Katrina Bowl

Ok, so we're all really happy that the Saints won the Hype-er Bowl this year. Everyone, that is, except the folks from Indianapolis. I really was hoping thay'd win inspite of the fact that foopbaw rates a very poor third behind a couple of other games that can be played 'pon a carpet.

I just have one little niggling problem: why is it that every--literally EVERY news or sports story about this game and this team never failed to mention how a win for the Saints would do wonders for the folks in N'Awlins trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

WHAT!!??

Hurricane Katrina, for those with memories de-enhanced by children's prisons, happened almost four-and-a-half years ago. Four-and-a-half years! Get over it!

South Florida had a class three or four hurricane every two or threee years. Typically, they're rebuilt in a few months, and saying it's worth the nuisance to live in such a wonderful place.

Folks equally devastated in coastal areas along the gulf coast of Mississippi and Alabama got relatively little news coverage, very little disaster aid (by comparison) and rebuilt and resumed their lives within a few months.

Four-and-a-half years after N'Awlins' first bad hurricane in recent decades, and there, it seems, has been little or no recovery yet.

To be fair, N'Awlins had a really bad break in the criminal mismanagement of disaster aid by local, state and federal relief agancies, for which literally dozens, maybe hundreds of local, state and federal officials should be taken out to the nearest concrete wall and shot. Literally.

Also, to be fair, a majority of the voters in N'Awlins deserve the hard times they managed to survive for having the suicidal stupidity to re-elect that profoundly inept thievin' idiot they have the incredibly poor judgement to have called Mayor. But for the few thousand remaining productive individuals in that fair city, who certainly voted to give the dunderhead Mayor Nagin a lift from the pointy tip of their boot, not only out of N'Awlins, but out of existence.

The hurricane was only the bare beginning of their problems.

Government defines incompetence.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

The World's most Pussified Army

First, I was angered that a deranged religious fanatic would charge into a crowded group of soldiers and their families and open up with an automatic rifle. I remember that the first question I asked to myself as I watched the reportage on tv was, "What religion is he?" already pretty sure I knew the answer.

Well, I was right. He was both an insane islamic fundamentalist and an Army shrinkologist; a combination that should be watched very carefully. The only reason the Army needs shrinkologists is that the politicians keep involving our military in parts of the world and for reasons not only unnecessary, but unConstitutional and wasteful, and the soldiers know this and know that they are being used merely to further the interests of political agendae.

Most of the news media, in tune with, and under the orders of the Obama Administration, completely avioded and continues to avoid any mention of the murderer's religion, in line with the Administration's guidelines designed to appease Middle Eastern savage despots, dictators Obama apparently admires.

Ok. After realizing all of this, it gave me time to make an observation that many others also noticed. On an Army base, with presumably several thousand soldiers on board of many different ranks and specialties, no one in the area was armed. No one.

Well, this is the part I find embarrassing. Not only are Americans effectively legally disarmed throughout most of the country, but so are those individuals whose task it is to defend the nation from invasion and to protect the rights of individuals. Not only are the orders from the top circumventing those tasks, but they're placing these men and women in danger for reasons linked more closely to the personal desires of self-serving politicians than to their Constitutional purposes.

Note that the Israeli and Swiss militaries allow--indeed require--soldiers to be armed on and off duty. Unlike deputy Barney Fife, the even get more than one bullet!

To prosecute its Constitutional mandate, the military doesn't really have to be very large. A very small regular military to maintain the toys and keep the brass polished, and a good reserve militia system in each state, to be called upon in case of invasion.

But, they should be armed....as should we all, those of us who actually have values we'd like to see protected.

Evil and stupid state and federal administrations for many decades have been trying to convert American men and women into a vast herd of sheep, easily led and regularly shorn. Is that what we have to look forward to?

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

System? SYSTEM!!! We Don't Need No Steenking System!!!

In light of the gradual nationalization of medicine, I keep hearing reference to a thus far undefined term, "health care system." Health care system. What might be the definition of such a phrase?

Was the mythical doctor in the tv series Gunsmoke part of America's "health care system?" Was the almost as mythical small town doctor I went to as a kid in Grand Forks? Did either of them consider himself part of America's "health care system?" Nope. Nor did any of the real 19th century doctors represented by Doc Adams in the tv series. The term "Health care system" was never used in America until the federal government started its quest to socialize the "health care system." Today, we hear both branches of the Boot On Your Neck Party routinely refer to our collection of doctors, clinics and hospitals as "America's health care system." They should, but will not, be ashamed!

I can't speak for how it was in the Old West. I'm not quite that old. History tells us that doctors in those years used to heal first, ask questions later. Doctors in 1950's North Dakota were much the same way, except they generally demanded payment in the legal tender--not with chickens or bags of wheat.

I've never heard of anyone being turned away by those doctors.

My dad worked for the Great Northern Railroad most of his career. Railroads being nearly nationalized then as now, were required to add major medical health insurance to its employees' list of perqs. The insurance took care of most medical expenses above a certain threshold--I don't know what that threshold was. Below that threshold, Dad was sent a bill, by the doctor--almost like free enterprise.

I don't think anyone in our family ever had an illness or injury that rose to the level to be covered by the railroad's major medical insurance. I think Dad paid for the hospital stay required when each of us was born. I had a tonsillectomy when I was twelve. That may have been covered. Much later, Dad had a hernia surgery. That was covered.

The bills seemed high, according to the comments I'd keep hearing at bill paying time, but Dad paid them. That was the way it was. If Dad really thought the doctor was charging too much, he was free to shop around.

Back to the point: there was no "health care system." There were many doctors, clinics and hospitals, all around the country whose only links to each other were professional organizations and a small amount of unneeded government regulation.

Can anyone, other than a few escapees of the worst communist dictatorships, imagine such an insane freak of nature as a "shoe supply system?" In which every one of the shoe manufacturing, wholesale, retail, shipping and repair entities are under the control of a single "tsar" whose job it is to determine how many shoes are produced, of what materials and styles, where they're shipped, what the prices should be.

How many shoe repair shops should there be? Where located? What kind of qualifications should shoe repair technicians be required to have? What kind of pricing?

What kind of shoe manufacturing and repair trade schools should there be, and who should be admitted? What kind of reporting should be required, so that the tsar's minions will know if its directives are being followed?

These are exactly the horrors that socialized medicine will bring--to an industry that holds, or will someday hold, most of our lives in its hands. We're already hearing comments from socialists, domestic and foreign, about how much care should be given to an aged, ill individual who will "soon die anyway."

Lastly, I'd be remiss not to refer you to the Dr Hendricks "why he quit" speech in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

America's health care system. It'll be the death of us all!

Warm Regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

The Hidden Bonus In This Election

This past weekend, John & Ken, a pair of local talkers on KFI-AM radio in El Pueblo de Los Angeles, held a party/protest out at Tom's Farms, a sort of farmer's market complex outside of Corona, Calif. It was a protest against Guber Schwarzengroper's tax & spend referenda 'pon which some of us voted yesterday. The set of referenda were sniggeringly sold as a way to help balance Stalag California's budget, but would really have served to hand billions more dollars to the Stalag's administrators to wantonly spend on wasteful things the embattled residents of the state neither want nor need.

Reports from The Wine Commonsewer and others indicated that it was a good-natured (if angry) group of protesters as much making fun of the Guber's (and the state legislators') actions as being critical. It seems to have worked, since the event got a fair amount of media coverage and helped point much of the voting portion of the Stalag's population toward fiscal good sense (for a change). The worst five of the six referenda were defeated resoundingly.

Guber Schwarzengroper just happened to be in Washington DC, home of the slickest and most accomplished thieves and murderers our nation can manage to produce, hat in hand, begging for Mr. Thompson President Obama to loot the other forty-nine states and give him the money. The trip had the added bonus of placing the Guber farther from the humiliation of having lost again.

We're all, those of us with even the least regard for our personal well-being and some small amount of pride in our ability to produce and our desire to live independently, are pleased that more and more people are beginning to understand that the looters will take all of your money if they aren't stopped. These insatiable parasites will never be satisfied until they've starved their hosts to death and then will go looking for more.

Michael Chrichton once observed, within the pages of his marvelous novel, Andromeda Strain, that a successful parasite never takes so much from his host that the host's life is endangered. An unsuccessful parasite kills its host by his greed, finally endangering the parasite himself, which must then quickly find another host before he, himself, starves.

Boys and girls, the state is rapidly becoming an unsuccessful parasite.

My congratulations and thanks go out to all who fought, voted against, and ultimately defeated this round of foolishness.

And thanks to John and Ken for making a lot of noise, saying the right things at the right time.

People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of the people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

More On Backseat Child Coffins

After an interesting exchange with my friend TF Stern about child restraints for cars, I realized that I may have been a mite flip in my response. While my opinion of these foul gadgets hasn't changed, there is far more to my answer than I have given thus far.

TF is a retired traffic officer who has far more experience than I with handling the aftermath of auto collisions. I'm sure he's seen many cases in which the lives of small children were saved by these contrivances, and I'll reluctantly concede the point.

Reluctantly, because my mind rebels at restricting a child's ability to see, do and learn. Yet, in a collision, a small child is nearly as vulnerable to physical trauma when restrained by a standard seat belt than he would be with no restraint at all.

Here's the problem. Years ago, someone came up with the idea of placing slots in a baby's bassinet in order to thread the seat belt through these slots, to hold it on the seat of the car during sudden maneuvers and panic braking. The baby was further strapped into the bassinet. Soon, the bassinet became a little seat for toddlers. Not too bad, so far.

Enter the federal government. The National Transportation Board (NTSB). What was a good idea became mandatory, and after a few tweakings to make the device even more difficult to operate quickly, it became frozen in time. There was no room left for further innovation, because.....the law's the law.

The fact that NTSB continues to try to require special booster/restraint seats for larger and older children tells me that safety isn't the only goal. Larger children are, in fact, equally safe in the car's standard seat belt/air bag systems as adults.

I submit that these unnecessary laws were adopted for no lesser a reason than to take even more choices away from the individual.

What might've happened had the NTSB not goose-stepped over individual prerogatives in this area? Perhaps further, and widely diverse solutions to these problems might be made available. perhaps the driver's and front seat passenger's seat belt release could also release the child restraints. In the 1993 action movie, Demolition man, cars automatically filled with a cushioning foam that protected the passengers.

But, in today's political climate, any innovation that threatens to disrupt the status quo is looked at with suspicion, if not outright banned. So children will continue to be drowned, or burned to death in car crashes because they cannot be easily extricated from their mandatory child confinement coffins, and the NTSB will continue to pressure for increased penalties for those who resist.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Protected to Death

Buried in a "news in brief" column in the OC Register today is a sad story about a car crash in which a car went off the road and skidded down a 60-ft bank into the Colorado River. The woman and her 11-year-old daughter escaped the car, but her 5-year-old daughter apparently sank with the car.

My knowledge of some of the laws foisted 'pon us by our omnipotent federal government reminds me that smaller children are required to be hogtied into an inescapable contrivance, far enough away from the driver that (s)he will be unable to reach the child in a panic situation. The restraints are secure enough that they are not easily undone, nor can the child save his(her)self.

I constantly wonder, watching parents deal with these child seats as they try to get them undone in supermarket parking lots or at nursery schools, why a parent would put up with this crap.

Now, I'm sure the National Transportation Authorities have cooked up hundreds of pages of statistics why making a mummy of your child in a coffin in the back seat of the car is a good idea, and that, as San Fran Nan might say, "500 million children's lives are saved each day" by these infernal devices. Some of that stuff can be found here.

Tell that to little Danica Maestas. Oh. You can't tell her. She's dead and her body has yet to be found.

Her body remains in the back seat of the car, rolling along in the Colorado River current to be found, probably sometime soon. Dead.

So, thank you, NTSB, for preempting yet another parent's prerogative regarding the safety of his (her) children--to the child's detriment. It's a one-size-fits-all world.

There were no child safety coffins around in my childhood. My parents avoided killing us in car wrecks by not having any. Following that line of thinking, I did the same thing. As I see it, all these safety devices (on the occasions when they don't kill the kids by drowning or by fire) actually do is give parents reason to believe that they can drive faster and more carelessly. Watch some of the suv's blasting down the freeways, careening from lane to lane, kids safely hogtied in the back seat, going 85 mph while talking on the cell phone, then tell me how well those little coffins work.

We don't know (the news story doesn't say) how fast little Danica's mother was driving, or whether she was talking on the phone, but I'll wager she would've tried to grab Danica's hand and pull her out of the car, had the little girl not been trussed up in that awful little death trap.

Aside: I wonder what was Ted Kennedy's excuse.....sorry. I couldn't resist.

Government is the root of all evil.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Rated R--For Winking, Leering, Lascivious Smiling and Brief Smoking

I've never been a fan of the MPAA Rating System, for a host of reasons. One reason is that certain films seem to be able to be rated PG, with plenty of cussing, violence and even a little nudity, while others become R rated for the ambiguous "adult themes." Please make me believe wealthy, successful producers can't smooth-talk MPAA Board members into changing an R to a PG. Please!

A second is that, though literally everyone swears it's true, no one has ever shown me serious science to the effect that the viewing of sexy, violent or highly dramatic movies causes harm to children who live in otherwise normal, healthy households.

Third, who goes to a movie and pays upwards of $10 to see a flick about which they know nothing? There are a plethora of reviews in newspapers, on tv and the internet that will tell one all that's needed to evaluate a film--sometimes too much!

There's a movie out now, a chick flick, I believe. I think that because it has just about every middle-aged ex-engenue you can imagine in the cast. They've been advertising it pretty heavily on radio and on tv lately. The Women. I have no idea what its theme might be--probably a "he done her wrong and now after counsel from all thirty of her best friends, she's going to get revenge!"

It's rated PG, I believe, but the reason why? The list of horrid violations of the young child's eyes and ears includes things like--mature themes, sexual situations, swearing and brief smoking(!).

Brief smoking. I wonder if it's safe to assume that it doesn't mean rolling and lighting up someone's drawers. That could legitimately draw an R rating, I'll concede!

But, changing the rating of a movie because someone smokes cigarettes? That's simple Political Correctness run amok!

As the one and only individual in the whole of Stalag California who doesn't smoke but doesn't care if others do, I find this tobacco-phobia just a mite silly. Since it's been shown that second-hand smoke is not harmful, but simply a mild annoyance (as opposed to the malignantly mistaken notion that the merest whiff of cigarette smoke is more dangerous than the release of a full canister of mustard gas), we have to conclude that the anger displayed by rabid anti-tobacco fanatics at seeing someone across the street smoking a cigarette, is merely the anger of tortured souls railing against the sight of someone enjoying himself.

Sadly, many of the denizens of Hollywood and surroundings fit into this category. So, we have a war against smoking by movie and tv characters.

Ok, so my reaction may be just a bit over the top. Why should anyone smoke, anyway. Smoking, while not actually dangerous to the passers by, is dangerous to the smoker himself.

But, so is drinking. So is driving--whether done in conjunction with drinking or not. So is skiing. The list is long. We all live with danger. Why shouldn't we try to squeeze a little pleasure out of life, each in his own chosen way?

Humphrey Bogart is still cool!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Let Them Eat Sprouts

One of the reasons, I guess, that I stay in El Pueblo de Los Angeles is the drama. Home of Hollywood, Surf City, Beverly Hills and the famous San Fernando Valley, LA seems to be the place from which all the nuttiness that sweeps the world springs. It's hip! it's happenin'!

It also seems to be the fount of all the big government meddling scams that sweep the several state capitals and, finally, Washington DC.

• The anti-air pollution movement? started in LA.
• Hippies? Right here.
• Anti-nuclear power? LA, again.
• Freeways? LA.
• Smoking bans in bars? El Pueblo.
• Chain cosmetic surgery? Our own Beverly Hills.
• Health food craze? Still, LA.
• Anti-obesity? See above.
  

The list could go on, but I'll be merciful.

This time it's the LA City Council. I don't think anyone other than a far-left loon could get elected to the LA City Council even if he got to count the votes.

This last, the anti-obesity thing, is the excuse the LA feudal lords and....no, calling them ladies would be way too much stretch....for calling a moratorium on fast food in South-Central LA. See the sordid story here.

It used to be called South-Central. In yet another moronic move by the City Council a few years ago, 'twas decided that changing the name of the district from South-Central LA to simply South LA, would wholly change the character from a poor, crime-ridden racial ghetto to a pleasant, tree-lined suburb. Well, it's still a poor, crime-ridden racial ghetto. And, it's still called South-Central by nearly everyone but the LA City Council.

They won't actually do anything about the street crime, because it might offend someone.

Businesses won't relocate or set up branches in South-Central because they'll be vandalized and robbed, and there are relatively few buyers and employable workers there.

There is, however, no shortage of fast food stores and liquor stores.

The sages at City Council have, at times, threatened to close down the liquor stores, as if that constitutes a cure for alcoholism. In the linked story, they apply the same (none dare call it) logic to repair the largely imaginary obesity problem.

Yet, a majority of those misguided individuals who vote for City Councilfolk keep returning these incredibly dysfunctional idjits to the Council term after term. They do nothing but make speeches that say nothing, dedicate horribly tasteless art projects at municipal parks and buildings and call for higher taxes.

In the dreamworld in which a Ruth's Chris will open at Crenshaw and Imperial, who in that neighborhood will have a hundred fifty dollars or so to treat his date to a steak dinner. Well, there are several crack sellers that might, but they spend their leisure time on Rodeo Drive or in Westwood. Nobody'll open a Ruth's Chris in South Central.

It'll be Church's and McDonald's for most of those folks--not that I think there's anything wrong with them--even if they have to take a bus to Inglewood for it. That is, until that same dreamworld City Council lightens up on their tax load so they can afford to improve themselves.

All government can do is take things away.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Highjacking At T-Shirt Point

First, allow me to suggest that all of this airport security is really a scam to put in place a system by which all prospective travelers must be cleared by government to leave their current location. Additionally, it gives them the information as to just where they're going. The Third Reich did just this sort of thing--in a much lower-tech fashion as befitted the time--in Germany during the period leading up to WWII. Looking at the way the US federal government (and others) is arranging things, it parallels the German model fairly well.

Although, as we all know, the whole of what is sniggeringly called "Homeland Security" is dressed in the trappings of keeping Americans safe from terrorists.

First it was guns. Then it was knives. Then it was anything that could be remotely imagined to be able to break the skin--such as pen knives, nail clippers and--I kid you not--knitting needles. I haven't yet heard whether they confiscate blind folks' canes. Then, they started inspecting shoes. May their hands all develop athletes' foot. They started confiscating bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste. They started feeling up people's genitals and women's breasts. Checking out pregnant women's abdomens.

I remember when the airport people would open the door. They'd check each passenger's ticket and let them walk out to a portable stairway that led to the door, where a stewardess would take a look at your ticket and give directions to your seat. Ah! Those were the days. The only federal sloths at the airport were safely confined to the tower, and were rarely seen.

'Tis true that the airlines, who have a true, rational interest in keeping dangerous individuals from interfering with the plane's flight to its destination, were very lax concerning their responsibilities along those lines. Several highjackings to Cuba should have lit a bulb somewhere, but didn't. I suspect there were federal restrictions as to what could be done, that interfered with the airlines' best interest.

Making a long entry even longer, I have to refer you all to the most moronic (not by far, but still, pretty dumb) event along these lines. It happened at London's Heathrow (where else?) and has cause groans of derision and peals of laughter all round the civilized world. As reported in Thisislondon.co.uk, a young man was refused boarding on an airliner and threatened with arrest for wearing a t-shirt with the image of a Transformer!! A Transformer that has some sort of machine gun for an arm.

Let's pause for a moment to allow ourselves to get up off the floor and recompose.

During a day in which there were at least a two teen-agers killed in knife attacks reported 'pon that same news page, whose murderers (if caught) face no more than a couple of years in stir, Heathrow officials are worried about a bloody (to use local vernacular) t-shirt!

This in a country in which self defense is illegal.

Englishmen! Englishwomen! Run, don't walk off that island, where insanity rules.

V, where are you when we need you?

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Training People to Act Like Sheep

A number of people are sitting and standing in a large room. It might be a bank, or maybe the waiting room of an airport. It might even be a store. Suddenly, as Snoopy often writes in the Charlie Brown strip, a shot rings out.

A man falls to the floor, motionless. Everyone else runs, screaming, in every direction, looking for the cover of something under which to cower, quivering in fear, awaiting further shooting.

Today on the KCAL evening news, they showed video of the above scene as part of a Homeland Security drill.

What was wrong with the scene? Why, of course! People were hiding under tables and behind partitions, waiting for death. Nobody had a gun.

Has ten to twenty percent of these trainees been carrying mockup handguns in their holsters or purses, they could've had a real drill in which the trainees could simulate shooting or arresting the mock killer before he could cause any further mock damage.

Sadly, it isn't within the psychological makeup of the jackbooted thugs of Homeland Security who formulate such drills, to put together a scenario in which the prospective victims could actually defend themselves. Yet, a populace capable if its own self defense is by far the best way to deal with the "terrorism" with which we're supposedly warring.

It leads me to suspect (as I've written several times) that the entire "war on terror" is nothing more than a plan to more rapidly put an end to the freedom we all own as sentient beings and which the people who regard themselves our leaders wish to see ended.

The actors in the drill were clearly depicted as helpless, and simply waiting to die, or perhaps be rescued by the armored and anonymous police squads upon which we're being taught to depend. I Find the entire notion both disgusting and offensive.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Keeping the Kids In a Soundproof, Padded Cell

As I sit in my car at a red light, I often look at the car beside me. Most of the time, if it's a woman, she's on the phone.....but that's not my point right now. I want to focus 'pon the back seat, 'pon which there's often a padded, plastic contraption into which a poor young child is strapped in, more securely than a condemned murderer is strapped into the electric chair.

Sometimes, the poor child's end is fairly similar--burned to death cruelly strapped into a padded coffin which requires someone else to remove to safety.

Proponents of these plastic maidens cite stats that indicate that a child is much safer hog tied in the back seat in the event of a collision or a rollover. I imagine that that is probably true, as far as it goes. On the other hand, when mom and dad are in the front seat arguing, or simply chatting....or when the driver is talking on a phone or driving 85 mph while trying to unwrap a burrito, the youngster strapped into his little cocoon is no safer than were he sitting, untethered, on the hood of the car.

Today's crowded streets and freeways, swarming with cars driven by young men and women who have no notion of the connection between actions and consequences, old folks whose physical and mental abilities have begun to diminish, foreign-born folks who learned to drive (to the extent that they can) very recently, and middle-aged working folk less concerned with getting there than with what they'll do when they arrive. In this venue, driving is a full-time job, for those of us who want to avoid crumpled metal (crumpled plastic, if you drive a foreign-made car), requiring all of one's attention.

To take the foolishness a step farther, I've observed on many more occasions than I like, seeing parents removing the youngster from the car, if he's a baby or a toddler, in his little suicide seat into the store or restaurant, placed it the shopping cart or on the chair or seat as a unit, keeping him immobile and fully bound--often gagged with a mouth plug, through dinner, the shopping trip, or whatever. One has to wonder if, when they get home, they just throw the Kiddie Kocoon into the corner, toddler and all, until bedtime.

So maybe, just maybe, in a certain kind of automotive mishap, a child might survive that otherwise might be killed or seriously injured.

What about the kids whose parents don't do the stupid stuff that causes (or fails to avoid) collisions? Why should they have to suffer, bound and gagged in the rearmost sections of the vehicle, kept in stasis while surging through a scary world that he can't see from his confinement.
Not having young children any more, I can only wonder how they ever grow up sane from their sensory deprivation capsules in the back of their mother's unarmed Armada.

When I was growing up, there were four of us. One of us (my little brother) lay in Mom's lap in front. The other three of us sat in the back. If it was a long drive, usually we'd take turns lying up in the back package shelf, looking at the following cars or up at the stars and moon. Going somewhere in the car was fun, and something to which to look forward.

If it wasn't too cold, we'd open the windows and stick our heads out, like dogs, or shape our hands into lift surfaces out in the wind. We'd wave at the truck drivers and look for out-of-state plates.

We were never involved in a collision.

When my kids were little, it was the same, except we all had seat belts. The key, of course, was to not crash into things with your car. With a couple of minor (no injury) exceptions, I've always been very good at that. I keep my phone in my pocket, and rarely (almost never) answer it until I park the car. "Leave a message, I'll get back to you."

There is, no doubt, reams of evidence indicating that childhood obesity is exacerbated by long periods of enforced immobility in their isolation chambers in the back of the car.

Soon, someone will invent the Kid-ee-muffler to wrap around his face so we won't have to listen to him, either.

Just until we can ship him off to the children's prison.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

What Happened to California?

I don't know if I can describe the wonder of Southern California to a fairly well traveled 21-year-old 'pon his arrival, in a new Chevy pickup, into which were packed my pregnant wife, my mother and everything we thought worth bringing along from the old home town. We left the snow shovels behind.

Palm trees. Eight-lane freeways--smooth white highways on which one never needed to stop or worry about oncoming or cross traffic, or bumps! Stop laughing! It was 1965.

Gas was 24 cents a gallon. Cigarettes were about a quarter a pack. Our first apartment was $75 a month. It took me less than a week to find a job, then six months to find a really good job in construction (which was what I wanted).

After a few years here, I made the decision that I'd be living and working here for the rest of my life. I maintained that opinion through two years in the San Fernando Valley, three in Orange County and fifteen years in San Diego.

There was a point, and I think it was during the time Jerry Brown was Guber, when things started going bad in California, although it might've been earlier. When Ronald Reagan was Guber, he enacted for the first time, withholding of state income tax money. This opened the door to draconian tax increases, coming very often.

Heavy tax increases and wasteful spending have been the rule in California rather than the exception. It's been happening under both Democrat and Republican administrations, without mercy or appeal. If the state income tax doesn't increase, then the sales tax does. California's tax tab is exceeded by only three or four states, and more increases can be expected.

What do we get for these increases? Roads, streets and highways are in far worse shape than they were in 1965. The state's children's prisons are turning out gangsters and illiterates, and even the better ones turn out graduates who can score well on tests, but have little reasoning ability or critical skills.

Public safety services (police, fire, etc) are underfunded for ridiculous arts projects that not only disfigure the city aesthetically, but make poor excuses for artists wealthy. Police are ordered not to inquire as to the citizenship of arrested individuals who when released, often commit more crimes. Government continues to turn a blind eye to the notion of individual self defense.

Gangs roam the streets, attacking and murdering people (often children) of other ethnic and racial groups, and our moronic Chief of Police has the nerve to try and convince the public that there's no racial component in it. Professional agitators attack police during an otherwise peaceful protest, and police physically attack the peaceful protesters with tear gas and truncheons while the agitators look on with smiles on their faces.

I can only assume, from statewide news reports and word of mouth, that it's as bad or even worse in Frisco and its surrounding suburbs.

San Diego's city government has been flirting with bankruptcy for some time, because of fiscal irresponsibility in its politicians.

I can only hope that the smaller cities near the farm and ranch lands of California are populated with individuals with better sense.

Productive individuals have been leaving the state for years, having gotten a bellyful of what I like to call California's war on productivity. The state's population continues to increase, though, primarily because of the influx of foreigners. These foreigners mean well, and are looking to make a better life means of the more favorable opportunities here, but their skills are limited.

Tax revenues are decreasing as spending is increasing. Tax rates will increase and productive individuals will continue to look for greener pastures. Frivolous spending will assure that Public safety will continue to be given the short shrift.

One wonders how long one should remain here.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Got Pennies?

On one hand, it was a prank. Students in Readington Middle Children's Prison were upset over the shortness of their lunch period. To give voice to their plight, several students thought of a very clever way to dramatize the problem. They paid for their lunch with pennies. According to EdgefieldDaily.com:

"Got pennies!" It's plastered on their shirts and these eighth graders wear it proudly because on Thursday they pulled a prank at the Readington Middle School, paying for their lunches entirely in pennies. "At first it started out as a joke, then everyone else started saying we're protesting against like how short our lunch is," student Alyssa Concannon said. In fact, the penny prank has earned 29 students two days of detention. "There was no rule in the rulebook about it," student Sarah Henschel said. "It was just unfair. It's U.S. currency."

The New York City news station WCBS-TV expounds a bit more about the sordid tale here.

I've always been a supporter of peaceful student protest, and am very impressed by the inherent cleverness of this one. Were I the principal of the school, I'd have to find a way to reward the young minds behind this stunt. "50 points for Griffindor!"

The event that seems to have caused the punishments was basically the laziness and lack of wit in the persons of the cafeteria workers. The complaint was that the counting of the pennies caused some students to miss lunch, because of the slowness of the lunch line--the lunch counter workers had to count the pennies(!).

The lowly penny has indeed been getting a bad rap in recent years. The US mint even devalued the penny by starting to make them from copper-washed zinc instead of a real copper alloy, back in 1980. How many of us actually pay for our cash purchases to the penny, these days? Every day we empty our trouser pockets to find between ten and thirty pennies along with the other change. What to do with them? Put 'em in a jar.

Eventually, the jar gets full. Then what? The bank doesn't want them. Laziness seems to hit bank tellers, as well. I used to actually roll up my accumulated change and take it to the bank periodically. They no longer accept it, or will charge a 7 or 8 percent fee to accept it. More often, bank tellers direct you to a change machine, into which you can dump your coins and get a cash voucher, minus a 7 to 8 percent fee, which can then be deposited (after waiting in the interminable bank line yet again).

In my youth, a penny would buy a piece of Bazooka, or a bit of sugary liquid in a wax "Coke" bottle. Today, people simply throw them away. A handful of pennies won't buy anything. One has to wonder why they're still made.

Back to the point. Pennies are still around and theoretically still have value. They're still legal tender. Since the New Jersey children's prison accepts cash to pay for lunch at the cafeteria, one has to wonder on what grounds the staff imposed punishment for the use of pennies. No one disputes the students' assertion that there are no rules prohibiting pennies. If not, then what?

It's a fine method the New Jersey Children's Prison system has for teaching youngsters: making up the rules as they go along. Very typical of the same kind of idiots that impose "zero tolerance" programs to prohibit things that prison staffs find might cause them to actually have to (shudder) think!

Returning to all fours.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Priscilla the Knife

More years ago than can be counted on both your fingers and toes and mine, I was an elementary school student at West Elementary School in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Admittedly, it was a different time, but the principles involved are the same. The stated goal of the government children's prison system is to help parents prepare youngsters to be able to function as adults in the real world. Today, the children's prisons are failing--not only by ineptitude, but by conscious intent. They are trying to make herd animals out of our youth!

I'm not sure they weren't already working in that direction in my skool daze; after all, most people my age are eight-hour-a-day wage slaves just as are those graduating colleges today. Seems like many of the high-profile successes 'bout whom we read in the business journals and society gossip pages got where they are after slipping the yoke in their own youth.

Now, I like what I do, and actually look forward to going to work most days, but sometimes I wonder why I'm not a movie studio executive or a famous writer or a crocodile hunter. Well, with age comes wisdom, and I finally realized that my difficulty is that I've always been afraid to take risks regarding my livelihood. Fact of life. Now, I have to ponder the question of whether it's too late to change.

But, I'm wandering away from the subject: the abominable and purposeful failure of the government children's prison system, and its stubborn and deliberate inability to make educated and functional adults out of children. Parents are also failing at their part, as well--they were inmates of children's prisons in their youth.

Yesterday, according to a story on the website of Local 6 News in Orlando, Florida, a ten-year-old girl, an inmate at the Sunrise Elementary School in Ocala, was arrested for having a knife on school property--a felony in Florida. She had a steak knife that she'd brought from home, and was using it to cut her lunch into bite-sized bits.

There was no allegation that she'd used the knife in a threatening manner. She was transported down to Juvie Hall, presumably to be flogged, then stretched on the rack until she admits membership in a pre-teen terrorist organization. Look for a much taller Priscilla if and when she's released (or when her cabal effects an escape for her).

The long-ago time I referenced earlier in this missive saw me and many of my contemporaries carrying knives to school, and everywhere else, routinely. We called them jackknives, and they were often given to boys as Christmas gifts by fathers and uncles. They were a permanent part of our trouser pockets, and we used them to make slingshots and to carve our initials into the bark of trees. As Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, our jackknives were an indispensable tool, to be used to do the tasks required to earn achievement badges.

I can only assume that young girls learned (in those days) to do Girl Scout things with knives, not to mention to learn to cook and bake under the tutelage of their mothers. And, of course, we all had to learn to handle tableware to dine without taking on the appearance of islamic savages.

What is it this that the Florida Children's Prison System is rejecting? The notion of eating meals like a civilized human being? Will the use of hands next be rejected? I can almost imagine the guards and wardens of the Florida Children's Prison System nodding in approval at the sight of the youngsters bent over the tables, faces in their plates and making snarling and snorting sounds while trying to snarf up gruel at the school cafeteria.

How long until walking upright will be forbidden?

Darwin was wrong. It's Devolution.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Stalag California In Fiscal Deep Scheiße, Says The Gubernator

Well, Duh!

In a story on the Bay area's NBC11 tv station's website, the Stalag will be over $14 billion in the 'rears by the end of the year. The story further observes that the Gubernator is going to announce the crisis in a few weeks.

I've yet to figure out why dopey politicians, in recent years, seem to have adopted the habit of announcing that they are going to announce (whatever).

State spending has increased by more than 40 percent since Schwarzenegger took office after the 2003 recall of then-Gov. Gray Davis. This after running on the platform of fixing state government, holding the line on both spending and taxes, while increasing spending for the children's prisons and the various welfare schemes that keep us all much poorer than our gross pay would seem to indicate. The contradictions are stunning. The fact that residents of the Stalag can't see it is even more stunning.

The Gubernator said, in an address in Long Beach today, that state government is in "fiscal crisis." In the same speech, he promised higher Medi-Cal payments to doctors and hospitals (shudder).

His announcement next month will supposedly declare a "fiscal emergency," which will give his office more power to make spending cuts. Seems he has an approximate 10% across the board cut waiting in the wings. We'll see how this flies with the Democrat-controlled State House.

This doofus actor has no bloody idea what he's doing. I don't think I'll ever watch "Twins" again!

Hasta la vista, Baby!

Warm regards,
Col. Hogan

To Kill A Thief

From a philosophical tenet I first read in an Ayn Rand essay, one has to realize that when a man sets out to take or damage the person or property of another, that's the moment he commits suicide. By not recognizing his victim's right to his life and property, he renounces the concepts of life and property--which effectively is a denial of his own right to his own life.

When his victim then shoots him in self defense, it's the criminal's own finger on the trigger. One needs never feel guilt over successfully defending himself.

Now, if only the law were to be rewritten to support this tenet......

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Let Them Snort Salt

In yet another step in the government's march to take over the rearing of children from their parents, the evil FDA is about to order toddler's cold medicines off the shelves, in the interest of protecting little children from the bungling stupidity of the adults who gave them life. According to a story in the Modesto (Stalag California) Bee, cowardly attorneys for drug makers are pulling the medicines off the shelves now, preempting FDA action.

Why, you might ask? Because an FDA report found 54 reports of child deaths linked to decongestants and 69 to antihistamines from 1969 to 2006, many of them younger than 2. That's a total of .... let's see....carry the one....123 dead babies in....um....37 years. While one must grieve the early death of even one youngster (unless it's a noisy one in a theater), where's the perspective? How many toddlers drowned in the bath in 37 years? A lot more than 123, I'll wager.

A more important thing to note is: how many toddlers have been helped by these medicines? A second thing about which to pay attention is: How many of the parents of the unfortunate babies were actually following the manufacturer's instructions? And a third: Just how much of the responsibility for bringing up our children are we willing to cede to a bungling, wasteful organization whose members' most urgent mission is to work as little as possible and retire with as large a pension as possible?

The solution offered? Stuff a rubber syringe full of salt water in the little tyke's nose to either drown him, collapse his lungs or rupture his bronchial tubes.

Fortunately, Modesto-area parents interviewed by the Bee's reporters seem to be more skeptical of this foolishness than, for example, people who live in El Pueblo de Los Angeles.

Granted, parents should carefully choose a pediatrician (I always get this mixed up: is a pediatrician a foot doctor?) and follow his advice. Some doctors believe these patent medicines are ineffective. Perhaps some of them are, but I'd rather the parents make the choices than Washington bureaucrats two intellectual steps away from the post office stamp window.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

To The Free Clinic.....March!

According to an AP story shown on Yahoo.com news, John Edwards, the man Rush Limbaugh calls "the Breck Girl," and Laura Ingraham calls "the Silky Pony," and I call one of several interchangeable "Rotten Fascist Bastards" is proposing a socialized medicine system in which everyone is required to go see the doctor for "preventative maintenance."

Edwards' plan claims it will cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care, including dental and vision coverage for all Americans. Showing either his utter contempt for the intelligence of Americas or his own poor knowledge of both economics and human nature, Edwards claims the plan will cost "up to $120 billion a year" which he will cover by ending President Bush's tax cuts to people who make more than $200,000 per year.

Edwards' plan is also unConstitutional. No where in the document can one find authorization for the federal government to be involved in the health care of individuals in any way.

I'm imagining, and this will unquestionably be the case should this program be enacted, Edwards' Bureau of Health" police marching manacled groups of people, rousted from their homes at all hours of the day and night, to wait in long lines of others who are really sick, or have hangnails or sniffles. I'm imagining people with serious conditions, waiting in long queues to be seen by specialists--the queue only moving when someone nearer the door dies.

I'm imagining tens of thousands of competent doctors retiring early or taking less responsible jobs to get away from the bureaucracy--leaving largely doctors of lesser ability and experience to fill the gaps.

“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill?
That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or of my patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors.
Men considered only the ‘welfare of the patients with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to chose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards—never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my consciousness, to stifle my mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on when they lie on an operating table under my hands?
Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

--excerpt from the novel, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Rand's novel is a dramatization, but it's both logically and empirically true that individuals will either quit work, or continue working at a less-than-optimum level, if his conditions of work are not suitable. This is only part of what we will face if Williams' program, or that most of the posturing fascists running for the office of President have their way in this area.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

It's Easy to Be Stupid

When the Nanny State proclaims that its job is to protect everyone safe from everything; to make the country child-safe; to create a nerf-nation, it's very easy to be stupid. And many brain-challenged Americans becoming just that.

According to a story in the Costa Mesa, California Daily Pilot, a 19-year-old child (you can't call a fool who does something like this a man) shot himself through the thigh and foot while examining a pistol he was considering buying.

Now, there are a host of problems with this story, indicating stupidity, or perhaps dishonesty on the part of many individuals.

First, police said that "Sanchez was looking at the pistol when it discharged...." Well, folks, pistols never just "discharge" when someone just looks at one. Never. Everyone with a brain knows that the first thing you do when you pick up a gun is: keeping it pointed in a safe direction, open it up and check to see if there are any cartridges inside. If so, unload the weapon immediately before doing any further examination. And never, ever point it at anyone or anything you don't plan to shoot.

Second, according to California law, handguns cannot legally be sold from person to person. I, of course, strongly disagree with this law as both an infringement 'pon individual rights and as a violation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.....but, it is the law. Handguns must be sold through a licensed gun dealer, who must verify that the buyer is a legal buyer, and who must do the song and dance of pretending to do a background check, making certain of the identity of both the buyer and the seller and doing a safety examination of the buyer (to make sure he knows how to use the weapon).

Third, the story states that the owner of the pistol is unknown. If the above hazing had been accomplished on the owner of the weapon, any police officer should be able to determine the owner of the weapon after about thirty seconds of tapping on his car's computer.

And finally, there's the fact that no charges were filed by the police. Well, no charges should've been filed. California laws that seem to apply on this matter are clearly unConstitutional, as are the federal laws. Sanchez ought to have to pay for his medical costs and the costs of the police response in full, as well as for any damage he caused to the home in which he committed his careless acts.

I haven't yet mentioned that, according to the news story, all this occurred at a party. Most adult parties include the drinking of adult beverages, and there's no mention of whether Sanchez had been partaking, or to what extent. That likelihood would add a whole new level to the foolishness that occurred.

Children should be taught firearm handling and safety by their parents and in their schools from the time they begin to be capable of taking serious instruction. Had this Sanchez fellow been given such instruction, this event would never have happened.

State and federal law seems to be designed not to preserve and protect individual rights, but rather to protect idiots like this Sanchez kid from his own stupidity--to protect us all from ourselves.

It will not work. But it will destroy our liberty.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

FCC: Protecting Our Ears From Evil Words

"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, in a divided decision, said that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was "arbitrary and capricious" in setting a new standard for defining indecency." Says a Reuters story, sending the recent "arbitrary and capricious" standards for defining decency back to the unConstitutional Federal Communications Commission for clarification.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin angrily retorted that he found it "hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that 'shit' and 'fuck' are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience."

"If we can't restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want," Martin said in a statement.

Oh, my!! Wouldn't that be awful. People could say anything they want! We certainly can't have that!

I think I'm gonna be sick!

Hollywood says a lot of obscene things already, many of which have nary an "obscene" word within. The obscenity of most of their theses and philosophical/political comments are only exceeded by their internal stupidity.

That's ok;. Each and every one of us has a brain containing the potential for rational thought and critical analysis. Every tv set has an off switch and a channel selector.

Where the evil lies, and where the FCC becomes an immorally coercive organization, is in the fact that the US Constitution makes no allowance for government regulation of speech and expression, and the First Amendment to the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, specifically forbids it.

The FCC is a rogue department of a vastly overinflated federal government. All government officials who advocate its continuance and/or don't act to eliminate this assault on free speech are in violation of their oaths of office and should be removed from office and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Colonel Hogan
Stalag California