Nielsen's ra(n)tings

And since I missed posting 2009 buck...

2011-04-05T11:32:00.002-04:00

Buck taken during 2009 rut

Belated 2010 buck

2011-04-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

Belated pictures of buck harvested during 2010 rut.

The Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth!

2011-04-05T08:21:00.006-04:00

California History Professor and farmer Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting piece on Pajamas Media today entitled "Kingdom of Lies."

It's a subject that's been much on my mind lately.

"I am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth — advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities."...Victor Davis Hanson

Politicians lie and spin and pander...the news media slants and spins and panders...and partisans on both sides lie and spin and pander. Nero fiddles while Rome burns...you'd have to admire the image if not for those pesky flames lapping around our feet.

The phenomenon has been particularly grating recently as budget talks heat up in Washington. The fact is we are spending way more than we are making. In local parlance, that's called spending our way into the poorhouse, and the solutions are really pretty obvious...find some way to get more money or stop spending beyond your means. Maybe you could get really creative and do both.

But the obvious solutions are not on the table thanks to the "Kingdom of Lies."

•In the Kingdom, Social Security has a fully-funded "lockbox." Never mind the fact everyone knows it's a stack of IOUs worth nothing until the Government borrows yet more money to redeem them. The fact is, any Social Security expenses above what is covered by current payroll taxes is funded by government borrowing. There is no lockbox full of money...there is only a demographic tsunami of retiring Baby Boomers soon to come face-to-face with the fact politicians spent their retirement withholding to grow the government.

•In the Kingdom, open borders and globalism makes us one big, happy family. In reality, globalism lets corporations enjoy the fruits of an expanded marketplace while also taking advantage of lower employment costs in other areas of the globe. You take production to the place where it can be done the most economically. While that can be a boon to developing nations, it guarantees a slow but steady decline in standard of living for most Americans, as our production costs (including labor and regulatory compliance) are among the highest in the world.

•In the Kingdom, a reduction in a huge planned budget increase qualifies as a "Draconian cut." There is no mechanism to restrain the growth of government, only to encourage it. Entitlements given in good years can not be scaled back in bad times, particularly by politicians of all stripes will to feign outrage "for the little people" to win a few votes.

•In the Kingdom, spending equals results in schools. Never mind the fact that some of the highest spending schools are among the lowest in performance. And never mind the fact that some of the high-performing charter schools are also among the cheapest to operate, thanks to the fact they've been freed from the yoke of the unions.

•In the Kingdom, wars started to intervene against a tyrant can be good or bad depending on your political bent and the affiliation of the President who starts the war.

•In the Kingdom, medical costs can be contained by increasing regulation and preventive care. Hey, if we have preventive care, nobody is going to get sick, right? We can cut doctor's reimbursement for the purpose of cost projection, then abandon the cuts later ("You didn't think we were SERIOUS about those cuts, did you?") In the Kingdom you can rail against unnecessary testing by doctors, but ignore the largest driver of those tests - the malpractice lawyers lobby. And in the Kingdom you can mandate cheap coverage for pre-existing conditions and then expect people to carry insurance until they're REALLY sick.

•In the Kingdom, you can wail endlessly about the evils of consumerism and the sanctity of green technology, then fly 3,000 miles home each weekend in a private jet to a 10,000 square foot mansion on the coast. Once there, Kingdom devotees can eagerly pore over their investment position in green technology and dispatch their on-retainer lawyer to block any attempts at placing offshore wind farms within sight of THEIR home...utilities are for the little people, don't you know.

The worst part of the whole charade is that it makes arriving at a logical solution all but impossible. Nero fiddles as the flames rise higher and the nameless, faceless liars conspire to buy themselves a little more time.

Just a little more time and it will be someone else's problem - another nameless, faceless liar finally forced to tell the truth.

Unfortunately, "interesting times" are here

2009-03-04T09:51:00.003-05:00

I worry for this country. I worry for my kids. And I worry for a world in which a submissive American foreign policy creates a power vacuum the assorted bad players throughout the world will be only too happy to fill.

“May you live in interesting times” is the way the ancient Chinese curse goes. Well things are getting pretty interesting lately.

The stock market’s tanking, banks are failing, pension plans are becoming insolvent, people have stopped spending, our Big Three car makers are crashing and retail stores are beginning to feel the pinch and the weak sisters are beginning to close. Our Congress just agreed to spend $800 billion as part of a stimulus, which does little actual immediate stimulation and, in fact, primarily rewards Democrat special interests. Property values are plummeting and our President just announced plans for massive tax increases on businesses, investors, utilities and ordinary citizens. Several states have been forced to near-insolvency by their free-wheeling spending habits coming face-to-face with the hard reality of declining revenues and, oh yeah, a class war is brewing as the government makes plans to take from the “haves” and give to the “have-nots.”

Have I left out anything? Oh, yeah, the unemployment problem is probably just getting started as cutbacks and belt-tightening are not enough to save many struggling companies which may have overreached during boom times. Higher unemployment means more people receiving government benefits, and, hence, fewer people available to buy the non-necessities which seem to power this economy. We’re digging ourselves a multi-trillion dollar hole from which our children may never be able to escape.And thanks to our preoccupation, Iran is building the bomb, North Korea is testing an ICBM and strategic supply routes are being cut off as countries go for the bigger, better deal.

Interesting times, indeed.

And to top it all off, we’re worked ourselves into such a apoplectic, polarized fury that we can’t even talk about it. Democrats have made clear their “we won, so get over it” stance and Republicans can only provide opposition, without articulating any alternate plans of their own. Democrats and Republicans alike are content to wallow in their own echo chambers, fiddling in righteous certainty, while the United States burns.

It should be clear to one and all that we are in trying financial times. It should likewise be clear that we can’t continue such profligate spending. And it should go without saying that we can’t recover from a financial meltdown by hamstringing the very people and corporations we depend on to revive the economy.

But we can’t even agree on that. Businesses and corporations are the enemy in this new world, evil overlords who exist merely to keep their heels upon the downtrodden workers. It’s time they got their just desserts, right? Hmmm, where have I heard that before? From the Communist Manifesto, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez…heck, even Eva Peron!

People on the left were justly worried that during the Bush years, freedoms were being eroded. They were right in expressing concern that the Patriot Act and various executive orders were giving the government too much oversight over the populace. I salute them for it.

I can’t understand, however, how those same people can blithely allow the government to assume even more control of their lives. Government health care (see how well that’s working out with the VA), government subsistence (expanded welfare) and governmental allocation of our resources (restricted drilling, mining, energy production, except through marginal “green” technologies) should be raising red flags in any freedom-loving Americans. As far as I can see, the only thing the “stimulus” serves to grow is government – even those “shovel-ready” projects are government projects.

One ideology’s suffocating nanny state is another’s comforting feather bed, I guess.

And the media, which should be facilitating the dialogue, seems more interested in phoning in the various talking points than looking at the problems. We can’t even be intellectually honest enough to talk about it – we’re too worried about power and scoring points against the opposition to worry about the actual course of the country.

Continuing on its current course, my kids stand to inherit a second-rate nation in which mediocrity is encouraged through onerous taxes on achievers and indolence is rewarded through state-sponsored benefits. They’ll inherit a country where those in government get a slap on the wrist for violating the law while the rest of us are jailed. And they’ll inherit a former Republic where the best and most rewarding job they can hope for is a cushy position in the government…and maybe eventually a spot in the Politburo!

Such a dream, comrades! More accurately, a nightmare for these “interesting times.”

Dirty politics?

2008-09-15T11:05:00.005-04:00

You know, I sometimes wonder if the term “politics” can actually be used without the word “dirty” in front of it and still be accurate.

I refer, of course, to the current run-up to the 2008 Presidential election, a campaign that gets dirtier with each passing day. As a small town pro-gun, non-religious, pro-freedom, small-government guy, my choice is clear – I’m supporting the McCain/Palin ticket.

The Sarah Palin pick as VP came as a complete shock to me – not because I had never heard of her, but because I never imagined the McCain campaign would spurn the usual gang of Beltway Boy idiots in favor of a truly inspired pick for his running mate.

Hmmm…bring in someone who actually, you know, has a connection with the people? Whoda thunk it?

And then the attacks started. By my imperfect recall, Palin has falsely been accused of:

Covering up her daughter’s pregnancy by claiming Trig as her own.
Banning scores of books from the local library.
Claiming Iraq was a “mission from God.”
Being a member of a secessionist movement.
Hating gays.
Being a stupid, hick PTA mom who should stick to organizing bake sales.
Not getting adequate prenatal care (pushed as a rationale for her Down Syndrome son.)
Firing someone who refused to fire her ex-brother in law, a sainted soul of a law enforcement officer who drank in his car, shot game illegally, tasered his stepson and, oh yeah, threatened to kill members of Palin’s family.
Opposing any sex education in school except for abstinence.
Wanting to convert the school science curriculum to creationism.
Wanting to kill all the endangered wildlife in Alaska in favor of Big Oil.

To hear her opponents talk, she is a 10-foot tall, live-animal-wearing, toxic-sludge encrusted and Bible-thumping cyborg who has come back from the future to derail the campaign of humanity’s savior, His Excellency, Barack Obama.

Hmmmm…Sarah Connor…Sarah Palin…coincidence?

To be fair, the anointed one has also come under smear attacks. He has been accused of:

Being a Muslim (false)
Forcing sex-ed on kindergartners (a big stretch)
Having no practical experience (oh, wait, that’s true.)
Wanting to raise taxes (true again.)
Wanting to increase the size of government (whoops, again true.)
Being out of touch with “flyover country” (Also true – are you seeing a pattern here?)

And with the media taking Obama’s pronouncements on faith while poring over and distorting everything from the McCain campaign, look for the political atmosphere to degrade even further.

Fortunately, Big Media no longer has a secure hold on sources of information. Its blatant bias, prominently on display this election season, also ensures it will no longer be able to credibly lay claim to impartiality in its news coverage.

If McCain is critical in examining his opponent, a job media has abdicated, he’ll be accused of smearing. If not, the information never gets out and the voters have no idea who they’re voting for – a virtual shadow man crafted by the left wing to satisfy the various focus groups which comprise its constituency.

So it’s going to get uglier...but hopefully in that ugliness, some of the truth will get out. Enough, anyway, to give people clearer view of the choices – and not through the distorted prism of the media.

More equine young'uns!

2008-05-27T09:31:00.004-04:00

New dunolino filly

New grulla filly

Since I haven't posted anything in almost a year, why not a couple posts on the first day back?

The pictures above are of the two newest additions to the farm, both fillies, and born just two days apart on April 23 and April 25. We're determined that our stallion is definitely a red dun paint, because the two babies he threw both show dun factor...the light colored filly is a dunolino and the darker black and white-looking filly is actually grulla and white. Both are now growing fast and will be for sale at the end of the summer. The paint filly, which the kids call "Baxter" because of the mustache-shaped black splotch on her lip, is developing into a tank, just like her mother

We were briefly down to five horses on the farm, having donated three to the Baptist camp down the road a couple weeks earlier. The plan is to be down to five again as we head into winter - three mares, our APHA stallion and our ancient buckskin mustang gelding, Tanner.

Happy Mother's Day (belated)!

2008-05-27T08:44:00.008-04:00

"Tigger"

The above is the present Doc-wife got for Mother's Day this year...a 1977 Corvette in "Corvette Orange" with a 4-speed transmission. My daughter (hereinafter known as "Bloody Ninny") and I drove with my father to Akron to pick up the work of pure automotive excess.

Hrrrunnnn! Hrrruuunnnn!

Suspect mufflers gave the 'Vette an even more menacing roar. Out of the driveway of the seller and onto the road we went...then things started to go wrong. First, it started raining cats and dogs...then the windshield wipers on my father's minivan decided to weave themselves together in some kind of weird macrame. Okay...a quick trip to Walmart was in order. We finally got to Walmart, parked the 'Vette, got him new wipers and went out to start the orange bomb again...nothing...nada....not even a click.

Whoops.

Hmmm...must be a bad battery...open the hood...hey, who the heck stole the battery? Checked throughout the engine compartment and front grill (never having owned a 'Vette before) and found zilch. We were rewarded about 20 minutes later when we finally turned up the wayward power source in a hatched compartment behind the seat. Okay...quick jump from Dad's van and we were on our way. Bloody Ninny and I made a quick stop at Auto Zone when we got home and had them change out the battery.

The conversation:
Me: "We need a battery. You put them in free, right?"
They: "Sure do...what kind of car do you have?"
Me: "It's a 1977 Corvette...and the battery's in the back seat."
They: (groan) "Yeah, I know...hey, where's Frank? He's the only one small enough to fit back there. You sure you don't want to do it yourself?"

So, battery in, we drove it to a local winery to park it as an after-dinner surprise. We got to the winery, found there was a 90-minute wait for dinner and decided to spring the surprise early. We gave her the keys and she knew which car we were talking about - she had seen the car when we walked by it on the way into the restaurant, stepping in a puddle because she was so mesmerized by it.

The rest is history. The 'Vette is known as "Tigger" now, and is the favored form of transportation. Replacing the aged exhaust and the worn-out shifting assembly are high on the list of repairs, though the car is still a dream to drive as is.

Nothing like purchasing a good old-fashioned American gas guzzler to herald the arrival of $4-a-gallon gas, eh?

'I'll give you healthcare, you'll beg for death'

2007-08-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

This is one of the funniest mock campaign ads I've ever seen, courtesy of Frank J. and Sarah K. at IMAO.

Enjoy!

All revved up again!

2007-08-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

It’s that time of year again…to quote Meatloaf, “I’m all revved up, no place to go.”

Damn the Outdoor Channel and ESPN and damn Bill Jordan and Ted Nugent and the whole Dream Season bunch. I’m ready to go hunting and nothing but varmints are in season…it’s maddening. Last year, at least, I was prepping for the boar hunt at the Bostick Plantation in South Carolina…this year, all I can do is watch TV and wait.

Well…and practice my shooting skills. I just came back in from shooting my bow for the first time since December. Not bad, not bad. I shot 30 arrows out of the Hoyt Trykon XL compound bow and the last five-arrow group was a respectable 2-1/2 inches, right in the boiler room, from a little over 30 yards on a new Glen Del deer target (son-and-heir demolished the previous, shot-out target with a sword). I bought a new crossbow for this year, too, an Excalibur Equinox, a recurve which has a bolt-drop compensating scope and flings an arrow 20 feet per second faster than even my Trykon.

Ooooh! Raw anachronistic power! The new bow is supposed to be accurate to 45-50 yards. I figure son-and-heir or the new exchange student (if he’s interested) can take full advantage of what is billed as “The World’s Most Accurate Crossbow.”

In the meantime, however, I wait, wait, wait.

Son-and-heir and I did a little scouting the other night with a spotlight…we shined the light on the 12 acre hayfield and there were deer eyes everywhere – I guess that explains where all our sweet corn is going. The acre patch we planted about 70 yards behind the house is being devoured at such a rate by the local fauna that I’m not sure we’ll even get an ear from it. It’s a good thing we also planted a couple acres of sweet corn at my father’s house – that corn has thus far been spared by the critters there. Our corn plot completes the perfect trifecta for deer palates – it’s adjacent to an old, overgrown orchard loaded with apples and cover and borders our hayfield, which is full of emerging trefoil and clover.

The way it’s going now, I’ll be able to bow hunt from the roof of the chicken coop...woo hoo, that would be some nice footage!

I bought a Cuddeback No Flash trail camera that I’m going to put out today – along with some C’Mere Deer – to start taking a census of the deer running our property. Later, I’ll move the camera to some of the other areas I hunt too…looking for clues to the whereabouts of the monsters lurking in the woods. I’ll post pictures as they become available.

I’m also considering taking S&H and my father on a boar or ram hunt in southern Ohio sometime in September. We’ve been looking at White Oak Exotic Hunting Preserve, near Cambridge, as a possibility. More on that later, too.

But for now I wait for the end of September and deer archery season to begin…and practice, practice, practice to burn off some of the fire of anticipation.

New student due Aug. 19

2007-08-09T12:19:00.000-04:00

We have a new exchange student, the 14^th we’ll have hosted, due to arrive in Cleveland Aug. 16. Following an orientation class at a local school, he’ll arrive at the Rantmeister hacienda Aug. 19.

He’s part of a class of 10 international students to attend the local high school this year. Jordan’s tall, blond, likes basketball and mixing music as a disc jockey. Taking a gander at his MySpace page showed someone creative who likes to have fun – always a good thing, unless the fun is carried too far and results in law enforcement officers calling our home in the early morning hours. This year’s hosting experience will be somewhat different for us as this is the first student we’ll have hosted from an English speaking country (Scotland), so there will be less of a learning curve on household communication. That may be a false hope on my part, though, as the exchange coordinator for the visit said the only students she has had trouble understanding, in all her years of hosting, are the Scots.

But picking an exchange student is always a crap shoot. For the most part, we’ve been very lucky in our selections – of the 13 we’ve hosted, I’d cheerfully host 11 again (excepting an abbreviated visit by a German girl and the most recent Russian.) I think a lot of the success in picking a student depends on the honesty of the student in posting their profile and the prospective host family’s objective flexibility. If the students are honest about their habits, potential areas of conflict can point host families to a different student. If families are honest about their own flexibility and capabilities, they can better choose the high- or low-maintenance student best suited to their home.

This year, we will also be dealing with a new exchange organization, which goes by the acronym FLAG. This will be the fifth or sixth organization we’ve dealt with, though we’ve only had two exchange coordinators. It seems to be a “coordinator’s market,” as the exchange coordinators with ties to local schools and exchange families shop for the best remuneration and support among the many competing organizations.

*****

We have a number of projects to complete before his arrival, including completion of the bookcases in the library (now installed, stained and partially trimmed out) and installation of a new dishwasher – our cheapie expired after only four years of 2+ loads a day! Imagine!

Out of the Darkness

2007-08-09T11:21:00.000-04:00

For the most part, the internet appears to me to be the equivalent of a high school hallway at class change time – noisy, chaotic, filled with rumor and innuendo, laden with hormones and supremely vacuous. But rarely, something comes along of such quality and depth that its publication seems almost tarnished by the media upon which it’s distributed – rather, it should be presented for savoring printed on parchment bound in thick leather.

I feel that way about the latest submission by Mrs. du Toit in her latest weblog entry, “Panem et Circenses.” In the essay, described by her husband as “gloomy,” Connie du Toit writes of humankind as self-obsessed, ignorant rabble eagerly placated with “bread and circuses” by grasping leaders who have interest only in themselves, and none in improving and nurturing that which is best in man.

From her weblog:

”We watch the never-ending broadcasts of modern incarnations of the gladiators of the Coliseum in shows such as Survivor, Intervention, or the great passions of soap operas; marvel at gizmo extravaganzas, or any number of things that make our lives easier or filled with greater status symbols, and base materialism. We focus our attention purely on the business of getting – paying little or no attention to what we are giving away in the process.
“And so it goes from generation to generation, from society to society, and the baton of whatever panacea is in fad or fashion, whatever tasteless gruel is filling their bellies, the masses are placated, even while they watch their civilizations erode, eventually to the point of ashes, while chanting timeless phrases of “Burn down the mission!” “They had it coming!” or “Now things will be fair!” It is a constant litany of the excuse to destroy that which others created and left for their progeny to destroy. It was first recorded as chants as warnings in choruses in the Greek plays, and heard above the cacophony of traffic and ear bending and mind-numbing music at any protest march of today. Voices shouting. Voices chanting. Always the same chants, always the same trespasses, all giving way for Bread and Circuses.”

And after detailing the black abyss that gapes for mankind, she finds a succoring hope in the fact that there are people who defy the “but everyone is doing it crowd” to do what is right, worthy and worthwhile, and to pass that knowledge and those ideals on to successive generations. She calls it rare, and I guess it is, or at least appears that way when one is confronted by the gibbering inanity of the internet on a daily basis. It’s a daunting task to try to separate the wheat from the chaff among millions of voices prattling on worldwide…made even more difficult by the tendency to anonymity and caution among those with wit and intelligence.

But that vast number of voices in cyberspace also makes it inevitable there are voices of reason, thought and worth to be unearthed…to be nurtured…to be celebrated. Though the majority of the internet Bell Curve is comprised of My Space, Quizilla and the endemic porn, there are outliers to either side. And as the jihadists post their murder videos on one extreme side of the curve, there are also people like Mrs. du Toit toiling on the opposite side. The internet makes all manner of perversion possible, and the extent to which we’re drawn one way or the other in some measure is an indicator of our character.

I write a little on a blog that is read by few people, so my worldwide impact is negligible. I do my part in my community to be thoughtful and contribute. I am, however, steward and caretaker to two outstanding children…children in whom I’ve tried to instill a desire to do what’s right, though perhaps not popular. I’ve tried to get them to think analytically and critically about any number of subjects and not to dismiss any subject out of hand because it doesn’t conform to their worldview (“There are more things on Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”) They have an appreciation of beauty, wisdom and duty for their own virtues, not simply for how they can profit from that appreciation. These children, and others raised by like-minded parents, will carry the baton of wisdom, beauty and purpose for Mrs. du Toit and humanity.

A gloomy entry? I didn’t see it that way…I saw it more as hope emerging from the shadows…hope that is all the more effective because now it knows it’s not alone.

Canadian: Socialized medicine sucks

2007-07-29T10:37:00.000-04:00

Does anyone out there with more than four brain cells to rub together really believe that socialized medicine…ala the systems in Canada and Europe (notice I’m not going to include Michael Moore’s Eden-like Cuba in that list)…provides better health care than the United States? Being married to a doc naturally skews my perception…and talking to several former Canadian docs who have emigrated makes me view any claims on the superiority of socialized medicine with a very, very jaded eye.

David Gratzer takes on the topic in Investor’s Business Daily.

A clip:

Canadian doctors, long silent on the health care system's problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. Day has become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center and challenging the government to shut him down.

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80% of government-funded diagnostic testing.

Oh yeah…and that jaded eye thingie? I can get that fixed this afternoon here in the United States…how long’s the wait in the vaunted socialized medicine paradise?

Weird King-esque photo-op

2007-07-29T10:06:00.000-04:00

I just came back from Wal-Mart (buying groceries for the seven hungry South Carolina locusts currently visiting our house) and saw something that reminded me of the movie version of Stephen Kings “The Stand.”

Perched atop the warning sirens for the Perry Nuclear Power Plant were four huge turkey buzzards…boy, talk about apocalyptic! In “The Stand,” it was only a measly crow perched on the warning siren…how much worse could things be if four buzzards are taking up the same foreboding position? In the book, almost everyone in the world dies from a bioweapon release. What's in store now...everyone dies from radiation PLUS has to pay vastly increased electrical rates to cover the cost of the cleanup? The mind boggles...

I’m not sure why the buzzards were congregated there…I didn’t see any fresh carrion baking to the perfect stage of buzzard-yummy putrescence…maybe the buzzards were keeping their eye on the group of recreational bike riders that had pulled up to patch one of the members’ tires, figuring one of the bikers must be sick and would soon fall from the pack.

File this one under “weird.”

The holy caste of Journalists

2007-07-22T10:09:00.000-04:00

*****Warning: Looooong post*****

I am endlessly fascinated by the print and news media assumption of some holy mandate proclaiming their product to be sacrosanct because they’ve been anointed by the sweet balm of a journalism or communications degree. This divine diploma apparently sanctifies as holy writ all information imparted by such beings…and condemns news generated by lesser- or non-degreed pamphleteers to the dustbin of irrelevant history.

It fascinates…and embarrasses me…because I was once a member of that priesthood.

I graduated from a small liberal arts college with a degree in print communications, jumped into the Professional Journalist world with both feet, won many awards, had many stories on the national wires, and eventually worked my way to the news editor position of a couple of large suburban papers. I’ve questioned Presidents, Governors, sports stars, murderers and movie stars (though I never wore a trench coat or a fedora.) and I’ve been in contact with local and national media of all persuasions.

I took a step back from all that when my first child was born and my wife started her medical residency a couple months later. Fourteen years later, I’m still Mr. Mom (and Farmer Dad) and have had the luxury of watching a titanic sea change in my former professional world. The monopoly is gone, the gates have been broken and the internet hordes have been pillaging the halls of “the big story,” formerly the exclusive home of Professional Journalists.

In the words of the great sage Austin Powers, “It’s a brave new world, baby, and it’s very groovy.”

Oh yeah, and that Journalism degree? That and $4.50 will get you a mocha-frappa-cappa-gollychino at Starbucks (my, how times have changed.) Now anyone can write and publish anything in any media, 24 hours a day, with worldwide exposure…an internet post can go from the keyboard to the Kremlin in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

The problem with a degree in journalism or communications is that the profession has always been more about affinity and ability than degree…the university time does little to train someone in the profession. You can either organize your thoughts and write or you can’t; you either have the wit and drive to recognize and follow stories or you don’t; you either have the fortitude to write the blunt truth or you don’t. That’s my perspective, and as someone who interviewed dozens of journalism school graduates for various positions I can say that the only way to truly gauge ability is to watch and read what they produce.

And as far as the “impartial servant of the truth” goes, journalists never have been and never will be impartial. Discrimination and slant comes into coverage in so many ways, the best that can be hoped for is that names, dates and numbers are accurate in whatever is forthcoming.

Core beliefs influence which stories are covered and the manner in which they are covered…it could range from something as simple as “it never occurred to me to ask that” to outright sympathetic coverage because the journalist believes in the cause. To pretend impartiality is laughable…at the risk of parroting Fox, it’s better to be accurate and balanced.

All of which brings us back to the new media…the internet…and its hordes of ardent, largely unpaid, pamphleteers. On the whole, I think much better coverage is provided about items of local and national interest by internet journalists and bloggers than by the major media outlets and Professional Journalists. Internet journalists, imbued by their interest in the story with more drive than the pros, dig deeper, provide more detail and follow up better than the mainstream can ever hope to do. Sometimes the writer is skilled in the area about which they’re writing…how much better to have the source for a story writing the story than some journalistic hack who doesn’t even know which questions to ask? You go from hearsay to a first person narrative, cutting out the annoying middle man! Instead of lazily printing some pols comments instead of digging into the facts (that’s too tiring), internet journalists are frequently focused on a single issue, devoting more attention, determination and passion to researching that issue than a Professional Journalist could ever match.

The coverage is better because it is more thorough and there is usually more than one writer digging into the subject.

The recent coverage of the immigration bill is a perfect example of internet journalists burying the professionals’ efforts on the story. The internet writers, no doubt clad in pajamas and merrily typing away on their basement computers, actually READ the bill instead of relying on the boilerplate commentary supplied by the politicians. - the commentary that was the mainstay of mainstream media coverage. Thanks to their superior knowledge (superior even to the pols supposedly crafting the bill), bloggers were able to define what the bill actually said and were able to point out huge problems that resulted in public outrage and the bills eventual demise.

Bloggers exposed the chinks in the armor of the media and showed that the mainstream media is not the only way to get information and, in this case, was certainly not the best way. Score one for the new media. But change comes slowly, and I’m sure our society will experience more growing pains as we shift from the old way of delivering information to the public to a new, more individually-tailored, way.

During “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” in January, I was talking to one of the other actors, a very bright and talented girl who graduated in May with plans to pursue Professional Journalism. She looked like I punched her in the stomach when I said “well, we’re all young and stupid once...(perhaps I could have come up with a better choice of words, but diplomacy has never been my strong suit).” I then explained how, for the most part, journalism has become the profession of everyman now and to jump into journalism is to board the Titanic about an hour before its rendezvous with the iceberg. We talked about it for quite a while and she said her plans were a little more focused on television than print, a venue in which there will still be some opportunity (though I told her I hated to see her intelligence and ability wasted on such a vapid enterprise.)

I hope she’ll eventually rethink her plans…

Gone are the mantles of indispensability and impartiality which once graced journalism – it’s been demonstrated that drive, knowledge and ability outweigh degree anytime. The mainstream media beast is ailing and may very well be dead…it just hasn’t gotten the news yet.

Norm would be proud

2007-07-21T19:27:00.000-04:00

*****Warning: Family Update Post – of limited appeal*****

This week has been like an episode of New Yankee Workshop at the Rantmeister hacienda as we’re building a host of bookcases so we can actually put many of our books in the room we call the Library. Norm Abrams would be so proud! So far, we’ve built a couple floor-to-ceiling cases with fixed shelves and another couple cases with one drawer at the bottom and adjustable shelves through the rest of the seven-foot tall cases.

On tap for tomorrow are the final cases…a couple lateral file drawers at the bottom with more shelves in a step-back arrangement at the top. Crown molding, baseboards and face frames will finish it off. See what happens when there’s no pressing theater or farm task to keep our hands busy?

We’re building the cases from birch plywood and the faces, crown molding and baseboards will be made from cherry cut on my father’s farm about 25 years ago. This is not a new pursuit for me…I built quite a few full sets of kitchen cabinets for Doc-wife’s parents, who own a lot of rental property in South Carolina. During my wife’s medical school years, I also rebuilt and salvaged a lot of antique furniture we purchased for pennies at auction or picked up from the trash. We’d then take those items to the antique shows over the weekend…it was a rare weekend that we didn’t pick up at least a couple hundred bucks worth of after-expenses spending money through selling our restorations. Our house is still furnished with some of those curbside finds.

Still, it was nice to get the sawdust flying again…though my current workshop facilities are somewhat less than optimal. My tools are located in the hay barn, and I’m constantly fighting with resident birds and high humidity to keep my machinery usable.

We’ve also got a full store of projects located with my tools in the barn…they include a nice oak pier mirror, several stack bookcases, a nice set of oak chairs and a primitive cabinet we brought along from our West Virginia house.
Later this summer or fall, we plan to build a concrete-floored pole barn to store our farm equipment. We’re planning a 40-by-80 foot building with a 12 foot wall height. We would also section off (and heat) a portion of the building as workshop space – a place where my cabinet saw, bandsaws, shaper, 12-foot wood lathe, planer, drill press and other assorted guy toys could be used and kept in relative luxury. This will be a new experience for us as we haven’t actually hired anyone to build a structure for us at any of the houses we’ve owned…we figured if we couldn’t build it ourselves, we didn’t really need it.

Stay tuned for construction updates.

Medievel meandering

2007-07-19T18:03:00.000-04:00

At the Faire

The Rantmeister clan visited the Great Lakes Medieval Faire over the weekend, decked out in our medieval finery. Here, Doc-wife, son-and-heir and blog daughter enjoy the performance of the comic fire eaters near the entrance to the Faire. As we’re the proud holders of season passes, we expect to visit the Faire regularly over the summer.

Drawbacks of travel

2007-07-19T10:16:00.000-04:00

Having been nauseated after periodically picking warbles from the skin of various pets, this struck me as particularly yucky – boy, talk about those drawbacks of international travel that no one mentions! This leaves dysentery in the dust, in my book!

The Spud that roared

2007-07-19T08:36:00.000-04:00

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight…it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

It’s one of those old truisms…and I found out yesterday that it can be applied to cats, too - even half-grown cats who are more a legend in their own minds than in reality.

Remember the kitten I pictured in the tortilla a couple months ago? We call him “Spud” now and he’s been a constant companion on our outdoor forays. He’s the source of a lot of exasperation as he winds his way around ankles and under feet as we’re trying to leave the porch of our house, though he does make up for his trouble with a constant parade of mice, moles and voles served up for our scrutiny.

Yesterday, as Doc-wife and I were surveying the garden (and gobbling some early season tomatoes), Spud was contentedly pouncing on grasshoppers unlucky enough to come to his attention. Suddenly, he stopped and went flying, arms spread for the pounce, into a patch of tall weeds.

We heard a weird burping noise and then a hiss.

Spud came sauntering out and stood by our feet with a “what the hell was that?” look on his face.

The weeds moved…we investigated…reluctantly. A very large, somewhat puzzled, woodchuck poked his head out and then made a beeline for the mound of dirt behind our chicken coop, Spud in hot pursuit. This woodchuck had to be at least 2-1/2 times as big as Spud, but the kitten wasn’t backing down. It was like those old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons with the tiny chicken hawk…”I’m a chicken hawk and you’re a chicken, so are you going to come along quietly or am I gonna have to get rough?”

Spud’s probably outside now, bragging to anyone that’ll listen about the “ginormous mouse that got away.”

Michelle Malkin: You go, girl!

2007-07-18T11:05:00.000-04:00

Blogger Michelle Malkin has launched a new campaign aimed at pressuring Congress to do something about the revolving door of criminal illegal aliens being "caught and released" in the country. She's started www.deportthemnow.com to try to do something about the problem.
Here's the website's debut video....with promises for many more to follow.

It's a problem the pols and immigration amnesty supporters would prefer was quietly swept under the rug...it's time to bring it into the light of day.

Another endangered RINO

2007-07-16T12:11:00.000-04:00

I wonder if anyone except John McCain is surprised that his 2008 Presidential campaign is tanking?

While the Arizona Republican was busy cozying up to his buddies inside the D.C. beltway and in the mainstream media, his antics weren’t playing too well in red-tinged flyover country…you know, John…that backwater place where all those VOTERS live? Perhaps your positions on critical issues were just too nuanced for our pedestrian minds to grasp. Perhaps your support for the Illegal Immigration Amnesty excrement being floated by Pres. Bush and Teddy Kennedy was in reality a subtle ploy designed to reveal that borders are too concrete a concept in an existential world…maybe we just couldn’t see the obvious truth that all the world should be one society under newly-elected King John?

Or that McCain-Feingold “Campaign Finance Reform” nonsense…perhaps we just couldn’t see that muzzling our free speech is the first step to…setting us free? Help me out here, John…throw me a frickin’ bone, okay?

I think maybe you mistook popularity in the New York Times and Washington Post for popularity with those flea-bitten flyover flatlanders who actually do the voting, the ones to whom deed matters more than word. That’s the beauty of our system…even incumbent dinosaurs like you have to return to the people every so often to renew your mandate as a representative. After a couple tries, and some really strong glasses, even us outside-the-beltway dullards can tell a Republican from a Republican in Name Only (RINO) like you.

Thanks for the service in Vietnam (and sorry about that prison camp and torture thing while you were there) but don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. The brand of two-faced politics-as-usual that you’re selling is not what anyone is interested in buying.

Capisce?

Rantmeister's Cincinnati Chili

2007-07-16T08:46:00.000-04:00

You know, the exchange students may leave our home, but they always take a little something along with them – a longing for some gustatory delight produced in the Rantmeister’s kitchen. Latest case in point: our first exchange student, German Till, caught me on MSN Messenger the other day, prostrated himself (figuratively) on hands and knees and begged for the recipe for Cincinnati Chili.

And being the magnanimous (and modest) person that I am, I agreed to post it on my blog. Please be warned: Anyone shopping the internet for Cincinnati Chili recipes should beware – there are a lot of fakers and pretenders out there, trying to pass off something as Cincinnati Chili from which even a moderately self-respecting Cincinnati dog would turn away.
Some tips:

*Clue 1 – If the recipe calls for you to brown the beef…run away! This person has never been to Cincinnati or savored the spices of Gold Star.

*Clue 2 – If the recipe calls for tomatoes or peppers or includes the word “healthy” in any context, take cover! It ain’t Cincinnati chili, just some would-be west coast gourmand trying to bring nouvelle cuisine to the masses.

*Clue 3 – If it includes the word “quick” in the recipe description, it’s time to find another listing…Cincinnati chili is equal parts alchemy, wizardry and patience. So without further ado:

Cincinnati Chili Recipe (a work in progress)

2 quarts water
3 medium onions (chopped very fine…I use a food processor)
2 small cans tomato paste
1 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp +/- red pepper
3 tsp ground cumin
5 tbsp chili powder
2 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 pounds lean finely ground beef (or venison, which also works well)
6 garlic cloves (chop finely in the food processor)
3 tbsp vinegar
3 bay leaves
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp cinnamon
2-3 tsp salt

Bring water to a boil in a large pot…like a pasta pot. Add ground meat. Cook meat until it begins to separate and disperses evenly throughout water. Add remaining ingredients and reduce heat. I like to cover the pot and cook for about 30 minutes over medium low heat, then uncover and simmer for at least an additional 3 hours, stirring occasionally until desired consistency is achieved.

Serve over spaghetti topped with finely shredded cheddar cheese (3-way) and chopped onions (4 way) and/or beans (5 way.) Sprinkle liberally with oyster crackers and enjoy. May also be served with hot dogs (coneys) in the following manner: place hot dog in bun, add line of yellow mustard down bun, fill to overflowing with chili, pile finely shredded cheddar of top of that and then try to eat the whole mess without wearing most of it.

Harry Potter: Good but...

2007-07-11T17:55:00.001-04:00

We just got back from the debut showing of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” at one of the local movie theaters. My take? This is the first Harry Potter movie that felt like it was made simply to set up the next installment in the series.

It was good and an enjoyable 2 hours and 10 minutes, but it seems like the production staff is starting to trade story for special effects, as happens so often in series productions. It fell well short of previous efforts. I thought the new characters in this movie were well crafted…I particularly liked the fey new “Luna” character. Having never read the books (I started one, but found Rowling’s prose unbelievably tedious), I don’t know how she figures in the continuation of the adventures in the already-completed volumes.

It was a sparse crowd at our local theater…I’d say it was at only about 30 percent of seating capacity – seemingly bad news for day one of an expected blockbuster, though I expect box office totals will eventually meet expectations.

*****

We also went a little over a week ago to see the new Die Hard movie, “Live Free or Die Hard.” Pocket review? Yippee Ki Yay MF’ers! Bruce Willis never disappoints ad this is no exception. We took the children, who then spent the next day in a Die Hard-a-palooza, watching the entire rest of the series.

This post brought to you by MacBook

2007-07-11T10:41:00.000-04:00

"The only constant in this world is change..."
I forget which great thinker said that (maybe Harpo Marx) but it's true. Change has even come to the Rantmeister this week in the form of a brand spanking new Apple MacBook Pro 17 laptop computer. This s my first blog post from the new computer...sitting wireless on my bed...and, yes, dressed in pajamas. I can practically feel the specter of Steve Jobs guiding my fingers. I began my computing journey with Macs working at the newspapers, had a Mac Performa in the early 90s, then switched to PCs because of the availability of software. With this Core Duo Mac able to run anything made for either machine, the decision to switch back was a no-brainer.
Ain't life grand!
The new Harry Potter movie is on the agenda for today...leisure time is welcome after the last five weeks of performances at the Ashtabula Arts Center (three weeks of The Wizard of Oz and two weeks of The Fantasticks.) The Fantasticks was a ball, though, working with a small cast of very talented people...you were never quite sure what the show was going to be from night to night (there was a lot of improvisation going on.) It was very challenging for me musically, as my last formal musical training was as a chorus member at the arts center in probably 1974, but it could have been a lot worse.
On the home front, the garden is growing somewhat slowly because of the drought, but our four acres of sweet corn looks good as do the peppers and tomatoes. We've also launched a somewhat preemptive pogrom against raccoons (or consider it payback for all the chickens they've killed here) with the current tally standing at 12 confirmed kills and a couple probables.
More incisive blogging to follow as I sort out the ins and out of this new platform.

I'm not dead...here's a dusty update

2007-06-04T09:09:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the lack of posts (he says, blowing the dust off his blog,) but rehearsals for this summer’s theater efforts and “plantin’ time” have interfered.

*****

To update:

*”The Wizard of Oz” is coming around…it opens Friday at the Ashtabula Arts Center and should be pretty good. We had a seven-hour rehearsal yesterday, complete with two hours of jitterbug dancing to start things off. Today I am feeling every one of my 46 years.

*We have 2-3 acres of sweet corn planted, with the early planting up 8-9 inches already. “Knee high by the Fourth of July” should be no problem…heck, it’s already knee high on some of our more height-challenged members of society. We’ve also got 75 tomato plants, 75 peppers, 25 hills of cucumbers and 25-30 hills combined of muskmelons and squash…now if we can just persuade the deer to dine elsewhere…

*Son-and-heir apparently has a girlfriend. I’m not sure how to feel about that. He spent more than an hour talking to her on the phone yesterday…this, the boy who won’t even talk to his parents on the phone. He needs to work on his date planning technique, though…he invited her over to the farm this summer to help make hay.

Yep, he’s a smoothie…just like his Dad (not.)

*We’re gradually reducing the horse herd…one left yesterday, bringing the total down to 10 (and another, Bubba, due to be returned in the coming weeks to the adoption program from which he came.) We’d like to have the tally down to 5-6 by the time fall rolls around this year.

*****

I’m also planning to write a post on my continuing disdain for the illegal immigration amnesty being pushed by President Bush and that corrupt legion of yammering simians inhabiting the Senate chambers in Washington, D.C. Stay tuned…

Coyotes in the news

2007-04-16T10:07:00.000-04:00

A toddler in New Jersey was attacked by a coyote last week, leading the talking head female newscaster at the FOX News station reporting the event to wonder why on Earth the animal would attack.

Watched a few too many Disney movies, have we? Here’s a clue…anything smaller than the coyote is considered by the coyote to be potential food. The coyote was attacking the toddler because it saw the defenseless youngster as a chance for a quick snack…a walking chicken McNuggett in SpongeBob training pants. Animals are not cute, reasoning, smiley little furballs only concerned with doing good in the world…they are wild creatures living under the Laws of Fang and Claw (hat tip to Jack London) trying to survive by any means necessary. They are not our friends…they have no regard for us at all other than as sources of food or danger.

News flash: The resurging coyote population means the critters are nearly everywhere, from big cities to the suburbs. You wouldn’t leave your toddler unattended in the ocean with sharks about, would you? It’s time to start thinking about coyotes, too.

A busier summer

2007-03-29T12:31:00.000-04:00

I haven’t even started rehearsals yet, and I’ve already been bumped up the cast list for The Fantasticks at the Ashtabula Arts Center’s Straw Hat Theater. I was going to play the part of the Guy who Dies…a funny, smallish role. I found out yesterday I will be playing the part of the father of the boy, a main role in the small cast, meaning I’ve got at least eight songs to learn.

It should be a fun show to do as I know, like and respect the director and all the other actors. Stay tuned.

*****

Guitar update: It’s going well. Doc-wife has joined me in my quest to be a jukebox hero, and now we play our Fender Stratocasters (mine Ice Blue, hers Midnight Wine) for an hour or more every day. We can give a recognizable chords-only rendition of quite a few songs that use the 15-20 chords we know…we were working on “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd this morning.

The Freebird video (not us) is here.

Bring me the head of F-250 engineer!

2007-03-29T12:02:00.000-04:00

I would like someone to bring me the head of the Ford engineer who decided to design the F-250 Heavy Duty Crew Cab diesel so that the oil pan can only be changed by REMOVING THE FRIGGIN’ ENGINE FROM THE TRUCK! That would be the same oil pan that has a habit of RUSTING THROUGH in salty climes, or so the service advisory says!

I noticed some oil leaking from the truck at Wal Mart yesterday…about a cup or so ran out while we were in the store for about an hour. Called the Ford place up the hill…was told to bring it in that afternoon. Cool. He called me back in a couple hours…hole in the oil pan…also checked out that diesel smell I’d been smelling…fuel bowl leaking…sweet. Easy fixes, right?

Then came the bad news:

He: The bad news is we have to pull the engine out of the truck and turn it over to change the oil pan.
Me: WTF!?!?!@? Hahahaha! I thought you said you had to pull the engine out of the truck…funny, huh?!
He: Yeah…so you’re looking at about $2,300. And just for the record, we have no sense of humor.

TO CHANGE A FREAKIN’ OIL PAN!?!

I read on the internet some guys have tried to do it by jacking up the body and loosening the transmission to get enough clearance, but they always end up with an oil leak. So now I’m stuck with no recourse. I just want to find that Ford engineering wunderkind who committed that little whoopsie and carve $2,300 worth of lead out of his worthless ass with a rusty grapefruit spoon.

Update: Oz, Fantasticks

2007-03-24T23:40:00.000-04:00

I went to callbacks today for The Wizard of Oz at the Ashtabula Arts Center so the director could take a look at the potential Dorothies, Auntie Ems and Wicked Witches. My ears are still ringing from the characteristic cackling of the witches and I was happy to see terrific people there auditioning for the parts. It was a riot to hear the witches cut loose for the first time (of course, then I couldn’t hear anything.) Question: Should there be blood flowing from my ears and “ahhh-hahahaha!” reverberating in my head?

Several of the Dorothy candidates are taking part in the “Kids Sing Broadway” production this weekend at AAC…we saw it last night and it was terrific. Such singers…I’ll have to scrape the rust off my own pipes to keep up. The talent bodes well for a good show this summer.

And speaking of summer, I also learned I will be playing the part of Mortimer, The Guy Who Dies in “The Fantasticks”. I’m not really familiar with the part, but from a quick Googling, it looks like it should be fun. I’ll be playing another Indian…this time with a Cockney accent…I KNEW I was going to be typecast after “Cuckoo’s Nest!”

*****

I’ll write more interesting stuff tomorrow when I have more time…I promise!

Best wishes for Elizabeth Edwards

2007-03-23T08:24:00.000-04:00

I heard with real sorrow yesterday that cancer has reappeared in Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic 2008 Presidential candidate John Edwards. Cancer has been detected in Mrs. Edwards’ bones and there are indications it may also have spread to her lungs, according to published reports.

At a press conference yesterday, the condition was characterized as incurable, but treatable. That means they can slow it down, but they can’t eliminate it. Barring the intervention of some accident or other disease process, it will probably kill her. The timing will become more apparent as the disease progresses and the effects of various chemo- and hormone-therapy strategies are assessed. I hope they're able to slow the cancer to a crawl.

Both have vowed to stay in the race for the 2008 White House. It’s not the decision I would have made, but, to be fair, the couple is not in a position in which I would ever find myself. I haven’t decided whether I think it’s a cynical attempt to use the emotions of the electorate or a sad commentary on what has become important to our career politicians.

By anyone’s standards, John Edwards is a rich man. He doesn’t need to work. He’s in an uphill battle for the nomination in which Democratic front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have a commanding lead. He’s pursuing an impossible quest for a thankless job, spending precious hours and days playing the political game while his wife’s candle burns ever shorter. If politics is the couple’s favorite pastime, something they would pursue above all other activities, then I have no problem with the decision to stay in the campaign (though I question their priorities.) If Edwards is staying in the race because he hopes to get a “sympathy bounce” in the polling…I have no words...cynical just doesn’t cut it.

I like the sentiments of country singer Tim McGraw in his Live Like You Were Dying:

…I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

I hope the campaign doesn’t rob the couple of too much precious time; it would be a shame to waste it on something as meaningless as politics.

Going to Oz this summer

2007-03-23T06:50:00.000-04:00

The first audition results are in: the Rantmeister Clan will be traveling to the land of Oz this summer in the Ashtabula Arts Center’s Straw Hat Theater production of “The Wizard of Oz.” I will play the Tin Woodsman, Doc-wife will be the munchkin coroner and the blog-daughter will have an as-yet-unspecified part. I will actually begin work on the show Saturday at a call-back audition as the director tries to see which aspiring Dorothy will work best with the the actors she’s picked as the other principals.

No word yet on The Fantasticks or Moby Dick: The Musical.

14th birthday...how'd that happen?

2007-03-22T06:40:00.000-04:00

Son and Heir turns 14 today.

It just doesn’t seem possible that 14 years ago, a Monday, we made the drive to Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati for the delivery of our first child. Stubborn, he was reluctant to make his appearance; strong, he stood in the doctor’s lap upon his arrival; and loud, we could hear him squalling 200 yards away and through 5-6 closed hospital doors in the nursery. They had to bring him to our room because he was keeping all the other quiet little babies awake.

I can still remember loading Doc-wife and our new baby into our blue Eddie Bauer Ford Aerostar van to come home, wondering when security people were going to stop us from leaving because we had absolutely NO IDEA how to raise a child. We were still looking for flashing lights and sirens as we pulled out of the driveway, both concerned and relieved that we were allowed to go.

He was a near-8-pound hard, rubbery chunk then…he’s considerably bigger now, but still built like a linebacker. What he will be at adulthood is anyone’s guess, but we’re liking the indications so far. He thinks well, knows right from wrong, can recite dialogue from Monte Python’s The Holy Grail, and sometimes his socks match…it could be much worse.

He has asked to skip school today to shop for his present (we’re helping him buy a computer by supplementing the allowance money he’s saved) and we have acquiesced…he never misses school otherwise. He wants pizza for his birthday meal – a predictable choice.

He’s a young man now, and I can finally envision a time when he’s out on his own, living his life, perhaps getting married and deciding to start a family. There may come a time when, after witnessing the birth of his child, he’s waiting at the pickup doors of the hospital for his wife and new child and having no idea what to do next.

My advice: Enjoy the moment, treasure your family and relax…if we could get it right 14 years ago, it should be a snap for everyone else.

Sci Fi's terrifying reality

2007-03-21T11:23:00.000-04:00

I was reading some news this morning and came across an article where some researchers are postulating it may be possible to chemically scrub away bad memories. Why does this sound like the first step on the slippery slope to a truly terrifying science fiction novel?

From the story:

"There are several major concerns" about creating these kinds of drugs, said Felicia Cohn, a medical ethicist at University of California at Irvine's School of Medicine. "Is the act of altering memories even an appropriate medical intervention?" she asked.

Another set of "issues is related to consequences. What are the effects of altering a particular person's memory but not changing the context the person is living in. We might erase a young girl's memory of a rape, but people around her will still know and inadvertently remind her," Cohn said.

"It becomes a genie in the bottle question. Once a drug is available for use, it gets used appropriately and inappropriately. People could start going to physicians to forget they love chocolate. … Is it just for post-traumatic stress disorder and rape victims? Where do we draw the line? Who gets to decide what is horrific enough?"

I happen to believe we are the sum of our memories, good and bad, and anything that eliminates those memories steals part of us. In the end, the only things we can really claim to own during our lifetime are memories – anything else can be taken away.

I empathize with the people who have had horrific occurrences in their past, but hasn’t that molded their current self? If you take away those memories and experiences, don’t you, in effect, erase that person?

Those are just a couple of the ethical concerns with the intended uses of such a drug. Thinking about possible misuses of such a drug is enough to promote nightmares on its own.

My conclusion: Just because we can doesn’t always mean we should.

Open season on paparazzi

2007-03-21T09:32:00.000-04:00

You know, I have a little trouble conjuring up any sympathy at all for the paparazzo Keanu Reeves apparently clipped with his Porsche on Monday.

From the story:

The photographer fell to the ground and paramedics were called after Reeves' car allegedly struck the man at 7:30 p.m. Monday, said Deputy Ed Hernandez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

"He grazed a paparazzi standing in front of his Porsche and the man fell to the ground," Hernandez said. It wasn't known how fast the Porsche was traveling.

Reeves was leaving a parking space in the Avenida Tranquila residential area near Los Verdes County Golf Course about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, he said.

As a matter of fact, I have a lot of trouble feeling sympathy for paparazzi beset by any number of work-related mishaps: they are scum-weasels, human energy-sucking remoras clinging to the celebrity teat and abusing privacy in the name of the “People’s Right To Know.” I’m only sorry Keanu wasn’t borrowing one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legion of Hummers at the time…now THAT would have resulted in more than a graze.

Law enforcement needs to crack down on the harassment commonly practiced by these packs of ravening idiots, shielded as they are by celebrities’ generally-acknowledged reduced right to privacy. Either that or give Sean Penn, Lindsay Lohan, Reeves et al a free rein to respond to the public harrying with anything short of lethal force.

Protesting the protesters

2007-03-19T10:49:00.000-04:00

I was just reading Tantor’s account of the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest march in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. There’s a lot of material there that will never be covered by the friend-of-the-peace-marcher mainstream media.

My favorite bit:

Before the march started, some of the vets found a stash of ANSWER propaganda, six boxes of it, stashed under a tall evergreen tree next to the bridge. They pissed on it. ANSWER posted a guard on it after the fact. Quite frankly, I lost my confidence in the ANSWER commies competence to rule the world when they can't even keep their propaganda dry.

The era of old media’s stranglehold on information is at an end when citizen-reporters like Tantor give an event more balanced coverage, free and without commercial interruption, than the so-called professionals.

Auditions over...now the wait

2007-03-19T09:47:00.000-04:00

We had auditions yesterday at the Ashtabula Arts Center for this summer’s Straw Hat Theater season. Son-and-heir opted out, but Doc-wife, the blog-daughter and I were on hand to sing our little hearts out and do a monologue for the assembled directors.

BD picked a compilation of Jayne’s monologues from Joss Whedon’s late “Firefly” television series. She said one of the directors actually looked ill when she got to the part about the crazed Reavers, who “rape (people) to death, eat your flesh and sew your skin to their clothing…and if you’re real, real lucky, they do it in that order.” Of course, another of the directors (The Fantasticks) actually recognized the source of the monologue – major geek bonus points for that!

The shows we are interested in include “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Fantasticks” and “Moby Dick-The Musical.” Straw Hat will also present “Sideshow” this summer, but it sounded a little depressing and I’m not ready for that yet after “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” plus I don’t want to be a role hog. The director of Sideshow sounded hurt that I wasn’t auditioning for that show. When asked for preferences, I told them I’d like to be the Tin Woodsman in the Wizard of Oz and Doc-wife expressed a longing to be the munchkin coroner in the same show.

Doc wife sang “Les Poissons” from “The Little Mermaid,” but in the interest of brevity they cut her off before she could whip out her little plastic lobster prop. I sang “The Bare Necessities” from “The Jungle Book” and the blog-daughter sang “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from “Easter Parade.” The songs were not rendered in a stellar manner as it was difficult to keep pace with the erratic young accompanist. All in all, though, things could have been much worse.

There were at least 50 people signed up for yesterday’s three-hour cattle call audition, mostly junior high and early high school girls. I assume they had a similar-or-better turnout at Saturday’s auditions. Hopefully, they had a more diverse age group at Saturday’s tryouts.

Casting is expected to be announced within a couple weeks.

It ain't Carter in the White House, Mahmoud!

2007-03-19T08:46:00.000-04:00

So Iranian military officers are getting captured in Iraq or defecting and we’re not giving them back, prompting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to flap his gums about kidnapping Americans or Israelis in retaliation.

From a Times Online story:

“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”

The first sign of a possible campaign against high-ranking Iranian officers emerged earlier this month with the discovery that Ali Reza Asgari, former commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force in Lebanon and deputy defence minister, had vanished, apparently during a trip to Istanbul.

Asgari’s disappearance shocked the Iranian regime as he is believed to possess some of its most closely guarded secrets. The Quds Force is responsible for operations outside Iran.

I’m not even going to touch that thing about feeding officers to fighting cocks…not gonna touch it.

Slim Pickens riding the bomb...Yeee, haw!

The thing Mr. Ahm-a-dinner-jacket needs to remember is this is not 1979 and Jimmy “Give Peace a Chance” Carter is not sitting in the White House harboring lust in his heart for all the D.C. hotties. Nope, the one with his finger poised longingly over The Button is none other than Chimpy McBushitler, the raving lunatic christofascist, imperialistic, war-mongering soul brother to Yosemite Sam who is the nightmare of every far-left loony and dictator out there. To them, he’s like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, just waiting for a chance to drop a nuke and ride it all the way to its target.

Go ahead, Mahmoud, make his day.

For one, I’m happy to see that we are finally taking this shadowy proxy war in a minor way to the Iranians – they’ve gotten a free pass by operating in the shadows for far too long.

Eat an Animal for PETA

2007-03-16T08:21:00.000-04:00

Kitten burrito...fresh, tender, fuzzy!

I didn’t get the memo on yesterday’s fifth annual Eat an Animal for PETA Day, so I thought I’d show solidarity with my fellow carnivores by chomping on a quick breakfast burrito this morning. Mmmmm…kitten…the other cute meat!

*Note: No cute, fuzzy, five-day old kittens were hurt during the snapping of this picture.

Web censorship spreads

2007-03-16T06:42:00.000-04:00

So you say the United Nations should be responsible for control of the internet? That would be the same UN which includes countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Iran?

Oh wait…those countries (and a host of others) already censor the internet, don’t they?

A recent study by Harvard Law et al has found that many countries, including the above UN members, already practice web censorship. And guess what? The practice is growing. From the story:

A recent six-month investigation into whether 40 countries use censorship shows the practice is spreading, with new countries learning from experienced practitioners such as China and benefiting from technological improvements.

OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites.

The research found a trend towards censorship or, as John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, “a big trend in the reverse direction”, with many countries recently starting to adopt forms of online censorship.

Drudge is also reporting today that Russia’s Vladimir Putin just signed a decree to create a “super agency to regulate media and the Internet, sparking fears among Russian journalists of a bid to extend tight publishing controls to the relatively free Web.”

I just don’t see turning the keys to free internet expression over to a group numbering heavy practitioners of censorship among its members. Talk about turning the fox loose in the henhouse…

Reflections on NYC shootings

2007-03-15T11:21:00.000-04:00

So a guy puts on a fake beard, goes into a New York City pizza joint, pulls a gun in this supposedly-gun-free NYC establishment, and proceeds to empty the clip into the back of his waiter. He then exits the eatery.

During his fleeing and eluding, he comes across a couple of unarmed (and apparently non-kevlared) volunteer police officers responding to the scene of the shooting. He caps them both. Some ARMED officers then cornered the guy and said perp then went down in a hail of bullets from NYCs finest, some of whom were apparently injured in the exchange. That makes four dead including the perp, the waiter and the two unarmed auxiliary cops.

Mayor Mike “Gonna Grab Your Gun” Bloomberg had these comments:

Bloomberg lamented the loss of two volunteer police officers.

"Since I became mayor, not even one auxiliary police officer has been lost," he said.

"Tonight was a horrible night for the New York Police Department and for our city."

Bloomberg said Marshalik, an immigrant from Russia and New York University student, was two weeks away from his 20th birthday.

Pekearo, he said, lived nearby in Greenwich Village and had served as an auxiliary officer since June 2003.

"It could have been a lot worse," Bloomberg said. "Without the actions of our brave officers most likely it would have been."

You know, a few things stand out here.

*First: This shooting screams “domestic incident” or “execution” of some type. A guy disguises himself, which is either to fool the intended victim or aid his getaway. He empties his magazine into the back of one victim, not indiscriminately spraying fire, and then flees. Fifteen shots into the same victim either expresses extreme anger or the desire to send a message.

*Second: What were UNARMED VOLUNTEER OFFICERS doing responding to a shooting? The first thing I learned in karate and handgun classes is that you just don’t go into a gunfight unarmed or with an inferior weapon. Going to a gun crime wearing a uniform makes you a priority target. Making yourself a defenseless target is not helping anyone, despite Bloomberg’s platitudes to the contrary.

*Third: How could this happen in a city with such draconian gun laws? Could it be that the perp was not obeying those gun laws? And what might have transpired had this happened somewhere where concealed carry is legal and widespread…perhaps something like this? Or this?

*****

Rantmeister Axioms of the Day: 1. People do some crazy sh*t and you better be prepared to ensure your own safety. 2. Don’t go unarmed and/or unarmored into a gun fight.

Raising reading machines

2007-03-15T09:09:00.000-04:00

I turned Son-and-Heir, nearly 14, loose this morning with military sci-fi dean Gordon Dickson’s book “Necromancer,” the “gateway book” into Dickson’s famed Dorsai series. I’ve read each of the books so many times over the years, I can quote passages.

I think his conclusive work, “The Final Encyclopedia,” belongs in the top 10 of any list of the best science fiction ever written, right there alongside Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot,” Ray Bradbury’s “R is for Rocket” collection and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” (though not all the subsequent books in the series.)

As my children have aged, they have turned into little reading machines; skin-covered literary Terminators whose sole purpose seems to be to devour every book ever written. They’re currently reading 3-4 adult novels per week. Son-and-Heir plowed through most of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender” books in about two weeks and the Blog-daughter, recently turned 12, has been ripping through Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz at a furious pace.

I had to laugh the other day when the school sent home a paper for us to sign affirming that we were trying to get the kids to read at least 15 minutes per day…yeah, like THAT’S a problem. It’s more like “it’s midnight…if you don’t turn those light off and go to sleep NOW, there’ll be no more reading for a WEEK!”

It has also been nice that their reading tastes have been maturing of late…they’ve both been reading a lot of my favorite literature and giving me their take on it. I remember long conversations with my mother about the books we’d read and those we hoped the authors would eventually write. We both had a particular liking for the Dorsai books – she for “Soldier, Ask Not” and me for “Tactics Of Mistake.” We fought for reading rights to the household’s sole copy of Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now I’m fighting with my own kids for some reading time with Koontz’s “Strange Highways.” As a parent, I can think of a lot worse problems.

Pump up that brain!

2007-03-13T22:10:00.000-04:00

Just back from a trip to the gym today, the Rantmeister saw word of a study that shows exercise can add brain cells in the areas of the brain involved in memory, an area that typically begins to decline as adults reach age 30.

This was good news to the Rantmeister, a casual workout buff who’s already somewhat past age 30. Did I tell you I saw a study about how exercise grows brain cells? I did?

From the story:

Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice — and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise.

They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise.

Thirty five minutes on the Stairmaster, then free weights and Nautilus for another 40 minutes a few times a week and you, too, can have a properly pumped up brain!

Rockin' and rantin'

2007-03-13T21:42:00.000-04:00

The Rantmeister, long a dedicated Walter Mitty-esque hard classic rocker, and Doc-wife have begun a dedicated guitar-learning blitzkrieg. So every day for the last week, Fender Stratocaster and Fender accoustic, respectively, in hand, we play until our fingers will take no more (about 30-35 minutes so far – the ends of my fingers are still numb from this afternoon’s session.) We’re making progress on various chords, scales and strumming…following one of the free lesson plans which abound on the internet. Eventually, we’ll move on to individual instruction at one of the local arts centers.

I’m not sure what we’re hoping to get from this latest endeavor…opening for the Rolling Stones at some point is probably out of the realm of possibilities. Maybe we could front for them when they open their 2017 tour of America nursing homes..."crank up your hearing aids, folks, it's the Rolling Stones!" Maybe we should just give Weird Al Yankovic a call?

We had to go pick up Son-and-Heir after school last week…the day the used Stratocaster arrived in the mail. As we were coming down our road, it occurred to me that the Blog-Daughter had already arrived home on the bus. I started offering odds to the other members of the Rantmeister clan in the van as to what BD would be doing when we got home.

We had our answer before we even walked in the door…she was rockin’. She had the guitar out of its case, plugged in and was making some noise, ala Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. She’s got the attitude…she’s got the look…she’s got the desire…and now she’s got access to the guitar.

Look out world!

Don't chain my V-Dub!

2007-03-12T10:54:00.000-04:00

Now they’ve gone and done it…human-caused global warming disciples have turned their attention to Europe, are dipping their paint brushes in black paint and getting all set to put up some speed limit signs on Germany’s famous autobahn.

From the AP:

"There are so many areas in which we waste energy in a completely senseless way and burden the climate," Dimas told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper."A simple measure in Germany could be a general speed limit on highways," he added, according to the newspaper. "Speed limits make a lot of sense for many reasons and are completely normal in most EU states, as in the U.S.A. — only in Germany, strangely, is it controversial."

The reaction was predictable:

Dimas' comments drew a slew of largely negative responses Sunday on the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung's Internet site. One respondent described the debate as a "farce" and questioned the environmental record of Dimas' native Greece. Another demanded "free driving for free citizens" — quoting one of Germany's most popular and well-known slogans.

My take : Germans like their fast cars and like to be able to unwind them on the autobahn. I don’t see them easing up on the accelerator any time soon – speed limits or no speed limits.

Kucinich the voice of reason!?!

2007-03-12T07:56:00.000-04:00

From the Department of “Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Weirder:”

Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis (I put the ‘K’ in Krazy, man!) Kucinich came out over the weekend against the Dem candidates and their nutroots minions who worked to pull their candidates out of a planned Fox News Channel debate in Nevada.

From the Kucinich website:

“If you want to be the President of the United States, you can’t be afraid to deal with people with whom you disagree politically,” Kucinich said. “No one is further removed from Fox’s political philosophy than I am, but fear should not dictate decisions that affect hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of others around the world who are starving for real leadership.”

Kucinich said “the public deserves honest, open, and fair public debate, and the media have a responsibility to demand that candidates come forward now, before the next war vote in Congress, to explain themselves.”

“I’m prepared to discuss the war, health care, trade, or any other issue anytime, anywhere, with any audience, answering any question from any media. And any candidate who won’t shouldn’t be President of the United States.”

It’s a telling commentary when Kucinich is the voice of reason within his party - that’s like Captain Ahab calling for reason among his fellow whalers. Of course, Kucinich makes a valid and oft-overlooked point – any President of the United States IS accountable to all voters, not just those who put him/her in office. The president is expected to grow past the petty political jealousies and intrigues and represent the best interest of all Americans, even if they are the red sort who watch Fox News.

Kudos, Dennis, for pointing that out,

Lest you think I’m signing up for Kucinich ’08, here’s a video gem showing Dennis at his full loony best:

Mrs. Cox: My ears and daughter thank you

2007-03-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

The blog-daughter has been flitting around the house the last couple days, belting out “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” from Camelot. It’s her intention to sing the number at auditions Sunday, March 18 for the Ashtabula Arts Center’s summer Straw Hat Theater productions.

This year it has actually been kind of nice to listen to her. Previous year’s audition practice has been kind of hit-and-miss with the blog-daughter: to quote a line from a child's book, “when she was good she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid.” A year in the middle school chorus, though, has made a tremendous difference. Now, she almost always hits the right notes with clarity and good support…when she gets more confidence, she’ll be unstoppable. Her middle school chorus teacher, Mrs. Cox (a newly-minted educator and terrific addition to the schools), has offered to help BD prepare for the auditions by working with her after school during the next week. My daughter is also currently in rehearsals at the AAC for the musical “Pocahontas,” which runs March 30-April 1.

BD is interested in auditioning for “Moby Dick: The Musical,” “Sideshow” and “The Wizard of Oz.” In addition to those shows, the AAC will also produce “The Fantasticks” this summer. Doc-wife and I (perhaps even son-and-heir) will also audition, though we haven’t yet settled on the music we’ll use.

We’ve decided, for the first time since our return to Ohio, to forego auditions this summer at our most-local theater…as I noted here, there is just nothing on their slate of shows that sound appealing this year.

Build. The. Fence. Now.

2007-03-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Times, U.S. border patrol agents are outgunned by Mexican drug gangs and the Mexican government shows little ability to rein them in. From the story:

"Last month, Mexican military officials in Matamoros, just south of Brownsville, Texas, stopped a tractor-trailer containing weapons and ammunition, along with a pickup truck fitted with armor and bulletproof glass.
"The weapons included 18 M-16 assault rifles, one equipped with an M-203 40mm grenade launcher. Also seized were several M-4 carbines, 17 handguns of various calibers, 200 magazines for different weapons, 8,000 rounds of ammunition, assault vests and other military accessories. "

M-16s? Those are fully automatic and at least $2,000 a pop - if you can find them. That's not the stuff used by a drug gang...it's stuff used by someone who's trying to build their own private army.
Build. The. Border. Fence. Now.

Newsflash: Gates, Jobs agree

2007-03-09T09:01:00.000-05:00

There must be something about computers and logic…

This week, Microsoft’s Bill Gates came out and said we need to facilitate the immigration of skilled people to this country to ensure our long-term technological competitiveness on the world stage. A couple weeks ago, it was Apple’s Steve Jobs pointing out that the National Education Association has put roadblocks in the way of improving education by making it difficult to purge bad teachers. Both men were right and both were actually addressing different facets of the same problem: how do we ensure the future competitive wellbeing of this country?

Gates’ comments advocated continuing to make ourselves a Mecca for the best and brightest while Jobs tackled the problems inherent in home-growing our own whiz kids through the public schools. I think we need to take a hard look at the way we currently do things and must follow the advice of both men. Feel-good phrases and platitudes aren’t going to cut it…we need to look at what’s best for the future and let the chips fall where they may.

Gates’ call to ease restrictions on immigration of skilled people addresses an action long overdue. I’ll take it a step farther: Let’s fling wide the doors to this country to anyone who wants to come.

Aha! The Rantmeister, fierce opponent of illegal immigration, has gone soft! Not so fast, hemp-wearing forces of a globalized, no-borders, Age of Aquarius world – there needs to be a caveat on that blanket invitation. The caveat would go something like this: You’re welcome, as long as you can prove there’s something in it for me, and we’re not talking cheap grunt labor to dig my ditches and pick my tomatoes “at the height of flavor” either – we’re talking E=MC2, Yao Ming in the paint, Manhattan Project, “my God, that Pavarotti can really sing” contributions. Call me elitist, but I think new immigrants should bring something of value to this country, not just a demonstrated willingness to break the law and some impending anchor babies.

The US has historically been a magnet for the world’s high achievers. I think it’s also in the country’s best interest to continue that trend - we need to preserve our advantage by ensuring our supply of highly skilled people to power and grow our technological edge.

Jobs is covering the other side of the equation: we must also do a better job of preparing our home-grown talent so they have an equal footing from which to compete with the newcomers. Based on my experience with exchange students, this is not happening. Perhaps we should include teaching among the professions eagerly sought from abroad – bring in teachers who know what it takes, and are willing, to get the most from their students?

The NEA makes it tough to get rid of the bad apples now and ties the hands of administrators when demanding more from teachers. I’m not letting administrators off the hook either – they often seem to be more interested in erecting shiny new buildings, teaching the standardized tests to ensure good scores and soothing ruffled feathers than worrying about the quality of education their students actually receive. I think as a society we must also cut through all the bullsh*t and admit that not all students are cut out for higher learning, and we should prioritize our limited educational resources accordingly.

I was reading some comments on a blog critical of Jobs’ take on education (no link, I can’t remember which blog) where the writer said Jobs can’t treat education and the schools like a business. My question was…why not? Privatization would solve a host of those problems, not the least of which is stranglehold by the NEA. Why can’t the taxpayers expect tangible, non-superficial, results for their dollars? And if those results are not forthcoming, why can’t the parent take their business elsewhere?

It’s essential that people like Gates and Jobs are turning their eyes to the future and loudly sharing their concerns about education, immigration and, ultimately, America’s preeminence in innovation. There’s almost always a better way to do things when you finally have the fortitude to look.

On Coulter, Obama, identity groups and maniacs

2007-03-07T11:17:00.000-05:00

Some political Rant-Nuggetts pulled from the headlines:

*****

Ann Coulter used a conservative convention over the weekend to say she’d like to call John Edwards a faggot, but then she’d be sent off to re-education camp by the PC police. The comment’s provocative, as is her meme, but is also stupid, juvenile and unfunny, which is usually not her MO. The tempest in a teacup it produced provided invaluable publicity for Ms. Coulter, though it also cost her some advertisers.

File under “there’s no such thing as bad publicity…”

*****

The NYT has an article today following some of Barack Obama’s suspicious financial dealings. What will be next, the Times running a story on how it has information about a secret government national security program, but has decided NOT to run with it in the best interest of the country?

There is a lot of time until next year’s primaries…a lot of time for the airing of dirty laundry, smears and faux-outraged condemnations. If anyone makes it to primary season with an unsullied reputation, it will be a miracle (or a candidate who stands ZERO chance of being elected.) I think the people who are clearly interested in running in 2008 but have not yet declared are following the smart route…avoiding the inevitable bloodbath until the last possible instant.

*****

I’ve decided I resent being lumped in with an identity group…perhaps it’s arrogance on my part…but it ticks me off that politicians candidly talk about tailoring their positions for various groups.

I’m fiscally conservative, but am not in lockstep with others who describe themselves so; I’m somewhat socially liberal, though I regularly condemn many positions held by the left; I’m a strong environmentalist who questions the science behind the ‘man is causing global warming’ crowd. With apologies to Winston Churchill, I must be “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…”

That’s why I hope for a little honesty and plain-speaking in politics (if wishes were fishes…). Forgo the carefully crafted speeches to appeal to each identity group at each separate venue – they don’t apply to me. Tell me who you are and what you stand for in no uncertain terms and THEN I can make an informed decision when I cast my vote. Today’s drift in politics seems to be to try to blur the line between all candidates so everyone seems to stand for everything for everyone, with name recognition and mudslinging as the only deciding factors.

*****

I wish we had the technology they used in The Fifth Element to reconstruct a living person from the few living cells they could find after a crash. If we had such science, I would use it to resurrect this piece of sh*t so I could kill him over and over again, ad infinitum, in ever more painful ways. It’s bad enough that he threw a temper tantrum and tried to bump off his mother in law by crashing a plane into her house, but I just don’t see how anyone could willingly and maliciously take the life of their child.

It almost makes me wish I believed there was a Hell, because I’d like to think this guy was spending the rest of eternity in soul-rending agony in its deepest pits.

Better, stronger, faster Zumbo

2007-03-06T06:06:00.000-05:00

Former Outdoor Life writer and current uber pariah Jim Zumbo has a letter on a thread in RKBA today which he should have written two weeks ago. He has apparently come to his senses in the wake of his very-public scourging by the gun community (more here and here) and has dedicated himself to defense of the Second Amendment.

I’ll echo the thoughts of one RKBA commenter who said, “Good on ya, Zumbo!”

From the letter:

“I’ve studied up on legislation now in Congress that would renew and dangerously expand a ban on many types of firearms. The bill, HR 1022 sponsored by New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, is written so broadly that it would outlaw numerous firearms and accessories, including a folding stock for a Ruger rifle. I understand that some of the language could ultimately take away my timeworn and cherished hunting rifles and shotguns as well as those of all American hunters.

"The extremist supporters of HR 1022 don’t want to stop criminals. They want to invent new ones out of people like you and me with the simple stroke of a pen. They will do anything they can to make it impossible for more and more American citizens to legally own any firearm.

"Realizing that what I wrote catered to this insidious attack on fellow gun owners has, one might say, “awakened a sleeping giant within me, and filled him with a terrible resolve.

"I made a mistake. But those who would use my remarks to further their despicable political agenda have made a bigger one. I hope to become their worst nightmare. I admit I was wrong. They insist they are right.”

I think Zumbo’s words are sincere and I’m grudgingly willing to forgive and forget…ardent Second Amendment supporters are always welcomed by the Rantmeister. I hope others are as willing to give him another chance.

No Child Left Behind? Hardly.

2007-03-05T14:20:00.000-05:00

I’m very worried that many school systems, including the Rantmeister’s own Madison Local School District, have decided to make sure that ‘no child is left behind’ by never even getting into the car.

Watered-down curricula, inflated GPAs and declining standardized test scores have been in the news the last few weeks. From The Washington Post:

“The mismatch between stronger transcripts and weak test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation's report card, resonated in the Washington area and elsewhere. Some seized upon the findings as evidence of grade inflation and the dumbing-down of courses. The findings also prompted renewed calls for tough national standards and the expansion of the federal No Child Left Behind law.”

We’ve seen somewhat-impartial evidence of this phenomenon through hosting 13 exchange students…the students uniformly have said the American schools are easy compared to schools in their homelands and note that their fellow students have nowhere near the body of knowledge (related post here) about core subjects which they possess.

We’ve heard that:

*U.S. students know nothing about geography, languages or other countries.
*The U.S. schools are terrific because they grade on a curve, have minimal homework and offer interesting subject matter removed from the core subjects.
*Madison’s four-block scheduling system results in a lot of wasted/homework time at the end of the extended class period.
*Watching a lot of movies in class is entertaining, but not necessarily educationally valuable. (Current student just watched The Bourne Supremacy in German class…presumably because there is some German and Russian dialogue included.)
*The U.S. schools are a breeze, with one notable exception - Mrs. Kilpatrick’s American Literature class at Madison elicits the most groans and complaints that the course is too demanding. This, in my mind, shows she is pushing the students to put forth their best work.

NCLB efforts have focused on testing at both the state and national levels to assure some level of achievement. Now, much of the school year is expended in preparing for these tests, teaching the test materials to the exclusion of other material and further eroding the body of knowledge imparted to our kids.

It’s understandable…teachers and school districts are rated based on how their students achieve on these tests. The community wants to be able to trumpet its pride in an “excellent” rated district, attracting new business and residents.

But all of this is smoke and mirrors where it really counts – in the real world competition with students from other countries. The fact is that students from the United States, our future, are lagging behind students from other developed countries. I do not say they have inferior potential or capabilities…merely that they have not been educated to the same level as other developed countries.

I blame a host of factors for this problem, including:

*NCLB – As not all children are created equal, in order for no child to be left behind, those children who learn at a faster rate must necessarily be restrained or ignored, unless separate educational facilities are maintained.
*NEA – Makes it difficult to fire inferior teachers, insists that teachers be rewarded for longevity as well as achievement. Has also made it difficult for non-teaching degreed people, who have achieved success in various fields outside the classroom, from returning to the schools as instructors.
*Must have good grades for good college – This pressures teachers to demand less work and massage grades to provide a nice Bell Curve of grading distribution to protect them from criticism by school administration and parents. There is little support from parents for the ‘tough teacher’ who demands high quality work and is stingy or uncompromising in awarding grades.
*The best and brightest students have not, historically, gravitated to teaching. They’ve gone into the more financially rewarding areas of engineering, medicine, law and business. How can teachers be expected to motivate, challenge and demand the best from students when the students’ capability may be a standard deviation or two above their own?
* School administration – Superintendents and principals, of necessity, are political beasts unlikely to buck the system by unilaterally instituting higher standards for teachers and students. Their livelihood depends on tangible results…and plummeting GPAs are unlikely to win them any friends.

The solution? I don’t know…perhaps privatized schools or vouchers would diminish the NEA’s power and less reliance on high school GPA as a college entrance requirement would remove one of the barriers to tougher standards. Ironically, less standard testing would probably be a boon to higher-achieving schools, which could then concentrate on teaching students rather than teaching the tests.

No child left behind? Hardly. We need to find a better solution soon or it will be our nation’s future which is left behind.

'Stranger Than Fiction' rings true

2007-03-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

I watched “Stranger Than Fiction” last night and was blown away.

From its perfect cast, especially Will Ferrell as Harold Crick and Emma Thompson as writer Karen Eiffel, to its low key and near-surreal poignant tone, the film hit all the right notes. It's understated, articulate and unique – in execution and tone if not in plot.

Ferrell plays Crick, an IRS auditor, with a low-key, guarded earnestness that emphasizes Crick’s extreme awkwardness and loneliness. He discovers while brushing his teeth one morning that someone is narrating his life. That someone is Eiffel, a reclusive writer of tragedies who hasn’t published a book in a decade.

Thompson’s portrayal of Eiffel’s eccentric desperation to find the right ending for the near-completed book stands in stark contrast to Ferrell’s Crick, who spends his days obsessively counting time, steps and numbers. Crick is shaken from his routine by discovery of this literary choreography of his life and, in the process, comes in contact with feisty baker Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). In Eiffel’s masterwork, the glimmer of hope provided in Crick’s life by the arrival of Pascal will serve to accentuate the tragedy of his impending death.

And as if the gods of casting had not been kind enough to the production, Dustin Hoffman appears as a professor of literature who helps Crick track down the identity of his life’s narrator. Queen Latifah also turns in a well-crafted, low-key performance as an assistant sent out by the publisher to ensure Eiffel’s book stays on track.

There are moments in this movie that ring true and unimpeachable in their capture of the human condition. Crick’s shy but earnest guitar and vocal rendition of The Monkees’ “I'd Go the Whole Wide World" is powerful. Likewise, his awkward gift of flowers (in reality, small bags of various flours with different colored tape closures) to baker Ana is perfect. The humor is subtle and clever.

The movie sated my appetite for intelligent language, my penchant for the offbeat and resonated with the shy and supremely awkward nerd who still resides within me.

An act you'll never see on MTV

2007-03-01T14:25:00.000-05:00

The Teapacks are an Israeli group, kinda Weird Al Yankovick meets MC Hammer with a little Devo thrown in (BAM!) just to spice things up. I can't decide whether they are too weird or too cool to be believed.
You decide. Watch.

NRA didn't doom Zumbo

2007-02-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

Jim Zumbo (see here) made his living by providing a service to gun enthusiasts and shooters. He penned some very ill-considered remarks, which cost him the faith and allegiance of a large portion of his target audience and, ultimately, his job.

His contribution to hunting lore and/or Second Amendment discourse will not be missed; his contribution was neither unique nor particularly insightful. I will go so far as to say it will not even be noticed – nature (and media) abhors a vacuum, so someone will step up to provide those services previously tendered by Zumbo.

I note that some have accused the NRA (see comments on this post) of being behind the stunning amount or criticism directed at Zumbo. As a gun rights guy, on again/off again member of the NRA and hunter for 38 of my 46 years, I can say that I didn’t get the “rally ‘round the black gun” memo from my NRA masters. I found out about the blog post through Instapundit and left my own critical feedback at Zumbo’s blog all without consulting the talking points from my NRA overlords.

How can this have happened? How could such a swift outcry come without extensive orchestration, action alerts and form letters supplied by that monolithic repository of all evil, the NRA?

It’s because the NRA is just people..it has no evil, insidious power of its own. Zumbo got a mountain of critical responses because every one of those respondees was self-motivated to give him a piece of their mind, not because the NRA pulled some strings and made members dance to its macabre tune. Because of his position in the public eye, Zumbo was a de facto representative of the hunting and shooting communities. He was expected to be a learned advocate of the shooting sports. When he made damaging remarks antithetical to the beliefs of those communities, reaction was swift and he was removed.

He also lost most of his sponsors who, after all, depend on Zumbo’s former target audience for their business. His actions are akin to a US State Department official railing against this country as “The Great Satan,” or the Press Liaison from PETA showing up at a media affair in her new jaguar fur coat, munching a baby seal kabob and offering to share her favorite recipes for kitten tar tare. Both display conduct inappropriate to their position and should be removed immediately.

In each of the above cases, criticism of a behavior out-of-keeping with their position, would lead to dismissal. This previously may have been a drawn-out, dampened process, with letters and telephone calls – in the era of the internet, the reaction was instantaneous and overwhelming, something even the NRA is powerless to orchestrate.

The Zumbo fiasco was not an example of the power of the monolithic NRA, the group-think of gun owners (as there were many different reasons in comments critical of Zumbo’s post) or the injustice of a ravening lynch mob…it was an example of the power of the internet to give individual and equal voice to the common man.

Right name for the job

2007-02-24T07:57:00.000-05:00

From the Department Of Making Sure The Guy Has The Right Name For The Job:

Scientists have found that circumcision cuts (pun intended) a man’s chance of contracting HIV by 60 percent. Enter our intrepid World Health Organization lackey (pun realized belatedly) tasked with commenting on the study…going from relative obscurity to eternal glory in the blink of an eye. From the story:

"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described. (emphasis added)"

It’s a good thing his parents didn’t name him Richard or Benjamin!

Treasures from the auction

2007-02-23T16:22:00.000-05:00

The whole Rantmeister clan went to the local auction last night and we bought so much stuff, I had to leave partway through and take the van home to exchange it for the pickup truck…we were going to need a lot of carrying capacity.

I bought a couple oak file cabinets, a couple pieces of old matte green art pottery and a nice blue-to-yellow glass Toby pitcher, the blog-daughter bought a set of Johnson Brothers dishes (including platter and gravy boat) for $2 and Doc-wife got the weird buy of the night…she spent $20 for this HUGE (4’x4’x30 inches deep) three-drawer file cabinet absolutely full of dressmaker patterns from the 1940s through the 1970s. There must be (very conservatively) 750 patterns in this monstrous vault, plus lots of zippers, lace and other do-dads. Son-and-heir and I toted it into the house last night and it probably weighs all of 200 pounds.

I guess it was the one thing she never knew she always wanted. Mental note: Don’t let Doc-wife get hold of the bidding number again at that auction…ohhh, my aching back!

Unworthy precedent

2007-02-23T16:04:00.000-05:00

So the elite, enlightened, globalists among us would open our borders and have us incorporate input from the rest of the world when crafting our laws and interpreting our Constitution, huh? Remember the questions from Democrats during the hearings of the newest U.S. Supreme Court justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, concerning utilization of international law in their deliberations?

I have to ask myself what they think of the international precedent (cue thunderous music and reverential spotlight) set when a court in Cairo, Egypt sentenced a blogger to four years in prison for “contempt for religion” and “insulting the president.”

Seeing as most of the push for using international law as a touchstone for our American statutes is coming from the intellectual (and ineffectual) left, I’m curious how this ruling, sentencing a blogger for pursuing two of the left’s favorite activities, will play. Is this a precedent they want to have considered when the next freedom of speech question comes before the court?

Egypt, home to more than 70 million (mainly Muslim) residents, seemed satisfied with the verdict, though some wanted their pound of flesh. From the story:

“Many people expressed the view that Abdel Kareem should be killed for what he wrote, and each of them shared their preferred way to kill him: stabbing, hanging, and of course, the classic beheading. One actually asked a lawyer if it was legal to now kill him, since this verdict clearly brands him as an apostate, and the Sharia punishment for an apostasy is death. People were talking about killing him in the most casual manner, as if he was no longer a human being to them.”

Here’s a strong precedent. Hey, a third of the world is Islamic and at least pays lip-service to the merits of Sharia...now that’s a lot of weight behind this international case law. If it seems absurd that we should even consider following this legal course, then how do we decide which precedents to consider? There’s the problem…you can’t and maintain the supposed impartiality of the justice system. By picking and choosing precedents from the international community, the justices would be introducing their own prejudices into a supposedly impartial process. They’d be straying from looking at the law of the international community as a whole, instead picking and choosing among various venues to back up their own pet beliefs.

Our system is grounded in the Constitution, which has served as a pretty good model for more than 200 years. The legislative and executive branches craft the laws, and the courts ensure they fall within constitutional guidelines.

If international input is desirable, it should be considered at the legislative level, when the laws are fashioned, and where there is opportunity for debate. It should not be considered at the judicial level where the consensus of international law is anybody’s guess and I, for one, have no wish to see anyone in this country jailed for contempt of religion or insulting the President.

Political McNuggets

2007-02-22T11:13:00.000-05:00

Some political McNuggets (trans fat-free, of course).

*****

John McCain has shown he is a crafty, cunning old political wolf. Appointing former RINO Sen. Mike DeWine (spit!) as chairman of his Ohio 2008 Presidential election campaign is sheer genius. It’s like Sun Tzu said, “you’ve just gotta do the lamest, dumbass thing you can think of so your enemy won’t be expecting it – then you can really stick it to them (apologies to Sun Tzu if I have inadvertently misquoted him.)”

I’d say McCain’s move embodies that philosophy. Imagine…appointing a political hack who lost his incumbent seat by a big margin because even staunch party members couldn’t stand the sight of him. DeWine’s ascension is the last thing anyone would expect. It’s daring, unexpected, unorthodox, some might say.

I’d say it’s stupid.

*****

I haven’t found anyone one either side I can comfortably lean toward for election 2008.

For the Republicans:
McCain: Too old, soft on illegal immigration, would support Assault Weapons Ban.
Giuliani: Anti gun, soft on illegal immigration, New York point of view.
Romney: Bigger politically expedient flip-flopper than Kerry or Hillary.
Duncan Hunter: Currently my best hope, though I’m unsure whether he’ll gain enough momentum to attain the upper tier.
Tancredo: Mixed gun position, pushes “Social Security lockbox” myth.
Gingrich: Hasn’t announced, lot of baggage.

For the Democrats:
Obama: No experience, thinks unions are the answer, anti gun.
Clinton: Will say anything the polls tell her to say, wants to expand government role, is married to Bill.
Richardson: Soft on illegal immigration, anti-military.

Applications from candidates who are pro-gun, fiscally conservative, smaller government, pro-abortion rights, pro-privatizing Social Security, anti-illegal immigration, pro-homeland and international security and pro-education vouchers are being accepted at the Rantmeister’s office. Wipe your feet off before you come in and try not to step in that furball the cat hacked up in the doorway.

*****

This internet thingy makes it easy for anyone to check whether their representatives are “speaking with a forked tongue” about past events. From Victor Davis Hanson:

“Why did a majority of Democratic senators — such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, and Chuck Schumer — vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now supposedly George Bush’s misfortune and not theirs?”

It’s all there at the touch of a button, Buckos, and no complicit media can cover for you any more.

*****

Things are getting good between Obama and Hillary…at least there’s some entertainment value in these skirmishes more than a year and a half before election 2008. I was a little surprised to hear entertainment mogul David Geffen slam the Clintons:

”Geffen, who was a co-host of an Obama fundraiser Tuesday night in Los Angeles, saved even sharper criticism for former president Bill Clinton, to whom he was close before a falling-out over the pardoning of financier Marc Rich at the end of Clinton's second term. "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," Geffen said in an oblique reference to questions surrounding the former president's private life.”

I smell a Celebrity Death Match in the offing!

'I do not think that word means what you think'

2007-02-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

And people wonder why Britain’s crime rate is rising and people treat the criminal justice system like the joke it is….from the Telegraph:

”A teenage girl has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering her love rival - a 39-year-old mother of two…Ross, now 17, of Croydon, south London, pleaded guilty to murder and was ordered to be detained for life with a minimum term of 10 and a half years.”

So life in prison, for Brits, means 10 ½ years as long as you’re on your good behavior? In the immortal words of Indigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, "I do not think that word (life in prison) means what you think." They’re not engendering any respect for the system when word (life in prison) and deed (10 ½ years) are so widely disparate.

I also do not cast a blind eye to the deficiencies in our own system. A life sentence should be a life sentence and the added "without possibility of parole" shouldn't be required.

*****

Side note: This occurred in gun-free England…how is this possible? Gun are gone, right, so sweetness and love should prevail. Rantmeister’s axiom: If someone is dead set to kill some other sumbitch, they’re going to use whatever means comes to hand…be it gun, knife, baseball bat, car, poison, sword or Ronco Kitchen Magician. The tool is not the problem…and its elimination is not the solution.

Gak! We've eaten the peanut butter of death!

2007-02-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

Peanut butter jar lid of death

Someone send nice flowers to our funeral…we didn’t know it, but for the past week we’ve been eating from the Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter Jar of Death. We’re goners…forward all our mail to Boot Hill, because that’s where we’re going to take up residence.

In the photo above is the incontrovertible proof that we’ve been smearing our bagels recently with veritable death spread. Blithely, in our ignorance, ignoring the FDAs warning about possible Salmonella Tennessee contamination. We’ve already eaten about 3/4ths of the jar, so it’s probably too late for us…run!…save yourselves!

Me to Doc-wife (who is spreading peanut butter on a raisin bagel): Hey, I wonder if we have that bad peanut butter… (checking lid)…yep.

Doc-wife: Mrfffm brrrfm (munching happily on the bagel…bravely in the face of impending doom.)

Me: Hey, you done with the toaster? I want one too.

Calling Billy Bob and Bruce!

2007-02-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

We are so screwed.

A group of scientists, ex-astronauts and cosmonauts has decided that asteroids are a threat to human existence on Earth (apparently their DVDs of Armageddon and Deep Impact arrived from NetFlix this week.) So instead of dialing up Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton, this brain trust has turned to the world’s last, best hope: the United Nations.

I am not making this up, though I wish I were.

Yes, the United Nations is the perfect basket in which to place all the world’s eggs. Blessed with agenda-driven science, corruption, inefficiency, moral decay and willful blindness, the UN brings a whole host of human attributes to the fight for mankind’s survival. Just to complete the perfect storm, how about making the representative from Zimbabwe, that high-tech titan, the chairman of the “Committee To Save The World From Big Rocks That Fall From The Sky…And Free Palestine.”

I am feeling the love…feeling the safety…nearly ready to burst into a chorus of “We Are The World…”

The Association of Space Explorers, the group of former astronauts and cosmonauts, intends to host a series of workshops this year to flesh out the plan to deflect space rocks and will make a formal proposal to the U.N. in 2009.

I hope the higher-ups at NASA are looking at this, shaking their heads and saying “that’s nice, boys, why don’t you go play with your Spacely Sprockets and decoder rings while Mommy and Daddy fix this little problem.” I hope that NASA’s on the ball because I have a huge problem trusting the future of the Rantmeister clan to a group which has proven itself unable to deal with any problem in this world, let alone in space.

Zumbo kicks hornet nest

2007-02-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

The gun aficionados internet sites are all abuzz this afternoon after Outdoor Life writer Jim Zumbo checked his brain at the door and declared that AKs, ARs and the host of other military styled weapons have no place in hunting.

His stirred up a shitstorm. The last I looked, the original article had over 2,600 comments (and the counter had quit clicking) and comments on his lame-ass apology, posted a little while ago, was zooming past 700.

From his original post:

“I call them "assault" rifles, which may upset some people. Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. I'll go so far as to call them "terrorist" rifles. They tell me that some companies are producing assault rifles that are "tackdrivers."

Sorry, folks, in my humble opinion, these things have no place in hunting. We don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern. I've always been comfortable with the statement that hunters don't use assault rifles. We've always been proud of our "sporting firearms."

This really has me concerned. As hunters, we don't need the image of walking around the woods carrying one of these weapons. To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Let's divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods. (emphasis added)”

I guess I’m a terrorist, since I’ve used these terrorist weapons, right Jim? You know what else, Jim? Police departments get calls all the time from people who are terrified about teenagers carrying evil black BB guns into the woods…I guess they have no place either, huh? Some people just hate guns, Jim, and the sight of any gun is cause for alarm…and spouting your own ignorance about the utility of the Brady-demonized “assault rifles” from the bully pulpit is inexcusable.

Zumbo’s unfortunate comments are already being used as ammunition (how’s that for irony?) by the Brady Campaign, which is crowing that “Even Outdoor Life’s Top Gun Writer Thinks Assault Weapons Should Be Banned.”

That someone who makes his living writing for the gun lovers and sportsmen across the country could be so ignorant is mind-boggling. That he could write these things and then offer up a cover-his-ass apology saying “I’m your friend, really,” and “I talked to Ted Nugent and he’s in the NRA, so it’s okay” is insulting. If they have any hope of minimizing the fallout from this colossal poochscrew, Outdoor Life needs to fire him (not say “we don’t agree with him, but hey, it’s the same ole Jim”) NOW. Any sponsors he has would also be well-advised to drop him like a hot potato, because this one hit a nerve and the gun community is not going to forgive and forget anytime soon. Anyone who wants to “stand by their man” should be prepared to suffer the penalties of guilt by association.

Saying “I Was Wrong. BIG TIME” just ain’t gonna cut it, Jimbo.

Worrying about our kids

2007-02-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

As time passes, I find myself invested more and more in foreign news.

That’s because we’ve hosted 13 exchange students…each of whom we’ve made a member of our family and for whom we only want the best. So when we hear about disasters, political upheaval and international confrontation involving their home countries, we get the jitters.

Most recently, we’ve gotten the jitters about Venezuela and, consequently Jesus, the boy we hosted from that country in 2001.

We’ve watched nervously as President Hugo Chavez has launched his country on the path to socialism, which treads delicately on the slippery slope to communism. He’s seized many privately-owned businesses, including utilities, driven away foreign investors and seen his country’s inflation rate shoot past 20 percent. To combat the resulting shortages in his newly price-controlled grocery stores, he’s threatening significant jail time for grocers found to be hoarding food or evading the price controls. He’s seen the rich move their investments out of the country and has imposed controls on those seeking to buy dollars as a hedge against the Bolivar’s slide. In the midst of an unprecedented oil boom, his efforts have put the economy in the crapper.

That bodes poorly for Jesus, a very-bright, talented, principled young man whose natural abilities and drive would be rewarded with unlimited success in any free and open society. With socialism, however, you close the path to entrepreneurship by shutting off the rewards from such efforts. What’s the point of hard work when the government owns and/or controls the major industries? And to make matters worse, Jesus is a tech guy…computers and electrical engineering…and the market for those abilities is weighted internationally, not locally. What international company is going to be interested in doing business with Venezuela when Chavez is doing his best to curtail foreign investment?

National and international news paint the same grim picture and it worries me that all the promise of such a young man, who should be his country’s greatest source of pride and its treasure, is in danger of being wasted.

*****

We also just found out that our first exchange student, a German boy named Till, spent the last six weeks in a cast after breaking two vertebra in a snowboarding mishap. Doc-wife’s reaction? “Yeah, well, okay…but when’s he going to give us some grandkids?”

Medical people are NOT sympathetic. Especially not when potential grandchildren are involved….

*****

We’re expecting a late spring/early summer visit from Rachel, the Brazilian student we hosted in 2000. She has now finished college and is trying to decide what to do with her life…knowing Rachel, that will change 27 times between now and Tuesday.

*****

Jesus and Alla, the Russian girl we hosted in 2004, have been carrying on an online relationship since they met via our computer in late Fall 2004. It’s progressed to the point where the blog-daughter tells us there may be wedding bells in the near future.

I’m not sure how to feel about that…host-son romances host-daughter…isn’t that some kind of electronic/digital host-incest? A question for another time…

The kids are alright!

2007-02-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

We had a great surprise Wednesday.

That was the day the big blizzard was rolling in…it was also the day of the middle school parent-teacher conferences. Of the two, the conferences had caused Doc-wife and I more anxiety.

You see, it’s always an adventure to talk to son-and-heir’s teachers. The teachers want him in therapy, want him on drugs, wonder if he’s on drugs, think he’s brilliant, are sure he’s a serial killer in training and uniformly demand that he be tested to prove he’s human and not some interstellar whack job masquerading as a middle schooler. We’ve never gone into the classroom and had the teacher have to stir her memory to remember son-and-heir…when we say we’re his parents, they usually start backing away and looking for the exits.

This time, it was different. It was like being in some weird-but-too-good-to-be-true other dimension.

This time, we got glowing reviews about our all-As (Huh? Son-and-heir with all As?) offspring. He’s doing his homework, turning it in, getting all As on tests (not unusual) and generally behaving like the gifted child we know. His math teacher raved about him, saying she’s really looking forward to the advanced assessments the class will take…she said he is an advanced and creative thinker and could have some interesting solutions on the more advanced math. Ditto science: “I use (son-and-heir) as a reference in class sometimes.” Social studies: “I love him…I think he’s got like 120 percent…he knows so much about culture and history.”

Language arts was a little different, though he still has a good grade there. Son-and-heir has mentioned this teacher to us before…she’s a far-left ideologue whose political leanings often spill into class. From our brief interlude, she also came across as a grade A BITCH whose interest is in collective action rather than individual achievement. Of course, it doesn’t help that son-and-heir is a loner and individualist who despises writing and quit reading the grade-level books she assigns when he was in third grade.

Our message to him: There are petty, vindictive people like this everywhere…do the work, ignore her philosophical bludgeoning and get a good grade – success is the best revenge.

The blog-daughter had a (nearly) equally good report. The book on her: All As on tests, failure to complete homework is dragging her down a little, though we received her honor roll notification letter in the mail yesterday. All of her teachers thought she was terrific.

Of course, they all described her differently…in some classes she was reserved, in some helpful, in others joyous and bubbly. Doc-wife observed that she’s the ultimate livery stable horse – her interpersonal performance is tailored to each person with whom she comes in contact.

After completing the rounds, Doc-wife and I just looked at each other, waiting for the “but…”

It never came. I hope this wasn’t an anomaly, but a trend. We’ve been handed a little candle of hope…maybe our kids won’t end up like Unabomber Ted Kaczinski and Imelda Marcos, respectively…maybe we’re not complete and utter failures as parents.

Life is (temporarily, anyway) good. The kids are alright!

*****

And just because I can, here's the video!

Gun laws didn't stop Utah shooter

2007-02-14T08:18:00.000-05:00

Here is one reason why I'm glad I got my Concealed Carry permit (CCW) - I only wish fewer places were off-limits to carrying.

*****

This guy is a perfect example of why more gun laws are NOT the solution to such episodes. He had a shotgun...not an evil semi-automatic assault weapon (otherwise known as diabolic death hose)...and even rabid anti-gunners admit that shotguns have a place among the hordes of small game hunters throughout the country. He also was illegally carrying a .38 caliber pistol (age for ownership is 21.) He walked into a mall with these items concealed (broke another law there...tsk! tsk!) and opened fire. He killed six people and wounded four.
A call to 911 didn't stop the gunner...it was an off-duty police officer, out on a date, who happened to be carrying his weapon. He engaged the guy in a gun battle and pinned him down until help arrived.
The police are NEVER going to be able to arrive quickly enough to stop such an act...the best defense is provided by armed law-abiding citizens who have passed the background checks and training requirements to receive their CCW.
More laws only hinder those who are predisposed to obey them.

*****

LGF ponders whether this is another case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome (hat tip LGF), something the police and mainstream media habitually fall all over themselves to disguise.
Young, male Muslim...violent rampage with car, gun, bomb, other tool of destruction...it's becoming a very common story here and worldwide. I'm not anti-Muslim...I am, however, anti Jihadi Muslim. I object most strongly to people who are trying to kill me and my family. Islam needs to get its house in order with regard to the hate spewed by some of its imams and the destruction caused by its young radicals or risk guilt by association and the inevitable consequences.
In the meantime, I've got my CCW and this (and others) to provide some measure of defense.

Ninja questions: ROFLMAO

2007-02-11T07:18:00.000-05:00

I came across this today and laughed my butt off.

Edwards fiasco a sign

2007-02-08T08:32:00.000-05:00

Not that I had even considered voting for John Edwards anyway, but how inept and out of touch do you have to be to hire a foaming-at-the-mouth extreme liberal like Amanda Marcotte (more here, here and here) of Pandagon to be your interface with the web world?

In her profanity-laced rants she managed to denigrate the Catholic Church, motherhood and the unjustly-accused Duke lacrosse players, among others. So far, bloggers have not yet confirmed that she turned her invective on ”truth, justice and the American way” (probably apple pie, too), but there had been some furious airbrushing along her blog trail.

Marcotte, of course, is free to write whatever she wants about whomever she wants…it’s not her fault that she was brought on board a Presidential campaign. You don’t blame a rabid weasel for being a rabid weasel: it is what it is. You just have to have the foresight to realize that perhaps it is not the best choice as the web-based image you want to present to the public.

Edwards’ campaign realized this, of course, after the blogburst of criticism was reaching its crescendo. Yesterday, she was canned…sent back to the minors where she can froth away, safe from the tender eyes of middle American. It was another nail in the Edwards coffin, though, another miscue in the inept campaign of the Trial Lawyer Who Would Be King.

I have to believe Edwards is a smart, if smarmy, guy. Law school and his rags-to-riches rise on the strength of flawed malpractice law require a modicum of intelligence. So how, then, could he make a boneheaded move like this? Is he removed from the day-to-day operations of his campaign or perhaps surrounded by a uniformly foaming-at-the-mouth campaign staff? Either way, it bodes ill for his prospects. To win the White House, you have to appeal to the vast sea of moderates in middle America. So while the howling juvenile passion of the extreme liberal can be invigorating, it is ultimately unappealing to those who will make the decisions in 2008.

The Edwards campaign, for whatever reason, mistook Marcotte’s blog hit-count for mainstream popularity…choosing numbers over message. It was a big mistake.

Update: She's baaaaaack! Breck Boy just doesn't know when to quit!

Salt(water) in the wounds

2007-02-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

My sister with the dolphins...may the fleas of a thousand camels infest her armpits!

My sister sent me some diving pictures from her recent cruise vacation.

Damn her!

Here we sit with the wind howling, the children home from school and the thermometer pegged at a chilly 2 degrees F. Diving pictures from the Caribbean? Sure, rub our noses in it! Pics of you diving with the friggin’ dolphins while we’re forced to burn the cats just to stay warm?

(Sorry cat lovers…a little wishful hyperbole there…)

We had hoped to go diving somewhere this winter, perhaps with my sister and her husband and son, but logistics (and the fact we have a Russian exchange student…that creates problems because of travel restrictions) prevented it. We’re stuck staying in the country and (pretty much) restricted to driving getaways for the duration of her stay. We’re planning a trip to Dollywood with the inlaws and their foster children for spring break…nothing like a little dose of redneck glitz to show a foreign visitor the REAL America.

Son-and-heir and the Rant-daughter have been making loud, obnoxious noises about taking another cruise…perhaps this time to the Western Caribbean or Mexico…maybe Belize…anywhere warm. Doc-wife keeps mentioning Alaska (no diving there, of course…we’re not drysuit certified!) I keep saying “okay, yeah, that’s nice…but we can’t go until early summer at the very earliest.”

And meanwhile, the wind continues to howl outside. And I keep getting emails announcing great cruise deals to somewhere, anywhere, warm. And I’ve got my sister’s photos to look at to remind me not everywhere is white, windy and wintry.

Thanks for the salt in the wound, sis! Maybe you should save it for the sidewalk!

Cold steel nostalgia

2007-02-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

Cold steel nostalgia

There’s another Gunrunner online gun auction going on now through Feb. 12 and there are a couple items of interest to me…reminders of lost youth.

When I was a teenager, I saved a lot of the money I made working at a local plant nursery and persuaded Dad to buy me a gun…a Remington 572 BDL Fieldmaster Deluxe .22, complete with 3-9x scope. To this day, that remains my favorite .22…not a squirrel was safe in the woods when I was armed with that slick-shooting beauty. I traded it away in college (for what I can’t remember) and have always regretted that decision.

So lo and behold, the latest online auction has two 572s included. Of course, they’re the lower grade ADL version, but the same mechanics, pointability and feel. Hopefully, one or both will make their way to my gun safe at the conclusion of bidding.

Officially on the '24' bandwagon

2007-02-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

Doc-wife and I are halfway finished watching a DVD set of 24: Season One. I bought the set a couple months ago after hearing the buzz surrounding the series, but we never seemed to get enough time to watch it – this week’s chilly temperatures and blowing snow have provided that time.

The only thing I can say is “holy crap…I can’t believe what have we been missing!?!” It’s so addicting, I’m in danger of joining the legions of my fellow countrymen who ask themselves “what would Jack Bauer do?” before embarking on some controversial course of action. I'm officially on the "24" bandwagon.

I remember when the show debuted…gimmick, I thought. How can you enliven a show and retain an audience when each episode covers only one hour in the day of its protagonist?

Question answered.

The show packs so much action/suspense/adrenalin/intrigue into each episode it’s a wonder Bauer continues to stride the Earth with gritty purpose, rather than slumping into a fetal position with his favorite teddy bear and wishing it would all go away. How the heck anyone can watch this in the conventional network airing manner is beyond me…so many of the episodes end in cliffhangers, it would be sheer torture waiting for next week’s episode. And if you happened to miss an episode? Forget it…life just wouldn’t be worth living.

Bauer unfailingly does the right thing in his pressure-cooker circumstances – cool and collected doesn’t even begin to cover it. The supporting cast is filled with fully-fleshed characters, too, from his family and co-workers to the apparently honest and principled Presidential candidate who has discovered he is surrounded by a nest of vipers he had previously called his campaign staff and family. The acting is solid and almost too believable.

The dizzying twists and turns, betrayals and revelations in each episode would be impossible to follow if you missed one during the regular network airing…this show is the best argument I’ve ever seen for Tivo.

It probably comes as no surprise that Walmart or the Amazon website will be getting a visit from the Rantmeister in a couple days to pick up season two…I’d like to think that’s what Jack Bauer would do.

Is our soft civilization doomed?

2007-02-03T17:25:00.000-05:00

There was an interesting article by Selwyn Duke in the American Thinker about the hurdles western civilizations, particularly the United States, face when dealing with the spread of the Islamic culture. From the article:

“People may laugh. That's crazy, say they, we have the greatest military in the world, the most advanced technology, and a nuclear umbrella. Yes, that's true. But first, I don't claim we'll fall tomorrow, next month, or next year. Even more significantly, though, external enemies would not initiate our undoing. The fact is that no body, no matter how strong, imposing and well-armored, can survive an untreated disease metastasizing rapidly within. The smallest bacteria can kill giants as easily as dwarves.

And that is what ails us. Every time an action designed to preserve western civilization is taken or even proposed, a great internecine battle ensues. We capture combatants on the battlefield and then spend millions in legal fees debating whether to adjudicate their cases in civil or military courts. We rightly scrutinize Imams making a scene at an airport and then spend millions more arguing about so-called "racial profiling." And it's incessant. Every act nowadays, from singling out illegals for deportation and the suspicious for scrutiny to getting swatted by "Tigger" to a six-year-old boy giving a girl a peck on the cheek, is met with hand-wringing and a disproportionate reaction. And far too often litigation results, costing us valuable resources.“

While I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment of the situation, and have said the same thing in previous posts, I have faith that the bulk of the American people will wake to the danger before it is too late. We’re a fickle people…as prone to swing from a largely coddling worldview to one of bloodthirsty vengeance.

Read the whole thing…it’s well worth it.

Pulling for Phil

2007-02-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

I hope Phil’s right.

Punxsutawney Phil, the Groundhog Day “seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators” emerged from his den today and declared there will be an early spring. From the story:

“Phil did not see his shadow (today), which, according to German folklore, means folks can expect an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter. Since 1886, Phil has seen his shadow 96 times, hasn't seen it 15 times and there are no records for nine years, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999. “

Color me skeptical…18 inches of snow already on the ground and temperatures predicted in the single digits this weekend will do that for you, I guess.

Auction masterpiece?

2007-02-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

Son-and-heir and I went out to a local auction last night because he’s looking for ways to supplement his $10 a week allowance. Said I: “You could buy stuff and then I’d sell it for you on Ebay.” Said he: “Sounds good.”

So we went.

The first item we bought was an oil on board painting of a melancholy clown sans most of his makeup. Hmmm. Son-and-heir got nervous and wanted to stop at $10…I bid the painting up to $22.50. I liked it. I liked it even more when we found out the artist, Francis J. Meyers, is a deceased Cleveland Art Institute instructor who is listed in national sales catalogs. There are also some rudimentary drawings of his on Ebay listed for fairly high prices.

Woo woo! If we decide to sell the painting (a big IF), all proceeds go to son-and-heir’s gaming computer fund.

Next purchase was a pack of 1950s nudie playing cards for $3…where were these when I was doing “Cuckoo’s Nest?” We also bought a beer advertising sign with thermometer, leather baby shoes, a mahogany chest of drawers (for my daughter’s room, $25) and a silverplate cigarette holder thing, the likes of which I’ve never seen, but which was engraved in 1954 and is apparently European. I promised son-and-heir proceeds from reselling these items as well, provided he keeps track of his expenses and proceeds in a comprehensive manner, does the packing and shipping, and does the research to provide an accurate Ebay listing.

It’s education cloaked in entrepreneurial trappings.

Doc-wife on sick call

2007-02-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

Doc-wife called in sick today.

She awoke at 1:30 a.m. with nausea, spent the next 3 ½ hours in the bathroom and finally decided that enough was enough…she made THE CALL to work. I’m sure “shocked and stunned” was the only way to describe her employer’s reaction.

See, Doc-wife DOES NOT call in sick. Ever. She has worked shifts immediately after breaking her hand in several places, face-planting in the dirt after getting bucked off a horse and spraining her knee playing volleyball. She also had to leave a shift early once, but only because she was immediately taken into surgery for a fallopian tumor. She has worked through countless bouts with migraines and the accompanying nausea.

Ironman? Pshaw! Titanium is more like it. Maybe even the elusive “unobtainium (anyone else see ‘The Core?’)”

I’m sure the accusations of “short-timers syndrome” are flying around her work…mentally if not verbally…because she will change jobs at the end of March. Though there is a little truth in that thought, it would be more accurate to say that she is tired of working through illnesses which bring other people to the hospital. She should not have to work with a broken hand/severe abdominal pain/bruised and stitched face…she should have the option to have someone else pinch-hit for her in an emergency. Up to this point, she’s felt like the little Dutch girl with her finger in the dike…she can’t leave or the whole world will come crashing down. She had no backup and was on her own in the battle against all the world’s ills.

So she couldn’t work today…her employers found a solution to staff the department…life goes on. She found out she can, at times, be human and the world will not end.

At least not today.

GOTL due for facelift

2007-02-02T08:49:00.000-05:00

I just read that one of my favorite places in the world is due for a facelift.

Geneva on the Lake, a small summer-only arcade and dining entertainment strip along Lake Erie, will soon see a new “boardwalk, amphitheater, microbrewery, shopping plaza and a seafood restaurant,” according to an article in the Ashtabula Star Beacon.

The plans were announced by businessman Don Woodward, a bright guy who was one year ahead of me in high school. I’m sure the improvements will be somewhat profitable, but what the business owners and village officials really need to focus on is some way to bring the crowds to GOTL during the other three seasons. I don’t think Woodward can do it by himself.

Thousands of people cram the GOTL strip every night, Memorial Day through Labor Day…every other night of the year, you’d be hard-pressed to find a dozen people. It’s like a ghost town…businesses are boarded up, leaves and trash accumulate on the sidewalks, parking lots are chained closed. It doesn’t look like the same place.

Recently, a couple more businesses have begun year-round operations on the strip…they include a large winery and a small storefront seafood restaurant. These businesses, however, face the challenge of not having the built-in crowds that summer inevitably brings; they need to find a way to give GOTL an identity and purpose through the off-season months which will give the crowds a reason to come.

A complication in developing this off-season identity is the fact that many of the business owners are old-time GOTL fixtures, and are used to their business being a three-month dalliance. To truly develop an off-season identity, everyone needs to sign on to the idea…from Woody’s World to Eddie’s Grill. They would also need to put some money into upgrading their facilities for off-season usage…winter days can be cold…and decide what services to offer in lieu of their traditional summer fare.

Some ideas that come to mind:

*Winterfest…turns a negative into a positive and would add an additional season of usage. Add ice skating and sleigh rides…turn the burden of the lake effect snow to your advantage.
*Little Napa – focusing on the wineries which abound nearby…would have the advantage of being adaptable to year-round use.
*Christmas on the Lake…an extra season of usage.
*Lake borne gambling Mecca – would need state legislation first.

Woody’s plan is a good first step. Hopefully, he can get the bulk of the remaining business owners on board with an improvement plan.

Pissing away an opportunity

2007-02-01T10:42:00.000-05:00

I don’t know what to make of this year’s exchange student.

She comes from a small town and, apparently, competed and won a scholarship contest to be able to come to the United States for a year, complete with a stipend for spending money and reimbursement for educational expenses. I would have expected the contest to produce a motivated achiever.

What we have found is someone interested in going to the mall, to restaurants and acquiring various electronic devices.

*Interest in bettering her English? Zip.
*Interest in busting the grading curve in her classes? Nada.
*Interest in acquiring a herd of American friends? Yawn.

She pissing away her opportunities and it’s made for a tough year. Maybe it’s because she’s the unlucky 13th student we’ve hosted. It’s still somewhat difficult to hold conversations with her because her English has not improved to the same degree as that of other students we’ve had…and she shows little interest in getting better. It’s so bad that my daughter and son can have critical conversations about the student, right in front of her, and she has no idea. My son, kindly to a fault around most girls, is routinely pretty rude to this oblivious student when she is attempting to manipulate him for some gain.

Things boiled over last week when the student, 17, and my daughter, 12, got into a catfight in the barn while feeding horses. From what I can ascertain from stories told by the girls and my son, the student tried to push my daughter out of the way (bad move, unless you want to pull back a bloody stump where your am used to be,) My daughter pushed back and kicked at her and the whole thing tumbled into a mass of hair-pulling, scratching and slapping. Doc-wife had just left for work (was a half mile down the road) and I was away at rehearsal at the time, or I would have personally packed the student’s bags and taken her to the exchange coordinator’s house. Things had simmered down by the time I got home and have not, as yet, heated back up…I guess she’s aware enough to know that she is on exceedingly thin ice.

We host students because we like to interact with these bright young foreign visitors and, because we’ve been fortunate in our lives, want to share some of our bounty with others. We expect the visitors, however, to have some appreciation for what we offer and to try to make the most of their time here.

Plainly that’s not the case this year. We’ve asked the children whether they want to host a student next year and both responded with an enthusiastic “yes,” indicating to me they see this year’s hosting experience as an aberration. At present, Doc-wife and I are still debating whether to continue our hosting streak.

The student’s flight home is scheduled for May 15.

Boot scootin' with the Amish

2007-01-28T09:52:00.000-05:00

Doc-wife and I went out to the local honky tonk the other night after one of the “Cuckoo’s Nest” performances…giving me the chance to unwind from that charged show with a couple beers and some country music.

The place was packed with people of all ages and lifestyles…from John Travolta Urban Cowboy wannabes to the dozen or so snowmobilers stopping in for a quick warm-me-up to the gang of 8-10 Amish boys in the corner ogling the girls and trying to consume every Jell-O shot in the place.

They nearly succeeded. In between playing with their cell phone and smoking copious quantities of cigarettes (Ohio’s smoking ban hasn’t made it to this place yet), these boys emptied the waitress’s tray of shots three times during the hour we were at the bar… forking up the cash for two or three shots each during visits by the waitress. It’s a good thing they weren’t driving.

The Amish boys, clean shaven (thus unmarried) and apparently on rum springa, got me thinking. I was reminded of the music video by John Michael Montgomery, “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident.),” with the anachronistic dancing Amish guys.

I doubt that any of the boys was of legal drinking age (21), though since the Amish have no photo identification, how can you tell? “Oh, yeah, that’s my brother Owen Yoder there…he’s 21 for sure.” Anyway, the reason for this disjointed post is I thought I’d see how difficult it is to link to a music video…in this case the John Michael Montgomery auction video…let’s see…

SOLD THE GRUNDY COUNTY AUCTION INCIDENT

USB turntable...great, but flawed, idea

2007-01-26T08:46:00.000-05:00

While shopping for my daughter’s birthday present at Hot Topics this week, I came across something I absolutely had to have.

The Ion ITTUSB turntable is an idea whose time has definitely come: Direct-to-computer transfer of those old vinyl album tracks from my hundreds of LPs…those albums that are classics, but will never make the commercial jump to CD…what’s not to love? Unfortunately, the idea was better than the execution.

After four hours of frustration yesterday that the computer couldn’t find the turntable, completely reading the instruction manuals and support materials online, at the very end of the FAQs, I came across the note that “oh, yeah, it’s not supported by Windows XP Media Center.” XP Home…yes. XP Pro…uh huh. No Media Center, though. A further look revealed no patches for the problem either…grrrrr!

It’s aggravating, but not an insurmountable problem, though, as we plan to purchase a couple new laptops within the next two months. I’ll have to do a little further looking to see whether the turntable will be compatible with the new Vista OS.

Will post review later…assuming I can find an operating system on which it will run.

Dissecting polls

2007-01-26T08:06:00.000-05:00

Mrs. du Toit has an absolutely outstanding post up about the ludicrous claims being made based on one question, yes-or-no polls. An excerpt:

Do you think Social Security should be eliminated?

Yes

No

If you answered that all taxes should be eliminated, think the cost of Social Security is too high, but don’t think that Social Security should be eliminated, what have I learned?

Yeah, BESIDES your being psychotic.

I’ve learned that you don’t think of Social Security as a tax, but I’d have to ask a lot more questions before I would be certain of that. I have to ask the tax question a few different ways, I have to ask the Social Security questions a few more ways, and on and on until I can figure out how you really feel about Social Security. Then I’d have to figure out how strongly you felt about Social Security in relationship to other issues, say Medicare, Welfare, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. If you continually choose something other than Social Security as the issues you feel are important, then I know that while you may have opinions on Social Security, the issue doesn’t move you.

I’ve harped on the fact that reporters, being the lazy and sometimes ideologically-driven creatures they are, often present such polls without looking at the substance and methodology behind them. Connie du Toit lays out in clear and lucid detail why those public opinion McNuggets presented with such fanfare by the media mean exactly nothing.

Read the whole thing.

Global warming sucks

2007-01-25T17:22:00.000-05:00

A foot and a half of 'global warming'

We got about a foot and a half of global warming dumped on us the last day or so and more expected tonight. High winds, deep drifts and another half a foot expected also forced the cancellation of tonight's performance of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" at the Ashtabula Arts Center. I'll be back on stage tomorrow night.

'Nostalgia' no growth strategy

2007-01-24T11:04:00.000-05:00

I can’t help feeling I’m seeing the blind destruction of one of my favorite local institutions.

Rabbit Run Theater has been in operation for more than 60 years and is one of the few barn theaters surviving in the country. It’s hosted the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Hume Cronyn through its history and for years has enjoyed broad support from the community.

I’m just not sure why there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the organization, now, to splinter that support.

Rabbit Run’s season this year seems designed to appeal only to the over 70 crowd and diehard theater-goers. The season includes:

*Forever Plaid

Four young men donning the loudest of plaids and singing in the closest of harmony bring the joy and innocence of the music of the 1950’s to life in this uproarious revue.

((Fogies of the world relive your youth!!))

* Having Our Say :The Delany Sisters` First 100 Years

Each over 100 years old, Sadie and Bessie Delany take us on a remarkable journey as they recount the last hundred year’s of our nation’s history as seen through the eyes of these two pioneering African-American professionals.

((Are your sh*tting me? Black history in lily white Madison? Remember the trouble we had casting Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy?))

*Swing

Experience the joy and exuberance of SWING!, the `feel-good musical` that celebrates the music and dance of the swing era. Be enthralled as some of Northeast Ohio’s most talented young adults strut, shuffle, and stomp to the music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and many others.

((More fogeys dancing in the aisles))

* Little Women - The Broadway Musical

Follow the adventures of Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy in this exhilarating new musical based on the beloved novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

((Can’t find a story from the last 100 years, huh?))

* Fallen Angels

Watch the hilarity unfold in this classic Noel Coward comedy as the ups and downs of marital monotony and the thrill of rekindled former romances are outrageously explored.

((A 1923 Noel Coward play? And don’t give me any of that “as relevant today as when it was written” crap.))

The theater has also upped its ticket prices, going to $17 a ticket for the musicals.

All of this, to me, seems designed to appeal to an aged audience or one composed of diehard theater-goers. It’s losing sight of the fact, however, that your aged audience is not going to be there forever; and by appealing to only the elderly, you’re ignoring the task of building a base of Rabbit Run patrons for the future.

This geriatric slate of offerings will also prompt the Rantmeister clan to forego Rabbit Run auditions this spring. This summer…for the first time since we returned to Ohio….the Rantmeister clan will be absent from the Rabbit Run stage. Let’s see…”Fallen Angels” at Rabbit Run versus “The Wizard of Oz” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to be presented this summer at the Ashtabula Arts Center…it’s no contest…we’ll take our costumes and greasepaint to Ashtabula this year.

In a barn theater like Rabbit Run, nostalgia is nice and certainly has its place. But the past shouldn’t be pursued exclusively at the expense of the future.

If it was good enough for David...

2007-01-24T07:20:00.000-05:00

This was just too funny...heck, even Barney Fife had it all over these guys:

TIJUANA, Mexico — The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.
Municipal police spokesman Fernando Bojorquez said Monday that the slingshots, along with bags of ballbearings, were given to officers patrolling areas of the city visited by tourists.

Tijuana's police force of 2,000 officers has been without guns since Jan. 5, but some patrol alongside armed state police.

Now THERE is a solution I would never have conceived...I'd have started with maybe...hmmm...policing my own police force? Cracking down on the corruption and graft that passes for justice down there. By arming even the good cops with slingshots, though, you're virtually guaranteeing the drug gangs will be able to run amok...ingenious!

Finding home again

2007-01-23T09:17:00.000-05:00

Last night, I found home again.

It’s not like I was lost, really. I’m a pretty happy person, comfortable and content in my home with my family. I’ve always been somewhat on edge away from home, though. Moving every three years like clockwork, as we have because of work and home concerns, I’ve developed a shell and have always been on my guard when out in the public, not surrounded by my close family circle. Friendly: yes. Relaxed: no.

I took the blog-daughter to rehearsal for Pocahontas last night at the Ashtabula Arts Center. The scene was chaotic - there must have been at least 200 people milling around through various rehearsals for Annie, Pocahontas, performance choirs and dance classes. Normally, such noise and confusion would cause me to try to find a quiet place to sit on the outskirts and count the minutes until I can leave.

This was different, though.

In front of me in the pit area of the building was rehearsal for Annie. That consisted of 35-40 people of various ages going through blocking of the upcoming play and tuning their harmonies while happily walking through the fledgling production. I remembered the pit area as the place where I’d spent countless hours as an adolescent, rehearsing plays, singing in the youth repertory choir and waiting for my sister, who was nearly always in dance class at the center. I remembered it as the place where I met my wife and kissed her for the first time, when we auditioned for a mutual friend’s production of “Catch-22” in May 1985.

To the left, in the previously hallowed ground of the original dance space (genuflect, all ye who enter here, and REMOVE YOUR DAMN STREET SHOES) 30-40 youngsters chatted and made/renewed friendships during their first Pocahontas rehearsal. Parents watched as the music and theatrical directors tried to impose some order on the proceedings with less than complete success. This was also the place where my sister, on a near-daily basis through her youth and adolescence, had obeyed the mysterious stentorian French commands of “glissade, assemble, changement, changement!” delivered by the dance teacher. Then, it was the home turf of the legion of the leotard-and-tights, hair-pulled-back, pointe-shoes-wearing, short-tempered dancebots…now it’s just used as an extra rehearsal space. The dancers now have and entire new wing of the center in which to pursue their obsession, safe from the distraction of prying eyes.

At the service/information/center hub counter behind, me was a woman I had known during my stint at the local community college. She answered phones, accepted money, wrote receipts, reserved tickets and answered questions with a smile…not rushed, but happy in the moment. I remembered another woman who had manned the counter for a time during my teen years, enjoying the tide of bright and interesting people ebbing and flowing from the center: my mother.

I recognized new friends and old friends, heard sour notes and the promise of beautiful music to come and saw a small band of dancers venture from their wing into the main part of the center (no doubt to get a Diet Coke), staying tightly packed together lest some of the whirling chaos infiltrate their world of control and precision. I had several people come up to me to congratulate me/ask for information about “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

And I realized…I was happy, very uncharacteristically relaxed in this swirling crowd of chatting, laughing and singing people. I was just me, without need for the shell presented to all but close family and select friends. As my daughter trundled off to her rehearsal, memories from the past and present merged into something I hadn’t realized I was missing. It was that “swift spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever (courtesy of Grosse Pointe Blank.)”

It felt like I was home.

Master wordsmith

2007-01-16T14:52:00.000-05:00

Best analogy for the folly of raising the minimum comes from....drumroll please...Kim duToit:

"Increasing the minimum wage is like daylight savings time. They day isn’t actually made longer (or shorter). It’s like cutting off your head and standing on it, so you’ll be taller."

Mrs. duToit also posts a succinct, logical, real world-based explanation of how increasing the minimum wage actually hurts those it's intended to help. Despite her on-again, off-again blogging, Connie duToit remains one of my must-reads.

The Big Chief

2007-01-16T07:57:00.000-05:00

"Every night, they turn the world on its side..."

Here's the Rantmeister, aka Chief Bromden, during his opening monologue for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," now running at the Ashtabula Arts Center. Opening weekend went very well - the cast was ready and foulups were at a minimum. The show continues for the next two weekends.

"Cuckoo" hatches

2007-01-13T08:10:00.000-05:00

Opening night for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” at the Ashtabula Arts Center went pretty well last night…the production was ready for it’s debut, something that’s not necessarily been true of other recent Arts Center productions with which I’ve been involved.

The smallish audience appeared to appreciate the play, though I did hear reports of an elderly couple leaving early (we warned you there was bad language and mature subject matter.) An actor playing a minor character had the misfortune to dislocate his shoulder yesterday at school, but took the stage like a trouper at curtain, albeit with a slightly modified role.

The show was being recorded last night (which I knew), but the videographer was also waiting in the hall outside the dressing rooms to record the actors when we left the backstage area after the show (which I didn’t know.) There was also a gauntlet of cheering people to run through after leaving the backstage area for the lobby of the Arts Center, all the while being filmed.

This wigged me out.

Coming off stage from Cuckoo’s Nest, I’m already very wired up and jangly and the thing I want most at that time is some peace and quiet for a little while to wind down. When I’m onstage, I’m performing…offstage, I just want to be able to disappear. I want to go off into a quiet place for a couple minutes and ramp down…last night I was just trying to get to the parking area, and my truck, for some solitude.

I’m afraid I probably looked a little deranged coming out of the backstage area and being faced with the camera and cheering audience members. Thankfully, two of my relatives came to see the show last night and I was able to say a few words to them before bolting to my truck.

*****

The preview article for the play was in the local paper’s weekend edition here. The play runs tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday next weekend and Thursday, Friday and Saturday the following weekend.

Top of my 2007 Christmas list

2007-01-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

I saw this on Instapundit this morning, and it is just too cool to be believed. Doc-wife, are you reading this? Nudge, nudge, hint hint!

"Cuckoo's Nest" to open

2007-01-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

We’re heading into production week for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at the Ashtabula Arts Center and, as usual, things are looking a little shaky.

Rehearsals for the show, ongoing since early December, have been on Sundays and Tuesdays only and have been sparsely attended. Most of the actors know their lines, though the principals are still having some problems. Hopefully, the magic of the theater will help everything come together for opening night, because the cast is very talented and the play is dynamite.

I play Chief Bromden, who is the narrator in the original book. While observing life in an insane asylum, he pretends to be deaf and dumb so he doesn’t have to interact with the staff and patients. He is forced from his shell by the arrival of a boisterous patient named McMurphy, who challenges the status quo at the institution with tragic results.

The artwork above is one of the promotional posters for the show. The other poster, apparently prepared by someone with no knowledge of the show, is of a cuckoo bird flying over a nest. The title of the book has little to do with the plot, and is taken from an old children’s rhyme:

Wire, briar, limber, lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew east, one flew west
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
O-U-T spells out
Goose swoops down and plucks you out!

The show runs Jan, 12, 13, 19-21 and 25- 27.

"Shite by any other name..."

2007-01-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

It’s depressing to watch the early slate of candidates being trotted out for the 1998 Presidential run.

Rudy “The ‘G’ stands for Gun Control” Giuliani? John “Gang of 14/McCain-Feingold” McCain? Mitt “No abortions/No assault weapons” Romney? Two east-coasters and a senile Southwestern septuagenarian? Is there no one promising from those bright red flyover states? These guys are a trifecta of weaselly, mealy-mouthed, career yes-men whose only claim to conservative status is that they look somewhat conservative by New York standards. Curtail free speech? Check. Gun control? Check. A nod and a wink to illegal immigration? Check.

And on the Democrat side we have Chicago’s own Barack Osama Obama, whom everyone agrees is a “rock star” among politicians, but can’t come up with anything else about which to boast on his resume. And then there’s Hillary, a harridan I would cheerfully vote for only if she were in a contest against that poster child for liberal lunacy, Dennis Kucinich, with Cindy Sheehan as his veep.

And I’m not a classic conservative…”angry moderate” is the phrase a friend used to describe me. I favor abortion rights, stem cell research, keeping God out of government, space exploration and strict enforcement of pollution/environmental regulations. Conversely, I also want to shrink the federal budget, put an end to illegal border crossing, free law-abiding citizens from onerous gun regulations and, if necessary, use force to protect American interests at home and abroad.

The worst thing is that it is fast approaching the season when these candidates will fine-tune their image try to convince the voters that these turds can, indeed, change their smell. To paraphrase the Bard’s famous observation by Juliet, “What's in a name? that which we call shite by any other name would smell like crap.” The east coasters are now faced with running outside their home turf and trying to win the hearts of “flyover country’s” voters. Predictably, they will bury their gun control speeches and resurrect tales of religion in their lives. They will wring their hands over the epidemic of illegal immigration while maintaining the need for “humane” measures to help the huddled masses already here illegally.

Is this the best we can do? The greatest Republic on the face of the Earth is reduced to depending on insipid power-grabbers more interested in tailoring their speech to the latest poll than stating their positions with integrity, honesty and intelligence?

I guess I’ll have to console myself that it’s a long time until the election, and perhaps today’s Presidential luminaries will burn out before November 2008. Twenty two months and counting…

WTF?!?

2007-01-03T10:57:00.000-05:00

Custom Mauser .308 that weighs in at 20 or more pounds!

The Gunrunner has another auction running this week and one of the guns that caught my eye was a custom Mauser in .308 with a heavy stock and super heavy barrel. Obviously not one for packing over the mountains, the gun would be deadly at a stationary blind (think artillery emplacement.) With the bid at $20 as I write this, it seems like a bargain so far. Heck, the scrap iron value alone...

New year, same story

2007-01-03T10:47:00.000-05:00

If it’s January, that must mean it’s time for the annual “Starving of the Exchange Student Exhibition.” Get you tickets for the spectacle now!

We are currently hosting our 13^th foreign exchange student…a string that started when we began hosting in West Virginia when son&heir was only four. We’ve had boys and girls from several different countries, sometimes two at a time, stay at our house for the school year.

The story is always the same come January, though…”Holy crap, I’ve gained 30 pounds (or more) since I’ve been here and now the New Year reminds me that I will have to return home in a few short months.” What follows now will be a couple months of extra trips to the YMCA, skipped meals and self-flagellation over allowing themselves to balloon like the blueberry girl on Willy Wonka after partaking of the sumptuous Rantmeister vittles.

To be fair, this annual ritual is much more pronounced in the female exchange students than the males we’ve hosted. In fact, the only being thus far immune to the effects of the Rantmeister’s larder was a boy from Hong Kong we hosted in 2000. This boy ate more than anyone I have ever seen, twice as much as any other family member, but remained at his 5-10 and probably 125 pounds throughout his stay. I swear that boy must have had an entire bellyful of tapeworms to process that much food without adding weight.

Yesterday’s trip to Wal-Mart (Den of Unspeakable Evil) saw my cart loaded with more fruits and veggies than normal (ever the conscientious host parent.) We’ll probably also cut back on our trips to the buffets for a couple months to aid our current student in her efforts to again shoehorn herself into her jeans.

Recipe blogging: Black Bean Soup

2007-01-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

I’m back again after a whirlwind trip to South Carolina to visit Doc-wife’s relatives and celebrate her 10^th-anniversary-of-turning-30 birthday (nudge, nudge, wink, wink!) It was a nice trip but a long-ass drive.

We brought back a HUGE can of black beans with us which one of their renters had left in a house when they moved out. Lacking any other culinary inspiration at supper time yesterday, I made some black bean soup which turned out to be pretty tasty. That makes it time again for some completely lame recipe blogging.

So, without further ado:

Rantmeister’s Spicy Black Bean Soup
1 huge can…institutional size (a gallon?)…of black beans
2 pounds ham, cubed into ½-inch pieces
2 medium yellow onions…chop coarsely
3 large carrots…cut into 3/8” thick slices
2 large stalks celery, sliced ¼ inch thick, include the leaves if possible
1 can diced tomatoes and chilies
2 cans chicken broth
3 chicken bouillon cubes
1-1/2 tbs cumin* (*approximate…I don’t measure these things)
3 tsp six-pepper spice mix from Sam’s Club* (see previous note)
3 tsp coarse garlic salt* (do I have to say it?)
1 tsp paprika* (duh!)
¼ cup vegetable or peanut oil

Place oil in large Dutch oven type pan over medium-low heat. Add ham, onions, carrots and celery. Cover and cook until they start to soften. Add tomatoes, one can broth, bouillon cubes and spices. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain and add beans and remaining broth, stir, cover and simmer over low heat for at least an hour.

You just can't make this stuff up

2006-12-27T08:19:00.000-05:00

Hmmmm….political advisor Robert Steinbuch doesn’t want the sordid details of his sex life splashed about for all to see on his lover’s blog, circa 2004. So what does he do? He files a lawsuit against the writer, then known as Washingtonienne, more properly known as Jessica Cutler, asking for $20 million in damages.

Now I know that the proper path to power in Washington, D.C. is an undergraduate degree in stupid with additional coursework in ignorant arrogance, but this is rarified territory even in the land of the perpetually pandering. By filing a lawsuit to recover perceived damages from a violation of his amorous privacy, when a trial is guaranteed to spread those salacious details to every man, woman and child on the planet, the Bobster has distanced himself from the pack of also-rans in the Grand Prix de Knuckleheads.

It is certainly fitting that Steinbuch was an advisor to our own soon-to-be-gone-but-not-lamented Sen. Mike DeWine (R{sorta}-OH). It’s also ironic that he has taken up teaching in Arkansas, almost as famous as West Virginia for its steely refusal to overvalue education.

It’s been TWO YEARS Bobster…anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together will tell you that if you were truly interested in your privacy, you’d quietly withdraw from this suit and hope never to hear the word “Washingtonienne” again. Thankfully for the Jerry Springer-watching crowd, however, it looks like the Bobster is going to stand up for all those Washington insiders who have had their exploits…exploited.

From the story:

“…Cutler called him the "current favorite" and said he resembled George Clooney, liked spanking and disliked condoms. "He's very upfront about sex," she wrote. "He likes talking dirty and stuff, and he told me that he likes submissive women."

My advice, Bob, is to cut and run You think you were violated by the initial disclosures? Just wait until the expert witnesses hit the stand during the trial, analyzing your hanky panky with spanky spanky. It’s like watching a long anticipated slip and fall on a banana peel…you’d like to follow your higher instincts and avert your eyes from this misfortune of your fellow human, but it’s just too damn funny.

A near shutout

2006-12-21T09:42:00.000-05:00

This has officially become my worst deer hunting season in at least 15 years.

We have ONE deer in the freezer, a 7-point taken during archery season. Results of gun season? Zip. Zero. Nada. Heck, I didn’t even SEE a deer for the first five days of the week-long season. The fresh tracks were everywhere by the thousands, it was just the deer that were absent this year during hunting hours. I blame the warm weather and lack of snow for keeping the deer nocturnal and sluggish.

Of course, this year during archery season I saw tons of deer…more bucks than I’ve ever seen. I passed up several easy shots on bucks (youngish 8-points, forks and spikes) and young does while in the woods with my bow.

The just-completed extra weekend of gun season also did me no good. I’m down to muzzleloader season now and the remaining month of archery season…brrrr!

Meant what she said...said what she meant

2006-12-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve had cause to reflect the last few weeks, during Doc-wife’s job search, on the difficulties in communication between people.

We have a common language, somewhat common cultural background and perhaps even a shared generational outlook…so how come simple declarative sentences such as “I’m not happy working under these conditions and, if they don’t improve, I’ll find work elsewhere” can become shrouded in such layers of mystery?

Case in point: Doc-wife had been telling her present company for six months that some aspects of her job are unacceptable…not only for her, but for patient care, liability and staff morale. She told them again when she went to the corporate offices to discuss the company’s desire to renew her contract. Even when she tendered her resignation letter, effective, per her contract, 120 days from submission, they attempted to pat her on the head and to smooth her ruffled feathers.

What she said: “I’m not happy and will look elsewhere.”

What they heard: “Blah, blah, blah, blah, I’m whining for more money, blah, blah, blah.”

There was a fundamental disconnect in the way the two parties viewed that simple statement. One was straightforward and the other was through a connotative lens that turned the words into some kind of gambit in the game of contract negotiation. That has to be why the corporate people have been hounding her for the last two weeks with the attitude of “c’mon, what do you really want?”

They say they had no idea that she was unhappy, and in that they may be telling the truth; seen through the corporate lens, all of her messages may have been viewed as nothing more than moves in the game. If that’s true, then nothing this company does or could ever do should entice her to return. They’re pitting themselves against their employees, and the validity of criticism and chance for improvement is sacrificed by people most interested in getting the best of their workers at the negotiation table.

Now they’re promising her all kinds of things…things they specifically and emphatically said were off the table when she drove down to corporate for a meeting the week before Thanksgiving. Of course, working where she does, she’s seen a lot of this spontaneous repentance: “I’m sorry, baby…I swear I’ll never hit you again…I didn’t mean those things I said…just come back to me and everything will be alright.”

I think the model of her new company is much to be preferred: “Here are the very-high qualifications for whom we hire and this is what we pay everyone…if you like it, great, we’d love to have you.” Though generous, the contract terms are not really flexible…leaving no room for the game players, the wiggly middle men and the cheats.

It’s the American Way..straight-talkin’, straight-shootin’ and nary a nuance to be seen. It makes communication a lot easier when everyone takes the words at face value rather than trying to seek advantage in some perceived meaning behind them.

Promised update...

2006-12-14T17:48:00.000-05:00

Last night’s meeting with the elite of Doc-wife’s company yielded the expected high-pressure used car salesman’s pitch to get her to stay. It also provided some interesting moments:

*A medical director said “now I don’t want to sound like a car salesman,” immediately after sounding exactly like a car salesman…I laughed. He didn’t get it. He then proceeded to offer carrots to get her to stay. At least he didn’t have to go check with his sales manager to see what kind of deal he could offer Doc-wife.

*Everyone in the company who has met the owner has commented on what a great guy he is…Doc-wife had only seen him in passing once at a corporate education event, and so had no opinion. He was charming and reserved during last night’s dinner meeting, so bland as to defy description.

Doc-wife and I had the same reaction upon leaving the restaurant…intense dislike and distrust. Mine started the moment I saw him…one of those visceral things you can’t explain, and which almost never happens. He was too slick by half while, unsuccessfully, trying to act the common man. It was weird…we walked out the door and said almost the same thing at the same time…what a slimy individual.

*After the president left, the others kept us there in the restaurant for another hour and a half, fishing for an opening to pressure her to stay. It got so bad, the maitre de offered to give us the keys to the restaurant and let us lock up.

Can't spell stupid without 'u'

2006-12-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

You know, the older I get, the less tolerance I have for people who are stupid or think that I am stupid.

Doc-wife and I were talking about the subject this morning.

*****

As an example, I flipped on the computer last night after getting home from play rehearsal, and found that there’d been a big illegal worker raid at meatpacking plants across the country. Hmm…this sounds familiar…wasn’t there another raid on packing plants in the southeast before the last push for a wide-sweeping immigration amnesty last summer/early fall? Results of that raid? Lots of confirmed illegals rounded up…and then let go. Results of this raid? Ditto.

It’s all done for effect.

“We’re serious about enforcement (uh huh, okay…) so let’s just pardon all these lawbreakers so we can really focus on securing our borders. Oh, and funding for that 700-mile border fence we approved before the last election is going to be a bit of a sticky wicket. So how about we just shelve that and instead hire NICE Systems, you know the closed circuit camera company that has turned Chicago into the modern approximation of 1984, to put up cameras all along the border. That way, in addition to monitoring the flow of people over the border, we’ll also be able to make some cash by hitting up all those border jumpers for their “Welcome to the USA” photos conveniently posted at kiosks along popular human smuggling routes.

Note to Those In Power, who have apparently forgotten…or never knew…or think we’re stupid: Gestures do no equal accomplishment and a big show does not obviate the need for competence.

You insult me when you think I’m stupid enough to fall for this.

*****

I was also talking to a teacher acquaintance recently who was concerned his district might go on strike. It’s the usual problem in Ohio…the costs for employers to provide benefits to employees is skyrocketing, but as schools are funded primarily through property taxes, homeowners are reluctant to keep footing the bill.

The district has 4,400 students, just built a new high school (to consolidate two older schools) and plans other construction projects…all to be funded through taxpayer beneficence, of course. Apparently, the district has stubbornly maintained the need for a reduced level of benefits in the contract negotiations…which have proceeded to arbitration and are now considered to be deadlocked by the board.

He maintained the district was just being miserly, pointing out the books showed a $700,000 surplus in the last budget cycle.

I was polite, didn’t rant or rave, but pointed out that schools districts, just by maintaining current benefits levels, are effectively granting huge yearly raises to staffers. Costs for companies to insure their workers have risen by 87 percent since 2000. The benefits increase is also not taking into account the automatic salary hikes built into virtually all teaching contracts, and personnel costs typically eat up 85 percent or more of a district’s budget. That budget surplus is nothing in a school district the size of the one in which he teaches (he’s not a math teacher) and will likely be quickly eaten up in other projects.

*****

Doc-wife will be switching jobs in a couple months, going back to work for a company she worked for two years ago.

She repeatedly pointed out problems with her current company (with which she had a two-year contract), offered solutions for some growing pains and tried to improve things despite her lack of any official authority to do so. At a corporate contract renewal meeting, company reps dangled carrots, offered no concrete proposals, but did affirm their support for a fellow employee whose incompetence is a major roadblock to improvement. She came out to the car after the meeting and called her old company, a top-notch nationwide firm which “killed the fatted calf” at the idea of her return.

Since then, she’s had a non-stop parade of corporate lackeys dropping by seeking to stroke her ego. It’s back to my first entry again…gestures do not equal accomplishment and a big show does not obviate the need for competence. Her retention would have been easy…she was honest with you during her entire tenure and if the company had done its job with an interest toward improvement she’d have signed on the dotted line for an extension.

We have a dinner meeting tonight with the president of her current company and other assorted notables for doc-wife to (ostensibly) frankly detail the manner of their failing. I’m fully expecting the dinner to be a used-car-salesman-what’ll-it-take-for-you-to-go-out-the-door-with-this-lemon effort to get her back.

They’re either unbelievably stupid or think that she is…I’m not sure which is worse. My political correctness governor has been turned off for this meeting, thus giving my inner gremlin permission to be just as blunt and plain spoken as it likes.

Hehehe. Will update later.

2006-12-11T10:53:00.000-05:00

I just had to laugh at this post from The Burton Blog, which is produced by Gunrunner owner Scott Weber. (reprinted in its entirety.) Perhaps the era of wit has passed, but I find it a welcome alternative to the MTV Jackass/Funniest Home Videos/Scary Movie genre of humor in vogue today.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

-- Winston Churchill

*****

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."

-- Winston Churchill

*****

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

-- Clarence Darrow

*****

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

-- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

*****

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words"

-- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

*****

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."

-- Moses Hadas

*****

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."

-- Abraham Lincoln

*****

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

-- Groucho Marx

*****

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

-- Mark Twain

*****

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

-- Oscar Wilde

*****

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one."

-- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

*****

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."

-- Winston Churchill, in response

*****

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."

-- Stephen Bishop

*****

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

-- John Bright

*****

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."

-- Irvin S. Cobb

*****

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."

-- Samuel Johnson

*****

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

-- Paul Keating

*****

"He had delusions of adequacy."

-- Walter Kerr

*****

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."

-- Jack E. Leonard

*****

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."

-- Robert Redford

*****

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."

-- Thomas Brackett Reed

*****

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them."

-- James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

*****

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."

-- Charles, Count Talleyrand

*****

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

-- Forrest Tucker

*****

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"

-- Mark Twain

*****

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

-- Mae West

*****

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

-- Oscar Wilde

*****

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."

-- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

*****

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

-- Billy Wilder

Miss Kitty in repose

2006-12-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

Miss Kitty at home

This is a photo of Miss Kitty, the barn cat we brought with us when we moved back to Ohio from West Virginia. As far as we know, this ancient cat (at least 16, according to annecdotal evidence) had never been in the house before last week, when we felt bad about her being left out in the snow and carried her in. As you can see, she's settled in rather easily...after her initial claustrophobia. Now if we can just find a way to get her back outside...

Nothing a couple of .45 slugs wouldn't cure

2006-12-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

It’s been awhile…time for a rant.

*****

What the HELL is going on in England?

I was just reading the Right to Keep and Bear Arms page from Thursday, Dec. 7 and came across several news items which made me despair for the future of the country from which a majority of my forebears emigrated.

Item 1:

A 23-year-old policewoman described yesterday how she was left screaming in agony after being shot at point blank range trying to arrest a suspected burglar. Biggest mistake: like most of the bobbies, she could only bring pepper spray to a gunfight. Bobbie (Bobbette?) Rachael Bown, 23, said that despite yelling at him not to shoot her, she heard a bang as the gunman ran past and felt excruciating pain down her right side. She collapsed on the floor terrified and struggling to breathe, screaming into her radio "I've been shot, I've been shot".Nottingham Crown Court was told that the gunman, who the prosecution claim is 24-year-old Trevon Thomas, did not even break stride as he ran past her and her partner and fired the gun.

Item 2:

AN ARSENAL of 40 imitation guns are to be destroyed after a man surrendered his collection. Officers were shocked to find the weapons at the home of a Nantwich man. Along with relatives, the man, who has refused to be named, had built up the collection over the years but became worried that they could be stolen by criminals. The stash included self-loading rifles, machine guns, automatic pistols and a long-barreled Smith and Wesson revolver, similar to that used in the film Dirty Harry. There was also one genuine Thompson sub-machine gun, which had been de-activated. But police say they could have been faced with a 'life or death' situation if the guns had found their way into the wrong hands (emphases added above.)

Item 3:

This is the moment three sword-wielding raiders robbed a petrol station. The CCTV image shows the brave cashier struggling with one of the thugs. Despite the man's courage, the raider overpowers him. The robber then pinned the cashier against the wall, allowing another gang member to rifle through the till. The cashier was bludgeoned across the back of the head with one of the blades after the gang stormed into Skippool Garage, in Singleton, Lancashire, at around 9.30pm on Sunday. Police were shocked by the degree of violence in the robbery, which netted the raiders £250 in cash and cigarettes.

Above are two clear-cut cases where the law-abiding use of a gun was clearly warranted. And one case of hysterical overreaction in the face of a non-threat shows how out-of-balance British thing has become.

Let me state the obvious in no uncertain terms: Police officers NEED TO BE ARMED.

The people they come into contact with, by the very definition of their work, are criminals. Criminals tend to scoff at things like gun laws and rules of polite society; they prey on the weak, try to avoid (fear) the strong and exhibit behavior more along the lines of “A Clockwork Orange” than “Pride and Prejudice.” They don't even raise their pinky finger when sipping tea...appalling!

When someone pulls a gun on police, it’s a pretty good indication they have little regard for the law. Their reward for this behavior should be a double tap through the center of mass, not a misting with pepper spray as they blithely skip between the neutered guardians of law and order on their way to their next act of crime. The timely application of a couple .45 caliber slugs not only puts an end to this crime (and saves the state the expense of paying health care costs for the injured officer…and in the unlikely even they're caught, the resulting criminal trial and incarceration), it also puts an end to any future criminal activity in which the perpetrator would have been involved.

Likewise, guys with swords come to rob a gas station: Clerk’s gun trumps sword in that confrontation. At the least, bad guys flee and think twice about their life of crime.

And the case where the police were all a-dither because of a collection of non-guns? What the hell is scary about fake guns? See option A: if someone pulls a fake gun on a police officer, apply two .45 caliber slugs through the center of mass and then call the coroner. Problem solved. You'd also be ridding the gene pool of someone clearly too stupid to be allowed to procreate.

Impolite? Yes. Less than genteel? Definitely. American cowboy justice? Perhaps…but I’d rather be guilty of that than lose my life to some thug because I refused to see the world, complete with its monsters and dark underside, in the harsh light of reality.

Snow day here

2006-12-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

The news for which kids prey

The Rant-daughter looks over the white world outside after being woken by her brother ("Hurry up, we'll miss the bus!") only to come downstairs and find out the local school district declared a snow day today. Our Russian exchange student was also delighted to find out she was having her first snow day: "Oh, why don't we have school buses in Russia...then we could have snow days too!"