Nov 12 2012
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Nov 12 2012
Steve used to spend many hours at our home with my son practicing tae kwon do, walking a tight rope and doing various other annoying things.
Actually none of the martial arts and athletic stunts were annoying but Steve could be. If I had only known more about his family… Well let’s not go there.
Steve went into Special Forces. My son chose to become a sissy Navy nuke. Hard to say who was most foolish but Steve had the most adventures.
Steve was in a wheelchair for months and told he would never walk again. Steve was eagerly pursuing his lifelong ambition to be an artist now that he could when he somehow managed to walk again. Intractable pain in his back will probably last for a lifetime but, hey, what do you expect when you enlist?
Steve was once court-martialed and imprisoned for years for breaking most everything to break in a Korean officer’s body when the Korean sought to enforce an illegal command with a pistol to Steve’s ear. His family always knew Steve was no good but the Army didn’t. Months after the affair had blown over, Steve had his rank, pay and status quietly restored.
After leaving the Army, Steve became a professional sky diver. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a professional sky diver but Steve is or was one.
At least one time, an adventure as a skydiver matched any combat in wars we never fought. Steve landed in a lake after tangling with a tree and was unable to free himself from the parachute and back pack. As recounted by my son, Steve strained to get an occasional breath of air. A five-year-old on the way from the drop talked about one man in a lake to his father as they were on their way home. Steve was rescued after an hour or two. He thought he was a goner, Steve told my son.
Steve whines some on occasion about lost records of wars never fought, like other Special Forces recruits and even this “peacetime” Vietnam veteran, but this is a day for generals and admirals and chickenhawks who held our coats and sent us off to war. Some of us are just too dumb to learn. I will thank you for not mentioning it.
Best, Terry
Nov 12 2012
I suppose we all get our schadenfreud on in different ways. Some prefer the sophisticated humor of R-Money Coyote Super Genius–
According to all the sources I spoke to, the breakdown of the campaign can be traced to the primaries. One source saying “they looked at the guy who could raise the most money in history as a ride” adding that “money no longer matters. That’s the problem,” also referring to the campaign overall as “the biggest political flim flam of all time.”
The result of all of these false numbers and inaccurate ground reports is simple: Mitt Romney was ill-prepared for the actual numbers on election day and his false sense of confidence directly translated into how the campaign operated in the closing weeks. In the words of one source, it was a con job. As David Mamet famously said, “If you’re in the con game and you don’t know who the mark is … you’re the mark.” Mitt Romney had no idea what was coming.
As indicated, the comments are instructive.
I personally like deep human drama of the General Hospital kind.
FBI probe of Petraeus triggered by e-mail threats from biographer, officials say
By Sari Horwitz and Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Saturday, November 10, 2:17 PM
The collapse of the dazzling career of CIA Director David H. Petraeus was triggered when a woman with whom he was having an affair sent threatening e-mails to another woman close to him, according to three senior law enforcement officials with knowledge of the episode.
The recipient of the e-mails was so frightened that she went to the FBI for protection and help tracking down the sender, according to the officials. The FBI investigation traced the threats to Paula Broadwell, a former military officer and a Petraeus biographer, and uncovered explicit e-mails between Broadwell and Petraeus, the officials said.
That MoveOn Ad
By Matthew Yglesias, The Atlantic
Sep 21 2007, 10:41 AM ET
I completely agree with the dread DC Establishment that calling General Petraeus “General Betrayus” was dumb. That said, I’m staggered by the amount of emphasis that people inside this town are placing on this. One virtue of having moved to the Beltway is that I can tell you, the reader, a thing or to about the mood here and that while you might think the reverse is true, the truth of the matter is that the left-of-center establishment is being restrained in terms of expressing its absolutely fury at MoveOn over this. People seem to really think that this was not merely a misstep, but a huge blunder of world-historical proportions.
The organization created the ad in response to Petraeus’ Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. MoveOn hosted pages on its website about the ad and their reasons behind it from 2007 to June 23, 2010. On June 23, 2010, after President Obama nominated General Petraeus to be the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan (taking over the position from retiring General Stanley McCrystal), MoveOn erased these webpages and any reference to them from its website.
In Washington, That Letdown Feeling
By Sally Quinn, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 1998
“We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.
“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”
You see, it’s the lying, not the sex.
How Petraeus changed the U.S. military
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
1:31 PM EST, Sat November 10, 2012
Historians will likely judge David Petraeus to be the most effective American military commander since Eisenhower.
He was, after all, the person who, more than any other, brought Iraq back from the brink of total disaster after he assumed command of U.S. forces there in 2007.
Nov 12 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
November 12 is the 316th day of the year (317th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 49 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1775, Upon hearing of England’s rejection of the so-called Olive Branch Petition on this day in 1775, Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John:
The intelegance you will receive before this reaches you, will I should think make a plain path, tho a dangerous one for you. I could not join to day in the petitions of our worthy parson, for a reconciliation between our, no longer parent State, but tyrant State, and these Colonies. — Let us seperate, they are unworthy to be our Breathren. Let us renounce them and instead of suplications as formorly for their prosperity and happiness, Let us beseach the almighty to blast their counsels and bring to Nought all their devices.
The previous July, Congress had adopted the Olive Branch Petition, written by John Dickinson, which appealed directly to King George III and expressed hope for reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain. Dickinson, who hoped desperately to avoid a final break with Britain, phrased colonial opposition to British policy as follows:
“Your Majesty’s Ministers, persevering in their measures, and proceeding to open hostilities for enforcing them, have compelled us to arm in our own defence, and have engaged us in a controversy so peculiarly abhorrent to the affections of your still faithful Colonists, that when we consider whom we must oppose in this contest, and if it continues, what may be the consequences, our own particular misfortunes are accounted by us only as parts of our distress.”
Abigail Adams’ response was a particularly articulate expression of many colonists’ thoughts: Patriots had hoped that Parliament had curtailed colonial rights without the king’s full knowledge, and that the petition would cause him to come to his subjects’ defense. When George III refused to read the petition, Patriots like Adams realized that Parliament was acting with royal knowledge and support. Americans’ patriotic rage was intensified with the January 1776 publication by English-born radical Thomas Paine of Common Sense, an influential pamphlet that attacked the monarchy, which Paine claimed had allowed “crowned ruffians” to “impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears.”
Nov 12 2012
I was painting a wooden basket yesterday with boilt linseed oil and thus came the inspiration for tonight’s topic. Drying oils are very important in the coatings industry, not as much as in the past but still important.
Back in the day before high quality water based paints had been developed, oil based paints were just about the only good choice except for some specialized applications. Before we go into detail, we should define some key terms regarding to paint.
The vehicle is the part of the paint that forms a tough, adherent film. In oil based paints the vehicle is generally linseed oil. In latex paints the vehicle is some type of synthetic resin.
The second component (not always in paint, but usually) is the solvent, also called the diluent. In oil paint the solvent is now usually petroleum distillates, but before oil was discovered the solvent was almost always turpentine. In latex paints the solvent is water.
The pigment is composed of inorganic powders, usually white or colorless. The pigment can add to the toughness of the film. For commercial house paints the pigment does not provide color (except for white) and usually organic dyes are added to the pigment for colors, although some other materials are also used. For art paints, many times the pigment is also the color in many cases. Pigments are similar for oil and water based paints.
There are also additives in small quantities in most paints to modify drying rate, viscosity, surface tension, and other properties. Water based paint often contains ethylene glycol as an antifreeze.
Nov 12 2012
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