Ice On Mars!

It's been a pretty good week.

The MSM is finally starting to grudgingly admit that we've won in Iraq, even though they're sure to get their digs about how fragile it is.

I've begun my running/core fitness training a week ago, and I already feel better.

Yesterday I volunteered for some cleanup on a wine restaurant downtown. I got some good quality sledgehammer time, busting out moldy, disgusting walls. It gave me that "good citizenship" feeling that I like so much.

And today I read that NASA said that they definitely found ice on Mars, 2 inches below the surface. Pretty cool. I also think it's pretty cool that NASA is an American agency. Mars is a long ways away. I know that a lot of people feel that all countries are equal and that all cultures are just as good at all things. I think that's a goofy way of thinking. Here's the score.

Discovered Water On Mars Scorecard
USA = 1
Uzbekistan = 0

And the Olympics are coming up soon too. Wheee!

Vroom Vroom

I had a birthday recently. I told my wife that I wanted a 3 level cake, so she made one.

I didn't realize this, but if you have multiple layers, you have to put some disk of cardboard, or plastic or something, in between each layer. Then you have to cut dowels and place them through the cake for support. I guess good building materials are somewhat rigid and lightweight, and cake is the inverse. Squishy and heavy.

So you need the dowels and platforms to prevent collapse. I think she did a pretty good job.


Thank you honey.

This weekend Paul Gorecki came into town for what is called a Dog Party. Thank you very much for the invite. I had a great time. There was golfing in the morning which was fun. Kimbo Slice and I hit best shot. Then there were drinks and revelry in the evening. And some fireworks. And they had a bonfire, and played a game called "Brains". No not "Cat Brains". But just regular Brains.

So here's the skinny. You wad up some newspaper so it's sort of open at the bottom. Then using a stick, you position the thing over the fire, so it ignites evenly from the inside. The the whole thing rises into the air as a glowing, embery, brain-like thing. It went up about 30 feet. I think it should be called Krell. You nerds know what I'm talking about.

Well, the next door neighbor kid, who looked about 8 but apparently was 12, had a go-cart that he wanted to show Paul. I had a rented go-cart for a while when I was a kid, and the thing went maybe 20mph. The kid said that this one goes about 45mph. So a few of us filled up our Fat Tire at the kegerator, and strolled over to the other yard. This kid is also into golf, so his dad tore up his yard to make a tee box and a green so his kid could practice. Apparently the kid also has a racetrack because that yard is now tore the heck up.

I know what most of you are thinking. What kind of bad parents would turn over their yard to the whim of their 12 year old? It's irresponsible and dumb!

Well guys, you know that if your wife would let you, you'd have the same setup for yourself. Get up, go hit a few dozen chip shots on your own private green, go tear ass around the yard in your suped up go-cart, then top off the morning with a nice big chocolate malt. That kid's livin' the dream.

I also made the unwise decision to trust my life to the driving skills of a kid. Watch and laugh.

Double Think

Obama: Surge Was a "Bad Strategy," I Have No Idea What Would Have Happened if We'd Followed My Strategy (and I Don't Really Care to Think About It), and Oh, By the Way, It Was Really My Call for Political Reconciliation That Reduced Violence


So let me get this straight.

Success is a "bad strategy"?

Good God.

And he wants a surge in Afghanistan, where it would, in fact, be a bad strategy.

Also.

So, even last month, no political progress had occurred, and that showed that the surge, while reducing violence, had actually failed, since it was "designed to provide a window of opportunity for political progress." But now the story is, the political progress that hadn't occurred even a month ago, actually took place BEFORE the surge, and so the surge had nothing to do with it, and in fact, it would have happened even faster if we had withdrawn our troops "to put more political pressure on the Iraqis," as per Obama's proposal.

Let's not forget how a solid chunk of Americans and terrorists were (in their own words) "Against the Surge". Not just apprehensive, but 100%, to the hilt, straight up and down, against the Surge. Heck, they even called my house telling me that I should also be against the so-called "surge". Remember how their buzzword was "Escalation", and that "escalation" wouldn't accomplish anything. What a difference a year and a half makes.

Well, I don't forget so easy. You jerks bet against the US Forces, and on the enemy. Go eat crow.


Oh well, what would I know? Maybe I should go watch Generation Kill to find out what the US Military is about.

Fitness

Over the course of the last 2 months, I've been helping the Mrs on her workouts. We've gone to the gym 5 days a week, and have been doing pretty heavy 30 set days. We've concentrated a lot on her chest/triceps in order to get her bench press up. Lots of hammer strength incline/flat/decline, as well as just normal flat bench press, and some good old fashioned pushups. She let me write her workouts for her, and in the evenings I'd make a big bowl of lentil soup with either chicken or beef, so her body would have all the building blocks she'd need.

I've been working out a little too, in between her sets, but not to failure and not at my limits; so clearly my gains haven't been as substantial as her's.

Anyway, this was all in preparation of the Hudson Pump-n-Run competition, which she also ran last year. Here's the rundown. It's a 5K race, but the night before you can do a benchpress. Women do 70% of their bodyweight. For every rep they do, they can deduct 15 seconds from their run time.

The course is sort of hilly, so she's been running on a gravel country road, and doing a local endurance course for some hardcore training. I've gone running with her, and she leaves me in the dust. I wasn't much help on the running program, other than pointing at some terrible set of hills and saying "I would do you good to run that."

Seems pretty fun, huh?

The crazy part is that she'd attack whatever obstacle or set of hills I pointed to. That E-Course is a real but kicker. I invite anyone to come out and run that thing. I'll post your time. It couldn't be worse than mine.

Well, after the 8 week training cycle, she tapered and we hopped in the car with the confidence that we had done everything to prepare. Lots of work, lots of food, some sleep. She was as ready as she was going to be.

We got there and she did her best.

And she won the whole thing.





That's pretty good in my book.

The Dojo is now offering impersonal training services. If you train at the Dojo, you just win all the time.

The sensi of the Dojo, however, will continue to eat half-pound hamburgers covered with chili, and run 11 minute miles.

Iran will get you

Kissed a squirrel

I kissed a squirrel, and I liked it!
The taste of the squirrel's acorn chapstick!

Have fun with that going through your head everytime you hear that song.

You're welcome.

Lolz

And for 3 points, who was Van Damme's go-to bad guy actor?

Firecracker Day

Just for a laugh, here's a question I asked a guy who I used to work with back in my restaurateuring days. He didn't seem to know much about much, but he sure acted like he did.

Me: "What do we celebrate on July 4th?"
The Guy: "Independence Day."
Me: "Independence from what country?"
The Guy: "Um.....Russia."

I got a big kick out of that.

Have a good July 4th.

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update:

America Rules England Sucks - Watch more free videos

Moving The Goalposts

There's a false and underhanded argument style called Moving The Goalposts that I notice a lot. I've been holding my tongue for a while, but it looks pretty established.

Moving The Goalposts(Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection):

If your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn't up on.

OK. Remember when the mission was regime change in Iraq? The toppling of the dictator Saddam Hussein? That mission was accomplished in about 30 days in which could arguably be called the most well executed invasion in human history. President Bush gave a victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which made a lot of critics angry as they believed it to be a lie, and that the invading force was actually eradicated as dictated by Baghdad Bob.

So after a time these critics had to give up their fantasy and maybe admit that the Bathe Regeme was not still in power and that the ole Coalition had indeed ousted their beloved Hussein. But they had a simple option to admitting they were wrong. They could just move the goalposts.

They had to invent a new measure of success or failure.


You might remember what it was.

The new measure was killing and/or dissuading former Bathists and Al-Queida terrorists. But because the US Government no longer puts much effort into enemy bodycounts (a Vietnam lesson), these critics could claim that the enemy deaths were a grand total of zero.


After the Second Battle of Fallujah it became clear that Al-Queida was getting dead at a cyclic rate, they quickly threw that metric under the bus. Dead terrorists don't matter, they said. It was very fashionable to say

"Killing terrorists only creates terrorists".

That was their meme. That was their code. They moved the goalposts.



The new metric that they invented was the safety of the short stretch of road between BIAP and The Green Zone, which a few journalists dubbed the "Most Dangerous" road in Iraq. (It wasn't, btw.) They claimed that this short little bit of road was emblematic of the entire country. That pissed me off as I was in country at the time, and I knew that those reporters were exaggerating just to make it sound like they were "in the shit". Someone taking a potshot isn't an "ambush", although they often include it in the stats. That road wasn't all that dangerous. Certainly not the "Most Dangerous".

So the US Military allocated other resources to give a bunch of security to this one little bit of road, as this is the one factor that success was measured by.

But guess what. When it was safe, they claimed it was no longer emblematic. They moved the goalposts again.




Then we have the huge giant metric that critics love to use to measure the success/failure of Civilization vs. Islamofascists. You can already guess it.

US Military Deaths.

Terrorist sympathizers gloat about this number as some sort of end-all-be-all metric of US Success/Failure. Did you notice that every time it reaches a round number they brag by using the word "Milestone".

Milestone?

Like their side accomplished something and reached a goal. How transparent can they be?

OK. So since the other benchmarks or measures of success or failure haven't fit their narrative, they will always have the US Military Deaths metric. Right? They've set that in stone, haven't they?

What if we increase the operations tempo against the enemy and create a surge and announce it widely as The Surge? What if the results of The Surge kill a lot of terrorists and the hyper-observed US death count is lower? Will the critics repent then?

Naw. They'll just move the goalposts again. They'll say that the actual goal isn't killing/disrupting terrorists at a high ratio compared to the US. They'll say that The US Military failed because the Iraqi people and Parliament haven't met their benchmarks fast enough or at all. They'll gloat that The Surge has failed, even though the evidence proves them wrong.





Look at what Harry Reid said at the beginning of The Surge.

"This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq " -- Harry Reid

When they're proven wrong, they just change the topic to the Iraqi Legislators.



Have you noticed how stories about Iraq have almost disappeared from the news? It couldn't be because reality contradicted their narrative could it?


Well the News should be proclaiming how wrong they were any minute now as of this bit of data:

Iraq Parliament Report Card: 15 of 18 Benchmarks

Cricket...cricket.

I wonder what the new metric will be?

I've personally heard someone say this gem: "Bush thought he could go to Iraq and solve all their problems!"

All. Their. Problems.