Turning the page on 2013....

It was a good year and now a new one is upon us!  Go forth and conquer into 2014!

Happy Boxing Day!

Decided to try something new! :-P

Saturday The Fourteenth

The day after Friday the 13th features rain pouring down by the buckets!

At least the Army-Navy game is on and in the snowy conditions I like so much.  I have a million books to read and Michelle will try to get me to watch "Michelle Movies"/documentaries about all sorts of odd stuff.

She probably thinks the stuff I watch is weird...Crusades, Alexander, Seven Years War etc....LOL

We move closer to Christmas so there is not a lot happening at the moment.  Probably just as well but if I have to comment on any issues of the day, it is this: "Get out of Afghanistan and let the idiots destroy each other."

Army just scored a touchdown and they have a 105mm howitzer in the stadium....Is that safe? 

Oh well, its Philly.....

Haas Thanksgiving Football Weekend

This year's Thanksgiving Football weekend was spread out a bit since Thanksgiving was really late in the month.  In fact, it started before Thanksgiving--in Canada!

The Sasakatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup and my cousin Pete was out in the streets of Regina celebrating.  It was the Riders first championship since 2007 and you have to remember that they suffered through two Cup losses in 2009 and 2010 to Montreal.  This time, they beat my old team, Hamilton,  It would have been better to take out Montreal but you play whoever makes it through the playoffs.  This game was in Regina on the Riders' homefield so that made it an even more special win.

The rest of my teams tanked....LOL

My Steelers lost to the Ravens on Thanksgiving night 22-20 despite Coach Tomlin's best efforts :-P.  I have never seen the Steelers win on Thanksgiving.  This was their first turkey day game since the infamous "heads-tails" game against Detroit back in 1998.  Maybe we should keep away from turkey day football....

  East Carolina was pummeled but Marshal 59-28, losing any chance of going to the Conference-USA championship.  It is their last year in C-USA before they go to whatever the Big East has "evolved" into...The American Athletic Conference or something like that.  ECU is 9-3 and heading to some bowl, probably the Military Bowl against Maryland according to the panjandrums at ESPN.

Before West Virgina ran off to the Big 12 (or 14?) and Pitt bolted to the ACC, the day after Thanksgiving was traditionally the day of the Backyard Brawl.  This year, I had to settle for watching Pitt lose to Miami 41-31.  Will Pitt go to a bowl game?  With a record of 6-6 and a million bowl games, it is certainly possible.

Not the best record but a Grey Cup championship makes up for it!  Of course, if you are watching football with Michelle sleeping on the couch next to you and with Sprinkles the cat sleeping on the other side, you have all ready won regardless of what the scoreboard says.

Happy Thanksgiving!

                                                    HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Saskatchewan wins Grey Cup!

The Saskatchewan Roughriders won the 2013 Grey Cup!  Of course, the game was in Regina so they were the clear home team but winning a championship on your home field does not happen very often! 

Too bad it was against Hamilton, the team I played for briefly.

There are only eight teams in the Canadian Football League, so you are going to play everyone multiple times, so get used to it. I am still glad the Riders won.  I was texting and calling my cousin Pete in Regina during the game, which I was able to watch.  He said the city was going insane.  I am glad because I would not have wanted to be in Regina if they lost...LOL.  Talk about people in a bad mood!

I am not sure who is crazier--Pittsburgh Steeler or Saskatchewan Roughrider fans--and it might be wise not to find out but it is always fun to win a championship in either place!

Now, try to repeat!

Worry about that next year.....

Alternate uniforms

This is the Golden Age of Alternate Uniforms....especially in football.  I have never seen so many alternate uniforms in one year as I have in college football.  The Oregon Ducks have been doing it for years but now it seems a lot of teams are finding some way to turn their uniforms inside out.  Some look pretty good.  Some are awful.  If you can stomach it, look at the University of Indiana's or University of Maryland's

The NFL seems to fixate more on throwback uniforms and to be honest, most of them deserve to be called "throwaway."  My Steelers have the worst looking one but Michelle likes their socks, so we may be stuck with them for a while.  The only problem is that sometimes I cannot tell who is playing.

"Black out" uniforms are a failure.  Sorry, they just are.  Although they remind me of the Northmarcher elite Demon Division, the problem is that they all look the same.  No distinctiveness.  I don't know about the psycobabble about all black causing fear but anyone who steps out onto the field with 300 plus pound linemen is out of his mind anyway.

East Carolina has suddenly started wearing black pants with black helmets and purple jerseys.  Looks too much like the Baltimore Ravens....definitely need to change that!  Better to go to all purple but then you end up getting Minnesota Viking comparisons....

And so it goes on.....:-P

Daylight Savings Time

Why not just stick with one "time" and stop confusing everyone?

Daylight Savings Time started, I think, in 1917 to give farmers an extra hour of daylight.  Since less than 1% of our population is engaged in agriculture, it might be time to rethink this policy.  Personally, keep it and watch the sun go down an hour later.  This changing the clocks just confuses everyone and throws off everyone's "internal clock" for about a week.

I am not sure who to call but if you figure that out, tell me and we can see what can be done. Yes, there are bigger and worse things out there but if nothing else, we will know what time it is!

ObamaCare Train Wreak

This what a government run enterprise looks like

Max Baucus called back in April.

ObamaCare was going to be a trainwreak.

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a website that does not work could have been used for anything else.  Like, perhaps, a working website or putting it towards UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!

There is really nothing to say other than "I told you so" but to be honest, it would be better to scrape the whole thing...unless this was the whole intent.  Why would this be the intent? Who knows.  Just please don't give it to the government!

Laughing at DC

They can read...they can reason too!

Despite a few park rangers playing out Nazi fantasies and following directives to "make it hurt", Americans are ignoring their government and walking into national parks anyway.  Most park rangers appear to be waving at them as they go in though they insist tourists stay away from cliffs and hazards since the shutdown has deprived the park service of manpower to patrol everything.  A few rangers have acted like idiots but after World War II vets pushed aside barricades to go into the always open memorial, the rest of America has followed the example of men who landed at Normandy and Iwo Jima uninvited. Yellow tape and bureaucrats are not going to stop them.

I am beginning to hope this shutdown never ends.  Looks like the NSA and IRS is having problems functioning but I really wish the idiots in Congress would be furloughed.  Can't have everything I guess.....Not bad though!  Not bad at all!

Shutdown!

This is what happens when you have incompetents who live in a bubble and have never had a real job are in a position of running something......

At 12:01 am today, the US federal government shut down non-essential functions due to no funding.

This, of course, comes as no surprise.  The federal government is $17 trillion in the red and the ObamaCare fiasco in not the cause but a symptom. Would it have not been easier to go to socialized medicine?  Odd how liberals dodge that question and how conservative hate the term but most have some form of it anyway. 

The point is that the United States government is broke.

Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible (reprehensible?) and both deserve blame if not expulsion and imprisonment. At the very least, everyone on Capital Hill, the Supreme Court and the White House should be handed pinkslips and given the "five and five" treatment---five minutes to pack up your crap and five minutes to leave.  Whatever is left behind goes to the world's largest yardsale...we have a $17 trillion deficit to work on...have to start somewhere.

Happy Anniversary!!!

Today is the anniversary for Michelle and I!  And East Carolina pummeled UNC today in Chapel Hill, 55-31!

Nobel Peace Prize for Putin?

The Russians have shown more sense than the United States over this Syrian thing.  This makes me wonder how insane this situation is.  There might be some common sense emerging but it is coming from Moscow, not Washington.

The United States appears to be pushing for a strike.  Kerry had declared that the Syrian offer to let UN inspectors as "too little, too late" and even now is saying that a thirty day program to put Syria's chemical weapons under international control is not enough.  The United Nations is not going to let any resolution authorizing force to pass.

The United States government says it has evidence that Assad launched the chemical attacks but won't show the evidence citing national security.  If you don't show the evidence, why would I believe you? Given the scandals this summer--NSA, IRS, Benghazi etc...--why would anyone trust this administration even if they did show "evidence".  The rest of the world remembers the build up to 2003 and Iraq.

No one condones chemical warfare.  No one condones out of control military aggression either.  Especially on flimsy pretexts.

I think it is likely that Assad did launch a chemical strike.  But we don't know that conclusively.  The opposition, full of al-Qeida elements, may have done it to pull the US into another quagmire.

If you thought Iraq was bad, Syria would be even worse.

Would a US strike even change anything?  The Russians will rebuild whatever gets destroyed.  Any chemical weapons that are hit will drift around and in the chaos, may even fall into the wrong hands.  Of course, the Syrian government would constitute "the wrong hands".

Welcome to the Middle East.

Stay out of it.

A step in the right direction...

I believe in giving credit where credit is due.  President Obama backed off his threat to strike at Syria just long enough to debate it with Congress--as the Constitution calls for.  Now, if this is a good idea, given Congressional competence, I cannot say but at least the imperial presidency is being rolled back.  And this was a move by the President no less.

I am pretty sure this had something to do with the British people, speaking through their Parliament, saying NO to any UK military involvement in Syria last week. That, by the way, was the first time any British military action has been forbidden by Parliament since 1782.

The President CANNOT start a war on his own nor initiate the use of military force without Congress.  Granted, there are those who point to Grenada back in 1983 and Panama in 1989 as operations launched without any debate but those were potential hostage situations where time was of the essence.  Then-Presidents Reagan and Bush did however consult with Congressional leaders just before everything started rolling--maybe not the perfect solution but one that seemed to work.

In the 1990 build up to Desert Storm, President Bush attempted to assert he did not need any Congressional approval to invade Iraq but was quickly proven wrong. Obama's 2011 air war in Libya was unconstitutional but it looks like the roosters came home to roost on that one here in 2013. Congress threatened to cut the moneyflow so that also got the message across.  Things have a way of balancing out.

This still does not mean attacking Syria is a good idea.  This has the potential to get out of control real fast as things usually do in the Middle East.  Delaying everything until September 9 at least gives the situation a chance to cool off.

The US seemed to be in a rush to bomb, calling Syria's acquiescence to allowing UN inspectors to investigate the site of the chemical attacks and determine if the Syrian government or rebels used them.  The snipers shooting at the UN personnel were not on Assad's payroll so draw your own conclusions.

The build up to an attack on Syria in 2013 looks a lot like the build up to the attack on Iraq in 2003. I fell for that one but I won't this time around.  There has to be some other angle here than just anger over chemical weapons. The US did not punish Iraq in 1988 for using them against Iran or the Kurds.

Syria is none our business.  Airstrikes will do damage but in the end, it won't matter. They will rebuild. And Syria has a fairly dense anti-aircraft defense system. Remember, or look it up, Syria shot down two US planes in 1983 on a retaliatory raid.

Americans have been fighting in the Middle East since 2001.  It is time to leave that screwed up part of the world to its own devices.  Both Obama and the Republican hotheads should remember a basic law of history--wars are easy to start but hard to end.

Of course, you won't see Obama or McCain anywhere near the fighting if it breaks out.

Operational Security--Ever hear of it?!

According to NBC, the United States will launch a military strike on Syria on Thursday.  Has anyone every heard of OPERATIONAL SECURITY?!

NBC goes on to state it will be "three days of strikes".

Are they sending the Syrians a target list too?

Of course, we know this is about raising oil prices.  This has nothing to do with the use of chemical weapons.  And possibly pull attention away from the multiplying number of scandals engulfing the White House.

The story below is for your consideration and/or disbelief

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-strike-against-syria-could-135200275.html

Civil War in Egypt?

Egypt appears to be spinning out of control and maybe into civil war.  The unrest has spread beyond Cairo and twenty-five police officers were ambushed in the Sinai.  This would make anything in Syria look like a walk in the park.

The oil sleazebags will probably use this as an excuse to raise oil prices, citing a threat to the Suez Canal.  The canal will be fine.  You can deflate that argument with four words --United States Sixth Fleet.  On the other hand, rational arguments do not seem to hold much water with fanatics, whether they wear turbans or suits. 

Now what does the US do about this?  I am not sure there is anything it can, or should, do.  Everything Washington gets mixed up in the Middle East, everything goes awry and the situation is worse than it was before.  That is the story with or without American involvement.  The Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Abbasids, Mamelukes, and even Mongols found the region perplexing not to mention the more recent British and French adventures in the nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries.  The people living there probably can't figure it out either. It has been that way since 3500 BC and it is not changing anytime soon. 

Furthermore, the people on the ground in Egypt don't like Americans. Hillary Clinton found out when her car was pelted with moldy fruit.  They see the US as backing and keeping  Mubarak  in power all those years and the Egyptian people, however they feel about the Moslem Brotherhood, at least see them as Egyptian. 

I am worried that fears over the Suez Canal can drag the US into a Middle Eastern shootout quicker than anything in Syria.  Of course, the oil industry would love to see that.  So would defense contractors. 

And you wonder why aliens don't make contact with humanity.....

Not this guy again....

The scary thing is that I would pick Anthony Weiner over Bloomberg for Mayor of New York.  The really scary thing is that this guy is running for mayor of the largest city in America...

Naturally, he is associated with the Clinton political machine, which might explain why this guy with an obsession with anything peverted. His wife, Huma, like her patron, Hillary Clinton, is playing the "stand by your man" card like its the Lewinsky scandal circa 1998.

If this is the best New York can do, maybe they deserve it.

Hopefully someone sane wins the race.....

Detroit throws in the towel

Berlin in 1945 or America in 2013?

Detroit, the eleventh largest city in America declared bankruptcy.  This is not a surprise but it should be a warning to everyone.  There are four other cities in Michigan in similar straits (ironic since Detroit means "the straits") and other cities in America like Stockton, CA and San Bernodino, CA who are in the same boat.

The governor of Michigan appointed an "Emergency Manager" who has nearly dictatorial powers and has rendered the Mayor and City Council of Detroit impotent.  This sounds a lot like what happened to Rome.  Gross mismanagement followed by dictatorship.

The city government failed by spending more than it had.  The unions failed by demanding more than the city had and the city of course agreed.  Several corrupt mayors came and went (straight into a jail cell). The voters kept putting the same people in and in while cheering on "soak the rich" policies that drove away businesses and investment.

Almost 40% of the street lights don't work, there are over 77,000 abandoned buildings, and there are wild dogs and even wilder humans running around large stretches of the abandoned city.

If you give Greece a lot of crap for its financial problems, Athens will point past you and at Detroit.  How does this affect anyone living outside of Detroit?

 Take a look at the federal government's balance sheet.

Homeland Security Adrift

Janet Neopalito resigned from leading one of the most useless parts of the federal government--the Department of Homeland Security.

Fifteen of the forty-five leadership positions are now vacant.  We should make it forty-five for forty-five because the DHS does nothing.  Our borders are not secure, traveling by airlines is a complete nightmare and the average TSA agent is a mindless drone with an IQ of 45 who could not handle a threat of any kind, real or imagined. The Israelis, who live with a real terrorist threat everyday, handle it in stride without turning their much smaller and more vulnerable country into a mismanaged police state that spies on its own citizens and still cannot detect threats like the Boston Bombers even when the Russians give out warnings.

Shut it down.  It wastes money and accomplishes nothing.

And there is no one in charge of anything.

Like anyone would notice.

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July!

Best Stanley Cup ever?

If the 2013 Stanley Cup was not the best Cup series ever, it was pretty close.  The only things that could have made it better was if the Penguins were winning it or if the series went to game seven. After three different overtime games, the players must have felt it was just like seven games. 

What made this series so great was not just the Finals but the path to get there.  For whatever reason, the last four team to have won the Cup where in the Final Four.  Pittsburgh had won it in 2009, followed by Chicago in 2010, the Boston Bruins in 2011, and last year, the Los Angeles Kings took the Cup home to that hotbed of hockey, Southern California.

LA came close to repeating but fell in the Western finals and I am not even sure Pittsburgh was there, getting swept in four but the Boston-Chicago series made up for it.  Not only was it an Original Six match up, it was a good physical series with no let up.

Until Boston let two Blackhawk goals slide by in seventeen seconds.  The Boston crowd watched a seemingly safe 2-1 lead and game seven trip to Chicago turn into a Blackhawks Cup celebration on their ice.

One of the greatest sports traditions in the world is the Cup presentation and the players lining up to shake hands.  I always wonder what the losing team is thinking but that seems obvious enough--next year, WE will win this thing.

The Pittsburgh Penguins lost to Detroit in 2008 on their home ice but came back to beat those same RedWings in seven in 2009 in Detroit.

Yes, it can happen.

Will it?

That, my friend, is why they play the game.

Luster Lost...

 

In 2008, Candidate Obama gave a speech in Berlin in front of hundreds of thousands of cheering Germans who believed in Hope and Change.  In 2013, Obama stood in front of a couple thousand vetted guests, hosted by a German government clearly uncomfortable with their guest whose government is spying not only on the whole world, every American citizen, and even the rest of the US government itself! 

When Obama went to Ireland, the typical fawning, slobbering press followed him around but there was a curious lack of excitement about his visit.  One Irish lawmaker seemed to have the answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnJCvKA-oEU

Blundering back into the Middle East

Maybe Obama is trying to pull attention away from the multiple scandals plaguing his administration. Maybe Haliburton is trying to make more money.  Maybe those making US foreign policy are utterly clueless....

Best answer: all of the above

SecState John Kerry has announced that the United States is going to send military aid to Syrian rebels.  Obviously, he does not remember Libya (see May 19 blog entry).  All the US will succeed in doing it arming people who will eventually attack it (again, see Libya).  Making matters worse is the US stationing fighters in Jordan, supposedly at Jordanian request.  It starts to look like the establishment of a no-fly zone.

A no-fly zone over Syria would be much more difficult than the operation over Libya.  The Syrian anti-aircraft defense system is actually an operating system that looks pretty dense and has been built with Russian, and possibly Chinese, help. There might be Russian and Chinese personnel on the ground there too.

The United States claims that Damascus is using chemical weapons, namely sarin, against the rebels in the northwest of the country.  Syria denies this.  The real question here is "Is this any of America's business?" 

The United States might be claiming to intervene in the name of humanitarian purposes but after the IRS and NSA revelations, can anyone anywhere trust anything that comes out of Washington.  And the human rights front sees somewhat shaky when those same scandals are brought to light combined with the very real possibility of Eric Snowden possibly defecting to China or Russia.  Correct interpretation or not, this is how most of the world sees it.

Stay out of Libya, let Afghanistan wind down, and let that part of the world continue on its merry way to self-destruction.  Sit back and watch the show.  Most importantly, don't let it drag you down with it.

Off the rails and off a cliff...

If you were wondering, that still, I believe, is from Back To The Future III.

It is also a pretty good description of what is happening to Hope and Change.

If lying about Benghazi was not bad enough, the government spying on the news organizations and the IRS scandal did not make things worse, now we have even more examples of the IRS spending other people's money like drunken sailors and even MORE government spying...

...on everyone.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, broke the story about the impossibly wide scope of National Security Agency spying on phone calls, internet usage, and phone records.  Notice the leakers did not go to an American newspaper.  This is completely insane.

Not to mention illegal, tyrannical, and utterly unnecessary.

How do you listen in on a hundred million phone calls?  Is it even possible?  Do you know how much this would cost?

Then the First Lady gets heckled by a Gay activist and Eric Holder makes the usual donkey's behind out of himself and you really wonder if you should hold on to American citizenship.

If there is one thing we have learned, it is this----the Tea Party was right all along.

Time to yank the chain on this government.

May 29, 1453

On May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell as its capital, Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Turks.
A history dork like me would remember this...LOL.  Nonetheless, the last emperor, Constantinos Paleologos (spelled a bunch of different ways), fought the Turks to the end.  He probably died with his men but no one knows for sure. The Turks found someone with purple boots, thought he was the Emperor and chopped his head off.  As they paraded it around, the Turks noticed no one recognized the severed head....

The last Roman Emperor and King of the Greeks was probably interred in a mass grave with a lot of Byzantine, Italian, and Turkish soldiers but we don't really know. One legend is that an angel swooped out of the heavens and took him to an underground cave and turned him to marble to awaken on day to retake the city back from the Turks.

Or maybe he is running a liqour store in South Philly....

When you look down at the picture of the final siege of Constantinople, does it not look a little like the siege of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings? Maybe the great Tolkien took some inspirtation from that terrible mid fifteenth century Tuesday?

If that is the case, he did a great job with it!

Closing Gitmo

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign,candidate Obama promised to close down the prison camp, Camp X-Ray, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five years later, the issue has risen its head again,which of course, prompts many to ask this scandal-ridden administration "why now?"  Especially since all it would take is an executive order which could have been issued any time in the last five years.  Naturally, the first thought that comes to mind is this is an attempt to pull attention away from the scandals enveloping the administration.

There are other issues.  One, does Camp X-Ray create more jihadists?  Many of those released, oddly mostly Yemeni, have returned to their homeland and immediately joined al-Qeida.  So what are we supposed to do with them?

One idea is to toss them out of the back of an airplane over the North Atlantic but I don't see that happening or at least not enjoying  any open endorsement.  Neither the Bush or Obama administrations seem to trust the Justice Department to handle them because if they did, Camp X-Ray would not exist in the first place.  Besides, Eric Holder can't seem to do anything right and he is contempt of Congress, which leads to the question of "why is he still Attorney General?".

Back to Gitmo.

If the judicial system cannot be trusted, maybe America is doomed to lose the so-called "war on terror."  The "war on terror", if the attacks in Boston, London, and Paris, are any indication, is entering a "lone wolf" stage so the authorities better get their ducks in a row.  Given our goverment's level of competence, it does not look good.

Time to close it down.  It's run its course, costs $450 million a year to operate and does not seem to have any useful purpose other than to serve as propaganda for Islamic terrorists.

I would be scared to look at the Vegas odds on the West vs Islamic terrorists.....

Running off the rails...

Between the IRS scandal, the return of the Benghazi controversy, and an ill conceived and probably illegal secret raid on the Associated Press' records, it has turned out to be a bad week for the Obama administration.  Everyone at the head of every institution has tried the "I did not know about it" line but it rings hollow and everyone sees through it. It is pretty obvious to everyone that the emperor has no clothes.  I am not sure if it is merely abuse of power or simple incompetence but many, many Americans, even those of the liberal persuasion, are washing their hands of this administration.  Add in the coming trainwreak of Obamacare and the continued economic mess and you can see a rerun of the 2010 midterm elections coming up. 

I have the feeling that the White House liquor cabinet will need to be restocked on Monday morning...and probably Tuesday morning...

Anyone seen any Hope and Change?

May 12

May 12 is another big day on the Haas calender!

That is the day I graduated from the The Citadel and won the final victory over the insidious evil that polluted the place.  No, they don't get any money from me....

May 12 is the day freedom triumphed.  It is a day we celebrate freedom from tyranny and freedom to decide our own destiny.  Crushing any attempts at intimidation and pushing arbitray obstacles, we move forward.  You don't always win the first round but you will win the last and eventually emerge victorious.

Life is not a sprint, it is a marathon.

May 12....kind of what the Fourth of July used to be....

Another struggle there looming...get ready for it....

...and remember the 12th of May!

Happy Greek Orthodox Easter!

The Western Easter was on March 31, so I wasn't able to get Easter candy at half price this year....LOL

Looking at Syria...

If the US wants some advice on Syria, here is some---Don't.

Don't get involved, don't intervene, don't even comment on it.

Let events in Syria run its course.

No need to re-experience Libya where we arm and intervene on the side of "rebels" who later turn around and attack us.

The problem with Middle Eastern revolutions is that they are often not revolutions at all. Too often the "revolutionaries" are often indistinguishable from the people they overthrew.....can you say "Egypt"?  Middle Eastern "revolutions" are often battles between armed bands of psychotics.

Senator Lindsey Graham (or is it Graham Lindsey?) wants the US to launch cruise missiles at Syrian military emplacements or even launch air raids.  Naturally, this is the first step toward getting mixed up in another Middle Eastern war...like we have not seen enough of that (Afghanistan 2001,  Iraq 2003) not to mention the ongoing, never ending "crisis" with Iran that has been going on since at least 2005.

The Israelis should not open fire on the border either.  Remember the miscalculation Saddam Hussein made in 1980 thinking he could defeat Iran when it was in the middle of the Islamic Revolution.  An Israeli attack will unite all of the Syrian factions and push the country towards Iran.  The nightmare of an Iran with influence extending to the Med is a nightmare no one wants to see either. It might be the Persian Empire reborn and while many say intervention will prevent this from happening, it seems more like it would,

The Middle East has been in chaos since 3500 BC if not longer.  We are not going to change that.  Keeping it contained is one thing.  Wading in is nothing anyone sane wants to do....except maybe Haliburton.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Some sick mind conceived of a plan to detonate two bombs at the Boston Marathon yesterday and even worse, carried it out, killing at least three people and wounding hundreds more.  Making the story worse is that two more bombs were discovered.  Fortunately, they were disarmed.

There is a lot of speculation as to who is behind this.  Islamic terrorists, right-wing or left-wing extremists, or even a false flag operation have been mentioned but it does not matter.  People are hurt and need help. 

Internal bickering also does not help.  All that does is make the situation even worse.

Prayers for Boston and do what you can to help.

Yellow Storm!

Now that Spring finally arrived, the pollen has come with it.  Lots of it!  It is not quite Yellow Storm of 2007 but it is pretty bad.  Luckily I don't have any allergies but I see lots of people coughing and hacking and tossing yellow wipies around. 

Ever hear of a trashcan?!

Well, they are suffering so let's give them a break.

I am still not touching that thing on the ground though

Forutunately it is raining pretty hard at the moment so most of it get washed away---for about a day.

Oh, well...at least the flowers will be in full bloom!

Engagement Anniversary

April 2 is always a big day on the Haas calender...Back in 2007, I gave Michelle her ring in front of Heinz Field!

North Korea getting restless....

It is not unusual to hear odd ball announcements and threats from North Korea but the latest seem particularly troubling....

Nominally a Chinese client state and subject to a lot of Russian influence, North Korea nontheless acts as a wild card, doing whatever it likes most of the time.  The recent bellicose behavior is cause for alarm though.

Consider this--Kim Jong-un is still only a year and a half into his reign so maybe there is some behind the scenes instability we are not aware of.  Whipping up anger at South Korea and the US is a good way to unite the people of North Korea and distract them from hunger.

He has to know that he can't win Korean War II

North Korea's military, while formidable, has no "staying power."

Within a few days, their supply lines, assuming they have not been obliterated by US airpower, will stop functioning since there will be no supplies to send.  North Korean forces will go straight for Seoul and do a lot of damage but they will be beaten back in the end.  Do you think China is going to intervene militarily like they did in 1950? And if Kim Jong-un is still in Pyongyang when it is over, how long will be remain in power?  Any official line about "winning" or "accomplishing the mission" will be contradicted by the many veterans coming home.

I don't see it happening.  North Korea has about a 1% of winning.  On the other hand, North Korea has never been blessed with sane leadership.

I hope this is just a case of typical nutcase North Korean leader primping for his generals or the population at large.

If not, you might want to stay out of Seoul for a while.

Happy Greek Independence Day!

Happy Greek Independence Day!

Iraq War--Ten Years Later

Ten years ago on the this day, US forces launched, what was called a pre-emptive, invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  President Bush was on the TV telling Iraqis that "the moment of their liberation had arrived."  He also stated the invasion was happening because Iraq was actively pursing research and acquiring "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) and was allied to al-Qeida.

Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations in 2002 and told the world that Iraq was seeking yellow cake uranium in Niger to make nuclear weapons.  He also stated that al-Qieda and Iraq were meeting to coordinate attacks on the United States.

Worst of all, many of us here in the US--including me--fell for it.

The Iraqis were never in Niger, there was one low level contact between Hussein's people and Bin Laden's that never amounted to anything, and we never found any weapon of mass destruction.  A couple of mobile weapons labs, true, but they did not seem to have been used for anything.

We were lied to and the nation was plunged into a divisive, futile, and inconclusive war that left 4,488 servicemen dead, thousands wounded,. God knows how many Iraqis dead and wounded, Iran as the major power in the region, and a distrust in our government that may never leave.

President Obama promised to end the war but instead tried to extend it. Post-Hussein Iraq would not allow American soldiers to stay beyond December 31, 2011 in the original agreement signed with the preceding Bush administration so the war was going to end on way or the other.

Combined with Afghanistan, launched in 2001, these wars might be christened the Moslem Wars by future historians.  What did they accomplish?

Not much.

The Middle East is in turmoil like it usually is, we have a national security apparatus call Homeland Security that resembles the KGB but twice as big and twice as incompetent, as passengers lining up in airports are essentially stripped searched by the TSA, and the FBI engages in active profiling as millions of illegal immigrants walk over the southern border to have US politicians beg them for money and votes.   Those same politicians make millions from the wars and security apparatus and the population of America loses hope in democracy.  And let's not forget the out of control debt these ill conceived adventure put us in.

Was it worth it?  It might be too early to tell but so far it is looking like a big NO.

At least one positive thing will come out of this.

The United States won't be going to war anytime soon.

We're too broke.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Everyone is Irish today!

I saw the Pittsburgh Penguins defeat the Boston Bruins in a hockey game today....I could not help but wonder why they did not have this game in Boston on today of all days....

No complaints though.  Pittsburgh won 3-2!

Now we know why...

Do you remember back in January when I went up to Chapel Hill and everyone was angry, muttering and possibly insane?  I think I found out the reason.....

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/07/university-of-north-carolina-sex-assaults/1970301/

Between the football team and the much more serious allegations of covering up rape and sexual assaults, you wonder just how corrupt UNC is.  What the article fails to mention is even worse--the attempt by the school's "Honor" Court to expel the victim.

Remember, these are supposedly "liberals."

Time for a Stalin's Purge in Chapel Hill.

Story from USAToday....

Sequester!

So, our esteemed elected officials return from vacation and cannot even balance a checkbook.....Never mind this was supposed to happen back in January but they kicked the can down the road and still could not solve the problem....Panic over a 2% cut in federal spending...overdue and just the beginning.  Is President Obama upset?  Too bad.  We had to take a 2% pay cut in January.

This is well overdue.  If the government was so upset by this, then why did Congress and the President go on vacation this week?

The sun will rise tomorrow and the deficit will still be there.

Hopefully this is the beginning.

It will not be easy and there will be pain involved.

No easy way especially with a dysfunctional government but this sequester might be a tiny step in the right direction....ie starving the federal beast and putting it on a diet.

Byzantine=Roman

People tend to ask me this question a lot--"What is the difference between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire?"

Answer: aside from the fact one is speaking Latin and the other Greek, and one was polytheistic (mostly) and the other aggressively Greek Orthodox, none.....LOL

Back in 285, Diocletian realized the Roman Empire was too big for one man to run so he made an administrative East-West division with its own emperor though the older one was senior.  Constantine the Great (312-337) did away with this and after the Edict of Milan, legalizing Christianity, moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium.  Then Constantine, ever the modest type, renamed the city Constantinople.

After 337, the Romans went back to the old East-West division and in 476, the Western Empire fell.

September 4, 476 is the fall of the Roman Empire.

But that was only the western half.

The East lived on until 1453.  It was a pretty wild ride lasting nearly a thousand years.

The word "Byzantine" did not even exist until 1557 when a German historian named Wolff coined the term to mark a distinction between the Roman Empire of antiquity and the Byzantine Empire that still carried Roman standards into battle in the Middle Ages.

The Eastern Roman Empire was built around a Greek core rather than the original Latin but it took until the 600s before Greek became the official language of the empire.  Of course the character of it had changed.  Historian argue weather it was Justinian or Heraclius who was the "last" of the Latin emperors but a look at the names should tell you what you need to know. LOL

Western Europe, for some reason, never seemed to recognize Byzantium as the Roman Empire. They always referred to the Emperor as "King of the Greeks."   It got to the point where they crowned an aging Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800 and kept up the Holy Roman Empire charade until Napoleon got tired of looking at it.  As Voltaire said, "It was neither Holy, Roman, nor an empire."  Oddly enough, the Turks, Arabs, and Persians had no problem seeing the Byzantine Greeks as Romans, referring to the empire as "Rum". 

It was all fun and games until May 29, 1453 when the Turks finally took the city by storm.  Even the Turks recognized how valiant an adversary the Byzantine Greeks were and the Greeks never forgot, finally winning freedom in 1832.

Of course, they did not call themselves "Byzantines."  They proudly called themselves "Greek".

Stay Classy, LA

After watching the whole Chris Dorner episode unfold, I suddenly understand why Los Angeles is such a weird place----Its populated by insane people!

I don't know who was crazier--Dorner or the cops.  And not just the Los Angeles Police Department. The San Bernadino Sheriff Department seemed to be staffed by people who were not sure what planet they were on.  It might explain why, after nearly twenty years after Rodney King riots and federal supervision, why so much hatred and vitriol came out against the cops in SoCal.

Did they set the cabin on fire or didn't they?

Why were there over fifty (!) individual security details all around LA because of one crazy?  Who was watching South Central? And HOW do you mistake two Asian ladies in a pickup for one large guy in BDUs? They open fire and plant nearly a hundred rounds in the truck and shoot a fleeing old lady in the back?

The LAPD is clearly one of the most corrupt and incompetent organizations on the planet.  All those resources to chase down one guy?  And if he was so crazy, why did the LAPD bring him on board as a cop in the first place?

Did he know something they did not want everyone else to know?

Given the LAPD's reputation, it is kind of hard to shock anyone.

If the "Big One" ever hits Los Angeles and slides off into the Pacific, I don't think anyone is going to miss it.

Donald Driver---Class Act

Don't you wish you could see more stories like this about athletes? I might even forgive him for Super Bowl XLV after this......:-).  Story from Yahoo! Sports

 http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/donald-driver-final-stop-green-bay-home-78-201447164--nfl.html

More wild weather!

What is it with January weather?

Last year, it was a couple of snow storms.  This year, it did not snow because it was too bloody cold and then these wind storms with 60 + mph winds came out of no where!  Fortunately no tornadoes but you do wonder!

It was easy to sleep to.  Pelting rain and high wind.  Imagine the rain as icy snow and the wind as the usual wind and  you know what it is like out on the Canadian Prairies at night.

After last year's hail storms, there were a lot of roofers out asking to inspect roofs and then giving quotes,,,,LOL  I bet we see them come out again!

Nothing like a little entrepreneurial initiative.  I bet it is all cash too...especially with our moron government trying to tax everything in existence.  Don't worry...its going to implode because there is not that much money in the world and they are going to find out the hard way!

In the meantime, its back to writing and reading and all that other stuff!

Benghazi Hearing...

"The form was still there, but the animating health and vigor had fled."

I remembered that line from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when I watched the oft-delayed hearings on the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Libya that cost the life of Amabassdor Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

After delaying, claiming she was "busy", followed by a stomach virus and a claim of a concussion, SecState Hillary Clinton finally gave her testimony about how much she knew of the deteriorating security situation.

"At this point what difference does it make?" what the answer we received.

What difference does it make?

Four Americans died in a supposedly liberated country and you did not ensure their security before, during or even after the attack!

Senator Paul Rand said it best: "I would have relieved you of your duties."

She needs to go to jail.

First, the administration blamed some Youtube film for a "spontaneous" demonstration that did not happen.  No, even in the Middle East, people do not carry RPGs to demonstrations.  Arresting some guy in California does not prevent this from happening again. Despite promises to "bring the attackers to justice", has anything been done?  Do we even know who committed the attack?

Susan Rice was offered up as a sacrificial lamb and was lambasted.  Hillary tried to dodge the hearings and could not.  When she was brought up finally in front of the Senate, she bangs her fists on the table and says "What difference does it make?"

I would ask Chris Stevens but he is unavailable for comment.

Proud day for America.....

Chapel Hill--Vicious and Nasty?

 I was in Chapel Hill, NC on the University campus.  I saw angry people with sullen faces.  When they were not looking down at their feet while walking, they were shouting at each other and giving hand signals that had nothing to do with traffic.

I, aloof from the drama,  watched from a Starbucks with a hot chocolate.  I looked around and saw people slumped down in their seats, angrily staring at computer screens and it was quiet....eerie quiet.  I wondered what was going on.

Then today I saw a New York Times article ripping Obama over drone strikes at US citizens joining al-Qeida in the Middle East.  What? The New York Times upset at Obama?  What was going on?

Then I made a connection and I realized what I saw in Chapel Hill earlier.

Everyone was getting smaller paychecks due to the increased payroll tax that somehow was not included in the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.  Suddenly, these committed liberals who had fought so hard and campaigned tirelessly for Obama were reaping what they had sown.

And they did not like it.

Can you blame them?

Would Romney have been any different?  Hard to say but he is not the one in the White House so guess what---it's yours, Barrack!  And the people who voted for you don't seem too happy with you.

It is nothing to gloat over but it shows an important lesson--liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat--we are all in this together.

United States....U.S......US....Let's keep it that way and forget the infighting.

It is time to work together and fix this mess.....

TOGETHER!

Rudy West

The University of Oregon Ducks are known for three things--(A) Horrific uniforms, (B) fielding consistently good teams and (C) teamwork!

With 2:27 left in a 35-17 route of Kansas State in the Fiesta Bowl, Oregon player Keanon Lowe (pic above, courtesy of Sports Illustrated) fake an injury so that his teammate, Dane Ebanez, could come into the game.

Ebanez was a walk on who had played for the last three years on the practice squad.  He was the practice squad player of the year for the last two years but had never been in a game.  Since he was a senior, this Fiesta Bowl would be his last.  Lowe "limped" off the field and waved Ebanez in so that his teammate could at least be in a bowl game before his college career ended.

This is what teamwork is all about.

Dane Ebanez is probably not going to the NFL or CFL but you never do know.  Lowe might and if he does, I hope he does well.  Hopefully it isn't for the Baltimore Ravens.....

Cold pizza and running

I ate cold pizza this morning and then ran three miles in the 29 degree morning temperature under crystal blue sky.  It was like being in Canada again. This was the best winter NC could offer so I took its best effort.  It is usually best to run in the afternoon when it is warmer and you can sweat some more but sometimes you take what you can get.

I think "Cold Pizza" was the name of some ESPN sports show or something but I couldn't tell you one way or the other.  What I do know is that pepperoni and sausage pizza is the best kind of pizza. There is some debate over the merits of Italian vs Polish sausage but I am going with Italian.  Polish sausage is best reserved for kielbasa.

Meatball pizza runs a close second though others in the debate charge that you might as well eat a meatball sub.  They may have a point there but it depends on if you can but garlic butter on the bread.

If Congress took this up as a matter of debate, their approval rating might reach positive numbers....

Picture from Buckeyeplanet.com