Hiking

Just got back from a three day hike. Four of us went. We had different experience levels, different stamina levels, and different pack weights. It worked out. It rained twice, once on the first evening when we were getting supper ready, once the next night after we were bedded down. It was mostly hot, humid, and sunny. The terrain was hilly, so it all up one side, then down the other.

It's been a rainy spring, and all the streams were running. Plenty of water at the campsites. Some MREs, some dry food, a few treats. Taking a first time hiker out is always a challenge, you want everyone to enjoy it, you want it to look like it is effortless, and you want him to want to go again.

I had a fine time. The forest was beautiful, late spring, everything just fully green. A light pack and reliance on old skills helped me keep up. I'm going to throw in a plug for Gregory packs, too. They are the cat's titties for backpacking comfort, I wish I'd had one thirty years ago.

I dream of hiking into my old age.
--Marlyn Doan

104,366 Reasons the U.S. Never Need Apologize to Europe

Here's a link to some pictures of U.S. military cemeteries in Europe.

We make war that we may live in peace.
--Aristotle

A Memorial Day followup

U.S. casualty report for the war in France, dated August 31, 1918. The war still had 2 months and eleven days before the Armistice was signed and the guns fell silent for a few years. Twice in thirty years, the United States sent her best to die for the freedom of Europe. We won, at a cost that is almost impossible to imagine today.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

It was C Rations in My Day

Some were better than others. The eggs were the worst as far as I was concerned.

MREs came along after I was out. I've eaten a fair number of them, between Scouting, the Red Cross during a bad hurricane 10 years ago, and getting them from various sources for camping. Most of them are pretty good, far better than C rations the way I remember them. Some are awful. Since I'm not stuck in the field, I have the option of being selective. It is a luxury our troops don't always have.

Here's one report from the field with a helpful suggestion for the federal budget. Very funny, go and read.

(Cheese Omelet with Vegetables)...is $15 Million a year spent on the excrement of Satan.
--Acute Politics, blogger

North Korea Launches Another Missile

N. Korea launches additional missile. So first a nuke test yesterday, now three missile launches today. It's like advertising.

I'll bet the U.N. and Pr. Obama are going to be very stern in their response. Waddya' think this time? A strongly worded denunciation? Maybe another uninforced U.N. mandate to back it up. All these words of concern? They are worth almost as much as a restraining order to a battered wife.

Here's my opinion. I learned it in 5th grade. You're not willing to face a bully and fight, he'll keep doing whatever he wants. You have to fight him, every time, win or lose, and sooner or later, he'll quit.

Here's a timeline of North Korean nuclear development. Tell me we didn't know. Tell me we couldn't have stopped them in 1985. Tell me we couldn't get together with the rest of the U.N., and have Chinese troops on the ground securing this nuclear material within a few days.

Failure to do this leaves nuclear weapons in the hands of a rogue state with a desperate need of cash. Tell me they wouldn't sell some to other parties now that they have proved they work. Tell me the next one won't go off in Miami, or Tel Aviv.

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense, I call it intelligence.

--Malcolm X

I've Been Disenfranchised

Barack Obama names Hispanic Sonia Sotomayor as new Supreme Court judge. A quote from the President said he was looking for someone who had empathy for ordinary citizens.

According to the New York Times, she's both sexist and racist. My life, and that of every man on the planet, has been discounted. My shallow vanilla life experiences just don't measure up.

You think what she said wasn't that bad? Turn it around. Try this: "I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life."

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
--Judge Sotomayor

Taxing The Rich

Maryland tried taxing the rich last year. The state raised the marginal rate of taxation for the wealthy and the millionaires moved away. Instead of raising $106 million more, the state took in $100 million less.

You going to get to see the same thing tried on the national level with the same results.

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.
--Robert Half

Memorial Day

I have found that it means more to me to pick something to focus on when a holiday like Memorial Day rolls around. This year I picked John Basilone. Sgt. John Basilone, USMC. He earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal in 1942, and volunteered later to return the fighting, ultimately dying of wounds sustained in battle on Iwo Jima in February of 1945. One of 6,821 Marines to die in 5 weeks of combat to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.

Semper Fi, John. Thank you for putting paid to the bill for my freedom. I can scarcely comprehend the price. Here's part of a video made in 1945 by the U.S Government Office of War Information.

For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action against enemy Japanese forces, above and beyond the call of duty, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in the Lunga Area. Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 24 and 25 October 1942. While the enemy was hammering at the Marines' defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machineguns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault. In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone's sections, with its guncrews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on. Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.
--The Medal of Honor Citation for John Basilone

Pr. Obama's Money Quote

In a C-SPAN interview, Pr. Obama said, "Well, we are out of money now."

Ya' think? Mr. President, here's a newsflash. You were out of money when you took office. That's what a deficit means. Every dollar you spent after you had spent what you took in? That's the money you're out of. All those billions you've been making up and throwing around? They don't exist. It's funny money. You sure outdid ol' George W. Bush. You spent at least three times as much money you didn't have as he did. He was wrong to do it, and so are you.

It's an interesting interview, though, and I recommend you read it, because right after he says he's out of money, he talks about how he's going to keep right on spending it. Medicare, Medicaid, GM bailouts, maybe even bailouts for the states that are in trouble, like California.

There's an old saying, when you realize you're in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. The U.S. government needs to stop spending money it doesn't have. I don't care what it is. Social Security, Medicare, federal employee salaries, the cost to keep the lights on in Congress and the White House. Balance the budget. Do not spend more than you take in. You claim to be smart people, work it out.

Let's set some limits and establish some guidelines.
1. The federal budget will be limited by Amendment to a percentage of GDP, say 10%. All revenue to the federal government, from all sources, will not exceed this amount.
2. The federal budget will be limited by Amendment to the actual money they take in, no deficits.
3. By Amendment, no laws affecting the states can be passed without funding included.
4. By Amendment, no direct federal intrusion into private industry by the Executive Branch.

Call it a common sense proposal for controlling spending. It would control the size of the government, and it's intrusions into areas outside it's Constitutional mandate, as well. It could be done. The States could make it happen. The Amendment process is there, and we could find some honest people to elect and make it happen.

The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
--James Dale Davidson

Time and Memory

Not long ago, in the late afternoon on a winter day, I was at the range. A friend of mine and I were shooting clays. We were winding down, getting close to the end of the daylight. He went to his truck and got out an old cardboard box. Old shells, he said, given them to him by someone who had no use for them. Paper and early plastic shells of mixed origin, everything from slugs to birdshot.

He loaded up and called , "Pull!". I threw the bird, he hit it, and the shell ejected as the smell of the powder drifted past. We both caught it about the same time. There was something different in shotgun powder 30 to 40 years ago, and the smell of the burnt powder took us both back. I picked up the waxy paper hull and smelled it, and it happened.

I was 8 years old again. Standing out on the line on the second station, barely big enough to hold the shotgun to my shoulder. My grandfather behind me, growling in that New Hampshire accent, "Lean into it. Now when you call for the bird, be ready. Point it out over the house and when you see the bird, put the bead on the bird and pull the trigger." The other shooters and his friends watching. One of the rights of passage for a boy, deemed big enough and safe enough to stand on the line and shoot. The coolness of a New Hampshire evening, shooting under the lights. Riding home later with an ache in my shoulder that I savored for days until it faded.

I looked up and handed my friend the empty shell, and he smiled and said, "It smells like childhood, doesn't it?", and we went on to shoot the rest of them. As we were cleaning up, we both kept a couple of the hulls.

My grandfather lived to be 85, and see his first great-grandson. But still he has been gone a while. A lot of days have passed since I was 8. It is only my memory of the event that still exists.

So many things only exist as memory. Your best dog. The home you grew up in. Your best friend when you were 12. The babies you brought home from the hospital. The strength and stamina you had when you were 22.

But the memories have power. It is not the house, the gun, or the furniture that matters. It is the memories. And they matter a lot.

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.
--Pierce Harris

Reflections on BZ's comments

Bloviating Zeppelin left me a couple of comments, and something he said got me thinking. While writing about moving his father to a nursing home, he said, in part:

And I, quite frankly, still feel guilty as hell because I forced him out of his house. I thought it was the right thing to do. But I watched him suffer...

I am looking at it a different way. I'm not claiming I make perfect decisions, or even great ones, but I am saying that when I helped move my parents, I was doing the best thing I knew to do at the time.

BZ didn't force his dad out of his home, time did. The inexorable passage of time steals everything from all of us. Our youth, our abilities, and finally our lives. Time stole the ability to live independently from my parents, and it will steal it from us, in it's turn.

To live well, to choose to love and be alive, is to recognize this, and live anyway. BZ's father did this. He came home from the war, married, raised a family, and had a full life. In the end I hope I can look back, late in the evening of my life and say the same.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.
--Carl Sandburg

New York Terrorism

A group of men in New York had decided to blow up synagogues and shoot down military aircraft. They got caught, after buying their explosives from undercover agents. They are all American citizens, all with criminal histories, and all of them part of the same organization. Let's go down the Homeland Security extremist list and see if we can identify the threat.

White Supremacists
Conservative Christians
Tax resistors
Gun Owners
Veterans

Well, waddya know? It's that other group. The unnamed one. The one these men converted to in prison. Here's the charges. Why were they going to bomb a Jewish center? Why were they planning to shoot down military aircraft?

Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God.
--Osama Bin Laden

Change

Pr. Obama has more than tripled the deficit. After running on the platform of "George W. Bush is doing a shitty job, just look at the record deficit!", in his first 100 days, Pr. Obama jumped right in and tripled it. My guess is that he ain't done spending, either.

Pr. Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half within 4 years. So, um let's see, 500 Billion X 3.6 = 1.8 Trillion. Later, 1.8 Trillion / 2 = 900 Billion. So, in his first four years, Pr. Obama is promising to cut the deficit down to around double where it was under George Bush? That's Change You Can Believe In!

Just wait, he'll fix health care next.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.
--Winston Churchill

GM's Bankruptcy Plan

According to Reuters, GM's plan is to sell all the "healthy" assets to the federal government, and sell off the rest to satisfy the creditors. What this will create is a new car company, owned by the government, and a lot of former investors left losing almost everything. I need a Constitutional scholar to show me where in the Constitution this sort of action by the federal government is authorized.

Anyway, to do my part, I have created a new logo for GM to use, I expect to see it on the trunk lids of the 2010 model year.

My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.
--Karl Marx

Selling the Family Home

Bloviating Zeppelin posted on Sunday about selling his family's home. He posted last year about moving his father out of the home for the last time. A heartbreaking, if necessary, decision. Both these posts are worth your time, and his love for his family shines through.

I linked to his posts today because this past weekend, I, too, had to move my parents out of the only home they ever owned. They are both still alive, but have reached the point where they can no longer take care of the house and land. My sister volunteered to have an addition put on her home and wants to have them live there. As an interim move, they are in an apartment while that addition is built.

The closing on the sale is next week. Thursday, they were still living at home. Saturday afternoon, they were in an apartment.

Goodbye, house.
--Richard Alley

Abortion

The New York Times reported on Pr. Obama's visit to Notre Dame to give the commencement address. He suggested that the dialogue needed to remain open between people on both sides of the issue and said things that on the surface appear reasonable.
The problem is that there are only two polarizing viewpoints. One side sees it as a personal rights issue, the woman's right to control her own body and to choose not to have an unwanted pregnancy. The other side sees it as personal rights issue, the right of the child in the womb not to be murdered. With only these two viewpoints, there is no room for compromise, no other voices, and both sides demonize the other. I think we need to think outside the box. Come up with other positions and widen this discussion among people of good will, as our President has asked us to.
This post is going to offer some other viewpoints on abortion for you to consider, you may add others in the comments.

The old viewpoints are "Abortion is Murder" or "It's not life until the baby is born." There may be some nuances I'm missing, but that's what I am starting with.

1. My first new viewpoint would be "Sure it's murder, but who cares?" If you want to kill your own offspring in the womb, have at. This eliminates my need to be involved in what abortion rights activists call "the woman's choice". I can think it's murder, but like murders committed in some third world country, I can think it's wrong and do nothing.
2. The 90 day return. This would be the personal responsibility viewpoint. It's your fetus, you deal with it. We declare that fetuses are not babies until they have been viable outside the womb for 90 days. At 90 days, you can get a birth certificate and give the fetus a name, thus making it a baby. Until then, if you don't want it, you can deal with it. The kicker is you have to do it yourself. You don't get a doctor to make it look like a medical procedure. I call this one "the enhanced woman's right to choose." This removes medical personnel from abortion and reduces the profit motive for doctors and other medical personnel to be involved in abortions, taking pressure off the already strained health care system.
3. The Green Alternative. This position holds that every added human is an extra strain on Gaia. This makes not reproducing the moral high ground. Abortion is then seen a sacrifice that right thinking people make for the good of the planet.
4. The Teen Alternative. You don't really know what you're getting when you have a baby. It isn't until the kid hits puberty that you find out what a little sociopath you've been harboring. Retroactive abortion from ages 13-18, by the birth parents, would solve all of those issues. Kids would grow up knowing that they were on thin ice with Mom and Dad. The current entitlement issues the society has with teenagers would disappear. Getting good grades, coming in on time, helping with chores, speaking respectfully to their parents? No problem, Sir.
5. The One Mistake Rule. You get pregnant, it's like a first speeding ticket, you get a warning, the points get reduced. So, you get one abortion, courtesy of the State. Now you know what causes it. Get pregnant again, you either have the baby, or if you come seeking help again, the 2nd abortion comes with sterilization.
6. The Baby License. We set up a system where all adolescent females are on some form of effective birth control, imagine an annual shot that prevent ovulation. When a woman is ready to bear a child, she takes the required training courses, proves that she has the financial means to support the child, and she is allowed to forgo her shots and get pregnant. There are no abortions, because there are no unwanted pregnancies. There are no babies on welfare, because only licensed babies are born. Couple this with the Teen Alternative (see #4 above) and we would solve a lot of the problems we currently face.

With humans it's abortion, but with chickens it's an omelet.
--George Carlin

We're destroying ourselves

Geek with a 45 offers a fine piece on how and why American industry dies.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.
--Ayn Rand

Understanding the Bailout

The Wall Street Journal has an article that explains why the government intervention in Chrysler is a mistake. The Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution was mentioned, and I had to go see what it was, and what it meant.

Hit the two links, put together what is said.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.
--Dwight David Eisenhower

Saturn 5

Star Trek was on TV in the late 1960s, and all us little geeks watched. It wasn't wildly popular, it hovered on the edge of be canceled, and only lasted three seasons. The special effects were terrible. The stories were uneven, some pretty good, many so lousy that even a 12 year old nerd in the making could see the plot holes.

After it was canceled, it ran in syndication, and I saw most of them several times. The fan base, being the huge nerds they were, made up a language for the Klingons, started holding conventions, wearing uniforms, and generally setting the standard for fans of other movies to follow. Later, much later, there were Star Trek movies. The best of them is The Wrath of Khan, and even that one doesn't hold up all that well.

The new movie is superb. Enough homage to the old, a quick jump to an alternate universe where Kirk and Spock are young and all their adventures await, more action, good special effects. I liked it, and I hope they make more. My favorite line, in case anyone should ask, comes early. Captain Pike, talking to a young, out of control James T. Kirk says, "Your father commanded a Starship for twelve minutes and saved eight hundred lives."

The new movie made me remember something. Something that has been lost since those years in the late 1960s, and it is no fault of the movie industry.

You see, we were going out there. We, the United States of America, had made a decade long commitment to go to the moon. We had Saturn 5 rockets, lunar modules, astronauts, and the will and vision necessary to do the hard things.

I watched the moon landing. I was 12. I believed I would go, maybe not as an astronaut, but as a scientist at least, to live and work on the moon. There were plans announced for a manned mission to Mars. The Apollo missions were just the first step. I could watch a moon landing on TV and walk out in the wet grass and look up at the sky and know they stood on the moon looking back.

We didn't do it. Apollo ended early, and we never went back. We couldn't do it today, we'd have to start over. We have an aging system of shuttles that carry crews and equipment to low Earth orbit, and nothing more. Someone will go again, someday, I still believe that, but I know I will never get there.

Maybe the Chinese, or maybe some consortium of corporate interests that figure out how to make a profit out of spaceflight, but the USA has lost the vision to lead. We can make a damn fine movie, but we can no longer do this:

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.
--Frank Borman

Remember the Achille Lauro?

The Achille Lauro was a cruise ship. Hijacked by the PLO in 1985, the terrorists demanded the ship sail to Syria, and that fifty PLO members in Israeli prisons be released. They were refused entry at Syria, so they shot a Jewish passenger named Leon Klinghoffer and threw him overboard.

Mr. Klinghoffer had been forced to retire when he had a series of strokes, and he was confined to a wheelchair. When his corpse washed ashore in Syria, an autopsy was performed. He died from drowning.

Then his murderers negotiated for safe passage to Tunisia on an Egyptian airliner. President Reagan ordered the plane intercepted. Fighters off the USS Saratoga forced the plane to divert and land in Italy. Italian and US military and police ended up in a standoff for several hours, but once that was resolved, the hijackers were tried in Italian courts.

One of them was paroled last week. We know a lot more about Islamic terror then we did back then, but we still aren't ready to face it.

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
--Albert Einstein

Primers

I get email flyers from MidwayUSA (and others) on a regular basis. Being a gun nut, I always look to see what being offered and occasionally place an order. It is a necessary part of the addiction.

But now, I go straight to their reloading supply page and check for primers. They never have any. Even when it looks promising, they are always out of stock. So here's my advice. Send me a flyer when you have primers in stock. Whoever you are. I promise I will place an order. Otherwise, I'm done. I won't need anything else, what do you need gun parts, targets and cleaning supplies for when you have no ammo?

In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.
-- Lee Iacocca

Montana

Montana passes a new firearms law. Go read about it, it gives me hope.

We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
Barack Obama

Most transparent administration, evah!

The $328,835 that we, the American taxpayers, paid to have new photos taken of Air Force One over New York City will be wasted. Doesn't matter that you paid for them, they have become a political liability for Pr. Obama, and they will be put away out of sight of the taxpayers and voters.
As a public service, I offer you this image, it's the only one you're going to get.

It would have been possible to Photoshop Air Force One onto the New York skyline, so here's a question? Who was joyriding on that plane? Who wanted a closeup view of New York City? Close friends of the President, the 1st Lady, the President himself? Who? Was this whole thing an airborne thank you flight for his close supporters? Remember the lesson of Richard Nixon, Pr. Obama, it's not just the crime, it's the cover-up.
__________________________________________
Update
Michelle Malkin has filed Freedom of Information Act requests in response to this incident.

The politicians say "we" can't afford a tax cut. Maybe we can't afford the politicians.
--Steve Forbes

And so, the journey to the dark side is complete

Al Franken will be a Senator. It gives Pr. Obama 60 votes, guaranteeing that he can pass any legislation, or appoint anyone to the Supreme Court without the GOP being able to muster any meaningful opposition.

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee.
--F. Lee Bailey

Ladies Day

Twice a year we open the club ranges to all the women in our community for an instructional shoot. It's gotten to be a big event. We provide range officers, instruction, ammo, firearms, and lunch. Here's what the local newspaper had to say about Saturday's event. I can add that everyone was safe and fun. It's one of the most enjoyable volunteer events that we hold.

There is no substitute for practice. Learning to shoot, to clear a jam, carrying a weapon in a holster, drawing and shooting at targets, even cleaning a firearm, can only be learned by doing. Find a range, ask around, there are knowledgeable shooters that would take pleasure and pride helping you learn something about the sport.

In the meantime, if you are looking for information online, one of the best sites on the web is The Cornered Cat. It's by women, for women, and it looks at all different aspects of firearms training, carry, and use. In fact, the more I look at the articles, I think everyone can benefit from reading what Cornered Cat has to offer.

Not me. Not mine. Not today.
--Kathy Jackson, The Cornered Cat

News from Nineveh Province

Two American dead, three wounded. Shot by Hassan al-Dulaimi, a soldier who also served as the imam of a mosque at an Iraqi army training centre south of the city, the capital of Nineveh province.

We don't know yet who they were, but they died for us. It is likely that they wouldn't have seen it that way. They probably hated it over there. A strange, dangerous place, long hours, little opportunity for relaxation, away from family and friends. Still, they died for us. As so many others wear the uniform and live for us, working to try to make things better in Iraq. Working to prevent the full war from breaking out, the one where both sides drop all pretenses of civilization and both commit themselves to total war in search of total victory. The war that we may yet not be able to avoid.

Because what we do know already is who did this. And why.

There's still some old timers around that remember the last time things went all the way. Ask them about Bataan, Dresden, Berlin, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Hiroshima. Ask them about what it cost, and how the veneer of modern life is stripped away until killing is all that remains.

Attacks on cities are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of allied soldiers.
--Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris
29th March 1945

Ted Kennedy

The seed for this post comes from Borepatch's post on the Boston Globe. On track to lose $85,000,000 in 2009, the Globe is facing shutdown.

Anyway, I went and looked at the The Boston Globe. Read the headlines, looked at the opinion page, and wandered through the online features. I found this feature multimedia article on Ted Kennedy.

Go to chapter 3. Watch the video. Ask yourself how long you would have served in jail if you had done this.

Because on the very next page was this quote: (Kennedy) found his strong voice as the fearless defender of American liberalism — too late to be president, but not too late to lead the fight against Republicans and the new GOP President Ronald Reagan in the Senate.

Really. If Ted Kennedy is leading the fight against Republicans, I might have to reconsider joining the GOP. And if Ted Kennedy has been the Senatorial candidate of choice for the Globe for the last 40 years, they have already failed.

Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy.
Deceit is a poison in its veins.
--Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Financial Decisions

That old Dodge truck I blogged about yesterday? The tennis shoes Michelle Obama wore on her trip to the food bank cost $165.00 more than the truck did.

Let them eat cake.
--Marie Antoinette