The Happy Carpenter

Venez obtenir votre photographie élevée à la crête chinoise de chien de viande

No idea why, but lately this pic I posted last year has been getting tons of hits from a French search engine.  Ayez l'amusement avec le chien stupide vous les canailles déloyales!

And how irksome is it that the French and the world's ugliest dog put The Happy Carpenter over the 200,000 hits threshold?  It ain't right.  It just ain't right.....

Shingles

Those of us who spend much time in a doctor's office should appreciate this! Doesn't it seem that more and more that physicians are running their practices like an assembly line? Here's what happened to one guy...

Bubba walked into a doctor's office and the receptionist asked him what he had. Bubba said, "Shingles." So she wrote down his name, address, medical insurance number and told him to have a seat.

Fifteen minutes later a nurse's aide came out and asked Bubba what he had. Bubba said, "Shingles." So she wrote down his height,  weight, a complete medical history and told Bubba to wait in the examining room.

A half hour later a nurse came in and asked Bubba what he had.
Bubba said, "Shingles." So the nurse gave Bubba a blood test, a blood pressure test, an electrocardiogram, and told Bubba to take off all his clothes and wait for the doctor.

An hour later the doctor came in and asked Bubba what he had.

Bubba said, "Shingles."

The doctor asked, "Where?"

Bubba said, "Outside on the truck. Where do you want them?"

No wasted typing

I'm not a good typist, so when I leave a long (for me) comment on another blog, I often post it here to save on effort.

John of Random Jottings has a post up in which he says:

I support the Administration in the War not because I think they don't make mistakes, but because I agree with their compass heading. And the contempt I feel for President Bush's liberal opponents is huge, not because I think they would necessarily make more "mistakes" if they were in charge, but because they have no compass.

They have never made a philosophical case for a different Grand Strategy. Without that, to continually oppose and hinder our elected leadership means they are not a "loyal opposition." They are just treasonous ankle-biters.

I think that's not quite right.  I wrote:

John, it's not that they lack a different Grand Stategy. They have one, and while it's hard to get it out of them, it basically boils down to doing exactly what the Clinton Administration did.
They fact that their Grand Strategy didn't work, that it lead to the embassies, the Cole, and 9-11 really doesn't bother them. They shrug off everything before 9-11, and blame 9-11 itself on President Bush. Never mind that this makes no sense.

One hallmark of the liberal mind is caring more about intentions than results. To you and me, that sounds like insanity, but according to the psych's, the good-intentions folks make up something like a third of the population (including my ex-wife). As with the war on poverty and socialism in general, repeated failures just don't matter, or at least do not give a reason for changing their compass heading. They always argue in the face of failure for more of the same, a faster pace down the demonstrably ineffective but well-intentioned heading. Those are the nice liberals, and on even numbered days like today, I believe they're the majority of the Left. Tomorrow is an odd numbered day, so I will believe they are nefarious scoundrels more interested in personal power than in the well being of their fellow men.

Secrets

Ralph Peters makes an excellent point:

I don't keep secrets from the American people. I keep secrets for the American people. I took an oath not to divulge classified information. In return, I was trusted. And I never broke my word.

He goes on:

The climate of leaks-without-penalties must end. But it probably won't. Why? Because senior figures in both parties see political advantages in well-timed leaks. They're willing to betray our nation for a brief partisan edge....

This isn't a matter of creating a police state, for God's sake. We're at war. In war (and in peace, as well), we have secrets to keep. When we fail to keep those secrets, soldiers die, our enemies are encouraged, our allies grow reluctant to share intelligence with us, and our own agencies worry about the danger of sharing information from their top sources. And you, the American people, are betrayed.

It makes me sad to agree with him.  Fighting about policy among ouselves is necessary and important, although it should be done with a lot more respect than it is.  But to leak classified information during time of war is beyond the pale.  Understanding why the President is not having the leakers prosecuted is beyond me.

Saw a flock of 30 of these beauties yesterday!

Beautiful!

Me too: "Beyond the misreporting of the NIE, what strikes me most about it is what a useless document it is. It is couched in such generalities that I don't see what use the President, or anyone else, could make of it for policy-making purposes." -- Powe

Powerline has posted a bunch of the latest National Intelligence Estimate here.  Read it for yourself, but really you could summarize it as "blah blah blah, yada yada yada".

Captain Ed's take:

We have now had a week of this debate. Does anyone feel any safer because of it?

Damn checking account

DAMN CHECKING ACCOUNT
An old man walks into a bank and says to the woman at the window, "I want to open a damn checking account."
The astonished woman replies, "I beg your pardon, sir. I must have misunderstood you. What did you say?"

"Listen up, damn it. I said I want to open a damn checking account now!"

"I'm very sorry sir, but that kind of language is not tolerated in this bank."

The teller leaves the window and goes over to the bank manager to inform him of her situation. The manager agrees that the teller does not have to listen to that foul language.

They both return to the window and the manager asks the old geezer,
"Sir, what seems to be the problem here?"

"There is no damn problem," the man says. I just won $200 million bucks in the damn lottery and I want to put my damn money in this damn bank."

"I see," says the manager", and is this Bitch giving you a hard time?"

Chicks with Glocks

Women with guns.  You gotta love 'em.

Geneva vs. Terror

I don't know what got me thinking along this line, and I usually eschew analogies, but...

Suppose the mother of the house (or Senate, if you like) has a rule:  Before anyone leaves the house for any reason they must brush their teeth and comb their hair.

Simple enough, and no doubt the people leaving the house will always look good and their breath will always be fresh.  Great idea, right?

But suppose the house is on fire, and the kids, naturally enough, go running out of the house in their underwear, hair awry and teeth gunky.  What would you think of the mother if she sent the kids back inside to brush their teeth and comb their hair?  You'd think she was a dangerous nutter, of course, and she'd be prosecuted for such an act.

OK, so what about the Senators who want to extend the Geneva Conventions to terrorists?  Isn't it like that?

And didn't the Arabs do exactly that when that girls school caught fire a few years ago?

A book I'm going to buy

Gulf Coast Emergency House Plans
Steve Mouzon, New Urban Guild Foundation, 2006
$3.95

This is the first book of Katrina Cottages. This 80-page book includes a Principles chapter at the beginning describing several ideas upon which traditional neighborhoods are built. It also includes a Resources chapter at the end that includes FEMA details for building stronger and a listing and description of disaster recovery websites, among other things. In between are chapters that tell the story of the origins of the Katrina Cottage and also that illustrate the first seventeen Katrina Cottages. If you see a plan that you like, you can order a set of working drawings from the New Urban Guild, 1253 Washington Ave., # 222, Miami Beach, FL 33139.  786-276-6000.