27 June -

Let me get this straight. Half of Americans pay no federal income tax. No income tax. Half of Americans contribute nothing to the running of government and its programs. Wow! I don’t mind people not paying a lot of taxes. Nobody should have to pay a lot of taxes. But, I am not going to get ahead of the story right now.

What is painful about this permanent tax holiday is that it was a gift from pandering administrations and congresses who found it an undisciplined method to get votes. Bread and circuses in exchange for retention of government power. Compounding the pain is the concomitant expansion of the role and influence of these administrations and congresses in nearly every aspect of our lives. This expansion has cost more money than anything ever purchased by anyone anywhere in the history of the world. Yet, this expansion has been funded by an increasingly smaller percentage of our populace than any time in my memory. It does not surprise me when people who pay tens of thousands of dollars of federal taxes feel that representative government has been tortured to mean something the Founders probably would have found eroding to the nation.

I have an idea. Why don’t we build a tax system that requires all people who earn any money to pay some federal income tax? It doesn’t even have to be a universal flat tax. It could even include some graduated tax tables. For example, it would simply be that no one pays less than 2% of one’s income to federal income tax. That would mean that someone who earns $10,000 a year pays $200 on the 1040 short form. The issue isn’t the amount of the money these 50% of the populace will contribute, but the fact that everybody in the club should pay something. I feel that noncontribution to the funding of government erodes one’s sense of responsibility and obligation toward the proper running of government. This is especially true when the noncontributors are also major recipients of government largesse. The battle cry of early rebel patriots was Simple: “No taxation without representation”. Maybe our battle cry should be “No representation without taxation”.

I like the idea because we should look at our citizenship as something akin to being a member of a church that asks for tithing. Tithing normally means 10% of one’s income being donated to the church. It is up to the church to use those funds in ways that the members find acceptable. It is human nature that giving such tithes ties the member to the church and ties the church to the members. A poor member can stand up and voice his opinion because, after all, he pays his ten percent as righteously as the rich man does. The payment, not the amount, is what makes the voice legitimate.

Of course, once people don’t have to do something, they are loathe to assume the obligation. Therefore, so are law makers loathe to institute it. Too bad. I guess it will have to throw the present bums out and get new ones.

Range Gate Stealing

23 June 2011 –

When I was young and full of spit and vinegar, discussions about hot topics of the day would frustrate me. We would start on one subject and end up on another. Nothing was clarified. Nothing was remembered. Others remained stupid and uninformed. As I got older, I realized three facts applied to most conversations about contentious issues. First: I—the obviously brilliant and insightful one—would still allow discussions to stray from the original subject to something else. I learned that to stray is natural and easy; to remain focused is hard. I was not a disciplined conversationalist. Second: I naively believed that my interlocutor had no intended animus when he went topic hopping. I actually assumed that all people wanted to resolve hot issues with agreed upon truth. Three: I realized that arguments and discussions almost never win over the other person to one’s way of thinking. The more realizable objective is to clarify and frame one’s own argument and then stick to it, using only one’s own words and concepts. Winning converts is never as important as staying focused on what is clear and right.

As a young Air Force officer, I found a powerful analogy to clarify these concepts. As is often the case, insight in one area comes as one is reading something seemingly unrelated. I was studying about electronic countermeasures (ECM) in what we now call the battlespace when clarity shone on me. One of the processes that pilots, radar operators, and missileers use to survive and win battles applies directly to how one can survive and, dare we hope it, win a discussion on a hot topic. It is called range gate stealing or range gate pull-off. In the explanation you will see the connection.

I majored in French in college. I am not a “beeps and squeaks” kinda guy. Nonetheless, I think I can explain this in simple terms and still make the point.

If you want to defend an area from air attack, you build radars on the ground that send out streams of electrons at a certain frequency to detect and pinpoint and track the location of incoming enemy aircraft. These radars then send the tracking information to missile batteries that use that information to fire missiles at the attacking aircraft. If God is willing, the missile will hit the aircraft, explode, and send the pilot to the fiery depths of hell.

The ground radar sends out beams of electrons that can cover much of the sky. The frequency of the electron beam is the key to the analogy. All radio wave frequencies are given a number on a spectrum based on the center of the width of the frequency. If the beam’s frequency is 100, for example, the width of the beam may actually be from 95 to 105. The beam usually vacillates between 95 and 105, with the most electrons, the most powerful signal, being sent out right in the middle.

Back to the fight. The radar sweeps the sky back and forth, up and down, constantly sending out beams of 100 frequency electrons. When these electrons hit something in the sky, like one of Darth Vader’s attack ships, the electrons bounce off the aircraft and go everywhere. Because goodness reigns supreme, enough of the electrons do bounce back to the radar dish on the ground. Because the electrons are still on 100 frequency, the radar receives and processes them. The information shows up on the operator’s screen as the well-known blip that indicates that an enemy aircraft is approaching from a certain angle, height, and speed. This information is quickly passed to the missile battery. Great warriors aims their missiles at the aircraft and blow the Evil Empire lackey out of the sky. Yay! Everyone is safe. The Republic and the American way are secure.

That is a simplification of one version of electronic warfare. But, war is never that simple. The Evil Empire has developed electronic countermeasures (ECM) to defeat radars and to render missiles blind and impotent. Darth Vader wants to kill us and boast later of his conquests. The ECM is where the analogy becomes apparent.

Since the enemy can’t afford to have all its aircraft shot down, it develops ECM equipment for its attacking aircraft. The concept is simple. When the ground radar sends out its 100 frequency electron stream, the attack aircraft’s ECM gear detects that those electrons are hitting the aircraft and probably returning to the radar. The ECM gear also detects the frequency of the radar beam at 100. The ECM gear then sends out an identical beam of 100 frequency electrons, but at a slightly stronger rate than the ground radar is sending out. The ECM beam’s 100 frequency electrons find their way to the ground radar and, because they are at a greater rate of return, the radar starts to follow those returns exclusively. The ECM gear continues to emit a strong 100 frequency beam, but then changes its center ever so slightly to, say, 99. But, since the return beam to the ground radar is so clear and strong, the radar tends to follow the false beam of now 99 frequency electrons. After all, the 99 is still well within the overall width of the 100 frequency beam. The ECM gear then changes the still strong beam to have a center of 98, then 97, then 96, then 95. The ground radar is being fooled by the ECM beam’s being pulled off the original center frequency of 100 to one of 95, at the edge of the ground radar’s original frequency. This is the set-up for the kill.

Actually, the ground radar is still sending out the original 100 centered beam of electrons, and its original electrons are still being reflected back to the ground radar. But, since the ECM’s false beam of 95 is stronger, the ground radar ignores the returns from its beam in preference to the stronger, false beam. Darth Vader is ready to strike. He does it by simply turning off the ECM gear’s beam of 95 frequency. What happens is that the ground radar becomes blind. It cannot track the 95 frequency because it no longer exists. The ground radar’s 100 frequency beam is still emitting and returning, but the radar must take time to recalibrate its receivers in order to receive the original signal, process the signal, and display the enemy aircraft again on the screen. Then, the ground radar has to send the correct info to the missile battery. These precious seconds of time, when the radar adjusts to see again the threat, gives the Evil Empire a window in it can operate with impunity. Once the enemy aircraft’s ECM gear shows that the radar’s original emissions are not being received by the ground radar, the pilot attacks either the ground radar, the missile battery, or the local orphanage or hospital. Evil reigns for another day, and Hell is denied it dues.

You are the ground radar. You send out a good message. But, language being what it is, there is always a range of interpretation for the message. In a cunning use of that range, the skilled opponent grabs your message and repeats it, but by pulling it away from your intent and toward the edge of the meaning.

For example, your message at a town council meeting is that we must fund the public library system in town. Everybody smiles and someone asks you what dress you were wearing last evening at the main library. You answer that it was a blue jumper. The opponent repeats that you were wearing a blue dress downtown last night, right? You acquiesce to the looser interpretation and say yes. The opponent then asks why you were wearing a teal cocktail dress on Main Street last night. You stumble and try to correct the opponent by saying that it wasn’t a teal cocktail dress, it was simply a blue dress, but fail to correct him completely on the type. You also do not correct him about the specific time or location—after all, the library is on Main Street, and what’s the difference between last evening and last night? The opponent then contends that someone saw you late last night walking on Main Street near two bars wearing a blue cocktail dress and carrying what seemed to be a bag full of books—or even something else, one can’t be sure. You sputter that you were indeed in the library last night, but you didn’t see anybody dressed like that walking around the library. Since you felt that it wouldn’t do any good now to say that the library is across Main Street from two bars, you feel that you are losing control of everything. All of what the opponent said now is fact in the discussion. You are no longer talking about the library in the way you want to and you are concentrating on defending yourself against groundless accusations. The opponent then demands to know why you would dress so provocatively during late nights in the bars of Main Street when you should have been in the library. Are you really the one who should defend library use? Damage done.

The opponent pulled your message off, brutally preformed range gate stealing and embarrassed you in the process. Your good message became a bad one and you were left sputtering and wondering how you are going to recover and save the library, to say nothing of your reputation.

If your message is going to stay clear, pointed, and dangerous to those who need to be blown out of the sky and sent down to…well, enough of that…you need to stop the range gate stealing EVERY TIME the opponent tries it. You have to stay on frequency, say on message, and don’t let the opponent coopt and then abuse your lexicon. Keep pulling it back to your message, to your words, to your argument. If you don’t, in the end, you will be lost and wondering what happened. Or, you will be dead.

21 June 2011 –

Yesterday, my wife received a return e-mail from a friend of ours. My wife and she became friends while we were living in central Africa. This woman and her husband have been associated most of their lives with agencies such as USAID and with the State Department. I was in the U.S. Air Force for thirty years, and my wife was a broadcast journalist, taught time management and English as a second language worldwide, raised four children, and kept an elegant home in ratty officers’ quarters on one base after another. Both families have seen a lot of the world. Both families know much about the machinations of our government. And, each family holds down an opposite end of the political spectrum.

Prefacing the chatty part of our friend’s e-mail was this response to my wife’s mentioning of Tea Party Republicans. I include it today because it is well spoken, and it allows me to talk about a fundamental part of individual liberty.

“You’re right…I’m rolling my eyes about the Tea Party. But I appreciate your right to believe in its principles. As I always say, ‘Everyone had a right to be wrong!’ ;-) I just hope we don’t ignore our responsibility to ‘the least of these’ by cutting programs so drastically that they are no longer effective. I don’t believe that caring for the poor & aged is something that only individuals, churches and other religious groups can do; we’re beyond that. We need government involvement & leadership – and to some extent, “forced giving” (i.e., taxes) to make sure we all live up to this commission (whether we believe in it or not – too many people today don’t see personal giving as a mandate). “

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

“You’re right…I’m rolling my eyes about the Tea Party. But I appreciate your right to believe in its principles. As I always say, ‘Everyone had a right to be wrong!’ ;-)

I would expect her to roll her eyes about the Tea Party movement. She has spent her adult life in programs that give away money and assets in the name of aid to the poor. I admit freely that participating in a program to give food, medicine, and other benefits to the poor makes the donor feel good. I may indeed be wrong, but it seems to me that government aid programs rarely create conditions where the donors can demand accountability from the poor to use the aid to rise above individual poverty and to avoid falling into it again. My experience around such programs worldwide and in the United States tells me that aid without individual accountability coopts the donor into a self-serving aid industry. It enriches corrupt government officials who often control the dispensing of the aid. Worst of all, it almost always chains the poor to a static lifeline of continued aid. A movement such as the Tea Party, which also contends that such programs fail to effectively improve the lives of the recipients and, most importantly, waste huge sums of money, would not be on our friend’s Christmas card list.

“I just hope we don’t ignore our responsibility to ‘the least of these’ by cutting programs so drastically that they are no longer effective.”

I agree with one part of this statement: It is our responsibility as God’s children to help and provide succor to “the least of these”, our brothers and sisters (I could be more formal and call them brethren and sistern, but that never has sounded good to me). I don’t agree with my friend’s implication that government aid is effective at all. Therefore, cutting government aid programs, in the end, doesn’t reduce government effectiveness; there wasn’t any effectiveness to begin with. Beginning with FDR’s programs through the Great Society to today’s stimulus packages, shovel ready programs, and increased food stamp rolls, there is scant evidence that the trillions of dollars spent have reduced the lot of what we call the poor, the “least of these”, in our society.

I don’t believe that caring for the poor & aged is something that only individuals, churches and other religious groups can do; we’re beyond that.

Here is where the separation between this good woman and me yawns widely. I believe strongly that caring for the poor and the aged is something that only individuals, churches, ethnic, business, and other private, societal associations can do. Can do effectively and somewhat efficiently, that is. It is in the voluntary acts of service and succor that men and women are ennobled. Donors’ hearts are tied to the poor and aged with incredibly durable bonds—bonds that only strengthen the fundamental pillars of our society, such as family, religion, and local community. The humility required to receive such succor from family, church, and local community impels the impoverished to follow the ennobling stipulations that regulate the aid. Those stipulations usually are fundamental principles of behavior that will improve the impoverished and his lot.

I contend that lifting from families and churches the obligation to attend to their aged has eroded familial love and commitment to a point that it is a major contributor to families falling apart. It can even be said that such denial of responsibility helped create conditions where the not-so-late Jack Kevorkian was allowed to practice his murderous ways until he had refined it to an efficient industry. Anything that erodes family commitment, to include abrogating personal responsibility for the care of our aged, tears at the fabric of society. If our society’s cohesion has diminished to a point that, “we are beyond that”, then my keystrokes are ringing hollow in a dying world.

“We need government involvement & leadership – and to some extent, “forced giving” (i.e., taxes) to make sure we all live up to this commission (whether we believe in it or not – too many people today don’t see personal giving as a mandate). “

Are we no longer a society that sees itself first as sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, children to those who raised us, children of God, and only second as members of the secular polity writ large? If we “are beyond that point”, then government involvement and leadership, for less than altruistic reasons, will indeed force us to live up to a commission to provide aid and succor to the poor and aged. Alas, human history has shown that such a commission will further destroy the personal desire to serve voluntarily our families and communities and erode the religious cohesion that kept us safe in our homes and in our communities. It will replace human ties with the yoke of “forced giving”, giving to programs that seem to enchain the poor and the aged. I agree, my dear friend, too many people today don’t see personal giving as a mandate. Indeed, they are those who were raised in a society that increasingly does not demand accountability and does not reward family and religious cohesion and virtues. These people know only how to receive.

So, how do we change this problem? I think that it is through such movements as the Tea Party that people will receive their first glimpse of individual responsibility toward family and community. The method to aid the poor and to succor the aged is to eliminate corrupt, wasteful, and stultifying government aid and entitlement programs and then demand that the elements of society that God created to do so assume their responsibilities. The mandate that impels family, religion, and community to donate time, money, and emotion bonds us together: dynamic and strong. The forced mandates of government tear us into strangers: weak, whining, and willful.

Keep it up Tea Party. My friend, despite her protestations, needs you. We all need you.

If my words are harsh, please read Sam Adams’s words when the future of this nascent nation was being determined. They still thrill me.

“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What should be the reward of such sacrifices?’ Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you, May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”

15 June 2011 –

It has been a while since my last wanderings on the blog. I shall try to do better for the rest of the week. There certainly has been enough material for this comedian wannabe. There is always enough material.

Flag Day has come and past. We flew our flag even though the home owners’ association has a rule against flying flags on houses. Nothing happened. I was ready for the fight; but, in the end, I am content that the day passed without incident. Maybe nothing happened because we are at the end of a cul-de-sac and the home owners’ association inspector is too busy turning the car to carefully inspect the front of the house. Or, maybe the association leadership realizes that the rule is unenforceable; the leadership would rather pick a fight with the guy who wants to build a fifty foot flag pole in his flower garden and fly a huge flag every day. Either way, I flew my flag all day. We still have the 4^th of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, the U.S. Air Force birthday, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and any particularly beautiful day when I feel compelled to add the stars and stripes to the skyline. Is this righteous resistance to oppressive government and quasi-government regulation? Nah. Probably not so much righteous as reclusive; nobody saw the flag in our corner of the neighborhoodit, I am sure. Hmm, if a flag flies in the breeze and nobody sees it, does it make noise when it flutters?

Last night, a group of Republican presidential hopefuls stood uncomfortably and answered audience questions and moderator gotcha moments on CNN. It was called a debate, but, of course, it hardly followed the rigid rules and structured scorekeeping suffered by high school debate teams. Are there still debate teams in high school? Anyway, nothing much came out of it. If you were a Republican and liked a particular candidate before the show, you probably liked him or her after the show, despite the idiotic and demeaning questions about music, pizza, and hot wings by the moderator. If you were a Democrat, you should have been watching the Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros 1-0. It would have been a better use of your time. Watching a good baseball game is almost always a better use of your time. Besides, now that running for president has been stretched out as long as the NBA regular season and playoffs, you can miss a lot in the next 17 months and still be entertained on demand. The issues and how the new president will address them will greatly affect our lives; but, since most of us want entertainment more than anything else, the campaign seasaon will not disappoint us. Presidential campaigning, the new reality show. Every night on every channel. You can’t miss it unless you prefer watching of Frasier and Law and Order. Who does that anyway? At least I mix in a few Rockford Files, Gunsmokes, and old movies in my boob tube fare.

If I were running for President as the incumbent, from the Left or the Right, it wouldn’t matter, I would do one thing that would assure me reelection. I would cheerlead for drilling for oil as quickly as possible in and around the United States. A couple of things would happen almost overnight.

First, the price of oil would drop far below $100 a barrel. I would expect $30-40 dollars a barrel within a month or two. Speculators and companies that prey on the tight supply of oil simply could no longer do so. That would mean that gasoline prices would collapse as well. Wouldn’t it be nice to see gas prices nearer to $1 a gallon than to $4 a gallon? Food prices would drop as well as the fuel prices needed to produce and move the food would drop. This would be a real boon to me, the president—no matter what else I did on financial or social issues. I could apologize to the greens at my leisure, because I would have enough votes to be reelected without them. If I were a Democrat, many of them would hold their noses and vote for me anyway, or they would not vote at all. I certainly would not lose them to a Republican opponent. If I were a Republican, I would get a lot of votes from the center and center left—Reagan Democrats—who would thank me for making their paychecks go farther. What stops the present president from doing this?

Second, it would force the oil companies to quit whining and to produce more in order to make money. The now-called energy companies would have no acceptable excuse to not drill, drop prices, and actually compete in a free market. I have wondered about oil executives who complain about the restrictive government rules on oil exploration, production, and refining. Are they not garnering record profits in a market that is dictated by cartels, governments, and a small number of competitors? The lady protests too much, methinks. From my vantage point, the oil companies have little incentive to drill any more than absolutely necessary. They are pulling in huge profits by producing less product. Not a bad gig. If they had their way, I posit, we would need appointments to fill up our tanks and be compelled to pay a small professional fees for the privilege.

Third, the more we buy oil and refined fuels from U.S. producers, the less money flows into the coffers of those who use such monies to fight against the U.S. and her interests worldwide. Would Iran have the money to develop nuclear weapons or support Hezbollah if the U.S. had been energy independent or flexible 20 years ago? I doubt it. Europe, Japan, and other major oil consumers would have operated in a buyers’ market. Oil prices would have been lower because the suppliers would have been more diverse. That means it would have been easier for any country or business to find a less politically controversial source of oil when the arrogant mullahs in Tehran threatened genocide against Israel or hatred of the U.S. and its allies in the West. The fact is simple: Such hate mongers are not dangerous to others unless they have the means to project power, military, economic, or diplomatic, past their borders. U.S. energy flexibility and independence—economic conditions—would have suppressed all three of these instruments of national power among the mullahs in Iran. Such economic decisions almost always trump ideology, on all sides of the marketplace. The same goes for Saudi Arabia. U.S. energy flexibility and independence would not have stopped Saudi oil exports, but it would indeed have had a dampening effect on the Saudis’ ability to fund the construction and the running of hundreds of radical madrassas in places like Pakistan, Sudan, the UK, Germany, France, and Falls Church, Virginia. You can’t recruit the new generation of suicide bombers and their supporters if you can’t afford to pay for the process. We are never going to change how radical enemies of the U.S. think. We can, however, suppress their ability to hurt us.

Oil, more than any other commodity on earth, is bought and sold with geostrategic implications. To me, oil imports are not an economic question of balance of payment disparities, they are a question of strategic security, culturally and physically. Our energy flexibility or independence would blunt the swords of our implacable enemies. As well, we would not have to fund the military machine necessary to deploy to such pest holes as Iraq, Afghanistan, and, who would have believed it, Libya. Without the threat of nukes and the need for their oil, the conditions in those countries would not have passed the strategic test of “and how does a crisis in one of these countries constitute a crisis for us?’

The moral courage to do something simple and beneficial for the country as a whole is always tested by the narrow desires of a politician’s paymasters. A politician can defy those paymasters and still get elected. Alas, who will do it in this case?

By the way, Mr. President, when will you learn that the office of President of The United States should always be kept above the muck that is roiled by such out of control perverts as the tweeting congressman. You should not have commented on the serial drama at all. If anything you could have said that this is a congressional issue and that it will be resolved within that branch of government. But, you should never let the situation touch you, nay, you should never pull it to you and say something as idiotic as “If it was me, I would resign”. You are the President. Never lower yourself to such a level as commenting on salacious acts as this one. What kind of advisors do you have around you anyway? Twenty and thirtysomethings who grew up getting their news and view of life from rap videos? Wow! Or is it that you, the Narcissist, can’t help from inserting yourself into every situation that you hear about? Bad form; bad form.

7 June 2011 –

The administration announced that next month’s withdrawal of thousands of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan will proceed on schedule. This comes as a belated relief to those who contend that it was a hubristic fool’s errand to expand the limited military mission of killing terrorists and their supporters to one of nation building. The announcement must come as a bitter pill to the families and compatriots of the soldiers who were killed trying to do something the military is not organized or trained to do. To waste the lives of the best soldiers this country has ever produced on a mission that history has consistently shown to be impossible is, in my opinion, reprehensible. When will the best and the brightest learn that nation-building by outsiders in a region that shows no desire to develop the necessary tools to take advantage of our help doesn’t work? It has never worked. When will the best and the brightest humbly admit that the sheer force of their magnificent intellects will carry the day with people whose feelings for us range from hatred to apathy, but never friendship? When will the best and the brightest cautiously and slowly recommend putting soldiers in harm’s way, no matter the mission? Until the best and the brightest act like wise stewards of the nation’s instruments of national power, soldiers will continue to die honorably and gallantly for less than well-measured objectives and murky strategies.

What now? Will the arrogance and ignorance of our leaders be revealed by yet another failed effort to use military force to effect nation building in one of the world’s pest holes? Sadly, I doubt it. It seems that every seven to ten years, a new crop of “can-do” advisors tries to put its lasting mark on the world by telling leaders that this time we can “git’er done”. How? Because we are so much smarter than our predecessors. The prospect of doing something great is tempting to someone arrogant enough to not be humbled by history. Meanwhile, our veterans’ cemeteries expand with the graves of well trained, patriotic, and wasted young men and women. The war that President Obama was so quick to expand and to claim as his war will probably end worse for the U.S. than the war in Iraq. How the president’s spinmeisters try to foist that off on the American people will take every iota of their nefarious talents of misdirection and obfuscation. Killing and dying don’t bother me. It was my professional skill set, and a necessary one to protect U.S. interests. Doing it in a mishmash of missions when the conditions and reasons are not in our favor shows a leader’s disregard for the sanctity of life. What a waste.

7 June 2011 –

To send dirty pictures of yourself to a women is tawdry. To send them to someone when you are married to another is unfaithful, despicable, and indicates that the sender cannot control perverted urges. To talk dirty to a woman over an office phone that is paid for by tax dollars, as one woman has claimed the congressman did, most certainly violates House ethics rules. To lie about the whole dirty business on national television indicates an arrogance in such an important elected official that is dangerous to the security of the United States. After all this, to expect to remain in office and to continue with business as usual is fundamentally a democratic party thing to do.

7 June 2011 –

714; 755; 3000; 4256; 2297; 60/61, 262; 116; .406; .367; .690; 521; 535; 502; 490; ‘36-’39; ‘49-’53; ‘55-’58; ‘60-;64; ‘72-’74; ‘76-’78;. So many numbers, so much relevance to the real world. Are these seemingly random numbers really code? Yes, to understanding the greatest game man has ever devised. If you understand these numbers, you just may be a baseball fan.

I am a baseball fan. I have been a baseball fan since 1960. As a small boy in Montana, I watched Ted Williams on TV as he played in the last year of his Hall of Fame career. In black and white, I watched him swing a bat at Fenway Park. So powerful, so fluid, so authoritative. The game, the park, the team was imprinted on my soul.

Baseball numbers matter. They matter more than numbers in any other sport. In fact, in many ways, life imitates baseball, and not the other way around. I learned all the basic arithmetic I have needed to know in life from baseball statistics. I learned how to divide history and its lessons into eras based on how many consecutive pennants the Yankees (argh!!!!) have won through the years and how the wars of the 20^th century have affected the game. I learned trigonometry by watching the flight of a baseball from the pitcher’s grip to the batter’s swing to the arc that landed in the stands, in the gap, or in a fielder’s glove. I contrast and compare eras of baseball by the players’ numbers. All fans—all true fans—find solace and strength in the comparison of one era’s numbers with another’s. There is a consistent truth in the game’s numbers that allows baseball to calibrate much of the rest of our lives in meaningful ways. The fact the Yankee second baseman, Snuffy Sternweiss, won the American League batting crown in 1945 with a then-record-low average of .306 (632 at bats, 195 hits) helped me learn how World War II drained all healthy young men into the war effort. The fact that Carl Yastrzemski in 1968 won the AL batting crown with a paltry .301 average s (539 AB, 162 hits) spoke volumes about the great Year of the Pitcher in major league baseball and reminds me of the contrasting unrest in our nation during the late sixties.

The continuity of the game, and the numbers each player and era produce, reveals hidden truth about the rest of life. An examination of the differences in the numbers and their causes allows the real fan to understand why the 1920s and 1930s were so much different from the 1950s and 60s. Babe Ruth was great beyond comparison. Ted Williams was a hitting god. Mickey Mantle broke my heart with his waste of a god’s talent. Sandy Koufax had the best overhand curve ball in the history of baseball, but burned brightly for oh so short a time. Nolan Ryan was beyond mortal comparison for durability and for when his fastball smoked and curve dropped. Ty Cobb, if he had been in a different era, could have dominated as he did in the dead ball era. All this allows the fans to tie the moments of civilized time together in a meaningful and solid way. It allows one to calibrate one’s own life and actions in a disciplined and cogent way. It starts with the relevance of the numbers, the statistics. Numbers matter in baseball. They matter.

Ted Williams was beyond comparison, for example, because, at the age of 39, he won a batting crown in 1957 with the lofty average of .388 (420 AB, 163 hits). He was only five hits from hitting .400 again! This at the age of 39, when natural time, even to a hitting god, dictates that the body slows down and the bat loses its speed and “pop”. The next year, at age 40, he won the batting crown with a .328 batting average. Truly unique in baseball, in life.

Steroid use by players, and the numbers they subsequently produced, rendered meaningless the relationship between baseball, life, and their numbers. Players, whose steroid use put forty pounds of muscle on normal, 185 pound frames, created fantasy numbers that mocked the rhythms of the game. They changed its structure to one that more resembled slow pitch softball. No matter how many home runs these players may have hit, no matter how many slugging feats they may have exhibited, they cannot be compared to the pantheon of stars who preceded them. Their drug charged achievements belong in a video game parlor, where other, two-dimensional fantasies are played out for anybody with a quarter. Their baseball has no relevance to the real fan or to life itself, except maybe as a sad commentary on the greediness of the player who imbibed in, and the management who allowed, steroid use. Shame, shame, shame. Sad shame. Now, I hope we can start counting again. 2004; 1908; 56/130/.353; 49/122/.316; 44/121/.323; 2130/2632; 6-4-3 DP; 60’6”; 90”

6 June 2011 –

D-Day. Sixty-seven years since American, British, and Canadian troops pushed ashore and cracked the “Festung Europa” on Normandy. Soon, the heroes who took those beaches and the surrounding countryside will be gone. Soon, the heroes of Heurtgens Forest, St. Lô, North Africa, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadacanal, Guam, Midway, the strategic bombing campaigns, Cape Esperance, New Guinea, the Coral Sea, Sicily, the Italian Campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic, Pearl, and of so many other battles, whose cannons still rumble from the disappearing past, will be gone as well. If these places mean nothing to you, the rest of my words probably will mean nothing either.

I remember as a child, in 1961-63, that my Mother would go to the local VA hospital to visit my father. My siblings and I were too young to go onto the ward, so we had to stay outside in the car. On the rare, warmer evenings in Montana, we would play on the large grass field in front of the hospital. Usually, contact with our father was limited to waving to him as he looked out the third story window of his room. One time, however, I got to go upstairs in the hospital and sit in the ward’s day room. There, patients/inmates/never-to-leave agains would gather to watch television, play cards, and talk. That evening, there were fifteen or so men in pajamas sitting around. I remember one of them had a deformed right side of his skull, as if part of his face was shot off and rebuilt. He had only one ear, one good eye, and only part of his jaw. Others sat in wheelchairs and were missing limbs. One man in blue plaid slippers sat motionless at the window, looking out over Fort Harrison, Montana. I asked a man in hospital clothes who these men were. He said that they were World War II veterans mostly. They had been in and out of the VA for the last sixteen or seventeen years and would probably die there. I suppose that was quite a harsh thing to say to a nine-year-old boy visiting his never-to-leave again father. However, I took it as a legitimate answer to my question; I felt that the staff and the veterans treated me quite like a mature young man. The two hours I spent on the ward that night have stuck with me for half a century. In 1962, most of these men were still in their thirties; my father was forty. He died in 1963. I am sure that most all those men are dead now. After all, THE big war ended 66 years ago.

In some East Africa cultures, where Kiswahili is spoken, people are divided into the living, the sashaa, and the zamani. We are the living. The sashaa are those who have died, but who are still remembered by their living families. The sashaa are considered partly living and are respected as such. The zamani are those who are so long dead that all who remembered them as living are also dead. The zamani are gone to the land of the dead now and are remembered mostly as tradition. Even with our advances in technology, our minds do not seem to change much.

All the men and women who fought the greatest war in the history of this world, the war that defined the United States as a modern, powerful nation, soon will be honored as sashaa. My generation, the generation that remembers these heroes in their prime, must continually clarify and regale their accomplishments until we become sashaa and they become zamani. If we don’t, the younger generations will look at World War II and the results thereof as only slightly more important to them than the implications of the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648—whatever that was, really!! I suppose it is natural to forget the past. But, I want to fight it until the day I die. I want World War II veterans to always be sashaa, to be revered as long the breeze flutters the flags on their well-kept graves, in the VA cemetery at Fort Harrison, Montana, or elsewhere. They deserve more than we, the living, can give.

3 June 2011

Yesterday, I made fun of idiotic and self-centered politicians who allow their hubris to outweigh their obligations to the electorate, Today’s serious commentary, however, focuses not on the salacious, but on an underlying system of individual and, by extension, societal morality that should prevent most of us from doing such foolish things. Is there such a moral construct upon which we can rely to chart our path through life and to help us identify those men and women who deserve our vote to represent us? In 1997, I heard a lecture in Air War College that linked three concepts together in a cogent and consistent way. The instructor talked about verities, virtues, and values and how they build one on another to guide us to professionally moral lives. It impressed me so much that I have taken his lecture, added thoughts of my own, and present it now to you. For me, the following construct is based on deeply held religious belief. But, like all durable things, its principles can be used by anyone.

The foundation of all my decision-making is truth—verities, if you will. My definition of verities is simple: Those things that one holds to be fundamentally, undeniably true. Verities can be one’s belief in God and the commandments and wisdom written in what one holds as holy books. Verities also can be the statistical surety that the sun will come up tomorrow, that the tides will continue unabated in near future, or that good old Newtonian physics stills rules when one tries to build a bridge or a skyscraper, quantum physics notwithstanding. Verities are the foundation of our lives. They give our lives and our actions meaning. The question upon which one should meditate is simple to frame and revelatory to consider: What do you hold to be undeniably true? As well, how confident are you that acting on that truth will give you desired outcomes? Another way to say this is even simpler: To act on verities requires faith. That faith can be as simple as the confidence that the sun will come up tomorrow or that your boss will be at work tomorrow so you had better be there as well.

The next level on the building of solid decision-making and moral consistency is what I call virtues. A virtue is an attribute that forms and refines over time by adherence of one’s actions to a fundamental truth. If the truth one holds dear requires discipline of action and a certain effort to implement, then the result of the adherence of one’s actions to truth is the eventual development of virtues. What virtues are there? Patience, courage, and loyalty, quickly come to mind. The list of virtues is quite long, with no definite end. I doubt seriously if such virtues can come from living one’s life in a willy-nilly manner with no truth imposed discipline. As well, I doubt seriously that one can declare that there is no truth—that all life is based on relative truth among the human race—and still develop the virtues mentioned above. I have yet to see it.

The final level on the building of life is what I call values. The term values has been stretched so much that it can mean just about anything. I want to narrow its meaning again. Values are those things which one spends time, money, and effort to achieve or attain. Values are what one is willing to pay for. Using the term as a verb, I say that one values what one is willing to work for. What is critical to understand about values is that people with quite different constructs in life can often have the same values. But, one should not confuse common values with common virtues or common truth. An example is two men who value good cars, a good home, and low taxes. Are these two men alike? I simply don’t know until I understand why the men value such things. It could well be that one man values a good car because it is reliable transportation back and forth to work, to stores, and to schools. The other man might value a good car because it is a proven way to score with women. One man might value a good home as a way to raise his family in security and comfort. Another man might value the same home as a way of showing how important and successful he is. One man might value low taxes because it is an indication that limited government allows a citizen to keep what he has earned. Another man might value lower taxes because it gives him more money to buy booze, lottery tickets, and prostitutes. Same values? On the surface, yes. Are these same values indicative of a similar decision-making construct or lifestyle? No. The product of virtuous living is one’s focus on appropriate values, on values that are consistent with basic truths. In essence, values are the means to a better and consistently virtuous life, not ends unto themselves.

This is my construct. It works for me in its open simplicity. If I am consistent in my adherence to undeniable truths, then my life is simple and strong. The questions germane to the subject of our elected officials are just as simple. Are elected officials’ values, what they actually do or pay for, consistent with their declared personal and public virtues (I make no distinction between public and private life)? Even more important, are their declared and displayed virtues consistent with those you aspire to develop? If not, why would you vote for them in the first place, and why would you continue to vote for them after revelations of their lack of virtue become so evident? Selecting elected officials in our republic should carry with it such questions. Are these men and women representative of you? Elected officials need virtues far more than they need technical expertise. They can hire the latter; they can’t hire the former I say, throw them all out.

2 June 2011

Another day, another scandal. First. A congressman from New York has been caught with his pants down, literally. A photo of a man with most of his underwear covering most of what is was designed to cover was sent from his Twitter account to some woman—not his wife, of course, or this story would not have the legs it has. Anyway, the congressman refuses to say if the private parts so boldly displayed in the photo are his. What? What? In the words of any teenager: “Really”. I am sure that the facts will all tumble out soon enough. In the meantime, the congressman’s supporters are already caveating the congressman’s actions—not that they would admit either that he had sexted—by saying that it isn’t illegal to sext (?) such stuff anyway, ad nauseum. Argh! I refuse to succumb to the puns and doubles entendres that such a situation tempts me with. Almost every phrase that comes to mind could be so construed. Therefore, to comment adequately on such a deliciously absurd situation requires quoting the great sage of our times, Bugs Bunny: “What a Maroon!”

Second: I am thankful that this political scandal will soon be thrown on the compost pile of previous political peccadillos. Those who make their living harrumphing and guffawing about current events will soon blow themselves out repeating their talking points. Alas, however, the pundits need not worry about being out of a job anytime soon. Another elected buffoon will show himself unable to keep his privates private, and the vaudeville cycle will repeat itself. We never run out of material.

1 June 2011

Benjamin Netanyahu is back in Israel. President Obama is focused on other things. The idea of Israel returning to pre 1967 borders as a basis for peace negotiations is dead. I wonder what was going through President Obama’s mind when he actually made the idea public? The idea has absolutely no traction in Israel. I was embarrassed for my president when Prime Minister Netanyahu dressed him down in the White House two weeks ago. I can only say that President Obama should have known better. He publicly floated a major shift in U.S. policy that Israel would refuse to accept and that had virtually no support in his party or in Congress. One only had to watch the love fest when Netanyahu spoke before Congress. My goodness. What was President Obama thinking?

Anyway, there are a couple of concepts that anyone who wants to delve into the Israel/Palestine/Middle East drama has to understand. One: The United States should stand firm with Israel because it is the only democracy in the region. Israel has support in the United States from the latter’s influential Jewish community and from many parts of the evangelical Christian community. But, U.S. policy in such a crisis area should be based on the fact that we are the leader of the free and democratic world. That means that we should support democracies , particularly those whose very existence is threatened by their neighbors. Democracy and personal liberty are far more cohesive ideas in the U.S. than are religious or cultural ones.

Two: Almost all decisions made by Israel’s leaders have strong implications for the survival of their nation. Most all decisions made by U.S. leaders are for internal, political reasons or for furthering U.S. interests in the world. That condition translates into Israeli leaders often being quite prickly in their relations with the U.S. and U.S. actions often appearing to be less than decisive. In the end, however, the U.S. should always push Israel to act within the bounds of civilized nations. Then, the U.S. should back Israel, and its unique, democratic processes, in its survival strategy.

Three: The Palestinian “problem” is an Arab Moslem problem as much as it is anyone else’s. Israel is a convenient scapegoat for the sins of internal Arab and Moslem conflicts and power struggles. If Israel did not exist, there probably still would be no peace in Palestine. It would still be in turmoil as a battleground for Sunni, Shia, Arab and other power struggles. Every act of violence on the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, or near the Lebanese border is directed as much toward another religious or ethnic group within Islam as it is against Israel. The scorecard is full of nasty players who want what they want and easily resort to violence to achieve their tactical as well as strategic goals. Such violence and hatred cannot be resolved from the outside. Aid, direct grants, any kind of financial assistance to any groups to impel them to behave simply not help us achieve anything. Only when these fractious groups understand that we are committed to democracy and are willing to let them kill themselves but not Israelis will their policies and actions change. Even then, they won’t change much.

31 May 2011 –

The press roils the information pool whenever Sarah Palin steps out. This time, it is her participation in the 24th annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle ride on Memorial Day weekend. Her riding through the Pentagon parking lot on the back of a hog caused pundits to comment yet again on former Governor Palin’s political future. The question is simple: Will this conservative woman run for the GOP presidential nomination? Continually asking that question preoccupies liberals. From time to time, it makes me think that hawking the question is intended to distract voters and listeners from the real issues of the day, that is, the economy, out of control spending, and the ballooning deficit. Otherwise, why not leave it alone until the moment is ripe?

The liberal media dismiss Sarah Palin as a lightweight; yet, even when they don’t need the distraction, they continue to talk about her. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks,." is what Shakespeare said. Liberals attack what scares’em is what I would say. A woman who thinks and acts and speaks like Sarah Palin is real competition for women’s votes, votes that democrats need to win general elections. No matter how much liberals denigrate her, Sarah Palin is popular for her star attraction and for her increasingly focused messages. Many women like her. She is a scary opponent and getting scarier.

Conservatives in the Republican camp can’t seem to leave her alone either. They also talk about her as if she is something they wish they could get rid of, but don’t want to criticize too much for fear of alienating, again, women who may like her. It seems a lot of people are scared of her. That is quite a different reaction than is received by any other pretender to the throne.

I like to watch Sarah Palin. I like to watch her in front of crowds. She is confident and knows how to speak without a teleprompter. She grabs peoples’ attention and holds on to it. I like to listen to Sarah Palin. Most importantly, her message itself, which indicates how she would think and act as President, exudes personal courage and strength. Her message in a man’s mouth would have already galvanized the Republican Party. Men and women alike suffer from gender bias; we must overcome it here. Her message is as consistently conservative as any on record. Her decision-making, particularly in times of crisis or pressure, would be consistently conservative as well. She reminds me of tough, female Air Force officers I have had the privilege of working with in my career. Often diminutive in stature, but always ramrod straight in their courageous execution of the mission, these officers win wars.

If you focus on the message and not the voice, if you ignore the temptation to dismiss anyone who looks that good in jeans, then you will see a serious, conservative candidate for President of the United States. Anyone who receives this much attention is worth serious consideration.

Am I alone in this thinking?

30 May 2011 -

In 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, freedmen (freed slaves) honored the sacrifice of the 257 Union soldiers who died in a local prison camp by exhuming them from a mass grave and reinterring them in a new cemetery named Washington Race Course. On 1 May 1865, thousands of mainly black residents held events at the cemetery that included sermons, singing, and a picnic. They created the first Decoration Day.

By 1868, other locations, mostly in the north, celebrated similar events. On 5 May 1868, the Commander of the Grand Army of The Republic--an organization for Northern Civil War veterans-- issued General Order No.11, which said that the 30^th day of May “…is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or other decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion….” By 1890, every northern state had officially recognized Decoration Day as a holiday.

In the former Confederate states, there were decoration or memorial days set aside to honor fallen Confederate soldiers. They continued for decades and are still observed today in some towns in the South. This national divide continued more or less constant until the eve of World War I, when American nationalism began to compete strongly with sectional loyalties. After World War I, nation-wide Decoration Day celebrations changed to include honoring those who fell in all of the nation’s wars. The preferred name for the holiday gradually changed from "Decoration Day" to "Memorial Day", which was first used in 1882. After World War II, the name “Memorial Day” became widely used. In 1967, federal law declared the official name as Memorial Day. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved Memorial Day and three other holidays from their traditional dates to specified Mondays. The three-day weekend that includes the last Monday in May is now generally called Memorial Day weekend. Barbeques, shopping, sports activities, the Indianapolis 500 car race, and various other leisure activities now compete strongly with the purpose of General Order #11. In fact, driving around our neighborhood of some 500 homes, I was able to find only 22 other flags flown from front porches. Little wonder that General Joshua A. Logan, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of The Republic, was sadly prescient in General Order #11 when he admonished former soldiers: “If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us”.

There is little to add to General Logan’s words. The greatest privilege in my secular life has been to wear the uniform of my country for 30 years and 28 days. I served with heroes, entrusted my life to them without reservation, and counted on their honesty and courage to get the job done. All honor goes to those who flew to the sound of the guns and did not return. In their ultimate sacrifice, they defended this nation’s skies, protected its interests overseas, and helped win wars. Radio operators, navigators, gunners, pilots, crew chiefs, parajumpers, and intelligence collectors all flew, fought, and won. Along with their compatriots in our sister services, they answered their nation’s call. I shall never forget them. If you understand: ”So here's a nickel on the grass to you, my friend, and your spirit, enthusiasm, sacrifice and courage - but most of all to your friendship. Yours is a dying breed, and when you are gone, the world will be a lesser place.” Memorial Day 2011.

28 May 2011

So much to comment on. I never run out of material, as a political stand-up comic would say. Today’s comments are far from funny; but, as the comedian well knows, touching raw nerves often results in laughter. Maybe you can find a smile in the following paragraphs. I doubt it.

One last commentary about at Osama bin Laden’s dispatch to the nether regions of hell. Then, as I would do after scraping something bad off my shoe into a watery gutter, I shall think of him no more.

Was killing Osama bin Laden a good thing? Yes, it was. Without a doubt, the world is a better place, and the United States’ interests are much better met, with him dead. The counter argument that he will be replaced by an equally bad guy is always a shallow one. On a real scale, his death means that there is one fewer bad guy and the remaining ones will fear us even more. What is more, to say that he is now a martyr whose face and legend will enlist even more to his cause clouds an appreciation of the prevalent reasons people join or support terrorist movements. The real reasons have far more to do with the cultural, economic, political, and religious problems vexing the terrorist in the making. The problems that made Osama bin Laden and his ilk are their personal problems and their own societies’ problems. The U.S. is a convenient scapegoat. Kind of like the rich company with deep pockets that makes suing a potentially lucrative act.

Would it have been better if we had been able to spirit him out alive? Maybe so. If we had captured him, his intelligence value seems to have held much potential. But, alas, to force bin Laden to give up useful information probably would have required interrogation techniques similar to those used on his henchmen, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Faraj al-Libi, and Hassan Ghul. They, as you know if you are following this serial drama, gave up information that, when combined with other information gleaned through myriad intelligence sources by intelligence experts, led to pinpointing Osama’s hideout. Realistically, I doubt seriously if any U.S. interrogators or their bosses would risk the type of criminal charges this administration so hypocritically pursues with the interrogators’ predecessors. Therefore, a live bin Laden’s intelligence value would have been problematic from the outset. The computers, drives, and documents seized, however, are most likely yielding good intelligence. On the whole, we scored an intelligence coup in the mission. Importantly, to execute further actions against Al Qaeda based on derived actionable intelligence requires that nobody outside a small circle of professional intelligence analysts and strategic decision-makers must ever see any of the information seized. If such discipline is maintained, this story will then drop off the daily news grind and we can have more success at the time and place of our choosing. .

Another problem with a breathing Osama would have been another damaging debate over who should have legal jurisdiction in such cases. Under this administration, I doubt seriously if the military justice system would have been given that task. Such a decision would have been wrong-headed. The face of present and future conflict is one of supranational and non-state actors using increasingly unconventional methods and combatants in what can only be called war. The military justice system, international and U.S., has yet to catch up to handling the legal issues of such warfare. The administration’s and the left’s open disdain for our constitutionally mandated military justice system denies the military justice system the needed experience with test cases that could help it respond rapidly and constitutionally in the new legal environment of asymmetrical warfare. What a waste of time, effort, and American power. My thirty years in uniform have shown me that the U.S. military justice system is just as capable of handling sensitive, evolving legal questions as is our civil system. The next administration, perhaps. Until then, trying a terrorist such as bin Laden in a civil court could harm the U.S. war effort far more than it would bring resolution to the issue. This administration seems to privately accept that fact. Therefore, this administration has created a painfully paradoxical situation that impels decision-makers to use the lethal option as the pragmatic and preferred method of dealing with bin Laden and his ilk, while still currying the support of those in the U.S. and worldwide who refuse to accept this conflict as a war.

Contrary to what some people may contend, bringing bin Laden back alive would not have improved the U.S.’s reputation in much of the world. I have lived in eight countries, been to seventy more, and worked with the militaries and governments of scores of them. I am constantly reminded of a basic fact: A significant portion of the world will always hate the U.S. and its culture of expansive and egalitarian democracy, personal freedoms, and concomitant responsibilities. What is more, that hatred is rarely abated when the U.S. protects its interests overseas. This protection includes promoting governance based on democratic principles throughout the world and aggressively bringing to justice murderers such as bin Laden. A clash of cultures, even civilizations as Samuel Huntington would say? Probably so. As the Duke of Wellington was reported to have once mused on a smaller scale, “We have been, we are, and I trust we always will be, detested by the French". That is definitely the case for the U.S. in much of the Arab and Moslem world. Such hatred is now fashionable in Europe where socialistic, welfare systems have spawned a populace that increasingly is anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-sovereign state, and pro-supranational governance. The mass immigration from the Maghreb and Middle East to Europe only exacerbates anti-U.S. sentiment among our economic, diplomatic, and military allies in Europe. All this said, Osama bin Laden, alive or dead is, only a throw-away line for most U.S. haters. They hate our system. They hate us. Let’s get over it, and our foreign policy will be much better focused.

On the whole, killing Osama bin Laden was more beneficial to the U.S. than bringing him back alive. Perhaps, when the administration changes or if this one miraculously wakes up, the next thug on the terrorist/bad guy list will end up in a U.S. military court at Guantanamo and receive a swift, just punishment for his actions. Or, like Osama bin Laden, he will receive a swift, just punishment for his actions. The way rules of engagement have been structured by our present policies, the only thing we can do to pursue U.S. interests overseas and still not cause a firestorm everywhere is to continue to kill bad guys on the spot. Now, I never want to talk of this bad guy again.