By way of apologizing for the light blogging here - may I offer a sample chapter from Book Three of the Verein Trilogy, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”? I’ve gotten about two thirds through the first draft of it, and am getting ready to revise Part Two and submit Part One to the usual publishing suspects.

Enjoy… this one has a interesting climax to it, one that I’ve been hinting at, all through the first two books. Previous chapter here

Chapter Forty-Eight: Day of Reckoning

“It all seems very quiet,” Magda remarked, on the Saturday that she and Anna reopened the store. “And so empty!”
It was a week after Rosalie’s funeral, a week after Hansi and the boys returned, empty-handed and covered in trail-dirt, on horses trembling from weariness.
“I still keep expecting to see Vati in his room, or sitting under the pear tree,” Anna agreed, wistfully. “I wish Papa and I could induce Mama to leave her room – but she will not hear of it.” Hansi had exhausted himself, pleading fruitlessly with Liesel. He had finally lost his temper and left with Jacob, taking a wagon-load of goods to Kerrville. He had promised to deliver a load of cut timber to the Becker farm, where work had commenced on the house, after the spring cattle round-up. Magda didn’t know if Liesel would have forgiven Hansi by the time he returned, and was herself too grieved over Rosalie to care very much.
“It’s like one of those starfish,” Sam observed earnestly. He plied a broom with great energy, although Magda thought he was merely stirring the dust around. “When it loses one of its arms,”
“How is that, Sam?” his mother asked, much puzzled.
“It grows another one to replace it,” Sam scowled, thoughtfully, “Or maybe it’s one of those jellyfish things I am thinking of. It grows again into the shape it needs, even if it’s not in quite the same shape as it was before.”
“Clear as mud, Samuel,” Anna said, but secretly Magda thought her son was right. The household, her family – it was reshaping itself, like a starfish. Wearily, she wondered if the starfish, or whatever Sam was thinking of felt pain when part of it was cut off. For they all felt pain, but only Liesel was incapacitated by it, by the unbearable absence, the emptiness in the places where Willi and Grete should have been. She had withdrawn into her deep, deep cellar, leaving Marie to cope valiantly with the household, aided as always by Mrs. Schmidt in the mornings and by her sister and aunt whenever they could step away from the shop, and Hansi’s freighting concerns.
(more…)

B Dubya asked a good question in a comment on an earlier post:

Timmer!
Serious question to an industry insider…
Why is it that cell coverage in the US is so spotty, when Europe and even Arabia are totally covered? What would it take to get the US system on a par with even the third world in this area?

And Occam’s Razor gets applied. While the U.S.A. was busy replacing our old, mostly copper cable, communication’s infrastructure with new, expensive, fiber optic cable in the 1990s, when cell phones were still kinda bulky and sort of a fad, the rest of the world basically said, “Hell, we can’t afford that fiber optic stuff stuff and we’ve got these new cell phone thingies, let’s just put up a whole bunch of cell phone towers instead.” That’s why countries that basically had crap land line service even 10 years ago, now have cellular communications infrastructure that beats ours to hell and back. There are some places in Europe that STILL haven’t switched to fiber and if you use a landline, you’re not going to believe how crappy the sound is. They’re basically still using cable that was laid just before or after WWII.

Add to that the fact that most countries have ONE cell phone provider, often run by the government, that provides one kind of service that everyone has, while we in the U.S.A. have about four big companies and multiple little ones, all competing for coverage and bandwidth, and you have the situation you’re bemoaning. Not all the cell phone companies play nice with one another either. If you’ve got a Brand X phone and are closest to a Brand Y tower, you may get signal off that Brand Y tower, but the Brand Y customers are going to take priority over you and your Brand X phone.

In short B Dubya, the U.S.A. could afford upgrading to fiber optic while many places in the rest of the world couldn’t, so they started building cell phone towers en masse instead of laying fiber. Most of the U.S.A.’s cell phone companies are working hard to play catchup and are learning to play nice with one another because they’re learning that customers don’t care it’s because Brand Y’s tower is down, I’M not getting service where I want it. We should have almost full coverage on all major highways with very few “dead” areas by the end of the decade, but because our companies all are competing for a market that’s rapidly becoming saturated, they’ve been concentrating on covering more densely populated areas first and slowly expanding to suburbia and rural areas. Cell phone towers are cheaper than fiber, but that doesn’t make them cheap. You’ve got to have enough customers paying a bill in an area to justify adding and maintaining a tower somewhere. You also have to have landowners that will agree to let you put a tower on their property.

Ok, since we just recieved an automated “vote for me” call from the Barama campaign addressed to voters in Bexar County,Texas… note to y’all; you would get so much farther if you could get the pronuciation right. It’s pronounced “bear”. Not “bechs-ar”. Sorry for the way it looks, spelled out. It’s pronounced “bear”.

So now Blondie is on the line explaining her life story… and to someone who represented himself as a Marine veteran from the west coast who said he served “someplace in Florida” but which he said is closed now, and never said his name, rank, term or serivice, etc. And as she was talking to him, the call center operator reported that they were getting swamped with calls from people likewise compaining about their pronunciation. (Nice guy, very personable. All props for their compaign manager, or whoever Blondie reached after hitting 0, 0, 0+)

We report. You decide.

8:05 PM Another automated call from the Obama campaign. Sorry, you’ve already lost me. My number is on the Do Not Call List - d’ya supose I want to hear from you guys when we’re trying to watch “The Office” and eating dinner??!!!

‘Villa Junque’ (pronounced in Spanish as Hoon-kay’) – sounds so much better than ‘garage full of junk’, which is what mine has descended to, what with Blondie enthusiastically collecting ‘stuff’ for her eventual first apartment/house/place of her own. A couple of years ago, I saw a tee-shirt/sweat shirt with “It isn’t an empty nest until all of their stuff is out of the garage” and truer words were never printed across the parental chest. All of her accumulated stuff from two hitches in the Marines came home with her – the large TV, the stereo system, a lot of Target and Walmart bought kitchenware, a microwave, and several boxes of shoes and bedding. And a strangely comfortable metal-framed armchair and footstool which was apparently the prize of the Cherry Point single barracks, as it gravitated from room to room until my daughter inherited it from a friend and shipped it home with her stuff. She pleaded with me to re-upholster it, which I did… and to give it houseroom in the den… which I also did. As I said, it is strangely comfortable. Her TV and stereo also were allowed in, with some reluctance on my part. They were newer than mine by about a quarter-century, so a bit more complicated… but worked a little better. The classical station still receives badly, but that’s an eccentricity of their transmitter.

Her dog and her two cats were also folded into the household, and it generally works out, although three of my cats hate the dogs and prefer Blondie’s end of the house to mine. It’s all her other stuff which has made my house into the Villa Junque, although I do admit that some of the stuff I moved into the garage was specifically dedicated for her first place – the dining table that was too big for the dining area, some bookshelves superfluous to my needs once I put up hanging shelves and some other small stuff. Really, it wasn’t a patch on what I notice in other people’s garages. I could actually get my car into it, still. (Well, I could until Blondie moved in her stuff.)

Besides being drawn to the 70%-off shelves at fine retail establishments (where we have snapped up plenty of Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper for next year) Blondie is also a dedicated yard-sale shopper. Walking the dogs early on Saturday morning is nothing more than a disguise. She is actually reconnoitering for yard sales. With luck and walking the dogs, we can beat the roving pros, descending with their battered step-vans and pickup trucks and snapping up the good stuff. I don’t know where these people go with their oddly assorted gleanings; they are usually Hispanic and go for the furniture and the used appliances, but do not distain the clothes, bedding and toys. Blondie now has a nice collection of glass and silver-plate knick-knacks, garden lanterns and ornaments, chairs and crockery. She hopes that some of it may be Antiques Road Show-worthy some day.

I think our neighborhood is moving up, socio-economically; there is a better grade of stuff at yard-sales than formerly. Even the stuff put out for the trash – especially when someone is moving and is sick to death of making decisions about stuff – is a better grade. We struck a bonanza this year with pots and plants, but the absolute prize was spotted Sunday afternoon by our equally bargain-fanatic neighbor Judy. She saw a love-seat placed by the curb with a lot of other trash and made a special visit to our house to tell us where.

It turned out to be upholstered in leather, only a little worn on the seat cushions and two tears in places, and so heavy that it probably is a good grade of furniture. Well and I know that because of the chore it was for the two of us to load it in the back of the Montero and then carry it into the house. Whatever it will be to reupholster a solid hunk o’ small sofa like that is still less than it will cost to buy new. And it is amazing the difference that some cleaning solution, and some carefully placed throws and pillows will accomplish.

The Weevil loves it, since it is large enough for her to sprawl in comfort; Spike and the cats love it because the back and arms are broad enough for them to stretch out in equal comfort and all of them together. And I have to admit – it is a very comfortable place for humans to lounge as well.

But – we are swearing to everyone that we actually scored it at a yard sale for $20.

At present I am about halfway through the first draft of Book Three, the Adelsverein Trilogy – or as has been called “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”. I have gotten the various members of the Becker and Richter families up to the making of their various fortunes in the post Civil War cattle trade, when an acute surplus of cattle in Texas met the advancing trans-continental railroad.

Well, not exactly met, since the cattle were in Texas and the railroads were advancing at a good clip west from Chicago and St. Louis; the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. The actual tracks were stretching ribbons of iron track across Nebraska and Kansas, putting the four dollar a head Texas cow a considerable distance away from that forty-dollar a head market in Sedalia, Kansas City or Abilene.

Out of that not inconsiderable distance was born the enduring legend of the long-distance cattle drive. In the twenty years after the Civil War about 10 million cows walked north, most to the Kansas railheads, but a smaller portion went farther north, into Wyoming and Canada to be used as brood stock for ranches that eager entrepreneurs were falling all over themselves to establish.

Trailing cattle out of Texas to profitable markets elsewhere was not, by that time an entirely new phenomenon. Texas longhorns were brought north beginning in the 1840s, along what was called the Shawnee Trail between Brownsville and variously, Kansas City, Sedalia and St. Louis. Another trail, the Goodnight-Loving trail went from west Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming, following the Pecos River through New Mexico. But the most heavily trafficked trail was the many-branched Chisholm Trail. It’s tributaries gathered cattle from all across Texas into one mighty trunk route which began at Red River Station, on the river which marked the demarcation between Texas and the Indian Territories of present-day Oklahoma. The Chisholm Trail crossed rivers which, thanks to storms in the distant mountains, could go from six inches to 25 feet deep in a single day and skirted established farmlands farther east, whose owners usually did not care for large herds of cattle trampling their crops and exposing their own stock to strange varieties of disease.

Once into Kansas, the trail split again, over time as the railroads crept west. The end of the trail came variously at places like Dodge City, Newton, Ellsworth and Abilene – depending on the year, how far the railway had come, and the exasperation of local citizens with the behavior of young men on a spree after three months of brutally hard work, dust and boredom. The cattle were loaded into railcars, their drovers paid off… and next year, they did it again. The tracks can still be seen from the air, all across North Texas and Oklahoma.

So this is what I have been researching and writing about, these last few weeks – a world not much like that seen in TV westerns and old B-movies. It was a bit more complicated than it looks, watching an old TV show like “Rawhide”, with a great many more interesting characters, a lot more hard work and not nearly as prone to stupid gunplay and bravado. As one of my characters reflects… “The cattle drive was…uncommonly like the Army. The days combined long mind-numbing stretches of tedium interspersed with back-breaking labor and the occasional moment of innards-melting terror; all of it in the open air and in the exclusive company of men, day after day after day.”

Other curious things noted as regards the golden age of western cattle ranching:

The average age of a cowhand/drover was about 24. About one in six or seven was black, about one in six or seven Mexican. The work was seasonal, and most did it for only about seven years before moving on to something that paid a little more, or setting up as ranchers themselves.

They usually did not own their horse. Horses were provided as a necessary tool by the cowhand’s employer, to be swapped out when necessary. Which, depending on the work involved, might be two or three times during the working day.

In fact, at the end of a long trail drive, the horses were usually sold, and sometimes the cook-wagon, too. The cowhands returned to their starting point by rail; a ticket home being provided along with their wages.

In 1854 a drover named Tom Candy Ponting took a herd of longhorns all the way from Texas to New York City.

A French nobleman with a glamorous wife and apparently bottomless funds of money, the Marquis de Mores emerged with a small fortune after building a processing-plant and slaughterhouse… and a whole small town at Medora, in the Dakota badlands. Unfortunately, he had started with a large one. He also nearly fought a duel with Teddy Roosevelt.

Wyoming cattle baron Granville Stuart was married happily and successfully for nearly thirty years to a Shoshone Indian woman, Aubony (or Awbonny) Stuart.

Curiously, there didn’t seem to be all much cattleman-sheep herder warfare in Texas. Many Texas ranchers had stocked their lands with whatever herding animal was likely to make a profit. There was horrific bad feeling between cattle ranchers and ordinary farmers, though. See the Mason County Hoo Doo War, in which the farmer and the cowman were pretty evenly matched.

(more to follow - reposted to allow comments)

For the Presidents’ day weekend. Found via Rantburg, my own deep well of news and sarcastic commentary. Our Five Most Bad-Ass Presidents!

Yeah, I know. Totally juvenile… but… ummm. Mostly accurate. There were indeed giants on the earth, in those days.

Interesting post about an event that never happened… but still did a thing to our world. Scroll down to the “DMW Flashback: The Greatest March ” entry

About twenty years before our current popular culture records such an event happening.

Or not.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been considering voting for Barack Obama. Thought it would be nice to have a President who could put a full paragraph together without making words up to express himself. Thought maybe four years of an inexperienced executive with a vision might be good for the country. Shake things up a bit. The problem is, I started paying attention to his campaign and started reading some off the political blogs again. Not many, just a few. In the past two days the folks on the right have jumped all over Michelle Obama for a couple of sound bites:

Tues, Feb 19:

What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.

Okay…I know that others have already beat this thing into the ground and some of the comments I’ve seen on blogs and heard on the news have been over the top when it comes to beating this lady up. Let’s just keep to the words she said. She’s most proud of us when we’re hungry for change. Hmmm. I’ve been proud of our country many times in my adult life, not so much when we’ve been hungry for change, but when we’ve faced adversity and come together to overcome it. I haven’t been excited about “change” since Boyo got out of diapers, and that was because I could stop changing. Regardless of what she was saying or trying to say, it was really a dumb thing to say if you’re trying to pull in the center or just right of center.

And then there’s this bit from a speech she gave at UCLA:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Again…I’m not going to go as far as the far right is taking this, but come ON. I admit, that on some level, especially talking to a college crowd, it’s inspiring. Give the kids some direction. However (comma) on another level, for someone who wants less government in their lives, it’s just plain creepy. This isn’t JFK having me ask myself what I can do for my country, this is our president “demanding” that I shed my cynicism and “never allow(ing)” me to go back to my life as usual? Really?! Ummm, with all due respect, now that I’m a civilian again, I’m not that interested in my president demanding anything of me, thanks though.

Senator Obama is right. Words are important. “Hope” and “change” are powerful words. They’ve taken him very far. The problem I think, is that the Senator’s wife is giving us a peek behind the curtain of hope and change and some of us aren’t as hopeful or eager for that kind of change.

When I was a young child, sometime back in the dawn of time (oh, sorry - the late 60s), one of my favorite songs was by a group named Think. The song was called “Once You Understand.” It was basically a constant refrain providing the background sound for snippets of conversations between parents & teens. In keeping with the times, every parental interchange was angry/uncaring/non-supportive of their child’s latest dream or activity. The refrain got louder as the song progressed.

“Ma, I’ll be home at 11…”
“You’d better be home at 10, or don’t bother to come home at all.”

“Hey, Dad! Did you see my new guitar? I joined a group!”
“Son, there’s a little bit more to life than joining a group, or playing a guitar.”
“Yeah, Dad? What is there to life?”

When I was 10-12, this song was the epitome of everything that was wrong with parents. I had one of the those old K-Tel vinyl compilations that included this song on it. Over the years, the record got lost, and I have periodically scoured the internet hoping to find it. Alas, all searches were in vain.

Today, wandering through my blogroll, I checked out LaShawn Barber’s Corner. LaShawn has recently changed the primary focus of her blogs from politics to music - digital music in particular. She wrote about a new search engine called SeeqPod - kind of a “google” for music. So I jumped over to SeeqPod, and typed in “Once You Understand,” hit search, and crossed my fingers.

Eureka!

I still can’t find it to buy, but at least I can listen to it, and remember singing along at a slumber party 35 years ago. That’s better than nothing.

Thanks, SeeqPod!

h/t LaShawn Barber

Dude works for a big company. Blogs. Gets noticed. Gets fired. It happens.

Now, he claims he’s never seen an employee manual, which I find really hard to believe - those guys in HR are really into making sure people read those things. But, whatever.

Naw - my problem is his usage of metaphor ..

… that is until the day she was taken out into the figurative woods without any warning and given the Old Yeller treatment.

Dude. Ol’ Yeller wasn’t taken into the woods. Yeller was confined to a pen when he turned rabid and that’s where Travis did the deed. 

That and .. Ol’ Yeller had to die - he was rabid.  I don’t think the fellow is trying to make the point that his friend acquired rabies defending her boy against a wolf, and then had to be shot by his best friend.

Unless that’s really where he’s going; his friend got all weird in the course of her work so her corporate masters had to tearfully execute her.  Naw, that’s just too weird.

I call a metaphor penalty.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

First, go read this post.  I’ll wait. I need a fresh lemonade anyway.

Done? Cool.

First of all let me say that for someone who doesn’t work in the telecom industry that it’s very easy to think badly of T-Mobile after reading that story. Hell, if I didn’t know what was really behind what happened there, I’d be just as peeved. But the whole story isn’t there and I think it needs some clarification.

Okay, so the events that took place happened in January of 2008. Let me double check, yep, by the information that’s provided, that seems correct.

What most people don’t know is that back in December of 2007 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed stricter Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) regulations that all U.S. Telecoms have to abide by. Before those new regulations it was pretty easy for anyone to call in, give their name, confirm the name on the account, confirm some personal information, and they’d get full access to that other person’s account. Since the new CPNI standards went into effect, that’s no longer the case. The FCC decided that only the account owner (the person who’s name is on the acount), or the people that the account owner had designated as Authorized Users on the account, may have access to the account information…which would include access to buying a phone in that person’s name. Apparently in the past, unauthorized folks just called up, ordered a phone, charged it to someone else’s account, mom’s, dad’s, daughter’s, and off they went with a new phone and no one was the wiser until the bill showed up.

If any of those T-Mobile employees had allowed that girl’s dad to buy a phone for her on her dead husband’s account when the dad wasn’t an authorized user they would have been guilty of a federal crime.

I don’t know about the T-Mobile employees, but I wouldn’t be willing to go to jail for anyone, no matter how bad their situation.

I realize that it’s easy to hate cell phone companies, trust me, I work for one and I think it’s absolutely scandalous that they just don’t give away cell phones and forgive every bit of overage that customers accrue through ignorance or apathy. It’s like they’re in business to make a profit or something. (sarcasm…in case you missed it) In this case though, they did exactly what your government told them to do.

source

It’s expected that his brother Raul will be the new president.

HAVANA - An ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba’s president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when parliament meets Sunday.

The end of Castro’s rule — the longest in the world for a head of government — frees his 76-year-old brother Raul to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel Castro fell ill in July 2006. President Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition.

Here’s hoping that their next 50 years are better than the last.

UPDATE: Val Prieto (and friends) do their usual good job of providing background and commentary on all things Cuban over at Babalublog. Val’s blog is where I first started reading more about Cuba, a few years ago. It’s always the first place I head when I see something about Cuba in the news.

“Monica Lewinski’s ex-boyfriend’s wife for President!”

It’s just so wrong that it makes me giggle.

The run-up to this presidential election has a horrid fascination about it, kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We have on one side, Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois, in the words of a recent blog commenter, vigorously throwing melanin and ovaries at each other. It would be funny, if not for the sure and certain knowledge that one of them will be the Democrat’s anointed by convention time. And also that our grandees of the conventional media establishment will have pulled themselves together by that time and tied a big best-of-show ribbon around the neck of one or the other. Never mind that half the MSM are at present going all wobbly-in-the-knees for Mr. Obama and the other half are indignantly insisting that there is nothing wrong, nothing the least bit wrong with the spouse of a two-term president waltzing into the White House for a term of her own, born up on a rising tide of her previous experience there.

Me, I am left relatively unmoved by the dreaminess, charisma, vision and whatever of Mr. Obana. Like P.O’Rourke, I consider the desire to adore a head of state, or any prospective applicants for that office, to be a grim transgression against republicanism (Small r there, meaning the system of government, not the actual political party). I am also left similarly unmoved by the notion that just because Her Inevitableness is a woman of certain age, with all that long memory of feminism in the last quarter of the last century, that OF COURSE I am going to vote for her. Fight the Patriarchy, the glass ceiling, sisterhood is powerful! Umm, no. Sorry; this is not Argentina and she is not Eva Bloody Peron. Frankly, the thought of Bill “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” Clinton prowling the corridors of the White House trolling for interns – yet again, sort of makes my skin crawl. I would have respected Her Inevitableness so much more if she had dumped his sorry ass, after L’Affaire Monica. And dumped it with vigor and sufficient force to achieve low orbit

On the other side; not much better, really; either Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani would have worked for me. I could have voted for either one without too much cringing – but alas, neither had the stamina to hold out long enough to be a serious contender. Which leaves me with John McCain; and I keep thinking I ought to be more enthusiastic about that. Way back in the primordial dark of the 2000 primary season, I had rather liked his candidacy, and held considerable of a grudge against GWB for certain dirty tricks pulled against McCain in the South Carolina primary. So, the man has a good shot at the Republican nomination now – and I ought to feel better about that. But he has a long record in public life, he is a cranky maverick with a bad temper and has gotten into political bed with some pretty unsavory people…so, who knows?

God knows, I don’t. All I can do come this November is to walk into the voting booth and vote for the one that I think is the least worst.

And then I remember - and hope! Even given that the worst of the three takes the oath of office next January. It’s only four years. God knows, we should be able to survive. I mean, we got through the presidency of that blob of vacuous sanctimony known as Jimmy Carter, even if we are still cleaning up some of the mess from his term.

Because it’s the weekend. And it’s funny.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

via.

The Air Force recently came by and did some simulated bomb runs on City Hall. The idea is that ground controllers need practice guiding air strikes in urban areas. Most bomb ranges are way the heck out in the middle of nowhere and lack urban terrain, so they come up here and do their thing.

Makes sense to me - you guys in blue do know how to rock on completely.

The paper described the AttackSimEx [1] as controversial but the only people who actually objected were six members from the Fox Valley Peace Coalition. One of whom was confused about what he was upset about.

“Apparently, this exercise is to improve the accuracy of bombs so they don’t have the ‘collateral damage,’” he said. “Collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent people, and I strongly object to my government killing innocent people. This is one small gesture on my part to at least make this known.”

Um, yeah. Actually the military [2] is all about killing as many people as possible; good, bad, innocent, guilty as sin, as long as the gun sight lays on ‘em we’ll pull the trigger. Our only problem is we can’t slaughter them fast enough; they keep wiggling around and throwing off our aim.

No, it’s the nancy pants [3] in Accounting that insist we get as much bang for the buck as possible. While carpet bombing is a whole lotta fun and a terrific emotional release it’s just not effective enough. The taxpayer is footing the bill and it’s our fiduciary responsibility to make sure the bombs land as close to the actual target as possible. That way we can use less of them - it’s a win-win for everyone.

Except the guys who are actually the target. But we in the War Mongering business call this hard cheese.

That angular monstrosity is City Hall - the target. Talk about putting the ‘close’ in close-air support …

[1] I have no idea if the milspeak shorthand for this really is AttackSimEx or not - but if it were it would not surprise me.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

To: The Arch Bishop of Canterbury
From: Sgt Mom
Re: The discrete attractions of sharia vis a vis English Common Law

1. Having been raised in the relatively intellectual and logic-based tradition of the Lutheran church, the temptation to take a swipe at a church founded on Henry VIII’s scheme to get out of one unrewarding marriage and into another more to his liking is almost overwhelming. The Church of England came about because King H. had the hots for Anne Boleyn and she wasn’t giving him any until he ponied up a ring and a crown and lots of other pretty shiny baubles. Lutherans have the 95 Thesis nailed to a church door, and the C of E… has Henry VIII’s gonads. I admit, Bish – you made a damn good show of it though, especially with the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible and all that. Speaking as a wordsmith, it beats Luther’s Small Catechism all hollow. Pure ecclesiastical and literary gold, but lamentably, it looks like your church has been running out of steam ever since.

2. What on earth where you thinking, urging your fellow citizens to acquiesce to the use of sharia law in Britain, as anything other than a small-scale, mutually-agreed-upon-between-the aggrieved parties adjunct, a sort of counseling service? Did you have any idea of the ruckus that would arise, upon suggesting that it was inevitable and by implication a good thing in this pretty, shiny multi-culti 21st century Britain? Do you even, god save us, have any idea that your casually tossed off remarks appeared to approve of grafting an alien sprout onto the tree of common law? An alien and wholly contradictory sprout that no matter how often or how loudly the praises of sharia law are sung by the usual chorus, casual consumers of recent media reports cannot help concluding those places in which sharia law holds sway are violent and benighted hellholes? In the eyes of those innocent of spectacles constructed of industrial-strength rose-colored glass, it is a turd. No amount of gold-plate will make it acceptable, not least, I suspect, to those who have had first-hand experience of it. (Especially those of the female gender.)

3. It is one thing, my good Bish, to discuss theoretical constructs – it is quite another to install them as workable and working systems, when real-world experience of them suggests that the outcome will be something comprehensively different, from what it appeared to be in ones’ airy world of theory and abstraction. See the practice of communism, when tried out in any place you could name.

4. Hoping that this memo will be of assistance to you, in explaining the storm which has descended upon your miter-capped head.

5. Sorry; coming up with an explanation for all those gorgeous but empty church buildings the length and breadth of Britain is more your line of work. Good luck with that.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Later:This lovely monologue/rant courtesy of I-don’t-know-who-it’s-a-couple-glasses-of-chablis-into-my-birthday-eve here

Eh - Rantburg, the source of all things sour and sarky

Yes, I did write quite a number of posts about them, didn’t I? Stern words, had to be said. And I think I did a pretty ringing job, the first time around, so here are exerpts and links:

The strength of the West is in that very noisy disputation, our freedom to put everything on the table, to question, to non-conform, and by disputation and argument, make our beliefs even stronger for having all the idiocy knocked out of them. As such has been our custom, and in the reported words of Martin Luther, at the Diet of Worms: “Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.” (original post here)

As far as American newsprint and broadcast television is concerned, the phrase “freedom of the press” is from this day now enshrined in my favorite set of viciously skeptical quote-marks. The affair of the Danish Cartoons, and their non-appearance in all but a handful of newspapers has put the lie to every bit of lip-service ever paid to the notion that the American people had a right to know… had an absolute right, enshrined in the foundations of our very Republic to know… well, whatever it was that would goose the ratings, or boost circulation this week… A right that every journalist would fearlessly defend, with every fiber of his principled, journalistic being. Oops, there seems to be a little contradiction there. Principled… journalist… now there is a concept worn to tatters by this little international imbroglio, especially after Eason-gate, Rather-Gate and all the other tedious-gates. (original post here)

…the next time I hear someone pontificating away on the awesome responsibilities involved in upholding the “freedom of the press”… and they are from a newspaper which refused to run the Danish Cartoons, or a television station which refused to air them, citing “community sensitivities” or “deference to religious feelings” or whatever the sad excuse du jour is…. I shall laugh and laugh and laugh. (original post here)

Amusingly, that lugubrious old talking prune, NPR’s Daniel Shorr was coming out on the side of being all sensitive and being responsible about “using the power of the press” as regards the Matter of the Danish Cartoons. (Doesn’t that sound like a very dull Sherlock Holmes adventure, or the worst name for a war since the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”?) Just like the pet professor of international relations whom my local paper keeps on hand to drivel on about the Moslem world and international relations, and how the US must…must…zzzzz… oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a moment. I do that when reading the gentleman’s editorials, but so do probably most of his students. (original post here)

Wouldn’t change a thing… well, except to point and laugh at Daniel Shorr a little more.

No, it’s not a long-hidden horror flick. It’s the next volley in the fight to support freedom of speech/freedom of the press. It seems that the Danish government recently arrested some Muslim conspirators who were planning to kill Kurt Westergaard, the man who drew what was deemed to be the most offensive of the cartoons two years ago.

That would be this one:

You may recall that our own Sgt Mom wrote about this very topic the first time around, castigating the mainstream press for kowtowing to the Islamofacists. I’m certain that she’ll be weighing in on this revival, as well. I’m heartened by the fact that the Danish papers have responded to this recent arrest by re-publishing the cartoons. As Captain Ed says, they are “on the front lines for free speech.”

According to the article, Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch newspapers also republished the cartoons. Anyone want to take any bets as to when we’ll see them in the NY Times?

From that funny magician guy, Penn…you know, the one that talks. Have to say I agree with him…about Hillary anyway, I’m not sure that Obama is the next President, but pretty sure he’s right on about why Hillary won’t be.

Via He Who Needs No Linkage.