mouse trax

The Corporate Whore

2010-01-22T07:13:00.001-05:00

Let's see, according to this week's Supreme Court ruling, Corporations cannot have their spending on political speech curtailed by us, the citizenry, because corporations are, under the law, "people," with many of the same rights as citizens.

That's funny. Despite a lifetime of service I have never seen Private Corporation carry a rifle into battle, ride a cripple down to avoid a neighborhood, or grieve over a son's cold medals. Private Corporation neither stands a lonely watch, nor maintains a family's vigil; Private Corporation's only duty is to rake the cash over the graves of our citizen sacrifice.
I am a poll worker, but I have never seen Corporation in the ballot box nor on the ballot, ever. But from this day forward I will feel Corporation's heavy hand on every election. And every elected representative will think first not of what is best for the nation, but what will best please or most displease Corporations.
I'm an American Citizen, carrying the rights, and the obligations, and the love of my nation where ever I go. But a Corporation is a gimlet-eyed jade, a promiscuous multinational citizen of the world, concerned only with increasing its market share, maintaining taxpayers subsidies while avoiding taxation, and answering only to its bottom line.

Corporations may indeed have the rights of an American Citizen, but they have none of the duties nor obligations of citizenship. And to think, we used to worry about liberal activism on the Supreme Court. The founding fathers never envisioned or intended this outcome.

We Buried a Marine Today

2009-09-10T19:03:00.038-04:00

We buried a Marine today
in the graveyard behind our house.

Umbrellas huddled around the awning,
His casket Covered in Glory.

Near the Carillon, seven Riflemen at parade rest
for His Service, unflinching in Devotion to Duty.

Their woolen tunics weep at the hem,
their seven rifles fire three volleys each.

Torrents beat a Tattoo on the canvas as
Marines tri-fold his Glory to the intonations of Taps.

His Glory, His triumvirate:
Eagle, Globe, Anchor.

His Compass, tri-pointed:
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.

His Creed, His Trinity:
Honor, Courage, Commitment.

We buried a Marine today
in the graveyard behind our house.

You've been relieved, Marine. You go get some rest.
The Marines have this Watch.

Semper Fi

On behalf of the President of the United States, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's service to Country and Corps.

Gray Day Graves

2009-09-09T08:14:00.000-04:00

Traffic in the graveyard today, lots. Gray, dreary days always bring them out. Mostly gray heads in cars, always alone. Too wet to get out, so they sit and stare at some spot--3 rows back and just to the left of the holly. And remember, I guess. Windshield wipers sweeping away God's tears.

The Ivory Tower Lynching of Sgt. James Crowley

2009-07-24T07:53:00.036-04:00

It's clear that academics just don't get cops and police work at all. And apparently neither does Gates or our President. Examine Gate's quote in the Washington Post:

"I'm glad that someone would care enough about my property to report what they thought was some untoward invasion," Gates said. "If she saw someone tomorrow that looked like they were breaking in, I would want her to call 911. I would want the police to come. What I would not want is to be presumed to be guilty. That's what the deal was. It didn't matter how I was dressed. It didn't matter how I talked. It didn't matter how I comported myself. That man was convinced that I was guilty." [Emphasis mine.]

--Washington Post

We'll drop, as Dr. Gates does, any racial bias concerns about the person reporting this apparent felony residential burglary in progress and give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming that she'd have substituted the equally descriptive: "two white boys with long hair and skate boards" in place of "two big Black men," if it had been appropriate. [note: as reported 27 July a replaying of the 911 tape shows that the caller made no reference to race at all.]

What unnerves over-educated academics, however, more than anything else and what has precipitated this Ivory Tower Lynching of Sgt. James Crowley in liberal media and academic circles, are the comments that I highlighted above by Dr. Gates and their unspoken implications:

I would want the police to come. What I would not want is to be presumed to be guilty [indeed, most burglars would prefer not to be thought of as guilty when caught inside a house, it impedes their chances of slipping away].
I'm dressed nice [so I'm above the law].
I'm well-spoken [so I couldn't possibly be a burglar].
I have fancy manners [so it's clear I belong in this neighborhood]
That man was convinced that I was guilty [Yes, Dr. Gates was apprehended at a burglary call--at a trial the courts must assume his innocence in its proceedings; the police at the scene, however, are not constrained by this assumption in the investigation of a crime].

By every report, it was Dr. Gates who brought up race in the confrontation between himself and Sgt. Crowley, not the police officer.

The first rule of policing Ritzy neighborhoods is this: the nicer the neighborhood, the more elegant the criminal. If you park an old beat up truck in a driveway in Harvard Square, you'd better have a lawn mower in the back.

In many regard I imagine that policing Harvard Square must be a lot like policing Beverly Hills: Ritzy neighborhoods rife with the self-important, over-indulgent and over-entitled to whom the rules of dealing with the police just don't apply [they think]. In the decade that I policed down in South Texas, I had occasion to police similar neighborhoods and police/citizen encounters like the one Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates had were depressingly frequent. Most of mine went something like this:

"Burglar alarm has gone off, sir, let me see your ID."
"I live here." [so did ex-boy friends, ex-girl friends, ex-spouses, and, in the nicer neighborhoods, ex-maids.]
"I need to see some ID."
"I've got a key, see?" [statistically over 50% of houses have entrance door keys secreted somewhere around the door--flower pots, under the door mat, in those fake rocks, not to mention left over in the possession of that long line of exes mentioned above.]

This is where the test of will kicks in, the Law vs. Dr. Diamond Jim dealing with an educational and social inferior police officer.

"If you don't show me your ID or find some neighbor to vouch for you, I'm going to put you in handcuffs and book you."
"You wouldn't dare. This is my house."
"No, it's my crime scene."
"All right, here's my DL." [keeping in mind that in a mobile society a large percentage of DLs don't actually list the correct current address of the holder. So often a DL does little to clarify in a policeman's mind a person's right to be on the property.]

[I copy down the info for my report. This quiet moment is where 99% of these encounters go bad...usually for the citizen.]

"You're just doin' this because [I'm black, I'm rich, I can buy you, you don't like me, you don't like I'm with a white girl, you hate attorneys, you think I got drugs, I drive a better car than you, because I play poker with the Mayor...name your dig].

"Nope, I'm here because I was called. Here's your ID, have a pleasant day."

Dr. Gates and 99.9% of the people I arrested in similar circumstances screwed up at exactly this point: They just wouldn't let it go and they took their fight to the street [ie. outside the 4th Amendment protections of their homes].

By the way, in my decade of police work I have never encountered someone who got upset with me and who was black that didn't sling that "you're just doin' this to me because I'm black"-guilt thing at me...even when I was working in all black neighborhoods and where he was the one standing over the body with the gun in his hand. I can just about guarantee that race is not what earned Dr. Gate's his time in jail.

What Dr. Gates and the rest of your Born-With-a-Silver-Spoon-Up-Your-Asses-types missed in Police 101 is this: A good cop likes trouble.

If a cop didn't like trouble he'd never get out of his car to shake the doors of a closed building, or stop a carload of yahoos cruising without lights at 3 am, or write that ticket for speeding in a school zone, or check that car with a single guy in it parked on the far side of the playground. We like trouble.

I'm not saying that Sgt. Crowley was 100% right in this matter, but he wasn't all that wrong. I don't know about Massachusetts law but in most jurisdictions the crime scene belongs to the police until they're satisfied that they've got everything under control or that there is no crime at all. Dr. Gates should have appreciated the fact that the police officer was just doing his job and cooperate with him so that the matter could be cleared up quickly.

Imagined how things would have changed if Professor Gates could have just brought himself to say: "Thanks for checking, Officer. I appreciate your stopping by. That's why I moved into Harvard Square: fast response and superior police protection. Got time for a coffee or do you need to get back to work?"

This incident was not an example of racial profiling. It was an unfortunate incident, maybe a misunderstanding. What intense media scrutiny of this matter does, however, is dilute the true crimes and abuses of racial profiling, which is rampant in many communities and is perpetrated not against the well-to-do but the poorer, less educated members of society. However, what really is upsetting the Ivory Tower community is not concern for the victims of racial profiling as much as that sneaking, creeping, feeling that they may not be any better than any other suspect at a crime scene.

Obama - The Man in the Arena

2009-05-16T01:26:00.005-04:00

When I look at all that is on President Obama's plate and listen to his critics, I am reminded of a speech President Theodore Roosevelt gave in 1910 that said in part:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Health Care - Where's the Value Added?

2009-05-15T11:38:00.001-04:00

Where is the value added to the American consumer in a health insurance company run system? By my lights:

health insurance companies don't reduce costs (apparently),
health insurance companies routinely create roadblocks to care or outright denial of service despite their contract and then daring sick people to sue them,
health insurance companies drop coverage on sick people by retroactively scrutinizing applications to ferret out reasons the policy shouldn't have been issued in the first place
health insurance companies effectively exclude those who have been ill in the past from coverage
health insurance companies burden heath providers with paperwork to slow the payout and discourage appeals,
health insurance companies abuse and starve down the most basic health care providers--like family practice doctors, who are on a 10 minute treadmill (8 to see the patient and 2 to do the paperwork) to the point nobody wants to be a Family Practice doctor anymore and
health insurance companies suck all the profits from health care that could have been used to both reduce costs, expand coverage and pay primary care providers.

Where is the value added to our system by health insurance companies?

I'm not saying everybody should get free health care from the government. But for all the cash American citizens are pouring into this system, we should be getting much more for our money in terms of transparency, organization and management, not to mention health care.

Computer systems have advanced to the point where paying all the premiums American's are now paying to health insurance companies into a central fund and dispersing it electronically would cut out 90% of the need for insurance companies all together.

Build a Bee Condo

2009-05-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

Norfolk city ordinance prohibits keeping bee hives inside city limits on less than 5 acres of land, yet we all know that bees are important pollinators of our favorite fruits and vegetables as well as some flowering plants. And, of course, we all heard the news reports that the most common hive bee, several varieties of European honey bees, are in deep trouble because of a little understood condition called Colony Collapse Disorder. So how does a Norfolk gardener get his plants pollinated?

The answer is native bees, of course. So while most of us don't have enough property to keep bee hives in Norfolk, we can encourage native bee habitat in our gardens, just like we do for birds and butterflies. (For you tomato growers, you should know that the common honey bee is virtually useless at pollinating tomatoes anyway. We know from experience and university studies that tomatoes varieties that are not self pollinating are pollinated best by native bees or other insects, not honey bees.)

Many varieties of native bees live in our area--bumble bees, sweat bees, digger bees, long-horned bees, carpenter bees, leaf-cutter bees, and mason bees are probably the most common--and each requires its own habitat. University studies show that the champion native bee pollinators is the long-horned bee, but all are highly useful. Most native bees are solitary or small community nesters and none are aggressive. In fact, native bees are quite docile--male bees don't have stingers--and most native females have to be severely threatened to be provoked into stinging you.

I mentioned that honey bees are not good tomato pollinators. This is not the fault of the honey bees but the tomato plant, which doesn't give up its pollen easily to just any bee. As I mentioned, most varieties of tomatoes are self pollinating, but certain popular varieties--like cherry tomatoes--require insect pollination and even self pollinators could use the help of a good bee. Bumble bees, in particular, have mastered the art of "buzz" or sonic pollination of tomato plants.

To buzz pollinate, a foraging bumbler will grab hold of the tomato flower with all six legs and flap her wings furiously, transmitting all her energy into shaking the flower. When you hear this going on in your garden, it sounds like the bee is angry. But that's just the sound of bumble bee working hard to help you get more tomatoes. This violent sonic vibration causes the tomato flower to spew out pollen, which covers the bee and floats to other tomato flowers. You can do this yourself using a tuning fork--about Middle 'C' works well--but a lazy gardener would just let the bees do it.

So how do you encourage native bee habitat? By providing the essentials--water, food, and shelter--and stopping or limiting your use of pesticides, particularly insecticidal dusts, which stick to the bees and then are ingested when the bees clean themselves. Garden plantings for native bees is for another article, but if you are butterfly gardening or fruit or vegetable gardening, then you're well on your way to having the right food habitat for bees, which need nectar for energy and pollen for protein (you didn't think they were doing all this work for free, did you?).

What native bees need most from you is a little home in a quiet corner. There are two good ways to create habitat for native bees. The easiest native bee home to build is a bundle of reeds or hollow stems of various diameter, such as bamboo, cut in 6-8 inch lengths. Be sure to cut bamboo at the node so that there is an open end and a closed end. Then bundle 15-20 tubes with closed ends grouped together. I wedge my bundle of bamboo at the 'Y' where the rain gutter down spout bends inward to meet the house. A rafter in a carport, open garage or the crotch of a tree would work just as well, too, someplace where the nest will stay relatively dry and out of the weather.

The second way to build a native bee habitat is to drill nesting holes into a block of UNTREATED wood. A scrap 6-inch long piece of 4X4 (drill into the cut end to get the proper depth) or a length of 4X4 screwed to a 2X6 mounting board works fine. Holes should be 3/32 to 3/8-inches in diameter on 3/4-inch centers. Holes larger than 1/4-inch should be 5 to 6-inches deep. Smaller diameter holes should be 3 to 4-inches deep. Do not drill through the board! The hole must be closed at one end and fairly smooth inside. Then mount your bee condo on a fence post, tree, or outbuilding 3 to 6-feet off of the ground. A slight downward slope will keep most rain out.

Here's a picture of a luxury native bee condo that combines both of these ideas and then adds a roof.

Bumble bees are ground dwellers, so a clear and undisturbed patch of garden is all they need. Often bumblers will set up a small brood in an abandoned mouse hole. Many beekeepers make nesting boxes for bumble bees--a small wooden box buried with all but a length of 3/4 inch PVC pipe exposed for an entrance --and later rent their bumble bees to commercial greenhouse operators who need reliable pollinators.

For more information, see the Xerces Society web site www.xerces.org or pick up the may-June 2008 edition of Audubon magazine.

White Fly Trap

2009-05-15T10:24:00.000-04:00

I love our gardenias, almost as much as the white flies. Every year we struggle for control of the bushes that remind us of paradise and remind the white flies of...well I don't know. Anyway, I've been assured it is a loosing battle. I've been told by one Extension Agent that I should Shovel Prune my gardenias and be done with it, but we love them too much to do that. So the struggle goes on year after year. Since we limit our use of insecticides to emergency infestations of house eating monsters, I'd like to share our more natural techniques to wrestling the white flies to a draw.

My white flies are attracted to a particular shade of yellow, specifically the yellow the color of the plastic in Preston Antifreeze jugs. Accept no substitutes; we've tested several other kinds of yellow product. The attraction is so strong that I've found white flies hanging around a jug of Preston I left next to the garage last week. Auto shop dumpsters are a good source for empty Preston jugs.

We wash out the jug and cut a number of 2X2-inch squares and then rig hangers from string or wire. Then we smear the yellow plastic squares with Vasoline or some other viscous oil from the kitchen to make them sticky. Hang the square in each infested bush near the infestation. Check weekly. Clean off the stuck flies and recharge with petroleum jelly if needed.

This and a light spraying with insecticidal soap solution keep white flies in check around here.

Vermiculture

2009-05-15T10:19:00.003-04:00

Worm Smoothie

Into the remainder of your morning's fruit smoothie add to the blender:
1-banana peel
green tops from strawberries
those moldy blueberry and strawberry's

Add:
2-apple cores from yesterday's lunch
morning coffee grounds
several used tea bags (remove string and staples)
bad spot from last night's potato
culled lettuce from last night's salad
slimy celery tops from the crisper
moldy half cucumber
carrot peelings
egg shells from last weekend's breakfast

Add water to liquefy to consistency of sludge. Serve

...to your worms.

Instead of buying plant food, we've hired worms to eat our garbage. In return for the occasional contents of the kitchen bucket, our worms work day and night to produce pails full of rich, organic worm castings and friable compost each year. We have a small worm farm we bought on the internet which is composed of 5 stackable trays on top of a catchment basin with spigot in the bottom unit to catch that yummy worm tea our flowering plants drink all summer long. These trays take advantage of worms' natural instinct to migrate upward in search of food (through grid openings in the bottom of each tray) . Once they've finished all the food in the bottom tray, the wrigglers move up to the next tray in search of more eats. We then harvest the castings from the bottom tray, rescue the stragglers, and put that tray on top of the stack, ready to receive our fresh garbage. The new tray is charged with shredded newspaper--printed with soy inks anymore, but avoid slick color sections--a small spade full of soil, a handful of fresh worm castings or compost, and then wet until damp. Add a layer of leaf litter on top and you're set to start burying your kitchen waste.

You can also construct your own worm bins from stackable plastic trays from the store (like Rubbermaid), just drill lots of holes for the worms to wriggle through in the bottom of all but the bottom tray. Be sure to cover your worm condo to prevent a rain from drowning your worms as well as to discourage marauding Robins, who will turn your worm bin into a worm buffet in a heartbeat. Ensure ventilation with tiny holes high in the side of each tray. Plans for larger bins, constructed from plywood, some large enough to be patio benches, can be found on the Internet.

Does it smell? Not if you do it right. I had our bin in my home office all winter long to keep them from freezing and never noticed an odor. A bad odor indicates poor living conditions inside the worm bin, usually too wet, where anaerobic bacteria have taken over. Anaerobic conditions will kill your worms.

What do you do in winter? A small 25-watt light bulb under your bins, moved into the garage or basement & covered with an old quilt, will keep your worms toasty and eating your garbage all winter long. Worms do best above 59 degrees, but remember the bins generate a good deal of heat because of aerobic decomposition, so they can stay warm down to 45 degrees or so outside. Also, their home should be shaded during the summer. Mine are in a fence corner behind a stand of Camilla, in the shade of the Wild Cherry tree.

Where do you get composting worms? The best producing worms for composting are Eisenia fetida, but Eisnia andrei and Lumbricus rubellus are good, too. Searching the Internet for "compost worms buy" will turn up several dealers who will ship you a pound or two of good composting worms. Many people get their starter worms from fishing shops, but many times these worms, often Eudrilus eugeniae or Nightcrawlers, are not top composting worms, but acceptable if you think you may want to sell excess worms to fishermen.What should I do first? If you put your worms into "fresh" garbage, they will die. So set up your bin at least two weeks before you introduce your worms to your new home. In truth, worms do not eat the garbage. Instead, they eat the bacteria and fungus that break down the food. This is the reason you add a bit of soil and compost as well as bedding material after you've harvested a tray of worm castings, to introduce the real worm food: bacteria and fungi. Bacteria and fungi are also the reason you should have a rotation of multiple trays: one major processing tray--the one on the bottom--with the trays on top in different stages of "cooking" the food.

What should I not feed? Generally, you should not feed your worms meat scraps, fat, dairy products, or very much citrus fruit. Mostly because these will attract raccoons, not to mention your own dogs. Too much citrus will change the pH level of the tray and often hatch out fruit flies.

How Much Do I Feed? It is easy to overfeed your worms. We started off with about 1 lb of kitchen waste per week in a 2-lb starter herd of worms. We have increased this as the worms reproduce--when they're happy, they reproduce fast. The ratio should be about 2-lbs of worm to 1 lb of garbage. We can now feed about a pound a day.

What if I go on vacation? Bulk up your spare trays and forget it. Worms will work and rework trays looking for food for many weeks. They can survive 30 or 45-days without any care at all. If we are gone for more than a couple of weeks, we hire a neighbor girl to make an occasional worm smoothie.

Any warnings? Only two.

You can do more damage by over feeding than by starving your worms.

Lots of fat, wiggly, worms and eggs (look like yellow pearls) is a good sign.
Sparse & skinny worms with few baby worms means feed more.
A wet smell mess means too wet and too much food.

2. Worm castings and worm tea are somewhat "hot" fertilizers. We cut our castings and tea with tempered compost or potting soil, 1/4 to 1/2, depending on how tender the plants are.
Resources? There is a lot of information on the Internet. I particularly like the WormBin group on Yahoo groups, which is great for beginners. Also the small book, Worms Eat My Garbage, by Mary Appelhof, is an indispensable guide.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

2009-05-15T10:18:00.002-04:00

Around our house we eat a lot of yogurt in small cups as well as from the larger containers, but the City of Norfolk guidelines for recycling state specifically: NO Wide-Mouth Plastic Containers (such as those for yogurt and butter). It seems a waste to just trash these nice cups, so we wash them and stack them in the garage. During the winter months we make seedling cups from the small ones. The larger ones we use for transplants. All you have to do is poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage.

Those cups we do not reuse, we collect and take to the Green Alternatives store down in in Ghent (1905 Colonial Avenue). The Green Alternatives folks collect these cups and ship them out for recycling as... [ta dah] seedling cups. If you don't want to bother making your own seedling cups from your used yogurt cups, then consider collecting your cleaned cups and dropping them off at the Green Alternatives store.

Also, from the Just So You Know department: the folks at Green Alternatives also accept all kinds of electronics for PROPER electronics recycling--computers, monitors, cellphones--as well as batteries. And the store carries compostable plastic tableware and paper plates made from 100% post consumer recycled paper for your parties, picnics, and barbecues. As a test I put used paper plates and compostable plasticware into both my compost pile and my worm bin. I'll report back on how they do.

Kids Gardens

2009-05-15T10:16:00.003-04:00

Children do better when they garden with a purpose. Here's a good group project for those with kids to entertain and educate this summer: a Pizza Garden, followed by a pizza party!

Use your imagination, but my Pizza Garden would grow:

green Bell pepper
jalapeño pepper
a determinant tomato, maybe a cherry
red onion
some garlic
thyme
oregano and
basil

A pizza garden can be grown in the ground or in containers. The ingredients are easy for kids to tend and later harvest. And it's a wonderful way to connect children and what they like to eat--pizza--with where it all comes from, the garden. All you need to finish this meal off is get a store bought pizza dough, some tomato or pizza sauce, cheese, and whatever other topping the children can't grow.

Instead of trying to make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, I'd oven dry the tomatoes the day before the pizza party. Slice the tomatoes and place them on a cookie sheet cut side up. Season with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and some of the fresh thyme from the kids garden. Let rest one hour for the salt to draw out the liquid. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Bake (dry) the tomatoes for 5-6 hours. Then use the oven dried tomatoes like pepperoni slices on your Kids Pizza Garden Pizza. Tomatoes prepared like this are sweet and a bit chewy and kids love them.

Maybe finish up with an Ice Cream Garden:

strawberries
mint
chocolate mint

Or try a Taco Garden:

tomato
cilantro
onion
garlic
lettuce
peppers--both green and hot

In the winter, maybe a Pot Roast Garden would be in fun using root crops, or an Italian Dinner garden that included eggplant or an Asian-themed garden. You get the idea. The important point is to give children the skills they need to grow some simple foods and to help them make the connection that what is on their plate came from the ground and their hard work. If you come up with a Mac & Cheese Garden, let me know.

Bunny Deterrent

2009-05-15T10:16:00.001-04:00

You know it's spring when you see bunnies in your garden. But bunnies also mean crop damage in your pea patch. If you're like me and don't have the time or heart to trap and kill the little fluff balls, do what our forefathers did: plant a sacrificial bunny garden. When you look at the plans of many old time gardens, you will see an outer ring of tender, sacrificial green vegetables, like lettuce or spinach.

Being prey animals, rabbits would prefer to creep along in good cover than to cross out into the open. Nor do they like to be "trapped' inside enclosures, like a fenced garden. So if there is enough to eat on the outside of your garden, the bunnies will almost never go past that outer ring. If you don't want to plant that much around your garden and if you can figure out where the "bunny trail" runs, try offering up some greens along the trail.

Why Are Peppers Hot?

2009-05-15T10:14:00.002-04:00

Hot on the trail of an answer to that burning question is botanist and researcher Joshua Tewksbury of the University of Washington. He's researching down in the jungles of Bolivia. An article about his research is in the April 2009 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. Researchers have known for years that birds are not bothered by capsicums, the active ingredient that puts the hot in hot peppers. That is actually beneficial to the peppers because the pepper seeds then pass through the birds to seed new plants. For some time researchers have also known that seed crunchers, like rodents, are deterred by hot peppers. That's obviously beneficial to the pepper plant as well, because a broken see will not germinate. But Tewksbury thought there was more to the story.

Why, for instance, could he find mild and spicy peppers of the same variety growing in the wild in close proximity to each other? His answer: fungus. A genius of the Fusarium fungus is specific to peppers. In the wild the higher the concentration of capsicum in the peppers, the lower the rate of fungal infection in the pepper plant. And mild peppers often carried heavy loads of the fungus.

The tendency toward high concentrations of capsicum is long lived in the gene pool of the peppers that develop it, which is why healthy plants still produce hot peppers. Then centuries ago spice loving humans came along and selected certain peppers for their heat index to pep up their food, perpetuating those hot genes. Because of some antifungal properties in hot peppers, many cultures have used peppers to preserve food over the centuries.

Chemist Wilber Scoville invented the scale to measure the "heat" in peppers in 1912. The SCU or Scoville Heat Unit measures how hot a pepper is:

Bell Peppers - 0
Poblano - 1,000 - 2,500
Jalapeño - 2,500 - 8,000
Serrano - 7,000 - 25,000
Cayenne - 50,000
Chiltepins - 70,000
Habanero - 200,000 - 300,000
Scotch Bonnet - 200,000 - 300,000
Naga Jolokia - 855,000 - 1,041,427

Organic Pest Control

2009-05-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

There are good bugs and there are bad bugs. We all know that. And in nature they're pretty evenly matched. Each is attracted to it's own kind of shelter, food, and nursery materials in the wild. The good and the bad tend to keep each other's population in check. Most gardens, though, are not much like nature. In nature plants are intermingled and mixed. In a garden we often have long rows or square plots of monoculture. So once a bad bug gets into a monoculture it thrives there. Then there are not enough good bugs to help keep them in check. When a gardener sprays to kill bad bugs, she'll kill the good bugs too. And it is axiomatic in organic circles that the bad bugs always rebound faster from a dose of chemicals than the good bugs do, usually making the problem much worse, not better. However, there are several organic techniques to help encourage good bugs and discourage bad one by keeping your garden in a natural balance:

Select Pest Hardy Plants--cultivars of corn that have good thick husks are seldom much bothered by corn earworms. And purple cabbage is seldom troubled by imported cabbageworms. Many varieties of tomatoes and other vegetables are bred for natural resistance to disease.

Concealing or Masking the crop from pests--light weight, translucent row covers are a good way to prevent many pests from getting into your young crops while still allowing sunlight, water, and air to circulate. This technique is particularly good for the young, tender salad crops--lettuces, cabbages, spinach, kale.

Producing odors that repel or confuse a bug--scientific experiments have demonstrated that many of the night-flying moths, including the one that delivers those vicious cut worms to your garden, track odors upwind to the plants they lay their eggs on. Marigolds (most nursery marigolds are unscented so look for Tagetes patula or Tagetes erecta -- if anybody runs across these spp. locally, let me know) mints, and sweet basil interplanted with flowers and vegetables helps to "mask" or repel unwanted pests.

Use a "Trap Crop" to lure unwanted insects away from your garden--growing collards well away from cabbage will help protect against diamondback moth larvae. Plant petunias well away from your roses to trap Japanese Beetles. And be sure to remove and replace any infested "trap" crops to keep the pests from multiplying and spreading to your more desirable plants.

Provide food for beneficial insects as they search for pests--beneficial insects tend to have short mouth parts. So small, open faced flowers will provide easy to reach pollen and nectar to give your little garden friends the strength to go after the pests. Dill, fennel, anise, and coriander (all members of the carrot family) produce small flowers suitable for beneficial insects. Longer blooming sunflowers, zinnias, and asters also attract and feed them. Other plants attractive to beneficial are yarrows, angelica, chamomile, candytufts, morning glory, baby blue eyes, evening primrose and goldenrod. You'll notice that many of these plantings are basic to a butterfly garden.

Companion Planting--There are some winning combinations for companion planting:

Basil and onions with tomatoes to control tomato hornworms.
Thyme or tomatoes with cabbage to take care of flea beetles, cabbage maggots, and white cabbage butterflies
Catnip with eggplant to deter flea beetles
Set Onions in rows with carrots to control rust flies and nematodes.
Horseradish with potatoes to repel the Colorado potato beetle
Add radishes or nasturtiums near your cucumber plants to control cucumber beetle
Interplant borage among your tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries to both repel some pests and attract many good ones
Cilantro among the spinach will repel aphids and attract the very beneficial tachinid flies
Summer Savory with your beans will repel bean beetles
grow tomatoes, parsley, or basil with your asparagus to help keep a check on asparagus beetles
and if you can, leave the paper wasps nests and spider webs alone. They are ferocious hunters.

Also, sphagnum moss has fairly powerful antifungal properties. Top dressing around your new plants is said to help prevent some fungus diseases from getting started in seedlings.

And don't forget the beneficial animals --Toads for instance, eat 3,000 grubs, slugs, cutworms, flies, wood lice, grasshoppers and beetles a month (make a toad house by placing an old clay pot upside down in a cool, moist, out-of-the-way place in your garden. Break out a door for Mr. Toad, about the size of a 50 cent piece, at the rim where the pot touches the earth). An added benefit of toads is they won't turn on your flowers and vegetables if there are no insects to eat. Most pests are actually night workers, so a single bat will eat 1,000 bugs a night, a family of bats thousands. If you're near some open spaces,consider erecting a purple martin house, each martin eats 1,000 insects in 12 hours. A single wren can gobble down 500 insect eggs, beetles and grubs an afternoon. 60% of a chickadees diet during the winter is comprised of aphid eggs.

All good reasons to make your yard as bird and animal friendly as possible.

Gardening for the Mobility Impaired

2009-05-15T10:12:00.002-04:00

I never tell people when they need joint replacement, says my ortho doc.They'll tell me when it time because they can't stand the pain anymore.
Can you get me through one more summer?
No.
Bummer.

So I'm scheduled to get two new knees right as Spring gardening gets underway, double bummer. Recover will be long and the rehab grueling, I'm told. And I'm definitely not going to get down on my knees to dig in the dirt this Spring--so no fresh tomatoes on my vines, no snappy homegrown peppers, no spicy salad greens from my little ol' pea patch, not this year--that's a thought more depressing than the surgery.

Then my wife Gayle had an idea. What if she unloaded the junk from some plastic storage shelving in the garage and set the shelves up on the back deck? We could buy some containers to put on top of the shelves and I'll be able to sit in a chair to tend my cukes at table level after the surgery. Because I'd been eying the magazine ads for the Grow Box from Garden Patch anyway, that's what we ordered.

The Grow Box has several advantages for the mobility impaired (or for those with limited space, like a balcony): these planters are large and deep; they are self watering, so I won't have to maneuver down the stairs to drag the hose up onto the deck to water them every day or so; and they have a plastic mulch cover that not only helps warm the soil but also limits the weeding I'll have to do. They're a bit pricey, but we ordered six.

Now I've got my kitchen garden at table height where I won't have to get down on my knees to plant and tend vegetables. And because the water reservoir is large, holding a couple of gallons, watering is infrequent and can wait until Gayle is home to help. I dropped some mosquito dunks (Bacillus thuringiensis) into each water tank to control the little pests. Now, between physical therapy sessions, I can tend my veggies without the risk of tearing stitches or of falling on stairs.

Unwanted grass in ornamental grasses / perennial beds

2009-05-15T10:11:00.000-04:00

Toward the end of last summer I was plagued by unwanted grass growing up through ornamental grasses. It was in some of my perennial bedding plants, too. This grass--tall, narrow leafed, fast growing--wasn't just growing near my other plants, it was growing up inside them, so that pulling out the unwanted grass meant pulling out the ornamental as well. During winter clean-up I cut the grasses and border perennials back to the crown after they'd died off. And so this spring, when I noticed the unwanted grass greening out long before anything else, I decided to do something to get rid of it.

But what to do? I stewed about it a couple of days and decided, despite my organic leanings, I'd need to use a contact herbicide like Round-Up. But how to apply it without killing the "good" plants? I put a waterproof dish glove on one hand and then pulled an old cotton sock over the glove. I wetted the sock--the palm and fingers of the glove--with herbicide and then ran my gloved hand over the long grass, from stem to leaf, grasping it like I was going to pull it out and coating the leaves with the chemical. Because the herbicide was applied only to the grass leaves and didn't touch the "good" plants, it worked like a charm. This week the good plants are budding out, free of that unsightly grass.

Gardening Tip

2009-05-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

Pray for miracles, but plant cabbages.
-- author Ken Follett in his novel Pillars of the Earth

Deskset II - Thelma Drake & George Bush

2008-10-07T14:44:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_SPmqOP3dc

Financial Services Disaster

2008-09-26T12:00:00.002-04:00

Please call the current Financial Services disaster by it's proper name: a gigantic continuing criminal enterprise, a national Ponzi scheme, an international fraud. Ironically this crime was worked against every citizen who invests in the new "Ownership Society," yet, as in all good confidence crimes, this crime was also perpetrated with the help of the "mark."

This crime was perpetrated by Wall Street, enabled by payola--sorry, political contributions--and favors lavished on Capital Hill and in the White House. Blame extends to all members of both political parties in Congress.

Regulators at the Fed and at Treasury acted as Wall Street Mafia Lieutenants, turning a conveniently blind regulatory eye to the building credit tsunami as they rotated in and out of "public service," offering their expertise in new-style Wall Street markets and financial instruments that mere career civil servants, we were told, who were too stupid to understand.

This criminal enterprise extended its tentacles from Wall Street to Main Street using mortgage brokers and real estate appraisers as pimps and bag men, playing not only on the ignorance but also the unrealistic hopes and aspirations of the credit junkies they'd hooked.

Even if the average citizen didn't get a shady mortgage himself, most of us participated in the fraud by riding the rocket of ever increasing--and increasingly unrealistic--returns through our desperate attempts to insure our retirement investments against a murky future in the new Ownership Society.

Thank God we didn't let Wall Street get its hands on Social Security; a lot more people are going to need it now.

This nation was foolish to invest in an opaque, faith-based, financial regulatory system. We were foolish to allow Wall Street thieves to--at last!--create a way to tap into the equity in our homes in exchange for cheap plastic crap from China. And in November we will all be exceedingly foolish to re-elect anyone now in office.

Still, just wait until you see the looming credit card panic, coming soon to a government near you.

Yet Another Intellectual Flyweight

2008-09-12T07:53:00.002-04:00

Let's see, 43 presidents. 9 accidental presidents. That's a 20.93% chance Palin & her spoon fed, failed Bush-era ideas not to mention their shared lack of international situational awareness will become president if we elect McCain.

Oh and, 5 colleges in 6 years to get a journalism degree?--I thought she hated the press anyway. Flyweight.

That's all we need in the white house another jokey, quipping, reactionary who is also a science denying, intellectual flyweight.

Nice parody though:

This Will Make Your Blood Boil

2008-07-28T16:25:00.006-04:00

You may have heard there's no such thing as a free lunch, but David Cay Johnston says there is — and wealthy Americans do get richer because of it. In an April 14, 2008 speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of "Free Lunch," outlines how government-private sector collusion affects the middle class and the poor.

http://wordforword.publicradio.org/programs/2008/07/25/

This is more than a Conservative/Progressive/Libertarian politics question, but something that cuts to the fabric of who we are in the United States. All Johnston's information is from public sources, mostly government documents.

Fight of the American Economic Airline

2008-07-25T08:53:00.002-04:00

Let's see, 7,000 mortgage foreclosures per day in the US, but it is a "moral hazard" if we were to bail out a common taxpayer; after all he may have been speculating, or should have been smarter, or should have read more carefully, or just isn't rich enough to care about in Washington.

But yesterday Congress and the President bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and Bear Stearns before them), all reckless gamblers in the global casino, yet there is no corresponding "moral hazard." Our federal keepers couldn't even manage to extract a jot of blood, much less a pound of flesh in the bargain. No 5% of future profits into the treasury for taxpayers covering Fannie and Freddie's bad bets, foir instance. Congress didn't even have the cojones to unseat the best paid corporate executives in the world as a price for their bad bets at the money tables.

This is nothing more than socialized risk for corporations and free market pain for the taxpayer.

On this flight of the American Economic Airline, those who have bought their way into the government's First Class section get the Golden Parachutes, while the taxpayers in the back of the plane just have to ride this crippled flight down.

Wise County Plant Permitted

2008-06-26T09:20:00.003-04:00

I've been away a few days, over in Wise County, Virginia, at the far western tip of the state. I was testifying before the Air Quality Board against the proposed Wise county coal-fired plant, know officially as the Virginia Cities Hybrid Energy Center--makes it sound like a Prius, doesn't it?

Tough trip for a 3-minute gig--9 hours each way--but statewide representation was called for and TWCAN and our eco allies have been battling this plant for a couple of years now. There was a good showing; we mustered about 110 people from all over the state, not bad for a hearing spanning a couple of weekdays out in the middle of nowhere (largest gathering of Toyota Prius' (Prii?) I've ever seen: 15).

Unfortunately, I just read in the news this morning that the Air Board approved the permits last night. Still this was a qualified "win" for us as opponents forced several amendments. Dominion Power will now cut allowable Mercury output from ~10 lbs per year to 4 lbs and Sulfur Dioxide from 2,400 tons per year to 600. We did not convince the Air Board they had a duty to regulate Carbon Dioxide, despite the recent Supreme Court ruling. That was disappointing. By the way, Dominion could still do better on Mercury emissions. There is a Pennsylvania plant that has Mercury down to 1 pound per year. Since every fresh water body in the Commonwealth of Virginia has a warning about consuming fish because of Mercury contamination from coal-fired plants, the Air Board should have gone for the 1 lb standard.

Also as part of the deal, Dominion is going to convert two nearby coal-fired plants--built in the 50's and real polluters--to natural gas, which reduces the state's overall pollutants profile considerably, and was the rationale for allowing the 4 lbs of Mercury. But that was really a case of making necessity a virtue, since Dominion would soon come under considerable pressure to do something about the pollutants from those ancient plants in any event.

From the beginning this plant was designed as a fairly innovative circulating fluid bed "hybrid" plant that could burn waste wood and piles of coal left all over the ground from previous mining operations in the region. That left over coal is called "gob piles" by the locals. Runoff from gob piles has been polluting streams and rivers in Virginia for decades. There was a amendment added to the permits to prohibit the cutting of standing timber for fuel, only waste products.

The downside of this ruling:

* there's still no such thing as "clean coal," and mercury and acid gases--CO2 and SO4--are still being emitted,

* there is no requirement to actually collect and burn the gob piles,

* the plant is required to burn Virginia coal, which means more mountain top removal mining--which is really heartbreaking to see,

* while this plant might meet all existing state and federal regulations, if national politics continue as forecast there will be a substantial change in clean air regulations after the November elections, probably making this plant obsolete before it is built,

* no compromises were made on increasing statewide energy efficiency. According to the DOE EIA the average Virginian still uses twice as much energy (per capita, less transportation) as the average Californian, yet California has the world's 7th largest economy,

* at $2 billion this plant is no bargain for Dominion ratepayers as a guaranteed 14% increase in rates is built into the legislation. Not included in the future costs are adding carbon capture and sequestration capabilities as they become available--if they ever becomes available. (and if it will even work here. It is still not proven that abandoned coal seams are sufficiently air tight hold the carbon).

* Plus we should add in the costs of disease from the pollutants, lost work time and productivity due to those diseases, and lost revenue from eco-tourism, not to mention the costs of more CO2 emissions, if Congress implements some sort of Carbon cap and trade system.

Water quality is a real mixed bag in this deal. Dominion is reducing treatment of returned water by boiling most of it off in the operation. But the water will still comes from the scenic and environmentally sensitive Clinch River--home of many lucrative eco-tourism businesses. The Clinch River is also the source of water for the nearby Cabo coal-fired plant, which will lower water levels even more during dry season.

I'm still digesting it all. On the one hand, not a bad showing in the heart of coal country, I suppose. But on the other, you have to wonder about the folks of that region who showed up supporting this plant.

For 100 years coal has promised to pave their streets with gold, yet they're still the most economically depressed, polluted and diseased area of the state with the state's highest per capita suicide rate, alcoholism rate, lung disease rate, and exodus rate. In the end, Virgina missed an opportunity to bury coal as a source of power.

Already nationwide 80 coal-fired plants have been taken off of the books n favor of alternative energy and energy efficiency. Even the Department of Energy has abandoned its efforts at to build a super efficient coal fired plant as unworkable. There is no such thing as Clean Coal.

The Great Oil Stampede of 2008

2008-06-20T09:14:00.000-04:00

So much smoke all of a sudden and so little fire, not just drifting out of the Great Dismal Swamp, but belching from the proponents of offshore oil and gas drilling. I've watched for a couple of weeks now as conservationists, democrats, liberals, foreigners and just about everybody else except the real culprits were dragged through mud in the press as being the cause of our sky high gasoline prices. There are a lot of reasons why they're wrong.

First of all gasoline is expensive because we allowed our economy to be driven into the ditch, and the value of the dollar has fallen on the world market. If we were buying gasoline with Euros, gas would be the equivalent of about $2.50 US per gallon. A weak dollar makes all foreign purchases more expensive.

Second, despite what Newt Gingrich and his cohort has been busy preaching on every talk show on TV and radio, there is no ban on offshore drilling to lift. Oil companies can still drill on the offshore leases they own, and they own a lot. There is only a ban on new offshore leases. According to evidence obtained through congressional oversight hearings (the first such hearings on energy of this president's two terms), as reported by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio, inside the continental US offshore waters there are "44 million acres off the coast leased, 10.5 million acres of that has been developed, but the other 33.5 million acres are available for offshore drilling." According to the United States Department of Minerals Management Services, 80% of the potential offshore oil is available to be developed through existing leases, but has not been pumped by the lease holder. From the report of hearings before the congressional Committee on Natural Resources, "Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two."

Further, back in the 90's former President Clinton leased what used to be known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve, now known as the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, to the oil companies, a field which contains a known 13.4 billion barrels of oil & is the largest reserve on the continent. Since the Clinton presidency, the lease holders have drilled 25 wells and capped them all. Because oil has gone from some $20 per barrel to it's current $135 mark since those leases were let, the Oil and Gas companies have increased the value of their underground stores without pumping a single barrel from under federal lands. In short, they're sitting on their investment and watching it grow in value. Why should they pump more oil to lower the price when we're willing to pay four to five dollars per gallon?

Finally, none of the sturm und drang over offshore oil leases really matters much when the United State's oil reserve numbers are compared to the world market, which produces (and consumes) 300 billion barrels of oil per year. According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration the technically recoverable oil in the lower 48 states amounts to 40.92 billion barrels of oil, a drop in the bucket. Of that, only 18.17 billion barrels of oil are "unavailable for leasing or development." Compared to the worldwide oil production, the much disputed ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) fields contain about 17 days of world oil usage. All told, US estimated oil reserves (Alaska plus the oil in and offshore of the lower 48 states) are 221 billion barrels--period. That's less than one year's worldwide production of oil or, if dedicated to the US market alone, 1000 days of US usage.

In short, we pumped America dry first and that hurts us now. But here's the real pain: within the lifetime of the graduating class of 2008, China alone--at it's current rate of growth--will demand about 300 billion barrels of oil per year, the today's total production. So we're at an energy crossroads in the United States.

We can either doom our children and grandchildren to endless wars over a depleting resource like oil, or we can put this nation's talents and considerable might behind greater energy efficiency and developing alternative energy options to fuel this great nation. This is a patriotic duty we owe our country and a parental duty owe our kids. Take up the challenge of developing alternative energy today.

Green is Dead, Long Live Blue

2008-05-03T18:58:00.006-04:00

Podcasts Worth Hearing

From the Commonwealth Club of California, Inforum series.

Adam Werbach, was the youngest and first paid director of the Sierra Club. Four years ago he, along with Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus, all well known environmentalists, rocked their world by delivering their eulogy for the movement called Is Environmentalism Dead? Read Here.

Today, after enduring years of being reviled as a environmental traitor and for working with companies such as Wal-Mart, Adam is back receiving the Inforum award for 21st Century Leaders Listen Here (real player file).

The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict

2008-03-14T06:53:00.003-04:00

The title about says it all. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of Making Globalization Work and Globalization and Its Discontents. Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a former assistant secretary for management and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce tally the true cost of this war and how it's been hidden from the American public.

In this interview Bilmes does an excellent job in detailing exactly how much this war has--and will--cost U.S. Taxpayers and details the inner workings of the federal financial systems and the efforts of the administration (and Congress) to keep the true cost of the war from being totaled.

Most devastating is the inability of wounded troops to qualify for and receive promised health care, a national disgrace, because of bureaucratic infighting and lack of budget.

A particularly good interview with Linda Blimes by WHYY's Marty Moss-Coane on Radio Times:
listen to podcast here (right click the link to download this mp3 to your computer).

Natural Pest Control

2008-03-10T06:42:00.003-04:00

A natural pepper spray to deter animals and, it is reported, two-spotted spider mites and other insects.

puree two chile peppers (the hotter, the better) & some water in a blender
strain out solids
add water to make 1 gallon

Mix 1/4 cup of concentrate per gallon of fresh water in a sprayer. Add one tablespoon of liquid soap to help spray stick to your plants.

From Organic Gardening magazine, 2007, v. 54, No. 6

The Virtues of Native Plants

2008-03-07T09:14:00.008-05:00

Podcasts Worth Hearing

I heard Dr. Douglas Tallamy speak at this month's meeting of the Butterfly Society, held at the Norfolk Botanical Center, and found his message and his presentation quite compelling. In fact, Doug has changed my entire emphasis in gardening: only native plants from this day forward. Even a single home garden here on the East Coast Flyway can make a really big difference for both birds and butterflys.

I have since found a WHYY Radio Times interview with Dr. Tallamy available as an mp3 download (right click and save to your desktop or mp3 player Listen Here ).

I also bought an autographed copy of his book Bringing Nature Home, how Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, which is fascinating.

Dr. Tallamy is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, where he has written more than 65 research articles and has taught insect taxonomy, behavioral ecology, and other subjects. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities.

What cost North Dakota, Mr. Editor?

2008-02-28T06:43:00.022-05:00

Even here in the northern reaches of Margaritaville, the incessant whining from North Dakota has broken through a pause in Jimmy Buffet tunz, prompting me to write, although I am sure by doing so I risk a visitation from a flotilla of well tanned hayseed hitmen (undoubtedly RVing home for spring planting after a relaxing, sun drenched winter in Florida) or, worse, that Truth Squad you've launched to spread the good new about your state ("North Dakota: Not As Bad as You've Heard," perhaps?).

As I understand it, North Dakota is in an uproar concerning the editorial slant of an article in National Geographic magazine, which focused on the net out-flow of your most precious commodity--your children. First of all, know that I am a distant ancestral cousin of yours, familiar with both the plaint and the plight of North Dakota families because I grew up on the high plains of Texas, in Lubbock, where cotton is King and kids also go off to school and never come back. Growing up I never thought I'd live anywhere else but Lubbock; then, I joined the military and quickly swore I'd live anywhere else but sad ol', dusty, Lubbock for the rest of my life. Spurred in my flight by Mac Davis' tune, "Happiness is Lubbock in your Rearview Mirror," I know how your young people feel because I've felt their frostbite, to paraphrase a former president of the United States. (The plight of the plains reminds me of that old WWI song, "How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm Once They've Seen Gay Paree?")

After my wife --another Lubbockite--and I escaped the high plains, we lived around this big ol', glorious, technocolored world, boating with the Navy, our happiness weighed down only by decades of impassioned entreaties from our parents begging us to come back to the dusty plains to live; to farm; to suffer through bleak, desolate winters; to spend sleepless nights moving and setting irrigation pipe in the fields; to suffer the bite of the northern hawk on treeless vistas; to endure blinding dust storms and terrible allergies; to worry through withering droughts in cloudless summers; to suffer the oppressive and small-minded political and religious atmosphere; to raise children in that same stifling and, at times, backward terrarium we escaped all those decades ago. We resisted our parents' pleas for nearly 30 years and, now that their leaf has blown from the cotton stem, I am quite happy to report that we will likely never see the high plains again, except perhaps between beverage services through our window from first class. (Q: What to you call a family reunion in Lubbock? A: a funeral. Feel free to substitute Bismark for Lubbock, it probably works.) But that is a personal tale. Here is my real question for you, Mr. Editor, and the reason I write.

What cost North Dakota to the rest of the nation? What do the rest of us pay for you to enjoy you splendid isolation and cherished unbroken vistas?

In John Sperling's book, The Great Divide, Retro vs. Metro America, he demonstrates that during the decade 1991-2001 North Dakota was a net federal welfare state (federal inputs from all sources less federal taxes paid) to the tune of $21.9 billion dollars. That is an average $102,216 federal subsidy per North Dakota family of 3 over that decade (yeah, we suspect where it all went too; you folks need to look into what happened to that money we sent you). Further, nationwide the agriculture industry represents just 0.8% of US gross domestic product, employing just 3.2% of the nation's labor force, yet receives $20 billion dollars per year in federal subsidies; an average of $3,775 per worker.

So instead of carping about a magazine article, it is time North Dakota residents imagine how empty North Dakota would be if it had to stand on it's own two financial feet in this government, pull their own weight in the Union, and then perhaps you'd make more of an effort to be thankful for the sons and daughters of North Dakota who've left your welfare state to join the net productive parts of our nation, ensuring our continued financial support of your North Dakotan dream. Maybe thinking of it as an arranged marriage would ease your pain. You're not losing a daughter but ensuring your meal ticket on the free lunch express.

Sure, North Dakota produces some things that the other parts of the nation need--as do many other parts of the world, all items we can--and do--screw a spigot into the side of your state and drain off without too much expense or trouble to ourselves--wheat, oil, electricity, coal, your children. Cut us off, and we'll just buy wheat from Canada or New Zealand. Coal? It's everywhere. Talented kids? "Hello, Bangalore!" they're everywhere. So tell me again, why do US taxpayers pay so many people to live in North Dakota at all? Isn't the nation paying too much for what North Dakota provides? Will North Dakota ever pull it's own weight in the federal tax system? History is not on your side.

The relentless march of progress is also against your state, sir. I have read that, with modern GPS navigation and computer technology, a couple of teenagers on a combine can now harvest five thousand acres of wheat! Imagine that. But in the future I foresee a fleet of computer-controlled combines monitored from consoles in Bangalore, India, likely doing the same work via satellite control for pennies an acre. On-site manpower will only be needed in North Dakota for fueling, maintaining and highway transportation of the Chinese-made equipment from field to field, work undoubtedly supplied by itinerant drivers in the US on work visas from south of the border. We could probably robotize the over-the-road transport too, if you'd get your pickups out of the way. In the future, what need will the nation have of a sizable permanent population in North Dakota? A capital of North Dakota at all?

Same goes for your oil and other extractive industries. A few hundred roughnecks a year will pass through your oil patch instead of trekking to Canada or Alaska, sinking pipe and setting up the computer controlled pumping stations to get the product to the places where the nation's work is done. Don't need many people to watch the dials as that black gold flows toward the coast. But isn't that the inevitable end result of the relentless march of progress and most likely future North Dakotans are raising and educating their children to return to? Is that really what you want for your children? Even in this newspaper there is evidence of your state's decline as well-paying, high tech jobs are--apparently--not enough to lure talented, educated and thinking people to the frozen back of beyond, since those jobs go begging week after week. Yet you Northern Dakotans cling like the South to your own Lost Cause.

So what is the upshot?

I tend to think about North Dakota, when I think of it at all--indeed when I think of any of the plains states (all of your neighboring states are, by the way, net federal welfare states as well)--the same way I think about the National Park system. I pay a lot in taxes for those parks, but I seldom if ever visit them. Yet I don't begrudge them their keep, and I do find some comfort and pleasure in just knowing that they exist--like I enjoy knowing that the last herd of buffalo or pack of gray wolves or band of Lakotas exists--even though I'll probably never see them outside the pages of National Geographic. So it is with North Dakota and the rest of the cultural desert we call the fly-over states--they're nothing more to me than a still life of a world that maybe used to be, a tableau of the myth of the family farmer, at best a fading Polaroid reminding us how far we children of the plains have come. So, as a child of the plains, I can tell you that we're not going back and we're not coming back either.

So, good on you for choosing to live in North Dakota, for proving your mettle and stamina against the frigid elements, and for living the rugged, and isolated lives you've chosen to live. Just don't expect the rest of the nation, those of us who pay for your way of life in part or in whole, to get too wound up about your state's out-migration problems. The more who leave North Dakota and the sooner they do it, the better for the positive GDP producing parts of the nation. But in the meantime, just keep those commodities coming--both kid and wheat--and we'll help with a handout when we can.

--

Rick Kennerly
Virginia Beach, VA
http://www.mouseherder.blogspot.com/
http://www.mouseherder.com

Putting Conserve back into Conservative

2007-11-02T06:18:00.001-04:00

When did conserve fall out of the Conservative movement? It's a serious question for Virginians on both sides of the political divide today. Amid the dust ups about climate change and among all the tears shed for drowning polar bears, Conservatives have overlooked the underlying issue of Virginia's runaway, cash and resource wasting energy consumption. No successful businessman would add a vehicle to his fleet or a person to his staff without first being absolutely certain that he had wrung every ounce of efficiency out of his operation. Yet as a state we pay and pay some more to increase energy supplies without addressing our underlying inefficient energy usage. Energy inefficiency is not good business and it's not sound fiscal policy for the Commonwealth.

Companies as large and as diverse as General Electric, Bank of America and 3M as well as future oriented utilities like Florida Power and Light, BC Hydro and Pacific Gas and Electric have all put considerable study into America's energy future and are taking steps to insulate their companies from the coming worldwide energy crisis and inevitable rate hikes as well as rapidly repositioning their product lines and portfolios to take advantage of the New Industrial Revolution (NIR) in energy efficient generation spreading across the nation (Alliance to Save Energy- www.ase.org ). One gauge of the strength of the coming NIR is venture capital investment in Renewable Energy, steady at around $250 million per year for the last several years, suddenly blossomed to $1.5 Billion in the first six months of 2007 alone (Newsweek, 08 Oct 07). Yet Virginia's energy future stands firmly rooted in the dirty past.

In 2006 the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy ( www.aceee.org ) issued it's annual report rating the 50 states in six categories, from Utility Spending on Energy Efficiency to Building Codes to State Leading by Example. The maximum score of 44 points was earned by Vermont while the Commonwealth of Virginia scored a measly 6 points, mostly on the strength of our building codes. Fortunately for the Commonwealth, enforcement of those building codes was not rated or we would have probably fallen even further in the rankings. In the end, Virginia finished 41st in ACEEE's assessment, much lower than it appears because of the numerous two- and three-way ties above us in the rankings.

What Virginians need now is some creative thinking in Richmond about energy efficiency. Our legislature could look to Austin (TX) Energy for inspiration. Back in the early part of this century Austin Energy bought a 3-acre property and set it aside for a future coal-fired electrical plant. Today, that property has yet to be developed as a generation plant. Austin Energy, instead, opted to increase demand-side efficiency first by offering free energy audits to homes and small businesses as well as offering financing assistance and guarantees for energy efficient improvements. In the end Austin saved 600 MW of electricity through increases in energy efficiency alone and avoided building a 500 MW coal-fired generator. The cost of the new efficiency program? The citizens of Austin saved about one half the cost of the proposed billion dollar plus generation plant, and energy efficiency savings keep paying month after month after month.

In Virginia the stumbling block to utility-based efficiency programs is the way that Commonwealth utilities make money. Here, utilities only make money by selling electricity (supply-side), so there is no financial incentive for programs to reduce demand-side waste nor to limit supply-side growth. This is where proper conservative thinking in Richmond can help. We have not suffered an energy crisis in the Commonweath in modern times, but we should learn from those who have. Consider California, seventh largest economy in the world.

Like many people I got a good chuckle as California worked it's way through several energy problems over the last few decades, but California emerged with an energy system more efficient, more supply diverse, and considerably more future proof than that of complacent Virginia. In fact, because they are more efficient, the average Californian consumes only one half the energy the average Virginian does (on an annualized, per capita basis, in millions of BTUs from all sources of energy, less transportation--so as to compare residential and business use alone, Energy Information Agency - www.eia.doe.gov). As I write this, California is now on track to increase energy efficiency 1% per year over 30 years. They're halfway there. That's the equivalent of a major oil field discovered under the state, an oil field that is never depleted.

Nor does Virginia's government lead by example, as highlighted in the ACEEE ratings. Governor Kaine's 2007 Virginia Energy Plan is largely aspirational (aspirational goals having replaced Blue Ribbon Commissions in politics as the political fig leaf of choice for lack of vision and legislative inaction). The energy re-regulation bill now coming out of Richmond is largely written to favor one supply-side intensive industry. Our state legislature will not even commit to a modest Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard or enforceable Energy Efficiency standards for Virginia (again, offering only aspirational goals), even though there is a 20% payback on energy efficiency investments. My own city of Virginia Beach, is equally guilty. With 200 other cities Virginia Beach signed the Cool City Initiative, but as far as I can discover has made pitifully little progress toward energy independence nor energy efficiency for the city. Our elected leadership may not get it, but leaders in other jurisdictions do.

In Blountville, TN, for instance, the Sullivan County School District engaged in a performance contracting project to improve energy efficiency in their schools (projects from daylighting, to geothermal heating and cooling to just shutting off computers overnight--which saved the district $35-40k/year alone). No new taxes were raised for the project, the schools received millions in energy efficient upgrades and the district is saving $1 million dollars per year in energy expenditures, cash which they then put back into the classroom. Sumner Country, TN, installed geothermal heating and air conditioning in their schools and now have an extra $5k per month in cash flow to invest in education. The state of Kentucky saves $3 million per year in replacement and manpower costs by replacing every traffic signal with long lived LEDs signals ( www.kilowattours.org ). Even the most mundane application can be improved. It is estimated (FacilityManagement.com) that all the EXIT signs in the nation burn about 35 billion KWH per year. If those were replaced with more efficient LED models, it would save about 90% of the energy, the equivalent of 5 nuclear power plants.

So before Virginia agrees to yet another expensive, mountain destroying, air and water polluting, $1.5 billion coal-fired generation plant in Wise county, before we open a new power line corridor to the Ohio Valley to get yet more energy from some of the oldest, most inefficient coal-fired plants in the nation, join me on insisting that our representatives in Richmond ensure the Commonwealth is operating as efficiently as possible. Join me in putting the conserve back into Conservative.

Solar Decathlon

2007-10-17T05:31:00.000-04:00

Every other year, twenty universities from around the world compete in the solar decathlon in (surprise!) 10 categories

Architecture
Engineering
Market Viability
Communications
Comfort Zone
Appliances
Hot Water
Lighting
Energy Balance and
Getting Around

the homes are limited to 800 sq. ft., for transport by truck or shipping container and, while designed for grid-tied electricity, are built off-grid on the Mall.

I've created a couple of video tours:

Introduction (win 2:12)
House by House (win 23:45)

Introduction (apple 2:12)
House by House (apple 23:45)

If you have a slow connection, right click the link, select "Save Target As", and play from the downloaded file later.
--

Dump the Junk, Save a Tree

2007-09-28T09:31:00.000-04:00

The average American receives 41 pounds of unsolicited mail each year, mostly junk mail. It's not just annoying but bad for the ecosystem. That 41 pounds per year represents:

more energy in production, delivery and landfill costs than 2.8 million cars do.
requires 100 million trees to supply the paper
bulk up landfills (44% of the junk is never even opened)
wastes your time sorting and recycling
costs you a lot of money, if you buy something you don't need.

You can help stop most of it from ever finding its way to your mailbox:

www.DMAConsumer.org ($1 fee, but contacts the majority of the Direct Marketing companies)
www.OptOutPrescreen.com (targets credit card and insurance companies)
when buying online, be sure to check the box that DOES NOT mailings to your house.
support Junk Mail legislation that allows all people to opt out ( www.NewDream.org/JunkMail ).

From Natural Home Magazine

Don't Bug Me

2007-09-23T10:11:00.002-04:00

The federal Do Not Call list expires next year, www.dontcall.gov or 1-888-382-1222

Podcasts Worth Hearing

2007-09-22T06:41:00.001-04:00

Patricia McConnell: "For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend"

Listen to a really fascinating interview with Pat McConnell on the Diane Rhem Show, on WAMU

(right click and "save as" they play for smoother play back)

Pat McDonnel, PhD, Animal Behaviorist, trainer, radio talk show host of "Calling All Pets" talks about the new brain science and dogs, particularly their emotions and how those emotions are both similar and different from our own.

Best Tip:

Once you get past the basics, the time to praise or reward a dog is the instant they look at you. McConnell gives the example of when you call "come". The time to get really enthusiastic is when the dog looks at you and has that split second decision, keep sniffing or comply. Reinforce the right decision then, not when the dog comes. (I wonder if rewarding an ear twitch is good enough for cairn?)

Buy this book and support Cairn Rescue

The Good Citizen Dog Walker Kit

2007-09-21T11:22:00.001-04:00

After Sydney's sorta bad black and tan adventure, I thought I'd share my dog walking kit (click image to enlarge):

cell phone with camera
Bags on Board container (15 ct. per roll) emergency poop bag
Gerber lock blade pocket knife # 05842 has belt clip and opens with one hand
HeatWave 17% pepper spray with UV marker (for ID later by police) & leather carrier
1 aluminum carabiner, for belt (never a belt loop) to hold extra bags and pepper spray as well as to tether dog to waist
1 aluminum spare carabiner, to tether dogs to fence or post
6' leash and chain collar, makes a pretty stinging weapon if the dogs are off leash. Also, it's difficult for the dogs to slip their collars when excited
plastic shopping bags, 5 per trip out. Recycle those bags and save the expensive emergency bags (If you're not picking up your dog poop on a walk, you're a bad, bad owner).

Green Festival Comes to DC, 6-7 October

2007-09-20T07:57:00.000-04:00

Sustainable Economy | Ecological Balance | Social Justice

At the Washington Convention Center map

$15 / Day (discounts available--see site)
400 booths and exhibits
150 speakers
8 pavilions

This event has the expected organic and farming booths, natural health, etc. But several categories and events caught my eye:

Green Building (11 booths)
Green Careers and Education (11 booths)
Renewable Energy (9 booths)
Socially Responsible Investing (3 booths)
New Green Businesses (2 booths)
Green Pets (3 booths)
Building Green Economy (Sat 4 pm)
Jim Hightower (just because he's a hoot, Sunday 3 pm)

Green Home Series (40-min. each, continuously both days)

Energy-Efficient Lighting
Living with Solar
Solar Hot Water & Photovoltaics
Is Your Home a Hummer?
Top 10 Steps to Green Remodling
Planning a Self-Sufficient Solar Home
You and Your Employer Going Green Together

Green Careers

Landing Your Dream Green Job
Green Multimedia
Possibilities in Green Government
Careers in Alternative Transportation

So, if you're in the DC area, you might be interested in spending a day or two at the convention center.

More Sad News from Iraq--NYT OpEd Soldiers Dead

2007-09-13T05:41:00.000-04:00

If you missed the NYTs OpEd entitled "the Was as We Saw It" by seven career soldiers actually serving in Iraq at the time of publication, I've put a copy on my blog because it's now archived and available only for a fee at NYT.

http://mouseherder.blogspot.com/2007/09/war-as-we-saw-it.html

As noted, in a coda to that piece, one of the writers, Murphy, was wounded in the head before it was published and has been evacuated to Bethesda. Now word comes from Baghdad that two of the remaining authors, Mora and Gray, died in Iraq Monday.

I hope you'll remember these multiple combat tour, combat hardened troops when reading about Pete Hegseth and his GOP front organization Vets for Freedom, both of which have been much in the news lately. Hegseth did one tour of Iraq early on with the NY National Guard and hasn't been back since. While I honor his service, he's abused his mantle of authority beyond credibility in the press. His prowar neocon organization, Vets for Freedom, much in the news lately with the latest administration push after the Petraeus/Crocker report, is a wholly owned, 100% financed, creation of the GOP war machine.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Vets_for_Freedom
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pete_Hegseth

http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/

Why We Need a Draft: A Marine’s Lament

2007-09-12T12:40:00.000-04:00

Mail this to all your Chickenhawk associates...

from Newsweek
http://tinyurl.com/3aadvb

Why We Need a Draft: A Marine’s Lament
He was in the firefights of Fallujah. He saw gaps in America's arsenal that he believes can only be filled when America's elite puts its sons on the battlefield. A plea for selective service.

By Cpl. Mark Finelli

Newsweek

Updated: 12:20 p.m. ET Aug 28, 2007

Aug. 28, 2007 - “Maybe we would have only lost those three instead of 13,” I thought to myself on a dusty Friday in Fallujah in early November 2005. I was picking up the pieces of a truck that hours before had been blown apart by an IED, wondering why our equipment wasn’t better and why three more Marines were dead. Ramadan had just ended, the period in which a suicide bomber gets double and triple the virgins for killing himself in the name of jihad, and my weapons company, Second Battalion Second Marines, had lost 13 men in the last two weeks—not from firefights but from roadside bombs likely being imported from Iran. The insurgents were ramping up their technology, and here we were in the same old trucks. At least these didn’t have cloth doors like the ones last year. But seriously, was this the best technology we have?

Courtesy Cpl. Mark Finelli

Cpl. Mark Finelli, who served in Second Battalion Second Marines

Just then I noticed a big vehicle driving by, one owned by a private contracting company. This thing made our truck look like a Pinto in a Ferrari showroom. It was huge, heavy, ominous, indestructible. I wanted to commandeer it. I wanted to live in it. If only we were in one of those, I would definitely come home, and a lot of the guys who won’t would too. As it passed I stared at what I would later learn was called the MRAP vehicle (Mine Resistant Ambush Protective Vehicle). I never thought I would see something in Iraq that enticing, but there it was, rumbling past in all its glory.

I looked at my platoon sergeant. “Staff sergeant?”

“Yes, Finelli?”

“Why are the private companies driving around in these things and not the Marine Corps?” He looked at me and gave the universal sign for money, rubbing together his thumb and forefinger. And suddenly, I understood. It became clear on that November Friday in Fallujah that America’s greatest strength, economics, was not in play. A sad realization.

According to the Pentagon, no service personnel have died in an MRAP. So why isn’t every Marine or soldier in Iraq riding in one? Simple economics. An MRAP costs five times more than even the most up-armored Humvee. People need a personal, vested, blood-or-money interest to maximize potential. That is why capitalism has trumped communism time and again, but it is also why private contractors in Iraq have MRAPs while Marines don’t. Because in actuality, America isn’t practicing the basic tenet of capitalism on the battlefield with an all-volunteer military, and won’t be until the reinstitution of the draft. Because until the wealthy have that vested interest, until it’s the sons of senators and the wealthy upper classes sitting in those trucks—it takes more than the McCain boy or the son of Sen. Jim Webb—the best gear won’t get paid for on an infantryman’s timetable. Eighteen months after the Marines first asked for the MRAP, it’s finally being delivered. Though not nearly at the rate that’s needed. By the end of the year, only 1,500 will have been delivered, less than half the 3,900 the Pentagon had initially promised.

It’s not hard to figure out who suffers. The 160,000 servicemen and women in Iraq are the latest generation of Americans to represent their country on the field of battle. And like their predecessors, they are abundantly unrepresented in the halls of power. As a result, they’ve adopted what I find to be a disturbing outlook on their situation: many don’t want the draft because they believe it will ruin the military, which they consider their own blue-collar fraternity. They have heard the horror stories from their dads and granddads about “spoiled” rich officers. Have no doubt: there is a distinct disdain for networked America among the fighting class of this country. When a politician would come on TV in the Camp Fallujah chow hall talking about Iraq, the rank-and-file reaction was always something like, “Well, I am blue-collar cannon fodder to this wealthy bureaucrat who never got shot at and whose kids aren’t here. But I know I am making America safer, so I’ll do my job anyway.” And they do, and have been for the last three and a half years, tragically underequipped but always willing to fight.

The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001—something I certainly believed would happen after running down 61 flights of the South Tower, dodging the carnage as I made my way to the Hudson River [I worked at the World Trade Center as an investment adviser for Morgan Stanley at the time]. But President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not. Allow me to build a squad of the five brightest students from MIT and Caltech and promise them patrols on the highways connecting Baghdad and Fallujah, and I’ll bet that in six months they could render IED’s about as effective as a “Just Say No” campaign at a Grateful Dead show.

On a macro level, we are logistically weakened by the lack of a draft. It takes six to seven soldiers to support one infantryman in combat. So, you are basically asking 30,000 or so “grunts” to secure a nation of 26 million. I assure you, no matter who wins the 2008 election, we are staying in Iraq. But with the Marine Corps and the Army severely stressed after 3.5 years of desert and urban combat in Iraq—equipment needs replacing, recruitment efforts are coming up short—you tell me how we're going to sustain the current force structure without the draft? The president’s new war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, essentially said as much earlier this month, when he announced that considering the draft “makes sense.”

Of course, the outcry was swift and predictable. America has rejected selective service before, though always in the guise of antiwar movements. But they should really be viewed as antidraft movements, and they existed, en masse, when the wealthy could buy their way out of serving—as Teddy Roosevelt’s father and his ilk did during the Civil War, or as countless college kids did during the deferment-ridden Vietnam conflict. Not every draftee has to be a front-line Marine or soldier, but history shows us that most entrepreneurial young men, faced with a fair draft, almost always chose the front. A deferment draft, however, is a different story, and ultimately counterproductive because of the acrimony it breeds. By allowing the fortunate and, often, most talented to stay home, those who are drafted feel less important than what they are asked to die for. At the end of the day, it was this bitterness that helped fuel the massive antiwar movement that pushed Nixon to end the draft in ‘73.

I don’t favor a Vietnam-style draft, where men like the current vice president could get five deferments. I am talking about a World War II draft, with the brothers and sons of future and former presidents answering the call (and, unfortunately, dying, as a Roosevelt and a Kennedy once did) on the front line. That is when the war effort is maximized. Quite simply, the military cannot be a faceless horde to those pulling the purse strings of our great economy.

The draft would even hasten a weaning away from foreign oil, I believe, if more Americans felt the nausea that I do every time I go to the pump and underwrite the people who have nearly killed me five times. This war on the jihadists needs to be more discomforting to the average American than just bad news on the tube. Democracies at war abroad cannot wage a protracted ground operation when the only people who are sacrificing are those who choose to go. This is the greatest lesson of my generation. Young Americans: you may not want to kill jihadists, but they are interested in killing you and your loved ones. Wake up.

Cpl. Mark Finelli is an inactive, noncommissioned Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006. He is currently writing a book about surviving 9/11 and fighting in Iraq.

The War as We Saw It

2007-09-10T09:02:00.000-04:00

The most under reported story on the war I've seen. None of the major news outlets gave these troops much space, if at all. Since the article is archived now and available only for a fee, I thought I'd share it here.

NYTimes commentary

Published: August 19, 2007

The War as We Saw It

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Published: August 19, 2007

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.

(In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.)

While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse -- namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made -- de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government -- places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict -- as we do now -- will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Click-N-Ship

2007-09-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

One of the best kept secrets in the government is the new USPS Click-N-Ship services. Advantages are listed below, and USPS offers a lot of shipping materials for FREE!

So if you love to hate the "backwards" U.S. Post Office, it's time for you to give it another look. That's particularly true if you, your small business, or home business are shipping small to medium sized packages on a regular basis.

The USPS's new online system, Click-N-Ship, offers these features:

No Stamps--print professional looking barcoded shipping labels WITH paid postage on your inkjet or laser printer
No Standing in Line--FREE USPS residential or business carrier pick-up, scheduled online (for unattended pick-up, just tell the carrier online where to find the package-- e.g. front porch under chair, watch out for spider) For added security, you may also drop your package in any mailbox or at any post office
print barcoded mailing labels using plain paper (tape to package) or buy custom USPS self-adhesive labels online
pay online using secure credit card processing technology
pay cash--if you don't pay by credit card you can print the label and then deliver the package and label to a post office to pay cash
buy additional parcel insurance online or request delivery signature confirmation
multiple mailing options presented online and their costs. Just select the one that suits your needs.
FREE online address book for routine correspondents (with USPS database generated address and zip code checking, correcting and formatting for machine scanning)
FREE online package tracking and shipping history
FREE e-mail notification of shipping (to recipient) and delivery (for you)
FREE USPS Priority/Express Mail boxes, envelopes, and tubes delivered to your house
FREE USPS Express and Priority Mail stickers and tape
Flate Rate envelopes and boxes will ship up to 70 pounds for a single rate
e-mail receipt for every charge to your credit card
Batch Orders, print several shipping labels at a time, and have only one credit card charge for the batch

Of course, you can use your own boxes, but the USPS boxes give your merchandise a very professional look that your customers will notice. Order FREE and for fee items online here: USPS Store.

You don't need an official USPS scale, but you will need a fairly accurate scale of some sort. If you don't have an accurate scale, you can purchase an electronic USPS scale for very little--NOTE: under postage packages will be either returned for more postage or delivered postage due, depending on the amount underpaid. Neither makes your operation appear professional to your customer, so accuracy is important to avoid embarrassment.

There are a few downsides, but not many:

if you elect unattended pick-up, you are responsible for the package until the postal delivery folks actually have the package in their hands (they'll leave a hand receipt in your post box)
this service is for domestic deliveries, mostly. There is little support for international deliveries, where the rules are much different
I screwed up and forgot my USPS account password and couldn't, after several requests, have the problem resolved on-line. I ended up creating a new account under my wife's name

So give Click-N-Ship a try. I found it most competitive when compared against the prices of UPS and FedEx. The FREE (did I mention most of the boxes and envelopes were FREE?) shipping materials helped make it cost effective and easy to use.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Whole House Fans

2007-09-05T08:40:00.000-04:00

Whole House Fans are:

inexpensive to buy ($150-250)
energy saving (we saved $158.63 during the first spring of operation. Payback less than one year)
easy to install
cool well
allow you to direct cooling breezes throughout the house
significantly reduce energy bills
add to feeling of being a part of nature
Utility Company Rebates (google "whole house fan" rebate )

September marks the end of the hot, muggy and windless Chesapeake summers and the beginning of our wonderful and quite long fall season here in the mid-Atlantic, a perfect time to turn off that energy hogging AC and open those windows for night time cooling.

Our single story ranch, however, is difficult to cool using the natural passive "cooling chimney" techniques available to two-story home owners. That's why I installed a Whole House Fan last winter to reduce our home cooling bills during the long spring and fall months (see Energy Usage chart at left to compare March-July 2006 to 2007 after the fan was installed).

Normally installed in the ceiling of a hallway, these fans and automatic louvers come in two models: direct drive and belt drive, and in two sizes: 24x24 inch and 30x30 inch. Cost starts under $200 at the home improvement stores. Installation only takes an hour or two, depending on your abilities, but is well within the do-it-yourselfer's skills.

While some models require the homeowner to cut a ceiling joist to box in the fan, at least one brand (Air Vent) has bracket hardware to allow the fan to sit atop the joist. The installer then fits stiff cardboard (included) between the fan box and the ceiling below to seal the air flow. (note: click image to enlarge and inspect the bracket placement on top of joist and staples holding the cardboard in place to seal airflow. Not shown: I scored the cardboard on one side and folded it into an "L" shape, and then stapled the short leg of the "L" to the ceiling and the long side to the fan box.)

All that remains is to wire the motor for regular household current (120 volts), cut the sheet rock inlet hole, and install the automatic louvers. This particular fan is controlled by a pull chain and has two speeds, but wall mount controllers are available.

To begin enjoying the joys of your cooler seasons, turn on the whole house fan, open windows in living areas or bedrooms to control air flow. If we only open windows on the shaded side of our home, we are usually comfortable inside the house using the whole house fan alone in temperatures up to 85 degrees.

Considerations:

before you cut into your ceiling, be sure you have enough attic room above the fan (the attic space above my hallways was blocked where roof supports joined the ceiling joists)
direct drive fans are reported to be somewhat more noisy than belt drive fans. However, direct drive fans are not prone to the belt noise of some belt driven fans.
if you are not comfortable with 120 volt connections, hire an electrician for this part
a 30x30 inch whole house fan operating on high requires about 7 sq. feet of exhaust vent from your attic. You may have to add a bit of exterior venting in the form of passive gable or rooftop vents. Don't forget to calculate in the area of soffit vents under the eaves and ridgeline vents on the roof, if you have them. (Note: for exit vent calculations, screening over vents reduces air flow by about half the area). Ignore this warning and you may blow down a weak section of ceiling when you over-pressurize the attic--I did, fortunately it was in the garage and easy to repair.

A bit odd, but it works:

I mentioned that whole house fans are usually installed in hallways, but we couldn't find a place inside the house where it was easy to get to from above and below. So we installed our whole house fan in the attached garage. Of course, the connecting door has to be open between the house and the garage for the fan to work.

Advantages of installing in the garage:

less noisy
usually no itchy blown-in insulation over the garage to fool with
with AC on and the house buttoned up, the whole house fan vents and cools the garage while I'm working on a project
removes paint and varnish fumes from garage
removes heat from parked cars and vents it out the attic
with AC on in the house and the garage bay door open, the whole house fan will force super heated air out of the attic and replace it with cooler air from the garage, reducing the load on my AC system (my ducting is in the attic).

Disadvantages of installing in the garage:

door open between garage and house. We use a pet gate to keep the dogs in the house and out of dangerous substances in the garage.
mice can crawl into the house through the pet gate (this has not happened yet, and in any event, our three cairn terriers would count a mouse in the house as a bonus, not a disadvantage. The seem to recognize this and sleep in shifts watching the gate at night, hopeful for a critter incursion)

We love laying in bed together on a cool fall night, snuggled together under our comforter. We listen to the splashy fountain outside our window and the nocturnal sounds of nature being drawn into our bedroom on the breeze from our whole house fan.

Black Gold Booster

2007-08-30T19:21:00.000-04:00

Yet another letter from the Mouseherder to Newsweek:

Thank you for publishing Fareed Zakaria's interview with National Petroleum Council chairman Lee Raymond. I say this for two reasons.

First, it is enlightening to know that the man who killed the alternative energy program at Exxon is also chair of President Bush's Alternative Energy Committee. No wonder this administration has made such poor progress on the topic of energy independence and alternative fuels for this nation.

Second, I want to point out the extremely self-serving industry position highlighted by Mr. Raymond's comments and the report of his council when contrasted against the independent (and less rosy) July 2007 assessment of The International Energy Agency's (IEA) titled: /Medium-Term Oil Market Report.

My only wish is that Zakaria had done more research on this subject before the interview and confronted Mr. Raymond with the true state of energy production, use and in-ground resources left in the world.

What if Global Warming is not real? Let's Pretend...

2007-08-29T12:55:00.000-04:00

This is a copy of a Letter to the Editor the Mouseherder wrote to Newsweek.

I take exception to the exceedingly narrow scope demonstrated by both Sharon Begley (the Truth About Denial) and Robert Samuelson (Greenhouse Simplicities). If this were just a debate about global warming and human agency in climate change, I'd be less concerned. However, Newsweek has totally missed the underlying grassroots corporate, religious and citizen movements converging on the questions of climate change, energy independence, one's duty for stewardship of God's living gift, and a parent and grandparent's desire to turn over not only a sustainably run planet but also a sustainable run economy as well.

Neither article asks this most important question: "What is the down side to acting as though climate change is real, that human agency in global warming is confirmed, and that we as a nation can do something about it?" After careful study my answer is: there are not many downsides; even if, in the end, we are wrong about our ability to effect global warming at all. In fact, we will only gain a stronger more diverse and cleaner economy with more job; we will get well funded research into alternative energy; conservation, and carbon sequestration; we will have cleaner air and water; and we could prevent the probability that our children and grandchildren will have to fight needless and endless wars over a nonrenewable and disappearing resource like oil (isn't it a little crazy to be funding both sides of the War On Terror because we have this addiction to cheap oil?). The truth is, there is a looming energy crisis not only in China, not just in the United States, but worldwide, and we should prepare ourselves for it.

Mr. Samuelson needs to rethink his proposed raising of the gasoline tax and instead support:

1. legislation removing all subsidies from the oil, gas, and coal industries and allowing the free market to find its natural price level for those products (given the likely resulting true cost of gasoline, I've seen estimates of $5-7/gallon, automotive CAFE standards will take care of themselves as drivers will then make rational choices about transportation. People will drive--or ride--what they can afford, once the government stops distorting the market price by making everyone subsidize waste). Those subsides and tax credits should be redirected to carbon sequestration research, making alternative energy affordable, and making Plug-in Electric Hybrid Vehicles a reality (which would recharge on the mostly wasted energy generated by utilities overnight).

2. strike from the tax code the provisions that allow business tax write-offs for vehicles over 6,000 lbs. GVW. This provision was intended to help ranchers, farmers and tradesmen like plumbers, but instead has been roundly abused in every sector of business to write off large gas guzzling SUVs as company cars for executives and salesmen alike.

3. Pouring massive tax credits into nationwide energy conservation efforts for utilities, individuals and businesses. In a country where gasoline consumption alone has soared 15% per year for a decade (and electrical demands even more), it is a fools errand to try to build our way to energy sufficiency on dwindling supplies of carbon resources. Instead, Congress should mandate public utilities to launch immediate conservation and alternative energy development programs, create services programs among their business and residential customers to reduce demand and then reward the utilities, home owners and businesses for their successes.

Last year our family knocked 30% off of our gasoline and utility bills with very little effort, little expense and no pain. This year, we're really working at it. Despite what Vice President Chaney thinks, this is not some weird tree-hugger fantasy. Every dollar saved through conservation is a dollar in your pocket and while we may not be able to save our way to self sufficiency, conservation is a more rational position to start from than building more energy capacity into a wasteful system.

Corporations from Goldman-Sachs to GE to Wal-Mart who have seriously studied the energy future of the nation and are adjusting not only their portfolios, but also their practices and products to position themselves to take advantage of the new energy economy. This nation should do the same. Energy Independence is Homeland Security, but it's much, much more as well. It is a means of securing a rational future for those who come after us.

Sock'em

2007-08-27T10:26:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in an early morning breakfast meeting with a potential client, noshing pastries around one of those itty-bitty glass cocktail tables in the hotel lobby, when I looked down at my ankle crossed over my knee.

I was embarrassed to see at least 3-inches of my somewhat hairy but all too fish-belly-white calf shining out beyond the cuff, the sock gathered around my ankle like an old snake skin. I don't know if the client noticed, but I sure felt self conscious and awkward for the rest of the meeting. To make things only slightly worse, when I glanced down at the other foot I realized that I had dressed with one short blue sock and one medium length black.

Cheap socks in a $400 suit ruined the image I was trying to project and ruined my presentation because I became self conscious.

I didn't get the work, but I did fix the problem. I went home and took stock of my sock collection:

24 pair of socks + 5 socks with no matching mate
short black socks
short brown socks
short blue socks
long over the calf beige socks
medium black socks
medium brown socks
one pair Argyle socks
one pair Christmas novelty socks

(I didn't count the white athletic socks or the white footlets that go with my--euphemistically named--"running" shoes.)

This is crazy, I thought. Who cares what kind of socks a 54 year old guy wears as long as you don't have to look at his calves?

So I took all the "dress" socks, put them in a bag, put the bag in the car and drove to J.C. Penney's where I bought eight 3-pair packages of reinforced toe and heal, over-the-calf, basic black ribbed socks.

Splurge a bit and get the the cotton/stretch nylon/spandex blend for long life and calf hugging abilities (cheap socks will eventually stretch out and fall down, so buy quality:
It's the cheap man who pays the most

No more pairing socks after laundry
No more matching colors
No more matching styles
No more pulling up short socks
No more exposed fish-belly white calves
No more sock problems, period

Look at the socks on the next homeless guy you see, odds are they're too short and miss-matched because I dropped that bag of old socks off at the Salvation Army drop box on the way home

Life's too short to worry about socks.

It's more than Ecological, it's important!

2007-08-24T07:15:00.000-04:00

This is a copy of a letter the Mouseherder wrote to the editor of the Virginia Pilot this week. It is in response to the several anti-global warming articles published in the VP. Mostly, though, it is a reaction to those of us in the ecologocal/energy independence/stewardship of God's gift always portrayed a leftwing kooks?

It is impossible to respond comprehensively to the lengthy attack editorials on global warming run in Friday and Saturday's Virginian Pilot in the alloted 150 word limit, but allow me to hit the high points.

First of all, global warming is not the new "secular religion" (worn code for godless and democratic, I suppose). Religions are a fixed and unchanging polar star of the faithful. Global warming, on the other hand, is based on science, on evolving scientific understanding, better (and better refined) scientific data and ever more sophisticated technology. There is and always will be debate in science; it is the nature of the beast. But that does not mean that the underlying understanding of global warming is under any significant cloud. Indeed, those whose claim "the science is not settled" almost never then go on to address the areas where the science is unsettled. Instead, they launch into their own canard against some aspect of global warming, usually attacking the well understood areas of the field as if it were unsettled science.

Second, if the tactic of arguing "the science is not in" or "the data are conflicted" or "there is significant scientific debate" seems familiar, it is. Think back to the tobacco wars and the anti-smoking movement. This is straight out of the corporate tobacco play book. Let me be clear, there is no significant scientific disagreement about the basic science or observations of global warming.

Third, there are significant advantages for the United States to acting as if global warming is real, that humans have made significant contributions to the acceleration of global warming, and that we can actually do something about it, even if, in the end, we are totally wrong about it all.

Despite what your Op-Ed authors opined, global warming and the sustainability movement are not just an ecological movement. They are much, much more:

It is a movement of religious devotion for a growing number of congregations of all faiths--from How Many Jews Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb? (no kidding, look it up) to evangelical Christians to Muslims to Buddhists. It's about concern about our stewardship of God's gift of this planet, His environment, and His resources.
Is is a movement of parents and grandparents who are concerned about leaving a sustainable economy, a sustainable ecosystem, and a sustainable lifestyle to their children and grandchildren (not to mention clean air and pure water, both a particular concern for Virginians since every open body of water in the commonwealth has measurable amounts of mercury from coal fired plants upwind of us).
It is a movement of corporations from Goldman-Sachs to GE to Wal-Mart who have seriously studied the energy future of the nation and are adjusting not only their portfolios, but also their practices and products to position themselves to take advantage of the new economy.
It is a movement of labor leaders, business owners, and workers who see new (and unexportable) economic opportunities in renewable energy, energy conservation, and sustainability.
It is a movement of the citizens of more than 250 American cities (and growing), including Virginia Beach, and several states who have pledged to honor the Koyoto Protocols, even though the President and Senate of the United States would not ratify the treaty.
Finally, it is a movement of American Patriots who understand that even now, through our over dependence on foreign oil and unsustainable use of petroleum products, that we are funding both sides of the war on terror; the cost of our military and defending the nation on the one hand and the payments we make to countries from which terrorism springs on the other hand, by paying $80 to $100 per barrel of oil. (I know, most of America's imported oil comes from Canada, but research which royal families and Arab petroleum companies have major holdings in those Canadian stocks, too.)

Today's total world production of oil has been steady or in slight decline at about 300 billion barrels of oil per year for over a decade. During that same decade, American use of gasoline alone increased 10-15% per year. Substantial new finds of petroleum are reported unlikely, existing untapped reserves--such as ANWR or the fields off of the coast Virginia, California and Florida--are insufficient to meet future demands for long. And here's the kicker: if China maintains its current rate of economic growth, by mid-century that nation alone will have energy demands equal to today's total worldwide oil production, not counting the needs of India, Europe, the rest of Asia or the United States.

I for one, do not want our children and grandchildren fighting endless wars over a nonrenewable and shrinking commodity like oil. But we can win by changing the game. We can change the game by taking advantage of this unique nexus of interests--environmentalists, believers, families, future-minded corporations, and patriots--to substantially reduce America's dependence on carbon producing energy through conservation and economy, through support of alternative energy and research, through smarter design and smarter use.

King CONG--Coal, Oil, Nuclear, Gas--will put up a fight, just like big tobacco did, probably more of one. They'll use the same dirty tricks, run out the same tired arguments and trot out the same dubious mouthpieces that tobacco used. But we will not be deterred.

We do this for our God. We do this for our children. We do this for the future of our nation. We do this for our earth. And we'll do it one light bulb and one family at a time, if we have to.

1st Lt. Pete Hegseth, Neocon Fraud Part II

2007-07-11T07:17:00.000-04:00

but Lt. Hegseth doesn’t tell the whole story, does he?

Like we’ve won the war, every battle, but we are losing the occupation. Or that never in modern history has there been a successful occupation of an Arab country by a western power or that the only reason Israel is hanging on is because she has got us at her back and a few nukes.

Like the now friendly warlords in Anbar fighting AQ and the Taliban are minority Sunni and likely to turn on us as soon as we’ve helped them accomplish their goals.

Or that our allies, Turkey, has declared there will not be a Kurdish state on its border and is massing troops along the Turkey/Iraq border already.

Or particularly that regardless of how much extra blood and treasure we spend trying to buy the princes of the greenzone a bit of time, that they’ve made absolutely no substantive progress on actually forming a working country or finding a way to defend themselves.

What 1st Lt Pete Hegseth of VFF needs to do is abandon his part-time National Guard post and join the regular fighting Army, the folks who have made 3 or 4 or 5 deployments to Iraq and where company grade officers like Hegseth are leaving in droves and are in extremely short supply. Let him fight and die for his beliefs like a real soldier, instead of standing on the sidelines writing articles.

BTW, Hegseth and VVF are a bit of ringer. Check out him and his organization at www.sourcewatch.org. Vets for Freedom is a completely GOP owned and run 527 front organization and has, as far as anyone can determine, very little active duty military membership (VFF won’t releasea list of members, but their 527 reports show donors and contributors are mostly republicans loyalists).

I heard a radio interview the other day with a Lt. Col. His assessment: “right force, right mix, too little, too late.”

Visitors

2007-07-10T18:36:00.000-04:00

You'd expect more visitors than we see in our graveyard. Sure, Easter and Christmas, Mother's and Father's Day are big visiting days in the boneyard, but other than Toddler's Row there's never much traffic in the yard, which makes the regulars standout.

Without fail at 0630, rain or shine, an older gent struts into the graveyard, proud and purposeful, erect in a stooped sort of way, trying to retain that old military bearing despite his age, gravity, and, one suspects, arthritis. He's always crisp, probably a retired Marine or an Army lifer. He tends a single grave, bending at the knees to to sweep away the dead grass, then stands erect, removes his cap and prays...or maybe he just remembers. He's never long, though. It's only a minute or so before he about faces and marches across the yard and through the gates.

My wife and I make up stories about some people we see, like the older guy in the white convertible with a much younger blonde riding shotgun. They whizzed in one Sunday morning with the top down, all tanned and fit.

"I guess they're going by to show the old dead wife his new car and spouse", I said.

One visitor we can't figure out, however, is the younger girl in the black over silver PT Cruiser convertible. Every weekday morning around 6 am she enters the graveyard and just drives aimless, looping circles on the roads around and through the graves. She never stops, never takes the same route twice, and then, like she'd finally made up her mind about something, she heads out for the boulevard. Cruiser girl's been doing this for several weeks now and I'm getting ready to go stop her and ask what she's up to.

On the other hand, maybe she can be my private Suzanne Sommers in a white Tbird.

I like the biker best of all the visitors. A big guy with a black beard and one of those black Nazi-looking helmets riding a real Harley hog thunders into the cemetery every now and then, always around sunset. You can tell him from the note of his pipes. Even inside our house we feel the earth tremble as he racks his pipes and shuts down in an expensive part of the graveyard.

His ritual is aways the same. He always brings a big pizza in a flat box and a six-pack of Corona, and, sitting next to a grave, he eats a single slice of pizza and drinks a single beer with his buddy. When he's finished, he boxes up the pizza and leaves it and the beer on the grave.

Years ago, I spent 4 years in the Western Pacific on the island of Guam, where America's day begins. There was some flavor of Buddhist temple near our house that I visited now and again. The temple catered to the needs of Japanese families making pilgrimage to Guam to honor the fallen family members from WWII and was kind of a mixed use Taoist, Buddhist, whatever establishment. The monk was affable and enjoyed the occasional visitor. His gardens were beautiful and restful. He had a 3-legged dog.

Inside the temple itself, always awash with the smoke of dozens of burning incense sticks, worshipers bring food and drink to leave on the alter for ..."the gods" the spirits of the dead? Somebody. I learned from the monk that the gods ate the essence of the offering, leaving the physical behind. While I never saw him eating or drinking items from the alter, I always suspected that he did. He never looked like he had much to eat: scrawny.

So when the Harley fires up and after the biker has rumbled out of sight through the gates, it's my cue to hop over the fence and retrieve our dinner, I say to the gods or the dead guy or maybe both or maybe no one, "hey, you gonna finish that?"

I hope the gods got all the essence out of that pizza and 5-pack of Corona.

Michael Moore's Sicko

2007-07-08T08:20:00.000-04:00

Maybe we should run Michael Moore for President. I went to see Sicko yesterday. Even though it was 5pm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon there were a couple of hundred people at Sicko--in Virginia Beach! a Navy town and the GOP's Elephant Graveyard. People were actually applauding and hooting. Interesting mix, oldsters and younger people. Not a lot in between.

I thought it was quite good and quite thought provoking. I'm trying to image why we couldn't have organized universal health care in the US. Perhaps it's time we start taking seriously the

"in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"

part of the Constitution. Of course, you only have to walk into any county ER to see that we have a sort of unorganized universal health care going right now, for which we pay through the whazoo locally.

Stats don't lie. By virtually every measure (available through the CDC and WHO), there are many countries with much healthier people who live longer. It's not like we're not paying for health care; we just don't seem to be getting much for what we do pay for. I see no reason cradle to grave health care could not be a birthright of every American.

I think, particularly with an aging population, that Moore has hit on something. What could actually be more freeing than to have the burden of worry over health care and health insurance lifted from our shoulders?

Moore is right on another of his points, too. Americans are sheeple, chained to systems that keep us enslaved. One of my favorite philosophers Jean Jacques Rousseau said, "man was born free, yet everywhere he is in chains". The chains he was referring to were the chains of ideas and traditions and systems that keep man down.

Finally, Moore is right about our government not being nearly as afraid of us as it should be, sheeple.

Energy Use

2007-07-02T10:13:00.001-04:00

Vets for Freedom--Neocon Fraud

2007-06-27T07:06:00.000-04:00

Lots of buzzz about a piece in the Washington Post called Reality Check for the Antiwar Crowd By Army National Guard 1st Lt. Pete Hegseth, fronting for his group Vets for Freedom, who writes to support the administration's actions in the War in Iraq.

Pete even had a great appearance on the nationally syndicated NPR Diane Rehm Show yesterday, but something didn't seem right. I mean he had a good story, spent a year in Iraq with Army National Guard, saw the good that would come from our involvement, wanted to do something to support the war effort and his buddies in the field so he and a group of vets started his group Vets for Freedom. Unfortunately, the usually competent WAMU staff and the even more competent WaPo got reverse Swift Boated by Pete Hegseth.

According to Source Watch the organization Vets for Freedom is a GOP front organization run a well known GOP PR firm The Herald Group and involves former White House spokesman Taylor Gross.

Pete Hegseth is not all he seems to be either. Again, according to Source Watch, 1st Lt Hegsweth's day job is as a policy consultant at the Center for the American University as well as the conservative think tank Manhattan Institution. While I honor Pete's service to the country, both WAMU and the WaPo should have been upfront with their listeners and readers about Mr. Hegseth's political associations and neocon roots, since that's how he earns his crust of bread.

Diane Rehm got reverse Swift Boated.

Toddler's Row

2007-06-22T17:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I guess there is one downside to having a graveyard behind the house: Toddler's Row is right behind our fence. We seldom see the burial, but live with the aftermath for months, even years. Some families come every week, a few every day, a couple of women come several times a day for months on end. Often late at night ghostly wailing sets the dogs afire with agitation when the windows are open.

Men come too, but almost always with their wives', seldom alone. After awhile, though, the men all begin to wear their "shopping husband" faces as they mill about. I've gone so far as thinking about putting in a husband bench, like at the malls, for the men to sit upon and to wait. You can see it in the men's eyes; they're wondering the same thing on their side of the fence that we're wondering on our side of the fence; when will she get over it? Will she ever get over it?

Actually, it's not true that men don't come alone, but it's not like when they come with their wives. One guy came by himself last weekend. We were pruning the back the new growth on the Azaleas along our side of the fence when he popped out of his red truck, leaving the door open and the engine idling. He was on his cell phone the entire time he inspected the tiny grave, popped back into his truck and left. Guess he can tell his wife he came, maybe he was inspecting to be sure everything was right for the Sunday morning pilgrimage.

There are positives to having Toddler's Row near the house. Parents often leave cupcakes on the graves, which our dogs enjoy.

Life on the Edge of Other People's Graves

2007-06-22T12:16:00.001-04:00

Nope, Mouseherder's feelin' fine. But the Rat's Nest is nestled in on the edge of a cemetery, which creeps a lot of people out. Not us, though, they're good neighbors and nobody's gonna build a condo behind our house.

We think it's pretty kewl, in fact. And so do the dogs. The graveyard has been alive on our morning walks this spring. The dog's jump rabbits and squirrels to chase nearly every day (all too fast for them, though. What they need is a squirrel on crutches). The dead people don't seem to mind the pups thundering over their graves, but their relatives do--the reason we're out of there by 7 am.

Life, as they say, is for the living.

I wonder if dog pee stains white marble?

Natural Round-Up

2007-06-22T11:46:00.000-04:00

natural round-up from Mother Earth News

1 qt vinegar
2 TBLS canola oil
1 TBLS dish soap

Put in sprayer

Organic Insecticidal Soap

2007-06-22T11:40:00.000-04:00

Natural Insecticide Soap from Mother Earth News

1" Fels-Naptha Soap
1 qt water
Boil to dissolve; put in lidded jar

1 tbl mixture : 1 qt water
1/4 cup rubbing alcohol

Put in sprayer

pour up a geriatric screwdriver

2007-06-22T10:37:00.001-04:00

1 oz. vodka
6 oz. water
1 Tablespoon orange flavored Metamucil

Two or three of those in the morning should get things movin’.

Texas Caviar

2007-06-22T10:32:00.000-04:00

3 cans black-eyed peas (rinse & wash away the juice)
1 large can black olives
1 jar green olives (the broken “salad olives” are fine)
1 med white or red onion
5 stalks of celery
6 med carrots
4 med jalapenos
1 large green bell pepper (or red or yellow)
4 cloves garlic
salt & pepper
olive oil
apple cider vinegar

Wash & rinse canned peas and place in large bowl. Chop all remaining ingredients to about the size of the peas. Salt & pepper to taste. Add vinegar and oil. Refrigerate overnight.

We eat it bowls of it, but can be used as a relish or served on crackers.

They Knew What They Were Getting Into

2007-06-22T10:27:00.000-04:00

The stupidest comment I hear in defense of the Iraqi war is that soldiers “knew what they were signing up for” when they joined the military. While true on its face, it is also disingenuously false because it only looks at the personal responsibility side of the equation, a favorite hobby horse of the far right.

What these commentators overlook, I think intentionally, is the bargain our volunteer citizen soldiers have made with the leaders of our nation, not to mention the citizens of our great nation. In the decades after the Vietnam war the understood but unspoken bargain was this:

I will serve you. I will protect you and our nation. I will sacrifice for you. While you sleep, I will stand lonely vigil. I will willingly walk my post on foreign soils so your children are not forced to.

In return I ask only this: that you do not waste my sacrifice in foolish endeavors; that you stand behind me as you lead me; that, when all is said & done, I can be as proud of your conduct, restraint & judgment as you will be of mine.

We, as a country, have failed every man & woman in uniform.