Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

For all my readers (however many there may be) on the East Coast and other places up north, it's 10 PM this evening and we have the windows open enjoying 70 degree weather. Just sayin'.....

Why Am I In Texas - Just Look at This

Grandson in the snow in Maryland - Good God are you people crazy?

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

My darling wife wrote this last night. I thought it should be shared:

Dear Madam Speaker

Regarding your statement that Obama was “dealt a very bad hand because there was no plan in Afghanistan for years.”

I will just borrow the highly professional statement you made regarding Bush on national television in 2008 (yes, we were SO proud of you)

"You know, God bless HER, bless HER heart, Speaker of the House, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject,"

You boobs in the house and senate still don't get it, do you? History is at our fingertips. Plans, proposals, and requests for more troops, funding, etc - ALL of that is online. Do you ever bother searching for your own name? In 2007 you were more interested in bashing Bush than actually working to bring this nation together to accomplish the missions in Iraq AND Afghanistan.

Additionally, the Bush administration gave unprecedented briefings to the Obama administration (which asked the Bush administration to keep the findings quiet)and they foolishly honored that request.

The defense spending bill was loaded with DOMESTIC costs totally unrelated to either war - because you and your sorry ilk REALLY don't get it. You play games with our troops, and our country. You run your mouths then hide in private sessions while the rest of us have to cope with the disasters YOU promote or refuse to thwart because it cuts into your social programs and payoffs.

Your childish rants and outright LIES regarding real life and death issues are a disgrace to the office, and this nation. It goes without saying that conservatives mock you - but so do centrists, moderates and independents. You open your mouth, and give voters a reason to think that women are not equipped for this job. Thanks for that. Now grow up, knock of the b.s. rhetoric and treat this position with the respect it demands.

WTF?

Happy Birthday

One of the great pleasures of my life has been the daughter I “inherited” when she was just a little girl. Now, grown into a beautiful young woman, I discover her to be a friend.

Her dedication to her friends and family, her unceasing devotion to a woman who started as a patient and became much more before her untimely passing has been an inspiration to me and, I know, for many other people who watched this drama unfold over the last three years.

She has been through struggles and some hard times and those efforts have made her strong and proud. And there’s a lot to be proud of.

Happy Birthday Lindsay.

Random Encounters

I was at the Ford dealer's customer lounge yesterday morning waiting for my car and of course CNN was on. And of course the CNN head was talking about The One's Peace Prize and how his Oneness was going to fix the economy, battle for health care reform and make it possible for us all to live on milk and honey and not have nasty old jobs. A lady sitting next to me was taking in every word. And I started to notice. She was rolling her eyes, huffing and puffing like she was going to blow down the house. Every once in a while I heard her mutter - "Idiot - Fool - Damfool ideas - Idiot".

I meet a lot of people every day in this job and everyone wants to talk. I just sit and listen and I'm seeing more every day that this lady's reaction is widespread in Austin Texas. If he's losing Austin, maybe there's hope yet.

Shaved Heads and Law Enforcement

Hanging around the airport yesterday I noticed the the police officers who also hang out there and I got to wondering. What's with all the shaved heads? Having mucked around in the woods and the desert I remember well that having no hair on your head is the best way to keep clean and not itch. But city cops? And why is it that all the shaved heads are on top of scowling, intimidation-mode faces? Seriously. Are these guys all Reservist Army Rangers who may get called up at a moments notice and don't have time to get haircuts? But I've known lots of Army Rangers who just keep a high-and-tight but don't shave it all off. Conducting a little experiment I spoke to each police officer I saw yesterday, a total of six. One had hair and he nodded and said "Good morning, sir". The other five, all shaved heads, just glared at me when I said "Good morning" and none of them said a word in reply.

Interesting....

FEDEX - A Hero

Click on the title and try to read what FEDEX did for a little girl and not get a tear. HT - Radley Balko

Incompetencies Pet Peeves and Time Wasters

Time to pick up a prescription this fine Saturday morning. And the Expedition (of course we drive an SUV) is missing on one cylinder with a "Service Engine" light on. I think it's a coil pack. So I head to town and go to Walgreen's first, pulling into the drive through. I push the call button and a disembodied voice says, "I'LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU!!!!!" Soon the box shows up, I stick in the prescription and tell the now embodied voice through a window that I'll be back in about 20-30 minutes. She tells me she'll need 30 minutes to put the 36 pills in a bottle. So I go across the street to Advance Auto and ask them, in accordance with their ads, if they can plug in a scanner and tell me what the computer says. The counterman follows me out and plugs in - looks at his scanner and says - paraphrasing only a little - "Dude - there's something wrong with your scanner outlet - maybe a wire's broken....you can probably just pull all the wires off each coil pack until you find the dead one - but I can't help you." There are eight coil packs on this engine - all buried under all kinds of hoses, pipings, and fuel rails. I say thanks and go across another street to AutoZone, thinking maybe the Advance Auto's scanner is broken. Tattooed man asks me what I need - we follow the same procedure and he says, "Dude, you may have a fuse out.....I can't help you". I say thanks, get in the truck and call DWSO. "Can you find out which fuse controls the scanner outlet on this truck?" Computer keys click - BING is your friend - "It's the number 3 fuse, 20 amp". I reach under the dash, pull out number 3 and yup - it's blown. I go back to Advance Auto since I'm on that side of the street and tell counterman I need a 20 amp fuse. He sells me a pack of fuses (OK - spares) I plug it in and he plugs in the scanner - number four cylinder is missing - he sells me a coil pack for $49.95 and I hope that's the problem. By now an hour and 15 minutes have passed. You didn't forget Walgreen's did you?

I go back there and discover 15 people in line - a very slow moving line - but they're not directly at the pharmacy - they're all getting flu shots. About 5 minutes per person. I step around to the pickup window and ask for my prescription - and the young lady who had taken it earlier and promised 30 minutes - - - well, you know the rest. Not ready. Won't BE ready until the pharmacist finishes with the flu shots. How long? Not long....15 minutes maybe....I ask her to look at the line - it's growing - no way 15 minutes. Well sir, you'll just have to wait!!!!!

How about if you just let me have the prescription back? And she pulls out a STACK of prescriptions - at least 15-20 - none of which have been filled.

I started going to Walgreens when they opened here in town because they beat Walmart pharmacy for service. It looks like those days are over - on now to CVS - oh and "Dudes" at Advance and Autozone - I should have gone to NAPA for the coil pack.

President Bush on 9/11/09

I had a discussion a little while ago about President Bush staying home on Friday and not making public appearances. I expect he wanted, as I did, nothing to do with this so-called National Day of Service

The statement from his office said:

“We honor those who volunteer to keep us safe and extend the reach of freedom - including members of the armed forces, law enforcement officers, and intelligence and homeland security professionals. Their courage, service, and sacrifice is a fitting tribute to all those who gave their lives on September 11th, 2001. On this day, let us renew our determination to prevent evil from returning to our shores.”

The Obamabots would have made another attack on him no matter what appearance President Bush had done and no matter where he'd done it. He did his duty and he reminds me now of Neil Armstrong in his reticence. I hope it doesn't last as long as Armstrong's.

Driving the DNC

The Democrats are in town and I drove one of six motor coach loads of them to the LBJ Library last night. Mostly nice people. Mostly.

One couple - a bit older - got off the bus and turned to the left while most people were going to the right, to the door for the auditorium. About a minute later they came back and the lady asked, "So, where are we supposed to go? There's construction there..." I said, Ma'am, I believe you're supposed to go in that entrance down there for the....." and she cut me off and said, "You BELIEVE? But you don't KNOW???" I said in my nicest voice possible - "Ma'am, your staff advance person is the young lady at the end of the sidewalk; I suggest you ask her since I obviously don't know anything about this Library."

It turns out he's a very senior cog in the Illinois State Senate. One of our other drivers recognized him as having seen him on TV with "The One".

It never fails.

Health Care Grab - Borrowed from VDH

I stole this shamelessly from Victor Davis Hanson, one of my heroes and someone I want to meet:

Health Care Grab

We all know what that a good health care system can be improved by increased competition, tort reform, tax credits for catastrophic insurance plans, deregulation, etc.

But Obamacare is not really about medicine. It is rather aimed at absorbing more of the private sector—once more, to create a vast new constituency of government workers and beneficiaries, to ensure an equality of result in treatment and access, and to replace private health insurers with public bureaucrats. (I got a taste of the future of the government octopus when I went yesterday to a California DMV office, and noticed that all the state employees at the windows had on purple union T-shirts with “organize” and “solidarity” emblazoned across them.)

In other words, in the Obama mind, would you want an autonomous family practitioner, entrepreneurial, keen to adopt to patient needs and tastes, juggling 10 employees and a 2-million-dollar family practice budget, grossing $400,000 a year in profits, highly opinionated and self-reliant, using his profits once in a while to ski or buy a BMW—or have him transmogrified into a GS-something, at $100,000 a year, with government benefits, unionized, docile, and waiting to go home when his shift at the dreary government clinic ends, wearing his doctor union T-shirt to work and eager to vote in politicians who ensure him lifetime tenure, generous retirement packages, and guaranteed pay raises?

Cellphones Confiscated - Say WHAT????

From the New York Post -

August 7, 2009 --

MICHELLE Obama, like her husband, enjoys a good burger, but not as well done. The first lady brought daughters Malia and Sasha to former "Top Chef" contestant Spike Mendelsohn'sGood Stuff Eatery in DC for cheeseburgers, onion rings, fries, and milkshakes. "They got the burgers medium," says a spy. (President Obama was mildly ridiculed after ordering a burger medium-well in January.) "Three starving Secret Service guys were literally standing over the grill as Spike made the burgers, but didn't eat," our source adds. Fellow patrons had their cellphones temporarily confiscated to prevent pictures from being taken.


OK - look - I've been around. I worked with lots and lots of Secret Service agents. First off - they ALWAYS get fed. Don't worry about them. But they confiscated cell phones??? So pictures wouldn't get taken of the royal family eating their burgers????? What security protocol did cellphone cameras violate?
If you're going to go out in public with the peasants Michelle, at least let the peasants take your picture! It's the only thrill they may have for the day.

COAC.

You Can't Fix Stupid

"I sure wish they'd invent something to keep the sun out of my eyes"

Rocket Men

I have been lucky in many ways in being one of the last of the baby boomers. I never saw the Great Depression; I never saw World War II or Korea; and I was too young by six months for Vietnam.

But I did get to see Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon.

I thought that I had read about and seen enough documentaries to have a good understanding of America’s man-in-space program. Last week I picked up Rocket Men by Craig Nelson.

Nelson’s book is filled with new interviews as well as well as archival pictures and on-the-record talks with the engineers, scientists, and astronauts who were there and what happened to many of the major figures after it was all over. The focus on the first part of the book is the engineering team that put it all together and the hurdles faced with inventing all new technology, engineering disciplines, and even project management.

There’s an old joke told about an Apollo astronaut at a dinner party where everyone there is bragging about their career – the doctor is a famous heart surgeon; the inventor built a new computer chip; the chef had created a new chocolate concoction and the astronaut says, “I walked on the moon.” Conversation stops as nobody there can top that. Buzz Aldrin relates that this pretty much happened to him and caused several years of depression and alcohol dependence. After you’ve been to the moon, what else is there? I have been fortunate enough to travel and there are places I’d like to see again – if I save up the money I can travel back to Paraguay, Lisbon, London, or Istanbul. People talk about a “once in a lifetime experience” when they go to Disneyworld but they can go back. But the moon is out of reach to the men who once went there and that fact left scars.

Read it – you won’t be disappointed.

Till Death......

Words fail me. Colonel Mathew Bogdanos writes in the Washington Post the unique challenges of combat leadership and the comradeship, brotherhood, and blood shared by those who serve.

"Your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers. We are honored to lead them. "


As they say, read the whole thing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/14/AR2009081402519_pf.html

Unidentified Fallling Objects

Water from the sky? What in the world? I seem to vaguely recall something about rain......

Old Medical Instruments and Treatments in Use Today

This old tool has been rediscovered and put into use by the new adminstration.

Youtube is Doctoring the Numbers

UPDATE: Page view is now showing over 13 thousand. Maybe they got the message.

Youtube has a video up of union thugs attacking protestors at Rep Carnahan's office St Louis here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXBOgPCh9w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Furbangrounds.com%2F&feature=player_embedded

Google/Youtube is doctoring the page view numbers on this video, locking it at 313 views. I've hit it five times in the last 10 minutes, and it's embedded at Powerline, UrbanGrounds; Instapundit; and several other high traffic blogs. The idea this video has only been watched 313 times is simply ridiculous. They are deliberately sabotaging the number of views to make it look, I assume, like it's not being watched.

I'm off today and I'm forwarding as much as I can to flag@whitehouse.gov. If they want input, I'm going to give it to them. I'm also e-mailing that sorry Congressman who represents my district, but not me, Lloyd Doggett. My blood pressure went up when I went to his site and filled out the survey he has there. The only choices are the liberal, and I really mean socialist, talking points he has up there.

Wish I'd Been There

I didn't know about the meeting with Lloyd Doggett this past Saturday, apparently because it was only advertised in the Austin Chronicle. But this looks like a protest I would have supported.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8UjY3YDlwA

Set Deep in Texas

Many of you reading this will understand the title of the blog. The rest of you will figure it out eventually.

I'm starting this to keep up with some folks, get away from Facebook, and satisfy my desire to write something once in awhile. I'm also going to establish a Bookshelf and share some interests with some folks I've met a long way from Texas.

Interests - Texas music and history; politics of course; military affairs and whatever else strikes my fancy. There may even be some things on here that are true.

Comments are welcome!