TRITIUM CONSERVATION TRUST

According to this silly article the world will have to accustom itself to a new crisis of dwindling earth resources. Jump on the bandwagon before it's all used up! This stuff doesn't grow on trees.

Only you can save little Trit!

NOT VERY GOOD

Washington DC is a pretty cool place to ride a bicycle. The roads are wide. The paths are extensive. Built on a swamp, it is comfortably flat. I was impressed that Justice Bryer is out and about riding his bike on one of the first really beautiful warm days of the year but they can be dangerous and with his record

remedial lessons might be a good thing.

MINDING THE RACE*

After the events of the day, as I finished reading tonight, I was struck by an easy question. Who is minding the race? Keeping it all civilized and mindful of the future...

It's a big job though. There's an awful lot of barbarism out there.
* "The race of reason, of course."

A LITTLE HUMOR

The Seitz System of Condensed Concordia found on the tubes a few days ago and we are amused.
1704 B.C.: Charshumash the Hittite bitten by first vertebrate; lawyers emerge from slime.
1444 B.C.: War of the Chaldean Succession; Pangea broken up in accordance with the Treaty of Uruk.
A.D. 1215 Magna Carta eaten by Velociraptor.

Clearly written by a man familiar with the grand sweep of history.

PUBLIC SAFETY

The article is weasel worded throughout but the language itself, pretty clear. Two citizens were hunted down and killed by the police after a 19 mile chase by 100 police officers through downtown ending in a hail of bullets. 13 police officers fired 137 bullets into the car and the bodies of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell; aged 30 and 43. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner ruled their killing at the hands of their police was homicide. They didn't even have a gun.

They should have armed themselves.

I wonder where the other 90 bullets the police fired ended up? Other police shot and killed a man outside the Empire State Building a few months ago. No big deal. But those two cops also shot 9 innocent bystanders in the process. For the public safety that was in it. It seems there is no end to the firepower police seem to need; everything from machine guns, shotguns, extended high capacity magazines, tactical gear, etc. Would some pass/fail weapons training and fire discipline go amiss? If they shoot this badly it's no wonder they want a few hundred rounds on each patrol but perhaps instead we ought to limit them to black powder muzzle loaders instead and thus enhance the public's safety. 

A Police SWAT armed with the Public's Safety in mind....

SELDOM SEEN

Intercom is for unauthorized personnel only! Wheelists!

BOLO

One of the Tailhook criminals staged a breakout and escaped custody today. Last seen flying

Heard to exclaim, "Phucket". FBI baffled.

VIEW FROM OLYMPUS

Dark. Cloudy. UPDATED

It didn't arrive on a missile or a truck. Pakistan has these things in its current weapons inventory and this guy

has his finger on the trigger. And this from infowars and Daily Mail is utterly vile and wrong.

 I'm not going to think about it for a little while.

MADE IT

Another trip around the sun. Happy B

                                                                                                               thday!

DESERT SHIELD

As the Shield turned to the Storm I was sailing a Kettenburg 41 like this

from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas with a friend who was on  her way to Scotland via the Panama Canal. It was a long ten day effort with a couple of days in Magdalena Bay sewing up the main sail which had suffered a blowout just as we were a quarter mile out from the entrance to the bay leaving us with nothing to make it the rest of the way except the jib.
When we got to Cabo we headed for a hole in the wall now called Squid Roe and other nicer places where we met a number of young fishermen from Alaska way who spent most of the year sunning themselves down that way before heading back north to catch fish or crabs.
I thought of them when I saw this

putting out to sea to ready us for the norK ballistic missile threat. It keeps watch in the far north in mountainous seas but it idles in Pearl Harbor. I'd sign on the idling crew in a heartbeat. The Great North crew? Not so much.

A BIT OF THEATER

I have always liked Margaret Thatcher but she wasn't my Prime Minister. This is an excellent bit of video of one of her former cabinet ministers addressing Parliament. While they get up to any number of stupid and boneheaded stunts they are, for the most part, admirable public speakers and put our lame politicians in the shade.
Courtesy of nimne

Just contrast with the Captain Kirk type performance of our performing actor/politicians.

CURING CONTINENTAL DRIFT

T=Thank you xkcd.com

ALL SECURE

Some muslims decided to blow up innocent people at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. In response the Police ordered everybody in Boston to stay inside or else:

oops. sorry. my bad.
The Police ordered everybody in Boston to remain indoors or else:

Police? I'm not sure that word means what you think it does...

AN AMAZING THING

I read about a Gated City in California today and of course this sprang to mind

 It's not really an island. That's either an artifact of global warming terrorism or the Barbary Pirates/English were interrupted towing it out to sea.

Cool isn't it?

CIVIL WAR LETTERS HOME III

These aren't in order yet. I have them all scanned now but still have to order them and type them up. I'm not sure if others prefer trying to puzzle them for themselves or read the transcriptions.

-->

Pittsburgh Battle Grounds
April 17th 1862
Dear Parents
This morning I started out to hunt some paper to write a letter to you on as our teams have not come up yet and my paper is all back with them. While on my hunt I came onto the 15th Regiment regulars where I seen Russel Deacons and he gave me some paper to write, a place to write and pen and ink to write it with. He belongs to Company A 15th U.S. Regiment of regulars. I suppose you have heard that our division (Woods’) got here in time to chase the enemy but not far as they had too large a force to harass them much on there retreat. Colonel Wagoner is commanding the Brigade I am in which is the 21 Brigade. The 57th, 40th and 15th Ind. and 24th - Regiments compose the Brigade.
In my next letter I will give you some particulars of the battle and of some of the Union Co. boys but I cannot do so this time as I am attending to Sam Neayre? who is sick and will have to go back to ---. None of the boys in our Company was hurt in battle.
I am as well as usual. Please write soon. I received your letters of the 6th a day or too ago. Direct your letters to me in the 15th Regiment Indiana Volunteers, Co. I, Capt. Patterson commanding, Co Col. Wood commanding Regiment
Your affectionate son
Luther Beaver

Mr Beaver
Dear Sir
This morning I happened to meet with your son Luther. I find him in good health. I am well also. Please inform my connection in Liberty that I am in good health~ through his kindness I pen these few lines.
                                         Truly Yours,
Corporal N. R. Deacon
Co A, 1st Battalion 15th U. S. Infantry
CHANGE ONE
Liberty comes up a lot in these letters for that is where they are all addressed: Liberty, Union County, Indiana.

PARTNERS

This is a whimsical post for the wind is out of the east tonight. I was reading this seriously amusing article at Big Lizards ----Don't Ask which I am anyway going to quote because I find it tickles the heart wonderfully. It has to do with people who, it seems, have not yet been clued in on the subject and persist in the rather foolish but sincere desire to marry.
Jeremy Irons was quoted as saying:

"It’s a very interesting one, that, and I don’t really have a strong feeling, but what I see … what we had in England, which was not marriage, but it was a union you could make if you were gay and you wanted to make a civil partnership … same rights but not the name … it seems to me that now they’re fighting for the name, and I worry that it means somehow we debase, or we change, what marriage is. I just worry about that. I mean tax-wise it’s an interesting one, because you see, could a father not marry his son?"

Zepps responded that there are laws against incest.
Irons, not to be deterred, said:

"It’s not incest between men. Incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don't breed, so incest wouldn’t cover that. Now if that were so, and I wanted to pass on my estate without death duties, I could marry my son, and pass on my estate to him."

Zepps: That sounds like a total red herring. I’m sure that incest law would cover same sex marriages.
Irons: "Really? Why?"
Zepps: "cause I don’t think incest law is only justified on the basis of the consequences of procreation. I think there’s also a moral approbation associated with incest."
I especially like the charming naivete of the Zepps guy who clomped so earnestly back into the debate by announcing that there are laws against that. HA! That's the whole point dumdum! There are laws!
I don't know how you feel about

but me? I think they have suffered enough. Why inflict them with marriage?

NET WORTH

I read a fascinating article about the Euro scheme in the Financial Times yesterday before it disappeared behind the pay-wall. Fortunately, it is referenced in Walter Russell Mead's blog Via Meadia in The American Interest. It is well worth a read if you're interested in what the future may hold for Europe and the Eurozone as Germans become aware that they are subsidizing the high-life of Club Med households in southern Europe with much larger net worth than German households. Britain has been doing the same thing now for decades as it supports far higher payouts and subsidies for everything in Scotland while denying or severely curtailing the same services for the English. I'm not at all sure how that works either.

Press on Oh Pioneer.

A DECADE OF WAR LATER

After a decade of war the Soldier Center has staggered out of a blinding bolt of lightning and realized that women soldiers do have some passing resemblance to

and perhaps the old idea of one shape of armor fits all is passed and opening. As you read the article though it's worth pointing to some of the other features that the Soldier Center and the Army are trying to wrap around their soldiers on modern sunny battlefields. The dismounted troops need a lot of power for all the gizmos they carry because they need them. They would not carry them if they did not need them. They are working on conformal batteries. A neat idea that is about 60 years behind the Army Air Force that was coming up with the idea of aerodynamics ages ago. The Army is probably also trying to wedge together diametrically opposed soldier wrapping ideas such as: it must be camouflaged for anywhere on land and it would be cool if it was air conditioned in hot and heated in the cold, looked fine as a parade uniform in garrison or at Pentagon lunches and if it was cheap, washable, collected solar energy, was waterproof, insect proof, chemical agent repellant and smelled good. It would be nice if it took a good crease with only a little starch and was made of whatever that wrinkle free stuff really is.
Progress in other areas was slow since a lot of the folks in Natick had no idea that it rains in desert countries but as you can see, they are making progress with the battle brolly which is being field tested at the front.

I can put a nice photo in here but I don't think I have permission to do so which is a regret.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Joshua Hedetniemi tests out the tactical capabilities of his new Iraqi friend’s umbrella while on a patrol to Nadeem Village, Iraq, April 9, 2009. The soldiers are assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry Regiment, 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania National Guard, Multi-National Division-Baghdad. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jacob H. Smith

Still some work to go.

POVERTY IMAGE A NATION

We don't hear about the hopeless cases so much anymore. There are places (not just Philadelphia) where the human condition has fallen so far that we have lost sight of it. I could be wrong. I disconnected from cable news and entertainment long ago and stopped reading papers when it became clear that most of the alleged news beyond the Pale was from the AP and thus utterly worthless. Africa may not have been completely abandoned by the press militant. They may still have their correspondents there reporting on the doings of the Ghanians, Malians, Rhodesians, etc but with the onset of Arab Summer I have seen little to no reporting anymore out of Libya, Tunisia, Morocco or our friend in Egypt. That changed today while reading Spengler. As usual he describes things very well.
There is no money in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood running Egypt now is making sure that it stays that way. They don't approve of infidel tourists. They don't approve of infidel antiquities. Pretty soon they'll try the Kim or Argentine trick and start making bellicose threats about attacking the evil ones in order to distract their own people from the fact that there is no money and no food. Honestly! You'd think with the rich example set here they could blame Aliens, Tea, Parties, or Global Warming and pull together the scratch to keep the lights on and the masses fed but no, we know who they'll blame don't we?
I think Egypt might be the genesis of the wonderful story about the king who spent all the money in the treasury buying weapons and soldiers and responded to his ministers who moaned, "the people will revolt if we do not do more for the poor," by replying, "I'll be ready for them." At least they'll have plenty of tear gas....till they run out.

It goes without saying doesn't it? They're our 'friend' in the middle east. The Shah's laughing his head off.

I HOPE THEY'RE HONORED

I saw another blogger had up a post about General Dempsey (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) sending his staff into the boondocks of the Pentagon in order to have them sniff and lick the admirals and generals working on the Joint Staff in order to determine if they are the right flavor.

 It is fiendishly diabolical in its intent and I so hope that they are Honored.

They have forgotten that the axis of the universe is irony and is greased by humor. No, those guys getting the sniff created this and now they can live with it too.

America's military--wasn't always a bookstore.

A GLORIOUS FUTURE

It's been there for almost a thousand years now as the residence of the Royal Family. It looks good for another 1000 years. They should let the various bits of the UK that want out of the Union leave. 

Think of the fun they'll have in 20 years taking back the bits they want. Probably recover the old family real estate in France and Germany too.

SELFISH BASTARDS

How are we going to get more of these

if people in San Francisco and the rest of the United States are forced to winnow through and remove all the trash from their trash before it goes to the rubbish pile? So San Franciscan of them; never thinking of the future and the rest of us.

READING

Congress has what many of us regard as an ongoing problem with actually doing their jobs. They are guilty of rushing to push legislation through the Senate and House without anybody ever even getting a chance to read it much less reading it at all before voting for or against it. It's hard to see how we benefit from such a legislative process. What's the rush?
Here's an idea

All bills to be read aloud into the record in each Chamber before the vote. Think of the benefits!

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DON FAITH RIP

He served in World War II and died fighting in a largely forgotten war in Korea a long time ago. The Department of Defense announced yesterday that he will be buried April 17, 2013 in Arlington National Cemetery. His fate was bound up in the third wave of the Korea War. There were many a Forlorn Hope in the first wave as the United States Army traded in the most precious commodity for time to reinforce the peninsula through the port of Pusan. There were probably fewer as the United Nations counter-attacked the communist forces and drove them back everywhere until finally, as the forward elements of those Armies reached the Yalu River, the Chinese attacked and overwhelmed the forces in the van of the UN attack. These two men died there.

I don't think it is possible to really know exactly what happened to Task Force MacLean, later Task Force Faith when the Chinese Armies attacked but for an idea you could do worse than this place. That said, it was a total disaster.

IF PIGS?

I saw in the news that a camel given to the Fuhrer of France was mistakenly eaten by the Malian family he asked to take care of it. That's the drawback with socialism of course, turn your back on it and someone always eats your camel. However, had the camel made it back to la belle France it too would would have learned a trade. Like this:

On the other hand this could be an abject lesson on abuse of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

Courtesy of gerardvanderleun

FOR SOME IT WAS A BAD DAY AT THE OFFICE

I used to do this and still would if I had a boat handy and it warms up a bit and if it stops raining and maybe when the lightning tapers off. Some of these clips are of professional sailors and thus the title. I never counted myself in that company but I did pitch-pole a 420 in Charleston once driving over a submarine wake during a race. I told my crew that she had it much easier than I did since she was so much closer to the front of the boat and thus nearer to the water as we buried the nose in the wake and the stern kicked up and over. A lot of these guys would have been much better off if they had learned to just "let go" the sail.

Many people think sailing is boring.

BROADBAND SURVEILLANCE AND DESPICABLE ME

I went to a website I know about and for the princely sum of $99.95 I requested full video surveillance of another person for a week. One of these

will follow the target of my fascination around for a week and I'll be able to watch the video in near real time by downloading it from a server. The web site is pretty cool. It allows me to select the type and model of drones used in the surveillance but it says that best results are achieved with a mix that they propose.

All I had to do to get the whole thing rolling was provide them with name and license plate data and the money of course. The company will take care of getting the drone to North Korea and establishing and maintaining surveillance on Kim Jong um. These little suckers are invisible and totally quiet so he'll never even know it's there.

The site says that they'll be offering armed drones in the near future. Laser Beams!!!

DESPAIR

Don't you love the champions of the poor? They are responsible for spreading misery on a planetary scale and never seem to realize it. They imagine that they are caring and  smart unlike the troglodytes on the other side and yet they do things that simply make one Despair.

Just like the idiots and marching morons of Heinlein and Kornbluth they never seem to realize that there is more to accomplishing a legislative feat to ease the handicaps of poor education and poverty then just passing a law. Heinlein's perennial favorite was the legislators who kept trying to enact a law making

=    3

 
So now we will see those that do not smoke pay for the health care of those that do because of the fairness that's built into the system by the inherent rights of others to your money and your children's money and their children's money. I don't mind people smoking as long as they do it downwind from me but don't these idiots realize that spreading the cost of the few self indulgent losers drives up the costs for the many? And doing this after making participation in the scheme mandatory for all? At least these thieves go to jail sometimes when they're caught. In case the link fails and we have to keep that in mind since it links to an AP story, it's about the staff of the Louvre going on holiday because of all the pickpockets overrunning the Louvre. 

There are others today who wonder if the decision to make all Americans pay higher premiums for smokers so that they aren't singled out to pay more might not just be part of a larger plan to drive private health insurance under. One would have to be a real conspiracy theorist to believe something that insane.  

A WORLD OF THEIR OWN

When I read about this earlier last week I thought it was a particularly sick and twisted joke but I saw one with my own eyes today in a parking lot here in MetroParkCentralisMassif:

It used to be easy enough in these matters to simply ask, "what has that person done with life to merit my vote for president of the United States?" Of course that lost all meaning when the current President was elected not once but twice and he never accomplished a single thing in his entire life. He's been 'studying' the Canadian Pipeline now for 4 years longer than it would have taken to build it. He's doubled the national debt in 5 years. He went 2 for 22 shooting hoops with kids at his own basketball court at the White House. He truly is a man of few accomplishments.

That said, what did Hillary or Michele ever do? Ever? Would anybody care to hold them up as counterweights to the Iron Lady who stepped into the clearing at the end of the path today?

Still, the country is more than out of money. We've had the Fed inflating the money by printing more money to buy worthless government bonds for years now. At some point when the world notices that the bad money has driven out the good, politicians are going to be thrown up against the wall. I'm OK with that. There is a certain justice in that--them dying of something totally preventable such as lead poisoning in this day and age.  The kind of merciful justice that would see every global warmist scam artist strapped to icebergs in the Arctic where they could also serve as polar bear snacks. We should be fair though and ask them if they want to go for their final ride in summer or winter.

Another win win.

SHALLOW LEATHER FACADE

Maggie's Farm invited us to look at the train wreck of an idiot. So I did.

Here is a man, an editor at GQ magazine, who published his written confession in GQ that he is something else. A COMPLETE IDIOT.

From the Magazine with the Masthead "Look Sharp Live Smart" comes a man who claims that he has spent $638,412.97 on Gucci leather clothing..for himself.

Now what kind of idiot subscribes to or reads a magazine with a narcissist like that at the helm?

The urge to paste pictures of this idiot in this post are nearly overwhelming or I could provide a link so you could see for yourself. But I won't. I will do what I think is best in this kind of situation.

Oh OK, second best. I was going to post an image of Meg Ryan from the film but this works on a deeper level.

THERE IS A TIDE

Grimmer Wormtongues speaking for the Ministry of Truth have been flailing the airwaves of late with their usual elegant disdain for facts and honesty. I won't argue with them since the Ministry of Truth exists to suppress the facts that reveal the true nature of the State. I will say though that those covered by the mantle of the Law in this country have finally reached the farthest shore and it must be no surprise that many a hand is now turned against them or indifferent to their fate. There was a time when the Law could rely upon men of good will to support them in the struggle for Law and Order. 

Law was once used to control parasites that harmed the peace and tranquility of the community but it has become the most damaging parasite in the body politic. When government and regulators have made everything a crime and thus criminals of us all it will be hard to find good men; honest and true, to stand up for the rules of Law that so disdains them. I thought the killings would start with the more egregious US Attorneys but there are so many who have given great cause for violence. No one is above the law.

They have created a juggernaut that is easily capable of hunting them down one by one and ending them. In spite of its flaws, this remains a society of free peoples and hounding them with the Law comes at a price that a man with nothing left to lose is fully willing to pay. It was better expressed elsewhere; don't do a grave injury to a person and leave them alive behind you.

PROXY WARS ARE SO 20TH CENTURY

For the moment and the foreseeable future it looks like the old fashioned proxy wars that ate up so much of the 3rd World during the last century are finally over. They ended decades ago in Europe and in Asia. They may have lingered in some of the unimportant little places that nobody much cares about but for the most part the vast military machines created during WWII and added to during the half century Cold War are relics of a forgotten time.

These days most of the young seem to vote communist and all the intellectuals and sport stars agree that Hugo Chavez, Fidel, Mao, Kim and Kirchner are all top notch A number 1 guys (except Cristina). They vote communist here and reckon it's a fine ism with no appreciable downsides. One has to think as they do that the Killing Fields were a justified extension of organic farming using pesticide free fertilizer but once you slide over that little bump everything else falls into place.

There are no existential threats to the continued glorious existence of the West except for deforestation, acid rain, global climate change, the sun, asteroids, those creepy tuna fish substitutes on sale at sushi places everywhere and maybe the Tea Party. They are all prone to overreact to the damnedest things but they have coalesced around one good idea. People must be controlled by their superiors for their own good.

The funny thing though is that every single other time this country thought that it had reached the end of war and ugly things like that, it was wrong. You know it was less than a hundred years ago that the Kellog-Briand Pact made war against the law. Yep. We passed a law about that.

SCRAP MERCHANTS OF DEATH

It's just a little thing I know and not much of a bother to anybody important so we shouldn't care but aren't you tired of reading about and hearing about all these places that have been hit by stupid metal thieves who will trash a million dollar house for the $200.00 of copper wire they'll get when they rip it from the walls and sell it to an honorable scrap merchant? I am. Oh sure I enjoy the stories about the really really stupid thieves that neglect to turn the power off before setting themselves alight but that should probably be curtailed too.

All this moronic posturing for gun control and yet I've never seen one single person (nor even a married person) stand up and demand that scrap metal merchants be licensed by the state and be inspected daily and have solid requirements to prove where every scrap of scrap metal came from. How hard can it be to find these purveyors of stolen goods?

Officer Bob, "nice load of manhole covers you have here clearly marked Washington DC Municipal Water System. Who sold them to you?"
Scrap merchant of death, "why I got them from a saintly little lady who represented herself to be the DC Congressional Representative's daughter the honorable dealer in metals herself."
Officer Bob, "prove it."
Merchant of scrap death, "why that's impossible! There is no way to prove who owned this stuff I bought as scrap!"

I realize that it is way too demeaning to demand that voters use verifiable government issued photo ID in order to vote but still, voters need them to get on aircraft and they need one to get into a courthouse and they need one to cash a check. It's really too hard to get scrap merchants of death to make a photocopy of every seller's photo ID and check the national database of licensed purveyors of scrap?

Oh OK. Probably 85% of the sellers of illegally procured scrap work for the municipal, state or country government and have ID but still there must be some way short of electrocution to rein in this trade in deadly metals.

DEEPLY FLAWED

They were all lost in a series of unfortunate events but I always thought they were the most marvelous things to come out of that age of the world.

SIGNAGE OF THE TIMES

One can find the most amazing meals on road trips.

LITTLE GIRL LOST

I was called to come and pick up a young lady the other day and to take her to campus where she wanted to go. She had boarded the wrong bus and found herself in an unfamiliar place and phoned for help. She was from deeper in the MassifCentralis where to describe the housing and neighborhoods as blighted is to have a PhD. in understatement. I looked around the neighborhood I found her in and it was nice and it struck me again why some people won't pick up and move away even from the very worst places on earth.

 A lot of people still live in various hellholes on earth and won't move and I wonder why not? What keeps any person living in Detroit? It cannot be the job so good that it cannot be beat elsewhere. I lived in Detroit and I won't go back. Even Karachi is nicer and probably safer than Detroit or Chicago. Let's face it. When you can be a member of the high school band that played for the President of the United States one day and be shot to death in your own neighborhood the next day, it's passed time to find a new place to live in another environment.

On the gripping hand, there are some people that nobody wants to have around.  Like these little sneaks that won't even look you in the eye.

THE OTHER SIDE

I'm not a reaper.

Honest.

In our opinion she also has oddly short legs.

See that up there. That called to mind finding myself at work one day looking at one of my Gun Fire Control-men who was covered with bandages and band-aids. I asked him what in the world happened to him and he explained as how he had said something unflattering to the Mrs. at breakfast and she went after him with a fork.

MORE FROM THE HIDDEN UNIVERSE

Nope. Not there. But can't you see the frenzied tearing off of the electrical panel door in the event of a fire?

MAKING STUFF

I make up words but I know how to spell them so it's OK.

VINCIBLY IGNORANT ZEALOTS

Whenever I want to hear some ignorant zealots pontificating about things they know absolutely nothing at all about, I listen to NPR.  One has to almost admire the purity of their indoctrination and the way they relentlessly stay on message. When they have occasion to discuss gun control they always line up 2 people each more rabidly in favor of gun control and arm themselves with talking points from the Brady campaign and then start outtwisting each other in their efforts to pillory any and all stupid ignorant clinging trolls who FAIL to understand that GUN CONTROL is only about keeping guns away from bad people.
I used to listen to them for the humor that was in it. Seriously, a long trip could go by in no time listening to Radio Pacifica interviewing the various guests all sincerely arguing the case that if we just killed all the cows we would reduce the global warming. Serious talking heads getting to the heart of the topic and laying bare the undeniable greed and inhumanity of the Tea Party.

Very progressive NPR liberals in a heated discussion about how bad school choice is and how very important it is that everybody understand that the 2nd Amendment doesn't really mean anything at all since they didn't vote for it either.

Look at the world as it really is. If you don't know how it really is, visit it from time to time.

LIVING ON A VOLCANO

Volcanoes are beautiful and majestic upwellings of frozen planet stuff. Yes, somebody left it out too long and it got all dried out but they are magnificent. I wouldn't live on a live one though. It is, after all, just a matter of time. I see the good folks of Korea living there on that volcanic slope known as the GSMA (Great Seoul Metropolitan Area) and I always consider that they live atop a volcano and wonder that they do for the fires that rage beneath are not those of an uncaring earth but rather the flames of madness, ambition and war made flesh in the form of the Tyrant of North Korea. Three generations of diseased fiends who rule a nation steeped in terror.

I object to the indoctrination efforts of the progressive leftists that run the education system from top to bottom in the US but they are a pale shadow of the progressive liberal indoctrination of the norK state. In my less temperate moments I concede that it is the goal and ambition of every progressive liberal in America to emulate the norK indoctrination machine and teach their message of gentle inclusion and diversity....with the same sort of penalties for doctrinal error on the part of the counterrevolutionaries.

When we listen to the talk and rumors of war--or the outright declarations of War ringing out from Pyongyang I think of the residents of Seoul. 99% Korean. 100% in artillery range of norK and in the sites of a regime that has shown an evil inclination to kill job lots of unbelievers for heresy and which has every kind of weapon of mass destruction ever made by man. Looking at the vast size of GSMA it might be easy to believe that even a heavy rain of high explosive won't lay waste to the entire town but then I don't believe for a second that it will be a heavy rain of explosives but rather the worst type of the most persistent chemical weapons known to mankind. I used to wonder how even the norK commissars would move the troops expeditiously through the GSMA enroute to Pusan so they could redo the War without the mistake of leaving any ports for the US to come back through. Well, if the GSMA glows in the dark and its touch kills instantly anybody who stops to loot, the rampaging armies of the Kim's won't be shopping after all.

FOR RUSSIA WITH CONCERN

As I reached this point I discovered that I had read a lot of Russian history and one thing struck me over and over again. There were a few brief moments in history when it was possible to leave Russia and the Soviet Union. An ordinary citizen could walk across the borders and get away clean if he didn't look back. Looking back as one flees the hells on earth has been a bad idea since biblical times. I wouldn't do it.

In Russia it was a death penalty offense to leave the State and severely punished. Occasional windows were let open for fleeting instants when Russians could get out and now is such a time. You could walk away and you and your descendants could survive in the West. Leave.

Oh, it's so easy to say that we here in the West don't have it any better and I'll argue that we do but more importantly we have the means and the ability to walk away from the State whenever we want to and move anywhere on the planet if we choose. Life under the Mongols sucked. Life under the Tsars sucked. Life under the Communists sucked and let's be honest, nothing I've seen of the Kleptocratic Totalitarian State is all that appealing or desirable. With Putin still running things and quickly reconstituting all the old anti-proletariat anti-serf controls it's passed time to begone.

The beauty of the West has always been its transcendent hold on its populations. Over here YOU can always get away. If you want to go to Hell on Earth you can even go there with our blessings. There are so many people that sincerely believe that Cuba is a paradise unfairly maligned by the US but then I see another State that forbids any of its people to leave. It would rather hold them in jails forever than allow them to go elsewhere. What sane regime does that?