Bringing A Knife To A Gunfight

I’ve Met The Enemy, and He is Me


I honored my commitment to be standing in front of the pool house yesterday morning at the appointed time. Actually, I was there at ten minutes before 8 AM.

Surprisingly, everyone was on schedule for a change. I just hate working for free and having to wait on all of the paid people to get there fifteen minutes late, which is usually what happens.

Miss Property Manager was second to arrive. I think that I’ve finally gained her confidence, although I only trust about half of what she tells me right now. (More on that later.)

Being the self-important smart ass that I am, I’m carefully leaking certain Condo Nazi “political” information to her on a “confidential basis” just to see where it ends up going. The good news is that right now I find that she will listen to me when I tell her something important, and that’s all that really matters.

As long as she manages to keep the swimming pool clean and the Condo Nazi’s and their inane rules off my back and away from my grill, I’m happy as a Pig in fresh mud.

Any way, Miss Property Manager told me that she called the mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner Condo Board President to invite him to attend our little meeting, but he was out of town.

Good.

He’s continually a pain in my ass and he knows zero about these buildings except for eating, sleeping, and taking a crap in one of the units for the past twenty years or so.

Then she said that he told her that he (the mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner Condo Board president) didn’t want me to attend the meeting.

Maybe I’m just confused…I thought as committee chairman I was IN CHARGE of managing issues when it comes to property maintenance. The mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner lovely gentleman asked me to head the “maintenance committee”, but now he is lamenting me wanting to “run everything” when it comes to maintenance?

Maybe I’m better suited to chairing the swimming pool committee or the geriatrics committee or something.

After the arrivals and introductions, we proceeded to spend an hour and one half ambling over the property with a civil engineer that Miss Property Manager had invited to give us a quote on doing a site topography survey and producing a revised site rain water drainage plan.

I’ve been laughing in my hat ever since the last board meeting when they decided to go the consulting engineer route.

You see, our condos are situated on a flat piece of dirt about four feet above sea level at high tide. The site topography map wouldn’t have any lines on it unless you used a contour increment of three inches or so.

The real problem is that when we get twenty inches of rain in fifteen minutes, some of the old ladies have been getting their orthopedic shoes pumps wet walking to their SUV’s in the parking lot. A couple of ground floor condos have actually had water enter through the back doors when we’re in monsoon season.

I tried to tell the board last year that all we needed to do was get a contractor to bring a half dozen Mexicans laborers and a tractor with a blade and backhoe in here and spend two or three days cleaning out the swales and existing drainage routes that have been allowed to silt in and grow full of grass over the past thirty years.

But nooooooooooo, if doing nothing won’t solve the problem, they decide to turn 180 degrees around and run out and hire a Professional Engineer.

It turns out that Mr. PE, the civil engineer, was about as enthusiastic as I was about the situation. I got him to admit that the cost of the topography survey alone would run in the TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars, and then we’d have to pay for his design and drawings, and then we’d have to hire a contractor to implement his design…

and then if he was going to guarantee his work we’d have to pay one of his guys to stand around on our site each and every hour of each and every day that work was going to be done.

So much for having a new roof this year, but we’d have the fanciest DIRT on Saint Simons Island when the dust finally settled.

After Mr. PE left, I had a final conversation with Miss Property Manager and another member of the board that is a professional home builder. I reiterated my idea to simply cut out the existing sod, re-grade the contours of the dirt, and replace the sod.

Then we’d step back and see what happens in the next rain storm. I figure that for $5,000 we can move a hell of a lot of dirt, and it's clear to me personally that I could manage the project and make a major improvement if they would just let me.

Now I suspect that as usual, now MY idea is THEIR idea, until if and when it fails. Then and only then I'll own it again.

Oh well, at least they can’t fire me, and they can’t cut my pay because I’m already working for free.

I have to be the poorest philanthropist on the entire planet.

Official “Unofficial” Recognition

Turn Your Head And Cough…


I'm thinking that I absolutely MUST be getting better when it comes to practicing my journalism skills.

Take the issues behind this recent posting, Adding Apples And Oranges, where I took to task a Washington DC “Think-Tank” smarty pants, Mr. Anthony Cordesman, whom managed to get his thoughts published on the LA Times Op-Ed page last weekend.

OK, I admit that I did write here on the blog that he was wrong, wrong, wrong in his analysis of the latest Department of Defense report to Congress dated May 31, 2006.

But…

I also tendered this polite text directly to the LA Times:

While I respect Mr. Anthony Cordesman’s position as an analyst with CSIS, his credentials make his flawed numerical and logical analysis of sections of last month’s DOD report to Congress titled Measuring Stability and Security In Iraq even more shocking.

In opening his discussion, he states that only 46%, not 77% as published in the DOD report, of the Iraqi population voted in last December’s election. This assertion has two critical flaws.

First, he assumes that all Iraqis over the age of 14 are eligible to vote, which is patently false. Secondly, he omits the entire 2.05 million registered Iraqi voters living in exile from his calculations.

Having verified that CIA’s population estimate of 26.8 million, but instead using UNICEF’s estimate of 13.3 million Iraqis aged 18 and over, it is quite easy to calculate the total number of potential voters to be 15.35 million.

Based on the DOD report’s figure of 12.2 million actual voters, one can easily do the math and calculate a number (79%) very close to the DOD’s more conservative published figure of 77%. I believe that this variation is hardly something worthy of opening an editorial by throwing around words like “fundamentally false.”

To further quote Mr. Cordesman’s own words, I suggest, without dissecting the balance his editorial, that it is HE, not the DOD, that is “simply incompetent” in his analysis and reporting of the conditions in Iraq.

Quite an eloquent dissertation…don’t you think?

Well…here’s Mr. Cordesman’s personal E-mail response to my commentary today:

The report clearly states on pages 3 and 6 that "77% of the population voted." It never goes on to qualify what it means by voter turnout beyond that point.

There are many areas where someone can guess what should have been said. Should have doesn't count.

Perhaps ironically, I generally agree with the strategy the US is trying to pursue. It is the quality with which it is executing the strategy, and its reporting that I find to be the problem.

Tony Cordesman

So this highly paid so-called "expert" has to hide his "politcal" rational and commentary behind semantical "issues" as simple as the lack of the words "registered voters" or " elligable voters."

What complete and total CRAPPOLA.

Being the nice guy that I am, here is my (presumably) final rebuttal:

Mr Cordesman,

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my commentary on your Op-Ed piece in the LA Times...but...

You can't be serious however--defending your analysis on the belief that the DOD would actually assert that everyone alive in Iraq was eligible voter--that's ludicrous.

While I agree that the word "eligible" was omitted in their text, you have expanded what would reasonably be considered to be a typo or otherwise a language error into a gigantic purported lie or misstatement of mathematical facts.

I know that we're each entitled to our own opinions, but I don't believe that someone of your position should be writing such nonsense and using it as an opening argument to support your thesis in the pages of a major national newspaper.

The good news (excuse the pun) is that your writing was clearly identified as "opinion/editorial", not hard news.

Best Regards,

Virgil Rogers


So there you have it Ladies and Gentlemen, I challenge each and every single one of you to differentiate between my own intellectual, logical, and writing skills and that of these so-called “experts” employed by newspapers like the LA Times.

Now where’s my nice fat glass of ice, vodka, and cranberry?

AAAAHHHHHaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh…just as I suspected…

Sip....

Listening To The Voices

“…they’re telling me to stay home today and clean my guns…”


For those that don’t already get it, my subtitle is actually the punch line to one of my favorite politically incorrect jokes.

The joke involves some guy calling in to work and, having exhausted all of the standard excuses for being absent from his employment, he tells his boss that “the voices told him to stay home and clean his guns…”

What’s an employer to do when faced with the option(s)?

Can you say “postal”?

Any way, that’s not what I’m talking about this morning.

I find myself entirely frustrated with my moronic, self-serving, self important neighbors the lovely people that serve with me on our Condo Board of Directors.

Basically, I‘ve figured out what they (the board) are up to (or down to,) and they’re pissed off at me as a result. Since there is nothing else that they can do to me, they’ve chosen to launch petty anonymous assaults on our use of the property in an effort to cause discomfort and otherwise discredit me personally.

Last week I was told that I couldn’t have my barbeque grill on my front patio. “Twern’t allowed according to the ‘covenants’”, which I couldn’t have a copy of (the covenants) because “I ‘twern’t’ an ‘OWNER’”. And by the way, “they would be contacting the owner of our condo if we didn’t comply…”

Resisting the urge to bitch slap the insolent woman lovely young property manager’s assistant, I said “Fine, I’ll take care of it” as I held my temper in check.

What was interesting to me is that my Webber Kettle has happily resided on the corner of our front porch for at least 18 months without any commentary as to a violation of the sensibilities of the “Condo Nazi” codes.

It was only after my arrival on the board with criticisms that unexpectedly struck a bit close to home with certain useless imbeciles members of said board that our living standards became an issue.

This latest missive was delivered by the property management company’s newest employee—I’ll call her Miss Crappy Pants—in honor of her personality and demeanor.

Actually, her personality could more aptly be compared to that of…oh…I don’t know…possibly…a BRICK?

This assault follows on the heels of the denunciation of my installation of my lovely flamingo and parrot lighting on our screened sun porch last month.

As a result of the latest directive, I had my grill and associated Rubbermaid grilling supply storage locker relocated to our narrow back patio within a half hour of our conversation. I can hardly wait to stand with smoke filled eyes, balancing on one foot, while attempting to handle my next load of grilled beer butt chickens.

Regarding the “Condo Nazi’s” prior efforts…I only need one or two words:

Can you say “ineptitude” or possibly “willful malfeasance”?

Here’s the real problem that I’ve uncovered in my unofficial official capacity as head of the so-called “Maintenance Committee” of Sea Palms Colony.

Again, as an executive summary, I only need three words:

“Everything’s falling apart.”

How simple is that?

Ok, it’s really not that bad, but this place is over thirty years old and has gone from a moderately priced development on a rural coastal island, to a highly coveted property worth about $15 million dollars on an island with ever increasing population density.

The only problem is that until the past few years, when the descendants of the original owners and new buyers started coming in, maintenance was a sideline issue—just so much eyewash on the agenda of the “tea party” annual board meetings.

The board loves to pound their chests and tout their six figure escrow balance and the fact that they keep the annual association fees at a constant level. The only problem is, they should have started increasing the fees each year—five or ten years ago, because they need three or four times as much money as the have in the bank to handle the roof, site drainage, and patio structural issues that I’m finding about now that I’ve started looking at the property details.

At the last board meeting the president basically waived me off and irreverently dismissed my comments, just prior inviting me to excuse myself from the meeting after wasting 75 minutes of my time enduring mindless “Roberts Rules of Order” BS and motions to spend $2,400 planting new palm trees.

Now they want me to meet with their civil engineer this morning to walk the property to address the site drainage issues.

Fine, I’ll be there with bells on.

I’ve been beating that drum (site drainage) for 26 of the 27 months we’ve lived here and I’m probably only one of two people on the board that knows how to use a transit and read a topographical drawing.

The only problem is that we need to buy a new ROOF to keep the rain out of the buildings, but I’m afraid that the cost of the site improvements to make that rain water run off of the property is greater than the amount that we currently have in the bank.

I emphatically stated that FACT in a meeting 18 months ago, but no one listened.

Here’s the bottom line. For the past five or ten years our condo board has been populated by people that are very old and know that their time here in these condos, if not on this planet, is quite limited. Their strategy has been to vote to limit their out of pocket costs to a minimum, knowing that they are either going to buy the farm die else move into assisted living before the bills come due.

Thus the low bank balance and ensuing fiscal crisis.

I have in the past lamented the fact that we might have missed a good deal by not purchasing our condo when we moved here in 2004. Now I am certain that I am glad that we didn’t buy and hold it past about right now because the proverbial feces is about to strike the fan blades and the result is going to be a SUBSTANTIAL increase in annual condo fees in addition to a SUBSTANTIAL assessment to cover the existing cash shortfall.

The condo board is definitely going to have a shit fit regret their intimidation campaign and failure to heed my warnings when I get through delivering the written results of my independent investigation to all 48 owners. The ground is already shaking under my feet.

If you don’t hear back from me soon, someone please call 911.

Poisoned By Moroccan Food

I Think I’m Gonna Explode


I’ve always been fascinated with the Northern African country of Morocco.

Forget places like London, Paris, and Rome; if I had the time and money I’d head straight to Portugal, and then when I was through drinking all of the Port wine I could consume I would catch a commuter plane or ship and head down to Casablanca.

Then I’d hang out with all the other Bogart and Bergman fans at “Ricks” sipping Sherry & Cognac while listening to Sam’s replacement pianist “playing it again.”

Unfortunately, since Morocco is something like 97% Muslim, I think it best to keep my white Redneck butt here stateside for the time being. Not to worry, however, because I can always cook Moroccan food here at home and pretend that I’m looking out at the Mediterranean or the far side of the Atlantic.

That’s just what we did last night.

Take a look at this recipe for Moroccan Chicken with Apricot Couscous and Green Olive Sauce in Flatbread.

I cooked my own version last night, and let me tell you—I ate more at one sitting that I have in months if not years. The whole condo smells like a Moroccan Bazzar (without the goat & camel dung) from the unique aroma of the spices involved.

The spice list includes cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, cumin seed, fennel seed, coriander, sweet paprika, kosher salt, and brown sugar. You put everything but the salt and sugar in a skillet and heat it up to bring out the oils, then after it cools off a little you run everything through a spice mill to grind it up.

Instead of a whole chicken, I took some boneless chicken breasts and coated them with the spice mixture, then wrapped them up around lemon wedges, diced garlic, and cilantro; then pinned them all together with toothpicks and baked it in the oven.

The couscous has apricots, almonds, mint, cilantro, and green onions all mixed together with kosher salt and lemon juice.

The Green Olive sauce has Shallots, parsley, sherry, rice vinegar, and olive oil pureed smooth, smooth, smooth in a food processor.

I didn’t have time to bake the Lavosh (flat bread) myself and our Catholic/Protestant grocer didn’t even have any Pita bread available, so we had to settle for some pretty good Tomato Basil bread that was fresh baked yesterday afternoon.

We sat down to eat about 8:15 PM.

I was in a food induced coma by 9:00 PM, thus the lack of posting before midnight.

I tell you this, if you spend your entire life eating basic meat and potato dishes and never venture offshore to sample other countries’ cuisine, at least in your home and restaurant cooking and dining, you are missing one of life’s greatest pleasures.

I’m working up a recipe for Lavosh bread and I guarantee you that we’ll be eating Moroccan Chicken again this weekend.

Stop by about 7 PM, if you will…

Time To Bake The Biscuits My Brains Out

Still Working On My First Case Of Skin Cancer


I'm forced to go to the pool this morning, because the sun is shining brilliantly and there's a law or something to that effect.

I hate it...well...actually not.

I feel a good rant coming on, but I guess that it will just have to wait.

Bartender...SPF 30 for everyone...on my tab...

So What If I WANT To Be A Giant Lardass?

More Government Meddling


It’s been a little while, but I think that my head is actually coming back up to speed this morning. My regular readers know what I mean by “up to speed”—what I call “orbital rotational velocity.”

Take a look at this Washington Times article:

The federal government wants smaller portion sizes at restaurants and nutritional information listed on menus.

As Americans eat more food away from home, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday the nation's 900,000 restaurants needed to take the lead in cutting fat and the agency laid out ways to help people manage their intake of calories.

"We must take a serious look at the impact these foods are having on our waistlines," said Penelope Slade Royall, director of the health promotion office at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dammit, but I want the Department of Health and Human Services to keep their red ink stained, paper shuffling, stupid assed socialist elitist hands off of the restaurant menus.

What ever happened to something called consumer choice?

Yes, I agree that the portions at places like Outback Steakhouse (where I generally refuse to eat) actually are HUMONGOUS, but I also have to ask: What the heck business is it of the GOVERNMENT what size the pork chop or pile of “blooming onion” is on MY plate.

After all…it still is MY plate, isn’t it—at least as long as I continue to sit inside the restaurant?

And after all…I’m paying for the giant portion of FOOD on MY plate with MY MONEY, aren’t I.

By MY MONEY, I mean what MONEY that I have left over after the aforementioned GOVERNMENT—you the know—the GOVERNMENT that now wants to limit the amount of food on my plate—lets me keep AFTER TAXES.

Isn’t that special.

The GOVERNMENT, after taking MONEY out of my pocket for the past 30 years, now also wants to start taking the actual FOOD off of my table.

When will this kind of crap ever end—GOVERNMENT intervention—I mean?

Next thing you know, they'll be coming to your house and installing locks on the door of the oven and fridge with a bar code scanner that won't let you cook or other wise consume more than a predetermined number of calories each day.

Then the government will want to send auditors to your house and they'll fine you or put you in jail for eating too much or eating unapproved diets.

Screw this type of crap, is anyone but me going to speak up?

Adding Apples And Oranges

More Inept Political Editorializing


Until the NY Times Website decided to hide Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd behind an annual subscription fee, I could always count on at least one good rant each week dissecting the incomprehensible spewing of commentary based on incomplete and/or inaccurate facts and figures.

Paul Krugman was particularly prone to “cherry picking” his numbers from various incompatible and dissimilar sources in order to support whatever socialist or leftist topic he chose to write about on any given day.

I honestly believe that the NY Times made the decision to charge to read Krugman and his cohorts often nonsensical ravings in order to eliminate the bloggers criticisms. The Times basically got tired of having to print corrections and retractions. They even lost a Public Editor partially as a result of their journalistic blunders.

Now I’m forced to ramble around the internet to places like the LA Times in order to find fodder and a writer to deliver a good lambasting to every now and then. This morning’s subject is Anthony H. Cordesman’s opinion piece entitled “Give the Defense Department an F” found in this morning’s edition of the LA Times online.

Mr. Cordesman works for some Washington DC think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After doing a little snooping around I learned that it is run by former Georgia US Senator Sam Nunn, so it can’t be all bad. Although Mr. Nunn was a Democrat, he was a Democrat in the moderate Zell Miller model rather than a Kerry/Kennedy/Dean wild eyed liberal lunatic. He did Georgia a great deal of good in his twenty odd years of service, as I recall.

Any way…

Mr. Cordesman’s takes issue with the validity of the DOD’s latest report to Congress entitled Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq.

Predictably, I started scratching my head as I read the opening to the editorial because Tony jumps right in and says that the DOD is either lying or is incapable of doing math, so I pulled up a copy of the report from the internet and took a gander at it myself.

Just as I suspected, either Mr. Cordesman is yet another ignorant, biased, partisan jackass with a political axe to grind, else he just needs a set of new batteries in his calculator along with some improved reasoning skills.

Don’t the editors of ANY major news publication EVER bother to check the facts underlying fundamental assertions made by their OP-Ed writers?

Mr. Cordesman opens with this discussion:

IF THE UNITED STATES is to win in Iraq, it needs an honest and objective picture of what is happening there. The media and outside experts can provide pieces of this picture, but only the U.S. government has the resources and access to information to offer a comprehensive overview.But the quarterly report to Congress issued May 30 by the Department of Defense, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq," like the weekly reports the State Department issues on Iraq, is profoundly flawed. It does more than simply spin the situation to provide false assurances to lawmakers and the public. It makes basic analytical and statistical mistakes, fails to define key terms, provides undefined and unverifiable survey information and deals with key issues by omission. It deserves an overall grade of F.

The report provides a fundamentally false picture of the political situation in Iraq and of the difficulties ahead. It does not prepare Congress or the American people for the years of effort that will be needed even under "best-case" conditions nor for the risk of far more serious forms of civil conflict. Some of its political reporting is simply incompetent. For example, the report repeatedly states that 77% of the Iraqi population voted in the December 2005 election. Given that the CIA estimates that almost 40% of the population is 14 or younger, there is no conceivable way that 77% of the population could have voted. The report says 12.2 million voters turned out. The CIA estimates Iraq's population is 26.8 million. This means roughly 46% of the population voted.

It seemed very strange to me that the Department of Defense could be guilty of making such a fundamental error or tell an outright lie in a document delivered to Congress, so I did a little fact checking of my own.

It only took about fifteen minutes to verify the assertions that the Iraqi population is about 26.8 million and that 39.7% (10.63 million) of the Iraqi population is 14 years old or younger, but what exactly does that have to do with the price of eggs in China the percentage of eligible Iraqi VOTERS?

First, is Mr. Cordesman asserting that he believes that FIFTEEN year old kids had the right to cast a ballot in last December’s Iraqi election?

Second, what about the 2,050,000 registered Iraqi voters living in exile outside the country? Apparently he forgot them entirely in his analysis, and this error is substantially responsible for his flawed conclusions.

Finally, what I think Mr. Cordesman is tripping over is the lack of the words “eligible voters” in the DOD narrative, but I am at a loss as to why he could be thinking that they meant otherwise.

Doing a little more checking at the UNICEF web site I learned that they estimate that there are 13.5 million Iraqis under the age of 18, and that the median age (1/2 older and 1/2 younger) in Iraq is 19.7 years.

I couldn’t actually find online verification of the voting age, but based on our influence on the process and using the US suffrage as a model, I’d say that it is safe to assume that there were at LEAST 15.35 million eligible voters over the age of 17 in the election, so if 12.2 million actually voted, I calculate 12.2 divided by 15.35 to equal…drum roll please…

Seventy Nine Percent (79%)

The DOD says seventy seven percent (77%).

Hardly the gross misrepresentation that Mr. Anthony Cordesman would have us to believe it is, RIGHT?

So much for his opening argument.

I then suspected that the entire composition was full of crap and after reading through it a couple of times it is clear that his obviously biased, illogical commentary spirals downhill from here.

The far more serious problem, however, is the spin the report puts on the entire Iraqi political process. Political participation surely rose. But that wasn't because of acceptance of the new government or an embrace of a democratic political process; it reflected a steady sharpening of sectarian divisions, as Sunnis tried to make up for their decision to boycott earlier elections.The report touts a "true unity government with broad-based buy-in from major electoral lists and all of Iraq's communities." But its own data tell a different story. The one largely secular party won only 9% of parliament. The sectarian Shiite party, the United Iraqi Alliance, got 47%. The equally sectarian Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front got 16%, and the Kurdish Coalition got 19%. That hardly adds up to "unity."

Using Mr. Cordesman’s logic, the United State’s own political system is fatally flawed and doomed to failure because we have a Republican president and a House and Senate that is split 45/55 between Democrats and Republicans, with a few Libertarians, Independents, and Green Party Loons thrown in for good measure.

What about having fifty individual state governments, each divided within themselves by the Democrat/Republican/Libertarian/Independent party factions. And what does he think about the effect of having the African American’s in the Congressional Black Caucus running around carrying their own battle flag and agenda?

Would Mr. Cordesman consider the elections to be a success if the new Iraqi government consisted of only one or two parties?

Look at the conflict in Palestine resulting from having two competing parties. Slimly divided unity obviously does not guarantee stability.

Next...

The United States is making real progress in some aspects of building the Iraqi regular military. Yet there is still a tendency to promise too much, too soon, to understate the risk and the threat, and to disguise the fact that the U.S. must be ready to support Iraq at least through 2008 and probably through 2010.

Yaada...yaada...yack, yack, yack...

Funny thing, but aren’t we still in Germany in 2006, over 60 years after the end of WWII? And didn’t it take until 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall to attain ultimate stability in Germany?

Why the rush, Mr. Cordesman?

The U.S. cannot afford to repeat the mistakes it made in Vietnam. Among them was dangerous self-delusion. The strategy President Bush is pursuing in Iraq is high risk. If it is to have any chance of success, it will require bipartisan persistence and sustained American effort. This requires trust, and trust cannot be built without integrity. That means credible reporting.

I’ll completely agree that we don’t need to repeat the mistakes made in Vietnam, but the failure in Vietnam was caused by executing the Murtha/Kerry plan of running out of the country before the job was done. The Chinese supported thugs from North Vietnam rushed into Siagon, changed the name to Ho Chi Men City, and slaughtered Millions in the ensuing racial cleansing.

Yeah...that seems like a plan here---NOT!

And by the way, Mr. Cordesman, I agree whole heartedly with the need for “CREDIBLE REPORTING”—and the problem starts and ends with people like you and the LA Times.

Don't YOU agree???

New Legislation For Dumbasses

Making Stupidity More Affordable


Back in the old days (good or otherwise) I think that people had enough sense to manage their own risks based on their own abilities to deal with them.

I imagine that Ponce de Leon, Christopher Columbus, and British General Oglethorpe found that slogging their way through the mosquito, snake, and Gator infested marshes and lowlands of Florida and Coastal Georgia in past centuries was quite a deterrent to progress, not to mention having to survive sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a wooden sailboat using a Sextant to find your way rather than radar and a GPS navigation system just to get here.

The people that followed in their path in the past century and built vacation homes or otherwise settled to live on these same coasts took not only their own lives into their own hands, but they paid cash to build simple “cottages” and other structures that could survive the onslaught of the weather found living in areas that were “hurricane prone.”

There was no such thing as “building codes” and “flood insurance” to protect them and their little slices of paradise, so if they got washed or blown away they either survived and rebuilt at their own expense, else they faded away into an asterisk of history.

Not so today.

Everyone seems to think that they have a God given right to buy a piece of land inches from the high tide line, pile up some lumber, cinder blocks, and stucco, install a few elevators, and then have the GOVERNMENT not only insure their bodily safety when the next hurricane comes knocking on their back door, but also underwrite their ability to live a normal life within 24 hours of the storm’s passage.

In defense of this assertion, I tender this news article:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Hundreds of gas stations must have access to generators and be able to quickly get the pumps, freezers and credit card machines running after a hurricane under legislation Gov. Jeb Bush signed Thursday.

The bill was designed to ease one of the most vexing hurricane aftermath problems: an inability for people to get around because they can't get gas at stations with no power.

The measure was one of several hurricane preparedness bills the governor signed at the state emergency operations center on the first day of the new hurricane season. l

Many of the requirements, however, won't go fully into effect until 2007.

The gas station measure requires that owners with 10 or more stations in a county have a generator available and be able to move it to where it is needed. The more stations the owner has, the more generators they'll need to have ready to put in place after a hurricane…

Jim Smith, president of the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, which represents mostly small gas stations, said station owners weren't thrilled that some would now be required to have generators available. But he said many were already getting them on their own anyway because it's good business…

The bill also requires the owners or operators of any building, including condominiums, that are at least 75 feet high to be able to run at least one elevator on generator power and be able to power the fire alarm system. Some high-rise residents found themselves stuck on upper floors with no elevator to get down after last year's Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida.

What total, complete socialist government CRAPPOLA.

Doesn’t anyone but me see that it’s not the government’s job to tell gas station owners that they need generators?

Using one of my favorite arguments let me point out that no where in the US Constitution do I see the words “life, liberty, and a continuous supply of unleaded high octane gasoline.”

It just isn’t there, Folks.

I admit that having a few gas stations around that can operate when the electrical grid is down would be a nice CONVIENCE, but as to it being required by LAW…I say that’s going a bit too far.

If I owned a gas station anywhere within 150 miles of the coast in the southeastern US, I’d already be looking into putting in my own generator and I wouldn’t need Governor Bush to tell me to do it.

It would just be good business sense.

We bought a 7.5 KW generator after Hurricane Opal trashed our farm in south Alabama in October of 1995 and we have it mounted on a concrete pad inside a wooden enclosure adjacent to the garage, hard wired into my Mother’s house so she can run things like a little AC, lights, the fridge and freezer, etc.

All you do is turn off the main breaker, push the start button, and you’ve got lights. The only problem is that the phone is probably still out and a tree might have fallen on the satellite dish in the mean time.

The farm is 110 miles north of the coastline of the Florida panhandle, but it didn’t take any more incentive than surviving direct strikes by two substantial hurricanes in twenty years (with 100+ MPH winds) to convince us to spend the thousands of dollars it took to make the improvement.

We didn’t need an act of the state legislature to protect ourselves.

It’s actually a bitch to keep enough gasoline around the house to operate a generator beyond a few days and if I had it to do over again I think that we’d look at a propane powered engine, but the one time in the past ten years that the generator has been used, it paid for itself quite well.

As I see it, all the state of Florida is doing with this type legislation is ensuring that more and more people are going to elect to stay put in the face of an oncoming hurricane rather than evacuating. Further, more and more people are going to continue to move into the hazard zones and the problem is only going to continue to get worse in the future.

I say that the federal flood insurance program—once considered insurance for rich people—is now insurance for stupidity. If people were forced to rely strictly on private insurance, Florida and other coastal real estate values would drop precipitously and that is what this debate is really all about.

Florida is actually facing a so-called insurance ‘crisis” because, after forcing insurers to take on a certain percentage of coastal risks in order to do any business in the state, many are going bankrupt or otherwise ending coverage in the state after the past two years of losses.

And the thing about requiring building owners to have elevators that operate on generators…what’s up with that?

I don’t want to get near an elevator during or after a hurricane. I suppose that they are worried about all of the elderly people and lard assed fat people riding around in “scooters” that are too stupid or otherwise unable to move with the approach of an oncoming storm.

Let me say THIS about THAT.

I you weigh five hundred pounds or you are 100 years old and you otherwise can’t get around without assistance; you’d better get the hell out NOW.

Move to Birmingham or back north to NY or Boston. Do anything but sit there sunning your bloated or wrinkled body while taking the risk of having to have firefighters and other emergency responders risk their own lives to get your ignorant carcass out in 120 MPH winds or after your condo roof has fallen on you.

For those of you not actually living in Hurricane prone areas…If your Mama or Daddy or Grandparents insist on living on a beach or retirement community in Florida—GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THERE…NOW.

If they won’t leave or you won’t go get them when The Weather Channel issues an evacuation order, then I say that you might as well kiss them goodbye right now and be glad that they survive if they do.

What I don’t want to see is your crying face on CNN or FOX News lamenting your loved one’s demise while you piss and moan about the shortcomings of FEMA and the Red Cross.

Governor Bush and the idiots in the Florida legislature can write laws and pass resolutions from now until Christ returns, but I promise you that no amount of legislation is going to cure the root cause of the problem—that problem being one of…

STUPIDITY

A Matter Of Perspective

Information…Or The Lack Thereof


As my regular readers know, a common theme here on this blog is one of media bias and the resulting public opinions elicited by editorials being disguised as news stories.

I’ve written tens of thousands of words ranting about the stupidity and obvious political motivations of the so called college educated “professional journalists,” but the good news is it seems to me that we might be turning the corner as the “dead tree” press and the major networks suffer declines in readership and viewers.

I’m going to take a break from my usual “bias” theme this morning, while at the same time continuing my criticism of the media. This time my subject is one of “sloppy reporting”—or more specifically, the media’s continuing failure to put any actual facts and information into their stories.

You know what I mean by “facts and information”, don’t you?

By "facts and information," I mean little trivial, inconvenient things like data, numbers, and statistics that would allow a reader to make an informed decision about whether or not to actually worry about the content of the writer’s story—things that much of the media apparently believe that we’re perhaps too stupid to understand?

Take the 2471 casualties incurred to date in the war in Iraq, for instance. Every day we get an update and running total pounded into our heads as if the world has never seen such carnage and savagery.

Upon hearing these figures, the media and many private citizens are prone to tilting their heads back, throwing their arms into the air, and running around in circles, hysterically screaming and lamenting the losses and inhumanities of war.

Now don’t get me wrong here, each and every single loss of life in the defense of our country is a personal tragedy of an unimaginable magnitude, and I personally would never trivialize such sacrifice in my thoughts and writing…

BUT…do you have any idea how dangerous and deadly it is to serve in the military IN PEACTIME?

Do you have any idea how many people are routinely killed every year in things like normal military operations and training accidents?

Check out the casualty tables found on this Department of Defense website. Here’s a little summary for you:

In 1980, at the beginning of President Regan’s first term in office, there were 2,159,630 active duty, reserve, and national guard forces in our military. In that same year, there were 2,392 deaths of military personnel, and only one was killed by terrorist action, and 231 committed suicide.

In 1983, the year of the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon that killed 263 soldiers; there were 2,273,364 troops and a total of 2,465 deaths, including an addition 18 losses to hostile action.

By 1986, at the beginning of the end of the cold war in the middle of Regan’s second term, the forces had increased by over a quarter million to 2,359,855, while deaths were 1,984 with only two killed in hostile action.

In 1991 during the first gulf war, troop levels were down to 2,198,189 men & women, with 1,787 total military deaths and the war casualty count at 147 lives lost.

Now fast forward through the Clinton Presidency to the year 2000. With the resulting substantial reductions in military spending and troop strengths down to 1,530,430 personnel, we find that we lost 758 GI’s including 17 to terrorists.

Stay with me now, I’m almost finished…

In 2003 and 2004, the latest two years for which data is published, troop strengths were 1,732,632 and 1,711,916 respectively, while the deaths for those same years were 1,410 and 1,877. In 2003 we lost 344 and in 2004 there 737 killed in the Iraqi war.

So you see ladies and gentlemen, the 1,081 deaths sustained in the first 20 months in Iraq were actually exceeded by the 2,206 men and women that died in situations unrelated to combat. Things like training accidents and car crashes and death from natural causes.

2,206 versus 1,081

Have YOU ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone in the lamestream media mention those little inconvenient significant statistics while doing their reporting on Iraq?

NO?

Do these "facts and information" put things into an entirely different perspective when considering the cost of "The War On Terror"?

Yeah…I thought so…

More Insensitivity

I Just Can’t Help Myself


Is everyone in the entire state of Massachusetts just plain CRAZY, or is the condition limited to the city of Boston? Maybe the insanity is just a prerequisite limited to the lawyers setting on the court benches in much of New England.

The reason that I’m considering the mental health of my northern neighbors is because of this story about convicted murderer Robert "Michele" Kosilek:

BOSTON--A convicted killer serving a life sentence for murdering his wife 16 years ago wants Massachusetts to pay for his sex change operation.

Television station WCVB reported that Robert Kosilek now goes by the name Michelle. He's already been before the state courts and has received favorable rulings.

The court has previously granted the 57-year-old the right to have the state pay for his female hormone treatments and laser hair removal after a judge ruled he is entitled to treatment for a condition called gender identity disorder.

Now, Kosilek wants the commonwealth to pay for a sex change operation to become a woman.

His lawyer said that denying him the operation amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

On Tuesday, a psychiatrist testified that Kosilek is likely to commit suicide if he doesn't get the operation.

The trial in Federal District Court in South Boston is expected to last about two weeks.

The first thing I have to say is this: So what if “Michele” is distraught over his/her God given “plumbing”—let him/her go ahead and do us all a favor and commit suicide.

Who besides these stupid judges would care?

Secondly, I think that "Michele" might actually be onto something here with the idea of giving prisoners sex change operations.

If the states are going to be in the sex change business, I say that we should demand that they give them to every man convicted of rape, child molestation or any other so-called sex crime.

Then throw the bastards into a men’s prison and step back and watch the fun.

Imagine the deterrence value of knowing that you were going to not only legally have your penis removed and breasts and a vagina installed, but you were going to serve your time with “Bubba” and the boys in the big house.

By the way, if “Michele” does manage to get the citizens of Massachusetts to chop off his Johnson, I believe that (s)he shouldn’t be granted a change in prison accommodations either.

They should leave the stupid murdering bastard in the exact same prison, in the exact same cell when the stitches are finally taken out.

As the old saying goes—"careful what you ask for in life…because you might just get it."