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I used to think that there were two types of drivers on the road. Maniacs and Morons. A maniac was anybody driving faster than me and a moron was anybody driving slower than me.

There seems to be a lot of morons out there. Thanks god there aren't as many maniacs.

Anyway, today I'm adding a third category. Idiots. An idiot is that person in front of me at the construction zone letting everybody and his third cousin cut in front of him. Hey the 3 mile jam of cars behind you have nothing to do today either.

Blog wander

So, I'm on a blog wander this morning while I wait for the phone to ring to send me to Ghu knows what part of the country. The path I took this morning started with Lawdawg. Yes, I know, I was in for a good ride no matter what starting this way. Anyway, Lawdawg led me on to AD and so on. I ended up at VPC Blog. Maybe I was having a blonde moment, but I kept waffling back and forth between was this real or a send up. It gave me a few good chuckles. Always a good thing on a monday morning. I give it a flap of approval.

Where is the line.

Last weeks Gun Nuts:TNG pod cast was a good one. During the show a question was asked about where do you draw the line on, in this case, gun rights. But the same question could, conceivably, be asked about any of our rights. Where do we draw the line? I made an off-handed comment along the lines the hindsight is 20/20 and it's easy to look back and say, "Yeah, there's the line we shouldn't have crossed."

Let me put it too you that while something may be glaringly obvious after the fact, as you're barrelling up on it, it's not so clear.

Ask the victims of the Nazi regime and holocaust. It started relatively benignly. Lets just make it easier for "the undesirables" to leave. If they don't, well, we can enact some laws to make it easier. Step by step, a statute here, a demonstration there, suddenly, we've got death camps and pogroms.

Below is a time line of Nazi anti-Semitic growth and the infamous Nuremberg Law.
http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/holocaust/laws.htm
http://www.mnstate.edu/shoptaug/Timelines.htm

Do you think most of them knew what was happening until it was too late?

But back to the original point. The Constitution guarantee's some of our most basic rights. Where do we draw the line in defense of those rights from those who would take them away in the name of "our own good" or "for the children" or whatever fallacious slogan they've cooked up? There's often been talk of the slippery slope, but how do you identify those first few steps? When everything seems to make sense and nothing seems to have changed.

I only have my opinion. I'd say that we should have put the line at the point the founding fathers placed it and not one step backwards.

My apologies

I've been sparce on blogs this week. My flight schedule has been hectic, to say the least. My off week starts tuesday, I'll get some blogs I've had stewing out then.

A little bit of (almost) forgotten history

Have you ever been to Wendover NV/UT. It's a little border town sitting astride the Nevada and Utah state line on I80.

Now a days, Wendover is home to a number of casinos. Being right across the state line, it's nice and convenient for those who aren't... convenient... to Reno or Las Vegas, I mean. Of course it's wasn't always a casino town.

For those of you who don't like to make a study of history, here's a bit of it for you. Wendover UT used to be home of Wendover Army Air Corp Training Base and then later Wendover Air Field. Most of the airfield's runways are still there and a number of the original fields hangers and buildings still remain. It's a museum of sorts. You see, Wendover was the airfield chosen by then Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets as the staging and training site for the crews and B-29's used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That little bit of history happened this month in 1945. That makes Wendover a place that deserves to be remembered and preserved. In fact the pit they used to load the practice bombs into the B-29's is still there off in one corner of that field.

And here's a bit of trivia for all of you. As of 2002, so I've been told, every purple heart that has been awarded for the last 60 or so years has been presented with a medal commissioned back in 1945 for the invasion of main land Japan. You see, all the planning staffs had estimated that there would be a minimum of a millions casualties, wounded and dead, if the allies had to invade the main island. War being what it is, and the military being the way they are, they went ahead and had enough purple heart medals struck to cover the expected invasion. Thankfully, that price never had to be paid. The reason we never had to pay that price? Because Col. Tibbets and his men did their mission, successfully. Those two bombs ended the war.

You see, dropping those bombs saved 1,000,000 or more men having to pay a very high price. That's a good thing.

Why I carry.

This happened just before I left for work yesterday morning. I had to drive around the police tape and firetrucks.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080806_11_hr744416

As one of the chatters at last nights Gun Nuts podcast said, "When you need smoke and covering fire to get to work in the morning...."

This is the 4th murder in my complex this year. That's not including other crimes like home invasions, drive bys, drug dealings,....

And speaking of last nights podcast. A point was made in passing that has me pondering a blog. I'll post it when I get it polished enough for me to not be completely embarrassed by it.

The art of the possible

Politics has been described as the art of the possible. That may be the root of the problem. We've been electing politicians instead of statesmen. A statesmen is that elusive man or woman capable of leading a mass with resolve, morals and maybe even a bit of panache.

To me, today's politicians are the professionals at the art of the possible. They will say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done to reach that all mighty compromise. The thing they lack is that little thing called principles. Since they don't have anything they really believe in, the compromise becomes surprisingly easy.

Imagine for a moment that instead of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hancock, and the other 51 men who signed the Declaration of Independence and started the revolutionary war, we had Pelosi, Kennedy (Ted), Obama, Clinton, etc. for state representatives? Would we have had a Declaration of Independence, a war of independence? Or would we have had a group of politicians who would have repeatedly gone back and told their states to not rock the boat. "Hey they may have just passed a law that required all trade with the Americas to go through English ports first, but we got them to agree to leave estates larger than 1000 acres alone!" Would we be the country that we are now, or would we be something akin to a vassal state subjected to the worst of the colonial system that existed.

I'm sure that most of our politicians today started out as principled people looking to improve our country, but I think that inch by inch, compromise by compromise, they've become the occupiers of those chairs in the senate and congress that we have. Their concern stopped being about what was best for their state and more about what was best to keep their seat. They stopped being custodians of their peoples wishes and more about keeping "those people" from upsetting their life.

Big hint: Those People are the ones you're supposed to be representing.

When Jefferson took the office of the president, he took it with the belief that his principles would not be compromised. While he did make compromises in office, he never let go of his principles, to the extent that he lost many a good friend and angered a lot of people over them.

Would he or Adams be electable in today's political climate? Unfortunately, I don't think so. They had their beliefs and I don't think they included a nanny state that current America seems to enjoy. Their opponent would merely have to mouth whatever his handlers decided the masses wanted to hear and promised whatever gub'mint cheese was the current fad and we would be less as a nation for it.

Would the phrase "All men are create equal" even exist in our Declaration of Independence unless men of principle hadn't had the courage to stand up and be counted. Not only against an oppressive absentee government, but amongst themselves also.

Travelogue, the finale

HOME! Home at last! The idea is, since it's generally -50C or so at altitude, having AC isn't such a big deal. This being the thought process of the the office ijits that book the trips. And to that I have to reply, you're right, for the 1 to 2 hours that the airplane is flying up there, heat is not an issue. But the 4 or 5 hours we spend ON THE GROUND waiting for the trip to either start or end, it sure as shit does.


Moab, UT temperature at take off - 103F
Tulsa, OK temperature at take off - 97F
Birmingham, AL temp at take off - 92F


That's outside folks. Sitting in the cockpit is exactly like sitting in a car in the sun without AC. I didn't have a thermometer with me. But my bathroom scale says I lost 7lbs today.


Now, for your moment of Cloud Zen.

Hammer - Nail - Head...

Bullseye

Just go read

this

Talk about right on the money.

Travelogue

Okay, I'm going to subject y'all to another round of "vacation photos". Don't be a hater. You know I roll that way.

We've moved to Moab, UT. Just from the view out my window, I would have much rather spent 4 days here and overnighted in Eagle. But, them's the breaks.

And for the record... "but it's a dry heat"....

Here's the view out of my hotel window. I have to say a great improvement on the one in Eagle.