Political Oozings

Imus - Mourning for the morning

2007-04-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

First of all, we must start with one single premise; what Imus said was not funny, it was racist. None of us can look into this man's heart, but we must assume he either said it because he is himself a racist or he was pandering to other racists. All the attempts at weighing on one hand what Imus said against what others have said is simply not valid. All of us must recognize the statement for what it was, that it stands alone in it's utter ugliness and ability to do harm. The fact that it was directed at 10 young women who have seen their accomplishment denegrated, their dreams tarnished, make that statement, in itself, unforgiveable. Is it high time that all of us examine what we will tolerate in the name of humor? You bet it is! We should not accept it when it comes from a white radio and tv pundit, nor should we accept it when it comes from a black rapper. Wrong is wrong. But, in truth, little will change until Mothers and (especially) Fathers, find the courage to set aside their own bias to tell their children that discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. This may be the time when we can finally do something. Dry your eyes, take the arm of your neighbor and stand up. Tell the world, we can be better than this and, by God, we're ready to try.

Whose Policy is it?

2007-02-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to get a little peeved with the more vocal Republicans on the war issue. (Hey, that's a first, huh?) We keep hearing this refrain from them that sounds like, "where is the Democrats plan for Iraq". Actually, there are a lot of them out there, but that really isn't the point. Ms. Clinton has one, Mr. Biden has one, Mr. Obama has one, and if you're still short, just look around, there are plenty more.

GOP congressional types would like to set a trap that would force Democratic members to say they are going to stop funding for the troops, thus making them look stupid and unpatriotic. Except for rare instances, I don't think they will fall for that.

But here's the thing. The Iraq policy that is presently being debated is not a "Republican" policy, although most Republicans bought it, marched in lock-step with it, and if you didn't notice early in the war, there were a lot of Democrats following right along. If the Iraq war policy and strategy were the product of the Republican party it might be incumbent on the Democrats to come up with an alternative policy. But it isn't!

That policy is the sole responsibility of the Bush administration. The president put it out there, the Defense Department implemented it, the State Department hawked it to the rest of the world and except for a wink and a nod, law makers of both parties had little to do with it.

Now, the Bush administration is a big apparatus. Frankly, I don't think the president had much to do with the inception of the policy, he bought into a vision put forward by a few neo-cons who painted such a rosey picture of what they thought the middle-east would look like when we were all done, he just thought it was too good to pass up. Up close, it looks a lot more like Deadeye Dick Cheney, Roll-em-up Rumsfeld and War-at-any-price Rove to me. Mr. Bush is just not a deep thinker, I doubt he even realized he was being sold a bill of goods.

Now, does that mean that the Democrats have no responsibility to set this thing right? Absolutely not! But, what can they, or even the Republicans do? The truth is, not much. It is the Bush administration that has to come up with alternatives and Americans, by 70% don't like the old plan. Oh, there are a lot of platitudes that fit the situation, "When you're in a hold stop digging", "You can't beat a dead horse," etc. We don't need platitudes, we need action. Iraq is a failed experiment and tweaking the parameters of the experiment won't help.

Maybe the administration is tired, maybe they are sick of getting beat up by the press and voters, and maybe they are just so fixed on trying to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear they won't consider anything else. It would be a shame if they persist in this folly, the young men and women who bear the burden of this catastrophe deserve better.

Perhaps They'll Listen Now

2007-01-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

I often refer to myself as an unrepentant old rocker, the music still speaks to me so often. But, I came from an era of protest and music was such a large part of that resistance. Today's music has not kept pace with the great issues of our time and that puzzles me, somewhat. Is it because we don't care or is it because there is no movement or no direction?

There are great issues that face this generation, none of them more important than the war in Iraq. Also, the environment continues to take a beating, the poor people of New Orleans find themselves still waiting for promised government assistance. The people voted for change but still seem powerless to move the Bush administration in any new direction.

"Now I understand, what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity, how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now."

We look as though we are going to put more troops into Iraq, more doors to be kicked in, more people to alienate? But this time it will be different. This time the Iraqi forces will take the lead. But, did you know that since our elections in November, the Iraqi parliament has only met once? The other attempts to meet could not raise a quorum. They need to have 50% plus one of a 275 member body, and they won't even do that. Many of the Iraqi ministers do not even live in Iraq. They live in London and Jordan and can't get back for something so vital as a session of parliament. And in the meantime, over one hundred and fifty young Americans have given their lives.

"Starry, starry nights, portraits hung in empty halls, frameless heads on nameless walls, with eyes that watch the world and can't forget. Like the strangers that you've met, the ragged men in ragged clothes, a silver thorn, a bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow."

And the President and the vice president ask for patience. Give us one more chance to achieve victory. We don't want victory, we want this to stop. We want an end to officials taking vengeance on people who don't agree with them, we want the constitution read and obeyed. But, we'll stay the course, we'll stand up more while they stand up less. When, in God's name, will we learn to listen to the music?

"Now I think I know, what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they're not listening still, perhaps they never will."

The lyrics, by the way, are by Don McLean for a piece called "Vincent".

The Turn-Around Year?

2006-12-29T11:30:00.000-08:00

Well, its that time of year when we look cautiously over our shoulder in an attempt to get a better picture of 2006. Some good things happened, but probably not enough to off-set the bad. We lost a lot of young Americans in Iraq, hundreds more were seriously wounded, we wasted an opportunity to fix our borders and we threw a lot of the bums out of office. There is a good chance that we got some things turned around and headed in the right direction, just the same.

One thing that happened was very subtle but the consequences of it may last for years and years to come. The old, tried and true relationship of news makers and news consumers changed dramatically. It used to be that the folks in Washington made the news. They had it pretty much their own way. The media folks picked it up, packaged it and fed it to us. They had it pretty much their way too. Suddenly, all that changed. How much? Ask the now ex-Senator from Virginia and the soon to be forgotten Senator from Massachusetts. Both were considered front runners for the 2008 presidential race, just a few weeks ago. Now, because of an entirely new concept in news, they've pretty much had it.

If we didn't, we should have seen it coming. There are cameras everywhere. If you screw up, there is probably some guy with a cell phone camera recording it. I think John just slipped up; he didn't really mean what it sounded like he said. He has a talent for that kind of thing. George, on the other hand, got caught with his prejudices exposed, so it serves him right. But, you can bet a dollar to a doughnut hole that politicians have learned a valuable lesson from all this. Smile, you're on candid camera, 24/7.

Another thing turned around in '06. It seems, regardless of how fortified politicians think they are, a disgruntled electorate will finally strike back. It was the GOP that suffered this time, but only because it happened to be their turn. Do you think all those fresh new faces, hell bent on reform and making all things right again won't suffer the same fate? I'm willing to bet they will, if I have any dollars left.

In the fading days of 2006, the world lost a couple of personalities. One of them was a nice guy from Michigan who became President of the United States. Under his watch we finally stopped losing in Vietnam. We stopped trying to hold apart something that desperately wanted to come together. All the pundits said the nations of Asia would fall like a row of dominoes if we gave up in Vietnam. It didn't happen. In fact, Southeast Asia has pretty much moved in the direction of freedom since then.

The other personality was a despot. Under his watch we have fought two wars in Iraq. He was a despot, to be sure. He killed thousands of people in his own country and thousands more of his neighbors. He ruled a country that desperately wanted to come apart, but we're in there trying to hold it together. And the pundits are saying if we let that happen the Middle East will come undone. We don't understand our enemies very well, and we don't understand the world order very well either. Maybe we should just stop meddling into other people's affairs.

Neither Vietnam nor Iraq were or are a threat to the United States. We have real enemies out there, and they are actively engaged while our attention is diverted. Maybe we ought to put some people in those countries with cell phone cameras. You think anybody would notice? Happy New Year.

One Step Forward

2006-12-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Boy, what a week this has been. Suddenly everyone seems to notice that the emperor has no clothes and wants us to believe they've been saying that all along. Well folks, it just isn't true. It seems to me that the same ones who followed President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of War Rumsfeld blindly to Iraq, kept saying "stay the course", derailed any oversight attempts, and threatened the ultimate veto if things didn't go their way, are now ready to play nice, be bi-partisan and usher in a new era of cooperation. We need to hang those guys, if only for a few days, and let the slime drip-dry on their new skin.

On Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group published what portions of their report that hadn't been leaked previously. Immediately following that we heard from both ends of the political spectrum, alternately praising or damning the document. The dems said it was an outright rejection of President Bush's policy and strategy; the GOPs said it was a good place to start, and the Neo-Cons said we are surrendering and under no circumstances should we talk with our "enemies."

On Thursday, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair rearranged the lyrics to "stay the course" and pretty much affirmed that was what they planned to do. Oh, there was a little backstepping, saying they were disappointed that things hadn't progressed more rapidly than they had, but we got the old specter of the bad guys landing on the beaches of NYC if we left Iraq without a "victory."

If you haven't been reading between the lines you might find my next statement a little over the top, but finally I'm getting some believers out there. There is no victory for Iraq as far as the US is concerned, and I doubt there ever was. You simply cannot take centuries of history, most of which involves bloodshed, religious and ethnic turmoil, a noble idea and a 200,000 man invasion force and make everything hunky dorry again. I don't much care how you define "victory", it isn't going to happen. It was an idiotic idea to start with and it hasn't improved with age.

From the polls published on Friday, most Americans are blaming the President for this debacle. Rummy is gone, although not forgotten, and Mr. Gates has been handed a job he can't do. There isn't enough lipstick in the entire world to make this pig pretty enough to kiss. I worked for Bob Gates and, as I recall, the changes he made in the CIA came slowly and without a lot of fanfare. By 1993, when he gave up the post of Director of Central Intelligence, we were pretty much out of the Central American wars, just getting into the anti-terrorist business and being pushed into the drug war. I wouldn't look for any short-term miracles when he takes the reins of the Defense Department either.

The problem, my friends, lies in the Executive Branch and the State Department. The 110th Congress will not be able to redirect this war any more than the 109th was, except perhaps to exercise the forgotten art of oversight. Either we have to fight or talk. If we fight, we best be prepared to kill off enough people from the middle East to render them irrelevant and suffer as many American casualties as we did in Vietnam. While we're doing that, you better come up with a quick replacement for oil. When it comes right down to it, talk is cheaper. Right now, the equipment, arms and the forces are all worn out. The military hospitals are jammed to the gunnels with young men and women who are learning to walk on prosthetics and they have paid enough while it has cost you and I almost nothing. War is never a good idea, but in this case it was terrible. Let's just get out of there and save what we can.

A Blue, Blue Day - Revisited

2006-11-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

Unlike the politicians I prey upon, I'm not above admitting when I've made a mistake. Back in April I said that I didn't think the forecasted Democratic victory would be as big as it was made out to be. I was wrong. Americans were a lot more angry than I thought, even though the price of a gallon of gas is down a dollar since April.

Exit polls from yesterday's election shed light on a couple of startling facts. The war in Iraq took a back seat to concerns about scandal and terrorism. The scandal issue didn't work at all well for the Republicans and the fallout isn't over yet. The terrorism boogy-man should have worked against the Democrats, but it didn't. I think the reason for that comes right back to Iraq. The country just isn't buying into the rhetoric any longer.

The Democrats can't win in Iraq any more than the Republicans did. Except withholding funding, there is little they can do about it, and believe me, they aren't going to do that. Here is what they can do. They can bring this all out in public and we can have a real debate about it. If anybody was paying as close attention to the election as the American public was, it is the Iraqi government. I'll bet there were more than a few "oh-oh's" muttered in Baghdad this morning. We need to have a parade of military generals appear before congress to express their unguarded opinions. They will have to have a guarantee that their careers are not in jeopardy and that we honestly value their input.

I was a champion of the appointment of General Pace to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have tremendous respect for Marines, past and present. They have saved our bacon, and my own personal butt, too many times to be regarded with anything less than absolute pride and regard. Yet, I think General Pace has been less than candid with his lock step obedience to the Secretary of Defense and the President. I want to hear what he really thinks about all this. His Marines have suffered too much, given too much and asked nothing in return but the privilege of serving the Corps. Is that all he really wants? The regular Army, the reserves and the National Guards have got to have a say in this war. Perhaps a Democrat controlled congress will finally give them the opportunity to do it.

In the end it is the President who must change the course. Was he listening to the election results? Did he hear what Americans said with their ballots or will he fall back on one of his favorite phrases, "Americans need to realize.....", indicating we don't understand and only he does. Believe me, Mister President, we do understand. This is not the time to turn Karl Rove loose on his opponents, it is an opportunity to sit and reason with one another. Nobody has all the power, but together we can solve all problems. Now, let's get it done.

A Return to Accountability?

2006-11-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

If President Bush, Vice President Cheney and SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, who planned and executed the war in Iraq, were a medical team, they would be sued for malpractice and have their license to practice medicine revoked. Unfortunately, they are politicians and there is no such mechanism to limit their incompetence. There is, however, a system of checks and balances that provide at least a modicum of oversight, but a Republican congress has prevented its use, until now.

Its my own personal opinion, but I believe the above mentioned team has used outright lies, misdirection and selectively blamed the intelligence community for getting us into Iraq. Since 9/11 they have played fast and loose with the constitution and put the United States on a moral level with the terrorists we seek to destroy. As a country, we deserve better.

We often hear it expressed that if we got the intelligence wrong, so did the rest of the world. The problem is that you never hear any of the world intelligence agencies back up that statement, with the possible exception of the British. For instance, you've never heard the Germans, the French, the Israelis or the Russians say, "yeah, we thought they had weapons of mass destruction too." Since 2003, we've had a few brave individuals from our own intelligence community say it wasn't so, that there were real doubts and that opposing opinions were discarded. The Bush administration has a track record of dealing harshly with people who disagree with them. Bullies often do that. I'm hearing that, now that they have some protection, there are more revelations coming.

For all practical purposes, the Presidency of George Bush ended today. He now becomes an official "lame duck". The Democrats have subpoena power and I fully expect they will use it. I sincerely hope they use that power wisely. Impeachment would be a waste of time and effort for a body that has an awful lot of work that needs more immediate attention. Having said that, the practice of awarding no-bid government contracts to old cronies, the suspension of habeas corpus, the power of the lobby over congress, oil and drug companies who have reaped tremendous profits, and the subtle tinkering of the constitution are matters that should be publicly aired. I, for one, am not interested in seeing the administration put on trial. I will be perfectly content if, on some not too distant date, a civics teacher asks a student who the 43rd president of the United States was, and the answer is, "wasn't that the bad Bush?"

The New Political Reality

2006-10-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

I read an article the other day that I thought had no political slant to it at all. It was about repairing fractured relationships. I've fractured a couple of relationships in my day, so I thought I'd better read through it. Well, it turns out that the prognosis of repairing relationships is not good. Here is the general rule. If restoring a marriage or partnership meant that one or both of you had to change more than one thing about yourself or the partner, you're better off to cut your losses and move on. One change might work, more than one is definitely going to fail.

So, you say, what does this have to do with my usual meanderings through the world of politics? A couple of days after the email scandal broke in Washington, the high priest of conservatism, Pat Buchanan, made a remark that really got me to thinking. He said, "Republicans are not Conservatives; Conservatives are Republicans." In other words, you could take the conservatives out of the Republican Party and there would still be a Republican Party left over. I suppose you could say the same thing about Democrats and Liberals. Frankly, it sounds like a great idea to me.

I think what Pat was hinting at was this. The conservatives haven't been well served by the Republicans as of late. This thing with Representative Foley is just the icing on the cake. You ask any high school kid who has had at least one course in civics and they will tell you what a conservative believes in. A strong military, smaller federal government, balanced budgets, and most of all, "family values." What the Republicans add to that list, or subtract from it, is what has the conservatives upset.

Every few years a movement starts, or at least sputters, to create a third party. We usually think this part would be "independent". It'll never happen! Here's my suggestion. Take all the real liberals from the Democrats and let them have the party; then take all the real conservatives from the Republicans and let them have it. We'd have the liberals on the left, the conservatives on the right, and all the rest of us lukewarm, middle class, tax-paying, uninspired, immensely powerful dimwits left in the middle. We wouldn't be independent, we'd be "Centrists." Either end of the spectrum would have to come to us for a majority.

All the great moral questions of the day, like prayer in school, stem cell research, gay partnerships, wars of choice and wars of necessity would become the topics for those on either end. The rest of us would handle the more mundane items, like earning a living, health care, education, energy, the environment, and protecting the constitution.

Well Pat, I wish you'd try it again. It didn't work out too well the last time, but perhaps the conditions are better this time. The alternative, I think, would be to ask either the Republicans or the Conservatives to change a hell of a lot more than two items. One way or another, you're headed for divorce court. I guess the question to ask is; are divorce lawyers republicans or conservative or liberals or centrists? One thing I'll bet; they aren't cheap.

Shooting the Intelligence Messenger - Again!

2006-08-25T07:49:00.001-07:00

Three republican congressional staffers wrote a 29 page report critiquing the intelligence on Iran's nuclear program this week. The report was made public even before it was in its final form.

Basically, the report complains that Iran is further advanced in its capability to produce and deliver atomic weapons than the intelligence community is willing to admit. I wonder, do these staffers have intelligence that indicates a more advanced program, and if so, where did it come from? But, perhaps there is another and more devious reason for the report and it smacks of another round of "selective reporting", again.

There is an element in government with neo-con leanings that would very much like us to take military action against Iran, or have the Israelis do it for us. In that scenario, we would furnish the smart ordnance, the giant bunker-buster bombs and the prioritized targeting and the Israeli Air Force would do the missions. The problem is that the intelligence community, already gun-shy from taking the blame for not locating the "slam-dunk" WMD in Iraq is playing it pretty close to the chest on this one. Instead of relying on questionable sources and people who have an axe to grind, the CIA and other intelligence agencies are sticking to the tried and true methods that have served us so well in the past, regardless of what many consider to be recent shortfalls.

You know, if the U.S. and it's allies had been given an operational atomic weapon during WWI, it wouldn't have made an iota of difference in the outcome of that conflict. Why? Because having an atomic weapon is only about a third of the ability to use it. One of our first A-Bombs was called "fat boy", and with good reason. It was huge. It was all a B-29 could do just to get the thing off the ground. Then it had to be armed, in flight. You can't just take an atomic weapon, duct tape it to the nose of a scud missile and launch it. To do so would give a whole new meaning to the term "blast off". The weapon has to be miniaturized, hardened and greatly simplified from its original form, and that, as the North Koreans are probably experiencing, takes time.

The neo-cons would argue that we need to deprive the Iranians of that time by striking now. However, in order to convince a congress of the urgency of the situation, they need a few intelligence tid-bits to stir up the general population, and they aren't getting those tid-bits. While its true that the Iranians have a very aggressive missile program with the probability of producing a guided intercontinental weapon within the next decade, they still lack the experience of dealing with nuclear components.

The intelligence community isn't taking sides in this debate, thank goodness. They are telling it like it is. Iran has, to the best of our ability to discover, such and such ability today, will probably have such and such capability in five years, ten years, etc. They aren't saying we should use that time to destroy facilities or to engage in diplomatic intercourse. As Sgt Friday used to say, "just the facts".

If you tell the intelligence community what sort of intelligence they are supposed to produce it might serve your cause well for the short term. We should realize by now that it doesn't work for the long run. Another thing that is counter productive is to establish another intelligence agency that will give you the answers you want. So where did this idea come from that the staffers cite?

Mum is not the word we need.

2006-08-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should say something about the war in Lebanon, but frankly, I'm not sure what I think about it. I understand the Israeli need for security and getting rid of the threat of rockets on their border. I don't understand why so many Lebanese children are dying to achieve that goal. I understand why the Moslem world wants an immediate cease fire; I don't understand why American footdragging is getting in the way of that.

Here's something I do know. America, during the period of the Bush administration, is playing a sophomoric game of not talking to people we don't like. We don't talk to North Korea, we don't talk to Iran, we don't talk to the "old Europe" nations. Well, that isn't a real good recipe for world peace, in my opinion. At the risk of roiling up the Clinton haters, it's not a policy he would have followed, and I can't think of another president who would have. Clinton talked to everybody. He brought the Arabs and the Jews together at Camp David, he was forever sending somebody somewhere to sort out regional problems, he would probably have gotten right in the middle of the Hatfields and the McCoys if he'd have been around at the time. I don't think it ever hurt us to talk to those folks or to facilitate their talking together. We had a pretty good reputation as being an "honest broker", which isn't a bad thing to have in a world where there are plenty of saber rattlers around.

Being an honest broker is a hard thing to achieve. You have to be willing to listen to both sides and not get caught up in the explosive rhetoric. Now there isn't one Muslim in a million who thinks we have any other side except being pro-Israel. Not only that, but about 900,000 of that million believe we are outright anti-Muslim. We're also anti-Arab, anti-Persian and anti-Castro. The list of folks we don't talk to is about as long as the list of those we do. It must be a real fun time to be in the diplomatic corps these days.

Everything we do as a nation exacts a price or brings us some benefit. We pretty much know by now what price we pay for being disengaged in part of the Middle-East while waging war with another part. Isn't it about time we stop this silly game of being absent from the world body? If Dick Nixon brought the world closer to peace by playing ping-pong with China, I'd think George Bush could work up a horse-shoe tournament with some of his boogie men around the globe. Go ahead George, give it a shot. Oops, probably not the right thing to suggest to "43".

The Slogan War

2006-08-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Three of the Defense Department big guns spent a few very uncomfortable hours in front of a senate hearing this week. They were, of course, the Secretary, Don Rumsfeld, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace and the poster General from Iraq, General Abazaid. Under the pressure of some pretty tough questions, the Generals, at least, somewhat reluctantly agreed that Iraq was slipping towards civil war. Mister Secretary insisted it is all a matter of definition.

One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is their confusion between slogans and policy. A slogan is not a policy and anybody who buys into slogans is overlooking the hard facts. "When the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down," is not a policy. If you delve into the facts that lay behind that slogan you will see how much trouble we are in.

When it comes right down to it, there are five factors that go into the Iraqi equation; Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis,oil and power. The Shiites have a large numerical superiority, most of the oil and most of the power. The Kurds have the rest of the oil and the rest of the power, plus an ability to get their stuff together and run the areas they control with a pretty even hand. The Sunnis, on the other hand, have nothing. Actually, they have less than nothing because under the old regime, they had it all and they killed a lot of the other two groups keeping it. They don't have many friends inside Iraq.

Then, along comes the U.S. and the coalition of the "if you aren't with us, you're against us." We topple the regime, disband the army, the police and anybody who ever held a position of authority with the old government. Surely and steadily, an insurgency arises, but, "Its better to fight them over there than over here." The coalition sets up an interim government, holds elections and writes a constitution. The purple index finger is substituted for a slogan which substitutes for a policy.

We knew from the onset that elections would produce a Shiite government in Iraq. The Sunnis knew it too and they saw the writing on the wall. The Kurds were way ahead of the other groups in that they already had a functioning central authority and a united approach to the Baghdad government. The resulting constitution failed to address the problems of the Sunni minority, its lack of wealth and resources and the genuine animosity that the rest of the Iraqi population felt for them. But, "we've turned the corner in Iraq."

The corner, it now seems painfully apparent, was an alley that took the country right down the slippery slope to civil war. Most independent thinkers believe it has been in civil war for more than a year, and definitely since February 20th when the spate of Mosque bombings started. Now, one hundred Iraqis die every day, and still we diddle with semantics. The policy is, "stay the course."

"When the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down," has a hidden agenda. What we are saying is that we want the Iraqi Government to contain sectarian violence, right? The Iraqi Government is Shiites who seem to have no intention of bringing the Sunni minority into parity with the other groups. So, its the Sunni who are in rebellion and we are assisting the Shiites to put down that rebellion. When they, or us, kill all the Sunnis and their imported terrorists, we can go home and let this new democracy flourish. My friends, we are taking sides in a civil war and we have no business doing that.

We cannot keep compounding our initial error. The role we should be playing is to pressure the Iraqi Government into making the necessary changes to their constitution that will allow the Sunni to share in the future. If all we are offering them is death and destruction you can understand how they might be reluctant to participate. If we don't do that, and very soon, I'm afraid we're going to left with the other failed Iraq policy, "bring it on."

Moving the Heat

2006-07-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

There is an old truth in physics that air-conditioning experts know well. You can't move cold; you can only move heat. If a room is too hot you don't blow cold air in, you move the heat out. Sounds crazy but it's true. Well, it seems the political body is learning that also.

In the last few weeks we've seen lots of attempts by the Bush administration to move the heat. All those situations that have been causing all the problems in the polls are being slightly changed to get some of the pressure off. For instance, when the Supreme Court said the President couldn't deny civil rights to the prisoners in Guantanamo, he quietly told congressional leaders he would agree to granting them the protection of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. When public opinion all but threw his plan for border protection and amnesty for illegal immigrants back in his face, he did basically the same thing. When Time Magazine noted that we are witnessing the end of "Cowboy Diplomacy", the West Wing didn't even object.

The Korean rocket crisis should have had the neo-cons lined up for a ride on the Enola Gay, but the Administration played it pretty cool. The President even chided his critics saying diplomacy works slowly and we shouldn't be too hasty. Now, the Middle-East is at a bubbling boil and again we are seeing a definitely reserved response from the White House.

Do you think all this has anything to do with the upcoming mid-term elections or has Mr. Bush really seen the light? I don't think we'll know for sure until after those elections. From a quick look at the world's situation, we should get plenty of indicators between now and November. None of the problems are going away, and some of them threaten to really muck up a guy's attempt to turn over a new leaf. Once again, the big "D" democrats have only to sit back and watch, but I'll bet they will find a way to get their fingers in the pickle slicer once again.

Oh yes, physics also tells us that heat tends to return to where it came from. Gee, I wonder where that might be? Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson just filed a civil lawsuit against the Vice-President and his bunch for destroying her career. Maybe the heat will dribble back in just the way its being dribbled out. Remember a few weeks ago I told you that you can't cover up some things completely? They just seem to keep coming back until they get the attention they deserve. In the civil courts the rules of evidence are so much broader than they are in criminal cases, I wouldn't be surprised if we learn a few things that haven't as yet been revealed. Its summer until it cools down, regardless of what the calendar says. Hell, it may be summer clear up to November.

By the Rocket's Red Glare

2006-07-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

North Korea's standing army is no joke! Current estimates put it at between 1 and 1.4 million men, and they get fed twice a day. That is just a whole hell of a lot better than the rest of the folks in North Korea and also a reason for discounting their reserve forces. South Korea, on the other hand, has just 700,000 active military, but just about every guy who has shaved has some military experience. What's more; they're tough as nails and their country is rich, by Southeast-Asian standards. Along with American forces stationed in South Korea, they train regularly and have sophisticated weapons systems. They are a match for anything North Korea will throw at them.

Oops, back up. "Anything" doesn't include nuclear weapons. Going nuclear on the Korean peninsula would be madness, but recent events suggest we are not dealing with anything that approaches sanity over there. On the Fourth of July, the North Koreans filled the sky with No-Dong (read "Scud") missiles and an ill fated attempt to send an ICBM our way. The display was apparently intended to get our attention. But it isn't as if we weren't already pretty much aware of just how much trouble a feeble minded dictator and a scientific community run amok and intent on producing a nuclear weapon can cause.

We told them right off the bat, launching those ICBM's would be a bad idea and would result in us lodging a strong protest with the United Nations. I get this image in my mind of Mr. Kim's middle finger extended in the air telling us he is now number one. Hey bub, you can't be number one with a half-dozen missiles that will only go a few hundred miles. We got bigger ones with warheads we know will work and we can launch them from Crawford Texas and stick 'em in your ear, anytime we want to.

Unfortunately, it is just such talk that has us backed against the diplomatic wall. We can't talk to North Korea because we said we wouldn't. We aren't having much luck talking to the rest of the world because we told them we didn't need them to take care of our problems. It took thirty years to break up the Sino-Soviet partnership, but it is taking only about five years, thus far, to put it back together. China says, "sure they are naughty, but they are starving to death. This is not the time to impose additional sanctions on them." Russia, well Russia just smiles and reminds us the last time North Korea got hosed by the Security Council the Russian's abstained. They don't plan to do that again. You see, neither the Russians nor the Chinese have anything to gain by pressuring North Korea, at least not at this time. Given a few years, when the North Koreans have learned how to harden and miniaturize their atomic warheads, it might be a different story.

There is no question which way we should go, there is only one way open to us. A military solution is out of the question; we're already stretched too thin, thanks to our involvement in Iraq. The Japanese and the South Koreans, who are both within range of Mr. Kim's present weaponry, can't provide an offensive threat to Pyongyang without us. Somebody has to sit down and talk with these guys and the only one they really care about is somebody who represents the Bush administration. Bite the bullet, George; eventually you're going to have to send Ms. Rice over there anyway. Do it now and save the world a lot of hassle and possibly win back a little respect for our diplomatic corps.

This is going to be tough one for the intelligence community. We've got all the telemetry, I'm sure, but making sense of it might prove difficult. Did they splash the ICBM or did it blow up? Analysis is never easy. If you were to give an analyst data that indicated most overweight people drink diet soda, he might wrongly conclude that diet soda causes people to be overweight. Getting into the mind of a maniac with a penchant for disregarding the plight of his people in favor of bigger weapons and more movies for his personal collection will be infinitely more complicated.

Oversight?

2006-05-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

It should be a pretty exciting week unfolding. Tonight, the President is going on television to announce that he is sending the National Guard to the Mexican border. That chubby Air Force 4 star will be making the rounds at the senate office building, hoping to convince Senators he won't turn the CIA into a domestic spy agency the way the Vice President, the Attorney General, the DNI and some others would like it to be. Journalists jerk spasmodic every time the door to the Federal Prosecutor's office opens, thinking this might be the indictment they have been waiting for so long. Over in Iraq, the various factions involved in putting a government for the people together, fritter while more young Americans die. By next Friday evening, how much will be accomplished to make America safer, the Mexicans less willing to make a dash across the border or the average American feeling that the government knows more about his private thoughts than his therapist? Excuse me while I step out on this very thin branch. Not a damned thing!

Now, why is that? Why are you and I content when week after week after week things either don't change, get worse, or they get profoundly worse? Instead of public opinion polls being published once a month, they now come out every Friday, and the reason is that they want to see if the President's numbers will keep going down. And guess what? They keep going down. The numbers for congress keep going down. The numbers for the war keep going down. The numbers for the direction of the country keep going down. The only thing that goes up are the prices of gas and the national debt.

You might have seen the picture last week of one of the Senators holding a copy of USA Today aloft. He was waving it about while expounding that congress had waived it's oversight responsibility and given it to the press. You know what, I think he might have hit on something there. You have to admit, it has been a while since either the house or the senate have done anything but rubber-stamp legislation that is packed with pork and has more ear-marks than a 30 year old range cow. One party says they can't get anything done without an absolute majority; the other party says we aren't going to do anything while the other party keeps shooting itself in the foot.

What a great way to run a government. It is true, congress has turned over their oversight responsibility to the press. The problem is the press isn't real interested in oversight either. Lou Dobbs is interested in border security but he don't give a rap about oversight. Chris Matthews thinks Americans are jealous of their privacy, but he doesn't care about oversight either. The major newspapers in our country care a lot more about advertising than they do about oversight.

But the ultimate oversight responsibility does not rest with congress, or the executive branch or the judicial. You and I are the ultimate oversight apparatus. If we want to, we can replace the entire house of representatives and just a bit more than 40% of the senate in this upcoming election. Frankly, it sounds like a great idea to me.

A Blue, Blue day?

2006-04-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

Okay voter fans, here we go again. We are just about into the 200 day apron of the off-year elections and most of the pundits are busily predicting some huge shift of votes. And here I go again, stepping outside the conventional wisdom. I'm not at all sure this is going to be such a liberal shift as most would have you believe.

Let's take a quick trip through the bads and goods of this election season. On top of everybody's hit list is the war on Iraq. Americans have gone from an 80% approval on the war to a 75% disapproval rate. Clearly not a plus for Republicans, but the Democrats, with a few exceptions, can't claim it as "their" issue either.

How about the national debt? The Bush Administration and a Republican Congress has gone on a spending spree that would make any drunken sailor blush. (as a retired USN veteran, I hate that term). But here again, while the Republicans were building bridges to nowhere in Alaska, the Democrats were standing right in line with their own local hand-outs. Its just another one of those things that makes all of us believe that congress is about as productive as a one-armed house painter.

And some say that Hurricane Katrina response will influence a lot of voters. It could be, but I remain skeptical as to just how much negative pressure it will put on anyone but the representatives from the gulf area. Granted, it is yet another indicator of just how badly the neo-conservatives govern, but it doesn't detract much from their splendid ability to win elections by turning issues inside out.

Well, how about all the Washington scandals, you might ask? Leakers that go unpunished, lobbyists who buy and sell congressional influence like so many hot-dog vendors, increasing evidence of intelligence manipulation, a military whose retiring seniors say they just can't take it anymore? Well, I'll give you all those points, but I don't think they are as provoking to voters as they would have you believe.

No, here is what you need to take into consideration. First there is this thing called Gerrymandering. There are very few voting districts that are subject to anything except a absolute dumping of one political party. Secondly, there is this thing called Incumbency. If you are in office and running for reelection, chances are you will be reelected. The voting history bears that out, time and time again. Thirdly, although we detest the performance of the governing body by a margin of almost 8:2, its the other guys congressman and senator we blame, not our own. Somehow, the founding fathers must have realized that might come into play, so they designed our system so that I can't vote against anyone, I can only vote for someone, and only the guy who represents me, not you.

So, that's it? We get another two years of the same old crap? Well, I'm not quite ready to say that, but don't get your hopes up or down too much either way. You want to know what the kicker is going to be? The price of a tank of gas! This Administration is pretty well tied to the oil industry. The number one guy, Dick Cheney, and the number two guy, George Bush, have done a lot for the oilers and the oilers might not be able to pump that much money into the coffers to prevent this backlash. But, you can bet they are going to try. So, even if you are paying $4 a gallon for gas in October of this year, I'd look for a sharp plunge by the middle of the month.

I'm sorry for being such a cynic but it comes with the territory. As far as I'm concerned, we have only one political party representing one constituent, business. There are opposite ends of the spectrum, naturally, but by and large they battle for the same outcome. If you really want to make a difference, start a new party. Just make sure when you send out invitations that you clearly mark it, "bring your own solutions". Cheers.

A general criticism

2006-04-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

Here is an old joke that, strangely enough, has some sudden relevance. It seems there was this group of monks in an abbey who had taken a vow of silence. They never spoke. Yet, there was one day each year when any monk who had something to say was allowed to give voice to his concerns. Normally that day would come and go and not a word was heard from these holy men. But, one year, a brother stood up and said simply, "the mashed potatoes are lumpy." Another year passed and when the speaking day came up again the Abbott rose from his seat and scowled at the brother who had spoken the year before. "Why haven't you said anything?" he inquired, and then sat down. The next year, the complaining brother stood again. "Because up until now everything was okay."

The general staff is a lot like those monks. Silence is a way of life. General Peter Pace says there is adequate opportunity for flag officers to make their concerns known, but that is sort of like saying they can speak up on that one day a year, and even then, they do so at the peril of their career. As one general, speaking off the record said recently, they are willing to sacrifice their lives, but not their careers.

The group comprised of, but not limited to, Generals John Batiste, Greg Newbold, Paul Eaton, Anthony Zinni, Wallace Gregson and Colin Powell are a very small number when taken in totality. There are literally thousands of Generals and Flag officers in the Armed Forces. Yet, this is a pretty potent galaxy. The president is fond of saying, along with the Secretary of Defense, that strategy and boots on the ground levels are in line with what the field commanders have requested. You might be interested to learn that of that group mentioned above are two division commanders from Iraq and the general in charge of Iraqi training.

Why haven't these officers made their concerns known while they were still on active duty? The reasons are myriad. There is a "safety in numbers" factor in play at the present in that as more officers speak up, others feel compelled to follow suit. One main consideration is that individually, with one glaring exception, none of these men could have made a difference in the decision to go to war or how that war was planned or executed. The one general who had the platform, the respect of his countrymen and political power to change things was Colin Powell. He knew it was being done badly with insufficient planning and he chose to say nothing. He will have to live with that decision and his late writings can't change his previous blind obedience.

But, my friends, as we question and criticize these officers and their motives, we are overlooking a basic fact. The mashed potatoes are lumpy! The military tradition of saluting and carrying out the mission has become so intolerable to a few that they are breaking with that vow of silence. Perhaps we need to heed their warning and we certainly ought to send somebody to the kitchen and check out the spuds.

TITWTW

2006-04-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

A few years ago they had funny comedy series on television called, "This is the week that was." It was so popular that it was identified by the initials only. The week's highlights were portrayed in skits and comedy routines. It really was quite humorous.

I don't think they ever had a week like the one we just had. Wow, talk about the other shoe falling. An entire week of falling shoes. Everything was turned on it's collective ear. We find out that Judas wasn't a bad guy, he was a good guy. We also found out that George Bush isn't a good guy, he's a bad guy. Tom Delay isn't a bad guy or a good guy, he's history.

We also found out that there may be a shared kernel of truth in both "The Davinci Code" and "Holy Blood" and neither author has an exclusive right to the idea that Jesus might have had a thing going with Mary Magdalene.

You might ask what is the common thread in all these events? Just this. Given sufficient time and enough people looking, just about everything is going to come to light eventually. Two-thousand years on the desert isn't going to completely destroy an ancient text and a White House that declared war on the press about the same time it invaded Iraq cannot hope to hide it's vendetta approach to anyone who has a different viewpoint. In the end I doubt that anyone is ready to nominate Judas Iscariot for Sainthood and Ambassador Joe Wilson won't become man of the year.

What we do come out with is a new skepticism of the executive branch and another clue at just how far the early church went to hide the things it didn't want revealed. Both approaches are in vain. It is all going to come out eventually. One of these days a priest with an axe to grind or suffering from conscious, is going to break into the vatican's vault and provide copies of those forbidden documents to the press, or somebody equally villainous. The same thing is going to happen in the White House, and, in fact, you see it happening already. The White House was hoping it would take two-thousand years, but things move a lot faster in the modern world.

Some things just won't tolerate a lid for too long. When the lid does come off we are often burned by the eruption. We should know by now not to stand too close to the boiling pot. We must have had an inkling that the ancient church was not publishing everybody who had a Gospel, and that some of those writings might have a more realistic view of Christianity than the one we grew up believing. We should also have known that the President and the Vice President have their own methods of taking down opponents. It's just that we're not too used to reading it in court filings.

Don't be surprised at the things that are and will come to light in the next weeks, months and years. There's something rotten in Washington and probably in Rome too. It all makes such great fodder for satirists and comedian's. Too bad TITWTW is off the air.

My favorite quote of the week came from retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, speaking of the plans (or lack thereof) for the conquest of Iraq. The decision to invade Iraq, "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the specific province of those who have never had to execute these missions - or bury the results." Right on, marine!

The North-Woods Voters Pact

2006-03-15T14:29:00.000-08:00

If you want to check your calendar, you'll find we are about eight months away from the mid-term elections. Nobody is running for president on this ballot, we're still more than two-and-a-half years away from that, regardless of what you see on TV.

I've got a rather novel idea. Nearly 7 out of 10 voters do not like the way the country is being governed, at least according to the polls. Now, the responsibility for the way the country is run is really up to you and I, the voters. We are supposed to elect representatives who share our political views, regardless of the fact that we are conservative, liberal, independent, red or blue. The problem has been that we can't count on that any longer.

Traditional conservatives have allowed the government to grow larger, the national debt to mushroom and have done little or nothing to close our borders. Liberals have done little more than rubber stamp the initiatives of the other party and haven't offered a reasonable alternative in six years.

Here's what I think we ought to do. We should establish a RID committee, composed of Republicans, Independents and Democrats. This committee would correspond with the state and national party headquarters and inform them the North-Woods will not buy into slogans, tags or coat-tails any longer. If you are going to send a politician up here looking for votes, he/she better have something to say.

We want action, not rhetoric. If they think the national debt is too large, we want to hear what specifically they intend to do about it. What bills are they prepared to introduce? How will it be enforced and how will it be paid for?

Do you think there might be terrorists coming across our borders along with those seeking a better life in the land of plenty? What are you going to do about it? What bills are you prepared to introduce, how will it be enforced and how will it be paid for?

Are you concerned about drastic changes in our environment? How about national defense and homeland security? Mind you, we aren't buying any broad statements like "I'm for a strong national defense." Save it for the sound bites. If you come up here looking for votes or money, you best bring along your agenda.

We better let these incumbents and wannabe's know that we're concerned about a lot of issues and are just a bit tired of being treated as Wisconsin's outer limits. After all, what's the worse that might happen? They don't come up here? They have done without us for years, I suspect we can do without the politicians a whole lot easier. I'll volunteer; anybody else with me?

Looking back

2006-03-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while we all should look back and take a look at our previous efforts. The guy who has his hand on the helm of a ship is called a helmsman. He steers the ship but he does not decide the course; he simply follows the command of the officer-of-the-deck. Helmsman in training are encouraged to look back at their wake to see if the course is steady and doesn't zig-zag all over the ocean.

I'm pretty content with my wake. Back in September I wrote about the government's failed efforts at dealing with Hurricane Katrina. A comment from a reader told me, "the Government is working fine." Well, let's see. New Orleans is still a mess, the French Quarter is being restored and the lower 9th ward is being sold to developers. Yep, Government is right on top of that one. The real help in the storm damaged area is coming from private sources, but I guess that is the way it is supposed to be in conservative circles; people help people and Government spins its way from one failed effort to the next.

My Iraq observations have been pretty accurate. You can go to the Department of State website and get a bi-weekly report that will tell you how much electricity is available there, how much oil they are pumping, how much of the population is getting regular fresh water and all those things that we are supposed to be buying with our $350 billion. In almost every category we have diminished capacities from what they had before we got there. I said we were in the middle of a civil war several months ago; the military is hedging it's bets and saying it can still be prevented. They don't give real good odds that it will be, but they hold out the hope. Let's face it guys, it's out of our hands. All it will take is for one side or the other or the other or the other to blow up a Mosque to tip the whole thing over. It really doesn't matter if it is done by an Iraqi patriot or a terrorist, the result will be the same. So, with all the dead and wounded, all the treasure spent, what will be our accomplishment? A small "d" democracy that can't or won't come together, and Haliburton making more money than it ever imagined, the middle-east less stable than it was and the Iranians holding a winning hand.

I came down a little hard on the Vice President, but that doesn't make it wrong. If I shot somebody, even by accident, you can bet the police would interview me right now, not tomorrow morning. I happen to believe that the man who is a heart beat away from the presidency should probably keep that president, and the public, informed of his involvement in a situation that might bear on his ability to perform that function. I think it was very gracious of Mr. Cheney not to ask the president for his resignation when his reaction was somewhat cool.

Speaking of the VP, he rattled the sabers at Iran last week saying we would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon. A couple of days later, scientists said there were water geysers on one of the moons of Saturn. I suspect we will soon hear a warning that we will not tolerate a Saturn with a nuclear weapon either.

Sandra Day O'Connor spoke to the George Washington law school last Friday. Remember, she is a Republican and was appointed by a Republican President. I forget what his name was, he was the other guy who ran the national debt up about 300% in two terms. Anyway, Sandra says we have already taken the first steps to a Dictatorship. Wow, that's pretty heavy stuff. Yep, Government is working fine.

What everyone is thinking.

2006-03-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

Wow, it was quite a week, don't you think? Of course, if you respond to that question, you'd be expressing your opinion. Everybody has opinions, naturally, it's just that some of us publish those opinions and almost certainly they will be read by people who both agree and disagree with them. I've taken a lot of flack lately about my opinions and my sources.

Public opinion was so overpowering this week that it effectively killed a deal by which a corporation owned by the governing family of Dubai was forced to modify the terms and step back from the proposal. Congress from both sides said that regardless of the merits and/or reservations about this transaction, the public had spoken. Polls held that about 70% of Americans opposed the deal.

The Associated Press published a poll Friday that said that 60% of Americans disapprove of George Bush's performance as President. Does that mean that when the poll reaches 70% they are going to throw him out? I hardly think so.

That same AP poll said that 70% of Americans feel that a civil war in Iraq either exists or will escalate to that level within the near future. Realizing that when we finally label this as civil war we (coalition forces) will no longer be able to kill anybody for fear that it will appear that we are taking sides.

The Zogby published a poll this week in which 70% of American Forces serving in Iraq favor our withdrawal within six months. That terrible left-leaning national newspaper, the dreaded New York Times, says that 70% of Americans feel the government is headed in the wrong direction. I would point out that it was this same left-leaning newspaper that gave President Bush a free pass on going to war with Iraq in the first place and then printed items the White House hand-fed it and allowed the administration to cite the same articles as a backstop for their reasoning.

The cumulative approval ratings of the president and the vice president (34% and 18% respectively) total up to 52%. Now that should raise some eyebrows.

I was much happier when I wasn't in the majority. Just to check my credentials I took one of those tests you can find on the internet which gives you a pretty accurate indication of where you fit into the political spectrum. Just as I thought, I came out as a left-leaning moderate. I still favor balanced budgets and policies that protect the environment over big business. I think that the government has some responsibility to take care of the sick, the poor and the aged, and I also believe that Government has grown too large and too disjointed to function properly. I don't want the NSA or the FBI in my bedroom or on my telephone and I think that unless we do something to close our borders that homeland security is a joke that nobody laughs at.

Public opinion is only a call to action if those called are willing to act. 70% is not a magic number, it's just a number. This week the Senate decided it did not need to reform lobbying because the public does not understand what a great system we already have.

Sometimes, we just have to wait for events to evolve. There are persistent rumors, at least within the intelligence community, that should the mid-term elections provide a congressional split that will protect the whistle blowers, we can expect at least four earth shattering revelations that will rival Watergate. In the words of George Bush, "bring it on."

Shooting down the Shooting

2006-02-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

I'm going to make a conservative estimate here. Over the course of my lifetime I've probably fired about 10,000 shotgun shells. A great majority of them were at clay pigeons, but I've brought home a lot of ducks, rabbits, squirrels, pheasant, quail, partridge and various other game birds and animals that have fallen victim to my skill and/or luck.

The Vice-president was involved in a hunting accident this past weekend. Generally, the public and the press took it very lightly and almost jokingly. By Monday morning I had figured out it was a lot more serious than anybody was letting on. If you are just "peppered" with bird shot, you don't spend 48 hours in the hospital, no matter who shot you. They were doing something other than plucking bird shot out of that good-ole-boy's butt.

To the uninformed, the shotgun is something akin to non-lethal force, sort of a stun-gun that might make you bleed. Let me give you a couple of facts that you can verify, accept or discard at your own pleasure.

A shotshell is a bit more complicated than a rifle cartridge, if only because it has more components. You start out with a "hull". That's a piece of plastic molded into an elongated tumbler shape. The hull sits in a brass base. The base gives the hull strength and rigidity at the point where it will experience tremendous pressure when firing occurs. In the base is a primer, a percussion cap that provides the spark for ignition of the gunpowder. When the hull is prepared, a measured quantity of gunpowder is dumped in. After that, you insert a "wad". Some years ago the wad was actually a wad, or a piece of felt/cardboard; now it is another piece of molded plastic. That plastic wad brought the modern shotshell right up alongside of other lethal firearms, because now you can dump in a full three-quarters of an ounce of lead and hold it together for a fairly long firing trajectory.

For those of you technically inclined here are a couple of statistics. A 28 gauge shotshell used to hunt quail would normally be loaded with number seven and a half chill shot. That's a fairly small b-b, there would be about 260 of them in a normal three-quarter ounce load. A factory produced hunting load, or one made by a good handloader, would fire those pellets with a muzzle velocity of about 1330 feet per second. At thirty yards the velocity would have decreased to about 900 f/p/s, but each and every pellet would strike with a force of nearly 3 pounds each.

According to the New York Times and some of the television coverage, the victim was hit with as few as 6 pellets or as many as 200. This is an observation, not a fact; but if that guy was hit with 200 b-b's, he took the brunt of that shot and he is in serious condition. The police report of the incident seems to indicate that there was a heavy concentration of pellets in the area of the neck/shoulder junction. It would also seem that either the range was considerably less than 30 yards or that the victim did not get just the edge of the pattern of shot as previously published.

It might make great fodder for the late night television hosts, but believe me this accident is not funny! How the incident has been handled by the White House, the Vice President and his PR people is strange, weird and smacks of Cheney's total disregard for public opinion and accountability. That isn't funny either.

Of Judges and Jerks

2006-01-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, here's the way I figure it. The President nominates a person for a seat on some federal judicial posting. The nomination goes to the senate where they figure out if this person is of sound mind and isn't a criminal. If they don't find the nominee to be a complete idiot, they confirm him/her and if they do, then they reject the candidate. That's it!
I think we can take it at face value that any designate is going to be of much the same political persuasion as the President. Wouldn't that be logical? Hey, it's one of the perks of being the President. If you don't like the political persuasion of recent judicial picks, run for president.
This thing has gotten completely out of hand. The whole confirmation process has become a sideshow. I don't mean to hit you with so many short sentences, but occasionally it doesn't take many words to point out the truth. I wish, for a change, all the senators who take part in the confirmation hearings would remember that too. Do they honestly think a person who has the abilities and capabilities these people have is going to sit in that chair and give anything but evasive answers? Not likely. They have a record and it is open for all to see.
Okay, given that people interpret different readings of the law in different ways, that the lawyers who present cases to the supreme court will cover the spectrum of professional ability, I can understand how a prospective judge can give those evasive answers. They really don't know how they will respond to the way a case will be presented.
There are a lot of people out there who would like to see Roe Vs Wade reversed. There are a lot of people out there who would like to see the power of the executive expanded, and just about as many people who would like to see just the opposite. Personally, I don't see either of those things happening. What you're going to see, in coming years, is Roe being refined and issues of privacy tinkered with. When the court goes too far to the right there will be a backlash and the conservatives will get tossed, a liberal will be elected president and he will begin the process of moving the court back in the other direction.
When that happens, it will be the right side of the isle to make stupid remarks and the left will say "this is all political. They should just give the guy an up or down vote." It isn't a real neat and clean process, nor is it very fast. It takes years and years sometimes, but as they say, what goes around comes around. So, it doesn't matter which political extremity you vote for, just keep at it and before long all your wishes will be granted. Of course, you could take a more moderate view of all things political and you'll be frustrated all the time. It's called Democracy.

Waiting for the other shoe.

2006-01-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

I received a gentle nudge from my son today, reminding me I haven't written anything lately. As a matter of fact, its been quite a while. I hastened to tell him that I'm not particularly upset about anything at the moment, but upon reflection I've decided that isn't entirely true.

The truth is I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is a big problem in Washington and throughout the country right now. Every time we hear a thud, we're not quite sure if that is the other shoe dropping or if it is the first one of another pair. Its hard to tell the thud from the first shoe as compared to the other shoe - well, you know what I mean.

We've got the ongoing war in Iraq thing, with three or four different recommendations from different ends of Pennsylvania Avenue making their way through the grist mill. Then, there's the Valerie Plame thing, with one indictment and another one possibly going to happen, possibly not. Oh yes, then there is the item about the CIA running dungeons at various places around the world. Now the NSA and the president seem to have set off all the alarms at the New York Times with allegations of spying on Americans. They didn't set them off quite loud enough to cause the Times to publish this information for over a year, so if the Times isn't really alarmed, why should any of us be? Oh yes, I nearly forgot the Jack Abramoff and the "buy a congressman" program. The Senate's number one doctor is still in legal trouble, isn't he? Hard to be sure with all the foreground noise being drowned out by the background noise. Tom Delay is still innocent until proven guilty and Duke Cunningham was so guilty he agreed to wear a wire for the Justice Department. What have I forgotten?

They had an election in Iraq. That should be a done deal by now, but we still haven't received any official vote accounting and the various factions have already begun killing each other over the unofficial results. Now, this is an insurgency right? I know we sometimes have trouble calling a civil war what it is. I think we referred to our own war as the War between the States, The War of State's Rights, and one or two other titles before we got right down to it and decided it was a civil war. Iraq sure looks like a civil war to me and I wonder what the hell we're doing fighting in somebody else's civil war. We've made that mistake once or twice before too.

So, I'll just reserve my oozings until some of these matters are settled. No sense in getting all upset about something that could turn out a whole lot differently than it appears it might. I mean, the Congress could do like the Administration and hire some journalists to print the stories the way they want them and all these stories could just fade into the mists of time. Maybe we should get a good lobbyist to run this country, or are they already running it and just haven't told us yet?

I don't have any scoops; I don't even have a good read on a lot of the things that are happening lately. But, let me give you a little heads-up. The upper levels of management within the Intelligence Community change with the ebb and flow of politics; it has always been that way. But the real heart and soul of any agency is that middle level man and woman who have been doing their job the best way they know how for fifteen, twenty or thirty years.The way I'm hearing it they are damned tired of taking the blame for everything that has gone wrong over the last few years. There are a lot more shoes to drop and the thuds aren't likely to stop until there is as much blood on Capital Hill as there is in Langley and Fort Meade and the last time I looked, the bottom of the hill on Pennsylvania Avenue is in the 1600 block.

The Lakeland Hurricane

2005-09-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

Back in the mid 1960's I had the privilege or working with a brilliant, young technician from Louisiana. I've thought a lot about Tommy in the last few weeks, wondering how he is and if he crossed paths with hurricane Katrina.

Hurricanes frighten me, and with good reason. I'd just finished building a new home in Homestead, Florida when hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. Andrew wasn't any more unexpected than Katrina was, and I'd heard all the warnings on TV and radio. But, as a guy who had grown up in the north-woods I really had no idea of what a hurricane was and what it could do. I sent my wife and infant daughter north to Orlando and decided that I would ride this thing out. Big mistake! The storm blew the roof off part of my home, demolished two bathrooms where I had sought shelter and I ended up in the living room under and overturned sofa accompanied by my 100 pound Akita.

Andrew was the first of the super-storms; now it seems we get one or two every year. Maybe it is part of global warming, maybe not. Maybe global warming is caused by our misuse of the environment or maybe its part of a naturally recurring pattern of weather variations. Whatever is happening, it is entirely within probability that these things will keep getting bigger, badder and cover more of the earth in the coming years than we have anticipated.

Warm water, they say, is the real culprit. The oceans are warming, the storms are born and nurtured over warm water and die only after wringing themselves dry over land mass. Lakeland should be safe, right?

The other evening, in mid-September mind you, the water temperature on Little Arbor Vitea was 71 degrees. The walleyes think it is still summer, and a warm summer at that. We've had more days above 90 degrees this summer than any old timer I've met can recall.

So, let's see if this scenario works, given we're down the timeline a few years. Hurricane Zack, the 26th named storm of the season which came ashore over Virginia as a category 9 storm, blew itself down to a category 3 by the time it reached Ohio, strengthened over the warm waters of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan is headed straight for our Northern Wisconsin sanctuary as a dangerous category 2. What do we do?

Of course that is nonsense; it isn't going to happen. But something is happening and we had better acknowledge it. The people of Mississippi and Louisiana are painfully aware of it, the folks in Florida are barely able to clean up the destruction of one storm before the next one hits. The Red Cross and the other charitable organizations are being stretched beyond reasonable limits and anyone, anywhere who has access to CNN knows that something is completely haywire in the meteorological system. Everyone, that is, except Washington.

We might never have to experience hurricane Zack, but Northern Virginia, Maryland and that small, diamond shaped community that lies snuggly between those two is a lot closer to the eastern seaboard than we are. Somebody ought to warn those folks that trouble in on the way.

America, how are you?

2005-09-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

You probably recall the lyrics of the old song; "Good morning America, how are you? Don't you know me, I'm your native son? I'm the train they call the city of New Orleans and I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done."
I'm fairly certain New Orleans will one day recover from hurricane Katrina. San Francisco came back from the quake, Chicago came back from the fire, even Hiroshima came back from the bomb. The new version may be somewhat different than the old New Orleans, but it will be there.
I worry about the broader question; America, how are you? It may be an oversimplification, I'm often accused of that, but I usually figure if the American people are okay, America is okay. Well, today, the American people are not okay. A sizeable chuck of our countrymen have been hit by a killer storm and subsequently ignored by the Federal Government. Almost without exception, officials have spoon fed us a rhetoric of why relief was so long in arriving and it always fell back on Mother Nature. The levies broke; the city was impassable; it takes time to assemble the food, water, medicine and to call up the National Guard.
Am I some kind of idiot? I saw the city of New Orleans from air shots on CNN almost as soon as the wind died down. If CNN can fly the Army, Navy and Air Force can fly and their choppers could have been loaded with those essentials necessary to save, preserve and sustain life. If the President had the presence of mind to sign a disaster relief designation before the storm hit, he knew it was coming. We all knew it was coming!
I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of this conservative form of "condemnation Christianity." That's the variety where the good stand at the front of the church and proclaim their moral superiority over those who have a more tolerant view of homosexuality, gun control, science and preemptive warfare. If you want to talk about Christianity, lets talk about helping the least of my brethren.
A Government has to be efficient at more than killing enemies. It has to understand that America can only be strong when it is right, and that is not an end on the political spectrum. It would help if the Government understood a term called "aftermath". I suspect that the justifiable outrage of people who have witnessed this latest incompetence of planning, preparation and execution might bring that term a little closer to the oval office. A month; six months; a year from now, when the Gulf Coast and the Delta are still dragging themselves out of the mud of Katrina, and the President's fireproof cabinet is still intact, so help me, if one Government Official tells me, "we are going to stay the course," I think I'll throw up!

Checks and balances - Reinstate the draft

2005-08-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me that we might be missing out on a good thing here. People are fond of making comparisons with the war in Iraq to the Vietnam war, primarily using the term quagmire when doing so. I'm not sure that is relevant or useful. I was in Vietnam for the mandatory 365 days, unless you got killed, wounded or your fairy Godmother touched you with a magic wand and got you out of there. I haven't been to Iraq, at least not as a combatant, although I was there many years ago.
The Vietnam war was also a popular undertaking it its early days. We were going to send a few troops over there to help train the Vietnamese to fight an internal insurgency and a minor infiltration of regular NVA from the north. Well, as the years went on the mission was changed, redefined and altered to the point where we got involved up to our eyeballs and a lot of young Americans were killed and wounded in the process.
The anti-war movement was small but vocal in the beginning, but it grew along with the casualty numbers and it finally got to a point where it forced the Washington establishment to reconsider our policy and we called the whole thing off.
The anti-war movement for Iraq is gaining momentum but it will never reach the level that we witnessed on the streets and universities back in the 60's and 70's. The reason? Personal involvement.
I was a Navy recruiter back when they ended the draft, posted in a place where patriotism is celebrated with all the fervor of a religion, Utah. Recruiters went from good times to hard times overnight. One day the offices were full, the next day they were empty. Did patriotism die overnight? I hardly think so. What was missing was personal involvement.
Here is something to consider. If the waging of war has no probability of touching you or your immediate family, you probably don't care much about it, one way or another. If, on the other hand, every able bodied man, woman and senior teenager is potentially a combatant, the stakes rise considerably.
The all-volunteer force has been a tremendous success, we don't need to debate that. Unfortunately, it has taken you and I out of the picture. We've not been asked to participate in any way. We don't have to save scrap metal, we don't have to grow victory gardens, we don't have to ration meat, sugar or gasoline, in fact the only thing the government has asked us to do it to carry on with our normal lives. The less involved we are, the better it is.
Reinstate the draft! Perhaps it might degrade the overall capacity of the Armed Forces, perhaps not. Put the possibility of sending everybody to war back on the table. Close the loopholes we once had for the privileged and the influential, and then let's see if the next bad guy on the list of evil-do'ers is really such a threat as we might have thought.

War - From beginning to end

2005-08-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

A new poll was published today which said that 57% of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq as "not being worth it". We are not quite sure what has brought about this shift in the wars popularity, but the pollsters feel it has something to do with the number of casualties, the price of oil and a generally uncomfortable feeling concerning an exit strategy.

Maybe it is time for a reality check. We are approaching 1800 young Americans killed in action, another 10,000 seriously wounded and an indeterminate number of Iraqi deaths, often estimated at from 30-100,000. We have expended $300 billion dollars and face an insurgency that seems to have no bottom.

It all makes me a little angry. I've got some news for the recently converted six or seven per-cent of Americans who now think it was a bad idea. This goes for the Hillary Clinton's, the Joe Biden's and the John Edwards' as well; if it is a bad idea now, it was a bad idea then. This isn't one of those parties where you can come late and still be fashionable. President Bush asked you for permission to start this war and you gave it to him. If 1,800 dead, young, Americans are not worth the price, neither was the first one.

You see, that's the thing about war. It isn't the hoopla that Secretary Rumsfeld puts out in daily press conferences touting precision, high-tech weaponry, it is young Americans getting their arms and legs blown off. That's what war is on the ground, up close where you can smell it. It's knowing that the kid who used to service your car isn't coming home because he was blown into fragments by a roadside bomb, and its knowing that the girl who used work at the beauty shop can't do permanent waves any longer because she has no hands. And that is just exactly what most of us wanted when this thing started. Did you think that we were just going to send the troops over there to kick ass and then come home with the colors flying? Well, the color is red, my friends, and the red is blood.

Here's the thing. Either America was in danger from Iraq or it wasn't. If it wasn't, we shouldn't have gone there in the first place. If it was in danger, then we had better get used to the idea that we may have to throw a lot more young men and women into that meat grinder. If we are in danger, it might cost thousands more lives and it could come down to grabbing a weapon and be willing to sacrifice your son, or your daughter, or your husband or your own life to protect our liberty. Or wasn't that quite what you had in mind?

Remember a few months ago when saying you opposed the war but supported the troops was akin to treason? So don't shudder when fourteen splendid young Marines die under their bombed and burnt APC, we haven't seen even the beginning of the end yet. "Bring it on". My God, what did you think that meant? Did you think this was going to be a fist fight after school?

If you supported this war from the beginning, then stand your ground. Don't beg off now that it is hitting your wallet and your gas tank. You knew, or should have, what happens when we go to war. Those who have the most to gain, gain on a scale grander than you can imagine and they lose nothing. Those who lose, lose everything. And those kids over there, they are there protecting you, or that's what you would have them believe. They think they are fighting there so you don't have to fight here. Well, maybe if those who believe that wasting the lives of young Americans in Iraq had to fight their own battles once, things might change. I wish those yellow ribbons that say, "I support our troops" were an exclusive item that could be purchased only by people who have been to war. We need a ribbon that says, "I support the war, and I support killing as many young Americans as it takes to bring democracy to Iraq." Such a waste.

The Intelligence Sniff-Test

2005-07-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

There is an old saying inside the intelligence community; "Intelligence Stinks". The thought comes not so much from our efforts or the truth of what we learn, but more towards the fact that there is almost nothing in the world that decays at such a rapid rate.

Two objective and talented reporters came face to face with their own ethics and the Supreme Court of the United States this week. One chose to stand by her principles and went to jail in Virginia; the other, released by his source, will soon appear before the grand jury.

There is a myriad of loose ends to be unraveled in the Valerie Plame case; the first and foremost being if there was actually a crime committed when her name was published by Robert Novak as a CIA operative. There are more loopholes in the legality of that act than you'll find in your fishing boats landing net. We don't even know for sure at this point if Valerie Plame actually did work for the CIA.

I thought you might be interested in what happens when a spy is uncovered and why it is so counter productive that laws have been enacted to protect the identity of those people. Even if Ms. Plame is an operative, there is no danger that she will be tried by some foreign government as a spy, her life is not in danger. But, the mere insinuation that she was might have been involved in the collection of intelligence set off a chain of events that has and will have far reaching effects.

As the wife of career diplomat, Ambassador Joe Wilson, Ms Plame obviously came in contact with many intelligence sources of both allies and potentially unfriendly governments. All of those sources have been recalled, interviewed, questioned at length of what they might have told her, even in passing. Then there follows a damage assessment by foreign intelligence agencies. The fish is already beginning to smell.

You can bet the farm that whatever sources and methods that were even remotely in danger of being compromised have been changed, altered, scrapped and replanned. Whatever insight we had of those operations are gone forever. That is the way intelligence works. Sometimes, even having the intelligence makes it unusable because to use it would tip off your opponent you know about it.

During the African campaign of WWII, the code breakers had knowledge of every ship, transport and support flight the Germans had scheduled to resupply their renowned Africa Corps. If we would have used that intelligence to sink all the ships or to shoot down every aircraft, the Germans would have quickly realized we had broken their logistics code and would have changed it. We were left with the choice of picking off a few, here and there, or risking a major intelligence breakthrough.

So you see, intelligence really does stink. Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time Magazine aren't the cause of that stench, nor is the Supreme Court, its just the nature of the stuff. Realizing that, one might have cause to question the value of the intelligence gained from individuals currently held in Guantanamo and other prisons. Three year old intelligence smells remarkably like a bucket of fish you caught three years ago. It might make good fertilizer, but I don't want it around my roses.

The Taliban Commeth

2005-05-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

Too many things upset me anymore. I'm not sure if it is my age or the age we live in, but I seem to be drawn to the idiocy of stuff. Maybe that is because there are so many important items on our agenda that aren't getting any attention at all. Will Rogers, the great American philosopher once made a remark that comes to mind. "I've read so many things about the evils of drink that I may have to give up reading."

Now I read that the Texas House of Representatives, apparently having solved all the lesser important things like education, poverty, a porous border with Mexico and the most polluted city in the country, has decided to tackle a real evil, sexy high school cheer leaders.

High school sports in Texas is not an after school activity, its practically a religion. That's okay with me and its obviously okay with them. The fervorence with which Texans follow high school sports occasionally leads to some unfortunate and violent confrontations with fans and coaches, fans and opposing fans, fans and players, even coaches and players. All that is understandable and even acceptable. But, these sexy routines by cheer leaders can no longer be tolerated, according to the state legislature.

Like a lot of other laws enacted, this one doesn't have much bite. The bill is only two/thirds of the way to enactment, so perhaps they will tighten up the loopholes. The proposed act makes school boards accountable for the actions of cheer leaders. Well, duh, didn't they already have that responsibility? There is no specified mechanism suggested whereby the school boards would review such routines and no method to penalize acts that fall outside the invisible boundaries of this law. The representatives just want to remove all sexually suggestive acts from the sidelines.

I hope this doesn't come as any great surprise to Texas lawmakers, but I can tell you from memory, everything is sexually suggestive when you are in high school. A bag of potato chips is sexually suggestive. Nature designed it that way. It doesn't matter much if you are a creationist, a Darwinian or some other belief; when the male and female of any species nears the peak of their physical development the hormones begin to make you goofy. We have but to look around and start counting heads to realize what a success this system has been.

I guess the only way to deal with this terrible temptation in our midst will be for each high school to hire a monitor. This person could then supervise the cheers and the choreography to ensure that no moral tenants are being tread upon. Oh, those costumes are going to have to be modified. No more mini-skirts or sweaters, we better cover those ankles and feminine hands and faces better be covered too. Hey, here's an idea. We could put all the cheer leaders in Burkahs! The monitor could wear a black turban and have a long beard.

It hasn't dawned on the Texas lawmakers that those 240 pound teenage linebackers out there on the field might be on steroids because of all the emphasis on winning at any cost. It might have slipped their minds that a better way to spend the money required to enforce this act would be to hire a geography teacher. It doesn't matter. Hand me my spear, Sancho, I think I see a windmill up there who needs to be slain. Aren't you glad we live in Wisconsin where we can go placidly amid the noise and haste, remembering what peace there might be in silence?

Some Bad Days

2005-05-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

I've had some bad days lately, but when you get as old as I am, you'll find you've accumulated a lot of bad days. Funny thing is, you don't even know they were bad until you have enough of them piled on top of one another. Looking back, they all seem like they were pretty great days, it's hard to think of them as bad, even though they were.

I've just completed round one with skin cancer, melanoma, a killer disease. The fickle finger of fate points to too many days in the sun. I say round one because I'm pretty sure there will be other battles; once you find you have this thing it tends to pop up again and again.

You find yourself wondering which days they were that began this megareplication of cells. You suppose it was all those days under the hot Utah sun, riding horses? Good heavens, they were joyous days, I couldn't be more content with any days I've ever had compared to those. Maybe those days at the beaches, or the days spent in duck blinds gazing into the sun. Those were good days too. Maybe the days mowing lawns or working in the garden, or the days I once spent on deck of a ship trying to understand the vastness of this earth and its waters. No, it couldn't have been those days; they were good days too.

All those days under the warmth and brightness of God's sun were good days. I couldn't condemn any of them for this. So, it wasn't the days I spent on the golf course or the days on the casting deck of my bass boat, the truth is that it wasn't any of those days individually, but all of those days collectively. Eventually, all those gamma ray, or beta rays find a place to play havoc with your skin.

I always kid my boys, all who have suffered various portions of hair loss, saying that gene comes from their mother, don't blame me. I've learned that my genetic contribution might be a bit more deadly. My father, at least one uncle and an aunt have all had malignancies of the skin. Still, all of them lived into their nineties, which seems to indicate this thing can be treated successfully. But, you need to be watchful and cautious. Listen to that small voice inside you that says there is something wrong. You know yourself better than anyone else, and if you see a change, check it out. It is apparent we have a tendency toward this thing. Be suspicious.

Our Elusive Truths

2005-05-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

Just about everyone in our wonderful country is dissatisfied these days. Recent public opinion polls have the President's approval rate hovering around 47%. Uncomfortable as that might seem, the President is ahead of the congress; they come in at a dismal 39% approval. But here is a real shocker; both of those entities are ahead of the press and media of our nation. Those guys, and I guess I'll have to claim some membership, rates only a 33% approval. Wow, two out of three Americans don't believe what they read in the papers, see on TV or hear on the radio.

Last week, a well renowned and respected writer for Newsweek magazine incited riots in the Muslim world by running a column that suggested that a copy of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet in Guantanamo by an overzealous interrogator. He cited as his source an "undisclosed Washington official". In the run-up to the Iraq war we were led to believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as reported by "a reliable source" generally believed by the Intelligence Community. Both have since been proven to be not so reliable as we thought. The consequences are the truth, if we are to believe the media and I guess we've already established we don't.

So, where is the truth these days and why doesn't it come out and show itself? Why is it that long-time reporters are so desperate that they will go to press with rumors and misquotes? Have we created a society that can't tolerate or isn't prepared for the truth? "Good grief", as Charlie Brown says, with a handful of 24 hour news channels on cable and satellite, thousands of newshounds hanging around in the halls of congress wearing grooves into solid marble, cell phones and video cameras on the street corners of any large city, we ought to be able to get at it somehow.

This is an opinion, which is a long way from the truth and should not be considered as anything more than it is. Those cable and satellite channels have to have something to fill up those 24 hours, and if the truth isn't available we'll settle for breaking news. The radio and TV segments of the media are owned and operated by a few, select, powerful corporations. Much the same can be said of the newsprint industry. In truth, they operate more efficiently that way, they stand a better chance of making a profit and productivity flourishes. Unfortunately, the editorial slant is often tailored to fit into the corporate image and spin can be substituted for fact.

Truth is a dangerous commodity. If you know the truth and let others in on it and you happen to work for the Government, you can end up in jail. Even if it is an unclassified truth you might be subjected to harassment and character assassination. As a result of that, and other factors, nobody in any position of responsibility is willing to go on the record any longer.

As in all things, there are two sides to this story, two ends of this string. At one end is the media and at the other end is the consumer. Yes, we can jump on that columnist with both feet and demand that anything worth putting in print had better be verified, two or three times. There will be some stories that won't make the evening edition because of that, but it might forestall a riot in Pakistan also. And yes, we can probably state with a good degree of accuracy that Fox News is conservatively slanted and that NPR is liberal in it's reporting. But guess where that 33% that believes everything the media puts out as Gospel is getting their news? From one source! I can almost guarantee they are the ones getting the least amount of truth. You can take that to the bank, but deposit it as an opinion, not as the truth.

It's the American Dream - by a nose

2005-05-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

The last couple of decades have seen a diminishing of so many of the things that we've always considered permanent and inviolate sanctuaries. Our younger generation has no idea of what their elders speak of, with misty eyes, when we mention the American Dream. My folks, your folks and most aging parents worked day and night to give us a chance at that dream and it was a foregone conclusion that our lives would be better than theirs. I'm not so sure that is true any longer.

Nobody trusts the Government any more; we pick and chose from a menu of lesser evils to finally settle on a party or a candidate that comes closest to our beliefs and values. The churches and religion all seem to be involved in their own battles with results that often just turn our stomachs. The Anglicans tug and pull at issues like gay bishops; the Catholics deal with the child molestation scandals by shrugging their shoulders and telling us it isn't nearly as widespread as the thousands of victims might indicate. The Baptists are neck deep in an effort to put the bible into schools as a scientific fact of creation. More people go to church on a weekly basis in this country than in any other industrial nation, but it seems we come out of church just as upset as when we went in.

We've become accustomed that every newsworthy item we read or see will have some little sleazy factor attached to it. A young man who gave up a million dollar football career to serve his country is killed in Afghanistan and is a hero; but then we find out the military didn't give us all the facts. He wasn't any less a hero because he was killed by friendly fire, but they managed to tarnish the event with their own self interests. Jacko trials dominate the media when there isn't a child abducted by a weirdo who slipped through some bureaucratic loophole, we dash around the world selling an idea of democracy that we haven't even managed to work the kinks out of, we ignore the root causes of high gas prices and a sickly economy and it all seems like an exercise in futility.

But occasionally, just a dim portion of the American dream shines through and gives us all an opportunity to see it again. Saturday, a no-name colt, running in a field dominated by stable mates of the favorite, slipped to the outside and called for all the courage and boldness his heart could provide and he ran for the roses. He won, and maybe in doing so, he led us all to the winner's circle. He came out of the gate at 50-1 odds and made more money in that one race than Secretariat made in his entire running career.

The Arabs have a saying or two that have always spoken to me directly or indirectly. "Allah does not subtract from a man's allotted time on earth that time he spends on the back of a horse." The other is a bit more oblique. "God made the horse as a special gift to man to repay him for all the other ugliness he was obliged to put on earth."

Back in my horsey days, I understood that. It's hard to visualize anything quite as beautiful, quite as breathtaking as a foal running freely across God's earth. If it doesn't speak to you, you've lost the battle; you're doomed to the hopelessness that surrounds us. If it does speak to you, if it lifts your heart and your soul, if the sight of it catches in your throat and accelerates your pulse, there is a chance you might make it. There might be things more important than rock stars and politicians. There might be an American dream after all. Saturday, the name of that dream come true was Giacomo.

Bolton, Bush and the United Nations

2005-05-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that President Bush is upset with the UN and his nomination of John Bolton to the post as our Ambassador to that organization pretty much confirms that fact. The UN didn't back the President's reasons for war in Iraq and wanted more time for the weapons inspectors to do their job. The truth is, the function of the UN is not to back anybody's war but to mediate, investigate and negotiate; which is exactly what they were doing until we told them to get the inspectors out of there before the bombs started falling.

But, the President has a point. If the UN has no power or will to back their own resolutions with credible force, they function as little more than a group of diplomats, all with divergent opinions and not much else. We could replace them with a few sage individuals who render opinions and cut down a lot of traffic and parking congestion in NYC. Even as peace-keepers the UN has less than a stellar reputation. Let's face it, the blue berets have limited success and when the peace does get broken, the UN pulls them out a lot quicker than they were able to put them in. Add to that a tarnished image involving nepotism and corruption, we are left with the concept of an organization that does little to influence world peace and provides an opportunity for countries to reward political hacks with a plush assignment in a place where the shopping is great, the food is fantastic and they don't even have to pay for their speeding tickets or parking violations.

Every respectable world leader has longed for an organization that would act as the globe's conscious, where they could take their grievances and have them resolved with fairness and an even handed justice. Where did it all go wrong? The answer must lie within the Security Council because that is where it all happens. By giving the five permanent members an absolute veto power on any question, we might have known that there would be very few questions that would not end up with at least one of those members opposed. How many times has the US vetoed resolutions that call on Israel to change their course of action? How many times have the Arab representatives done the same thing when Palestinian terrorists are called on to do the same?

My fear is that President Bush wants to remake the UN into a rubber stamp of US policy. We've found out we can't even do that within our own groups such as NATO. He says John Bolton is the guy we need to get that job done. I'm not sure the bull in the china shop approach will do much more than fracture factions even more than they are now. We need a person with a great deal of vision, a whole bunch of charisma and an innate ability to communicate that vision to people who suspect we are far less interested in global problems than we are of establishing a political dynasty. I haven't noticed any want-ad advertising for such a person and to be real honest with you, I don't know of anyone who could do all that, right off the top of my head. Unfortunately, Abe Lincoln, Gandhi and Solomon have all passed from this veil of tears and probably wouldn't want the job anyway. Maybe you've got somebody in mind. If you do, drop a note to the President and put in a good word for this person. Good heavens, we ought to be able to do more than keep sending the best and worst from a pool that just keeps recycling jobs and faces and accomplishes about as much as a bumper jack with no handle. Anybody else got an idea?

The Old West moves east

2005-04-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

A couple notable things happened yesterday that quickened our march back to the days of the old west. One event was in Florida, the other in Washington, D.C. Both should cause us to step back and take a better look at where we are headed.

The law, in most states, holds that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend his castle. Naturally, that right extends to Queens, Duchess' and Princess' should they be the legal resident who is entitled to open all the mail addressed to "occupant". The state of Florida threw in a very modern interpretation yesterday; the castle can be a mobile home. Yep, your castle goes with you, even when you are in your car. So, if you are the proud owner of a 'carry' permit and you are threatened by what you perceive is grave danger, (is there any other kind, re Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men"), you are allowed to whip out your Colt and plug the culprit. I can see the trial lawyers licking their lips already.

The other event was a court decision that says only home-grown felonies can prevent you from obtaining a gun permit. You could gun down the entire population of Sanna, Yemen, be convicted of that offense and upon your parole after 37 days of hard labor, you can come home and get a gun permit. Other countries, it seems, don't really know what an American felony is and therefore can't be considered as real violations of any law.

We've really got to get a handle on this thing. I've fired about every kind of weapon from 22 caliber pistols to 50 caliber machine guns. They all have a functionality that fits various situations. Did you know, for instance, you can go to a gun show or on-line and buy a 50 caliber sniper rifle for about $2,500? Go whole-hog; put another $1,000 with it and you can put a world grade scope on that baby that will put your effective range out there well past half a mile. Now, that's a moat a guy can live with around his castle.

Excuse me, I don't mean to be flippant, but I'd hope there are people out there that recognize this as a blueprint for mayhem. Folks, like me, who don't presently have a carry permit are going to be cuing up to get one. And, God knows, if you have a headache, an upset stomach or your spouse gave you a bad time at breakfast, that scowl you have on your face might be perceived as a threat from a paranoid nerd and then it's mano a mano. Slap leather pal, and may the fastest man survive.

It costs about $35, or used to, to have a sport jacket or suit coat altered to allow you to let old Betsy nestle snuggly against your arm-pit; and then there's all that oil and those uncomfortable harness' to deal with. I'm not sure who championed this Florida legislative fiasco; maybe the gun manufacturers, maybe the ammo dealers, maybe the tailors or the Association of Launders and Dry Cleaners, but the NRA said they thought it was a great idea. One thing is for sure, it will open up a whole new line of work for the fast and accurate. Town Tamers the likes of Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickock will once again find fame and fortune. I guess the rest of us just take cover and wait for the smoke to clear.

Peter and the Wolves

2005-04-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

My Naval career was not very naval, in the true sense of the word. I did serve on a few ships in the course of those nearly twenty years, but much more of my service was fairly unconventional. For instance, I had two assignments at the Pentagon, working almost six years on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As an enlisted man I rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful men in our government; pretty heady stuff for a young kid from Michigan.

One tends to take special interest when one of your old haunts is about to break the mold and do something that has never been done before. JCS is just about to do that. There has never been a Chairman of JCS who came from the Marine Corps. There were a couple of Generals who received serious consideration, but the big-three Chiefs always prevailed. Enter stage right, General Peter Pace, USMC, a Vietnam combat veteran, an athlete and about as sharp a military image as anyone could hope for. He has spent his last few years in the post of Vice Chairman of the JCS, so he is no stranger to how things get done around the Pentagon.

You might think that all the Chiefs sit around in a conference room and discuss the issues that set the military policy for the Government. It isn't quite that way. The Chairman, Vice-Chairman and their respective staff, J-1 (Personnel) through J-6 (Communications) reside on the 2nd Floor, where they crank out war-plans, OpOrders and policy memoranda. The Chief of Staff, Army; the Chief of Staff, Air Force; the Chief of Naval Operations have their offices and staff on different floors on the other side of the building. The Commandant of the Marine Corp, at least in my days, wasn't even in the Pentagon. His staff was located up the street, a mile or so away, on Columbia Pike. Marine commanders, until recently, were one grade lower than their contemporaries in the other services.

Every morning, the Joint Chiefs meet with the Chairman and go over the day's agenda. When the meeting is over they scatter and get on with doing what Chiefs do. When something, such as an OpOrder or a policy memo gets to a final draft phase with all the Chiefs having signed off on it or stating their reasonable objections, it goes upstairs. The guy upstairs is commonly called SecDef, and we all know who that is. The fact that a civilian has the power to accept, reject, or redline a document to the point that it ceases to look anything like the one originally submitted by the military has not always set well with the brass.

Two things seem pretty apparent in this nomination. A: The role of the United States Marine Corps has changed dramatically in recent years. Our elite fighting force is no longer relegated to supporting naval operations, they are on an equal footing with the U.S. Army. B: The President, the Secretary of Defense and an adoring congress are finally open to an alternative view of warfare. You can bet that General Pace won't be looking at fighting the next war based on this one; he's going to look way beyond that. Or, let's hope he does.

My tour in Vietnam, contemporary with then Lt. Pace's, was served in what we used to call "I" Corps. Most of our combat troops were Marines. Marines cherish their own beyond anything comparable to the other services. They take their loses personally. A Marine that might be assigned as a company clerk knows that his first duty is that of a "grunt", a term they refer to with a pride that surpasses all other accomplishments.

We've never had a "grunt" as our senior military commander. I doubt that even Secretary Rumsfeld, in spite of a long and apparently good relationship with a man he often shares the press podium with, knows exactly what will come of this appointment. I suspect there will be a whole new slant on things. My only advice would be, don't back him into a corner. They used to tell the story of two Marines dug into holes on the side of a hill in Vietnam. One was a Lance Corporal, the other a private. About a thousand North Vietnamese regulars were closing on their positions; the private looked a bit shakey and he turned to his senior in the next hole. "What do we do now?" the private asked. "Simple," the Lance Corporal replied, "you kill the five hundred on the left, I'll kill the five hundred on the right."

To be sure, the wolves will gather around this superb individual, looking for a weak spot, testing him at every opportunity. I'm not sure I'd want to be one of the wolves at the Pentagon in the next few years. It isn't going to matter much if he is seated behind a mahogany desk, appearing before the press or a congressional panel, this guy is a grunt and he knows his primary task is to accomplish the mission, and every man or woman in uniform can count on that. I believe we can all count on that.

New leaders; forward, backward or lateral?

2005-04-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

Wow! Given the recent elections, along with subsequent resignations from former cabinet members, the rehabilitation of the Intelligence Community, the death of Pope John-Paul and the shuffling of inner circle of government, we have a lot of new leaders to contend with. Throw in a potential for Tom DeLay's reduction in rank, it starts to be mind boggling.

It might be a bit early to say with any certainty, but it appears that Americans are viewing the selection of Herr Kardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI with mixed emotions. We tend to think our problems are, or should be, first and foremost on the world's agenda. Given that Americans make up only about 7% of the world-wide population of Catholics, we might be better advised to consider what is at stake for the millions of Africans, Latin Americans and Europeans who claim a much larger portion of that body. That doesn't mean that the crisis of priests, bishops and cardinals who have failed to deal with the child molestation incidents in our country is off the radar, but I'm afraid it is a small blip that probably won't be dealt with any time soon. It doesn't mean that Africa, dealing with the AIDs virus that threatens to kill a quarter of this and future generations on that continent won't receive attention, but I'd guess the attention is going to look much like a finger wagging in their faces. Pope Benedict is to be a bridge from the last Pope to the next Pope while the clergy stakes out their battlegrounds for the decade after this one.

Mister Bolton's assumption to the throne of Ambassador to the United Nations seems as though it might be sidetracked for a few weeks also. It seems the smoke from all those smoldering fires has started to make even conservative senators cough a little. We'll put that one on the "things to do later" stack, along with the ongoing rehab of the "IC" (Intelligence Community). Last week the FBI and the CIA both received failing marks for their plans to ramp up their capabilities. The President informed them that their new plans looked an awfully lot like the old plans with a new date on them.

House Republicans decided today they might have to take a look at all these allegations concerning that guy from Texas; you know, the one who had some problems with the old Ethics Committee before they shuffled the rules and powers of that group around. That should take the heat off that one for a week or so.

So, I guess we're back to selling privatized Social Security, keeping the KIA numbers in Iraq off the newscasts, hoping the stock markets will turn around, the price of oil will come down and that the next generation doesn't notice the real looming crisis generally referred to as the National Debt. Oh, one other thing; Utah just voted down the No Child Left Behind provisions in favor of their own state laws that they know how to budget. Meanwhile, three other states are going to court to sue the Department of Education for lack of funding to implement No Child Left Behind (if you pay for it).

Come to think of it, all this new leadership seems to be moving laterally. I think they used to call that "sidestepping".

What have I to offer the world hasn't read before?

2005-04-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Hello to everyone,
I suspect my average reader is going to be just a bit older than "carding age", so I hope you don't mind if I enlarge the text a bit; it's easier on old eyes viewing smaller monitors on systems that probably still have Windows95 on them.
Except for a lot of years spent in places most people run across only in crossword puzzles and the occasional mention on the nightly news, I'm a pretty normal person. Granted, I might have a career path that seems, on the surface at least, to be a bit exotic, but my entire life has been spent earning a living and trying to get from day one to the last one with the least amount of trauma and turmoil. I haven't always been successful at that and I've left some damaged lives in my wake. For that, I'm truly sorry. If I had it all to do over again, I'm not sure I would do it a lot differently because in doing so I would deprive the world of some people who are, and have the potential, of being exemplary human beings.
What I write here, what I've written in my novels, and whatever source you have and wish to comment or disagree with me on, I welcome. It seems we live in an age that will not tolerate disagreement even when doing so might bring the bright light of truth to a myriad of subjects that beg for illumination. I consider myself a centrist and that certainly brings out the best and worst from the extreme ends of any spectrum.
I invite you to visit my website at http://tonykillinger.com and look over my books. Contact instructions are there if you want to correspond with me directly.