I just found out that Steve Irwin was killed recently. I'm sort of two minds on the whole thing.

For one, he deserves great credit for his work. Like Jacques Cousteau and Marlin Perkins (along with poor Jim Fowler who always got saddled with wrestling enraged hippos while Marlin spoke into the camera), he really brought the beauty of nature to the forefront. Through his personality he was able to make nature study popular. No doubt there are thousands of children out there in whom he awakened a real interest in nature and if some percentage of them retain that interest, we will all have benefitted.

On the other hand, I feel that he was remiss in that he downplayed the dangers inherent in screwing with Mother Nature. Don't get me wrong: I feel perfectly safe in the woods. Safer, in fact, than I do staying in a motel or walking down a city street in broad daylight. But that's because I know better than to go dragging kraits around by their tails, I know that polar bears and fer-de-lances are unique in nature in that they will actively hunt humans, I use bear bags when called for and I don't go shoving my hand in holes or crevices.

I don't rejoice in his death, in fact I rue that the world has lost a terrific, charasmatic educator (not to mention husband and father); but in nature, just like everywhere else, there are rules. And Steve Irwin routinely broke them.

What an evening.

I am probably a contradiction--I hunt, I fish, I love being in the woods, I was once a real live Green Beret...but I have also played musical instruments and marched with them most of my life. I was six when my overachieving father demanded I start taking music lessons. I didn't even really know what I wanted to play, but I told him I'd play the "long black thing" (I'd seen someone play it on TV the night before). That was the kickoff of a life-long love affair with the clarinet.

I played clarinet every opportunity I had--community band, school band, seven straight years of all-county band, western Maryland regional band, Baltimore Colts (remember them?) marching band. I also picked up the tenor saxophone (dirty secret--it's easy for clarinet players to pick up the sax and the flute) for jazz band and musical plays. I even played wth the school orchestra. I also picked up the bass baritone bugle and played with four different drum and bugle corps over the years. I still play baritone bugle in parades and so forth to this day.

Don't get me wrong--I was never particularly good, but I was and am passionate about it.

This evening was the final day of band camp at my son's high school and they presented an exhibition for the parents. Given the history I've presented, you can imagine the emotions I felt as he stepped off the line and took the field with the band.

Fortunately, the field faces west, into the setting sun, and it was quite hot, so I was able to ummm, wipe my brow periodically. Just sweat on my brow...

I've not been very good at keeping my links updated. It's a task I really need to undertake--many of the links no longer function, and there are so many I really should include. It's a huge task, but I'll start of with a link to a blog I find interesting: http://bttrflynrvrse.blogspot.com/

The url is new, but the blogger has a solid history of interesting posts.

"Band of Brothers" has been shown numerous times on cable television over the last few years. It's also been a book even longer than that.

Even though I read the book some years ago, I find the series incredibly compelling (probably because of the high degree of accuracy), so I find myself watching it every time it appears on the History Channel. Tonight's episode was entitled "Why We Fight", and it explored different reasons--news from home about the evil Nazis, a subtle implication about guys fighting for each other (friends defending friends), and finally it concludes with the guys discovering a concentration camp. The evil that they discover is indescribable.

However. Once again for the ten-millionth time: Anyone who compares Bush to Hitler is a cretin. I've been to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I've been to Dachau. I've seen the results of a regime headed by a truly evil man and his twisted henchmen. There's no comparison.

The bad boys at Gitmo, who are demonstrably threats, get Islamic meals, exercise, religious items, et al--all incredible tolerance given that they are known enemies of the western world.
In Nazi Germany; Jews, Gypsies, etc. were rounded up and put to death without regard to their loyalties--they were simply judged to be "enemies of the state" and killed; most often by incredibly inhumane means. The death toll will never be sorted out. We know it includes some six million (six million!!) Jews, probably a like number of "undesirables" such as Gypsies and other eastern Europeans and untold numbers of Soviet soldiers taken prisoner. The Soviets probably got the best deal of all--they were machine-gunned in trenches which were then closed over their bodies (although they did test out the gas chambers at Auschwitz using Soviets--what a privilege! Everyone else either worked until they starved to death or were herded into "showers" in which they were gassed. Technically, there were "work camps" and "death camps", but the difference is academic. Who did what? Well, big, strapping guys got culled out and were given the "priviledge" of work/starvation until one or the other did them in. Older men, women and children were stripped of clothing, shoes, hair, tooth fillings, you name it...and then sent to the gas chambers lest they become burdensome. Oh, and I'm sure that some of the women were kept for, umm, "recreational purposes".

The displays at Auschwitz-Birkenau are beyond heartbreaking. Literally mountains of baby shoes. Not just childrens' shoes--baby shoes. Mountains of them. Mountains of personal effects--mostly toys. Mountains and mountains of effects stripped from women and children before they stuffed them into a gas chamber and ended their lives.

I could keep going. Truth is, the "Band of Brothers" epsisode set me off again, but to good reason. If you think that there is ANY comparison between Bush and Hitler, you really, really need a good flossing of the brain.

I emailed the writer of the story I referenced below and asked her if she was proud of revealing a potential vulerability in our defense during a time of conflict.

Her reply was full of the usual arrogant platitudes about "keeping the taxpayers informed", etc. She went on to state that the agency was aware that she was writing the article and raised no objections. Of course they didn't. They knew she'd write it anyway and making an issue of it would only further publicize the article and make things worse.

Never one to leave well enough alone, I emailed her again, quoting her line about the agency raising no objections and asked her if she'd give a damn if they had. Shockingly--no reply.

Fortunately the paper is a lightweight rag with a seriously dwindling circulation. For one thing, the city that it "serves" is collapsing in on itself a la Detroit.

Newspeople are whores. Plain and simple.

I'd like to find a more acceptable, less abrasive monicker, but time and time again they show themselves to be nothing more than gutter whores.

Just the other day a local paper (which is read by a lot more people than who read this blog) "broke" the story that a government agency might be hitting the wall on energy requirements. For the life of me, I can't imagine why anyone could be so self-important that he/she felt the need to call a reporter and build him/herself up ego-wise in this way. And yes, it's all ego. Why on earth would someone need to call the local paper to report that a government agency might see an electrical shortage if not to build up his/her own ego? Unless it's a plain and simple attempt to hurt our own defense community. And that's as likely as not since many Muslims have lately shown their loyalties to be to Islam, and not the country that has protected and nurtured them.

So it's either ego or an undercover sabateur. There's just no other explanation: "Hello, I'd like to report that an important defense agency is running low on electrical power".

And self-important gutter whore reporter actually makes a story of it.

Her name is Siobhan Gorman, and I've emailed her twice, but I don't expect a reply. She's from the Big City and ergo much more erudite than I (at least in her mind).

I feel like I often play off on the fact that I was in the Army for about ten years. I've been out for some 16 years now, so sometimes I feel like I'm trying to make currency on something I no longer am. But I can't deny that I still feel a tremendous pull toward the military in general and the Army in particular. Military service is an incredibly profound, soul-deep experience that people who have never been there can't begin to understand. And I never intended to get out when I did. A series of injuries left me no other choice, but I had every intention of making the Army a career.

Recently a video has been circulating the internet, in which a Lieutenant Colonel named Randolph White delivers a graduation address to a class at the US Army Infantry School. I think it sums everything up and makes it clear why I was once proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with men such as LTC White and the graduating class, and why I'll always be proud of the time I spent in the Army, even if I am a has-been.

You can see it at one of these two links, among others:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/08/us_army_infantr.html

http://guidons.blogspot.com/2006/08/great-speech-great-soldier.html#links

Ten Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter

Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure as hell not picking anything up.

Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them from your body.

Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to assure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric staple gun and fasten your trousers securely in place around your waist.

Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, I am told, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early."

Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for a movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process which can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful... like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter:
Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool.
Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight.
Places where there is darkness.
Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness of any kind.
Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her Adam’s Apple.
Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which feature chainsaws are okay. Hockey games are okay, too, as are baseball games.
Visits to old folks' homes are best.

Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight, speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

There are only ten rules, so I expect you to be able to recite them to me. If you cannot remember them, we will result to alternate means. I am aware that having them tatooed on you would be cost-prohibitive, but ink will wash off. May I suggest my wood burning tool?

I had no intention of ever posting anything like this, but I was trying to think of a city in Florida synonymous with retirees and stumbled over this article:

STDs Running Rampant in Retirement Community

Talk about egos. It wasn't enough for John Kerry to come home from Vietnam and accuse every other person in Vietnam of being a war criminal (but not him, of course--after all, he earned three purple hearts), now he thinks he has the master plan for the world.

Via Toni (owner of the best legs in Bloggerdom), a new height in Kerry's delusional "I'm King of the World" ego: "If I was president, this wouldn't have happened". Yep, big guy, I'm sure that you'd have kept the world under control. No more killing Israelis just because they're different (the territory thing is beyond dispute because Palestinians have no actual "homeland", either), yep, if you were president the sun would take a few days off and cure global warming, too. Hell, I'll bet if you were president there'd be no more tsunamis, either.

How about some specifics, Mr. Haircut--Just how would you have prevented the Islamic hatemongers from attacking Israel between your visits to the salon? Talk is cheap--"Wouldn't have happened if I was president". Well, then, just how and why would it not have happened? Do you have a magic wand that suddenly makes Islam actually the "Religion of Love"? Can you magically make the Arab world stop hating their Semitic brethren?

Didn't think so. G'night Johnny. See you at the beauty parlor.

I know that I've visited this subject before, but it deserves clarification, especially since the left hates Bush so much that they'll make an issue out of anything.

We on the right didn't much care for the Boy President, Billy "Can I Look Up Your Skirt" Clinton, but the vitriol unleashed against Bush is ridiculous, and much of it is utterly unwarranted--it's just pure hate, which I thought the left declaims.

Anyway, the stem cell debate hit the news again last week when Bush vetoed a bill to expand federal funding of fetal stem cell research. To make things more dramatic, it's his first veto.

Let's take things step-by-step: First--Bush did not outlaw fetal stem cell research. Repeat after me: Bush did not outlaw fetal stem cell research. The hate wing of the Democratic party wants you to believe that he quashed all fetal stem cell research. He did not. He only said that the government will continue funding research on several established cell lines (big surprise, kids--the government is still funding fetal stem cell research), but won't fund research on any new lines.

Not a big surprise--the government has been cutting back on all sorts of expenditures ever since the Clinton recession (don't believe me on that one, look it up). And fetal stem cell research has shown zero potential. Why should the government fund a dry hole in an era of cutbacks?

A primer on stem cells: Stem cells are "undifferentiated" cells. In other words, they haven't yet become muscle cells, skin cells, eye cells, etc. In theory they are like sheet metal, which can be hammered into a particular shape. Theoretically they can be coaxed to become a particular sort of cell by exposing them to specialized conditions which force them in one direction or another. In other words, theory has it that a stem cell can be grown so as to become a cell that could bridge a gap in a severed spinal cord.

But, it doesn't work that way. There have been some positive results in stem cell research, but in every case it has involved adult stem cells. Yes, there are adult stem cells. They exist as peripheral blood cells, which are much less numerous than red and white blood cells, but exist nonetheless; and in adipose tissue (fat). Adipose tissue is in no short supply these days and at any rate, once obtained, stem cells can be cloned to become a cell line, making them a commercially available product for any biotech company to obtain and work with.

Fetal stem cell research is a bust. I don't know why, nobody knows why, but they just don't work. But to say "we don't need to be drilling this dry hole anymore" is to be instantly labeled "anti-abortion", the 21st century equivalent of "Nazi".

There are two reasons for this. The primary reason is that there is a number of scientists making damn good livings playing with fetal stem cells. To this day they have absolutely nothing to show for their efforts, but to call them on it is to break their rice bowl. They need the grants, they need the money, and they'll be damned if they'll admit they have nothing to show for it. Instead, they intimate that anyone who is against their research is a Luddite or, gasp, anti-abortion. The second reason is that fetal stem cell research mitigates abortion. It's more palatable if the "byproduct" goes to biotech research.

Thought I was done with baseball two weekends ago when I threw my keys at an obese guy whose hair, beard and physique make him look exactly like a garden gnome. I kid you not--picture the "roaming gnome" from Expedia or whatever it is, add 400 pounds and a self-serving ego equal to a Clinton, and you have this guy.

Well, turns out we're sponsoring the state senior league tournament. We spent five evenings and Saturday morning getting two fields ready. I have no idea how much food we unloaded, but we unloaded 240 lbs. of ice just for Saturday.

This is a small state, so everything is relative, but some of the the teams are driving as much as five hours to get here, and the tournament will last six days. Many are checking into the few hotels we have, at personal cost.

Kinda makes me glad my son opted for a high adventure Scout experience.

One of my pet peeves is highly paid newspeople who just can't get it right. Some months ago the local paper wrote an article about a guy who was deploying with the "82nd Engineer Armored Tank Division". I wrote an email to the editor explaining that there are no engineer divisions and "Armored Tank" was redundant. I found an 82nd Engineer Bn (SEP) stationed in Germany which was no doubt what the "journalist" was referring to. Our small town newspaper is run by big city liberals, and he didn't even deign to reply to my email.

Now I just turned on the TV to find Greta Van Susteren reporting on the events in the Middle East. To be fair, she probably makes her cool half million or so reading scripts wriiten for her by others, so I can only half blame her for reading reports as she stares into the camera with that lopsided stroke-looking visage. But enough is enough. She just said that she was going to report on Israeli tanks "firing deep into Lebanese territory". Well first, tanks mostly fire line-of-sight, and they certainly don't fire "deep". Second, the armor they showed was not tanks, but self-propelled artillery. Which can "fire deep". I you're going to make six figures times two, at least get things right. It's like that Geico commercial with the Cro-Magnons--"Next time do a little research".

Children aren't stupid. They're less experienced, but not stupid.

Some time ago my son read the book "Blackhawk Down". I probably should have sat down with him after he read it and talked about certain things, but I never did.

Today we drove down to where the wife works to look at a vehicle. Looked at it, test-drove it, etc. Then I put the kids back in the truck and we drove out of the parking lot. As we drove out we passed a car bearing a bumper sticker proclaiming "When Clinton Lied, No One Died". Refreshing to see someone admitting that Clinton is a pathological liar, a bit less encouraging to see that some people still need to call Bush a liar weeks after we unearthed some 500 cannisters of gas.

As we drove past the car my son (spontaneously--not prompted by me) said "Well, Clinton lied and people got killed". I started thinking Khobar Towers and such, but he followed up with this observation: The soldiers in Somalia said they needed armored vehicles, but Clinton told them they didn't need them and they died because of that.

Bingo

Independence 

Ok. I'm hacked off for only about the 1200th time since we began the Global War on Terror.

The war began years ago. I guess the serious war on the West began in 1979 when stooges reacting to the emergence to power of the anti-west fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini reacted in an anti-west fervor (similar to the Nazi fervor of the '30s) against the US embassy in Teheran.

Subsequent to that various radical Islamists have showed their courage by dumping an elderly man in a wheelchair from a cruise ship (Leon Klinghoffer from the Achille Lauro), ganging up on a brave young man who happened to have a US passport and beating him to death (Robert Stetham), and blowing up an assortment of old folks' homes, pizza parlors and school buses in Israel. I particularly applaud their vast courage in blowing up little children. In a stellar show of statesmanship and courage they boarded several airliners and used boxcutters to gut stewardesses (I thought women were "special" in Islam) until the pilots could no longer stand things and handed the controls over to soulless butchers who flew the aircraft into buildings containing people who had nothing whatsoever to do with stated Islamic issues with US policies.

Are we pissed? Hell yes. And we've showed it in the form of stealth aircraft, AC-130s, Apache Longbows, heavily amored/armed troops, etc. Some would call it an "assymetric" response--responding to agression from terrorists and the odd poorly trained/equipped military with 21st Century weapons and tactics, but if you don't want to find yourself staring at an Apache Longbow, don't gas our subways or bomb our buildings. It's that easy.

A few years ago we coerced Israel into making concessions to the Palestinian Authority (which entity came about because we twisted Israel's arm in the first place} and the PA rewarded us by holding one hell of a party on the night of 9/11. Screw you guys. And which Imam has come forward to condemn the murders in the name of Islam? I'll give you a minute. Yep---not one. A few governments have stepped forward, notably Pakistan, but nowhere have the people risen up en masse and decried the outright murders of 9/11.

So am I worked up about Abu Ghraib? Well, it shouldn't have happened. But just how, John Murtha, does a couple of war weary kids doing stupid things rate against an enemy that revels in death? Lynndie England, the barely functional moron who is the Abu Ghraib poster girl, did stupid things with her comrades. But they didn't saw any heads off, they didn't string burnt, executed bodies from bridges--you get the point (or do you in your political ambitions)?. How about our latest casualties, Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker? They were so horrendously tortured and beaten that our people had to resort to DNA to identify them. They weren't caught in a bombing strike that blew them up--they were captured and their bodies were deliberately and systematically destroyed while they screamed in agony. What do you think, John "Ambition" Murtha, Teddy "Swimmer" Kennedy and John "Buddyf*cker" Kerry? Are we fighting a fight best kept on their soil or should we stand down and let them bring the fight back to us again one clear September day?

Well, it's 2:00 AM and I'm just now getting through a day and getting ready to bed down so I can get through another day, but I just had an extraordinary moment.

Saw the last moments of a movie. One the the "Godfather" movies, but I don't know which one other than I know it's not the first. I don't know exactly what was going on, but it seemed to be a number of "hits" while people watched an opera. It culminated with a family exiting the opera house and being caught in a cross fire in which a daughter was hit and killed.

I have news for the world. If anyone ever hurts my daughter, he or she had better kill me first. Because if I am alive, I will bring a world of hurt on that person that he or she will never forget (at least until the point of death). And death won't be instantaneous. I kid you not.

I don't make threats. I issue promises.

Just some late night thoughts. You may date my daughter, but if you hurt her, I'll make you wish you had never been born. I promise.

Sports are not the be-all and end-all for me, but since we live in an area where it would be pretty difficult to get eight or ten guys together for a pickup game (although we certainly have the land for it), boys' baseball and girls' softball have become a part of our lives. I've gotten involved in baseball, mostly to my distress (although as NOTR points out it may qualify me as a US/Iraqi liaison), but that's my own mistake.

Anyway, quite an evening today. It's the last round of the end-of-season tournament and SnakeEater Jr's team is hot in the chase. Last year they were the team to beat and somehow just lost momentum in the tournament. This year they have been incredibly inconsistent. Over the course of the season they succeeded in losing several games to teams that they should have beaten handily. It's just been wierd that way. Tonight they trailed the hands-down best team in the league for most of the game, but always stayed close enough that everyone knew the game wasn't over just yet. A Junior League game lasts seven innings--this game went nine before a winner emerged and SnakeEater Jr's team finally took it 6-4. SnakeEater Jr personally drove in two runs and made a great catch to put a batter out. He also employed his bazooka of an arm to keep a couple of runners at bay.

Took him, the Bear and one of Bear's friends out for ice cream after the game. We'd have gone for ice cream either way, but I'm sure it tasted just a bit better this way.

It's best two out of three, so I'm not rejoycing yet. But they rose up and beat a team that they've never beaten before. Game Two comes Wednesday. I damn near had to restart my heart several times tonight--I can't imagine what Wednesday will be like...

(On a really evil note, the manager's nancy-boy son was away today, so he wasn't a factor in the game. Expect him to be a [negative] factor in Wednesday's game)

How do you fire vounteers?

Damnded if I know, but the umpire coordinators got fired. That was the job I did last year by myself. It proved to be an incredibly difficult job--far worse than I ever imagined--by I refuse to quit, so I rode it out and did the job.

Well, the umpire coordinators (two--I was only one) got canned yesterday and guess who the league went to in order to finish the season. Yep, good ol' dumbass SnakeEater.

Fortunately I have my contacts from last year and am in good terms with all of them. The couple that took the job this year alienated a lot of the umps. So I have to pick up the pieces and drive on. I'm not complaining--not at all--the most important thing is to keep the league going for the kids, and I've already covered most of the games (might take a few myself), just commenting on league sports. I think I've said this before, but it takes adults to really f*ck up sports for kids.

Hit the landfill/recycling center the other day to offload a whole bunch of tree branches (which will be turned into mulch) and paper.

I have a "Dubya" sticker on the truck. I'm not at all ashamed that I voted for him instead of the weenie/buddy f*cker that the Democrats nominated. He's not perfect, but he slowed the economic downturn that Clinton initiated and above all we're fighting Islamic fundamentalism on their turf, not ours.

Anyway, some woman who was also offloading plastic or something saw my sticker and made a snide comment about "stupid" (the Democrat fantasy that Dubya, who has a history of shrewd corporate decisions and got elected twice, is a stupid man...) and "illegal" war.

Headed down the road to the gas station and incredibly, there she is right in front of me. The kids reacted first and said "Hey, there's the woman who yelled at you at the recycling center". I got out of the truck and said "Yep, it's her". At that point I saw HER bumper stickers, of which there were at least eight. They were so trite that it defies intellect. One which I remember simply stated "Cheney is a Creep". Wow--what an intellectual rebuttal of the current administration's policies!

Being as she felt compelled to yell at me (as I--gasp--recycled things, something that everyone knows Republicans don't do), I felt obligated to comment on the lack of intellect reflected by her bumper stickers. She ended up yelling at me in the gas station that I had "anger issues". Hmmm--Who had the stupid bumper stickers and had to shout at me at the recycling center???