How I Felt Back Then

I kept this email, and went back into the archives I have moved forward through different accounts to find it. I wrote this, as it shows, on September 27, 2001, and mailed in reply to a request to participate in a candlelight "peace rally". If I had thought we would still be fighting in Afghanistan ten years later, I would have been a lot more furious. Here are my exact words from that long ago time:

________________________________________

Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 06:19:12
To:
From:

Subject: My current reply to most e-mail

SORRY, NOT THIS TIME! I'm not interested in mourning, grieving, or moving
on. I am not interested in colored ribbons, candle light vigils, or new
memorials where tall buildings once stood. I am ready for the United States
to lead the world in eliminating evil people and their distorted ideas. When
that job is done, then we can rebuild, and put up appropriate memorials to
all the dead.

The United Islamic Jihad made a written declaration of war on the U.S. in
1999. We ignored it, to our current chagrin. Starting with the assault on
the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979, and the taking of the hostages (Remember
Jimmy Carter?), I have a list of events I have thought of. The bombing of
Pan Am 103, the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut (241 dead), 
the 1st bombing of the World Trade Towers, the bombing of the Kobar
apartments in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of the 2 U.S. Embassies in Africa,
and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. There may be others, these are some that
come to mind.

Ok, we are at war, with a enemy who's stated purpose is to destroy the
United States. What happened 2 weeks ago is not a tragedy, it is an
atrocity. Another in a series of acts of aggression that have gone
unanswered and unchallenged. I think flying the flag is enough of a symbol.
If you want to take action, here are some ideas.

1. Write your Congressmen and senators. Tell them you support the
President's military actions. Demand that we go as far as is necessary to
ensure that no one can ever attack us like this again.

2. Send a care package, snacks, homemade cookies, etc. to a serviceman or
woman.

3. Befriend the family of a serviceman or woman that has been called up to
active duty or sent overseas. They need our help and support.

4. Encourage young men and women of good character to join one of the Armed
Services. We need the best of America in this fight.

5. Keep your outrage fresh. Don't let the media or anyone else dilute the
energy. Stay focused, and be prepared for more attacks, deaths both here at
home, and in battle overseas.

6. Actively resist and confront "politically correct" people sharing
thoughts and ideas that wander toward the old idea of peace at any price.
Peace at any price isn't peace, it's slavery.

Semper Fidelis,
ASM826

Remembering 9/11

It has begun. The White House has issued talking points for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Ralph Nader has a 10 point press release for how he thinks we should be thinking about the date. There will be lots more people and organizations weighing in the next few days. As a faithful reader of RAoP, I would be doing you a disservice not to offer you my direction on the issue.

So here goes. Think for yourself. Don't let anyone, not the news media, not the White House, not some blogger, tell you how to feel or think. They are going to want to manage the whole thing like a stage production. Don't fall for it.

In a following post I'll share what I think and feel. I'll tell you what I was thinking then and what I'm thinking now. That's why I have a blog.

Lost To The Ocean

I learned about the Markham-Albertson-Stinson Cottage last year when this article was published in Our State magazine. The cottage was built in 1903. It was part of a community of beach cottages then, although the others were gone along with the land they had stood on.

Hurricane Irene took the cottage. Standing out over the water, the land already washed out from underneath, it was only a matter of time. Still, it was irreplaceable. No one can just build where they want anymore and permits would never be granted to build over the water. The family that owned it knew what a treasure it was, opened it to tours, invited friends to share in the experience to staying there. It was decorated with art, beach combing finds, old furniture.

All that remain are the steps. They went down to say goodbye and someone snapped this photo.

Y'all Are Going on Youtube

Chainsaws and trees are a dangerous combination. Trees don't always do what you expect. Chains get pinched, saws kick back. People get cut, hit with tree limbs, flung off ladders.

I was headed out to help some friends with Irene cleanup yesterday evening and she told me to be careful. My reply was that I would, and that I thought that running a chainsaw was significantly more dangerous than going to the range. When I got home, I started looking for videos and accident reports. You can find them easily enough, but you better be prepared for the accompanying photos. Let's just say that anything that cuts through an oak log isn't going to be slowed down by your face.

Rather than subject you to that, here, for your amusement, I offer a video where no one gets hurt, but one of the rules of chainsawing gets broken. "Be absolutely sure of where the tree is going to fall and what it is going to fall on." You might not be able to move a house or a shed, but dropping a tree on a truck you could have parked a hundred yards away will get you immortalized on YouTube.

Infringing on Borepatch

Al Gore has jumped the shark.

One day climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists, or so says former Vice President Al Gore.

The rest of the article is no better

The former vice president recalled how society succeeded in marginalizing racists and said climate change skeptics must be defeated in the same manner.

And just to cap it off.

“We have to win the conversation on climate,” Gore added.
When Bogusky questioned the analogy, asking if the scientific reasoning behind climate change skeptics might throw a wrench into the good and evil comparison with racism, Gore did not back down.

Fine. Hold to that. It obviously doesn't matter what the facts are. All that matters is that you "win the conversation." Start a smear campaign, be willing to tell any lie, do anything to marginalize the truth. I will assume that anything you say in public from here on is self serving bullshit.

Maybe This is Why They Hyped It Up

The New York Times offers this article this morning: Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate.

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?

Is all the hyperbole on the TV for the past week just a set-up for articles like this?

What damage? What scale? Isn't there anyone that remembers the hurricanes of the past?

In The Area

Raked up and picked up, then went for a walk. In the cemetery near the post office was this tree. There are some other big ones that have lost limbs or fallen, but this one we will miss. First reports don't seem too bad. Damage is worse down by the coast and a lot of roads are closed today.

6:18 AM

Power came back on. Yard's a mess. House okay.

On and Off

Both power and internet have been intermittent. If it goes off and stays off, I won't tell you about it.

Smart Dog

Gracie the dog wasn't leaving the porch. Getting her to do her business required putting her on the leash and venturing out.

Storm Building Up

Getting 35-40 mph gusts. With all the trees around the house, I expect some damage. Power and internet could go at any time, but for now the lights are on and here I am posting an update. Forecast says we will get winds approaching hurricane strength here and rain throughout the day.

Still Offshore

Early morning surf cam 8/26/11

Aikido in Japan

This is what the martial art I study is. We are not as rigidly formal, but if you watch the action sequences, it looks like this.

Toledo Ohio and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Starting in the early years of the last century, Toledo Ohio was a major glass manufacturing center. They called themselves, with a mix of pride and self hucksterism, "The Glass Capitol of the World." They developed safety glass, Corningware, automated light bulb manufacturing, created fiberglass insulation and more. In 2006, looking back on those days, Toledo built a museum celebrating glass. A beautiful museum, with curving glass exterior walls and displays of glass throughout history.

The beautiful glass walls? Made in China. There wasn't a U.S. company that could build them.

I was reminded of that when I heard the news report about the new Martin Luther King memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., located between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. The stone carving of Dr. King? The 1,600 tons of marble used? Made in China. The artist did the work in China and then a team of Chinese stone masons accompanied the blocks to Washington where they oversaw the final assembly.



I don't know if there was a U.S. artist who could have done the work, or if there is a U.S. quarry that could have provided the stone. I only know we outsourced it to China, making it the first Communist made memorial on the National Mall.

Scout Leader, 76, Stabbed to Death on Hike

Innocence is no defense when the darkness comes.

Quote of the Day

"But my shoulder hurts. I guess that feels like freedom!"

--Borepatch

Teenagers Fake Robberies for YouTube

The title says it all. They used a toy gun, filmed them, and planned to post them on YouTube. The victims were unaware that it was a "prank". They were in Australia, so the risk of being shot by one of their victims was very low. But even so, this could have turned into a hairball. Try this on someone who has been studying a martial art for long time, or is a boxer, or has some military combat experience. I'd say they were lucky to be arrested.

Found It

Now, Mr. President, let's get your mechanics to work on Ms. Donna Trusky's Impala.

The Internet is Forever, Which is More than You Can Say for GM

Here's the promise President Obama made back in March 2009. Probably as good as all the other promises politicians make. You'd think they were selling used cars.

"Let me say this as plainly as I can. If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired just like always," Obama said in a speech. "Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it has ever been. Because starting today, the United States will stand behind your warranty."

In fact, if you had bought a GM car in April of 2009, from what we can now call the Old GM, the new GM will not honor that warranty, and the United States doesn't have any dealerships.

Buy a Ford. And remember their promises when you go to the polls.

Another Reason to Just Buy an Old Car

If you had bought a GM product before the 2009 bankruptcy proceedings and had a problem related to the manufacturing of the car, even one GM knows about and has fixed on similar models of police cars, there's no warranty. Since this current corporation uses the same product names and logo, and took dozens of billions of taxpayer dollars to stay alive, you might have made the mistake of thinking the companies were related. They are not.

"New GM did not assume responsibility for Old GM's design choices, conduct, or alleged breaches of liability under the warranty."

This makes buying an old GM product attractive again. Just buy a real old one and go in eyes open, knowing that there is no warranty, written or implied. Because if you buy one of 400,000 Impalas from 2007 or 2008, the new GM wants you to know that the defects in the rear suspension aren't their problem.

Another Alternative

As Egocentrist pointed out in the comments, lots of Marines drive Mustangs, so in an effort to be different, he suggested considering Sex on Wheels, otherwise known as the Pontiac GTO. I can get behind that, and out of the ones I see on E-Bay, this one looks like a reasonable alternative to the Chevy Volt.


The current bid is $17,099 and it has less than two days to go, although I noticed that the reserve is not met. You're not going to get a GTO for what you can pay for a Mustang, there aren't as many of them. But there's lots of late '60s, early '70s muscle cars out there and something should catch your interest at a price that would make buying a Volt look criminal.

Chevy Volt

They managed to sell 125 of them last month. Not bad considering what it is. It's a $42,500 dollar car, capable of 40 miles of electric travel on an 10-12 hour charge. After that, it's a hybrid, running a gasoline engine to power a generator, at something like 45 mpg.

If I had 40K to drop on a car, I'd get one of these. Maybe this one.


There's lots to choose from. For $40,000 I ought to be able to get one that has been mostly restored, do any work that still needs to be finished, and put gas in it for several years.

So here's a question, Chevy sold 125 Volts last month, how many used Mustangs changed hands in July 2011?

Rule 2!

No, really, rule 2!



Don't ever put a loaded firearm in the waistband of your pants. The muzzle will always be covering something you don't want a hole in. Sometimes more than others. Just ask Stubby, when he get out of the hospital.

I Can't Come Home 'til The Last Shot's Fired

The Past is a Foreign Country

The video I posted a couple of days ago, with the service station owner dressed in a crisp uniform and a cap, reminded me of how people used to dress. If you look at old pictures of baseball games, men are wearing ties and hats, women are in dresses. Nurses wore starched hats and white dresses, not loose fitting scrubs. Last night there as an ad for an new TV show about Pan Am Airlines, and it showed the stewardesses in their iconic blue uniforms.

So here is a picture of a man dressed for work. What was his job?



The man is my grandfather. The uniform is what he wore as an employee of an inter-city bus company. He is standing in front of his bus. It was probably taken around 1930.

I don't know that it was any better, but it sure was different.

Honor

What would you do if you bid on and won an old 1911 in an on-line auction and when you got the pistol, it had a name on it? A 1911 manufactured in 1914 with USMC markings and the name of a Medal of Honor recipient engraved in the slide?

This wasn't a philosophical question for George Berry. He won the auction, got the pistol for less than a $1000. Then he researched the name and found out that the name on the slide, John J. McGinty, had earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam in 1966, with that pistol in his hand. With that information, the value of the pistol went up considerably.

After more research, George Berry found out that John McGinty had retired from the Corps in 1976. He is still alive, living in South Carolina. George contacted him, wanting to hear the story of how John had come to part with the pistol. Turns out it was stolen.

So what does a man of honor like George Berry do? A man who had also served in the Marines and the Navy? He returns the pistol to John McGinty. Just gives it back after it had been missing for 30 years.

Honor. Some men have lots of it. George Berry is one of them.

Semper Fidelis.

A Training Film

Here's a short video that must have been used to train service station owners on how to grow their business. Everything, from the watch to the uniform to the cars, is history.

The American Dream

To own your own home, be your own boss, run your own business, to be free. Not to punch a clock for someone else, but to have both the risks and rewards of taking your skills and your wares into the marketplace and offering them to the public.

Opening a service station was one possible expression of that dream, and as the roads were built and cars became common, tens hundreds of thousands of service stations opened up. I don't know what the details of the agreements were, but it was Esso, Cities Service, Texaco, Sinclair, Phillips 66, Sunoco, and more. It must have exploded after WWII, guys with lots of experience in motor transport, tanks, and airplanes, coming home and wanting to put that to use, highways being built, everyone buying cars.

Dreams die hard. What my friends have gone through is a story repeated over and over. You can't quite make it. Or you make it for a while, and then things change. Maybe the interstate is built six miles away and the road your shop is on is now deserted. Or you have some health problems and there's no real safety net for a sole proprietor. Or the rules change, and the oil companies decide to open stores they own directly and sell gas at the pump for less than your wholesale price.

I did a Google image search for abandoned service stations. You get lots of images. Some are interesting photos, but every one of them represents someone's dream dashed against reality. And it's not just owner/operators of service stations. It's independently owned motels, restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, and on and on. How many have closed their doors in the face of competition from chains, new regulations, taxes, and changes in the community in the last 50 years?

Where did they go?

How I Found Out

I called to talk to Jeff about getting an inspection and a door lock replaced. I got an answering machine. I had never got an answering machine during business hours before. I left a message and after work I drove by the station. There was a sign on the door thanking customers for their business over the years.

I left him another message and asked him to call. He called the house and talked to my wife.

As I said in the last post, there are other factors than just the impending construction. Jeff's fiancee had graduated and found a good job. By any kind of financial assessment, the business was only marginally profitable. The location was going to be unusable, possibly permanently. And there are family issues, involving Jeff's time and energy, that make it difficult for him to put in the kind of hours it takes to run a operation like an independent service station.

I understand. I support his decision, hope for only the best for him and his. But it's a loss.

I stopped this morning and took the picture at the top of this post. It's not a business anymore, it's an just an old building standing in the way of pending construction.

Last week I dropped my truck off at the local Ford garage. They did a fine job and I have no complaints about the service or the price. It was computerized and efficient. They sent me an email follow-up with a satisfaction survey. What more can you ask for these days?

From 100 Miles Up

You can see the problem from a hundred miles up if you click on the image


That has become a group of heavily traveled roads. The university is a couple of miles on one side of the track, the hospital and med school a few miles on the other. The rail line is regularly used, and nearby sidings are used to build trains. This intersection is often blocked. The roads meet at odd angles and traffic backs up even when the roads are open.

There are plans in the works to build an overpass, redesign how the roads intersect, and eliminate the congestion. One building in the area has already been demolished. The storage yard, at the top of the first image, that Jeff used for fenced security, is in the construction path. The whole area will be disrupted for months, maybe years. Here's the proposed map.


Another thing you can see is the purple line that is the boundary of the railroad property right of way. The station's paved parking lot is almost gone if that is returned to the railroad. It is likely that area was always railroad property, but had been used for decades by the station. These are not the only issues, to be sure. They are just the last ones.

How It Was

It was old fashioned. First names and relaxed. If you were in a hurry, you might not have been at the right place. Once or twice something didn't get fixed the first time, but it was always made right. If they towed you in, they would drop you at home so you didn't have to walk or call a taxi.

At Christmas they handed out big glass jars of blistered peanuts to the customers. There was a calendar every year featuring old cars. This is the current one, hanging on my office wall.

The Unexpected

I'm sure Dennis thought he would be fixing cars and selling tires until he got too old to work. I don't know what Jeff's plans were. What happened was the unexpected. Dennis got cancer of the esophagus. He still had young children, he was in his early 50s, he fought it.

Dennis had always been a big guy. Beyond robust or solid. Rotund. Cancer treatments can be almost as cruel as the disease itself. It burned him down. He lost at least half his body weight. He couldn't work. The medical bills piled up. Jeff took on the business.

The family got involved, answering the phone, figuring out the running of the operation. They bought a computer. Looking for something more to keep things going, they started renting trucks.

Dennis had always let people run a tab. I never had to, but I know it must have been tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills in that file cabinet. Jeff tried to tighten up on the billing and payments. His girlfriend, later fiancee, started helping. She was working on a business degree, and I think she got a handle on the cash flow.

Dennis did not survive his cancer. He passed away a few years ago.

Jeff kept the shop open and we continued to be loyal customers. My sons were driving, and still in town, so more old cars came into the picture, all needing towing and repairs. For the longest time, I would say, "I'm going to have to take the truck to Dennis, " and she would say, "Jeff..."

Fleming's Exxon

It used to be called Fleming’s Exxon. Dennis renamed it Fleming’s Tire and Service when he stopped selling gas. Some new regulations concerning underground tanks had been issued. It was the last straw. When I asked about it, he explained his decision. I'm paraphrasing, it was a while ago, but it went something like this:

“Those are new tanks in the ground now, only been there a few years. I had them replaced to meet standards when those pumps were installed. Now they have to be replaced again. So I sat down and did some figuring. If you take all my expenses, tanks, inspections, pumps, and the price I pay for delivered gas, and what I can sell it for, I might have broke even selling gas over the last ten years. I sure haven’t made anything. And everyone complains that it’s more than the Stop’n’Go sells it for, but I can’t match them. They get the gas at a corporate price. In the end, I’ve really lost money, because I’m going to pay to have the tanks removed and the soil tested one more time.”

He had the tanks removed and the pump islands leveled. It made it easier to get in and out of his bays. It was one thing he dealt with that I knew about. I started buying my gas at the Stop'n'Go.

Jeff Buck

Jeff Buck is Dennis’s oldest son. He was a teenager when we first met, not old enough to drive. As the years went by I saw him learn to drive, survive his first car, become a fixture around the shop. I have a story that involves Jeff I want to tell. It happened about ten summers ago. It’s not the main point of this series of posts but it illuminates my relationship with Dennis and Jeff.

The ’76 F-250 is the vehicle in the middle of this tale. I had driven it on a Scout trip to the beach. Since it was a heavy truck with a good low gear, I was towing the equipment trailer. We were caravanning back on Sunday afternoon, about 30 miles from home, when the clutch let go. One moment, rolling along at 50 mph. The next moment…BANG! The clutch must have completely disintegrated. The engine was no longer connected to the gearbox in any way that provided momentum. I slowed, drifted off on the shoulder in front of a couple of houses and stopped.

After discussion, the rest of the Troop decided to continue on. The trailer was connected to a different truck. One other leader, Leo, stayed with me and everyone else went on to get the gear unpacked and the Scouts home.

I called Dennis to see if he would send a tow truck. It was Father’s Day and he was with his family, but he said he would send Jeff in a little while if we could wait an hour or so. We could, as we really had no choice. After the call, we went up to the house and explained our situation. We got permission to sit under the trees near the house. I had my gear and equipment in the truck, so after we called Dennis, we put up camp chairs, got out a cooler, unpacked drinks and snacks and settled in.

Jeff showed up to find Leo and I relaxing in the shade. We’d been telling stories, doing our best to enjoy what the day had turned into. Jeff was driving a flat bed tow truck, the kind that you tilt the bed and winch the vehicle onto. We stood back as he set up, attached the cable, and started the winch. My truck, with all the gear in it, got to the top of the inclined ramp and was just about ready to be tilted down to level when the winch cable pulled out of the clamps.

My truck, no longer connected to anything, rolled back off the tow truck, across the yard and slammed backwards into an oak tree. Hard. Hard enough to tear the truck box off it’s bolts and slide it back into the rest of the gear. Hard enough to crunch the bumper up into the tailgate. Loud enough to make the people come out of the house and stare.

Jeff climbed out of the cab of the tow truck and ran back and looked at my truck, looked at us, and started trying to apologize. He knew I was his Dad’s friend and customer, but didn’t know me that well personally.

Leo turned to me and said, straight faced, “This is going to make a great story.” That was it. I started laughing. Leo joined me. We laughed until we had tears on our faces. Jeff looked at us like we were insane, which just made it funnier.

Finally I got control enough to get him to stop apologizing, “It’s an old truck, it’s just a bumper, it’s okay, I’ll work it out with your Dad.”

Jeff didn’t have any tools, but I did. I put the cable back together, we hooked it back up, and this time I rode in the cab to have my foot near the brakes as he winched it up. We loaded without further incident and headed home.

The next day I went to see Dennis and got to tell the story for the first time. I’ve told it to Scouts, and now I’ve told it to you. Jeff had already told his version of it to Dennis, and we laughed about it some more. Dennis looked at the bumper and said, “I can beat it back down so the tailgate opens and not charge you anything for the towing, or I can get you a replacement bumper, no charge, and the towing will go on the repair.”

I took the free towing, and drove the truck with a dented bumper. It didn’t seem to make much difference in how the truck looked.

Dennis Buck

This is going to be longer than usual. I’ll break it out in parts. It’s been floating around and I’ve been putting it off, but this is an important post to me. It’s the story of an American small business owner and his son. It’s not something I read about, this is personal.

I had 4 children. That’s important to the story for a couple of reasons. First, because it meant when this story began we didn’t have any money to spare. The grocery store took most of it. Then it was shoes, glasses, school supplies, doctor visits. We lived month to month. And second, because we needed a big vehicle. Did I mention we didn’t have any money? We needed a big, cheap, reliable vehicle. What we had was a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with 3 seats. My kids called it The Brown Boomie. It cost me $800.00 when I bought it.

We heat with wood. When we started, the money I saved on the wood went to buy an old pickup truck. Think about what sort of pickup you can buy for $450.00, because that’s the truck this story starts with. An old Dodge. The wood slats in the bed were rotted out. The wiring was a disaster. When I first saw it, it was parked up alongside a barn in a horse pasture. It started right up though, and the motor sounded strong. The man that sold it to me told me that there was a mechanic he knew that ran his own shop that could help me with it if I ran into things I couldn’t do. Gave me directions, told me the guy was honest, and opened the gate as I drove the old truck out.

I did most of my own work in those days. I could change the oil, plug a tire, replace a water pump. A couple of times I’ve swapped engines. I’ve changed a clutch. But sometimes having a lift and some real skills is important, so I ended up meeting this mechanic.

His name was Dennis Buck. The shop was an old two bay full service station. It stood back from an intersection where three roads and a set of railroad tracks met at odd angles. It looked like every gas station you remember. They used to be everywhere. A pile of old tires on the side, rows of cars that had been towed in, three or four guys working all the time. The bays looked like they needed to be steam cleaned and painted, the office was all run with paper tickets and a filing cabinet. Some old chairs, a soda machine, and a freezer full of popsicles and ice cream bars. In the winter there was heat, from an old cast iron stove in the corner.

To get to the heart of this, he was honest. He liked me because I always managed to pay when I picked the vehicles up. I liked him because after a while I absolutely believed what he was telling me about my junk. Years went by and we got to be friends. He helped me keep the Brown Boomie on the road for a decade. The Dodge truck was a daily driver for seven years until I replaced it with a 1976 F-250, a $1400 truck that needed as much work as the truck it replaced but had the advantage of not being completely rusted out.

He had bunch of kids of his own, along with his parents and extended family. We would joke about how he was overcharging, he would accuse me of stealing food from his children when he knew I did some work myself. I started buying gas from him, even when it wasn’t cheaper, knowing that as an independent he was paying more to get it, so I saw him every week. I bought my tires there. As we did a little better and started buying better cars, I would take them to him to get checked out before we bought them.

He was an anachronism. A small business owner, dealing with customers who often didn’t pay on time, employees good and bad, paying his own bills, and coping with ever increasing government regulations and taxes at the local, state and federal level. He had taken the business from his father, and in turn, was teaching it to his oldest son. He was never going to get rich doing this, but it was enough to provide for his family. In ways he might not of thought about, he provided something to the community. Support for his family, honest work at a fair price, employment for his crews, taxes. He contributed.

Class Warfare

Since these images are from the spring of 2009, it would seem that the problems in the place where Great Britain used to be have been simmering for a while. Who does he think is going to bring food into the city if there's no longer any profit in it? Who builds a truck, raises a crop, works long hours in a warehouse, if not for personal gain?

I'm okay with change, but it has to make some sense. What kind of world is being offered here?

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
--Winston Churchill

Gun Control

Do not ever point to Great Britain as an example of why the United States should prevent it's citizens from owning firearms, because this is the inevitable result.


When you disarm the citizens and the police you don't get peace. You get anarchy.

Now It's the Tea Party's Fault

Since we're past the point where the Democrats could possibly blame Bush, they were looking for a new scapegoat. They picked the Tea Party. Remember that tiny minority fringe group they were discounting? Well, now they are so powerful that they caused the debt crisis and the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating.

Cognitive Dissonance

So, if I'm understanding the official Chinese News agency Xihhua correctly, they are agreeing with the Tea Party.

From the Xinhua News' Opinion Page

The alarm has rung. It is time for the naughty boys in Washington to stop chicken games before they cause more damages. It is time for the policy-makers in Washington to settle down, to show some sense of responsibility and fix their fiscal problems.

The United States is not only the biggest debtor, who must pay its large amount of obligations, but also the printer of international reserve currency, which has the responsibility to assure the value of other countries' foreign reserve assets.

If the country's governors kept wrangling for their own interest, ignoring the voices from domestic and aboard, how can their people trust them and where will the confidence for a better economic scenario come from?

If the world's largest debtor kept eating May's grain in April and kept robbing Peter to pay Paul without fiscal discipline, eagerness to balance budget or effective efforts to boost sluggish economy, how can the creditors keep lending without doubts?

It's the Debt

It's the debt that caused the markets to drop. Our political leaders didn't fix anything, didn't stop spending, they just kicked the can down road a year or so. Everyone knows it.

The U.S. media has been bending over backwards trying to find some other reason that the markets went tumbling the day after the Obama administration raised the dept ceiling another 2.4 T$. There isn't one. Let's go with Occam's Razor and surmise that the most obvious explanation is likely correct. People that understand economics and economies looked at what just happened and figured it was time to get out of the U.S. stock markets. I would.

So would the Chinese.

Already, Dagong Global Credit Rating, a Chinese ratings firm, downgraded the U.S.' rating Wednesday, noting that the nation's debt is growing faster than its economy.

If that's not enough, so would Standard and Poor's, who lowered the United States credit rating. It remains to be seen what ripple effects that will have. But all of this is a direct result of the government deciding to write themselves a check for 2.4 trillion dollars, on top of the 14.5 trillion dollars we already owe.

We had one last chance to turn it around. Now comes the fallout of the failure.

Godwin's Law and My Corollary

Most people that have been using the internet for a while have heard of Godwin's Law. It hearkens back to the olden days of the internet. 9600 Baud modems, text only interfaces, and usenet discussion groups. Lacking any way to control a discussion, discussions became heated, and eventually became flame wars. Sooner or later, any position, however rational, would be denounced as fascist, hence this law:

Godwin's Law: All discussion threads will eventually invoke Hitler and the Nazis. The person who does this in an invidious comparison is deemed to have lost the debate.

So, once you had stated a position or an opinion and the other person had replied with , "Well, I guess that's what I should have expected from a Nazi like you!!!11!!!", you could move on, secure in the knowledge that the other party had no rational response.

Harrington's Corollary to Godwin's Law: All political debate will eventually invoke Al Qaeda and terrorism. The person or group who does this in an invidious comparison is deemed to have lost the debate.

So, for example, when a Congressman expresses the opinion that it would be better if the United States had a balanced budget and paid down the national debt, and the Vice-President and leading Democrats denounce that opinion as terrorism, Harrington's Corollary is automatically invoked and the debate is over, with the win going to the fiscal conservative.

Feel free to link back and use Harrington's Corollary whenever spurious comparisons to terrorism are invoked.

A Lesson for the Vice-President

Vice-President Biden and some leading Democrats compared the members of Congress that were opposed to increasing the national debt to terrorists. I would like to offer a lesson to the Vice-President and anyone else that thinks that being in favor of being financially responsible as a nation is terrorism.

This is terrorism.



Working for and voting for positions that you support as the best outcome for the constituents that voted you into office is democracy.

There's a difference.

You cheapen the losses of the past decade with your ill considered comparison.

Better and Better

Better and Better links back to a post from 2008 he titled Hoka-hey.

A Prediction

The 2.4 T $ in new debt we're taking on? It lasts us about 18 months.

This Debt Is Like a Cancer

So we stopped for a moment and looked at the problem. We didn't have statesmen. We had politicians. They wrote themselves another check for 2.4 trillion dollars(2,400,000,000,000) and Barack will sign it today or tomorrow. It's all bread and circuses from here on.

I've mostly given up on quotes, but these two say it all.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone absorb all federal discretionary revenue, the rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans—the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries.
--Alan Simpson, co-chairman of Barack Obama's debt and deficit commission, July 2010

This debt is like a cancer, it is truly going to destroy the country from within.
--Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's debt and deficit commission, July 2010