Dètente Canceled

Just two days after promising to leave the homes of Walter Rosales and Karen Toggery untouched for at least a week, the Jamul Indian Village has destroyed them. Via Rob Davis, writing in the Voice of San Diego:

After years of delays, the Jamul tribe followed through on its plans to demolish the homes of Toggery and Walter Rosales, who lived on the reservation but are not members of the legally recognized tribe.

In doing so, the Jamul tribe reversed course on promises its chairman gave to casino protestors over the weekend. At a Saturday standoff where casino opponents were clubbed and pepper sprayed, tribal chairman Leon Acebedo helped resolve the confrontation by assuring opponents that no construction would happen until Friday.

But Monday morning, the Jamul tribe’s executive council unanimously rejected the temporary reprieve offered by Acebedo, who said he warned opponents Saturday that he didn’t have the authority to issue such a delay.

Leon Acebedo, the tribal chairman, is known to some locals as “Lying Leon”. I can’t help but wonder whether he actually did warn the opponents on Saturday about this possibility. I also can’t help but wonder to what degree the executive council is under his thumb, and their “override” was engineered…

An aside: isn’t Rob Davis' reporting and writing on this story a refreshing change from the pap that the Union-Buffoon has been serving up? I stole the headline for this post straight out of his article…

Later in the Rob’s article, there is this thought from Patrick Webb (the attorney for Walter and Karen) about why the Jamul Indian Village is suddenly breaking off negotiations with the state, and acting to clear the buildings off the land:

"I think it’s down to the wire for everybody,” Webb said. “We have yet to decide what’s putting the pressure on them to do this. We can only assume it’s coming from Lakes Gaming, which has the money up."

Webb’s notion that there is pressure on the Jamul Indian Village to get something done sounds right to me. I can’t think why else there would suddenly be this outbreak of dramatic and rash actions on their part. And his suspicion of Lakes as the source certainly makes sense — for what other entity has any sway on the Jamul Indian Village at all?

Finally, here’s the last paragraph of Rob’s article (but go read the whole thing), with a quote from Karen Toggery:

"You can’t sit here and cry, it’s not going to help,” she said. “I’m not going to give up, if that’s what they think. Land is the most precious thing you can have."

Karen’s not crying, and she will keep fighting. So will we all. I have a fantasy about a future ceremony, jointly held by a new Jamul Indian Village administration and the local residents of Jamul, wherein we burn every last shred of paper related to the monstrous casino.

After we get a burn permit, of course.

JAC

The webmaster for the JAC (Jamulians Against the Casino) web site contacted me today to let me know that their web site, while still under construction, is up and running. There’s useful information up there, especially (at the moment) with regard to the history of the Jamul Indian Village and their efforts to build a casino here.

Go take a look!

Word of the Day

Bozone, n.: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Word of the Day

Foreploy, n.: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

So Sad

Yesterday morning as I bought some repair items at the Jamul hardware store, I heard a discussion amongst several people there about the “commotion” down at the Jamul Indian Reservation. The folks there weren’t entirely sure what was going on, but they suspected that Walter Rosales and Karen Toggery were being evicted. After leaving the hardware store, I drove down to see for myself. The people I talked to there gave me a confused and contradictory version of events, so I wasn’t sure what was going on. The one thing I could be sure of is that there was a vocal confrontation and a significant police presence.

Walter and Karen are Jamul Indians and long-time residents of the reservation who oppose the casino. They refused to move off the reservation, and were “disenrolled” from the tribe late last year — allegedly because of inadequate documentation of their membership in the tribe, but really, I’m sure, because of their opposition to the casino.

Late yesterday, a reader left a comment on my blog, and this was the first verification I had that Walter and Karen were in fact evicted. Here’s the comment in its entirety — a first-hand account of what happened:

We received a phone call alerting us that the casino faction was forcibly taking Walter and Karen out of their houses this morning about 7:40 a.m. It was a very sad state of events, thugs hired by the casino proponents took them out of their houses and then started throwing all their belongings into U Haul vans. Walter called 911 but it took awhile for deputies to respond and actually sheriff deputies did nothing … did absolutely nothing … to protect Walter or Karen and their homes and property. And later when many residents and Walter and Karen’s attorney Patrick Webb accompanied Walter to his house the thugs beat and pushed and maced people with the sheriff deputies still doing nothing. Everyone felt so helpless because we could not help Walter and Karen protect their homes. Walter is such a kind, gentle man. When someone told him not to give up, he likened it to being in a difficult situation in Vietnam with the Marines and things worked out. I hope this does. I hope all of San Diego County sees the type of people the greed of casinos have turned these criminals into that call themselves casino proponents. Unfortunately it ended with their belongings being hauled off to a storage facility. Robby and I took Walter’s two roosters and two pet conures. Walter had his dog and Karen’s cat was brought out to her in a cardboard box. They were not allowed to go back to their homes. Jamul residents that were hurt filed complaints against the so called “Jamul Indian Police”. Grievances will be filed against the Sheriff’s Department. Diane Jacob arrived to try and intervene but with little success other that a written promise from the lying Leon Acevedo, so called tribal chief promising not to level the homes until after the close of business next Friday. It actually did not seem like something like this could happen in America.

Indeed. How could something like this happen in America?

Well, there are several answers to that. The one most immediately applicable here is that we are seeing (once again) the strangeness that can occur at the intersection of American law and Indian law — the tortured mess that is our law regarding the country-within-a-country status of American Indian reservations. But today — unlike a few years ago — we could see this happening even outside a reservation, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision, which opened the doors wide for any municipality (or other government unit) to “condemn” anyone’s property for any purpose they deem worthwhile — including simply replacing someone’s home with something that generates more taxes for the government. Like a casino…

I got to pondering this morning about all the events that had to be in place for Walter and Karen to be evicted yesterday:

The notion of Indian reservations, with their quasi-independent systems of government, had to be in place.

Casinos had to be illegal off-reservation, but legal on-reservation.

Walter and Karen had to be Indians living on a reservation in a desirable place to locate a casino.

A majority of the Indians on their reservation had to support the notion of building a casino.

The reservation had to secure funding for the casino (which the Jamul Indians have done by striking a bargain with Lakes Entertainment).

A majority of the Indians on the Jamul Indian reservation had to be willing to take some very radical steps. Their six-acre reservation is so small that they couldn’t possibly have a casino and still live on their reservation — so they had to be willing to relocate off-reservation to do this. To some members of the reservation (including Walter and Karen), some of the reservation is hallowed ground, with the ashes of their ancestors and their possessions. And a majority of the Indians had to be willing to force the objectors to comply with the majority’s wishes.

What’s motivating all this?

Money, of course. Period, end of story. It’s all about the money.

Do you find that as sad — and pathetic — as I do? Here’s a group of Americans (the Indians) who, were they assimilated into the rest of America, would have the same opportunities as the rest of us. We’d find them in all kinds of jobs, with the same range of success we see in the rest of our citizens. Instead, they’re part of the reservation system, isolated to some extent in their own culture — and feeling desperate enough about their collective situation to be willing to do the things I outlined above. There’s a message in this about the utter failure of the reservation system…

There are a couple of news stories about the incident. Here are a few excerpts from those stories:

Toggery said she was still in her pajamas when she was ordered to leave her home. “I said I am not going to open my door until I get ahold of my attorney,” Toggery said. “They finally kicked it open."

Walter Rosales was also evicted Saturday morning. He was forced to grab his animals and leave a home he says he inherited from his uncle in 1987. “I was evicted this morning be a bunch of goons, you know, the old goon squad,” Rosales said.

The situation got even more heated when County Supervisor Dianne Jacob — she also opposes the casino — showed up. Jacob said she may place an emergency call to the governor to stop the evictions.

"I strongly oppose the evictions that have take place here today,” Jacobs said. “I think it’s wrong. I think it’s shameful"

"I will promise you this — if there is one piece of dirt that’s moved that looks like they are starting construction that I will notify the governor’s office immediately and ask them to intervene and take action,” Jacobs said.

The evictions led to confrontations with neighbors opposed to the casino in which tribal police used pepper spray and metal batons. Sheriff’s deputies stepped in and paramedics treated some people.

Nobody was immediately hospitalized, although one man shot in the eyes with pepper spray went into a hospital later in the day.

The confrontation ended only after negotiations among Jacob, the Sheriff’s Department, the tribal chairman and Patrick Webb, a lawyer working with Rosales and Toggery who is also a Jamul resident.

Acebedo said he would pay for a nearby house in which Rosales and Toggery could stay and agreed that their homes would not be demolished for a week – giving state and federal courts a chance to consider the legality of the evictions.

What a sad, sad tale.

I, and many other local residents, hope that Walter and Karen prevail. My own support for them derives from two things: one, the just plain awful and unfair way they’ve been treated, and two, the fact their objective (stopping the casino) coincides with my own. I’d like to see the casino stopped in its tracks. I’d like to see the Indians succeed the way the rest of Americans do, instead of by desperate maneuvers like this casino that would evict them from their own property and hold them in thrall (by their debt) to the shady world of gambling companies. I’d also like to see the tribal system completely dismantled to remove the artificial differences it creates — to the tribes' detriment — between American Indians and the rest of Americans.

I can dream, can’t I?

The Union-Buffoon article also contained this nugget:

Tribal leaders also announced that they plan to sidestep a 1999 agreement with the state and fill the casino with less profitable games so they can get around local opposition.

Under federal law, the so-called “Class 2” games, based on bingo and poker, don’t require an agreement with state governments as do Las Vegas-style games.

“We’ve broken off negotiations with the state,” said tribal Chairman Leon Acebedo.

This is an interesting development, one that has always been present as a possibility. I infer from this that the Jamul Indian tribe (and their backers, Lake Entertainment) have been entirely unsuccessful in negotiating a profitable casino operation under the pact that governs tribal gambling for most games in California.

The spin from casino supporters in the rest of the article is that this is a good thing for them, and that there is still a profitable casino to be had. But clearly this is the less desirable course for them, or else they would have skipped the negotiations in the first place. However, it must be attractive enough, as a business proposition, for Lakes Entertainment to be willing to fund it anyway. From my personal perspective, it doesn’t matter what games are being played inside the casino — the monstrosity and the people it will attract are just as antithetical to our community either way…

Nuclear Email

This morning I received an email from a friend with a video clip about a tame Canadian goose who has made friends with a man and his dog. The video has some amazing sections showing the goose flying along side a speeding motorboat, so close that the man can reach out and touch it. My friend knew I would enjoy this video, and so he passed it along to me.

Another friend had done the same thing, with the same video, just a couple of days before. That sort of thing has happened to me many times; sometimes I’ve received the same joke, photos, sound clip, or video dozens of times. What’s going on here?

As I was trying to word a response to my friend, trying to find a way to say “Thanks! But I’ve already seen this…” I got to pondering this phenomenon. Why does this happen so often? And why are the contents of these emails quite often genuinely entertaining or interesting (or both!)?

So I started with my own behavior. When I get one of these emails, what do I do? Sometimes I post it on my blog, where it will be seen (and often passed along) by somewhere between a few dozen and a few hundred people (the number of people reading my blog varies tremendously from day-to-day). Sometimes I forward the email, and when I do, I usually forward it to 10 or 12 people I think might enjoy it. The majority of these emails I read, enjoy, and delete. I would guess that I delete 80% or so of them. But the 20% that I don’t delete get seen by something like 20 people (averaging between the blog and the forwarded emails). So…if 20% of the emails I receive are seen by 20 people each, that means that on average, every email I receive is then seen by 4 other people.

Am I typical? I don’t know. But just to be conservative, let’s say my behavior is double the average person’s forwarding behavior. If that were true, that means that every email sent out is see by 2 additional people, on average. This process is self-selective on the quality of the email’s contents, too — because of course the more entertaining or interesting contents will be forwarded more often…

Now lets see what this implies. Imagine that you created a short video of the earthworm you laboriously trained to do backflips on verbal command. This is something most people would consider both interesting and entertaining. Now you send this video to your two friends — and three people will have seen it. If, on average, they send it to two people, that means four more — a total of seven — will have seen it. If those four now each send it to two people, then eight more — fifteen in total will have seen it. And so on. We can reduce this to a simple formula: V = A^G - 1, where V is the number of people who have viewed the email, A is the average number of unique new viewers that each viewer sends it on to, and G is the number of “generations” including the original sender. So…if A = 2 and G = 10 (meaning that the email has been forwarded 10 times) then V = 2^10-1 = 1023 people will have seen it. But if G = 20, then A = 2^20-1 = 1,048,575 people will have seen it — and twice that many on the very next generation! How long does it take for an email to be forwarded 20 times? I would guess just five or six days, maybe ten at the most. And if this went on for 33 generations — then every single person on the planet will have seen the email!

The analysis above is not rigorous by any means. For starters, it’s almost certain that A varies from generation to generation, especially in the early generations. But it does illustrate just how quickly one of this email can propagate. It also shows just how likely it is that multiple people would send it to you at nearly the same time — if a million people have seen an email, what’s the chances that you know two of them? Or if 100 million people have seen an email? Pretty good, I think…

In fact, the process reminds me of another phenomenon of quick propagation: a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, as you’d find in a nuclear bomb. In these reactions, each decaying atom throws out two (or more) high-energy particles — each of which can then cause another atom to split and decay. The nuclear reaction proceeds much faster than email, as the energetic particles are moving at near the speed of light, and they only have to move an inch or two at most. But the underlying math is very similar…

Email and nuclear weapons are related!

Beautiful Jupiter

The New Horizons robotic spacecraft recently passed Jupiter on its way to Pluto and the outer Solar System. On its way around Jupiter, it took many photos of the planet and its moons, including this montage showing the Big Red Spot, the Little Red Spot, and their respective whirl-filled wakes.

I sure wish we’d invest more in these robotic explorers. The science done by any one of them exceeds the total science done in the current manned space program, at a tiny fraction of the cost…

Blooper of the Day

From a church circular:

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

Chuckle brought to you courtesy of GeorgeK…

Word of the Day

Giraffiti, n: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Old Goats

Forwarded by SimiL (one of my tiny-but-loyal group of regular readers):

A group of Americans were traveling by tour bus through Holland. As they stopped at a cheese farm, a young guide led them through the process of cheese making, explaining that goat’s milk was used. She showed the group a lovely hillside where many goats were grazing. “These” she explained “are the older goats put out to pasture when they no longer produce.” She then asked, “What do you do in America with your old goats?” A spry old gentleman answered, “They send us on bus tours!"

Hah!

But here in San Diego, old goats have a different fate: they are rented out to eat chaparral. Seriously! Brush-clearing-by-goat has become quite popular here, both with local governments and landowners. And from what I can see on the couple of occasions that I’ve seen the old goats in action, they seem to like it as well…

Word of the Day

Sarchasm, n: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

What's Right?

Read about Megumi Yokota (from the Wall Street Journal$):

Megumi, who was abducted in 1977, has become the symbol of the movement to free the abductees. She was 13 years old and on her way home from school when she was snatched off the streets of the western Japanese city of Niigata by North Korean agents. Imprisoned in the hold of a ship and taken to Pyongyang, she was forced to teach spies how to pass as Japanese. In 2002, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il admitted to kidnapping Megumi and 11 other Japanese citizens.

Their stories are equally heart-rending: A young couple disappear in Kagoshima Prefecture while on a date at a beach, where they had gone to watch the sunset. A 23-year-old woman vanishes in Europe; the last her parents hear from her is a postcard from Copenhagen. A mother and daughter go missing during a shopping trip in Niigata Prefecture. At the time, police who investigated these and other disappearances had no notion of North Korean involvement. In recent years, Japan has reopened many of the missing-persons files from the era but the scent has grown cold. There are only 17 people on the official list of abductees — the most recent was added in November — but officials say privately that the victims may number in the “hundreds.” South Korea, whose appeasement-minded government prefers not to talk about the kidnappings of its citizens, has 485 people on its list of abductees.

Pyongyang allowed five of the Japanese abductees to return home in 2002. (They were required to leave behind their Korean spouses and children as guarantees that they wouldn’t badmouth their captors.) It claimed the rest of the abductees had all died, but the causes of death they cited were so absurd as to be unbelievable — a 20-something young woman who dropped dead of a heart attack; a man who drowned while swimming in the ocean during a typhoon; and so forth. Megumi was reported to have hanged herself. But the DNA evidence provided by Pyongyang in her case and others proved to be fraudulent.

Can you imagine being the victim of such a kidnapping? Or the relative of one?

To my mind, this behavior all by itself is sufficient and compelling cause for the world to use all means necessary to remove crazy Kim and dismantle his evil government. At the very least, North Korea should be sealed off from the rest of the world until it collapses under its own incompetence — though certainly the effects of this would be awful for the North Korean people. An alternative would be a military effort from all directions: China, Russia, Japan, and the West — though certainly that would incur a substantial number of casualties amongst the military and civilians. In other words, of course this effort would be messy and would have consequences. But I can’t imagine how we (the world outside North Korea) can stand by and let this happen.

But that’s exactly what we’ve been doing for over 50 years. And it’s not like we just figured out that Kim (and his father before him) was evil — this has been perfectly clear since the early 1950s.

As I ponder that reality — the world’s inaction against unambiguous, clear evil — the one piece of clarity that emerges is this: that the United Nations is completely useless as a way to control rogue governments. The UN wouldn’t stop another Hitler; in fact, it would probably send him aid.

Ain’t that a comfortable thought to start your day?

Strange Statues

Now here are some things that you just don’t see every day. Clearly there are quite a few sculptors with well-developed senses of humor and whimsy.

Most of these are sculptures that I would love to see in the public spaces of San Diego (the nearest large city to me). Instead, with just a couple of notable exceptions, we have sculptures that I just don’t understand. The epitome of this class of sculpture is the … whatever it is … monster sculpture of what looks sort of like the prow of a ship, hanging from a bizarre arrangement of steel beams, at the corner of Laurel and Harbor Drive, near the airport. I cannot imagine why anyone would want such an ugly and uninteresting thing in their city.

But a piece of sculpture that puts a smile on people’s faces? That’s something to aspire to!

Don’t miss the rest of them.

Book Recommendation

I just finished reading an excellent overview of American involvement in the Middle East: Power, Faith, and Fantasy by Michael Oren. Though I’m a bit of a student of history, this book taught me a lot about America’s involvement in the Middle East, especially our involvement prior to the 20th century. I was especially surprised to learn just how big a role the Middle East actually played in the earliest days of our country.

For anyone interested in our current involvement in the Middle East, I highly recommend this book for background. You can get it on Amazon.

The Reminder

Tip o’the hat to SimiL for this little story:

An elderly gentleman of 83 arrived in Paris by plane. At the French customs desk, the man took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry-on bag. “You have been to France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked, sarcastically. The elderly gentleman admitted he had been to France previously. “Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.” The American said, “The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.” “Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France!” The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained. “Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find any Frenchmen to show it to."

Having visited France a few times on business, I can tell you that the premise of this story — the sneering French official — rings very true. Especially in the big cities, Americans are frequently “treated” to condescension and insult from French citizens. To any American with even the slightest knowledge of history (ok, I know, that’s only 2% or so of Americans) this is galling, to say the least. To someone who was actually there on D-Day, surely it’s much worse…

I’m reminded of an article I read a few days ago concerning the NATO troops in Afghanistan. I’m not sure why this surprised me, but it did… While it is absolutely true that NATO is supplying the foreign armed forces in Afghanistan, and that virtually all NATO members have troops there — it turns out that most members have placed significant conditions on the use of those troops. In fact, with the exception of Britain, the U.S., and a few new NATO members with tiny forces there (because their countries are tiny!), all the NATO “partners” have forbidden their troops from participating in combat! Huh? What, exactly, is their purpose, then? Well, it turns out they’re engaged in logistics, training, and police work.

The French troops are amongst those that are not allowed in combat roles. Thanks a lot, “partners” — which must be French for “cheese-eating surrender monkeys"…

Word of the Day

Inoculatte, v: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Casino Update

The Voice of San Diego — a refreshing change from the Pulitzer Prize winning San Diego Union-Buffoon — has an informative, well-written article today on the Jamul Casino. In this one article, they’ve got more information than the Union-Buffoon has managed to get into the sum of all their articles on the subject. A sample:

At the same time, for Toggery and Rosales, it is an intensely personal quest. They are reluctant dissidents, convinced of their cause but hesitant to embrace the hero label bestowed by fellow, non-tribal opponents. The two protest that the casino would destroy burial sites they consider sacred.

But they also worry that their battle may end soon. Eviction notices were taped to their doors Feb. 24, promising they’d be removed from their homes within five days. The Jamul tribal chairman says the two dissidents will be gone in 90 days. The casino, he says, will be built by 2009, the latest promised construction date.

This is why Toggery and Rosales talk about human fences and their plans to stand in front of bulldozers. This is why a neighbor hired security so the two could sleep soundly at night. This is why Toggery says she is afraid to leave her home for more than an hour, fearful she won’t have a house when she returns.

Still, they have fought the casino, despite the alienation, the threats, the severance of longstanding familial relations.

"What we have here, and what’s in the ground, it should stay,” Toggery says. “As long as you have one person who believes, that’s all that really matters."

As they say, go read the whole thing.

One very useful thing I discovered while reading this article is that the Jamul Indian Casino web site has finally put the environmental impact report (EIR) online. They did it in a quite awkward fashion however, so I’ve downloaded all the individual Word document files they provided and put them in a single ZIP file, which you can download and save yourself.

I haven’t had a chance to read the entire report myself yet (but I will, as it’s not that long). However, a quick sampling of a couple of sections shows that (as usual for such things) it’s more a public relations piece than it is an objective, factual report. It’s what I was expecting, but not what I was hoping for. The EIR was commissioned by the tribe and Lakes Entertainment (their backers), and it sounds like it. If Jamulians Against the Casino were to make an EIR, I suspect that darned near every issue listed would have a completely different conclusion. An awful lot of time and money is spent on EIRs, which are required by law in many circumstances, but I really can’t see the point when the result is so obviously biased…

Grocery Shopping on the Web

This Thursday — yesterday — we received a flyer in the mail from Von’s (a western chain of grocery stores that’s part of the Safeway grocery conglomerate). The flyer spoke glowingly of Von’s new web store, and how one could order anything you’d like from the grocery store and have it delivered to your home even that same day.

Do you remember PeaPod and WebVan from the dot-com days? This was their premise as well, and after squandering vast quantities of venture capital, these fine companies went out of business. They never did deliver to rural areas, either — you had to live quite close to their distribution warehouses to be eligible to use their services. We live in a veryrural// area, about 20 miles from the nearest Von’s — and probably a lot further from their warehouse, where I suspect these delivery vans are being dispatched from.

But the Von’s flyer said they covered San Diego County (amongst many other areas). Not “the popular parts” of the county, not “selected areas” — the inference was that they covered all of San Diego County. So I decided to put it to the test. On Thursday afternoon I went to their web site, created an account, and was pleasantly surprised when no apologetic “Sorry, but we don’t serve your area” page popped up when I entered my address. The web site just accepted it as though I lived in some normal area, and invited me to enter my grocery list. Which I did — some $220 worth of groceries of all kinds, which is most of a month’s groceries for my wife and myself.

During the checkout phase, I discovered that I had a choice of delivery times — and for $9.95 I could have a two hour delivery window, as opposed to $7.95 for a four hour delivery window. Actually, both of those sounded good to me — living out here in the boonies, we’re used to delivery windows expressed in days, not hours! For any order over $150, they knock off $5 from the delivery charge — and for the first order, as a promotion, the delivery was free. So I signed up for a Friday delivery (the next day) with a two hour window from 10 AM to 12 PM.

This morning, I fully expected to get either an email or a telephone call telling me that I was outside the service area and I could just forget about it. So sorry, but if you’re so dumb as to live 20 miles from a grocery store then surely you can’t expect us to deliver to you!

And sure enough, at 11:30 AM I got a call from Von’s. But it wasn’t the call I was expecting. Instead, it was the driver of the delivery van, telling me that (a) he was running about 20 or 30 minutes late, and (b) he had no frickin' idea where I lived, and could I please give him so directions. This had me thoroughly flustered, as I really didn’t believe there was much chance they’d really deliver my groceries. But here I had a real, live (and very polite) driver telling me that yes indeedy he’d be out here in less than an hour.

And at 12:20 the delivery van pulled into my driveway. The driver was every bit as polite in person as he was on the phone, and he proceeded to show me how it the delivery part all worked. My order was in five blue plastic bins: three in the unrefrigerated section, one in the refrigerator, and one in the freezer. He stacked them all up on a cart, wheeled them to my front door, and then helped me bring them all into the house. All my groceries were in the same shopping bags they’d have been in had I done the shopping myself. In just a couple of minutes, all my groceries were in the house and I said goodbye to my delivery guy.

Then I checked out my order, which was actually fairly complicated. I had a dozen or so items (produce, meat, etc.) where I had entered specific directions to my “personal shopper” on the web site. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that with one exception, everything was exactly as I had ordered. The exception: they had substituted ordinary Kosher bologna for the Lebanon bologna that I ordered. If you know anything about Lebanon bologna, you know it is nothing whatsoever like ordinary bologna — but this was such a small and really insignificant mistake that I am not disappointed at all.

Think about it. I live about 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store. To buy these groceries, I’d normally have driven for an hour — using about $10 in gas — and spent another hour or so in the grocery store. Two hours of my life, and $10 in gas. With this service, I spent less than 30 minutes online, and zero time or dollars driving. This privilege cost me zero this time, and in the future will cost me $2.95 (the $7.95 charge for a four hour window, less the $5 they knock off for orders over $150), as we’ll most likely order only once every three or four weeks, and that order will easily exceed $150. This is a complete no-brainer for us, unless the service deteriorates very badly.

I hope to never visit the grocery store again!

Oops II

Bruce Hall, on his blog Hall of Record, has done a very interesting piece of analysis that takes several posts over the past week. It’s a great example of one of my favorite kinds of analysis: the “sniff” test, or a quick test to see whether a hypothesis correctly predicts something.

The hypothesis in Bruce’s case was global warming. Not what’s causing global warming, but the simple hypothesis that there is global warming. Bruce thought that if our globe was really getting warmer, then we should be able to see evidence of that in climate records. And it just so happens that the United States has been keeping widespread and very accurate temperature records for over 100 years.

So Bruce had this interesting — and testable — thought. If global warming is a real phenomenon, then surely it should be true that we’re setting more record high temperatures in recent years than we have in past years. It turns out that this data is readily available. Bruce got the data, did the analysis, and (in his words):

Sorry, but I just don’t see “global warming” in these extremes. It must be happening on some other part of the globe. CO2 is just not doing its job.

Go read the whole thing (and check out his very useful graphs).

Word of the Day

Hipatitis, n: Terminal coolness.

Oops!

Some interesting news from, of all places, Mars. Data from NASA satellites around Mars indicates that Mars is also experiencing a “global warming” of its own. NASA’s satellites gathered information for the past several years on the polar ice caps of Mars (which in its case, are carbon dioxide ice, not water ice). That data indicates that Mars has experienced a warming trend that matches the one seen on Earth — and, like the one on Earth, correlates quite nicely with the increase in the output of the sun.

In other words, on Mars as on the Earth, a brighter sun produces a hotter climate.

The oops? This is a pretty solid indication that mankind’s activities — especially the increased carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere — aren’t the only explanation for global warming. In fact, it’s pretty good evidence that even if mankind weren’t here at all, we’d still have global warming. After all, there are darn few gas-guzzling SUVs on Mars. As in zero. And there’s not even a Hypocrite’s Mansion on Mars, as there is in Nashville.

What say ye to this, oh Goreacle?

Read all about it in the National Geographic magazine. It’s quite amusing how those scientists who are on the global warming funding teat quickly find ways to discredit this…

Word of the Day

Osteopornosis, n: A degenerate disease.

Religion of Peace

Shortly after 9/11, I first read about a poll of Muslim countries (at that time, primarily Arabic countries). This poll was designed to find out what sort of support there was for Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and their terrorist activities amongst the ordinary citizens of Muslim nations. Since then, dozens of such polls have been conducted, in a broader range of Muslim countries, with some of them seeking to further clarify the initial findings by sampling not only whether a citizen was Muslim or not, but also what branch of Islam the citizen believed in (Shia, Sunni, Wahabi, etc.).

The results of these polls have been remarkably consistent.

Support for Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and terrorist activity directed at America is always between 80% and 95% of those sampled in the poll.

Some of these polls went further: they sought to understand why this support existed. Their results are also remarkably consistent.

The overwhelming majority of supporters of terrorism directed at America cite one reason for their support. It can be summarized — fairly, I believe — like this:

The Quran (Koran) says that infidels must be coerced to either convert or die, and that it is the duty of all faithful Muslims to coerce them. America is the leader of the infidel nations. America must be coerced. The best weapon the Muslims have to fulfill their religious duty (at least, until Iran gets nuclear weapons) is terrorism. There is no stricture in Islam against killing infidels (in fact, quite the opposite), so engaging in terrorism is completely consistent with their religious beliefs.

These poll results are consistent with another piece of evidence, one not often spoken of in our lamestream media: Al Qaeda and its ilk are quite well funded. They are spending many millions of dollars annually on training, weapons, ammunition, logistics, and so on. Where does this money come from? Well, actually, that’s well known (if little discussed): an interesting fraction comes from terrorist-supporting governments (Iran, Libya, etc.) — but the majority comes from individual donations. The money is solicited from Muslims much as a Christian minister or priest, or a Jewish rabbi, might solicit money from their flock for charity. The Muslim imams — both directly and by endorsement — overtly raise money to help the terrorists kill infidels. Overwhelmingly the target of their rhetoric is American and Jewish (e.g., Israeli) infidels.

So here’s the ponder…

Does anything short of eliminating Islam remove the threat to America?

The contention of the lamestream media, propaganda outlets like CAIR, and most other defenders of Islam — including the imams of many mosques in the U.S. — is that Islamic terrorists are a tiny minority of Muslims, and that most Muslims condemn their actions. These polls show that contention to be false.

If we could somehow wave a magic wand and round up every single Al Qaeda member this instant, what do you suppose would happen next?

If I believe these poll results (and I know of no reason why I shouldn’t), then surely another Al Qaeda would arise very quickly. It would have no trouble either recruiting or obtaining financing. So long as their remained a Muslim base with the beliefs indicated by those polls, this would be true.

So…

Logically, it seems to me, there are only two ways to eliminate the threat to America.

One way would be to change the beliefs of Muslims. How on earth could we do that? Even attempting to induce such a change would be confirmation of our infidel status, and further “proof” of the need to convert or kill us.

The other would be to eliminate Muslims (or better, only the Muslims who believed they had a duty to kill infidels).

Would anyone care to point out the error in my logic?

Word of the Day

Karmageddon, n: It’s like, when everybody is, like, sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s, like, a serious bummer.

Word of the Day

Glibido, n.: All talk and no action.

Word of the Day

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Bit of History

In the Soviet Union, between 1924 and 1937, there was once a group of people dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Latvian language and culture. They called themselves the “Prometheus Society", and they financed themselves by manufacturing and selling various items (including slide rules), and by putting on concerts, shows, and art exhibitions.

I recently acquired one of their slide rules, and with the help of my friends Vera and Konstantin Stankevich, I found out quite a bit about this society. Their end was tragic: in one of Stalin’s infamous purges, every member of the society was either killed outright or set to gulags (most likely for a slow death there).

This is one of the most interesting stories I’ve heard associated with slide rules, and thus a particularly good example of the unexpected benefits of my hobby.

Read more about the society here, or see the slide rule here…

Word of the Day

Arachnoleptic fit, n: The frantic dance you perform just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

Please...

The year was 1980, and the FBI was running a high-level sting operation to catch government officials taking bribes. It was called “Abscam", and it was doing great work until the lamestream media exposed it. Here’s an extract from a videotape of one of Abscam’s most famous moments:

On tape, Murtha told the undercover FBI agent: “When I make a f***in' deal I want to make sure that I know exactly what I’m doing and … what I’m sayin' is, a few investments in my district …"

It is a profound and shocking fact that Murtha even showed up at this meeting, knowing he was going to be negotiating bribe money with Arabs.

Murtha added that he wanted the investment in his district to look like it was done “legitimately … when I say legitimately, I’m talking about so these bastards up here can’t say to me … 'Jesus Christ, ah, this happened,' then he (someone else), in order to get immunity so he doesn’t go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people and then the son of a bitch all falls apart."

For those of you just joining us, no, this isn’t a scene from “The Sopranos.” It’s an actual conversation between a U.S. congressman and an FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik offering a bribe.

"Murtha” is Congressman John Murtha, D-PA. Yes, that Murtha — the one that the Democrats have proudly chosen as the leader of their anti-war efforts.

Sometimes you just have to wonder whether you’re in the real world, or in someone’s demented, loony-bin dream world. Because in the real world, surely something this obviously wrong wouldn’t happen, would it?

Please, someone wake me up and get me back to the real world!

H/T to Ann Coulter…

Fortress Report

As I write this, my contractor continues his never-ending stream of lies, broken promises, and just plain immoral behavior. It’s really quite sad.

And quite annoying, since it’s my money he’s got, and my fortress he’s not building!

Several of my concerned readers have asked me privately to name this contractor, as they would like to avoid making the same mistake I did. Privately, I have responded to them — and if you’re about to make a decision on a concrete contractor, feel free to contact me!

However, I’m not quite ready to disclose his name publicly — although I’m very, very close. I’ve gotten some advice from an attorney on this matter, and there’s one more step I’m going to take before I’m ready to go public with the contractor’s name. In a few days, if I don’t have a positive response (meaning visible progress on the fortress), then I will name him here.

Quote of the Day

From Mark Steyn’s most recent column in The Australian:

According to my dictionary, the word “ally” comes from the Old French. Very Old French, I’d say. For the New French, the word has a largely postmodern definition of “duplicitous charmer who undermines you at every opportunity”.

Read the whole thing.

Word of the Day

Beelzebug, n: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Word of the Day

Caterpallor, n: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

Word of the Day

Ignoranus, n: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

Wow!

As you can see on the gauge at right, we had almost 3 inches (7 cm) of lovely, gentle rain fall on us yesterday. For once, the rainfall occurred almost exactly when the NOAA forecast said it would: midnight-to-midnight on the 19th. No forecast I saw got the amount right, though — predictions varied from 1.25 inches to 2 inches.

Our wildfire danger is now essentially zero, and it will most likely stay that way for at least a month. Hopefully more…

If our deserts to the east got some of this rain (I don’t know yet whether they did or not), then we’re quite likely to have good desert wildflowers this year.

And of course, in a few weeks I’ll be engaged in the annual battle weeds and grasses battle!

Rain!

We’ve got a very nice rain storm going right now; it’s been raining — often quite hard — since just after midnight last night. On the radar snapshot at right you can see that at 7:15 this morning we had a big old storm cell right on top of our heads. The current radar image shows more such cells on the way. The forecast says rain all day today and into tonight.

And we’ve got over an inch already!

I suspect the Lawson Creek will be running tomorrow, for real…

The rain has been intense enough, on occasion, to cause my satellite Internet connection to fail — it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything like that…

Slide Rules

If you found this blog because you were looking for Tom Dilatush, the slide rule collector, you’ve found some scribblings by the right guy — but you’re in the wrong place.

Mike Konshak (the proprietor of the indispensable International Slide Rule Museum) offered to host my slide rule collection on his web site. That was such an attractive offer that I could hardly resist, and my collection is now slowly making it’s way onto the web at this new location. As I write this, I’m approaching 100 slide rules scanned, photographed, and documented.

So go take a look!

Oh My

Doomed, I tell you, we're all DOOMED!

Watch this.

Then (if you're American) weep for your country.

Gun Control

Here’s England’s experience, in a pithy summary from the London Telegraph:

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licenses, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

This pretty much matches the NRA’s predictive slogan:

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

The left in the U.S. never ceases its attempts — sometimes successful — to whittle away at the rights of Americans to own firearms. With the Democratic majorities now in Congress, we can expect more of the same at the national level — hopefully to be vetoed by President Bush. In 2008, should Hillary or Obama be elected (an outcome you can bet that Osama and his ilk are fervently praying for), and should the Democratic majorities in Congress be maintained, we can expect some very restrictive gun control legislation to be passed. Both candidates have, in the past, expressed support for either eliminating the right of U.S. citizens to own firearms, or for restricting that right severely, as in the U.K. today. In fact, Hillary has cited the U.K. as a model for gun control. Should such legislation be passed, the NRA and other such groups will immediately mount a Constitutional challenge, and one hopes they’d win that. But after Kelo, I’m no longer so confident that our Supreme Court will actually uphold the plain meaning of the Constitution. Event its “conservative” members are alarmingly prone to inventing new meanings and new passages…

Global Warming

On Reuters yesterday:

KATHMANDU - Snow fell on Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, for the first time in 63 years on Wednesday, stirring excitement and curiosity among residents and their children.

"I have never seen it snow in Kathmandu in all my life,” said 45-year-old housewife Manju Shrestha, playing in the snow with her young children.

Also in the news yesterday: temperatures in Antarctica are not increasing, as the climate models have predicted. Let me translate: the “evidence” for the notion of future global warming caused by human activity consists almost entirely of the predictions of computerized “models” of the Earth’s climate. For the most part, the changes predicted by these models are small and slow, and therefore very difficult to verify over the course of even several years. However, there are several changes the models predict that are larger and faster. One of those happens to be in an area where there is lots of scientific activity, and good climate records over the past few years: Antarctica. The models predicted easily measurable temperature increases over the past 10 years.

Those increases didn’t happen.

The models are demonstrably wrong.

But I don’t suppose the Al Gorians will temper their rhetoric in the slightest. After all, they’re not the type to let a little thing like some pesky data upset their gravy train certainty…

Quote of the Day

From Iraqi Konfused Kid:

I’m gonna tell you something that all the Iraqis who pretend they’re full of pride and shit don’t tell you, every Iraqi who knows what’s good for him wants the US military plan to happen - it’s a known fact today that while US soldiers do occasionally rape 15-year-olds and add naked photos of our hairy butts to their family albums, they are still infinitely more trustworthy than any Iraqi soldier from anywhere. When an American soldier knocks on your door for a search, you go 'oh thank god' but when Iraqis do the same, you are instantly on your toes.

Read the whole thing, please.

There’s a wide variety of commentary coming from Iraq these days, on blogs — military blogs, diplomatic blogs, propaganda blogs, and Iraqi citizen blogs. What’s most striking to me about all of these sources of information is this: while they all have different perspectives and different kinds of information … I haven’t found a single one that even comes close matching the awful picture painted by the lamestream media. If you read these sources, as I do regularly, you’ll discover a different Iraq. A much more plausible Iraq than the one you see on CNN, and also a much more complex Iraq. There’s good news and there’s bad news, and plenty of both. And contrary to what you’d believe if your only source was the talking network heads, there’s plenty of those most precious human commodities: hope and inspiration…

Wake Up!

Last night Debbie attempted to use our microwave oven, and discovered that it didn’t work. Oh, the lights came on, and the turntable turned, but the stuff inside stayed ice cold. Thinking that it might have gotten itself into some software failure mode, or perhaps that some electronics got overheated, I pulled the plug and told her we’d try it again in the morning. It’s amazing how often a little “rest” cures whatever ails an appliance.

So this morning I plugged it back in to try it out. Of course it won’t do anything until you set the clock, so I had to figure that out again. Thank goodness for Google’s ability to find a manual on the web — because there’s very little chance we’d ever find the manual for this 8 or 9 year old device in our house! So, with multi-page clock-setting directions in hand, I managed to get the clock set. Now we’re ready to test it, and hopefully we’ll be cooking with hard radiation!

But such was not to be…

I put my test container of water in the microwave, and pressed the two buttons that would make it heat for one minute on 'high'. For the first couple of seconds, everything acted perfectly normal. Then there was a very loud kra-a-a-ck!!! and a jet of blue flame shot out the right side of the microwave. Our microwave is sitting in a recessed cabinet, so the blue flame quickly filled the small space between the microwave and the cabinet, and then changed direction to the only escape it had: straight out the front. This flame jumped out perhaps 18 inches, right past my right hand (which was still up at the control panel) and just a few inches from my eyeballs.

I don’t think my heart rate has ever jumped quite so much, quite so quickly.

The microwave is now sitting ignominiously out by our trash cans. I will buy us a nice, shining, new, non-exploding microwave this afternoon.

And I will never, ever have an unguarded microwave moment again!

Plan Two

The Democrats' actions don’t match their rhetoric? I know, I know, big freakin' surprise! I can hear the peanut gallery already… They’re politicians, for crap’s sake! What was I expecting? Leadership? Aw, come on, be reasonable — these are politicians we’re talking about!

For all their “deeply felt", “moral” rhetoric during the last election campaign about the need to end the war in Iraq, and for all their self-congratulating talk about the “mandate” the voters handed them, the Democrats have just shown us how shallow their actual commitment to the cause really is. In four months the Democratic leadership has made the transition from in-your-face anti-war agitation to a kind of political “guerrilla war”. They don’t have the votes — or the Constitutional authority — to force an actual end to the war. So they now have the objective of preventing President Bush — the Commander-In-Chief duly elected by a majority of the American people — from prosecuting the Iraq war as he decides. From The Politico:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration’s options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition’s goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement — the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged.

Translation: the Democrats have figured out that their bring-the-troops-home-right-now position is not the position of the majority of the American people (and possibly not even the majority of the lefties — barking moonbat rhetoric notwithstanding). So they can’t take on the issue directly, as they would lose. Rather than accept this outcome — which is after all just that pesky “will of the people” thing, not the view of the “elites” — they will instead try to hobble President Bush with their version of the legendary Chinese torture: death by a thousand cuts. Financial cuts, in this case.

Their political courage in office doesn’t even come close to matching their rhetorical courage while running.

What disturbs me the most, though, isn’t this specific tactic; I’ve come to expect such bullshit from this crowd. No, what disturbs me the most is that my fellow Americans keep re-electing these bozos, despite their repeated failure to live up to even their own side’s expectations! So far as I can discern, there is simply zero accountability amongst our elected representatives.

Sort of like the Post Office.

Now there’s a scary thought for you…

Simple Joys

A friend passed along this story…

One sunny day in 2008, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench.

He spoke to the Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton.

The Marine replied, “Sir, Mrs. Clinton is not President and doesn’t reside here."

The old man said, “Okay,” and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton”.

The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mrs. Clinton is not President and doesn’t reside here."

The man thanked him and again walked away…

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mrs. Clinton. I’ve told you already several times that Mrs. Clinton is not the President and doesn’t reside here. Don’t you understand?"

The old man answered, “Oh, I understand you fine, I just love hearing your answer!"

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said … “See you tomorrow!"

Trouble is, this story would be just as funny — and comforting — with almost any of the 25 (or 45, or whatever it’s up to now) announced candidates for President in 2008…

Quote of the Day

On Saturday, I chanced to hear a prominent politician say this:

If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Mr. Obama but also for the Democrats.

Can you guess who this was?

It was that well-known American patriot, John Howard. The Prime Minister of Australia. Leave it to an Aussie to have the political courage to speak the truth, however inconvenient or politically incorrect it might be…

Fortress Fortitude

Back in November, I posted a few times about the “fortress” I am attempting to have built (just search for “fortress” at right if you’re interested in the history). Since then, I’ve been suffering from a contractor who just wouldn’t live up to his side of the bargain (e.g., building my fortress), though he was happy to take my money. Things have been slowly escalating, most recently to the point where lawyers have been consulted and threats made. Last night, I met with my contractor — and maybe, just maybe, got things back on track. As it stands right now, we’re scheduled to pour 14 cubic yards of concrete next Saturday.

If that actually happens, there will be some celebrating here on that evening!

Since those first few posts, several people have posted comments or written me privately, wondering why I felt so threatened that I felt compelled to build a fortress. So let me explain to anyone who may be wondering…

The “fortress” is not a defense against burglars, nuclear weapons, or any other act of man.

The “fortress” is a defense against fire — the kind of wild, crazy, fast-moving wildfires we get out here in the chaparral. What makes this compelling is two things: (1) The knowledge that a wildfire in our area, within my lifetime, is almost inevitable. It has already been almost thirty years since the last fire burned what is now our property — and that means thirty years of chaparral growth, and thirty years of fuel accumulation. (2) The unexpected discovery, after the last fire that burned close to us, that steel buildings are vulnerable to wildfire. As we drove around through the burned areas off Montiel Road after the fire, I was stunned to see that virtually every steel building had either completely collapsed or had partially collapsed.

That latter discovery prompted a lot of research on my part into exactly what kinds of buildings can survive a fire — as I had purchased the components of a steel building, and was planning to erect it. And as usual, it turns out there are lots of ways to skin that particular cat. However, one particular building design combined several things that I really liked: low cost, completely reliable even with no power or water, and simplicity. That design: a concrete building with a double-walled, thick steel door.

After completing my research, I engaged a contractor and a structural engineer, and we came to a firm design. It’s only called “the fortress” because the solid concrete building evokes the image of a military bunker. It starts with a 6” thick reinforced concrete slab, 20' by 20'. Centered in that slab is a 16” deep, 24” wide footing for a 16' by 16' building. The walls of the building will start with hollow cement blocks, with the inner ceiling being 8' high. Every second run of blocks will have horizontal steel reinforcement. Once the walls are built, vertical steel reinforcement will be inserted, and concrete poured to fill the walls. Then a steel reinforcement mesh will be wired into place for the roof, and a 10” thick concrete roof poured around it. Sounds like a bunker, doesn’t it? But all that strength is what’s required to make a solid concrete building meet our building codes, including for earthquake safety.

It has nothing to do with withstanding mortar bombardment, and everything to do with withstanding a magnitude 6.0 temblor.

And a fire.

The fires we have out here in the chaparral pass very quickly. It’s unlikely that the fuel in the immediate area will take more than 30 minutes to burn. Inside the fortress, if we or our animals need to escape to there, we won’t even get warm.

And that’s the whole point of the exercise!

Facts and Claims

Local folks will remember well that on the evening of this past December 1, a local man — Charles Crow — was shot dead on Wisecarver Truck Trail, just off Skyline Truck Trail. This happens to be just over a mile from where I live, so this particular incident struck close to home in both the figurative sense and in the literal sense. Ever since that day, we’ve been trying to figure out exactly what happened, as the meager information we received clearly didn’t tell the whole story.

Yesterday a hearing was held in El Cajon Superior Court, Judge Laura Palmer Hammes presiding, to determine if there was enough evidence to bind the suspect in the case (Jamul electrical contractor Bob Orlosky) over for trial on one charge of murder (of Charles Crow) and two charges of attempted murder (Hector Monget and David Hurley, Jr.), all local residents. The judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence, and has scheduled a hearing for Februrary 22nd to set a trial date. For those of you who do not understand how these proceedings work — this does not mean that the judge believes Orlosky is (or is probably) guilty. It simply means that she has determined that the prosecutor has a sufficient evidence to warrant allowing a jury to hear the case. This is a very low bar…
From the three articles I’ve found on the hearing (here, here, and here), I’ve gleaned these facts:

The three men in the Jeep that day were Charles Crow, David Hurley Jr., and Hector Monget.
The maximum sentence Orlosky faces, if convicted, is life in prison.
A week before the shooting, Orlosky and Grant Nunmaker caught copper thieves on Orlosky’s property and held them at gunpoint until sheriff’s deputies arrived to arrest them.
Crow and Hurley were suspected (by the sheriffs) of stealing copper in the past, but not from Orlosky’s property.
There was no copper in Hurley’s Jeep (the vehicle involved that evening), nor were there any tools that could be used to remove copper from electrical machinery.
Orlosky remains free on $2 million bail.
The defense attorney is Paul Pfingst (former San Diego District Attorney).
The prosecutor is Jeff Dusek, who used to work for Paul Pfingst.

The story alleged by the prosecution:

Hurley says that he and Crow were driving Monget to his home (in Rancho San Diego) on that night. He said that they saw a “For Sale” (real estate) sign as they drove past Wisecarver Road, and decided to check it out. He said they drove up Wisecarver Truck Trail, past a white pickup driving the other way, until they ran into a locked gate. At that point, he said, they turned around, and retraced their route toward Skyline Truck Trail. At some point he said they saw the white pickup parked by the side of the road, slowed down to see if the driver needed help, and at that point Orlosky stepped out from behind the white pickup and started shooting with his rifle held at his waist.

And some other unverifiable information:

Pfingst said that Hurley’s initial testimony to police was that he did not get a good look at the shooter’s face. Hurley said that his memory started coming back to him after the fact.
NBC News is reporting that the defense argument will be that the three men in the jeep were drunk, on drugs, and stealing.

This hearing was all about the prosecutor’s case, so we didn’t get to find out much about the defense’s side of things. From what was presented in the hearing, it sounds like the prosecutor is going to paint a picture of Orlosky as the outraged and out-of-control property owner, wronged in the past, and leaping to unwarranted conclusions in this instance. The fact that there was neither copper nor copper removal tools in the Jeep sounds damaging to Orlosky’s case to me; you’re not going to remove wire from motors or transformers with your bare hands. You might be able to make an argument that Orlosky believed they were on a scouting expedition, or something along those lines, but that would not be a reasonable justification for shooting.
One piece of Hurley’s testimony jumped out at me: that Orlosky held the rifle at his waist while shooting. Why would anyone shoot a rifle like that? If you know anything about guns, you know shooting “from the hip” is guaranteed to be wild, inaccurate fire. I don’t know why, as I wasn’t there, but that sounds to me like desperate, panicked shooting — not deliberate, calculated shooting. Of course, we don’t even know that’s really what happened; this is the just the testimony of one person.
It’s also interesting that Crow and Hurley were suspected in other copper thefts. I wonder if Orlosky knew that? Numerous commenters on previous posts have painted a glowing picture of Crow — they’ve called him a fine, upstanding young man who would never consider doing such a thing. The sheriffs obviously believed otherwise. I wonder what their suspicions were based on?
But to hear the other side, most likely we’re going to have to wait for the trial. We’ll know when that is on February 22nd.
If you’d like some history on this case, and a fair amount of commentary (much of it from local folks), check out my previous posts on the subject (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

One Life = One Year

Jonny Dallo was sentenced today to one year in jail for killing Jodi Burnett through his reckless actions. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A 19-year-old Jamul man was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail because he killed a mother of five in a high-speed crash last June.

He also was placed on probation for three years, and will lose his license for three years.

This kind of slap-of-the-wrist sentence is exactly what I was afraid of when we got news of Jonny’s sudden guilty plea. It smelled like a plea bargain had been struck (though none was made public), and this sentence certainly seems to confirm that. In the absence of any public information, we’re left to stew with our worst suspicions — that the high-powered legal team defending Jonny somehow raised enough doubt to scare the prosecutors into bargaining for a light sentence. Or even worse, that the prosecutors had somehow been bought. One commenter (on another post relating to this case) speculates that the Dallo family paid the Burnett family to get their support for a lighter sentence for Jonny — possible, I suppose, but again there is no public information to support that.

In the end, with what has been made public, here’s what we know: a hard-working mother and wife is dead from a horrible car wreck that happened only because of Jonny Dallo’s incredibly reckless driving. Dead.

And Jonny gets one year in jail.

Do you think that justice has been served here?

I do not.

Universal Bumper Sticker

Brought to you by the folks in New York:

Run, Hillary, Run!

Democrats put this on the rear bumper.

Republicans put this on the front bumper.

Libertarians put it on both bumpers.

An Animal Moment

A few minutes ago, I walked into our kitchen to finish making the cup of tea I’d left brewing there. This is, of course, something that I’ve done hundreds of times before.

But this time was different, on two counts:

First count: Mo’i (our older male field spaniel) was sitting on the floor, happily munching away — on a plastic food bowl. We’ve had that dog food bowl for a long time, and nobody had ever molested it before. This morning, for whatever reason, Mo’i went after it. Thoroughly. It’s dead; just barely recognizable. It’s a good thing the rest of our bowls are solid steel. At least, I think it’s a good thing!

Second count: Tippy (an adult shorthair cat) was up on the kitchen counter with a look of kitty ecstasy on his face. His eyes were half-closed with happiness, and I thought I heard a little moan of pleasure. He was lapping away at my tea just as fast as he could! And no, there was no milk or sugar in it.

There was a slightly odd flavor to the tea, but that may have been my imagination…

Title

A friend’s email brought a smile this morning, as I read through these examples of the wit and wisdom of Will Rogers. Here are some of his most famous one-liners, often used in the context of his trademark razor-sharp political commentary:

Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

There are 2 theories to arguing with a woman…neither works.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket.

There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

If you’re riding' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin' it back.

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

And here’s Will on the subject of aging:

Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know “why” I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.

When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of algebra.

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.

One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.

One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it’s called golf.

If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old.

Thanks, Will. The world still needs someone like you…

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

From a story in the San Diego Union-Buffoon, which, per their normal practice, doesn’t involve any actual investigation — just 'reporting' in the most literal sense:

Walter Rosales and Karen Toggery, who have lifelong blood ties to the village but are not officially enrolled, argued that the Jamul tribe has been hijacked by officers and members wrongly recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The two contend they are the tribe’s rightful leaders, one of several claims they have pursued in a series of unsuccessful suits dating back to the mid-1990s.

Southern California Intertribal Court Judge Anthony Brandenburg, sitting as a circuit judge in the first hearing of the Jamul Indian Village Tribal Court, rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the court lacked jurisdiction to serve as a legal forum for the eviction proceedings.

This is both the bad news and the ugly news. It’s bad (from my perspective, and that of many of my fellow Jamulians) because it means that the casino we don’t want to see built has one less obstacle to overcome. It’s ugly because this intra-tribal fight has turned into a full-blown, very public battle pitting two members of this tiny tribe against the other 30 or so members who support building the casino. It’s difficult for an outsider to imagine what this must feel like, on either side. But it can’t be pleasant for anyone…

Rosales and Toggery contend that land grading and casino construction would desecrate the tiny Jamul reservation, where funerary objects of their family members have been burned and buried near their homes as part of Kumeyaay Indian rituals.

The two cite such objections in an injunction lawsuit against the California Native American Heritage Commission that was filed last month in county Superior Court. They succeeded yesterday in getting a Superior Court order halting crews from dismantling the reservation’s meeting hall until a hearing on their injunction motion takes place March 19.

There’s the good news: one obstacle to the casino has at least gained the standing to be heard before the court, and the building work is, at the very least, delayed until the hearing date in March.

For You, Arkin

Many people have ably commented on the awful slurs written yesterday by William Arkin, the mindlessly liberal columnist at the Washington Post (whose words I will not repeat here). He’s been verbally whupped to the point that he’s now issued a (slimy, qualified) apology that falls far short of what’s needed. Personally, I think the Post should fire him, pronto, but of course that isn’t going to happen. The single best response to Arkin I’ve seen yet comes from a warrior poet, Russ Vaughn. Here’s the beginning:

WaPo Weasels II

Contributed by Russ Vaughn

...

Want to slam our soldiers, Arkin?

Well here is one to slam.

I got used to Lefty slamming

When I came back from Vietnam.

So you want to put a muzzle

On our brave fighting men?

Well try muzzling me you jerk,

Just tell me where and when.

...

Your profession needs a lesson

In basic free speech rights,

For those you worms all hide behind,

For those who fight your fights.

Like all your soft and smarmy kind,

You really have no clue,

Who American warriors truly are,

What our warriors truly do.

Now go read the rest. That’s an order!

And while you’re there, don’t miss WaPo Weasels I…

The Debate Is Over

Yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer — one of California’s dysfunctional U.S. Senators — said this:

"The scientific debate is over. We will have legislation this year."

This is but the latest in what looks like an orchestrated campaign by the left to shut down all debate and discussion on global warming. In recent weeks, we’ve seen efforts to ban global-warming skeptics from radio and TV, to refuse funding to skeptics, and even to criminalize public speech by skeptics (by claiming that any skeptical talk is criminally misleading and damaging to the public).

This is un-American.

This is madness.

This is anti-science.

This is getting dangerously close to Fahrenheit 451 (how long until we’re told to burn our copies of The Skeptical Environmentalist?), and Orwellian thought control (shutting down legitimate debate is just one step from telling you you’re not allowed to have skeptical thoughts).

This is (as others have observed) very much like a kind of secular religion — our leftie “betters” want us to take global warming on faith.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to combat this?

Hugo

Am I the only person worried about what’s happening in Venezuela? Hugo Chavez just got his legislature to grant him almost unlimited personal power — including the power to remove his Constitutional term limits, which of course he’s already talking about.

Hugo is following a well-trod path to dictatorship — precisely the same path followed by a fellow named Adolf Hitler, and very similar to the path followed a few years later by Fidel Castro.

But this time, the newly-minted dictator has been the darling of the American left (which is conspicuously quiet about recent developments in Venezuela) for the past several years. They didn’t stop toasting Hugo until last week, when he started talking about how he was about to nationalize the over $34B in American investments in Venezuela.

Oops. Looks like the left hitched themselves up to another bad boy…I wonder how they’ll wriggle out of this one?

But forget the petty politics for a moment. We’ve suddenly got a rather bad actor not far south of our borders, and he’s no longer got any internal restraints on his behavior. He’s got a lot of oil-generated wealth at his disposal. He has a substantial and modernly-armed military. He has a close and open relationship with Cuba, Iran, and Libya. He openly proclaims his objective of ridding the world of “American tyranny”.

What the hell are we going to do about this wacko on the Caribbean?

A prediction: Iran will build nuclear-capable missile sites in Venezuela.

What will we do about that?

And why aren’t we hearing much about this in the media? Hugo is a clear and present danger to the U.S. homeland — but you’d sure never get that from the news! What gives here?

Ban the Bulb?

Do I still want to live in California?

I actually asked myself that question after reading about the latest lizard-brained idea from Sacremento. One of our liberal, Democrat, environmentalist-wacko, Gore-infected legislators introduced a bill to ban the incandescent light bulb in California. The bill would phase in the ban, which would take complete effect in 5 years.

And the pundits say it’s likely to pass, and almost certain to get the Governator’s signature.

This is completely plausible to me. The sheeple of California (meaning the majority of adults of voting age: left-leaning, uninformed, and apathetic) will likely listen to the bleating about how incandescent bulbs are guilty of wasting an enormous amount of energy, about how compact fluorescent bulbs put out the same amount of light but use much less energy, last longer, and cost less. They’ll hear all that, and then like the unthinking, uninformed, and unobservant sheep that they are, they’ll say “Yeah, that sounds good!” and re-elect those same legislators again — those legislators that are, brick-by-brick, building a nanny state that is removing one freedom after another from us.

"What on earth is Tom ranting about now?", some of you may say. Well, for background, read this. But here’s the bottom line: incandescent bulbs are superior to compact fluorescent bulbs with respect to the quality of the light they emit. To use simpler words: our artificially illuminated world looks better with incandescent bulbs. But if the legislators prevail (as it appears they will), I will be forced to use inferior lamps, or risk criminal prosecution after the “light bulb police” catch me using bulbs I bought from another state.

The right way to handle this would be to allow the market to control the “problem”. Many people already choose to use compact fluorescent lamps — either as a replacement for all their incandescent bulbs, or only for those where the aesthetics don’t matter much. They do it, I’m sure, to save money. I do this myself in my home. The higher the price of electricity (and therefore the greater savings from compact fluorescent lamps), the more people will do this. That’s the right way — let each individual make up their own mind, based on the value of high quality light to them.

For example, when I’m working on my hobbies, the quality of the light is vital to me. Sacremento is going to tell me that I can’t have my halogen desk lamp. That means that I will either have to work on my hobbies only in daylight (doesn’t work well in the winter!), or I will have to become a light bulb criminal.

Or leave.

Enough of this sort of crap, and I am outta here. I wonder which state is the least likely to engage in this sort of nanny-statism?

Anti-Icky-Poo

We just ordered some of this, on the recommendation of an animal trainer who says it works great. If I’d ever stumbled across it before, I’d have ordered it just because of the name!

From their web site:

Whether you spell it with a hyphen or without, its still the absolute best odor eliminator on the market. There are probably more animal behaviorists and veterinarians recommending Anti-Icky-Poo than any other odor eliminator available today.

Whether you have a cat urine odor, a dog urine odor, a human urine odor or any other organic odor, AIP can come to your rescue.

Why wait another day for a solution to your odor problems. Even skunk odor, musk or how about lady bug odors. We had a client call with a problem of thousands of lady bugs that died underneath her deck. With Anti-Icky-Poo the problem was solved in days.

Once we get it and try it out, we’ll let you know if it worked for us…

Quote of the Day

From C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I suspect Mr. Lewis would have made a fine libertarian…