Late For the Sky

(with apologies to Jackson Browne)

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A most persuasive argument against The Obamanon:

Europe’s media and left-wing intelligentsia see Barack Obama as the most appealing candidate for the U.S. presidency. He exemplifies what the French leftist magazine Le Nouvel Observateur calls “the America we like.” Most Europeans deny that they’re anti-American; they argue instead that there are two Americas—the good and the bad. Michael Moore is a good American, honored with the Cannes film festival’s highest prize in 2006 for his anti-Bush fantasy documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Other good Americans include Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Noam Chomsky, Barbra Streisand, and Philip Roth. Charlton Heston and Billy Graham are bad—as bad as McDonald’s—and so, of course, are President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Let us understand why, from the European perspective, Obama is good.

Well, now. I’d say the lede graf is more than enough reason… on its own… not to vote for young Barack, wouldn’t you, Gentle Reader? But wait!… as that obnoxious Billy Mays says screams while flogging Oxy-moron or whatever it is… there’s more! And it won’t cost you $19.95, either. “Europe ♥ Obama; For continental elites, the candidate exemplifies ‘the good American.’” Yours, free, just for the reading and but one click away.

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And speaking of Billy Mays… as I just did… that guy sells a lot of stuff. And cleans up doing it, too.

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Why does every useless (or nearly so) thing “as seen on TV” sell for $19.95?

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Interesting, this:

That’s a good political ad, although I did raise my eyebrow just a bit when I saw the implicit comparisons made to Churchill and T. Roosevelt. I think Senator McCain has a ways to go before he can make those sorts of comparisons, in all honesty. And that’s considering his POW story, which is genuinely heroic but not unlike those of Bud Day or Lance Sijan, to name only two. There are many more. Still and even, the comparisons work better with McCain than they would with the other two (Democrat) candidates. In their cases I wouldn’t have raised my eyebrow… I’d have laughed.

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Today’s Pic: Daisies. And someone lurks therein.

North Bend, Oregon. 1979.

What Passes for My Foodie Post

There’s a bit of a food meme going on over at the Southwest Oklahoma Blogging Coalition… Jay started it with a post about his favorite restaurants, and Lou piled on. I dropped comments in both places about how it would be well nigh impossible for me to name my favorite restaurants… due mainly to the fact that I’ve been a transient my entire life. After a while all those wonderful restaurants just seem to run together, memory fades, and few (none, actually) notes were taken. I suppose I could have saved all those expense reports from my business travels after the Air Force, but that would only account for perhaps 25% of my lifetime eating-out experiences. And that’s assuming I would have been anal enough to actually save those things. Ha. My record-retention policy is basically “toss it” if something/anything doesn’t meet IRS record retention requirements. And toss-‘em I did…

That said, I did remember The Second Mrs. Pennington saved a few odds and ends from our 1991 trip to Beijing and Tokyo (more about which, here, conveniently labeled for your reading pleasure. But no photos as yet.), which included some memorable restaurants and great good times with three of The Second Mrs. Pennington’s host families from her Rotary Exchange student days. One such event was Christmas Dinner at a wonderful Japanese restaurant that specialized in European cuisine (French and Italian, predominately). I could have sworn TSMP saved the menu from that night, but I can’t find it. The food was outstanding, as I recall, but the company was the best part. Here are a couple of shots from that night… TSMP’s host father is the one in the light suit with the blue tie, and that’s his wife to his left, and his business partner and wife to his right. The blond-of-many-hair-do’s at the end of the table is another Rotary Exchange student who was staying with TSMP’s host family. She was quite taken with herself, and for moderately good reason, too. She is most definitely a “looker,” but she had yet to learn that looks aren’t everything…

The third picture in this series (TSMP and I) was taken towards the end of the evening and you might be able to tell I was feeling little or no pain, Gentle Reader. This is the result of LOTS of wine with our meal, and lots of beer before and after. A great good time was had by ALL… not the least YrHmblScrb. Note that TSMP doesn’t appear the worse for wear… she had an image to uphold.

These next two pics were taken at a small restaurant near Mount Fuji, in some name-unrecalled small town...which is better described as a village. That’s TSMP and her host father at our table, where we cooked our shabu-shabu. The restaurant we ate in was supposedly famous throughout Japan for both it’s ambience and the quality of the food…which the Japanese can be fanatics about. If you chased the link, you’ll note shabu-shabu is a traditional Japanese winter dish, and it was most certainly winter outside…as you can see from the way we’re dressed. While the day might have been cold, the company certainly wasn’t…and the food was delicious!

The next picture is TSMP and I in a Tokyo sushi bar. We were living in Deetroit at the time, and while Detroit has some very good sushi restaurants, there ain’t nothin’ like the real thing. TSMP and I indulged our passion for sushi at numerable sushi bars during our brief stop-over in Tokyo on the way home. This is but one…

The final three pics illustrate that airline food wasn’t all that bad, once upon a time. This is the menu one received in Northwest Airlines business class back in December of 1991. And the food tasted every bit as good as it reads on the menu. I haven’t flown biz-class in quite some time, but I’d hazard a guess that corners have been cut there, as well as in cattle-car class.

But the best thing about traveling in Biz-Class, back in the day? Free drinks. Up to the point they cut you off, that is. While I never had that particular experience, being the mellow sort of drunk I am, suffice to say I could have been poured off the plane when we reached our destination.

As always...click the pics for the larger versions.

Miscellanea

Didja see my new McCain vid in the sidebar? I got it here…where there’s lots more such stuff, if’n ya have a mind to…ummm… join the party. The winning party…

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Oooh… I want one!

Great ad, eh? I’m normally against co-opting rock ‘n’ roll… but this works. I’ve said this before (and about another Jag, too) and I’ll say it again: this sort of thing almost makes me wanna go back to work… Almost.

{sigh}

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There’s more…lots more… on the Air Force’s KC-45 award last week. Yesterday Ms. Sue Payton, the Air Force’s acquisition executive, briefed Rep. John Murtha’s House Appropriations military subcommittee on the award to Northrop-Grumman/EADS. A LOT of the committee members were upset, to say the very least. Some items from the Air Force Association’s Daily Report:

Moving Up: Originally scheduled for next week, the Air Force said Wednesday it would now provide Boeing on March 7 with a thorough debrief covering how its KC-767 was rated in the Air Force's KC-X source-selection evaluation. The company asked the Air Force to move up the scheduled meeting so that the Chicago-based company could gain insight into why it did not prevail in the $35 billion KC-X contest that the Air Force awarded to the KC-30 tanker team, comprising Northrop Grumman and European maker Airbus. Northrop will get its debrief sometime next week, Air Force acquisition executive Sue Payton told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee Wednesday. Payton rejected allegations made by Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), in whose state Boeing has a huge presence, that the Air Force made changes to the evaluation criteria late in the competition that placed Boeing at a disadvantage. "There were no changes made to the requirements or the evaluation criteria of this [request for proposals] after it was approved by the joint requirements oversight council," she said. And she reminded the panel that the Air Force's acquisition strategy was approved by OSD and is in compliance with the Competition in Contracting Act, the Buy America Act, and the Federal Acquisition Regulations that are derived from those acts.

-Michael C. Sirak

Image by Northrop-Grumman.

Game Face: Reiterating the stance made Feb. 29 in announcing the Northrop Grumman/EADS team as the winner in the KC-X tanker competition, Air Force acquisition executive Sue Payton said Wednesday that the company's bid was clearly the best. "Northrop Grumman brought their 'A game,' " Payton told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee in her first public appearance on Capitol Hill since the politically controversial decision. The company's team, she said, "met or exceeded the requirements of the request for proposals" and "provided the best overall value to the warfighter and every American taxpayer based on the competition evaluation factors." When members such as panel chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) and David Hobson (R-Ohio) pressed Payton on whether the Air Force's evaluation weighed factors important to the lawmakers such as industrial capacity and where the jobs will be created and where the profits from the tanker work will go [i.e., home or abroad], she said, no, because such issues lie outside of the federal acquisition regulations by which she must abide. "I wish I could award to somebody I like [or] to somebody who offers things that I personally like, but according to the law ... those things cannot enter into the decisions," she said. The KC-X decision abides with Buy America provisions passed by Congress, she noted. The Buy America Act gives exemptions to about a dozen countries, Payton said, adding that it says to treat those countries "as the US." "The countries that have companies that will be engaged in the new KC-45A are all on that exempted list," she said. So the federal acquisition regulations "are all being followed."

Weighing In: Members on both sides of the political aisle in the House Appropriations defense subcommittee said Wednesday they want to look carefully at the Air Force's KC-X tanker decision to see if lies in the best interests of the country, given the fact that, at first glance, it looks like many American jobs have been lost in favor of much overseas work. "This is as political as anything that we do," said chairman John Murtha (D-Pa,) in characterizing the lawmakers' oversight role in the multi-billion-dollar tanker program. He explained: "We are the ones who appropriate the money. When I look at the Dubai [ports deal] crisis that we had, the public was up in arms. The full committee voted 60 to 2 to stop that provision, so this [too] has to be completely aired so that the public understands." Murtha said he will hold a second briefing on the tanker soon, likely behind closed doors after the two teams are debriefed (see above). Ranking member C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) echoed similar caution. "I want to make certain that we continue with manufacturing capability in the United States," he said. "I want to make certain that any technical developments within this program that are vital to the future interest of the United States are not going to be transferred to the likes of a country that I do not have all the confidence [in] that I would like to have in, namely France." Other members were less diplomatic. "This thing is fatally flawed in my judgment," said Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), in whose state Boeing would have done much of its tanker work had it won. "As far as I am concerned, Northrop Grumman is a front," said David Hobson (R-Ohio). "They are a fine company, but they are a front for the French and their other partners."

I watched parts of the hearing yesterday and it got quite animated and very contentious at times. I fully understand the lawmakers concerns about this award, not the least of which is the diminishment of our industrial capacity and the failure of the Air Force to Buy American…even if the law does provide exemptions to the “Buy American” Act for several of our “allies.” I place “allies” in scare quotes because I still remember the “support” for Iraq we got from the very same people who won the KC-45 deal… “support” that continues to this day in Afghanistan.

Just an aside: Many years ago… following my first successes in the proposal biz… I was asked if I was interested in joining EDS’ fledgling Military Services Division and, more specifically, its Air Force sub-division. I declined, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I wasn’t interested in living in the DeeSee area, even if it was in suburban Virginia. And most importantly, I wanted nothing to do with military acquisitions, given the labyrinth complexity of Federal acquisition laws, rules, and regulations. I think there are as many lawyers on pursuit teams responding to gub’mint requests for proposals (RFPs) as there are technical and pure-business folks, if not more. The civilian sector is much easier to deal with…by far. And that was then (approx. 20 years ago); one assumes it’s a lot worse, now… all the evidence seems to point in that direction. I don’t regret my decision in the least.

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Today’s WX Report… Well. As you can plainly see, Gentle Reader, Ol’ Man Winter ain’t done with us here on The High Plains of New Mexico just yet. It’s 28 degrees outside as I peck this out…with light snow showers. Kinda pretty, it is. Given the fact I made a commissary run yesterday we have absolutely NO reason to venture out today. So: Let it snow, let it snow…let it SNOW!!

(coz it’s gonna be 53 tomorrow.)

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Today’s Pic: Another photo of the dorm room I occupied in the NCO Quarters at Yokota AB, Japan…posted principally because of the travel poster stuck on my wall. That poster illustrates the rustic charms of a mountain river about an hour’s ride north of Yokota/Tokyo, and was the site of The Second Mrs. Pennington’s and my First Date, which was actually the second date. Our first date was on the day we met… and where I had been set-up with TSMP’s roommate (THE classic blind-date) by my good friends Ed and Bernice. The roommate and I had absolutely nothing in common, but TSMP and I had lots…and we spent the entire day together at an outdoor concert.

It was about a week later that I threw TSMP on the back of my motorcycle and took her up into the mountains to this river… where we spent the day playing in the water, eating lunch and dinner at small Japanese restaurants, and returning to Yokota late that evening. We spent that night in my dorm room, it being too late for TSMP to catch a train back to her place. Which, of course, was engineered that way on my part, and which she went along with enthusiastically. It was about a year later we found this poster in a Japan Travel Bureau store. It became a permanent part of our décor until such time as we moved beyond the “posters on the wall” school of interior decoration.

As always, click for larger.

An Interesting Night...

So… it was all politics, all the time here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington yesterday. I began watching the coverage yesterday afternoon sometime around 1430 hours and continued watching until well into the night… to the point of falling asleep during Obama’s “concession” speech (The Deity only knows what time that was…), waking up again at some indeterminate point in time to see that Hillary had won Texas (in addition to Ohio), and listening to all the analysis (off and on) until the wee small hours, when I fell asleep yet again… this time for good.

I also watched Huckabee’s concession speech, and McCain’s “we won…we’re the nominee!” speech, as well. I found all of it, combined, to be the most interesting night in this interminable campaign season so far. And my hat is off to Democrat Bob Beckel, who is a Fox News Channel political analyst on the Democrat side. That Ol’ Boy has a wicked sense of humor, in addition to being very astute and well grounded when it comes to politics on his side of the wire. Mr. Beckel really gave it to Fred Barnes… in a very humorous yet scathing way… Barnes can be and often is one of the biggest wind-bags on the political right. And Yes, Virginia, there IS such a thing as “Hillary Derangement Syndrome.” Barnes is living proof of that, if not the Poster Child for same.

Last night’s coverage was very, very good…at least on Fox News. I even found that ridiculous Susan Estritch person to be entertaining, especially when she delivered her “Republicans’ wet-dream” joke about a continuing, ugly-leading-to-uglier Democrat campaign late last night. Her remark occurred well and truly after prime-time, and FNC host Bill Hemmer so noted, adding that “I guess that’s OK…” in reference to Estrich’s off-color remark. It made me laugh right out loud, it did. I occasionally switched over to CNN to see what was happening there, but didn’t stay long…mainly because I detest that frickin’ Blitzer guy. I wasn’t on CNN long enough to comment on the quality of their analysis. It might have been good, for all I know. But I kinda doubt it: Blitzer was in charge. At least I missed Blitzer’s side-kick, the supremely annoying Jack Cafferty. If he was even there…and I don’t know that he was. That’s a good thing, Gentle Reader.

So. It looks like the Democrats will continue to beat each other up for at least another seven weeks or so, until the Pennsylvania primary and perhaps beyond. Neither candidate is conceding anything, at this point. Some Dems are bemoaning this fact, others not so much. But for those hand-wringing Dems…remember this: You brought it on yourselves. It’s YOUR rules that are prolonging this contest, what with your arcane delegate assignment processes, and most specifically the proportional allocation of delegates in your primaries. This thing would be close to OVER if you adopted a “winner take all” approach to the primaries. Which kinda-sorta reinforces my belief that the Democrat Party just ain’t ready to govern. And that would be ready to govern anything… from the smallest hamlet all the way up to the nation.

But I will admit: all y’all create quite the spectacle. I’m enjoying every minute of this.

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Cynthia… writing in the comments to yesterday’s post about my house in North Bend… noted that the older homes in North Bend are disappearing due to Californication. So I went out to Google Earth this morning and checked to see if 3337 Sherman Ave. still exists. I’m happy to report it does indeed exist, and looks pretty much the same as it did when I owned it. You can’t tell that from this screen shot, but I thought I’d give ya the “larger” view, Gentle Reader. You can see that we weren’t but about five or six blocks from (part of ) the port…where the principal activity was loading logs and woodchips on to freighters bound for the Far East. It looks like things haven’t changed at all, in this regard…as there’s a freighter docked next to a huge pile of chips visible in the first screen shot. The second is the state of Oregon, just to give you some perspective on where North Bend is…in relation to other stuff. Like Washington.

As always, click for larger. Or go to Google Earth yourownself, if the spirit moves ya...

3337 Sherman Ave, North Bend, Oregon

Exterior, front... along with our 1979 Ford Courier pick-up, which is really a Mazda

Exterior, rear

Day before yesterday I posted a photo of My Favorite Frog and The Second Mrs. Pennington that was taken in our home in Oregon. North Bend, Oregon, to be exact…which, along with its sister city Coos Bay… forms one of the nicer places I’ve ever lived. The geography is good, what with North Bend being on the Oregon coast and all, the weather is generally fine albeit a little wet, and the people are friendly, for Oregonians. Which isn’t to say they’re Unfriendly, it’s just that they’re Oregonians…the folks who supposedly originated the term “Californication” and most definitely invented the UNgreeting Card. They can be a bit stand-offish, especially to outsiders, and especially if they think you’re gonna stay in their Fair State. But we managed to muddle through…

Me on the front steps

North Bend is also the town where TSMP and I bought our first house. Even though we were poor, we managed to buy a house about a month after we arrived in Oregon in August of 1978…more about HOW we managed to buy the house comes later. Like most first houses, our was small… a two-bedroom place with about 1,100 or 1,200 square feet and a single bathroom, built in the late 40s or early 50s. But the place had wonderful fenestration, new carpet, new paint, and a great big oil-fired, hot water heating system with massive radiators that pinged, clanged and hissed in the process of getting the house warmed up. The home’s previous owners had also been avid gardeners and bequeathed us a rose garden that was both beautiful and fragrant. We never lacked for fresh-cut flowers during Spring, summer, or Fall. The roses were the best, but there were other flowers, as well.

Me, with some of the backyard flowers

TSMP in one of those comfy sling chairs

Me in the other comfy sling chair along with Kuma, aka Koomer Za Zoomer

As I noted in the Froggy picture day before yesterday, TSMP and I were pretty poor at the time. We furnished that house with (about) $500.00, and our furnishings consisted of two sling chairs from the JC Penney garden center, a cheap dinette set, a glass and chrome coffee table (our sole “indulgence,” which remained with us until the very end), a mattress on the floor and some other odds and ends… including my stereo, which was replaced by a friend’s stereo…for about a year or so. We had no teevee; we had a dog, instead. Much more entertaining.

More décor

Our house had the air of an up-market hippie crash pad, due in no small part to the décor (such as it was), and the fact there were three of us living there. A good friend of mine, who was also stationed at North Bend AFS and who was going through hard times, moved in with us when we took possession of the house. My Buddy was the victim of bad choices and bad luck that led to him being (a) involuntarily discharged from the Air Force and (b) being involuntarily discharged from his relationship with his girlfriend, later his wife…at nearly the same time. So TSMP and I took him in while he got back on his feet. And there were various comings and goings of other characters as well, which I’m sure had the neighbors wondering, if not talking among themselves.

But…life was good in that house. Life was also pretty much normal. I left for work every morning around 0700, and got home around 1700…rinse, repeat, five days a week. I went to night school at the local community college. TSMP went through a number of shit-jobs following her graduation from that university in South Bend with the used-to-be-great football team…among them car salesperson and waitress in a Japanese restaurant, where she put her BA in Japanese to some use, anyway. She eventually landed a better job, becoming a personal assistant/admin to a self-employed real estate appraiser, which, in turn, opened up a whole new circle of friends for us. Her boss, Max, also owned an airplane which he wrote off as a business expense (aerial photos of properties, ya know), and that plane was the platform from which TSMP shot the photos of the air station, below.

761 Radar Squadron, North Bend AFS, OR (1)

761 RADRON (2)

North Bend was also where I purchased that red RD-400 (my favorite mo’sickle of all time), and where I spent many enjoyable hours “building” that bike in the small detached garage out back. I also rode the bike to work nearly everyday…when the weather agreed, and sometimes even when it didn’t. It rained a lot in that part of the world. The ride to and from work was most exciting and challenging… as the site access road climbed about 5,000 feet in the space of about five or six miles… and that road was a twisty-turny sport biker’s wet dream, Gentle Reader. And I got to ride it twice a day, every day, five days a week. Great good times, those were.

Ultimately, the best thing about that house was the Oregon State VA loan we had, which was the sole reason we could afford to buy a house in the first place, given our level of poverty in 1978. Oregon’s Department of Veterans Affairs had a state-funded mortgage program for Vietnam vets at that time, and the State was our mortgage banker. This was a wonderful program for Vietnam-era vets and one needn’t have served IN Vietnam, you only had to be in the service at the time to qualify for one of these state-funded mortgages. So, I qualified…and the loan carried a mere 3.5% interest rate and what’s more, those same mortgages were assumable by anyone… vet or not… at a rate of 5%. This being in early 1980, at which time… if you’re old enough to remember… we were in the end-game of Carter-era stagflation (well, it’s easy to blame Jimmuh but he wasn’t wholly at fault, just mostly. Assuming you disregard Tricky Dick.). Not a fun time to be buying or selling a house, to put it mildly. When we put our house on the market in the first week of May, 1980 the prime rate stood at 18.75%, with mortgages going around 3% over prime. So… you can see the appeal of a loan assumable at a mere 5%, can you not, Gentle Reader?

We had a firm offer at our asking price…full asking price… the day we put the house on the market. We laughed all the way to the bank, and quite literally, at that. We put the profit from the sale of the house in a jumbo CD, packed up our sling chairs and other stuff, and left for Ol' Blighty in the summer of 1980, where we spent the next three years living in London.

We weren’t so lucky with our next house, but that’s quite another story…one which ended when we took a rather substantially-sized check to closing when we sold. Not when we bought the house, but when we sold it. Bad juju, that was. But: another time.

They Call the Wind Mariah... and Other Unmentionable Names, Too.

Today is A Soldier’s Wife’s birthday. She’s been having a tough go of it of late, so why don’t you drop by and wish her A Happy, Gentle Reader… and give her a hug, while you’re at it. I know she’ll appreciate it.

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Today’s Pics: Wow! We had ourselves a wild, wild night last evening!! Big-time wind… of a sort that’s rare… even for The High Plains of New Mexico. I swear to The Deity that the wind was over 70 mph last evening…but it wasn’t, if one believes The WX Channel…which said we were experiencing steady wind of 37 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph… but no more than that. I think they lie, myself. We were most certainly rockin’ and rollin’ last night…and it was cold and snowy, too. In short: it wasn’t fit for man or beast outside last evening.

Last night’s storm left a little detritus lying around today. Once again, I was lucky. This tree would have made life just a little bit inconvenient had it smacked the Green Hornet or El Casa Móvil De Pennington when it fell last night. This is twice in the space of six or seven months that I’ve dodged a bullet dead tree, but I think we’re done now. If the wind gets high enough to take down the large tree that overhangs El Casa Móvil, chances are I won’t know about it…coz I’ll already be in the next county. Or Texas… depending.

Back in a bit. Yet another late night and later morning. This is getting to be a habit... and not one I’m comfortable with, Gentle Reader.

Don't Pay the Ransom...

... coz I escaped and I'm alive and semi-well. The post title is an impromptu line delivered over the phone to an unsuspecting TSMP after I'd overstayed my allotted time at the bar one evening in North Bend, Oregon. The lady was not amused, Gentle Reader. But my partners-in-crime at the NCO Club on North Bend Air Force Station were...

Let us begin.

―:☺:―

This blew me away…

The Pentagon’s competition worth up to $35 billion for the new KC‑45 refueling tanker was Boeing’s to lose, and it lost big.

The selection of an Airbus design for its KC-135 replacement will freeze Boeing out of a market long considered to be a monopoly for the only U.S. wide-body manufacturer. Airbus has now soundly penetrated the world’s largest defense market.

The Northrop Grumman/EADS team’s $1.5-billion win Feb. 29 of the KC-X competition was announced after multiple delays; it includes the manufacture of four developmental aircraft. Five options worth $10.6 billion for the first 64 aircraft are included. The total buy of 179 tankers begins with the fifth aircraft to come off the line. It will take more than a decade to complete with buy rates between 12-18 aircraft at a cost of about $3 billion per year.

KC-X is the first iteration of a three-phased approach to replace the Air Force’s fleet of 530 KC-135E/Rs and 59 KC-10s. The next tranche to replace the Air Force’s larger KC-10 tankers, dubbed KC-Y, is not expected until at least 2020, effectively freezing Boeing out of the tanker market for the foreseeable future. One factor attractive to the Air Force was the ability to use fewer KC-45s per mission, according to sources familiar with the evaluation. Air Force officials were focused on providing refueling services to the massive Pacific theater and cargo hauling for humanitarian missions over the Cold War scenarios focused on Europe.

Boeing had the inside track on this procurement and they lost. It pains me to think the USAF will be flying Airbus tankers. I don’t care if Northrop is partnered with EADS and they’re gonna open a production facility in the US… the lion’s share of the money the gub’mint spends on new tankers will still end up in Toulouse. That’s just not right, Gentle Reader.

―:☺:―

In other things aviation…via Lex… some stunning aerial video of a P-51 Mustang, along with a moving story about the plane’s restoration. The Reader’s Digest version: WW II fighter pilot’s grandchildren find and restore their grandfather’s P-51. The original. The very plane he flew in Big Bang Two. Bring Kleenex, and lots of it. But don’t forget… you’re going for the plane, too!

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The sole redeeming feature of my last post was the link to “Stuff White People Like.” I’ve since spent (much more than) a few hours on the blog and am most amused by the comments… which range from the predictable and appropriate “LOL!” to 1,000-word rants from clue-free individuals who simply don’t get it and insist the rest of the world know they don’t get it, too… and all points in between. Then I stumbled upon this op-ed in the LA Times on the site and its origins. You might find it interesting, Gentle Reader. I sure did.

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For the men in the audience… Got a nurse fetish? Well, get thee to Ol’ Blighty, where The Times (UK) revealed that “Nurses: we do seduce our patients.”

THOUSANDS of nurses believe it is justified to break the taboo on having an affair with a patient in their care.

Almost one in 10 nurses think starting a relationship with one of their patients is acceptable while one in six said they knew of a colleague who had a sexual relationship with a patient they were looking after.

{…}

The survey’s findings suggest a significant proportion of Britain’s 400,000 nurses are prepared to run the risk of sanctions – which in extreme cases could entail being struck off – for sleeping with patients. They also reveal that relationships between nurses and patients are not uncommon.

Well, now. Who’d a thunk it, eh? This might be the one and only Good Thing about socialized medicine. YMMV, of course.

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My daughter-in-law Erma (SN1’s wife) forwards the following:

The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists; two men and a woman. For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances."

Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!!" The man said, "You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife." The agent said, "Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home."

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent said, "You don't have what it takes. Take your wife home."

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow. "This gun is loaded with blanks" she said. "I had to beat him to death with the chair."

MORAL:
Women are crazy. Don't mess with them.

Ummm… yep. Noted. But I’ve kinda sorta known this for years.

―:☺:―

Today’s Pic: My favorite Frog, first posted yesterday sitting in my dorm room at Yokota AB, Japan and freezing his cute lil buns off on the deck at my home in Fairport, NY (a suburb of Fabulous Ra-cha-cha, NY). Here’s Froggy when he was a Kitchen Frog… in North Bend, Oregon. The year was 1979.

That’s The Second Mrs. Pennington on the phone. We were too poor to afford chairs at the time.