Category Archives: Mrs. Charm

School security, a trend still waiting to happen

Posted on December 25, 2012 | Comments Off on School security, a trend still waiting to happen

On this supposedly peaceful Christmas day, which it usually is here at the rancho, the Nightmare before Christmas lingers. As well it should.

Mr. Boy told us that, in the days following the Newtown massacre, there were three armed security men patrolling the grounds of his middle school up the street. Mrs. Charm figures they needed three because the school has portable classroom buildings outside the main building.

I doubt very much the three armed men will be there when school resumes after Christmas break, however. The school district, top-heavy with administrators like so many educational institutions these days, couldn’t afford such extra spending for long.

Meanwhile, the “come-and-get-em” signs, otherwise known as “gun-free zone” announcements, still decorate the entrances which are said to be locked now but, again, for how long? Have noticed word that Utah has school teachers who carry concealed weapons, at least one Texas public school district does and a New Jersey school district is talking about it. UPDATE: So is state government in Arizona.

No clamor for change here yet that I’ve noticed and I don’t really expect any in liberal Austin where antigunner Democrats rule the roost, though the city pols officially are called non-partisan. Sure. Ours was the only city in Republican Texas to vote for Barry.

Despite the NRA’s good advice on the subject, at least one Texas Dem “leader” has suggested that NRA members who don’t support gun control should be slain. Uh, that would be me, but I’m not worried. The man’s mouth is bigger than his brain. Only fools and cowards make public threats.

Pundit Charles Krauthammer calls out popular video games in which players shoot people over and over again. He’s referring to the Call of Duty war games, which Mrs. C. and I have forbidden Mr. B. until he’s sixteen. We do allow him the Halo shooter game because its targets are monsters. Not a small difference to my mind, even if they are cartoons. None of us attends the Hollywood bloodbaths that pass for movies these days. I’d certainly support banning them, but their makers are Democrat donors, so we can forget that.

Home schooling may proliferate now, pundit Peggy Noonan thinks (behind the WSJ’s fire pay wall), when parents realize that the likes of the Texas Dem “leader” will block any attempt at more school security. While the elite’s own children are protected.

Not that Dems have much influence elsewhere in Texas, but our concern is here, where they do. But home schooling is out. Even if I was qualified, which I’m not. So we’ll wait and see. I’d be happy if they’d take down the damn “hunting preserve for children” signs. It would be a start.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Obamalot, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Rule 5: Pin Up Girls

Posted on October 15, 2012 | Comments Off on Rule 5: Pin Up Girls

Glad to see these “girly” calendars are still around. I saw my first one when I was about fifteen and wandered into my Texas grandfather’s engineering office. It was at the Magnolia Petroleum Company‘s terminal (now Mobil Illinois Pipeline Company) just north of tiny Patoka, IL. Instant you-know-what.

Via The Fat Guy through whom you should buy your own copy if you’re so inclined. The purchase link is there. I’d like to but I have no idea where I could put it without incurring Mrs. Charm’s enduring wrath.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Mrs. Charm, Rule 5, Science/Engineering, Texana

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Vote for the Mormon not the charlatan

Posted on October 4, 2012 | Comments Off on Vote for the Mormon not the charlatan

Mrs. Charm’s paternal ancestors left Wales (Babylon) in the 1850s, among a multitude of Mormon converts bound for the U.S. on ocean-crossing, side-paddle steamers. Her direct several greats grandfather made it as far as Kansas where his wife proved too ill to continue their wagon trek to the Great Salt Lake (Zion). Eventually their descendants left the church altogether.

But his brother pushed on and became a Mormon high muckety muck. None of which is directly dispositive of why I dislike President Golfpants so much (see here, here, and here for that), but it may help explain why I have nothing against Mormons in general or Mitt Romney in particular.

Before last night’s “debate,” I wished he had more balls (as some wiseguy said, if Sarah Palin loaned him one of hers then they’d both have two) and would show exactly how the Democrats are stealing us blind with their phony “stimulus” spending that mostly goes to their cronies, and why their welfare state will bankrupt us as it has Greece and Spain. But he did just fine.

Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, he ought to win handily. Barry may still eke it out, but it’s hard to believe people could want four more years of a tanked economy,  more unemployment and higher taxes—not to mention higher electric and gasoline bills. Just so they can be proud that they voted for a half-black man. Even if he is a charlatan. Bah.

High time to let an experienced businessman try his hand at a fix. Only Obama, Reid and Pelosi make it look like rocket science.  Romney knows it isn’t.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Mrs. Charm, Obamalot

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AMAC president: Vote Romney

Posted on October 3, 2012 | Comments Off on AMAC president: Vote Romney

I was torn, once upon a time, about whether I should be become a member of AARP. One of my nieces is married to a young lefty who works for them, so I wondered. Then I began to read of their involvement with Barry, especially being in cahoots with him on Obamacare. So I forgot about it.

Now comes a new and so far smaller rival, AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens (nice title, that), whose conservative approach is much more to my liking. Especially now that I see their founder and president Dan Weber, saying he, for one, will vote for Romney/Ryan, both to save Medicare and protect Social Security from the Democrats’ rising tide of European-style entitlements.

After all, as Weber says, neither program was intended to be an entitlement, though today the Democrat news media lumps them in with welfare and the Democrats are enhancing the image by enrolling millions of young people in a Social Security disability program. One of Mrs. C.’s young nieces is married to a fellow who is on that particular dole.

Medicare, originally, was “a health insurance policy for which eligible older Americans have paid real premiums all the working days of their lives,” Weber says. Indeed.

And Social Security, likewise, “is a type of self-funded retirement program in which we have invested our own money, deducted every payday from our salaries and wages.” Exactly.

“I, for one,” Weber continues, “will opt for reform over Obamacare.  Its official name is the Affordable Care Act, but it is not affordable and it was crafted in secret to diminish the value [of] our paid up Medicare policies to pay for free-for-all entitlements.

“I also choose sensible changes to the way our children and grandchildren pay for and receive Social Security.  Specifically, in this day and age when people are living longer and working longer, it is not an onerous modification to up the age of eligibility; nor is it a radical notion to allow those who pay into the Social Security fund to opt for an independent Social Security IRA that lets citizens set up their own supplementary retirement accounts.”

Makes sense to me and, so, I have joined AMAC and, because AARP is larger (so far) will have to hope for the best from American seniors who (unlike the feckless young who voted for Barry in ’08, and now have only unemployment to show for it) are guaranteed to vote on election day.

UPDATE:  Hey, AARP, you own Obamacare. Obama himself said you backed it. In fact, “According to a 2011 House Ways and Means Committee report, AARP stands to make between $55 million and $166 million from Obamacare in 2014 alone.” Through its sales of Medigap insurance. Heh.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Plastic Army Men

Posted on August 7, 2012 | Comments Off on Plastic Army Men

My youth was spent without video games, the Internet, or even, for the most part, television. It would have been a lot more boring without these guys, and they almost didn’t come along in time. Plastic toys were not on my personal agenda immediately because they were expensive. Plastic being new, you see.

There were tin soldiers around in about the 1730s. Hollow-cast metal ones all painted and pretty became available in the 1920s. I first encountered those in the living room display (behind glass) of a friend whose father was a British army officer. Pricey, though. Too pricey for me and my friend to touch.

The plastic ones I’m thinking of first appeared on this side of the lake about 1936, though I didn’t see any until I was, oh, about nine (1953). They were all one color, usually green. But that was okay. I could use my imagination. I bought some for Mr. B. when he was about eight. Mrs. C. was aghast. She wasn’t sorry when he put them aside in favor of video games. I winced.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Troops

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Masada of the North

Posted on June 24, 2012 | Comments Off on Masada of the North

Not as photogenic as the Masada of the South, nor as dramatic to look at. But Gamla is green, or is during the spring and fall when it rains more. Remains to be seen what it’ll look like this Wednesday when I climb over its ruins for the first time. I stayed at the overlook on my first visit in March, 2011.

This is on the Golan Heights, which Syria claims despite losing it in 1973 in an invasive war they started. But there’s little development up there as the Israeli government still holds out the faint hope of someday trading it for a permanent peace treaty. Or as permanent as anything can be with an autocratic Arab state.

Gamla, however, dating as it does from pre-66 C.E., readily shows who owned it originally, as does the archaeology. It wasn’t Assad & Co. I  expect Mrs. C. and Mr. B. will prefer to watch for eagles at the overlook above the place rather than tramp the lone trail down there with me. This is a nature preserve. But we’ll see.

UPDATE:  Mr. Boy opted to go down the steep, rocky trail with me to see the oldest synagogue yet discovered in Israel. We enjoyed the visit. And it was a good thing he came. ‘Cause while he ran back up the quarter-mile trail like a mountain goat, I like to died getting back up it. Without his encouragement, I might still be sitting out there mumbling, “just a few more minutes until I catch my breath.”

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Posted in Israel, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm

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Masada

Posted on June 23, 2012 | Comments Off on Masada

Just one of the places we’ll be visiting in Israel, though by far my favorite. We’ll be riding the cable car to the top of the 2,000-year-old Jewish fortress and winter palace of King Herod in southeastern Judea. But I may walk down the “snake path,” the white line on the lower right. Takes an hour or so. As for the history, some is at the link above. Much more is in this very fine book.

UPDATE:  I didn’t walk down in the heat. I enjoyed the nice descent on the Swiss cable car, instead, with the breeze through the open windows.

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Posted in Israel, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm

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