I Need a Used Stryker, or MRAP, or Something.

Anything heavy and armored will do.

This afternoon, I was sitting at a traffic light. The intersection is a four way on a major four-lane road. The crossroad has a green light one way and then a green light the other way. I was sitting on the side that gets the second green. So traffic is coming the other way and I see a SUV come across-- the driver did not look up the entire time that the SUV moved through the intersection.

I have no idea how the driver did that, but it seemed pretty clear that the driver's attention was not where it should have been. If I had been standing in the street with a rifle, I could have hit the driver right in the forehead without that driver ever being aware of what was about to happen.

Jesus on Roller Skates, people, is that text or email worth dying over? Is it worth going to prison, because I'm pretty sure that if you get into a crash and kill someone because you were wrapped up in a text or email or whatnot, a zealous prosecutor can make a pretty good case for involuntary manslaughter.

Pull your eyes out of the inside of the car and keep them on the road until you've pulled off it and parked.

(Morons)

Well, Forget the Anonymity of the Postal Service

They're recording the face of every envelope sent through the mail. It's called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program.

The Stasi would be so jealous of DasGov.

More and more, this pervasive surveillance is turning us from a nation of citizens to a nation of subjects.

Two Days that Effectively Signaled the End of the Civil War

July 3, 1863: At the Battle of Gettysburg, the multi-divisional Confederate infantry charge, popularly known as "Pickett's Charge, failed with horrific casualties.

July 4, 1863: The Siege of Vicksburg ended with the surrender of the city to the Union Army. With the surrender of Port Hudson, LA five days later, the Union controlled the length of the Mississippi River. The fighting would go on for another 21 bloody months until the Confederacy surrendered.

Ever since I first read about Gettysburg, it seemed to me that Gen. Pickett got a bum rap. The charge wasn't his idea and he wasn't in overall command of the charge. He commanded the center division. The charge was commanded by Gen. Longstreet, who predicted that it would fail, but Gen. Lee ordered it anyway. Lee may have had a good reason to order the charge, he may have been counting on Gen. Stuart's cavalry to get behind the Union lines and cause a panic. But a heavily outnumbered Union cavalry brigade, led by Gen. Custer, stopped Stuart's attack and the Union center held.

Another bit of trivia is that, following the end of the Siege of Vicksburg, the Confederate soldiers were paroled back to the Confederacy. The custom of parole at the time was that paroled soldiers could not serve anymore. The Confederacy broke the custom, most of the parole soldiers were taken back into the Confederate Army, and the Union stopped paroling Confederate soldiers for the rest of the war. Given the dreadful conditions of POW camps on both sides, one can only guess as to how many Confederate prisoners died as a result of the end of paroles.

I'm also suspicious of historical turning points. President Lincoln could have left Gen. Meade in full command of the Army of the Potomac or replaced him with another "Peter Principle" general. The Confederacy could have appointed a commanding general for its armies, who then could have devised a strategic plan for the conduct of the war. Lincoln could have left Gen. Halleck in charge of the Union Army or found another inept general to command the Army. The Confederacy could have won a smashing battle in September or October of 1864, which might have then led to McClellan winning the presidential election and then suing for peace.

None of that happened, of course. And so the course of the war followed. Yes, the Confederate Army won a lot of battles in the months after Gettysburg. They still lost the war.

And the Confederates, now ably assisted by four justices on the Supreme Court, have been struggling to overturn the results of the war ever since. Were it not for the 13th and 14th Amendments, they might have succeeded more than they have.

NSA Chief: "I Forgot About the Patriot Act"; Ayup, Tell Me Another One Edition

The Director of the NSA, James Clapper, claimed that he forgot all about the Patriot Act when he told Congress last March that the NSA didn't spy on Americans.

I don't know why he just doesn't resort to the old standard: "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Clapper apparently has a history of lying, so those good Senators should have been a little more prepared.

From 2001 to 2006, Clapper was the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies to provide information on insurgencies, nuclear sites, terror camps and troop movements. ... "We certainly feel there were indications of WMD activity," Clapper told reporters in October 2003.

You know, those Iraqi WMDs for which no hard evidence has ever been found to substantiate the lies that people like Clapper, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, "Curveball", Achmed Chalabi and Judith Miller told? Remember those lies, the ones that got us into an eight year war that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives?

But hey, who cares, right? Go lie to Congress about taking steroids and you'll be prosecuted. Go lie about spying on Americans-- not so much.

German Outrage Over NSA Spying

Der Spiegel has a lengthy story about NSA surveillance of "friendly" nations, including Germany.

This is the point where I start yawning. What the hell did they think that our spies were doing? They are supposed to spy on foreigners, that's their job. Things have changed since 1929, when Secretary of State Stimson closed down a code-breaking unit with the explanations that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

I would be astonished if the Germans didn't have spies working in their erstwhile allies' nations. There were persistent allegations a long time ago that the Japanese government was intercepting every fax sent and received from overseas by every hotel that was popular with foreign (especially American) businessmen, and that the Japanese government was sharing the content of those faxes with Japanese companies.

When Airplane Technology Advanced Rapidly

About eight years separated these two airplanes: A Hanriot and a Fokker D.VII.



Both are reproductions at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. The D.VII has an original engine.

Sunset

I wasn't the only one who thought that it looked a little like someone had detonated a nuke.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Mig-29:



You can see the doors that cover the engine intakes on the ground. They were the Soviet solution to foreign objects on the airfield.

A Little More Nature

The morning mist moves over a lake.

Gone from there, now. Soon it will be back to the World. I had a week of not thinking of anything other than relaxing and doing whatever it was I was doing at the time. It was a terrific vacation, the best I have had in decades. I've had other ones, of course. But they've all been variations on visiting friends and family. This was the first pure getaway since I last went to Sun `n Fun. Yes, I was with family, we all were away. No cares, no worries for a week. It was glorious.

When I get the rest of the way home, I expect it will be several days before Jake unwelds himself from me. The catsitters are all in love with him.

Caturday

There is a Jake-sized lump somewhere there.