Travel destination......Coober Pedy
It seems to me that there are very few truly unique travel destinations left in this ever smaller world. Spots that offer something no one else on the planet has, albeit it not for the faint of heart. Coober Pedy appears to be one of those locales, after all this is where Mad Max was filmed. In exploring my new Sister City online I've discovered some things that are really amazing. Like... some large degree of the population of the town lives underground. The Cooberites, Gary there tells me they are called, are not particularly to be considered troglodytes, they are just wise since the temperatures in the middle of the Outback can get, in a word, scorching. They also have an almost unlimited supply of tunnels created by opal mining with which to set up house.

Some of the businesses just bespeak adventure and the out of the ordinary experience. On my trip to to Coober Pedy, I think I'd like to stay at The Mud Hut Motel. I like the thought that one of the best places in town to stay on vacation is called The Mud Hut. Besides, the picture shows a windmill on the property, making me feel right at home. And so not to have to wilt in 100° heat, I believe I'll eat underground at the Old Miner's Dugout Cafe where, it is advertised, "some of the dishes have never been served in Australia before...". Makes one wonder, but this is an adventure vacation.

But perhaps the most interesting adventure item, and one I've never seen anywhere else is the 12 hour Mail Truck Run. As advertised....."A 12 hour, 600km adventure visiting remote Australia on the Coober Pedy – Oodnadatta – William Creek Mail Truck. Drive with the mailman and visit remote outposts as we deliver the mail. Walk around towns we pass through and visit many points of interest". You tell me where else can you pay to go ride for 12 hours with a mail truck. As I've mentioned before.....this looks like my kind of place!

And there's more to do in Coober Pedy than can be described in this short space. Like the Night Sky Tour. If you are a city slicker and have never seen the night sky in a remote area of the world, you would be stunned. Then there is the Outback Camel Tour and Desert Cave Tour. Like I said, just too much to do in the Greater Coober Pedy area!

In a token of friendship to the Sister City, I have been in contact with Gary, purveyor of The Coober Pedy News, and we should begin work soon on transfering their online newspaper into a more functional Blog version of the News. And thanks to "Slatts" for his mention and assistance in helping to make Coober Pedy a household word here in the United States.

Coober Pedy.....
Actually, I had heard of Coober Pedy , Australia in the past, but barely. The town is synonomous with opals, those milky gems that adorn so many rings, pendants and brooches. It took my online friend, journalist Bernard Slattery in Geelong Australia to bring the town to my attention in a more intimate way. Slatts, being the professional journalist that he is, has been intriqued by the towns newspaper which is viewed online at, The Coober Pedy News. Directed there by Slatts, I too now enjoy the news from Coober Pedy and have become enthralled myself. This is life, news the way it's supposed to be, information by and for the people.

To tell you the truth, perhaps I was attracted to Coober Pedy because it seems to me to be a lot like many smaller towns in West Texas. Honest, hard working, hard living folks who keep going in a tough business because they are optimists. Down in the mines they think themselves one shovel load away from wealth and eternal ease, which is the mentality at heart with those of us in the oil and gas business. That next well will produce the motherlode! Most don't, some just break even, a few make a fair return, but hope springs eternal for the really BIG ONE. Optimism keeps poor people happy.

Midland, Texas has several official Sister Cities, most notably Dongying, China a large and vast new city which is the hub of the Chinese oil industry. That's all well and good, but I'm chosing Coober Pedy to be my personal Sister City, I identify more with the Bubba's of the World and anything I can do to promote their cause, I will. I hope you'll keep in touch with The Coober Pedy News. You never know what the Cooberites are up to! And by the way, the last three lines of the current issue quote me. Well actually a comment I made on Slatts News, but any newspaper that quotes me, even slightly has my undying support.

When indeed.....?
Well they say, they being everyone, when is the wedding? We say, this is a good question, but we just don't know. Not long, but really not too short a period of time. Not June of 2004, but not next month either.

There really is much to be done prenuptially. Get Julie's house on the market. Get young Jack started at his new school. Decide which pieces of two sets of furniture stay, which go. Clear space in the Bedford Drive residence for two more occupants...and another dog. Then there is the Air Show in late September of which I am commited to assist in running. A reunion in San Antonio late in October that we don't want to miss, a reunion in D.C. in early November that we don't want to miss......and then those pesky holidays Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And don't even get started on where......my oh my, where? Today while talking to an old friend who is now in Miami, I had a suggestion for where and when. The suggestion was made so that she and her husband could be sure to attend. They have been some of my closest friends over the years, such good friends that I lived with them at Ft. Benning, Ga. in 1971. Tom, is one of the highest ranking Generals in the Army, Four Stars, and travels constantly so it would be nice be able to accomodate them. Plus, I don't know many people who have Four Star Generals in their wedding....so that would be memorable. We'll see.....and don't worry the "where" in the suggestion was not Miami.

So for now, we'll concentrate on first things, first. We are still trying to choose between two rings for Julie. We'll decide on the ring this week and move on from there.........

A Love Story.....
I almost did not go to the Christmas party that friends Lori and Joe were having during the holiday season of 2001. I wasn't sure I really felt like going alone. But I did go. Joe and Lori are interesting people and neighbors and I usually see friends from my high school days, business acquaintances or older couples who are friends of my folks and whom I've known for 40 years. I went, and I did see many friends......however I didn't see the girl who saw me.

Joe and Lori live in the next block, and their alley is on my regular dog walk route, so it didn't surprise me when I saw them several days later. What did surprise me was that Lori said there was someone at the party who had asked about me. Who was I and was I unattached? A tall blonde girl Lori added. It had been a moderately large party and I had been speaking with friends, so I said, no I had not noticed and then I wracked my subconscious mind trying to remember a tall blonde. Lori asked if I might be interested in being "fixed up" with the tall blonde, Julie . Frankly I was in no hurry to be fixed up, but I consented.

Lori told me that Julie was also in no hurry, having things in her own life that needed to be attended to, so months went by with Lori asking me periodically if I was still interested. I was, but nothing seemed to happen to move the situation forward. Then sometime in April, with Lori asking me once again.....we decided that I would just give this Julie a call. So, call I did, and call and call. The line always seemed busy or the answering machine engaged. I was about to give up, when one day there was a message on my answering system from "Julie" indicating that she heard that I was trying to call....and to please try again. Luckily I did, we talked and made a date to go to a baseball game.

It seems like yesterday that I was readying myself for my first blind date in decades, if indeed I had ever gone on a blind date. I can't remember. But go I did, driving to her house and again I can still feel the nervous anticipation of a first meeting as if it just happened. Then the door opened and I saw a beautiful smiling face. After the first few moments, I can't recall any jitters between us and certainly no lack of conversation. Julie is interested in art, as am I. Julie is interested in history, as am I. No subject was foreign to our common interests. We had a great time at the ballgame, and I took my first picture of her there. When I look at that photo today, I still have the feeling I had then......"this girl is something special".

The next day Julie stopped by my house and we went to an art show where she helped me pick out a perfect oil painting for my fireplace.....our fireplace actually because this last Sunday Julie said that she would be my wife.

Julie is a sophisticated small town girl. A sweet, kind, beautiful, intelligent, loving person. My best friend, and a terrific mother to her kids Amanda and Jack. I never dreamed that I would find anyone so perfectly matched to me. Although I think that at times Julie had her doubts about the outcome of our relationship, probably caused by me. I have never had anyone who so obviously loved and adored me, and tells me so on a daily basis. I suppose I really didn't know how to fully react to this. I do now. I want her to be my wife and tell her every day how much I love her and what she means to me. And to have Jack in our family with all the joy that brings to enhance my.....our lives.

The engagement was made "official" last night when I asked nine year old Jack for his Mom's hand in marriage. Graciously and gladly he consented, adding with a sly boyish grin, "I suspected something like this........" So did I.

Bill of No Rights.........

Perhaps you have read the following which has been attributed to State Representative Mitchell Kaye from Georgia. If you haven't you will be glad you did.

"We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, delusional and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights."

ARTICLE I:
You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II:
You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be ... and like the rest of us you need to simply deal with it.

ARTICLE III:
You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV:
You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V:
You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII:
You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV, pool tables, weight rooms or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII:
You don't have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of part time jobs, education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE IX:
You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness --which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights,"

ARTICLE X:
This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from. We welcome you here. English is our language and like the one you left behind, we also have a culture. Learn it or go back to the country and the living conditions you were fleeing.

Thanks to alert reader Don Dulin

Praise be...!
There will be news of glad tidings and great joy to be announced shortly.......
stay tuned. :>)

No Joy.......
And in this time of personal joy....condolences to James Likeks

Chores.....
Mowing and edging the lawn, cutting big limbs out of big trees and hauling them off in 100° weather will either make you a lot tougher or kill you. I'm still here.......so I guess I'm a tad tougher but it was touch and go for awhile.

I knew it.....!
Research reported in the British Journal of Ophthalmology on Tuesday showed that a tight necktie elevates blood pressure in the eye, raising the risks of developing glaucoma. I would add that my studies show that it also adds to the risk of tinnitus...or ringing in the ears. My eyes aren't the greatest anymore and I have had tinnitus for a decade, at least that's what I think they said.....I couldn't hear the doctor all that well.

Thankfully we here in Midland Texas were well aware of the deadly necktie syndrome years ago. We don't wear ties here except to church and most funerals. Those who do wear ties [along with the dreaded "Suit"] are undesireable types such as lawyers, bankers and people from big cities like New York. This informal dress code has it's advantages in that if we see someone approaching on the street wearing a necktie, we can be fairly certain that they fall into the "undesireable class" mentioned above and we can do our utmost to avoid them. It works fairly well, except when cornered in small confined places like offices or restaurants.

Having gone tieless for over 12 years now, I think I may have saved my eyesight, but the ringing in my ears [actually more of a whining, hissing sound] is permanent and has caused me much personal consternation. The doctors told me that most likely the tinnitus was caused by my years in the Army....of firing large weapons and having explosions and helicopter transmissions in close proximity to my ears.

But now I know better. It was the neckties. I'm not going to live like this anymore without some sort of financial compensation. Most of my assorted ties were nondescript brands of which the makers are probably now defunct. But......my two favorites, which I wore often were original Jerry Garcia's . I'll bet the Grateful Dead made a ton of money and being the socially responsible band that they are they probably have a permenant fund set up to take care of tinnitus victims like me.

Thanks for the Memories...
Bob Hope is gone and there won't be another like him. He was the consumate entertainer, movie star and luminary whose career spanned nine decades in two different centuries and progressed from the vaudeville stage, through radio, to film and then into television. A man who was born when Teddy Roosevelt was President and whose lifetime lasted through 17 different Presidents, but who was always on top of current events in order to keep his act fresh.

But as much as he will be remembered as the biggest name entertainer in the world, there are countless millions who will remember him for his work in bringing some small joy to our troops in every conceivable locale in the world. The photo of Joey Heatherton, above, was taken by my friend Joe Galloway at the Bob Hope Christmas show in An Khe, Vietnam in 1965, one of the first of very many shows Mr. Hope brought to Vietnam. Veterans will always have a soft spot in their hearts for this man who brought one small little bit of home to servicemen far from friends and loved ones. So much so that a special Veterans Bob Hope Memorial is being built in San Diego to show our gratitude. It's the least we can do.....thanks Bob, for the memories!

Lance....!
Congratulations to fellow Texan Lance, "chamois in his Lycra pants" Armstrong in his record tieing fifth win in the Tour de France! A magnificent performance in a sport that is little appreciated in his home country, and is one of the most grueling events in all of sports.

The beauty of this triumph beyond the sporting aspect is the severe pain it must cause the French, for which the Tour is a national obsession, in watching an American rider dominate. Lance rides for the U.S. Postal Service team, and I count the small amount of tax dollars outlayed on supporting the team some of the best money spent if it makes the Frogs choke on a big lump of rotten limburger cheese!

How It All Began - Conservatives And Liberals...
A great piece by Fritz Pettyjohn of Stanford Ca. Forwarded by email by an old Huey driver...

The division of the human family into its two distinct branches, liberals and conservatives, occurred some 20,000 years ago. Until then all humans coexisted as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. A thousand generations ago, in the pivotal event of societal evolution, beer was invented. This epochal innovation was both the foundation of modern civilization and the occasion of the great bifurcation of humanity into its two distinct subgroups.

Once beer was discovered, our prehistoric forebearers decided it was time to settle down. Making beer required grain, and securing a steady supply of it ordained the invention of agriculture. After that was accomplished, ancient man quickly, and unfairly, consigned actual cultivation to women. Men couldn't just run off, willy-nilly, however. Neither the glass bottle nor the aluminum can had yet been invented, so it was necessary to stick pretty close to home, and the brewery. This left our male ancestors with a lot of time on their hands, and led to the division of the species, which persists to this day. Some men tried to conserve remnants of the old way of life (hence the term "conservative") by spending their days in the open field in the dangerous pursuit of big game animals. At night they would roast their prey at a big barbecue, and afterwards sat around the fire drinking beer, and telling off color jokes.

Other, more timid, souls stayed closer to home. They are responsible for the domestication of cats and the invention of group therapy. Mostly, they sat around worrying about how life wasn't fair and concocting elaborate schemes to "liberate" themselves from inequity (thus their designation as "liberals"). In the evening they gathered around their fire, nibbling on fruit and nuts, sharing their innermost feelings. Today some liberals try to pretend they're really sort of conservative, and sometimes succeed in confusing people. The following are a few tips to use in distinguishing the two types.

By definition liberals believe in big government and high taxes. Life is unfair and the government is there to do something about it. Most people are too stupid to spend untaxed income wisely, they say, and high taxes allow liberals in government to do a better job of it. Conservatives don't like government, and, aside from the military, wish it would just go away. They hate taxes, regulations, speed limits, and small cars. Typical conservatives are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh and, up there with the Big Man in the Sky, the incomparable John Wayne. Typical liberals are Dustin Hoffman, Shirley McLaine, Pee Wee Herman, Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, Barbara Streisand, Ted Turner and his former wife, the traitor Jane Fonda.

All conservatives drink beer. American beer. Some liberals like imported beer, but most prefer white wine or foreign water from a bottle. Liberals like to drive Volvos and Saabs because they're made in socialist Sweden. They like to eat weird food because it's un-American. Your basic conservative vehicle, especially in Texas, is the Chevy Suburban. It's big, it's American, it's four wheel drive, and it sucks up the gas. Conservatives eat beef, which they (surprise!) like to barbecue. Big game hunters are conservative.

Interior decorators are liberal. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule in baseball because it wasn't "fair" to make the poor pitcher take his turn at bat. Conservatives, inspired by a remark of the legendary Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Jack Lambert, believe quarterbacks should be required to wear skirts, so they can more easily be distinguished from real football players. James Brown and Ray Charles are conservatives. Michael Jackson and Milli Vanilli are liberals. Most social workers, personal injury lawyers, journalists, and group therapists are liberals. Most ranchers, loggers, professional soldiers, and oil field workers are conservatives.

Liberal jurors distrust the prosecutors and police. Conservatives figure the defendant must be guilty or he wouldn't be on trial. Most conservatives not only believe in the death penalty, they would cheerfully implement it, personally, if called upon to do so. Liberals think capital punishment is a barbaric relic, and unfair to boot. Liberals believe Europeans are, generally speaking, far more enlightened than Americans. Conservatives think they're basically decadent, as evidenced by their complete absence in wars. Typical conservative movies are "Raising Arizona", "Patton", and "Conan the Barbarian". Typical liberal movies are "Prince of Tides," "Last Tango in Paris," and "The Big Chill."

The quintessential liberal is the handicapper, the person who decides how much extra weight to saddle the faster horses with in order to make the race "fair". The American cowboy, of course, is your basic, full bore conservative. A hundred years ago an Englishman in South Dakota was trying to find the owner of a huge cattle ranch. He rode up to one of the ranch hands and asked, "Excuse me, but could you tell me where to find your Master?" To which the cowboy replied, "That sumbitch hasn't been born yet."

By Fritz Pettyjohn

Gotta' love those Cubans...

Ever inventive, a truckload of Cuban emmigrants was stopped on the high seas Wednesday as they attempted to drive their '51 Chevy truck across the Straits of Florida. The "Boruck" [boat/truck] was held up on a makeshift pontoon with a marine propeller attached to the drive train. Only 40 miles short of their objective of Miami, the Coast Guard deemed their drive a little too risky and took them into custody. I only wish that I had been on the Cutter that spotted the "ship". "Sir, pick-up truck off the port bow"!

General Motors engineers are hoping to capitalize on this new technology for an off-off road sport utility vehicle tentatively named the Chevrolet Mallard. I hope their vehicle ends up on Ebay©.

To Taos.......
Daily postings will be absent for some days as Julie and I take a break with a trip and photo shoot to Taos, New Mexico. For out of towners, Taos is about an hour north of Santa Fe and sits nestled beneath Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico at 13,161 ft. Taos is also home to what many scholars consider to be the oldest continuously occupied building in North America, the Taos Pueblo.

As anglo settlers began to settle the area, Taos was a center of the fur trade and in fact was the home of Kit Carson. Later as settlement progressed Taos became a favorite haunt for newly arrived artists and the "New Mexico" school of art was founded here. Consquently there are many great museums and galleries in Taos today. We plan to hit a few.

Today, Taos has grown a bit from my earliest visits, but is still a Mecca for art and photograpy along with some great dining and just sitting and enjoying the cool air laced with pinon pine smoke. We plan to do all these....and possibly more! :>)

Caribbean Visitor......

We always welcome visitors in West Texas, especially one's bearing rain. Tropical Storm/Hurricane/Tropical Storm Claudette now sits about 100 miles to the south of Midland, and she's brought some great weather! Mid July weather in Western Texas can be the dog days. They can be unbearably hot, deathly still and without a single cloud in the sky for weeks on end. Thanks to Claudette we have a 86°, a strong breeze and thunder showers in the area.

We are not total strangers to used up hurricanes, but usually we receive the benefit of Mexican storms coming in from the Pacific. Being so far west, we actually are almost as close to the Pacific Ocean's Gulf of California as we are to the Atlantic's Gulf of Mexico. Claudette was a wimpish storm as far as hurricanes go, but she is long lived and is bringing great rains to areas of Texas that really need it. Perhaps the Rio Grande will start flowing again! Yes, for out of towners, this great river virtually stopped flowing and for several years now, it has not even been able to muster up the spit to make it all the way to the sea.....it just stops or rather, just peters out in southern Texas.

What made me chose this topic this fine evening was a thought I had as I was walking the Big Gold Dog and watching the moving bands of thunder storms in the area. It occured to me what an amazing thing this is....this storm that had it's origins in the Caribbean thousands of miles away over lush tropical isles, raining itself out over hundreds of square miles in the deserts of the Southwest. It makes one feel rather small. I think that this is a good feeling sometimes.

Down Home....
One of the real advantages of living in a smallish city is that there are some things that just never change. There are those places surviving that will take you back many decades both with the decor and in the patron's encountered there. One of those places in downtown Midland, Texas is Johnnie's Barbecue. Johnnies is essentially as it was the first time I walked in the door in 1960. The layout is the same, the chairs have been inhabitants for 50 years as have some of the patrons and of course, there is Johnnie. I can't remember a time that I have entered the joint that Johnnie wasn't been behind the serving area, as well as a few of his employees who have earned 50 year service pins.

Johnnie's constitutes a time warp. There just aren't too many places in this modern world that one can reenter his youthful haunts to find things completely unchanged. Where else can you sit in a chair you probably sat in 42 years ago with some of the same diners sitting opposite you? A place to not only remember your past, but to participate in it. Despite comments about the dubious cleanliness of the place, the methods of potato salad production, and the smoke from the septigenariuns cigarettes, Johnnies has a charm to old time West Texans that is unmistakeable. Johnnies, as mentioned, is downtown where the oil business is. Johnnies has been synonomous with lunch to old time oilmen since the 1950's the way "The Spot", several blocks over, is to breakfast and the way the much lamented and now defunct 007 Club was to strong drink and riotous living. These places are where the deals were made in the oil business. Some of the men you encounter at Johnnies today became fabulously weathly, some went broke, some did both.

Occasionally when Julie and I have lunch, I'll want to go to Johnnie's as we did today. Julie complains about having to wash the smoke out of her clothes after the meal, but the food is pretty good...standard barbecue fare. More than the food though is just the opportunity for me to travel back in time and I suppose to reconnect to my roots.

And there is always the opportunity to see a friend not recently seen. Today it was George O'Brien. George lives somewhat across the street from my folks and is someone I've always liked, a rather quiet, modest guy who is also in the oil business. He, his wife Sandy and I walk our dogs on the same route some days. George is a friendly, regular sort of guy except for one small thing...he won the Medal of Honor in Korea. You never know who'll you'll run into at Johnnie's.

Gone West.......
Aviation can be a dangerous business, especially when flying aircraft that are 60+ years old. We at the Commemorative Air Force, the CAF, have lost another aircraft and her crew. Our Heinkel He-111 went down in Cheyenne, Wyoming this week after taking off from Midland on it's way to an airshow in Montana. Apparently an engine was lost on final approach into the airfield in Cheyenne. Two of our pilots lost their lives and the aircraft is a total loss.

Of course first and foremost, condolensences go to the families of these fine men. It is heartbreaking to lose anyone in a tragic accident of this kind. I know first hand. I lost two good friends in separate aviation crashes two years ago...within one month of each other and flying the same type of vintage aircraft. It'a hard to believe that these friends are gone, and both skilled and experienced pilots. But I can state with certainty, that these men were proud of what they were doing and felt a great degree of privelage in flying this aircraft.

Equally distressing is the loss of this aircraft, the only operational and flying HE-111 in existance. The HE-111 was one of the two principle types of German bombers involved in the Battle of Britain and is a symbol of that contest, along with the English Spitfire and German ME-109. This particular Heinkel, which I photographed [above] just last year, was built in Spain not long after the Spanish civil war, and was rumored to have been Francisco Franco's personal aircraft.

We at the CAF have had discussions about flying these "one of a kind" aircraft, started seven years ago after our B-26 Marauder went down with all hands aboard here in Midland. The Marauder was the sole remaining aircraft of it's type also. Our charter has as one of it's principles "to preserve in flying condition.....". It would be a tough decision to ground any of these rare birds. I don't know how I would vote, I do love the sound of those big engines as they pass proudly overhead.

Supporting our Veterans.....??
One of the great things about America is that we can support our government, and in particular our President, but still be vociferously opposed to some of the things they [He] does. I think President G.W. Bush is doing a magnificent job on many fronts including strong action against terrorism and those who oppose our way of life.

However......there are some things that gall me and I don't mind telling the public that I think some mindsets and priorities need to be changed in the Republican led government. Today's focus is on the treatment of our Veterans and the fulfillment of our promises to Vets in trade for their service in harms way. Almost every Republican candidate in the State of Texas courts the Veteran's vote, promising in an orgy of patriotic flag waving to "honor our Vets" and "take care of our Vets". We recently elected a new congressman, who during a public TV debate not more than two months ago intoned, "we need to honor our commitment to the Veterans". OK Randy, here's your chance.

As pointed out in Joe Galloway's syndicated column, to put it succinctly, Vets are once again being given the short shaft. Veterans who complete a military career are promised a retirement stipend based upon their years of service and pay grade upon retirement. That is unless the veteran is disabled. Then the Vet will have his retirement pay deducted by the amount of his diability pay. This means that a Vet who is judged to be 100% disabled is entitled to only his disability and his retirement pay is negated. For many this means they take home less money monthly than if they had never been disabled in the service of their country.

For the record most legislators [82%] know this and had intended to rectify this injustice by approving a bill to overturn the military retirement/disability law. That is until now. Now the President's office conjectures that this would cost the budget billions of dollars over the years and is putting pressure on congress to table this bill. The pressure may work, George is a popular President and his wishes have been their commands.

I urge the President to think twice. Veterans are, by and large, a conservative voting group, they are his supporters. But as a Veteran myself, I remind George that this sort of treatment, trading veterans rights for dollars, has been going on for decades and we've about had it! And what does this tell our current troops in the "all volunteer" Army. It's a great career, just don't get seriously wounded!

Hack 'em up.......
Last week's organized "hack-a-thon" involving one hell of a lot of work by the hackers, apparently only created some small degree of mischief. Defacing a few minor websites, knocking some off the web in denial of service attacks but generally small potatos stuff. Oh boy, big fun. Time not well spent.

Now I'm no hacker, I don't have the time nor the skills at this point. But it sure sounds interesting. I have thought for some time now that if I were a hacker I would use my skills for the good of mankind. That good would be knocking scumbag spammers off their digital perches. Slamming them, causing their servers to fry and if I could, blowing up their mobile homes via the Internet, generating fake messages telling them that their Rent-a-Center furniture is being repossesed and in general causing mischief designed to make their lives miserable.

Perhaps there are hackers out there at this very moment carrying out devious plans against these spamming scabs on the butt of humankind, but I never hear about them. And I would really like to. It would give me a vicarious pleasure. So if by some mistake my small site is hacked, here for you dear hacker is an IP address to start in on: 217.107.216.18. They're home, I just heard from them tonight.

Go to the Spews Spam Report and read all about these criminals. Perhaps you'll recognize some of the fine products they want to sell you. From fake Viagra to fake sex.....they stock it all. Also notice that, as usual, the spamsite host declines to do anything about these vagrants. Where is a good hacker when we need one?

Hillbillies Revisited...
I kept looking at the picture of Buddy Ebsen as Uncle Jed posted yesterday and I thought....wow what a great show, I wish we had something like that now. Younger readers will think, "yeah, right Dude, people back in the early 60's must have been real rubes to have watched that hick show"! Simple people in simple times who would lap up anything and call it entertainment.

Not so! During the first years that TBH's was on the air we had some of the most difficult events to handle that the 20th century offered. We had a President assasinated and we thought anarchy might reign, the democratic system could collapse. We were within a cat's whisker of a real nuclear war with the Russkies over Cuba, we know only now just how close. When TBH's had been on a few years, we started losing hundreds of young men every month in Vietnam, escalating to 1000's. These were serious and tough times.

And this is the reason that The Beverly Hillbillies was so immensely popular across a wide spectum. Why? Because it was funny and it was really stupid. And.....we laughed and we knew it was really stupid. It was supposed to be stupid and we needed and appreciated stupid. Compare this to the immensely popular show genres of today, the "reality shows". The Discovery Channel has probably five shows based on the "Trading Places" premise: turn a perfectly good room into something belonging in a cheap trailer park. The major networks each seem to have several shows based on "The Bachelor" premise: get people without a real life themselves to believe that two people can actually meet in a staged competition, get married and live happily ever after.

Like The Beverly Hillbillies these shows provide some form of entertainment and are really stupid, but the difference now is that a large sgement of the population doesn't seem to know that they're stupid. So as I set down by the cement pond with a mess of hog jowls and use my 5th grade education to do some 'cypherin', I conclude that I miss shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and that 20 years from now young people will look at Trading Places reruns and think, "What a bunch of pathetic losers people were in 2003.....didn't they have lives of their own, the rubes".

R.I.P.
"Uncle Jed"

Weelll Doggies Uncle Jed, thanks for the memories. Hope you get some relaxation out by the cement pond in the sky with Granny and Ol' Duke! We'll miss ya!

Spam on Rye..

As mentioned previously, Spam is one of my pet peaves. True, it's easy enough to hit the delete button, and by having my own domains with the ability to easily change addresses it's fairly easy to manage and keep the crap to a minimun. But, some still gets through, most recently thanks to Earthlink, who didn't have tight enough security on their mail servers to stop a spam house from sending through an "alphabet attack". For you novices, this involves a spammer hitting a mail server with millions of mail request using computer generated alpha letter combinations and seeing which ones are "bounced" and which are not. The "non-bouncers" are then stored in the scumbags data file for future spamming. So...I'm getting a few spam sandwiches to my default generic Earthlink address. Thanks Earthlink!

The real reason I hate Spam is that I just don't like the thought of these morons being able to do this with impunity. Which they are generally able to do because A] it's not against the law, B] they have sophisticated software and C] because the people who could put a dent in it...won't.

I'm not naive enough to think that making Spam illegal will stop it all, but it will provide a legal basis for bringing lawsuits against the scum and make it easier to win MONEY from the spammers...which is all they care about and which will hurt them. It would also allow the legal system to keep track of those offenders who are convicted and start up new spam operations. At present, when a spammer is cut off from his ISP or Internet backbone connection, it is a matter of days before they spring up elsewhere.

The software developed for the spam industry is significant. Just several years ago, I could trackback through the email header and generally tell the IP address and the point of origin of the spam message. Not today. Their software creates fake email headers and shows fake IP addresses as the rule. It does no good to try and trackback. The reply addresses are fake as are the ID message lines. I have a little program which creates fake "bounce" messages, designed to send mail back to spammers announcing that "this is not a good address" and hopefully they would delete my address from their database. This is no longer useful.

There is one source link to the spammers that can still be traced. In order for the spammer to sell you some fake Viagra, he has to have a point of sale...usually a website. Now some of these are "confuscated" web addresses, in other words they are written in various coding that the average person could not decipher in order to report. But through the links I'll provide below you can do this. Many addresses linked on spam are normal Dot.Com addresses. The trick is to find out who is really behind this address. Be forewarned that the owners listed are mostly fake names and addresses commonly now coming from China or Brazil. But, and a big But....what you want to determine is how, what route and backbone server, does the URL get from the spam site to your computer. Sad to say, this is commonly through large well known companies such as Verio, ATT, Cable and Wireless or Verizon who really don't give a crap about your little complaint. Until, hopefully, they get hundreds of thousands or millions of complaints. These are the people who have the power to shut spam sales sites down, by blocking the IP addresses of the offenders. This is why I still send Abuse reports on every piece of spam I receive. If everyone did, perhaps they'd listen.

OK, here are two useful sites to start to chase Spam.

Sam Spade: allows you to do WHOIS searches, i.e. see how owns the site, do a TRACEROUTE to determine where the spam site URL enters the Internet backbone [usually a large well known company 5 or 6 hops up the list]. Allows you to deciper the "confuscated" URL's.

UXN Spam Combat: Here I utilize the Traceroute function and the very important SPEWS refernce. SPEWS keeps track of well known spam operations and can help you figure out the latest. You'll need the numeric IP address for this one. [many Spams are using html formated mail "right click" and use "source" to see the associated URL for the site.]

While using these tools remember: Never send a reply back to a spammer, nor use their "take me off your list" return address. This just confirms that your address is active...! You can send complaints to legitimate ISP's or Backbone providers by using the email address abuse@whomever.net. Always send a copy to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. They won't act on the complaint but they are providing the statistics on Spam to the Congress [don't laugh, please].

There is some thought that since, hopefully, fewer and fewer people are buying anything from these scum, they will eventually implode. The biggest source of their revenue seems to come from selling spam email lists and spam software to each other. But until that happens, report the scumbags. Good luck and good hunting!

Independence Day...!
God Bless America, land of the Free and Home of the Brave...

And as a reminder that Freedom is Not Free, and why we should remember at what price our liberty is held and what the cost is when we take it for granted, please take the time to view Why we should not forget!

Mysterious Blob.....
Scientists in Chile are studying the remains of a mysterious huge gelatinous creature that has washed ashore on the coast of that South American country. The animal, which was discovered June 23 washed up on a Chilean beach, was described as a 40-foot-long (12-meter) mass of rotting grey flesh that scientists estimated to weigh about 13 tons.

My first thought as to it's identity was this:
Has Michael Moore been reported missing?

How's the Weather?....
Weather, the most talked about subject on the planet. But so far as we know, a subject completley ignored in the BlogWorld©. Now it will be at the new Interactive International weathertalk space known as How's the Weather. See comments from around the world about how weather is affecting people's lives.

Correspondents from your area are needed now? No sign-up, no fees. It's fast, it's compelling and it's free!

Dialing for Dollars....
The US Federal Government has finally done something useful for consumers. The new Federal Do Not Call list has been put into effect to try and limit unsolicited phone calls. You can register here. Reports indicate a heavy response.

I intend to sign up, but I am already on the Texas Do Not call list, which predates the Federal list by several years. And for the most part it works. I've only had one unsolicited call that I know of, and it was from a scummer who left a message on my answering machine recently. No return number, or I would have reported it and tried to collect my reward.

Now....if the Fed's would only get busy with SPAM protection for us online junkies! Don't hold your breath. I have been a SPAM fighter now for several years and have become fairly proficient in tracking down the origins of these messages and the SPAM sites that support them. As gratifying as this is, it is mostly in vain.....the spammers have for the most part become professionals and they cover their tracks very well. With modern SPAM sending software, it is almost impossible to track the ownership of the accounts. One can, however determine where the SPAM target sites are being hosted.....mainly in China. These Chinese based hosts do not care one whit if they get complaints and in fact laugh all the way to the Bank of Beijing. Therefore the only recourse is to complain to the American backbone server who is allowing that IP address into their network.

And then guess what happens? Nothing. Because Verio, CW, or AT&T are laughing all the way to the Bank of America. Nothing will be done until these companies, and others, that are permitting this [and making big bucks] are held accountable and/or liable.

Jed outlasts Strom...
In a twist of irony, Jed Clampett [Buddy Ebsen, see below] has outlasted Senate relic Strom Thurmond. There is justice in life. Senator Thurmon died tonight of..... well he just died, he was 100 years old for God sakes!

Whee Doggies..
Jed Clampett, aka Buddy Ebsen, has been hospitalized. I wish him well and hope that Jethro and Ellie Mae are there by his side! But the stunner for me is that he is 95 years old! How old does this make me feel. Especially since I still remember him as George Russell, the sidekick to Fess Parker on "Davy Crockett" back in the 50's.

Blog surprise...
Wow, what fast action after mentioning that I might move my Blog business to Moveable Type! Upon trying to update Streams yesterday, I was confronted with a strange webpage, blogger.sorry.streams.htm. My blog had been hijacked to be updated by Blogger.Com. That process is now completed and therefore I type this on the new Dano based system they have installed...whatever that is.

The SORRY webpage told me that this is the "new, all improved" version of Blogger. We'll see.

PS: the basic post function actually worked, and it appears to post and publish in a more speedy fashion. I wait in breathless anticipation for something to completely pfutz up.

Blogged Down...
It may be about time for me to buck up, buckle down and move on to Moveable Type, for all my blogging needs. I'm not one to complain about free services...but I'm going to. Blogger.com has gone downhill, to the point that it's not worth trying to fight uphill any longer. Free is no good if it drives you insane. I'm not alone in this feeling if my blogmates around the world are any indication. Most complain about the archive function, which frankly I have not had much problem with. My problems are more basic. The templates.

Some time ago I complained in this very text space about my Streams blog template not holding changes. After a month or so, that gradually and magically fixed itself after much consternation on my part. Then in the last month, Julie's informative cybernews spot The Yellow Bug Schmooze started acting up, by adding an unclosed bold start tag into the archived, but viewed entries causing all but the current entry to become bold. I have searched, and searched, and searched for an answer to this problem, driving me to distraction. There doesn't seem to be a logical explanation for this occurence. None at all, it just happens.

And now...I have dragged out and rehabed an old obselete Blog property of mine in order to start a very informative local weather and international news webspace and I'm having problems with it. I haven't touched this Blogspace in over a year, no changes to the template, no entries, it's been in dry storage. So what happens? The first entry I make on the Beta version of the international weather blog causes a nasty and persistent fault error on the Blogger upload page. Something to the effect of !Error 104:Java Meltdown. Danger Will Robinson!

I have learned that to search for the cause of this type of error is fruitless and will short circuit my brain and my good nature. When I made the effort to use the Blogger "self help" page, the only search result for this type of error gave as it's remedy "Exit Blogger and Log In again". Please....I don't need this kind of Microsoft© solution. If I believed this would work you can rest assured that I believe that the "Blue Sreen" warning is for my own good.

Yup I believe it's time to move on.

Enviro Friendly...

Our area of the country is rich in oil and gas deposits, primarily because 300 million years ago, we were the bed of the Permian Sea, an area of shallow ocean now long gone. Left with the biological deposits of flora and fauna that became oil, were vast amounts of salt water now located at varying depths below us, some quite deep.

When we drill oil wells we usually encounter this brine to greater or lesser degrees, and it comes flowing up with the oil. Before the oil can be sold the water must be seperated which we do in large heat treating tanks, the oil floating to the top. Of course, then the problem becomes what to do with the brackish water. In the old days of the business, the water was simply flowed out onto the ground, and in fact in some less developed areas of the world, I'm sure they still practice this method. However, it is catastrophic to the soil and plant life, effectively making the area a salt desert.

Today there are two options of dealing with this water. In many areas the water is held in storage tanks to be trucked away for safe disposal, such as to man made salt lakes where shrimp are raised. This costs around one dollar a barrel. The other option, an injection well, is pictured above. Where there are old non producing wells in proximity, the brine can be re-injected down the old well bore to be placed back in the bowels of the earth where it came from. The injection well above, handles water from 8 wells and is 14,000 ft. deep. The two lines with their solar powered meters running into this injection system come from two of our wells, and from six wells owned by another company in the area. The eight wells flow approximately 900 barrels of water per day back to the Ellenberger formation far below, and costs us 28 cents a barrel to dispose of. One of the ancillary costs of producing oil, but worth it.

Cool Cats!

Iran......
It is just 24 years since 1979 when it seemed that every single person in Iran hated the United States, hated democracy and was ready to vow his or her perpetual allegiance to the Muslim clerics, mullahs, and poobahs who had taken over that country. It is with some amazement that I read what is happening there today. It bears a close watch and the support of all who can reach them....which is you via the power of the Internet.

Take a moment to visit these Blogs from Iran:

Iranian Girl
Whoman
Lady Sun
Jactancy

Why we study history.....[or need to]

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage."

These words of wisdom current in their warning were written by Scottish historian Professor Alexander Tyler in 1787, concerning the Athenian civilization.

Thought on Democracy...
As an addendum to this thought on the state of democracy, Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University of Law, St. Paul, MN provides the following 2000 election factoids for consideration..

*Population of counties won by Gore 127 million, won by Bush 143 million.
*Square miles of country won by Gore 580,000, won by Bush 2,427,000.
*States won by Gore 19, by Bush 29 .
*Murders per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore 13.2 - by Bush 2.1

Professor Olson comments, "And may I add that the map of the territory Bush won was (mostly) the land owned by the people of this great country not the citizens living in cities owned by the government and living off the government".

Energy Update.....
From my perspective as a producer and supplier of energy commodities [oil and gas], things are looking very good indeed for the near future. We who explore for, and produce oil and natural gas are like farmers. We spend large amounts of money to produce the raw commodity, but have no say so in the price we get for our products. This is decided these days in the world markets and on the commodity exchanges of New York. And for so many years, decades really stretching back into the mid 1980's, oil and gas has been oversupplied, keeping prices low.

In fact in some years because of low prices it did not even make economic sense to drill new wells, and to operate existing wells meant barely breaking even. But things are changing now. Many analysts believe that we have crested the top of the curve where new supplies coming into the market outweighed the demand. Now demand in growing energy use in the industrialized world, and especially the newly developed third world is going to, henceforth, outstrip existing and newly found supplies. Of course daily world events, weather and manmade market disruptions cause fluctuations, but the trend in prices is definetly and irreversably towards the upside. Just this week the US Department of Energy raised their predictions for year 2003 natural gas price averages by 11%......this over their prediction of just one month ago, and 80% over year 2002!

It is an exciting time to be in the energy business in Midland Texas, not only because our bottom lines look better, but more importantly because of the new innovations that are being developed in response to the growing awareness of our energy needs and the recognition that our area is one of the world's leading locales for expertise in the energy business. Just this week we have had in town a large group from Japan who are exploring ways to more efficiently produce gas from their fields, and due to our Sister City arrangement with Dongying, China we have Chinese techicians in town constantly and now televised classroom links between our college and theirs .

People are looking at new ways of doing things in the oil field. My partners and I have decided to look more broadly at things and truly go into the energy business. We are in negotiations with a major US oil and gas corporation to construct an electrical power generation plant for their use powered by low BTU gas from existing wells that we have. This gas contains high levels on nitrogen and sulphur causing it to sell for a very low price and with the consequence that no one will drill new wells of this type. But this gas will power modern electric generation equipment with no problems. So we will turn an unused resources into one that will turn out low cost, clean electrical power. The Department of Energy is interested in our concept, as is the State of Texas.

Our region is at the forefront in the development of renewable resources too. Over 1000 Megawatts of electricity is currently being produced by wind driven generators, and solar powered plants are finally being considered. An Australian company is exploring solar power on a grand scale as seen in the article Solar Turbine Towers. These are exciting developments, but of course, have their drawbacks as well. The wind turbines, massive and numerous, are placed on hills and mesas which out in this country pass for our only scenic views. Visual pollution. And the solar turbine project is so costly and massive I have doubts about it's viability. And none of these alternative energy sources work economically without large tax incentives. But these new avenues for energy must be explored and perfected. For although when prices are high, we in the business benefit, prices that are too high are no good for anyone.

So long Mr. Peck......
Hollywood star Gregory Peck has died at age 87. With his passing one more true old fashioned "film star" has left us and will make us wonder whether any more film greats of this sort will arise.

There are many movie and media entertainment stars today, but true film stars may be a thing of the past. The film stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, I think, weren't so much worried about their mass market appeal or their commercial success as they were their craft. No, they tended to concern themselves with making great pictures, improving their performances and in securing meaningful roles that told a story and had depth. They made some bombs along the way, but by and large, the film stars had one or perhaps several films that are rated as classics. Such was the case with Gregory Peck. His role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, has been rated by the public as the #1 hero in filmdom.

The stars of today, seem to take any role that will make them a dime. They are bombarded upon us with interviews, tabloid stories, talk show appearances and they become too familiar. Familiarity breeds contempt, or at least boredom with them. In thinking of names who are big stars today, I quickly come up with people like Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford. Good actors with some really good entertaining films.......lot's of them. Too many of them. We are over saturated with Mel and Harrison, their mystique is gone. On the other side is someone like Meryl Streep. She remains, in my mind, aloof and out of the public eye. Until, she rises from her private world to make another great film. At which time I am awed by her talent and say to myself, "What a great actor, where has she been lately?" She's an old time star, like Gregory Peck and I am sorry there are not more like them.

A Toad Floater.....
Last week it was a close call with death by dust suffocation, this week death by drowning. For those not familiar with West Texas weather, dust storms and floods are close cousins, it just depends on how the thunderstorms grow and where they dump their much needed moisture. Tonight they chose to dump on us. I surmise close to 2 inches in just about 45 minutes. I'm not complaining about the rain, true West Texans never do for we know in August we'll be praying for anything we can get. But.....this storm started my roof leaking again after winter repairs, I'm just glad I was still up to set the buckets by the offending fireplace.

This storm started off as a small line of thunderclouds off to the west of us and grew rapidly, and came swiftly. At 8:30 p.m. it was barely a blip on the radar, and by 10:30 had grown into a storm packing 70 mph winds and dime sized hail. To give out of towners a scale, the distance on the map from Midland to El Paso is over 300 miles.

We genteel folk call these big rains toad floaters, but really the common Texas vernacular requires you to juxtapose two other letters into the "toad". The term originated in the ranching business, describing rains large enough to float the cow pies and start them drifting off out of the pasture. You figure it out.

Blown Away...
Midland, Texas is generally a great place to live, but it does have it's drawbacks. Dust being chief among the negatives. The picture above is not a 1930's Dust Bowl retinted image, but a weather event that happened here this last Tuesday.

This roiling, seething mass of geologic particulate hell was caused by a micro-burst [a misnomer here..this was mega!] from a thunderstorm that was over 90 miles away to our north. For those of you who don't have massive thunderstorms coupled with flat prairieland, I'll explain the concept. As thunderstorms build with rising heat they carry massive amounts of moisture aloft to great altitudes of 40, 50, 60,000 feet or more. As the clouds encounter colder temperatures at these altitudes they lose the ability to hold this moisture, and if conditions are right, the moisture rich center of the cloud basically collapses on itself releasing the water and huge amounts of energy in the form of wind, which goes straight down. When it hits dry, dusty flatlands it spreads out and travels for long distances. Think of blowing a hard concentrated breath straight down into a pile of flour and you'll get the idea, except on a grand scale.

This one must have had the force of a small nuclear weapon; large, amazing and somewhat spooky. As I was standing in the front yard facing south and with a clear blue sky overhead, I noticed an orange glow starting to embue itself on everything. Turning around I noticed this wall cloud of dust some miles north. Before I could go inside, procure the camera and come back out, it was on us, the wind going from 0-60 mph in zero seconds. I got a rather bad image of the wall almost over me, a sheer face thousands of feet high, so I'm lucky a friend took the image above from an office building. I could barely see across the street for an hour or more and when the dust settles it covers everything with the consistency of fine talcum powder. One minute perfectly clear and calm, the next instant a maelstrom. I have some feeling of how the citizens of Pompeii must have felt as they watched the volcanic gas cloud descend upon them!

I'm still cleaning dust from the estate!

Letter from the Prime Minister...
It's not often that I get a letter from a world leader, but one came in the mail today. Arriving in a fairly nondescript envelope I almost threw it in the trash thinking it was another "special deal" offering a no interest credit card. I'm glad I didn't, for the letter was from Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. I had found his address on a link in down under Blogmate, Tim Blair's informative column and had jotted off a quick note to the Prime Minister thanking him for his steadfastness concerning Iraq, when so many other world weasels were scurrying for their holes.

I'm glad Mr. Howard found the time to write. And, OK, doubters I know you are saying........"form letter". Perhaps some of it is, but he does allude in paragraph 2 to my comments about the closeness those of us in the United States feel for our Aussie brethren...Texans in particular. And, I am basically a doubter too...so I wet my fingers and tried to smudge the ink. A successful smudge as seen on the signature. It's an inpiring letter, I hope you find the time to read it:
Prime Ministers Letter

Divorce, European Style........
Writer Ralph Peters pens what many Americans have been thinking.........

"The societies of "Old Europe" remind Americans of the Arab Street. Preferring comforting delusions to challenging realities, Europeans talk a great deal, do very little, and blame the United States for home-grown ills.

The recent chants in the boulevards of Berlin were almost indistinguishable from those heard--until recently--in downtown Baghdad. Europe's culture of complaint, its enthusiasm for accusing America of every wickedness while assigning every virtue to itself, and its stunning lack of self-examination leave Americans bewildered.

We thought you were adults, but, from across the Atlantic, you look like spoiled children. And your recent tantrums have convinced Big Daddy America to deposit you on the steps of the strategic orphanage.

The damage done by the recent confrontation between The United States and those nations whose vocabularies collapsed to the single words "Nein!" or "Non!" will be repaired--on the surface. We shall continue to cooperate on matters of mutual interest. But, on a deeper level, the exuberantly dishonest attacks on America heard from France and Germany (Belgium simply doesn't count), along with the shameless grandstanding of Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Chirac, appear to even the most pragmatic Americans as grounds for divorce from our long marriage of convenience.

The divorce is long overdue. Ignoring "Old Europe" on questions of grand strategy will liberate the United States, freeing us at last from the failed European model of diplomacy that has given the world so many hideous wars, dysfunctional borders and undisturbed dictators. The recent mischief wrought in Paris and Berlin has enabled Washington to escape a long thrall of enchantment, a slumber of sorts during which America allowed Europe's ghost to haunt its decisions. Now you have awakened us, and we see that Europe's influence was nothing but a legacy of nightmares. We shall no longer subscribe to your bloodsoaked, corrupt rules for the international system, but will forge our own.

You will not like many of our new rules. But to paraphrase Frederick the Great's remark about Maria Theresia, you will cry, but take your share of any available spoils. As a result of a series of remarkable strategic miscalculations, France and Germany have lost their international footing--not only with the USA, but with the world. You had your moment in the anti-American sun. High noon revealed you as powerless and inept.

For Germany, this divorce will offer some advantages. American combat forces soon will begin to leave German soil permanently, followed in good time by our logistics facilities, which are simply more difficult to shift. This will be to Germany's benefit practically and psychologically--and very much to the benefit of America's armed forces, which have become nothing but a cash cow for greedy organizations ranging from your railways to your labor unions.

NATO will survive, of course. Along with the European Union, it's an indispensable employment agency for Europe's excess bureaucrats. But other bilateral and multilateral military arrangements will take precedence in Washington's strategic calculations.

On the negative side, Germany will lose almost all of its diplomatic influence beyond continental Europe--and Berlin never had much, at least since 1945. The world will take your Euros, but will not take you seriously. You have asserted your independence from America. Now you have it. Good luck.

We won our war, easily, despite your protests and without your help. And do not flatter yourself with rhetoric about refusing to be America's vassals. No one in the United States questioned Germany's right to decide for itself whether or not to support our efforts to depose Saddam Hussein. Germany had every right to decline to participal, but it was the way you did it that infuriated us.

Bundeskanzler Schroeder astonished us. We long had recognized him as a political charlatan, but the extent of his demagogy and his amateurish inability to foresee the consequences of his ranting still came as a surprise to us. We see Mr. Schroeder as a man utterly without convictions-a man without qualities--a political animal so debased that he resembles no one so much as he does European caricatures of small-time American politicians. His opportunistic anti-Americanism seemed all for effect, without substance or genuine belief.

Yet, in other respects, Schroeder proved quintessentially European: He criticized, but failed to offer meaningful solutions of his own. He chose slogans over ideas, convenience over ethics, and portrayed small-minded selfishness as political heroism. What qualities might better describe 21st century Europe? Germany has come a long way downhill from Adenauer and Schmidt to Gerhard Schroeder.

Most difficult of all for us to stomach were remarks from members of the German government comparing President Bush to Hitler. Now, does anyone reading this newspaper believe that's an honest comparison? And was it fitting coming from a German official? One thinks not. Americans heard the echo of Joseph Goebbels.

Then there were all the demonstrators waving signs equating the United States to the Nazi regime, as tasteless a display as Germany has managed since the last crematorium went cold. Once our tempers cooled, we realized that all these Nazi comparisons weren't really about us. It was all about you, your guilt and your evasions.

Perhaps the most revealing incident of the war came during a television interview with a young protester in Berlin after Baghdad had fallen. The reporter asked him what he thought of the images of Iraqis cheering U.S. Marines and toppling Saddam's statue. The young German said the scenes "annoyed" him. Doubtless. Reality is annoying, indeed.

Oh, we know how you see us. You never cease telling us. We are uncultured, because we cannot recall the date of the first performance of Das Rheingold. We are heartless, since our society favors opportunity over security. We are na ve, since we do not share your prejudices. We are warmongers, because we still believe some things are worth defending. And now we are Nazis, because we moved to depose a dictator who had slaughtered his own people as well as his neighbors, while harboring terrorists and pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, you continue to buy our cultural products. Your brightest young people come to our shores to work. We Americans have moved beyond the racism that blights Germany and France (we look forward to meeting a German Colin Powell of Turkish ancestry in Berlin or an ethnic-Senegalese Condoleeza Rice in Paris), so we certainly do not share your prejudices. And after the events of September 11th, 2001, we will not wait to be attacked, but will strike pre-emptively wherever we believe it to be necessary--and we shall do so without ever again asking Europe's permission. So we are, indeed, warmongers by European standards.

But what about the charge that Americans are the new Nazis? I think I understand the sickness that afflicts you. I received my first insight as a young Army sergeant in a not-yet-reunified Germany a quarter-century ago. Although the event was ten years past, young Germans unfailingly brought up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam during our conversations. My Lai was one of two documented American atrocities in that war. Almost two hundred villagers were murdered. It was inexcusable, and we did not try to excuse it. But those young Germans grasped at the My Lai massacre with an alacrity that astonished me. To them, the two-hundred dead at My Lai canceled Auschwitz and Treblinka, six million murdered Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and dissenters. The message was, "See! You Americans are just as bad as we Germans were-maybe worse." I did not find the comparison convincing.

Now, with Germany's Jews long since slaughtered or driven out (to America's great benefit, thank you), you attack Israel at every opportunity, hanging on every Palestinian claim, no matter how absurd, and inventing Israeli atrocities. Americans see Israelis as fighting for their existence against those who want to exterminate them. You view Israelis as a reproach to your past deeds, and you lash out at them. Clausewitz is no longer a guide to your national behavior. Today, we need to consult Sigmund Freud. A Jew, of course.

The Israelis, too, have been called Nazis by your elected politicians-indeed, "Nazi" seems to be your favorite insult. At times it sounds to us as though everyone who isn't a German is now a Nazi. Unless, of course, we are talking of Arabs who murder Jews, in which case a good German speaks of freedom fighters. Here in America, Holocaust survivors live among us, as do those aging G.I.s who opened the gates to Dachau. They have been our fathers, our teachers and our neighbors. Is it any wonder that we find your rhetoric repulsive? Hitler, at least, was honest about his bigotry.

And now we must endure the ludicrous schizophrenia of your present society, in which you alternate between insisting that German guilt must have an end and indulging in revisionist history that equates the allied bombing campaign against your cities or the sinking of ships ferrying submarine crews with Nazi evils. Your attempts to excuse the inexcusable merely remind us that Germany deserved every bomb dropped upon its soil. Bush the equivalent of Hitler? Show us the American death camps, please.

As a lifelong admirer of German culture, you leave me in despair. Your chancellor has transformed the worthy old maxim "Be more than you appear to be" into "Appear to be more than you are." Goethe's timeless query, "Germany...but where is it?" has been answered with "Between France and Russia, duped by Chirac and cooly manipulated by Putin." And Faust has been outed as Professor Unrat.

Auf wiedersehen, Lili Marleen. It was great while it lasted.

And Marianne? Since no one took Germany seriously to begin with, Berlin had less to lose in l'affaire Iraq than Paris. France gambled with Dostoevskian abandon in the strategic casino and ended up bankrupt in the morning light. President Chirac and his sorcerer's apprentice, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, emerged as one of the most incompetent combinations in diplomatic history, two drunkards behind the steering wheel of policy. It astonishes us that the French actually believed that Paris could dictate terms to Washington. Sorry. Gaul does not give orders to Rome.

We understood that Chirac was playing to the Arab world as well as to his domestic electorate. But the succession of French refusals to negotiate seriously or even to consider compromises at the United Nations, climaxed by France's announcement, in advance, that it would veto any further resolutions introduced by the United States or Britain, seemed suicidal to us.

And it was suicidal. The legacy of Charles de Gaulle perished in the Security Council. The tradition of permitting France a greater voice in trans-Atlantic decision-making than its place, power or contributions merited is over, as dead as Jean-Paul Sartre or his idol, Josef Stalin. The Gallic cock crowed so loudly it fell off the fence and broke its neck. Washington will no longer entertain the views of Paris on vital international issues. Nor will we risk another French veto on a matter we view as critical to our national security. And we will feed the United Nations the crumbs of strategy. Far from expanding its influence, France has forced its collapse. A quick round of applause in Algeria is hardly worth the loss of America's ear. Briefly the champion of all the anti-American forces in the world, from Libya to North Korea, France is left unable to resolve the civil strife in Ivory Coast. And Paris will not be given a significant role in rebuilding Iraq.

France long has seemed to Americans to be the apotheosis of European hypocrisy. While defending Saddam Hussein from "American aggression," Mr. Chirac hosted Robert Mugabe in Paris in a pathetic attempt to expand French influence into Anglophone Africa. But I was in Zimbabwe when the visit occurred and the degree of fury the people of that country felt toward France for hosting Mugabe--whom they have nicknamed "Robodan Mugabevich"--guaranteed that the French will never be welcome between the Zambezi and the Limpopo. France seems to us an aging whore desperate to attract even the most diseased customers.

But, above all, it is French naivete that leaves us shaking our heads. How could they so misjudge the situation? Aren't the French supposed to be terribly clever and devious? How could they be so clumsy, and on such a grand scale? The short answer is that, like Arabs, they believed their own fantasies. In addition to the forlorn illusion that France is still a great power, Mr. Chirac and Mr. de Villepin utterly misjudged George Bush. They had called him a cowboy for so long that they came to believe there was nothing to the man. And they were wrong.

I did not vote for President Bush. But, after 9/11/01, I was glad he was our president. Had Al Gore been in the White House, we would have done the European thing and formed a committee to ask how we had brought disaster upon ourselves. President Bush led a galvanized nation into a series of deliberate, carefully-considered actions that have broken the back of one terrorist organization after another while removing a brutal, backward theocracy from one country and a blood-encrusted dictatorship from another.

And America is not finished. We will no longer subscribe to the European system in which dictators may do as they wish with impunity within their own borders--your insistence on respect for national sovereignty simply means that Hitler would have been perfectly acceptable had he only killed German Jews. And we will not follow the traditions of kings and kaisers in which heads of state are exempt from personal punishment, no matter their crimes. We will go after the truly guilty, not the masses. And no amount of insults hurled from beneath the Brandenburg Gate or from the Place de la Concorde will deter us. We are finished with your delight in weeping over past holocausts while you remain unwilling to act to prevent or interrupt new holocausts. Srebrenica is the European model. Baghdad is ours.

President Bush is a Texan, as Europeans never fail to remind us. But the intelligence services of France and Germany seem to have failed to understand the character of Texans. They don't speak artfully, but they act resolutely. They aren't relativists. Texans believe there is a difference between right and wrong. And when you insult a Texan to his face while betraying his trust, he is not going to take it kindly. Confronting a Texan in public is always ill-advised, unless you intend to fight it out to the end--and have the means to do so. Texans don't even care where Europe is on the map.

We Americans are all Texans now. You have left us no choice."

Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of sixteen books, including novels, collections of essays and works on strategy. His most recent book is Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World.

Major League Guy......

We've been attending numerous charity events of late, last night's soiree benefited the West Texas Kidney Foundation. The speaker was Major League great ballplayer, Jay Johnstone, a funny guy with impressive baseball credentials. Like four World Series rings, being named the American League Rookie of the Year during his inaugural season and a record setting pinch hitter. He has written three books about his experiences including the best seller, "Temporary Insanity". He is still involved with baseball, broadcasting for Fox Sports and in a management capacity with the World Champion Anaheim Angels.

Baseball stats not withstanding, however, I was as much impressed with the charity work that he does including the Boy Scouts, the Special Olympics and being named the Big Brother of the Year, not once but twice, in two seperate cities, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. He also has a company, SporThings that provides sports collectibles to charity events. You should have seen the ones last night. Too varied to mention, but how does an autographed picture of Roger Stabauch, Sammy Baugh and Troy Aikman sound......all in one photo.

But most impressive to me, and the subject of a nice conversation with Jay, is the fact that he is a former U.S. Marine, and Vietnam Vet. An accomplishment that in my book is as good as any World Series ring!

Document this...

Frankly, We had never heard of the large European television channel "Arte", but here was their documentary film crew taping in my home this week. I would like to think that Europeans come to Midland, Texas to view my photographic work, or because they value my opinion on world affairs, but actually the media's goal is to speak with a special person I know, Julie, who once worked for a small oil and gas company here in town. Not that Europeans care one whit for small ten person oil companies, unless of course, one of those persons later becomes President of the United States, which is the case here.

Andrea and cinematographer Peter flew in from Vienna on Sunday, awaiting our return from Fredericksburg and our Memorial Day weekend. They seemed to have done well with the culture shock of leaving the forested beauty of Austria and landing right in the middle of some...well, rather stark countryside which abounds in West Texas. They even paid some small compliment by saying that it was not the complete desert that they had imagined. They wanted to get a flavor of the place so they met with the Mayor, toured the Petroleum Museum and we took them to get some footage of an oil well pumping. They were interested in filming everyday events in the Presidents old home town, so yesterday we took them to a Little League baseball game that Julie's son Jack was participating in. It was interesting trying to explain the game to Andrea who had never in her life seen a baseball game and knew nothing of the rules.

Julie's interviews with the media consist of recounting her years with the future President, what he was like then and how his life, policies and actions have been molded by his years in Midland. At least I think this is the gist of her talks, as I am sent out of the room. I know she does well though, because she speaks from the heart. My taped interview revolved around the history of Midland, the oil business, the ethos of the people and how I, from my perspective inside the oil business, view world events and the Presidents actions. I hope that I'm not heavily edited as it was a brilliant dissertation, at least from my humble perspective.

In our interviews with the BBC and now the Arte Channel, we made a basic assumption that their reporting would have a rather liberal tinge to it, and we tried to keep that in mind. But being Texans, we have a hard time not being ourselves and showing people who we really are and what we think. I believe that these more reserved Europeans have a hard time at first grasping this and it takes them some little while to adjust to this openess. But I think that this has served us well. I know it did with the BBC, as I still get email from one of their correspondents and their article pulled no surprises on us. After the first day with these Austrian filmmakers, we could laugh at our differing philosophies on world events and Andrea and Peter seemed to be genuinely having a good time. At least I hope they did. And I hope that they better understand our President, a man who like us, says what he thinks and means what he says.

If you are vactioning in France or Germany at the end of June, I hope you can catch the program and if you do, drop me a note and let me know how my hair looked.

A True Memorial Day......
During five hellish days in November of 1965, 234 young, proud and brave Americans died 10,000 miles from home at Landing Zones X-Ray and Albany in the Ia Drang Valley of the central highlands of South Vietnam. Their story was told in the bestselling book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young and later in the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers. Julie and I had the honor of spending Memorial Day with some of the Ia Drang survivors at the Adm. Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. This is what Memorial Day should be and I will never forget this one.

Most of these young men had been together and known each other for 18 months before they went to Vietnam....they knew each others wives, kids and families. They were close then, and they are perhaps closer now, more attached to each other than many of us are to our own kin. The Band of Brothers. Tears are still shed all these years later for those comrades who fell that day, and for the many wounded, and for those who have never been the same since. But also there is joy in seeing each other again and joy in sharing the good things that life has brought in the years that followed.

These are amazing men, with some amazing stories. Vince Cantu [black shirt/yellow tie] was a classmate of the books author, Joe Galloway, at tiny Refugio Texas High School, with a graduating class of 55 kids. Joe and Vince had not seen each other in the six years since their graduation. As a young UPI reporter Joe stepped off the helicopter at LZ X-Ray to cover the battle and one of the first voices he heard said, "hey Joe, you'd better get down, people are dying here". He wondered, "who the hell knows me in the middle of a battle in Vietnam"? That voice was none other than his old classmate Vince Cantu..... Vince is retiring soon from his job in Houston, and is planning to start up a new Tejano music band.

Will Parrish [red polo shirt] was a young kid from Oklahoma, and certainly had no dreams of becoming a hero. He was about to be become one, though it's a term he would not use on himself. During a human wave attack by the North Vietnamese at LZ X-Ray, Will found himself alone, manning a machine gun. He fired up all the machine gun ammunition and when that ran out, he emptied two .45 cal. pistols into the enemy.....they were that close. When the battle was done, over 100 enemy soldiers were found in front of his position. He won the Silver Star for Valor that day. Today, he is the mostly quiet modest person he has always been, still living in Oklahoma. He shies away from the term hero, an overused used term today, but his buddies know that he truly is.

Lt. Col.[retired] Bob Barker [yellow shirt/black hat] commanded one of the supporting artillery batteries at LZ Falcon, some 5 miles from LZ X-Ray. Bob and his fellow artillerymen, firing constantly for 3 straight days, poured some 18,000 high explosive shells into the enemy, and when necessary, right on top of the American soldiers at X-Ray. There is not a man who was at the battle who will tell you that the reason they are alive today is because of Bob and his artillery. That says it all. Bob is now retired in Hemphill Texas, a true gentleman and a great pleasure to be with.

Robert Saucedo [far left] was an extraordinary soldier who Joe captured on film during the battle and can be seen on our photo website, photo #2, assisting a wounded comrade to evacuation. George Kelling [red shirt] ran the evacuation medical facillity to which wounded soldiers were sent, and through his skill many lives were saved. He is now a PhD. and lives in San Antonio. Chip Parker [blue shirt/black hat] was an attack helicopter pilot in the Ia Drang Valley and provided continuous, accurate and deadly fire on the attacking NVA. He and his wife have been close friends of mine for years. Chip owns a telecommunications company in Dallas. I met Joe Pena [far right] and his wife Rose on the airplane flying to an Ia Drang reunion in Washington D.C. several years ago.....we have been friends since. Joe retired as the Chief of Police in Port Lavaca, Texas and now assists in helping youth in that area.

And the young man in the dark suit and tie is Dacien De la Paz. Dacien's father was killed at LZ X-Ray. The troops vowed that no one would be left behind and no one would be forgotten. Dacien is an example that the vow has been kept. Dacien is a living Memorial to his father and to all those who died that day and he is a member of the Band of Brothers and attends many of the reunion functions. He is a Doctor in Houston.

And finally there is the book's author, Joe Galloway [brown coat].....the reason for my association with this group. Joe has been a friend and business partner for some years now. I thank him often for my introduction to these great guys and for his efforts in telling the true story of the soldiers in Vietnam.

Memorial Day.....
Streams will be closed for the Memorial Day weekend. The management and staff will be at a fundraiser for The Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas with our good buddies from the We Were Soldiers crowd. What a great group to spent the holiday with.

Enjoy your burgers, dogs and potato salad and have a cold soda for me......but please remember the true meaning of Memorial Day. Many good Americans have died and suffered so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have!

Find the animal in you.....click here!

Which animal are you?
This is fairly accurate for me...which is why I love dogs so much. I love my packmate Julie too and eagerly seek her out! You receive five bonus points if you can identify the four examples of misspelled words above. Who does these things?

Rain....!
To all the Native American rain dancers who responded to my plea last week, a big Thank You. It is raining here today. Well we call it rain, really it's just wet. Folks in New Orleans or Seattle would consider the amount of moisture we've had today just spit in a bucket, but when you have had no rain all year you learn to alter you're perspectives. It has not been cloudy in, well I can't recall, but let's call it a coon's age. The dramatic change rather scared the Big Gold Dog who is a creature of habit and he was somewhat tentative about going outside this morning, thinking that perhaps he had awakened on a different planet.

And cool! Oh my, how delicious is cool when it's been so hot. We're talking a major league cool down today. About 50° cooler. The difference in 102° yesterday and 52° as I write will really get your attention. I had to wear a light coat on the morning dog walk today for the first time in months. So far in May we've had 10 days of over 100° temperatures and summer hasn't even started. Summer here proceeds on unceasingly until late September. I have to add, that although the final verdict on Global Warming is not in, there are indeed strange things going on with the weather in West Texas!

Yo Mama's a Redneck...
It appears that my wardrobe has been saved by the US Supreme Court . The high court refused to hear arguments from a New Jersey school district that wished to ban students from wearing clothes identified as "Redneck" or having redneck sayings on them. The school district's logic was that clothing with redneck connections was used to harrass or indimidate other students of the non-redneck persuasion.

A specific slogan mentioned in the lawsuit was "How you know you are a redneck: You wear a baseball cap to bed, and You know the Hooter's menu by heart. Holy damn cow, these aren't offensive, these are trifling. If they want to hear offense redneck sayings, they should have emailed me. You want 'em, I got 'em. Not that I wear my little jewels on a T-shirt, but I have them ready for use at the proper occasion. Offensive redneck sayings need to have references to plywood porches on trailer homes, marrying your cousin who has no front teeth...these sorts of things stray towards the offensive. You wear a baseball cap to bed? This is offensive?

Really I'm a sophisticated redneck, a suave and debonair redneck, but I have it in me none-the-less. Ask Julie. I admit here publicly that I on occasion chew Redman and occasionally when some bit slobbers off on my shirt, I consider the shirt still wearable for several more weeks. When I get a'holt of a good pair of shorts, or a T-shirt I like, you might plan on seeing it on me for extended lengths of time, like everyday. I don't see the need in getting a clean coffee cup out everyday just to put another cup of java in it. Having a dog sleep right next to my face don't bother me a lick. And I'll tell you up front I do have a Hooter's T-Shirt....given to me with love by Julie.

You'd think that the New Jersey school board would have more pertinent matters to consider than suing dumb ass redneck kids. Giving dumb assed redneck kids an education is one idea that comes to mind. What they were trying to litigate was a fashion statement. Redneck dress is no more insulting than the kids who wear baggy "shorts" that come down to their ankles or kids who wear nuts and bolts stuck through their tongues. In fact, if I was gonna' sue a kid, I'd go after the nuts and bolts crowd first...and they call rednecks stupid.