Category Archives: Texana

9/11 ten years later

What’s changed since that awful morning?

Well, nothing on the Islamic war against the West. It continues. Our all-volunteer military, while benefiting from a new generation of volunteers, remains stressed with two major campaigns and a host of smaller ones. For the first time, the National Guard and Reserves have become continuously- active parts of the active-duty force.

But the war is not (officially) called the War on Terror anymore (which, though clumsy and avoiding the main [Muslim] issue, was, at least, descriptive)—thanks to the Dumbocrats and their academic, Hollywood and media surrogates, who’ve impeded it every step of the way.

They’ve always been more concerned with nomenclature than reality. Green energy, anyone?

The war itself is still pretty much of a loser. Caroline Glick says it’s because Bush Jr.’s toughest words never got translated into action, the USA still refuses to admit it’s fighting radical Islam, and appeasement of Muslim countries in the Middle East remains the order of the day. Sigh.

Airline travel has become (if possible) even more onerous. We take off our shoes now, in order to get aboard, in honor of would-be terrorist Richard Reid (serving a life sentence in Britain, which means he’ll probably be out soon). Also no bottles of liquid allowed unless they’re purchased within the gate area, in honor of someone I forget, there have been so many of them.

For a long time afterward most previously-open military installations were closed to the public. Austin’s Camp Mabry recently reopened, making its good military history museum accessible once more. Fort Hood, after enduring its own terrorist shoot-em-up by a Muslim major, still is closed—probably for good.

One thing that hasn’t changed: Israel’s perpetual 9/11, a suicide bomber here, a suicide bomber there, and, as always, few media elsewhere pay any attention—except to write pitying profile stories about the Muslim bombers, only rarely about their Jewish victims.

UPDATE:  The Third Jihad, a film still worth watching, for a reminder of the war that likely will still be with our children’s children.

Wildfires: Obamalot’s Katrina

The recent wildfire-fighting in Central Texas has been an almost-exclusively ground operation. Thanks to Obamalot, too few water-carrying planes are available.

“The U.S. Forest Service terminated the contract with Aero Union five weeks ago to operate seven P-3 Orions that are critical to the agency’s firefighting mission, leaving the federal government with 11 tankers under contract to help battle more than 50 large uncontained wildfires now burning nationwide.

“That’s down from 40 tankers used by the Forest Service just a decade ago, according to Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Administration, who is challenging the decision to dismiss the largest provider of heavy air-tanker support to the federal government.”

Of course, Katrina impacted a largely-black New Orleans when a dastardly Republican was in charge of FEMA. The fires are a Western phenom, largely in states that are white and do not vote Democrat—so there’s no big media whoop-de-do about the missing tankers. Tough luck for us.

Via Drudge Report

Snakes a’ comin’

Tom Spinker photo of a Texas rattler, via Accuweather, which picked up Earth & Sky’s warning of a suburban invasion of “very hungry” snakes this month due to the drought.

We’ll be watching.

Fortunately, rattlers generally aren’t killers, unlike, say, Texas coral snakes, which are relatives of the King Cobra. But the rattler’s bite is painful and everybody reacts differently.

Smoke and soot

Got up this morning, smelling smoke. Went outside to find an alarming haze of it all around the rancho. Then I found this at KVUE’s site:

“The smoke smell in the air over North Austin has many people alarmed. There are no new fires in the area. That’s just the wind is blowing the smoke from the other Central Texas fires in our direction.”

The Bastrop forest fire east of the city is only about a third contained. Six hundred Seven hundred eighty-five homes out there have been destroyed so far.

Little pieces of soot are now falling in the back forty. No embers yet.

Rick Perry, jet jockey

Rick may have wound up flying turboprop C-130s, but, like all Air Force student pilots, he first flew the T-38 Talon, a twin-engine, supersonic jet trainer. Looks pretty good, eh?

Just one more reason why the Dumbocrats, populated as they are by old draft-dodgers and modern military shirkers, are doing everything they can to smear Rick as too stupid, too religious, too whatever, to take over from Obamalot.

Even the Republican elite prefers Romney. Stupid, stupid.

Speaking of smears, the champagne socialists of the Guardian have dipped into the high-crime southeast Austin suburb of Dove Springs to reveal “the dark underbelly” of Perry’s alleged Texas economic miracle.

Largely illegal Hispanic (dark, get it?) Dove Springs’s poverty isn’t unusual in the USA (or anywhere else, for that matter), but an enduring problem neither socialists or capitalists have been able to solve, and raising taxes for more welfare (the Dumbocrat solution that bankrupted California) isn’t likely to.

Wildfires

Getting antsy at the rancho with drought-induced wildfires to the north, east, south and west. Hundreds of homes destroyed in all those directions, plus about 16,000 acres of pine forest out in Bastrop County. Nothing in our immediate area yet but we’ve got the garden hoses ready just in case.

Firefighters don’t know what’s causing the fires. Arson doesn’t seem to be the culprit. But they know what’s spreading them: High winds caused by a cold front moving slowly towards us from the northwest.

Usually one of those attracts wind and moisture out of the Gulf and the differential in temperatures causes rain showers, if not thunderstorms. But all the moisture seems to be tied up in Tropical Storm Lee, leaving us with the winds—and, thanks to the drought, wildfires.

UPDATE:  Good roundup story by the daily, which is leading Drudge.

School killings old, old

Think American school shootings, stabbings, and general violence leading to death are a modern phenom? Think again.

Not counting Indian “warrior” raids on schools, first recorded in 1764, the first recorded one was in 1871, in La Grange County, Indiana. There were just six more in the Nineteenth Century.

Then things really picked up. The Bloody Twentieth Century recorded twenty-three before World War II. Fourteen more by 1960. Then a hundred and thirty-two before the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, CO, in April, 1999.

Followed by  a hundred and twenty-six more by Jan. 22 of this year. Whew.

So these things really aren’t new, except in the sense of clothing fashions, i.e. what’s old is new again.