Swanky Conservative

The Pampered Prince, Wesley Clark, had this to say in a conference call this afternoon:

In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

As I think of Clark’s involvment with the Waco siege and his time as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe during the Kosovo crisis, I can’t help but wonder what “relevant experience” Clark feels is necessary? He promptly continues:

If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the First Lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race, not only for representing am abroad, but for dealing with the tough issues of national security. this about Senator McCain’s credentials:

My jaw just dropped and hit the deck. Then I read that retired Admiral Bill Owens had this to say:

I would just say that I agree with Wes on that.

*forehead slap*

More from instapinch:

Talk about losing your big boost of confidence, the Associated Press reports that the owner of Enzyte is guilty of “conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.”

Ouch. Smiling Bob, the Enzyte guy, ain’t smiling no more.

Per the Daily Mail,

When is enough enough? Some twit in Brussels knows how you should live your lives in Britain? Seems there was a time when the Crown, not to mention her subjects knew how to tell off the rubbish from the Continent. The last time Britain was overturned was 1066. Is it time to update the history books?

From the New York Times (via Charlie Foxtrot):

When Mrs. Clinton talked about how it took Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to achieve the rights legislation, Ms. Goodwin said, “she was absolutely right.” Johnson’s great mastery was to get the support of Southern Republicans. “It required his understanding of absolutely every single senator,” Ms. Goodwin said. “They were a team. Without Martin Luther King agitating the country and J.F.K. picking up the bill there would not have been that pressure on the Congress, and without L.B.J. there would not have been a bill.”

What Southern Republicans? Except John Tower, there weren’t any in Congress at that time. Strom Thurmond later switched parties, but that only makes 2 Republicans in the Senate. Looking at the House makeup back then, there’s only 13 Republican Representatives in the South. So LBJ’s “great mastery” was to get the support of 15 Congressmen? Wow. Color me underwhelmed.

88th US Congress Makeup:

Jay Tea at Wizbang coined the phrase I used in the title, “hunting preserves for psychos,” after examining what it would truly take to make a gun-free zone a safe place to be.

First up, they need to absolutely control access to campus. They need to build hefty walls, with security features to keep people from going over, under, or through them. Then they need to put serious security measures on the few entrances through those walls. Metal detectors, hefty locks, repeated identity verification, and the like. No one gets in without going through multiple layers of screenings.

In essence, you take the model we all know and love from airport security and/or prisons and apply it to places like shopping malls or college campuses. The idea behind gun-free zones is to make it a safer place. Well, without controlling access of gun-carrying malcontents, how can that truly be? The short in the logic, like in all gun-control laws, is that all people, law abiding or otherwise, will respect the law. Funny how lawbreakers seem to miss that detail every time.

So let’s take the idea of a college, for example, designating itself (or the state legislature designating it) as a gun-free zone. No guns allowed; only the cops have guns. That’s the law students, faculty, staff and campus visitors agree to when stepping onto campus. The burgeoning argument in the Blogosphere is that these groups of people are forfeiting the individual right to “keep and bear arms” in return for the collective’s protection. If I give up my right to self-protection via my firearm, and set foot in the gun-free zone, then there is an expected level of protection afforded me by the college. The institution assumes the duties of protecting me and my family that I would have otherwise been able to provide.

Sounds like a legal briar patch I wouldn’t want to see anyone fall into. In my layman’s eyes, it’s as sound an argument as anything else. You tell me I can’t protect myself as I am able to do so anywhere else, I either a) refuse to step onto your grounds (something a state institution really can’t say) or b) allow me the individual right of self-protection I enjoy near anywhere else.

Why does this group featured in the New York Times sound like a tedious lot, the likes of which we’re all better off without?

Volatile compounds given off by dry erase markers? Bloody hell, teachers have more to worry about in the classroom than supposedly volatile compounds in dry erase markers. These women should be more focused on their childrens’ educations, not the markers. (When was the last time you heard of Death by Dry Erase compounds?) It’s not long before we see hints of the true motivation behind these EcoMoms:

“It’s like eating too many brownies one day and then jogging extra the next,” said Kimberly Danek Pinkson, 38, the founder of the EcoMom Alliance, speaking to the group of efforts to curb eco-guilt through carbon offsets for air travel.

A-ha! Guilt! Not only plain, ordinary guilt, but the insidious eco-guilt. Man, that’s gotta suck. There’s no cure for that, you know. Only treatments. Take five carbon credits and phone me in the morning. These women are screwed. Next thing you know, they’ll be holding sessions in church basements and talking about 12-step programs.

Oh, snap! A 10-step program? Spreadsheets to “tally their goals?” Talk about over-engineering your guilt. Kathy Miller takes it to an extreme. She’s gardening with guilt. “Weather-sensitive irrigation controls for her garden with nine growing zones?” I can’t read that without hearing Tim Allen’s voice, followed by his man-grunts.

And then there’s the whole “eco stress” tripe. A mother from Berkeley (well, duh!) can’t enjoy a bath? She takes an “extravagant” nightly bath. Well, first off, I have to wonder about her daily routine if she can afford the time to draw and take a bath every night. We’re talking about an hour or so an evening. She’s a mother, so there’s at least one kid. Presumably dad’s around to watch the daughter while mom’s self-absorbed for that time. If mom works, then she’s gone from say 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Leaves four to five hours a night with the daughter and family and she’s enjoying a nightly bath. She’s potentially taking up 20 to 25% of her family time so she can enjoy the tranquility and solitude of a nightly bath.

I’m making assumptions in that last graph, I know. Maybe she’s working from home. Maybe she’s not working at all. Maybe her total bath time (drawing, time in tub, getting dried and primped afterwards) is less than an hour. Maybe so. My hunch is still that the eco-guilt is a mask for something else. Something less trendy and hip than a supposed guilt over the environment.

Ladies, don’t go nuts. I’m seeing the housewives from Edward Scissorhands mixed in with bio-degradable trashbags and tofu sandwiches for Skip and Dot’s lunches. It’s a little too Stepford.

*Sigh*

My First Life was spent as a photojournalist. I started, inspired by my dad’s camera collection, in high school shooting photos for the school paper and yearbook. I continued through college and even did internships and freelance work for small-town newspapers in Texas and one in Kansas. I ended my first life as Digitization crept in and I shifted into my current life working with the Web and technology.

But seeing old-school physical images, even when they’ve been digitized, pulls at strings of my past and for a moment, I can almost smell the chemicals an feel that sensation of seeing history being recorded on the paper as the image comes to life.

Go browse the Library of Congress’s photos on Flickr.

This is a load of modernist crap in the Washington Post today. It seems some do-goodniks at the Naval Academy are “reviewing” the Herndon Climb.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? “Safety in mind?” I’m an enlisted sailor. I don’t want new ensigns coming out to “lead” me who haven’t overcome physical challenges because some desk driver decided it wasn’t safe. What’s next? Getting rid of General Quarters in boot camp?

The last thing our ever-shrinking Navy needs is soft officers, unable to take a risk because it’s not safe. The guys killing themselves to take out the Cole weren’t concerned with it being unsafe. Millennium Challenge 2002, General Van Riper takes out the bulk of US forces in one morning. Did he go easy because it wasn’t safe? No! He kicked ass and took names and was rewarded for his innovative thinking by having the fleet “unsunk” the next day by the Pentagon. Admiral Farragut’s famous “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” order given at the Battle of Mobile Bay wouldn’t have been thought of if he’d been overwhelmingly concerned with safety. Would Operation Overlord have even taken place in this mindset?

Don’t mistake my intention. I don’t want a reckless captain, or an ignorant, inconsiderate officer corps. I want a leader. Someone who will get the mission done successfully and is able to make the hard decisions in order to accomplish it. I want Nelson, Farragut, Jones, Ramsay.

We’re still the greatest navy in the world; I just want to keep it that way. Herbert McMillan, USNA Class of 1980 asks the question succinctly,

“We’re going to send these guys to war but they can’t climb a monument because they might get hurt? Come on,” he said. “It just seems like a solution in search of a problem.”

Hoorah, sir.

J.J. Abrams has released the first peek at the Enterprise from his new look at the original crew. Cool. Sweet. It’s awesome to see the original look, crew, etc. on the big screen. I haven’t heard many of the names of the actors playing James T. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. But back to the ship. Ain’t It Cool has the sneak peek which I’ve included below.

On their site, you can click through to a larger version of the above image. What caught my eye right off the bat (Nerd alert, nerd alert!) were the apparent turbines at the front of the warp nacelles. I know the old show had these spinny-things, but they weren’t fans. Maybe my nerd-fu isn’t powerful enough.

He only wants to cut and style hair…

Adam Sandler’s back with a funny one. Humor tinged with a taste of Middle East politics equals hysterical, to me.

Captain Ed posts a treasure of a video from his pal, Richard Disney, that deals with “isms.” Pertinent nearly 60 years after its release, it concisely illustrates the dangers of turning over individual freedoms to the State.