Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Thursday Thuds - Post-election special edition

Thud the First: Goes to FEMA. With the Nor-Easter "Athena" hammering the Northeast Coast of the US just a week after Hybrid Storm Sandy paid her call, and the recovery and re-constitution effort from Sandy just getting started there, guess what? FEMA took a "snow day" yesterday! Yep, the EEE-mergency filk our Government is so in love with took the day off to stay warm and dry as about 4 to 6 inches of wet snow pelted down in the damaged area. That rates a resounding F.A.I..L. If you are the nuts of a recovery and reconstitution effort (I have managed in that regard in the military AND in my work as a Deputy Sheriff), you DO NOT take a day off. You stay at your post until the clean-up is done and all affected residents have services restored with which they can carry on basic life. My orders? First Sergeant, put FEMA on the list of agencies which will NOT be brought back in the Second Republic. That is all.

Thud the Second: Goes to the Grand Old Party. Yep, the Republicans, the dear "Rs". I think that it can be safely said that you good 'ol boys fairly well farged this election up, and did it by the numbers! Because I might want to do something else today besides hammer on your sorry asses, here's a bullet-point list of how this failure of yours went down:

• You were too "fair", way back two years ago when the campaign started. You let the nomination process drag on for an eternity, and that overly-long process sapped the patience and reserve of everyone who has adopted your political philosophy. How many "front-runners" did we have? Five or so, one after the other? I don't know about you hosers, but I was bored silly after the first two, eh?
• You failed to set your standard. You never gave any guidance to your nomination prospects as to what was an acceptable version of your politics, and as a result, we had political philosophies ranging from Ghengis Kahn to Karl Marx trying for the brass ring. Especially, we had the religious fundies who are guaranteed losers on a national stage (read the farging polls, idiots).
• You failed to see the threat. When Romney finally DID lock it all up, the opposition had been gifted with a full year to get his number, and they nailed their opposition down: concentrate on his work as a hedge-fund CEO, which requires the closing of some underperforming businesses. Make him look like the evil capitalist, and ignore the fact that he ran several other major entities very successfully, including the Democratik People's Republik of Taxachusetts and the Winter Olympics. You failed to predict these attacks on your man, and you also failed to steer him towards any effective response to the attacks.
• Romney's fail. You, big guy, kept your excellent executive personna hidden until the first debate. Didn't you read anything about Ronald Reagan? After years of economic malaise, Reagan got out his cheerleader suit and successfully raised everyone's hopes for recovery, while painting Carter as a guy who would never lead the USA to recovery. You should have just copied that act, but you remained Mister Starched Collar CEO Guy, and inspired no one, at least until the first debate, by which time it was too late.
• Truth Squad. Where was the GOP Truth Squad? If there was one, it was a shadow of what it should have been. Obama got away with the most outrageous lies. At least when Kerry's Swift Boat lies were exposed, and Dan Rather was exposed for leading that liar's brigade, Bush's folks managed to get it out to the voting public effectively. Not one of Axelrod's or Plouffe's lies was ever successfully refuted, or even exposed as to origin, except in the blogs, and you filk completely failed to use THAT resource.
• Voting strategy. Obama won with barely a one-percent bulge in the popular vote, but with a 10% overage of Electoral College votes. How did THAT happen? Why couldn't you see THAT coming? Instead of concentrating on trying to marginally boost your statewide take in seven states, why didn't you concentrate on taking Obama out of the race in his strongholds, such as Cuyahoga County, OH or Fairfax County, VA? You were scrambling for pebbles in the riverbed while the entire mountain was sliding down to bury you (yeah, yeah, hindsight is always 20-20).
• The abortion nuts. Mitt, you did a masterful job of keeping your controversial Mormon religion out of the spotlight, but some of the idiots carying your banner were not so masterful as to THEIR controversial religion. Akin and Mourdock come to mind with their bonehead ideas on abortion. Look, let's put it this way: the Christian religion is morally flexible enough to forgive the major sin of murder when a life is taken in a just war, or a criminal's life is taken when he is committing serious crime, so why is it wrong to abort a fetus which is only there as a result of the sin of rape? If and when you GOP wallahs take the field of political battle again, you'd better strike the Abortion streamer from your battle colors. Far too few of your followers will stay in the battle with that streamer on your battle-standard.

Okay then, those are the high points of Romney's fail. Personally, I would add to it an aggravating financial team, dunning me for dollars every time I turned around to read my emails, and trying to phone me at all hours of the day and into the night with annoying robo-dialing machines (I was TOTALLY successful, and intercepted every one of these hundreds of calls without answering any of them). This fail of 2012 was epic. A President who had a record of non-performance as bad as Obama's, and a record of dictatorial over-reach as bad as Obama's should have been an easy target. Your failure to end his predation on our society is doubly regrettable, as history is likely now to write your failure down as the last gasp of a constitutional, principled society in the battle to save itself from Socialist mediocracy. America dies, not with a stilled battle-cry on it's lips, but a whine of defeat.

I'm ready for the Second Republic now. Perhaps we'd better see what can now be done to bring the formal end of this First Republic and properly start the Second Republic.

Next election, remind me...

To never give any money to a candidate who learned to solicit at the same school where they teach Publisher's Clearing House ignorami how to do that.

The Romnoids are up to about 2 appeal emails per hour now...

cc: Romney HQ

Letter to Mitt - 10/01/12

Dear Mitt:

Hey, Big Guy, another week has gone by with nothing jumping off the page from your campaign. You're chasing your tail, Mitt, and if you never watched you dog chase it's tail, that exercise seldom ends with the dog going anywhere useful.

At this point, your advisors have probably said that you'll "kill Obama in the Debates".

Guess what, Big Guy, Obama probably knows that, and if you really DO put some dee-bate hurt on him, he has several October Surprises lined up to negate that "bump" for you.

I'm going to get vulgar here, Mitt: This ain't no farging beauty contest, and if it was, beauty being no more than skin deep, you/ve already lost. Obama's "look" is in fashion, yours isn't. You can't just match Obama's bamboozling, you have to have some of your own.

Look, Mitt, you don't have a demographics adviser, because if you did, he or she would have told you by now that the electorate is one dumb bunny, compared to the shrewd hare it was just 25-35 years ago when our education system actually educated the kiddies. The electorate today wants everything fed to it pre-digested, with results of  "programs" predicted in advance, and those "programs" are always predicted to succeed, aren't they, Mitt? History notwithstanding.

The electorate might listen to a few of your words about job creation, but since getting to the nub of the complex subject requires thought, prolonged, critical, sustained thought, they won't and/or can't do it. Obama comes along and says "give me enough money, and I will buy the jobs for you". Obama's jobs program is an economic sham, of course, and he doesn't have the money, but the lie has sound-bite qualities that your presentations on jobs don't. You give us lectures in economics, Obama gives us promises of spendable dollars. They are phony promises, but when the dumb electorate doesn't know that, that electorate will follow those lies to the voting booth and re-elect Obama.

Look, Big Guy, everyone who is going to vote for you because of your conservative economics is already in your column. To round up the few swing voters that your current campaign strategy hasn't gotten to yet, you have to do one of two things:

• You have to go negative the rest of the way, and hammer Obama flat, tell the folks that he is a liar, and do it every day for a month, or:
• You have to have something new, some wedge issue that will resonate, will knock Obama flat, AND keep Obama from getting back up again. I outlined that for you here.

If you can't manage either one of those two things, you've just wasted the money I gave you, and a lot of other folks' dough as well.

Hammer time, Mitt. It's hammer time. You know the hammer issues. Get them on the air. 

Letter to Mitt - 09-26-12 - Updated!

Mitt, we haven't talked in over two weeks, and in that time, you campaign has gone nowhere, except maybe downhill. Your peeps have challenged the MSM on their gundecked "polls", but that's not resonating. If you don't do something soon to remove the MSM from their attack-Mitt mode, you will lose the election.

What to do?

Here's an idea that will take them out of the game, and put YOU in charge of what they say for the next five or so weeks until the election.

Start announcing your Cabinet. Yes, I know you are probably not prepared for this, maybe haven't even named a Transition Manager yet, but I know you have to have had discussions with prospects.

Start with someone important, like Treasury or State. Name the person, then sit back and watch what the media will do. Here's how it should break out:

1. First, they and Obama will howl that it's not traditional. Your reply will be, "so what", then "all we're doing is giving our voters a real choice". Some really brainy people from the (D)onk side will concede that it's a brilliant move.
2. The press will then have to start chasing the prospective Cabinet Secretary. There are only so many minutes in a broadcast day, and that takes away minutes from their incessant attacks on YOU, Mitt.
3. After a few days, do it again. With the second announcement, all the press will be able to do is react, then speculate about who all the rest of them will be, etc. Obama's time before the press will shrink, and YOUR time before the press will shrink, both good things, because, let's face it, Mitt, you have all the appeal now of a mud fence.
4. Quickly, the focus of campaigning will be not on you, not on Obama, but on your choices. You can then restrict your speeches to promoting your choices, which offers less fodder for the Obama War Room to grind you up with.
5. (The Update!) The elephant almost got out of the room un-noticed. This plan uses the tried and true "Assumed Close" method of salesmanship. I've sold intangibles (advertising) in my life, and I'm here to tell you that without the assumed close system, you don't sell water to a man dying of thirst in the desert, but with it, you can sell oil to an Arab Sheik who has it coming out his ears.

Word of advice: for this new tactic to work, the prospective appointees have to be solid people, not re-used hacks leftover from GWB43. There MIGHT be a few GWB43 people who would be decent, Ambassador John Bolton or Condi Rice come to mind, but leave out party hacks like Sununu, who, distressingly, is turning up more and more in front of GOP cameras.

Your election should be about ending the US move towards Socialism, and making that work means having some outstanding administrators to be able to get to the heart of the most damaging parts of Obama's destruction of individual enterprise, and ripping them out by the roots. That has to be reflected not only in the Cabinet Secretaries, but all the way down into the daily work force of the Government. You MUST have people working for you who can manage the Un-Do. GWB43 had his chance after Clinton's leftward moves, but he failed to change anything, and now you MUST.

Get to it, Mitt, this Nation isn't going to be worth a flying fark if we get Four More of Obama. 

Letter to Mitt - 09-11-12

No, this letter isn't about the 9-11 attack, I'm convinced that you are properly respectful in that area of remembrance.

This letter is about the biggest and stealthiest weapon the Socialists have, and one that they use to undermine our Nation every day. In this respect, they are far more dangerous than the Islamists who perpetrated the attacks on 9-11-01.

The weapon to which I refer is environmental extremism, and no, it's not in the form of a "hockey stick" wielded by Al Gore, either. He was pretty much laughed off the stage and has retired to his counting room to count his millions.

The current emphasis of the environmental extremists is coal.

There is currently a full-on War on Coal in progress.

The facts are simple: the burning of coal to make heat, and the use of that heat to generate electricity, is an old technology, one which has become somewhat supplanted by newer electric-generation technologies, but not replaced by them. We still need coal to generate enough electricity to keep our economy running. That's a fact. Without coal-burning power plants in operation, we would have at least a 10% shortfall in power to feed the electric grid, some say as much as a 20% shortfall.

Since all the rigging of "global warming" statistics, the "Carbon Footprint" people have toned down their rhetoric somewhat, but only to switch tactics because of a new economic development in the coal business: we have offers from China to buy as much coal as we can load onto their contracted ships. We could export as much as 400,000 tons per day from West Coast ports if the enviros are to be believed. Even if you cut that figure back by a third for the usual enviro inflation of all "evils", it's still 250,000 tons per day. That coal money would go towards reducing our horrible balance of payments for all the importing of Chinese goods we do, and that's a GOOD thing.

As much as the Socialists love China, they hate the idea of burning all that coal over there, they hate the "Carbon Footprint". Rather than bring up that issue to their puppet-masters in Beijing however, they try to short-circuit the coal on it's transport from the mines in the Powder River Basin via railroad, to the proposed ports in the Pacific Northwest. All of a sudden, coal trains are Evil Incarnate around here. The Socialist/Enviro-whackos reason that if they can stop the coal from getting from the mines to the ships, they will prevent it's burning and thereby "save the planet". Of course, we all know about their list of "threats to the planet". None of them stand the light of investigative science. None of them.

Now it gets local.

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad would be moving that coal. They have the trackage, they have the motive power, and they own the coal cars to do it, and will build more without a dime of taxpayer money if they need to. The only thing stopping them is the Socialists, who don't want to let the railroad build the waterside coal terminals along the Columbia River and in the Puget Sound, and now, don't want to let them pull coal trains through this County.

Where's Mitt?

Mitt Romney has been conspicuously absent on the War on Coal, just as he's been mostly absent from the Pacific Northwest. If Mitt thinks that this is too hot an issue to take on, it simply shows that he will be a GW Bush kind of President if elected, and will never get his hands dirty taking on the Environmental Marxists mano-a-mano. If Mitt doesn't want to get down and dirty in the War on Coal, maybe it's time to say he's not our man. Maybe, just maybe, we'd be better electing the Devil We Know, than a wuss who won't ever take on the real enemy of our Nation.

In case you don't think that the eviro-whackos are the enemy, you may not live where I live. Those Marxist idiots took over this once-vibrant state in the 1980's, shut down it's most active industrial base, logging and wood-fiber production, and have since taken aim at most other things that they think are Threats to the Planet. Their financing comes out of California, where the Sierra Club taps into the mega-rich to develop the huge war-chests necesary to buy whole states like Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

So, Mitt, are you going to stand up and be counted on as a leader against the enviros, or are you, like GWB43, just going to watch them tear down what's left of natural resource management and use?

We're waiting, Mitt. I promise NOT to vote for you until I see you weigh in on the correct side in the War on Coal.

Thursday Thuds, Labor Day Edition

Yep, it's early for Labor Day, but I might just be out for Dove season then...little buggers can make almost 60 mph, and they have only two bites of meat on them, but there are a LOT of them this year. Last week, there were dove and bobwhite quail EVERYWHERE we traveled East of the Cascades. I have the perfect gun for them, an antique L.C. Smith SxS 12, full & modified, and even though it is 97 years old, it has true-steel barrels, not Damascus, and will easily handle the low-base loads I hunt small birds with. In fact, it handles high-brass heavy duck loads just fine as well.

This weekend, I'm off to the High Cascades to attend a wedding. It will be the marriage of my best buddy's step-daughter. I've known her since 1985, and watched her grow up, from a precocious little girl who used to share her Mom's bathtub with my youngest (now Doctor) daughter, after playing outside and getting all muddy. Those were the days when my buddy was courting his second wife, a recent widow.

Heather grew up alongside my Erin, in the same day-care, in the same schools, and they went to the University of Oregon together to learn how to be liberals. Erin came out Cum Laude in Pre-Med and Microbiology, and Heather came out Cum Laude in Architecture. Both stayed on for a fifth year, Erin to get a business major added to her degree, and Heather to get her Diploma in Architecture, which takes graduate-level work.

Erin takes broken people and puts them back together in the ER, and Heather takes the dreams of companies for new office buildings, and breaks them, putting them back together with greater efficiency and better form to promote greater productivity and reduced cost.

Heather is an outdoor person, so she is getting hitched at a High Cascades resort which caters to sportsmen and women in all seasons. Photos may follow. I'm dragging Petey the Pop-Up camper up the mountain to serve as overflow lodging, and I have cooked a Chili for her Chili Contest:

Download TopGun Chili Reader (Open Office)

Download TopGun Chili Reader (PDF)

Without further ado, off to the Thuds.

Thud the First:

NBC News. They announced that they are covering exactly ONE hour of the GOP Convention on three nights. Said something about advertising revenue. OK, then they expect much better revenue from the (D)onk Convention a week later? They admitted that they will be covering much more of that Convention. Can you say In The Tank for Obama? I knew you could. This old fart thinks that if the press is going to shill for a political agenda, they ought to either admit it or quit it. Maybe, in the Second Republic, the next Constitution might actually figure out how to have a free AND non-partisan press.

Thud the Second: The Obama Administration, again. This time, they had their shill claim that Obama has "created more jobs than Ronald Reagan did", and is therefore, better for business. OK, if you buy that stinking pile of manure as the Truth, I have eleven, soon to be twelve bridges that I own here in Portland, and will make you a package deal, very cheap... Lessee here, what was the population of the USA back then as compared to now? What was the definition of a "created job" then as compared to now (hint: today, a "job" is today considered one half of one FTE (full time equivalent) for one month (15 days of work). In other words, seventy hours of work is a full-time job under Obama! This was the definition we were shown in the fine print back when the "shovel-ready" crap was being shoveled our way. I seem to recall, but can't find it, that the old Federal definition of a FTE was 2080 hours of work in a calendar year, and half-time (one half of one FTE) was 1040 hours. At least, that was what the last big Federal Jobs Program, CETA, was based on. Of course, all this begs the questions such as: government jobs vs. private jobs; creating jobs while stifling more than you create (with regulations), etc, etc, ad nauseam.

Thud the Third:

Mittens gets this one. The current best estimate of the GOP's electoral votes has the number at 191, with 79 more needed to guarantee a Romney win. So what does the Stupid Party do? They promise to fit a plank into their platform that calls for an abortion ban. Last time this issue was polled, I seem to recall that well over 60% of voters supported the Roe vs. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman's right to choose to abort or not. This issue is a loser for the GOP, because when push comes to shove in the voting booths in November, GOP voters are going to vote for Mittens whether that plank is there or not, but the tiny number of swing voters, those who are expected to swing this obviously-close election, might just see that plank as a sufficient negative not to pull the GOP lever. The GOP loads up it's gun, once again, and points it right at it's own foot. BTW, that THUD! you hear in November will be the Constitution taking it's last fall.

Thud Three-A, Bonus Thud: With the above turd stinking up it's pocket, it says here that Romney wants to get back to the Economy, stupid. Starting a hormone-fired fight within the GOP over Biblical issues isn't the way to do it, Mittens.

Thud the Fourth: Minor thud here, but wastes of resources gravels my butt. About 6 weeks ago, I sent Mittens a donation of $50. My spouse also sent him some $$$. Together, we get around 3-5 appeals per day in the mail. Mittens won't use window envelopes, so I have to shred the pre-printed forms in each appeal, the appeal letter AND the envelope from each one (my security program has as it's cornerstone that nothing with our names on it goes into the trash).

Thud the Fifth: Dregs of Sass-siety Edition: The porno industry is again facing a delay in filming caused by actors with STDs. This has happened before. In similar news, there is now a reported skin infection which can be gotten in tattoo parlors. Who could have guessed THAT? God may keep you healthy, but the Devil has a large bag of disease to take you, body AND soul. Forget that at your peril.

That will be all, readers. Enjoy your weekend. 

Letter to Mitt - 07292012

Dear Mitt Romney:

How are you sir? I hope all is well and going according to your plan to restore some sanity to the Executive Branch of our Government.

Two days ago, our Nation just barely evaded the biggest threat it's Constitution has ever faced. That threat was to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the right arm of the Bill of Rights, the Right of every Citizen to Keep and Bear Arms. At the last possible moment, after previously encouraging the United Nations to continue work on their gun-grabbing Treaty on Small Arms, which has, as it's premise, that signatory Nations must be in complete control of all firearms in those Nations, President Obama looked at the new bi-partisan coalition of 51 Senators who had promised to reject the Treaty's ratification, and he blinked, sending the UN a message which obfuscated some language in the Treaty, and the treaty thereby didn't make it out of it's Committee in time for consideration by the General Assembly.

This was a very close call, as your advisers must have told you. Had Obama signed that treaty, and had it been ratified, you would have had to choose to abrogate it in favor of your Oath of Office upon your election, or begin the process of trying to abrogate our own Constitution. Had Obama signed it, but it had NOT been ratified, you would have been under heavy pressure to get it ratified when you took office.

If I may make a humble suggestion, sir, will you please ask Mr. Obama, both now and in the coming Presidential Debates, to state why he thought HIS own Oath of Office could be so casually tossed aside in favor of this Treaty?

It's been years since the Treaty was first proposed, and every US President up to Obama told the United Nations, in strong language, not to darken our door with it. Obama said that he would consider it, and thereby encouraged the UN to actually produce such a treaty.

This entire Treaty debacle brings up a more important point: since the UN is directly involved with trying to tear down one Civil Right in our Bill of Rights (and threatening the second, our First Amendment), why are they still allowed domicile on our shores?

No Federal official has ever had permission to support any Government which worked in direct opposition to our Constitution, in fact, most Federal Officials have taken oaths to fight such governments.

Get us out of the United Nations, Mitt, and get the United Nations out of the US. They are sworn enemies of our Constitution, and thereby of this Nation.

Respectfully, 

George Schneider,

Major,

United States Air Force Reserve, Retired

Letters to Mitt (new category)

With this blog-post, I start a dialog with Mitt Romney, who, as stated previously, I now support, with my blog AND my money. My support is unconditional, but that doesn't mean I won't have questions for Mitt Romney.

Here is my first question, and you should know why it's first:

Dear Mitt:

Next January, when you are inaugurated and assume the heavy mantle of Commander in Chief, will your policy of winning wars differ from Barack Obama's?

I write this because to me, a Veteran of a foreign war (Vietnam) and retired USAF officer, Obama's biggest failing to me is NOT his mis-handling of the economy, it's his mis-handling of the job of CIC.

When you are inaugurated, the war in Afghanistan will still be going on. Policies put in place by Barack Obama are causing our military position in that war to become hopeless. For example, Rules Of Engagement (ROE) prohibit our troops from shooting into dwellings from which they have been fired upon. This rule, while effective at protecting civilians who might or might not be in those Taliban-occupied dwellings of their own free will, also gives the Taliban perfect cover from which to attack our patrolling troops. Using the element of surprise, the Taliban can fire upon our forces, then duck out of sight in those houses/compounds, and we can't return effective fires to destroy them. It has been the policy in organized warfare up to now that any dwelling used as cover by any belligerent may be taken under any available fires without the consequence of turning the attacking party into war criminals if they kill or wound civilians in the dwelling. Barack Obama changed that, probably encouraged to do so by Hamid Karzai, the corrupt and turncoat chief-of-thugs in that nation. This one ROE insures the defeat of the USA in this war, and makes the thousands of lives given by our men and women in combat into a gigantic waste.

When inaugurated, will you immediately issue a list of the crippling ROEs that you are rescinding? Will this ROE be on that list? Will all ROEs which are proven to cost lives and military effectiveness be rescinded? Will you stop supporting the crooked turncoat Karzai?

All veterans want to know the answers to these questions, Mitt. The economy will be Job One, for sure, but your role as CIC will be "Responsibility One". Barack Obama, who stated forever (up until he was elected President) that he was anti-war, has continued to prove that anti-war credential, and the ROEs are the proof. Are YOU going to reverse this untimely course of events, Mitt Romney?

Yours Truly, in War or Peace,

George Schneider, Major, USAFR, Retired.

(Reversing a long-standing policy of this blog, I've signed this letter.)