Time To Go Hunt the Blue-headed Chickens

Well, pheasant season is almost upon us here in California (the season opens this Saturday), so once again I'll find myself slogging through muddy alfalfa fields chasing the cursed blue-headed chickens this weekend.

It's sort of an annual trip for our group, trudging mile after mile in wet boots, made twice as heavy by the clay clinging to them, as we hope to get a shot or two at the wily creatures. And we'll have to explain to our dogs -- for the umpteenth time -- why we don't shoot at the hens they work so hard to flush.

Ah, but we'll have some extra entertainment along on this trip. One of my buddies is bringing a couple of "pheasant rookies" along. We'll spend Friday night around the campfire trying to explain it all to them. Then the next morning we'll laugh like fools when the exploding racket and the blur of a red and blue and brown rocket turns them to jello. There is just no way to describe to a man how unnerving it is to have a pheasant flush from beneath his feet. Good times, for sure.

Ebay Still Hates Guns . . . Kind Of

A while back Ebay, in response to the carnage at Virginia Tech, made the boneheaded decision to cease the acceptance of any gun parts for auction on their site. Included were bullets and even empty shotgun hulls for reloading, torpedoing a little cottage industry of mine, as I was making a small fortune auctioning off, at obscene prices, the empty 28 gauge hulls I picked up for free at the local shooting range.

I recently sold my only 20 gauge shotgun, and in going through all the junk in my garage, found I had managed to accumulate a surprising amount of 20 gauge reloading materials. I began to wonder how I would dispose of them. At one time, I would have automatically thought: Ebay!, but with the ban I figured I'd have to put them on Craig's List or maybe Gunbroker.com.

What the hay, I decided to check out Ebay to see if maybe their ban had been reversed. What did I find? Empty hulls are, indeed, still banned. Much to my surprise, however, I found that shotshell wads are still being listed. So are bags of shot. Hell, even shotshell reloading presses are still being listed.

If guns are so immoral to the muckety mucks at Ebay, why do they allow the auction of wads, shot and even the machines used to make shotshells, but the empty hulls to finish the job are forbidden? Is this any way for them to take a moral stand, by only forbidding one component (a component that is perfectly legal to own and sell, by the way) out of the many needed to produce shotshells? Are they confused or just stupid? Or are they, maybe, really dumb like a fox?

Seems to me they have climbed on their soapbox to proclaim "We are anti gun," when what they really mean is they are only anti-gun when it can serve both their political and business purposes at once. After all, to be consistent they would have to prohibit all reloading components, but it would shave off some of their profits to do so. What hypocrites. Oh well, if anybody here reloads 20 gauge, there are some good deals right now on some discontinued Winchester wads over there right now.

Glenn Beck Is Right

Or: The People of San Diego County Must Hate America -- They Still Support George Bush

By now most everybody has heard the quote from right-wing radio and TV host Glenn Beck: "I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." Let's leave aside, for a moment, that only an asinine knucklehead would say something so hurtful and spiteful.

Instead, let's focus on Mr. Beck's ignorance of California's political road map. A vast majority of the homes lost in Southern California this week were in North San Diego County, a reliable bastion of Republicanism in this otherwise solidly blue state. Mr. Beck is, in effect, calling out his own people.

I would contend Beck has committed the grand-daddy of Freudian slips: It is Republicans who must hate America, because they continue to blindly support a president bent on destroying both the very civil liberties we have held sacred for over 200 years and the idea we should have a burgeoning middle class in America.

Moreover, it is the "we hate taxes" mindset of those Republicans that may have turned what should have been a mere disaster into an utter catastrophe. In their desire to keep taxes low, the good people of San Diego have succeeded in choking their government to the point it can't protect them. As Steve Lopez points out in his column today in the Los Angeles Times, the city of San Diego has just 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents. Contrast that with "liberal" San Francisco, which boasts 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 residents.

Most firefighting analysts say these fires could have been mitigated had there simply been more manpower on hand at the outset. The people of San Diego may have done this to themselves. And the worst thing is that it will be folks like Glenn Beck who will shout loudest that, in this catastrophe, "the government has failed us," when in actuality it is the people who have failed their government.

Still, it is a testament to the good people of California that this is no Katrina. At the height of the wildfires over one million people had been evacuated from their homes. The evacuation was, in large part, orderly and calm, and the evacuees have been well taken care of. I'm no big fan of the Governator, but his leadership during this trying time has been exemplary. And my thoughts are with the good people who have lost their homes and businesses.

Iggygate Heats Up

Or: Ellen DeGeneres Torpedoes Would-be Dog Savers' Careers

By now, almost everybody knows about the strange case of Iggy, the dog that comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres adopted and then passed along to her hair dresser's family. My only question about the whole affair is this: what did Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, proprietors of Mutts and Moms (the animal rescue operation that originally gave the dog to DeGeneres) hope to gain by yanking the dog away from an eleven year-old girl and her family?

One assumes they meant to flip the figurative finger at DeGeneres, apparently for being a "celebrity" who could "always get her way" because of her status. Yet one also can't escape the feeling that Batkis and Chekroun aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. After all, DeGeneres has a considerable soap-box on which to stand. Had they thought this through, Batkis and Chekroun surely should have understood that taking on DeGeneres in this manner could only result in career suicide.

Yet take on DeGeneres they did, and in an unthinking and unfeeling manner. Following this story I'm reminded of the classic T-shirt; you know, the one with the caption "The Last Great Act of Defiance." In this case Batkis and Chekroun are the mice, and Ellen DeGeneres is the eagle.

Mutts and Moms is dead. Batkis and Chekroun may as well pick up the want-ads and begin looking for new occupations. Ladies, Ellen just stuck a fork in you, and you are done. You look like jerks, and Ellen looks like a sympathetic figure who just tallied another notch in her belt. Nice work, Mutts and Moms.

Randon Thoughts On the Day's News

All across the country today Neo-con heads are spinning -- a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist -- upon the news of Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Is now a good time to ask Mr. Gore to save us from the clutches of hell by, pretty please, running for president? I know this may seem a bit selfish, but, at this point Mr. Gore, your country needs you more than does the world.

There seems to be a lot of angst among the liberal blogosphere about the possibility of an "October Surprise" next year, perhaps another terrorist attack, in an effort to elect Republicans. Why would it occur to anyone that another attack will result in continued Republican rule? The Democrats need to repeat this mantra, early and often: It happened on their watch. It happened on their watch.

The Republicans were in control on 9-11, and they completely ignored the intelligence that we were about to be attacked. Call me crazy, but I think another attack will result in an immense Democratic landslide in 2008. Remember: it happened on their watch.

My vegetarian friends are feeling smug nowadays, what with the recent report that methane from the world's livestock are a major contributor to global warming. Personally, I don't think this report in any way validates the vegetarian lifestyle. After all, we as a species evolved largely as a result of our change from being an herbivore to an omnivore. Instead, I think the report merely validates a far more insidious fact: the world is dangerously over-populated, and we are rapidly beginning to exceed the earth's carrying capacity.

A Weekend In L.A.

My son's flag football team had an 8:00 A.M. game last Saturday in Pasadena. Reasoning that waking him up at 5:00 to make it to the game on time probably wasn't a good idea (much less waking my wife at such a god-forsaken hour), we decided to spend the weekend at my father-in-law's condo in L.A.'s Westside District, which would shorten our drive to the game by at least a half hour.

My son's team lost on a last-second touchdown by Pasadena, ruining our hopes for an undefeated season. After the game, we drove back to the condo to unwind, and then made our way to Westwood Village to take in the shops. I remembered the Village from my younger days as a wonderfully eclectic mix of quirky and unique shops. Today, the Village has been completely corporatized. Instead of the one-of-a-kind eateries that once populated the area, you now have Quizno's and Subway and the ubiquitous Starbucks. About the only unique shop left in the Village is film director Kevin Smith's comic book shop, and it's about to close because Smith can't find someone to run it for him.

As an aside, my wife and I noticed a difference between the homeless people we saw in Westwood and those we see elsewhere: they are electronically outfitted better than we are. We saw one guy sporting a brand-new Ipod Nano, and another with a Blackberry. It begs the questions: how does a homeless person go about downloading music to his Ipod? Where does Verizon send his bill for his PDA? Also, every homeless person we saw was pushing his cans and bottles in identical black carts. Are these government issue? Does West L.A. have some sort of program to make sure its homeless are homogeneous?

Anyway, after our disappointing shopping experience we decided to take our son to see The Rock's new film, Game Plan, at the historic El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. What should have been a twenty minute trip from Westwood took an hour and fifteen minutes, thanks to an immense traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway.

As an outside salesman I drive for a living. I deal with Southern California traffic on a daily basis, so I'm largely immune to traffic rage. I accept traffic for what it is: a pain in the rear about which I really can't do anything. My wife, on the other hand, has a ten-minute commute along surface streets to an office building. She doesn't do traffic. About five minutes in she started with the "hurrumpfs," then the heavy sighs, and then proceeded to have a near melt-down as we inched along. It was not the most enjoyable trip I've ever endured.

Anyway, we finally made it to Hollywood, and all I can say is that, despite the creeping corporatization of the area, it is just as delightfully weird as ever. A couple hundred people were in front of the Kodak Theater, protesting the plight of the Burmese people. Interspersed with them were Spiderman, Cinderella, Darth Vader, an Imperial stormtrooper, Davy Jones, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and no fewer than three Captain Jack Sparrows. Indeed, only a drunken, drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson was needed to complete the entire Johnny Depp filmography.

Here's a short review of Game Plan: If you have a six or seven year-old boy or girl, go see it. There's enough slapstick to keep the boys laughing, and it's cute enough to keep the girls smiling. In fact (and I never thought I would write this about any vehicle starring The Rock), it was not an altogether painful way to waste two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, we made our way to the La Brea tar pits. My son's at an age that skeletons fascinate him, so the walk through the museum was enjoyable for all of us. We got to see the paleontologists pull a real sloth femur from Pit 91. Then, as we walked past one of the pits no longer being explored, we caught a bit of realism: a small sparrow vainly struggling to extricate itself from the bubbling asphalt. This was a bit much for the wife, who didn't exactly come here to see the tar pits in action. My son, on the other hand, was enthralled, and declared we needed to come back in a couple of weeks to "see if we can find the bird's skull." I told you, skeletons fascinate him.

So all in all, it was a successful excursion for the family, although by the end of the weekend my wife had had enough of L.A. We want to go back to take in the Natural History museum, but I think she needs a bit of L.A. detox before again venturing into the City of Angels.

Bush Vetoes S-CHIP Expansion

So today President Bush vetoed the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) recently passed by Congress. "I believe in private medicine," he said, "not the federal government running the health care system."

Great, he believes in a health care system that has caused millions of children to lose their coverage in the six-plus years he's been in power. He believes in a health care system in which insurance companies gobble up from twenty to forty percent of all revenues, as opposed to government-run health care that boasts less than five percent in administrative costs. He believes in a health care system in which even insured individuals are routinely denied needed treatments by their for-profit insurers.

Moreover, he believes the trillion dollars it will end up costing us for his disastrous and unnecessary foray into Iraq is just fine, but spending seven billion per year the next five years to ensure the health of the nation's children is somehow "reckless spending."

So much for "compassionate conservatism." Hell, so much for conservatism. After all, study after study has shown the costs to society for having so many children uninsured -- from increased emergency room visits to missed school days to declining productivity once they reach adulthood -- far outweigh the additional costs of providing them health care. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish.

We can only hope the House finds the needed votes to override this mean-spirited veto. If not, look for this to be another in the long litany of issues in which Bush has effectively hoisted his party on its own petard. 2008 can't come soon enough.

Wow, Football Really Sucks This Year (For me)

I'm a big-time football fan. Always have been, since I was seven or eight. I love the game, love the pageantry, love the controlled violence. Football is the ultimate team game -- one player misses an assignment and the efforts of his ten teammates is wasted. A single player can carry a basketball team or a baseball team or a soccer team, but a single outstanding football player surrounded by mediocre ones is destined for failure.

Let me tell you, I'm not liking football very much this season. You see, my rooting interests are stinking up the joint. At the college level, my beloved Nebraska got creamed last week by USC, and on Saturday needed a last minute touchdown followed by a missed field goal to squeak by Ball State. At home. Ball State. We gave up 40 points. To Ball State. At home.

During the Devaney/Osborne years my Huskers would have rolled Ball State for six-hundred yards and a 53-6 pasting. Today, the vaunted "Blackshirts" (Nebraska's once-proud defense) are leaving holes so large that even I could probably go for 153 and four TD's, and I'm 47 years old.

Sunday was even worse, as my St. Louis Rams continued their free fall into the nether regions of the NFL. The Rams lost 24-3 to Tampa Bay, a team that won only four games last season, and the final score was in no way indicative of how bad it was. Down just 3-0 at the half, at no time did one have the sense the Rams were ever in the game. The Rams are now missing -- due to either injury or suspension -- four offensive linemen, a defensive lineman, a starting linebacker and their two starting cornerbacks. The Rams have guys now starting who were in street clothes just two weeks ago. 0-16 is starting to look realistic for this bunch this year, and the coach is a dead man walking.

If it weren't for my son's Pop Warner flag football team, 4-0 and coming off a big win versus our biggest rival, this football season would be a total loss. Maybe I should become a soccer fan.

Quit Blaming the Democrats

Again, there seems to be much angst among the blogosphere and liberal talk radio against the Democrats on capital hill for the Senate's failure to pass measures pushing back against the President's failed policies. This week alone, the Senate failed to pass a bill rescinding the abolishing of Habeus Corpus for so-called "enemy combatants," failed to pass the Jim Webb amendment that would have mandated more leave time for our soldiers, and failed to pass a measure mandating a time-line for troop withdrawal in Iraq. Much of the chatter amongst liberals is that these failures are but a growing symptom of Democrat's unwillingness to actually do something about Bush's executive power-grab.

It's time for a little civic's lesson here, folks. In the Senate, no bill may be brought to the floor for an "up or down" majority vote until debate is closed. It takes 60 votes to close debate. The vote to close debate is called a "cloture vote." The Democrats have 50 members in the Senate, plus an independent, who used to call himself a Democrat and who caucuses with the Democrats, but who usually votes with the Republicans.

O.K., repeat after me: we don't have the votes in the Senate to close debate.

Once again, a little differently: the Senate Democrats can't get past a cloture vote. The Republicans are free to obstruct anything they want. Yes, the same Republicans who, not too long ago, threatened the "nuclear option" of scrapping Senate rules that today allow them to hang on to a thread of seeming power. The Democrats can't pass any bill unless at least nine Republicans go along with it, and that's assuming Joe Lieberman would actually toe the line.

Quit blaming the Democrats for not stopping the occupation (I refuse to call Bush's Folly a "war" any longer). If anything, blame yourselves for allowing so many Republicans to remain in their senate posts for so long. And pray that nine more Republicans are thrown from their Senate seats in 2008, so Democrats can affect some real change, regardless of who holds the White House.

More Random Thoughts On the Day's News

A new study finds that Southern California commuters waste, on average, seventy hours per year stuck in traffic. Seventy hours per year? Are you kidding me? All I can say is, from my perspective, there are a whole lot of folks out here not doing their fair share of traffic time.

Other than George W. Bush, is there a dumber man ever to grace this great nation than O.J. Simpson?

Speaking of Bush, now he says he wants Congress to make his illegal domestic wiretap program permanently legal. The next time I have the urge to call Bush a lazy slacker, I'm going to remember his grand legacy, his one shining accomplishment: first president to burn the Constitution in effigy.

Iraqi leaders want to shove Blackwater out of their country for shooting a bunch of innocent civilians. If they come up with the gumption to throw out the other 100,000-plus hired mercenaries, er, "contractors" we have fighting there it could be a real turning point in this mess. Take away the mercenaries, er, "contractors" and there's no way our over-stretched and broken military can avoid being run over by the burgeoning civil war, er, "sectarian violence." Bush will have to make one of two choices: either reinstate the draft or get us the hell out.

As you can see from the previous paragraph, I've pretty much had it with the misleading labels the righties have come up with for explaining this "war." In fact, we're not waging a "war," we're conducting an occupation. We're not dealing with "sectarian violence," we're conducting our occupation in the middle of a civil war. These are not "contractors" out killing innocent people, they are hired mercenaries. We are not "building Democracy," we're protecting our oil interests. And, for the love of God, we're not "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," we're fighting them over there because that's the best venue for Haliburton to make the most money possible from the blood and guts of our brave men and women. Note to Republicans: quit trying to tell us the sky is green and water is dry. We know better.

More Random Thoughts On the Day's News

Producers of the EMMY's telecast last night bleeped out Sally Field when she exclaimed "If mothers ruled the world there wouldn't be any God damned wars in the first place!" Let me see if I've got this straight: a program based upon the Mob and featuring murder and mayhem is worthy of countless EMMY awards, but taking God's name in vain is a no no.

I have no idea, other than what I've read in the paper, who this Mukasey guy is. I just know he can't possibly be a worse Attorney General than Gonzo. On the other hand, if he maintains even a semblance of independence from the president and promises to faithfully execute his office -- even if it leads to evidence of Republican malfeasance -- he may not be confirmable, because the Republicans will filibuster rather than run the risk of more indictments before the 2008 elections.

I heard on the radio of a poll of some 2000 plus Iraqi citizens in Anbar Province, a place the president insists is a beacon of light made safe by his "surge." The poll reported that 100% -- that's everyone, folks -- agreed that attacking "coalition forces" was O.K. I don't know what's more disconcerting: that every citizen in Anbar thinks it's a good idea to attack our troops, or that the administration is still trying to peddle this whole mess as a "coalition." 140,000 U.S. troops and one guy each from Poland, Argentina and Albania does not a coalition make. Even the Brits have pulled out. Can we please stop the charade and quit calling this thing a "coalition of the willing," and instead call it what it is: A "mistake of the stupid."

California has passed a law mandating hands-free kits when using a cellular phone in the car. The law doesn't take effect until July 2008, which isn't nearly soon enough for me. Just today I saw a woman driving erratically in the fast lane at fifty miles an hour in a 65 zone. Sure enough, when I passed her she was driving with her knees, talking on the phone and applying lipstick at the same time. Listen up people! A car is not the proper environment to perfect your multi-tasking skills. Hang up and drive.

Cheating Patriots Get Off Easy

So the NFL has found the New England Patriots guilty of cheating in a most nefarious way. Seems Bill Belichick and company have been video-taping the opposing team's defensive coaches as they signal in their plays. No wonder the common lament of Patriots opponents -- "it was almost like they were in our huddle" -- now rings so true: in effect, they were.

Yet the penalties handed down by the league -- a measly $750,000 in fines and a lost number one draft pick -- seem benign given the gravity of the offense. After all, league history might read differently had the Patriots not cheated.

Take, for example, their Super Bowl victory over the Rams following the 2001 season. They didn't exactly roll to victory in that game. Indeed, despite the referee's unwillingness to call illegal contact against Patriots players who mugged St. Louis receivers all game long, the Patriots only won with a last-second drive aided by a blown non-call when Tom Brady intentionally grounded the ball.

Who knows how that game -- and league history -- might have turned out had the Patriots not known the Ram's defensive signals before each play? St. Louis might have been the town with an NFL dynasty, Kurt Warner might be on the way to the Hall of Fame, and Mike Martz might still be a head coach. The Patriots, with their despicable actions, have inexorably altered the lives and careers of those associated with every team they've played.

What the Patriots have done tears at the very fabric of a game that depends upon a perception of fairness to thrive. This turns the NFL into an enterprise no more real and legitimate than pro wrestling. The NFL blew this one. At the very least, Belichick should have been drummed out of the league forever and the Patriots should have forfeited last week's game. I would have preferred the league confiscate all those ill-gotten and unearned Lombardi trophies. Shame on you, Bill Belichick, and shame on the Patriots.

A final aside: you New England Patriots fans must now hang your head in shame, knowing that none of the team's successes over the past several years were in any way legitimate. Your team won by cheating, your victories are hollow.

Doublespeak

So President Bush breathlessly reports he plans to reduce our Iraq contingent by about 30,000 troops by next summer, hoping to quell the rising chorus demanding we begin bringing our boys and girls home now. Never mind this troop reduction was already planned, based upon standard troop rotations -- rotations that have been expanded from the standard twelve month's duty to eighteen. Never mind that this "redeployment" only brings troop levels back to the numbers in Iraq before Bush's "surge."

Only about thirty percent of Americans trust this man anymore anyways. Why does he continue to throw this garbage in our faces? Is it some aimless effort at maintaining that thirty percent? Why is he still wasting our time with this claptrap? Does he hope the mindless dolts running the mainstream media will report his misconstructions as fact and that the rest of us will meekly accept it on faith?

The wheels fell off this one a long time ago, George. The people at large no longer believe a single word emanating from your pie-hole, and with good reason. And your lackeys in your failed administration and your hobbled military are now no more believable than you.

A Generation of Weenies, or

Enhancing Self Esteem At the Expense of Excellence Is a Bad Idea


My son just started his first season of Pop Warner flag football. It just so happens his team is pretty good. It's a good group of kids, they have a great coaching staff that seems to have somehow melded a bunch of six-year olds into a cohesive, disciplined unit, and the parents are largely supportive. They are so good there is really no drop-off from the first to second string. As a result, we're rolling over the other teams on our schedule. And our head coach may be running the risk of getting in trouble for it.

You see, Pop Warner has this rule preventing teams from running up the score. You know, we don't want little Johnny to think he's inferior because his team is getting its butt whipped. If a coach doesn't take drastic measures to prevent his team from running it up (in our case, telling his kids to quit trying, since the second string is almost as effective as the first) he can face disciplinary measures, including suspension.

But I happen to think the alternative -- telling kids to quit trying because they might embarrass the other guys -- might be just as damaging. When you teach a kid that it's wrong to try to win, and win big, you're teaching him that winning somehow doesn't really matter all that much. You're fooling him into thinking that life is somehow "fair."

Life is not fair. Some people lose, some win. Some win big while others lose big. Maybe that's a harsh lesson for six-year olds to come to grips with, but it's reality. And I really don't think those six-year olds getting their butts whipped need this extra enhancement of their self esteem at the expense of penalizing the excellence of their opponents. I worry that this type of hand-holding will not in fact result in a more self-actualized esteem, but instead will only create a generation of weenies who can't understand why life has treated them so badly. Just my two cents.

Bush's Weapons Of Mass Deception

Sidney Blumenthal reports in his latest Salon article that CIA Chief George Tenet told George W. Bush in a briefing in September of 2002 that the agency had solid information Iraq and Saddam Hussein harbored no weapons of mass destruction. This briefing was described to Blumenthal by two former high-ranking officials at the CIA. Blumenthal further notes that not only did Bush ignore this information, he also forbid this information from being disseminated to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell or to the members of Congress who thereafter voted to authorize his use of force in Iraq.

So the short story is this: Bush knew there were no weapons in Iraq, but he wanted his war so bad he lied to Powell, Congress and the American people to get it. He played the "politics of fear" card so loud for so long (and, we now know for certain, so disingenuously) that in the end he got what he wanted: to be known as a "war time" president.

Where does this leave us? It seems obvious now he is guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and should be impeached Constitutionally, yet we know we don't have the votes in the Senate to convict and remove.

A lot of people on the left are kind of mad at the Democratic Congress right now for not showing the courage to end the war or impeach Bush. However, I lay this right at the feet of the Republicans. Where are the Republican statesmen who put principle over party? The Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton for getting a hummer but give Bush a free ride for lying us into a horrible and unwinable war that has cost thousands of American lives and maybe a million Iraqi ones?

What a sorry state of affairs this is.

Arizona Is Melting; Dove Hunting Report

Just got back from beautiful Dateland, Arizona, where I partook in our annual Labor Day Weekend dove hunt, and all I can say is: "Good God it was hot!" Of course, one expects a bit of heat when venturing into the Arizona desert on the first of September.

(Saner minds, such as my wife's, might question the wisdom of being outdoors in 117 degree heat just to fire our shotguns, in a largely futile manner, at speeding little gray missiles. To that I say: hogwash. Any day firing the lightening stick is a good day, even if it's hot enough to melt glass. Besides, as my Dad put it, "at least it was a wet heat.")

Well, we got our birds, although it was a challenge because Arizona has this arcane and indefensible rule that a hunter may only shoot six white-wing doves per day, reserving the rest of his or her ten-dove limit for the usually more populous mourning dove. Except that the place we shot was populated almost entirely by white-wings. So hunts that might have ended after forty-five minutes were extended to two hours -- in the searing heat -- as we let bird after bird fly by, looking for the lone mourning doves who had "integrated" themselves into the heretofore exclusive white-wing family.

This annoying habit of letting perfectly shootable birds pass produced much consternation in the dogs. I'm used to the look; I've seen the same facial expression on my dog when I fail to shoot at the hen pheasants she's so fond of flushing.

But, as I said, we got our birds and then immediately repaired to the swimming pool, surrounded by beer coolers, where we waited out the afternoon heat, sunk up to our necks in warm water. By the time the bright orb in the sky finally sank, the young ones among us were so shriveled they looked to be fifty, and the older ones looked like corpses. Just another three days in paradise.

Republican Sexual Hypocrisy

So Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has admitted to pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges resulting from his "lewd homosexual conduct" in a men's room. This comes on the heels of Senator David Vitter (R-LA) explaining why his phone number was found with prostitutes, which came on the heels of mega-church pastor Ted Haggard being forced to resign his ministry over some tawdry homosexual and drug escapades, which came on the heels of the Mark Foley (R-FL) page scandal.

And just what do all these prominent men have in common? Why, all of them are "pro-family" conservatives who claim homosexuality is a sin. All are on record as opposing gay marriage. All of them excoriated Bill Clinton for his infidelities. All of them are stinking hypocrites. Although they're human hypocrites, with all their foibles and closet skeletons, and that at least makes them a bit less unlikeable in my book.

These men are great late-night fodder for Letterman and Leno, who must look upon the GOP as a veritable "gift that keeps on giving." But then it's hard not to pile on men who denounce in public what they keep doing in private. Well, at least sometimes it's in private.

Maybe Republicans will eventually figure this out, and just say what those of us on the left have long known: there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, gays aren't a threat to heterosexuals or their quaint customs of marriage, and it was wrong to roast Bill Clinton over a spit for cheating on his wife.

Nephew's Second Time In Dove Camp

sister <> wrote:

Hey Sid,
I should know the answer to this already, but what kind of shells does my son need, and how boxes should he bring? Could you send us directions to Dateland and to where he needs to go to get his license?
--Sis

Sis,
He needs 12 gauge 2 3/4" shells, field or target load, 7 1/2 shot or 8 shot. The way my nephew shoots, I would count on ten or twelve boxes per day.

Take I10 east all the way through Indio to Highway 86S. Take 86S all the way to Westmorland.

In Wesmorland, turn right (south) on Center Street. Center Street turns into Forrester Road. Take Forrester Road south to I8 east. This will save him about 45 minutes by bypassing Brawley and El Centro. I know, Brawley is the "garden spot" of the Imperial Valley, but he can see it another time.

Take I8 east to Dateland exit, about 66 miles east of Yuma. Turn right (south) off of the freeway, go past trailer park on right, and turn left (east) at dead end. In a couple of miles he'll see the trailer park on the right, over the railroad tracks. I don't remember what it's called, but he can't miss it. There's nothing else out there except cactus and meth labs.

For his license: they've opened a new Walmart in the east side of Yuma. Take I8 all the way through Yuma and exit at 32nd St. (this exit may be signed as East County 11th Street South, which immediately turns into 32nd Street. Arizona's road names are more messed-up than any other state's except California and Utah. In any case, it's the last exit before Fortuna Road). The Walmart is on 32nd Street (or maybe 11th Street South, the geniuses at Walmart weren't sure), on the south side of the freeway. You can see it from the Interstate.

A non-resident year-long license costs $151.25; a three-day is $61.25. For either he needs to buy the $4.50 migratory bird stamp. Make sure he fills out a Harvest Information Survey and gets the free Harvest Information stamp. He's got to have the license and both stamps to be legal. At those prices he might want to consider the new alternatives offered by Arizona for purchasing his non-resident license: a pound of flesh or his first male-born child.

Tell him not to assume the idiots working the counter at Walmart know what they're doing. It took me four phone calls to find somebody who could give me directions to the store, and even then they weren't sure if the exit was signed "32nd St." or "East County 11th." I'm assuming they all have bunks in the warehouse, since nobody who works there knows how to get there.

Tell my nephew we're gonna' eat doves on Saturday and spaghetti on Sunday. Dad's gonna' bring the sausage, but I made sure he got half hot and half sweet -- another batch of that hot sauce we choked down at Rock Creek probably wouldn't go down so well at 112 degrees in the shade.

I don't know what Dad has planned for Monday -- if my nephew can stay -- but I'm sure he'll get fed. I've got plenty of hot dogs and chili for chili/cheese dogs by the pool. He needs to bring his own munchies, drinks and beer.

Yes, I said beer. I know he's only eighteen, but he needs to learn the ways, and I'm tired of him bumming beers off me. Besides he doesn't seem to approve of my taste. Just what's wrong with Pabst Blue Ribbon, anyways?

Give me a call if you have any questions. Tell my nephew I'll see him in Arizona.

Your brother,
Sid

Gonzo Resigns

It would be easy this morning to pick on Alberto Gonzalez, George Bush's embattled now ex-Attorney General. Notwithstanding his bumbling perjury before Congress when discussing the burgeoning prosecutor firing scandal and his knowledge (or seeming lack thereof) of his president's illegal wiretapping program, Gonzo seemed way in over his head from the get go.

His Bush-like smirk couldn't hide his base incompetence. Morale at justice had sunk to new lows, and the entire department had become dis-functional. At some point he had to go, and better late than never.

Still, the fact that a boob like Gonzo got the job in the first place only illustrates a disturbing characterization of this administration: George Bush's seeming inability to choose people with any discernible talents beyond blind loyalty.

Bush ran as the first "CEO" president, promising to run the government more like a real business. Of course, based upon his stumbling forays in the real business world, the voters might have hired a more competent CEO. George has run the nation like a business all right: he's hired people unfit for their jobs and has watched idly by as they've run the company into bankruptcy. He's borrowed more money from foreign entities than all previous "CEO's" combined. He turned a profitable company (we had a surplus when he became "CEO") into a company bleeding red ink. For God's sake, he's turned Toyota into Chrysler. Good going, George.

And he'll end up with a golden parachute at the end of his term in the form of a sizable public-paid pension, a lifetime of medical benefits and some stock options in Haliburton.

Terrorist Anglers

Citing terrorist threats to Los Angeles’ water supply, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) has permanently closed the Eastern Sierra’s Haiwee Reservoirs to fishing. Los Angeles aqueduct manager Gene Coufal was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, "If contamination occurred at Haiwee, it would be a matter of hours before it got to L.A.”

Apparently, this means we can soon expect water officials to announce plans to close Lakes Powell, Mead and Havasu. The San Diego City lakes can’t be too far behind. And God forbid if terrorists hit the many dozens of miles of the L.A. Aqueduct above Haiwee that are still accessible. (Of course, DWP thinks it has that problem figured out: they covered up all the signs along Highway 395 that used to read "Los Angeles Aqueduct" because, hey, terrorists apparently can't read maps.)

Seriously, does the DWP truly believe the city’s water supply is in danger of attack by terrorists disguised as anglers? Will the closure of two reservoirs to fishing really make our lives any safer? Or is there perhaps some ulterior motive at work here?

First, a little background. The twin Haiwee Reservoirs, twenty miles south of the town of Lone Pine and part of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system, were closed to fishing from 1950 until April of 1994. During those years DWP personnel, backed by posted “No Trespassing” signs, routinely drove surreptitious anglers from the lakes under threat of arrest.

In 1991, members of a group called the Owens Valley Warm Water Fishing Association (OVWWFA) began openly flaunting the closure. Citing the California State Constitution, they refused to leave when told they were trespassing. (I'm proud to admit that, although I was never a member of OVWWFA, I, too, made a habit of sneaking in to Haiwee before it was "legal.") Local law enforcement officials, apparently on to something, refused to cite the anglers despite pleas from DWP personnel.

Article 1, Section 25 of the California State Constitution reads: “The people shall have the right to fish upon and from the public lands of the State and in the waters thereof . . . and no land owned by the State shall ever be sold or transferred without reserving in the people the absolute right to fish thereupon . . .” In effect, anglers had been illegally excluded from a legal fishing destination for nearly fifty years.

The right to fish at Haiwee was also a condition made by Inyo County when an agreement transferred land from the Bureau of Land Management to the DWP in 1983.

Still, the DWP dragged its feet for four years, ostensibly because of concerns over water quality, despite the fact they allow cattle to graze at the reservoirs, right to the water’s edge. Apparently cows are cleaner than people. They also cited nesting bald eagles as a reason for concern, though anglers and eagles coexist at dozens of lakes in the state. Many people felt (and continue to feel) the DWP’s real motive was preserving their own private fishing hole.

Finally, in 1994 the DWP relented to pressure from fishing organizations. Parking lots were constructed, toilets installed, trash cans provided and gates opened. Strict guidelines restricting body contact with water were established, and catch and release fishing was encouraged.

Now, just thirteen years later, the DWP has closed Haiwee to protect the city from terrorists, as if the exclusion of anglers will magically make any plausible threat of terrorism disappear. Yet no such announcement seems to be forthcoming regarding Lake Crowley, which the DWP also owns and is a popular fishing destination upstream from Haiwee. Are the Haiwee Reservoirs truly the one weak spot in the city’s water system? Or is the DWP only trying to get people out of a place they never wanted them to be in the first place?

In any case, time to sell those personal watercraft, skiing sleds and fishing boats while you still can. Diamond Valley Reservoir is sure to be next on the list, followed by Silverwood, Puddingstone, and Skinner. Those reservoirs in the Sierra foothills and the California Aqueduct surely must be at risk -- we've got to close them too. And if you’re out there, be sure to report any suspicious looking anglers.

More Random Thoughts On the Day's News

Wow, this is sure news. Our intelligence agencies are reporting that Iraq Prime Minister Maliki is, to quote the L.A. Times, "unable to govern his country effectively and the political situation is likely to become even more precarious in the next six to twelve months."

You think?

And George Bush's reaction is to compare Iraq to Vietnam, another country that was "unable to govern itself," at least until we had the wisdom to leave it.

The Times is also reporting that Southern California is in the midst of an earthquake "lull" that has lasted as much as 1000 years, and that when the lull ends we could experience quakes fifteen times larger than the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Gee, that's comforting. I guess it's time to again consider purchasing that beachfront property in Yuma.

A former Army Corps of Engineers employee has pled guilty to helping rig the bids to repair levees in New Orleans. There is no truth to the rumor the man is related to Dick Cheney.

The big story, of course, (as far as the mainstream media are concerned) is that Nicolle Richie only served 82 minutes of her four-day jail sentence for driving the wrong way on the Ventura Freeway. I'm guessing that won't do much to teach her not to be a talentless, treacherous menace to society.

Bush Compares Iraq To Vietnam

So now President Bush is comparing Iraq to Vietnam, and says it's the reason why we should continue the insanity of occupying a nation we never should have invaded. "Whatever your position is on (the Vietnam) debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent victims whose agony would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' re-education camps' and killing fields,' " he said.

Well, Mr. Bush seems to be guilty of a bit of revisionist history. Most historians believe the U.S. military killed between two and three million civilians during the Vietnam conflict, far more than died in the post-withdrawal meltdown. Moreover, by the time one year had passed after the fall of Saigon, the killing in Vietnam had largely ceased, and the country had largely returned to some kind of normalcy.

Today Vietnam is a stable, unified country, albeit a communist one. No more "dominoes" fell, and Vietnam is both a trading partner of the U.S. and a vacation destination of our citizens. Things seem to have turned out O.K. Indeed, I think most Vietnamese citizens would agree the best thing that ever happened to their country was us getting out.

No, Mr. Bush, the parallel with Iraq and Vietnam is this: we were lured into both illegal wars by deception and outright lying at the highest levels of our government. Both conflicts quickly devolved into quagmires of civil war that our very presence only made worse.

And the lesson of Vietnam, Mr. President, is this: get out. Get out now. Don't waste the life of one more American or one more innocent Iraqi civilian. Don't burn through any more of our treasury on a doomed and unnecessary occupation. Don't continue to serve as a recruiting poster for terrorist membership drives. Just leave.

Jesus Was a Democrat

What is it about the so-called "religious conservatives" that allows them to pick and choose which teachings of the Bible are the important ones? I mean, abortion is sin because it's murder but war is virtuous because . . . well, I can't quite figure it out.

Indeed, it seems religious conservatives tend to focus on two issues in particular -- abortion and gay rights -- to the exclusion of a whole host of other issues I think would have interested Jesus, were he alive today. Jesus most certainly wouldn't have approved of George Bush's unjust and unnecessary war. Jesus was big on providing for the poor, a political dead end with the Republican party. I think Jesus would be appalled that a whole segment of society has no access to health care benefits. He probably wouldn't think much of giving tax breaks to corporations that pollute his Father's creation, nor of giving tax breaks to the richest in society while the working class gets snubbed. And don't get me started on the Republican response to Katrina; let's just say Jesus would have been mortified.

I guess what I'm saying is that, during the next election cycle, Democrats would do well by again claiming, forcefully, the moral high-ground that is rightly theirs. The Democrats are the party of the common folk, the poor, the disenfranchised, the people Jesus championed in His time.

Moreover, I think people of religion who support the Republican Party should be ashamed that their politicians pay lip service to morality but tend not to follow through. And for all you folks out there with their WWJD T-shirts and bumper-stickers, why I'll tell you: He'd vote Democrat.

Michael Vick Pleads Guilty

I usually try to refrain from commenting on sports. Not because I don't like sports -- I'm actually a big fan of the Rams, Cornhusker's football and the Anaheim Ducks -- but because at heart I believe sports are merely a diversion, and certainly not matters of any real consequence. With ESPN One through Ocho, Fox Sports Net, Jim Rome, countless blogs and even its own section of the local paper, I think sports gets pretty well-covered in this country, so I don't usually see the point of adding my two cents.

But this Michael Vick thing has me properly steamed. I see today where he agreed to plead guilty to running that dog fighting ring, despite his weeks-long protestations of innocence. I have two questions for Mr. Vick. First, how can you or your co-defendants, by any twisted sense of morality, come to the conclusion that fighting dogs to the death is a good thing? And second, what the hell were you thinking?

That second question is as old as sports, particularly since idiots like Steve Howe began throwing away their careers for drugs. But at least those guys had a semi-rational explanation: they're diseased. It's called addiction for a reason -- they can't stop, even though they know it could, and probably will, derail their professions and their lives.

But I have yet to see some talking head on the T.V. try to stake out the position that the desire to see dogs cleaving the flesh off of other dogs is some sort of addiction. Vick made a conscious decision here: I'm going to participate in a sadistic exercise, rightly abhorred by nearly everyone. And If I'm caught at it, this will almost certainly end my multi-million dollar career and any hope at ever endorsing any product ever again.

Maybe Michael Vick should have plead insanity, because from my point of view only a mad-man would have made his choices.

Owens Valley - An Environmental Irony

California's Owens Valley sits as a largely untrammeled outdoor paradise close by the towering eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Several smallish towns dot Highway 395 as it makes its way up the valley, providing gateways into the unspoiled Eastern Sierra back country and the Bristlecone Pine forest of the White Mountains. Yet other than these few slumbering bergs -- Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop, as one heads north -- the larger part of the Owens Valley looks much as it did five-hundred years ago.

The valley is home to dozens of fauna species, including the largest herd of endemic tule elk in the state, as well as dozens of endemic species of flora. As a transition zone between the Mojave and Great Basin deserts, the valley floor and the foothills of the Sierra, Inyo and White Mountains provide an amazing diversity of life not often found in such a harsh desert environment.

It's ironic, then, that had the City of Los Angeles not stolen the valley's water near the beginning of the last century -- an act thought of at the time as an unmitigated environmental and economic catastrophe -- the Owens Valley today might look a lot like Van Nuys. And sorry, Van Nuys, I don't mean that in a complementary way.

When he took over the L.A. City Water Department, William Mulholland saw that the key to continuing economic prosperity was water. With no reliable supply of water, the city's growth had become stunted. A man by the name of Fred Eaton thought he had the answer. During a family outing to the Sierras in 1904 he had travelled the length of the Owens Valley. The valley's major river, the Owens, tracked south through the valley towards Southern California before coming to an end at Owens Lake. He believed a canal could be built to bring that water to the San Fernando Valley, and would provide the answer to Mulholland's conundrum.

Just one little problem: the good people of the Owens Valley thought they had an agreement with the Federal Reclamation Service to build a project in their valley for their benefit. The project would transform the Owens into a verdant paradise of agriculture, commerce and economic prosperity. As he travelled through the area, buying any water rights along the valley floor not already belonging to the Reclamation Service, the citizens of the valley had no inkling Eaton planned all along to then sell those rights to the city of Los Angeles rather than Reclamation for use in the local project.

Construction on the Los Angeles Aqueduct began in 1908, and by 1913 the sweet water of the Owens River began to quench the thirst of the people of L.A. During the ensuing years the city purchased additional water rights in Long Valley north of Bishop and in the Mono Lake area, thereby in effect monopolizing water development in the Eastern Sierra.

And there sat the Owens Valley, all these years. With little water for local development or agriculture, the valley has largely remained as it was when the aqueduct first flowed in 1913, albeit with a dead river bed through which flowed only sand. But no more. After years of litigation the city of Los Angeles is again beginning to allow water to flow through the entire length of the Owens to its end at land-locked Owens Lake. Fish have begun repopulating the revitalized lower sections of river, and stream side vegetation has begun to take hold, providing wildlife habitat for elk, deer, rabbits and quail.

So tonight I will raise a toast to old Fred Eaton and William Mulholland, the men who stole the Owens River. Without them, a drive to Bishop Creek would take me through a concrete jungle and not the sage-covered raw beauty of a valley saved from ultimate environmental destruction: the development of the commons. Saved by the pure happenstance of an environmental irony.

Poor Tony Snow Is Out of Cash

One is almost tempted to feel a bit sorry for the president's spokes-liar, Tony Snow. After all, he is in a fight for his life, suffering from recurring cancer, and no one deserves that. Still when he says he's not going to stay with the Bush Administration to the end of Bush's term because of financial reasons, it's hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for him.

For Pete's sake, Tony, you pull down $168K per year, with a sweet benefits package that I'm guessing completely covers your cancer treatments. Most Americans would jump at a deal like that, but you're crying "poor." It's unbecoming and in bad taste, particularly since real wages for most Americans have fallen dramatically during your boss's reign.

For sure, Snow made a lot more money when he did his lying over at Faux News, and tons of cash await him on the rubber chicken circuit, but it stinks of elitism for a man in his position by be playing the poverty card. Kind of goes to show just out of touch with every-day Americans this bunch is.

Good Bye, Karl Rove

While I was holed up in the mountains, far from any news source, I see our good friend Karl Rove has announced his resignation. So this seems as good a time as any to reflect on his legacy, such as it is.

No political operative in recent memory was as reviled by the opposition party as was Karl Rove. Still, give the man his due: it's hard to argue with his electoral successes. After all, he managed to get a certified moron "elected" to the nation's highest office not once, but twice. His "divide and conquer" technique of solidifying the Republican base while refusing compromise with the Democrats forged a solid Republican majority for much of Bush's reign.

Yet, in the end, that tried and true technique failed him and his party. Despite the caging lists, the rigged voting machines and the general electoral chicanery designed to foster a "permanent Republican majority," the public soundly repudiated him and his ilk last November. If not for the rigged system, many of us believe the Republicans would have been completely routed instead of just removed from the majority.

It must have been a tough pill for old Karl to swallow. Now his party is shattered, his "permanent majority" gone, his president has Nixonian approval ratings, his war has gone south and his dream of dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society is finished. What he didn't understand is this: ignoring a large percentage of the electorate just to placate the base only works in the short term. True leaders must at least attempt to engage the oppostition, or face the wrath of the center. By ignoring that reality, Karl Rove has unwittingly doomed the Republicans to the electoral wilderness for at least a generation.

The barbarians are getting ready to storm the gates, Karl, and for the Republicans you so ably got elected -- despite the failed politics of their neo-conservatism -- there will be hell to pay. And in an ultimate irony, Karl, the unitary powers you helped George Bush accumulate are about to be handed to a liberal Democratic president. The joke's on you, Karl. Good bye, and good riddance.

Rock Creek Trip Report

Or, My God Teenagers Can Eat!

Just got back from another "family oriented" mini-vacation made necessary by our unwillingness (some would say our cheapness) to send our son to camp the entire summer. This time a camping trip up Rock Creek in the Eastern Sierra, sans the wife, who gets the son next week when I go back to work.

We stayed at one of the numerous Forest Service campgrounds that line the road up to Rock Creek Lake. Anybody who knows me knows this isn't exactly my kind of camping. For one thing, I don't particularly like people, and the average Forest Service campground is practically teeming with them; bunches of inconsiderate, self-centered locusts doing their unconscious best to ruin the outdoor experiences of their fellow campers. But with my six year-old, my sister's family (including her two teenage kids and their two friends) and my Dad in attendance, developed camping was our only practical alternative.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Rock Creek is the only east side drainage of the Sierras I'd never been to, and I wonder why it took me so long. The area is gorgeous, the creek lively and accessible, the lake picturesque and the hiking opportunities limitless. The campsites are spaced far enough apart to impart some sort of "solitude," if that's the right word. We caught some fish at Rock Creek Lake, my son had a great time floating his toy boat down the creek, and in general a good time was had by all.

I also caught a glimpse of what the wife and I are in for when my son reaches his teenage years. Good God, those kids can eat! Following is a list of what was consumed by four adults, four teenagers and a six year-old in just four days:

Nine rib-eye steaks, sixteen hamburgers, twenty-four hot dogs, three pounds of Italian sausage, two pounds of spaghetti, three pounds of stew meat, two large cans of Ranch Style beans, four cans of chili, three loaves of bread, three pounds of lunch meat, a pound of cheddar cheese, two large packages of American cheese, a loaf of French bread, three packages of English muffins, two pounds of bacon, two pounds of chorizo, 72 flour tortillas, ten pounds of potatoes, nine ears of corn, six bell peppers, twelve onions, a package of cherry tomatoes, several bottles of assorted condiments, enough Some-ores to wire an army with a week-long sugar rush, assorted crackers, cookies and candy, and an astounding 72 eggs. Oh, and two fresh-caught trout and four jars of canned lake trout my Dad brought back with him from Wyoming.

And we had zero leftovers. My nephew and his friend, in particular, reminded me of the old joke about Samoans: they didn't eat until they were full -- they ate until their jaws got tired.

So, as the camp cook, I spent much of my vacation standing over my old Coleman stove and the three grills required to cook that much food. Still, it was a fine four days, and the best proof was every one's attitude when it came time to pack up and leave: nobody wanted to go home.

Where Do Libertarians Go From Here?

When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 as a "compassionate conservative" most people assumed that meant he would somewhat soften the hard edges of libertarianism. Libertarians believe the federal government long ago entered into areas that rightly should be left to the states. They cite such programs as Social Security, federal funding of education, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Environmental Protection Agency as examples of the feds treading on rights that should be left to the states and the market economy.

While many pundits have attributed Bush's victory to the rise of evangelical conservatism, I believe the libertarians have been given short shrift. I believe hard-core, Barry Goldwater, principled libertarians provided the very foundation upon which modern conservatism rose to power. And I believe George Bush has taken them for a ride.

Let us count the ways in which George Bush has been anything but a libertarian conservative:

Libertarians, above all, believe in fiscal responsibility. When George Bush entered office, the federal government was enjoying a rare budget surplus. Today, Bush presides over the greatest expansion of budget deficits in U.S. history. Bush's government has borrowed more money from foreign sources than the combined governments of every U.S. president in our nation's brief life.

Libertarians believe in a strong national defense combined with an unwillingness to use it unless provoked. Bush gave us an enormously expensive preemptive war against an "enemy" that posed us no threat -- a war with no apparent plan, no apparent purpose and no end in sight.

Libertarians believe in liberty, that the Bill of Rights is sacrosanct. Bush has trampled the bill of rights, suspending Habeas Corpus -- keeping so-called "enemy combatants" locked up with no due process -- and he's spied on citizens without the necessary warrants in place.

Libertarians believe the federal government should stay out of such arenas as education, health care and the market economy. Bush signed the "No Child Left Behind" bill that bullies state's educational systems and is largely unfunded. He also signed into law a prescription drug benefit for seniors costing us billions of dollars per year. This in particular must irk libertarians because they see "entitlements" as one of the most insidious forms of governmental intrusion. Government hand-outs like the millions in subsidies provided to the oil industry must be likewise abhorrent to libertarians.

Libertarians believe in smaller government. With his Homeland Security Agency Bush has overseen the largest increase in the federal bureaucracy since the EPA was formed.

Libertarians believe in the separation of powers. With his bid to form a "unitary executive," Bush has centralized power to an extent not foreseen by the framers of the Constitution and has appropriated numerous powers that were to be left with other branches of government.

On issue after issue Bush has pushed away libertarianism. That he still maintains a 28% approval rating stems from much of his base either not facing reality or not paying attention.

The question, then, is where do libertarians go from here? Do they splinter off and try to push back against the egregious actions of Bush and his ilk? Do they stay with the Republican Party and try to reclaim true libertarian conservatism from the Neo-conservative usurpers, hoping, against all odds, that the current crop of presidential candidates might turn out to be a true believer? Or do they just give up and go home? Only time will tell. I do know one thing: Barry Goldwater must be doing back-flips in his grave.

O.K., Ebay, We Got It: You Hate Guns

So Ebay has just published new rules about what can and cannot be sold on their site:

They said they would no longer allow the listing of any firearm parts required in the firing of a gun. This will include bullet tips (their words), brass, shells (hulls), barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, trigger assemblies, etc.

This change is apparently in response to the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University. I suppose on some level it makes sense. After all, everybody knows that depraved mad-men buy all their reloading supplies on Ebay.

First off, this affects me personally, because there seemed to be an endless supply of suckers on Ebay willing to pay me 20 cents apiece for 28 gauge shotgun hulls I picked up for free at the local range. Now I'll have to go back to collecting aluminum cans for spending money I can hide from the wife.

Seriously, we all know those in power over at Ebay despise guns, but what good is it to exclude for sale legal products that don't require hazardous materials handling? Do they really think they can somehow prevent people from shooting their guns by restricting the sale of empty shotgun hulls?

And where does this stop? Is Ebay anti-hunting, too? Can I expect my Paypal account to be frozen if I try to sell some duck decoys on line? I notice there's lots of archery gear there. Is that next? After all, I imagine some kook with a compound bow could do some serious harm at the shopping mall were he so inclined.

What about all the other stuff sold on Ebay that could be turned into a weapon? Are they going to ban baseball bats the next time an enraged parent pummels his son's little-league coach with a Louisville Slugger because Junior didn't get enough playing time?

On a serious level I find this action by Ebay to be extremely counterproductive, because it just reinforces in every NRA member's mind that "those slime-balls on the left want to take away our guns." I've already noticed it at the many gun nut sites I frequent, and at least one is circulating a petition aimed at convincing Ebay to reverse the policy. This is another example of why most gun owners don't trust those of us on the left.

Which is unfortunate, because I've been arguing for years that, of those who own guns, hunters in particular really ought to be our natural allies. Both hunters and lefties want to protect the commons, lefties for its own sake and hunters so they will continue to have game to shoot. But every time the Sierra Club announces a hunter outreach program or Audubon Magazine publishes an ode to hunters some morons like Ebay come along and rip out the seedling alliance that has been sown. Good going, Ebay. Now I'm going to trip over to Gunbroker and see if anybody wants to buy some of these 28 gauge hulls I've got stored in my garage.

President Bush Is Classless

Either That, Or He Just Doesn't Care

In his statement this morning, President Bush segued directly from his heart-felt message to the people of Minneapolis to political hackery, whacking the Democrats for not completing the appropriations bills and including $22 billion of "extra" spending he said would cause us to "raise your taxes."

The bodies aren't even out of the water yet, but Bush can't pass up a chance to try and take the Democrats to the political woodshed. My first inclination is to think it's just another example of Mr. Bush's classlessness. But then I remember his Mom's comments during the Katrina fiasco about all the refugees trapped at the Superdome and how it was "working out well for them." Bush's comments about the Democrats on the heels of his words about the Minnesota tragedy stinks of the same inappropriateness.

So it seems more likely the Bush clan simply are missing the "compassion" gene. I don't think they care about the plight of other people, particularly those who are beneath their socioeconomic class. It explains his willingness to continue sacrificing our brave soldiers on the alter of an unnecessary and failed war. He doesn't really care about them, or their pain and suffering.

And incidentally, Mr. Bush, that extra $22 billion the Democrats want to spend is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1 trillion this war is going to cost us. I think we might have fixed quite a few bridges with that kind of money, don't you?

The Hualapai Nation Is Not Yet Ready for Prime Time

Or, My Vacation From Hell, Part Two

After braving the hoards of humanity at Grand Canyon National Park for the better part of two days, we headed back west for our visit to Grand Canyon West, better known as the Hualapai Indian Reservation. It is here the Hualapai have constructed the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a horseshoe shaped abomination of steel and Plexiglas that juts out over the canyon rim, allowing visitors to think they're walking on air. Although the Skywalk is asthetically unpleasing, I'm as much a sucker for cheap thrills as the next guy, so I was looking forward to checking it out. As this story shall show, the Hualapai might have done better to stick with the more traditional manner of relieving the white man of his money: steal it in Indian Casinos.

For starters, the road to Skywalk isn't yet paved. Now had I been driving my 4x4 Dodge Dakota instead of my wife's Charger this wouldn't have presented a problem. The Charger isn't exactly designed for off-roading, and my wife cringed noticeably every time a stray rock would strike the undercarriage. At that point, of course, she had no idea of how bad it would get.

When we pulled up at what passes for a visitor's center, my first impression was "this must be what Hanoi was like during the evacuation." A helipad with four or five idling helicopters sat right across from the center, and a landing strip featuring a constant drone of single-engine planes taking off and landing was just to the north. The Hualapai are apparently unaware of the invention of electrical transmission lines because the roar and stench of generators providing an interesting back-drop to the incessant racket and aroma of the aircraft.

Inside the visitors center there was what can only be described as chaos. There was no discernible line; just people, lots of them, wandering around with looks of either confusion or disgust. When I reached the ticket counter and asked about our room reservations I was met with a blank look that could only have meant "I have no idea what you're talking about." After talking with five or six of his co-workers I finally figured out why: the genius on the phone when I made the reservations had booked us into the Hualapai lodge in Peach Springs, a wide spot in the road two hours by jeep trail from Grand Canyon West. When they tried to hook me up with a phone to call the lodge and cancel our reservations, the phone went dead and couldn't be resuscitated.

Finally, we grabbed our tickets and prepared to get on the bus out to the Skywalk, only to be told by one of the flunkies they had closed it because of an impending electrical storm. We asked for a refund for the Skywalk portion of our tickets (twenty-five bucks a head), and were told to see the supervisor.

When we finally found the supervisor, he told us that no, the Skywalk was still open and we should catch the next bus out there. He told us that if the Skywalk did close we would indeed be reimbursed for that portion of the ticket.

When we arrived, we found that, indeed, the Skywalk was definitely closed, and probably would be for the rest of the day. We soon found out why. As we wandered around a bit, letting the kids play in the "authentic" tee-pees the tribe has constructed, it began to rain. Anybody who's ever lived in the Southwest will know what I'm talking about when I say it was a "gully-washer." We ran back to the bus, where the driver told us that "anybody with a low-clearance vehicle better get out of here, because the road is gonna' wash out."

When we got back to Baghdad -- I mean the visitor's center -- we tried in vain to find the supervisor who had misled us about the Skywalk being open. We later found out he was holed up in his office, afraid to brave the angry hoard of maltreated guests.

(I should probably stop here and explain the Hualapai Nation isn't exactly running things out there. They have hired some sort of "management team" and much of the staffing is in the from of folks who, shall we say, are not Native Americans. The various "managers" we spoke to are among the most incompetent individuals with whom I have ever had the displeasure of speaking. We never got the same answer twice, and they seemed completely unprepared for the types of eventualities that befall an enterprise such as this.)

After about half and hour we were finally able to find another supervisor. When she heard our story she said "I've lived here for years, and that road never washes out. Besides, the Skywalk has re-opened, so I can't give you a refund."

We explained we had just been there, it was raining, with thunder and lightening, and the Skywalk most assuredly had been closed. Moreover, we asked, why would her bus driver warn us to leave if the roads were fine? She remarked that they had "hired lots of new people, and some of them don't know what they're doing." "And just why should that be our problem?" retorted my co-traveler.

Anyway, they finally agreed, after another half hour, to give us our refund, but then they couldn't figure out how to credit my VISA card. So they gave us our paperwork and a phone number to call and sent us on our merry way . . .

. . . when we promptly saw a line of brake lights: cars stopped on the road because the gully-washer had washed out the dirt track. It was as if the supervisor felt obliged to tell us one more lie for the road. By the time the rain stopped and the rainwater had dropped enough for me to pilot my wife's Charger through the mud, a one-hour drive back to Kingman had taken us over three hours.

We managed to find a room in Kingman, where we collapsed on our beds, spent. (I do have to say I highly recommend the Kingman Hampton Inn Suites. The hired help was competent and cheerful. Of course, after our experience, maybe it was just the comparison that made them seem extra nice.)

Suffice it to say we won't be going back to Grand Canyon West to walk on the Skywalk anytime soon. I can only say in conclusion that the Hualapai Nation is definitely not yet ready for prime time.

Thank God Hunting Season Is Almost Here

My wife figured out hunting season was coming soon when she found me in the garage the other day reloading shotgun shells. "I guess this means that for the next five months we'll only see you on weeknights," she observed.

September first brings us the opening of dove season here in the southwest. And no, not the white, "symbol of peace" doves, but the drab-gray mourning doves and white wing doves. They are an extremely challenging bird to shoot on the wing, and they are quite tasty, particularly when stuffed into a jalepeno with a slice of cheese and smoked on the BBQ.

So the first of next month me and my buddies will again make the trek across the desert to a little Arizona burg known as Dateland. We'll get up before the crack of dawn, brave the chill of the morning (it's usually around 90 degrees by 6:00 A.M.) and stumble out to our fields where we'll only get to hunt for about twenty minutes because that's about how long it takes to get a limit. Then we'll spend the rest of the day lounging around the swimming pool at the trailer park while imbibing our favorite adult beverages.

(As an aside, what genius decided to schedule my son's first Pop Warner game on the dove opener? I am actually going to miss my first opening day in thirty-five years to watch a bunch of six-year-olds running amuck, pretending to play football.)

I chase lots of bird species that require physical fitness, endurance and skill if I am to hunt them successfully. I'll be after chukar partridge later this fall, an insidious bird about which it's been said one hunts the first time for sport, and thereafter for revenge. In November I'll be slogging through wet alfalfa fields on the unlikely notion I'll get an opportunity to shoot a rooster pheasant. December and January will find me in the duck blind, where I will have hauled sixty pounds of decoys and my eight-pound 12 gauge through the mud for a chance to shiver in the sleet as the ducks largely ignore my spread.

So yeah, most bird species present a formidable challence. Doves aren't one of them. My wife seems to have caught on to this. The other day she told me she knows "dove hunting is just an excuse for you to go drink." That pretty much sums it up.

200,000 Weapons Lost In Iraq

So the General Accounting Office is reporting our military has lost almost 200,000 weapons in Iraq since the start of the war and occupation. Presumably these are weapons given to Iraqi military and police personnel as we train them. These personnel then leave the military or the police, join their local militia, and use the training and weapons they got from us to kill and maim our soldiers.

Apparently this is part of Bush's plan to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." After all, what better way to dissuade Iraqis from taking an American vacation than to train them, equip them and then paint bull's-eyes on the backs of our boys and girls?

Seriously, this is just another example of the old Republican mantra -- that government is incompetent -- becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. They claim government is the problem and then go about proving it by their bad governing, time and again. Why the American public continues to elect leaders who seem intent on screwing things up is beyond me. Oh yeah, I forgot: we didn't really elect Bush, he was appointed King by the Supreme Court. My bad.

More Random Thoughts On the Day's News

Alberto Gonzales lies to Congress. Bolton and Meirs refuse to even acknowledge their subpeonas to appear before Congress, and are on the verge of being hit with contempt. Karl Rove is hit with a subpeona, and most certainly will likewise defy Congress. Congress asks for a special prosecutor in the attorney-gate scandel, but faces a stonewall by the Attorney General, the same guy who just proved himself a congenital lier.

Looks like we're heading towards a full-blown Constitutional crisis, folks!

Meanwhile, Aviation Week magazine reports on their website that on at least two occasions Space Shuttle pilots flew missions while so inebriated they posed a threat to shuttle safety. Why not? Airplane pilots do it, and so do bus drivers, taxi drivers, Lindsay Lohan and Nicolle Richey. At least we don't have to worry about a shuttle pilot driving his ship the wrong way down the Ventura Freeway at five in the morning.

I used to lobby for NASA to move the launch and recovery site permanantly out here to Edwards Air Force Base because we almost never suffer from the weather problems that always seem to plague the site in South Florida. I have now rethought that position. I don't want drunken shuttle pilots flying through my skies. We have enough to worry about -- what with earthquakes, fires, mudslides, global warming and drunken celebrities -- without having to fear a drunk driving incident involving tons of rocket fuel.

Finally, in case you missed it, Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab. And the national media has apparently decided that's a much more important story than the impending Constitutional crisis. Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

My Vacation From Hell -- Part One

Or: Why I Avoid National Parks Like the Plague

It seemed like a good idea at the time. My wife came to me about eight months ago and said, "for vacation this year, why don't we go the the Grand Canyon?" "Well," I countered, "I don't think our son is anywhere near old enough to backpack there yet. The hike into and out of the canyon is horribly strenuous, and I just don't think . . ." She cut me off. "Not a hiking trip, silly. We're going to take the Grand Canyon Railroad out of Williams and stay in a lodge at the canyon rim."

And so began my vacation from hell. First, I should explain why I avoid our wonderful National Park system like I would a root canal with no Novocain. In a word: people. There are too many of them. And in our most popular national parks, during vacation season, there are really too many of them. They all act like tourists, and most of them have no business being in the outdoors, even in a pampered setting like the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. After this trip I have made a solemn vow: I will never again set foot in a National Park, unless it's Yosemite and I immediately head off into the back country, away from the over-weight, sun burnt, fast food-addled yahoos one usually finds in these places.

The trip started out well enough. We headed out last Friday. The drive to Williams was uneventful. We checked in at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel and found the folks helpful and courteous. Our buffet dinner was somewhat bland, but edible. The rooms were not large but they were comfortable. And Williams is a delightful little town with an eclectic main drag largely devoid of the nondescript corporate-owned businesses that are increasingly making every main street in America look the same.

We caught the train to the canyon the next morning, after a fun wild-west shootout at the hotel that the young ones thoroughly enjoyed. The train ride was uneventful, if a bit long, but they served liquor in our first-class section, which made things at least bearable.

The fun started once we disembarked at the canyon rim, at about 11:00 A.M. Check-out time for the previous night's guests was 10:00 A.M., but we were informed that check-in time for us was not until 4:00 P.M. It takes six hours to vacuum a room and put on fresh linens and shelve some clean towels?

It was at that moment we discovered an immutable fact about tourists who stay in the lodges at the Grand Canyon, particularly those who take the train: we were their prisoners. We were trapped, completely at their mercy. They could house us when they wanted too, feed us what they wanted to, force us to walk through their interminable gift shops, and make us leave when they wanted to. At the Grand Canyon, the old saw that "the customer is always right" has been thrown out the window. The hired help was surly almost without exception, the food expensive and below mediocre, and the service was almost uniformly atrocious. And we couldn't do a damn thing about it.

The entire commercial operation at the South Rim is controlled by a company called Xanterra South Rim, L.L.C. This company has taken commercialism to an almost Disney-esque level. Almost every sight-seeing opportunity in the Grand Canyon Village requires one to walk through one of the ubiquitous gift shops along the rim. This trip certainly reinforced for me one of my main complaints about the privatization of our public areas: that doing so emphasizes profits over aesthetics.

(I should probably stop here and say the exception was the wonderful restaurant at the Bright Angel Lodge. I ate there twice, and both times the greeters, servers and busboys were uniformly cheerful, helpful and competent. I can only think that, for whatever reason, every good private employee at the South Rim must have somehow gravitated to the Bright Angel Lodge. Nor will I say anything bad about the park employees and rangers. These public servants are underpaid and overworked yet always seem to do their jobs with aplomb, even in the face of what must be some of the dumbest questions ever asked by human beings.)

And just as I feared, there were people everywhere. One couldn't walk ten feet without having to veer around some group of idiots who decided the best place to stop and reposition juniors hat or apply some sunscreen to little Sally was right in the middle of the trail. Almost everybody I came across was unconcerned about any other human being. It was as if every group of tourists was in its own plastic bubble, completely unaware of how their actions might be affecting the hoards around them.

When we were finally allowed to check onto our rooms at the Kachina Lodge, the first thing we noticed was that the "king sized" beds were smaller that the queen size that sits in our bedroom at home. The second was that the entire room was scarcely larger that a shoe box. Indeed, after fitting in the roll-away bed for my son we couldn't walk around in the room -- we actually had to crawl across the beds to traverse the tiny space.

That evening, I wandered down to the snack bar at the Bright Angel to get my son and his friend hot dogs for dinner, while the adults congregated at the El Tovar Lodge for dinner and drinks. Only the fact I had yet to imbibe much prevented what ensued from becoming an ugly scene.

When we got to the lodge and sat down with our hot dogs, we were informed we couldn't bring food from another establishment into the lodge. "Let me get this straight," I said to the surly waiter. "We have four adults here, ordering drinks and dinner -- we're spending plenty of money here. You don't offer a children's menu. Yet you're not going to let our two kids eat their hot dogs with their parents?"

Yep, I was banished to an outdoor bench with two kids because I had the gall to bring them to the El Tovar with hot dogs.

The next morning, Sunday, I awoke at 5:00 and was finally able to enjoy some peace. I walked along the South Rim Trail from our lodge up to Hermit's Rest. The seasonal monsoon system deprived me of the usual spectacular sunrise, but my early rise allowed me to walk alone -- the entire morning I only met five other people. Upon reaching Hermit's Rest I found only two folks who had taken an early bus shuttle and the operator at the obligatory gift shop. And the helicopters.

Why the National Park Service allows this practice is beyond me. The Grand Canyon, a place that should be among the most peaceful in the world, is shattered every day by the clop-clop-clop of choppers taking people with way too much disposable income over the canyons to sight-see the lazy-man's way. What was my one good day at the canyon was sullied by the constant buzz of helicopter engines.

We boarded the train at 4:00 for our journey back to the sanctity of the hotel back in Williams. Little did I know that this painful vacation was about to get even worse.

Next: Grand Canyon West -- or, The Hualapai Nation is Not Yet Ready For Prime Time.