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.