Restructure the GOP

This one they did deign to publish - as the "Letter of the Day", no less, with zero edits, which is most surprising.

If the GOP ever intends to regain political control, it must stop catering to the radical right-wing elements of the party. A consistent platform of smaller government, conservative economic policies, strong defense and personal liberty would crush the socialist policies of the left.

However, this message is sullied by the family values camp, whose hatred toward unmarried women and homosexuals turns off tens of millions of Americans who would rush to the right if only Republicans took down the exclusionary policies that limit entry into their "big tent."

Michael Steele has no reason to apologize.
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Sadly, Abe was no more honest than the rest of them

Here, our hero rants about Lincoln, who he's never liked. I sent this to the local rag for publication on Thursday, but I have my doubts if this is an opinion they want to share.

This Thursday, on his 200th birthday, the Lincoln Cultists will further deify our 16th President. This glory is unwarranted. Abraham Lincoln made a name for himself as a railroad lobbyist, a very successful lawyer who made his clients rich by manipulating legislators and legislation to benefit a select few.

Throughout the world, slavery was being abolished through non-violent means, yet Lincoln invaded the South, resulting in the deaths of one quarter of its men and economic devastation that would last a century. Did Lincoln free the slaves? He did emancipate Southern Blacks, but to populate his war machine, he introduced conscription to the United States, ensuring that all able bodied men, regardless of race, could be forced into servitude to fight the Federal Government’s illegal wars.

The War to Prevent Southern Independence was unConstitutional, as the Union between the many States is voluntary. What the aggressors call a Civil War was merely another power grab by the Big Government politicians of the day, in their continuing attempts to restrict freedom and personal liberty.

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What's Old is Old

Only very rarely will anyone tell you about the air travel experiences that were nice. This is not one of those occasions.

Yet another long flight to the desert. Yet another opportunity to be crammed into cattle class, elbow to asshole with the masses yearning to breathe free. I'm only starting to recover from it.

Cairo called, just one more time, so I packed my bags and headed eight time zones east and fifteen degrees south. This time, I thought to route myself through JFK, an airport that I hadn't been to in forty years, an airport netorious for delays, an airport in ghastly New York City (where the trash in the Hudson is so thick you can float a jetliner on top of it). The biggest thing was that this route would eliminate one stop and about three or four hours off of a 26 hour travel day. It was an easy sell.

The first leg was on some 70 seat regional jet with, as near as I could tell, 70 passengers. Fortunately, it's less than four hours to the east coast from home, and a short first leg is always simple. I was a little worried about changing planes in a new (the first time in forty years might as well be new) facility, but it worked out alright. As it turns out, my departure was two gates from my arrival so, to the best of my knowledge, JFK is some tiny regional airport with half adozen gates, sort of like Great Falls, but with a different smell.

The second leg was packed to the gills, but not overly smelling of fish. I had an interior aisle seat, thankfully adjacent to a small child who spent her flight sleeping on her mother's lap, leaving me unopposed in the battle for the armrest. The real trouble was the major turbulence, violently shaking the plane with little (but mostly no) warning. We'd be cruising smoothly, and then get hit with huge jolts, disrupting the galley, causing some passengers to shout in shock and alarm, and resulting in folks racing down the aisle to the relative safety of their seat belts. Half a dozen instances, probably, of the violent stuff, but easily an hour of shaking and shimmying out of twelve in the air.

I love to fly. I love to fly. I love to fly.

I arrived in Egypt completely jet lagged and fighting a virus that robbed my appetite and sleep for the next three days, leaving me barely able to work (three days of meetings) and having little energy between meetings. By the end of the third day, at least I wasn't spending all of my time in the head, and had some hopes of making it home in one piece, just needing to survive a twenty four hour travel day.

The hotel shuttle to the airport was late, but arrived eventually, then dropped me off at the wrong door to the terminal, so that I had to walk a kilometer and a half to the first security checkpoint. At this stage in Cairo, they ask for your passport and ticket, and I'm usually a bit concerned in that I have an e-ticket, but the dude accepts my itinerary instead, and I'm off to the Delta counter, where they check my passport and itinerary again, before sending me to wait in line, where an airline employee (or Egyptian national security agency employee, I really can't tell) says to me, "You look a little nervous today, sir."

Shit. Do I? Could it be that I've felt like crap the past three days? Could it be that my flight here was shit? Could it be that Israelis are dropping bombs less than two hundred miles from here? Could it be that I really don't like to fly? Of course I'm fucking nervous today,... sir.

"Well, I have been feeling under the weather the past few days."

Approaching the ticket counter, they need my passport and ticket again. A skinny airline employee (or,...) can't find me on his list. "Is Palmer my family name, or is Alan", was the first in our game of twenty questions.

I really should get a new passport. I think I have the last of the old style documents, with a glued on photo and perforated number, that was issued in Kingston eight or nine years ago. It never fails to confuse the TSA (who are morons). I will often get asked what it is ("A valid United States passport"), or if I have any other identification ("I have given you a valid United States passport"), or if I can step to the side and wait for a supervisor.

And it's got additional pages added a little sloppily by the Baghdad Consulate full of interesting visas, which cause many inspectors (including the skinny guy at Delta) to start asking pesky questions. "What hotel did I stay at? How did you get here from the hotel? How long did it take to drive here? What is your address in the United States? Do you have any other identification?"

Just get me on the plane.

Short story longer - there are additional ID checks at the ticket counter, immigration, departure lounge, and departure gate and then I'm on a mostly empty plane headed west. I even get an exit row to myself, but there seems to be little insulation in the emergency door, so the minus seventy degrees outside quickly works its way into the occupant of seat 22A, who moves into seat 22B, which is under the additional ventilation installed next to the head. I finished the flight wearing everything I owned, including a stocking cap.

New York to Minneapolis was uneventful, although I spent the second half of the flight standing next to my seat, having sat enough for one day, and too tired to ignore the fact to sleep. I just reminded myself of the toasty warm limosine that would pick me up at the airport, with it's cavernous back seat perfectly suited for a forty minute snooze.

Little did I expect. However, I received the most talkative driver I've ever had with this company, who couldn't help but turn to me as he talked, which turned the car into the next lane, to which he would correct his path, again and again.

All told, a fine business trip, but a crappy trip, nonetheless.


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Hogwash

Our attorneys had warned me that there might be some level of interrogation by the opposition, and that thought sort of lingered in the back of my noggin for a couple of days prior to the proceedings. My role would be as expert witness of sorts, defending the County staff in their decision to issue my client a permit to build their 250 megawatt power plant.

I didn’t know what exactly to expect. Would the opposition be bringing traffic and transportation experts of their own? Perhaps they were already so knowledgeable, or perhaps my previous work so full of gaping holes that they could drive right through any argument I may have presented.

I was almost expecting the high drama and theatrics of the multitude of crime procedurals on the idiot box. I didn’t know what to expect, but took comfort in the fact that I can fake it pretty well, and that I had some minor confidence in my work going in to it.


Funny thing, this thing. There were plenty of lawyers in the room, and they arguments were made to a panel of public officials, but the room was no courthouse or government office complex. Due to the projected crowds that would want to speak, we were scheduled at the Paddock Club in Great Falls, a low ceilinged, concrete floored room that serves as the beer hall adjacent to the grandstands at the Cascade County Fairgrounds. It smelled a little like a college bar on a Sunday morning. Sadly, the big coolers were devoid of libations, and there was no rodeo or monster truck contests to fill the time between when I got there and when I addressed the Board, and between the time that I spoke and the time we left the building.

Truly sad, because this particular hearing went on and on and on for nearly eight hours by the time the Board was finished with us, then they got to the discussion of agenda item number 2. Ouch.

Eight hours of cheap resin chairs, broken only by a couple of too brief breaks and a rather bland sandwich about two thirds of the way in.

The action in question was an appeal by the well organized treehugging factions to the issuance of our Location Conformance Permit at the power plant site. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve hugged my share of trees, but I also burn them for heat and sometimes just for the sake of burning them. Really, though, there are no trees at all at our site east of Great Falls. It’s miles and miles of dang flat wheat fields, interspersed on occasion by some ancient grassy coulees.

From the site, you can see the Highwood Mountains to the east, and the taller features of Great Falls to the west – the oil refinery, the malting plant, the power plant at the Malstrom Air Force base. A little closer are the local electrical distribution lines and the ground level support structures for the huge pipeline that runs through a portion of the site. Then there’re the grain bins and barns and houses and acres of rusted equipment that you’d find in much of rural America.

It looks like a lot of agricultural Montana, yet somehow, some of the local farmers and ranchers believe that the development and operation of an $859 Million industrial site will somehow adversely affect their lives and livelihoods. As if. The stack is only 400 feet tall and can be seen from rarely more than ten miles away.

Maybe that’s beside the point. The people of Montana need cheap electrical power and, right now, this is the best source of it that anyone’s offered to build. Of course, the opposition may not give a rats ass about that. We joke that they won’t be satisfied until we’re all living in caves and drinking out of puddles. Maybe it’s no joke. Since there’s no energy technology you can build that can’t be seen by neighbours somewhere, they are likely anti-energy. We know they don’t like coal technologies, and we’re pretty sure they don’t like wind, because they bitch about the four turbines we’re proposing here.

Maybe their real concern is that they will be able to see the plant, and it’s not the image of rural Montana that they grew to love. Bottom line is that they’re nimby’s.

I just wish they’d give us an option besides “no build”.

Regardless of their motivations, due process allows them this challenge, and allows us to respond. The issue I was assigned to address was our plans for mitigating potential adverse traffic effects caused by the construction and operation of the facility on local and state highway systems. A half hour later, having beat the crap out of the topic, I somewhat nervously anticipated the overly dramatic cross examination, which didn’t come. Marty said that the lead attorney for the opposition was scribbling furiously during my presentation but, specifically upon my use of the term “platoon”, he started crossing things off and then quit taking notes altogether.

What really surprised me was that the nimby’s never brought forth expert witnesses of their own to challenge our findings and reports. Instead, they strew tin after tin of Red Herring about the space, coating the walls to see what might stick. [Sure, I may have mixed this metaphor, but the room was awfully bland, and I was tired of the stale beer smell.]

Their lead attorney struck me as a self important showman. Wearing a poorly fitted and frumpy three button suit (buttoned at the center only!), and having a tangled and unkempt mop of mostly gray hair, he looked like the classic professorial country lawyer. Hemming and hawing at the appropriate times. Getting really breathy during his summation as he slowly outline the potential large scale damages to the most precious … and endangered … Lewis and Clark … Great Falls Portage … National … Historic … Landmark (or something like that – it’s not a very good acronym regardless and really, nobody knows where Lewis and Clark actually bypassed the falls, and it’s not like they would have left any artifacts, and seriously, most of the route lies under Greats Falls now anyway).

And he never said portage, like you’d say portage in Montana or Wisconsin. It was always portage, like the French would say it, as in “… the enormous historic importance of the portage”. Self important. Frumpy. Breathy.

He accused us of bringing in a “legion” of engineers. I guess we may have had the effect of thousands, but I could have sworn we were only three (although we did kick some major ass, engineering testimonywise).

And another thing, “summarize in a nutshell”. Cool trick, I’m sure, but his summary took forty minutes.

“Hogwash,” was the response to many of his allegations by our lead attorney.

Ultimately, the Board agreed, and we can continue advancement of the project, just as soon as I can get out of this airport and home.

Yesterday, a sportcoat was quite comfortable while temperatures were in the mid forties. Last night, though, the snows developed and were up to blizzard by this morning. My plan to fly standby on the first flight out were for naught, as that flight was cancelled. I’m still hoping to leave this afternoon on my original flight, but it’s still quite white through the terminal windows. Tomorrow’s high is forecast to be 15 below zero, and that may make it too cold to fly, so my hopes rest.

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David Palmer, 1927-2008

Come and sit by my side, if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy who loved you so true



On behalf of myself and the David Palmer family, I would like to welcome each of you to this celebration, and to thank you all for the support and compassion you’ve directed towards us. It is truly appreciated.

Dad had a plethora of positives. Despite not being a Boy Scout, he was still trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, yada, yada, yada. He was a staunch believer in and supporter of the United States Constitution, especially the Third Amendment, and would never, ever, involuntarily quarter soldiers. He was active and involved in his career, but always made time to advance the Profession through his work with various professional societies. He was a respected Professional Agricultural Engineer, whose primary obligation, like all engineers, was to the health, safety, and welfare of the People. This is an obligation he took very seriously.

He never really retired, just redirected his efforts from work, to professional associations, to volunteer efforts – often rising to top leadership positions. He wasn’t one to hang with the buds and choke down a couple of 40’s. He may not have seen the benefit to that.

He was true to the Rotarian motto long before he was involved in the Rotary. He was a poster child for Service Above Self.

I guess he did have one of bad trait. Like many engineers, Dad was a sorter and a filer of every scrap and tidbit and, mostly, a stacker of said scraps and tidbits, using every square inch of horizontal space to pile some papers about something or another. Many of you have seen the mess of his desk at their Evergreen house, where only the need to maintain the space as a guest bedroom kept the piles of paper below three tonnes.

Prior to that, the piles were in Joel’s old bedroom at the Regent Park place, packed full to overflowing, including the closet. He had moved up there from the family room, when his overstuffed alcove was absconded for use as a bar. [Which, by the way, he only got around to building after we kids had turned 21 and moved out of the house. For many years, that bar was used to pleasantly celebrate the daily happy hour.]

Before that, he piled his many piles downstairs in the furnace room, until fears of radon moved him upstairs. In the furnace room, however, many piles remained piled until the day they sold that house.

In Ames, his home office desk was an interior door, with legs bolted to it to form a table. Of course, a table has no file drawers, so stacks and piles are the only way to organize.

He was a piler from before the day I knew that there was such a thing and, sadly, separating from this inherited trait has proved difficult.

Of the good points, there were many. These have been passed down, through heredity or upbringing, to each of his children. We each share all of these traits in different measure. He had a great love of the outdoors, which Joel tends to follow. His love of music and performance is shared strongly by Sarah. John (obviously) got the brains. I received his love of travel to backwater burgs and exotic shitholes.

We each received his tolerance for most everybody and every idea. We each received his logical way of thinking. And we each received his strong dislike of FDR and the policies of Socialism in this government.

We each have the upmost love and respect for his wife of 54 years.

What have you picked up from the man? Hopefully not his laugh, or hairline, or the way he always sneezed twice. Perhaps you picked up his ability to always have someone to talk to at a party? Perhaps it was his narcolepsy? Perhaps his love of trucks, tractors, canoeing, travel, limnology, rodeo, agriculture, politics, or the Cubs? Perhaps you have noticed an increased love of pie?

He was clever and appreciated wit. [John’s wit, perhaps. I preferred to amuse him with a broader brand of humor.]

Dad was a man of letters, both academically and literally. While going through his office this week, we discovered one of his early letters, written to his eventually esteemed younger brother, Joseph. He was ten years old when he wrote this.

=====

Josephene,

You are a P-I-G baby pig. You are a great big fraidy cat and cry baby. You are a great big old sow that just came out of a mud hole. You squeal [to] your ma and pa and everybody else.

Your chicken pox, David

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Little known factoid – you know that cold headache you get when you wolf down ice cream or suck down a Squishy too fast (I think kids today call it a brain freeze). Well, he never suffered from those.

The flowers fall, for all our yearning; weeds grow, regardless of our dislike.

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Chainsaw Trout

I did this one solo. Those who missed it should regret it through the entire fast-approaching winter.

Leaving at about 0830, I drifted south on MN 52 through some clouds and temperatures in the low 50's. the electric vest was set on 2 or 3, but that came off at my first stop in Preston. As you may recall, I was in search of the elusive Chainsaw Trout, which plies the clear waters of the Root River.

What caught my eye coming into town was a 15-20' fiberglass trout (likely manufactured by FASTCO in Sparta, a Mecca for lovers of big fiberglass things). This modern trout was mounted on a trailer on the north side of town, just outside the tourist information booth.

So I stopped, and shed the vest, then went in to see what I could, which is more than I can say for the 70 year old dude behind the desk, whose glaucoma was so bad his eyes were reduced to two cloudy orbs. It was like I was caught in some awful made for TV sci-fi film on the WB.

I asked about the Chainsaw Trout, which stumped him for a little bit, until I could sense him starting to dredge up the memories from his past. I'd like to say that his eyes lit up at the thought but, you know, the glaucoma.

As the story goes, the Chainsaw Trout was spawned from an old dead tree. Since the tree was still standing, it was carved vertically, the fish standing on its tail. Sadly, as happens with many wild species forced to live out of their native waters, the trout suffered from tail rot,... and termites, and toppled a number of years ago. Ah well.

By now, it was gorgeous-sunny, and from there, it was east over the curvy section of MN 16, as it parallels the Root as it falls towards the Mississippi at La Crescent. Very nice highway, this, undulating up, through, and around the base of the bluffs. First on the left bank, then the right bank past Rushford. Although not quite at peak, the autumn leaves were spectacular. There were a few on the highway, but all of them dry, and not so many that they became a hazard.

I missed the Culvert Man in Nodine, because Ms. Garmin wanted to route me down aggregate to find it, and I refused to follow her instructions this time. Obviously pissed off, she tried twice more to get me on the rocks. Meanwhile, I got pleasantly lost on some narrow county routes before eventually stumbling out of the woods at Winona, where I stopped to eat a long lunch, make a number of calls, and shed the liner of the 'Stich.

Now homebound with plenty of daylight left, I considered a change in plans to play a few word games on Wisconsin's alphabetized county road system, but didn't, electing to get home in time enough to start earning the next kitchen pass. It was a quick shot north to almost Wabasha, then MN60 in Zumbrota.

MN60 wasn't my planned route, but it was so much fun flogging the twisties I didn't bother with the original plan to bypass through Millville, Hammond, and South Troy (maybe next time). Fortunately, all of the traffic seemed to be eastbound, so I rarely had to pass folks, even though I was moving slightly faster than the legal limit. I'd slow down for the curves, generally posted with advisory speeds between 30 and 50 mph, but 25 over that felt about right.

The run back on US 52 was as dull as could be expected, getting home around 3:30, with another 400 miles for the season, and one of my better Octobers.

Will there be riding in November?

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Risk Tolerance.

I’ve been walking to work this past week, leaving the marble floored comfort of the Palace for the dust and dirt of downtown Cairo. It takes about 40 minutes, door to door, more or less, with a comparative minimum of life threatening street crossings.

I’m so crisp as I pull shut my hotel room door. Creased trousers. Freshly laundered, starched and pressed shirt. Perhaps a tie and jacket. Quite a change from the end of the trek, when I’m dusty, tired and in a full body sweat. Fortunately, the office tea boy has learned to bring me a cold half liter of water as soon as I get in, so the recovery isn’t so long.

Today, the walk was markedly cooler, but through an incredible haze of humidity and smog, reducing visibility to under a kilometer. The lungs felt the sharp and heavy air almost as soon as I left the building, as there are three flights of stairs just after the first busy street crossing to get me up to the elevated approach section of the bridge over the Nile. There’s not too much traffic on the intersecting ramp, so my second street crossing is almost non-harrowing.

I usually stop briefly mid-span to look up the Nile watch the boats and reflect. Yesterday, I watched an egret for a time, floating his way to the Sea atop a jumble of reeds and trash.

On the right bank, there’s another three flights of steps, past competing shoe shiners, then under the bridge and to the north, between the river and the river road, stepping down and under another ramp to keep the river immediately on my left. The underside of Cairo bridges smells exactly like the underside of most urban bridges – a pungent, piquant mixture of filth and urine.

I like the walk next to the river for a number of reasons starting with my love of moving water. Then there’s the fishermen, some with poles, some with barbs on their hooks, trying to catch something fishlike (and likely inedible) from the ancient Nile. Sadly, the sidewalk becomes blocked after a while by a large sheet steel fence taking up all of the space between top of bank and back of curb so I get a choice – walk out in the street into opposing traffic for the last half kilometer or cross the road.

So far, I’ve always chosen the latter and have (so far) lived to tell the tale (enshallah).

Crossing the street in Cairo is probably the most dangerous thing you can do and this particular road, the Corniche El Nil, while not the busiest in town, is still pretty dang busy at 0830. First, it’s a high curb, so you need to step off, as opposed to walk off of it. Next, there could be three lanes of traffic you need to cross, or is it four? With no pavement marking or lane discipline, the offending vehicles are in a constant state of weave, so it’s hard to judge where they might be at any time. Worst is that there are no pavement signals upstream that would work to force gaps in the traffic. The result is a mass of continual traffic morphing heavy to really heavy to somewhat less heavy but always heavy with very few instances where a gap extends across the entire roadway and for a sufficient time that would allow an unimpeded pedestrian crossing.

Ever play Frogger?

Ever play with real cars?

It’s kind of like that, but you only get one life. What works to my advantage is local law/custom, which has the driver of a car that kills a pedestrian pay the bereaved the princely sum of about $1,200. Since most Egyptians don’t have $1,200, they try not to kill pedestrians (too much). Still, there are 80 million Egyptians, and it seems that most of them survive walking.

This is little comfort. But a minute’s wait, a small gap, and some internal time/distance calculations, and I make it to the median, where the same considerations play out, then I’m on the other side. So, with three crossings under my belt, I’m starting to think I might get to the office.

But first, there are a couple of busy side streets to traverse, and the blocks in between. The in between blocks, by the way, rarely have sidewalks. Sure, they used to have sidewalks, but you can’t see them today because that is where all of the cars park (backed onto the sidewalk with their noses taking up half a lane), forcing pedestrians out into the remaining portion of the street, this time with traffic approaching from the rear. There’s a few more pedestrians on this side of the street, though, so the odds of me, specifically, getting nailed are reduced. Plus, there’s a lot of bus traffic, so when they stop to take on or disgorge passengers, traffic is diverted away from the roadside to pass them.

Half a block to go, and I pass by one of these poorly parked cars, making eye contact with the driver who’s standing in the crease of the open door. As I pass by the hood, I catch him in the periphery, slipping into the driver’s seat, then feel the advancing bumper skim by my right leg and my right hand brush across the accelerating hood.

Well, it was a glancing blow. No harm done this time. Read More......