Category Archives: Scribbles

George’s and Teddy’s ugly act

Despite widespread opposition, the illegal immigration bill marches to passage.

"There’s something creepy about a political class so determined to impose a vast transformative bill cooked up backstage in metaphorically smoke-filled rooms on a nation that doesn’t want it. It’s an affront to republican government and quasi-European in its disdain for the citizenry." –Mark Steyn

Why it’s almost as if Mexico City was calling the shots. There are times when this democracy looks and acts exactly like the oligarchy south of the border.

UPDATE  Well, what do you know. But even saved from this, we still have an open border that needs fencing. Fred liked the way it turned out, too.

Swiftboating

Big Bill says he won’t let Hillary be "swiftboated" because those kinds of attacks won’t go unanswered. Pretty funny. Everytime I hear a Dem use that word, I’m reminded of what a liar John Kerry is. He didn’t answer back, if you want to put it that way, because his Swiftboat attackers were telling the truth. He was a fraud and he knew it.

Bump keys

Making the forwarded email rounds: Two videos about an interesting, cheap way to defeat most key locks with a bump. But, really, locks are to keep the honest honest, right? Not to keep the criminals out.

Bishop Sheen’s meatloaf

I usually don’t do recipes, but this was too good. The applesauce makes sense. I’m not so sure about the garlic.

Rose of Sharon

RoseofSharon0001.JPG

Not a rose, but a hibiscus, also known as Althaea. These blooms at the rancho are on a tallish shrub. It flowers earlier than the photo date indicates, and is still blooming away and will all summer and into the fall. 

Red Flag

Back in the mid-80s, when I was writing technology stories, I got to blend the subject into a piece on a visit to the Air Force’s Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB, near Las Vegas. Later in the early 90s, I went again when the local recon squadron at then-Bergstrom AFB (now Austin’s international airport) went up for the exercises. These videos at OP-FOR, from the IMAX doc on Red Flag, are so good you may get airsick watching them, but they’re from an angle only seen by the participants. My second trip, I got a conference-table full of pilots and backseaters to interview all at once. Not the ideal way to do it, but it worked out. One guy started talking airspeed in knots, stopped and started to translate the knots to mph. I said I was a sailor, so I was used to knots, just a lot smaller numbers. Smiles all around.

24 hours from Tulsa

Not trying to bash Tulsa and its car problems anymore, really. This song hardly bashes it, anyway–when sung by the incomparable Gene Pitney, who is lovingly remembered by Scott at the Powerline blog. Also here.