Is This the End of Hamas? Civilized Humans Hope So.

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

-       Golda Meir

 Western Ignorance on Parade

It is most disturbing to witness the rise in blind, rabid anti-Semitism that oozes out of the sewer every time Israel is put in the unfortunate position of having to defend itself in the same way any country would. I had a most unsettling discussion with someone a few weeks back.  Being of part English and part Indian ancestry, she is a sweet and attractive, spunky girl with amazing eyes.  

She is also a dupe in the all too common and predictable propaganda war launched against Israel every time that nation even discusses its own defense. She is daily drinking the pro Palestinian Kool-Aid.

What is most astounding this time, is how the young people are taking to it.  In Europe they are unashamedly shouting things like, “Jews to the ovens!” in their silly, shallow, uninformed demonstrations. It’s like Occupy Wall Street meets the SS.  In Canada, from whence my correspondent hails, one of their social mentors is (get this) Doctor David Duke.  What the hell did he get a degree in, Militant Mouth-Breathing?  

Those under 40 may be forgiven for not knowing this name.  That cohort and the next are not setting the world on fire with their ability to read and understand even recent history.  But those who remember the battle for the right in this country just a few years ago, remember Duke as a rabid racist politician.  A punk of the first order and still the archetype the left conjures when they want to distort what it means to be a thinking conservative in this country.

The irony lost on my debate opponent is that Duke would look on her as being a lower form of life than even his dreaded Jew. Anybody who thinks David Duke gives the least shit about Palestinians or Jordanians or Anglo-Indians almost deserves to be treated as a rube.

Equally disturbing is how gleefully the press dives into the fray, reporting from the Middle East how “terrible” the toll is on the poor Gazans and politicians talk of proportioned response; more on this later.

But at times like this, it is easy to see how a Hitler can rise to power and how a Mussolini was such a darling of the American and European left * in the thirties.  When you are ignorant of facts and are ruled by your emotions, it is easy to be led down rosy paths into the jaws of the dragon.

But there is hope.  As we look upon the excrement that fills the ranks of the organizations fighting in the name of the religion of peace, even Hollywood elites are starting to throw up in their mouths a little bit.  With a few glaring exceptions, even these champions of previous senseless violence are starting to admit that beheadings and human shields are nothing more than cowardly and psychotic.

The Historical Backdrop

Consider first, the history of this silly region.  Broken into pieces by self-important “intellectuals” such as Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations, the region was supposed to look upon us as their mentors and suddenly become advanced and civilized.  There was nothing wrong with us deciding what area would and would not become a nation.  It was theirs to simply accept the new world order and behave.  Resentments roiled immediately and kept the area in turmoil until the end of World War II.  In 1948, the second League of Nations, the U.N. (just as incompetent as the first) had to consider, among many things, what to do about a declaration dating back to the 1920s, giving the Jews a homeland.  Everyone was holding their breath to see what the US would do.  To his credit, Truman gave it more thought than Clinton gave our recognition of Bosnia, another fuse lit by the intellectual west, recreating pre WWI Europe.

George Marshall, then Secretary of State advised against recognizing Israel at that time, threatening to literally withhold his vote for Truman if the US did so.  In Israel, David Ben-Gurion was practically begging the leaders of the new country NOT to establish a country based on religion, but to make Israel a purely secular nation.  Sadly, the US recognized an Israel that chose to be a Jewish (religiously speaking) state.

[The author, with the advantage of historical hindsight, believes that Marshall was right.  Marshall was a realist and knew that forcing the issue of recognition would morally bind us to the region and not lead to stability.  Further, the author is an atheist who cares nothing for religion on any level.  Ben-Gurion was also right.  He took power with a heavy heart.  He knew that identifying Israel with ancient superstition was no way to enter a hostile world.  It gave enemies just one more bullshit excuse to foster hate based on their own outrageous superstition.]

The simple fact is, we did legitimize Israel.  We did enter into alliances with them.  We are bound, unless those alliances are scrapped, to assist them and we have.  And with one completely legitimate exception, the Six-Day War, 1967, Israel has made it easy for us to help them. After seeing the pointlessness of cross-border hit and runs of the 1950s, they don’t attack first.  If you look at the history of the battles, skirmishes and terrorist attacks that have occurred since the canal crisis, Israel has always responded to attack.  They don't unleash an unprovoked offensives against a neighbor.  

In 1967, with five countries massing on their border, and Nasser stupidly announcing his determination to destroy Israel, Israel knew they were in big trouble.  The decision was made to fire the first shot and try to put an end to the attacks with this the third war since ‘48.  It was then that they took control of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem from Syria and Jordan and the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt.

Here is where the arrogance of the modern West comes into play.  For eons it has always been accepted that territory gained through war, especially through wars where the aggressor was the loser, was the rightful territory of the victor.  It is only in very recent times that Western culture has made a practice of giving territory back to the vanquished.  Israel was and is under no moral obligation to simply relinquish one square inch of the occupied territories.  However, since 1967, they have repeatedly offered to trade land for a sustainable peace with anyone who would take them up on it.

Long before the 1973 war, Israel was back to the don’t-shoot-first policy.  On the morning Yom Kippur, Golda Meir was in consultation with her cabinet.  Moshe Dayan, no daisy he, said that he thought war might not actually be immanent. This despite having five countries poised to attack in huge numbers.  Another cabinet member told her that she should attack immediately.  He surmised, as history was soon to verify, that not striking first would result in the loss of many more lives than necessary.  Meir considered her options.  She decided against pre-emption for fear that if there was a war, they would lose any support they might still have.

What a disgusting matrix this must have been on which to make a military decision.  The whole world knew that the Arabs were poised to attack and knew they probably would.  But if Israel fired the first shot,“friends” might have abandoned Israel.  Kissinger had made this pretty clear later the same morning.  Gaza is the same insanity, writ small.

Sadat and Begin: Pragmatic Heroes 

The first success with land for peace came with the Camp David Accords.  Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, two old war horses who had last seen each other while shooting across a dining room at each other in the bad old days, had negotiated the return of the Sinai to Egypt.  The treaty that resulted has lasted 40 years.  It was almost ruined during the year that religious **nut bags ran Egypt.  But it still stands.

Israel has also abandoned a part of the West Bank in accordance with the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum.  Israel's reward for the latter was Arafat announcing a new intafada.  Sometimes, the liberal view of rich people is correct.  In this case, Arafat, a billionaire from skimming money that belonged to his constituents, behaved very pigheadedly.  You see, in the case of many among the Palestinian leadership, real peace and coexistence is not as profitable as constant conflict and living off foreign aid. But the PA still controls those areas that Israel gave up.

A later land for peace deal also didn’t go well.  In a deal with the Palestinian Authority, Israel gave Gaza back.  Here is where my niece and the western press lose all credibility and all connection to reality.  Who doesn’t remember Israeli troops dragging Israelis (many of them religious nutbags as well), kicking and screaming from the homes they had built in Gaza?  But they did it.  I was among the people scoffing at the idea.  I thought the PA would balk on their deal and Gaza would become a problem again.  I was wrong.  The PA, weak and utterly corrupt, was ousted by Hamas.  Now it was an even bigger problem.

It is important to understand that these terrorists organizations are, to a man, corrupt.  Most of these “freedom fighters” would do a drug deal as quickly as blow up a pizza parlor.  And many have done similarly.  But in Hamas’ case they were more disciplined and cold-blooded than the PA.  Taking over Gaza was easy.  And when they did, kidnappings, tunneling, and rocket firing commenced. 

Israel warned Hamas repeatedly that the rockets must stop.  And they did for a time.  Hamas had made a deal for some better rockets and needed to rearm.  In the latest round of unpleasantness, larger rocket raids started along with some cross border incursions through tunnels.  That was enough.  Israel made a decision to put an end to these attacks.  As is always the case, Israel responded to aggression.  The fact that this aggression was breathtakingly pointless and a danger to every Gazan is beside the point.

Let's Be Honest…

You’ve heard this analogy several times, but imagine if you will, a world where Quebec succeeded in breaking free of Canada.   Picture further, a band of angry members of wehatevermont.com setting up rockets in Montreal.  They place them in hospital basements, schools and malls and fire them into Vermont from the same areas. Some hit fields, some hit cows and some hit people.  The US government would probably issue one extremely stern warning.  With the firing of one more rocket, the drones and fighters would be in the air.  Using laser-guided munitions, they would hit every launcher they could find.  If rockets were spotted in schools and hospitals, there would be a warning for people to leave those areas.  But the warnings would not go on for a week as they did in the case of Israel/Gaza!  With the Montreal example, the whole world, with the exception of nut bags, would agree that the people responsible for collateral deaths were the un-evolved scum that put the rockets in public places.  But not if you are Israeli.  Right now it is fashionable to wax fascist and disparage Israel for correctly disposing of this violent batch of vermin.  Maybe, in their absence, a return of the West Bank becomes a possibility.  Israel has put it on the table several times before. 

So, what of this concept of proportioned response?  The next time you hear this phrase, blow raspberries at anyone saying it.  I will tell you what things like “proportioned response”, “limited war” and “winning of hearts and minds” will get you.  It gets you decades of violence, ever-increasing hatreds and military failure.  Vietnam was a limited war.  Afghanistan was a limited war, Iraq was a limited war. By what twisted logic do you defend yourself by using the same force being applied?  Does it extend morally to personal self-defense?   Should one carry an assortment of weapons to be sure that if attacked, they respond with a weapon of the same caliber and range or blade length as is used by the attacker?

Let’s return to my wehatevermont.com example.  While the rockets are falling on Vermont, is the United States obliged by the International Council of the Unforgivably Stupid (ICUS) to scrounge up some rockets of the same range, explosive weight and accuracy as their attackers?  The rockets would fly virtually forever.  There would be no end to the exchange of fire. 

No, the United States is first obliged to decide on whatever response the United States deems appropriate.  If the decision is to fight, they are morally obliged to use the most powerful weapons possible with considerations for minimizing collateral death as possible, and bring the conflict to an end in as few days as possible. It is beyond immoral to cause these things to drag on for years.  In total, many more people get killed over time than would be killed in an effective, overwhelming response to being attacked.  Israel doesn’t have long wars.  They don’t believe in an endless string of half-measures resulting in an endless string of casualties and no results.  The West, on the other hand, seems enamored with the idea. 

This week, another healthy cease-fire was predictably ended with Hamas firing more rockets.  This is suicide.  I believe that Netanyahu has decided that this will be the end of Hamas in Gaza.  That might create some breathing room for Israel.

But Golda was right. There cannot be peace until the tormentors love their children more than they hate Israel.

* The Forgotten Man, Shlaes, Harper Collins, 2007

** I go on about the "religious nut bags" in the Middle East.  I make no apologies for it.  Muslim punks who (intentionally) blow up civilians and celebrate the act are the lowest form of religious nut bag.  The fanatic Jews who go into the Occupied Territories and say that god had instructed them to build settlements in the exact spot that is sure to cause conflict are also religious nut bags.  But I would be remiss to overlook the wealth of god kooks we have right here at home.  There is a truly distasteful form of nut bag that preaches an end times battle and admonishes his people to pray for the battle so Jesus can return and rule the earth.  (Why would god have to kill a bunch of people to do that?) These same hateful cretins scoff at people who are waiting for the twelfth caliphate.  While laughable, it is no less so than Jesus doing a sequel.   They revel in the possibility that we could create even greater carnage in the Middle East.  Because these lowest of charlatans have a voice in a country as advanced as ours, so do their opposite number who support Jihadis.  Do you see where this is going?  We MUST call out, regardless of whatever creed we claim, call out the bloodthirsty maggots that get a near sexual thrill at the idea of holy war and hold them up to ridicule. 

If things continue apace on a crescent from Afghanistan to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel and north to Ukraine, you may one day be asked to kill people for Christ (the enemy being godless).  I hope that if such a dark day comes, we will all weigh our duty to our country and make the best decision possible as to how we will serve.  And I hope just as fervently, that we will all, with one voice tell the nut bags to shove the Jesus talk up their asses.  Killing people for god lost its luster a few millennia ago.  

We're a Pathetic, Programmed Lot!

You can't say, "colored".  Not that you would, the word has been out of fashion, with one glaring exception, for years.  As a word, it is utterly harmless.  If you described a black person as "colored" in a sentence, there is no valid reason to assume that you would mean any harm.  But the assumption would likely be made.  A comical case in point:  Matt Damon confronting Bernie Mac in Oceans Eleven.

Tribute to Bernie Mac

But when I was little - we're talking the Johnson Administration here - I learned that the correct, term for a kid of African decent was "colored".  The formal and respectful term, we were told, when addressing a black adult, was Negro.  The NAACP still carries the "colored" in its title.

Tangentially…

At a time earlier still, I remember playing in my friend's yard.  I couldn't have been older than four of five.  She would go on and on about "colored people".  I had no idea who the hell she could be talking about.  She would tell scary stories about "the coloreds" and how bad they were. For some reason, I got it in my head that she was talking about people whose skin was all the colors of a pack of fruity Chiclets.  That was the only frame of reference I could come up with. Then one day, we were on her front lawn.  That was already a problem because we were always supposed to stay in the back yard.  Suddenly, she ran behind a bush and told me to "get down!"

I looked around.  "What?"

"Coloreds!"

I froze.  I had butterflies in my stomach and an urge to duck.  I slowly turned in the direction she was pointing.  Across Rundale Avenue, some kids were walking home from school.  I look around urgently, looking for the dangerous people she had told me about.  I saw no one.  Just the older kids.  "Where are they?"

"Right there!", she hisses.

"Those guys?  They're not colored."  Then it dawned on me.  They were darker than us.  It never meant anything to me.  And I didn't know the significance of her hiding in the bushes.  When I asked my mom about it later, I used the term colored.  She immediately corrected me.

"Negro," she said firmly.  "Colored isn't a real word."  Needless to say, I was a confused little kid.  I would spend my early grade school years saying,"negro" at home and "colored" when I was outside.

This was one of those odd incidents that stay with you.  It all struck me as so silly.  I would later start to grasp some significance as I realized you had to go all the way to Chester Avenue on one side of my town and Bailey road on the other, just to see the home of a what?…Negro family?  Colored family?  Christ!!

In the late sixties, between the dawn of the hippie age and the black exploitation films popular in the seventies, the term Afro-American came into use and gained popularity.  Very quickly, if you didn't use the term, you were at best, old school and at worst, racist because you were not classifying another human being as they insisted on being classified.  Later, the term "black" was supposed to be the proper term.  Truth be told, by that time, my friends and I always used the terms black and white.  It was simple and everybody knew what the hell you were talking about.

Later still, the term African-American came into style. I never liked it because I never liked hyphenated Americans.  I also thought it pretentious.  But, what the hell…  In my writing, if I think to make a distinction, you'll see me use black and African-American interchangeably.  I rarely do, so you'll rarely see it.  But why such a fuss when people don't mean anything when they use whatever term they were once brow-beaten to say, with that term now having fallen out of favor?

Why?  Because we are being programmed.  If you speak in anger, the listener can tell by context or tone that you think ill of them.  When you use street vernacular in addressing someone, they know immediately if it is intended as an insult.  But these terms, steeped in a history of racial friction, have been made earth-shattering issues by those who are good at agitating and enjoy behavioral engineering.  The result is that people are always on social eggshells, worried that they may offend the sensibilities of someone else with a slip of the tongue or a joke they thought harmless.  The actions of people we never met against the victims we never met, are fashionably carried forward to add a sense of drama to the lives of some individuals and the needless the discomfort of the group.

I am still that kid on my friend's front lawn.  I don't see the point of any of it.  I never think in terms of race.  The only time it comes to mind, regardless of company, is when someone makes an issue of their own or someone else's race.  Then I just get annoyed, and sometimes empathetically embarrassed for the speaker.

Recently we have been treated to this type of thin-skinned drama in DC surrounding another socially protected group, the Native American.  I am not going to say anything you haven't read or thought about already.  But I have been wanting to comment on this for a while.

Let me start by saying they didn't name the team the Washington Pussies for a reason.  When a team is given a name, the intent is to create personae that, it is hoped, will be impressive, even intimidating.  It is also a name that team owners hope the community will rally around.  If the team plays well, even if they only try hard and play consistently, the team becomes a source of pride for fans.  Fans like Harry Reid who up until now watched games on his laptop while he worked so he wouldn't miss a game.

In the case of the Redskins, the name has been around for 100 years.  The logo was an American Indian, ready for battle, rallying his friends to the cause with his cry.  It was only in the 80s that a few people figured out they could make a political name for themselves by encouraging individuals from a small tribe to don the mantle of victimhood and accusing an NFL team of racism.  If the point of a team name was to make someone look stupid or for the players to put on uniforms they are ashamed of, these people who are voluntarily showing everyone their bellies in imaginary defeat, would have had a point.  For example:  Let's say Snyder decided he wanted to find a perfect target of shame and embarrassment.  Let's suppose he wanted to take on an image of that target and also embarrass that target every week on the football field.  It would be so easy, even geographically thematic.  He could change the team colors to a dingey brown and grey, have a slouchy mascot with a petulant whiney schtick and call the team the Harry Reids.  It would be the perfect DC team!  Or…his logo could be a chinless, pudgy-cheeked man.  The mascot could go to a microphone before every game and spout a bunch of meaningless inanities and they could call the team the Mitch McConnels.  See, now we're talking insult!

But, so far, on this the third go-round of the phony outrage, Snyder intends to keep the name Redskins.  He'd be foolish to do otherwise.  This is a brand a century in the making, named for the first head coach, an American Indian (or Native American, don't want to get anyone's nose out of joint).  There are high school teams all over the country that also carry the name, including one in Washington State that is made up of predominantly Native Americans.  They've already announced that they are not going to change their name.  Oops…

The bottom line is that it is no one else's business what you chose to name your business.  If it truly is offensive, it will fail.  People aren't stupid.  They're not going to rally around some pathetic name like the Washington Welfare Sponges or the Washington Democrats.  Society will marginalize things that are considered offensive.  We do it all the time.  Nobody will ever be allowed to open a strip joint next to Fawn Lake in Virginia.  Why?  Because it is considered offensive.  It will not be welcome.  Andrew Dice Clay wore out his welcome when all his fans, suffering form the immature urge to shock, got tired of his routine.

In the past year we've seen the same types of professional crybabies try to drive a perfectly legitimate restaurant chain out of business.  We've seen political activists comb through lists of donors to political causes, a personal right the last time I checked, and vilify the CEO of a successful tech company in the most dishonest and spiteful way to the point where that man lost his job.  Why?  Because he chose to believe in a cause the crybabies didn't.  HOW DARE HE?  DOESN'T HE REALIZE THAT THE MODERN AMERICAN LIBERAL IS THE MOST PIG-HEADED, CLOSED MINDED, ILLIBERAL POLITICAL CREATURE OF ALL TIME?!  SUCH A LACK OF SENSITIVITY!  DESTROY HIM!!!

Okay, the sarcasm switch is off.  But if you're still reading, you and I both know that such character assassinations are beneath contempt and should enjoy no respect whatsoever.  None.  In fact they deserve any insult that might be heaped upon the effort.

To that end, I have a suggestion.  Grab some Redskins gear; a towel, a drink cozy,  a hat and wear it or carry it.  No matter who your team is* or what sporting event you may be attending, wear it or carry it.  By all means, wear your home team colors too.  But get the Skins gear out there.  This for two reasons:  First, it is well past time we started to support the rights of free market entities against the disingenuous whiners in society.  Make no mistake, these crybabies need to feel that they are being obeyed.  They truly think that their narrow view of the world is the only view and you must conform.  So thumb your nose at them by waving your Redskins towel.  Second, it will be a test to see just how far down into the politically correct shit bucket this society has slid.  Wouldn't it be interesting if, say, the Pittsburg Pirates organization banned Skins gear.  Could you imagine how toweringly shallow and stupid they would look on the news confiscating some kid's towel at the gate?  Or telling some season ticket holder to remove his hat because the markings on it don't fit what the crybabies dictate?  It is not outside the realm of possibilities, but my faith is with the individual team owners and common sense.

But do get your gear.  I am ordering a towel.  And tell your friends to do the same.  We'll call it a blow against the division of society; us from our friends who don't agree with us by people who thrive on the division.  Let's all thicken our skins, no pun intended, and live in a world where what is said and what is clearly intended cannot be perverted by Orwellian piss pots.

And for goodness sake, keep your sense of humor.  We'll start here:  I am of Irish decent** and retired Navy.  There's got to be hundreds of jokes surrounding those two things.  I invite everybody to take your best shot.  Don't pull any punches in the comment section, below.  I want some funny Navy and Irish jokes.  Jokes submitted by existing "protected groups" get extra points.  Life should be fun.  What can be more fun than busting each others chops about things over which we have no control?  Well, at least until the first pussy hires a lawyer and calls us all bullies.  Even that's kind of fun when you think about it.

Note to the victim class:  Call this my contribution to the dialog about race you are always whining for. But know I really don't give a crap what your race is.  Neither you nor I picked that for anyone or for ourselves.  It just is, and what non-mouth-breather gives a real damn.

*My family lives and dies by the performance to the Eagles, Phillies and Flyers.
** As a fifth generation American, I am about as Irish as Alan Dirshowitz.  I just needed a frame of reference to get the ball rolling from here.

Get your gear!
Cheers.

Our Tradition

July 1st

On our lawn in Thornburg, Virginia.

July 4th

Same lawn, same flag pole.

Every year between July 1st and July 4th, Lyn and I (she is still a loyal subject of the Crown) stand on the lawn in period costume and beat the tar out of each other.  We call it a re-enactment.  Then on July 5th we become allies and trading partners again.  We seal the treaty with rabid monkey sex.  I'm not sure how historically accurate that part is.

Living on a River

A post moved from my other blog.

I moved this one here because the wusssies that run my other blog felt it was too commercialized for their taste.  Meanwhile they provide all manner of ways to monitize your blog site as it grows.  If I wasn't so heavily published there, I'd start a new one entirely.  But for this post, I decided to just move it over.

_____________________________________________________________________________

This will be a shameless plug. It didn't start out that way. A romantic at heart, I was just inspired to sit down and write. You see, the biggest heron I ever saw just glided down the river at treetop level. This creature looked like a flamingo on steroids, a pterodactyl with feathers. So write I did. I waxed poetic about how this experience reminded me of seeing pelicans for the first time, gliding with the kind of cool only they can display, inches above the swells in the Atlantic, just off the beach in Dam Neck.  But after scribbling for a while I realized that there was an opportunity here.

Some Back Story

Almost 8 years ago, Lyn, aka she-who-must-be-obeyed, and I were evaluating our situation, living in Governor's Green, Fredericksburg, Virginia. We were empty nesters, living in a large home, which had doubled in value in just 4 years. Real estate junkies that we are - we'd purchased that home on a whim and a 20% up-front discount - and knowing full well that we were at the peak of the market, we decided to cash out and find THE home. The search was on. I had many times looked at the home we occupy now and passed it up without the slightest thought. Lyn however found it on her own search and it had the magic ingredient. Water. True to the definition of her name, Lynette, she always want to live on water. When she pulled up the ad for this house on Realtor.com I was inclined to just say no. But the look in her eye had me saying yes. I bought here for two reasons: To let Lyn have the home she wanted and because there would be room to build a proper wood shop on the property. There were countless properties in this market where I could have built a shop. But they don't light Lyn's eyes the way this one did.

This is how the house used to look.  It was just a simple 

river house with four bedrooms, good storage and little else.  

                                                           

To be perfectly honest with you, it wasn't much to look at when we got here. But it was SMALL. That is what we were looking for. A simple house in Thornburg, Spotsylvania County. After years of big neighborhood houses, creating lawns that people used to take pictures of and ask pointers on; after maintaining spaces for social gatherings and high living, we now had a little split level on the Po River that didn't NEED anything and made us feel like we were living in the Pocono Mountains every time we came home. Not bad, not bad at all. We have an abundance of wildlife for our three little acres. There are deer, owls, red tail hawks, bald eagles, cardinals, heron, rabbits, groundhogs, foxes and on and on. As it was, we had a perfect little hide-away.

Not So Fast, Lazy Man!

My contentment was not to last. One day I came home and saw Lyn contemplating our west wall. "What are you doing?", I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Ya know," she said, "If we blew out this wall we could put in a big living room and a garage."

OUCH! But what does a husband say to that. I took the profits from the previous house, minus what I spent building the shop and gave her a huge living room, a two car garage and three decks. I know, you can say it. I'm a sucker. But $100,000 later, we have more than doubled our footprint and beautified our home. My girl was thinking. The extra glass just below the new roofline was Lyn's idea.  It came to great.

My Man Cave

Before there was a garage with a room-over, I had already added my dream shop. I make furniture as a hobby. I call it a hobby because I never sold very much. With the help of some friends to stand up the walls, I built a wood shop that occupied as much ground as the original house, 24' x 36'. It stands at the opposite end of the property, near the road, on the crest of the next hill. I was surprised how quickly my tools filled it. But if you spend 25 years collecting shop tools they'll have a big footprint. And for the first time I was comfortable working in a large shop rather than a garage or basement.

It has a wall-mounted heat pump that could use a shot of refrigerant, but fully charged it will just about chase you out with the heat in the winter and cooling in the summer.

Two cars can fit in the shop with careful maneuvering. By adding another bay door, or two you could easily fit two with rom left for quite a gear head heaven here. And there is a raceway going in as I write this not ten minutes from here. The track will be open to privates cars several times a week.

Work Shop

Or Next Adventure

Lyn and I have come to a new crossroads in our life together. We are planning our retirement. But we don't want an ordinary retirement. Sadly, we can't keep our hideaway on the Po River and maintain our present lifestyle. So we must let go.

Our river house is for sale! Shameless plug, I know. It's my blog. It's my laptop. I can do what I want.  We are presently interviewing for a new agent.

We will take a bit of a bath on the deal. The market is still flat. So somebody is going to get a free two-car garage with great room above, and a nearly free workshop. Poop! Personal pride notwithstanding, I can live with it. We will be one step closer to our retirement plan.

Main and upper deck and storage shed.

Lower Deck

Obama's top 50 WHAT?!

The Washington Monthly, in their March/April edition of 2012, published a list of the Jerrett, er uh, excuse me; the Obama Administration's top 50 Accomplishments.  Needless to say, a blizzard of comments followed.  I was not aware of the article until a friend on Facebook brought it to my attention in order to make the point that we mean haters who hate (read: Conservatives) ought to at least be willing to cheer Obama's successes while we jeer his failures.  I agreed and asked for an example, saying in all sincerity that if he could point out a legitimate accomplishment, I would happily laud it.  In response another friend, Brenna, sent me the link to the article.  When you read it, from the very first example, you are left blinking in astonishment that ANYONE could construct this list and hope that readers anywhere would actually take seriously what is on the list.  To be certain, only two types of people do; the frustratingly immature who believe it "just because" - They see Obama as cool, so he is right.  He is always right. - and the intentionally credulous.  Harry Reid is their patron saint.  He knows that what he and Obama have done runs the gambit from theater to sedition.  But he continues to blather on, knowing that no one believes he believes any of it himself, but hoping that enough people will pick up on enough talking points to keep the blind stalwarts in the fight.

So I am left with this list of "accomplishment" to address as I said I would.

Number 1 - Obamacare

I can't believe they actually listed it. Let's start from now and work our away back to passage of the precursor to socialized medicine.  

Just a few days ago, the Supreme Court struck down an item in Obamacare that demanded that all business with over 50 employees pay, through their insurance policy, for contraceptive services (for the purposes of preventing babies - that's an important distinction)  including abortifacients.  The court held that based on religious beliefs, a closely-held corporation could opt out of participating in medical procedures that offend those beliefs.  In the case of Hobby Lobby and others, the objection was to four items on a list of 17 that they said they could not abide being a part of.  

(Full disclosure:  I am an atheist and an activist in the secular community.  I don't care wit about Hobby Lobby's religious beliefs and don't believe churches should have special rights that are different than those of a corporation or a person. That said, the very principles that protect people to run their own lives according to their religious beliefs are in the same first amendment the protects free speech.  If you want to end religious exemptions from law, you must start with the first amendment and go from there.  Whose going to be the first to pick the good religions and the bad ones?  Who is going to the first secular person to quash 250 years of protections for religion and not expect the same thing to be done to us secularists the following week?) 

The vitriol that followed the ruling was typical of the history of this whole non-medical care exercise from the beginning.  But having to do with this particular ruling, the left was instructed to scream that "Old White Men" were denying women ACCESS to contraception.  

First, the Hobby Lobby objection was to items that were to be used to destroy the "ception" that the acceptable stuff was supposed to run "contra" to.  So the words "to contraception" used here were intentionally misleading.  Secondly,  no one is being denied ACCESS to anything.  It is simply not being FINANCED by others who object to doing so for moral reasons.  But the baseless whining continued.  Hilary Clinton said this was the first time in our history that we treated corporations as if they were people, a lie, until she adds, "when it comes to religion".  See what she was doing there? She's hoping most liberal proles don't know that corporations have all the rights people do.  If you need an explanation, read Smith or Locke.  One among the rights shared by people and corporations is religious liberty.  That stupid concept that Jefferson blathered on about just to make Barry's life harder.  Both Barry O and Woodrow Wilson have complained about the constitution getting in their way as they try to run the nation.

I only spend this much time here to demonstrate what a rhetorical shipwreck Obamacare has become. There is nothing about it that is or will be successful.  There is almost nothing about it that does anything for the healthcare industry.  It dismantled valuable insurance companies, it will not see 32 million more people insured, it has been run from day one with staggering incompetence, and if you think medical costs have gone up too fast in the past, wait until you get to the other end of this year and into next to assess the damage to the economy and your own wallet.

The fact is that with every step of the nightmare that is the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as with defending the serial criminality of this administration, the tactics have been the same; marginalize the opponents, crate straw man arguments and argue against those instead of arguing the actual point and merits of the case.

This all could have been avoided.

In July of 2012, in a move the New Yorker called a "singular act of courage",  Chief Justice Roberts decided he wanted to be a co-president for a few hours and missed the opportunity to gut the whole mess when he stepped off the bench, into the well and made the administration's argument for them.  The question was whether the penalty for not participating in Obamacare was a tax or a fee.  On consecutive days the administration's lawyers argued that 1) it was absolutely a fee and not a tax 2) it was absolutely a tax and to a fee. The reason is because of the dubiousness of the governments authority to cause people to buy something they don't need under the penalty of law.  Only in Orwell's crazy world should this thinking survive.  Roberts would have been correct to laugh the parties right out of the court room.  But he didn't.  He chose to nail his name into the pages of history and leave us to take this monstrosity apart piece by piece while the misinformation  continues to gush from the White House and a sycophantic press.  With each step, we will have to fight the straw man misdirection and hysterical wailing.

Original Sin

The "Patient Protection" part of PPACA is a laugh riot.  The people most left out there flapping in the breeze, the people least able to absorb the damage inflicted by this 2700 page law and upwards of 30,000 pages of regulations (!!!) are the patients.  The doctors are going to be, and are already, screwed to the floorboards trying to comply with it.  

The genesis of all this was even more frustrating for honest people to watch unfold.   In 2010, through lies - this won't increase budget deficits - to qualify the bill for the what the Senate calls "reconciliation" and outright unethical practices, this monstrosity was presented to BHO for signature.  The question of ethics comes in first, using "reconciliation" to blow open 1/6 of the economy. This is preposterous.  Reconciliation in this context is used to shuffle line items in an overall budget and make small adjustments without having to adjudicate the whole thing over again.  It took Reid and Pelosi to stoop to the levels they did to use this process to magically marry two bills that had not gotten through both houses of the legislature, in some cases skipping steps by "deeming to have voted", buying votes with HUGE kickbacks and voila, you have the worst law from the worst lawmaking since the nation's founding.  They really did think they had made the whole thing so complex and confusing and rush-  rush that the public would do shrug and say. 'Well, okay, if you say so."  Instead they created the Tea Party.  That movement is the child of Reid and Pelosi more than anyone else.

Conclusion: 

Point one of the top 50 accomplishments is a total failure.  Little secret; it may have been intended to fail.  Time will tell.

A Not So Insignificant Aside:

In the piece above, I wrote that we were hearing that women were being denied ACCESS to healthcare because people did not wish to FINANCE their lifestyle choices; specifically not paying for a handful of abortifacients.  I have heard from hysterical women and sunken-chested men several times asking if it was fair that insurance pay for viagra and other treatments of erectile disfunction (ED) and not pay for abortions and abortifacients.  I rarely believe that these complainers don't see the difference at work here, but I will do the unpopular and point out the weakness of the argument for the truly dense.

ED and related prostate problems, including cancer, are disorders.  It is a doctor's obligation to treat this as such and do his best to cure or mitigate it.  Pregnancy is not a tumor.  If you are pregnant and the baby is growing nicely, then there is nothing for the doctor to treat.  His primary obligation is to monitor his patient and make sure all remains well.  

If the patient decides to terminate the pregnancy, that is an elective procedure.  NO ONE has a moral obligation to finance that procedure.  Mother and child are healthy.  If an insurance company wants to cover that procedure, the pregnant woman is in luck (women in their productive years who don't want babies ought to check into this when buying medical coverage.  But that is NOT MY CONCERN!)

"But, ah!" comes the occasional retort, "what's to stop a doctor from citing a bullshit health reason to give a friend viagra just so he can have more sex?"  The answer is nothing.  If a doc wants to compromise his practice and be a total douche bag.  He can do that and probably get away with it.  In much the same way some doctors take into account the "mental anguish" some upper middle class college girl will face by experiencing a perfectly natural biological process.  That's contrived bullshit too, but it remains one of the prime arguments in favor of a pregnancy being treated like bubonic plague.