Whose Coat-tails?

There is a new polling term-du-jour in the mouths of the punditry, “the Generic Ballot.” I’d not encountered it before yesterday, but then found it referenced again in this insightful piece:

What to Point At

The gist of Bill Kristol’s editorial is that the very words of Sen. Obama four years ago in illuminating why John Kerry was qualified to be the next President of the United States reveal quite precisely the Messiah’s own shortcomings. But notice the comments regarding the generic ballot and take a moment to consider the dynamics.

In a period during which the US has again demonstrated its total lack of enthusiasm for any level of discomfort whether personally experienced or only vicariously through the nightly coverage of combat operations, the desire for an ideological change (there’s that word again,) means that the Democrats will gain a lot of votes from those tired of Republicans. With the economy somewhat debatably in a form of recession, a shift in policy makers seems to be on the horizon. So that is where this generic ballot comes into play.

Voters who really aren’t all that clear about their personal ideology appear eager to punch the chad for “Anyone But Bush.” The Obama campaign has done a fantastic job of chanting the very questionable assumption that John McCain is a Bush sycophant and his election will be a continuation of the same policies. Objective analysis of that thesis will quickly demonstrate much more opposition to Bush policies and ideologically pure Republicans than agreement emanating from McCain. Yet, the message has been sold. That means that the perception has become one that supports voting for any Democrat in preference to any Republican.

But here is where the strange thing happens. The generic ballot, comparisons of unnamed Dems versus unnamed Reps, shows a double-digit preference for Democrats this election cycle. When the names are inserted for the Presidential race an unusual and atypical phenomenon is displayed. Rather than showing a much greater advantage for Dems, the margin contracts to within the margin of error. The coat-tails which a party always cling to in a landslide election are not only not there but the numbers indicate that the top of the ticket is worse off than the party itself.

Building the froth of campaign enthusiasm for the Messiah in the next couple of days is going to be a very entertaining display of packaging and script-writing. The Nuremberg…er, Invesco Field rally on Thursday is going to have to outdo the Beijing opening and closing ceremonies combined. Can we get a couple of battalions of those Chinese storm-troopers to march in and raise some flags or some acrobats or something? Hey Beck, can you do some lighting for this gig?

But Of Course

Remember how it was at the beginning, a year ago when the coming of the Messiah was barely on the horizon? The issue was change and hope and abandonment of the “old politics.” What was to be changed and what we were to hope for wasn’t quite clear, but most assuredly the young, the idealistic, the down-trodden, the “working poor,” the masses of folks needing a helping hand from government were certainly enamored by the simplicity of the message of hope and change. It really didn’t matter what would be changed, simply that it would be different which presupposes that things would be more beneficial to the individual receiving the message. The “Politics of Personal Destruction” was headed for the dustbin of history.

That was then and this is clearly now. The Messiah is at apogee and as we view him so far above us it becomes much easier to notice the feet of clay. The difference is that he somehow manages to portray himself as the victim any time anyone says anything the least bit critical. He tours Europe (a strange place to campaign for the Presidency;) he finally gets some firsthand experience meeting real combat troops in a real combat zone; he unabashedly stiffs the wife of the former President of the United States in her quest for glory; he basks in adoring coverage from the mainstream media; and when someone suggests that possibly the man who would be emperor has a decidedly transparent wardrobe he hauls out the most irrefutable of whines.

Get this editorial piece at Slate:

Feel Guilty About Yourself

OK, anyone who spends any time reading Slate knows that they are slightly to the left of Mao Tse Tung, but this is too outrageous to go without comment.

From the first sentence it reads like some sort of Psalm written to glorify the deity while offering hope for an afterlife removed from this vale of tears. It speaks of the Seventh Level of Dante’s Inferno to which we have now descended and promises pie, probably ala mode, in the sky of the next administration if only we see the light. We must accept the Messiah as our personal and national savior and eternal damnation will be inflicted on any who fail to recognize the core shortcoming of America.

We are racist. That’s it pure and disgustingly simple Slate accuses. Obama is going to lose this election because America is blatantly racist. We are still predominantly white and everyone must know that we therefore are indelibly racist. There is no way that we flawed Caucasians will vote for an individual so intelligent, so capable, so hopeful and promising, so necessary to save the country if he also happens to be fifty percent African-American. We simply can’t do it, so Obama will lose and we will be at fault because we are racist. Are you kidding me?

You mean it won’t be because he has virtually no experience? You’re telling me that it won’t be because there simply isn’t enough money to give everything to everyone that is being promised? You mean that the cause won’t be the vacuous speechifying without substance that we’ve been subjected to these many months? You’re saying it isn’t going to be because of the Messiah’s hubris? You want me to believe that it won’t flow from his inability to be encumbered by evidence of military success in Iraq? You demand that all successful people should welcome incredible taxation to support the welfare masses? None of that will be the cause? It will be because we are evil racists?

Sorry guys, but that isn’t it at all.

Taking Things Into My Own Hands

And, this just in:

Too Much History

Think back on vice-presidential candidates past. Some of them have been remarkably prominent individuals, even recent opponents of the ticket head-liner. Names like Lyndon Johnson come to mind or Hubert Humphrey. They sometimes win and sometimes lose disastrously. The real individual who is responsible for winning the election is the candidate himself.

More often the VP choice is someone decidedly unfamiliar on the national stage, someone innocuous and with implications of undiscovered talent that will be groomed for a possible future. Franklin D. Roosevelt had no qualms about changing Vice-Presidents even while encouraging the Abraham Lincoln caution regarding not changing horses in mid-stream. FDR went through three of them, none of whom were particularly remarkable prior to their selection. Harry Truman, turned out pretty good when thrust into the Oval Office.

Consider Dan Quayle, for example. The only thing they could pin on him was how he spelled his vegetables. Not really very damning. Or, for that matter, how about Dick Cheney? Certainly he’s been vilified in office, but the opposition simply couldn’t muster much in terms of really outrageous earlier scandal. He really became acceptable in his “gravitas” providing role because of his age and lack of presidential ambition.

That’s what makes the Biden choice so weird for me. The mantra has been about “change” but how can you suggest that you are going to clean house if you are joined at the hip with a guy who has been in the US Senate for the last 35 years. Is it “change” to move your office ten blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue?

Then there is the problem of Joe’s record. He’s got a long and rich history of inflammatory rhetoric. He’s been a favorite of talk shows and press conferences because the things he says are invariably going to make great sound-bites. He has always got something to say and it is always going to be sarcastic, demeaning, partisan, embarrassing and colorful. Watch him in a Senate committee hearing and you are certain to learn what he thinks and seldom what the expert giving testimony has to say. He’s a loose cannon, a train wreck in progress, an immature adolescent in sixty-five year-old’s clothing.

But maybe the most disturbing is this bit of memorabilia from the Biden files:

At Least They Found Some Writings He Would Claim

You might remember the question about ten days ago regarding where all of the writings of the former editor of the Harvard Law Review have gone. The conspicuous lack of a legacy documenting Sen. Obama’s legal thought is certainly not duplicated in the case of Sen. Biden. The problem, however, seems to be the opposite. It seems that almost anything written could be claimed at one time or another by Joe.

At least that’s what the New York Times was saying. Do you think they will revisit the topic? I doubt it.

Not Quite Total Withdrawal

Ohhh, YEAH!

Gotta stop that aggressive air ops that is running the genocide in Darfur:

Hoist on a Petard

This is going to be great fun!

Did Santa Come Last Night?

I don’t recall a collective national anticipation ever before to rival the lead-up to the Messiah’s announcement of his running mate. The main-stream media are simply beside themselves with handicapping the “Veepstakes” (ptui, gargle, spit…) Every pundit has pontificated and by the time I rise to post this the name will be on every newspage, all the blogs, incessant on the cable news outlets and running in a crawl on the kid’s Saturday morning cartoon-fest. Frankly, Scarlett…

The “short-list” may or may not have been predictive. I’m honestly thinking that the membership of that select club might really have spent the night burning incense and sacrificing the neighbor’s bull (after all, they are collectivists,) to the gods in the hope that they aren’t the Chosen One’s chosen one. The leaks in the would-be ship-of-state captained by the harpooner who would be Admiral of all he surveys mean that someone tacked to his shoulder for the next four months is going to be dragged through an awful lot of discomfort. “Call me Obama, and this is my first-mate, Joe/Evan/Chet/Kathleen but definitely not Hillary.”

Whether it is a White Whale or a Holy Grail, the poor second-not-in-command will be a yawner evermore. So, who is it this fine day?

I know in advance it isn’t Hillary. No way Barak is going to look at that pasted on malevolent smile across the conference table for the next four years. And, definitely no way he’s going to be ready to put out former-President and intern-chaser fires which would be sure to erupt regularly. Nope, she’s out of the question. Let’s watch on Wednesday and see how she handles the situation.

Joe Biden? I like Joe, but kind of doubt it. Gonna be very tough to point at McCain’s age while trying to sell Joe’s experience. Biden has a lot of history and some of it is with foot firmly in his mouth. The “clean, articulate, black man” comment of less than a year ago is only the tip of that sooty iceberg.

Evan Bayh? Zzzzzzz, snooze, yawn, what? Oh, about Bayh, well let me say this, zzzzzzzz. Ooops, excuse me, nodded off again. Distinguished former Senator and…what? Oh, he’s not “former” just very quiet in the Senate…and Governor of, where was that again? Oh, that’s right, Indiana…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Kathleen Sebelius? Well, she fills the woman square. And, she is adequately slender so General McPeak would like her. She’s been a Governor, and her father was a Governor, so that means she knows how to govern and stuff like that. Well, no she’s never had a real job, other than being a state legislator and, did I mention, a Governor?

The dark horse that popped up yesterday on the national scene, but which had been mentioned earlier here in Texas is Congressman Chet Edwards. I’m betting he’s the name on the mornings buzz. History? Not much. Been a congressional intern then a real estate agent. Spent some time in the Texas state senate (31 members) and been in the House of Representatives for nine terms now. I guess that makes him inoffensive and probably doesn’t show up the Messiah for inexperience too badly.

Better get a cup of coffee and turn on the boob plasma screen to see what the real answer is. I doubt I’ll be surprised, but for sure a couple of Democrat contenders are relieved this AM.

Ahhhhhh! It’s Joe! Let the dismantling by recapturing his history now commence.

Because We Can

If one needed a crash course in the realities of our dangerous world you couldn’t go far wrong with some serious study of the Russian invasion of Georgia. It very clearly demonstrates the critical difference between what we wish were so and what actually is. We like to view the world through Obama colored glasses, seeing a panorama of highly intellectual nations arrayed in diplomatic frock coats and pince-nez sipping tea and discussing the nuances of cleaning up poverty and disease while simultaneously equalizing income not only in the US but around the globe. It is the world of Woodrow Wilson and Neville Chamberlain displayed in broad pastel strokes.

We have treaties and alliances that have made war a thing of the past. That was a brutal, stone-age solution to issues of the Twentieth Century which we have grown beyond. We’ve got trans-national corporations influencing politics, not jingoistic dictators. We’ve built a network of non-governmental organizations which transcends nationalism and offers us politely discussed solutions when problems arise. As Lyndon Johnson might have said, “let us reason together,” and we’ll find a solution. Let’s simply sit down and talk our problems through. We have evolved to a state in which we can be civilized.

That isn’t the way it is yet. Someone tell the Eloi that the Morlocks are out of their hole. Russia knows that the best way to stabilize a domestic political situation is to turn the focus outward. Create an enemy and then vanquish him. It gives you global stature and patriotic fervor. It’s win-win for the guys in power. Hitler knew it, Mussolini knew it, Mao knew it, Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad know it. And, so does Putin/Medvedev know it.

Those nasty Georgians are ethnically cleansing the good Russians living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia so let’s go down there and teach them a lesson. They don’t stand a chance of beating back our forces with their puny military. We’ve got somebody close by that we can whip quickly and no one can do a thing about it. We re-establish Russian pride. We regain respect for Russian military might, rusty though it might be. We show the former Socialist Republics that this flirting with NATO is not in their best interests. Now, what can they do about it?

The fact is that we can’t do a damned thing. Our military has been cut to the bone to satisfy America’s demand for welfare. We’re involved in a necessary two-front war and scattered globally dealing with terrorists, defense pacts and training requirements. We don’t really want to go nose-to-nose with the Bear. It would be a meat-grinder and we lack the will to fight.

The United Nations isn’t going to do a damned thing. The Security Council is powerless, as it was designed to be, with Russia ready to veto any action. The General Assembly is largely third-world anti-Americans and/or Euro-Socialist dependents on Russian gas and oil. Even if they did become suitably indignant over Russian aggression, they are totally toothless in mustering any sort of military response.

NATO has divulged to the world—at least to that part of the world which hadn’t already realized it—that they are today an effete debating society with little spine for incurring actual casualties in a combat situation. The emergency meeting of NATO ministers resulted in release of prissy language regarding their displeasure and sincere intent to be affronted at some undisclosed time in the possibly near future. Chamberlain would seem downright belligerent compared to Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Bottom line for the NATO countries is they get to play with the big boys, benefit from the historic US defense umbrella, and when push comes to shove they meet their obligations with a platoon of communication specialists or cooks. No trigger pullers or cannon-cockers available from most of them. It has worked for sixty years, but apparently the arrangement has eroded with US War on Terror involvement.

The core European powers, led by France and Germany would love to do more—or at least they publicly imply that they would. But, they depend for their economic survival on Russian energy sources and have developed a huge trade with the developing industrial giant to the East. Strong words regarding the invasion of Georgia, wink-wink, and we really are displeased Valerie. Stop it this instant…or when it suits you.

So, the Russians sign a cease-fire and promise to withdraw immediately. Or, maybe by Tuesday. Or they’ll get organized for an orderly withdrawal in about ten days or so. Or, maybe the techniques that kept Stalin in Eastern Europe after 1945 are still writ large in the play book.

The incontrovertible fact of international relations is that nations aren’t moral actors. They aren’t good guys and bad. They are amoral characters acting in their national self-interest. They do what they want to do if they can do it. They don’t do what they want to do if it is clear that someone else can stop them. In this situation, no one can stop them. They do it because they can.

Short Takes

Saw this item in the Dallas Morning Fishwrap.

Just Divvy It Up

Then it struck me. That final number in the story!

That figure of taxpayer dollars that has flown to New Orleans is $126,000,000,000.

Since the population of NO at the time of Katrina was a shade under 400,000 that means they could have simply dispensed $315,000.00 to every man, woman and child in town!

And, they keep saying the aid has been botched...

I know I could cope with relocation quite comfortably with that amount.

Converted

Once I was the sort of new computer pseudo-geek who foolishly enters every emerging bit of whiz-bang without a second thought. I was an unabashed “early adopter.” Show me a list of plug-ins, add-ons, extensions or utilities and I’d spend the rest of the week downloading them at 2400 bytes/sec over the hum, buzz, squeal, whistle, drone modem on my dedicated phone line. When a new version of an application came out I was first in line to install it. I went from Word 1.0 to 3.6 on forty-two sequential steps without hesitation.

Surprisingly it was then the right thing to do. The first generations of all of these goodies were both ground-breaking and unstable. They did things that hadn’t been done before, making them indispensable once you tried them. But, they crashed, stumbled and always seemed to lack some critical functionality that the next version update was addressing.

That’s all changed now. Reasonable stability has emerged and the improvements are so microscopically incremental that moving me to shift from a long established pattern takes a real break-through. Now, I will confess that I moved to Vista only six months after its release. But, my excuse was that I was upgrading to a new system with all of the horsepower to run it. I’ve not been disappointed in that choice. I also upgraded to Office 2007 and have finally gotten used to the cursed “Ribbon.”

It took some Vista incompatibility to wean me from Eudora as my email client. The fact that Qualcomm cut the program loose helped me make the transition to Outlook and while I don’t really like it, I’ve found that the integration of email, calendar, contacts and the rest of Office makes it functional for me.

My epiphany this time came with a new release item in a monthly computer mag I read about Firefox 3.0.1. I had used Netscape in the early days and was slow to accept Internet Explorer until around version 5.0. By then Netscape had gotten convoluted with plug-ins and integrated email which I didn’t like and Microsoft had undermined the display code to often leave Web pages unviewable in Netscape. I went to IE and stayed.

Doing software reviews, I had to look at Opera, Safari, Phoenix and others. Some were small and quick; some were large and unstable; all were marginal in comparison to IE for everyday use. I looked at Firefox when the buzz started. I tried it and didn’t like it.

Then Firefox offered tabbed browsing. I tried it again and thought maybe they had it right. The browser still seemed confusing to me with a need for an apparently endless search for “extensions” to do stuff that should have been in the application to begin with. After a two week test, I abandoned it.

But, I’m not close-minded. When the magazine said version 3.0 was great I tried it again. My conclusion is that this time they’ve got it right. And, it works in Vista!!!



The tabbed browsing options are faster and more stable than IE. I set up a half-dozen of my default work pages as my “home” and they are all there when I launch Firefox. The integrated password/username extension, called Sxipper, logs me in everywhere including an MS Exchange mail server and a college online course software as well as returning me with one click to any previously registered shopping site. New registrations are saved optionally by just clicking on a pop-up. Personal data (as much or as little as you choose to list) can be auto-filled on Web-page forms with just a click.

Shifting from IE is a no-brainer. When you install Firefox it will ask you if you want to import bookmarks or favorites from another browser. Click and it’s done. Adding and organizing nested bookmark folders is a giant step up from IE as well. Finding the sites you need really works easier with the “Awesome Bar”—the system takes “auto-fill” to an entirely new level.

Searches with Google or Yahoo are enhanced with a nifty extension called Surf Canyon. Get a Google hit list and choose a site as you normally would. When you return to the list, Surf Canyon will have added a sub-folder of additional sites supplemental to the one you just looked at. The drill-down research potential is incredible.

Previous iterations of Firefox exhibited some incompatibility with text manipulation on my blog host and college online instruction site, but the latest version has corrected that significant shortcoming for me. Opening of linked pages from a site can be done in a new browser window or a new tab by setting a default option, making a much cleaner and quicker multi-page viewing experience.

The “Links” toolbar from IE is called the “Bookmarks Toolbar” in Firefox and it works the same way, except that re-arranging along the bar and moving back and forth from bookmarks folders is a lot easier. Identifying icons for sites seem to be captured more quickly and retained more consistently than with IE. Handling of RSS feeds and updates are flawless.

In short, I’m now a Firefox convert. Unless something surprising occurs that hasn’t manifested itself in the last two weeks of testing, I think I’ll stay.

Not With a Bang But a Whimper

No, I’m not going all T.S. Eliot on you, nor even entering Nostradamus mode to predict the apocalypse. I’m talking about the implosion ongoing in the House of Representatives. Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that America seems somewhat upset that since her party wrested control of Congress two years ago not a damn thing has been done. Gas prices soared, the housing market crumbled, approval ratings for Congress set record lows, the damned President has somehow wrested success from the jaws of Middle-Eastern disaster, and strangely enough, America is beginning to awaken to awareness that doing nothing is not a policy. So, she coyly suggests that if she ever decides to return to Washington and do the job she was elected to do, she might allow (get that? ALLOW!) a vote in the legislature on becoming energy independent. She might allow limited, environmentally friendly, cautious, probably heavily regulated and definitely taxed drilling for America’s resources. How benevolent. How politically prudent. How pathetic that it has come to this.

Listen to the spin, the waffling, the stuttering, the simple BS as George Stephanopolous presses her. Is this leadership?



Sloganeering, “use it don’t lose it,” “a diversionary tactic,” “no reduction in price for ten years,” and simple stupidity. This isn’t about vilifying “Big Oil,” it is about wresting America’s wealth from the ground to let America succeed.

As she is saying this, has anyone noticed that simply because of the President’s suspension of the executive order against off-shore drilling and the gradual improvement of the situation in Iraq that the price of crude has dropped from $147/bbl to $113/bbl yesterday. The price of a gallon of regular gasoline has dropped from $4.20 to $3.49 and the dollar has risen against world currencies. In other words, the simple threat of drilling has impact. Imagine what actual drills in the ground might do.

I want the Speaker to tell me a few things. First, how will we achieve her goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil if we don’t increase production of domestic oil resources? We’ve got it. We know we’ve got it. The world knows we’ve got it. Who has more right to it than Americans?

Second, how will getting our own oil into pipelines fail to reduce costs to the consumer resultant from an increase in supply? Oil is a global commodity. Add to the global supply and the global price will come down. If we are part of the global community, Nancy darlin’, we come out ahead.

Third, what is wrong with making profit by companies that invest in production and delivery of a needed product? Remember that old capitalism business they used to teach in schools back in the days of Truman and Eisenhower?

Fourth, what would be the downside of putting thousands of Americans to work in exploration, transportation, refining, building new refineries and pipelines and then spending their wages in a bustling energy independent economy? You mean they wouldn’t be welfare (AKA Democratic Party) dependent any more?

Fifth, how will I power my car when you force a shift to wind and solar energy? Particularly, what will enable me to buy an electric car of dubious utility when I have no job because the economy has collapsed because of lack of fuel? Energy is not totally fungible.

Sixth, what makes you think that the miniscule population of the US can influence global climate change despite the flagrant pollution of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe? Remember the significant difference between Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island?

Last, how does being the Speaker of the House allow you to circumvent the will of the people who have elected representatives to their government?

At least we have this to be thankful for:

First Do No Harm

If watching laws being made is as distasteful as seeing sausage produced, we aren’t going to be very offended by this Congress, but we might not have meat with our breakfast.

The whimper comes from folks like Pelosi. The bang that is missing so far is the slamming of voting booth doors by disgruntled Americans who want their voice to be heard in government. When the people wake up there will need to be some explosions under the butts of these politicians who are more involved with posturing than policy making.

Otherwise the world we know will be coming to a very quiet ending.

Above His Pay Grade

During one of my characteristically hubristic moments, I ran for City Council in Colorado Springs. I ran for a district seat, one of four in the city. In the process I routinely associated with candidates for the other district seats as well as those running for the four at-large council positions. I made friends with several of them and often met for breakfast or a cup of coffee with them throughout the campaign and later during their tenure.

In one particularly memorable meeting a more experienced political type counseled me on my straight-forwardness. He cautioned that there was nothing wrong with being principled but to win an election the goal is to “leave no votes on the table.” In other words, don’t give people a reason to not vote for you. They might be tough to convince to vote FOR you, but at least don’t confirm their choice to NOT vote for you.

What he was describing was our pluralistic society in which we all have different priorities and positions on major issues. If I lose 40% of the voters on the abortion issue and lose 40% of the voters on gun control and then lose 40% of the voters on tax policy, it won’t be the same 40%. In very short order I will have created a significant majority that is staunchly opposed to me.

The secret is not to say very much and even what you do say is not quite as adamant as it might be. Barak Obama is the reigning champion in that event. He has demonstrated the ability to say nothing at all very eloquently and convincingly. He seems to succeed in being all things to almost all people. But, Lincoln was right about not being able to attain the “all of the people, all of the time,” goal. That is becoming increasingly apparent.

I couldn’t bear watching the Saddleback Shootout live. I tried once during the first hour, but the quickest view of Sen. Obama with the clearly coached, hyper-sincere head cocked over his right shoulder posture was too much to allow me to continue so soon after dinner. I knew I could get it all later.

I read the news and the blogs the next day and then opened up the viddie in a tab so that I could listen as I worked elsewhere while not having to watch. Can I say that there were no surprises?

When faced with unscripted questions, an unstructured environment and a need to spontaneously respond to policy issues the poor Messiah is left adrift. If you needed a picture to illustrate the phrase, “there is no THERE, there” he would be it. He rambles, he stutters, he hems, haws and harrumphs. He strings together imagery and visions of sugar-plums while clearly attempting to leave no votes on the table. Without core values and driven by incredible ambition he condescendingly attempts to circumlocute the difficult into simplistic terms which the unwashed can grasp. Not surprisingly it doesn’t work very well.

The easily foreseeable question in a Christian forum is going to be regarding abortion. It wouldn’t take a campaign staff to predict that and forge a pithy, concise answer. When it came in the form of “when do you think life begins?” the answer from McCain was personal, unequivocal and to the point, “at conception.”

How did Sen. Obama deal with it? First he said:

”Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.”

And then he continued:

“But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And so I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue is not paying attention.”

Got that? He is a US Senator, one of the 100 most powerful people in the country and seeking to be the President. He is asked what his personal position is. Not what he wants, what he would legislate, what he would support or defend, but simply what he, as an individual, thinks. He defers his opinion to a higher power in an attempt to remain all things to all people. CNN likes to refer to that sort of perseveration as “nuanced.”

So, where is Harry S Truman and his desk plaque, “The Buck Stops Here”, now that we need him?

Learning the Lessons

Considering the past is a worthwhile exercise and quite often intensely illustrative of mistakes we might be about to make. Take for example that unpleasantness that swept across Europe from 1914 to 1919.

The dominoes that fell to ignite that conflagration were stacked by a system of alliances created to achieve the nebulous goal of balancing international power. When you’ve got a continent full of relatively small nations and a couple of the larger ones tend to oppose each other there’s got to be a way to stabilize the system the great diplomats thought. If you get a couple of friends to join with you in a common defense pact, you get some negotiating clout. If your opponent musters some allies as well, so much the better because you don’t have a lot of little rogue nations scurrying about independently. You’ve got a couple of mature players composed of wise and contemplative leaders who will negotiate you out of conflict.

Then along comes some anarchist with a pistol. He offs an archduke in the backwaters of undeveloped Europe. The next thing you know, the alliances are invoked, the armies march and you’ve got a meat grinder across France and Belgium that extends all the way to Gallipoli. The mature and contemplative thing would have been to ignore the incident. Send a diplomatic note to the grieving nobles pointing out that the arch-duking business is inherently fraught with peril. You have to expect some losses if you want to enjoy being a member of the nobility.

What’s the point? The alliance we’ve got in question is NATO. And the problem I’m talking about that benefits from an historical review is Georgia.

NATO was established in 1949 as the linchpin of a network of alliances that Truman forged to implement the Truman Doctrine. The greatest foreign policy problem ever encountered was the question of how to deal with communism in a bi-polar world with nuclear weapons. Truman’s policy wonk, George F. Kennan, had analyzed post War Europe focusing on the economics of the competing systems. He advised Truman that communism was not sustainable without conquest and expansion. If contained and allowed to demonstrate the inability of central planning to manage an economy, the system would collapse. The solution to prevailing without launching global nuclear war was a policy of containment. Don’t confront, simply contain.

Truman and then Eisenhower with John Foster Dulles embraced the principle of building alliances stressing anti-communist governments and shared defense burdens. NATO was the premiere example, but CENTO, SEATO and other regional pacts performed the same function.

The core of NATO is Article 5, which simply stated says, “an attack against one member is considered an attack on all.” Kick my little brother and the whole family will beat up on you.

Many of the alliances have collapsed, but NATO has persisted. Because of that persistence, the Soviet Union and its mirror-image alliance, the Warsaw Pact, eventually did as Kennan predicted they would.

Which brings us to Georgia. The trend since the fall of the Berlin Wall is expansion of the NATO alliance. Bring former eastern European adversaries into the fold of western democracy and in the process create a larger buffer against a resurgent Russia. We’ve added states to the pact and it seems to work well. Article 5 has only been invoked once, following 9/11 and it hasn’t created a major rift as the member states contribute a handful of forces to symbolically fulfill their obligation.

Georgia has sought membership in NATO. Georgia, however, is not a European nation. Far from it. They are well into Asia and a long way from England, Norway, Spain and Denmark. They are just barely adjacent to Turkey. They are a very primitive, not even adolescent democracy. Like most “democracies” in the region they possess questionable legitimacy. Georgia is a step up from a Soviet Socialist Republic, but they don’t yet have a George Washington, or even a Kemal Ataturk.

We should look back at Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo and ponder the situation if Georgia had been a member of NATO these last two weeks.

Complying with the alliance would leave the US in a very undesirable situation. To fulfill Article 5, we would be seeking to oppose Russian aggression militarily in a ground combat situation. Something we are currently only marginally able to do. Or, we could renege on Article 5 and thereby demonstrate to the world that NATO is a hollow shell with no ability to defend its members.

Neither outcome is good. Until someone can show me a compelling benefit to the member states that would derive from Georgian membership in NATO, I will be unalterably opposed.

(And this item posted shortly after completing the above: Coincidentally

Whatever, Whenever, Always Better Grading

A conversation recently overheard on the parking lot of a shopping mall beneath a dense cloud of pungent smoke:

It's Like So Cool, Dude!

The kids are talking about their future and how the Dallas schools are going to prepare them for adulthood and “real” life by helping them avoid failure.

Now take a moment to peruse this “defense” of the Dallas Independent School District’s new grading policy. This should take care of educational problems in Big D for the foreseeable future. Why didn’t someone think of this before?

Inmates Running the Asylum

Did you get that? Teachers are mandated to accept late assignments without penalty. That should instill a strong sense of responsibility among the students and reinforce lessons of consequences for their behavior. It will carry through and make them much better corporate citizens in the future. It’s the route to assured success for graduates. Due dates are simply suggestions and whenever you get around to it is all right.

Don’t bother to study. Take the exam and you might squeak through without doing any reading or review. No harm, no foul, however if you fail. You just get to take it again and the only thing that can result is your grade goes up. Scores can never go down and failure is not an option…for the teachers.

Think you might get a zero on an assignment? Don’t worry, that isn’t allowed. The teacher has to track down your meth-head parent at the honky-tonk and get their coordination to assist you in succeeding. Think that’s gonna happen?

Kids will have plenty of time for their friends at the mall, since the total of all homework from all teachers and all courses can’t exceed one hour. Imagine all of those teachers gathering to try to see who gets to assign more than ten minutes of work tomorrow.

Those nasty old serious teachers will have to adjust their standards since they can’t fail more than 10% of the kids regardless of how lazy or undisciplined or inattentive or truant they might be. So, let’s all get together gang and take a dive in algebra. If we all suck together we all pass. Mediocrity isn’t the goal anymore. Now we can be totally dissolute. Dallas already has more than 80% of their high school students reading at below the 40th percentile. That should take care of the problem quite nicely.

Somehow I don’t see Supt. Michael Hinojosa getting a huge pat on the back from any conscientious parents that might still reside in Dallas. This is clearly a socially misguided attempt to reduce failure rates for the pathetic DISD schools but without instilling any sense of responsibility. I sincerely hope that within a week there are crowds of thousands in the streets outside of his office demanding his head on a pike.

Over the long term such a policy will first generate a migration to available private and parochial schools in the community. In a slightly longer period there will be middle-class flight from Dallas neighborhoods to more rational suburban school systems. About the same time there will be an exodus of competent teachers to more rigorous educational systems, leaving DISD on a downhill slide to abject ignorance and bumbling incompetence.

This is so incompetent that even the Dallas City Council might notice.

Hobbesian Existence

There’s a flutter of discussion on jury nullification in the blogosphere. For those unfamiliar with the term, the idea is that an individual on a jury may apply his own personal view of what the law should be in determining his or her finding in a case. If you don’t think a law is right or just, you may then ignore the evidence presented as well as the instructions of the judge with regard to what the law demands. You don’t like the law, you simply and adamantly refuse to convict. It should be noted, early on, that the principle is most often linked to prosecutions for recreational drug use.

So, take a look at this well referenced summary of the issue and then take a moment to read some of the comments:

The Judge Reports, You Decide

Or read here and see if you agree that America isn’t a free country when laws are used to imprison those who break them:

Save the Unjustly Convicted

Notice that the general tenor of the comments is that, in the words of Charles Dicken’s character Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

There are the usual appeals to glorious Constitutional principles being somehow assailed by enforcement of duly enacted legislation. They somehow forget, in advancing that argument, that the Constitution only offers the Supreme Court the privilege of declaring a law invalid and then only with respect to the Constitution itself. That power of “judicial review” is not even specifically expressed, but only implied and then asserted in 1803 by John Marshall in Marbury v Madison. We should not assume a right or privilege for each of us to determine what is and what is not the law.

The rhetorical distinction which is so often trotted out, regarding “rule of law rather than rule of man,” means that individuals, whether citizens, judges or prosecutors, don’t get to decide what law can be ignored. The clear authority to make laws is delegated to the elected legislative body. Admittedly they can be outrageously inept, but they still have the authority. Once enacted by the defined procedures spelled out in our federal and state constitutions, the laws must be complied with until they are revoked by further legislative act or overturned by judicial review. We as citizens only are involved in the process through our ability to elect those legislators and to influence their choices through political action.

Even when more democratic procedures are used to pass laws, the results still must be binding even when the law is ridiculous. Simply because most people want it, doesn’t make it good law. Witness the 18th Amendment. No legislative incompetence led to that foolishness. It was pure old-fashioned, democratic majority ruling. The correction was repeal of the amendment, not individual jury nullification.

When the law plainly sucks, we should do something about it. But, taking it into our own authority to ignore the existing laws because they don’t suit our convenience at the moment is a major part of that sacrifice of a segment of our liberty that is required if we are to live under the Social Contract. The Hobbesian world that would evolve without that sacrifice would be a natural state in which life would be even more nasty, brutish and short than it already is.

But a rational man will always view with respect the counter argument. If I were to change my mind it would be because of this excellent analysis. I lean toward order, but this is compelling:

Strongest Argument in Favor

Are you now confused or confirmed? My conclusion is that while a reasonable argument can be made for jury nullification of an unjust law specifically, the reasoning collapses when you extend the principle of jury nullification, as you inevitably must, to anyone with regard to any law. Then the result is chaos. You nullify for recreational drug use; I nullify for drinking and driving and Joe Bagadonutz nullifies for child pornography. That simply doesn’t work. The solution to the unjust law is not to ignore it, but to correct it within our Constitutional process.

Hitler Was a Piker

I grew up in Chicago, on the northwest side of the city, in a lower middle-class Polish, German, Irish neighborhood. I went to the neighborhood Catholic elementary school then St. Pat’s High at Belmont and Austin. When I wanted to go to college, a resident school was beyond our means, so I was a commuter student to Illinois Institute of Technology where I majored in first chemistry, then political science but always in Air Force. I minored in beer, girls, cars, and hanging around the back of the McDonald’s parking lot. When I was in high school and through college I listened to the radio in my bedroom as I fell asleep and almost always tuned to a jazz or Chicago blues station. One of my favorite disc jockeys was a guy named Jesse Owens.

He had a smooth, mellow voice that fit right into the breaks between record cuts. He knew his music and he educated me in Thelonius Monk, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis and Oscar Peterson. I didn’t know that he was also the “fastest man alive” and the guy who upstaged Adolph Hitler on his home turf.

It had been 1936 and the XI Olympiad was held in Berlin. That simple fact should quickly be brought forth to illustrate the fallacy that the Olympic Games are about athletics and not politics. Hitler was at the peak of his utopian grandeur. He had total control of the resources of a mighty industrial nation that was peopled by his master race. He built spectacular venues and created incredible militaristic ceremonies to trumpet the Thousand Year Reich. His Aryans would sweep the events and the world would kneel before German superiority.

But, then this slender Black man from Ohio State came forward and in spectacular fashion ran away from the field in four premier track events capturing four gold medals and the focus of the world’s fickle media. Jesse was a long way from Aryan and there was nothing Hitler could do about it.



That was a simpler time, despite the machinations of Der Fuhrer. Today we know that you can manipulate judges. You can chemically enhance your performance potential. You can even ignore the rules and change the published data of the past. You can PhotoShop the display. You can make footprints walk across the night sky, even if the fireworks fizzle on the launch pad. You can delete entire chunks of your recent uncomplimentary history from the massive scroll of life. Today, Jesse would have been disqualified, discredited, or prohibited from winning on some technicality if the goals of the governing party weren’t met.

Each day now we find something new popping up about the Olympics and the host nation. Bob Costas will continue to fawn, but there is a seamy underside being revealed that should confirm the apprehensions that many of us recalcitrant Cold Warriors have harbored.

Take a look:

Walk This Way

Or sing-along here:



Or:

Year of the Dog Counts as Seven

Let’s acknowledge that the little girls were great. But no mature adult who doesn’t lean toward pedophilia would ever have thought they could pass for sixteen. The rules are to protect children from injury and exploitation, but I guess if the state needs you then you must take risks.

If Hitler had only known how it was done.

Spoiled Corporate Brat

Boeing built a flock of tankers for the USAF forty years ago. They performed incredibly and have lasted unbelievably long. They earned respect.

But respect don’t feed the bulldog. They are in the heavy hauling airplane business and their hard earned monopoly among the airlines as Lockheed and Douglas dropped out of airliner production has been very effectively eroded by the upstart international cooperative EADS. The once niche producer of the early Airbus has now grown to offer a full menu of very competitive people haulers in all sizes from two-engine short haulers to aerial behemoths like the A380.



The Boeing folks thought they had a lock on the AF next tanker deal and crafted a single-source lease arrangement to supply the aircraft and in the process keep the company’s 767 assembly line busy for many more years. The only problem was a sweetheart kick-back set-up with the DOD’s procurement director. A plum executive job after retirement from government service was in the works for Darleane Druyen. But alas, it was not to be. John McCain blew the whistle.

Next step was cancellation of the contract and a competitive rebid. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But something happened on the way to the big payoff. One of the survivors of the aerospace defense consolidation wars pulled a rabbit out of the hat. Northrop-Grumman cobbled together a proposal that took an EADS airframe, some US engines, an American boom system and lot of global sub-contractors and delivered a winning tanker. Throw in a new factory, 25,000 jobs in Alabama and you’ve got a great deal for the economy and the USAF.

Wailing and gnashing ensued from, of all places, the ultra-liberal Democratic congressional delegation of Washington state. Unfair, un-American, un-patriotic, un-reliable, dangerous and more. A publicity blitz of monumental proportions ensued banding together hundreds of pundits who collectively can’t tell where the hot air comes out of the jets to explain to the USAF what they really need. What we need is an investigation.

So they got one. The politically driven and demonstrably biased Government Accountability Office conducted an audit of the bid process. The conclusion was foregone. Bad AF—Good Boeing. Rebid.

So, a new RFP (Request For Proposal) is issued. Now we get this:

Take Your Bat and Ball and Go Home

This isn’t surrender. Don’t think that this means OK, we give up and Northrop/EADS wins. What it means is that they know they can’t compete fairly. They know that they must have the RFP shaped precisely to favor their airplane and disqualify the Northrop/EADS option. They further know that forcing the Pentagon into a single-source award is politically unacceptable. Let’s see, Obama sure to carry Washington; McCain a virtual lock in Alabama. Stretch to November and win the contract by default.

Whatever happened to the idea of doing what is best for your country?

Loss of Leverage

I mentioned two days ago that I was, during one period of my career, on nuclear alert to attack Tbilisi in Georgia. At that time, it was a Soviet Socialist Republic and our posture was one of being prepared for all-out nuclear war. It seems long ago now, but it really wasn’t in the scope of the nuclear age. During the ’60, ‘70s and into the early ‘80s the tactical air force was as much involved in nuclear alert as the more publicized strategic bombers, ICBMs and nuclear submarines. There were fighter aircraft in hardened shelters throughout Europe and along the Pacific rim loaded with thermonuclear weapons and poised to launch against pre-planned targets.

This was a very complex and detailed plan that offered a wide range of options. From the daily alert posture it could be enhanced by the addition of more weapon-loaded systems and then enhanced again with forward deployment of more assets until it was many times the size of the standing start force. Mutually Assured Destruction meant that there were many more weapons than there were targets and you could tell where you were in the big picture by looking at the hyphenated suffix number on your target folder. If the last digit was “dash 4” that meant you were going to be the fourth weapon to strike that unfortunate location. Scary stuff to say the least.

Those days ended prematurely for my Georgian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Crimean targets when the nation that hosted our base went to war with a neighbor and we worried that our nuclear presence might create problems. Our alert operations were suspended and never resumed. Less than a decade later, almost the entire European tactical nuclear alert was suspended. SALT, START and nuclear non-proliferation agreements caused deactivation of a lot of nuclear systems. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact furthered the reduction.

But, take the current situation between Russia and Georgia into consideration. We aren’t happy with Russia’s actions. We have supported the democratization of Georgia. Georgia even wants to become a member of NATO. Russia, of course wants to reassert their military prominence which has been pretty well discredited since their Afghanistan debacle. (Note to Sen. Obama: read up on that and reconsider your war on terror plan.)

What leverage do we have today with our military heavily involved on two fronts in the war on terror that can be applied to compel Russia to accede to our wishes? We can complain to Putin’s puppet who sits in the chair of the Russian presidency. We can make a speech at the UN. We can threaten sanctions, but we have too much interest in Russian economic development and concurrent stability to really do anything. We can appeal to their humanity. Or we can wail and gnash our teeth. Maybe like policy wonkette Obama, we can urge “restraint by both parties.” Great solution to the problem, Barak!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we still had those jets with a big hammer sitting on alert? They certainly require that a potential aggressor take notice. If you then ask for reasonable behavior of Russia you are speaking from a position which possesses both carrot and stick. They know we wouldn’t use them, but can they really be sure?

The leverage offered by deployed nuclear weapons was considerable. The options for employment were very diverse. The simple fact of their existence meant that a potential adversary couldn’t just look at a map, count your deployed divisions, carriers and air wings then act with impunity.

Right now there is talking about enhancing Georgian defenses, maybe with air defense missiles or something like that. The problem is that the threat of the Russians isn’t from the air. It wasn’t during WW-Cold in the Fulda Gap and it isn’t in South Ossetia. It is armor. Tanks, personnel carriers, artillery, and boots on the ground rolling down the highway don’t much care about Patriot missiles. All deployment of advanced techno-weapons would do is Fedex them into Russian exploitation labs. It takes either a lot of bloody manpower to stop the horde, or one man in one airplane with the threat of one really nasty weapon. Quite economical, don’t you think?

We’ve lost that leverage. One could reasonably argue that the world is a much safer place because of that disarmament. But, one could also examine the current situation and make a good case for the reverse. Certainly we would be listened to a lot more seriously by Putin.

Must Read Item

I usually try to stick to just one posting per day. It leaves the main thought prominently on top so you are spared the search for what has happened. Occasionally, however, I encounter something which makes such a powerful point that it must be added immediately.

Please go and read this:

Where Are His Writings?

Inquiring minds will want to know.

Famous Last Words

Coming out of Independence Hall that muggy day in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was accosted by an elderly woman. Her question? “What kind of government have you given us, Mr. Franklin?”

“A republic, Madam; if you can keep it,” was his famous reply. One might have wondered then about his pessimism. Certainly the debate had been vigorous, but Madison had helped to hammer out a system of separate powers, checking and balancing each other which seemed to offer a brighter future than old Ben foresaw.

Had he been thinking about the inevitable result of expansion of the franchise to younger, less educated, more emotional demographic chunks of the nation? Was he worried that there would be drift from the slightly elitist republic which restricted the sway of the masses and offered guidance from the experienced and mature leadership of the country? Did he know that one day we would see this:

Too Dumb For Democracy

Sadly, I think he did. What might be viewed as even more sad is that even without the democratization of America, the experienced and mature leaders that Ben had been surrounded with have also been dissipated. One need only listen to the members of our Congress spout mindless talking points in front of any camera that points their way to know that the situation is approaching hopelessness.

Then I see this:

What Should I Do About Chavez, George?

I’ve lived through Fonda and Baldwin, Streisand and Penn and even Bono. They tower intellectually over the current generation that came with Paris and Britney, Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers sought out for their opinions. And, they were already scraping a pretty deep barrel’s bottom!

Will we elect a President of these United States who seeks foreign policy advice several times a week from movie stars and 300 advisors? Couldn’t we get a few PhDs and former governmental leaders with international relations experience in the mix? Probably not.

Ben, I’m deathly afraid that we won’t be able to keep it. Your pessimism was merited.

What's Going On

You won't find a coherent account in the main stream media, but since most folks don't know where Tbilisi is and never heard of S. Ossetia, you might take a look at this fairly comprehensive description of the events of the last couple of days:

Insight on the Situation

Be advised, however, that reading one perspective on a complex international situation is not decisive and only qualifies you to pursue further knowledge.

By the way, I know where Tbilisi is. I once slept with a nuclear weapon addressed to Tbilisi which I was to deliver on short notice if the President asked me. 345KT of instant sunshine--more than 15 times the size of the Nagasaki bomb. I know exactly where Tbilisi is.

Courtesy to the Host

I back-slid last night. I watched several hours of Olympic coverage. It was all that I had known it was going to be; and that isn’t a complimentary statement. It was over-blown. It was inane. It was politically correct. It was apologetic to dictatorial regimes and antagonistic to America. It was commercial. And, pervading the whole thing was a sense of surrealism.

There have been those incredibly maudlin puff-pieces about the overcoming of tragedy in the lives of athletes that participate in the Games ever since the Eighties and maybe before. We learn about their broken homes, their accidents, their poverty, their prevailing against incredible odds and hopefully we become more emotionally involved when they eventually take the world stage. We get reprises from games past of pre-pubescent female gymnasts breaking ankles, taping wrists, enduring pratfalls and living through embraces of sweaty European male coaches. We see the life story of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, a mis-guided Brit who gains his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame by hurling his body off a 90 meter ski jump despite never having done it before, having no chance at victory and only a slightly better chance for survival. Gag me again.

Then we watch the NBC announcers extolling the Chinese to the point of fawning adoration. The progress, the beauty, the history, the productivity, the courtesy, the far-reaching efforts of the host committee, the growth and progress of the nation are all subjects for comment by the talking heads. No mention during the techno-super opening ceremony that recaptured Chinese history of the twentieth century at all. Where was Mao? Where was Chaing Kai Shek? Where was the Cultural Revolution? What of the gray buildings and polluted skies and waterways? How about acknowledging that Chinas is where it is today because of the far-reaching political courage of that most maligned US President, Richard Nixon? Why not say that free market capitalism, even under a single party political dictatorship, can raise a people faster than the flooding Yangtze can raise a boat?

Nope, not a word of the dark side. Only praise for China, which is certainly good and proper with respect to your hosts. It is also reasonable to acknowledge the progress of the nation. But, why must every pat on the Asian back be followed by a slap to the face of the US? From Brokaw to Costas to Palmer and Lauer, they all snark their way through the evening and will do so for the next two weeks. Gag me once more.

Then there was the “sports” themselves. It makes me wonder what the Greeks would have made of it. There was badminton, a back-yard BBQ pastime elevated to Olympic competition. How about women’s beach volleyball? Sure, it’s athletic, but let’s admit that it’s really about watching semi-naked toned women leaping and stretching and looking really hot. It’s a sun-tan oil sponsored “event” not a sport.

Try a few minutes of watching that street developed gaggle called team handball. Take a softball, if you don’t have a bat and mitts, and toss it around from team mate to team mate to advance, limit the number of steps before you can throw it and then toss it at the kid from two blocks away on the other team who tries to keep it out of a goal, which is the space between two parked cars. Or something like that.

The real beauty was synchronized diving. We’ve had synchronized swimming for years, so why not have scientific proof of Galileo’s thesis that gravity effects all bodies at the same rate? You get more points for making a smaller splash! But it ain’t a sport. More gagging.

Remember Jim Thorpe? He was an incredible decathlete and pentathlete. Think about those combinations of sports and the amazing capability to be world class across that spectrum. The achievements were discredited, however, because he was tinged with accusations of professionalism. To be a proper Olympian, one must be a true amateur in every sense of the word.

Contrast that with today. Look at the millionaires taking the court in basketball, both men’s and women’s. Check out the rosters of the baseball squads. Dig back into the training facilities and support that these “amateurs” in all the sports today receive. Then, take a look at the teams of some of these smaller nations. Who are the representatives and where do they come from? Is there a bidding war going on for talent? Do potential stars that have a problem making the home team go on the global market for a slot? Where do they train? Who pays for it? There is something under the surface here and I wonder why the “journalists” at NBC don’t spend a lot of time on that issue.

I concluded last night that the Olympics aren’t about sport in the least. It’s just another reality show, scripted and not “real” in the slightest. It’s entertainment. I had enough.

Going Home

In August when many of the apartments of the older sections of Madrid, lacking air conditioning, become stiflingly hot, the Madrilenos flock to Casa de Campo on evenings and weekends. There they do what Spaniards have done for centuries. They create culinary magic in the broad grassy fields. They make paella.

They’ve packed the car with lawn chairs and tableware and the children. They’ve brought chilled wine and agua gaseoso to mix in when the kids get thirsty for a sip or two at dinner. The pantry has been raided for a bag of the fat, round arroz Valencia and a small jug has been filled out of the household olive oil supply. Maybe an onion gets thrown in as well. Most importantly, they’ve dug out the blackened round flat-bottomed paella itself. For years I called it a paella pan, not realizing that was classic redundancy. Before my time in Spain ended I’d been to the neighborhood ferreteria twice and the owner did not smile at my gaffe when I sought my own pans. I got the standard family size the first time that would feed eight reasonable people or four Americans. Then I had a squadron party and bought the 75 centimeter “grande” that nicely handles the job for two dozen of your closest associates provided you can find a fire large enough to set it over. An old Weber kettle does the job nicely.

The family has also stopped at the Mercado. That’s the important part because freshness is everything. There are as many paella as there are old Spanish grandmothers with a secret recipe. Depending upon what region of this diverse country you came from there will be different essentials. Mariscos prevail, but there is no standard shellfish. They might be any of a dozen different forms of shrimp, ranging from the tiny gambas to the crimson red carboneras or the lobster like cigalas and langoustinos. Mussels or clams appear often and sliced rings of calamari as well. A few from coastal regions will add rough fish. Chicken, with or without bone, and bits of pork are used if available as well as rabbit. Chorizo is favored by some southerners. The question of other vegetables in the dish is much like the debate in Texas regarding whether or not frijoles have any place in a proper chili con carne. If used, it will likely be peas and a few strips of red or green sweet bell pepper. Saffron threads, of course are absolutely essential.

At the park, they set a charcoal fire and feed it with bits of twigs and vines they find nearby. The kids play, the parents talk, the components are slowly added to the paella and when traditional dinner time arrives, the sun is on the western horizon and the temperatures have dropped in the dry high desert air. The table is set, the wine is opened and life doesn’t get much better.

I ate a lot of paella during my years in Spain, but never had one done this way:

Perfect Paella

I’d sure like to make the pilgrimage for some of that crusty rice. But even if I don’t, I’d like to thank the Journal for a flood of wonderful memories of paellas enjoyed at so many great places. My first and most regular paella stop was in the little village of Torrejon de Ardoz, just outside the base main gate. The Torrejon Hostal was a friendly whitewashed building with a patio dining area for al fresco meals through most of the year. The paella was tolerable, the summer sangria was too sugary, and the gravy spotted vest of the waiter who greeted us each visit and merrily tossed wine corks over his shoulder into the parking lot made it all a great memory. About half-way through my time in Spain, they tore down the rustic old hostel and built a six story hotel to replace it. The restaurant was still there and the recipes didn’t change, but an air conditioned dining room was never quite the same as the dirt floor patio.

Supposedly the best place in Madrid for paella was El Callejon. Made irretrievably famous by Hemingway, the name comes from the passage between the arena wall and the bull-ring barricade where the toreros seek shelter during the bullfights. Papa claimed it was the best paella in Madrid, but didn’t compare to the Mediterranean coast cities. Of course that was 1930 and much has changed since then.

There you could get a dozen variations, but all took at least half an hour to prepare. That allowed time for tapas and a few chatos of tinto before the feast. In the spring, when available, the angulas were an absolute requirement. A sizzling plate of hot olive oil spiced with some tiny deep red hot peppers and slices of garlic then mounded with a double handful of the inch long tiny eels that migrate each year from the Sargasso Sea to the north coast of Spain where they either breed another generation or appear at dinner tables for those who can find the delicacy. Flipped once or twice in the fiery hot oil and they are absolute heaven. For the main course, the Paella Valenciana was my usual default choice.

Just outside wall of Toledo, in the flood plain groves north of town beside the river Tagus, there was a beautiful country villa that welcomed on chilly winter nights with a roaring fireplace, good wine and a specialty of codornices or quail. Not bad paella either.

The most memorable paella was the one that my housekeeper made for me during the week before I departed Spain. She invited us to her tiny house and built a paella that exceeded anything we’d had before, while apologizing that it was missing the best ingredient—tiny “song birds,” plucked clean and roasted intact in the dish. When the meal finished, her husband sent their oldest son to the corner for puros de Habana for both of us and then invited us to pack up the cars and head to the Plaza de Toros Madrid for a bull fight. We did, but I couldn’t accept his hospitality to the point of letting him get the tickets. He had strained his meager resources way too much already. We sat sol y sombra in the contrabarrera (the second row in from the wall) and had a hell of a time. Even without the songbirds. They were luckier than the bulls that day.

The Religion of Peace

Remember that poor cartoonist and his Danish newspaper that had the audacity to publish some marginally funny cartoons depicting the Prophet? They weren’t much worse than what we see depicting our highest elected officials in America in our daily newspapers. They certainly didn’t rival the sort of thing we see vilifying priests and ministers in the US when atheists are making a point about something or other infringing upon their right to infringe on other’s rights. They were pretty innocuous and not all that disrespectful or humorous. Pointing out that Mohammed was increasingly being used as justification for beheading infidels and blowing up hundred of innocents to spread the true faith didn’t seem like that big a stretch.

But, riots ensued. Death penalties were issued by fatwa. It was messy to say the least.

Frankly, I’m sick of tolerating these primitives. Someone needs to give them a time out and teach them the childhood rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me or the Prophet.” We don’t need to go out of our way to be offensive, but we also don’t need to bend over backwards toward Mecca five times a day to avoid any possibility of offending this crowd’s excessive sensibilities.

Take a look at this short piece:

No Book Reviews Today

It refers to the much more detailed item published in the Wall Street Journal:

A "Stupid Piece of Work"

Did you get all of that? It is a NOVEL. That means it is even less responsible for being honest and truthful than the typical Michael Moore movie. It is fiction.

It is carefully researched fiction, arguably in the genre of Gore Vidal’s seminal works. The author is a scholar. She made the effort to learn Arabic. She expresses a view of the beauty of the love story. But none of that apparently matters.

Random House is no small publisher. They liked the work enough for a $100K advance! That is big bucks for an unpublished author’s first work. The “publication date” was scheduled for August 12th, so all of the work is done. They’ve got cases of books sitting in a warehouse ready to ship. Their money expended is well beyond the advance. I’m betting it is in the quarter million dollar range. And, they’ve been intimidated into pulling the plug by a bunch of raghead thugs.

C’mon folks this needs to be shouted from the rooftops. We need to express outrage and stand against it. At the very least Random House is missing the boat on this opportunity. Remember Salmon Rushdie? His Satanic Verses was no love story and for that matter it wasn’t even very readable prose. Yet, the death threats and fatwa publicity got him into the big numbers and made him a millionaire. The buzz of potential violence and controversy over the book insures top ten on the NYT Best Seller’s List for months. Frankly, I’d be willing to take the risk.

The risk taking would be sweetened every time I remembered that standing up for the book would be making a huge statement about America and our First Amendment freedoms as well. That is worth fighting for.

Let Your People Go!

This little item speaks for itself. Could it be the start of a trend? No one could possibly accuse the WSJ of being a bunch of hinterland discontents clinging to guns and religion. But, here it is:

Second Amendment Lives!

May You Live in Interesting Times

The Chinese curse has been operative in my life as far back as I can remember. I’m not a pessimist or conspiracy theorist, but I like to think I’m an observer of events who can make rational observations. Please keep in mind that just because we disagree doesn’t mean either of us is irrational.

Over dinner the other night, SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) asked who I thought would win the Presidential election. Like all good political pundits, I waffled. I told her who I hoped would win. That wasn’t the answer to the question. I told her who I feared would win. She knew that already. I turned it around and asked who she thought would take it. She was optimistic based on the declines following the Berlin Bounce which didn’t really equal more than a speed bump on the road to Washington. But she pressed the issue.

A moment of serious reflection and I was enlightened. A eureka moment transpired. None of the above was my last and final answer. (I didn’t use any of my Life Lines, either.) Neither of the expected nominees will win in November.

No way, she said. I tried to frame my epiphany for her. To get you into the mood take a look at this from American Thinker:

I Thought So!

And from a fair and balanced perspective:

Let The Healing Begin

That is the scenario that’s been in the back of my mind since the end of June. The Wicked Witch won’t go away, not even if the Democratic house falls on her or Dorothy pours water. Things happen around the Clintons and they don’t always follow the script. That’s how they get away with them. No one thinks it can happen and it isn’t until days, weeks or months afterward that the conspiracy theorists and critical analyzers combine to put facts together and get the causative factors in line. By that time the fait is definitely accompli.

That’s one scenario. But there are others that don’t involve skullduggery. This is, after all racist America and few can deny that elements still exist in our society which haven’t moved along from the civil rights battles of the ‘60s. We cultured Americans often lean toward assassinations as a means of politics. That isn’t something to be particularly proud of, but it is undeniably the elephant in the room. That sort of disastrous event could trigger riots and destruction which boggle any sane person’s mind. Yet the reality remains.

America also tends to embrace scandal quite vigorously. Disclosure of significant questionable activity could derail either prospective candidate; the result being nomination or last minute replacement by someone out of the party bull pen. Outcome: none of the above from the current expected choice.

And then, let’s not forget that McCain is on the inexorable downhill side of life. Over seventy, people often simply wake up dead. That also would lead to a last minute replacement. Again, the outcome is none of the currently above.

Increasingly I look for interesting times ahead. I’m incredibly apathetic about this round of Olympics. There will be never ending ceremonies, boring odd-ball sporting activities, requisite political posturing and intermittent demonstrations being surpressed. I look two weeks further for my entertainment. My pressing question these days is a paraphrase of Hitler’s, “Is Denver burning?”

Spelled Backwards It Reads…

Remember when PCs first started popping up and the fascination everyone had with word processing that let you fill your writing with different fonts and clip art and text sizes. It was polyester double-knit leisure suits for letters. Then we added low cost color printing to really get tacky.

Early users did shareware and “batch files” to swap which did things that we now take for granted like moving a file from one place to another or simply searching for it. The trade was huge and the movement grew for more than a decade. I confess I was into it when I first got a computer on my desk. I was so into it that I eventually got into the business of doing software reviews for Ziff-Davis OnLine Shareware Library. It was piecework, but fun, and I could turn over about $50,000 a year just playing around with my PC.

There was a dark side, however. When you install and uninstall a hundred programs a week even on the best maintained work station, you’re going to have a lot of problems. The total system melt-down with requisite hard-drive reformat and re-install of everything you’ve ever had was a regular occurrence. I could almost schedule it every ninety days like clockwork.

When C|Net bought out ZDNet, the Shareware Library went to the virtual recycle bin and I got out of the business to teach some college classes and write books. Today, I tend toward lean and mean computing. I’ve passed way too much crap through this goose to be lured into a lot of odd-ball software. Yes, I’ve got some Yahoo utilities on board and I’ve downloaded and run FireFox a couple of times without being swept away; but I don’t jump willy-nilly into much else. But it is getting harder to tell where the commercial quality stuff ends and the really handy independent code-writer’s starts.

Today, I took a well advised leap. But, the source of the recommendation seems pretty good:

Order for An Inbox Spelled Backwards

I’ve got to figure that if a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal says something is good, then it must be safe.

I’ve concluded that Xobni (that’s inbox spelled backwards) is way cool. It takes a bit over 3MB of download from Xobni.com and just a few seconds to fix that confusing bloated mess Outlook.

Installation is quick and painless, but you’ve got to be running XP or Vista with Outlook 2003 or 2007. Then when you open Outlook the next time you’ll get a new sidebar of info that makes it easy to handle your email. The first launch will take a few minutes to index all your mail, but after that it’s quick and transparent.

Click on an email and the sidebar shows the contact info on the person, the frequency of correspondence with them, the threads of past communication, their phone number (even if not in your address book,) and files exchanged previously. You also see the “network” of the sender created from the other addressees on their correspondence to you!

No more searching for an address or digging through folders to find a misplaced attachment. Switch to another Outlook function such as your calendar or task list and Xobni displays your last viewed email so that you can quickly return to it. Need to find an address or a previously sent or received email and don’t remember which perfectly logical storage place you left it? Simply type in one or two key words that relate and Xobni will search all of your indexed mail folders to get your there in a split-second.

You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Take the tour here:

He Knows What He's Talking About

Now, here we've got a congress-critter that makes an incredible amount of sense. Pay attention for the few minutes it takes to view this:



Then the next time one of the opposition whines about nothing coming out of the spigot for ten, twenty or more years, point them here. (By the way, have you noticed that the estimate of how long it will take seems to be getting longer and longer as the Dems get more and more frantic?)

Countdown to Olympiad

The anticipation hype is nearly over and now we are about ready to start the exaggerations and re-interpretations that what you are seeing on your television screen is not the way that it really is. The Ministry of Truth will be making every effort to insure that you completely understand the real visions that you are being told to watch.

Read this transcript of an in-the-can fill video to be run by NBC:

They Are All Incredibly Happy

Take a few minutes to scroll down at the end of the piece and check out a some of the comments. Is it any wonder that the major networks have lost all credibility with their coverage of anything?

Is there a mature soul in this entire nation who has been alive during the last thirty or forty years who can swallow that propaganda that Lauer and his echo board are spewing? Did you get the part that China was in “social chaos” from the Opium Wars of the 1870s until the birth of the New China (also known as the People’s Republic of…) in 1949? After that time they sagely note that there were decades of social chaos continuing! So, why even point out the break in form from corruption of the Empire to corruption of Communist Party rule? Must have been those happy, happy, oh so happy Five Year Plans of Mao that pumped up the place.

So, now they’ve got this idiot standing there telling us that “this is not the Soviet Union with some late-stage coma patient Communist Party.” Am I to then believe that this is now some new and improved version, sort of Obama Lite, which has given them new optimism while allowing the development of a free market economy?

Well, yes, we must note that there was that little dust-up in Tiananmen Square a few years ago. But that was just a bit of discipline for some rowdies in the park. Sort of what we’ll be seeing in downtown Denver a day or two after the closing ceremonies.

And, there has been that mix-up about getting the government out of the way for visitors to the enlightened paradise so that they can get their email without being hauled away for subversion. We might have a few restrictions show up on picture taking in the wrong directions or maybe wanting to head down the wrong streets, but that’s all for the safety of the athletes.

Yep, ol’ Matt’s got it right. Those Chinese are one happy bunch of campers. And we Americans are in the depth of clinical depression. Don’t we all wish that we could become Chinese?

Might it be because the Chinese people are beginning to see what is possible in a non-Communist future? And we are beginning to realize what we’ve already lost in terms of our freedoms and what more we are on the verge of losing in the very near future.

Keep watching. They are going to spoon feed you with more of this worker’s paradise crap in the coming two weeks. Lots more.

Message From The Messiah

There may be no safer gambit in modern American politics than the one that worked so well for Nero and Caligula. When things require a bit of propping up, simply hand out bread and provide some circuses. If there is some blood and gore involved, the masses will eat it up even faster. Yesteryear’s Christians have been easily replaced by anyone who is successful in America. Nothing inspires the hate of the welfare crowd more thoroughly than pointing out that someone has made a profit.

How Does This Work?

A perfect example. Let’s ignore the decline of gasoline prices over the last couple of weeks. Dwelling on that and linking it to an impact on the futures market from the President’s rescission of the off-shore drilling ban would also be counter-productive. Let’s even ignore the fact that oil is a global market and many of the contenders for the limited supply aren’t US “Big Oil” companies. No reason to let reality intrude with a good give-away proposal.

We’ve got the masses wallowing in self-pity that gas prices have gone up. Congress rushes off to their five week campaign recess blissfully ignoring calls for action. Nancy Pelosi bleats heroically that her mission is to “save the planet” and nothing else will do. The unwashed want a scapegoat and a hand-out. So the Messiah says, “I will give you money for nothing! You must only love me in return.” What’s your vote worth this time around? Will a cool G-note do it for you?

And, he goes on; I will get the money from profits on investments that the oil industry has made in delivering a product to your neighborhood. Yes, we will punish them and give the proceeds to you. A perfect plan and, did you notice, it is one that doesn’t cost the tax-payers a cent? Well it does in the long run, but I remind you not to look at the man behind the curtain.

The question that must be asked and no one seems eager to ask it is: “How does taking their profits from free market suppliers lead to lower gas costs at the pump?” If they don’t have profits, share-holders don’t get money on their investments. If they don’t have profits there is no research and development funding. If they don’t have profits there is no money for drilling exploratory wells. If they don’t have profits there is nothing for infrastructure development. If they don’t have profits, the alternative is to raise prices on their product to a point where there will be profit. Prices go UP when taxes are imposed, not down!

That’s the undeniable truth. Read it Sen. Obama. Please! And stop getting skewered like this:

That Should Do It

Is he so dumb that even the others will notice?

How We Have Changed

This needs to be dusted off and watched at least once every year. As you watch this classic, think of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and the others.



Contrast that with the reality of the Senate Majority Leader’s statement:

Reid Embraces Lost War

I mean, he really means it:

Really Lost

Well, if we had someone with reliable, first-hand experience reporting what was going on, would you listen?

And I know better than the guy commanding

Do Americans really love a good fight? Is it true that they can’t tolerate a defeat? This guy seems to challenge all of that thinking. And the pigs are loving it.

Like crap through a goose...

Yep, we need to pull out that old video and listen to those dramatic words and view them through the incredible challenge that was World War II. Then compare them to what we see today and the insignificant level of discomfort that coddled Americans face in battling a global force that seeks to drag us back into the twelfth century.

Inexorably Tied to Failure

John Stuart Mill wrote that “War is an ugly thing…” and went on to clearly state that despite the ugliness it was much more degrading and pitiable to go through life with nothing you value greater than your own comfort and safety. But, the ugliness is the predominant feature that makes it so readily embraceable as a cause for the Democrats. Mustering a majority to elect you when you promise to not fight for anything so venal as base patriotism isn’t difficult. It gets tougher when the nation has recently suffered a day that will also “live in infamy”, but time heals all wounds and memory is so very fleeting that in short order you’ve got the bleating libs of academia, the media and the metroplexes all donning pink ribbons and once again spitting on recruiters.

It got pretty blatant over the last two years as the resurgent Democrat majority in Congress mounted the podia of the capitol to incessantly chant that the war was lost. The surge was a failure before it was launched, and the general and ambassador who were saying differently in their reports from the scene were liars. They were heavily invested in anti-war sentiment. They would not be deterred by fact.

Last week, the man who would be emperor went traveling. It was about time, since it was becoming very apparent that any exposure he had to actual conditions in the war zone came from inhaling dust off the boots of returning military folks that he might have inadvertently walked past in the airport. He went to Iraq and Afghanistan. He smiled. He waved. He was photographed and he made a three-pointer live and on camera.

What he didn’t do and what he couldn’t do was admit the obvious. The surge has worked. The situation has improved. He was wrong in the first place and other folks were right. He reasserted his position despite all evidence to the contrary. And then, most confusingly, he suggested that we surge more forces into Afghanistan. But, your supreme eminence, how could a surge work there if surges don’t work? Never mind, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. We must believe in defeat, if we are to have change.

Now, we’ve got the economy. Listen closely to the voices of the left. They absolutely are jubilant at rising oil costs. They won’t allow drilling or exploitation of our resources to assuage the shortage. They love failure.

There is a recession. But, we’ve had growth for the last two quarters. Slow growth admittedly, but still growth in GDP. To be a recession there must be two consecutive quarters of contraction. Hasn’t happened, but they still scream recession. Gotta have failure to succeed as a Democrat.

Job losses, markets down, inflation up, foreclosures rising, any bad news is good news in their view.

Why then has no one pointed out that gas prices which were at $4.20 per gallon three weeks ago have dropped in my area to $3.59. That’s 15% in three weeks. Oil is down $25 a barrel from the record highs. The Dow has bounced back a couple of hundred points and mortgage rates are still around 6% for qualified buyers.

We don’t have a recession and we don’t need more government hand-out stimulus packages. And, we sure don’t want to hire a CEO and management team for our country that regales in failure.

I want someone who is willing to admit when they are wrong, who is proud of his country, who doesn’t think government is the answer to all problems, who believes in free markets, and who hates failure as much as he loves victory.

Can we find someone like that?