Character

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

- Phillips Brooks (1835 –1893), noted clergyman and author

Republican debate

I hate to say it, but in my opinion Huckabee easily won the debate tonight.  Part of that was due to McCain dragging Romney down into a stupid argument about "timetables".  Lois almost came unglued.  I think she'll vote for Hillary now before she'd ever vote for McCain.  Even Ron Paul came off better than McCain, except for his dumb isolationism.  Huckabee definitely had the best (smoothest?) answers, but I'm afraid all he's going to do is split the conservative vote with Romney and hand the nomination to McCain. 

Sex: work vs. pleasure

The Commanding Officer of a Marine regiment was about to start the morning briefing to his staff and Battalion and Company Commanders. While waiting for the coffee machine to finish it's brewing, he decided to pose a question to all assembled. He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed to get his usual amount of sound sleep. He posed the question of just how much of sex was "work" and how much of it was "pleasure"?

The X.O. chimed in with 75% vs. 25% in favor of work.

A Captain said it was 50 – 50%.

The Colonel's Aide, a Lt., responded with a 25-75% in favor of pleasure, depending on his state of "inebriation" at the time.

There being no consensus, the Colonel turned to the PFC who was in charge of making the coffee. What was HIS opinion?

With no hesitation, the very young PFC responded: "Sir, it has to be 100% pleasure".

The Colonel was surprised and asked why?

"Well, Sir," began the PFC, "if there was any work involved the Officers would have me doing it for them."



God Bless the United States Marine Corps.

Gas pipeline rupture

This picture shows what happens when a 30" natural gas pipeline, operating at over 900 psi, ruptures and ingnites. It happened on I-20 near Delhi, Louisiana, on Dec.14, 2007. It's interesting to me because as a Gas Controller about 20 years ago I operated this line. Fifty years ago my Dad helped build it.

photo by Clay Cooper III

Whose abortion "rights"?

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizes rival Barack Obama's record on abortion rights in a mailing sent to New Hampshire voters.

The mailer says that seven times during his time in the Illinois state Senate, Obama declined to take a position on abortion bills, while Clinton has been a defender of abortion rights.

During his eight years in the legislature, Obama cast a number of votes on abortion and received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive, a vote that especially riled abortion opponents. [link]

Read that last line one more time...Barack Obama "voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive."

And Hillary Clinton is criticizing his record on "abortion rights." How could anyone vote for either one of these people?

Cold spell soon to replace global warming

MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.   Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
…Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.  [link]

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

 

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
- Thomas Carlyle