Let Them Eat Cake, WI Chief Justice Style

Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson sues over amendment approved by voters : Wsj:

They may call themselves "liberals" and "progressives" and claim to be ALL about "the people", but let the people vote in something they don't like and the royal dander comes up.

I'm  not a great fan of "majority rule" or what it turns into -- the tyranny of the mob, so I'm all for Constitutions that are both hard to change and followed to the letter, as well as things like two Senators from each state, separation of powers and the Electoral College to try to put some brakes on the whims of the masses.

But of course "progressives" claim they are ALL about MAJORITY RULE -- until majority rule affects them negatively, in which case they sue.

I may well like to see the WI Constitution be harder to change,  but it isn't . When you hear a "progressive" tell you how great majority rule is, remember, they are most likely lying as they usually are -- or as they prefer to call it " being situationally ethical".

They are in favor of things that suit them -- you can trust them to be consistently in favor of things that benefit them, otherwise, assume they are untrustworthy.

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Malevolence, I Recognize Your Existence

Special Editorial: Kill the Deal | The Weekly Standard:

The linked article covers a number of aspects that congress ought to consider making prerequisites of any "deal" with Iran. Sure, it would be nice to have the refrain from regularly and publicly calling us the "Great Satan" since we are supposed to be on  on some sort of diplomatic and respectful terms. Not directly sponsoring terrorism around the world might also seem like a reasonable  gesture of good will for someone we are supposed to trust. But the one that really gives on pause is their refusal to RECOGNIZE Israel.

I may very strongly disagree with some of you reading this -- you may have completely different world views, as in being an atheist, or a proponent of vast expansion of coercive state power. You may hold a lot of hatred in your heart for Christians, business people, personal responsibility, gun rights, the Constitution in general, the unborn, etc. You may hate America, anything remotely "conservative" -- the list could go on and on.

But I'm willing to recognize your existence. I don't even consider that to be a matter of any question whatsoever -- to do otherwise seems to be somewhere between extreme malevolence and insanity !

Yet, Iran (and most of the other Arab nations) refuse to recognize the EXISTENCE of Israel -- and they are generally all sworn to annihilate Israel if they have the chance. I find them to be malevolent rather than insane.

Iran of course ALSO has no gay "marriage" issue because they have no gays. Seriously, they don't -- if you are identified in Iran as being gay you are put to death, so they have no gays. They don't recognize gays or Israel -- they deal with gays in the same way they want to deal with Israel, but so far they have not had the means to achieve a "final solution to Israel -- but they have stated that they WILL achieve such a solution.

So there is a very strong desire  in "The Party" -- TP, Democrat, for sanctions against Indiana and an equally strong desire to DROP sanctions against Iran.

The only way this makes sense is if CHRISTIANS and JEWS are who TP really hates, and if gays, blacks, and others are mere pawns to be used to battle the true enemies, Christians and Jews.

The only other explanation that would work is that TP is INSANE ... and I don't buy that one ... malevolence works just fine.







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Irish Fairies, Ulysses and Jonathan Swift

When we booked a round trip from Dublin to Holyhead Wales on a car ferry I never realized that we would be on somewhat famous ships.

Outbound we were on the Jonathan Swift, a fast catamaran ferry that I clocked on my GPS as making 45MPH   ... we made the 75mi trip in under 2 hours.

On the return we were on the Ulysses, the worlds largest ferry at the time she was launched and the subject of an hour long visit on the National Geographic Channel show "Superships".

Both trips were on time, very comfortable, and very clean accommodations/No need to spring for the "Club Class" as we did on the 3 hr Ulysses crossing -- the normal accommodations are very comfortable and the wifi is just as slow (satellite connections  have lots of latency ... bad for surfing!) ... I suspect that any of them are pretty good, but we were happy with Irish Ferries

The Fool, Three Years and Counting

http://bilber99.blogspot.com/2014/04/roswell-to-pagosa-springs-memories-and.html

I missed writing April 1 on the actual 3rd anniversary of  my exit from IBM. I did ride motorcycle a bit that day -- over to the health club to work out, then to church to pick up the communion kit, and then to give communion to a shut-in. Much shorter than my 100 mi on the Wing the day I left IBM, and MUCH shorter than my ride from Roswell NM to Taos to Pagosa Springs via scenic 64 and 84 plus a few other nice roads. My ride Wednesday was around town was the Harley -- chilly Wing today, it varies.

The third year brought the purchase of the lake property in IA, the marriage of our eldest son, the completion of the water feature, the purchase of the Harley Ultra, a nice motorcycle trip to Indianola IA to see the balloons, the loss of our nieces husband, and the trip to Ireland and England just over. There were other things -- the Packers loss to Seattle would be nice to forget along with the month of flu / pneumonia from Thanksgiving to New Years.

The winter was the first time I had A FEW feelings of wanting more to do -- that resulted in a little more activity on the book, but I find the self discipline to break away from the routine of writing the blog, working out at the RAC and reading extensively (Churchill was a major push this past year) to be rather easy to fall into. I even watched a BIT more TV for a change -- making it through a season of "Mad Men", and staying almost current with "Better Call Saul"  to give into a bit of peer pressure from friends that like to discuss a bit of TV  -- MAYBE I'll catch up, but the task seems daunting, TV is not very easy for me.

The expected birth of our first grandchild -- a girl, dominates thoughts of this year. Next on the list is the impending construction of our livable shed on the lake property in IA. High hopes for a lot more entertaining around the water feature and hopefully some memorable rides on the motorcycles.

It remains a great blessing to have been able to have a period of "retired time" while still able to be active. I completely bypassed the idea of finding something to work at that I felt was "a calling" in my youth -- I certainly liked computers and to some degree still do, but that old "what is your bliss" question is not an easy one for me. MAYBE it is writing -- the blog entries are certainly "pure fun" without any need to "buckle down" and write. I'm now approaching 3K entries over the decade that I've been writing -- but focusing on a book is so far a good deal harder.

Perhaps this will be the year when the muse strikes harder and real book progress is made -- or perhaps self discipline is the only muse that will ever "strike" and what I need is a "gumption adjustment". I can certainly tell that there is a good deal of the old friend "fear of failure" -- it has often been nice to dream of writing a book that at least some set of people read and appreciate. Far  more likely to to never produce a book, or to produce something that some very small set of people politely read and try to make the best of ...

It is fitting that my personal year cycle now tends to start on April Fools given the point at my exit from IBM. I imagine the Master Planner getting in a wink and a chuckle at that!

Apple vs WalMart

Mises Wire | Mises Institute:



A good little article covering something we all know. Progressives hate WalMart and they love Apple.



Why? WalMart is about poor, often rural hicks and Apple is about cool, upscale techie coasties. What part of that don't you get?



Progressives hate blacks, poor, hispanics, country hicks, the religious -- the "uncool". Sure, they will say things in favor of at least the black, poor and the hispanic, but that just means they want their votes and they want to feel good about throwing them some bones. They don't actually CARE about them -- if they did, then 6K young black youths being shot dead on the streets by other black youths would be a bad thing -- but as it is, they could care less.



Sure Apple makes way more profit -- why not? They are cool! Just like progressives -- just ask them, they are CERTAIN of it!



It's a short article, worth the short read.



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Life Lessons from Germanwings Disaster

Life Lessons from the German Air Disaster - Dennis Prager:

A very well thought out and well written article on the subject.

How true it is that we must all beware those that would "change the world", and be much more interested in changing our own life, and at best the lives of the people we love for the better.

Any Jackass can kick a barn door down, it takes a carpenter to build one ...

One psychopath murdered 149 people -- how difficult it is for any of us to change the lives of 149 people for the better!

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Marine Assaults African Immigrant and Steals His Lunch

Conservative biker saves little girl; He NEVER expected what happened next:



Just go and read the link ... how something is reported DOES make a difference!



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Forcing Blacks To Celebrate the KKK

The War on the Private Mind:

“I expect to die in bed,” Francis Eugene Cardinal George famously remarked. “My successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” Perhaps it will not come to that. But we already are on the precipice of sending men with guns to the homes and businesses of bakers to enforce compliance with dictates undreamt-of the day before yesterday.

The linked column is well worth reading. Another good quote from it:

Adlai Stevenson famously offered this definition: “A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” We do not live in that society.

For the thinking person, the facts of this direct attack on private religious thought stretches the application of "never assert malice when stupidity can provide explanation".

Tim Cook is gay and not stupid. A gay man running what may well be the most powerful corporation in America goes to battle against little bakers, florists and photographers who might still hold as part of their private religion, morals that were the standard of all of civilization for over two thousand years. REQUIRING at penalty of loss of their pitifully insignificant businesses and livelihoods next to his 700+ BILLION market cap Apple and his personal $400 millon and rapidly rising wealth, that they CELEBRATE a marriage ceremony that is in direct opposition to their religions views and the views of all mankind for all of human history up to the last decade.

The mind boggles. This is compared to Jim Crow in the old south? The comparison is apt only in that Jim Crow was run by the Democrats and this attack on the private religious freedom of the powerless "bitterly clinging" common people is also being run by the party of state power -- the Democrats. Tim Cook is the modern Bull Connor -- only far more powerful and ruthless. Are the masses really so far gone that they can't see who the powerful and who the powerless are in this battle?

Since at least Cook is not stupid, we must assign the motive for this attack to something else. Jim Crow was in some ways benign relative to the modern assault on private thought. Bull Connor and his like did not demand that blacks thoughts align with theirs, only that they stay in their place. That was sufficient, they didn't need to bow on bended knee and swear their fealty to their betters -- only comply in the physical sense -- their minds were still their own.

Leviathan has grown enough that such is no longer sufficient. We are now told to "get our minds right" -- on your knees naive! We are no longer granted the privacy of our thoughts and beliefs, for the all-powerful State has expanded to where it is no longer going to whisper about "bitter clingers" at private campaign events. It has now stepped over the line to where economic warfare will be used to coerce those that fail to worship at the state altar to do so or pay -- first with their livelihoods, then with ??

We know where this goes. Once the path to thought coercion is taken, the drive for that coercion to be 100% successful increases as the set of those that resist gets ever smaller and the level of coercion to reach that absolute gets ever more oppressive until "No one stands against us!!!!!" (they have all been annihalated, and if you decide to get off your knees, so will you)

But then, as in Rome or as in Nazi Germany, the level of the perversion and the blood lust to demand that ALL bow to declare the perversion sacred continues. For the lusts of the human heart are not limited -- in fact, the unrepentant heart of man is exceedingly wicked. There is a good reason that BC and AD are separated by Easter.

Christ is the difference in world history, but unrepentant man can not accept that difference. This is as old as Romans 1:28 "Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done."

As with the rise of the "isms" in the 20th century, the world seems determined to worship the idol of "Secular Humanism". How many millions will die this time before we repent and the Church picks up the shards?

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ZZ Top, Across The Border

We ventured over to La Crosse WI to see the ZZ Top show that was originally scheduled for my birthday, October 5th ...  but Dusty Hill broke his hip so it was cancelled and rescheduled for the 31st.

La Crosse is a little over 50K people, 1/2 the size of Rochester -- there were about as many bars / restaurants between the car park 3 blocks from the La Crosse Center where the concert was at than there are in the city of Rochester.

We ate at Buzzard Billy's Flying Carp Cafe ... before dinner we had appetizers and a beer at the Starlight Lounge upstairs. Two excellent local Pearl Street offerings and super chicken wings for $11.50. The meal downstairs, two drinks, two soups, two entrees ... a catfish Po Boy and a Cajun platter, both excellent came in at $36! A 16oz beer at the concert was a mere $4.50 ... up at an event in the twin cities $8 is a good guess.

I have no idea if it is competition, taxes, regulations, German vs Scandinavian culture or "whatever", but those costs would have been at LEAST 30% higher here!

Billy, Dusty and Frank are all 65 years old -- Billy still seems to move like he did a decade ago, but Dusty seems a little less mobile maybe -- although he is a bass man, and they tend to not move much anyway. At the end of the show when Frank walked down front from the drums, I thought he looked like he may have aged the most. The crowd? Well, the crowd looks OLD -- what am I doing in such a crowd!!

I can't really imagine what happened -- I saw them in the early 80's on the "Eliminator" tour, then on our 20th anniversary, then 5 years ago up at Mystic Lake, and again last night -- as Billy G likes to say "40 years, same three guys, same three chords". Harley / Sturgis / ZZ Top -- those were the T-shirts, and pretty much in that order -- they seem to understand their audience pretty well at this point.

A very nice belated B-day present,

Inflation, Interest, British Isles Prices

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Ben Bernanke, Confused as Ever, Starts His Own Blog to Prove It:

If you follow the link, Ben  Bernanke started a blog and one of his first posts was "Why are interest rates so low?" Mike "Mish" Shedlock is an investment guy that was relatively on top of the housing bubble and made money off it -- Bernanke isn't all that clear in his column, Mish disagrees with most of what he has to say, but isn't super clear either. My view is that when you are talking a $17T US economy, heavily intertwined with a $73T world economy, there is plenty of room for everyone, expert or not, to be confused, wrong, etc -- Mooses most of all!

The "simple Moose baseline" is that money is a "good" ... mostly like any other good; grain, oil, beer, ZZ Top tickets, etc. It happens to be the good that we all exchange, invest, etc to live, and it has a few "brands" -- dollars, euros and pounds were the brands that I spent some time with the past couple weeks. Interest is what we pay for money on the market -- and right now, we are paying historically low rates. (and of course also receiving historically low rates if we have some money to lend)

I found the key statement in the Bernanke post to be:

Except in the short run, real interest rates are determined by a wide range of economic factors, including prospects for economic growth—not by the Fed.

I think he is maybe being a little overly honest there -- global economic conditions and government polices have interacted to do a couple of things -- first, to make investment, savings, work and general productivity less likely to net good returns. We are in the age of consumption, not production, with vast amounts of that consumption being done by governments or people receiving payments in one form or another from governments (FICA, medicare, earned income credits, welfare, subsidies, grants, etc, etc). Second, the costs and risks of investment, savings, work and productivity are at very high levels -- taxes of all sorts, regulation, mandates like BOcare, PLUS the trend is clearly toward ever greater and ever more unpredictable risk on all those fronts -- more taxes, more regulation, unpredictably and capriciously applied often with no more than an executive decree.

Government has also been lowering the value of the money commodity by printing more of it here and in Europe, while at the same time raising both the costs and risks of production -- so the demand for money is LOW -- or in common terms, interest rates are low.

Business always deals with unpredictability. Government likes to lie to everyone that it deals in security and "certainty" (whatever that is), but it is in fact the biggest bubble of all -- it claims to be "too big to fail". In my personal dictionary, under "too big too fail", it says "see Brontosaurus"!

But what of inflation? We are told that it is also very low, yet anyone going out to eat, buying food, looking at what it costs to just live in your home, or doing much of anything KNOWS that they are being lied to -- that is unless you are being subsidized by the government, which slightly over 50% of the population now are.

The government keeps the inflation books, and like all their books, they cook them -- the fact of interest being low is part of the "low inflation" calculation (the "market basket" assumes you are a borrower) ... the fact that housing prices are still well below their bubble high also artificially depresses the inflation number -- homes are "down" relative to the bubble numbers. It is my understanding that the cost of taxes doesn't get factored in at least directly -- I'm not an expert, something I need to look into more.

My personal observation from the trip is that inflation in many areas is relatively INSANE, especially when one considers that we were getting a BETTER dollar - pound and dollar - euro exchange rate than what has been had in a good long while.

A 30 min train ride each way from Gatwick to London was $50! The one day tube pass was $25! Most all the "attractions" -- Stonehenge, Chartwell, Churchill's WWII bunker, were $30 per person. What's more, items that were formerly not charged for -- like Winchester Cathedral,  not charged for in '89 when I was last in London (yes, I know, a LONG time ago!) are now also $30+.

The other factor that I noted was that I get a lot more tired traipsing around the "square mile" now than I did nearly 30 years ago! Age seems to take a bit of a penalty on physical assets!

My suspicion on public transportation is that it is yet another form of socialist transfer payment -- while we just went out to the rail site and looked for fares, I bet if you live in the UK you can plug in your income, buy a long term pass and pay a much reduced rate. The concept is an old one -- tax the productive at high rates to build the system, and then "tax" the productive again with high fares if they want to use the system -- the socialist ideal of no good (productive) deed going unpunished!

While I had a lot of fun on the trip, it is VERY good to be home where the 4-lanes don't have curbs right at the edge of the lane and the rest of the roads have SOME form of buffer better than often having a rock wall 6" from the edge of the narrow lane. Not to mention hotel rooms the size of modern ladies closets in the US, and everything just packed in like sardines. Europe is a great place to visit, but it is EASY to see why so many people left!











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Coke, Bud, Jack, KFC

Some observations from Ireland and England -- may be applicable to the continent as well, dunno. It is just an observation ... nothing meaningful.

Coke is everywhere, Pepsi is pretty much MIA.

Every Pub has Bud ON TAP! **AND** people sit in Irish Pubs with Guinness, Murphy's, Beamish, etc and drink BUD! They also have Heineken in every Pub we saw ... so two taps pretty much down with beer that I don't want to drink when I'm across the pond. Fortunately, many places have a good number of taps, and the Guinness there is heavenly -- positively creamy, and the US Tenders really need to learn to put a shamrock in the foam!

Oh, I do drink Bud in IA when the choices are Bud Lite,  Coors Lite, Bush Lite, Miller Lite and Nite  Lite  ... or Bud!

And JACK! Every pub had Jack Daniels -- and sometimes Makers Mark and usually Canadian Club -- which was enough for me to look up the list -- Jack, Johnnie Walker, Jameson, Canadian Club (that explains it!) ... interestingly, Ballantines, Japanese brands I'd never heard of, plus Jim Beam (expected it to be higher on list) as well as Crown and Black Velvet appear in top 10.

McDonalds is there of course -- isn't it everywhere? But I was shocked by the prevalence of KFC -- both in Ireland and England. Apparently the folks on the isles find it finger lickin good!

Oh, and at the Jamison distillery, Marla, who just isn't into even triple distilled ultra smooth whiskey neat, went for the Jamison, Ginger Ale and a lime twist ... Now THAT could get a person into trouble! Smooth Jamison with it's little appleish-citrus tang accentuated by the lime, plus the Ginger Ale light ginger sweetness ... very nice! But possibly a little TOO subtle!

Germanwings 9525, Technology, Incrementalism, Trust

Germanwings 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust - The New Yorker:

This article jumps a bridge too far relative to safeguards on aircraft. The plane doesn't need to COMPLETELY fly itself, it just needs to add more "self preservation" ... which the fly by wire craft like the Airbus already have -- as do most cars now. Rev limiters, lock-outs to prevent shifts to reverse,  not starting in gear, etc. My Gold Wing won't stay running in gear with the kickstand down, thus preventing driving off and being up-ended by turning with it down.

Current planes limit the ability to pull up too fast on takeoff, fly over-speed, damage the engines, etc  -- all these elements have good and bad points. A fairly recent slide off a runway was caused when a plane had not settled enough on the gear to allow the thrust reversers to be used. There was a way to override that, but they could not find that switch fast enough.

There are ZERO systems that are "foolproof", "suicide proof" or will not have unintended side-effects as the hardened cockpit door added as a result of 9-11 did in this case. The systems analysts game is a game of odds -- prevent the big failure, weed out anything "common". First do no harm.

Current nav information DEFINITELY allows the planes systems to know where it is relative to ground and where airports are at. There is really not much of an excuse for an autopilot to accept a command to fly the plane into terrain. Such a command ought to require two pilots to type in an override code at a minimum if it is even allowed -- I fail to see a scenario where flying a jet into terrain is "the best alternative available".  It damned well better be in a landing configuration --  below 150mph, flaps deployed, etc, etc before the automation lets it get to say "1000 AGL" (Above Ground Level)

Our technology is not ready to allow commercial planes to go fly routes on their own, but it is clearly at the level where a plane ought not to allow a pilot to destroy it without putting up a very good  battle!  Certainly there need to be overrides and ways to "shut off most of the automation" -- because ALL systems can fail, but those overrides can be 2 man decision points.

Some of the more thoughtful may be saying, "Yes but, what if the other pilot is incapacitated" ... etc, etc. Again, this is about ODDS -- what are the ODDS that you not only need to disable all the automation, but ALSO the other pilot is incapacitated? Even that is possible to get around -- perhaps a flight attendant has a third code to cover that eventuality. I'm not doing a full design here -- it just ought not be as easy as it apparently was to allow one pilot to instruct a $70M plane to fly into terrain with a load of passengers.

The choice is NOT "remove the pilots" or just go on with the same risks. There are LOTS of incremental steps that can, and I'd argue ought to have been taken already given EXISTING navigational and programmed automation capabilities to make flying a modern aircraft into off-airport terrain an act that is nigh on impossible to execute.

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"Gone With the Wind", Indiana, History

Indiana Takes On America: Discrimination Against Gays, Religious Freedom And Rewriting The Constitution | Richard Brodsky:

It isn't the least bit "conservative". It is a radical, un-American, reactionary re-writing of our basic freedoms. We had struck a constitutional balance between private religious observance and public commercial activity. Real conservatives would be looking for a way to reasonably accommodate both interests.

Islam and "liberalism" share the concept that "wins" are not reversible. Any territory EVER under Islamic rule is ALWAYS considered under Islamic rule and Jihad against "occupiers" is forever the official Islamic position. If you want to understand the Islamic position on Israel, just study that aspect of Islam for about 10 min and you will understand it.

So too, "liberalism" or "progressivism" -- once the state has expanded its powers to coerce behavior by force, those liberties may NEVER be regained (without armed conflict).

From a "progressive" view, "gay marriage" was now ALWAYS a "basic right" and nobody can EVER decide that it is against their religious position to take part in such a ceremony. You may think that the concept of a "gay marriage" was so foreign to the writers of our Constitution that they would never have believed such a thing a remote potential -- but if you think that, you are not a "progressive" as defined by this article -- you are a "reactionary" and "un-American" to boot.

TWENTY states have versions of such laws as Indiana -- designed to allow Christian (or Islamic for that matter) photographers, caterers, bakeries, etc the freedom to decline to participate in a gay union ceremony, but Indiana is "too far north", "too populus", or something -- the line must be drawn there.

We know that the cornerstone of the US government is dead  -- LIMITED government is no more. The government can and does tell you what you may and may not do in every way. You could certainly refuse to do something for the NRA, the Koch brothers, Amish people in your community, your local gun club, a church -- nearly anyone except the gay or the black.

America was founded on the idea that YOU the individual had LIBERTY. "Justice" was something that the GOVERNMENT abided by -- it meant things like "equal protection", but that is long gone, invalidated by the "progressive" income tax and many other things since. Justice meant that the laws applied to all, but more important, LIMITED Government meant that law was a hammer to be little used. At our founding, it was coercion of the individual at the point of a gun that was "un-American".

The country that the column writer talks about is not America in any definition that would be recognized for the first 100+ years of our history, and little recognized for the first 200. There is no longer an "America" because there is no effective Constitution -- laws, government and court actions now violate the Constitution constantly, even in the tattered sense that it still held some sway up to 1950 or so. We were a nation of laws not of men -- or of territory. America was embodied in the now dead Constitution.

To the column writer, there are no powers "reserved to the States and the People" -- the Federal government is the sovereign, and "whatever some voting block big enough can get" is the law of the land. Mob rule, what the Constitutional Republic was founded to prevent.

All gone now -- the vast majority of the people no longer understand either of the twin perils of Leviathan -- unlimited government, nor the tyranny of mob rule. We now live under an unlimited mob tyranny. Liberty is dead. "Gone With the Wind" -- as the old South, now America.

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Ireland and England, Sunday Jet Lag Edition

I slept in until 10am, Ireland time mostly -- woke up at 2AM local time but got back to sleep until 5Am local. We left the hotel at 4am Dublin time yesterday, Saturday the 28th and landed in Minneapolis at 2pm CDT. Kept going until 8 Rochester time, or 1am Dublin time, which is what the biological and real "hours awake clock" was running on -- 17 hours up with a little nap on the plane.

I'll post the trip up in snippets and blurbs -- little recovery time, ZZ Top concert in La Crosse Tuesday, Holy Week. One thing about coming home after travelling than was different than the IBM career -- no massive set of email to go through with a bunch of new problems and the same ones that were there before to deal with. No post vacation letdown! Which is a really nice thing.

We were blessed with exceedingly trouble free travel. The trip over to Paris 3/18 on  Delta flt 171 using an Airbus 330 was way better than standard Moose over the pond travel -- the seats, spacing and positioning of the headrests give the impression of more space than the 767 we flew back on, plus with a prompt takeoff and nice tailwind it was short of 8 hours to Paris and over 9 back. The City Jet high wing Avro RJ to and from Dublin was a really nasty small fit seating -- although with some decent headroom for a small jet. Made for LONG two hour flights.

The highlights of the trip -- Cliffs of Moher. MUCH thanks to niece Jonna for introducing us to this wonder of Irish beauty. Had never heard of them ... could walk around and just sit at a few spots for days and ponder the heights, the sound of the waves far below, the views of the vast Atlantic with the Aran islands in the foreground. Simply stunning.

The Dingle peninsula -- who knew Ireland had mountains! It would be another good place to spend a number of days or even a week just soaking up the scenery and the local pubs.

Chartwell! My Churchill worship continues -- the man had REALLY great ponds and water features! I've been to a number of "estate / residences", but this was really a very LIVEABLE place as well as suitable for entertaining the greats of the world. No pictures allowed inside -- the dining room, where Churchill held court would have been STUNNING to dine in with three sides of windows looking out on the the incredible grounds. Standing in the study where he wrote and rehearsed many of his most memorable speeches and did all his writing was a wonderful connection to history.

NYTs, Green Bay Paper for the Clintons

To Avert Repeat of 2008, Clinton Team Hopes to Keep Bill at His Best - NYTimes.com:



Listening to NPR or reading the NY Times on political issues is reminiscent of reading the Green Bay Gazette or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel without the honesty. The Gazette and the Journal Sentinel know and freely admit that they are 100% total Packer partisans!



NPR and the NYTs will make no such admissions, so their "reporting" -- better called "cheer leading" or "home team kibitzing" sometimes seems surrealistic to someone that has a tiny bit of objectivity left in the brain. The Packer papers are even well aware that although the Pack is their team and they LOVE them, the Pack will not win every game, and in fact a competitive NFL is actually really important for the game of football.



For NPR and the NYTs, there is no such understanding. They no longer believe that the competitive give and take of a competitive market of ideas is actually critical to the future of liberty and success in our nation. They want single party 100% Democrat rule with other views and parties being banished to the ash heap of history. In their minds, it is not possible that ANY "reasonably intelligent decent people" could possibly hold any views that diverge from those of THE PARTY (Democrat).



I don't really recommend the linked article unless you are into "inside baseball" (politics) ... it is SO reminiscent of Packer artcles at this time of the year as to who the Pack should draft, weak spots, player development, if the "Pistol" offence ought to be used more, etc, etc ... all of which I find interesting.



The coronation of Hillary and how to best deploy Slick Willie is clearly of A LOT of interest to the NYTs ... I guess I'm weird. If it was not so sad, it would be really funny to contrast the treatment of the left media of Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, etc with this kind of fawning adulation and hopeful strategizing that the Hilly-Beast gets!



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