Monday, May 26, 2014
What were their names?
Midshipman Joseph Israel, USN. Killed September 4, 1804, Tripoli.
Lt. Peter Gamble, USN. Killed September 11, 1814, Battle of Lake Champlain.
Pvt. Francis D. Carter, 1st Illinois Regiment. Killed, February 23, 1847, Battle of Buena Vista.
Lt. Theodore W. Hodges, 55th Illinois Volunteers Infantry. Killed April 6, 1862, Battle of Shiloh.
Private George Hooker, United States Army, Killed January 22, 1873, Tonto Creek, Arizona
Chief Yeoman George Henry Ellis, USN. Killed July 3, 1898, Battle of Santiago de Cuba.
Private Robert L Blackwell, United States Army. Killed October 11, 1918, Hundred Days Offensive.
Chief Radioman John Francis Bauer US Naval Reserve, Killed October 31, 1941, USS Reuben James
Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro, United States Coast Guard, Killed September 27, 1942, Guadalcanal
Charles Villines, Civilian Contractor, Killed October 7, 1943, Wake Island
Pvt. John T. Julian, United States Army, Killed January 1, 1945, Battle of the Bulge.
PFC Attilio M Lupacchino, United States Marine Corps. Killed December 9, 1950, Battle of Chosin Reservoir.
1st Lt Howard Walker Kaiser, United States Air Force. Killed September 13, 1966. Vietnam.
Captain Arthur Bonifas, United States Army, Killed August 18, 1976, Korean DMZ
LCPL Thomas R. Adams, United States Marine Corp. Killed October 8, 1990. Operation Desert Storm.
Seaman James Rodrick McDaniels, United States Navy, Killed October 12, 2000, USS Cole.
SSG Maudlyn A. White, United States Army, Killed September 11, 2001, Pentagon.
LCPL Abraham Simpson, United States Marine Corps, Killed November 9, 2004, Fallujah.
SSgt David D. Self, United States Army. Killed May 16, 2011, Afghanistan.
Rest in Peace.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
You didn't build that.
Friday, March 16, 2012
No Vote for Oil
President Obama and the Saudi’s are going to collude on the election. Starting in July the spigot will be turned on full blast. The price of gas at the pump will begin dropping in mid August. By mid-October it will be below $2.75 a gallon and falling and President Obama will begin taking bows.
November 7th the flow will be stopped.
The net affect will be two-fold. First is the President will be reelected. Second is numerous productive wells in the United States will be plugged due to low prices, thus increasing our dependence on the middle east.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Broad Coverage
- The cost of going with out is a drain on society; IE unplanned pregnancy
- The great health risk involved of a pregnancy to the individual
So, does this mean Obama Care is going to pay for my new bicycle helmet each year?
- Cost of going without has a great potential drain on society; IE quadriplegic with brain damage
- Cost of not riding has a great potential drain on society; IE lack of exercise = obesity, heart disease, ETC.
- The great health risk of riding without a helmet on me as an individual
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Uncle Ron
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Mitt Rolaids
I think this is the primary source of Mitt Romney’s appeal. How often is it said “he can beat Obama”? Let’s please ignore the fact that it is generally leftists who are saying this with grim smirks. One can almost hear them thinking “I can’t believe they are buying this”.
To conservatives everywhere: Mitt is not It. This has nothing to do with him being a Mormon, Bain Capital, venture-capitalism, or Romney care. It all boils down to stomach acid.
Should the Republican candidate prevail, the primary function of the 45th President and 113th Congress will be to repeal the three big acts: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and Sarbanes-Oxley.
Mitt does not have the intestinal fortitude for this fight.
I believe what has made Mitt rich and famous and a threat to win the Presidency is his “go-along to get-along” attitude. This attitude is the reason Mitt has long been considered a flip-flopper. He simply adopts the latest trends and hangs on. For the repeal of these three laws that are working as a trifecta to strangle businesses across our county we need a leader who understands the danger these laws place on the countries financial well-being and work stringently with Congress to repel. Not amend, not “defund”, not work within the system to “improve that which works and remove that which doesn’t”; but to end, remove, and repeal these laws and rid ourselves of these onerous blights on capital.
Now, I know some out there might say that who sits in the White House is not nearly as important as a nuclear Iran, an unstable Iraq, and growing army of Islamic fanatics raised on hatred of the west and filled with religious fervor to strike a blow against the infidel. While they are absolutely right about the gravity of the threat from radical Muslims; they also need to realize only a country that is strong financially can wage an active war against terrorist insurgents on a world wide scale. Without financial backing, most intelligence: not gathered, the little that is: not analyzed, and finally there is no force to act upon what little we do learn.
First things first, we have to make long term decisions to get our financial house in order. Mitt Romney is not the man to make the tough decision to set policy of removing these laws and to lead the fight to set-in-place the fundamental building blocks that will restore our country financially.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
30 Rocks in His Head?
Mr. Baldwin is a proud liberal. Liberals in general appear to believe that if we just put enough rules in place we will all lead happy, safe, warm, comfortable lives. Rules, laws, and regulations are the hallmark of any liberal group. The occupy crowd wishes to have greater regulation over wall street. The recent democratic led congress believed we didn’t need to allow failing banks to fail, but to prop them up with a new bevy or rules and regulations. With any disaster, man-made or natural, the liberal solution is always a new set of rules.
So my question: why does Mr. Baldwin, who supports such rules and regulation to make life fair for all, not follow the rules immediately and without question? Doesn’t he realize these are Federal Regulations and were put in for our safety?
Saturday, November 5, 2011
C to Shining C
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tax Loopholes
Obese Childrem
Monday, February 7, 2011
Things are complicated
I have a "friend" on facebook called Chip. Chip's actually a guy I played in band with in high school, but who I haven't seen in decades, so he doesn't really qualify as a friend anymore, except in the facebook sense. Anyway, Chip runs a manufacturing company founded by his father that makes machines that have to do with making pipes. They make machines that make fintubes, whatever those are. (I get a vision of the offspring of a pipe bred with a 50s Cadillac, but I'm sure that's not right.) They also make equipment for fusing polyethylene pipe. As near as I can tell, they don't make polyethylene pipe or machines for making polyethylene pipe (unless fintubes are also polyethylene pipes), just the machines for fusing them. They seem to employ 100 or more people based on the company group photo on their website.
So what's the point? Chip's company strikes me as an outstanding example of how damn complicated our world is. Here's this company, employing dozens of people focusing on a really narrow portion of our industrial process: making machines to fuse pipes. There are pipes everywhere, of course, and fusing them is really important, if you don't want them to leak, but pipes are just devises to move fluids about. They're kind of dull. The really complicated stuff happens before or after the fluid goes into the pipe. Pipes aren't really central to anything people do with fluids, they're just a good way to get fluids from one place to another. Yet one small part of the process involved in creating these rather pedestrian devices is important enough to support a small industry. (I assume that Chip's company has competitors in the fusion machine and fintube-making machine markets.)
Multiple that by all of the other steps in the process of making pipes and you come to the the realization that the humble pipe implies a incomprehensibly complicated industrial infrastructure. I don't even want to think about the machines doing complicated things to the fluids at the end of the pipes.
I don't really have anywhere to go with this, except to say that it boggles my mind, and that anyone who claims to understand our economy is either lying or deluded.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Margin of error
I've been looking at political polls a lot recently. In my attempt to understand them, I've been thinking about the terms thrown about with explanation, one of which is "margin of error".
I don't think margin of error means what people think it means. You will often see polls like this: Bruce Scott (R) 51% v. Scott Bruce (D) 49%, margin of error 3%. To which people respond, "that's a dead heat since it's within the margin of error". Not exactly. Margin of error cuts both way; the real percentage is as likely to be 54-36 as it is 48-52. Given that, there are seven possibilities (54-36, 53-37, 52-48, 51-49, 50-50, 49-51, and 48-52). If one assumes that each of these possibilities is equally likely, then the "republican" wins 4 out of 7 times, the "democrat" 2 out of 7 times, and the lawyers 1 out of 7 times.
I realize that this is a gross oversimplification. To begin with, votes almost never break in even integer percentages, but the 2:1 win ratio for the "republican" v. "democrat" will apply for fractional results as well, the percentage of ties, however, will shrink. It is also probably that there is some sort of bell curve for these possibilities, so that 54-36 and 48-52 are equally likely, but both are less likely than 53-37 and 49-51. Even given that, the area under "republican" side of the curve will be greater that the area under the "democrat" side of the curve. I suspect that the 2:1 ratio might even still apply.
I also realize that I've never taken a course in statistics or probability, and that I may be completely wrong here. But until someone explains to me why this reasoning is wrong, I'm going to assume that "margin of error" is something that can almost be ignored.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
New Suggested reading.
Monday, September 27, 2010
2012 and history.
In 1912 William Taft faced a strong challenge for the nomination from Teddy Roosevelt. When Taft won the nomination, Teddy formed his Bull Moose party. Woodrow Wilson crushed Taft in the general election. In 1952 Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee defeated Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary. Shortly thereafter Truman withdrew from the race. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson barely beat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary. Four days later, Robert Kennedy entered the race and two weeks later Johnson withdrew. In 1976, Gerald Ford faced Ronald Reagan in the primaries and barely won, finally winning the nomination in a floor fight at the convention. Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the general election. In 1980 Carter faced a strong challenge from Ted Kennedy who won 40% of the delegates to the Democratic convention. Carter was crushed by Ronald Reagan in the general election. In 1992, George H. W. Bush faced a symbolic but significant challenge from Patrick Buchanan. Although Buchanan won no state primaries and only an handful of delegates, he did win a significant percentage of the primary vote. His run highlighted the dissatisfaction with Bush felt by the conservative wing of the Republican party. Bush also faced a third party challenger, Ross Perot, who may have acted as a spoiler for Bush.
The one example of a sitting president facing a significant intra-party challenge and prevailing in the general election was Harry Truman in 1948. Truman faced a serious Party leaders approached Dwight Eisenhower, but he refused. (The Republicans also approached him in '48 bas well, but he turned them down also. He didn't reveal his party until 1952.) Truman also had a three way split in the Democratic Party, with the new Progressive Party nominating FDR's second Vice President, Henry Wallace. The Democratic Party split again at the convention over civil rights, with southern Democrats walking out and forming the Dixiecrats behind Strom Thurmond. Despite this significant party disunity, Truman pulled off the greatest upset ever in presidential politics, and won the general election.
The one example of a sitting president being defeated in the general election without facing a strong challenge for the nomination was in 1932, when Herbert Hoover easily won the Republican nod, but was soundly defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in the general election. OF course, this was in the midst of the Great Depression, and Hoover's policies were widely blamed for exacerbating the country's economic woes.
Given that history, this could be very bad news for the president.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
High T.E.A.
Second graders know when they have no pennies in the piggy bank they are told no.
Even drunker sailors know when to stop spending - when the funds run out.
Why is it that Congress continues to spend with no accountability? Not only are they spending, but also borrowoing at alarming rates with no end in sight. Now in order to get us out of debt they propose a 1% tax increase. Is this a joke? Why reward these Senators with more money that they are going to over spend and tax the American population again and again.
Memo to Congress - stop spending.
Enough is enough. It is time to vote these morons out of offfice come November.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
On McChrystal Part II
Which brings up the question of who is replacing Petraeus at Central Command? For a while Lt. General Allen (USMC) will take over, but he's a three star and that's a 4 star slot. This also puts the Central Command in the some what odd position of having a 4 star general under the operation command of a 3 star general. Obama needs to get a replacement in a Central Command ASAP. Either promote LTGEN Allen (which might be tricky given that the USMC has a very limited number of full (i.e 4 star) generals (like one I recall correctly, the commandant of the Marines )) or find some under-employed 4 star that is willing to take that job, and please not a squid or a zomer.
Of course, IMAO, the correct sequence would have been fire McChrystal, brevet Allen to 4 stars (and get him confirmed by the US Senate ASAP), and assign him to AfPac commander. Among other things things, the USMC seems to have their collective shit together more in Afghanistan than the non-special forces US Army does. The USMC does have a longer (and more successful) history of "Small Wars" than the US Army does. But what do I know, I was just a SP/5 in the Army. Wait, that's more experience than Obama has...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
On McChrystal
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Opps The first in the series was some where else.
Couple of notes just as a point of comparison. Note that, even though it's raining he's not holding an umbrella and looking silly. For that matter he doesn't look silly after the wind hits the wreath.
Also note the serious Men in Suits standing around with brief cases. You know they have some serious firepower in those cases. I like the one staring into the hedge. What was he expecting? A raccoon or squirrel to jump out and attack?