Jamul Casino Update...

The latest report for Lakes Entertainment shows their investment in the Jamul Casino project continuing to look bad, at least on paper. The money quote from the report:

The net unrealized gains for the six months ended June 28, 2009 consisted of $2.2 million related to the Jamul Casino project with the Jamul Tribe and $0.1 million related to the Iowa Tribe’s Ioway Casino project due primarily to improvement in the credit markets, which resulted in lower required rates of return.

Essentially this says that Lakes' accounts believe they'd have been better off (by $2.2 million!) putting the money in the bank than investing it in the Jamul Casino project.

Also in the news is the JAC (Jamulians Against the Casino) lawsuit aiming to overturn Caltran's recent settlement with the Jamul Indian Tribe on environmental grounds. I'm no lawyer, but this sounds like pretty shaky grounds to me...

Car vs. Hydrant...

In Jamul! According to the (very short) story, this happened at around 5 pm last night, near the intersection of 94 (Campo Road) and Steele Canyon Road (i.e., near Ranch Feed, the 7-11, and the Greek Sombrero).

I'd like to have seen that!

There's a short video at the link.

An Open Letter to Obama...

Lou Pritchett is a former Vice President of Proctor & Gamble. I'd never heard of him until I read this letter that he wrote (below), which nicely summarizes many of my thoughts about Obama. Snopes has verified its authenticity. Mr. Pritchett submitted the letter to the New York Times, and says that they never even acknowledged his submission, much less published it.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

Carter Says "Finally!"...

From my mom. Perfect.

Obama = Socialism...

This has gone completely viral over the past few days. The lefties are screaming bloody murder about it.

Interesting.

I note how they didn't scream bloody murder when far worse depictions of Bush were gleefully distributed by the same lefties who are screaming now.

I'm putting this in my sidebar until The One is gone...

One of the Many Reasons...

This is one of the many reasons why we need a revolution at the polls. We need to throw all of these bums out on the street – Democrats and Republicans alike – and replace them with a new crew that's less fiscally insane.

Take a look at what the past few administrations and Congresses have done to our tax system. Even while the lefties are fostering the meme that the “wealthy” (a very, er, flexible term that is, in progressive hands) aren't paying enough taxes, here are the actual facts: the U.S. now has the most progressive federal taxes amongst all developed nations.

“Progressive” in this context means that the more money you make, the higher the percentage of your income you pay in taxes. For the last couple of decades, it has also meant something else in the U.S.: if your income is below a given amount, you “pay” negative taxes – you get a check from the government instead of the other way around. This welfare is euphemistically called the Earned Income Credit, and of course the money for it comes from taxpayers with higher incomes – the money is being taken from them and given to the “poor” (many of whom make over $40,000 per year).

Scott Hodge has a short post over at the Tax Foundation's blog. He notes:

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

Many states (including California, where I live – currently) have progressive income taxes as well, making this situation even worse.

It's not free money, folks. Those people paying the higher tax burdens are not going to do nothing while their hard-earned incomes are stolen. The easiest thing for an oppressed minority to do is to simply leave – and that's a lot easier when you have financial resources. It's happened before (think Sweden and England in the 20th century) and it's already happening now – the “wealthy” are leaving the states with the worst most progressive taxation policies (Maryland, Michigan, etc.) and headed for the states with the best most regressive tax policies (Florida, Nevada, etc). The internal immigration figures for the past few years demonstrate this rather clearly. And, though my wife and I are far from “wealthy” even by the Obamanation's flexible definition, we're starting to think about such a move ourselves – in no small part to escape the stifling total tax burden in California (said burden here comes complete with unrivaled fiscal irresponsibility and insanity as well)...

Quote of the Day...

Via reader Simon M...


ROFLMAO!

Bill Crawford's Story...

Col. James Moschgat writes:

William “Bill” Crawford certainly was an unimpressive figure, one you could easily overlook during a hectic day at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Mr. Crawford, as most of us referred to him back in the late 1970s, was our squadron janitor.

While we cadets busied ourselves preparing for academic exams, athletic events, Saturday morning parades and room inspections, or never-ending leadership classes, Bill quietly moved about the squadron mopping and buffing floors, emptying trash cans, cleaning toilets, or just tidying up the mess 100 college-age kids can leave in a dormitory.

Sadly, and for many years, few of us gave him much notice, rendering little more than a passing nod or throwing a curt, “G’morning!” in his direction as we hurried off to our daily duties.

Why? Perhaps it was because of the way he did his job-he always kept the squadron area spotlessly clean, even the toilets and showers gleamed. Frankly, he did his job so well, none of us had to notice or get involved. After all, cleaning toilets was his job, not ours.

Maybe it was his physical appearance that made him disappear into the background. Bill didn’t move very quickly and, in fact, you could say he even shuffled a bit, as if he suffered from some sort of injury. His gray hair and wrinkled face made him appear ancient to a group of young cadets. And his crooked smile, well, it looked a little funny. Face it, Bill was an old man working in a young person’s world. What did he have to offer us on a personal level?

Finally, maybe it was Mr. Crawford’s personality that rendered him almost invisible to the young people around him. Bill was shy, almost painfully so. He seldom spoke to a cadet unless they addressed him first, and that didn’t happen very often. Our janitor always buried himself in his work, moving about with stooped shoulders, a quiet gait, and an averted gaze. If he noticed the hustle and bustle of cadet life around him, it was hard to tell.

So, for whatever reason, Bill blended into the woodwork and became just another fixture around the squadron. The Academy, one of our nation’s premier leadership laboratories, kept us busy from dawn till dusk. And Mr. Crawford...well, he was just a janitor.

But you really should read the rest of the story...

RIP, Sgt. John C. Beale...

Sgt. Beale was killed in Afghanistan. More here...

Dogs Found!

A reader writes about two dogs he found (click to enlarge the flyer):

Monday July 13, 2009
Found a young female Dalmatian and a male Lasa-whatever in the middle of the intersection of Lyons Valley Road and Honey Springs.

No collars or tags.
They are a pair that live together because they stick close and sleep against each other.
Very dirty from their adventure and lots of stickers.
I've called and asked everyone around Jamul…but nobody recognizes these dogs.
I took pictures and showed them to Steele Canyon Vets but no luck.
Did the same with Jamul Vet Clinic again no luck.

Tuesday July 14, 2009
I'm taking both dogs to Steele Canyon Vets to see if they have chips and to get cleaned up.
They will keep them until Friday evening…when I come back from North County.
Also, posted FOUND DOGS flyer at the Jamul Trading Post, Jamul Vet Clinic, Steel Canyon Vet and along Skyline Truck Trail..

Awesome loving dogs. Please help me find the owners!

If you know these dogs, please give him a call!

Amazing Video...

Of one of our warriors who took an RPG to his thigh, and lived to tell the tale – because of his fellow warriors who took great risks to save him. Bring Kleenex.

Titanium Tea Strainer...

If you're a tea drinker, as I am, I highly recommend these strainers (under $15).

Here's to You, Mr. Jefferson...

Awesome, with Tea Party snaps:

Building a Radio, from Scratch...

Ran across this fascinating story from World War II, about British prisoners in a Japanese POW camp who built a working radio receiver from scratch. A taste:

I should come back to the capacitors on that, because we had to insulate the layers of those which we did by putting a layer of newspaper (a few people had newspaper and various things, for other reasons than newspaper of course, but then we had no other toilet requisites in the party) and by soaking this in some coconut oil we could insulate each layer after we wound it, and with a piece of this bee wire - we had something like fifty feet of it - wound round this part of the fish plate, we made a fairly good choke coil. And then a bigger capacitor, which was no trouble, having had success with the small one, to just wrap as much tin foil as we could round another sheet of newspaper which finished up about 18 inches long by about three quarters of an inch in diameter. We didn't even try to measure the capacitance of it, because we couldn't do anything about it anyway, except put more wire on. And that in effect was a fairly good rectifier, a very dangerous one because we had the 110 all right but we had a bit over that by the time we had rectified it, and we don't know because we had no means of measuring it.

Finally, the valve; we joined the valve by winding the clean little bee wire around it and then plugging it with any insulating material we could get to make it stick, - no valve holder, of course. So eventually we produced a receiver of sorts, except it wouldn't oscillate. We tried building more, another choke coil, and this went on for ages; there was no possibility we could get this valve to oscillate. I think it's recommended according to a friend of mine who had an amateur license, he thought that about 120 volts was the best we could get and there was no way we could get that by trying to smooth this any more. So the only avenue open was to bribe one Chinese working at the power station who was very much our way, and of course in those days was a nationalist Chinese.

For my readers unfamiliar with antique British English, a “valve” is what Americans would have called a “vacuum tube”, or just “tube”. For my younger readers, a vacuum tube is a device used for electronic amplification and rectification before the advent of semiconductor transistors and diodes.

Now I have built some electronic devices (including a radio receiver) from bits and pieces. My dad helped me build an old-fashioned crystal radio this way. But we had some purchased components (the headphone, the rectifying crystal, wire, etc.), easy access to things like waxed paper and aluminum foil, and some basic test equipment. These POWs not only had extremely limited materials at hand (though they were uninhibited about bribes, blackmail, and theft), they had no test equipment and no reference material. For instance, when they designed a capacitor, they had to either remember or re-invent the basic formulae describing capacitance!

One side-effect of our rapidly advancing technology base is that there are now relatively few people who understand the basics and fundamentals. In electrical engineering, for example, most time is necessarily spent on advanced integrated systems, and very little on the fundamentals of components. After all, in modern design work that newly minted engineers are likely to do, there's little use for the primitive components such as those the POWs made. On the other hand, back then electrical engineers generally were directly involved in the design of such components – so that knowledge would have been much more widespread in the engineering community...

Remember This Photo?

One of our warriors, caught by a firefight with the Taliban at an, err, inopportune moment. The photo made him famous. Now this:

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - The soldier who was photographed fighting the Taliban in his boxer shorts says he's glad to be back home in Texas after his yearlong deployment to Afghanistan—especially on the Fourth of July.

Specialist Zachary Boyd says he initially thought he'd get in trouble after an Associated Press photo showed him with other soldiers behind sandbags—while wearing his pink boxers and flip-flops, plus his helmet and bulletproof vest.

The Fort Worth soldier said he had jumped up from a nap when his unit came under fire and didn't want to waste time putting on his uniform.

But Boyd has been praised for his courage.

And now that he's home in Fort Worth he says his boxers will be displayed in the 1st Infantry Division museum at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Gotta love 'em...

America...

Thanking the Troops...

Two hundred and thirty three years ago today, our ancestors declared this country's independence from Britain. Our soldiers fought the Revolutionary War to make that declaration reality, and in all the intervening years, through many skirmishes, battles, and wars, our armed forces have kept this country a free and independent nation.

If you happen to see one of our warriors today, take a moment to thank them, won't you? You'll be glad you did, too. A couple of weeks ago I bought a cup of coffee and doughnuts for a couple of Army soldiers as we all waited for our flights at the Houston Airport. I sat down with them for a short conversation. Turns out they were both headed to Afghanistan on their second tour, and they were looking forward to it – they feel like they're doing something that matters, that makes a difference. And their smiles and warm words told me how much it meant to them to be acknowledged and appreciated...

If you'd like to make a more tangible contribution, I can't think of a better way than donating items, money, or your time to Homefront San Diego. These fine folks – all volunteers – find ways to help out the families of our deployed warriors.

San Diego is an expensive area to live in, yet we have more military here than in any other County in the U.S. Many of our lower-ranking military really don't make enough money to make ends meet – and when they're deployed, things can get very difficult for the family they left behind. Simple things that most of us would consider just irritating can become almost insurmountable challenges for them. For instance, the wife of an E-4 Marine with a couple of kids may simply have no way to handle a transmission problem on her car – she can't afford to get it fixed, she can't fix it herself, and yet she absolutely has to have the car to get around. Homefront San Diego will step into such a situation and find a way to resolve it. They're very creative about the solutions – maybe they'll find a local shop to fix it for free (or for parts cost); maybe they'll find a replacement car; or maybe they'll simply pay for getting it fixed. But one way or the other, they'll get that family back in its car. One can easily imagine what a relief it would be to the deployed warrior to know that his or her family has a safety net like Homefront San Diego to fall back on...

California Budget Crisis...

The entire planet knows that the state of California is in the midst of an awful budget crisis. The legislature has been unable to agree on a budget, primarily because the politicians are unable to bring themselves to significantly reduce expenses, nor can they find any politically acceptable way to raise taxes to pay for what they want to spend. Meanwhile, the state is completely out of money and has taken to paying many with IOUs, and forcing state workers to take several days per month in unpaid furloughs.

So one could be forgiven for thinking that the state legislators would be busy in meetings focused on resolving the impasse. If that's you, then your innocence and naivete are showing. Our legislators are meeting, all right – but they're discussing just about anything other than the budget impasse. For example, here's some video of a committee debating the propriety of lopping cow tails (with Schwarzennegger's admonishments):


Rope.
Tree.
Some assembly required.

Hopeyness and Changitude of the Day...

The Obama administration's total commitment to respecting the science.

WTF of the Day...

No animal was hurt in making that meat at your grocery store.

Oh, my.

I really don't know what to say.

But consider this: the person who wrote this is (presumably) an adult – and an eligible voter. What does that tell you about the viability of a representative democracy? Hmm?