I have freely admitted on numerous occasion just how hard it is for me to ask for help.  I am generally pig-headed in this regard.  I admit it.  I would much rather be the helper than the helpee.

I really don't think, no, I know there is not a superiority  issue involved.  I think that pre-disposition is based upon a deeply worn track in the mental vinyl that says, "Earn it."

This one is way beyond me - I am asking for help - PLEASE.  No - PRETTY PLEEEASE!!  Sugar, maple syrup, chocolate and/or bon bons on top.  Please, please, please - please God, just a small earthquake.  Nothing big - just focused.

I know there was a promise of no more water.  I think fire is not what You prefer to use.  I really know I should not be asking.  BUT I am over the top.  I think a mistake was made and life from some other planet was mistakenly allowed to take over a very small part of our country.

A small, targeted, efficient earthquake would fix it.  I'm sure.  Drop that little piece of dirt into the ocean and return the alien souls to wherever they were supposed to be in the first place.

This - Berkeley (yes - go ahead - click the link and see the results of bodysnatchers for yourself ) - defies any judgement that it is composed of life that by any earthly standard would be deemed "sentient".  There has been a mistake.

So - please God - just a small one.  I am out of patience.  I know it's wrong. 

I know we should be after the "hearts and minds" but... what do we do when those both are missing?

Yeah, well... life never throws simple pitches.

We are at this again but, time must cooperate for me to stay up to date.  Let's hope my mornings will lend themselves to my efforts to become a bit more consistent in getting the thought coagulated here.

For all the uninitiated - Ayn Rand was a tortured soul.  I am laboring, at long last, through "Atlas Shrugged" (go here)  and am well, a bit overwhelmed.  She got it - relative to collectivism, communism and socialism.  What a miss in terms of living life joyfully.

We have much to be thankful for.  We have a constant fight to preserve that for our children and theirs.  Humanity, and liberalism in particular, is/are entropic.  Never let anyone fool you.

Do something - invest yourself in others - prove Edwards/Obama/Clinton wrong.

Every once in a while, you do need to slow down and actually read some of the stuff put together by those with bigger hearts and intellects.  Poetry has not been my thing since high school but, there is a great deal which can be said in a short space.

The following came to me by a trusted source.  I hope it is properly credited.


A Different Christmas Thought

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night." "It's my duty to stand at
the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."
"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
 
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq.

I love this Country.  This is one of those things I have no questions about, even in the dark recesses of the cranial vacuum.  I really do love this Country.

The good we have done, the experiment with granting (as much as is possible within human terms) every person the right to be who they can and do what they see as right, the invitation we have offered to the world to be free.  I love our founding fathers' real vision and pursuit of right amidst the turmoil of survival.

But I stand amazed.  How this wonderful place could foster the lunacy that inhabits the minds of it's children, I have no idea.  I am trying to hold my cookies down over the thought of someone as morally bankrupt and idealogically broken as is Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House.  What have you all done.

The idea that people could mistake anything that has come out of the left in the past 40 years as being worthy of leadership astounds me.  How did we let our country so thoroughly lose its collective mind?

Who is going to fly over and tell the troops now that the country has decided it doesn't give a damn about their sacrifices (AGAIN!) and we have handed over leadership to idiots without the savant?  What do we tell Tony Blair who sacrificed his political life to stay the course and FINALLY do something to fix the world that liberals let happen?

I have to go figure out how to get up tomorrow and face Huxley's world.  Pelosi and the other rabid secular progressives certainly aren't brave and their ideaology and world vision isn't new.  It's the same book Castro, Chavez, Chirac, Jong Il, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, ad infi. have read and edited.  It isn't the same as the cover art.

Corruption and anti-accomplishment is on the way.  Is anyone happy about that?  Didn't we do 42+ years of this and almost destroy the economy, military, and national identity?  Can anybody tell me what the flip people are thinking?

Good luck with the war for our very survival Mr. President.  The rest of the country has left you hanging.  My apologies. 

So, I have always liked Aussies.  Even before Olivia.  The table manners of some of my friends from down under are, well, a bit rough at times but, that aside - great people.

Further proof of the "like-worthiness" of our friends WAY down south is a young lady named Beccy Cole .

Follow the link above and find out why.  Worth the listen, worth buggin' WalMart to get her records (did that date me? - CDs, I know).  Tell them to replace the Dixie Chicks with Cole's stuff.  They would certainly sell better.

VOTE TUESDAY!

OK.  After having taken a hiatus of many weeks, I am completely without the ability to shutup.  The secular progressives / liberal shocktroops / profoundly out of touch / inanely selfish (your choice of moniker) among us have endangered us all yet again and yet continuously.

How did we get here?  Can 40+ % of our population REALLY be so stupid?  How is it not clear how fragile our freedoms, liberties and ability to do right really are?  The thin veneer of civilization can crack with pressure and the not-so-far left is trying really, really hard to make that happen.  I have to assume they just don't understand what that means.

Here.  The Arab States are now rushing toward nukes. Why?  Not because of George Bush or because we are in Iraq or because we beat the pants off the Taliban and liberated millions.  No.  BEACAUSE WE HAVE NOT DEALT WITH IRAN.

We are berated by the monsters we have created.  No, not Noriega.  I mean the Hollywood monsters.  They twist our national empathy for those who are tortured and murdered and abused and they use that empathy to make us think our failures make us evil.  Poppycock.  The biggest failure we have made is letting these idiots and their ancestors talk us out of dealing with evil when we have set out to do just that.

How about we put George Clooney on a tour through Darfour without security?  Better yet, how about the night streets of Capetown, Hyderabad, Istanbul, Moscow, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Brussels, or just about anywhere his motley crew of bleaters tout as being morally superior to the USA. 

It would be a quick lesson in just how civilized the rest of the world is without the rule of law and the Judeo-Christian ideals we fight so very hard to keep alive.  What gives with people who hold up everything but what is true and just as true and just?

Am I making any sense?

My frustration with empty coddling of the masses is simply boiling over.  Promise me anything as long as I put you in power.  Right.

Go vote.  Use your brain.  Have a little fear, no a great deal of fear, of those who would sacrifice our entire culture to enthrone themselves and an ideology of self-gratification over all else.

Be afraid of those who would speak of hope and equality and truth when they have proven they mean debauchery, socialism and ordained leftist blather. 

Did we learn anything in Germany, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba or Panama?  Why are we not screaming from the streets about Venezuela, Iran, China, North Korea and others?

God help us with our apathy.  Me too.

We have spent a great deal of time in the Southwest U.S.  Amazing sunsets and an equivalently amazing diversity of environment make the area appealing to such a broad brush of humanity.

In that soup of culture I have been often surprised at how many people are so much smarter than most of the "mainstream" media (MSM), smarter than the general staff at the U.N., and apparently smarter than much of the French population across the globe.

In the face of continued and typical U.N. treachery and corruption  we are still being pummeled daily with exhortations to allow the U.N. to take the lead in dealing with Hezbollah.  Have they not been at that task for the past ummm.... 11 years?

I have talked to many, many Arizonans who think that repeatedly allowing the same horse to throw you, let alone kick you, without changing your approach is, well, kind of stupid.

In a truly amazing display of journalistic prowess, we have seen heralded how really, truly sorry Nasrallah really is about kidnapping Israeli soldiers.  If he had only known the consequences, he would have never allowed the mission.  Hmmm.  What a great guy.

I did not have to have deep conversations with folks from New Mexico to find out that they generally disapproved of people who set out to kill the children of others (or worse - their children) or who were actively engaged in terrorism.  They did not have a problem with polite mis-labelling either (i.e. - no guerilla or freedom-fighter ephitet).  They pretty much thought such folks were lower than shower mildew.

Now that we have been treated to a great round of Russian/Chinese technology, packaged in Iran and displayed in testing  in the Sea of Oman, maybe we should throw money at the wealthy Iranians to see if they will talk before nuking Tel-Aviv?

It is funny that the cattle ranchers from Colorado I talked with a few weeks ago saw things as pretty clear.  It simply does not make sense to save your anger until after your enemy has killed you dead.  It is hard to do anything at that point.

So how about we deal with the Iranian nuclear realities.  So how about we sit down and talk in terms the U.N. does not understand - honest negotiation.  Stements like, "If you continue to pursue nuclear weapons we will make very sure that you do not come into possession of them" would clarify some muddled thinking.

Iranian actions, their support and use of terror, and their irresponsible use of the power they have had to date presuppose that the world can take no chance in allowing this to continue any further.  They will use anything they can to destroy "infidels" - Israel first and any other country or group thereafter.

Do not pass "GO", do not collect $200.  Meet G.I. Joe.  And we HAVE taken the high road - we have been talking to Iran through channels for years.  Now those channels need to be very clear in what they communicate.  We will stop you.  We have to stop you because you are not mature enough to act like an adult with adult toys.  Sorry. 

Beyond all else that these past few days have placed on our vista, our hearts are very laden and our prayers are with those families and friends of the victims of the tragedy in Kentucky .

A vicarious thanks to all those who responded to the scene and valiantly did their best to render aid in a nightmare.

When I was a kid (which was really NOT that long ago - no really), in one place we lived we had about as fancy of a bathroom as anyone in the neighborhood.  Not only was our bathroom the neighborhood envy, it was actually set apart from our house on display (if you took a bit of a turn coming up the drive) for most all to see.

I am one of the few (and proud apparently) of anyone near my age to have experienced a bathroom at the base of the garden.  Not only did we have that separate building, it was roofed and shingled and had a working door with a latch.  Beyond all else, it was dually ported - i.e. a two holer (pronounced "2 whole-er"). 

You learned very quickly on which side to set the flashlight or you lost it.  Not that I ever did that.

Being that close to the reality of offal in life's journey imbedded some basic concepts.  You just get helpful insights such as the fact that there are things that you do not allow in your living space.  And other intuitive lessons - no good thing could come of getting in the pit under the outhouse.

Maybe we need to setup some outhouses to begin to imbibe the rudiments of basic wisdom to groups of our citizenry.  No matter what effort you make, the stuff in the pit simply has to be dealt with as what it is.  Bury it, burn it, compost it, grow mushrooms in it, dump it in the river, whatever.  It is what it is.  No matter how you categorize it, refer to it, illustrate it, or re-characterize it - it is what it is.

You don't get any points for pretending it is something it is not.  If you don't deal with the offal as what it is, you could get pretty sick.  You could endanger the health of your family.  It could even endanger your life (remember the guy last year who was cleaning his septic tank and fell in?).

The point is this, there are people in this world who simply belong in the pit.   They are evil.  Yes Virginia, I mean evil.  They cannot be molded, shaped, colored, trained, compromised or taught to be anything else.  Am I a fatalist?  In no possible way.

It is demonstrable that people can make decisions that, due to their elimination of any options for rescue, cannot be reversed.  There are people who have chosen to be so evil in the process of how they view man, God, women, children, or whatever, that there is no saving them from themselves.  At least by man.

Their only objective in negotiation is to put you in a position of weakness so they can take your life.  They believe your life is an impurity on their planet and must be purged.  They believe that blowing up planes over the ocean will win them favor with God (thank you MI5 and all others involved - a big Yankee  thanks). 

(momentary diatribe here - let's just get this out there - you can't win favor with God guys, get over it.  Nothing you can do is going to impress God, no matter how stupid, vile, valiant or impressive among mortals.  Hmm - the Guy that hung old Sol is going to recognize you going splat as something impressive...  If mercy and grace gave you air which doesn't kill you, how can anything you do earn a thing from Him when your very life is already a gift?)

Again - yes Virginia, there is evil.  You don't move evil into your house.  You don't negotiate with evil.  There is always room for genuine repentance/change of heart.  BUT, evil you hunt down and destroy.  You deal with it, you don't wallow in it, befriend it or send your sons and daughters to live with it.

I think Israel is just about to about to, at long last, deal with some offal in a direct and appropriate fashion.  Don't give me moral equivalence Mr. Annan.  There is none.  Israel has not blown up planes, trains and automobiles for the PR value.  Israel has not forced civillians into a house so they can be blown to pieces for the benefit of international media.  Israel has not setup the international community to receive their relatives in pieces after being blown up over the Atlantic.

By the way, when you insist on calling good evil and evil good, when you persist in painting refuse as an ideal our youth should hold in high esteem, you come precariously close to belonging in the pile under the out house yourself.

Cheerio and High-ho to the blokes across the pond.  Keep on your toes and good hunting.

For years and years we have all had to put up with the continuous parade of excuses for the antics and atrocities of the fascists in drag.  Often the murders of children and targeting of the unarmed was explained as a, "retaliation for the atrocities of Israel".

Sunday talking heads have made it plain that they will force the idea of moral equivalence between what was the only functional democracy (for over 40 years) in the middle east and a terrorist organization.

The unquestionable evidence of multiple instances of misreporting, suppression of facts, and even doctored photos and video seems to indicate that ethical icons are being shattered in sacrifice to ideologies akin to those that cost us entire cultures in history.

It would be easy to be fatalistic and depressed in the face of this constant wash.  Don't do it.  What these who appear to have ransomed their soul do not understand is that we have longer memories than the last episode of Seinfeld.
 
I wasn't alive during World War II but I remember it.  I missed the sweltering heat and mortal cold of Korea, but I remember it.  I did not get sucked down into the mud or trapped in the enveloping jungles of Vietnam, but I remember it.

I remember that the Nation was afraid of some unruly State (like Iran, Syria, or North Korea) holding democracy hostage by going nuclear.  We, on the right, were concerned that the next generation would have to clean up what was left behind, if they could,  if the job did not get finished there and then.

When I see weaponry reports on Hizbollah that demonstrates they have been equipped like a State army, I remember all the work that was done, and all the lives that were sacrificed so our brightest and best wouldn't have to do this again.  But it is being brought to us and pushed in our face.

No matter how many times I hear the bells chimed in praise of the rainment of Nazrallah, Kim Jong-il,  Ahmadinejad, Castro, or others, I remember the naked truth.  We are winning.  We will win.

We must still fight.  From the stupidity of the elitist media to the very real battle for life and liberty in Israel now.  But we will win.

One more thing.  I like Secretary Rummy.  He gets it.  Keep up the fight - don't lose sight of the prize.