Our own little war...

Our humble home, Chateau d'Lieteau, here in NEPA, is under attack.  My sons and I have declared war on the attackers, and have made serious headway against our assailants.  

Who are they, you ask?  Marmota monax.

Groundhogs.  Woodchucks.  Ground squirrels.  Giant rodents.  Destroyers of gardens and lawns.  The plague of the northeast.  The enemy of my backyard.

What headway have we made?  Two confirmed kills today, on top of two during the last week.  Good news, indeed... but concerning, too.  All I have read on the beasties says they are fairly solitary animals, living in their holes in small, family groups of between three and five animals.  We are four down already (not counting their insidious allies, the rabbits... two of them, too)... but we saw another three today while shooting the second of today's confirmed kills.  Now, our den (nest-warren-VC tunnel system) is not the only one here.  There is one across the street, within 20 yards from my mailbox... and another up the hill from our pool on my neighbor's property.  I suppose they could move from one den to another, or that the one's I've killed may be making sorties from these more distant dens... but I'm more worried that there are undiscovered dens within the bounds of my property.

Still, confirmed kills aside, the garden has been decimated.  The lettuce, the carrots, the peppers, and the beans are all a complete loss.  Only the pumpkins, watermelons, tomatoes and cabbage remain.  There are now no fewer than eight nine-inch holes in the one warren that we know of, sheltering any number of lurking groundhogs.

Thus, the fight continues...

Escalation... Syrian style

So, Ryan is (I think) on his way back to MS from NV... leaving the Land of Reed for the greener fields of his family's home state.  I know what a nightmare moving is, so I'm not holding my breathe for his rapid return to the Bund... but I'll post things to irritate him none the less.

Syria is embroiled in a civil war that is costing it far more than simply millions of Syrian pounds a month and hundreds of innocent lives... it is costing it what little cooperative spirit the Ba'athists in power might have had with countries like Russia, Iran, and the rest of the Arab world.  The despotic regime of the Ba'ath party in Syria has held sway since 1970... but I've a feeling that is about to change.

Last week, the Syrian Army shot down a Turkish fighter plane.  Now, Turkey is calling on NATO to view the attack as a violation of the NATO agreement:  attack one, attack all.  They have moved heavily armed units right to the border with Syria, including a brigade of SAM missile batteries that are more than enough to give any pilot in the Syrian Air Forces pause.  More concerning yet, there are now probably two battalions of tanks taking positions at the Syrian frontier, and that (in the modern sense) is NOT a defensive move.  It might be meant to deter further acts, but it isn't defensive... it is OFFENSIVE.

I'm confident that our commanders in Brussels are more than capable of talking Turkey down from an all-out assault over the frontier... but does Obama have the chutzpah to follow through with the NATO treaty obligations, should Turkey follow this course of action?  I'm not suggesting he'd be expected to put troops on the Syrian dirt, as was done in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Sixth Fleet's TF60 is ready to roll, as we saw in the recent Libya actions... and any one US aircraft carrier is more than a match for the entire Syrian Air Force.

This morning....

My employer has scheduled, with only a few hours notice, a mandatory meeting for this morning that all salaried managers have to go to.  That means me.

Seems I'm to get 90 minutes of training on how to keep our company free from the evils of union influence.  I'm going to learn how to "bust" unions...

Too cool.

Happy Fathers Day

To all my Bund Brothers... all of whom are Dads... Happy Fathers Day!

I came late into the "father" role, but now that I'm here... I realize it is a LOT of work.

It's worth it, though... it's really worth it.

Irony, on my radio...

I'm driving home last night, and turned on the radio.  Not satellite radio, but the traditional terrestrial kind... and I was listening to the Phillies broadcast of the Twins-Phillies game at Target Field in Minnesota.  Because it was Philly's first trip to the three-year-old Minnesota park, the announcers for Philadelphia took some time and described the park in real detail for the home audience back here in PA... concluding that the park is very "pitcher-friendly" with its 23' high walls in left field and 411' to right center.

This analysis was followed immediately (and I do mean immediately... first at-bat for the Twins) by a towering home run by Span off of Kendrick, who hadn't given up a home run in weeks of play.  Second inning, second at-bat... Ploufe hits a two-run banger off the upper deck face to take the Twins into a 3-0 lead.  The final (so I don't go into a play-by-play scenario here) was 11-7 Twins over the Phillies.

I'm a Twins fan... but I have to admit that I love listening to Scott Franzke (sp?) on the Phillies Radio broadcasts.  He's really good... and it was a double treat to hear him talk so nice about Target Field and the turn-around that the Twins have managed since their nearly nightmarish start to the MLB season, then to have to talk through a Twins win with three homers against a vaunted Philly bullpen.  What was described as a "pitcher-friendly" park saw a slugfest of hits each and every inning... 31 hits total, 17 of them by Twins batters.

Very nice, indeed.

History repeating... and repeating...

That is why I love history... sometimes it seems that there is nothing new under the sun.  I know this isn't true, but human nature being what it is, there are an awful lot of parallels that can be made to years past on almost any given issue one cares to look at.

For example...

Today (June 12, 2012) is the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Cold Harbor.  This was one of the most lop-sided engagements between the forces of Gen. Lee and the Union armies, with Lee out-numbered nearly two-to-one and the Union suffering more than five times the casualties as the Confederates.  It was also Lee's last "win" in a corpse-sized engagement (if you see Cold Harbor as anything other than a draw).

In looking at the history of the battle, one of my favorite Civil War figures plays an important role:  US Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock.  All his commanders, all his peers and all his troops that ever bothered to put pen to paper agree that he was impeccable in his position as commanding general of the II Corpse, Army of the Potomac.  If you read what people like Grant, Lincoln, Meade, Lee, and many, many others wrote about him, you'd think he was the best thing to hit the street since sliced bread.

What I find so fascinating, though, is his career outside of the Army (which is only a tiny fraction of his story, since he died while still serving in 1886).  He had political aspirations almost immediately after the War ended, and was a staunch Democrat (though a Unionist to his core).  Reading about his failed runs for the White House against Hayes and Garfield, and the positions he took on contemporary national issues, I swear he might have been the sort of Democrat that I could have voted for.

The issues facing the nation, while admittedly unique due to the nature of the era, are still very similar to much of what we see today, not the least of which is the manner in which the nation would carry the debt incurred during the Civil War and the costs associated with Reconstruction in the South.  It is amazing to me that, while more than 160 years have past since then... so much of what was front-page news then is still front-page news now.

I apologize in advance of my post...

(NOTE:  F. Ryan noted that the gargantuan picture of Hitler seemed a bit distracting... and it is utterly repulsive to me, as well, so it was removed.  I'll leave the post, though, and forgo the image)

This is a pic (now removed) that is being used around the web by those that feel the recall election in Wisconsin went against their wants to show that Hitler was "anti-union" and that Walker and Ryan are the same sort of people.  I HATE putting these images on my sight, but the hypocritical nature of such sentiments makes me ill, and I feel a burning need to rebut them at every turn.

My issues with this image and the message it sends:

1)  Hitler did NOT end all unions in Germany in 1933... or any year after that, in fact.  What he did do was to form the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or DAF, which was a party-controlled union that encompassed ALL previous unions and their contracts with private and public employers.  Membership was compulsory, and employment outside of the DAF was all but impossible.  The DAF ensured HIGHER salaries and longer contracts than previously found in Germany, but the requirements made by management  could be much tougher without recourse... meaning no right to strike.

This was nothing more than another example of Hitler and the Nazis bringing another facet of their tyrannical agenda home to the everyday worker on the street, by ensuring that total control of union labor lay solely with the Party leadership... and never with the workers themselves.

2)  Walker and Ryan did nothing to reduce or hinder membership in the unions of Wisconsin.  In fact, all they did (and we really shouldn't lump Ryan in with this... he's a Representative to Congress, not a State official) is remove the compulsory aspect of union membership for state contracted employment.  Any drop in membership that has occurred over the last 18 months is due to the individual members themselves LEAVING the union upon determining that membership does not suit their means or serve their ends.

Walker changed the manner in which the State bargains with unions, limiting it to salaries only... he did nothing (nor could he do anything) to change the manner in which unions conduct their business, either with the State or anyone else they choose to deal with.  These unions have the right to strike, organize, collect dues and fees, disperse monies and assemble how, when and as they see fit.

3)  The prominence of union interests within the very structure of the Democratic Party today is a far better example of the sort of governmental control of union goals as reflected in the above picture than anything one could hope to find in the GOP.  Granted, that shared interest is much more two-sided in today's America than it was in May of 1933 in Germany... but the similarity is uncanny and undeniable.

This is starting to really piss me off...

Let me be the first to ask:

Where is the response to all the negative, even hateful things being said about and to Gov. Scott Walker?  After years of listening to the call from liberals that the Tea Party is a party of hatred, racism and intolerance... the liberal response to Walker's winning the recall by a larger margin than he won the initial election is making me damn-near nauseous.

If any conservative pundit or host fails to mention this disparity of action between the rhetoric spewed out after the recall and that which was "perceived" to come from the Tea Party and its supporters... well, I'll be very disappointed.

Frankly, I think it all boils down to this...

The people of Wisconsin decided to go to the polls and say that THEY, the people of Wisconsin, decide how government in Wisconsin is going to run... not the labor unions.  The people voted for Walker because he accomplished (or started to accomplish) what he had promised to do:  balance a budget... not because he was a Republican Party member.

Stop talking about what all this "means" in November... it means almost nothing.  What it "shows" us (as Jambo pointed out in his brief little blurb) is that the attitude of the average voter seems to be moving away from the left and closer to the center of the political spectrum, once again.  Walker is NOT an ultra-conservative, libertarian-leaning GOP stand out... he's not even as conservative as Paul Ryan, his good friend in the House.  What he IS is a man that set out to do what he said he was going to do... and who accomplished a helluva lot is a really short time.  THAT is the message that should resonate... not that the GOP won and Labor lost.

So, this is what DIDN'T or WON'T happen:

Wisconsin has NOT suddenly become a hot-bed of conservative sentiment.  Romney is NOT going to win Wisconsin in November.  Walker is NOT going to be nominated as the VP candidate for the GOP ticket.

This is what DID or WILL happen:

Labor took a HUGE black eye last Tuesday... spending millions upon millions of hard-earned dues on a losing campaign and gaining NOTHING as a result.  States around the Union are going to start looking long and hard at how they do business with Big Labor, especially States like New York, Ohio, Illinois, and (dare I say it?) California.  As far as State employees go, I'd say we might be seeing the end of the "closed shop" era... and that could be a very good thing.

God... I'm old

My days off are Wednesday-Thursday... and I needed to get some serious yard work done today because it has rained all week and things are backed up.  So, I ran the mower, did some weed-whacking, took a break to drive children all over God's creation, made dinner, then got to trimming some of my trees.

That's when I hit the wall.

My Bund brothers will recall a line of rather large pines that I have on the edge of my property, facing the north (the downhill side of my yard) and edging my neighbor Judy's yard.  They are probably 30' tall, there are nine in all and they run in a straight east-west line for about 200'.  The lower branches are so thick and heavy that I can't mow around them, and I know my neighbor Judy can't either.  I've made some half-assed attempts to trim them up, but there is no solution that will work other than whacking the lowest branches completely off to a height of about 5'.

Now, these trees are at least 300' from the house... and I have no extension cord that long.  I own no chainsaw (left mine with a friend in MS after the storm).  So, its limb saws for me.  Two hours later, two trees are done, there is a five foot high pile of branches in the yard, and I am gasping for breath, drenched in sweat and covered head-to-toe in pine sap and needles.  Now that two trees are done, the other seven simply look WORSE then ever, so I'll have to finish the job tomorrow as best I can, rain or shine.

Time was, I did something exactly like this for my grandfather at his place in Minnesota during a summer visit, and I'm not even sure I broke a sweat.  Hand sawed the limbs, dragged them across the road and made a pile the size of a large truck for all the trees along his property line... and all with the energy and vigor of a teenage boy's build.

Why am I recalling that earlier job of trimming my grandfather's trees so vividly?  Is it me longing for my lost and misspent youth?  Am I realizing that I am over 40, overweight, and over due to quit smoking?

Nope.

I am recalling that job in 1985 because I'm using the EXACT same tools now that I used then... courtesy of Ray H. Foster and his meticulous care of all his hand tools.

Thank you, Grandpa.

The day of days...

In preparation for Operation Overlord, the British Isles became a juggernaut of militarization.

-39 divisions
-3 million men
-4,500 tanks
-221 destroyers
-1,000 mine sweepers
-22 battleships
-93 torpedo boat destroyers
-4,000 landing craft
-800 merchant men
-800 ships of various size and capacity
-12,000 planes

And our current president couldn't find ONE SECOND to stop and officially commemorate this historical anniversary (smart money says he didn't do it privately either). Reagan flew to Normandy to mark the 40th, and his current successor has yet to do so once, in 3 years. Maybe he'll tweet it (enter nausea here).

Speaking of historical...

I received numerous solicitations to financially aide the honorable Scott Sky-Walker (I want a nickel every time somebody uses that!) in his battle with the dark side. I didn't contribute. However, I now have "non-buyers remorse." Calling it historical is no mere hyperbole. He is the first governor in American history to successfully fend off a recall. And here's why - he didn't back down. He simply went to the people of Wisconsin and said "look at the numbers, this is working." Unemployment down, deficit smashed, and that last number, the one Titus mentioned, is most damning of all: 54% of all dues paying union members opted to stop paying. In essence, recalling their membership. In one instance membership dropped from 63,000 to 28,000. Still another plummeted from 32,000 down to 7,100. These were dues paying members! If you can't convince them of your position, how in the hell do you convince a majority of your fellow non-union Wisconsin-ites? Short answer: you don't. The jig is up, we are on to you. It took record national deficits, a housing and banking crisis, and barren state coffers across the fruited plain to jolt us awake, but Americans are now on to the scam of endless spending and the absolute money laundering scheme that is public employee unionization (or is it ionization? No matter, I digress). Even American history's undisputed heavy weight champion of progressive policy, FDR himself, was opposed to public sector unions. The scam is basic: union bosses keep congressman X (or governor, or local rep, depending on whether it's a state or federal employee union) flush with campaign cash. Then that same elected official sits across the table from his union boss sugar daddy and "negotiates" the wages and pensions of the union members. How could that go wrong? Funny enough, the most conservative Democrat president of the 20th century, JFK, allowed this to start. I have to believe that someone with a bent nose and a last name ending in a vowel made this request that Jack "couldn't refuse."

At any rate, the grand lesson here is that every single Republican governor (or any blue-dog Dem) in the country should now have a spine of steel. In case they missed it, once again from the cheap seats - a Republican beat the Left and labor unions, in Wisconsin, even with Madison boasting a curious 110% voter turn out. Got that GOP? See what works Mitt? I hope so, because the main event is in exactly five months and your opponents are waiting on Patton in Calais.

Amazing that it went this far...

The man eliminated a $3.6 billion deficit in just 18 months without raising taxes at all.  He reduced the cost to the State in healthcare payments for State employees by asking them to contribute only 8% towards their coverage (compared to the 19%-28% that the rest of America pays), saving the State $489 million and the union workers at least 11% of their gross pay.  By eliminating mandated union membership for all school/university employees, he increased the take-home pay for every educational employee in the State by at least $380 a year (as long as they choose NOT to pay their union dues)... which 54% of ALL union members have done since 2011.

That last accomplishment alone should have won him the job.  In an age when the left is repeatedly calling for more "choice" in their lives, why is it acceptable that employment at a state university, public school or school district hinge on union membership?  From janitors to university professors, all had to hold a union card to keep their jobs.  More than 50% of all NEA members on the rolls in Wisconsin in 2010 have left the union since the "closed shop" laws came off the books.  No wonder the unions hate Walker so much!  Now, the unions can only bargain for their salaries collectively... no more contract debates regarding retirement accounts, or healthcare coverage.  What is THAT going to save the individual tax payer in Wisconsin when it comes time to pay their property tax?

Walker is hated for cutting the State education budget as much as he has... but the savings to the district tax payers means that if an individual school district needs to increase property taxes to keep their marching band in uniforms and riding buses to football games, they can increase local taxes accordingly without ADDING cost to the taxpayer.  In other words, they won't be paying the State AND the local taxes, as they were in 2009.  Now, they'll just be paying the local school taxes.

The man is a bona fide success story, and has been since he was elected.

Walker wins!!!

What does this tell everyone about the mood of the American people?

SATs...

Nolan, our 17-year-old, is taking his SATs today.

This could go one of two ways, I figure...

The boy is SMART.  There is no chance that I could hope to help him in math, he's simply too far above my math ability to help.  He loves science, and is very good at it.  He struggles to read, though... not because he can't, but because he doesn't want to.  I worry that his reading portions might suffer because of that.

He could really do well at this test.  He did so-so at the PSATs, and only took it once (Katey took it twice, and our neighbor took it four times)... but he didn't take it serious in any way.  It was just another wasted afternoon for him.

I tried, without nagging him, to instill that this was an important test for him and that he should take it seriously.  His mother will do the same all the way to the testing site, I'm sure.  If he is serious about the test, he could score will into the 1900s I think... but if he blows this off as another "chore", we might have to do this all again in 3 months, because I'm not going to accept anything less than 1700 from him in this.  The boy is simply too smart to score less than the top 80%.

He had a good sleep, a good breakfast, and had all his pencils sharpened.  Good luck, Nolan!