Et tu, Hamilton?

Today marks the end of the political career of a general who would be king and the beginning of the political career of a general who would not.

On this date, the 15th day of March (known in antiquity as the Ides of March) in 44 B.C.E., Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators. Julius Caesar had risen to prominence in Roman society by means of careful and cynical political maneuvering and by the age of 41 he had finagled a consulship. Caesar quickly and corruptly marginalized the other Consul (Bibulus) elected with him and his detractors thereafter referred to that year as "the Consulship of Julius and Caesar." Consuls were in effect the chief magistrates of Rome, and one year as consul was normally followed by another year as a Proconsul in charge of a Roman province. Caesar's political enemies attempted to assign him proconsulship of Italian natural resources instead of an actual province, but he was able to convince his allies to have him named the Proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum and Transalpine Gaul (northern Italy, the Balkans, and southern France). And, instead of having control of these provinces and with them command of four legions for just one year, Caesar convinced his allies in the Senate to make his term of proconsulship five years. Within a year, Caesar had illegally raised two additional legions in the provinces under his control and was poised to invade and subdue the tribes of Gaul. By the time his allotted term as proconsul was up, Julius Caesar had subdued Gaul, invaded the British Isles, and put down another insurrection in Gaul, all the while ensuring that his exploits were made known in great exaggeration by the Roman public.

Recalled to Rome, Caesar feared for good reason that he would be tried for treason to get rid of him and his ambitions. He returned to Rome with a legion at his back and civil war ensued. Caesar pursued his rival, Pompey, and, upon Pompey's death and the end of an Egyptian civil war in which he meddled, Caesar celebrated with his infamous tryst with Cleopatra. Upon his eventual return to Rome he soon engineered his election as dictator and consolidated power approaching that of an emperor. His assassination in 44 B.C.E. touched off yet another explosive civil war, the end result of which would be the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. Thus, the blame for the demise of the Roman Republic can be placed at the feet of Gauis Julius Caesar.

Contrast the behavior of Julius Caesar with that of George Washington. Perhaps the most important action of Washington's tenure as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army took place on this date in 1783. Informed that a meeting of a great many of the officers of his army had been called at Newburgh, New York for the purpose of sparking an insurrection against the Continental Congress, Washington made immediately to the site and confronted the conspirators, many of whom were his closest and most loyal officers. Washington could very easily have allowed his army to convince him to lead their march on Congress. Washington would have undoubtedly been popularly proclaimed the new emperor of America, and would have had the loyalty of an Army that had followed him through thick and thin (mostly the latter) for the better part of the previous eight years.

The Army was angered by Congressional failure to properly remunerate the veterans of the force that had kept congressional necks from stretching at the end of British nooses. The leaders of the Army were ready to revolt. Washington would have none of it. He first chastised the assembly, calling them "unmilitary" and "subversive of good order and discipline." Such was the force and presence of the man, that this admonishment stayed, if temporarily, the push for a military coup. Washington went on to promise that he would do everything in his power to ensure that the patriot veterans received all that was due them for their late service against the British. His final gesture was one of sheer dramatic brilliance not seen again in uniform until the generalship of Douglas MacArthur a century and a half later. Washington withdrew a letter from his pocket and then, in what was then considered an unmilitary act, put on a pair of reading glasses. His apology has become as legendary as any other quote in the vast lexicon of leadership quotations in American military history.

"Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown old in the service of my country and now find that I am growing blind."

It is reported that his men wept at the sight and realization that Washington had sacrificed as much as any in the room, and, while having every right to personally lead the march on Congress, would continue to sacrifice his own ease and ambition for the sake of the legs of principle upon which the new nation was ready to begin its march into history.

Would that we had more national leaders imbued with the principled and sacrificial discipline of Washington, rather than the more predominate ambition of Caesar.

Puddle Predilections

Did you know--if the Colonel knew, he had forgotten--that a four-year old boy and his two-year old brother can be in nine places at the same time? Did you also know that little boys have mud puddle seeking radar in their nose cones? And, did you know that if shod in knee-high rubber boots to keep his feet dry and granted granddaddy's permission to play in mud puddles, a little boy will, within fifteen seconds of arrival in the vicinity of a mud-puddle, progress rapidly through the five phases of play beginning with stomp-splash and ending with flop-splash.

Flop-splash has two variants--full frontal, and seated.

A little boy would rather wallow in a mud puddle than do just about anything else on the planet. It's a predilection shared with pigs and Marine infantrymen, so, in the Colonel's grandsons' case, they come by it naturally--the Colonel having been the latter and oft called the former.

The taste of Spring-like weather this week also brought with it some relatively warm rain and the Colonel and the Hope of 21st Century Civilization spent a good part of each day in muddy chores and splashing play, respectively. The Tallahatchie Free State edition of the digital encyclopedia known locally as Redneckipedia contains the same descriptive definitions for the concepts of "dangerous" and "multi-tasking," to wit: "Standin' in ankle deep mud, runnin' a chain-saw in the wood-lot, while keepin' one eye and one ear on the whereabouts and intowhats of two cabin-fever possessed pre-schoolers recently released from winter-time house arrest. "

The Colonel is looking forward to the day when the grandsons are old enough to do the chores so that he can play in the mud.

Fanning at the Plate

The Colonel has yet again been simply amazed at the power, speed, and viral nature of communications in the digital age. Cognitive abilities limited by the great distances between brain cells in his hat rack over which synaptic sparks must leap, and cultural hipness hindered by years cloistered monastically in infantry battalions, the Colonel, techno-limping along at the speed of smell, nevertheless maintains the delusion that he is an early adapter, grazing the first tender shoots of emerging technology to produce udderances of innovation.

In truth, what most often emerges is not milk, but manure.

Take, for instance, the Colonel's latest patrol into the dangerous digital no-man's land of FaceBook apps. Notice the Colonel's hip reference to applications as apps. Squads of twenty-something techno-jedi have no doubt detected the Colonel's use of the term sending tremors throughout the digital Force and are frantically searching for a new, more hip, term not so tainted by geezer-use.

Geezer-use. Now there's a hip term. But I digress.

As the Colonel was saying before he so rudely interrupted himself, yesterday's patrol into the frightening digital time-waste land of FaceBook applications provided quite the exciting result. With the promise of exponentially magnified readership of the persistent posts to his reader-poor blog, the Colonel created The Colonel's Corner fan page and then settled comfortably into the Chesty Puller chair in the executive corner office of the Big House at Eegeebeegee and waited expectantly for the deluge.

Within moments the first fan joined. In truth, it was the Colonel his own self, but we were off and running...at the aforementioned speed of smell.

Within the first hour, the number of fans had increased by a whopping 100%! The acrid smell of electronic overload emanated from the Colonel's desktop. Heady stuff, this.

The Colonel finally pried himself from the addicting exercise of refreshing his FaceBook page every 37 seconds and retired to the Davis bedroom for a lengthy strategic planning session. Up at prostate-thirty this morning, the Colonel delayed only long enough to charge his caffeine delivery device before logging on to FaceBook to greet the multitudes who had become eager and loyal fans of The Colonel's Corner.

All three of them. The Colonel, his own self, included.

Man (hippest term in the Colonel's repertoire), this digital age is amazing!

Get the Hook

If you think the public outcry over taxes and the progressive healthcare power grab has been loud this past year, just wait until the Colonel's fishing buddies (all 50 million of them) hear about the new policy PETA, the World Wildlife Fund, the International Fund for Animals, and the tree-huggers in President Obama's circle of advisors are pushing him to enact by executive fiat (among a full slate of other soci-state decrees).

Comes to the Colonel's attention today this article http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762 regarding a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration task force developing a national policy that could empower the federal government to, if taken to it's illogical extreme, ban all recreational fishing in all waters of these re-United States. The Colonel can not imagine any other action that the federal government could take that would precipitate a more immediate and violent response from middle America. Take their children's future away and give it to fat cat bankers--okay. Nationalize a few banks and car companies--that's alright. Mess up their health care system--go ahead. Tell them they can't go crappie fishing--whoa there Mr. G Man, them there's fightin' words!

The Colonel is quite certain that the folks advising the President to take these kinds of actions are depriving villages somewhere of their idiots. Don't these folks know that they are eye-poking a sleeping junkyard dawg? Don't they grasp the fact that the legions of good ole boys and girls whose droll weekly work lives are made tolerable only by the dream of weekends spent fishing also happen to collectively possess more firearms and watercraft than any army and navy in the solar system? Are they daft?

Well, yes. Yes they are.

The Colonel would like to think that our President is smart enough to realize that giving the whackos control of government policy ain't the best choice for his administration's, nor our nation's, longevity. The Colonel would like to think that. However, given that our President hasn't demonstrated that minimum level of intelligence heretofore, the Colonel isn't so very quick to give him the "got smarts" benefit of the doubt anymore.

With apologies to Forrest Gump; the Colonel is not a smart man, but he knows what dumb is.

The Bridge at Eegeebeegee, Phase I

Turns out building a bridge is not as simple as one might think. This is particularly true if during calculation of the weight-bearing and high-water-stability of the span and supports, the engineering specifications approach tolerances for withstanding a low-yield thermo-nuclear strike. The Colonel wants to make double dang sure that neither his trusty red tractor, Semper Field, nor his rusty red truck, Semper Fillit, becomes a mid-stream monument to poor prior planning.

The creek that divides the vast holdings that are the Colonel's domain is but a pitiful trickle in dry times. But, given a rain storm, said pitiful trickle becomes ye ole raging torrent, yea verily, the erosive effects of which have carved a deep and wide ravine through the clay that passes for soil here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The previous owners of the vast holdings that are now the Colonel's domain traversed the creek by means of a ford, with approaches cut into the steep banks of the ravine and large rocks piled in the stream. When observed at low water, said arrangement seemed indestructible. The rocks were the huge blocks you see lining highway underpasses and bridge abutments everywhere here in the rural south. However, and take the Colonel's experienced word for this, the hydraulic power generated by the aforementioned ye ole raging torrent, yea verily, is a force of nature to behold and beware. Said force of nature easily sweeps away large rocks formerly relied upon for stream crossing, not to mention formerly sure-footed, but now aging, infantrymen (the event not-to-be mentioned is grist for another post). The post-ye ole raging torrent, yea verily, SOP (Standing Operating Procedures for the two civilians among the three readers of this egregious waste of rod and cone time) was for the Colonel to retrieve the boulders, formerly employed as a ford, but now deposited well downstream by ye ole raging torrent, yea verily, and waddle-carry them back upstream for re-deposit on their former site of employment. Waddle-carrying may someday be an Olympic sport. Hey, if sliding a rock on ice can be an Olympic sport...
At any rate, after several sessions of the fun that is the break-breaking and shin-busting future Olympic sport of waddle-carrying several tons of rocks back upstream, the dim-watted bulb in the Colonel's idea factory began to glow ever so faintly.

The gap to be spanned, and allow for the occasional ye ole raging torrent, yea verily, is approximately fifteen feet. When the Colonel approached friends and neighbors hereabout at the northern end of southern nowhere and asked for their wisdom regarding rural bridge construction, most of the advice centered around the local custom of pitching two or three salvaged telephone poles across the creek and nailing salvaged barn boards on top. As appealing to his sense of adventure as is the idea of traversing such a bridge with vehicles for which the Colonel paid a significant portion of his annual income, well... Let's just say that the Colonel's sense of adventure ain't quite what it used to be.

The Colonel began his adult life learning how to destroy bridges and thought that building one would be a simple matter of remembering the end result of strategically placed demolition charges and aim points of precision-delivered munitions, and then reverse-engineering. The Colonel knows that isn't the definition of the concept accepted by the majority of industrialists, but it is the best understanding of the idea that can be cobbled together with the few remaining infantry-addled cognitive cells lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group. Needless to say, when one contemplates the forces of nature and man that might conspire to render an edifice such as a bridge unusable, and, when one considers one's own history of shoddily constructed projects rapidly thereafter rendered unusable, one tends to err on the side of, shall we say, over-engineering.

So, for the past several weeks, the Colonel, with the strong-backed and idea-wealthy help of his two thirty-something sons, has labored over the construction of The Bridge at Eegeebeegee. Construction was proceeded by several months of strategic planning. Unfortunately, none of the very valuable thoughts that took root in the amorphous goo lying fallow in the recesses of the Colonel's brain-housing group ever made the leap through the air gap between ephemeral thought and graphite on paper. Never mind, how complex can a bridge be, anyway?

Pretty stinkin' complex it turns out.

Nevertheless, one would think that someone who has demonstrated a strong enough grasp of the intricacies of the military operational arts (involving orchestrating the movement of thousands of warriors and their stuff over large distances and multitudinous obstacles) to reach the rank of Colonel, would be able to master the construction of a simple, short, one lane bridge. One would think. One would be partially correct.

The first challenge was the installation of the bridge's support pilings. For this critical component, the Colonel chose eight and one half foot long 6 x 9 railroad cross ties. To emplace these support pilings at the ten feet apart distance with which the Colonel would be the most comfortable spanning with anything across which he would drive vehicles for which he paid the significant portion of his annual income, holes would have to be excavated in the actual creek bed. As the steepness of the ravine in which the creek runs prevents diversion of the creek in a temporary alternate channel, the Colonel's not-so-bright idea was to LOWER the creek bed into a more narrow channel. Fortunately, the Colonel's participation in the aforementioned future Olympic sport of upstream ford rock waddle-carrying had the unforeseen benefit of preparing him for the now required participation in the future Olympic sport of ford rock heaving. Said sport involves squatting in posterior-deep February-cold creek water, thrusting one's hands under said February-cold creek water and around 1/20th of a ton of rock, straightening to the approximate heighth of a semi-erect Australopithecus habilis and part shot-putting, part lugging said 1/20th of a ton of rock into a ballistic trajectory that will place it, upon re-entry, onto a pile of 1/20th of a ton rocks strategically located streamside. Judging and scoring for this particular future Olympic sport will most likely require a synthesis of the systems for judging and scoring shot-putting, ice-dancing, curling, and platform diving.

Once the Colonel lowered the creek bed below the level of the event horizons of the holes required for installation of the bridge pilings, the real fun began. If the Colonel could have gotten his trusty red tractor, Semper Field, into the creek bed, he could have used his tractor's auger implement to dig the holes...if his tractor had an auger implement. Needless to say, the fingers of the Colonel's hands are now permanently cramped in the shape of the handles of a post hole digger.

Holes complete, the Colonel and his strong-backed and idea-wealthy sons manhandled the future bridge piling cross ties down to the creek and upright into their holes. This evolution might also someday spawn its own Olympic sport, but the memories of it are too freshly painful to allow for detailed description at this point. Not only did the Colonel and his strong-backed and idea-wealthy sons think that it would be a good idea to cement each piling into the creek bed, but they further concluded, without considering the method by which it would be accomplished, that it would be an even better idea to concrete all three pilings on each side of the creek into their own block of cement footer.

At this point, most bridge builders would whistle up a fleet of concrete mixer trucks and quickly pour, with a minimum of effort, all of the cement and aggregate mixture required to complete the aforementioned piling connecting footers. However, as one of his neighbors, who has had the great joy of helping the Colonel "un-stick" vehicles on the back side of the Colonel's vast holdings, put it, "You might not have a problem getting a concrete truck down to that creek, but you would never get it back up from it." So, in lieu of a fleet of concrete mixers, the Colonel, never one to use his head if his back will do, used his rusty red truck, Semper Fillit, to shuttle 15 to 20 sixty pound bags of ready mix concrete at a time from the local lumber yard to creekside. Another future Olympic sport whose memory is too freshly painful to describe in detail will surely derive from loading, by hand, sixty pound bags of ready mix concrete onto a dolly at the store, pushing said dolly to, and unloading into the bed of the Colonel's rusty red truck, Semper Fillit, and completing this process in reverse creekside, with the added joy of waddle-carrying each bag (did the Colonel mention they were 60 pounds apiece?) down to a wheel barrow in which three bags at a time were mixed with water from the creek to be spanned, hopefully by the end of this decade.

The Colonel apologizes to the three of you dear readers, who have nothing else in your lives more valuable to do with your rod and cone time than to spend it perusing posts herein, for this missive's interminable length and the purgatorial nature that has been your experience in reading it. The Colonel will, in recognition of your fatigue, and his own, bring this chapter in the retelling of a village idiot's guide to bridge-building to a merciful close. The Colonel will, when able to cobble together enough cognitive cells in the grey amorphous goo lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group to do so, continue The Bridge at Eegeebeegee narrative at some future date.

Now, where did those rocket launch pad plans go?

"Got it? Right, then!"

Comes to the Colonel's attention this morning sad news of the passing of a great man, with whom he had the honor of service 30 years ago. Major Jonathon J. B. Lear OBE, Royal Marines, figured large in a certain young American Marine lieutenant's early troop-leading experience and arctic warfare training. When the Colonel brings to mind some of his most important leadership and arctic survival lessons-learned, it is John Lear's voice echoing in the ear. Major Lear served with high distinction, earning admission into the Order of the British Empire. His obituary described a man who carried his passion for, and excellence in, the leadership and care for others into his retirement and in the advance of his community's causes. An overflow crowd attended his funeral, many standing in a cold rain outside the church to pay their respects.

The Colonel wishes he had been among those soaked.

Speak Up or Perish

The Colonel, thanks to Uncle Sam as his travel agent, has stood on the summit of Mount Carmel where scripture tells us that Eliljah called out the prophets of Baal and challenged them to a to-the-death barbecue contest. The Colonel attends a Bible study with several men from his church early every Tuesday morning at a local diner. The food, fellowship, and faith fills my burgeoning belly, my happy heart, and my joyful soul, respectively. For the past several weeks we have been studying the life and times of Elijah, and this morning we looked at the account in the 18th Chapter of First Kings wherein God's prophet challenged the prophets of Baal to a test to determine whose God is the greatest.

You know Elijah's story. God sends him to the evil king Ahab with the warning that for the Hebrew peoples' idolatrous transgressions, not a drop of rain or even dew will fall on the land for three and one half years. God then sends Elijah into the wilderness and sends ravens to bring him food every day. Elijah slakes his thirst in a brook, until, owing to the great drought, the brook runs dry. Then God sends him to a town and to a destitute widow who is about to prepare a meal of her last bit of flour for herself and her child, and then, as the scripture succinctly captures her situation, she expects "to die." God extends the widow's bowl of flour and she and her son and Elijah satisfy their hunger daily in the midst of the famine brought on by the great drought. Scripture tells us the widow's son falls ill and dies, and Elijah calls on God to bring the boy back to life, even though there is no record to that point in the life of God's people of Him ever doing so.

From the moment we are introduced to Elijah, we see God preparing him for greatness for His sake. God puts Elijah through a series of faith-building trials, each one demonstrating an increasing degree of God's miraculous provision and power. By the time he confronts the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, Elijah's faith in God's power is such that Elijah unhesitatingly calls on God to do the impossible and places his own life on the line in the process. Elijah gives the prophets of Baal all day to call down fire on their offering--Baal does not respond, even when his prophets go to the attention-getting extreme of letting their own blood. Elijah soaks his offering and fills a trench around his altar with water, and then calls on God. Scripture tells us that the supernatural fire that fell not only consumed the bull on the altar, but burned up the water, and the stones, and the very dust beneath them.

What strikes the Colonel most about Elijah's experience is not the power of God demonstrated in His miraculous provision of food, nor His raising the widow's son from the dead, nor even the supernatural fire with which He consumed Elijah's burnt offering. The Colonel is most struck by the attitude of the people when Elijah asked them, as is related in I Kings 18: 20, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God follow him." The last sentence in the verse is an indictment of a people too afraid to make a stand for what is right: "But the people said nothing."

Their nation, as ordered by their leader, had turned 180 degrees from the principles of faith upon which it had been founded. But the people said nothing.

Their nation had a centuries-revered written law, a constitution if you will, that their leader had spurned. But the people said nothing.

Their nation had followed a succession of leaders away from their founding fathers' reverence for the sanctity of life. But the people said nothing.

Their nation had endured a disastrous drought that had brought famine and economic ruin--all due to their leaders' folly and self-serving avarice. But the people said nothing.

How long will YOU waver?

The (Ever Nearer) Coming War with China

Nearly two years ago the Colonel rocked the geopolitical world with his mastery of the obvious (http://www.thecolonelscorner.blogspot.com/2008/05/coming-war-with-china.html). In that widely-read post (the Colonel had to remove a boot to count the total readers), the Colonel posited that war with the Peoples Republic of China was a looming inevitability--the causes for which could be seen mirroring, to no little extent, those that preceded and precipitated the war in the Pacific between these re-United States and the Empire of Japan in the last century.

Comes to the Colonel's attention this first glorious day of the month following the calendar period designated Scourge of Humanity Month by the Peoples' Representative (singular and sovereign) of the Tallahatchie Free State, the following article: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6200P620100301 wherein is reported recently published books by senior officers in the Peoples Liberation Army calling for Chinese military preparations to defeat the United States in a war for global hegemony. The article quotes PLA Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, the author of The China Dream, as saying that his call for an aggressive military stance versus the United States reflects "...a tide of [Chinese] thought [that]...we need a military rise as well as an economic rise." Demonstrating that the prescience possessed by the writer of this blog is not limited to the few remaining cognitive cells laying fallow in the amorphous goo in the recesses of the Colonel's brain-housing group, the above article also quotes the author of another similarly veined book, Colonel Dai Xu as saying, "I'm very pessimistic about the future. I believe that China cannot escape the calamity of war, and this calamity may come in the not-too-distant future, at most in 10 to 20 years."

While most of the rest of the world has wallowed in economic recession, the Chicom economy has continued to experience robust expansion, proceeds from which have fueled an unprecedented expansion of military spending and force modernization. Over the last decade, defense spending (at least what they claim to be spending--actual expenditures are probably much higher) by the PRC has increased at an annual rate of over 15%. By comparison, the military budget of these re-United States has increased at an average rate of only 9%, during a time, need not the Colonel remind you gentle readers, of ongoing extensive military operations in the undeclared war against Islamo-fascism. True, the U.S. defense budget is nearly 9 times that of the Chicoms'. But, the United States is far more generous to its military personnel during and after their military service, and personnel costs (pay, housing, medical care, and other "quality of life" expenditures) make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. defense budget. Maintaining a significant worldwide military presence and keeping global alliance commitments also represents a huge cost not presently incurred by the Chinese. As a result, the PRC has been able to devote a larger proportion of their increased military spending to modernization of a force that is rapidly becoming capable of standing toe-to-toe with the United States military in a contest for control of the Pacific.

The Chinese population, rapidly approaching 1.5 BILLION souls, has enjoyed significant, if uneven, increases in quality of life and economic vitality. Chinese national pride is, as was evident to the world during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, at an all-time high. The ruling elite's 20th Century concern for filling the bellies of the Chinese people has been supplanted by a need to feed their growing 21st Century national aspirations. The Chicom ruling elite must also appease the Peoples Liberation Army, without whose strength they could not maintain control of the people; and the proud PLA desires above all else to grow and bypass the United States military as the world's greatest. Finally, rapid Chinese economic growth has created a massive hunger for energy and resources beyond the capability of their own territory to provide.

All of the above is a snapshot of a situation not unlike that in which the Empire of Japan found itself in the early part of the 20th Century.

We all know how that turned out.

Colonel Rebel Redux

The Colonel is about to do something he hasn't done in many years, and swore a solemn oath he wouldn't do ever again. He's about to volunteer.

The balance of the meager readership of this egregious waste of rod and cone time is painfully aware, based on the repeated references thereto, that the Colonel didn't go to college. He went to Ole Miss. And now, the Colonel's Alma mater needs him. The Colonel realizes that even with his prodigious skill set and talent tonnage, the challenge at hand is too much for one man. The issue at hand requires a national response. Therefore, early this frosty morn, the Colonel gavelled into emergency session the Congress of the Tallahatchie Free State for the express purpose of debating and deciding the extent to which the TFS will entangle itself in the affairs of Rebel Nation. The Colonel was authorized to draft the following Tallahatchie Free State Peoples' Proclamation, which was approved by unanimous and wildly cheering acclaim of the representative of the people of the land at the northern end of southern nowhere--namely, the Colonel.

Whereas: The University of Mississippi, hereinafter referred to by its politically incorrect and racially charged epithet--Ole Miss, lost it's 70 year-old mascot at the hands of the cruelly ruthless and ravenously relentless lady assassin--Polly Tickle Creckniss; and

Whereas: Ole Miss will, for the foreseeable future, maintain the nickname Rebels, pending, of course, another attack by Ms Creckniss and her mindless minions; and

Whereas: Rebel Nation has suffered the indignity and dishonor of no mascot representation on the fields, courts, and diamonds of athletic combat, lo these many seasons; and

Whereas: The spineless administration of Ole Miss, under the spell of Athletic Director and suspected Sith Lord, Darth Boone, has gone so far as to hire a yankee public relations firm from, of all hated places, New York City, to find a replacement mascot immune to the slings and arrows of Ms Creckniss and her mindless minions; and

Whereas: Any Ole Miss Rebel mascot proposal so developed in enemy territory will be detestable and utterly unacceptable to southern sensibilities; and

Whereas: The current underground student movement at Ole Miss to draft the honorable Rebel Alliance leader Admiral Ackbar will, in the cruel light of day, be found wanting, in that, a) the cost of the Admiral's commute from his home in a galaxy far, far away will be less sustainable than the cost of Obamacare, and b) the royalties exacted by George Lucas would necessitate ticket price inflation to unacceptable levels given the fact that it's hard enough to get fans to attend a Rebel athletic event as it is; and

Whereas: The requisite qualities, skills, and abilities, of an acceptable Ole Miss Rebel mascot include, but are not limited to, a) Mississippi roots and representation, b) patriotic service, and c) connection with the "rebel" concept; and

Whereas: The above requisites are satisfied in the person of the Colonel (Ole Miss alum, career military officer in the service of the re-United States, and operational call sign: Rebel);

Now, Therefore, The Colonel, Sole Representative of the People of Eegeebeegee, by virtue of the authority vested in him by the laws of the Tallahatchie Free State, situated on the kudzu-clad hills at the northern end of southern nowhere, does hereby proclaim solidarity with the counter-revolutionary elements of Rebel Nation and not-so-humbly offers himself as the new Colonel Rebel, without requirement of any present or future emolument (save, of course, upgrade of his present season-ticket seating in the nose-bleed section on the 10 yard line of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium).

In Witness Whereof, The Colonel, acting in complete consonance with the expressed will of the people of the Tallahatchie Free State, has hereunto set his hand this 25th day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the establishment of the Tallahatchie Free State the second.

I'll keep the phone lines open...

Turning Points

June 14, 1775 is officially recognized as the birthday of the Army of the United States. However, this date, February 23, in 1778, should be celebrated as the date that the Continental Army became a modern, professional fighting force. It was on this date, 232 years ago, that Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin Ludolf Gerhard von Steuben (aka: Baron von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge and offered his services to General George Washington.

The Continental Congress authorized the raising and organization of the "Continental Army" on the 14th of June in 1775, and in so doing, took responsibility for the other bodies of colonial troops in the field opposite British regular, mercenary, and loyalist forces. The next day, George Washington (at the insistence of John Adams that at Southerner be so chosen to broaden the appeal of the theretofore largely New England rebellion), was appointed "General and Commander in Chief" of all the forces of the colonial rebel alliance. With minor, but much heralded, exceptions, George Washington and his ragtag army (an army in name only) stumbled, staggered and ran from defeat to defeat at the hands of the highly disciplined British. Were it not for the incompetence and sloth of their most senior leadership, the British should have easily crushed Washington's force and the rebel movement in the first two years of the "troubles." In the early winter of 1777, as the British army occupied the rebel capital, Philadelphia, Washington and less than 12,000 revolutionaries encamped on high ground within a day's march of the city at a place called Valley Forge. By February of 1778, Washington's force had been so depleted by disease, starvation, and quite-understandable-desertion that he could barely muster half that number of effective fighting men, and could have been easily routed by a British commander not so abhorrent of the "uncivilized" idea of fighting in winter.


Enter Baron von Steuben. A soldier of fortune with a somewhat checkered past and a falsified pedigree, von Steuben was possessed of a rare talent much needed by Washington--he was a master trainer. His service in several different armies in Europe had exposed him to the best and worst of professional armies and von Steuben had developed his own vision of a battlefield-mastering military force that was more modern than any in Europe at the time. In Washington's beleaguered force at Valley Forge, von Steuben found a lump of clay, unbound by tradition, with which he could could fashion a vessel for the receipt of his discipline and visionary fighting style.

When he arrived at Valley Forge, von Steuben first cleaned up the camp. As the army had theretofore wallowed and sickened in its own filth, he insisted that common latrines be dug, and that they be situated on the opposite side of the camp from the troop kitchens. Having taken these and other like measures to care for the health and welfare of the men, he next embarked on a program to "train the trainers." As he could speak little or no English, the "Baron" drafted a field manual in German, that Washington aides Hamilton and Greene translated. He then handpicked a company of 120 of the "best and brightest" and drilled them relentlessly until they could not only perform von Steuben's battlefield tactics flawlessly, but could now, in turn, train others. This development of subordinate leadership in the ranks, responsible for the care and training of other soldiers, can be seen as the forerunner of the professional non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps in today's U.S. Army in particular, and the U.S. military, in general. The efficacy of his fighting style was evident in the predominant colonial victories thereafter, and von Steuben's "train the trainers" approach is still the model for professional military forces the world over.

Another February 23rd is arguably the most important date, after November 10th, 1775, in Marine Corps history, and is also arguably one of the most important dates in U. S. history. On February 19th, 1945, two divisions of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of a strategically located Japanese-held volcanic island called Iwo Jima. In the brutal fighting that ensued, nearly seven thousand Americans gave their lives to wrest the island and its vital airfield from the Japanese defenders. Four days into the battle, and a month before final victory would be declared, a patrol of Marines scaled the summit of the island's creator volcano, Mt. Suribachi, and raised the Stars and Stripes. The flag was a small one, and the powers that be demanded that a larger one be raised to replace it. This second flag raising was captured on film by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. That image, of which it was said by the editors of US Camera Magazine, "recorded the soul of a nation" was sent home to a war-weary America and seized upon by a desperate Roosevelt administration.

By 1945, the American people felt pretty much tapped out by the war against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. Sales of war bonds, the proceeds of which were needed to finance the gigantic war material effort, had been disappointing. The last three of six war bond drives had fallen significantly short of their goals. While the flag-raising on Iwo Jima had not been a turning point in the battle (it had provided a momentary lift to the spirits of the men who would fight on for 31 more days), Rosenthal's iconic photograph of the second flag raising on Iwo's Mt. Suribachi proved a turning point in public sentiment on the home front. The Iwo Jima flag-raising image re-captured the American sense of patriotic duty, and the ensuing seventh war bond drive exceeded its target substantially.






In remembrance of these two momentous dates in the history of our nation, the Colonel--sole arbiter of such decisions aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, a virtual republic situated at the northern end of southern nowhere and founded as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek--does hereby declare the 23rd of February, "Turning Point Day." This day, each year, for so long as the Colonel remains in possession of sufficient cognitive cells in the amorphous goo lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group with which to remember it, shall be observed in solemnity and thanksgiving for the vision of von Steuben and the view-finder of Joe Rosenthal's camera.

Let it Start With Me

When you folks in Washington, D.C. find your spines and finally start making the hard decisions about the cuts to "entitlements" required to prevent the financial collapse of our nation, the Colonel wants you to start with his first.

For the honor that was his service to the United States, the Colonel receives a more than generous "retirement" from a grateful nation. In 1947, during an era when Congress conducted sweeping reformation and reorganization of the post-war military, the present military retirement system was codified. Allowing 50% of base pay, for life, to any one whose service reached 20 years, and 2.5 % more per year for every year over 20, the system was designed primarily to reward the small percentage of WWII veterans who decided to remain in the military after peace broke out. In 1947, the life expectancy of someone in his twenties or thirties making the decision to follow the calling that is military service was less than 60 years. So, had the Colonel entered service in 1940 and served until 1965 (reflecting actual service of '78 to '03), he would have been 47 years old and would have drawn his military pension for 13 years. Assuming the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda doesn't pull the Colonel's plug anytime soon (she wonders daily about the Colonel's "brain-dead" condition) he should draw a military pension for at least three times that long and maybe even twice as long as the actual time he served on active duty in his beloved Corps.

Whenever the Colonel has opined that he feels a bit guilty about taking such a pension at such an early age, his family has vehemently refuted that notion and reminded him of the entire family's sacrifice during the time of his service, and the seven figure income he would have undoubtedly commanded had he been in equivalent positions of responsibility in the private sector. Be that as it may, the Colonel decided to serve his nation, not for present or future emolument, but in large part out of gratitude for the freedoms, rights, and privileges that were the happy accident of his birth as an American in the 20th Century. The Colonel knew exactly what he was getting into when he raised his right hand and swore to give his life to "defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies..." The Colonel knew full well that, to paraphrase General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "defending means fighting, and fighting means killing."

The Colonel's larger point is this: The elected leaders of these re-United States are presently careening wildly out of control down the financial ski-slope, having crashed through all of the gates of restraint. At the bottom of the slope awaits not an applauding throng and a medal, but a clanging gong and financial ruin. In order to arrest our descent, VERY HARD leadership decisions must be made. ALL of us will be required to sacrifice. And by sacrifice, the Colonel does not mean giving up Starbucks for McDonald's.

FDR's Social Security was intended as a safety net, not a retirement entitlement. The safety net ensured that in the highly unlikely event (at the time) that someone lived beyond the age of 60 and could no longer physically contribute to the nation's labor force, he would not be destitute. Medicare was instituted in a similar vein. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to bring those two safety nets up to date with reality, or there will, soon, be no nation to lead.

Entitlements are but one portion of the federal financial equation; defense spending is another. Eisenhower warned against the rise and growth of the "military-industrial complex," and he had no clue to what gargantuan extremes his prophecy would be fulfilled. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to rein in the outrageous cost of exotic weapon systems, or there will, soon, be no nation in whose defense to employ them.

Yet another part of the federal financial equation is the federal tax code--an abomination of special interest service and state behavioral control. Leaving aside the argument whether a national income tax is unconstitutional (the 16th Amendment was passed to circumvent the Supreme Court's previous decision that an income tax was unconstitutional), the federal government must have revenue if it is to fulfill its constitutional requirements. The Colonel believes that since ALL share in the benefits of a federal government, ALL should share in its funding. Progressives (read, class warfare socialists) would have us believe that it is "unfair" for the poor to pay the same percentage of their income as the rich. As a means of controlling the masses, fascism re-defines. "Fairness" is one of the first casualties of such redefinition. Politicians, of every stripe, use the tax code to influence behavior. Such shenanigans are anathema to the efficient function of a free-market capitalistic democratic republic. Rant aside, either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to reform and simplify our federal tax system, or there will be no economy left, soon, from which to source revenue.

Finally, the free market of our capitalistic democratic republic, such as was envisioned by our founders, cannot, despite the wishes of the banking elite, function fairly if unregulated. It is one of the highest duties of our federal government to ensure that corporations and banks (the engines and financiers of prosperity) operate on a level and non-monopolistic playing field. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, without Wall Street lobbyists in the room, to strengthen the oversight required to enforce the rules already on the books, or there will be another, and another, greed-fueled and scoff-law-driven bubble whose burst will plunge our nation over yet another financial system precipice. Oh, and when a bank fails--let it fail. If it is "too big to fail," break it up. This ain't rocket science.

The Colonel is willing to sacrifice his ease, if our leaders are ready to make their own political sacrifices.

I won't hold my breath.

Congressional Nihilism

In recognition of the 209th anniversary of the election of Thomas Jefferson as the 3rd President of these re-United States, the Colonel this morning convened a special joint session of the Second Congress and Executive Cabinet of the Tallahatchie Free State, a virtual republic established as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek, for the purpose of considering weighty matters of state. As is tradition aboard Eegeebeegee--capital of the TFS; situated prominently at the northern end of southern nowhere--the Colonel, the people's representative (single and sovereign), presided over the proceedings ensconced in the Chesty Puller rocker on the front porch of the Big House.

The first order of business was a report from the Minister of the Environment, the Right Honorable Idon Feelmafeet, whose observation that it was colder than an Ole Miss sorority girl's heart outside resulted in his nomination for a Mastery of the Obvious award. Said nomination will be considered at the next regularly irregular editorial meeting for the purpose of planning the next regularly irregular installment of the Colonel's Monday Morning MOTO Awards. Minister Feelmafeet also reported that the Climate Change Bill has been sent back to conference in order to further obfuscate the wording so as to make it as unintelligible and omni-applicable as possible. The Colonel approved the minister's report and ordered that at the yet unscheduled joint session of the TFS Third Congress and Executive Cabinet a report on the effect of climate change on next Fall's duck, deer and football seasons be provided.

The Minister of the Interior, the Right Honorable Sawyer N. Builder, reported on the status of Eegeebeegee infrastructure and Big House interior capital improvement projects. The Colonel congratulated the minister on completion of Phase I of the Big House Closet Remodeling Project and reminded that Phases II through IV are behind schedule and in danger of extending into the crappie and turkey seasons. A report on the progress of the bridge at Caleb's Crossing elicited similar reminders of the sure work-stoppage to occur during the March/April time frame as Eegeebeegee's permanent workforce (the Colonel) will, without doubt, break for the aforementioned holidays.

The Minister of Finance, the Right Honorable Cash N. Carry, reported that the TFS Debt to GDP ratio was at an unacceptable 35%, but on the decline. The Colonel noted with pleasure Minister Carry's report that the TFS continues to operate with a budget surplus, debt payments notwithstanding.

The Minister of Health, the Right Honorable U. R. Lukingood, reported that the prevalence of obesity aboard Eegeebeegee remains at 0%. Immediately prior to his sacking, the Health Minister opined that the Colonel, while not technically obese, was edging ever so slightly toward the upper limit of the Marine Corps height and weight standards and might consider placing himself on voluntary weight control. Upon installment of Lukingood's successor, Kip N. Matrapshut, the Colonel directed that all scales aboard Eegeebeegee be taken in for recalibration and that the larders be emptied of cookies forthwith.

Despite the presence of numerous other items of TFS business on the agenda, the Colonel summarily adjourned the 2d Congress and Cabinet joint session due to the fact that the Ole Miss sorority girl's heart had not warmed perceptively and the Colonel's coffee cup, around which his fingers were stiffly and coldly wrapped, was empty and, as a means of caffeine delivery, devoid of meaning--kinda like this post.

Brotherly Birthday Bromides

Fifty-one years ago, today, my parents, and a vengeful God, gave me a little brother. I don't know why this was considered a particularly good idea. You would think that little brothers would be given to those whose grasp of the basic concepts of younger sibling care was significantly more than the tenuous hold I had on the subject. Still, there he was. All mine.

Mine, of whom to be jealous. Mother reminds me regularly that I grew tired of her attentions to the pink, smelly interloper some time in the first 48 to 72 hours of his arrival and demanded that she "Put that baby down!" Honestly, if she had just done as I required, and ignored the thing for a few weeks...

Mine, to use as a musical instrument. Did you you know that a hammer fist to the back of a twelve-year-old produces a sound akin to that of a bass drum? And, did you know that the resulting squall from said twelve-year-old comes to a father's ear like a bugle call to action? Did you also know that fifteen-year-old percussionists make a sound akin to that of a cartoon cat with its tail on fire when punted by a father answering said bugle call?

Mine, to blame. There are things for which I should have surely roasted in parental Gehenna, but for which little brother's substitution provided propitiation instead. I won't provide specifics as there is no statute of limitations on infractions of parental laws. Suffice to say that the "Great Cookie Jar Heist" would have been adjudicated far differently had Mother been apprised of the latest forensic evidence gathering techniques.

Mine, to subject to endless tricks and treachery. "Okay, Bruce, go long. I promise to throw it to you this time."

Mine, to use a tackling dummy, punching bag, and joke butt.

Mine, to envy. Brother's wife and daughters treat him like a king. All I know is that when we were growing up, he was royal pain in the...

Mine, at whom to marvel. My brother has excelled in a technical field of work and has accomplishments and accolades too numerous to mention. All of this despite an appalling lack of education (he went to Mississippi State).

Mine, for whom to feel sorrow. He could have been blessed with an older brother possessed of empathy, patience, kindness, and a giving nature. He could have had an older brother who would have cared enough to write something uplifting or flattering about him on his birthday. He should have gotten a big brother.

Instead, he got me.

Winter Dove

One of the few bright spots in the otherwise dark and colorless purgatory that is the month of February is the presence of birds at the feeders out on the back porch of the Big House here at the northern end of southern nowhere. Were it not for the pleasure of watching the juncos, redbirds, goldfinches, and other feathered fauna, the dreary, wet, cold, windy weather that clamps a clammy hand over the clay-covering kudzu around about would be just about enough to send the Colonel howling 'round insanity's curve. I have mentioned my loathe for the despicable month before, have I not?

To paraphrase John's account of Nathaniel's retort to Philip, "Can anything good come out of February?"

The Colonel thinks not.

Rather, there is much to the thankfully short month to recommend it for placement at the bottom of any ordering of calendar counts. Go ahead, name a more vile month. The Colonel will wait...

...and wait...

...still waiting...

It's settled then. February is hereby declared the scourge of humanity.

Yeah, the Colonel heard some of you say, "What about Valentine's Day?" To which the Colonel will gently remind the three fair and gentle readers of this post, if you wait until one day a year to tell that significant other how significant the other is, the other ain't. Nor are you.

Back to ornithology (the study of birds for you Mississippi State and LSU grads).

For the past three scourges of humanity the gangs of juncos, redbirds, and goldfinches that frequented the Colonel's feeders have been joined by a solitary mourning dove. While the Colonel is not skilled nor keen-eyed enough to determine the gender of this lone Zenaida carolinensis, it has been dubbed a she and given the name: Zena. It would stretch the Colonel's already uber-elastic credibility were he to maintain for your benefit that this particular bird is the same dove that has appeared each winter. So the Colonel will only entertain that belief for his own benefit, as there yet remains just barely enough grey matter lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group to maintain delusions.

Told you that there wasn't much to recommend February.

Lunar Leadership Example

On this date in 1966, the third day of February, the Soviet Union's spacecraft, Lunik 9 made the first controlled landing on the moon. Shortly after landing, Lunik 9 began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. Lunik 9 was preceded by Lunik 2, the first manmade object to reach (and crash upon) the moon, and by Lunik 3, the first spacecraft to circle the moon and send back pictures of the theretofore unseen "dark side" of our Earth's synchronously rotating celestial dance partner. Luniks 2 and 3 reached the moon in 1959--well ahead of any of the United States' space efforts.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's the United States lagged far behind the Soviet Union in space. While the Soviet's were committing significant amounts of national treasure to fund their captured German scientists' space rocket endeavors, the United States was spending but a pittance on our captured German scientists' rocket dreams. The Soviets' Yuri Gagarin was not only the first man in space but his spacecraft actually achieved and maintained Earth orbit. By comparison, Alan Shepard's flight three weeks later was merely a suborbital one--Shepard (on the Colonel's short list of personal heroes) essentially rode a surface to surface missile. We were way behind the Soviet's and losing ground.

All of that dramatically changed by the end of the 1960's. In 1961, a young and inexperienced President, embarrassed by domestic and foreign policy failures (the Bay of Pigs debacle chief among them), needed something around which to rally our nation. Five decades ago, this brash young American president, exuding cool matched only by the members of Sinatra's Rat Pack, threw down the gauntlet to the Soviet Union's captured German scientists, and challenged America's captured German scientists to, by the end of the 1960's, land a man on the moon and bring him safely home again. It was a staggering challenge, and it galvanized America's scientific community and captured the imagination of our people in a way rarely seen in our history.

In a speech at Rice University a few months after issuing that challenge, President Kennedy explained his rationale for embarking the United States on the mission of lunar exploration. His speech is excerpted below:

"We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency...
...To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead...

...And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold...

...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."

It has been nearly four decades since the last men of Earth walked upon the surface of our planet's moon. Would that these re-United States had possessed presidential and congressional vision in the years since 1971 and taken the actions needed to keep the moon in the care of free nations--led, of course, by us.

A Bridge Too Far

The ford ("shallow creek crossing" for you Bama grads) connecting the Colonel's westernmost field to the rest of the vast holdings that comprise Eegeebeegee has been impassable for the better part of the last year. Heavier than normal rains washed most of the rocks downstream, and just about the time the Colonel finished prying the boulders from the sucking sand and waddle-carrying them back upstream to the ford, another heavy rain swept them tumbling back downstream. Hydraulics is a fascinating power...unless it's working against you.

So, the Colonel has decided to build a bridge.

For the better part of his adult life, most of the professional study and preparation to which this Marine subjected the loose collection of grey matter laying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group dealt with the destruction of bad people and their things. The largest construction projects attempted rarely exceeded the complexity of assembling a bookcase out of 1 x 6s and milk crates. Engineering and erecting a bridge, substantial and sturdy enough to safely accommodate the Colonel and his trusty tractor Semper Field, certainly must seem to anyone even remotely acquainted with him to be folly in its fullest meaning. No matter--there ain't enough brain matter left to cobble together a convincing argument against the attempt.

Said bridge building project began in earnest a week ago. The near-shore bridge pier construction phase began with three behemoth (meaning: very large--for all of you LSU grads) railroad ties hauled down to Caleb's Crossing--so named in honor of the Colonel's second favorite person on the planet. Holes were excavated large enough to accommodate the ties stood on end and encased in several yards of concrete. Mind you, ALL of the digging and maneuvering of said behemoth railroad ties was done by hand. Yep, the Colonel ain't smart and you can't make him.

As the Colonel and # 2 son stood over on the far shore admiring completion of Phase I--three (did I mention they were behemoth?) railroad ties towering straight and tall and spaced five feet apart across the point where the road ended in the creek--an errant thought took shape in the few remaining brain cells in the amorphous goo at the base of the Colonel's skull. But, before he could translate thought to speech, #2 gave verbal shape to the Colonel's thoughts.

"Well, Dad, you've either made substantial progress toward bridging this creek or you've made it so that no one will ever cross at this point again."

Seems the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda gave birth to a mind-reader.

I Don't See You

The pimply-faced mouth-breather at the concession stand handed over our 3D glasses and gushed unbidden, "It's the best movie I've ever seen! I've watched it ten times now! You guys are gonna love it!"

Had it not been that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was on my arm, the Colonel might very well have succumbed to the overwhelming desire to set the vocal chords on "stun" and subject the errant youth to a brief, but effective, lesson on a select number of points. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's ever-so-slightly tightened grip on the Colonel's arm indicated that she had detected the tremor in the Force that often foretells a curmudgeonly blast from yours truly.

I cooled my jets.

However, after watching "Avatar" and then closing my eyes for an extended strategic planning session, the Colonel awoke this morning with jets at full military power, and the beneficiary of the resultant pedantic post will be you, gentle reader, instead of the public school product pushing concessions at the multi-plex. While the electrons comprising this missive are ordered for his consumption, I doubt the young man's ability to apply the fifth grade level reading and comprehension skills required to plow through it. But, the Colonel has always harbored a fondness for lost causes...

First, the Colonel cares not one wit about the "experience" of some adolescent whose digestive tract is still processing what his mother fed him for breakfast before pushing him out the door and pointing him toward the bus stop to join the other neighborhood punks-in-training beginning their matriculation at Che Guevara Elementary School. Just give me my bucket of stale and outrageously overpriced popcorn and my watered-down and outrageously overpriced fountain drink, and point mutely toward the Men's room so that I can prepare to sit still through a long and outrageously overpriced movie. If you must speak, restrict your vocalizations to short, intelligible utterances laden with information and respect--not necessarily in that order.

Second, the Colonel wonders to what better use the several hundred dollars you spent on repeated viewings of this movie could have been put. Oh, I don't know, maybe some suspenders to help keep the waistband of you trousers from sliding down around your thighs. Or, maybe a hat with the bill on the front. Or, maybe a haircut.

Third, the Colonel would like to know against what films you applied your cinematic comparisons to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that this is the best movie of all time. "Caddy Shack" was more original and had a better plot than this tree-hugging homage to anti-capitalism. "Avatar" has some really neat special effects, but contains little novelty--most of the movie was lifted from other films. Even with the few remaining synapses firing in the amorphous goo laying fallow in the recesses of my brain-housing group, the Colonel was able to detect and identify scenes and devices plagiarized from "Aliens," "Star Wars," "Dances with Wolves," and "Starship Troopers," to name only a few.

On a positive note, the Colonel appreciates Cameron's allusions to the evils of mercenary armies in the service of corporations. These re-United States sully the good name of our people with the allowance and employ of such mercenary outfits as Xe (aka, Blackwater).

It has always been the Colonel's position that the United States military should be used to do corporations' bidding--they pay for it.

Give ME a Teleprompter, Please!

The Colonel really wishes everyone would lay off of our president regarding his use of a teleprompter. Frankly, the Colonel longs for the day when technology catches up with the dream of a memory chip behind the ear and a personal HUD ("head-up display" for all of you Mississippi State and LSU grads) to guide my every spoken word. Programmed to prompt the statistically most effective and least inflammatory responses to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's every query, the Colonel's quality of life would dramatically surge into the upper 90's as measured by daily tracking polls.

The Colonel can only imagine the soaring heights to which his familial popularity would rise once his off-hand remarks and scattered-brained utterances are disciplined and scripted for the most effective delivery. And with the behind-the-ear memory chip implant providing pronunciation and diction cues (appropriate to the audience), there would be no more of the verbal stumbles and monosyllabic guttural utterances that otherwise characterise and dominate this Marine's speech.

One fervently hopes that second and third generations of these devices would even provide faithful speech replication--nothing like the flat-toned computer speak by which Steven Hawking currently communicates. These devices will, if the Colonel's happiest dreams come true, have the ability to pick up even the slightest of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's whispers in other rooms, accurately interpret their hidden meanings, and provide an automatic reply calculated to satisfactorily answer in a soothing-toned voice replication, thus negating the need for personal constant monitoring and attention to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's communication network. The Colonel can only imagine the marital bliss thereby provided.

The Colonel's communication with non-familial contacts would also benefit from the envisioned technology. The heretofore unintelligible utterances of bored store help would be instantaneously translated and winnowed for what tiny bits of useful information might exist in their verbalized breath expulsions. An answer of thanks would be generated and produced for the Colonel, obviating the need to actually personally reply. This might actually save the Colonel from the legal action sure to be incurred if he acts on the overwhelming impulse to grab the offending mouth-breathing public school product by the stacking swivel and... Anyway, you get the idea.

Teleprompters for all, I say.

Ode to Anas Platyrhynchos

It has been a season to remember. For the uninitiated, the sport--nay, Calling--that is duck hunting, seems a foolish pursuit at best. When one who has never been hears of the 0-dark-thirty reveilles, the wind-chilled boat rides, the frozen-fingered handling of dozens of decoys, the back-killing hours standing in thigh deep water, the expense of guns and ammunition, and the often empty-handed result of all of these rigors, they need no other confirmation that their friend is three or four shells shy of a full box. And in more years than not, with birds in short supply, and those warier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, the hunter himself comes to the same self-evaluation. But, then, just about the time a duck hunter is ready to enter a seven-step program to wean himself from the addiction, there are seasons like this one that provide the rush that hooks him deep in his soul and leaves him longing for the next season's fix.

For the Colonel, there may not be many sights in this world whose thrill compares to that of a brace of greenheads turning and dropping altitude toward the decoys, wings cupped into the wind. Well, there is the sight of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda after a couple of hours absence. And, there is the sight of a sleepy-eyed grandson toddling towards you for his morning hug. And, okay, there's the thrill of seeing the Rebels run on to the field for the first time in September. But, other than that... a duck on the downwind approach, gear down and wings cupped, in the soft light of a early winter morning...it just doesn't get much better than that.

The past several seasons here at the northern end of southern nowhere have been marked by low water and even lower numbers of ducks. We persisted though, trekking to isolated pockets of flooded timber in all but forgotten patches of cypress swamp. Sometimes we saw a few ducks. Most often not. Our trips became as much social outings as hunts; our cold, wet, birdless misery bonding us; our watch phrase ever the refrain, "maybe next year we'll have enough rain to flood the lake and the hunting will be better..."

And then, heavy rains came early this fall, washing away the bitter disappointment of a once buoyant Rebel football season aground on the rocks of reality, filling the lake to overflowing and our hearts with the hope of flocks of mallards escaping the ice up north and finding wet room to raft and loaf. A month ago, we were living the dream. There were birds in abundance, some of which even turned their heads to our plaintive reeds and circled our spread. And some of those thrilled our hearts, and the hearts of ammunition manufacturers, with the wind dance that brought them into range of our guns.

Yesterday, the first day in a nearly a week that we could get back on the lake--thunderstorms and waders don't mix--we motored to a spot that provided the perfect protection of calm water in a strong west wind and expectantly went through the well-rehearsed drill of donning waders, throwing decoys, hiding the boat and then hiding ourselves. We waited. No birds. Our ducks were gone--probably further south.

Stupid ducks, who needs 'em?

Surf's Up

"Bait and switch" is an effective short-term tactic, but it is a hopeless long-term strategy. We've all been its victim in a store--responding to a ridiculously low price advertised on the Bettermade 1000 only to find that the store is fresh out when we get there, "But, we have plenty of the Bestmade 2000 and it is really a much better value than the Bettermade 1000."

When applied to the prurient playground of politics, "bait and switch" takes the form of either comely specific campaign promises made with no intention or ability to keep, or nebulous rabble-rousing rhetoric that stirs the heart but has no soul. This deceit is not a recently discovered political art form, but has been in existence for as long as man has interacted with man. Moses recorded in Genesis, perhaps the first known broken campaign promise--the apple, as delightful as the fruit of its consumption seemed in the abstract, did not produce the constituent contentment its consumption promised.

This barely-reconstructed rebel doesn't often offer praise for yankees. However, the Colonel is heartened that the good people of Massachusetts demonstrated this week that even the most closed-eye constituency can be roused from its for granted-taken slumber. But, the Colonel is also aware that the results of Massachusetts' US Senate special election to fill the seat formerly held by Miss Kopechne's last boyfriend are not as insignificant, nor as earth-shattering, as the two political parties would have us believe. True, the results are newsworthy--much more so than most of the tripe that passes the lips of newsies--but, our assessment of them must be tempered by the adage attributed to Tip O'Neil that "all politics is local." In reality, the Democratic candidate, once she secured her party's nomination, believed she had the election sewed up in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and whose electorate went for H in a landslide barely 14 months ago. When Coakley's campaign awoke to slipping poll numbers, a rash of ham-handed missteps and electorate-insulting gaffes left her wide open to the Republican's deft counterattack.

While the Colonel does believe that an element of anger and disgust at the bait and switch tactics of the Obama administration provided some momentum away from the Democratic column in the Massachusetts senate race, as well as the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the politicians positioning themselves to catch the wave should not mistake the message. As much as the brokers of power and purveyors of political pablum would have us believe, American political sentiment, on the whole, is not particularly policy-driven. We might say that we want our government to take care of this personal need or to do this or that for us, but, when our government intrudes into our lives in order to provide the service, we react as we nearly always have since 1775--with anger.

What we Americans really want, and for which our Constitution so adeptly provides, is government responsive to our desires for the freedom and opportunity to achieve our personal goals. We want government that provides physical security. We want government that ensures a level playing field. We want government that does our business in the open, so that we can supervise those we have chosen to serve us. We want government that does not take us for granted. Promise us "a chicken in every pot" if that is what gets you elected, but don't tell us how to cook it.

Sadly, the Colonel is afraid that the message coming out of Massachusetts, and Virginia and New Jersey, will be misinterpreted as policy-driven by politicians whose hubris prevents them from accepting that they are there because we put them there. Politicians with personal agendas will attempt to ride the current wave of popular sentiment to the left or to the right, showing off to the crowd on the beach, padding their personal power bases--and their pockets.

The Colonel hopes that real American leaders will emerge to harness the current productive wave of popular political sentiment before it turns into a destructive tsunami of violent popular expression.

But, hope is not a strategy, nor an effective course of action.

What We Owe Haiti

Were it not for Haiti, the dirt poor nation from which heart-rending pictures and descriptions of earthquake destruction are filling our news, the United States might not exist in any form near what we know today. Certainly the United States should respond to the need of this hemispheric neighbor with the massive and immediate aid that only the United States has the capacity to provide and the means to deliver. Whether that aid will significantly improve the lot of the Haitian people in the long run is another question. However, that is besides the point. The United States owes its very existence to the actions of the ancestors of present day Haitians.

The history of Haiti is perhaps one of the most interesting of all of the lands in the Western Hemisphere. The island of Hispaniola, on the western end of which sits Haiti, was occupied by the Arawakan Taino when Columbus and his crew of misfits and mercenaries blundered ashore in 1492. Within a few generations, due to European diseases and depredations, the Taino all but ceased to exist on the island. The gold and silver, after which the Spanish scoured the island, turned out to be much more prevalent on the New World mainland and the majority of Hispaniola was largely abandoned and left to serve as a base for Caribbean piracy.

While British and Dutch brigands also used Hispaniola, it was French pirates who established the first permanent settlement on the nearby island of Tortuga. In 1652, King Louis XIV commissioned an official French settlement on Tortuga; and in 1664, the French West India Company took over administration of the Tortuga colony and claimed control of the Western portion of Hispaniola. In 1697, Spain ceded this part of the island to France. French plantation owners imported West African slaves to work their fields and by the end of the 18th Century maintaining the over half a million laborers in Haiti accounted for a third of the Atlantic slave trade.

To maintain control over a slave population that outnumbered them 20 to 1, French planters employed the most ruthless and inhumane methods imaginable to discipline and terrorize their charges. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped to the interior where they formed their own communities, supported in large part by raiding their former masters.

On the heels of the revolution that plunged France into bloody chaos, slaves on Hispaniola began a rebellion in 1791. The French attempted to regain control of the island by declaring emancipation in 1793. Turmoil at home and war with Great Britain resulted in French neglect of their colony and former slave leaders filled the power vacuum. The most prominent of these, Toussaint Louverture, led an army of former slaves in turning back a British invasion, and by 1801 had brought the entire island under his control.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had seized power in France, and in 1802 sent a huge force to reclaim French control of the island. His intent was to rapidly subdue the island and then use it as a base for invasion of North America via New Orleans. For all his military genius, Napoleon never did quite learn to take the environment into account when embarking on one of his campaigns (see his experience in Egypt and Russia). Within a year of landing on Hispaniola with the mission of re-enslaving the black population, nearly half of the forty thousand French troops were dead from malaria and yellow fever. The remainder of the French invasion force was destroyed by the former slave army and they declared their independence on January the 1st, 1804.

As Napoleon's dream of Western Hemisphere conquest died, he attempted to salvage what he could and sold his claims in North America to the United States in order to finance his ongoing war with Great Britain. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the territory of the United States and allowed the great westward expansion that changed the former colonials into masters of nearly an entire continent. Were it not for the freedom-fighting former slaves whose descendants are clawing their way out of the rubble in Port-au-Prince today, our nation might very well be nothing more than an asterisk in European history.

Of course, the re-United States paid Haiti back in the early 20th Century by sending Brigadier General Smedley Butler and a brigade of Marines to sort things out for them. But that's grist for another post.