March 28, 2010 · 5:10 am

Hawaiian Strolls

One of my pleasures here on Maui this winter has been a morning stroll down the beach. Rain, shine or howling trade winds I spend a happy hour, winding up at a small grocery to purchase my daily fix of the “Wall Street Journal”. I am hardly alone on these jaunts and, over the course of many weeks, have come to some conclusive observations.

1) Women’s swim suits have become considerably smaller since my life guarding days at Hamburg Town Park on Lake Erie in the late ‘50s. On the other hand, men’s suits have become significantly larger. I have been wondering if this is some previously undiscovered “Law of the Conservation of Fabric”? Men’s suits now extend to the knee and often beyond. As an added piece of coverage you often see guys wearing long sleeved tops. How can you swim wearing all that stuff? Women’s suits do not have much further to go… unless they adopt the French approach and forgo the top altogether or reduce to the Brazilian thong. Obviously, as a human ethologist I take no position on the current state of swim wear design or where the future may lead us. (I took a course in ethology in college and pulled some stomach muscles laughing at my professor, a chunky, bespeckled guy, dressed in a twig embedded sports jacket, string tie and moccasins. He was doing his imitation of the mating dance of the male prairie chicken and didn’t seem to notice when I fell out of my chair.)

I have always chosen to swim in a Speedo and although I have three with me, I am reluctant to take them out of the drawer. I did an ocean swim in one when we first arrived and as I trudged back to my towel, I felt conspicuous, as if the spectators were saying, “Funny, he doesn’t look European.” Back in the room I checked my profile and decided that at 68 maybe it was time to make some concessions to fashion and go with the sea anchor suit instead of the Speedo.

2) On my jaunts I encounter an amazing number of SUV-like strollers and people lugging incredibly young babies. Often the Humvee strollers are loaded with baby gear and the tyke slung in a carrier hanging about Mom or Dad’s neck. In mid-morning it can be pretty hot here and I wonder about these tiny persons wrapped in blankets with a cover over the stroller. It’s probably 100 degrees in there and frying the little nipper’s brain. The larger question: why take a vacation with a newborn? Even more curious is the couple vacationing with not only the newborn but also two other kids under the age of four. How much fun can that be in a hotel room? And, what will the kids remember of this trip to a tropical paradise? We would never have considered such an expedition when our kids were small. Of course, at that time we could not really afford the kids, much less a vacation to Hawaii.

3) A great number of my fellow amblers cannot seem to part with their electronic pacifiers. Cell phones, of course, either stuck in their face or holstered at the hip ready for a quick draw. You never know when you need to Google something. I passed a young woman going in the opposite direction yesterday. She was shouting into her phone. (Apparently you need to shout to be heard when talking to someone on the mainland.) Having both reversed course, we passed again 20 minutes later. She was still bleating into the phone like a motivational speaker on speed. “Same call?” I wondered.

Speed walkers and joggers all have iPod buds stuck in their ears and wear glazed, determined expressions. It must be some sort of requirement these days to have music blasting in your ears when you exercise. Perhaps it dulls the pain? Occasionally they toss me a dirty glance as they motor through the exhaust fumes of my cigar. I nod and smile in return. “Aloha.”

(Another reason not to wear an iPod while jogging–read this article. -ed.)

I am quite confident my electronically connected compatriots on the foot paths don’t notice the brilliant and varying hues of the ocean: where the coral meets the white sand or where it turns indigo at the drop off. They surely didn’t notice that the waves plunge here where the gradient is steep or break and roll further on where it’s shallow. Most likely they missed the two whales blowing and splashing just beyond that moored sailboat and I know they missed that the old gentleman pushing his wife in the wheelchair was singly softly to her. I doubt they heard the two male cardinals arguing over disputed territory in the kakui trees just beyond the Marriott. Sad really. They might as well be exercising on their treadmill in the basement.

John Adams, it is said, walked every day. He lived to be 90 years old. He died on July 4th in 1826, the exact same day as his friend/rival, Thomas Jefferson. Apparently Jefferson’s only exercise was pleasuring female slaves. Right there I’ve got a lot to think about on a morning stroll down the beach.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

March 20, 2010 · 4:15 am

Sedge’s Last Retrieve

The Story Behind the Painting

Note: I have received reminders from two of my three faithful readers that no new posts have been added to my blog in some time. True. Once again this year, we are hiding out in Hawaii escaping the gray and wet of the Pacific NW and for some reason when in Hawaii I find it difficult to sit down and write. I can’t even get enthusiastic about writing about the wrangling of the Democrats as they try to pass a health care bill nobody wants.

We learned last week that “The Conservator”, the quarterly magazine of Ducks Unlimited Canada, has published the painting “Sedge’s Last Retrieve” and my accompanying story. A few days later we learned that “The Retriever News”, a US based magazine aimed at sporting retrievers, will also publish the painting and story in their April edition. Hey, other than indignant letters to the editor, it’s the first thing (and likely the last) I ever had published. True, they paid me nothing and it’s pretty brief but…

The picture and the story as published below gives, you the gist of how it happened. What follows is the ‘rest of the story’.

The story behind the painting, “Sedge’s Last Retrieve” is one of sentiment. True, it’s been argued by art critics that sentimentality is to be avoided when painting. Nevertheless when the challenge arose to recreate a poignant moment experienced by two veteran waterfowlers, sentiment became the unavoidable subject. Dick Draper, British Columbian sportsman, retired entrepreneur, dog lover and former U.S. Navy SEAL, commissioned me to capture that moment for posterity. The following narrative, in his own words.

Mark Cudney

It certainly looked like a lousy day for ducks: high clouds, dead calm and warm. Worse, the northern birds taking advantage of the mild fall weather had not moved down yet, and the locals had gotten an advanced degree in decoys and steel shot. But Rob Pomroy and I were on a mission to get his aging Labrador Retriever, Sedge, out for one final hunt. Sedge had been fading fast in recent weeks and we worried this might be our last chance.

Rob and I met when we both did a stint as fly fishing guides in Whistler and despite our age difference (he’s as young as my son), we became companions in our shared passions of hunting and fishing.

Old Sedge had been for years, our constant partner at the duck club and did yeoman’s duty as the bow lookout on our fly fishing expeditions to central British Columbia. We recognized these duties would soon fall to another.

Despite the gloomy prognosis for the hunt, we put out the decoys with the usual care and settled in the blind to wait. The few flocks that came by were high and wide and arrogantly uninterested in our set-up. Finally a mallard, which may have been the last uneducated mallard in lower British Columbia, approached within range. Rob and I both opened fire.

Sedge saw the duck fall dead into the water and hobbled out as fast as his 13 year old arthritic legs and cancer-afflicted hips would take him. He mouthed that mallard and headed back but it soon became obvious he wouldn’t make it. He stopped and stared at the blind. Immediately, Rob waded out and picked up Sedge who refused to release the mallard. As he made his way back to the blind with that dog in his arms, tears filled my eyes. And I cursed myself for leaving my camera at home.

The next day I contacted Mark Cudney, an outdoor artist and writer acquaintance whose skills in both fields have greatly impressed me. I sent Mark some photos of Rob and Sedge and he went to work on some preliminary sketches. The final acrylic painting entitled “Sedge’s Last Retrieve” perfectly captures that poignant moment.

Sedge died two months aferwards and as a loyal companion of shared adventures and affections, he is sorely missed.

Dick Draper

Mark Cudney and I never met face-to-face until the painting had been completed. He is the cousin of Jim Cudney, my college roommate for three years, who a couple of years ago sent me a print of one of Mark’s paintings as a Christmas gift. Mark and I then began an email relationship fueled by our mutual love for fly-fishing, the outdoors in general and writing. Mark, of course, is a professional writer and artist and has had a number of his works published, especially in the high end “Gray’s Sporting Journal” and “Sporting Classics” among others. He also has published a book. IOW, he’s a damn good writer and was kind enough to read some of my stumbling efforts and offer helpful suggestions. His art that has appeared on the covers of the above magazines impresses also. You can check that out at www.markcudney.com/. This is where you go to order a print.

When I contacted Mark about doing a painting of Rob carrying Sedge back to the blind I had absolutely no clue how much work was involved in doing a painting like this. So, I asked him how much money he wanted for the job. Understand that all our contact took place through email. Until we met last August when I went back to Buffalo for my 50th high school reunion, we never even had a telephone conversation. Mark suggested a trade for his services…. He would like a new fly rod and reel in exchange doing the painting. Now unless you’re talking about a hand made split bamboo rod or an antique, the best rods out there go for around $700 or $800. A decent reel is another 150 bucks, maybe. Sounded OK to me.

As the weeks dragged into months while Mark was working away on the painting, I started to do a little math in my head and figured that Mark would be making something like ten cents an hour on this gig. I emailed him and said, “Are you sure about this deal? Would you like to renegotiate?” He came back and said that, no, he was happy with the original arrangement and that he had “his own reasons” for taking the job. He also advised me that when he was working as a commercial artist, a project like this would go for about $14,000. Gulp. I figured he’d need to sell a lot of prints to get even a modest return on his investment of time.

Mark drove up to meet me when we were staying at my former roomie’s house outside of Buffalo during the reunion visit. I suggested we go fly rod shopping to get the payment part of our deal completed. We trooped off to several fly shops in Buffalo to test-drive some high-end fly rods. Nothing impressed him on that day and he later decided on a Winston (Boron, 9ft in 4 wt) and a nice Ross reel.

When the painting arrived in Vancouver (in packaging that would have survived an air drop from 5000 feet) I got it framed and headed for Whistler where Rob had been waiting anxiously. It so happened that all his relatives were in town for a family reunion and that suggested an “unveiling party” would be most appropriate. A little champagne, some appies and a damp eyed unveiling marked the occasion.

Sedge’s Last Retrieve now hangs in the entry to our house, displacing a very nice Crosby watercolor. (Note: Rob has Print #1 and I have promised him that when I take the big dirt nap, the original will be his. I added the caveat that if I should drown on one of our fishing trips as a result of a blow to the back of the head with a canoe paddle that the deal is off.)


This fall when Rob and I were sitting in a duck blind waiting for some ducks to show up, we started talking up our return trip to Minnie Lake in central BC in early June. We agreed that it would really great if Mark could join us at the yurt on Minnie. It will be his first visit to the Pacific NW. Mark has spent his whole life fishing the small streams and rivers in western New York and reports that the biggest trout he’d ever caught on a fly was an 18” brown. Nice fish indeed for those waters but, we both thought he needed to hook into one of Minnie’s 8 pound rainbows and turn that new 4 wt of his into a knot. Mark agrees and will be joining my friend John Alexander from Seattle, Rob and me on the 1st of June. Sedge’s replacement, Hurley, will be along in his official role as the new bow lookout.

1 Comment

Filed under Dick, Last Retrieve

January 7, 2010 · 7:01 am

The Depends Bomber

“The US does not have an (air) security system; it has system for bothering people.” Shlomo Dror, Israeli Air Security Expert, 2002.

The Obama Administration dodged anther bullet on Christmas day when a Nigerian Muslim by the name of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (hereafter referred to as UFA for obvious reasons) attempted to set off 80 grams of PETN hidden in his Depends-like briefs while aboard NW flight 253 as it approached Detroit. You may have seen the video of what 50 grams of PETN can do to a jet liner. 80 grams would surely have done the job, killing all 300 aboard and an unknown number of unsuspecting innocents on the ground. Had UFA’s detonator worked, the public reaction to the resulting catastrophe would be furious rather than the “ho hum, another failed terrorist plot”.

The President, not wanting to disrupt his vacation in Hawaii, took three days to comment on the incident. In his statement he used the word “alleged” numerous times.

Alleged?

Alert passengers subdued this turkey with his genitals on fire and his diaper loaded with high explosives! Obama’s statement plus the fact that UFA was arrested and given a lawyer rather than turned over to the military for questioning certified yet again this Administration’s return to the pre-9/11 mentality of treating terrorism as a legal matter. We know how well that worked out during the Clinton years.

With the lawyer’s sage advice, UFA immediately clammed up and that eliminated any possibility of obtaining any useful information from the guy. Had the CIA been given a crack at him and allowed to water board, we might have learned some useful information about his network in Yemen. Not to worry said spokesman John Brennan on the Sunday talk shows, they might offer UFA a plea bargain to obtain info. Al Qaeda is laughing their asses off. Plea him down to what? Smoking on an aircraft?

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano issued a statement saying, “…the system worked,” thus sliding just under the wire for the Stupidest Statement of 2009 Award. This is no small achievement given her other statements in ’09, such as her pronouncement that “terrorism” would now be called “man caused disasters”. She also opined that veterans, gun rights advocates and various right-wingers were serious threats to national security. Among many notable challengers on the Obama Team, ol’ Janet may be the most uniquely unqualified of the lot.

The monumental absurdity of Napolitano’s statement became glaringly obvious when it was revealed that not only had his own father reported to the State Department that his son was a threat but also, that the British had warned the US about this guy over a year ago. He had purchased a one-way ticket with cash and traveled with no luggage. The Brits had denied him a visa and yet he had a valid one from the US. This nut job was waving more red flags than a North Korean May Day parade. The only way he could have been more obvious would be to wear a tee shirt with the word “Terrorist” on the front and an arrow pointing to his crotch with the words “bomb here” next to it.

The system worked? Nothing worked… most importantly the detonator. A week after the incident Obama, after meeting with his “security advisors”, announced that, yes, “mistakes were made”. That’s my all time favorite Washington cliché. It covers crimes big and small. He informed us that from now on they would be looking more carefully at people flying in from certain Middle Eastern countries.

That’s a start but still avoids the major and blindingly obvious issue: 100% of the terrorists are Islamic fanatics, young men and primarily Arabs. Obama’s new policy would not have stopped UFA since he boarded the plane in Amsterdam. And, what about flights originating at US airports? The BHO administration, and Bush’s before him, refuse to do the one thing that would make us safer….PROFILE. Giving young Muslim men the identical scrutiny as white haired grandmothers from Omaha can only be described as idiotic.

This political correct mania and reluctance to offend any Muslims is what got 13 soldiers and one unborn child killed at Ft. Hood recently. And, it’s behind the decision to try KSM and his 9-11 terrorist cohorts in NYC instead of using military tribunals.

I can’t understand why Obama thinks it perfectly fine to vaporize suspected terrorists in Pakistan with missiles from Predator drones, but if we happen to catch one, we give him US Constitutional rights and a free lawyer. God help any SEALs or spec ops guys who might give the terrorist a fat lip in the process of capturing him. And profiling? Furgetaboutit.

Meanwhile, the TSA and FAA are dreaming up more ways to make air travel even more inconvenient and intrusive. Not only will we be just taking off our shoes and having our toothpaste and shampoo confiscated, carry-ons are now forbidden and no standing up or potty breaks on the last hour of the flight. What’s that supposed to do? Next up: full body scanners. They’ll see what Granny has in her knickers but still won’t give any special attention to the young man from Saudi Arabia with the sweat running down his forehead. Maybe everyone should simply refuse to fly until some common sense gets injected into the issue? I wonder how long it would take?

2 Comments

Filed under Obama, Politics, Terrorism

December 23, 2009 · 7:55 am

The New Deniers

Skeptics of man made global warming have been called “deniers”, a name purposely chosen to tie them to “holocaust deniers”. In other words, nut cases refusing to recognize the obvious. Skeptics like me were held in contempt and shouted down by the true believers. Most skeptics kept their doubts about the doomsday predictions to themselves.

One would have thought that after the publication of over 3000 emails and reams of data either hacked or released by a whistle blower on November 17th from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, that things would change. I naively expected that the scandal dubbed “ClimateGate” would anger journalists and editors and they would now aggressively investigate and report on what appears to be a massive fraud. HA! Silly me.

“The Vancouver Sun” reluctantly ran a brief report on “ClimateGate” a week or so after the story broke on the internet and then pretended it did not matter, running one global warming scare piece after another on the buildup to the climate conference in Copenhagen. Today they ran four pieces lamenting the failure of the UN conference to impose massive restrictions and taxes on Canada and the developed world.

The ClimateGate emails revealed that the dons at CRU had fudged and cherry picked the data, conspired to “peer review” each other’s work, frustrated FOI requests for other researchers to see their data and methods and pressured scientific journals to exclude articles critical of their positions. Now they claim they have “lost” the original data on which they based their research! They also wrote each other lamenting the inability of their theories to account for recent cooling. Pretty damning stuff and those defending the emails as simply ‘banter between scientists’ sounded more than a little lame.

Honest and diligent reporters should have smelled out this story years ago. Canadians Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick have been working on it for years and have written papers discrediting Dr. Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph widely used by alarmists. The graph showed a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last century and eliminated the Medieval Warming Period of 800 years ago. M and M, as the CRU scientists called them, discredited the hockey stick proxy data showing that they had cherry picked the data. (Recently Russia revealed the CRU had also selectively utilized the weather station data provided to them by Russia. CRU researchers only used 25% of the data, selecting the warmest locations.) McIntyre also made NASA back off from their contention that 1998 was the warmest year on record. It was actually 1934. NASA admitted their error. Did you read about any of this in your local newspaper or see it on TV? No, of course not. Should they take Al Gore’s Nobel Prize away and give it to McIntyre and McKitrick? Certainly.

You would think that when new evidence is presented a rational person would reevaluate their position. That does not seem to be the case with global warming (oops. Climate Change). And, with record breaking cold and massive snow dumps in Europe and North America even before winter’s official start (yesterday) one would expect some concern. Hey, it actually snowed in Houston and collected on the beaches in the south of France. Hello. Oh, I forgot, that’s climate change formerly known as global warming. Right.

There seem to be two camps that have a vested interest in perpetuating the global warming alarmism: The scientists who receive massive amounts of money from various governments to conduct their research. If scientists scream the world is coming to an end government opens the purse to fund the research. CRU received $20 million from the Brits. The US has doled out far more. This camp also includes those who invest in industries poised to gain from government funded alternative energy projects and those who can get in on the carbon trading schemes.

The other camp includes socialists who believe the solution to all the ills of society can be rectified by a world government. Craig McInnes wrote a piece in today’s Sun (After Copenhagen: Political Climate Change Begins at Home). He summed it up for us with this quote: “What Copenhagen demonstrates again is that we don’t have a system of international governance that allows a global interest to override national interests…” Just what Canadians need, the UN telling us how many cow (or moose) farts are allowed, how we can heat or light our homes or whether we can barbecue a steak. If you think about the UN Food for Oil scandal or the ongoing slaughter in Darfur you can probably guess how well global governance might work out.

What about the editors and journalists, you might ask? I suppose some are just lazy or hired to be the “environmental reporter” inclined to lean left and green. They have tended to just parrot news releases and propaganda put out by environmental groups without doing any serious checking of the facts. Hey, scary stuff sells papers. Don’t rock the boat.

If you really want to get information on global warming you have only to go to the internet. (Journalist take note.) You can start by viewing a special report by Fox News called “Global Warming, Or a Lot of Hot Air”. It ran last Sunday but it’s now posted on YouTube (part 1 of many–look for other links). If I could find it, you can. Next I would suggest Steve McIntyre’s site, Climate Audit and then Climate Depot. If you still believe in global warming after a little honest research God love ya. You’re a New Denier.

1 Comment

Filed under Global Warming, Politics

December 16, 2009 · 6:37 am

The Fisting Czar

Note: This piece contains adult content. If you have cable it’s probably not too shocking but….. you are forewarned.



As I mentioned in an earlier blog, openly gay Kevin Jennings is Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” (the official title: Assistant Deputy Director for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools within the Department of Education). Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Jennings was the Executive Director of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) which he founded and where he was paid an annual salary of $273,573.



Jennings encountered some grief after his appointment when it was revealed that he, in his former role as a teacher, had advised a student who had revealed he’d had a homosexual encounter with an older man. He did not suggest that such activities might be unwise, but only that a condom might be a good idea in the future. While that raised some questions, it was not enough to get him fired.



Recent revelations posted by Scott Baker, co-host of B-Cast at Gateway Pundit and Biggovernment.com should, if there is any sanity left in the World, do the job. GLSEN and Jennings were giving seminars to students and teachers in Massachusetts in 1995 and were discovered by Mass Resistance to be distributing a booklet entitled: “The Little Black Book: V2.0 Queer in the 21st Century”. This illustrated manual exposed teens to the bizarre homosexual practices of fisting (inserting one’s hand into the anus of another male), rimming (tongue to anus contact) and water sports (the joys of urinating on one another).



The Little Black Book also discussed the pressing issue of whether to “spit or swallow” and offered a helpful list of the local gay bars where teens could hook up with older gays. Gee, to think that I spent my teen years trying to unravel the mysteries of bra hooks when all this stuff was out there.



In 2000 GLSEN and Jennings sponsored a conference at Tufts University where kids as young as 12 were instructed on the technique of fisting and “fisting kits” were handed out. I am not exactly sure what a fisting kit is and, frankly, at this point can live without knowing the specifics. And, of course, the old dilemma of spitting vs. swallowing came up again, this time under the question of “is it rude?” I wondered when I read that… which one? Or, the whole concept? And, of course, helpful hints were provided on how the teens could hook up with older pedophiles. I had to wonder why they did not show old re-runs of ABC’s, “To Catch a Predator” just to balance things out.



I have always believed that what you do in your own bedroom with another consenting adult is nobody’s business. I am also convinced that people attracted to their own sex have always existed, although I have been skeptical of the percentages promoted by the gay activists. Of course, there are no gays in Iran and if they were ever to find one, they would kill him.



My problem with the gay movement is that I object to having their life style rubbed in my face. They are not so much after acceptance and equal rights as in convincing everyone that their sexual preferences are normal. What I really object to is the attempt to promote this life style to young and impressionable youth. They are recruiting among teens and pre-teens struggling to figure out their sexual identity. You will have a hard time convincing me that a guy like Jennings who thinks it’s just swell to teach 12 year olds the joys of fisting and hooking up with old pedophiles, has any concept of “safe” schools. If Obama had any sense of shame, he would fire this idiot tomorrow.

3 Comments

Filed under Czars, Obama

December 7, 2009 · 12:50 am

Tale of Two Crimes

Unless you have been in a coma or perhaps hiding out in the Space Station, you have certainly heard about the murder of four police officers in Lakewood, WA. Executed is more like it. They were all sitting in a booth having morning coffee before their shift when a dirt bag by the name of Maurice Clemmons walked in and shot them all. One officer managed to get off a round hitting Clemmons in the gut before he himself was killed.

A massive manhunt began and I told my wife as we watched the TV coverage, “This asshole is never going to see the inside of a courtroom.” Sure enough, 48 hours later a cop recognized Clemmons and gunned him down. The carefully worded statements suggested that, yes Clemmons did have a gun, but that he was nowhere near it when the officer shot his sorry ass. The overwhelming public sentiment was “good riddance”. Debate then shifted to apportioning blame for whether Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas or the judge in Seattle should be held responsible for letting this guy run loose given his repeated convictions and penchant for violence. The question of whether the cop had gunned down an unarmed man never came up and nobody really cared.

About the same time another news story popped up, but on this one you would really need to be alert since none of the major networks except FOX gave it any coverage. The news: three Navy SEALs are going to be court marshaled in January for the crime of “abusing” a terrorist.

Perhaps you remember back in 2004 four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, Iraq were captured by the Al Queda in Iraq insurgents. They were executed, mutilated, dragged through the streets, burned and hung from a bridge over the Tigris River. After years of searching, the ringleader of the group, Ahmend Hashim Abed, was located and captured by three SEALs: Matt McCabe SO2, Jon Keefe SO1 and Julio Huerta SO1. During the course of the arrest Abed reportedly received a fat lip (some reports say he was punched in the stomach). This incident got reported and the Navy decided to charge the SEALs with prisoner abuse.

The “SEAL Net”, a loose collection of email networks tying together ex-Navy SEALs, suggests that the charges of abuse came from the military police who took charge of Abed when the SEALs turned him over. It is also widely known that the terrorists are well aware of our penchant for political correctness and frequently bash themselves or attempt fruitless escapes so that they can claim abuse. They know how to game the system. And, of course, there is an endless supply of ambulance chasers more than willing to take the cases of these poor abused terrorists.

The three SEALs faced a disciplinary procedure known as Captain’s Mast or what is called Non-Judicial Punishment, a practice that harkens back to the days of sailing ships long away from their homeport. Captain’s Mast in no way resembles a court of law, the captain of a ship at sea being the closest thing to a god. The skipper hears the charges and the explanation from the accused and makes a decision on the spot on guilt and the appropriate punishment. The three SEALs in this situation were assured of receiving a career-ending letter of reprimand in their service files. As is their right, they opted instead for a full-fledged court marshal with the upside of being found innocent of the charges. They gamble, however, that if found guilty they might spend some hard time in the brig and receive a dishonorable discharge.

A serviceman has the option of hiring a civilian defense attorney to represent them in a court marshal and all three SEALs have done so. Obviously, these guys are not rich and defending themselves will not come cheap. The good news: there will be plenty of people, including most of the ex-SEAL community who will be willing to contribute to the fund for the defense.

The cop who emptied his gun into the unarmed murder Clemmons gets a pass from a grateful community. I’m fine with that. I am not fine with prosecuting three guys who capture a dangerous, vicious terrorist. They should be regarded as heroes, not criminals. Something is seriously out of whack here.

1 Comment

Filed under Crime, Navy SEALs

November 24, 2009 · 7:03 am

Another Blue Dress Moment?

We might all remember the moment it was discovered that Monica’s famed blue dress had a generous dollop of Clinton’s “DNA” on it. (DNA being the euphemism preferred by the press for semen.) In a heart beat all of Clinton’s lies about ‘not having sex with that woman’ were exposed… unless, of course, one were willing to accept the argument that blow jobs were not actually sex. My guess is that 99% of all teenaged males were happy to agree with this thesis. The rest of us? Not so much.

Late on November 19 another “blue dress moment” occurred when it was discovered that over 3000 emails and data files had been either hacked or posted by an insider from the computers of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. All of the information is now all over the internet. The British government has given the scientists at the CRU over $20 million to do research on global warming. Dr. Phil Jones, the CRU Director has confirmed that the emails are genuine.


What the emails have revealed so far is:


1). They have massaged the data in the past to get desired results and openly discuss among themselves how to manipulate the data to eliminate the recent global cooling.


2). They conspired to prevent the release of raw data requested under the FOIA, or to disclose their methods and source code to other scientists so that their work and conclusions could be verified.

3). Only studies favorable to the theory of global warming were published and the CRU scientists and their allies punished and threatened editors of journals that published contrary science.


Here’s a sample email from Dr. Phil Jones to other scientists. “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. From 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”


“Mike” refers to Michael Mann who published his famous and extensively promoted “hockey stick” graph in “Nature” magazine. This supposedly depicted a near vertical up tick of global temperatures in recent decades. Al Gore and others used Mann’s work to predict the end of the World. This graph was later widely discredited as nearly any data plugged into Dr. Mann’s model produced the hockey stick result.


“Keith” refers to Keith Briffa who published a study of tree ring data from Yamal, Russia purporting to show unprecedented warming in the last century. Forced by a FOIA request to release his data to Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, it was easily spotted as a fraud accomplished by cherry picking and manipulating the data. (US Climate Reports: They Lie). A number of the released emails acknowledge the deception and discuss damage control and the continued wisdom of withholding data.


Some of the other emails derided skeptical scientists and one even celebrated the death of one of their vocal critics. Being an outspoken skeptic of global warming (frequently called “deniers”) has been an unpopular position, to say the least. A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor of the “Vancouver Sun” criticizing a piece by a columnist who regularly writes doomsday articles on global warming. From the angry reaction I received you would think that I had written endorsing the joys of pedophilia.


While the news was reported by some press outlets, it has been largely ignored by the Main Stream Media. Of course, they are heavily invested in advancing the “settled science” of AGW and would be embarrassed to admit that they have been duped by a handful of researchers more interested in advancing a political agenda than objective science. One would hope that they would now want to reveal this information and promote a true open and honest debate on the science of global warming. John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, says he has a petition signed by 30,000 scientists and meteorologists who want that debate.


This is especially important now as a cap and trade bill has already passed the House and a companion bill is ready in the Senate. Either one of those, if enacted, will seriously damage the US economy and impose enormous costs on everyone. Also, the Climate Conference in Copenhagen scheduled for next month proposes even more draconian rules, taxes and even surrender of sovereignty to the UN. It would certainly appear that a One World Socialist government has been the goal of the AGW proponents all along. As some call them: “watermelon environmentalists”….. Green on the outside, red on the inside.


For further reading on this subject, check out: Climate Audit, Wattsupwiththat or Pajamas Media (Charles Martin).

2 Comments

Filed under Cap and Trade, Clinton, Global Warming

November 13, 2009 · 8:44 pm

Mixed Grill

Just a few thoughts on recent items in the news of late.

Major Hasan’s potential for mass murder was ignored by the Army prior to his attack at Ft. Hood, despite glaringly obvious clues. His many radical public statements and comments to associates (duly reported), his attendance at a radical mosque frequented by the 9/11 perpetrators and attempts to contact Al Qaeda should have rung some serious alarm bells. Nobody did a thing. The only explanation seems to be political correctness. At all costs we must not offend any Muslims.

This tendency continued even as the bodies were being hauled away. Commentators in the MSM carefully avoided the obvious and refused to call the slaughter an act of Islamic Terror even in the face of the facts and that Major Hasan had shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he fired over 100 rounds into the unarmed troops. The contortions were almost funny as the talking heads explained that Hasan had “snapped” and perhaps suffered from “pre-traumatic stress disorder”. Since Hasan had never been in battle (or near it) he presumably contracted this new syndrome from anticipating his deployment or from talking to troops who had seen action. Absurd.

The degree to which the MSM will go to avoid calling a spade a spade was humorously on display last night when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Sally Quinn, veteran reporter of the “Washington Post”. You should watch the interview. He had to practically pin Ms. Quinn to the wall and throttle her to get her to say the words “Muslim terrorist”.

President Obama did not look very good in his handling of this tragedy either. Attending a conference with American Indians he stepped to the microphone to speak to the nation about the attack. Before getting to the Ft. Hood incident he spent several minutes discussing the conference and giving “shout outs” to several attendees. Almost as an after thought he brought up the Ft. Hood shootings. Then he choppered off to Camp David for a relaxing weekend. Meanwhile, with cameras and publicity prohibited, George and Laura Bush quietly drove to Ft. Hood and met with the victim’s families. This is what a Commander-in-Chief does instead of slipping off for a weekend of R & R.

================

In case you missed it, the House rammed through a 1990 page health care reform bill with two votes to spare, including one lone Republican. 39 Democrats voted against it. The Dems spent a lot of time figuring out who would be permitted to vote NO and still get the thing to pass. Surely the Democrats in the safest districts (those likely to be re-elected even if caught on video snorting crack while sodomizing a sheep) voted YES with little fear. Those in districts carried by McCain or considered conservative were given a pass. This measure is highly unpopular and will prove more so as the taxes, penalties and coercion kick in. The cynical Democrat calculus is that short- term losses are acceptable, and if they can once get this implemented, will ensure a left of center government forever.

They are nervous though. The public gets ever more angry as the unemployment rate keeps climbing (10.2%) and the debt piles up. The health care bill costs over one trillion dollars even with the increased taxes, and forcing the unwilling to purchase health insurance or face penalties, or even imprisonment. It has people more than a little concerned. Now it’s up to the Senate. They have not even released the bill yet and if Harry Reid is to be believed, it will mirror the House bill. The question remains: if the Democrats don’t have the 60 votes, will they pass the thing by “reconciliation”, the parliamentary procedure requiring only 51 votes? While it’s a highly questionable maneuver, Reid may do it as a parting gift to the liberals as it seems likely the good people of Nevada may toss him out next November.

************************

As the health care train trundles down the tracks, those busy Democrats in the Senate are quietly preparing the Kerry/ Boxer version of a cap and trade bill. You might remember that the House has already passed its version. Cap and trade is a huge tax on an already strained economy that is struggling to rise out of a serious recession.

Why the Democrats figure hanging these two anchors around the necks of the taxpayers at this time is a good idea befuddles me. I guess just as the health care bill is not about improving health care or making it more affordable, the cap and trade bill is not about reducing carbon emissions. Both of these boondoggles are about power and control. And, if anyone thinks the government can effectively run health care or the energy industry, you have not communicated with the Social Security Administration or the IRS lately. Social security and Medicare are headed for bankruptcy and Amtrak and the Post Office on life support. If you think these new initiatives are a great idea, you need a reality check.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Cap and Trade, Health Care, Obama, Politics, Terrorism

October 26, 2009 · 4:20 am

Fox Hunt

A couple of times in recent years my liberal friends have offered without any prompting from me, a disparaging comment about Fox News. In both cases I responded, “How would you know? You’ve never watched it.” That ended the debate because, of course, they never had tuned into Fox News.

In the past week the White House and George Soros funded Media Matters all came out attacking Fox News, the latter with a “Fight Fox Campaign”. White House advisor and former campaign manager for President Obama, David Axelrod, appeared on one of the Sunday talk shows and opined that Fox was not actually a news organization. Rahm Emanual, White House Chief of Staff appeared the same day on another show and uttered essentially the same exact words. Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director said the same exact thing. Gee, what a coincidence. The previous Sunday Obama appeared on all five morning talk shows…. Except Fox.

What the Hell is going on here? Actually it’s quite simple. Fox is the only network reporting on some of the radical people Obama has chosen to be part of his collection of “Czars”, positions within the White House reporting only to BHO, unconfirmed by Congress and accountable to no one. They have also reported on the unlawful activities of ACORN, the community organizer and receiver of government funds and SEIU, the radical union that heavily supported BHO’s election.

None of the other news organizations bothered to report any of this stuff. In fact, readers of the NYT and viewers of the major networks were confused when Van Jones, the “Green Jobs Czar” was forced to resign because of videos of Jones admitting he was a communist and other racist and absurd comments. They were confused because the major outlets had completely ignored the controversy and had failed to report that the guy was on his way out!

Messrs. Axelrod and Emanual both observed that Fox has a “point of view” ie. They are conservative and therefore should not be taken seriously. What a joke. Like MSNBC, CNN and the NYT do not have a distinctly liberal point of view? ABC, NBC and CBS are similiarly left wing and all were cheerleaders for Obama during the election and haters of GW Bush during his Presidency. They failed in their job of vetting this man during the election and since Obama took office the MSM have been fawning over him like a love struck teenager. None of the late night comedians do any jokes about Obama and when SNL did a mildly critical skit about Obama it caused the Left to go crazy. CNN even did a “fact check” on the skit.
Only Fox and talk radio have been questioning what he’s doing and looking into the CVs of the radicals he’s appointed to be his “Czars”. BHO has appointed 30 of these folks at recent count. Here’s a sample of some of the people closest to Obama and the positions of power and influence that they hold:

Valerie Jarrett: Senior Advisor and closest confident to BHO. Former advisor to Mayor Daley in Chicago. She has ties to communist Frank M. Davis and has been linked to left wing radical causes.

Van Jones: Former “Green Jobs Czar”. Embraced communism when in prison. Professional radical. Resigned.

Ron Bloom: “Manufacturing Czar”. Former union executive, has made anti-capitalist statements and said Mao Tse Tung is a political guide.

Anita Dunn: White House Communications Director. Also said Fox “… is not a news organization”. Quoted as saying Mao is “one of the two political philosophers she turns to…” (Mao, you might remember, was the dictator of China responsible for the death of 70 million Chinese.)

Carol Browner: “White House Director of Energy and Climate Change Policy”. One of 14 leaders of Socialist Internationals “Committee for a Sustainable World Society” calling for One World Government.

Cass Sunstein: Head of “Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs”. Argues for bringing socialism to the US and lends support for communism.

Kevin Jennings: “Safe Schools Czar”. Homosexual who has worked to teach gay topics in schools including elementary schools. Ties to NAMBLA (you can look that up).

Mark Lloyd: “Diversity Czar for the FCC”. Praises Hugo Chavez for his stifling of the press during Venezuela’s “great” revolution. Big fan of Saul Alinsky and government control of all media.

And this is just a partial list.

In one of my blogs right after Obama was elected, I said he would surround himself with radical leftists from the fringes of society. Even I had no idea he would be brazen enough to recruit a bunch of left wing kooks this far out of the mainstream.

It seems pretty clear that this attack on Fox News is an attempt to intimidate the rest of the media into continuing to keep silent and not question what the Czars are up to. With Obama’s approval ratings falling rapidly (51% as of 10/28/09) they want to keep the news of their radical agenda under wraps long enough to ram through socialist policies unpopular with the electorate. And, of course, with his Czars he can use regulations and mandates, avoiding the messy business of passing laws.

This guy is even more dangerous than I thought.

1 Comment

Filed under Czars, Fox News, Obama, Politics

October 2, 2009 · 5:25 am

Ann Coulter: Too High Above Cayuga’s Waters

Generally I enjoy watching and reading Ann Coulter, the conservative author and commentator. She’s often quite funny and I do relish that she gets under the skin of liberals with ease.

On the other hand, she occasionally drifts into the outrageous just, it seems to me, to get attention. Ann also seems to be too impressed with her own considerable intelligence and suffers under the illusion that she is just as attractive as the “info-babes” on Fox News. Sorry Ann.
When Coulter decides to go after someone she becomes caustic and very, very personal. She displays outright distain for Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher of the New York Times.

Of course, Sulzberger, whom she calls by his nickname “Pinch”, inherited his position at a young age, the NYT having been controlled by his father and grandfather for the past 150 years.
In recent years under the leadership of Pinch the Times has lost its position as the “paper of record” by becoming a left wing rag.

Along with credibility the Times has lost readership and boatloads of money. Bankruptcy has only been avoided by the $250,000,000 infusion of cash by Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire.

OK, Pinch is a lousy businessman and a schmuck. But, Coulter’s attacks have been very personal, calling him stupid for failing to get accepted to Harvard and getting into Columbia only because of family connections. Out of bounds? Yeah, I think.

Coulter has also focused her sharp tongue on Keith Olbermann, the host of MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”. Before I get going here, let’s be clear. I think KO is a dip shit and an extreme liberal bomb thrower. I believe MSNBC has sold its soul to the Democrats and should be ashamed to call themselves a news organization. Having said that, I think Coulter’s attacks on Olbermann are too personal and over the top.

Chief among Coulter’s charges is that Keith’s frequent references to his Ivy League education at Cornell ring hollow because he went to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell. She calls the college a “bovine management school” and claims the only people who can legitimately call themselves “Cornellians” attended the College of Arts and Sciences. This likely shocked those folks who attended the Engineering, Architecture and other fine colleges that comprise Cornell.

It certainly came as a surprise to me, a graduate of said College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1964. While yes, the CALS does offer courses in agriculture and related fields, it also offers majors in pre-med, pre-vet and dozens of other majors including: biology, sociology, economics and engineering. I got my own degree in Marine Biology. Olbermann got his degree in Communication Arts.

Ann also ignored that students in the CALS School take many of their courses in the “Arts School” where they compete head-to-head with the “real Cornell students”. Note to Ann: We often kicked their Asses, thank you.

The big advantage for students who are residents of New York State is that you can attend the CALS and other state supported colleges at Cornell and pay 1/3 of the nearly $30,000 per year tuition for the same education. For guys like me who were self-financing a college education, this is an opportunity not to be ignored.

Coulter also conveniently overlooks that acceptance to Ivy League schools may not always be based on pure academic achievement alone. Legacy students, those whose parents attended the university are given special consideration, as are minorities and athletes. The Ivies pride themselves in not giving athletic scholarships but let’s get real. If a great high school running back with less than stellar grades applies… Well, adjustments and exceptions can be made. When I was there nearly our entire hockey team was comprised of Canadians. Great students? Maybe.

Ms. Coulter’s attacks on Olbermann are justified on the basis of his view, opinions and some of the asinine things he says. But, denigrating everyone who attended the other fine colleges at Cornell except the “Artsies” smacks of snobbery and the very elitism she so often disparages.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Ann Coulter, Cornell, Keith Olbermann, Politics