Democrats Fight On

This is a spoof off Scrappleface.com, but gives a good indicator of where bias in the media is at. The MAIN STREAM media, actual Democrat Senators and Congressmen have made statements like:

"It is all about Oil, Bush is in Iraq only for oil" - even the most out of touch idiot with a brain could realize that lifting the sanctions on Saddam would have netted far more oil than going to war.

"The Iraq war was cooked up in TX to get Republicans in power" - Going to war is a bad way to get votes, ask Lyndon Johnson, and look at the current polls. The Iraq war is a DRAG on polls, not an add.

"We support the troops, just not this unjust war" - Witness Haditha, tons of folks in the MSM and the left are very anxious to convict Marines with no evidence beyond hearsay. It is hard for them to ever accept guilt for a murderer in the US no matter what the evidence. Half the time a confession won't even cut it.

The sadness was palpable on MPR as the news came out this past week. It was quickly pointed out that "it didn't make any difference" of course, and "it may be worse" since he may be seen as a martyr (they hope, they hope), and of course he had been "demonized by the Bush administration". al-Zarqawi has always been tough for the MSM and Democrats, because one of their favorite stories was that "many Americans had been misled that "Iraq and al-Quaeda had connections", and then occasionally had to report that al-Zarqawi fled their from Afghanistan in 2002. They also occasionally liked to chide the Bush administration for "not even being able to capture or kill al-Zarqawi".

For the "consistency isn't an issue" crowd, none of this makes much difference. They can forget about this news as fast as good economic news, lower casualty number and elections in Iraq, and anything else that might look like "good news". The Democrats aren't in power, so it all sucks.

If the right to center right press was putting out a story that claimed all this to be true, then we would be pretty close to a "balanced press that was equally as idiotic as the current MSM and left-wing press". If we could ever get tot he point where we talked about actual facts from at least two points of view and potential alternatives rather than poll numbers and name calling, then we would have a press that could let more people make informed decisions and have a national discussion.

The "fighting on in the war on the ware on terror" is pretty darned close to being actual truth, and they certainly had a lot more respect for this particular head-chopper than they do for any old US Marine or member of the Bush administration.

Innocent Unless Proven Military

It is sad to listen to the left fulminate and hope against hope that Haditha becomes synonymous with My Lai and brings American troops home in disgrace. The current left likes to claim "support for the military", but they look at their actions with a lot different view than their usual criminal constituency. Any brand of child molester, murderer, drug addict, or any criminal not "white collar" must receive the full protection of law, numerous trials and re-trials in order to be even nominally be called "guilty". Even then, the real "guilt" is usually due to injustice, poor childhood, societies corrupt values, or other mitigating factors.

Marines faced with daily combat in situations where their buddies are blown in half receive no such consideration. They are declared guilty instantly, and in the most sensational terms possible.

Molly Ivins declares;

So, Haditha becomes another of the names at which we wince, along with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and My Lai. Tell you what: Let's not use the "stress of combat" excuse this time. According to neighbors, the girls in the family of Younis Khafif -- the one who kept pleading in English: "I am a friend. I am good" -- were 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1. What are they going to say? "Under stress of combat, we thought the baby was 2"?

Molly knows all about "stress of combat", her bravery is pretty much confined to writing, and it is pretty easy to see the joy in her column as she thinly raises the classic liberal epithet for the military "baby killers". She isn't alone, the left gets very excited about every chance to discredit America, and the military is a part of America that they especially love to soil. No use of letting something like "due process" get in the way of that as there would be with a cop killer. No, with Marines, a "patriot" like Molly can rush directly to judgment and point out her expertise and understanding of the stress of combat instantly, and the MSM stands back and applauds.

What happened at Haditha? I'm sure we will know pretty well at some point, and if it was wrong, there will be penalties. What penalties will there be for Molly? Sometimes "free speech" is worth just as much as free advice.

Rousseau:Restless Genius

Finished this biography of Roesseau by Leo Damrosch. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (JJR) is considered by many to be one of the key fathers of modern liberalism, and many of the key tenants of liberalism shine through. The one stated by JJR many ways and in many forms is "men are wicked, but man is good". One of the prime acts for the liberal is to locate the source of good within the individual, so at the core, the self is "good, true, perfect", no matter what the outward behavior or result might be. JJR has no formal education, lives a life of no great virtue as understood by any philosophical system, yet simply declares his life to be virtuous because it is "authentic", "true to himself", with the self as the ultimate judgment of goodness.

At the start of "The Confessions", JRR opens with this statement that any Christian will recognize for the sad empty wish that it is:

" Let the trumpet of the Last judgment sound when it likes; I will present myself with this book in hand before the sovereign judge ... Eternal Being, assemble around me the numberless throng of my semblables; let them hear my confessions, let them groan at my disgraceful actions, let them blush at my wretchedness, but let each of them reveal his heart with the same sincerity at the foot of your throne, and let a single one say, if he dares, "I was better than that man."

Sadly, JRR worshiped in and took communion at various times in both Catholic and very conservative Calvinist Protestants Churches, yet somehow missed the core of Christianity that any works of man, confession, or otherwise, are of no use in the covering of sin. One can hear the sound of liberalism though, nobody is any "better" than anyone else, BUT, MY works point out that I'm really the best. Certainly nobody is any better.

The first JJR work that was widely noted then, and is still well known is "Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men". His breakthrough thought is that primitive man with "no socialization" (whatever that means) is "good", and there would be no evil or "inequality", which to JJR and the liberals who follow is basically the ultimate evil. This is one of these points at which a conservative thinker must return for nearly childlike thought patterns to gain anything but laughter for what a significant number of people find to be nearly holy writ. Conservatism is grounded in reality, and believes that there is such a thing as objective truth, and it is the same for all. All may not find it, or be able to comprehend it even when faced with it, but it exists.

For the liberal thinker, such is not that case. What is a "human" without "society"? What is a bee with no other bees? Well, nothing of course, they don't exist. They don't exist because man is a social creature just as bees are social. In order to function, we come together in groups. Reality is never going to get in the way of liberal thought however, so JJR decides that "solitary man" is "good" (as defined by each solitary man), and "men", groupings right down to the family are "bad" ... because they breed "envy", "inequality", the potential and the reality of "evil".

Unsurprisingly, JJR was uncomfortable in social settings, had a urinary tract problem that caused him to need to relieve himself extremely frequently, and was plagued with depression, psychosomatic illness, and was unstable to the point that he bordered on being paranoid. He never married, but had a couple very long term affairs. He had 4 or 5 illegitimate children which he consigned to the orphanage, a death sentence in his day, yet he is considered a foundational thinker for liberal education,  especially "Emile". He never really held a steady job, didn't believe in income inequality or aristocracy, yet regularly availed himself of living arrangements and sustenance from the elite of the day. Liberals have never believed that consistency was of any interest, and JJR fits that very well.

Part of his "genius" was "emotion over reason", and "the personal confession and childhood events as key to psychological understanding". If the self is God, and the ultimate good, we can see where "understanding the self" is of primary importance and interest. "It is all about you". JJR is one of the founders of "be true to yourself", and the search to find out where "events", or "family", or "society" have damaged this believed innate goodness and happiness of the almighty individual. The task for the liberal life is to discover your own unique good and perfect inner plan, and live according to your own personal dictates. If you ever do wrong, it is the fault of your family, society, organized religion, corrupt politics, or inequality, anything but yourself. JJR was one of the original "victims". He was never treated fairly, and was constantly pursued and hounded by governments and enemies.

In truth, he did manage to ruffle enough feathers to have enemies, and some sanctions against him, but he also received enormous patronage and kindness, often from the very same aristocracy and governments that he maligned. I never fully realized his fame in Europe, a fairly major street named after him in Paris, and a number of historic sites. He was one of the key figures looked up to and admired by many of those that instigated the French revolution, and was read by many of the American founders as well.

The book has a lot more detail on his life than I would likely care to know, and in many ways I would have been better served by going directly to his writings than this biography, however the insight into "what kind of person often becomes a liberal" is also worthy. For whatever reasons, they choose to believe that their lives are not their own, and they are "victims". They see the "specialness of their feelings", and assume that their feelings and their thinking is of special use and merit over that of others, and believe it to be "good" by their own standards, rather than any outside standard. It becomes easy to see why conversation between liberals and conservatives can be quite difficult.

DaVinci Code

We went to church this AM, and the DaVinci code this evening. I had read the book, and this was one of those cases were the book was definitely better. I like Tom Hanks, I think Ron Howard is generally a pretty good director. I'm not a film criitic, I can't say I can really put my finger on what the problem is with movie. My raw guess is that in order to make it as a film the sexual tension and developing relationship between Langdon and Sophie had to be there and be bought into, and that just never happened. There was also the problem of just attempting to follow the book too closely .. they needed to skip something and develop the characters more, but given the intricate way the code fit together, they likely didn't have any time. 

It also may just be one of those stories that knowing how it came out in the end just spoiled it too badly to hold interest for the length of the movie. There is one gigantic point of comedy here. Earlier this year we had riots worldwide due to a couple of tired old cartoons in a Danish magazine. The liberal press wrung their hands about how "they respect Muslims" ... indeed they do respect the violence and threats of violence used by the Muslims. 

Of course, they have no problem reporting on a movie that claims that Christ was "just a man", there is no power in the blood of Christ, and he never rose from the dead. While the movie points to the Catholic church, and Opus Dei as sinister and violent, the lack of bloodletting or even any threats thereof show pretty clearly that Christianity is far different from Islam. Is it possible for people to be so blind that they can't see the difference in MSM treatment of DaVinci Code vs the cartoons? I suppose the blind will always find a way to remain blind.

The movie is fiction, and obviously fiction. Were any of the secret organizations depicted nearly as powerful as Brown makes them out to be, he would be long dead. The Christian faith has little problem in standing up to challenges like Brown's, and has no need to "duck and cover" by prohibiting believers from seeing it, or threatening violence against those that created it. Star Trek isn't real either (although I know some folks this is a shock to) ... but it is still entertaining. 

If things had to be true to be entertaining, there would be no reason to listen to NPR!

Shooting the Gift Horse

After years of work by Democrats and the Press to create a "culture of corruption" charge against Republicans, the FBI finds that New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson has $90K in freezer, no readily available lie, and on tape taking $100K from an informant. Little things like that would tend to weaken the idea that corruption is somehow a "Republican problem" in an unbiased nation.

It is an election year, the guy is guilty as sin, other than the fact that a good deal of work is required to get the media to do any reporting on a dirty Democrat, it looks like political Christmas in May. So how do the Speaker Hastert and the House Republicans handle it? Well, they complain about the FBI getting into a Congressional office of course, and turn it into another "administration over-step", likely to have a "chilling effect" on the "separation of powers". What are they thinking? Nothing intelligent obviously.

Unless they are just out to lunch, and that should not be discounted in this case, I'm thinking the idiots think something along these lines; "Duh, Bush is unpopular, we want to be popular, we better distance ourselves from Bush". Makes one wonder how the country can operate if that is what counts for thinking at that level. The country is a 50/50 country, Bush is at 32 because he has alienated 18% of HIS base, and likely more than that. He alienated them by "governing as a center-right moderate" which he is, and always has been. That seems pretty obvious, for those that are not sheep of the MSM or the 20%+ from the right that are ticked at Bush, but apparently not.

prescription drugs, Harriett Miers, UAE Ports deal, small tax cuts, immigration and even the general level of military response to 9-11 have all been "center right" (at best, some are middle to center left). Since the media and the Democrats in this country are bordering on far left, but naturally call themselves "moderate", the skew gets confusing to folks that pay probably the rational level of attention to current events and politics. I pay an irrational level of attention because I seem to like to waster time. If the MSM analysis of where they are is correct, then there is nobody to the right of Bush, and TONS of folks to the left of NYT, NPR, and the Democrats. There are PLENTY of people to the right of Bush on all the issues that I mentioned before (Like 20% of the country), but it is very hard to find folks to the left of even elected Democrats, let alone MSM moonbats.

Clinton was able to "triangulate" and "run to the right", since there was a "D" next to his name. The MSM, as well as all but the farthest right Republicans were more than willing to give him credit for NAFTA, welfare reform, and his anemic little military adventures in the face of the mounting terrorist threat of the '90s. There are at least two severe problems when a Republican attempts to be "moderate". First of all, the MSM will give them no credit at all ... it will be labeled as "pandering", "weak and ineffectual", "wrong", "complex", "not a real program", or some other term that means that even though potentially vast amounts of dollars and political capital have been squandered (as in prescription drug benefits), the amount of political benefit to the Republican is essentially zero.

The 2nd problem is that Republicans have principals, and believe that consistency IS an issue. If Democrats believed the same they would have turned on Clinton in droves as a result of NAFTA, Welfare Reform, Somalia or Kosovao. Where Clinton was able to keep his base and the media reasonably happy even though he was mining votes on the center right, nobody in the center or left of center is moving to Bush because of his moderate policies, and 18-20% of his base on the right has abandoned him since they see him as abandoning them first.

The media keeps up working hard to defeat Republicans, Bush has had some severe missteps for sure ... Meirs, Ports Deal but he hasn't left any stains on any dresses that I know of. Now the Republican congress seems intent to be as stupid as possible, the only remaining bright spot is that Republicans STILL get to run against Democrats in the fall. The benefit of that can't be overstated. Americans are still goint to have to look at the other side before they punch the buttons for Democrats all over the country. Everyone was "sure" in '02, and '04, that Republicans were going to go down in those elections are well. The congress seems to be doing all it can do to help, but it is still a long way until election day.

Mille Lacs Good Old Days

I grew up with a nearly constant discussion of "the good old days". I suspect a lot of that has to do with being on a small farm, where it would have been clear to anyone of an objective bent that the best days of small dairy farms were well over. It didn't just pertain to farming though, there were a lot of discussions on how great fishing "used to be", and most everything else in life. I got sick of "the best days being behind" with Jimmy Carter, and have never gone back to that way of thinking.

I spent Thursday-Sunday last week up at lake Mille Lacs having a great time fishing and catching walleyes. Fishing on Mille Lacs was the best in 2003 that it had been in any time in the last 100 years or so, and I got to enjoy some of that. It wasn't quite that good this past weekend, but with numbers of walleye over 20" and 4 over 25" for our group, it was a long way from bad. In fact, it was pretty much in there with the stories that I grew up with about the "good old days" of fishing.

The modern world is all about change. What is very odd is that liberalism is generally all about change too, but it is change only in "removal of restriction without effort", which has generally come to mean only social change. Technological and economic change generally required effort, and that is something that liberals tend to be against, certainly as a "requirement". The modern "Reagan Conservative" movement is a far cry from the old meaning of conservative as "someone that wants to keep everything the same". The modern conservatives have embraced technology and practical changes in economics as well as fishing, and as a result, these are the good old days, and they generally keep getting better all the time for those willing to embrace change.

The fishing is an easy example. Mille Lacs is a big lake, and the kinds of waves that make the catching good would push almost all pre-70's private boats off the lake. No longer true with an 18+ foot deep aluminum boat with enough power, electronics, and pumps, the conditions can be dealt with safely. Add in modern light lines, sneaky and effective tackle techniques, plus the management of catch and release, and more and bigger walleyes can be caught than "in grand-dads time".

Much the same is true for life in general. Master the computer, internet, cell phones, globalization, "just in time" inventories, branding, franchises, or a host of other technology and process innovations, and you are taking part of the upper part of a US growth rate that continues to hum along at 4%, better than the '90s, when the media liked to talk about "a strong economy". Ignore advancement and try to operate like it was 1950 or 1960, and the talk quickly shifts to pining away for the "good old days".

No doubt part of it is age. With my 50th birthday approaching this year and having had much more in the way of health problems in the last decade than those decades prior, it is easy to understand how pessimism and looking back can creep in and cause "death before death". Politically, the left which includes the media see loss of the political power that is their only religion as having so much pain that only pessimism is possible.

For those that want to stay alive though, a reasonable recognition of the need for "attitude adjustment" with age, a staunch avoidance of belief in the MSM, and a hearty embrace of change will go a long way to keep the good new days getting better all the time.

Iowa

Spent most of the weekend going to a graduation in a small farming community in IA, that included a service at the "Apostolic Christian Church" that my wife grew up being associated with. Link to Their Web Page if you are curious. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the specific doctrines, but the men and women sit on separate sides of the church, men members greet men members, and women members greet women members with a "Holy Kiss". Women wear head coverings, and male members can't wear any facial hair, which pretty much excludes any 1st century Galilean fisherman from taking part.

I happen to be reading a biography of Rousseau, which I'll no doubt comment more on later, but some of the aspects of our world that we take so much for granted were simply impossible in the say the 1700s. The family mix that showed up for the graduation was all MN and greater IA, but transportation would certainly allow more. Something around 200 people attended the party out in a big machine shed on the IA flatlands. A good number of them were farmers, which means it was a rare national group, since < 2% of the current US population is in farming. In the 1700s, you generally either stayed in the village you were born in, or within a day or two walk of same. Often you followed the trade of your family. "Class" was a major issue, and the idea of "class mobility" was quite foreign.

Today we travel for 100's of miles with very little thought. Differences in education and income are certainly present in a gathering like a graduation, but "class" is not, and the differences in income and education are quite muted. The modern proclivity for informal dress (one that I approve of and enjoy very much) makes that aspect of personal style virtually melt away. One could potentially make some guesses based on the vehicles, but in general, even that is often significantly off with the higher income/education people being less "consumer market controlled" and driving vehicles that would supposedly indicate less "status". In fact, as you meet and greet people, the whole concept of relative "status", or "class" is close to impossible to determine, and the desire to do so is conspicuously missing.

Democrats would like to change this. They would love to be able to ignite class warefare between "the rich" and "the poor", as well as between those who have religious faith, and those who do not. They have definitional problems ... they don't really want to name the dividing line between the parties that are supposed to war on income, and they don't really know how to name the exact boundary between the "religious" and the "non-religious" either, but they keep trying.

Their response to the tax bills of this past week make that very clear on the monetary class warfare front. I'm sure this year will see them working hard to get some anger going between "rich and poor", and between "the religious right", and everyone else. The MSM has been having a good run since Katrina, maybe they can successfully get some warfare going this time. At least out in IA though, there doesn't seem to be much concern about politics at this point, so potentially they will fail yet again.

Confirmation

Our youngest Son was confirmed this past weekend. Having been raised a Baptist, and having a wife raised in a church with somewhat Baptist-like beliefs, the path of infant baptism - confirmation - communion is very special to me.

I recall my religious youth as one long altar call. The issue was about YOUR commitment to Christ. YOU needed to make a "personal commitment", and once that was done, you would be "saved forever". The only fly in the ointment was that the commitment had to be "true", and there was the rub. If YOU managed to be genuine enough, then "old desires would pass away and all things would become new". That was the way it was supposed to be, and in public, especially in church, it even looked that way pretty much. But it really wasn't. Some were closet smokers, some were closet drinkers, "the love" wasn't quite what was portrayed on Sunday, so it seemed like nobody really "made the big conversion". The old joke is that Baptists sin just as much as Lutherans, they are just a whole lot better at keeping it secret seemed very true. If you are going fishing and want to take a Baptist, take two or NONE! Otherwise he will drink all your beer!

The other interesting item about Baptists was that they knew they were the only ones that got it right. That is unfair, because most of the "adult baptism types" are pretty convinced that each sect will be the only ones in heaven. The rest of us will need to be quiet, because no doubt they would have to tell God he messed up if they were to see a Lutheran or for certain a Catholic on the golden streets. Really only fair you see -- they hid their sin on earth, so the rest of us will have to hide our presence in Heaven so they can be joyful!

Yes, they believe Jesus died on the cross, and then maybe a few folks got it right for 100 years or so, but then "the harlot", the Catholic Church, took over and dispensed nothing but tickets to Hell up until some folks got it all right on the 2nd or 3rd attempt after Luther. Luther apparently paved the way, but still missed the mark because of infant baptism, communion being a real sacrament rather than just a symbol, and thinking that there was a purpose for church beyond a place where one went to hear perpetual altar calls.

Mostly they don't talk about the period from say "AD 100" up to "reformation+30+" when the "Anabaptists" or "re-baptizers" (Calvin) show up. It is generally a pretty uncomfortable topic. A few will somehow claim that there were some "real Christians" that somehow survived for 1300 years or so hiding and passing down "the true faith" from generation to generation until the evil (but obviously much more courageous than "the real Christians" hiding out and letting millions worship false doctrine) Luther somehow shook things up.

It is somewhat unclear how these holy spirit filled holders of the truth managed to be completely unseen for over a millennium, yet another plain old "world church" guy named Luther was able to upset the whole apple cart of Catholicism, yet still miss the boat. He did open the door so the hidden "truth" could finally come out  from their POV I guess, although there were not many kind words for Luther (nor Lutherans) in the church I grew up in.

The evangelical and "fundamentalist" movement has found a real home in modern America. Not really surprising, it is pretty much "do it yourself salvation" -- "if you want to do it right, you have to do it yourself, and since it is done right, it is done forever" (once saved, always saved). I love independence as much as the next guy, it is just that all those competitive do it yourselfers tend to set the bar a bit high for that "moment of true conversion".

"All things being changed"  for me, doesn't mean that all the wrong desires are gone, they are just "new", as in given an ongoing willingness to continue to accept grace and to stay in communion with the church. The power of the sin is "gone", like the power of death, ONLY in the CONSTANT light of the church and sacrament. There is still sin, just like there is still a grave -- the change is SPIRITUAL, and with a lot of allowing ourselves to be dimmer so Christ can be brighter, that spiritual change is "made manifest".  "Salvation" is a process AND an event, but the event is all God, the process is you being continually willing to let God do his work in you via the Holy Spirit.

Lutherans are into God's commitments as being of greater import than their commitments. They accept the weakness of their ability to commit, but also the strength of God's ability to commit. I was a really bad Baptist -- never "changed enough". The more they would preach about the "new life",  the more I realized if I was honest, I was never more than one short skirt from following Jimmy Carter to "lust in my heart" -- and fully realizing that alone was enough to mean that I was not "really changed", so therefore, if I was honest with myself, not "really saved". There were LOTS of short skirts in the early '70s!

It was being around Lutherans and Lutheran families that taught me that there were folks that were genuine ... Maybe not claiming as much "perfection" as in 'don't drink, don't smoke, don't lust, don't cuss, don't go to movies etc" Baptist, but at another level, very solid on the DO side of a working actual faith that was "in the world, but not of the world". They stood out from what showed through them on the "DO" side vs trying to stand out from the "don't" side. Somehow the "don'ts" always seem to degenerate into a war over who is "failing to don't" just one or two last things that eventually become key -- and then that church breaks up over women wearing slacks, somebody having TV, or maybe somebody's kid going to a dance.

It was as if the commandment had been "You will know them by their DON'TS!

I love a lot of evangelical fundamentalists. I don't like to spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to go through life without connection to the true body and blood, given unto you for forgiveness of sins. It isn't really my opinion that counts, I've accepted that my commitment to Christ isn't good enough to get me to heaven -- it's much more about HIS commitment! (Praise be to God!)

A Baptist has faith that ONCE, their  "personal commitment to repent" was completely genuine, and that is that.. They have no sacraments, need no baptism (just a symbol), and need no communion (another symbol). Both baptism and communion are just optional "good things". Their commitment to give their lives to Christ "got it done" as long as it was genuine, and they aren't likely to be talked out of that by a poor admittedly sinful Lutheran.

Nor "should" they be -- giving up my right to judge is one of the difficult cornerstones of my Lutheran faith. There is no doubt people are wired amazingly different. As a Packer fan, it seems completely unnatural that someone could cheer for the Vikings, and yet, here in MN I see it every fall and those people are accepted as completely sane (I remain unconvinced).  I've often been told that "I think too much" -- and that may well be right. Maybe a Baptists really are changed more than I and have found the true way. These things have been discussed for at least 500 years (since Luther),  they will no doubt be discussed for as long as Christ tarries.

Most of all though, I'm thankful. Thankful that our boys have gotten a wonderful start in the faith that makes me a bit envious and wistful. I pray that is how their lives may always be, in faith, in love, in career, in every way!

Kennedy vs Limbaugh

Those that believe that the MSM is into the "equal treatment" concept could look at a small juxtaposition of events in the past week. On April 28, CBS news was running the following headline about Rush Limbaugh's battles with addiction to perscription pain medication. The MSM has been wallowing in enjoyment over the charges against

Rush since 2003. This "arrest" was a political stunt by a well known Democrat prosecutor in Palm Beach county to be able to get another set of headlines and a mug shot. The case is over, he completes the treatment that he voluntarily started and there is nothing left here.

A week later, Representative Patrick Kennedy, driving with no lights on, crashes into a concrete barrier near the Capitol, "late for a vote". The police fail to take a breathalizer. In their defense, one could argue that is a reasonable decision and simply efficient. One doesn't need a breathalizer to know that a Kennedy is drunk.

Now it appears that Kennedy is going to seek treatment from perscription drug addiction. The incident is already off the CNN headline this AM, and something tells me that we won't be hearing about it for two years. In fact, shockingly, I would make a strong guess that there will be ZERO attempt to try to find out "how he got the pills", or any mug shots taken at all. Even if there were, it would be buried in the back pages of the MSM. The reason is pretty obvious ... he has a "D" next to his name, and of course in his name, the ultimate in lefty royalty, he is a Kennedy. I'd argue that is "just fine" ... the treatment of Kennedy, Favre and countless others with pain med additions in the media is generally correct. If they are famous, it is reported (especially if something like a car accident is associated with it), and then they are allowed to quietly seek treatment. Of course, Rush was not treated that way, nor would I expect a congressman with an "R" to be so treated by the MSM.

Virtually every one of the Limbaugh articles points out that "he made statements against drug addition on is radio show". I'm sure that Kennedy has never made any statements of that kind. Why, in his view, the only vice is probably people that have worked hard, made money, and tried to keep some of it rather than send it all to the Government. In the Kennedy school, the only valid way to have money is the old fashioned way, inheritance.

The media trips over itself to report the fallacy of people having any kind of standards. They are likely to fall short of them. The only safe position is "anything goes", and who is more consistent on that then the Kennedys? Clinton gave it a good try, but sex in the Oval Office still falls a bit short of murdering your girlfriend. Who knows, he still has time left and I'd never count Slick out in that kind of a race. I'm sure he would be very sorry, and the lip would even quiver a bit if he was left with no alternative but to murder a young girl. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for "great men".

Great men like Clinton and Teddy have to get a pass, but is there any limit to the abuse that should be heaped on someone that claims that there are such things as moral standards and then fall short of them? Well, according to Democrats, the MSM, and Satan, I guess not. Having just recently had plenty of vicodin in my diet and having had a drink or two in my time, my analysis is that equating "vicoden" and "drugs" in general is about like calling the Mona Lisa and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue "pictures".

My personal experience with Vicoden is that it does a darned good job of reducing or wiping out pain, doesn't make you feel "high", and mostly you at least "feel" like you can operate pretty naturally with it in your system. Based on Favre winning an MVP while apparently on it, Limbaugh no doubt on the radio with it, and me certainly doing work and reading with it, my guess is that analysis isn't very far off.

So why do they get addicted? Partially because Doctors seem to be willing to give out a lot of the stuff, which I suspect is "no problem" as long as the pain goes away in some reasonable time. Having had more than my share of knee surgery, back problems, elbow surgery, busted ribs, etc, I can attest that long term pain isn't all that much fun. Something that gives you freedom from pain and allows you to pretty much live as if you didn't have it (all be it with risks that are likely hard to quantify), is pretty darned enticing. Like a lot of addictions, it likely is well along the way before you really realize exactly how bad it is.

I'm also overweight. I work out 6-7 times a week for 40min+ on a stairmonster or other suitable torture device. I attempt to watch what I eat, but I really like food, and the bottom line is that I'm weak and eat too much. So, do I have to be in favor of perscription drug addiction since I feel I can understand it, and obesity, since I'm a "victim"? Ann did a great job of discussing this in
Lie Down With Strippers Wake up with Pleas so I won't try to cover the same ground here, other than to say "of course not".

The well known quote by the Frenchman whose name I can never recall; "Hypocrisy is the homage that virtue pays to vice" says a good part of it. To be a human and have any virtue at all is to be a hypocrite to some extent, often even a great extent. To not be a hypocrite is to be a liberal, but lacking virtue and wallowing in vice is quite a high price to pay for avoiding hypocrisy.

Never Again?

Charles Krauthammer has a must read for the reality oriented on the clearly stated intent of the Iranians toward Israel and how the world is yet again standing by. He doesn't say what to do, or even suggest anything. The Iranian leadership seems to feel that the consequences of wiping out Israel would be "acceptable losses" for that Arab world.

My personal view is that a series of H-bombs should be installed in monoliths around Mecca and Medina as beautiful gift monuments to Islam, the religion of peace. If the monuments are tampered with, all go off, and there is no Mecca. If a nuclear bomb goes off in Israel, they go off and Mecca becomes an ex-location.

There will of course be the "moral equivalence people" that will scream "what right do we have"? That argument is the kind of argument that let Hitler kill 6 million Jews the first time. The other popular "everything is equal" argument will be "Well, the US used nuclear weapons against Japan". These arguments all come down to belief. For those that at their core really believe there is no "objective truth" other than their own authority, everything really is morally equivalent except for their own view. If they really search their souls, they will find it is actually the idea of "authority" and "order" beyond the confines of their own skin bag that produces the anger. The idea of "truth to power", or basically anything that gives "chaos" the upper hand and thus (in their mind) improves their position relative to "authority" is a "win". Only in their blindness do they miss the authority that they serve. There is a god of chaos as well, and he is happy to let them see themselves as the ultimate authority as long as possible.

For those that don't hold that view, it isn't likely that a deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons will be seen as equivalent to the use of them in the first place. Sometimes it is fun to have an argument or two to rebut the chaoicians;
1). The US was attacked by Japan and a known state of war existed between the two nations. Two weapons were used, surrender was achieved, and rebuilding and assistance in the billions of dollars was provided to return Japan to a peaceful and productive member of the world community. The careful observer may notice slight difference between that at a desire to annihilate the Jews.
2). The choice of using the weapons is in their hands anyway. The only action that would be taken from this side is to make the consequences obvious.

The "specifics" of the weapons in monuments are of course a "detail of implementation". The dangerous part is the Arab world not understanding clear and unavoidable consequences, and the monuments would just make that visible. I hope and pray that quiet back room diplomacy has qiettly shared the target coordinates of a number of missles on submarines and assured them that the technology and resolve is as physical as an H-bomb sitting on a granite slab.

Proper Use of the Constitution

We have been regularly schooled by the Democrats and MSM here in MN that making a constitutional amendment that marriage should be between one man and one woman is "frivolous". Senator Dean Johnson assured us that he had it directly from MN Supreme Court judges there was no way they would question the law on the books from the legislature. He later assured us that he had never heard any such thing, but the MSM is still certain we don't need anything so foolish as a constitutional amendment.

What we DO need is an amendment to permanently provide some percentage of sales tax to clean water, swamps, ducks, fishes, the arts and maybe some form of public broadcasting. That usage of a constitution is quite reasonable, and something that everyone should be in favor of. Oh, the outrage on MPR though. This AM they pointed out that the evil house Republican bill EXCLUDES Minnesota's "premier broadcasters", none other than MPR. They could think of "no legitimate reason" for this exclusion, but quickly debunked a couple of "false reasons".

It seems that some Republicans think that a service that has 100's of millions in endowments, just build a $40 million new main office in St Paul, turned down $500K from the state because it would have required them to disclose the NUMBER (not the names) of their employees over $100K salary a year, owns major parts of CA public radio, and has a corporate arm that rakes in a bunch more, didn't NEED funding. How foolish. It was pointed out "look at the new Walker, look at the new Guthrie, these are WINNERS, they get state money, the state ought to WANT to invest in WINNERS!". A wonderful sentiment ... I'm sure their attitude will be the same for people with high incomes, corporations that make a lot of money, and CEO salaries from this day forward. No double standards on MPR.

They also pointed out that maybe some idiot Republicans don't like that fact that Garrison Keilor who is regularly on MPR in all sorts of capacities raises a lot of money for Democrats, writes scathing editorials against Republicans, and regularly makes it known they are the lowest form of slime on the planet. Pay no attention that there is nobody associated with MPR that has anything like the reverse view. Never mind, Garrison Keilor DOESN'T WORK FOR THEM!! Well, they air his show, and he is on there a lot, but he has his own company, and they just pay them, so there is really no connection. Simple. Now, let's see, Dick Cheney and Halliburton? Nah, can't be any relation, "he doesn't work there". There has yet to be a Republican politician that ever had a job for which the "relationship" between them and their former employer or business isn't "questionable", but the MPR to Garrison relationship is 100% clear, "he doesn't work there".

This is all amazingly funny, but the slightly sad part is that they have no clue how funny they are. Sadly, I'm convinced that they actually BELIEVE what they are saying, which is pretty frightening. There are people who actually listen to MPR for news rather than humor, and that makes one understand how MN elects Senators like Mark Dayton.

Gas Prices

The silly season seems to be here on gas prices again, and I've linked a couple of great columns. In Supply and Demand, Krauthammer pretty much sticks to the facts of supply and demand and touches on one apparently major fact on the supply side that has received precious little MSM coverage. Last years energy bill demanded ethanol content in the gas and we have a shortage as a result. We can't import it since due to the presidential politics of Iowa primaries, we have a big nasty tariff on ethanol. Now there is one you won't see covered in the MSM. Headline, high gas prices due to political pandering and measures supposed to cut our demand on foreign oil, while holding us hostage to Midwest ethanol production.

Good old Ann is more cogent than biting this week in It's Hard out there for Pump. She focuses on how Democrats and the MSM are constantly saying that gas costs TOO LITTLE as long as it isn't at a peak, and trying to find a drilling restriction, environmental restriction, or new gas tax that they can use to raise the price, reduce driving, and "save the planet". When the price is high, it is naturally not their fault, it is the fault of George Bush, the oil companies, and the evil Republicans. Their world is a simple one.

Indefensible

I was forwarded a link to this screed entitled
"Fearless Leaders"
and asked to comment on it, and I thought it was a good subject for a blog entry.

My first thought is that if most Americans could get as excited about fighting terrorists as they are about fighting CEOs, we could likely look like a united nation to they world and our chances of success in the WOT would be greatly increased. The MSM and many on the left can find excuses for everything from suicide bombers to child molesters, but their hatred of guys that head up companies shows no bounds.

When one deals in numbers, it is very important to have perspective on what the numbers are being related to. The guy that hates CEOs wants to use the salary of the "average worker". How about comparing CEO salaries to other highly paid Americans? I mean, the guy that heads up a 300K person company can't really be considered "average" can he?

On Forbes 2005 list, George Lucas of Star Wars fame was #1 at $295 million, Oprah #2 at $225 million, Mel Gibson $185 M for 3, Bill Clinton was 89th, pulling down $6M for speaking, Dan Brown of DaViinci code made $76 Million, Kate Moss made $5 million for being beautiful and having her picture taken. Tiger Woods made $87 Million, and was #4. Nobody is writing nasty articles about these people and they certainly aren't creating nearly the returns, real products, or jobs that the companies that have high paid CEOs are. I don't mean to denigrate what any of them make. The market pays them too. If the market values pretty pictures of women as much as they value a CEO giving up their entire life for a number of years to head up a major corporation, that is OK with me. I don't claim to be as smart as the millions of customers and stockholders that end up deciding what CEOs should make. Who is it that we would pick that WOULD be as smart to set the "proper" limits?

Why is it though that so many people have a visceral self-righteous indignation over CEO salaries, but they are unbothered by a former president that walked the halls of power with his pants around his knees pulling down $6M a year for giving some speeches? I believe there are three basic reasons. The first is "spiritual". They see Slick Willie as "gifted". He is "special". Same thing for sports stars, authors, film makers. Those are "special gifts", and somehow "worthy". They can understand that Kate Moss is beautiful, Star Wars is creative, and it is very hard to put a white ball in a small hole, so the folks that are the best at it may as well get "huge money". They DON'T understand running a large corporation. They see it as "going to work". They go to work, the CEO goes to work, they can't understand what is different about his work to make it so highly paid. I'd think it may dawn on them that running a company that makes billions of dollars and employs 10's or 100s of K of people is harder than their job, but apparently not. It has become popular in this country to be clueless and outraged, and one of the things it is popular to be that on is CEO salaries.

The second reason is because they don't have emotional intelligence on economics. They believe in the "pie at the table" model of the economy, and figure if the CEO makes more they make less. Oddly, they don't seem to think of Tiger or Kate Moss eating their pie, apparently they see the "gifted" as dining on some other sort of pie. This lack of at least emotional understanding of economics goes back to childhood. We all are raised in some sort of a family. The head(s) of that family appear to be way rich and god-like to us as small children. They COULD get us all the toys we want when we are little, but don't. Worse, if there are siblings, we sometimes see that they allocate money "unfairly", ie. "they didn't give it all to us". We don't understand a lot, but we see "the pie" as of a fixed size and allocated under the control of powerful people. The author of this article, most of the MSM, and the majority of Americans operate with the economic emotions of a young child. Not surprising since the untruth has been drilled into them during all their schooling and continues to be reinforced in the media constantly. Their is a bitter joy in returning to childhood and feeling the outrage that someone else has gotten an unfair slice of YOUR pie, and you will have to do with less.

In reality, neither the world or US economy are fixed in size. In yr 2000 dollars, the US GDP per capita has grown from $22,716 in 1980 to $37,523 today. Just because someone else makes more doesn't mean that you or anyone else makes less. In fact, with growth, it often means that everyone else makes more. Japan, one of the countries pointed out as being better for lower CEO to worker pay multiple had only $29,400 of GDP per capita in 2005 by the same measure. Apparently, CEO pay is not hurting us or helping Japan if it is real results rather than feeling outraged that is important.

This GDP is also not allocated by "powerful people" like "Mom and Dad", it is allocated by a market. Were it allocated by powerful people with connections as was attempted to be driven into my brain as a kid, I'd likely be doing something with turkeys in Barron WI for $10 an hour and complaining bitterly about the "unfairness of the system". Most all of us would overvalue our "fair pay", and undervalue it for others, especially those that make more than us. We all work hard, and are certainly worthy of more, while those that make more than us ought to be satisfied with a lot less than what they make, and just "love their jobs".

40% of the planet lives on something less than $1 a day, so a person making $109,500 is already making 300x that and by comparison is a "greedy CEO". There are millions of "greedy CEOS" in the US relative to 40% of the population of the planet. Is it true that the success of the US is taking money from those people? Hardly, in fact it does the reverse. The success of the US economy and system has created globalization, and it is provably the best "aid to poor nations" ever created in the history of the world, and while it works, it makes many Americans richer as well.

The third reason that people feel resentment about CEO jobs is because they don't understand that getting to the CEO position is a lottery. We understand a lottery where everyone puts in a small amount of money for a very small chance to win a large sum of money. Getting to CEO is a lottery where a fairly large number of people have to work very hard for a very long time to have a very small chance of getting a special job. The payout for that very special job needs to be large enough to keep a significant number of people motivated over a long time in order to come up with the quality level of person needed to accomplish the task. Over time, the market for CEOs has factored that into CEO salary.

There are many reasons that folks with a left tilt hate that analysis. It asserts that the market works, competition works, some people are better suited to positions than others, even high pay can be rational, and a host of other "bad" things if your brain tells you that "everything should be level, we are all equal". Equal for opportunity, but not equal in gifts or outcomes I'm afraid. Those that can't stand the kind of diversity that matters, diversity of competence and outcome, are always going to find a reason to hate those that rise to the top.

We all hate seeing retirement at a young age go away. We hate losing our hair, losing our memory, and waking up stiff too, but we need to get used to all of them.
I've blogged on that at Retiring Models
Part of leadership is also letting people know about reality. CEOs work up to take a very specialized job, and their retirement is going to be different from that of an average worker, just like Tiger, Bill Clinton, or George Lucas. In our system, there isn't anything stopping you from being a CEO if you feel it is a "cushy job for high wages". I don't agree with you, but the great thing about a free country is that anyone can go out and go for the brass ring.

I don't want a CEO job at the salary they make even if it was offered to me. Corporations have to find CEOs from people that make much more than I do, and they have to compete for the best at least significantly on the basis of dollars. On the day that stockholders decide that lower CEO pay is an indicator of better stock performance, CEO pay will start to go down. Until that day, CEOs are going to get the same kind of money as great models, and ex-presidents speaking.

Edmund Fitzgerald, John McCain, Life

I suppose I'm being cursed by those with slow internet connections at this point. The shots are off my back deck this beautiful Sunday afternoon, this is what spring looks like at this point in Minnesota. Canon Powershot S2 IS, 2592x1944 pixels, 14-bit color depth. 2.5MB each, which is what the slow connect folks will hate.

I've got WAY too much work work to do, and have been doing some, but I keep getting distracted, so thought I would take a break and write a blog from the deck. IBM Thinkpad T-40 with 1400-1050 resolution LCD, the brightness just isn't really there for comfortably working outside. Shaded, but it is still marginal, worth the hassle for an hour or so on a beautiful spring day, but not the way to maximum productivity. 

The elbow keeps improving and the anesthetic is leaving my system. In general I feel fine, but I slept over 9 hours last night and yesterday PM I was only able to a 20 min workout at the health club rather than 40, but that is pretty good for a couple days after surgery I guess. 

I finished up "Mighty Fitz", by Michael Schumacher. She went down in Nov of '75, and at that time of my life Lake Superior was one of the few natural wonders that I had ever seen, and ore boats were one of the few man-made wonders that I had been able to see on a couple family trips to Duluth and Superior.

It was my sophomore year of college, and I remember it well. It didn't seem possible that something that big could be taken down by a storm on Lake Superior. The Gordon Lightfoot song, being from the upper Midwest, the stage of life, an interest in technology, are all factors that make me a bit of a sucker for most things Fitzgerald.

They call it "The Titanic of the Great Lakes", and to me it is more than that since the Titanic was a bit before my time. The basic answer to "how could a storm on Superior do that" is of course, "it didn't". The two prime theories are that she grounded on 6-mile shoal and was wounded. Slowly took on water, and when the freeboard got low enough, nose-dived when a big wave hit her. 

Since she was over 700' long and the water depth is 550', most likely her bow hit the bottom while the stern was still on the surface. The violence of the impact tore the ship in two and virtually "vaporized" (small pieces) about 200' of ship. The stern is sticking straight up out of the bottom of the lake. 

 Two other theories involve a similar slow loss of freeboard due to improper latching or other problems with hatch covers, or a catastrophic hull failure caused by a keel problem that some have asserted that she had. 

As anyone with a passing interest in the Fiz knows, the Arthur Anderson was shadowing her that day and was in constant radar and radio contact. Something went wrong with the Fitz in the vicinity of 6-mile shoal North of Caribou island. The Anderson thought the radar track of the Fitz was too close to the shoal, and shortly after they went through the area the Fitz radioed that they had a fence rail down, some damaged vents, a list, and had lost their radar.

The Anderson captain always felt that they must have hit bottom to cause that damage, and even though it didn't instantly take them down, this is the most likely reason that they eventually sank. Not the greatest of books, but a subject that I have an interest in, and little things like finding out that one of the guys on the Fitz was from Iron River WI where I've snowmobiled, and he went down and visited his family for a few hours as the ship loaded connect it to places of familiarity even more.The museum at Whitefish point MI is now on my list of places that I'd like to see.

I continue to read along a bit in John McCain's book, "Character is Destiny". As Hugh Hewitt says, John is "a great American, and poor Senator, and a rotten Republican" ... BUT, to good Republicans, the great American has to continue to cut a lot more mustard than the other two, or we would be Democrats. I'm struck by a section of a guy that he sees as a hero of the Rwanda massacre. McCain takes personal blame, assigns blame to the US government and Democrats and Republicans alike for the cowardice of letting 800,000 to over a million people be brutally massacred, when a very small number of troops could have prevented it, but he NEVER mentions Bill Clinton. 

I wonder if a Rwanda happened on the watch of Bush if the response would be the same? Maybe, Darfur in the Sudan has seen a lot of death, but we are also a bit more preoccupied than we were in the '90s. It is an interesting question in my mind. In some respects, the MSM willingness to blame Bush for everything is really a compliment, they hate him, but they must think that at least some folks will see him as "potentially responsible". I'm not sure anyone really expected anything from Slick Willie but chasing women with big hair, and when that is just what he did, they didn't really see it as a disappointment.

If a million people happened to die while he was busy with "personal matters", that was fine with the MSM. That the people were black, well, Clinton was a Democrat, so he can't be racist, they are certain it wouldn't have bothered him to let some white folks die while he took care of his "needs" either, and that is the kind of President that they can strongly support.

It isn't like Bush and New Orleans. He was talking to some veterans in San Diego for part of that, and everyone KNOWS that he is racist, so he is clearly responsible for the worst combination of overt racism and incompetence that can be imagined. By any technical measure, the Katrina response is the fastest and best hurricane response ever. The standards are just a little different in some reason. 

Howie Dean-scream was down there this weekend still blathering about the lack of hurricane response. From a city that 7 months ago was supposed to be taken back to the 3rd world, and may never recover. It gets more and more difficult to see how one makes the claim that New Orleans is back, come on down ... and "nothing has been done", all at the same time.

Americans in general have VERY short memories, and for the left, consistency (or even coherence) is just not a consideration.

EC +1

Went into Mayo at 6 AM yesterday AM, up to surgery at about 8. Mental lights out shortly after, and woke up in recovery about 10:30 and back to the room at 11. I suspect that how long they have you under makes a big difference in how bad you feel, and also how much drilling and hacking they are doing while you are there may be a factor as well. I felt far better than the last time. Dr came up, said "go ahead and see if you can bring your palm up". Big difference right away, that titanium screw locking the radius and ulna together being gone is a big help!

Made it home by 2, was on a telecon for work for an hour at 3, and generally had a fairly productive evening until I crashed at about 9PM.

Today I've got a decent amount of throat discomfort and some general stiffness. It seems like the drugs, the tubes, and the general violence of being cut into takes some level of toll even it it is relatively minor surgery. Was able to do a pretty normal day at work although got pretty tired in the PM. Be nice to have a weekend to recover a bit more.

Elbow EC

In the computing business, a fix to the hardware is an Engineering Change, or "EC". Tomorrow I go in for an EC on my elbow. I wonder if it would have ever been attempted without a CAT scan, since it really just looked "suspicious" on the x-rays, but on the CAT scan it was obvious. The view that the Dr showed me was a series of "slices" looking straight on at the bones in the forearm. As the plate came into view, it was very visible at the bottom, the bones are crystal clear, and the marrow and hard outside of the bone are just like you were inside the arm looking at them.

As each screw came into view, I learned that all the screws go all the way through the bone because the bone is structurally hollow (the center is soft), they want to get all the anchor force and stability that they can, so they go all the way through. They intended to go all the way through, but the last screw is either too long, mispositioned, or both ... it goes all the way through and right into the radius bone (the ulna was the one I broke). Apparently, having a large titanium screw linking the two bones in your forearm really reduces their ability to move independently, and thus the palm will no longer rotate up.

So, I call Mayo tonight and will get the specifics on arrival time for the AM, but it sounds like 6:30 AM is likely. They intend to pull out all 7 screws and the plate, and put in a single screw to insure that it holds together. In theory it is supposed to be a "one day down", and other than some slight care of the incision, I ought to be "pretty much OK and able to work" on Friday they say.

Close followers of the blog will no doubt know how correct that is by how fast I am able to return to action on the web.

Generals

I've been watching the number of media stories on "retired generals that want Rumsfeld out" in the last week or so. Normally our media is pretty much anti-military and generally even more against any hints of the military questioning their civilian control. During the Clinton years it was more than an open secret that many in the military didn't think much of old Slick, but any mention of that was quickly quashed as "inappropriate". The respect for the "Swift Boat Veterans" seemed pretty minimal, even though there were a couple Admirals on that list. I wonder what could account for the difference in thought? We know there is no bias, so it can't be that.

The Generals and the media seem to be in agreement these days that "more troops" would have been, and in some cases even currently would be a better idea. Of course, they really thought and think now that "no troops" is a better answer, but these days press pretty much salivates to get anything that is anti-Bush or anti-Bush administration as far up in the headlines as possible. Tommy Franks, the guy that actually presided over the planning for both Afghanistan and Iraq has been a strong supporter of both Bush and Rumsfeld, and wrote a book on the subject. That is the kind of thing that gets no play in the MSM.

One of the odd parts of this is that Rumsfeld IS in fact disliked by a lot of folks at the Pentagon, but it has very little to do with the war in Iraq. The Pentagon pretty much focuses on fighting the NEXT war, and the war they would like to fight is with China. They see China as the USSR replacement that allows all the same armed services to keep all the troops and get all the nice hardware that they have in their plans. The hardware that the guys in the General seats have spent their whole careers planning and budgeting and procuring. The closest thing to "the military-industrial complex" that most of the left always rail against. Basically, "organizational intertia", a common feature of all large organizations.

Rumsfeld came in and started restructuring the military right away, even before 2001 to be more focused on special forces, smaller groups with higher technology and more autonomy, focused at dealing with situations like Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree Iraq. Like most large organizations, the Pentagon doesn't like change very much, and so they didn't, and still don't like Rumsfeld. Yet many of the observers of the military that look at the threats we face in the future believe that he was and is exactly correct in the changes that need to be made.

Much like with John McCain, the MSM finds him to be a "great guy" as long as he is on their side of the story. The moment he "strays" and acts like an actual Republican, he "loses his way". So with military generals. As long as a few are willing to say what the MSM wants them to say, then they "should be taken seriously" from their POV. Deciding to only report the side of the story that agrees with your POV is just propaganda. Deciding that the military should talk back to civilian leadership shows that they believe in strict control of the military only so long as the civilian leadership agrees with the MSM. I suppose a military coup is just fine if it takes down Bush and Rumsfeld as well, but maybe there should be just a little bit more thought on that before we follow this path too far.

Riding Rockets

For a bookworm, there are few joys to exceed finding a book that is so interesting that it keeps you up late at night and you want to get into it at the first opportunity the next day. "Riding Rockets" by Mike Mullane was such a find for me. Mullane is a 3-time shuttle mission specialist, and the fact that he is "unknown" lets us know that he space program has changed a lot since the days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

He was one of the first round of shuttle astronauts selected in '78. A West Point graduate that switched to the Air Force trying to get to space, but whose eyesight wasn't good enough to be a pilot, so he settled for flying over 100 missions in Vietnam as a "back-seater" on a Phantom. He picked up a masters in flight engineering after the war, and although he gave it at least his all, he was surprised to actually be picked to be an astronaut.

The book is loaded with a lot of ribald humor and practical jokes, as well as a lot of detail of how it "feels", sometimes in the physical sense of discomfort and pain even, to be an astronaut. He probably captures the end of one type of military culture, the "pre-women in everything" era, and of course takes part in a major part of the transition himself as one of the first astronauts to deal with women in that role and part of the missions to space.

It is hard to imagine someone being as open about his personal life and the lives of his loved ones, even telling about his wife's experience as an unwed mother as a young woman. There are plenty of parts of this book that some will say "that is more detail than I wanted to hear", and there are many things that it would seem could have been left out without detracting. However, this is clearly his book, and has the feel of "authenticity", it doesn't seem like any of the "sex and violence" is really gratuitous, this is just how he is, how he sees the world, and apparently part of how a fairly significant number of the astronauts of that period saw it.

Other than the "ethos", and 10's of great little stories about flights in T-38's, his 3 flights, training, the astronaut beach house, and many other details, the information about the Challenger was the most disturbing to me. It sounds like it is pretty clear that at least most of them were alive all the way down. A number of switches that would be related to trying to restore power and oxygen to the cockpit had been toggled in ways that made it clear that human hands had done it, and a set of auxiliary air source packs had been turned to the "on position". One of those packs was intact enough that it still contained air, but a little over 2 and 1/2 minutes of air was gone, the amount of time that it would take to fall from the point of the explosion to the water.

The point that he makes over and over is that these are a group of people that are so dedicated to spaceflight that the risks are really meaningless to them. Something like the explorers that sailed out on the unknown in small wooden boats, they are willing to take those risks to open the next frontier. At least many of them do know fear, although not all, his first shuttle commander was sleeping in the cockpit for a good nap during a pre-launch hold, so some are indeed cut from different cloth.

If you have a significant interest in the space program, this is an excellent book.

Charts of Perspective

Ran into the above out at CBO 125 Year Picture

The web is so full of information like this is too bad that MSM reporters don't care much about facts. The chart shows spending as related to GDP, a rational approach. We commonly hear about "the largest deficit", "largest budget" or some other version of runaway spending in raw, non-inflation or percentage related numbers. Simply hearing that should be a red-flag that the source is trying to mislead you.

Most everything in the number department really only makes sense in context and relationship. If someone lost 10lbs during a workout, it would certainly be life threatening for a 100lb woman, but a fairly normal thing for an NFL lineman. Looking at numbers as a % of GDP is nice in that the inflation effect and the relationship to the size of the overall country are pretty much factored out, and one is comparing apples to apples over history.

The purpose of the web page is to show that there is no way that the the country can continue to spend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at the rates that we are now as the baby boom retires. It is a pretty sad commentary that very few Americans understand the chart at the end of this blog. Believing in the Easter Bunny is more rational than believing that we are going to continue on as we currently are with the named programs.

The chart at the start of the blog though shows pretty clearly that GIVEN SOLID ECONOMIC GROWTH, we can do a ton of things with very little effect on the overall economy ... war in Vietnam, War on Poverty, screw up 4 years with truly the worst President in at last a century, Jimmuh, end the USSR, and a host of other things all with something between 17 and 23% of GDP. The chart shows the "lie of defense" that the left likes to blame for everything ... going from 9% to 3% over the period. It shows the seeds of the disaster that awaits us with SS and the Medical entitlements going from 2.5 to 7.9% of an ever larger GDP. Starting in '75 and not beginning to drop off until '85 we see the mini-disaster of the slow growth of the '70s to early 80's. Had that not been turned around, our situation would actually be grim today, rather than just looking grim in the future.

Why the CBO seems to think that crisis isn't going to ensue post 2010, I have no idea. It seems very unlikely to me that all other spending is going to drop from 13-15% to a static 7.1%, and I doubt that interest will become a net revenue GAIN for a significant period. What it DOES show pretty clearly is that the entitlements eat the budget at a rate that is TRULY "unprecedented in history". The Democrats and MSM are very proud that they were able to stop Bush from doing anything about this problem, more proof that nothing makes them happier than what they know will damage the "unfair country" ... America.

Sarcasm the most Truthful

The following off Powerline is pretty hard to beat for truth. They did miss it a bit though. For most Americans the "leak" of the jobs and the recruitment numbers will be just as secret as what was in the "leaked" NIE ... Can't have the public confused by getting more than the MSM approved side of the story!

BTW, on the deck, over 70 degrees and beautiful in MN. People that live in decent climates don't really understand the joy of weather that they would just find "passable". I really ought to bang my head on the wall for a few minutes and stop a bit more often to feel super!

Warning: Sarcasm Ahead

Last Friday, the Bush administration released a Labor Department report that showed that employers added 211,000 jobs in March, and the nation's unemployment rate has fallen still further, to 4.7%. Harry Reid responded by demanding an investigation:

The administration's leak of the Labor Department report was clearly intended to make the Democrats' complaints about the economy look stupid. We're consulting with our lawyers to determine whether the leak of this report is an impeachable offense.

[Fake quote; humor intended.] This morning, it was reported that the Army has exceeded its reenlistment goal for the first six months of the 2006 fiscal year by 15%. Nancy Pelosi was outraged:

How dare the administration leak this highly sensitive report? Once again, the administration has leaked information that can only be designed to show that the Democrats' effort to demoralize our troops has failed. We are calling for an investigation to get to the bottom of President Bush's role in authorizing this leak.

[Fake quote; humor intended.] I don't know why the Democrats keep going back to 2003. There's a new leak "scandal" nearly every day!

Screw Length

I went to Mayo Friday, and it seems that their screw selection for my elbow may have been off. They have me scheduled for a CT scan tomorrow to decide if I need two screws replaced because they are interfering with motion. In general it is pretty usable, but the biggest problem is that I can't roll the palm up close to flat.

While I'm certainly not glad, it is interesting the different sentiments that I encounter as I talk to people. In general, the less training, education or responsibility the person has, the more the attitude is "you should sue", or some level of anger at Mayo, or Doctors in general. My personal view is that I don't do elbow surgery at all, so I have very little understanding of what is involved. The set of things that I manage to do "mistake free" is exceedingly small, no matter how much I might desire perfection. I have a strong suspicion that Mayo starts with basic humans to make into doctors, and I have very little understanding of the degree of difficulty in deciding just what screw goes where in adding hardware to a person's body.

The Masters is on the 50" HDTV in front of me, a beautiful sight to behold, about the only golf of the year I watch, but what a super use of HD and a larger screen. The best in the world seem to make mistakes there as well ... At least it didn't look like Freddy Couples wanted to put the ball on the edge of Ray's creek. His recovery was great though, should they need to replace the screws, I trust that Mayo's will be as well. If their recovery isn't great? Well, I suppose if I had to pick who was going to win the Masters last Wednesday, I would have picked Tiger. Even a couple of times today I might have picked him. I would have been wrong, Phil was the best. How would I pick my surgeon? Certainly not wisely.

As we enter Holy Week, that might be a core difference between Christians and the world. Christians believe there was but a single perfect human, and his sacrifice is our only hope. The world still believes that humans are perfectible, and "someone else" really ought to be perfect in just about every situation.

Fiction as Fact

As I watched the MSM feeding frenzy at the end of the week on the idea that the President was "the leaker in chief", the thought occurred to me that there apparently is no limit to the MSM creation of their own world, and then dealing with that world as if it were real. At one time Reagan was considered to have trouble with the difference between movies and reality, but I suppose since we have gone through "what IS is", "fake but true", and many of the fictionalizations of Katrina, there is simply no mooring left.

First of all, if the President authorizes the release of information, it isn't a "leak", it is an authorized release of information. The President and likely the VP are completely able to de-classify information, and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that included the justification made by all the existing US security services for WMD and the War in Iraq was declassified in July of '03. Somehow the MSM seems to think that they are able to fabricate any information they see fit, but it is somehow "wrong" for the President to release the information under which actions were actually taken. The content of that now declassified assessment is public knowledge, but is completely uninteresting to the press, even though it was the basis that every Senator except those from the outer planets (Finegold, Harken, Boxer, etc) decided that Saddam had WMD, along with the leaders of every country including France and Germany, and the UN as well. Obviously the MSM feels that information should in no way be "leaked", because it might put the administration in a good light, something that they would like to defend against more than the risk of a major US city being blown up by a nuke.

For people that read below the headlines and paragraph one or two, the above would probably be somewhat obvious, but what is amazing is the apparently conscious attempt to juxtapose "Plame Investigation", "leak", and "President Bush" in an attempt to allow people to come to the conclusion that Bush leaked the name for which the special prosecutor investigation was launched. While it has never been shown that linking her name with the CIA was any sort of a "leak" at all, and in fact the prosecutor gave up on that. Fitzgerald is only attempting to get Libby for "perjury", and we all know that were Libby a Democrat like Clinton, that isn't even a crime. In fact in "defense of your office", perjury ought to get one hero status. The media is well aware that most of the sheep can't keep up with the details very well, and it seems like what they are going for here is a "basic slime" ... Give the appearance of impropriety, and the Republican base will be less excited about voting.

I have to give them credit for technique. At one level it is certainly a "weakness" of the right to actually have principles, morals, and the desire to apply them consistently. Once it was obvious that Nixon lied in the cover up, his own base abandoned him with as much fervor as those on the left. As we saw with Clinton, the left has no such inclination. They are willing to defend anything in order to keep their hands on the tiller of power.

The small problem with this situation is that people on the right are left to deal with a media and political opposition that hold nothing sacred in any form. Not God, not Country, not truth, not family, not even any sense of what would normally be called "self interest". They are willing to do anything, and to countenance anything being done for the sole purpose of raw political power, even in wartime, with in many cases the knowledge that what they are doing may increase the chances of a terrorist attack that would kill Americans. If it is bad for Bush, it is OK with them.

One is left with the immortal question of Luke to Yoda; "Is the dark side stronger"? As we embark upon Holy Week, that is a pretty good question to ponder. My answer would be that yes, the dark side is definitely stronger in the physical earthly terms, but something seems to prevent it from the victory that one would assume it would achieve. This would be a great week to reflect on what that might be.

1776 and Mixed

One of the books that I'm currently reading is "1776" by David McCullough. If one depended on "the odds" for America to happen, it wouldn't have. In those days, they believed in "providence" and "the hand of God", and for some reason, both seemed to often come to the rescue of the US. The US declared Independence in 1776, the Constitution was ratified in 1789, and we fought a REAL civil war in 1860. Can Iraq get everything done in 3-4 years? It seems that with the modern media and a good half the population, it is never too early to declare failure. "Cut and run", the motto of much of current America.

Speaking of running, the French continue to show the wages of socialist give-away governments. Maturity, taking responsibility, delaying gratification, entering the arena to compete and being willing to try, fail, and try again, and valuing striving for personal independence no matter the outcome. Those are characteristics that have to be worked at every day. never come easy, and can always slip away. Learning to believe that one is entitled ... to a job, a home, a lifestyle, that others are responsible, that we are victims, that things are "unfair". Those lessons are easily learned and take no effort, and are VERY hard to unlearn. The French appear to have learned them well.

I heard a bit of old Kevin Phillips blathering about the evils of the current Republican party on NPR at noon today. He is an old "country club Republican" ... the sort that can't believe that the party is now full of a bunch of middle and lower-middle class "evangelicals". The way he says "evangelical" reminds one of how you might say "child molester". The problems of the world are pretty much all caused by people that say they believe in God according to Kevin. Of course, none really do believe, some are just playing at it to lead others, and many are just too foolish to realize that they are being taken. In the old country club days, rich Republicans were willing to sit down and be the lapdogs of the Democrats, and only occasionally complain about a deficit or something. It was so much more civilized, and nobody got crazy about religion. Oh, for the good old days.

What is wrong with the world today? Pretty much all the same things that have always been wrong ... and right. Technology lets us see a little farther and have a lot more, but life is still pretty short, and most of it is spent doing "less than the best". Like a lot of things, "wrong" depends on expectations. A view that life is a gift, grace is a gift, and we have the freedom to make our own success, that is one outlook. That everything is going to pot, today is worse than yesterday, and tomorrow is worse yet, and especially, that somebody, somewhere is taking advantage in an unfair way, that is another perspective.

Which kind of people created America in 1776? What kind are in Iraq? What kind are in France? and in the US, is it still 50/50, or are the polls right and we are headed toward acting like the French? BTW, I don't know about the Iraqis ... they may not succeed, but I don't really expect them to be WAY better than our founding fathers.

A lot of the future is very hard to predict, but there are a lot of signs that it will be a competitive future, and that competition will be impossible to hide from and maintain anything like the level of lifestyle that Americans have become accustomed to. "Entitlement" isn't a word that the global economy seems to care about much.

5 Months of Lower Casualties

If the MSM is reporting this at all, it is very hard to find. I wonder why that is? Does anyone suppose that if US casualties had been INCREASING for the past five months they would have reported that? Only as the top story everywhere every month! Most anyone understands that lowered casualites for US troops in Iraq is good news for the prospects that the Iraqi's can take over the battle and form their own stable government. Why are Iraqi casualites up? Because they are taking over more of the work.

Good news for the US, good news for Iraq, but bad news for the MSM and Democrats.

Last Helicopter

The WSJ last Wednesday had an article called The Last Helicopter that puts the Mideast view of the US in a bit more context. Essentially they see Bush as an abberition that is willing to work hard for progress in the Mideast, and they are going to wait him out. The authors have an opinion of the country that is shared by Hugh Hewitt that post 9-11, the people of the US aren't going to throw in the towel on Iraq. I hope the authors and Hugh are right, but in any case, the track record presented by US behaviour in the Mideast from Carter forward are interesting.

Painting the Map Red

Picked up Hugh Hewitt's new book up in the twin cities Thursday and finished it up in pretty short order. It was a must read for anyone that considers themselves anything less than a far lefty. It would bee good for them to read it as well, but folks on the far left can't possibly read anything that disagrees with them, or there is no way they would stay there.

He kicks off with; "It's break the glass and pull the alarm time" for the republican party. Bush isn't ever going to be more than a 50/50 President no matter how good he does, and it is time for Republicans to realize that they need overarching goals. A 60 seat majority in the Senate is the big goal what Hugh says needs to be focused on. He believes that Republicans can easily stay the majority party and potentially even do in the Democrat party so they needed to form a new party. Indeed, he would say that Republicans BETTER figure out how to do this for the future of western civilization.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) isn't going to go away anytime soon, and if it isn't well fought (and maybe even if it is), there is going to be a 9-11 with WMD at some point that is going to radically change life going forward. The best way to keep that from happening is to keep Republicans in control, but that isn't going to be easy ... Because of the standard reasons; MSM, the rich guys like Soros and the Hollywood types, but maybe mostly because the nature of Republicans. Pretty easily disenchanted and perfectionistic ideologues that love nothing better than leaving the tent on "principal" even if the tent collapses because of it. I was there with Bush Sr and his breaking of "No New Taxes" ... so I did my part to usher in Bill Clinton, Monica, Internet bubbles, and the security conditions that created 9-11.

For Republicans to be a majority party, they have to be a very big tent, but it has to be tent ... he argues that Olympia Snow, John McCain, and Arlen Specter all make it in that tent ... Lincoln Chafee does not and needs to be defeated, even at the cost of Republicans voting for a Democrat. The seasoned political logic of the hows and whys of that alone are worth the price of admission. Hugh is a solid pragmatist, something that can never have to much exposure to Republicans.

He is convinced that the Democrat Presidential ticket in '08 is going to be Hillary/ Obama, and it is going to be VERY hard to beat. He doesn't think the Democrats have a great chance of taking either house this year, but it could come very close unless Republicans have a solid national goal, which he argues ought to be a 60 seat Senate. His main messages are all on the "going negative on the Democrats", arguing they are certainly doing, have and will be doing that with the help of the MSM, and they have given the Republicans better negatives to go after them with:

1). The Democrat left and the MSM have declared ware on the military
2). The Democrat left has declared war on religion
3). The Democrats have declared war on the Judiciary
4). The Democrats want to radically re-define marriage on the way to radically redefining the culture.
5). The Democrats are addicted to venom, and that venom is destroying the political process ... and people would like to see it stopped, which mostly means stopping Democrats.

He makes and interesting argument that the technology of the internet has made it impossible for the MSM to continue to put lipstick on the pig of the hard lefts screaming, bile, and "chip on the shoulder" attitude, where it has allowed thousands of generally reasonable, Christian, family oriented right-center blogs to spring up and be read. While the left blogs are loaded with "Hitler", the F word, and rambling rants against everything from Christians to the military to America itself, the right-center blogs that predominate tend to be just the opposite. Just like "guns don't kill people, people do", the internet is just a tool, it allows more direct contact with fewer filters. In general, for the center-right that has provided a picture that is much more flattering than the one usually painted by the MSM, where the left has exposed itself in all it's screeching, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family and generally "anti" picture, and that picture has been far from flattering.

Representation and Polling

Powerline has a great discussion on polls and why Democrats are often surprised at the election results when they thought they were ahead in the polls. The media really enjoys polls that show bad things for Republicans. The actual representation of Democrats and Republicans in the population has become very close to even over the past 20 years, but the media polls tend to oversample Democrats by 10 points or more. Worse yet for the "surprise factor" (from a Democrat POV) is the Republicans tend to turn out better in elections.

The Democrats found a lot of the "evil" of the "Republican machine" on this. They claim that the "polls looked fine", but then they lost the election. The answer must mean that "Republican dirty tricks", or "election day shenanigans" somehow "stole" an election that they were all set to win.

Strategery

I finished up the Bill Sammon book "Srategery" a week ago or so. It has been awhile since I've read anything pro-Bush, and it is pretty amazing to hear the viewpoint these days. The biggest thing that hit me as reading it (although Sammon never mentioned this) is the contrast of the Clinton apologists with the treatment of the Bush people like Karl Rove.

Remember James Carville, Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulas? I suppose many don't, but they were the big paid Clinton hit men of the '90s, and they are all still around. George now has his own "news" show on ABC, "This Week with lefty Clinton Apologists". Well, maybe not exactly that title, but name one Reagan or Bush 1 guy that has his own mainline media show, or even "other" show where they are called anything other than "conservative commentator". Why is that different when they are the left? Carville and Begala have a book out that I saw being fawned over on a show recently. "Take It Back", or something like that.

There seems to be a bit of a difference between the MSM view of Republican operatives and Democrats that do the same thing. Chris Matthews, "Hardball" worked for 4 Democrats, Tip O'Neil being the one he talks of most. Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" worked for Mario Cuomo and then Daniel Moynihan. These are the guys that the MSM puts out front and center to give us "straight news" ... Oh, but Fox is biased, because Al Franken tells us that Bill O'Reily may have registered as a Republican at one time in the distant past. I suppose we ought to expect the standard for FOX to be different. BTW, Britt Hume, no such political background as the MSM guys previously mentioned. Huh, FOX is the most biased, apparently "biased" means "employs others besides certified Democrat operatives".

The Sammon book talks of the Bush people as actually decent, talented people trying to do what they see as the right thing for the country. Interestingly, Clinton people that talked of "Dragging a $50 bill through a trailer park ...", attacked any Clinton opponent by any means possible, including dredging up marital affairs that were 30 years old are STILL talked about as not only "decent", they are GREAT, and even given jobs by the MSM. The contrast between the treatment of those people and say "Karl Rove" is not very subtle.

Sammon is unabashedly pro-Bush and has inside access to the WH. The book chronicles 2004 and 2005 ... The election, Abu Grab, the convention strategies, the Swift Boat guys, Rathergate, the exit polls, social security, Katrina, Meyers, and up to Alito from the inside. Most stories have far more than two sides, reading a book like this makes one question how the MSM could be quite as incurious as they are. Maybe they have an agenda rather than an interest in reporting what is happening?

One thing is pretty certain, Billy C was WAY short of being the "comeback Kid" that George Bush has been, don't expect the MSM to be saying that a President that has beaten the odds over and over is in any way deserving. What was a point to be celebrated for Clinton is a terrible accident with dark overtones in the case of Bush.

Personal Notes

I was thinking that I was getting close to a full year of blogging, like most other things, I was late. The first entry was the 15th of March last year. For a busy person, blogging is one more thing to be late at. Is it worth it? Maybe mostly for friends and family that don't really care what I think politically, they can ignore the blog, and don't have to ignore quite as many conversations or e-mail notes as otherwise.

Mostly people care very little of what others think of most anything, they have their views, they like their views, and they are going to keep them. If something is "wrong", the problem pretty much has to be with someone else. The set of people that look at positions from both sides of the spectrum is tiny, and the set of people that actually enjoy a political discussion with someone that knows enough to make some challenging points is even smaller. As the media becomes more and more polarized, people are more and more able to hear only what they want, and in general, it seems that is the course that the vast majority on both sides are following. They are gravitating to the news sources that provide only the views that they feel comfortable listening to, and their blood pressure just goes up too high if they get exposed to the other side.

Thinking of a year ago also reminded me of heading out on the 7 day cruise over spring break. No spring break cruise this year, will be a couple of days up in the Twin Cities of family fun at the end of the week, but otherwise work as normal. Having a senior in HS that is doing part time college credit and part time HS credit means that he gets no real spring break, so we are staying around home. There will be a summer cruise to Alaska, so the deprivation isn't too severe.

It looks like we may break 60 on Thursday this week, so that should really get us into spring fever mode in MN.

City Hall Evicts Easter Bunny

Nice little article in the Pioneer Press about how tolerant our great state of MN is of "spring decorations". I hesitate to even consider an easter bunny and plastic eggs "religious" in any form, but they are too far out for the city of St Paul. Here are some quotes from that article:

A toy rabbit decorating the entrance of the St. Paul City Council offices went hop-hop-hoppin' on down the bunny trail Wednesday after the city's human rights director said non-Christians might be offended by it.

The decorations — including the stuffed rabbit, Easter eggs and a handcrafted sign saying "Happy Easter," but nothing depicting the biblical account of Christ's death and resurrection — were put up this week in the office of the City Council by a council secretary.

"I sent an e-mail that Easter is viewed as a Christian holiday and advised that it be taken down," said Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director. "It wasn't a big deal."

Why does the nation become more polarized? Christians are expected to tolerate anything from crosses in urine, constant swearing in the workplace, gay marriage and all other manner of direct attack on their faith in the public square, while a secular easter display is too large a burden to even contemplate a non-christian having to view. "Tolerance"? Don't expect to see any of that from the left.