A Near-Miss and WAY the Hell Off Target...

Blog-Bud Lou writes about the wild fires in southwest Oklahoma last evening... and one of her commenters drove me to the newspapers covering Oklahoma City and its environs. I lived in Choctaw, a suburb of OKC, for about a year and a half while I was stationed at Tinker AFB in my final USAF assignment. Choctaw and Midwest City were the locations of some of the worst fires to hit the area in quite some time, and those fires appeared to be quite close to the Old Pennington Homestead at 1277 South Indian Meridian Road, pictured below.

The top picture is a bird's eye view (heh) of the general neighborhood where I lived; the bottom pic is the house I owned... which sat on a little over two acres. I worried about tornadoes when I lived on Indian Meridian Road and never thought much about wildfire. I hope my used-to-be neighbors are OK...

―:☺:―

Your political commentary for the day comes from one of my favorite pundits... Charles Krauthammer, writing at Townhall.com. The lede grafs:

WASHINGTON -- In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 --"binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the U.N. -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

Read the whole thing... coz the paragraphs above were just a shot across The One's bow. It gets a LOT better.

Us and Them

You may or may not have heard something about the dinner The One had with conservative columnists last week in the home of George Will. The event was “off the record,” and precious little mention of it… or, more importantly, the things said at that dinner… have trickled out into the media. But there has been some mention. Here’s David Brooks, conservative columnist for the NYT, giving a tantalizing peek at the goings on:

JIM LEHRER: Now, David...Moving right along. You were at a special dinner with -- you and a few other right-wing fanatics... went to this off-the-record dinner at George Will's house.

I'm not going to ask you what was said. But what was the feeling that came out of that, from you? How did you feel?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he was carried in by cherubs with Oprah Winfrey spreading rose petals at his feet.

DAVID BROOKS: And he said, David, which sort of wine would you like me to turn your water into? That was...

JIM LEHRER: I see.

DAVID BROOKS: No, I -- we can't talk about what happened. But I will say a couple of things.

The one thing that comes across -- first of all, the one thing I will say is, it's a bunch of conservatives, mostly, and him. There was no sense that there were ideological sides. It was just a bunch of people sitting around talking about policy.

And there was no sides. And then I think the things that comes out of the whole series of interviews he did -- he did one with conservatives and the next day with liberals, and then The Washington Post editorial board, and I think...

JIM LEHRER: USA Today.

DAVID BROOKS: USA Today. And I think CNN.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But the thing that comes out, a couple things. One is the intense pragmatism of the guy.

I really think he's a Democrat. And Mark will be fine with him. But he really is empirical. And I think he sees himself as a very empirical person, data-driven, no grand philosophy of what the role of government should be, just what works.

And, second, I think a real sense of stability and order, which will be of comfort to conservatives. And he's emphasized this quite a lot this week, that we are going to be spending a lot of money over the next couple of years on the stimulus package.

But, over the long term, he's aware of the deficit, the possibility of fiscal imbalances. And he's very serious about Social Security and Medicare reform, entitlement reform, to get the long-term budget in line. And, so, if he's really going to be serious about entitlements, if he's going to get a commission that will help us solve it, then he can spend a lot of money in the next year or two -- I don't care -- because that's the real fiscal issue.

And -- and he stressed that this week in his public interviews, that he really wants to take care of that issue.

Quoted from The News Hour’s web site. And then there’s this from Bill Kristol, writing in yesterday’s NYT:

Barack Obama will assume that just and rightful authority at noon on Tuesday. After a dinner with him that I attended last week, as we said our goodbyes, I overheard one of my fellow conservatives say softly to the president-elect, “Sir, I’ll be praying for you.” Obama seemed to pause as they shook hands, and to thank him more earnestly than he did those of us who simply — and sincerely — wished him well.

The incoming president is the man of the moment. He deserves good wishes and sincere prayers. But I’ve found myself thinking these last few days more about the man who has shouldered the burdens of office for the past eight years, George W. Bush.

Kristol’s op-ed is worth the read, btw, focusing as it does on 43 and NOT 44. But we digress... my point is Kristol was at Will's house for the dinner and seems impressed. More, from today’s Financial Times (UK):

On his last night of freedom – so to speak – Barack Obama on Monday chose to host a dinner for John McCain, the man he defeated last November after a rancorous campaign. Monday night’s forgive-and-forget banquet followed an equally eyebrow-raising dinner last week at the home of George Will, the conservative columnist, whose guests included Bill Kristol, the viscerally anti-Obama neo- conservative.

In the build-up to probably the most feverishly awaited inauguration in history, the president-elect has been assiduously courting conservative enemies. Most supporters of Mr Obama accept the logic of winning over as many Republicans as possible in order to get maximum support behind the emergency bank bail-out and fiscal stimulus that he needs to push through Capitol Hill in his first few weeks.

In contrast to George W. Bush, whose political “boy wonder”, Karl Rove, said the support of 51 per cent of Americans was all they needed to accomplish their agenda, Mr Obama wants to build a bigger tent that enables Americans to transcend partisan differences.

The only people left scratching their heads are the liberals, who thought the incoming president was one of their own. Instead of appealing to the “better angels of our nature”, as Abraham Lincoln did in his inauguration speech in 1865, many want Mr Obama to take the fight to the conservatives, whom they believe got America into a mess.

Which, of course, is precisely the WRONG thing to do, assuming we… the American people… want our gub’mint to actually DO something, rather than continue the political posturing that’s gotten us exactly nowhere over the last few years. There’s a reason Congress’ favorable public opinion ratings are the lowest in history, and it ain’t due to the wonderfulness of our culture-warriors carrying their flags into battle. Yet some on both sides of the aisle want to perpetuate the madness.

I’m NOT saying conservatives should roll over and buy everything The One is selling… far from it. We should remain the “loyal opposition” and oppose policies and legislation that are in contravention to our core values, e.g., fiscal responsibility, small government, a strong military. What I AM saying is similar to what Maggie Thatcher told President Reagan all those years ago about Mikhail Gorbachev: “This is a man we can work with.” Put another way: becoming “the party of NO” like the Democrats did during Dubya’s first six years in office ain’t exactly smart, yanno?

The initial indications about The One being a politician Republicans can work with are good. After all, one would be hard pressed to find someone who was more anti-Obama than Mr. Kristol. In the mainstream, that is, we both know there are nuts on either side of the wire, Gentle Reader. I’m cautiously hopeful about The One… and I think he’s gonna be a whole helluva lot easier to work with than those old culture warriors on the left… like Algore or John Frickin’ Kerry. The trick will be convincing the old culture warriors on the RIGHT this is so, tho.

Never forget: politics is ALL about compromise. T’was ever so.

Holeee Crap!

If these are the...

Honorable Mentions: Bill Ayers, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Juan Cole, Kent Conrad, The Daily Kos, Bill Delahunt, Glenn Greenwald, Alcee Hastings, Christopher Hitchens, The Huffington Post, Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Jr. Caroline Kennedy, John Kerry, Ezra Klein, The L.A. Times, Mike Malloy, Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore, MoveOn, Michael Newdow, The New York Times, Michelle Obama, Rosie O'Donnell, Keith Olbermann, Michael Pfleger, Ted Rall, Bill Richardson, Randi Rhodes, Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Jeremiah Wright, Matthew Yglesias

Then who makes the cut for the "20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2008?" Well, you'll just have to go read to find out, wontcha? And no... The One ain't The One on this list. But he IS in the top ten...

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous...

What he said… “he” being Victor Davis Hanson… in his essay “Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts.” A couple of excerpts:

6. Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience. In the old days, I remember only that I first heard a variant of this accent with the old Paul Lynde character actor in one of the Flubber movies; now young men sound closer to his camp than to a Jack Palance or Alan Ladd.

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

I found myself nodding this ol’ gray head north-south as I read the ten things that tick Mr. Hanson off. There’s an assumption in that last sentence, but I feel pretty safe in saying VDH doesn’t look upon any of the things he mentions as a “good,” with the sole exception of his proposal that we (re)introduce Latin as a compulsory subject in public school. Yes… Latin. I can see the wisdom in Mr. Hanson’s proposal, even though I never took Day One of Latin. I did, however, take seven years of French… and that’s reasonably close. I really, truly feel my love for the English language (and my competency, too… such as it is) is directly related to the fact I was once fluent in French. That and the fact I had competent teachers back in the day (see VDH Item Ten, above).

As far as VDH Item Six goes… yes, I have had similar experiences. But NOT since I moved to New Mexico, not locally, at least. I personally think the feminizing of the Young American Male’s accent and manner of speech is mostly a metropolitan phenomenon, which VDH admits is a possibility. I encountered it all too frequently while living in the San Francisco Bay Area Soviet Socialist Republic, and that was six years ago. OTOH, the guys with the suspect accents I ran into just might have been gay. I’ve heard there are a lot of gay guys there, but have no personal experience in that space. (Added, later: the foregoing was said in jest. Of course there are lotsa gays in SFO, we all know that. The point I was trying to make... and badly, at that... was my GAYDAR sucks, for the most part. I can recognize blatant gay-ness nine out of ten times, like the stuff one sees in the Castro district. Otherwise? Hard for me to tell, if I even thought about it. Which I usually didn't.)

Nonetheless… I agree with VDH, especially when it comes to really old movies. But here’s yet another thought: all the guys in those really old movies, particularly war movies, smoked. And we all know what smoking cigarettes does to your voice… or at least we should. Think on that for a moment, Gentle Reader (whilst shedding a metaphorical tear [if you’re male] for those smoky female voices of yesteryear… like Suzanne Pleshette or Tallulah Bankhead. If you’re female you have lotsa male voices to choose from — see above).

Mr. Hanson closes his essay with a simple statement: “Well, with that done—I feel much better.” I’m sure you will, too… if’n ya read the whole thing.

―:☺:―

Signs o’ The Impending Apocalypse… (part of an on-going series)

“Obama collectibles:” Results 1 - 10 of about 2,210,000 for obama collectibles. (0.22 seconds)

“Obama commemorative:” Results 1 - 10 of about 659,000 for obama commemorative. (0.14 seconds)

“Obama collectors items:” Results 1 - 10 of about 364,000 for obama collectors items. (0.26 seconds)

“Obama collectors items” (images): Results 1 - 21 of about 256,000 for obama collectors items. (0.10 seconds

“Obama collectible magazines:” Results 1 - 10 of about 59,200 for obama collectible magazines. (0.17 seconds)

“Obama collectible coins:” Results 1 - 10 of about 24,100 for obama collectible coins. (0.21 seconds)

God Save Us.

Dirty Work... Second Try

Well… I’ve been wondering, ya know. I’ve asked the question from time to time and have never really gotten an answer. Why? Because there is no answer. Michael Kinsley, writing in the WaPo (“Let the Guy Smoke”):

Obama has never denied that he was a smoker for much of his adult life. He said as early as February 2007 that he had promised his wife he would quit in order to run for president. He also admitted as recently as this June -- when his presidential campaign was about three-quarters over -- that he hadn't done so. In May the Obama campaign released a carefully worded letter from his doctor, who wrote that Obama's "own history included intermittent cigarette smoking. He has quit this practice on several occasions and is currently using Nicorette gum with success." Obama has declined to amplify.

The instructions on Nicorette say to stop smoking before starting with the gum and to stop using the gum after 12 weeks. We know, because he has said as much, that Obama was still smoking the month after his doctor said he was using the gum. And even if he smoked his last cigarette on May 28, the day before his doctor said he was on gum therapy, the 12 weeks would have elapsed Aug. 20. Wouldn't you think that some reporter since then would have asked Obama whether the gum had worked? Yet no one seems to have asked.

“No one seems to have asked.” Dang, I may have heard that line before… somewhere. Ya think? This issue is a nit, to be sure, but it’s also symptomatic of the general lack of curiosity on the part of The Media where The One is concerned, innit? I’m also somewhat taken aback at Kinsley’s last word on this subject:

Obama's steely calm is now one of our country's major assets. If he needs an occasional cigarette to preserve it, let's hand him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way.

An Über-Lib offering apologies for the nasty habit, including a suggestion we just look the other way or even facilitate this deviant behavior? Well, now! Who’d a thunk it? No one gave ME that option back in the day when I still indulged. Nope… I had to go huddle in the doorway down on the street along with the rest of the degenerates to get my fix, all the while subjected to hard looks, glares, and the not-at-all-well-concealed opprobrium of passers by. One wonders if there will be ashtrays in the Oval Office or if Barack will have to step outside into the Rose Garden to quiet his Jones. Ditto for Air Force One, where I’m sure smoking is banned. Oh, well. We must be tolerant now, mustn’t we?

―:☺:―

Blown opportunity… That would be yesterday. I was up until the crack o’ dawn yesterday morning, going to bed somewhere around 0600 and staying that way until 1300 hrs. This sort of behavior always leaves me with something akin to a hangover, minus the throbbing pain. Nope… it’s just that left-of-center, out of sorts feeling that hangs on most of the day before we finally get back to what passes for “normal” here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington. So… why is this a blown opportunity, you ask? The weather, Gentle Reader… the weather. Yesterday was just flat frickin’ gorgeous. Bright sunshine, 72 degrees (at 1400 hrs, an hour after I woke up), and no wind. Perfect Happy Hour weather, in other words. I blew if off.

And I have regrets:

Today is NOT a nice day here on The High Plains of New Mexico. We will defer Happy Hour until sometime this weekend, as it were. More’s the pity.

―:☺:―

Finally… here’s some Steely Dan for ya. There’s no point at all to the Clintonista imagery, although it IS entertaining in a retro kinda way. Sorta. Nope… what we’re on about here is Dirty Work’s superb music and lyrics, as the song happens to be one of my all-time favorite Steely Dan tunes.

Good, innit? I'd tell ya why this song (ahem) strikes a lot of different chords with me... but I don't want to shatter any illusions you may hold about my...umm... moral values (and those of certain women in my past, as well). I leave you to wonder, Gentle Reader.

(You may ask what this "Second Try" is all about... I originally published this piece at 0942 hrs this morning. Blog-Bud Barry e-mailed me a few minutes ago to let me know the post was showing up in his RSS reader, but NOT in his browser. Sho 'nuff... IE couldn't see it, but all was well in FireFox. I cut and pasted the post into a NEW post, written in Blogger's "Compose" window, but the cut 'n' pasted bits didn't show up when I hit "publish." BOTH offending pieces have been removed... and I'm left looking a lil bit like the Verizon Guy... which is to say, wondering: "Can you see me NOW?")