A Failure to Lead

The Colonel was the least effective leader to ever make rank in the history of the United States Marine Corps (maybe even in the history of organized armies), but even he cringes at the total lack of leadership on display at the White House this Spring. The young man from Chicago/Harvard/Indonesia/Hawaii/Kenya has a a truly enviable oratorical ability, but every lance corporal in the last rank of the third platoon of any rifle company knows that a speech from the man in charge is just that--a speech. The Colonel knows--he's given quite a few speeches over the years that fell lightly on the auditory systems of those over whom he held a position of authority and yet caused not one muscle-moving synapse to fire.

Speeches don't lead--action leads.

One needs only a cursory glance at the headlines to see examples of leadership failure by this President and his administration. Every page front portrays weakness on every battle front. The three of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon don't need the Colonel to tell you what is going on.

Gonna tell you anyway.

The destructive slick of oil washing ashore in Louisiana on the otherwise gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico is analogous to the dangerous slick of criminality riding the otherwise gentle waves of migrants crossing our border with Mexico. Our national leaders have done nothing to prevent either. In response to both national emergencies, the Obama administration has done little more than give speeches pointing fingers at others (BP and Arizona, in particular) for what the administration portrays as "inappropriate" actions to protect the American people from the destructive effects of both.

News flash, Mr. President--of all of your responsibilities to the citizens of these re-United States, keeping us safe from invasion--be it human or chemical--is your paramount priority. The great irony is that you want the federal government intimately inserted into every orifice of our lives and yet sit fiddling like Nero as two immense threats to our domestic ease sweep over us like fire.

There is even further irony to consider. The world, for which our President pines to be the Messiah, sits precariously this warm season on the precipice of hot war. As the Colonel tippy-taps this missive, Israel prepares to strike Iran's nuclear capability; the powder keg on the Korean peninsula has a lit fuse; China is flexing its new muscle in the Western Pacific; and our troops in Afghanistan are preparing for what may prove to be the most pivotal campaign in the entire Global War on Terror (or whatever other misnomer by which our fight with radical Islam is referred today). In response, our President is attending political fund-raisers in California and playing golf with cronies in Chicago.

And to top it all off, President Obama delegates the duty of attending the Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery to the man who would prefer that the title "Capital of the Free World," for which the men and women lying in honored repose therein gave their last full measure, be given to Brussels instead of Washington.

To quote what our current Vice President claims he told President Bush, "Look behind you, Mr. President, nobody is following you."

The Mississippi Purchase

The Colonel's vast holdings here at the northern end of southern nowhere nearly doubled this afternoon and all it took was the remainder of his meager life savings and his signature on more forms than President Obama has hidden about his life prior to ten years ago.

Actually, the Colonel's No. 2 son--the single, rich one (the latter primarily because he is the former)--joined him in the purchase of the acreage adjacent to Eegeebeegee, so it's not exactly accurate to claim a doubling of the Colonel's vast holdings.

But, since when have the three of you who regularly waste precious rod and cone time perusing posts hereon ever noticed the Colonel allowing accuracy to prevent his telling a story?

The aforementioned acreage acquisition reunites two halves of a piece of property sold asunder by the previous owner. While there is nothing particularly special about the new addition to the Tallahatchie Free State's capital city limits, the Colonel and his kin have wanted it, more than any other reason, so that nobody else would get it.
The last thing the good citizens of the TFS wanted was to have some developer try to put in a subdivision next door. That would have put a significant crimp in the freedom of the Hope of 21st Century Civilization--dashes One and Two (H21CC-1 & 2) to make water at the base of any random tree on the Colonel's property without fear of offending the tender sensibilities of some suburban house- er, um,.. significant other.

Not to mention putting a significant crimp in the Colonel's similar freedoms.

The really great part of this good news story is that the extra acreage brings with it a whole set of its own required capital improvement projects. There are extra fields to plant to feed the antlered and bearded fauna, more trees to selectively log to feed the Colonel's sawmill (Semper Filet), and another stream across which another bridge must be built in order to provide far field access for the Colonel's rusty red pick-up (Semper Fillit) and his trusty red tractor (Semper Field).

The Colonel is considering recruiting and commissioning a Corps (pronounced core, Mr. President) of Discovery to explore and map the new territory. H21CC-1 & 2 are the most likely candidates for co-captains of the adventure.

With any luck, they'll find a navigable route to Sardis Reservoir that will negate the need to pay the Feds a fee to launch the boat next duck season.

When in the Course of Eegeebeegee Events

An emergency meeting of the Tallahatchie Free State executive cabinet convened yesterday evening on the front porch of Eegeebeegee's Big House aboard the Colonel's vast holdings here at the northern end of southern nowhere. Seems that a crisis of confidence in the Colonel's competency to govern has crept into the collective consciences of his constituency.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, whose standing as sage counsel to the Colonel is unquestioned (particularly by the Colonel), and whose loyalty and best-friendship to the Colonel has survived the ravages of the Colonel's idiocy and idiosyncrasy for mere months shy of four complete decades, rose in the well of the House (in this case, rocked on a chair on the porch) and called for a vote of no confidence, citing the following as evidence of the Colonel's unsuitability to continue as the people's sole representative and chief executive of the Tallahatchie Free State:

(Italics indicate specific charges)

1. The Colonel has failed to complete even one shovel-ready project among the more than a dozen edificial improvements to the vast holdings that comprise Eegeebeegee, the physical capital of the Tallahatchie Free State--a virtual government in opposition founded as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek--whose plans were hatched in the fallow fields of the Colonel's imagination and approved by the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda.

The Colonel rose to counter, and pointed out that the Chicks of Eegeebeegee were now ensconced in the coop with integral hen house over which the Colonel has labored lo these many weeks since their arrival. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda conceded that such was the case, but pointed out that, while habitable, the chicken coop with integral hen house was far from complete and not nearly up to the ascetic standards against which all additions to the grounds of Eegeebeegee are held.

2. The Colonel has failed to keep the flora and fauna aboard the immediate grounds of the physical capital of the virtual Tallahatchie Free State safe from terrorist attack and danger of criminal invasion. Rabbits and deer continue to raid and raze new growth, and an attack by an eastern indigo snake on the newborn of the nesting pair of eastern bluebirds in the nest box at the corner of the vegetable garden was thwarted only by the bravery of Ma and Pa Bluebird and the sharp eyes of the Colonel's firstborn grandson; the Hope of 21st Century Civilization, Dash One (H21CC-1).

The Colonel's assertion that the snake's plot was foiled due to superior construction and siting of the bluebird house was met with the deadpan facial expression which graces the visage of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda when she really wants, with all of her kind heart, to expound in detail on the mental short-comings of her mate.

3. The Colonel has acted with wanton disregard for the express desires of the citizens of the Tallahatchie Free State, by word and deed too many to enumerate, doing as he darned well pleased, since the founding of said virtual government in opposition, and must step down as chief executive and sole representative of the people.

The Colonel rose and concurred with the third charge. The Colonel's question, "So?" was met by the deadpan facial expression that graces the visage of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda when she really wants, with all of her kind-heart, to expound in detail on the mental short-comings of her mate.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda continued for the better part of the next hour and a half, listing, in detail that the Colonel will spare the three of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon, the gross malfeasance with which the Colonel has executed his duties as chief executive and sole representative of the people, concluding with the announcement that "the people of Eegeebeegee, T.F.S. do hereby unseat the Colonel and relieve him of all duties of governance."

Whereupon the Colonel woke from the slumber induced by the detail spared the three of you who regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon, immediately declared martial law, and suspended all fun until morale improves.

Idiocy Supremacy

The Colonel is an idiot and everyone around him suffers the consequences. Allow him to offer case in point.

The Chickens of Eegeebeegee are rapidly outgrowing the brooder box the Colonel built for their early childhood development and the Colonel has been laboring over a design/build chicken coop (with integral hen house) to house said rapidly growing yard birds. By the beginning of this week the frame of the coop was completed and tin from a neighbor's shed, destroyed by the tornado two years ago, was salvaged and cut to fit the roof rafters.

Remember, for future reference, the Colonel is an idiot.

Yesterday, a stack of tin was loaded on the back of the Colonel's rusty red pick-up truck, Semper Fillit, and parked next to the coop. Said stack of tin was jutting out the back of the pick-up bed. The above-ground-level altitude of a stack of tin jutting out the back of a pick-up bed is approximately head-high on a four year-old. The Colonel recognized the need to unload the stack, but procrastinated.

Yep, next to the definition of idiot in Webster's is a picture of the Colonel.

The Colonel's little buddy, the Hope of 21st Century Civilization-Dash One (H21CC-1), proved beyond a shadow a doubt in any mind that the Colonel is an idiot. Things do not turn out well when four year-old cheeks and tin occupy the same space--at least not for the cheek.

Of all the idiots identified throughout history and cataloged by degree of idiocy, the Colonel's case for idiot-in-chief easily holds supremacy.

The Colonel is not just a garden variety village idiot. Oh, no. If states had official idiots, he would be Mississippi's. And probably Alabama's and Louisiana's, as well.

Luckily, Tennessee already has Al Gore.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, who has never had a speeding ticket, broke several land speed records getting H21CC-1 to the local emergency room, while the Colonel remained at home with H21CC-2 and rapidly turned into a quivering mass of self-recrimination.

Actually, the Colonel managed to maintain a modicum of calm while he called H21CC-1's parents at work, before rapidly turning into a quivering mass of self-recrimination.

Has the Colonel mentioned that he is an idiot?

Turns out the bravest soul in this whole extended family trauma was actually the victim of the Colonel's idiocy. H21CC-1 ceased crying approximately 30 seconds after the collision with the stack of tin that laid his cheek open, and never seriously tuned up again--even while the finest plastic surgeon in all the land stitched him back up.

The Colonel, by contrast, has teared up continually since the incident.

There is nothing more pitiful than a crying idiot.

Book Bound

The Colonel has a book in him. Most of it is stored in the few remaining active cells laying fallow in the amorphous grey goo puddled in the recesses of his brain-housing group. The majority of the plot is there in abstract, as are many of the characters. The story's first several chapters are actually already in draft--a hundred or so pages in Word--each starting like gang-busters and then petering off into inconclusiveness.

The challenge before the Colonel is two-fold: Master his ADHD and overcome his fear of irrelevance.

Writing, the Colonel has come to realize, is a lonely endeavor, filled with opportunity for discovery and fraught with the danger of dead-ends and dearths of idea-connecting files. Writing can be a lot like reading--sometimes the words flow from the future and bring with them new thoughts and expressions; sometimes the book gets put down, interrupted by life, and not ever finished.

To write, one must love language. The Colonel loves words, but language is more than vocabulary and there are so many requirements for a healthy, loving relationship with sentence structure, syntax, tense, and paragraph composition. The Colonel could just write and leave the rules to the textbooks, but that seems such an undisciplined attitude for this old disciplinarian.

And, yet, the best stuff seems to fly off the fingertips when the Colonel lets the reins loose and ignores the fences.

It is a quandary faced, the Colonel is quite certain, by millions before him who have attempted effective communication via the written word. And, there are millions of books completed.

And, then, there is the fear of rejection and irrelevance that haunts the Colonel's consciousness like a taunting schoolyard bully, "you ain't nuthin'. What makes you think you can write?" Coming from an extended education in the school of fearlessness that was the infantry, you would think the Colonel could easily master this seemingly safe, sedentary task without trepidation. There were always those whose stature and strength towered over him and yet he surprised and surpassed. This should be no different.

The Colonel is no David, but the book in him is no Goliath either.

It's just a story.

"Okay, then, Marine. Get on with it."

Clear and Present Danger

The Colonel believes it's time to apply some serious armed force in the vital national interests of these re-United States. There is a clear and present danger to American lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and it is NOT Islamic Fascism or Radical Extremism. It is not even the threat of a strengthening Peoples' Republic of China, with whom the Colonel is convinced, beyond any shadow of a doubt in his military mind, the United States will eventually go to war.

The clear and present danger to the United States of America is a criminal insurgency invading our sovereign territory, primarily across our southern national border.

Let the Colonel be clearly understood. He is an avid proponent of legal and regulated immigration to the United States. The greatness of our nation is, and always has been, deeply rooted in our acceptance of the world's "huddled masses yearning to be free."

The Colonel would have you focus on the last word in the above quote.

Freedom to legally pursue the fruits of liberty is the overarching principle under which our nation was conceived and with which it has attained its greatness. American exceptionalism is no accident. It is the inevitable positive product of the equation that sums and multiplies the world's cultural strengths and a free people's talents and toil.

Freedom is not free, however. It is a privilege earned by citizenship, one of the most sacred duties and inescapable requirements of which is abiding by and enforcing the laws of the land.

The United States, if it is to remain the "shining city on the hill" and the "last stand of liberty on Earth," must zealously guard and enforce the rule of law by which our freedoms are guaranteed. Let the Colonel rephrase that--we must resume the zealous guard and enforcement duty we have shirked for nearly two generations.

The Colonel would have you consider the proposition that perhaps in our valiant and noble actions of the past century to "make the world safe for democracy" we have taken our eye off of the more fundamental goal of keeping our own nation safe for liberty.

Again, the Colonel would have you know that he believes that our nation should continue to welcome liberty-seekers from every corner of the globe, the only conditions of their admittance being their willingness to contribute to the furtherance of our great experiment and their submission to the rule of our law.

So, let us turn our attention to the criminal invasion across our borders. Make no mistake, it is an invasion. The Colonel takes issue with the extreme position held by some that the entire tide of immigration is criminal. The Colonel believes that the vast majority of those who have entered this country "illegally" over the past 30 to 40 years are simply good people seeking better opportunity and greater security than that afforded under the corrupt or ineffective governments in their homelands. Were our control of our borders a lot more effective and our immigration policies a little more liberal, the Colonel believes that vast majority of the primarily Hispanic liberty-seekers would have entered our country in a controlled, orderly, and legal fashion.

Frankly, the fact that upwards of 20 million Latin Americans have joined our club, even "illegally," over the past two generations speaks very highly for the attractiveness and desirability of membership. Gotta be proud of that. If we weren't so great, there would be a lot more emigration than immigration.

What bothers the Colonel is the realization that even if 95% of the aforementioned 20 million are otherwise law-abiding and liberty-loving, that still leaves ONE MILLION who are not. If an invasion of ONE MILLION folks set on goals contrary to the vital national interests (i.e., criminal enterprise) doesn't represent a CLEAR and PRESENT DANGER to you, then you need to review the coursework for National Security 101.

To put the numbers in perspective, the Colonel could easily seize control of, say, El Paso or Phoenix with a lightly-armed infantry component (no tanks, artillery, or airpower) of a Marine Division--roughly 10,000 fighters. Assuming only 200,000 cross our border unchecked each year (and you and the Colonel both know the number is much higher), only 5% of whom are intent on criminal enterprise (and you and the Colonel both know the percentage is much higher), the criminal invasion force entering our nation each year is equivalent to the aforementioned lightly armed infantry component of a Marine Division.

Against this massive invasion, Senator McCain, attempting tough talk to rescue his re-election hopes, proposed this week the need for only 3,000 National Guard troops.

Even allowing for Clausewitz' argument that "defense is the stronger form of warfare," McCain's proposal to defend our borders is laughable.

Only the Colonel ain't laughing.

Runnin' Rebels

They were a bunch of angry white guys, fed up with their over-bearing and out-of-touch government and stirred up by rabble-rousing businessmen. What they did this morning, 235 years ago, shocked the world and plunged their country into a civil war, and, by some reckoning, plunged the major powers of Europe into a "world war" -- at least a multi-national war fought on many fronts globally.

In response to several "intolerable" Acts of Parliament passed in early 1774, aimed at more closely regulating commerce and other colonial activities, the first Continental Congress met in an attempt to form a more collective colonial front in opposition to perceived unfair treatment by their mother country. That first Continental Congress, with delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, first proclaimed, in "The Declaration and Resolutions" their opposition to the "intolerable" Acts and their claim to the same rights and privileges afforded their countrymen in England. Next, the Continental Congress sent an explanation of their actions to the people of the Colonies and an entreaty to the Canadian colonies to join them. An address explaining the Colonial position was sent to "The People of Great Britain," followed at last by a "Petition of Congress to the King."

New England--Massachusetts, in particular--had been the hotbed of colonial sentiment against the British government for several years prior to the Spring of 1775, and as tensions mounted, the colonial rebels in New England formed militias and accumulated stores of weapons, gunpowder, and lead. Alarmed by the increasingly militant stances of the the rebel ringleaders and the accumulation of military stores, General Thomas Gage, British governor of Massachusetts received instructions from Great Britain to seize the aforementioned stores in an attempt to tamp down the growing insurrection.

It was just the ignition of the revolutionary powder keg for which the rebel politicians had been looking.

A seven hundred-man force of Redcoats left Boston on the evening of April 18th and headed for Lexington and Concord, the two villages nearest Boston at which the rebel militias had been stockpiling arms and ammunition. Expecting such a move, rebels in Boston planned to send riders to warn the militias when the British marched out of Boston. Enter Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott. The first two were able to warn the militia in Lexington before captured by the British and the last was able to spread the alarm as far as Concord.

At around 0500 (5:00 A.M. for the Colonel's civilian readers) the British force arrived at the village of Lexington where a group of militiamen numbering approximately 77 had hastily assembled to impede the British mission. To say that the rebels were hopelessly out-numbered and militarily over-matched would be an understatement ranking right up there with any of the current Vice President's patronizing, off-color reminders to his boss. The British commander ordered the rebels to disperse.

They rebel militia did what every red-blooded American militia has faithfully done in every battle and skirmish since 1775.

They ran.

The Colonel could be gracious and give the yankee rebels the benefit of the doubt, given that they were up against the cream of the greatest military force on the planet at the time and were outnumbered roughly 10 to 1. Okay. The Colonel will be gracious.

They dispersed.

End of story and probably end of the nascent American colonial revolution, but for one angry white guy who evidently resented being told to disperse. Maybe he hadn't been at the militia meeting when the subject of dispersal was addressed. Some contemporary, eye-witness accounts claim that "the shot heard 'round the world" was actually the British commander discharging his pistol into the air as if it were a starter's pistol for the militia race to safety in which most of the participants had already "jumped the gun." The Colonel would rather believe that the first shot came from a tardy minuteman who, upon seeing the meeting already breaking up, fired his musket skyward in frustration. At any rate, the two sides exchanged volleys.

Well, the British fired a volley. The rebels, not so much. When the smoke cleared, eight colonists lay dead on Lexington Green; ten other colonists were wounded. One British soldier was wounded.

The British proceeded to Concord and succeeded in destroying the rebel munitions stored there before confronted by a growing force of minutemen. The British, their mission accomplished, retraced their route of march back to Boston.

But, the fight was on.

Harried all the way back to their base, and sniped at from behind rock walls and stands of trees, the British suffered 300 killed, wounded, or missing in action by the time they got back to the friendly confines of the Boston city limits. The militia in Lexington avenged their fallen comrades, exacting several casualties as the British marched back through their town.

The Colonel would have you understand that there are several very important lessons-learned from the event 235 years ago, today.

First, for those who today advocate forming militia--stop it. All you will accomplish is getting a lot of good folks killed.

Second, militias always run. You can't cobble together a bunch of Rambo wannabes, plink and drink on the weekends, and have an effective battlefield force.

Third, if you are a government official contemplating armed confrontation with an otherwise law-abiding, but armed, militia group--stop it. In addition to killing a bunch of folks, you will likely ignite an armed insurrection or incite some mouth-breathing, village idiot to commit domestic terrorism.

But, don't take the Colonel's word for it. Ask the British.

Better yet, ask Janet Reno.

Anger Management

At a recent ad hoc Tallahatchie Free State cabinet session on the front porch of the Big House here at the northern end of southern nowhere, the Colonel, sole representative of the people, was made aware of an egregious omission in the pantheon of holidays, commemorative days, and other not-so-special, actually-quite-ordinary days recognized and celebrated here on the grounds and vast holdings that comprise that fair land known as Eegeebeegee.

We ain't got no day for "Angry White Guys."

Now, the Colonel means no disrespect to those of you whose composure, complexion, or gender excludes you from the above appellation. In fact, the Colonel is always quick to recognize the historical accomplishments of those whose composure, complexion, or gender excludes them from the above appellation. Furthermore, it is in the spirit of inclusion that the Colonel takes pen in hand..., er, tippy taps on his keyboard, to ensure that angry white guys get their due.

The Colonel would ask your indulgence and would frame his argument in favor of his establishment of AWG Day with a series of questions.

Who fired "the shot heard 'round the world?"

An angry white guy.

Who gave us the immortal words, "Give me liberty or give me death?"

An angry white guy.

Who were the signers of the Declaration of Independence?

A bunch of angry white guys.

Who uttered the immortal words, "Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

An angry white guy.

The Alamo was surrounded by ten thousand Mexicans and who refused Santa Anna's offer of all-you-can-eat Tex-Mex?

Angry white guys.

First man on the beach at Normandy? First man off the helicopter at Ia Drang? First one to burn his draft card?

All angry white guys.

Who invented the twist-off bottle cap?

Don't know for certain, but the Colonel would bet it was an angry white guy with no bottle opener and a lot of hand strength.

First person to walk out of a screening of "Brokeback Mountain?"

Bettin' on the angry white guy...

The Colonel could go on, but this is all startin' to make him angry...

The Bridge at Eegeebeegee, Phase IIB

The Colonel had an enlightening encounter with mass, gravity, torque, leverage, and the coefficient of friction this weekend. And, amazingly, no serious injury resulted.

As the three of you who regularly waste precious rod and cone time perusing posts hereon will remember, the Colonel is building a bridge across the creek dividing his vast holdings here at the northern end of southern nowhere. Over the past ten weeks the Colonel and his crew lowered the creek bed in order to install bridge pier uprights, cemented in the near and far shore abutments, and replaced the rip-rap rock in the creek to raise the creek bed back up to it's previous level.

It was now time to add the major timbers that will form the backbone of the bridge span. A neighbor provided two creosoted 12 x 12, twenty-four foot timbers and Saturday morning delivered them by trailer to the far shore via another neighbor's adjacent pasture.

Does a 24 foot long, creosoted 12 x 12 timber weigh a lot? Is "I" Barack Obama's favorite word?

The Colonel can not accurately assess the mass of the timbers, but is fairly certain that when the timbers were rolled off the side of the trailer and impacted terra firma seismographs across a three-state area recorded the event. The earth's axis was almost certainly shifted and you may thank the Colonel for the resulting shorter day.

The jolt bounced the Colonel, and an acre of unattached fauna into the air. A coyote and the Colonel shared a shocked eye-to-eye moment before it dropped back into its tall grass hide.

The last surviving snail darters in the Tallahatchie drainage were stunned and floated belly-up.

The air was filled with a yellow-green haze of pollen snapped suddenly and massively from the boughs of pines across the Colonel's vast holdings.

As a gentle breeze cleared the air, the Colonel and his neighbor stood next to the timbers and gazed down the long slope of the approach to the bridge site. "How you gonna get these things down there and across those abutments," the neighbor asked.

The Colonel adopted his best "air of confidence" pose, paused for effect, and stated matter-of-factly, "I have no idea..."

The Colonel did, in fact, have an idea, but it was so Rube Goldberg in nature that he was loath to admit what his plans were.

With the strong backs of #2 son and one of his friends, the first timber was rolled over onto rollers improvised from short lengths of PVC pipe and, the Colonel kids you not, short lengths of oak limbs. The timber was levered and edged by hand, inches at a time, until it reached the lip of the slope down to the creek. As the center of gravity of the massive beam neared the precipice, a warning light began to flicker faintly in the Colonel's brain-housing group.

The Colonel never pays attention to flickering lights.

Levering and edging eventually moved the beam's center of gravity past the lip of the slope, and, as the nose of the beam slowly dropped, the flickering warning light suddenly glowed brightly and was joined by a clanging alarm bell. The Colonel frantically searched his speech center for an appropriate warning.

What is the appropriate warning for a impending runaway 24 foot, creosoted 12 x 12 bridge timber?

Excellent question.

The Colonel still doesn't know.

Needless to say, the bridge timber reached a position 50 feet down-slope a lot quicker than was anticipated given the amount of elbow grease it had taken to move it the first 25 feet from pasture-level to slope precipice.

"Well," #2 son opined, "that was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be."

With the timber's nose about 10 feet from the abutment, two 6 x 6 timbers were positioned side by side with ends alongside the timber and other ends propped up on the abutment. With a cant hook, the timber was rolled over onto the 6 x 6's. A chain was attached to the timber and stretched across the creek to the Colonel's rusty red pick-up truck, Semper Fillit, and the timber was pulled halfway across the creek. Remembering what happened the last time the massive timber's center of gravity crossed a fulcrum, the Colonel instructed his two assistants to sit on the far end of the beam as he pulled with the truck, to keep the leading edge higher than the abutment on the other side of the creek until the beam's leading edge was safely over that side.

To the amazement of all involved--it worked. Twice.

The Chicks of Eegeebeegee

The critter count at Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, increased significantly this past Easter weekend.

It has long been the intention of the Colonel to add domesticated fauna raising to the extant flora raising activities aboard his vast holdings here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The Colonel would occasionally point to the spot on the grounds adjacent to the Man Toy Storage and Sawdust Production Facility upon which a future chicken coop and hen house would someday rise in simple and functional elegance.

The future is now.

While on a shopping trip to the "big city" (Tupelo) last Saturday, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel were stimulating the economy in our favorite frilly, fanciful hobby and manly, practical tractor supply stores (separately and respectively) when they were overcome by the overwhelming urge to buy chicks for the Hope of 21st Century Civilization (H21CC, dash 1 and 2).

There is something sinisterly irresistible about a feeding trough full of fuzzy yellow and brown chicks.

A downy little chick just has to be picked up.

A downy little chick just has to be taken home to H21CC-1, -2.

The store required a minimum purchase of six chicks. Who needs six chicks? There are only two grandchildren, at present, gracing the grounds of the Big House at Eegeebeegee. Two chicks would be plenty.

The Colonel bought eight.

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's mother hen instincts went immediately into hyper-drive. Ever driven for an hour with a chick peeping in your ear? Oh, and the chickens were making a lot of noise, as well.

The large cardboard box in which the Colonel intended to raise the chicks for the next several weeks lasted two days. The Colonel dutifully disappeared into the sawdust production side of the Man Toy Storage and Sawdust Production Facility and emerged several hours and approximately three-quarters of a ton of sawdust later with the Eegeebeegee Chick Raising Box (patent pending). Ostensibly man-portable, the Eegeebeegee Chick Raising Box (patent pending) required the aid of the Colonel's trusty red tractor--Semper Field--to transport from the sawdust production side of the Man Toy Storage and Sawdust Production Facility to the spot in the garage at which the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda insisted was close enough to the door to the Big House to allow her to communicate with her new peeps.

Yesterday, H21CC-1 and the Colonel measured off and staked out the site on which Eegeebeegee's next edifice will rise. The Colonel will keep the three of you who regularly waste precious rod and cone time perusing posts hereon appropriately apprised of the chicken coop and hen house construction activities as they unfold.

Can anyone tell the Colonel whether chickens lay eggs, or do they give live birth?

Okinawa Vision

It was Easter, and the American troops who landed on the beaches without any casualties considered it a miracle. It was also April Fools Day...

Sixty-five years ago today, less than three and one-half years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the culminating battle of the War with Japan began with landings on the island of Okinawa, 340 miles south of the Japanese home islands. The fighting on Okinawa claimed one of the highest casualty totals of the entire Second World War and presaged what planned landings on the home islands themselves would cost. The savagery and carnage of smaller island fights from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima was writ large on Okinawa.

At Okinawa, Japanese regular and irregular land forces numbered greater than 110,000. The American 10th Army, whose task it was to wrest Okinawa from the Japanese, consisted of over 180,000 soldiers and Marines in four Army and three Marine Divisions. Instead of contesting the landing beaches as had been the Japanese strategy theretofore, the Japanese commander on Okinawa massed his forces inland in rugged terrain and intended to bleed the attackers white in order to give them a foretaste of what it would mean to carry the fight to the Japanese home islands.

In that regard, he was very successful.

While the fighting ashore on Okinawa ground opposing forces in a horrific meat grinder, U.S. and British naval forces offshore endured their own maelstrom. Kamikaze attacks sank a dozen ships and killed over 5000 U.S. sailors--a total greater than that suffered by either the Army or the Marine Corps, separately, on land.

Japanese forces killed numbered over 100,000 and civilian deaths, by some estimates, matched or exceeded that total.

Harry Truman, who assumed the Presidency while the brutal battles on and around Okinawa raged, was faced with the prospect of a butcher's bill twenty times the cost of U.S. and Japanese lives on Okinawa, were landings on the Japanese home islands required to bring the War with Japan to a satisfactory conclusion. Waging atomic war was a no-brainer, and ultimately saved both Japanese and American lives.

Oh, and the Japanese have been our closest allies and most valuable trading partners ever since.

Were the strategists currently designing our facetious "Long War" campaigns against the Islamo-fascist threat to civilization in charge of our response to Japanese Imperial aggression, the Colonel wonders what the fight in the Pacific would have looked like.

Would we be timidly and selectively fighting Japanese tactics? Would we still be fighting, and losing, a "Long War" against Japanese militarism?

The Colonel has long maintained that our war against Islamo-fascism could have been satisfactorily concluded five years ago. "Long Wars" are unwinnable, particularly by democratic republics whose citizenry rapidly tire of protracted military campaigns, and whose politicians use the war and its costs as campaign fodder.

But, what does this old knuckle-dragger know?

Bedding down the Bedouins

Today, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel begin their fourth year aboard Eegeebeegee, our promised land at the northern end of southern nowhere. This is a momentous event; the occasion appropriate for uplifting speeches, orchestral music, grand fireworks, flowery parades, and rest from labor to reflect on the wilderness wandering that preceded arrival here at their lives' culminating point.

There's a tight budget, so the Colonel will mutter and hum while traipsing from chore to chore and try to remember who he is when he stops to take a breather.

Marking three years living in the same location may not seem like anything special to you, gentle readers. But, for the Colonel and his long-suffering bride, the average interval between moves, the majority on orders from Uncle Sam, was well south of two years. Many "homes" held our eclectic collection of sturdy furniture for mere months. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Colonel's fathers were career Air Force men. By the time Miss Brenda consented to joining households with the Colonel, at the tender ages of 19 and 20, respectively, they each had nearly a score of "permanent" addresses under their belts. The next thirty years easily doubled that number.

At every stop and start in that nomadic life, "Some day..." began the refrain.

Some day, we'll have our place in the country.

Some day, we'll put down roots.

Some day, we'll get to see blooms on the roses we plant.

Some day, we'll buy furniture without worrying about how it will hold up in a cross-country move.

Some day, we'll make friends to whom we won't have to say goodbye in six months.

Some day, we'll wake up in the middle of the night and not have to figure out where we are.

Some day is today.

Except that the Colonel, with ever-diminishing mental faculties, still wakes up thinking he is somewhere else.

Scamp Escape

The younger half of the Hope of 21st Century Civilization is up early with the Colonel this morning. His parents are off to work, big brother yet slumbers, and the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda is polishing off the rest of her beauty sleep, so it is the Colonel's responsibility to maintain situational awareness regarding the whereabouts and intowhats of the little scamp.

At 28 months he is becoming quite the escape artist.

He is supposed to be watching cartoons while the Colonel administers caffeine to his few remaining brain cells and reads the digital papers. The door out of which he escaped is line of sight beyond the left side of the Colonel's computer screen. Yet, with stealth and an active camouflage technique the envy of snipers the world's militaries over, H21CC - 2 performed a flawless break-contact maneuver and his absence remained undetected by the Colonel for the better part of the brief time it took to drain the first of many caffeine delivery devices.

His absence was finally realized by the lack of squeaks and squawks that are the primary communication method of two-year-olds and the Colonel conducted a quick security patrol house-wide to re-establish contact.

Found him in the bed with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, supervising the last few minutes of her manifestly unneeded beauty sleep.

The look in his eyes as he watched her sleep was enough to start the Colonel's eye wash. By the end of the day the Colonel will have been tempted to restrain the little booger with a liberal application of duck tape, but for the moment he understands the meaning of love.

A Phineas Fellow

The Colonel recently participated in a running, on-line discussion with an old friend with whose pacifist positions he disagrees, but whose right to have them he fervently respects.

The Colonel has long maintained that these re-United States' War on Terror (or whatever it is miss-called these days) is, despite a few limited offensive examples to the contrary, a war fought primarily on the defensive. For the most part, we are conducting tactical actions against the fielded forces of our enemy when, in the Colonel's not so humble opinion, we should have prosecuted strategic, regime-change war against the several nations [still] providing funding, manpower, and other material and tacit support to terrorist organizations.

The friend, whose Christian faith the Colonel deeply respects and shares, challenged the Colonel's reconciliation of his Christian faith and Jesus' teachings with his calling as a professional soldier and the Colonel's calls for strategic war on our enemies.

It's not the first time the Colonel has been asked how he reconciles faith with fighting, so the answer required little additional soul-searching.

The Colonel's personal belief regarding his willingness to fight in the defense of his faith, family, and nation is rooted in the actions of a man named Phineas as recorded in the 25th Chapter of the Old Testament book Numbers. The Colonel encourages you, gentle readers, to read for yourselves from that text. Suffice it to say, Phineas did not turn a blind eye to lawlessness. He took action, and God was so pleased with Phineas' action that He stopped the plague that had befallen the Hebrew nation as a consequence of their failure to abide by His Law (their Constitution, if you will).

Jesus, my Lord and Savior, commanded that we who would be His disciples should show love to our enemies--"turning the other cheek." And, to his personal enemies, the Colonel has endeavored, not always successfully he will admit, to do just that. The Colonel has had ample opportunity to build and activate a personal enemies list. Life here on Earth, provides us all with that opportunity. The Colonel, instead, can honestly say, that there are none for whom he has not felt God's conviction to forgive, nor asked God's strength to forget their transgression.

The Colonel will admit there are one or two with whom he is still working out the forgive and forget equation. Nobody's perfect, not even the Colonel.

The Colonel's friend capped his side of the discussion with the following question:

"Who would Jesus bomb?"

The quick, reflexive answer that comes to a Christian's mind is, of course, "No one!" Christians cannot imagine for a second that Jesus, the God-Man who came to show love to all mankind and to sacrifice His life for the atonement of our sins before a Perfect Creator God who can abide no sin, would ever harm even the most deserving of harm among men. The Christian's default position is that Jesus would not kill, and we, whose callings may require us to kill, end up compartmentalizing our faith because that default position CANNOT be reconciled with our actions. And, such compartmentalizing of our being and belief is itself antithetical to the teaching and expectation of Christ.

The Colonel is no theologian by any stretch, but he believes that the default position is a flawed supposition.

One of Jesus' closest friends and dearest disciples, John, wrote the following about Jesus in his version of the Gospel:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made." [bold type added] John 1: 1 - 3

What John wrote, inspired, the Colonel believes, by God, was that Jesus (the Word)has been with God from the beginning and that Jesus is Creator God. The Colonel won't try to describe further what is the indescribable nature of God. But, if Jesus has been with God from the beginning and is God, then Jesus, as God, killed men. Jesus bombed Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus swept back the Red Sea over Pharaoh and his army, drowning them all. Jesus, as God, destroyed the enemies of His people on numerous other occasions. And, John tells us in the book of Revelations, when Jesus returns to Earth at the end of the age, He will destroy the enemies of God--demon and man alike. And, don't try to tell the Colonel that Jesus changed His nature and theology when he came to Earth. The Colonel fervently believes, as key to his hope of salvation, that God never changes, nor changes His mind regarding a promise.

Jesus even commanded His disciples, when he sent them out to spread His good news, to wipe the dust of unbelieving and unaccepting towns from their feet; in effect, condemning those men to eternal death.

Therefore, the Colonel does not accept the proposition that Jesus' commandment to love, pray for, and turn the other cheek to his personal enemies automatically prevents him from taking even offensive action against the enemies of his faith, family, and nation.

The Colonel reserves the right to retract the above under conviction of his God.

You Go, Gohmert!

Whenever the Colonel is having a little trouble falling asleep (this old infantryman is a master at rapid snoozing, so "trouble" is anything more than 30 seconds), he turns on CSPAN and watches our Congress at work.

Parliamentary procedure is the guaranteed antidote for caffeine overdose.

Last night, before the 111th Congress adjourned for its Passover/Easter break, and before it could, as he remarked, "do any more damage," Louie Gohmert, Representative from the 1st Congressional District of the former Republic of Texas, gave a fascinating, if rambling, speech that should be staple for every study of the Constitution of these re-United States.

No sunshine patriot, Congressman Gohmert is a conservative who puts his money where his mouth is. The Colonel is sad to opine that he finds that a rare trait among conservatives. Even more rare among liberals--they lag far behind conservatives in charitable giving all the while calling them "heartless." But the Colonel digresses. Congressman Gohmert served his nation as an officer in the Regular Army of the United States. That gets him automatic respect from the Colonel.

Every Congressman needs a crusade, and like his Texas compatriot Charlie Wilson (whose personal campaign was chasing women and killing Russians in Afghanistan), Congressman Gohmert has a worthy cause into which to pour his passion. He believes, as does the Colonel, that the 17th Amendment to the Constitution is the key flaw in our law that has allowed the federal government to unconstitutionally usurp rights and powers reserved to the States in the original ten "Bill of Rights" amendments to the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment specifically and succinctly says,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The framers of our Constitution, while desirous of central, federal government stronger than the feeble, ineffective confederation under which the States operated during the war with Great Britain and for six years thereafter, were also rightfully wary of a federal government grown too strong and thereby easily injurious of the rights and freedoms of the people. They viewed the separate States as one of the greatest checks against the accumulation of too much such injurious power in the hands of the federal government. They created the House of Representatives to directly represent the will of the people to the federal government, but realized that the will of the people could easily be manipulated by demagoguing populists. As a check against the fickle, firebrand House, the framers intentionally created the more exclusive and deliberative Senate. AND, most importantly, Senators WERE NOT popularly elected. They were appointed by the States to guard against the excess passion of mob democracy and to act as a CHECK on the inevitable and quite natural attempts by the federal government to accumulate power to the detriment of the people and the States.

Until ratification of the heinous (the Colonel does not use that word lightly) 17th amendment, United States Senators, appointed either by State legislatures or State Governors, as each State's constitution allowed, were subject to immediate recall by the States if found to be acting contrary to the rights of the States and the freedoms of the people, AS ENSHRINED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS. The heinous and injurious 17th Amendment unconstitutionally usurped the power of the States, by stripping them of their ONLY check on the power of the federal government. Since ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, Senators have been popularly elected and not subject to recall by the States.

To be sure, the pre-17th Amendment process of selecting Senators was flawed as well. Impasse in some State legislatures often had the effect of no Senator elected to represent the State in Congress. And, State legislatures all too often sent men to Washington whose qualifications to be Senators were dubious at best. But, the 17th Amendment went TOO FAR in its attempt to correct senatorial selection. Indeed, it can be argued that the States themselves brought this upon themselves as the amendment in question was called for by two-thirds of the states and was ratified by four-fifths of the States. But, the Colonel argues that the States must be forgiven that transgression because they knew not what the long term injurious (the Colonel is liking that word this morning) consequences would be.

Enter Congressman Gohmert and his call for, as Article V of the Constitution allows, a Constitutional Amendment Convention. Gohmert is quick to point out that this would not be a sweeping CONSTITUTIONAL convention, in which the entire Constitution would be rewritten. This Constitutional Amendment Convention would allow for the best and brightest constitutional minds to craft Amendments to restore the correct constitutional balance between the rights of the States & freedoms of the People, and the Federal Government. This is necessary to help prevent such things as the hugely expensive unfunded mandates imposed by the recently passed heinous and injurious Health Care Reform Bill (which is neither healthy nor reform). If two-thirds of the legislatures of the States adopt resolutions demanding a Constitutional Amendment Convention, the Congress is bound, by Article V to call such a convention. Arguably the Congress could constitutionally limit the purpose(s) of such a convention to prevent it running amok. Any proposed Amendment would require, as provided for in Article V of the Constitution, ratification by three-fourths of the States in order to become law.

Last night, Congressman Gohmert, prior to submitting his motion for adjournment, read Reagan's 1983 Passover/Easter Holiday address to the Nation and Benjamin Franklin's "Prayer Address" to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Both stirred the Colonel near to tears.

Just so you know, the Colonel hasn't cried since he found out his mother was a civilian.

Fed Up

It takes a lot to get under the Colonel's skin, but he is fed up with the following:

1. People who use hateful, intolerant speech to denounce the perceived hateful intolerance of others.

2. Officials who love power more than the people whose power they have been elected to exercise.

3. People who purport to be patriotic, yet have never once in their lives performed a patriotic act beyond displaying a flag.

4. Politicians whose choice of party with which to affiliate and under whose banner they run for office reflect political calculations rather than principled consciences.

5. Liberals who shed copious tears over the demise of a polar bear or the loss of a pod of porpoises, yet support the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.

6. Hypocritical conservatives who put not their money where their pie holes be.

7. Media personalities, at both ends of the political spectrum, with agendas.

8. Celebrities, at both ends of the political spectrum, who forget that their calling is to entertain not to preach.

9. Bankers with their hands out; politicians with their hands in my pockets; and young men and women whose hands should be in the air volunteering, but aren't.

10. Reporters who, in the ninth year of the war on which they are reporting, still don't know the the difference between a main battle tank and an armored personnel carrier, let alone the proper designations of basic military organizations.

11. Folks who don't know the difference between the privileges and blessings of residency and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

12. Americans who don't vote.

There is more, but the Colonel is fed up with this post.

An Act Too Far

Far and away from this day, back down the faintly echoing halls of history, a people once suffered at the hands of an out-of-touch and oppressive central government. That government--the British Parliament--attempted to pay for deficits, incurred by war with France, by regulating commerce with taxes. Those people--our nearly forgotten forebears--revolted. Since those people had no representation in Parliament to respond to their wishes, they began to take matters into their own hands, believing, as Thomas Jefferson penned in the Declaration of Independence, that people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and that "whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these [rights], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

Beginning in 1764, Parliament passed a series of acts; the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Quartering Act, and, on this date, 22 March, in 1765, the Stamp Act, which required that documents, newspapers, and playing cards to be printed on special stamped and taxed paper. To insure that the Colonies abide by these acts, non-juried Vice-Admiralty Courts, theretofore only employed in the adjudication of commercial disputes, were given greatly increased, and to the colonists' minds, arbitrary, powers of enforcement. In response and protest, 9 of the 13 British Colonies in North America convened the "Stamp Act Congress." In October of 1765, this first congress of the people's representatives in America produced the "Declaration of Rights and Grievances." From that document, the following excerpt seems to the Colonel to be germane to our present:

"...That the late act of parliament, entitled, an act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, &c., by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of these colonies, and the said act, and several other acts, by extending the jurisdiction of the courts of admiralty beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists." [bold italics added]

In response to the American Colonies' outcry against the injustices of these acts and the later actions of the people (the Boston Tea Party, for example), Parliament, to use a term in vogue today, "doubled down" and passed further acts designed to compel the Colonies to toe the government line. These "Coercive Acts," as they were known in Parliament, were labeled the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists.

Colonial "declarations" and other protest documents had previously declared love and loyalty for Britain. The ensuing--not so much.

On matters of lesser import, Americans can be a fractious, fickle, forgetful people. But, once the majority makes up its mind about something large, there is little wavering from their convictions.

No matter to what extreme those convictions may take them.

The Bridge at Eegeebeegee, Phase IIa

Several rotations of the Earth ago, the Colonel posted regarding his labors to erect a bridge over a creek dividing his vast holdings here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The three of you who regularly waste your precious rod and cone time reading posts hereon will remember that, during Phase I, in order to allow for the emplacement of uprights for near and far shore piers on which cross-creek bridge timbers will rest, the Colonel lowered and narrowed the bed of said creek.

Now, the Colonel finds himself at the point at which he must refill and raise the creek bed.

Earlier this week, the Colonel contracted for, and took delivery of, twenty-five (25) tons of rip-rap suitable rock. Is twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock a lot of stone? Did the Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?

Twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock dumped in one place forms a heap the size of which would have made a paleolithic mound-builder proud. The truck that delivers twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock requires a road surface on which to travel with the carrying capacity of that required by the crawler that delivers the Space Shuttle from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. So, traversing the 400 yard long pot-hole riven, rut-strewn, one lane gravel road that passes for the Colonel's driveway connection to the paved county road with a dump truck carrying twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock is not a matter for serious consideration.

And, that is the best section of internal roadways aboard the Colonel's vast holdings.

The twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock sits at the end of the Colonel's drive on the shoulder of the road. The Colonel has not measured the exact altitude of Rip-Rap Mountain's summit, but you can see the Rocky Mountains from the top. Rip-Rap Mountain is approximately maximum effective rifle range due East of the Big House at Eegeebeegee. The Bridge at Eegeebeegee is approximately maximum effective rifle range due West of the Big House. See where this is going?

The Colonel must move twenty-five tons of rip-rap suitable rock from its present location to its future site using his trusty red tractor, Semper Field, and his rusty red truck, Semper Fillit. For the past couple of days the Colonel has toyed with this mission. Any time he is down at the road, the Colonel loads a few hundred pounds of rock in the bed of Semper Fillit by hand (the Colonel is never one to use his head when his back will do), drives back to the bridge site and unloads the rock by hand. The Colonel feels this hands-on effort is necessary to allow for careful quality assurance inspection of each and every component of the monument to Motrin that is the Bridge at Eegeebeegee.

In the midst of one such inspect-load-transport-unload iteration the other day, the Colonel ceased from his labors and climbed to the summit of Rip-Rap Mountain to view Pike's Peak. As he stood upon the mount, breathing the thin air at altitude, the Colonel's keen senses detected a slight tremor. Seems the Colonel's endeavors at the foot of the mountain had served to weaken the foundation of rip-rap suitable rock along one of the mound's faces.

Lucky for Hawaii, Eegeebeegee is not located on the West Coast of these re-United States, as the ensuing avalanche, were it to have crashed into the Pacific, would have surely sent a tsunami of epic proportions racing westward.

At the apex of the Mount Rip-Rap, the Colonel hopped and skipped with the reflexes and nimbleness of a man half his age. Unfortunately, the Colonel is of such an advanced age that halving his years produces no appreciable amount of youth, nor corresponding reflexes and nimbleness.

As luck would have it, the Colonel was perched on one particularly massive and relatively flat rock and managed to surf his way down the collapsing face of rip-rap suitable rock. As the slide culminated at zero AGL, the Colonel dismounted lightly from his conveyance, took a three-step momentum-slowing jog and came to the correct position of attention, county road-center. Breaking discipline, the Colonel swung his head and eyes left and right to check for oncoming traffic, and to ensure that his mishap had not been witnessed.

There's enough rumors circulating around here about the Colonel as it is!

Slip-sliding Away

Political Correctness is the slippery slope down which those with an agenda push innocents unfairly pre-judged. It is the greatest of ironies and yet an inarguable fact that prejudice and bias exist as much in the heart of the pusher as the pushed. It is also an inarguable fact that once the slide begins, its momentum carries away with it all intelligent discourse.


Oh, and if you think you are safely politically correct in your new terminology and belief system, just wait. What was deemed politically correct yesterday, and with which the silent majority apathetically resigns itself to acceptance, will be found today to possess some flaw, some "incorrect" component, requiring those who believe themselves superior, to impose their will on the rest of us, all in the name of fairness. But, because LIFE is NOT FAIR, cannot be, and never will be, the Agendaratti will never rest.


As any one who has wasted precious rod and cone time reading posts hereon knows, the Colonel did not go to college--he went to Ole Miss. The Colonel's alma mater, formally known as the University of Mississippi, is a relatively small public university at the northern end of southern nowhere that has suffered the indignity of decades of national attention far out of proportion to the school's importance.



The University of Mississippi was founded in 1848. When the university began fielding sports teams, they played as the Mississippi Flood. On the occasion of the publishing of the first yearbook in 1897, a student contest chose the name Ole Miss for the publication and soon the University adopted Ole Miss as nickname. In 1936, when the editor of the school newspaper proposed a contest to produce a new nickname for Ole Miss teams, the duty was assigned to Mississippi sportswriters who overwhelmingly chose the name Rebels. Two years later, Colonel Rebel appeared for the first time as an illustration in the university yearbook and by the late 1940's had achieved its present form.

By the time this Colonel began his matriculation at the Harvard of the South, fans at football games were vigorously waving Beauregard's Battle Flag and a student in Confederate uniform exhorted the Ole Miss faithful from the sidelines. Your writer, dear reader, waved a Rebel flag as vigorously as the next fan. There was no racist intent on my part--unless you consider Yankee a race.

During the Colonel's service in the Marine Corps, it became painfully clear that the Rebel Flag was insulting and offensive to some and considered a banner of racial hate. The Colonel didn't see it that way...well, that is unless you consider Yankee a race...but he ceased flying and displaying the flag out of the sense that his leadership responsibilities and effectiveness required him to respect the sensibilities of others.

The Colonel believes that the University's 1996 decision to cease and prohibit flying the Rebel Flag at Ole Miss ball games was a correct one. The Colonel has heard, and respects, the Southern Heritage and free speech arguments for the "right" to fly the flag. But, the Rebel Flag was NOT ever an official symbol of the University, and was in fact flown beginning in the 1950's as a reaction to Yankee meddling in the politics of the South.

But, the slide had begun.

The next target of the prejudiced, self-righteous, political correctness crusaders was Colonel Rebel. Much more innocuous than scores of Yankee university mascots, Colonel Rebel was deemed to have arisen out of the slave-holding ante-bellum South.

Yep. He was.

Much of these re-United States' most cherished symbols and beliefs reflect back to a time when, in both the North and South, people enslaved other people. We have transcended those errors of inhumanity and now assign more proper, egalitarian virtues to the symbols we have retained from those times. And, just because an evil minority usurp a popular symbol or phrase, the good majority should not be deprived of that symbol or phrase's innocent use. Mouth-breathing, village-idiot white supremacists carry crosses and use the term "God Bless America." Shall we ban crucifixes and discontinue asking God's blessing on our land?

Believe it or not, there are prejudiced, self-righteous, political correctness crusaders who think we should.

The Colonel warns you, if you allow Colonel Rebel's banishment for that reason, the prejudiced, self-righteous, political correctness crusaders will not stop there. The Washington and Jefferson Memorials and their likenesses on our currency will be deemed inappropriate for the same reason. And once the chorus of prejudiced, self-righteous, political correctness crusaders take up YOUR treasured tradition or cherished belief in denouncing chant, you too will find yourself pushed down the slippery slope by those with an agenda you do not share.

Remember, what is deemed politically correct today, will not be tomorrow, despite the assurances of those who imposed the new rules that this is the end of the crusade. There is always the next crusade, else the pitiful lives of the prejudiced, self-righteous political correctness crusaders loses all meaning.

At the University of Mississippi, the administration has banned Colonel Rebel and taken steps to ensure he never returns. Because fans were chanting innocuously "the South will rise again" at the end of Elvis' "From Dixie with Love," that song was banned by the University's liberal elite bent on appeasing other liberal elitists. But, they assure those of us who love Ole Miss that "...the University of Mississippi will always remain the Ole Miss Rebels."

The Colonel's intelligence has been insulted, and that takes some doing.

Tolstoy's Corporal

One of the Colonel's favorite shows on cable is Charlie Rose. Mr. Rose often has very interesting guests with whom he engages in conversation about current events, recently published books, or movie releases. In many instances it provides, if nothing else, an opportunity for the Colonel to understand the mind of the enemy. Sometimes the Colonel is reminded of the old Art Linkletter Show segment wherein he questions a panel of precocious kids. Liberals, like children, say the darnedest things.

Last night, the guest was Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short, Inside the Doomsday Machine. Lewis' book details the story of a handful of investment savants who saw the rot at the core of the sub-prime mortgage investment pig sty in which the too-big-to-fail Wall Street firms were wallowing and began to sell short--in effect betting against the conventional wisdom on Wall Street. The Colonel hasn't read the book, yet, but the Rose and Lewis discussion of the events detailed in the book was riveting.

The story is intriguing on a number of levels. Perhaps the most amazing element was the fact that a couple of the short-sellers were actually Wall Street insiders who tried to tell everyone that a collapse was coming--to no avail. As preamble to this theme, Lewis begins his book with the following Leo Tolstoy quote:

"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-
witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the
simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if
he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of
doubt, what is laid before him."

The Colonel wonders if our current crop of elected national leaders are likewise so "firmly persuaded that [they] know already" that they cannot or will not see the collapse that is coming as consequence of their actions.

The Colonel identifies with Tolstoy's "most slow-witted man." In fact, he is quite certain that had Tolstoy included illustrations with the above quote, the Colonel's likeness would have appeared alongside. Heck, had the Colonel been born in late 18th Century France, there is little doubt he would have gained immortality as Napoleon's Corporal.

There is no clarity like that of a simple idea presented to a simple, uncluttered mind.

Perhaps it's time to send some folks with politically uncluttered minds to Washington to do our business.

Ard Choille!

The Colonel's Celtic blood stirs a bit this morning. St. Patrick's Day serves him not as opportunity for intemperance, but as pause for solemn remembrance. You see, the Colonel is a descendant of the MacGregors of the Scottish Highland Clan Gregor. There was a time in Scotland, when even bearing the name MacGregor or one of its septs (of which Gregory is one) meant summary execution--seems my ancestors ended up on the wrong side of one too many rebellions. Outlawed, they lived up to their designation. And, they were very good outlaws and quite savvy racketeers. An historical account the Colonel read recently indicated that the only way the other clans could deter MacGregor poaching and rustling was to pay them to stop.

So, what's the tie to St. Patrick? Well, in his autobiographical account, Confessio, young Patrick, a Roman citizen living in what is now Scotland, was abducted by Irish raiders. Patrick escaped back to Scotland in his early twenties, had a Saul-like "Road to Damascus" moment, and returned to Ireland to convert the heathen island to Catholicism.

So, were it not for Scotland...

But, since so many celebrants of St. Patrick's Day (the Colonel not among them) must inebriate themselves senseless or find no meaning in the holiday, the Colonel provides the following amusing anecdote as toast to the life of the brain cells which will meet their untimely end this day.

A man stumbles up to the only other patron in a bar and asks if he could buy him a drink.

"Oh, aye.", comes the reply.

The first man then asks: "Where are you from?"

"I'm from Scotland", replies the second man.

The first man responds: "Oh, aye? I'm from Scotland too! Let's have another round to Scotland."
"Oh, aye!", replies the second man.

Curious, the first man then asks: "Where in Scotland are you from?"

"Aberdeen", comes the reply.

"I can't believe it", says the first man. "I'm from Aberdeen, too! Let's have another drink to Aberdeen!"

"Oh, aye!", replies the second man.

Curiosity again strikes and the first man asks: "What school did you go to?"

"Saint Andrews", replies the second man. "I graduated in '62."

"This is unbelievable!", the first man says. "I went to Saint Andrews and graduated in '62, too!"

"To Saint Andrews!", they cry in unison, and down their drinks.

About that time, in comes one of the regulars and sits down at the bar. "What's been going on?" he asks the bartender.

"Nothing much," replies the bartender. "The MacGregor twins are drunk again."