Im intrigued By Theory 2 and Theory 4.

Theory 4 Brings up the rather hard to believe idea of dissent in North Korea coming to a head. I would dismiss it out of hand, except thre was the rather odd explosion in Yongbon railyard soon after the "Dear Leader" passed through. Then there was word that the large portait pictures of the "Dear Leader" throught Pyongyang had been removed or possibly defaced. Just this week there is word that he has publically announced the line of succession goes to his son and grandson.

Why now? and was there any doubt? There wasnt to me.

For support of Theory2 , there is this pice from the Boston Globe.

Key Points found within:
NORTH KOREA sold uranium in gaseous form to Libya in 2002, US officials just told Japan, South Korea, and China.

The latest turn in the nuclear crisis came after experts at the Oak Ridge laboratory reportedly concluded that uranium gas found in Libya came from North Korea.

North Korea began acquiring the means to enrich uranium from Pakistan in 1998 after the Clinton administration failed to live up to its commitments in the 1994 Agreed Framework.

In the immortal words of Science Officer Spock:

"Fascinating"

There is something that has only just occured to me. I've always been thinking that each country would be working on their own to accomplish the task of building atomic weapons. A friend of mine was channelling Enrico Fermi one day when he posed this question:

"If the theory of atomic energy is so well understood and the materials to develop them are at readily at hand, why are there not more of them ?"

The answer is either that there are more of them than we know of ( very possible) or that even if the theory is well understood it still takes a great deal of technology(read: "money")to accomplish the task.

Be let's "just suppose" this. While no one country in the 'axis of evil' can accomplish the task on their own due to limitations on each of their parts(not enough money, not enough talent, not enough land, not secure enough), perhaps, they decided to cooperate to accomplish the job and share the results? This would also allow the overall project to continue even if any one country was removed from the equation by forces outside of their control.

They would need one country with a ready supply of untraceable uranium. North Korea fits the bill nicely. They would need another with a healthy supply of ready cash. Iraq or Libya fit the bill. They would need a large area in which to test, Iran fits the bill. Perhaps Cuba also provided intelligence to see the task accomplised, as they are also a dynastic dictatorship, in danger of being overthrown without the atomic security blanket that was pulled off when the Soviet Union went away. My guess is that Castro wants it back very badly. Perhaps Venezuela is being courted as the new replacement for the badly needed cash component for this project.

And then there's Pakistan. Pakistan is probably the source of much of the talent that is driving the project. My suspicion is that A.Q. Khan developed the Pakistan project with one hand, while simultaneously handing off the data to the "other players" with the other hand.

Tie them all together with any number of newly available and unemployed atomic scientists and technical staff from the former Soviet Union, working as "consultants" and you can start to see where this theory takes us.

Two key components have been removed, Libyan and Iraqi cash, and another has been neutralized - Pakistani leadership. Now it seems that the raw materials may be our new priority.

Oh yeah, and Kims Birthday is in four days. Let's see how that goes.

Posted @ February 13, 2005 12:30 AM | Current Events | Comments (2)

Changing the world - One cable modem at a time.

Once while watching TV and seeing a Dodge Ram pickup commercial, my brother-in-law began to opine about the obvious fuel inefficiency of Dodge pickups and what a fool anyone would be to buy one. He offered that anyone who didn’t buy a Honda was an idiot, as only Hondas could get decent gas mileage, and thus were the only cars “good for the environment”. I then reminded him of something he knew, that I owned a Dodge pickup and that he had parked right next to it in the driveway. After he acknowledged that I then told him something he didn’t want to hear.

“My Dakota is more efficient than you Honda”, I said.

He laughed back and said to me in mid guffaw that there was no way that could possibly be true. The poor bastard didn’t know he was being set up.

“When was the last time you bought gas?” I asked him. He said he bought gas on a weekly basis, and a tank of gas is 12 gallons. I told him I had not bought gas in 8 weeks, and my tank held 18 gallons and as a result, it was clear that My V-8, 5 speed manual transmission Dodge Dakota was more efficient than was his Honda. .

You see, My Brother-in-law used his Honda to go to work. His work was 40 miles from home and it took him 90 minutes and two bridge crossings to get from where he lived to where he worked.

He traveled all that way to sit in a standard office cubicle farm, where he would have a networked company PC and telephone. He worked with no one at that office, as most of his contacts were actually other companies and other employees around the globe. His management team was actually in London.

My manager is based on the east coast. His manager is in another state. The Vice President of our division is not an American. Our customer base is globally and in every country except North Korea, Libya and Iran. I work at home. My commute is exactly 14 steps down my stairs into my office. I rarely drive a car for work, unless I’m going to the airport for a trip out of town, which is becoming more and more rare as remote access technology advances with the times.

Am I Efficient? You bet your ass, and I don’t need a Honda or a big expensive public transportation system to be that way.

I need three things.

I can do this type of work because networking infrastructure companies like Cisco invested and developed VPN (Virtual Private Network) technology, which allows me to use public networks to access internal corporate networks as if I were inside the office.

I can do this because the company I work for wants to remain competitive on a global basis, and wants to be as cost efficient and effective as it can be.

Most of all, I can do this because the city I live in made the decision back in the 1970’s to use the then advanced technology of fiber optics not just for business offices, but for all residential telephone access. When they put it in, no one could foresee the existence of home computers, much less the existence of the Internet. Today, the local phone company not only offers phone services, but it also offers high speed broadband and ‘video on demand’ services, all on a single pipeline to the consumer. This was a hell of a good investment on the part of the city owned utility.

I am not unique in my situation. In my neighborhood over the past 5 years I have seen a number of people do the same. In my cul-de-sac, half of the 8 homes in it now have people working from home during the day, all for different companies, all former “cube farmers” like myself.

Think of it that for a minute; 8 homes – on average driving an hour and 20 minutes each day, just for work. Now, with no law passed, with no dictate from “the central committee” our little neighborhood cut the total miles driven by the people in this one cul-de-sac in half.

5 days a week, times 80 minutes for 8 homes = 53 hours a week.
5 days a week, times 80 minutes for 4 homes = 26 hours a week.

Half.

Think of it from a fuel ‘supply and demand’ basis, we dramatically dropped demand and use of fuel in our little cul-de-sac. Which would do what to the price of gas?

Exactly.

Do you think a Toyota Prius could do that? No. How ‘bout a neat Hydrogen Car? No.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone can or should try working remotely. I am saying that a very high percentage of people today can and should do it. It will never be 100% and that’s just fine, the impact is the same whether you go into work or not. What is stopping most people from doing it is more of an ingrained cultural habit than not the lack of infrastructure. We are raised to “go to work”. No one stops and asks “ what am I doing when I get there that I cannot do from home”( and as I often say – What is there left that I can not do BETTER from home?).

The next time you are driving to work, try this exercise. Count four cars, now on the fourth car, imagine that it’s gone, that it’s not on the road. Keep repeating that until you get to where you are going. That’s what a 25% drop in traffic would be like.

Now, what do we need to make this revolution happen? Do we need years of expensive ‘Research and Development’ with only the hope of a “maybe” at the end of it all? This is what is being proposed with Hydrogen Car technology, its possible, but its still a maybe and even if it worked and worked well tomorrow, it would take a great deal of time and money to roll out the technology.

In the case of “working remote” it’s already happening. There’s even a name for it, its called “Homesourcing”. Rather than companies “outsourcing” their work to far off parts of the world, they are learning that it’s often just as cheap if not cheaper to allow their employees to work remotely rather than coming to an office. The company doesn’t require as much office space (and thus real estate) and employees get a tremendous benefit of being able to work without the added cost of commuting. As I’ve illustrated with my little part of the world, it’s a trend that is already underway without government edicts. The market itself has forced companies to be as competitive as they can be, and the same technology and systems that allow US companies to outsource to India can also be used to let you work in your pajamas from your ancestral home in Mt. Airy North Carolina instead of the inner city hell you once had to settle for because thats where the work was.

I say this with total command of my faculties that fully 25% of the US workforce could start working remotely within 90 days.

Again, 25% of the manhours and miles driven (and thus gallons of gas saved) spent driving to and from work could be eliminated within 90 days.

This is achievable. Today.

Imagine what would happen to the world fuel markets if there were anything like a 25% drop in demand for fuel. Just a 5% change would have dramatic effect. I didn’t choose 25% because it’s the ceiling either, I just picked it because I think its doable today, with little or no effort on the part of companies or the government. I say this because I watched it happen once before.

In 1989 I was a part of a vast experiment in forced “homesourcing”. Like 3 million other people, I was working in an office in San Francisco when the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred. The loss of the Bay Bridge and the damage to streets and offices in the city itself put a severe cramp in the ability of people to get to and from San Francisco to work.

Did they stop working? Did the form an office worker ‘trail of tears’ and migrate to other climes where the hunting and gathering was better? Did they die of starvation at the side of the road?

No. They took their new office PC’s home and began to work out of their homes, coming into the city only when it was absolutely necessary. PC’s had only just arrived, but they made a world of difference in the ability to distrbute work. Now, in 1989, Corporate data networks were still kind of primitive, there was no Internet and frankly there was no broadband, but you could get your email and you could certainly write you documents and send them to others. It worked. Processing power was now portable; you no longer had to be at the office to get something done.

Your work was where you were, rather than the other way around.

Most people came out of that experience saying that while they could not work at home every day, it was sure nice to not have to commute, and they were all shocked at how productive they were because everyone expected that productivity would go down with the disruption. It didnt, to everyones surprise, it went up. Six months after the quake, things were back to normal in the city, but people continued to work at home at least one day a week. 1989 was the start of “work at home’ Fridays, a part of modern corporate life that we’ve all learned to accept today as normal, but it wasn’t always so.

Now I loathe discussing the idea of the government stepping in and “doing something”. The worst political disease I know of is the “Do Something” disease. I see it happen all the time, and I see it in the Presidents proposed Budget with the R&D dollars for Hydrogen technology. I also see it on the left with the knee jerk reactions about “the need for more dollars for AMTRACK. When I see it I just want to scream:” THE WORLD HAS CHANGED – GET WITH THE PICTURE!!”

We don’t live in tenements at the edge of cities. We don’t work in factories powered by the wheel at the old millstream. We live in cities that are a mix of work and suburb. The “Age of Hierarchy” is over; this is “the Distributed Age”. We all work in the global market, and many more of us every day are working with people we will never meet as a normal part of our daily work.

So, why are we still going to an office? If I want to talk to coworkers in India, I pick up the phone, I can do that anywhere. If I need to correspond, I send an email, again I can do that anywhere. If we are working together on a particular problem, we use desktop collaboration software so that they can watch as I demonstrate the situation from my desktop, just as if they were sitting in the same cubicle with me, again I can do that anywhere.

So, why are we still going to an office? Our coworkers arent there, Our customers arent there, our bosses arent there! For far too many people who work in offices, it is done for no other reason than its always been done that way, and for me, that is the absolute worst reason to do anything.

For the left and all its talk about wanting to "save the environment", it’s just talk. They are more interested in the power that comes with the extortion dollars they get scaring the hell out of businesses. If you really want to save the environment, do something to encourage homesourcing. You see, unlike all the other solutions for “saving the environment” or “making the US less dependent on foreign oil” “homesourcing” is largely a cultural problem, not a technology problem. Homesourcing can be put into practice and have an immediate and dramatic effect - TODAY. And the effect would be staggering.

If everyone who could do it worked remotely for just one day a week, the impact to fuel demand in the US would be amazing. People don’t need to buy new fuel efficient cars, and we don’t need exotic new fuels, we just need to drive less. Until recently, driving less meant a dramatic decrease in productivity. However, with the advent of the internet, there is no longer any loss of productivity just because you don’t go anywhere. In the 1970’s if you could not get to work, you were screwed and that was it. In the 1980s, it was better, you could at least use a PC at home if you had to, but it was still less than what would be optimum. But since the 1990s with the full availability of goods and services via the Internet, you no longer suffer if you are not in a particular place.

The work is now where you are, rather than the other way around.

Everyday, in every city more and more people have access to broadband network facilities. If I were to get the government to do anything, it would be to accelerate the expansion of broadband networks in the US, but it isn’t necessary, it would just be nice. If I were to get the government to do anything it would be to encourage more homesourcing, but it isn’t necessary, it would just be nice.

If you are a small town and you want to become more competitive as an economic base, there is no better way to do it than to ensure that you have broadband facilities in your town. Once upon a time, the Federal government devised a program called “Rural Electrification” that brought electric power to farms and ranches. It also brought paved roads, which helped bring goods out of the hinterlands and into the markets. The result was an order of magnitude improvement in efficiency for farming and ranching in the US. Rural Electrification was a huge project, The Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Hoover, Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams were all a part of it. It changed the face of America and it was a damn good investment.

For my money, I would prefer to see the President propose “Rural Internet-ification” to take the place of the “Rural Electrification” project. I would prefer this as opposed to the boondoggle of “Hydrogen powered cars”. If Democrats were more interested in helping people than proving to themselves that “Bush is an Idiot” then they would begin to propose programs like “Rural Internetification” to actually help people in general and help the "red states" become Democratic again.

Let’s see the Democrats propose a program that actually makes American business more competitive on a global basis like widespread access to broadband to employees to make Homesourcing a reality for more people. Let’s see Democrats propose a program that could actually improve the lives of people, rather than just increase the power of politicians over their lives.

While they are doing that, I will be working with my neighbors, quietly and without fanfare transforming the world in which we live, one cable modem at a time.

Clarification: I'm not "blaming Democrats" for anything that I'm not also "blaming Republicans". Both parties are reacting to budget priorities in terms of what helps their parties maintain and achieve power, rather than what is actually effective and helpful in peoples lives.

It's just that Democrats say that they are "for the people" so I expect more of them in that area as a result. When people discuss the problem of "what are we going to do about fossil fuels" I would like to hear some other answer except " let's put everyone on a train". My essay should have provided you with another direction to take the conversation.

also - I have no intention of ever getting a Prius. In the world I live in you are free to buy whatever the hell you want for whatever reason that suits you without fear of retribution from the thought police.

I hope the world you live in is also liberated from the tyranny of the mob.

(UPDATE:) Reason #24 for why there is a Second Amendment to the Constitution can be found here at Vodkapundit.

Posted @ February 10, 2005 01:10 AM | Current Events | Comments (12)

Notice

Thanks to the efforts of "The Great Stacy Tabb" of Sekimori Designs, Comments and Trackbacks have been returned to function at Varifrank.

The Blog rules I established earlier on this post, still apply, so please behave my lefty compatriots.

You may resume calling me such things as a "toffee toothed knuckle dragging fascist of the very extreme right wing", and I shall resume banning your IP. It's a tight little food chain we have here at Varifrank, but it works.

Posted @ February 01, 2005 09:05 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Welcome Neighbor!

At the end of your block sits a house. Its state of disrepair and unkempt nature drives down the property values of your neighborhood. What’s worse? The home is occupied by a nefarious gang of outlaws to terrorize you and your neighbors. You stay inside; you don’t dare leave your home unoccupied for any length of time, as it will assuredly be robbed.

While the police are at the house once a week to check into some form of problem, they seem unable to get at the issue or to actually change anything. While there are individual arrests, the gang itself continues to occupy the house as a whole. Individual players come and go but the terror remains. You and your neighbors go to the city council to complain, only to be told that there’s nothing that can be done. They take a vote and decide to start a “neighborhood watch program” and to implement a “drug free zone”. Funds are drawn from the coffers for city workers to erect the signs on light posts in the neighborhoods.

Within weeks, each of the signs has been vandalized.

You are losing money in the investment of your home; your family lives in trauma of the violence that may occur at any moment. You cannot take the law into your own hands, or the very forces that should be taking out the criminal gang, will instead take find it very easy to persecute you.

You and your fellow citizens decide to take action. At the next election, a new Sheriff is elected. He goes to the City council and asks, “ Is there any new business?” to which you and your neighbors take the podium to make clear the situation with the house at the end of your street. You make your case as such:

It is a notorious crack house. Crime in the neighborhood is at an all time high, you are in fear of your life. At all hours, newly paroled criminals take up residence in the home and begin robbing and extorting from their neighbors.

While this is being done, the Chairman of the City Council promises to “look into the matter”. The Sheriff, newly elected and without any political baggage asks:

“Why hasn’t this been taken care of?”
“Who is responsible for this?”

The City Council responds that while complaints have been received, the matter has been looked into and the hands of the police have been tied by the DA’s legal and with individual cases against the gang pending, they could not comment further.

After the meeting, the Sheriff, over cups of late night coffee with many of the older hands of the police force, he begins to form an opinion of the real situation at hand:

“The police force has been bought off by the gang. It may go as high as the DA. The entire city organization may be bribed or compromised by these people”.

He visits the neighborhood. He sees the situation. He goes through old police reports to see the level of violence in the neighborhood. After talking to many of the people who live in the neighborhood, he begins to form a plan.

The sheriff asks for a special meeting of the city council. All city council meetings are open to the public for participation. The sheriff asks the people of the neighborhood to attend the meeting and to be prepared with specific dates and details of the crimes and give public testimony at the city council meeting.

He also invites his friend from the Federal DEA to attend the meeting, but says nothing to the police force or the other members of the council.

As the meeting convenes, the city council tries to slip around the Sheriff and his agenda, but it wont work. The sheriff asks for public comment, and by doing so neighbor after neighbor steps to the podium to relate with specific dates and times stories of crimes committed.

The DEA agent begins to take notes. At one point, one neighbor relates a tale of machine guns being fired. Another tells of seeing boxes of ammunition taken inside. The agent reaches for his cellphone and walks into the hallway. As the meetings beings to disburse, other agents of the DEA arrive to begin taking depositions from the neighbors.

After 24 hours, a federal weapons warrant has been sworn out after testimony before a federal judge. The Sheriff is asked to assist with the serving of the warrant. The Sheriff neglects to tell the police or the city council of the issuance of the warrants, which he will excuse later as simply being “new to the job”.

Federal agents surround the home and with lightning speed take it over and arrest the members of the gang. During the arrest, two members of the gang shoot it out with the federal officers and are killed.

Children are found in the home in an abused state and turned over to Child Protection Services. Many women are found in the home being used as prostitutes having been addicted to drugs. Cell phones and other phones found at the home are confiscated and their phone records are found to lead to a number of other gangs that are also distributing Meth and Crack cocaine. Individual members of the gang are interrogated for information and in return for lighter sentencing being to give it to the federal agents, who continue breaking the back of the gang. Members of the police force and the city council are found to have received favors from the gang and are removed from their positions.

After a few months, the home is sold to pay back property taxes and fines. The new homeowner is a young couple, who proceed take the distressed property and begin to turn it back into a home from a crack house. Within a year, the home is a spectacular example of homes in the neighborhood.

Oddly, While, a great deal of methamphetamine producing chemicals was found in the house while the gang was there, no more than a trace of “Meth” is ever found on site. There were also no signs of the “Machine guns” found in the house as was stated on the initial warrant.

Epilogue: When the law begins to act as a shield for criminal activity, it is not a crime to use the law against itself. I do not care if we found a single WMD in Iraq. I would have called for the invasion of Iraq for no other reason than it has supported terrorists and has a long border with Iran and Syria. It was the Tikriti Clan in control of Iraq that was the danger, not what they had in the paint locker.

It is always a fetish for the left to concentrate on the weapon, rather than the criminal. Usually you see this portrayed in its obsession against private ownership of pistols but in this case its WMDs; but the situation is the same.

We’ve removed a criminal element from the neck of the people of Iraq, and it was our duty as fellow of the world citizens to do it. If you needed the threat of WMD to go and stop that nightmare, then it served its purpose. But it should have taken much less, and shame on you that it didn’t, and shame on us all for waiting so long to stop it, but there is no shame that we didn't find the weapons.

Posted @ January 15, 2005 01:51 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Today, I was "Unprofessional"...

Over the past 6 weeks, I've been deeply enmeshed in one of those "go live at the end of the year" projects that we in the IT industry have learned to love. The kind where managers assume that since no one is working, why that would be the perfect time to go live!

Of course, it means that your doing complex work at the point of maximum distraction with many many holidays and no staff.

This year we had a major distraction, and I'm bothered that I described it that way.

On Christmas Day, a disaster visited the human race. Hundreds of thousands of people, quietly living their lives on the edge of the sea were killed. They were killed, not by suicide bombers or suitcase nukes or crazed men hijacking planes into buildings. They were killed with simple seawater. Those that were killed werent just simple minded fools who wandered lemming like out into the unusually low tide, only to be mowed down by the sudden flood. They were people enjoying the sights from the second story of a hotel when the ocean rose up to engulf them. The horror of it all hasnt even begun to sink in to most of us.

There is a tendancy in the western world to overlook the disasters of the third world. Unless it involves us "white folks", the press of the western world does not seem to care or think that we do. In this disaster, one example of disgusting western depravity could be found in the many press outlets that made big news out of a "supermodel" who was (gasp!!!) harmed in the disaster. Imagine if someone on September 12th had published a report that Zsa Zsa gabor and her poodle were put out by the lack of cabs in Manhattan. It made me sick to my stomach to see this item on the news.

Today, The Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that 5,000 Americans could not be accounted for, Sweden also announced roughly the same figure for their citizens.

Now we care. And shame on us all.

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:

" See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier..."

After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud.

and then they looked at me. I wasn't laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.

I'm afraid I was "unprofessional", I let it loose -

"Hmmm, let's see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?

Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?

Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?

Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?

Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?

Well "Franz", us peasants in America call that kind of ship an "Aircraft Carrier". We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that's right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us.

Do you know who those people were? that's right Franz, Europeans.

Theres is a French Aircraft carrier? where is it? Right where it belongs! In France of course! Oh why should the French Navy dirty their uniforms helping people on the other side of the globe. How Simplesse...

The day an American has to move a European out of the way to help in some part of the world it will be a great day in the world, you sniggering little f**knob..."

The room fell silent. My hindi friend then said quietly to the Euros:

"Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute? There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the world, why can't you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them would have done so. I'm ashamed of you all..."

He left the room, shaking and in tears. The frustration of being on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to assist and faced with people who could not set aside their asininity long enough to reach out and help was too much for him to bear. I just shook my head and left. The Euros stood speechless.

Later in the breakroom, one of the laughing Euros caught me and extended his hand in an apology. I asked him where he was from, he said "a town outside of Berlin". He is a young man, in his early 20's.

I asked him if he knew of a man named Gail Halvorsen.

He said no.

I said "that's a shame" and walked away to find my Hindi friend.

Posted @ January 03, 2005 08:25 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

And now a word from General McAuliffe

After a particularly bad press conference, the beleaguered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, walked away from the podium shaking his head in wonderment at the questions he had received from the solidly defeatist press. “ I wish there was something I could tell these people to help them understand”. He said to no one in particular.

High above in the cosmos, his voice was heard by the pantheon of heroes on Mount Olympus. Zeus and Apollo took pity on the mortal Donald Rumsfeld in his struggle. “What shall we do to help him"? Said Athena, twirling the curls of her jet-black hair. “How do we communicate with these "Americans", they wont react to us like the Greeks did”. She looked out of the corner of her eye at Zeus in a seductively playful way.

Zeus just smiled, as Apollo instantly sensed what he was up to “ Let’s send them one of their own, maybe they will respond to one of their own heroes rather than one of us”!; and with a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning, Zeus’ thoughts came into being within the mortals temporal universe.

As the Washington press corps began to filter out of the White House Press Room, the elderly Helen gathering her stadium cushions and putting them in the “Big Brown Bag” clutch along with her knitting was the first to notice the temporal disruption emanating from the podium.

“What’s that smell"?, “Hey, Sonny, do you smell that? It smells like Ozone”.

As she turned and faced the now unoccupied darkened podium, the lights began to flicker, and a vapor began to form in the shape of two spectres.

The Press Corp began to shuffle back into the room to witness this spectral vision taking shape.

As the first spectre began to take recognizable form, it belted out in deep bass tones, the words:

"Ladies and gentleman of the Press, at the request of the Gods Zeus and Apollo, I present General Anthony McAuliffe for a briefing on today’s military action”

As the spectal announcer finished his introduction and faded away, General McAuliffe came into sharp resolution from what was once a hanging cloud of vapor. He stood proudly with his hands clasped behind his back and with a nod, acknowledged the now completely befuddled press.

“What is this, some kinda Joke?” Said Helen, tossing her hands up in display (along with her knitting )into the air. The General glared at her and grasped the podium with both hands and shouted down at the gnome-like-elder-presswoman and said:

“ Do I look like “a joke” to you lady?” You don’t think I have better things to do with my time in the infinite than come back here and talk to you pansy-assed idiots?”

The other specter returned, briefly whispering into the Generals ear, he acknowledged it with a mumbled “uh-huh, ok, I got it...” .

With his eyes darting from side to side like a schoolboy caught in an indiscretion, the General then asked for forgiveness,

“ I’m sorry ladies and gentleman, I want to apologize for my somewhat brisk manner, you caught me on a bad day.”

The now hurriedly re-assembled White House Press Corp, Ignoring the more obvious and self evident story of a trans-dimensional spirit appearing in the form of a Great War Hero taking corporeal form in the White House Press Room, decided instead to take up its daily agenda against the Administration, hoping that General McAuliffe would provide lots of talking points in their self appointed war against the Bush Administration.

The hands of the press flew up at the chance to talk to the long dead General. It's not every day a reporter gets to talk to someone who has crossed into the infinite,but rather than ask the General about life in the hereafter and its implications on 10,000 years of religious dogma, they stayed with the task at hand, the denouncement of the presidents proxy, Donald Rumsfeld.

“ You there...” Said the General, pointing to one grey headed horsefaced reporter.

He stood, straighted his tie for the Camera and said,

"David Thusandsuch - NBC News. Sir, What is your opinion of the news out of Iraq?"

The General dug into the podium with both hands and vented out,

Well David, If you would have told me in 1944 that the US Army would progress to the point where it could invade a country the size and population of California and occupy it in less than three weeks and after a year suffer only 1300 casualties with a wounded survival rate of 94%, I would have said you were out of your mind. I have all the faith in the world of the American Fighting man, but I doubt very much you could take over the city of Chicago with such light losses, much less an entire foriegn country, its capitol and 35 million of its inhabitants.

Sir-David-of-NBC then shot back his reply at the General, “ Sir I’m not sure you are aware of this on your side of the infinte but yesterday, 22 soldiers were killed in an unprotected mess tent in Mosul, does that change your opinion of the situation”?

“ A Man - fired A Mortar -at A Mess tent, Son. That doesn’t sound like war winning strategy and tactics. Any monkey can fire a mortar.” “What you misunderstand is this, The target of these people is not the men in the mess tent, the target is you and I sorry to say, they are hitting their target fairly regularly”. They want to break your will to fight, and you are giving that to them, Son. You might as well be handing these animals the shells they fire at our men. As long as they hold out hope that we will fold up our “unprotected tents” and go home, they will keep lobbing rockets at our men.

Once upon a time in a very cold place called Europe, my men and I were in a very bad situation. We were surrounded on all sides by an enemy who wanted to kill every last one of us. They had to, they could not survive if we stayed where we were. They came to me one night to ask for our surrender, they were ready and willing to give us good terms. My men were cold, with no food and no ammo and no hope of re-supply.

We could have given up. We could have surrendered. Lots of boys would have survived that horrible time had I done that. But what you don’t understand yet is that that We couldn’t surrender. If the lives of all those men who had died up to that time was to mean anything at all, we had to stand and fight. I did not want everything we did to have been in vain. All those men we lost on the road up from Normandy would have been for nothing had we surrendered at Bastone. The Enemy would have driven on to Antwerp, split the allies and the world would have been very different indeed. What you don’t yet understand, Son, is that sometimes the lives of the few now can save the lives of the many later.

I know what fear is and I know what fear can do to men. It can turn even the bravest men to Jello. In Korea, the enemy began to become 10 foot tall giants in the minds of our men who had been undersupplied and badly placed into a battlefield as Washington and the world were surprised by the dirty little backwoods North Koreans. I got up to the front as quick as I could to find out the true situation. What I found were men who ran for cover at the first round of artillery, even when the round was a wide ranging shot, the effect was to slow our lines, causing even more men to be killed by snipers. During one such artillery attack, after laying in a trench beside a road at the top of a berm, and looking at a group of good soldiers as they started to lose their will. I decided to do something about it.

“What did you do?” Questioned Sir-David-of-NBC.

“I stood up and walked to the middle of the road and took a leak, in front of full view of my troops and the enemy spotters. The artillery continued, but it was clear that the enemy could not range their weapons properly” I yelled out to the troops “ These bastards cant hit a damn thing, now get up off your asses and get moving”.

And they did!

You people talk about the resolve of the “insurgents” but you never talk about the resolve of the people who have come across the globe for no other purpose than to free other men from tyranny. By your actions you have done more to empower the enemy than any of the madmen that have been fighting us. You shower then in glory when you should be shaming them by their actions.

Sir-David-of-NBC decided to try to trip up the General with the tried and true trick of the none too subtle use of the "race card",

“General, when you talk about “the enemy”, are you referring to Islam?”

He let out a hiss and shook his head. “Son, The enemies that our country has been fighting has always been the same, even when the enemy was our brothers in the confederacy”. “ The Enemy” is the enemy of mankind. “The Enemy” is any person or power who believes that one man is the property of another. “The Enemy” is any person or power who seeks to destroy instead of build, imprison rather than embrace, Starve rather than feed. “ The Enemy” from my time wore different uniforms and came from a different places than yours, but they were the same. "The Enemy" you fight today are no different than the men who met me with the demands of surrender in a farmhouse in Bastone. The men who marched a generation into camps and killed them en masse are still here today. The difference is, in my day, we were appalled and disgusted. In your day, so long as its not Americans doing it, you ignore it. Pol Pot kills 7 million people, you said nothing, Rwanda, Iraq, Darfur the list goes on and yet, because America is not the force that caused it, you excuse it. Frankly, some of you even defend it.

Son, if you and yours in this room continue to give these people the mantle of legitimacy, then the men under my command who died back there in Bastone will have died in vain. The war against the enemy of mankind didn’t end in Berlin or Tokyo or Seoul, that war goes on today. That war is being fought by men and women every bit as brave as the men who I served with in the past.

Son, I want you to understand this, so listen up and listen good. Our men and women aren’t dying over there because the enemy is effectively fighting a war. Our men and women are dying because we wish to be humane. Does anyone in this room believe that we could not kill lots and lots of insurgents by dropping bombs from 10,000 feet? Does anyone not also believe that we would also end up killings many civilians as well by accident, yet our deaths would be extremely small?

It’s up to you Dave, you can do what you want but at some point you are going to have to ask yourself whos side you are on? There is no neutrality in the face of evil. You are either part of the force stopping it or part of the force that allows it.

People are going to die in this war until someone says “ I surrender”. If you are ready to surrender, I suggest you do so, for the rest of us, I have just one word for you:

Nuts!

And while the last consonant hung in the air, the General began to dissipate from solid back to a vapor again.

The room sat silent, and wondered at what they had just seen.

“Wow. After that guy, Rumsfeld seems like pussycat…” said Helen as she tucked her knitting under her arm, waddling away to the sound of a half filled hip flask splashing her a cadence count.

The windows of the press room rattled with far off unseasonable yet unexplainable thunder.

Posted @ December 22, 2004 11:26 AM | Current Events | Comments (2)

May You Live In Interesting Times....

And according to the people of 2014, We do...

In 1978, I worked on an IBM 370 via a 110 baud modem to a timeshare unit at Cal State Sacramento. My code had to be punched and translated to paper tape prior to the window when our class had time. It took two months to create a program that added columns in one punch card reader to columns in another and summed and cross hatched the values fed into the two card readers to produce a sum total on a third. It was all in machine language. I hated it...

In 1984, I worked in mostly IBM JCL and VSAM. I belong to the GENIE bulletin board system, and I own an original Mac, with 128k of memory and no hard disk. ( I still have it... it still works). I own a betamax, I leave a 100 dollar deposit to rent videos at the new video rental place. The paperwork to join is in triplicate and more complex than a car loan.

In 1987, I worked in 370 assembler code, creating macros for CICS and VSAM flat files. DB2 is still a twinkle, IMS is close but no cigar. The GUI is character based, and it was considered amazingly flexible to be able to display dates in formats other that US style dates.

In 1992, I worked on C code and proprietary GUI tools as we convert from mainframe to client/server architecture. I hear about something called TCP/IP and "the internet". Someone shows me a copy of mosaic. I wonder what it is I'm looking at. I cancel my GENIE account.

In 1994, I worked on Relational Databases and complex performance problems produced from running the same code on multiple OS platforms. This was not a problem just a few years before as there was only one big enough to care about, MVS. Now there are 7 and MVS is not one of them.

In 1996, many of my colleagues have gone "indie" as the money from Y2k Conversions is just too sweet to ignore. I begin to get calls from recruiters with bizarre plans for new software businesses. I work at a startup software company, its a back breaking, nut crunching hell made liveable only by the fact that I worked with the best people in the business. It doesnt help, as we still fail miserably. Long before it becomes fashionable in the south bay, We go belly up. We essentially beat the "christmas rush" as the end of an era in software development occurs two years later at the end of 2000 with the "Dot Com" crash.

In 1998, people begin to debate " Should a company convert to running its apps on the web?". I laugh as just a few short years ago, the same exact debate was over if it was safe to run applications on client/server architecture.

In 2001, someone decides that it might be time to toss expensive proprietary architecture servers out for cheap, essentially disposable generic intel servers running linux attached to network storage. I write a memo sayings its not "feasable,reasonable or secure". After the success of the pilot, I write a second memo saying I was wrong on every count. I end up being the project mananger. I also end up becoming an evangelist for the new technology.

In 2004, I work on grid provisioning systems that create and maintain infrastructure to run entire data centers with absolutely no staff on site. My connection at my workplace at home is T1 Speeds, my ISP is converting our neighborhood to FTTH (Fiber To The House), allowing one pipe to the house to handle voice, video and data, with room to spare. I work remotely with a team based around the world in multiple countries. We use VOIP and IM to communicate. I own 2 tivos. I have no video tapes. One of my PC's is a "media computer". My kids look at our old VHS tapes the way I looked at my dad's 78's.

1984 - Dial up. Structured Programming. Batch processing.
1994 - TCP/IP. Object Oriented Programming. Online Processing.
2004 - Network Storage. Grid Systems. Follow-the-sun hosting.

Care to place your own guess as to what 2014 will look like? Not me brudder....

Stay cool. Stay flexible. Don't ever think that the platform you work on today is the best of all possible worlds. If you begin to think it's all figured out, forget it. We're just getting started.

1984 - I wore a suit, drove to work and did my thing on the raised floor of a data center in Plano Texas.

2004 - I dont even wear a shirt with a collar, I never drive anywhere, I sit on my sofa. I used to have to be in Texas, now I can be anywhere on the planet and do my job and even though the data center is still in Texas, I dont have to be.

Posted @ December 21, 2004 07:45 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

"Balls 8" hangs up her wings...

(From Space.com)

NASA's big B-52B jet dropped more aircraft than bombs during an aerial career that spans nearly five decades, but hung up its wings for good this month.

The space agency officially retired the hulking, eight-engine jet plane, which served as an aircraft mothership for hundreds of experimental flights throughout the years, on Dec. 17.

First put into service by the U.S. Air Force to test bomb navigation systems, the B-52B - better known by its tail numbers 008 - began its career in June of 1955. By 1959 the aircraft became one of two airborne motherships for the X-15 program, clutching test aircraft close under one wing until reaching a desired altitude, then turning loose the experimental plane and its pilot.

With the end of X-15 program in 1969, the carrier aircraft served as the go-to mothership for any NASA test flight requiring air launch at the agency's Dryden Flight Research Center. It tested parachutes that would later be used on NASA's space shuttles and solid rocket boosters, and eventually dropped unpowered, wingless lifting bodies which proved gliding vehicles like the shuttle could return to Earth safely.

The aircraft's final flight - hoisting NASA's hypersonic X-43A test vehicle on a flight that would not only prove successful but propel the experimental scramjet aircraft at speeds of nearly Mach 10 - took place on Nov. 16, 2004.

This image shows NASA's B-52B in its early days under the space agency's employ. Taken from a chase plane in 1972, this image captures the moment just after an experimental lifting body has cut loose from the B-52B mothership and begun the flight away from its parent.

I know she's big and tall ( check out that old style B model tail), but let's make sure the old lady gets a proper place on display at a good museum. Man's first steps into space were made under the wing of this fabulous aircraft, and we should not forget what role she has played in the history of our species.

Posted @ December 21, 2004 02:09 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

Tuesday's "Neener-Neener" moment.

Remember when you read this, you heard it here first.

Posted @ December 21, 2004 12:39 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Ma Deuce Goes to Sea.

If you listen to John and Ken, you'd think nothing was being done to combat illegal immigration. Check this out the next time feel that way.

Pacific Currents: U.S. gunboats, sinking of ships rankle Ecuadoreans

Aint it funny how you hear nothing about this. My Dad and Grandfather, both Navy Chiefs used to say " The Navy works during wartime but the Coast Guard works every damn day..." It would appear that is the case.

Posted @ December 20, 2004 10:58 AM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Time Magazine Merges with The Onion

Oh my, Time Magazine has done a great service to bloggers everywhere by writing this parody piece

Excerpt:

Wither The Dollar
A weak dollar should be good for U.S. exports. But it's already causing pain overseas, and in the long run it could drive up the cost of living at home
By DANIEL KADLEC

European Pain

Americans traveling in Europe, where their dollars don't go very far, are feeling some pain. While vacationing in Paris last week, university professor

(Nerd Alert! - vacationing offseason - In France - University Professor, 10 guesses who she voted for...)

Maria Armanda was surprised to find "a bottle of Coca-Cola outside the bus stop was $2.60. That's unheard of!
( Obviously shes never been to Disneyland...)
I needed the caffeine, or I wouldn't have bought it." Trina Chang, a Californian backpacking through Europe, says, "We were going to buy two oranges this morning, but they cost so much, we put them back. It's so expensive, it's so sad."

Heres a thought Trina, Instead of backpacking through europe in mid-winter, Visit Sunny Florida!, where they have so many oranges its almost like they grow on trees!

More important, the cost of foreign goods in the U.S. is increasing. Consider: at import-foods shop A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, N.C., a pound of European Brie ( Oh my heavens no!, what about the poor children, what will they eat!, say it isnt so!) has shot from $6.99 to $8.29 in a year, and even at that price, the store makes less profit. "We try to educate our staff" about the dollar impact so they can explain the prices to angry customers, says manager Briggs Wesche. And it's not just cheese and other luxury imports: every American buys foreign goods, from TVs to food to clothes — often without knowing it — and many of those things will cost more too.

Meaning that they will be forced to buy goods that their neighbors produce, rather than a third world country that is largely built on slave labor. Oh the horrors of modern life...

Hardest hit around the globe are the Europeans( Admit it, you just giggled when you read that...), whose exports are being squeezed by the cheap dollar and equally cheap Chinese yuan, which, to the dismay of global leaders, remains pegged at 8.3 yuan to the dollar. China has a large and growing trade surplus with the U.S., and American and European officials argue that the cheap currency gives the Chinese an unfair advantage. Some Europeans are taking advantage of the robust euro to come to the U.S., where everything from iPods to Gap jeans to four-star-hotel stays are suddenly a bargain. (Bookings are up 30% at Germany's largest tour company, TUI, which has been able to cut trip prices as much as 26%.) I wonder if the Tour bus has a "W" Sticker on the back... But euro-land companies are suffering.(Must-Not-Giggle...Must-Fight-Urge...) Exports from Germany to the U.S. are down 10%. Thierry Desmarest, CEO of French oil giant Total, says the dollar's move over the past two years means "we have practically lost one-third of our earnings." Bic, the French firm that makes disposable shavers, says the weak buck has shaved 75% off its sales growth.Merde...

Ah, George W. Bush, Who every day seems to remind the Euros why they need to wear a Cup during hockey practice.

Posted @ December 17, 2004 11:26 AM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Publishers Discover Blogs

Must...Concentrate...Must...Ignore...Commercial...Opportunities...

Posted @ December 16, 2004 10:06 AM | Current Events | Comments (0)

VariFrank Recommends: Waking The Dead

I'm not big on TV Shows. If the Tivo hadn't been created I doubt I would watch anything on a regular basis. As it is, the majority of my TV time is spent with The History Channel, Discovery Wings and so on. I get most of my movies via netflix or from movielink.com, if I can't be bothered to wait for the DVD to arrive.

I used to enjoy the various flavors of CSI , until the cases got increasingly unlikely and the plots seem streched to their limit of reasonableness. Truth be told, I watch it now largely because it's in HD. And Emily Proctor, Khandi Alexander...

But there is one show that I think is absolutely perfect. BBC Americas "Waking the Dead"

The episodes are 2 hours in length, but after commercials, it ends up being about an hour and 40 minutes. The show is about a "cold case squad" in London. "Cold cases" are supposed to be cases that were never solved in the past. Trevor Eve plays Detective Peter Boyd, the leader of the unit. In the backstory, Det. Boyd suffered the loss of his teenage son 7 years ago, and many of the episodes tie his experiences as a bystander and victim of crime as well as his role as a solve of crimes.

The show is very precise and very crisp in its writing. I dont recommend trying to watch it with other things going on. In many respects the show reminds me of trying to watch the 1960's show "The Prisoner" where even a minor distraction would cause you to miss a key plot point where you would find yourself mired in confusion for the rest of the hour.

The show is very well written and is very engaging. I value shows that I cannot predict the plot in the first 5 minutes. In every episode I have seen so far, I have been surprised by the way the plot has gone and the direction given in the story. For me, this is a highly unusual occurance for the average TV show.

For those of you inclined to watch other shows when a show goes to commercial or you dont care if you catch the last 5 minutes because you already know the story is resolved, do not do this with "waking the dead' In every episode, the closing scenes of the show unwraps the rest of the story that you thought you had all figured out.

Catch it if you can. I highly recommend it.

Posted @ December 14, 2004 06:09 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

The Gaudier the Patter, the Cheaper the hood.

Check out the cover on this cat. It's like "Ming The Merciless" and Liberace got together to open a clothing line.

Now, youre supposed to look at this and think, "wow, this guy must be important". I look at him and wonder if he can get me theater tickets for a sold out show as well as open the door for me at the St. Francis Hotel.

I dont know what General Pinochet sounds like but if there is any mercy in the universe, it was a combination of late vintage Vincent Price and early John Hurt in his best Caligula impression.

My dad used to tell me that the stronger the democracy, the more the uniforms look like bus drivers( re: RAF uniforms). I guess the inverse rule to that is the more fascistic the country, the more they look like 5th avenue doormen.

Posted @ December 13, 2004 10:43 AM | Current Events | Comments (6)

The World Rotates Under Your feet And You Don't Even Know It.

So, I’m out doing Christmas shopping today and driving** between malls, I hear Bob Brinker complain about foreign oil imports. You know the drill, “ we import too much oil”. It wasn’t his diagnosis of the disease that got me thinking; it was his cure. Bob wants the “government” to mandate that car manufacturers make cars with twice the mileage that they get today. His logic being that “just” by doing that, we could cut oil imports in half.

Bobs Diagnostic works like this:

Problem: Americans are importing too much oil because they drive big cars.

Solution: Government will make manufacturers produce cars that produce twice the gas mileage of current model cars.

Now, if Bob were 15 years old, I would let him off the hook. But Bob is a respected man in his field. He is someone I listen to regularly, and I agree with most of his advice. In this case I must disagree strongly. Now, I have other things to do this evening, so I’m not going to write a full essay on this, so I will limit my disagreement to only his proposed solution and not his premise. They are both rich with the good crock-pot like makings of “a fisking”, but as I said, I’m limited in time.

Bob wants to solve the problem of “too much Oil being imported” by making cars twice as efficient. A nice idea, it seems simple enough. If the government can mandate smog requirements and safety mandates so as to cause the complete revamp the car industry, then what cant the government make an industry do if it so decides that it needs to be done?

Bob says “ Make cars twice as efficient”. For Bob's cure to go into effect, Billions of dollars and man-hours will need to be expended before the first benefit will be found in the marketplace and the economy. Varifrank has a much simpler method that costs close to nothing and can be implemented immediately.

Buy whatever car you want. Get whatever kind of mileage you want. Manufacturers can take their sweet time making hybrids (which I like, and will like more when I can get a Dodge Ram ½ ton that uses a diesel/electric motor, but I digress…)

All you have to do to reach Bob's goal, is drive half as much as you do today.

How do you do that? Chances are, you already are. If you are reading this, you are using the infrastructure that has the best chance of lowering America’s dependency on “Foreign oil”.

Allow me to explain.

Back in the 1970’s, you had to GO to work. It was the workplace that had the phones, the manuals. The primary method of communication between part of the company was a stack of manila envelopes, called “interoffice mail”. Memos slipped into these envelopes and routed between departments represented the information flow of major companies. In the 1970’s, you had no other choice but to go “someplace” to meet with “someone”. In the 1970’s you had no other choice than to live where your work was. Everyone you worked with was within arms reach of your work. If you had to meet with someone “far, far away” you HAD to travel to meet with them. Get in your car, drive to the airport, get on the jet, sit in a hotel, go to another office, say hello, talk for 2 hours, show a presentation, and then reverse the process. An entire “work week” of man hours and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, just so you could put a slide show presentation on the wall of someone else’s office in a far away city.

In the 1970’s OPEC decided to punish the United States for standing by Israel in what was once again a humiliating defeat for the forces of Islam. The result was an embargo against the US and it was devastating. It wasn’t that gas was expensive, it simply couldn’t be found at any price. The real problem was that for almost everyone in the US, there simply wasn’t any choice in transportation to work. You had to go to work, it didn’t matter if you took the train or even if you carpooled, you had to go, and for almost everyone, a car was involved at some point.

It’s only when we begin to examine how the world of “work” has changed since that time that we can see that oil does not have the role in our lives that it once did. Since the 1970’s a revolution has taken place that is such a part of our lives that we hardly notice its influence. The incredible investment that companies, government and yes, even individual citizens have made into computerization has changed the world in deeply fundamental ways.

Today, you have a cellphone with you at all times. You are always connected, so much so that in the rare case where you are in the far outback and outside of a cell, it feels like you stepped into the middle ages. You have at least one computer in your home, with more software running you home accounts than even a large company could point to in the 1970’s. In most cases, your company has their internal systems set up in such a way that information can be reached from any employee from any point on the globe. Woe to the field sales representative who cannot keep his pipeline up to date for the management team to make projections. We all live with the concept of “just-in-time” inventory systems, but to the world of the 1970’s, it would have seemed like an impossibility (except for the visionaries who were proposing and creating them at the time)

Where once you had to go to an office to get work done, you very often find that most of the people you work with are no longer in that office, but spread out all over the globe. It was precisely because of the work to ‘computerize” business since the 1970’s that the ability for a company to work in several time zones and countries became a reality. We’ve gone from the turn of the century concept of a “Company Town” to the 1950’s ,“headquarters office” on to the 1970’s “corporate campus”. In the world of today, its considered a detriment to have your company working at one location as that wastes 16 hours of productivity in a 24 hour period. Companies around the world have gone to a ‘follow-the-sun” philosophy where workers are distributed around the globe, rather than clumped into one office.

What does this mean to you ,dear oil burning commuter? It means that you go to the office today, largely out of habit, rather than utility. Ask yourself this on you next drive into the office:

What am I going to accomplish at the office that I could not get done better/faster/easier in my office at home?

Here’s what I want you to do, examine why it is you go to the office. Is it habit?, or is there something in the office that you simply cannot do without? Obviously, if you work in a factory or a warehouse and you put your hands on things or you meet directly with people in the field, this does not relate to you, but in my estimation, that is not the majority of people.

My point is this, how many people do you know today who plan their weeks by saying:

“ I’m going to be working from home on Friday”?

It’s a smart thing to do, and without realizing it, that person has cut their driving by 20%. It's a quiet revolution and it's been going on for some time now.

The challenge in implementing this change is largely cultural, not technological. My guess is that a large percentage of people who work in offices already have the tools they need to begin working remotely, its just the habit that needs to be broken, along with a long standing cultural tradition that needs to be broken.

Back in the 1990’s, American business culture underwent a different kind of change. It started innocently enough, it was called “Casual Fridays” In the 1980’s I worked for one of the most straight laced companies in the world (I dare you to find one more tightassed, I double dare you, I triple dog dare you….). We had to wear full suits (with jackets on at all times!), white shirts, dark tie, black shoes, even on weekends. I was once sent home for wearing a bright red tie. I knew the world was changing when on of my assignments I was at IBM, and IBM began to talk about “casual Fridays”. Our management didn’t know what to do, should our staff come in to the customers office in suits, or should we “go native”. Well, we went native, and within a year, so did my company. By the end of the 1990’s, the last of my suits met its end. Today, I have to remind myself how to tie a tie, where it was once a daily ritual.

Change happens, not in big “central command planning” ways but in simple and small ways. If you were to work remote just two days a week, you would be amazed at how much work you will accomplish in those two days, but you will also be stunned at how much money, and gas, you will save. This isn't limited by just commuting, look at how much you buy via Amazon.com or safeway.com that you used to have to go "somewhere" to get. Look at the use of movielink.com to keep you from having to drive to get a movie. It all adds up! Look at how much you can do today without leaving your house compared to the 1970's and you can see what I mean.

In deference to Bob Brinker, I would much rather “the government” get involved by encouraging the expansion of broadband internet access to more remote areas of the United States. I would much rather “the government” help companies break their dependence on office cubicles and their need to fill them. If companies can send jobs overseas, then the aught to be able to accommodate your working across town. They get a happier employee, they don’t need a big office building, and you are vastly more productive. You also get to drive whatever the hell you want; you just get to do it for fun rather than because you have to.

Change doesn’t come from Washington D.C., it comes from you. This change is already underway; you just need to give it a little shove. This makes a whole lot more sense to me than making a whole industry make cars no one wants.

** - Yes, I was out driving today, but here's the point. I drive a Dodge Dakota V-8 manual 5 speed transmission, it gets 12 miles to the gallon. When was the last time I bought gas?

October 12th!

I love my truck, but what saves me from buying gas for it is my T1 line, not my fuel injection technology.

Posted @ December 12, 2004 10:36 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

S.N.A.F.U. - 2004

Kasserine Pass – Tunisia 1943

"In Africa we learned to crawl, then walk, then run."
General Omar N. Bradley

Almost everything the Americans believed was wrong. The M3 Lee and Grant tanks, mounting a 75mm fixed gun, had a high silhouette and was difficult to operate in combat with the heavy German pzkpfw Mark IV and Tiger panzers. Also, the Americans fought tank-to-tank, while the Germans concentrated their fire. The M3 would burn when hit and the riveted construction would shoot hot flying rivets around the crew compartment when it was hit. Also, tactical doctrine was inflexible and did not account for the rapid German advance. The Americans suffered heavy losses of 1,000 dead, hundreds taken prisoner, and the loss of most of their heavy equipment.

Operation Market-Garden: Holland September 1944

In my prejudiced view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden's unrepentant advocate.
- Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

British 1st Airborne Losses in Market-Garden:

Of the 10,000 troops of the 1st Airborne Division who landed at Arnhem, only 2,000 escaped

US Aircrew Losses: European Theater 1943-1945

We have built up slowly and painfully and learned our job in a new theater against a tough enemy. Then we were torn down and shipped away to Africa. Now we have just built back up again. Be patient, give us our chance, and your reward will be ample--a successful day bombing offensive to combine and conspire with the admirable night bombing of the RAF to wreck German industry, transportation, and morale--soften the Hun for land invasion and the kill
– Gen. Ira C. Eaker – Casablanca Conference Jan. 15, 1943

"Battle casualties, Died, Missing, Interned and Captured" for the 8th & 9th Army Air Forces, operating from bases in Great Britain, amounted 54,997, (i.e. 63,410 less 8,413 wounded and evacuated), of which 19,876 are classified as died and 35,121 as "Missing, Interned and Captured".

US Air Force Losses in Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, it became apparent that the overwhelming concern about flying safety in peacetime compromised air-to-air combat training to an unacceptable degree. The most tangible symptom of this failure was the decline in the exchange ratio (enemy losses vs. US losses) between USAF and enemy forces. The exchange ratio obtained in the Korean War had been a highly satisfactory 10-to-1. In the Southeast Asian conflict, however, that exchange ratio fell to less than 1-to-1 during a period in the spring of 1972

Walter J. Boyne – Air Force Magazine November 2000.

Operation Iraqi Freedom December 9, 2004

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"

-Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can still be blown up."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Apparently, Army Spc. Thomas Wilson has discovered that the Army is a dangerous place to work. I look forward to his breakthrough research paper on how water is wet and fire is "bad".

I once worked with a guy who graduated from West Point in 1968 and at the time of the First Gulf War I asked him what his greatest fear was in regards to our military.

He said:
"Americans as so used to being invincible and that there are never any large scale casualties that they simply don't understand that in any war, you really never know how it will all turn out until 10 years after the war is over. War is messy, uncoordinated, full of unpleasant surprises and every one of them is different from the last one."
I wish he would have told that to Army Spc. Thomas Wilson.

Runsfeld is still a big bite in the ass, but I love the guy. On September 11th, Mr. Rumsfeld was in his office when it was struck. He ran to the impact site and began to coordinate operations. He had to be ordered to leave by the President.

Donald Rumsfeld is a former Naval Aviator. Donald Rumsfeld has my vote of confidence.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, try and show a little leadership and stop whining about what you dont have and improvise with what you do. It's a bad situation that wont be made any easier by your whiny piss pants attitude. If you joined the Army and are shocked to find people shooting at you, you might have a case against your recruiting officer, but this was not the best way to resolve it. If you had any hope of a career in the military, you can forget all about that now. Welcome to pariah-land. All you effectively did was lower your units effectiveness by one man - you. Nobody likes a smartass, no matter how valid your question was ( and I think it was valid) pissing on your bosses pantlegs is not a good way to get the problem fixed.

And Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, thanks for being the new "goofus and gallant" poster child for who is and who is not, a Marine.

UPDATE: News Flash! June 10th 1944. Secretary of War James Forrestal took rough questions from US troops over the lack of planning on the part of himself and the high command. Asked one trooper ' Sir, How long will we be forced to take scrap metal and weld it to the front of our tanks?" . The trooper pointing out to the secretary that for all the so called planning by Supreme Allied Headquarters, no one anticipated the French Hedgerow country which has rendered our tanks useless and resulted in many US casualties during the "unilateral" invasion of France.

Posted @ December 10, 2004 08:29 PM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Like A Cattle Car In the Sky...

Is there anything else that the airline industry can do to make flying a less dignified experience? Short of asking us to come to the airport dressed only in our bathrobes asking us to bend over and spread our butt cheeks for inspection, I don’t think there’s any room left for the industry to make the experience of flight any worse than they have done today.

I’m not complaining about TSA security measures, that’s not the point of the post. My complaint is with the mentality of the airline industry as a whole.

“Flying somewhere”, which was once thought of as the experience of a lifetime has become a version of ‘scared straight’ for adults. Once upon a time, Flying was considered dangerous and only for the eccentrics of society. Flying from place to place was done in questionable aircraft with poor maintenance records operated by airlines that would fail with a regular pace. It sounds like today, but that was the state of aviation in the 1920’s.

Yet, it’s as if we are right back where we started.

In those days, the airline examined their industry and decided to make any money at all they would have to change their image. Airlines figured out they weren’t in the transportation business; they were in the hospitality business. They had to provide safety, but they had to sell the glamour and excitement of “going somewhere”. Average people had to be convinced of not just the utility of flying but that it was a joyful experience. Posters like the image on this post were made with great regularity. Travel agents weren’t burdens to the airlines; they were front line sales organization for the airlines.

Today airlines don’t feel that they have to convince anyone that they should fly. Airlines today consider flying to be a commodity. They feel that the public has no other choice except to fly.

What they don’t realize is that they have made the experience so awful, that people only travel when they have to and not because they want to. Flying is something to be endured not enjoyed. What airlines have failed to understand is that the flying experience doesn’t begin at takeoff and end at landing, the whole trip from the purchase of the ticket until your arrive at your destination is what the customer is buying.

Let’s examine the “total flight experience”

Ticketing:

As a maker of automated systems, I applaud the use of websites. However, it would be very nice if the concept of “non refundable – super saver” tickets would die the death they deserve. The support of the bizarre and inexplicable booking codes is one of the key points of contention with the flying public. Before you even step on a flight, you are made to feel like you are a sucker. You just know there’s a better deal that you missed out on, that the airline is only keeping for their favorites, of which you are not a part of.

In the idea world, all seats in each class have one price. Perhaps you could support some form of early purchase discount but the boundaries should be clear and very simple to understand. Full price if you buy and fly today, 10% discount of you purchase up to 7 days in advance, 20% if you purchase 20 days, and 30% if you purchase 30 days or more in advance. Don’t make it any more complicated than that.

If you issue “frequent flyer miles” don’t have blackout dates. What the point of a perk that you can never use? My advice would be to end all “frequent flyer miles” programs. When I was a “road warrior” I had a ton of free ticket. It literally took me several years to use them all up, even when I gave many of them away. Why? If you fly with any regularity, the last thing you want to do on your own time is travel. Frequent flier miles exist for two purposes, bribing spouses and first class upgrades. So lets limit first class to just frequent fliers and cut to the chase.

Here’s another thought, if the airlines knows that there is to be a weather hold or an aircraft maintenance issue on a flight that you are on, then why not call you before you leave and tell you about it and give you a status update afterwards.

Airport Check-in.

If you can reserve a $30,000 rental car, get it and drive off with only so much as showing your drivers license as you drive it out of the lot, then airlines should be smart enough to end the soviet style, last roll of toilet paper, roof of Vietnam embassy style baggage check-in. I still think a part of me is waiting in a line at Newark for a flight that should have left 10 years ago.

I applaud United and Alaska for the use of Kiosks, However, would it be too much to ask to have a supervisor near by to help with the questions that may arise?

Under no circumstances should there ever be more than a few minutes waiting to get your bags checked. It’s just not that complicated a process.

1. Who are you?
2. Are these your bags?
3. Here is your claim ticket
4. Is there anything else we can do for you?
5. Have a Nice Flight.

Airlines should consider extending their services to picking up their passengers and dropping them back at their homes after the trip not just flying them but actually transporting them as well. All passengers everywhere struggle with the airport shuffle. Imagine being a parent with small children having the airline pick you up at your house, where at that point your bags would start the check-in process and you would begin your ticketing. Imagine on the destination end having the airline resolve the issue of “How do I get to…”

Security

Security is a real problem for one reason, carry on baggage. Carry on baggage is a problem for one reason, because airlines have done such a horrible job ensuring that your bags will arrive that no one dare trust them with the essentials of your trip. You trust them with your life by boarding their aircraft, but you wont let them handle a garment bag. Airlines could certainly take your carry on baggage and have it placed in the overhead baggage on the aircraft after its been cleared by security, thus eliminating your dilemma of schlepping around with your bags for an hour.

What does that leave you with? Take your shoes off and walk through the metal detector portal. An airline gate agent on the other side would greet you with your carry on baggage or if you choose inform you that it’s already been placed onboard the aircraft. Obviously, that means more than one gate agent for every 3,000 people, which is probably not a bad thing.

Gate agents should be available to assist passengers through the security process. I’m mobile, I’m of good health and I can manage to speak English and not require the use of a cane. When you go through security, take a look at the face of the older folks or the infirmed. It’s the face of people who are otherwise proud made humiliated by the process of going through security. This week’s trip required no fewer than 5 bins at each stop and the removal of my shoes, belt and wallet and watch to be able to clear security. The older couple behind me, he with a metal plate in his head and her with a hip replacement and the use of a cane were in a sad kind of living hell as the TSA was unable to provide them with much help at all to clear this indignity.

It would go a very long way to have a representative of the airline at the security portal to help guide the passengers through the process. The airlines aren’t responsible for providing security, but if they want your business, they need to make it as painless as possible.

Boarding.

Again, Take the time before boarding to organize the people who are about to fly. Rather than have a cattle drive, why not set up the seats in the waiting area to correspond with the boarding group – color code the seats for example. Here’s another idea, lets provide enough area to be able to accommodate the passengers, shall we?

Here’s another clue for the airlines to catch. If you board the aircraft, it’s because you intend to fly somewhere. If there is an ATC hold due to bad weather, don’t board the aircraft. If you have to be stuck somewhere, its much more pleasant to be stuck in the terminal rather than the narrow tube of an aircraft fuselage. I was once on an aircraft in Chicago that loaded everyone and then backed out of the gate 50 feet and sat there for 6 hours. Why? Because there was an ATC weather hold in Chicago. Why did we back out of the gate? So that they aircraft could be said to have had an “on time departure”.

Flying.

First, Let’s talk about seats. Seats should have adequate space for 6 foot 2 inch people as a baseline and you should be able to bring the table down while you are sitting in your seat. . I also like the Midwest Express approach, which is that every seat is a 1st class sized seat.

Second, if you provide little TV screens, lets try to put something on them besides commercials. Third, what happened complementary magazines?

I’m not going to cover airline food as its been done much better by others. I don’t actually want airline food, but for gods sake people were peanuts soooooo expensive that we had to go to pretzel mix?

Overall.

If you treat people like cattle, they will act like cattle. If you run your business like it’s the airborne Greyhound Bus system, you can’t be surprised if the customers act like they were paroled from Sing-Sing as early as that morning. If you treat them like valued customers they will respond to that too. Try it, you might find that they come back more often. Airlines today have simply forgotten what business they are in and they don’t honestly believe that people have a choice.

In my business, to do anything you used to have to fly to the problem. I don’t have to do that anymore. I’m not the only one who has been making the Internet work for me. Airlines think I don’t have a choice, but I do, and increasingly I’m choosing not to fly.

Airlines – I’m your biggest fan, and even I don’t like you. This is a problem.

Posted @ December 09, 2004 09:33 PM | Current Events | Comments (9)

Lunch With the Boys.....

Scene: (Sheraton Suites Hotel Lobby Restaurant )

NG: Hey, you know who I think is hot?

FM: No, Who?

NG: That chick in the Valtrex commercial.

TD: Valtrex?

FM: Valtrex, It prevents Herpes outbreaks.

NG: Oh. Sorry I asked! I guess her agent couldnt get her that Chronic Gastric Distress PSA. I guess she had to settle for "The herpes job". I'm sure her parents run to the tivo to record every time shes on TV so they can play it for their friends at the country club " HEY LOOK EVERYBODY, our little margie is is a HERPES COMMERCIAL!!!!

FM: Yeah,she is nice. But I don't think I'd let the fact that shes a fictional commercial actress who may or may not have a communicable lip born disease get in the way of your happiness.

NG: Oh, like you're better off.

TD: Why do you say that?

NG: Watch this - (SHOUTS) "SIGOURNEY WEAVER!'

FM: (YELLS) HOT!!!!!!

NG: See what I mean...

TD: Oh, wait a minute! What about that chick in the Pepto Bismol Commercial, the one at the end of the line simulating a diahrreah attack?

FM: Come on! Can't you pick anyone normal? Tiny Fey? Liv Tyler? Minnie Driver?

NG: Wait, what about the chick in the " My Man takes Levitra..." Commercial?

FM: AAARRGGGHHHH!!!!!!

NG: (SHOUTS AGAIN) SIGOURNEY WEAVER!

FM: See, now youre just screwing with me.

NG: (SHOUTS ) "SIGOURNEY WEAVER!!!!

FM: (SHOUTS LOUDER ) VALTREX GIRL!!!!!

NG: (SHOUTS ) "SIGOURNEY WEAVER!!!!

FM: (SHOUTS ) VALTREX GIRL!!!!!

TD: Waiter! - the tranqilizer gun!, if you would be so kind!

Posted @ December 08, 2004 04:56 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

I Want My Argument

Someone asked me once if I had any regrets. I answered:
" I always wanted to talk about the nature of light with Richard Feynman and I wanted to start an argument with Harlan Ellison".

Feynman is dead, but Ellison is still alive, and he lives in LA.

Litening to Ellison argue is like watching a master swordsman at work. He is a master at the art of verbal vivisection.

Here is a recent interview of Harlan Ellison by Writers Digest. A sign of a truly good intellect is even when you are on opposite sides of the argument, you enjoy hearing what he has to say. Ellison is often at odds with what I think, but I love to hear what he thinks even what he thinks is that Im a boob who should have stayed in bed.

Now, it seems that Mr. Ellison has been trying to protect his work from people that have been stealing it. I've never considered a tip jar before, but for this guy I might just take up a collection for his legal bills.

But I still want my argument.

Posted @ December 03, 2004 10:28 AM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Waiting and Playing and Thinking

While Im waiting for data to load and servers to become avaiable for more testing, I found this to play with:

Terrafly: allows you to map any coordinate and fly over the satellite photo in real time. How useful is this? Who cares! its just cool if you ask me.

I'm also thinking about something that happened yesterday. Al Zawahiri made another tape. 24 hours later, no one cares, its not even on the home page of any news organziation. When I read the transcript, he's clearly talking to us and not his Jihadi brothers. Why? I'll post my findings later this evening.

Oh, and President Bush is in Canada today. So what is on the CBC homepage? I guess its not news when there are no protests to cover.

Why do I like the President? He's going to Halifax to say thank you to the people there who helped our folks on September 11th. More on that later too...

UPDATE I: Quote from GWB:
"I'd like to thank the Canadian people who came out to wave, with all five fingers, for their hospitality," he said.

Heh...

UPDATE II:
Theres a weblog following Canadian Protests to the Bush Visit. Apparently, "Bush is Hitler, Eh!".

I havent found any links to protests of Castro,Aritside,Mugabe,Milosovich or Putin. I'll keep looking...

UPDATE III: Absolute.Freakin'.Brilliant.

UPDATE IV: From the great Tim Blair, Maple Powered Protest Photos!

You know what I like most about the left is how consistent they are. I also like how they are finally ready to fight Hitler, now that he's been dead for 60 years. I am a little disappointed that they seem to think everyone is Hitler, except Hitler.

After all, one mans genocidal maniac is another man's democratically elected socialist leader.

Posted @ November 30, 2004 10:22 AM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Meanwhile In Romania

While Ukraine slips into open civil war, another member of the soviet bloc is falling into th same nightmare. Romania is starting down the road of bad election results.

This is not good.

Posted @ November 30, 2004 10:05 AM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Thanks...

In my business the end of the year represents one of two things, either ultimate boredom because theres such a lack of staff that no decisions can be made, or you're super busy.

Last year, I read technical manuals and got caught up on my certifications. This year, I'm "super busy".

That effort, and the development of the 'Clifford Clinton Project' has dropped my posting effort somewhat. I've completed the character development process for the major characters of the story and I've got atleast two endings outlined, so in between coding and fixing problems, the other project is moving along nicely.

That being said, catch this if you can and remember to say your own "thanks grandad"

And speaking of giving thanks...

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I dont think I'm alone in that, as in the corporate world we get both Thursday and Friday off from work, while Christmas just rates one day. Christmas gets all the publicity, but Thanksgiving is the one we wall want. It's a simple holiday, it involves no mandatory orgy of mindless gift buying, just a feast, with family and friends, a few football games and rememberance of the year since the last Thanksgiving. It is a holiday made for people who's culture is aimed at the frontier and the future. It's the one day we stop and go against our nature by looking back at where weve been. We look back to give thanks to the providence that has let us go on for another year. Another year against the odds. Another year living in the embrace of freedom in defiance of the base nature of men and their natural drive for power.

Americans and Canadians take this one holiday to return to the places they call home as most of us have gone somewhere else to seek our fortune( and perhaps - escape our families!). Our collective homecoming is like the migration of Salmon, only without the dire ending of the great fish. If you want to watch something amazing, go to LAX and just watch the crowds on Wednesday afternoon. It is truly amazing.

We go home, We meet our neglected relatives, we eat great food in great quantities, we get reaquainted with those closest to us and we simply and humbly, give thanks. Some to God, Some just to each other, but we take the time to recognize the simple beauty of just being here. Its the civilized version of saying how much we appreciate those who serve in the trenches of life with us. Its a recognition of how we all know how lucky we are.

I'm grateful to be alive in one of the most exciting times in the history of mankind. Freedom and human liberty are on the march, and I may live long enough to see the remaining tyrannies leave the world and the human race at last. Since the ice age ended 10,000 years ago mankind has struggled with itself in how to live together. We are getting closer every day to the tipping point where the worlds human population will no longer be property of the state but will live as free men and women as citizens and not subjects.

Castro gets older every day, and when he goes the "strong man" theory of government goes with him. Kim Il Jong finds the walls of civilization closing in on him and when he goes, the last of the Asian warlord organization will die out with him. Iran is finding the imbalance of trade go from export of terror to the export of Caspian caviar as the market for Islamic terror is suddenly without suitors and caviar is always in demand. Syria is finding that it pays to return our amassadors calls and Saudi Arabia is beginning to look like the anachronism that it truly is.

60 days from now, Palestine and Iraq will vote. Two of the great cities of Islamic civilization( Bagdhad and Jerusalem ) will be voting. This is significant. Who can say it wont someday come to Mecca? If Islam wants to survive, it had better. Sooner, rather than later...

Its not perfect, its not heaven, but its not hell either. Its just life, and I'm happy to be here to watch it happen. In my life, I've been able to watch men land on the moon, the Berlin wall fall and communism march into the dustbin of history and I've watched Women stand in line and vote in Afghanistan.

Not.Freakin.Bad.

Sometime during Thanksgiving, we stop and say that we should be thankful this year over others because of something that happened this year. I say be thankful every year, especially in the bad years. You never know how good you have it. We have it very good, and by my estimate, Its about to get a a whole lot better.

Be thankful for your wives, your husbands and especially your children. Be thankful for your parents, even if you never knew them. Be thankful for yourself. Be thankful for all the happy accidents in your life that lead you to where you are today.

Frankly, I'm just thankful that I'm still here. There was a time in my life when I could never have believed that I would someday be 43 years old and living a comfortable exurban life with a wife and two kids, but here I am. I cannot begin to understand how I could be so lucky while so many that I've known in my life are no longer with us, but I am.

Don't overlook the simple beauty of your lives, and be thankful you got to see the sunrise, the stars, the leaves fall or orchestras play or babies laugh. Be thankful you got to live with more freedom and liberty and more wealth and health than any time in the history of mankind.

Eat up. Say thanks. Do the Dishes. Watch Football.

Now, thats a holiday.

UPDATE: Just in case you need to understand how special this time and this year is, take a look at this one.

Posted @ November 22, 2004 07:14 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Wednesdays WTF Moment

India Times August 18th 2004 - North Korean Leader Kim Jong il decides not to make the same mistake as Saddam – Democracy in North Korea?

I know, I know, "consider the source". I keep getting back to the Berlin Wall falling and at the time no one made the prediction that it would go down that way. Is it at all possible that Kim would just walk away one day?

But then theres this:
S.Korea set to ship fertiliser to North. Ok, now let me get this straight, they are short of what? I've been poor and Ive been hungry but I can honestly say that fertilizer is one thing I've never been short of. You have to be mighty bad off to be short of that. You can say your up to you rear end in it, you can say so and so if full of it, but I cant think of anyone who ever said " Boy, we could really use some more fertilizer".

Unless they are using the nitrates for the development of explosives, but that doesnt seem likely given that second hand Russian munitions are about as common as grains of sand on the world market these days why make your own brand of explosives when so much of it is available for next to nothing.

It would be the very coolest thing to be able to watch yet another tyrannical government go the way of the mastodon. Im not holding my breath, but I am wishing ever so strongly that Kim just goes away.

UPDATE I: This Just In..."Cult of personality" over the top ,says great leader.

This is like Hitler saying "Guys, maybe we aught to cool it on the whole swastika thing, we did a little focus group testing and its really hurting our image in the 18 -34 demographic".

Posted @ November 17, 2004 04:23 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Enlightened Blue State Explorer "Discovers" America

A cool story about driving (riding?) a Seqway cost to coast across the United States can be found here.

An interesting quote found within:

So what have you discovered about America?
We discovered a lot of interesting things. People naturally build up a lot of stereotypes about certain areas--that some parts of the country are going to be really boring or backward--and that's not true. We discovered that there's a lot of humanity everywhere in the country.

People are very kind and open. We heard a lot of great stories, and we learned a lot about opportunity. I think there's a lot of truth to the idea that America is the land of opportunity, but you've got to work hard and be willing to take risks.

Hmmm. Imagine that! People in the backcountry are very kind and open. Who would have thought such a thing could be true?

Du Doch Nicht!

Posted @ November 17, 2004 12:31 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

Quickie

Shooting in Iraq Mosque Angers Muslims

The article makes no mention of Muslim anger over people shooting from Mosques, using them as weapons depots or using the minarets as sniper nests.

I've been searching all day for any word of Muslim anger over this

dang if I cant find any...

Posted @ November 16, 2004 07:51 PM | Current Events | Comments (2)

Future Flash

Powell resigns as Secretary of State.
6 months from now, Cheney steps down due to "health" reasons.
Bush then nominates Powell for VP. Senate agrees.

Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of State in 2005. McCain nominated since his term expires in 2006. Senate agrees.

2007 - Vice President Powell runs for President, he picks McCain as his Vice President. 49 State sweep.

That's "Strategery" for ya baby!

( Yes, you could reverse this ticket and it would still do well)

Posted @ November 15, 2004 03:55 PM | Current Events | Comments (5)

Door Closed - Door Open

At lunch the other day, my wife asked me:

" Now that the election is over, what are you going to write about"?

It caught me off guard for a second, but then I realized that the narcotic effect of the election had worn off and it was time to get back to work.

Before I get to talk about "What’s next", I want to address the three remaining open questions on the election.

1) Will Kerry run again in 2008?

Morton Kondracke says yes. Chris Matthews says yes. Frank Martin says no. In 2000, everyone said Gore would run again. In 2004, Gore is nowhere to be found. My guess is the same will be true of Kerry in 2008. Why? Because by 2008, Kerry will be too far to the right for what is left of the Democrat party. The Democrats will also take a beating in 2006 in the Senate and the House, leaving what remains of their party more isolated and increasingly a regional party even more beholding to George Soros and Hollywood. For Bush, far from being a ‘lame duck’ president, he will prove once and for all that “misunderestimating” the Presidents “strategery” is a huge mistake and much like Charley Brown reacting to Lucy’s football, the Dems keep falling for it every time. Bush also enjoys a luxury that few second term presidents get, and that is control of both houses of congress by his party. This will keep the uncomfortable questions at a minimum in the second term.

I see few signs that the Democrats will be able to put up a winning coalition and I see every sign that they are more interested in ideological purity rather than winning elections. I’m very disappointed in them as a party and I hope they get it together but I have my doubts.

1) Will Bush take the country to war again?

I have to say that the crystal ball is not so clear in this case. What I can say is that the world is changing very quickly since the election.

Arafat is dead, and with him the concept of state sponsored terror as a bargaining chip on the worlds stage. I do not think the Palestinians will suddenly toss down their weapons and become advocates of nonviolence, but the effectiveness of the Palestinian “freedom fighter’ is at an end. I think we will see a wide-open civil war as various parties jostle for control, but their ability to fight Israel and thus the western world is at an end. Instead they will fight each other.

The EU and the US seem to be developing a somewhat effective “good cop – bad cop” process in dealing with the other nascent islamofascist states. Today Iran announced that it would stop processing nuclear materials in preparation for weapons. It remains to be seen that they will do what they say, but it is a move in the right direction.

North Korea is isolated and an unannounced Naval blockade is underway where we are intercepting shipping and inspecting what comes in and out of North Korea with great regularity. The three main routes in and out of North Korea are currently being re-enforced with a favored Chinese method, a wall.

North Korea gains nothing by building a bomb or selling the technology to make one, but it gains everything by giving it up. Left in the current state, North Korea will expire within 10 years. We can afford to wait, North Korea cannot. My guess is that the son of the great leader will fall at the hands of his staff within the next 24 months. Chaos will reign. Out of it, China, and South Korea will agree to jointly administer the former North Korean territory. North Korea as an entity will cease to be, by my estimates prior to the 2005 election season.

Does Syria have the Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction? My guess is yes. Will they use them against Israel? No. More likely, they will trade them for safety. Using them or brandishing makes them a target, trading them brings revenue and safety.

So back the original question, “will President Bush take the country to war again”? My guess is no. That is not to say that we will not be engaged in a great deal of covert actions all over the world at a rate unparalleled even in the cold war, but I think the full-scale invasion business is over for now.

I think the world has changed very quickly, much more quickly than I would have guessed in the days after September 11th. I don’t think the job is over by any means, but I think we have a clearer picture of what the world is going to look like. Islamofascism is losing and Democracy is winning even in places that are hostile to the West. My guess is that this trend will continue.

3) Will Iraq emerge as a stable country?

I think so. There are no Kurdish suicide bombers; there are no Shiite suicide bombers, just Sunnis. Their strategy is simple, don’t participate and make it impossible for the Shiite/Kurd coalition to maintain order. Many argue that we need more American troops to maintain order. I don’t think this is the case, as long as we keep the troop levels as they are and we concentrate on building up indigenous forces, any conflict becomes a “them versus them” battle rather than a “them versus us”. We can succeed by remembering that our job is not to colonize Iraq, but to return Iraq to its rightful owners. They are well underway to accomplishing that. The former owners of Iraq, the Tikriti tribe of the Sunnis and the Syrian Baathists are playing the losing game in this hand. Allawi has the control power of statehood and all the revenue it can produce and the alliances that will naturally result. For every smarmy New York pundit poo-pooing the idea of a free Iraq, there are 10 Iraqis working to make it so. I'm betting on the Iraqis.

My guess is that Allawi will put in place the oil revenue sharing plan similar to the ones that Alaska and Norway use. Once this is done, the whole Middle East will change very rapidly.

I find it interesting that before Bush leaves office in 2008, free elections will have been held in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Who would have thought such a thing was possible back when we watched Al Gore prance around the debate stage with George W. Bush in 2000?

And that officially brings the 2004 Election season to a close.

So, what will I talk about next?

First, the Democrat party will provide a huge amount of fun in the coming years as they scramble to come to grips with where they are in relation to their base constituency, the average folk of America. Watching the Democrats stumble around desperately in search of the bathroom in the dark like a drunk in an unfamiliar house will provide hours of cheap entertainment. I will exploit it for all its worth.

Second, I am writing two books.

I may end up publishing them myself, but what the hell. It’s time. From time to time I will write posts that parallel what I am writing about in each of the two works. I will also write about the process of writing either of the two pieces.

The first is a book about “remote work” and the subsequent rise of “exurbia”. I’ve spent a good portion of the past 4 years working remotely and I’ve watched a whole revolution quietly getting underway. "remote work" as tremendous consequences to the world and its almost never talked about. I think this has good commercial opportunities. I’ve had pieces of this work in place for a while, and now it's time to put it all together. Blogging has shown me how to make time for writing and how to have the discipline to write what I want to say.

The second book is about Clifford Clinton and Frank Shaw. Frank Shaw was the Mayor of LA in the late 1930’s and was the leader of a corrupt gang that took over the reigns of city government to use for his own purposes. Clifford Clinton was the man who stopped him. His house was bombed, his car was bombed, his restaurants were torched and his family endangered. One man stood up against a large political machine and won. One man can make a difference. Cliff Clinton is one of those men.

One door closes, another opens.

UPDATE: Well if this doesnt rate a "Danny Thomas spit take", I dont know what does. This could be verrrry innnteresting.....

Posted @ November 14, 2004 05:19 PM | Current Events | Comments (5)

Once I Built A Railroad...

Once I built a railroad, and made it run

made it run against time

Once I built a railroad,

now it's done...

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun

Bricks and mortar and lime

Once I built a tower,

now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Say, don't you remember, you called me "Jefe"

It was "Jefe" all the time

Say don't you remember, I was your pal

Brother...

can you...

spare...

a dime!

Sic Semper Tyrannus...

Posted @ November 12, 2004 05:10 PM | Current Events | Comments (2)

I'm Questioning Their Patriotism.

I have a couple of friends who are serious fans of Star Trek. I mean they are serious. Dead Serious. To me it’s just a TV Show, to these guys, its life itself. To them, all things can be seen through a lens created by Gene Roddenberry.

I’m usually amused by the way they go about their life. Every once in awhile I’ll catch them saying to no one in particular that they wish the world was more like the Star Trek universe.

I don’t mind this kind of semi day dreamy wishful thinking; everyone has an occasional moment of “wishing it were otherwise”.

It’s when I start seeing the desire for the alternate universe take over their lives that I start to worry. You probably know folks like this, one day they are talking to you about an episode of Star Trek, the next they have a ‘Star Fleet Academy Alumni” window sticker. One day they come to the Company Halloween party in a full Star Trek Federation uniform. Not a cheap off the rack costume, but an actual tailored uniform.

Then one day, they come to work in “The Uniform”. You stare; you wonder where your once rational friend went.

That’s when you grab them by the nape of the neck and go quickly into the lunchroom and ask “ What they hell is wrong with you?” Rather than respond with recognition that they’ve stepped over the line of normal behavior and admit to being somewhat embarrassed, they look at you like you’re the freak.

They tell you how they want the real world to be like the Star Trek Universe, and they can’t understand why you are so against it. “Don’t you want to live in a world like that, it’s so much better than the world we live in”. No matter how you try to bring this person back to “rational world” they insist in living in “Star Trek world”, and rather than try to compromise, they insist that there is something wrong with “rational world”, rather than the other way around.

This is the dilemma that the leftists find themselves in today. There is the way the world is and the way they want it to be and they don't line up anymore.

I spent a lot of time this weekend watching the reaction of the left and I can’t get over what I’m seeing, it's an unprecedented sprial of despair. There are lots of people seriously talking about leaving the country, going to Canada, New Zealand and parts abroad. There are people who are no longer going to visit their families in “Red States” because they can’t take the idea that there are people who would not vote the same way they do! I hate to remind these people doing the complaining that they all loved the “Red States” when those states voted for Bill Clinton back in the 1990's. I dont remember the other President Bush complaining about the Clinton States...

There is something seriously afoot in this election result. It reminds me of the days after the fall of the Berlin wall. When that happened, I was working in San Francisco, and I watched the left deal with the fact that the great Soviet Union was going away. They simply could not accept it, and I think there are many who still haven’t accepted it. I remember when the elections were underway in Nicaragua and the same people insisted that the Sandinistas would win a big victory. It didn’t happen, in fact, the Sandinistas were soundly trounced. Twice. It didn't matter, there are still people in San Francisco who believe that the Sandanistas have support in Nicaragua. There are probably more Sandanistas in San Francisco today than were ever in Nicaragua in the 1980's.

There was this need to look the other way or to find blame (U.S. Imperialism – CIA intervention!), but there was never a time when any of them ever said, “ Well I guess we were just wrong”. The left simply cannot accept that the ideas that they believe can be questioned, or can ever be wrong, even when the evidence says quite the opposite. Facts just don't matter to the Zealot and there are a lot of Zealots on the left.

I remember when Clinton signed Welfare Reform into law, and there was a huge outcry by the left that said it would automatically result in a huge increase in poverty, especially for women and children. When quite the opposite happened, they could not accept it to be true. They rationalized that there had to be “hidden poverty” that was somehow not being found by normal sources. Many states went to extreme means to ensure that people knew of the systems to help them and found themselves at a loss to explain why they weren’t being used. It never occurred to the State Government Agencies that people didn’t need the big government to run their lives. They simply could not see that angle.

Once again, no one could bring themselves to say “ Whoops, I guess we were wrong!”

I see the left today in a serious problem thats very similar to my Star Trek friends. It's fine to want to see the world in a different way, but there comes a point where you are not just wistful for another reality but actually wearing your Star Trek uniform out in public and to work, you’ve started down the road where even if you might have a good point or an idea, people are going to ignore you. We’ve seen political movements in America go the way of the Dodo before, The Free Land and Free Silver movements, the Mugwumps, and the Whig party. Go back not so long ago and you can even see when the Republicans became an utter irrelevancy. I am now beginning to think the Democrats have also jumped into the ashcan of history, with both feet.

I said in an earlier post that I wasn’t so sure that the Democrats are interested in winning elections anymore, but instead they have decided that “ideological purity” as being much more important to their own self identity. When I see and hear people say they no longer want to deal with the “Red States” people and would rather move to another country, I just shake my head. When I hear that so many are ready to run away and give up their citizenship over the results of one election, I just have to say that I am now, in fact, questioning their patriotism, and so should you.

Let no one who is now saying “ I’m leaving” compete on an equal basis with the rest of us. Let’s make sure that in 2006 our 527’s have lots and lots of advertising that shows the other side is in actual fact, not patriotic. I didn’t wet my pants and cry in 1996 when against all logic Bill Clinton was re-elected. I don’t give up on my country because an election doesn’t go my way. Maybe that’s what is different between people like me and the leftists. I believe in the rightness of the country, even when the elections don’t go my way. I believe in Democracy, even when it makes a fool out of me.

I tend to think of this as just one more election, but I get the feeling that many on the left that this was for them “the last election”. What I’m hearing isn’t the sound of partisans saying “let’s keep fighting” what I hear is capitulation. I think for many in the left, they are now finished with the long American experiment. They have wanted a left of center or socialist political movement here for a very long time and they are no closer today than they were back in the grand old days of Emma Goldman and Jack Reed.

I think the left is taking this defeat very hard, and I’m afraid that its not just something they are going to get over quickly. There is a whole host of things that this election has brought to an end, but I think the one thing that has come to an end is the leftist movement in America. It has been steadily becoming more and more irrelevant since the rise of Reagan. Although many will point to Clinton as resurgence, one need only look at the composition of the Congress and his legislative record to make a case that Clinton was the best thing to every come along for Republicans.

Now with Bush getting a second term, and with his maintaining a solid hold over Congress, he can afford to be bold. Most Presidents have a bad second term, but most Presidents don’t have their party in control of Congress. It’s very unlikely that Nixon would have been hounded out of office if Republicans had held the Congress.

That’s the purpose of an opposition party. To keep the Majority party honest. My greatest fear with the collapse of the Democrats isn’t that something worse will replaces them, but that their replacement is already here and they are called Republicans.

Take off your “Federation Uniforms” Democrats and drop the Vulcan salutes. I don’t want you to leave the country, I need you to stay and help keep my party honest. But before you can do that you need to be honest with yourselves about why you lost this election and why you have been steadily losing for 30 years.

It’s not Karl Rove, its not “Selected, not Elected” Its not Halliburton, its not Big Tobacco or Big Oil.

It’s you.

UPDATE: I was reminded by someone today that the last time there was talk about secession, it was Democrats reacting to another Republican Presidential election. In 1860, the southern Democrats left the Union in reaction to the election of President Lincoln.

1860 - Republican gets elected - Democrats want to leave.
2004 - Republican gets elected - Democrats want to leave.

It's nice to see that some things never change.

Posted @ November 08, 2004 11:20 PM | Current Events | Comments (10)

Nasdaq UHAL - Put in your "Buy" orders now!

Suddenly, it seems eveyone is interested in moving!

Posted @ November 06, 2004 12:29 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Get The Tranquilizer Gun...

Crikey! There's a serious nest of deranged lefty Moonbats out there! We all know how degranged the free range Moonbat can be when it doesnt get its way but there is some seriously disenfranchised behavior going on right now thats just too good to pass up observing.

So keep the tranquilizer gun ready with plenty of darts while I plow through the suddenly rich trove of the moonbat effluent to bring you the very best in the effects of 'Bush Derangement Syndrome'. Check back often as I go through web sites of the 'disloyal opposition' as I will add them to this post throughout the day.

First up, The ironically named Jane Smiley.

Next, the always dependable, UK Guardian.

Ooops, The Thorozine wore off, Michael Moore is awake again. Dems, If you want a scapegoat for your losses, look no further than this guy. First, he cost Gore the election, and now he cost Kerry his shot. You should pay this man to support your enemies.

I can't miss a chance to take a swat at Mark "Panty" Shields. Mark, Call Your Office!

Kids, Don't you know by now that "love means never having to say your sorry"?

E.J. Dionne - It's called 'acid reflux', and you are it's latest victim.

Hunter Thompson - El Jefe Es Muy Loco.

Paul Routledge - I think we need a double barreled Tranq gun and a tazer for this one.

Margaret Carlson - What Kind Of Mandate Is 51%. Gee Margaret, why dont you ask Bill Clinton, because he never got one. Oh! and Margaret, I dont think your evil, I think you're kinda hot. But that's just between you and me,ok?

Quick Question!: Are people in Europe more sad over the idea Bush being Re-elected than they were over 3,000 people being killed on 9/11? I mean on a scale of 1 to 10, Is Bush a 9 on the grief meter, but 9/11 was a 5? Ever notice how Bush can cause people to generate all sort of bile, but when Islamic madmen kill in the streets of Manhattan, no one can quite find the words?

UPDATE: Today, Opinionjournal.com Channels my question and gets results!:

The Angry Left may finally be coming to understand how normal Americans felt after the Sept. 11 attacks. A poll on DemocraticUnderground.com asks "Which is more depressing, 9/11/01 or 11/3/04?" The results at this writing: 9/11, 29%; 11/3, 71%. In the comments thread, "Big Blue Marble" writes: "I have lived 61 years, lost my parents and my sister plus many many pets and this is the darkest day of my life."

UPDATE II: Yasser Arafat wants to be buried in Jerusalem. Israel asks "Do we need to wait for him to die to bury him"?

UPDATE III: More Street Reaction.

Posted @ November 05, 2004 08:05 AM | Current Events | Comments (6)

New York Times Asks: Why Do They Hate Us?

"Remember, more people voted against George Bush than any President in history!"
Gov. Howard Dean
November 3rd 2004.
( Howlin' Howard - The man who could not even win the Iowa Caucuses...)

I’ve been watching the reaction from the Democrats to the election. The best part of living in a blue state when you are a Republican is you get to watch the recriminations up close and personal. I sat at lunch yesterday next to a couple that could not get used to the idea that 59 million people voted for President Bush. They were not aware that Kerry had conceded the election and were still talking about the provisional votes as if they were going to bring victory. They honestly could not accept that there were so many people who would vote for Bush.

You see this throughout the Democrat party. The “Blue States” folks are in utter shock. There is no other word for it. The cycle of recriminations and the assignment of blame has already begun. First that this was an example of "Red State Homophobia", that the “gay marriage” issue was manufactured by Karl Rove to turn out the church going populace. Second, that people in the “Red States” are just backcountry rubes who can be sold anything, and Bush just scared them to death.

I was tempted to write a piece that would help illustrate to Democrats what the need to do to win. After reviewing site after site of Democrat reactions and their own analysis of their failures, I decided it was a wasted effort. They dont yet accept that they have lost, or how deep the loss is.

What the losses of the Democrats to the Republicans comes down to is this:

You cannot make fun of people and then expect that they will vote for you.

I'm not sure the Democrats understand that everytime they said "Bush is Stupid" a small part of a "Red State" slipped further out of their grasp. I'm not sure they yet understand that many,many people identify with and even empathize with President Bush and when Democrats say he is stupid that the Democrats are also saying that they the simple minded "Red State" folk are also stupid.

In my opinion, what cost the Democrats the election was the way they treated the President with a complete lack of respect. Out here in "goober country", we don't think highly of that kind of thing. People in "Red States" believe in common decency, even between adversaries. For every bit of vitriol that was ginned up for the Democrat base, it probably cost them an equal amount of undecided voters in "Red States" who on election day, swung to the President.

Democrats cannot win unless they can take some of the Red States back into their fold. Fundamentally, the “Red States” are growing in population; the “Blue States” are losing population. Unless Democrats are willing to expand their membership they are doomed to a minority party status for a good long time.

I’m not entirely sure at this point that Democrats want to win elections. I think that for some Democrats, its much more important to remain ideologically pure. “Ideologically purity” is the necrosis of party politics. Once upon a time, Republicans had a solid litmus test for people in the party, you could not support gay rights, you could not support government funding of any sort, and you could not support abortion rights under any circumstances.

When they ran the party under that sort of ideological standard, Republicans held a minority position in politics within this country. Today’s Republican party has a wide variety of positions, from Rudolph Giuliani to Dick Cheney, and yes, George W. Bush. Even George W. and George H.W. express opinions that differ from each other greatly and Giuliani from the other two to Andrew Sullivan, who I think is still a Republican, although he takes a very different view of things.

The Democrats on the other hand have become the closed minded, “Ideological purity test” party. There are no “Pro-life” Democrats; there are no “Hawkish” Democrats. Sure there’s Joe Lieberman, and there was Richard Gephardt, but Dick Gephardt is gone now, and Joe is an exile. Frankly, Southern Democrats are going so fast I wonder if there will be any at all in 10 years. Where's Sam Nunn? Wheres Scoop Jackson or Carl Vinson of Todays Democrat Party? These men used to be commonplace in that Party, today you will be hard pressed to find anyone of their like, unless you look in the Republican party.

For so many people in the Democrat party, their party’s ideology defines who they are, and to suggest changing it is a thought akin to heresy.

Shhh Heretic! There will be no talk of "defensive war" because we in the true church of liberal-ity know that all war is caused by greedy capitalists against the poor and is never good under any circumstances.

Silence heathen! We in the true church know that marriage is a form of property over other human beings and the only valid marriage is the type that destroys the institution!

Be still underlings! We in the high church of socialism know that all religion is a form of brain damage and anyone belonging to any church is suspect and possibly a lobotomy victim.

For so many people in the Democrat party, where they live defines who they are. I’ve seen this phenomenon before, people who give anything to live in a particular zip code for no other reason than they feel that by having that zip code, it makes them a better person. I know people who judge people by where they live rather than who they are.

You simply cannot be a good and smart person if you choose to live in Idaho. You must desire to live in San Francisco or Seattle or Manhattan, and if you don’t, you must pine to do so someday.

Suburbs? Ugh! Only breeders live in the ‘burbs!

Many feel that to be a Democrat is to be given a “pass”, you cannot be a bigot, you cannot be a homophobe, you cannot be a dumb hick if you are a Democrat. To live in San Francisco or Manhattan is to say “ I’m not like those little oh so common people, I’m a better person than those people…” It's sad to watch their faces when I tell them, as I often do, that no matter where you go, there you are.... Places don't make you, you make places. If you need to live in Manhattan to be excited and joyous in your life, it's because you are probably too boring to make your own fun somewhere else. I've seen beautiful things in Manhattan, I've seen stunning things on the Paluxy river in Texas. I've learned to appreciate them each for what they are. I guess thats what makes me a small minded knuckle dragging breeder. it's ok,I'm comfortable in my own skin.

I don’t think the Democrat party of today can change. To do so would cause too many currently in the party to reject it. They cannot belong to a party that would welcome openly the silly and ignorant people who follow NASCAR. They cannot stand side by side with people who work in factories and go deer hunting on their weekends. To do so would be to lower their sense of self worth to admit that there were in fact just like that which they openly hate and despise. The common every day folk...

Even though I am a Republican, I really want a strong and solid Democrat party. Our political system is an adversarial system like that found in courts of law. Having one party rule is like having a court system where only the prosecutor gets access to lawyers. There is no more certain way to corrupt a system than to leave it unchecked. Democrats, by allowing their party to be taken over by coastal cultural elites have doomed their party to regional, almost cult like status.

To win, Democrats must drop their anti-religious bigotry.

To win, Democrats must find another candidate from “a town called hope”.

To win, Democrats must decide that America is worth defending.

To win, Democrats must again sing " Happy days are here again".

To win, Democrats must cast aside Al Sharpton, Michael Moore and Al Franken, they must learn to embrace Zell Miller.

They must learn that to win, they must reach out to the very people they despise.

People like me.

According to this map, they are going to need some mighty big arms.

UPDATE I: New York Times Local Reaction

San Francisco Local Reaction

Seattle Local Reaction

Portland Oregon Local Reaction

Posted @ November 04, 2004 06:05 PM | Current Events | Comments (6)

A Quickie

Ain't it nice to hear no one blubbering about 'Voter Apathy' and low turnout?

I'm working on my final piece for the election, but first I gotta go running.

Posted @ November 01, 2004 02:47 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

One Perfect Saturday

Outside Air Temp: 82 Degrees, Zero Wind, Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. The Sierras, MT Lassen and Coastal range clearly visible after 4 days of cleansing rain at the end of the burn season.

Community Center

Simultaneous Football, Soccer and Softball games in progress leave the parking lot full of SUV’s and Minivans. Kids, Uniforms, Parents, loudspeakers and game announcers for half a dozen different games all merge together in a soft buzz, hot dog odors, spilled Gatorade and game players of every type and their attendant parents walk through the park. To the rock wall, where after 6 months of trying, the little one finally makes it to the top. I catch up on my reading in between stolen moments of admiration as I watch the love of my life climb a three-story wall with no help from the staff. A wall made of only of fake rock, but a place where real courage and pride is discovered for a kid of just seven.

Target.

My Suzuki 650SV, our two Helmets hang on the side, My Daughters and mine. Inside my helmet is tucked a copy of James Ellroys “ The Big Nowhere”. I pick up a copy of Time Bandits and Garfield for her and for me, Dark Blue and Cowboy Bebop.

A quick interlude at the snack bar for a well deserved Icee and a Diet Coke. I get the latest breakdown on why the Icee flavors at Target are better than 7/11. I disagree, but I’m not really an expert. Icee flavors may change by location, but Diet Coke is the same the world around.

Home

Back to the house, where the little one finds her friends across the street have come home, inviting her over for the remaining afternoon. Which leaves me to watch a Tivo’ed version of “Major Dundee” to once again try to find where Sam Peckinpah went so wrong with such a great premise and excellent cast.

Posted @ October 30, 2004 06:01 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Blood Red Fury

I am so furious I can barely type. I cannot put into words the rage I feel.

Two days ago, in a coordinated effort to support the Kerry campaign, The American Media began to level charges of incompetency at the Bush Adminsitration for the mishandling of high explosives in Iraq.

At first, I found this amusing. Here in the final days of the campaign the media has finally understood that Iraq was a danger to the world. Fine, It looks like it took them awhile but they finally got here on the right side of the issue. Welcome Brothers...

After a cursory examination of the charges put forth against the President and the US Military, We have yet another case of 'media blowback' underway as it appears that A) The UN is in fact the likely candidate for mishandling the high explosives and B) It appears that Russian operatives had a role in their removal prior to the invasion.

US Soldiers did their duty, and their government is validated in its decision to invade Iraq and remove the now universally accepted threat that was the Saddam regime.

Again, so far, so funny. Big media gets the story wrong, Kerry gets big splat of egg on his face. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy as far as I'm concerned.

However, the media in its spittle filled 'day of the dead' zombie-like froth to "get Bush at all costs" is now crawling through old video for just the right picture or video to once and for all prove that Bush is an idiot...

They will stop at nothing for Abu Girab, they will stop at nothing for al Quaqua. But there is one story that the media walks around like it was a burning pile of dog crap on the front porch, and that is what we are going to talk about now.

I have a decision to make at this point in the post. I do not do what I do next lightly, but I feel it must be done. The pictures that follow are not meant to exploit, they are meant to illustrate, educate and put these miserable media sonofabitches into context of reality.

The US Media, the Democrat Party, The Kerry campaign, The EU and the UN will stop at nothing to tell you tales about how the evil Bush administration has screwed up Iraq, leaving you with a context of lies that Iraq was a quiet little thrid world paradise until we got there and messed it up for everyone.

They will never tell you the other part of the story, the story of the Iraqi holocaust. It's like telling the story of World War II and just "forgetting" to tell the story of the Jewish holocaust because you dont want to offend anyones sensibilities. You can't understand one without the context of the other. To tell one story without the other is not only irresponsible, it is at its core racist. Those people who came back from the WWII experience and tried to excuse Hitlers crimes as just accidents or wanted you to look elsewhere at other countries crimes were branded for what they were. Racists.

And so should we do as well with todays media, who treat the Iraqi holocaust as if it never happened, and what really matters is only the cost of liberation. No tyrant is too bad to overthrow in the eyes of the media, we must tolerate them and their crimes, so say they.

Imagine discussing Omaha beach without the context of Bergen-Belsen. Imagine someone in a position of responsibility within the media making the editioral decision to ensure that no one talked about Bergen-Belsen because it might effect the emotions of the audience in way that doesnt further their political goals. What would we call that kind of person?

What we liberated in Iraq was every bit as bad as the horrors of Nazi Germany. Any reasoning we had for invading was made moot by the discovery of the first "Childrens Prison" on the 4th day of the Invasion. We may not have gone in for that reason, but once we discovered them, and the mass graves, nothing else mattered.

When I watched old war movies when I was a kid, my dad told me to remember every time I saw a bomber fall from the sky in that stock footage, I was watching 11 men who would not be coming home. He reminded me that the stock gun camera footage in movies wasn't Hollywood, that it was real, men did die and people did get killed. I was not to cheer, even when it was a Messerschmidt getting shot in the film, it was an airplane, piloted by a man. That man had family, good or bad right wrong, the plane was real, the man flying it was real, and a family that mourns his loss even today, is real.

The pictures that follow aren't Hollywood, they are real. All too real I am afraid. And shame on us all for forgetting the cost they paid before we finally put a stop to it.

I want you to look. Take a deep,long look. These are not cartoons, or Speilbergian Special Effects. These are people. Fellow human beings every bit as deserving of our care as the haunting souls who walked out of the gates of Dachau.

While looking at each of the pictures that follow, for each of the bodies you see, say quietly to yourself, "father, mother, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt". Repeat this process 300,000 times.

Welcome to the horror of Saddams Iraq.

Behold!, Dear reader and despair:

Come tell me how the world is really made 'shades of grey' and how silly and simpleminded I am for thinking that there is real evil at work in the world and that we have a duty to stop it. Come and tell me that we Americans are the same as Saddam and his thugs. Come and tell me that the United States is the biggest threat to peace in the world. Tell me that our war in Iraq was a mistake and our President a lying fool for sending us there.

Talk to me until the rivers run dry and the atmosphere evaporates into space, then go tell these people about the evils of America. Tell them how all we want is their oil. They will tell you they would gladly give it to us if only we could bring back the lives of their children, their wives, their husbands, all butchered at the hands of the Tikiri clan. Be sure you tell them how you feel we should never have gone to Iraq because it wasnt a threat to America. Be sure you tell them how you wish the UN sanctions should have been allowed to work, even after they had been in place for 10 years, killing thousands.

Look at the man in the first picture, do you think he gives a damn about George Bushs' National Guard Record in 1968? Go ask him, I'm sure he's got an answer for you, just dont stand too close as he's likely to grab you around the throat to get your attention. Tell him how moved you were when you first heard the words 'Never Again" in College, and be sure to tell him how you dont think that those words apply to him and his family. Tell him how ashamed you are that the President didn't get the permission of the French and the Germans before we stopped Saddam from wiping out what was left of his family.

"father, mother, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt". over and over and over and over.

And after all those pictures, be sure to tell everyone you see how you are sure that Saddam was never a threat, that we had him contained, and we should have left him alone. He wasn't actually alone, he had all the Iraqi people to keep him company. Too bad he kept trying to kill them all. A small flaw in our plan.. Be sure to tell ABC News to keep looking for final video proof of our idiot President who saw a threat where there was none and bungled the job afterwards. Keep looking ABC, I'm sure its out there. You might try looking under the BOXES AND BOXES of film covering the mass graves. That would be the boxes of film youve never shown on TV because you don't want to unecessarily scare anyone.

And then go look at the pictures again, and realize that Here, you can find, not just 20 pictures, but 60 full pages of pictures. And this is just one site, for one group documenting the horror you so easily dismiss.

"father, mother, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt". over and over and over and over.

UPDATE I : From Christopher Hitchens endorsement of President Bush I found this quote:

"In Kabul recently I interviewed Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. 'For us,' she said, 'the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing.' I dare you to smirk at such simple-mindedness as that."

UPDATE II: Voices of Iraq for more info.

UPDATE III: New to Varifrank? Then Read this for Rules on 'how to comment' on posts.

UPDATE IV: For my new European readers, I'm not impressed with the "America Made Saddam" argument. I've post on this before, Here, Here and Here. Summary, because we were wrong in the past ( I believe support of dictators passively or actively is very,very wrong) does not mean that we stand aside and give defacto support by doing nothing to stop them today. We created our monsters, and its now our obligation to remove them. Unless you have a time machine where we can go back and correct our mistakes, I care not one tiddle what we did in the past, I dont live there, and neither do you.

UPDATE V: Jessica's Well weighs in. I think I got a wave going here.

UPDATE VI: Cox and Forkum Via Davids Medienkritik sums its all up nicely.

Posted @ October 28, 2004 11:14 PM | Current Events | Comments (46)

B'way and La Cienega: Traffic Stop Gone Bad

Dig. In the waning days before the American Spanking Machine did it's tap dance on cockroach nest that was Iraq, all sorts of things were shaking loose under the floorboards. Saddams Paramors were beating feet out of town while the the getting was good and taking anything that wasnt nailed down. Like the earlier version of the Kuwaiti 'highway of death' Saddams allies were leaving town with whatever they could as fast as they could. To Syria, To Turkey, To Iran, and they all ran. Like scalded dogs...

Check this out, Daddy-o. Anyone remember the grief out guys caught for whacking these pendejos out on the highway? You think that this convoy might have also been part of the 'midnight auto supply and five finger discount system ' that the Russians were running with their pal Saddam?

I wonder how many of these plans might have been interrupted by our cats in the 4th ID pouring out of Turkey. Oh thats right, They couldn't come down from Turkey because the French and the Russians bribed the Turks to keep us out of there. Our boys were delayed for three weeks in getting total control over the routes out of Bagdhad since they had to swing their asses down around the Red Sea and back.

Well aint that just convienent as all hell...

It kinda brings the whole missing HDX/RDX controversy into a whole new frame of understanding, now doesn't it.

(...With Apologies to Mr. James Ellroy)

Posted @ October 27, 2004 09:53 PM | Current Events | Comments (0)

schadenfreude ( #2 in a series)

scha·den·freu·de (shädn-froid)
noun - Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

So, Saddam is waiting for the gallows, Uday and Qusay are dead, Osama is sleeping under a rock, Castro takes a dive, Kim il Jung wont leave the house, now Arafat is on his way to the big dirt nap.

Who says Bush isn't having a very good year?

UPDATE: Editorial Board says Mrs. Edwards is off limits. Author agrees. Snarky comments about her waistline within a parody of lesbian-comment-scandal are removed and stored for a later day.

Posted @ October 27, 2004 02:44 PM | Current Events | Comments (3)

In the Scrum

Since I'm a crazed right wing fanatic, you should guess what was the first thing that came into my head when I heard Justice Rehnquist was in the hospital.

Gee, I sure hope he's ok...

I know as an evil right winger I should only think about how this guys health problems relate to me and my political views on the world, because as an evil right winger its all I can think about, right?

Sorry, it just doesnt work that way for me.

When I read work by people who have so clearly lost their perspective that they start reviewing childrens movies through the lens of politics, I know that some people really need to go get a beer.

A gentle reminder dear readers, as we head down the stretch here in the last few days before the election. This is not the last election, it is just another election. Despite what Mr. Kerry says, this is not "the most important election in our lifetime!" If it turns out that Mr. Kerry wins and the candidate I prefer loses, I have still won. Democracy is not about getting your way, its about concensus. I am a citizen,I am enfranchised with the power of the electorate,I am a voter and my voice was heard. I do not have to win an election to feel validated, I just need to be asked. If my candidate wins, good for him, if he loses, see you again in 2008.

I will not protest,burn down buildings,vandalize cars or shoot guns into the oppositions party headquarters or condone it if it is done by anyone in my party. I believe this is what separates me from that other party, but that's just me.

I do not look at every flutter of a butterflys wings as a sign from the Gods on how the election is going to go. I do not filter information and news as to "Good for Bush, Not Good for Bush". Justice Rehnquist is a man, he deserves to be thought of as just that, and his service to the nation second, and out about item # 78, we should think about his politics and how it relates to us. Common decency demands that remember that he is not a wooden icon, he is a man, with a wife, kids and grandkids. Today, someones grandfather entered the hospital for a dangerous procedure. Today, someone walked through the process of losing a parent, Today, a wife thought about the possibility of life without her partner. If you can't grasp what their day was like when they heard that the man of their life was in the hospital, you really need to take a deep breath and try to remember who you are and how you got that way. Who made you so small and petty? Who made you such a victim that you can't rise above your politics?

When you get all done making your case for your candidate, just remember you still have to live here. Be careful what you say about the veracity of people who disagree with you because after the election is over, they aren't going away. They will still be there, making their case, despite all the evidence that says otherwise. Much as I would love to see Paul Begala just say " oh well, I guess we were wrong,I'm glad Bush is President" it's just never going to happen, and that's fine. We still have to live together. If Bush wins, the left will still be here. If Kerry wins, The right will still be here. Thanks to the 2nd amendment and the fact that most Americans are reasonably good marksmen, they arent going to be hearded into flatcars and shipped away anytime soon.

So relax folks, put you feet up and enjoy the show. Go buy a beer for the other side after they lose and welcome them as neighbors and friends, because believe it or not, that's who we are.

One of our neighbors went into the hospital today, try to remember that when you screech about his impact on abortion rights.

Posted @ October 25, 2004 04:24 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

NY Times Backs Bush Reasons For Iraq

So the big watercooler talk this morning is about the weapons in Iraq that went missing. Apparently, it's all Bushs fault. No mention of the literally hundred of tons of explosives that have been captured and destroyed. Another inconvienent fact.

Well, color me happy to see that the NY Times now understands why we went into Iraq. It seems they now agree with me that Iraqi assets could be used by terrorists. It's too bad they didn't get onboard sooner and back the president and his reasoning for war in Iraq.

Oh - and on the Bill Clinton on the stump for Kerry Story. Don't you think this is the biggest subliminal campaign signal in history? A Post-op Bill Clinton is still more exciting than a top of his game Lycra wearing John Kerry. (UPDATE: Why is a Democrat campaigning in territory he should own outright? You know the answer. You can't be the 'comeback kid' unles you already acknowledge that you are losing. ( notice how often Clinton talks about himself and how often he talks about Kerry?)

And why is Michigan in suddenly in play? Ask John Kerry if he's ever heard of Hamtramck. Ask him if he ever heard that its the center of Polish life in the upper midwest. Ask him what the primary social structure is of the people of Hamtramck ( here's a clue Mr. Kerry - its that big building with a cross on the top).

Then ask him what his position is on this.

Posted @ October 25, 2004 09:47 AM | Current Events | Comments (1)

The Divide

Saturday morning,we went to visit Nevada City. It's a California gold country town up on the mid-sierra, no longer populated by farmers and miners, but by t-shirt vendors,fudge stores,funky bookstores and stores that contain the same sort of things you see on the wall at TGI Fridays. The town itself dates back to the civil war, many of the buildings are still of the old style false front buildings seen on movie sets, but these are real work a day places where folks try to make their living selling art, overpriced wine and the latest in hip cuisine choices.

This is one of my favorite places on Earth, It really doesnt belong to any specific time or place. You can often find guys who are still working in shifts down the shafts at the local hardrock gold mine sitting side by side with bohemian bicyclists out exploring the sierras on their winter break from UC Berkelely, where they are holding a major in "peace studies". There are many little sole proprietor stores that deal in occult,crystals,kites and macrame in nearly every store you find music that is called 'world' or 'ethnic' music. This is not to say that this is a dark town, this is a very light hearted town. Directly across the street from the bright pink feminist bookstore is the "Fur Traders" store where you too can buy a fur covered car seat.Across the corner from there you can find the candy store where you can get your fill of fudge at yet another store. It's that kind of eclectic thing that only makes sense in Nevada City. The smell of incense is a part of the personality of every door that you open in Nevada City. Theres a recognition of the old while an embrace of the new in everyone that lives there.

This is town that proves once again, that only the rich can afford the luxury of really bad ideas. Those that go to Nevada City to live out their lives in artisty in the tall pines and craggy peaks of the sierras, to join the burgeoning theatre group that is there, are almost all wealthy. It takes a lot of money to open a bookshop that has almost no inventory, to pay the rent month to month, to get the payroll out. It takes a lot of money to live without a day-in day-out job. If you were to ask those that are there, like the 20 something kid who served us tea at the tea shop if they were wealthy, they would say "no way man!", "I hate money". It's funny to watch how self illusion can cloud someones mind to the reality that they themselves have created.
You work at a job, junior! - you get paid for it too! - you like money because you like to eat and staying dry under a roof is a good thing. You young "Davey Sumshine" for all your counter culture anti-culture rebellion stylizing are no different than I am, and while that doesnt bother me at all to be in the same group as you, tonight my dear dreadlocked friend, this will keep you awake worrying about it until sunrise.

Today, It occured to me that America is probably the only culture on earth at any time in history where the counter culture is a reaction of the Rich against the Poor and the middle class. Usually, the counter culture is found in the ghettos and the places of poverty as a reaction to the power elite, but in this country, It's the children of the rich who would do anything except be thought of as "average". To say someone looks like they shop at wal-mart is the height of insult in our counter culture.

I've noted before that I never met an actual communist while I worked in a factory, but I did meet lots of them when I was at school. I also never found a communist or someone who believed in communism who actually had a job. What's worse, those who constantly lectured me on the values of communism were always the ones who sneered at the janitor, or gave the waitresses a hard time and left no tips. I learned a lot about the left while I was in college, although I'm sure it was not the lesson they hoped to teach me.

Nevada City is one of those places where you can see the divide in our culture in the wide open. It is like a heart surgeons chest spreader for the soul. We are a people divided between those who wish only to be average and embrace the rational and those who wish to reject the common and only embrace the irrational. On one side of the divide we have a culture that, strives to be different even if being the same is the result, and lives without obligations except to satisfy the self. the very idea that the the self is not the most important thing is incomprensible to that side of the divide. On the other side of the divide, there is an emphasis on family and selflessness, of sacrifice of the self for a greater good.

I believe it is this concept of obligation over self fulfillment that serves as the precise point of rupture in our culture.

Over the summer, one of the books I read while I was working in Seattle was "1939: The Lost World of the Fair" by David Gelernter. In this book, Mr. Gelernter describes the world of 1939 in terms of cultural values. He describes the 1939 world as a world of "aught", as in " This is what you aught to do" , in 1939, you as an individual had obligations to perform. In the world of today, we almost never describe our lives in terms of our obligations to others. Whats worse, we describe those who do hold onto obligations in low esteem. Watch TV today, and the father figure of every commericial is a babbling idiot, Watch TV today and every mother and father is a harried victim on the run from this or that threat. Watch TV today and see children who are always smarter and more wise than their parents. It's accepted as a reflection of realty, no one questions the validity of it.

A few years back, there was yet another movie about how awful life was in the suburbs. American Beauty. It didnt bother me that Hollywood made yet another movie describing suburban life as the 9th circle of hell, it didnt bother me that it was well reviewed and thought by he critics to be a great movie. What bothered me is no one ever stood up and said:

" For it being such an awful place to live, there sure is a hell of a lot of people moving to the suburbs all the time ".

I Love Nevada City, and I like the people who live there. But I do resent that the other side of the cultural divide who has benefitted so much from what the suburbs have created can only look back at it with a sneer and a giggle. Sneer away kids, you might think we sit in our suburban homes crying into our pillows, but most of us live a pretty damn good life here in the average suburb. Those of us who have been poor know that although there is no virtue in wealth for its own purpose, we also know that there is not virtue in poverty either. We like our lives here in suburbia. We like our lawns, our garages, our lawn sprinkers. We chose this life, just as you chose yours.

Embrace Diversity.

UPDATE: In the auditorium of ideas, my chair is somehwere between this guy and Christopher Hitchens. I'm also probably kicking the back of the seat that P.J. O'Rourke is sitting in.

Posted @ October 23, 2004 07:12 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Branson Taking Orders For New Golgafrincham Ark "B"

LONDON, England -- William Shatner wants to boldly go where he's only pretended to go so far.

The "Star Trek" star is among more than 7,000 people who have told Richard Branson they would gladly pay him $210,000 (£115,000) for a trip aboard his planned spacecraft, the entrepreneur said Friday.

Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro has signed up for a ride, and a Hollywood director who was not identified has booked an entire ship.

In Hitchhikers Guide To the Universe, The planet Golgafrincham creatively solved the problem of middle managemers: it blasted them in to space. Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitisers, Management Consultants, Hack actors and Marketing executives were persuaded that the planet was under threat from an enormous mutant star goat. The useless third of their population was then packed in Ark spaceships and sent to an insignificant planet.

That planet turned out to be Earth

I wonder how much we need to pay Richard Branson to make sure they dont come back? I also wonder if we should take up a collection to get Rosie O'donnell on board?

Posted @ October 22, 2004 10:20 AM | Current Events | Comments (2)

Gassed

As of late, I’ve been operating under a vision. It’s a fairly common one and I’ll bet you share the same. The vision is this:

I can’t wait to get this election behind me, so I can go one with my life.

This election has been such a drag, that I can’t wait to get it over with.

In the last 4 years, I’ve watched my country and the world go insane. I’ve watched formerly reasonable people with great skills of articulation lose the power of discourse.

I’ve see pacifists take to the streets in anger filled protest. I’ve watched cold warriors that worked under the doctrine of brinkmanship talk of the power of liberation.

I’ve watched people who protested UN sanctions in Iraq get absolutely livid when they were finally removed.

I’ve watched people who are feminists sneer at the fact that women are voting in an Islamic country.

I’ve watched people who said that war was too much of a risk due to the existence of Chemical Weapons then laugh derisively when they were never found.

I've watched a country come together in unity for one brief moment, only to see it fracture into a 1000 pieces 6 months later when swift action was taken to bring the criminals to justice.

I've watched men with great military records made fools of as their predictions of a ‘long hard slog’ were made moot by the liberation of the Kabul by indigenous troops just a few weeks later.

I've watched pundits talk about the harsh Afghanistan winter and how our troops were bogged down in a quagmire to only three years later acts as if it was always an easy walk into Kabul.

I’ve watched a former Secretary of State, who unilaterally gave nuclear materials to the North Koreans, talk publicly about how this administrations actions to stop nuclear proliferation with the North Koreans by taking multilateral action, was just folly.

I’ve watched as a former President certified a clear election fraud in Venezuela, and then called his own countries elections a clear fraud. I've watched as the said same former President allows a 400 lb Anti-Semitic propagandist sit in a seat of honor at his parties convention, while the same President enjoys the title of Nobel Peace Prize winner, yet never having brought peace to anywhere in the world.

I've watched as two former mayors of New York City,One Jewish, One Italian, a Democrat stage actor and liberal activist, and a old school deep south Democrat all give their support to a White bread Republican President from Texas.

I watched a national press take sides in an election, and then get indignant when their audience reacted negatively. I’ve watched what were formerly respected newsmen refer to some of their audience as “Jihadis” for simply speaking their mind, while some of the audience were having their heads cut off by people the same respected newsman would not allow to be called “terrorists” because of the bias it might show.

I've watched people decry the loss of their rights and the 'police state' imposed on them by the President, while literally hundreds of books and hundreds of movies were produced that provided dissent against the President, providing a steady income and celebrity to their authors.

I've watched as a candidate for president insists that their would be a draft, that it was only the president himself that was keeping drugs out of the hands of the infirmed people who needed them and that the elderly would be made into paupers by the actions of the president, while he simultaneously decried the president had artificially inflated the threat of terror to the country and hyping a state of fear to the populace.

I also watched a candidate for president answer a question about his wife by talking about his mother.

It’s been a long 4 years since I watched Al Gore “Huff and Puff” around the stage at the debate. It’s been a million years since the opposition research team of the Gore campaign dropped the DUI bombshell 72 hours before the election. It’s been a geological age since we watched the chads getting counted in Florida.

I’m tired. I’m suffering from a form of battle fatigue, I’ve gone "bunker-happy". I’m like one of those civilians who have been down in the London tube for too many nights during the blitz, and they start singing showtunes in their pajamas while running down the street as the bombs fall. Politics is not a sport to me; sport is sport. I find myself interested in politics to a degree, but I really can’t stand the way it’s become a contact sport. I can’t stand the way it’s become such a part of our lives. I think I preferred the days when we all decried “voter apathy”. Atleast when there was "voter apathy" I could buy a book at Borders about World War II without getting a lecture from the bookstore staff on how I was another 'fascist Bush supporter' and an "oppresser of third world people due to my clear support for globalization".

But I wasn’t nearly as tired as I thought I was, until I realized that the vision I’ve been living with was just an illusion. You see, I’ve been working with anticipation that after the election is over, I can go back to a normal life. Tonight, I realized that the day after the election, even if Bush wins by 15% and takes 49 states, Paul Begala and the other “children of the night” will be on TV, making a mockery of whatever victory has been accomplished and thus turning our Democracy on its ear for the sake of feathering his little political consulting business. For the truly black-hearted partisan, there is never a moment where they can just say publicly “ok, you won”. We are not going to wake up on November 3rd and find that the ‘armies of the insane’ have suddenly accepted a Bush victory. We will be going on with this insanity, because no one on either side of the argument has the force of character to simply say:

“Ok, you won”.

Part of the responsibility of citizens in a Democracy is to have the maturity to accept the result, even when it goes against your side. This next election is not the last election, just the next one in the line. There will be another in 2 years, and another 2 years after than and so on and so forth. Let's knock this crap off that "this is the most important election in our lifetimes"; they are all important. Just vote. Do a reasonably good job of knowing the issues, accept people who take a different view than you and then go take up rock polishing or go knit sweaters for the other 23 months in between the election season. Let's all go find a hobbies to keep us busy for Gods' sake.

The founding fathers really meant for us to do other things besides talk about tax rates every damn day of the year. You want to change the employment situation, then get a job, if you've got one help someone else. Start with your family and work your way out to friends, and on to acquiantances and then on to strangers. Got too much and feel guilty about it? then give somebody something you dont need. You want to do something about education? then go volunteer for lunchroom duty at the local elementary school.

Stop expecting these half-wit lawyers in Washington to improve your lives. You can improve your life all by yourself, you don't need John Edwards to sue someone for you to get a better life.

While we've all been dicking around talking about 'electoral vote tallies', a bunch of guys went into space in a private spacecraft. I ask you, Where's the better use of time?

( Note: The picture on the post is that of a painting by John Singer Sargent. Despite his age and the fact that he was better known for the quality of his portraits and his paintings of high society, his reputation led to Sargent (1856-1925) being commissioned to do this commemorative painting. In 1918, he went to northern France and during one of his journeys from Arras to Doullens, he saw groups of soldiers blinded by projections of mustard gas. )

Posted @ October 20, 2004 09:29 PM | Current Events | Comments (19)

Is It Time To Extend The Franchise?

I’ve been reading with some amusement the goings on over at Tim Blair’s site in regards to the “Operation Guardian” Project. Just to catch you up on the subject, there’s some well meaning doo-gooders over in “old blighty” who are starting a letter writing campaign to the residents of Ohio, to implore them to not vote for George W. Bush.

Now, we’ve heard this kind of stuff before; “If only the whole world world could vote, they would vote for John Kerry”. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what they were really saying. What the citizens of the UK are saying is that they would love to become part of the United States!

Let’s face it, What’s their option out there at the edge of the Eurozone? Join a pack of decrepit "has been" unelected bureaucrats in the European Union based in Brussels, a Union that none of their constituents voted on, where the populace will have fewer rights than they have today and a constitution that’s 1400 pages long and written by a French politician? They haven’t really been given any other options, you either join the EU or you will quickly become about as relevant as Andorra and Lichtenstein on the world scene.

Or…

Perhaps its time we make them a better offer? Lets look at it this way, in 1890, using the fastest form of transportation known to man, a train, a person could go from London to Edinburgh in 14 hours. Today,by air, you can go anywhere on the planet in 14 hours. So if you calculate relative distance in terms of time, rather than the linear measurement of space, the earth has now shrunk to roughly the size of England in 1890. Yes, England is over on the other side of the Atlantic, but so what, it’s really only 7 hours from New York, it's closer to Washington DC than is Hawaii or Alaska.

Now what would they get out of it? I don’t what to go off on a 100 page statement of what being a US citizen would give to the residents of the UK, so for now, let’s keep the conversation towards voting rights, specifically voting for the executive branch of government.

Under this model, let's treat each of the components of the UK as a separate US state. Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland, are now all new states to the United States. Ireland then decides to "beat the Christmas rush" and do the same with their 3 million inhabitants. Each of the new states either already have or are working on their own independent parliaments, and we would let them keep that as their own state level legislatorial systems. The only change we would mandate is regular elections, rather than the parliamentary approach of elections whenever they are called for. Now, let's add some federal representation; Give each of the new states two Senators and a congressional district for every million in population, with a minimum of one congressional district for each state.

That adds 12 new senators and 33 new congressman and 45 new electoral votes in the expanded US/UK "Union of The States" model.

For the first time ever, the people of England would be able to vote on their executive branch of government. with 45 electoral votes, the Candidates for President would have to visit far off places like Manchester, Luton, Bath, Liverpool, Dublin and London and kiss their babies, shake their hands, eat their 'rubber chicken' specialities and promise them a list of asininely impossible to deliver things that candidates have to do just like we do in the US today. Better still, we might get to vote on a guy like Tony Blair as our President. We could do with a eloquent liberal with a backbone who is willing to defend civilization. Hell, I'd vote for him if I could and I'm hardly a Labour voter, so its not a one way street! The economic conditions in the UK would undoubtedly improve with a "Union of the States", their need for an independent army and navy would no longer exist, they would never again fear of invasion from the continent, their tax burden would be greatly lifted, their opportunities for improving their lives would most certainly improve.

In every way that I can see, it seems to me that we could make them a better offer than the EU could put on the table. In business, we are very familiar with the phenomenon of industry consolidation. Once an industry matures, it’s natural for fewer and fewer companies to exist in that market, as there are fewer dollars to chase in the market as whole. The result is collapse of unfit companies and consolidation of the ones that are still solvent. We might be looking at a similar phenomenon in the nations of the world today. There is an underlying current of “consolidation” out there. The Europeans are looking to consolidate themselves, to become a sort of United States of Europe. This is a fine ambition, one that I whole heartily support. Unfortunately, What has resulted is not a winning combination and in many ways it is forming up to be a first class disaster. So rather than having the UK left with no other real choice but to join the already failed state of the EU, why not consider union with the US?

I know there are lots of details, and things to work out with a "Union of the States", but the same is true of a "Union with Europe". So when I hear you folks in England wanting to vote for the US President, I have a simple answer to the problem:

Now there’s no reason to think we have to extend this just to the UK, we can also extend this offer to Canada and Australia. But a word of warning, while we would welcome you all into the Union, I’m afraid its a permanent arraignment. We had a little problem once with some of our earlier organizations trying to leave the Union, and I’m afraid that didn’t go over so well.

Look at it this way guys, you're going to join someone, you've already made it clear that you're in the market when you signaled your intention to join the EU, so its not like I'm saying anything that surprising. I'm just saying I think we can make you a better deal, thats all. Do you still want to be whining in 10 years about how you still don't get to vote for President?, or wouldnt you rather have an average guy from Lincolnshire running to be President of the United States or the Presidential candidate running his campaign through your town? Think of it, in the Future some average kid in Wessex could be President of the United States!

Has Brussels really got anything that can compete with that?

Posted @ October 19, 2004 10:35 PM | Current Events | Comments (11)

Campfire Rumors

So, the boys and me were sitting around the campfire talking, when one of the galoots goes and says, “ You know its funny but I can’t ever remember there ever being so much flu vaccine rejected, and aint it funny how it happened just three weeks before a major election, it sure gets a guy to thinking...”

Thanks a lot Mr. Smartypants!, now instead of going to sleep, I’m going to have to sit here and think about paranoid conspiracies involving socialist bureaucrats in England conspiring with their Democrat allies to scare the hell out of American old folks, who now are lining up around the block because they’ve heard there isn’t enough flu vaccine to go around.

It wouldn’t take much, a little failed inspection here, a little production line sabotage there and "poof", you got yourself a "custom made for the 5:00 news" emergency. Now instead of dropping dead of flu, the old codgers are dropping dead in line at the pharmacy, thinking that if they don't get their shots, that they are going to be reenacting Stephen Kings "The Stand" in the community hall at Del Webbs Sun City. There is nothing in the world more dangerous than old folks with time on their hands and panic in their hearts. And you can just forget talking rationally to them, you can't tell those folks anything. Once you get that herd into stampede mode, you need to get out of the way, because there is no talking sense to them.

I hate it when this happens. I wish I remembered where I put the shovel so after Mr. Smartypants goes to sleep I can go bang him upside the head with it for planting that thought in my brain.

Posted @ October 18, 2004 11:14 PM | Current Events | Comments (1)

Discourse

There’s a way to do things, and a way not to do things. We all know the apocryphal tale of a person being able to tell a priest in church to “go screw himself”, as long as you know how to say it right.

It appears that there are many people who don’t know the difference between disagreeing and being disagreeable. Let’s walk through this together. I read Andrew Sullivan’s site almost every day. I only agree with him about once out of every 8 visits. I go to his site, not because I agree with everything he says, but he is a well thought out person of a different viewpoint. I don’t want to agree with everything he says, I want there to be disagreement. Andy challenges my thinking; as a result of that challenge, he makes my reasoning on a given subject stronger by causing me to disregard weak positions and causes me to reinforce my stronger positions. When I find myself disagreeing with him, I don’t go ‘crazy eight bonkers’ and write him a stack of hate mail. I don’t insist that Andy take my view of the world that of his own. I expect Andy to take an opinion that I would not. Frankly, I’m hoping he does, because that’s why I’m reading him in the first place. If I wanted to read what I think I’d just read my own blog, and what’s the point in that?

I often disagree with Andrew Sullivan, but I have no desire or need to be disagreeable about it, and he is under no obligation to facilitate that sort of discourse with me. Andy is entitled to his beliefs and it’s precisely his ability to expound on those beliefs that makes him interesting to me. I’m not the slightest bit bothered that his opinions are different than mine. Quite the contrary, I expect him to have an opinion different than mine.

Why is it that so many people read other peoples sites, where the masthead of the site clearly states someone’s political view and then act shocked when they read an opinion on that site that they don’t agree with? If I go to blogsforbush.com, am I really surprised that there is no Kerry support expressed by the site?

I have a stack of email a foot thick over one subject - The use of the word “victory” in my masthead. I got about 15 emails in the positive, and a stack of trackbacks, but I also got a hugely disproportionate number of emails from people who felt that it was akin to a racial slur. Now – had I seen someone use a word on their site that I found to be offensive, what would I do?

Avert my eyes
Write a cogent and simple email, that is not disagreeable, but disagrees.
Not visit anymore

Probably.

Would I ever flame the comments section?
Would I ever pound the other commentors with unwanted queries?
Would I ever insist that the author MUST see it my way?

Hardly.

It's time I explained a few things to some of you who don’t understand the difference between disagreement and being disagreeable. Varifrank is not a public utility, its a privately owned and operated website, created, owned and operated by solely by myself. I do not have a 'tip jar'. I do not have advertising. I am under no obligation to provide anyone with a forum on my site which to send his or her own thoughts out to the reading public. I provide comments only as an easy way on which to communicate with me on the subject at hand, it is not a cheap way for you to start a blog. It is also not a way to allow you to hijack the subject or to harass the readers. Right now, there is an effort underway by the demon like denizens of “democratic underground” to hijack what they consider to be ‘right wing websites’ by any means necessary. Some will hack the sites, and corrupt their content, some will commit Denial Of Service attacks against their sites IP’s. Some will send a spam wave towards the site, thereby clogging up the owners email with lots of useless email. Others are more subtle in their actions, by disrupting the comments section or bogging down the site owner with a great deal of disagreeable discourse they hope to dissuade the blog owner and its fellow travelers from having a voice.

We’ve seen some great bloggers, great minds who’s ideas we all benefited from reading silenced by this type of action. It’s not freedom of speech that’s being practiced by this kind of behavior; it’s thuggery, plain and simple. It has the same affect on a blog that broken windows, un-mowed lawns and graffiti does to property values.

If you have something to add, or if I’ve made an error, then by all means send a comment. The comments on this site are moderated by me, meaning they don’t get published unless I say so. I say so, not because the author of the comment agrees with me, but that the author of the comment has something that adds to the piece being commented on. Comments on this site are not a forum to attack me or the other readers. It’s not a method to get your own pithy statements on a web someplace so you can feel validated.

Here’s another clue to “how to do things”. If you want me to publish your comment, try to say what you want without acting like you are a victim of Tourettes syndrome. For the record, I’m not Jewish, I’m not Gay, nor am I a Woman, nor am I Black. I’m honored to be in their company, but if the basis of your argument is that “I must be a fill-in-the-blank racial epithet”, then you’ve just gone into the electronic circular file, even if you’ve just published the formula for nuclear cold fusion in your comments. For those of you on the left who feel its only us crazed right wingers who attack people, man have I got a stack of hate mail for you to read from supposedly pacifist people who can sling some pretty good racial epithets.

There is a way to disagree, without being disagreeable. If your disagreement is cogent, and well reasoned and civil to myself and the other readers, then it will likely get published. If you can’t get a grip on yourself, then not only will you not get your comment not published, but you will be banned from the site altogether. I need to protect your weak sensibilities from the damage reading my site does to your weak constitutions. I cannot bear the thought that I may be causing some of you such high levels of bile production.

Does it really surprise so many of you that there are people who disagree with your worldview? Do you really think that your vision of reality is universally felt and that any variation from that reality is subversive? I mean, I felt like that when I was 14 years old, but now that I’m in my 40’s I sort of figured out that opinions are like elbows, most people have at least two of them and most of the time it takes a great deal of effort to get them to meet in the middle, but they work just fine when they don’t.

When you visit a blog, think of yourself as being at a party where the host as invited you to meet people you’ve never met before. You are introduced to these strangers, you get to know them by eating and drinking with them, you politely listen to what they say, even when they are people you would normally not hang out with or agree with. But you do not throw lawn furniture at someone you disagree with; you do not “key” their car. At best you might stand in the kitchen and grumble under your breath and wish you would have driven yourself to the party, but you don’t try to burn down the hosts’ living room because someone said something you disagree with.

I worked in San Francisco for 12 years. I loved it, it’s a great city with some great people and the best food anywhere. One of the really cool parts of the job was that I was working in a culture that was completely alien to me. I was a conservative in the very capitol of leftist ideology. I worked there for 12 years, day in day out. Now, if after 12 years of day in day out exposure to leftist ideals hasn’t caused me to give up my orientation and become a Democrat, what chance do you think you have, dear DU Denizen, of getting me to change?

The thing is, I had some great friendships with people in SF who were really waaaaaay out there politically from me. We all managed to get along with each other fine. I once gave some frequent flyer miles to someone who wanted to fly in a jazz artist to a Christic Institute event. I once bailed someone out of jail after a protest against the President. When I had major surgery, one of the women who helped get me through that time was, and I’m not kidding, a real live Sandinista. They were my friends; their politics were secondary. We respected each other’s opinions, we knew that we didn’t agree, but we didn’t take it personally. One of my very best friends hates Bush so much he can’t bring himself to see or hear the Presidents visage or voice at anytime. When he comes over, he always says to me “ make sure you don’t have the TV on…” and I don’t. We have a lifetime of friendship together, that’s much more important than politics. We disagree with each other, but we are not disagreeable.

I learned along time ago that not all lefties are idiots and not all right wingers are Klan members. People are people, you accept them as they are or you leave them alone. All I ever ask of someone in regards to their politics is the answer to this one question:

“Are you prepared to be wrong?”

If someone wants to talk about politics with me, that’s the first question I ask. If you’re not prepared to be wrong, then there’s nothing to be said and we should talk about the negative effects of the ocean tide on fishing. I am prepared to be wrong; I am always interested in hearing a different idea on a subject. I am a pragmatist before I am anything else. I’m not saying that you are wrong, but if you are not prepared for the possibility that you might be wrong, then we are not having a conversation, we are just listening to the b-b’s in our heads rattle around. I don’t believe any human owns the truth, the truth is discovered through a sort of adversarial process akin to the way our law works, or when its done properly, science works by using the skeptical analysis approach.

We discover the truth together. None of us owns the truth, it is discovered via our discourse and disagreement.

Embrace the diversity of thought, kids. It's your only hope in discovering the truth.

Posted @ October 17, 2004 11:09 PM | Current Events | Comments (7)

A Week In Hooverville

Here is a recap of the week in the hell that has become our horrible economic situation brought on by evil and incompetant Bush administration. Some say its the worst economic situation faced by any country by any people in Western civilization since the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Saying it is one thing, but when other people believe it, well thats something else altogether.

Monday -
The house 4 doors down goes up for sale. The house is 7 years old. They are asking for 4 times its original purchase price. If I had to move here now, I could not afford to do it. Of course when we moved here, everyone said it was a mistake. That should show you what "everyone" knows. By the way, I have no intention of leaving.

Tuesday -
Now that a month of candidate interviews are complete, my team puts hiring offers on the table for 3 new openings - all for external hires.

Wednesday -
Another part of our group suffers a setback as three of their staff announce that they are quitting and going to work at other companies. These are all US employees, one is moving to Seattle to work at a small software company, but the other two are "working remote" at two different companies. I see a new employment trend on the rise, "outsourcing at home" why ship jobs overseas when you can just hire folks to work remotely here in the US?

Our Management struggles in the morning conference call to deal with the new phenomenon of employees leaving for greener pastures. Luckily for me the mute button is on as I fall on the floor laughing at their displeasure with the new reality. As I regain my composure, one of them asks what I think they should do, I respond "Oh golly I dont know, promote someone, give a raise here and there, pat someone on the back, give public kudos and thanks now and then?" My humor is often lost on the management class, however,this morning it hits them like a 2x4 across the forehead. I tell them the truth that "the drought is over boys, and those that can get out now, will. For every one of those that left this morning, theres another 10 of them looking."

At Lunch, I wait 20 minutes to get to a gas pump. At two different stations. I resolve to ride my motorcycle more often.

Heres an observation I made in the Costco Parking lot:
SUV,SUV,SUV,Minivan,Minivan,SUV,SUV,Scion Type B,SUV,SUV,SUV,Minivan,Hummer.
I make a note to mark the next time I see a car over 10 years old. 30 minutes go by and a 1968 Chevy Nova appears just as I'm about to give up.

Two afternoon conference calls are interrupted by the sound of pools being constructed in our court. The Gunite spraying machines and small tractors digging the holes are very, very loud. Between pool construction and lawn maintenance, the neighborhood during work hours is one very noisy place indeed.

I have no intention of ever getting a pool. Everyone wants a pool,until they get one. We've already had one thank-you-very-much. They are really at their nicest when they are someone elses and you just visit.

Thursday -
Two of our candidates reject their offers, as they have already accepted offers at other companies. The third accepts, turning down an offer that included a signing bonus. I had no idea such things still existed. The Second tier candidates are now re-evaluated for the remaining open positions.

A headhunter calls in the afternoon, he wants to have lunch next week. The rate of recruiter calls has gone up from one a quarter to one a month. Im not going anywhere, I like my gig but you've always got to take care of these guys. You never know when you'll need one. Besides, this one used to work for me back-in-the-day.

The house that went up for sale on Monday is now sold. The offer was for 20k more than what was being asked for. This leaves us as the last remaining original owners in the court. I dont know what to say.

We begin accepting internal staff transfers to the remaining open headcount. 5 employees are given lateral transfers. 2 are given promotions. This is a relief to me, as I can now stop working 18 hour shift cycles in concert with the European staff work hours.

Friday -
Good news! A new project has been started as we were just informed that an additional contract has been signed for our services. Back to 18 hour shift. For 24 hours, I was pretty happy, but now we are back to reality.

Plans are finalized this morning for me to visit San Jose next week, as the new contract requires the assistance of a new hardware vendor to support the project.

The next door neighbors parents are visting. How do I know this? Because their giant 5th wheel "super trailer" with the pop out sides and the satellite dish is sitting in front of my house. I am now officially "trailer trash". ( they are nice folks, and its ok, they usually only stay for the regulation three days at a time, but every time I hear someone squabble about how bad it is for old folks, guess who comes to mind?)

Friday Night:

6:30 - On the Border - A 45 minute wait to get a seat.
7:15 - Seated. Chips and salsa are delivered
7:20 - Waitress arrives. Drinks are ordered
7:40 - Orders for dinner are taken. Waitress apologizes for delay, apparently several staff did not arrive this evening. Apparently they quit for better offers. ( lots of that going around I opine)
8:15 - Dinner arrives.
9:00 - Check arrives. The waitress, is handling 25 tables by herself, due to a lack of staff. The manager arrives, announces that Dinner is free, due to the problems this evening.

On to 'Barnes and Noble' to peruse the shelves -

9:15 - Parking lot full - to capacity.
9:40 - Parking space secure.
9:45 - Store is jammed to capacity. 4 registers, all staffed, a line 15 deep forms in front. The line is consistent throught the visit.
10:30 - Standing in line for checkout.
10:45 - Checked out. I ask the staff about the lines " its been like this every Friday lately ..."

It's now too late for a trip to Best Buy, but a sign in front of the building says "NOW HIRING". Every store and restaurant we went by this evening has had these signs up. Christmas is coming, and it shows.

On to Starbucks!
11:00 - 6 in line,
11:15 - Order taken. The store is out of milk. This sends a groan into the air. A Starbucks out of milk is like KFC being all out of biscuits. I ask how this could happen, the barrista says " We had quite a run tonight and we didnt stock enough I guess..."
11:25 - Order delivered. All tables inside taken, All tables outside taken. We hover around a promising table.

11:45. Table freed up at the exact moment the latte is finished.

Safeway -
12:00 - 2 registers open, 6 people in each line, they both extend beyond the endcaps.
12:10 - Soft Drink row blocked by shopper on a cell phone asking his wife "what should I buy" over the phone. I give him "the look". I begin to wonder if anyone can function without those damn things stuck to their heads.
12:15 - In line.
12:20 - Another shopper is on a cell phone asking someone on the other end what kind of cigarettes they want him to buy. A game ensues where the cashier has to go to the cigarette area and call out the brands while our "remote autonomous shopping unit" attempts to find the required brands for our mystery guest.
12:30 - Home.

Hit it Buck Owens!

Gloom Dispair and Agony on Me, Deep Dark Depression, excessive misery
If it werent for bad luck I'd have no luck at all
Gloom Dispair and Agony on Me!!!!!!

Look folks, I know that sometimes people have bad times, I know its not all "sunshine and light" out there, but I also know its not the worst.economy.ever. I lived through the Carter Administration!20% Mortgage interest rates, 9% unemployed, no gas to be had at any price and the worlds biggest pacifist pessimist in the White House. Let's try to put things in perspective, shall we?

And before I get more hate mail, I know I'm breaking the "Commentariat Diktat" by reporting good news while the fascist Bush is in office, but I must. Repeat after me wage slaves!, Business is good,life is great,things are looking up. Don't be afraid to ditch pessimism to be positive. Stop looking at all the things that can go wrong and try to find something that has gone right. We are at War, oil is at 55 dollars a barrel, we should look like the picture at the top of the post. We dont. We are not even close, so stop acting like it.

UPDATE I: Washington State Reports its unemployment rate is falling rapidly. The horror, The horror

UPDATE II: Dell Announces its building a factory in Texas. Curse You foul temptress of positive thinking and Be Gone!

UPDATE III: Lucent announces first profit since 2000. (fingers in ears chanting "la-la-la-la not listening")

UPDATE IV: IT Hiring up. Must-not-listen-to-this-must-fight-it

Posted @ October 16, 2004 12:13 AM | Current Events | Comments (7)

Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions

Today's Co-worker Lunchtime Debate Exercise -

No Weapons of Mass Distruction:
- In the wrong hands, a boxcutter is a WMD. You can spend a millenium chasing weapons or you can end the culture of death that makes something as simple as a boxcutter into weapon that killed thousands of civilians. You can decide for yourself which is going to be more effective.

Iraq was a sovereign country, we had no right to invade:
- It was a combination insane asylum and concentration camp. We had a duty to invade.

I dont want to be at war:
- Then you must be ready to surrender. Its ok with you if I'm not, right?

Bush is stupid:
- Funny how he keeps winning...

Cheney - Halliburton:
- I like Halliburton. They make good products, they hire lots of Americans, their closest competitor is French. I'm in favor of favoritism of an American Halliburton over a French Schlumberger. I also like corporations in general as they help me pay my mortgage.

The rest of the world doesnt like us anymore:
- Oh I know!, thats why everyone, everywhere is trying to come here.

I Just think Bush "rushed us into war":
- Youre right, he should have waited till there were more civilian corpses on the streets of New York.

The tax cuts are unfair:
- Then give yours back!

Iraq is just like Vietnam:
Yeah, I remember when our troops invaded North Vietnam and captured Ho Chi Mihn and put him on trial for war crimes, and then turned sovereignty over the the Vietnamese in less than a year. Youre right, the parallels are striking.

Didnt you see Farenheit 9/11?:
Yes I did, and now I can say I know what it feels like to be the only black man at a klan meeting.

Theres going to be a draft, you just wait and see:
- When did the draft become a death sentence?

Kerry is a really smart man:
- If Someone asked me about my wife and I then started talking about my mother, I dont think anyone would say I was smart.

Posted @ October 15, 2004 01:19 PM | Current Events | Comments (4)

Milestone: 100 Posts

Before I started my own blog I used to steal a lot of bandwith by leaving comments at Vodkapundit and posting snarky pieces at Rantburg. After several attempts, Stephen Green at Vodkapundit finally convinced me that I should get my own blog, and I started slowly with a typepad account, thinking that theres no way I would ever be able to write enough to keep one going, and that no one would likely ever read it but myself.

It turns out I was wrong. Very wrong. 90 days after starting Varifrank, I've now posted my 100th Post. Most of my posts are items that I write, I rarely do posts that are links to other sites, unless its part of something I've written. I used to think it was important to publish my traffic figures, but I decided that it was only important if I was going to make this a commercial concern. I'm probably not going to do that, as it would change everything about what I'm doing and why I do it. I write the blog for a one person audience, not for the commercial masses. If you like it,good,if you dont thats fine too. I write the blog simply as an effort to teach myself the discipline and craft of writing. I'm not writing to spread a philosophy or any political idea, I just write what I see before me.

I do have a confession to make, I have suffered under several learning disabilities in my life and have never made a very good writer, I struggle daily with the English language. I have a good academic history mostly in the sciences, but I never once received more than a d+ in any English class I ever had. My lack of skill has held me back in serveral moments in my life. Varifrank serves for me what group therapy serves as for people who are afraid of flying, I simply have too much to say to keep letting my lack of skills get the better of me. I must overcome my little problem, and this is the best way for me to do it. You can't learn how to swim and not want to get wet and you can't learn how to write by talking about it. You gotta do it...

To date, The most popular posts (by traffic) have been:

Summary Analysis of Kerrys "The New War"
I Review John Kerrys Tome on how he would fight the war on terror, without anyone getting hurt.(here's a hint- Lawyers,lots and lots of lawyers, no guns, and your money, and by the way, its all your fault). I felt like sticking knitting needles in my eyes afterwards.

Japan "Surrenders" : Candidate Asks "Where is the plan for Peace?
I was a little tired of hearing "Going to war without a plan to win the peace".

Do We Deserve To Win?
I had a reader say that "we dont deserve to win after what we did at to the prisoners at abu giraib. I -ahem- disagreed.

The Way You Look Tonight
Cosmic intervention conspires to tie a picture, a piece of tourist kitch and 5,000 deaths into one long story.

A Little Trip In Mr. Peabody's "Wayback" Machine
Resolved: If Einstein can be wrong about WMD's, Why cant we?"

Farewell John Kerry!
Ok, I snapped. I just lost it one day. I still get hate mail on this post.

My Friend Masooma
I thought when the day came where Afghani women began voting was a good thing. Apparently only my timing was wrong. The day came when the "Evil Bush" was President. According to many people I was supposed to be quiet. I wasnt.

Iraq: It's Not For Us.
I make the case for why we are, and are not, in Iraq.

I want to thank each of you for visiting and for commenting and the trackbacks. I get as much out of reading your comments and your review of what I've written as I do out of writing it.

I hope I can keep you entertained and occasionally informed, and I hope you keep me honest.

UPDATE: No sooner do I post this, and what do you know I get a piece of hate mail over the Kerry post.

To: Varifrank
From "Bob"
Re:John Kerry Article

The only looser I see is you!!

"looser"? You can't make this stuff up kids....

Posted @ October 14, 2004 11:16 AM | Current Events | Comments (9)

A New Low

Without a doubt, this is the most unbelievable thing I have read in this election season:

- While Americans who go abroad to kill people vote Republican, Americans who go abroad to do just about anything else vote Democratic.

Elisabeth Eaves - Slate Magazine

Maybe she meant it as an endorsement?

Posted @ October 11, 2004 09:40 AM | Current Events | Comments (3)

Signal To Noise

There are state polls, push polls, and pundit opinion and downright speculation. Yet with all that, I have one sure way to tell how things are going. Hate mail and abusive comments.

The better President Bush is doing the more hate mail I receive.

By that metric, President Bush seems to be doing very well indeed. During the last week, I have had to ban more people than I have in the last three months combined.

Now, it begs the question, why?

I have a website. Big Deal... Having a website is hardly unique. I have an opinion, again, hardly unique. I have a masthead that says " Liberty, Freedom, Victory", apparently that bothers some people to the point of distraction. The masthead I used before this one said: "Forget it Jake, It's Chinatown". That didnt seem to bother anyone, and I didnt get people writing snarky comments to me over it. Apparently believing in the betterment of mankind is such a bad enough thing to some people as to require a rebuke in writing, but the use of obscure movie references can be left without comment.

Yesterday, I wrote a post about how the Afghani elections affected me personally. Silly me, I thought it was good news. I thought it was really good news. Anytime people in any country vote its good news but anytime anyone in an islamic country votes, thats really good news. Whenever women in an islamic country vote, well to me thats just stunningly good news.

But I forgot the 'Diktat of the Commentariat':

Moscow is listening Comrade, be careful what you say, There shall be no good news reported until the fascist Bush is defeated!

What I'm bothered by goes beyond the unexplainable phenomenon of people who take the time to write hate mail and abusive comments in an electronic age, where headers can be stripped and IP addresses can be traced to both the originating ISP and to the physical address in which the threat originated, thus revealing the offender to the authorities in a way that surface mail could never do.

I Know who you are, and I know where you live, so if you want to send threats let's at least think about doing it in a media that doesnt let you trace every single step in transmission, shall we? And try to remember, sending threats of bodily harm via email is a class C felony in most states...

In the last two weeks, I've noticed a clear campaign to suppress the voices of those of us who believe in democracy and freedom. Attacks on websites, attacks on political campaign HQs, attacks on people and property, the harrassment of people at their place of work for nothing more than the expression of political thought.

Early last week, Tom Brokaw said there were people leading a Jihad against Dan Rather. A Jihad? Really sir? Regular citizens fact checking a "Journalists" work is a "jihad" when it is clear by even a casual observer that he may have abused his position as a journalist in what appears to be a ham-handed attempt to further his political views?

A Jihad? Was the choice of that word an accident, a slip of the tongue? I find it odd that the same people who decry Americans who dont take an interest in politics are the first ones who cry "Jihad" when they do.

Words like "Freedom, Liberty, Victory" should not be viewed as invectives, they are the birthright of all mankind, but to the Democrats of today, it is the equivalent of saying "Arbeit Macht Frei".

"How dare you say Victory, we cant possibly win, we dont deserve to win after what we did in Abu Giraib..." - I got that in an email earlier this week. I always wondered if the person who wrote that to me ever bothered to write an email to Saddam saying he didnt deserve to be a sovereign nation since he gassed his own people and killed over a million of his own troops and countless civilians in a war against Iran.

Compare and Contrast:

A Guy with website and opinion - Rally with fury and anger against the use of the world "Victory".

Or

A "Stalin worshiping" thug in charge of a criminal tribe that murders millions - Shhh, Say nothing, He's the leader of a "sovereign nation"...

We are all entitled to our beliefs, we are all entitiled to live in peace, but there are those who are working overtime to ensure that the voices they dont agree with are suppressed. Voting in Afghanistan should not have become perceived as a Republican issue, but it is for no other reason than Democrats seem only to want to see the bad side of it.

No matter how you spin it, now matter how you keep looking for the dark cloud to contain that silver lining, People voting is good news, no matter who is in office or who wins or loses. An election is just one more election, not the last election. If you lose this one you will get another shot at it next time. If those of you on the left dont like the fact that people dont vote for your side, dont take it personally, just do a better job of selling your argument. However, you might try to get a workable and defensible position before you start. The only reason you've decided to go into the realm of thuggery and street theatre is because you run out of ideas to run on. People with a winning platform dont have to suppress the voice of the oppostion, but losers do.

Lefties, you're losing and you know it, or you wouldnt be here.

UPDATE: Apparently, It gets worse.

Posted @ October 10, 2004 10:24 AM | Current Events | Comments (14)

My Friend Masooma.

I didn't watch the "debate" tonight. I heard part of it, while I was taking my daughter to dinner. From what I heard, Bush sounded fine. Kerry sounded lost. I'm Biased, and I don't care, I'm voting for Bush. We got back home right as it ended, and I caught both candidates leaving. Well, they tried to leave.

I noticed that the crowd gathered around Bush was quite large and very happy. While the Kerry crowd was, both young and looked quite concerned. That told me everything I needed to know about what happened.

At one commercial break I heard the most amazing news. Voting was underway in Afghanistan. The first vote cast was by a 19 year old woman, who was in Pakistan.

I'm here to tell you, I became very emotional when I heard that news.

Three years ago, the world expected that we would be in a military quagmire in Afghanistan, today Women are voting. Three years ago, if an afghani woman was found just talking to men, they would be beheaded publicly in the soccer stadium. Today, they are standing in line and voting. Today, they are enfranchised for the first time in their history. Today, women in Afghanistan are not property, they are citizens of a democracy.

Tonight, America has a new ally in the war against terror. It is the free people of Afghanistan. We took a risk, we bet on the people of Afghanistan and I think it was a good bet. I dont know for sure, but I'm willing to bet the Afghanis think it was a good bet.

Tonight, in one place in the world where there was no hope, there is now hope. This is how we will win the Jihadi War, one country at a time.

Everytime I look at my daughter, I know what the stakes are in the Jihadi War. When I stand in line to vote in November, I will be standing with the women of Afghanistan.

To my friend Masooma, This ones for you, babe.

UPDATE I: Way back in the past, I used to live in Fremont California, Just a block from a little one screen theater, we called the "Already Been Chewed" Theater ( It's official name was the ABC Theatre) From the boys at Powerline, I catch a glimpse of the old place.

It's like the kids used to say: " The Whole World Is Watching!!"

UPDATE II: Just overheard in line at Costco - Anonymous group of Sweater and shorts wearing "College Kids" in the next line, one jumps up on her cart and and chants "Hey,Hey, J-F-K!, Who Many Kids Did You Free Today?" The crowd goes wild... One couple in line behind me, the wife wearing the long sari dress that is the custom of Hindi women says to her husband:

"you know, its true what she said".
He says, "Yes, It is truly a great day...I was wondering if anyone would take notice!".

Well I dont know about anyone else, but I did.

UPDATE III: How do I know for sure that the vote was legitimate? Jimmy Carter was nowhere near it.

Posted @ October 08, 2004 09:27 PM | Current Events | Comments (18)