Bensblurb #509: Science and toilets

Bensblurb #509 11/28/09

About bowing and scraping: Here’s writer Peggy Noonan, about the larger image of President Obama’s ceremonial bows, in her latest piece in the Wall Street Journal:

“The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic...because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something...incompetent, at least in its first year.”

And this, from an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal on the incriminating Climategate emails now public: “The public has every reason to ask why [the conniving scientists] felt they need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim.”

Indisputable science?

Read the comments of eminent Aussie scientist, Ian Plimer, in Pajamas blog: “There was warming from 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, and 1976 to 1998, with intervening periods of cooling. The only time when temperature rise paralleled carbon dioxide emissions was 1976-1998. The other warmings and coolings in the last 150 years were unrelated to carbon dioxide emissions.
“Something is seriously wrong. To argue that humans change climate requires abandoning all we know about history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and solar physics. This is exactly what has been done.
“The answer to this enigma was revealed last week. It is fraud....Data were manipulated to show that the Medieval Warming didn’t occur, and that we are not in a period of cooling. Furthermore, the warming of the 20th century was artificially inflated.”

Even so, climate scientists are just regular guys, don’t you see? And tree rings? Oh those! They’re fun to study, to be sure, but the problem is that our knowledge of temperatures post-1960 has nothing to do with tree rings, which are nevertheless the main support for the global warming conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which in turn is the U.S. government's only basis for cap and trade, etc, according to another critic.

So what? Well, “Climate legislation is in a Congressional coma and there is little hope for a quick revival amid a long-term economic malaise that makes spending untold trillions to prevent change in a global climate that has always been changing seem daffy.”--Chris Stirewalt, Washington Examiner

Re: Whoppers:

“[Democrat leaders]will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry...”--Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
“Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries...”--AP.

End Notes:

“Toilet paper consumes 5% of the trees harvested, a much lower percentage than shipping materials made from unrecycled paper, but it’s apparently seized most of the attention from environmentalists. Washingtonpost.com reports on a campaign to get toilet paper manufacturers to stop making the product so soft and to use recycled paper, which thus far has meant economic death for the producers. One has to wonder whether this is really the time or the, er, place for activism.”
--Ben Blankenship

A massive global warming Ooops

Bensblurb #508. 11/23/09


Call off Copenhagen?

The global warmists can be forgiven if most stay home from that Dec. confab. However,
as one analyst put it, “Unable to sign a binding treaty in Copenhagen, the president [has] called for...‘an accord that covers all of the issues ... and has immediate operational effect.’ The only way he can sign a deal with ‘immediate operational effect,’ without congressional approval, would be to have the Environmental Protection Agency accomplish by regulation what he cannot by legislation, a step he just might take if he takes the Senate's decision...to postpone consideration of cap and trade until next spring as a signal that it won't act then, or ever....” ‘.
All that rumination occurred before this weekend’s bombshell uncovering of skullduggery amongst the world’s elite scientific warmers.

As Newsbusters put it, “E-mail messages between high-ranking scientists appear to indicate a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists to falsify temperature data in order to exaggerate global averages. Those involved allegedly include: James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Michael Mann, famous for Mann's ‘Hockey Stick‘; Gavin Schmidt, NASA climate modeler, and; Stephen Schneider, Stanford professor and Al Gore confidant.

Further, about those publicized emails, here’s John Hinderaker of Power Line blog.

“...the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science.”

And from Bright Green Blog, this: “One target [of the emailers‘ wrath], climate researcher John Christy at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, finds the emails reflect a disturbing level of what he terms ‘group think.’ In an email exchange (a polite one), he writes:

“These people act in concert to diminish, reject, and otherwise denigrate findings with which they do not agree — and they are able to do so because of their ‘establishment’ positions. This is the preservation of ‘group think’ at its most serious level…. The group represented by the bulk of these emails does indeed have a message to defend. Those of us who see problems with that message are aware of how the data are manufactured and interpreted to support that message — and worse, how these establishment scientists act as gatekeepers for the ‘consensus’ reports to suppress alternative findings.”

Finally, here’s old friend Dennis Avery, a long-time author and leader in the skeptics community:
“Copenhagen has predictably brought out a new round of claims that humanity is frying the planet. Mother Nature, however, has told us to expect only about 0.5 degree of further warming over the next several centuries. Which is right, Mother Nature or the computerized global climate models championed by Al Gore?

“...One of the alleged emails has Kevin Trenberth of the U.S. National Center on Climate Research, saying to his fellow believers in man-made warming: ....“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming, and it is a travesty that we can’t. The [government satellite radiation data] shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. . . .”

“Trenberth is saying the data he’s getting can’t be right because they don’t confirm his theory that the Modern Warming is mostly man-made. But there’s an old saying in science: “If your data don’t confirm your theory, get a new theory.”

You can see other recent columns by Dennis at cgfi.org.

It will be fun watching the global warmists trying to pooh-pooh the thrust of these candid email messages
-----And, by the way, Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Our better candidates won

Now that the smoke has cleared here in Stafford following our election of supervisors in early November, maybe we can sit back for a few moments and figure out what happened.

Why did the GOP candidates all win handily?

First of all, Republicans have nearly always been a stronger force in the county. And this time their candidates clearly ran stronger campaigns and had better credentials. Doesn’t everyone agree?

Further, our Democrat friends in the county had seen the sitting supervisors they favored being outsmarted. The chairman of the board let too many meetings and agendas get out of hand.

Third, we voters tending to favor the GOP were angry and motivated--and not just about board decisions on BPOL and the wrangling over the SPCA deal.

In retrospect, it must not have been good strategy when county Democrats for too long kept blaming businesses and builders for all the county’s woes. In more prosperous times earlier in this century, that kind of rhetoric worked. Now, with many employers in the county hurting, beating on them has surely become counterproductive. Voters apparently noticed.

The county’s constrictive comprehensive plan, long in the tooth and still on the drawing board, leaves a bad taste. Democrats have championed it so as to further restrict (obviously) county builders and businesses. The tide has changed. They and we aren’t growing.

Moreover, we do not exist apart from the Washington political scene. We’re only a major, often huge, traffic jam away. Up yonder, things have changed since Obama’s election and not in positive ways: Huge new debt, no economic rebound, costly new health care and energy tax bills--both as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Locally, Dems must have thought that, since Obama had fared so well a year ago here, nearly tipping the county to the Democrats, that his coattails would still influence. Negative.

First sign of change I saw here was on July 4. About noon I drove down to the Stafford County courthouse to see if anyone had shown up for a lightly publicized Tea Party on its front lawn, expecting maybe a few malcontents with bullhorns. I was shocked. The place was overflowing. Over 500 mostly pleasant folks milled around chatting with each other and listening to a few rambling, mostly patriotic speeches.

So that straw in the wind shouldn’t have led to any shock and awe that the GOP this fall won all our state offices. How nice.

Will it make much difference to us here in Stafford in the long run? I doubt it. Gov. Kaine, the Richmond lawyer and pol, didn’t do too much damage, and I do like McDonnell and his military record. Yet, we Virginia voters change oil, not traditions and habits. I’ve liked it like that, right here for over 30 years, growing older with lots of friends who feel the same way--and always vote.

True, our county continues to evolve. Our supervisors must cope with problems. Mostly they have. And now I think they will do better. And our businesses and builders will, too. Let’s all hope so.

Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at info@staffordcountysun.com".
　
　

Stimulus dreams

Bensblurb #507 11/18/09

Stimulus dreams:

The infusion of gov’t bucks has really helped, creating a questionably sturdy number of jobs and immeasurably saving others. But wait. New housing construction has suddenly dipped, nearly as low as our president’s oriental bow, and heralding a double-dip recession?

Let’s hope not, at least until after our traditionally happy holidays and the closing of Gitmo, someday. Except:

“...[I]t is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more. The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double-dip recession...[thus]
we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures The damage will be extensive and severe...”--Nourel Roubini, professor of economics and Chairman of Roubini Global Economics.

There’s more:

“At some point, probably before the end of 2010, the bubble will burst. The deflationary effect on the U.S. economy of $150 plus oil will overwhelm the modest forces of genuine economic expansion. The Treasury bond market will collapse, overwhelmed by the weight of deficit financing. Once again, the banking system will be in deep trouble. The industrial sector, beyond the largest and most liquid companies and the extractive industries, will in any case have remained in recession – it is notable that, in spite of the Fed's frenzy of activity, bank lending has fallen $600 billion in the last year. Unemployment, which will probably enter the second downturn at around current levels, will spike further upwards. The dollar will probably not collapse, but only because it will have been declining inexorably in the intervening year...In the next downturn, the Fed will not be able to cut interest rates, because inflation will be spiraling, as in 1980. Instead it will need to raise them while dealing with a profound crisis in the bond markets. Capital in the U.S. will become still more difficult to come by, and unemployment will approach 15%.”. --Martin Hutchinson, in PrudentBear.
　
Why such gloom? Maybe Fort Hood set the stage:
　
"After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; [but]after the [Danish] cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life... I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a 'tragedy' but a national scandal, already fading from view." --columnist Mark Steyn 1/

But not all the news has been gloomy. It‘s been cool on the climate front:

"'Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,' President-elect Obama said of global warming last November. ‘Delay is no longer an option.’...Mr. Obama bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance will come of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. For the last year the President has been promising a binding international carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol, but instead negotiators from 192 countries now hope to ...sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010. No doubt... Of course, the pointlessness of Copenhagen will now become part of Mr. Obama's argument that the Senate must inflict cap and tax on the U.S., as well as a justification for the EPA's nondemocratic carbon crackdown via clean-air regulation. If he and we are lucky, however, the Senate will fail to act too, the EPA will get tied up in court, and the economy will recover faster without the looming burden of higher energy taxes.”--Wall Street Journal

1/ Footnote on Fort Hood: “The wife of one of the wounded soldiers certainly understood the implications of disarming service personnel (on U.S. military posts). When asked how she felt about her husband's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, she replied, ‘At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?’"--The Patriot blog

* * *

Stimulus dreams

Bensblurb #507 11/18/09

Stimulus dreams:

The infusion of gov’t bucks has really helped, creating a questionably sturdy number of jobs and immeasurably saving others. But wait. New housing construction has suddenly dipped, nearly as low as our president’s oriental bow, and heralding a double-dip recession?

Let’s hope not, at least until after our traditionally happy holidays and the closing of Gitmo, someday. Except:

“...[I]t is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more. The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double-dip recession...[thus]
we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures The damage will be extensive and severe...”--Nourel Roubini, professor of economics and Chairman of Roubini Global Economics.

There’s more:

“At some point, probably before the end of 2010, the bubble will burst. The deflationary effect on the U.S. economy of $150 plus oil will overwhelm the modest forces of genuine economic expansion. The Treasury bond market will collapse, overwhelmed by the weight of deficit financing. Once again, the banking system will be in deep trouble. The industrial sector, beyond the largest and most liquid companies and the extractive industries, will in any case have remained in recession – it is notable that, in spite of the Fed's frenzy of activity, bank lending has fallen $600 billion in the last year. Unemployment, which will probably enter the second downturn at around current levels, will spike further upwards. The dollar will probably not collapse, but only because it will have been declining inexorably in the intervening year...In the next downturn, the Fed will not be able to cut interest rates, because inflation will be spiraling, as in 1980. Instead it will need to raise them while dealing with a profound crisis in the bond markets. Capital in the U.S. will become still more difficult to come by, and unemployment will approach 15%.”. --Martin Hutchinson, in PrudentBear.
　
Why such gloom? Maybe Fort Hood set the stage:
　
"After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; [but]after the [Danish] cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life... I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a 'tragedy' but a national scandal, already fading from view." --columnist Mark Steyn 1/

But not all the news has been gloomy. It‘s been cool on the climate front:

"'Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,' President-elect Obama said of global warming last November. ‘Delay is no longer an option.’...Mr. Obama bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance will come of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. For the last year the President has been promising a binding international carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol, but instead negotiators from 192 countries now hope to ...sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010. No doubt... Of course, the pointlessness of Copenhagen will now become part of Mr. Obama's argument that the Senate must inflict cap and tax on the U.S., as well as a justification for the EPA's nondemocratic carbon crackdown via clean-air regulation. If he and we are lucky, however, the Senate will fail to act too, the EPA will get tied up in court, and the economy will recover faster without the looming burden of higher energy taxes.”--Wall Street Journal

1/ Footnote on Fort Hood: “The wife of one of the wounded soldiers certainly understood the implications of disarming service personnel (on U.S. military posts). When asked how she felt about her husband's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, she replied, ‘At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?’"--The Patriot blog

* * *

Smoking, mandating and stuff

Bensblurb #506...

First, before we get to the serious stuff, consider:

Thanks, smokers: They’re among the many Americans coughing up more taxes this year, by having to pay higher federal tax rates per pack and smoking more cigarettes than last year. “No tax increases for middle income folks” --who don’t smoke, Obama should have added.

Thus, smoke still gets in your eyes. But don’t worry. All Americans will soon have to buy health insurance. Pelosi-care seems to read that way. But wait:
　
"Where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance? If Congress gets away with forcing us to buy health insurance...do you naively think they will stop with health insurance?" --economist Walter E. Williams

Two other views:

* Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va): "The United States Congress passed laws regarding Medicare and Medicaid that became de facto mandatory programs. States all the time require people to have driver's licenses. I think that this is a bit of a spurious argument that's being made by some folks." Yes, but states require licenses only for the privilege of driving, says The Patriot blog.

* Jon M. Hall, in American Thinker: If Congress were to do the right thing and initiate an amendment to enshrine the 'individual mandate' in the Constitution ... it would fail miserably....I'm afraid Congress has not only misread the Constitution, but they've also misjudged the American people. Or maybe they just don't know what country they live in."
　
FORT HOOD LORE...

And by the way, staying up with the latest news, here’s a quotation from an instant celebrity:
“[I]t's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims...We love death more than you love life.” --Fort Hood terrorist Major Nidal Hasan.

Significantly, Gen. George Casey, Army Chief of Staff, said that the murders were a tragedy, but worried that it "could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers." He then warned, "As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." --Whose country does he represent?

And, speaking of awkward transpositions, there’s this: “The cultural Marxists, leaping to the defense of ‘diversity,’ their favorite poison for Western societies, claim Major Hasan’s massacre of his fellow soldiers does not represent Islam. Sorry, but it represents Islam all too well. Islam does not recognize any separation between church and state. States have no legitimacy in Islam; legitimacy adheres only to the Ummah, the community of all believers. The only legitimate law is Sharia. All Muslims are commanded to wage jihad against all non-Islamics.... Nightwatch for 5 November writes: Two years ago, a devout Pakistani cabdriver told Nightwatch that if Allah called him or any devout Muslim to go on jihad and to kill his family and even the riders in his cab, he must do it immediately. He made that statement calmly as a matter of fact, while driving north on US 1.--William S.Lind, Free Congress Federation

And now, capping off this all-too-eventful week, we hear that the 9/11 terrorists are going to be tried in Manhattan, right near where they in effect incinerated thousands of New Yorkers. If there are riots by survivors during the trials, you can blame--not the crazy Muslims--but Obama’s administration. Just watch.
　

Health Care Weekend

Bensblurb #505 11/07/09

On this fair football weekend, your U.S. representative is an arm twister or twistee inside the stuffy House chamber trying to pass a bill at coo-coo leader Pelosi’s command. Why? It’s democracy in action, I guess. So a Muslim kills soldiers in Texas and unemployment soars past 10 percent. Health insurance reform can’t wait.

Check these comments in Politico:
Lurita Doan, former GSA administrator :
With unemployment now at 10.2 percent, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have decided that healthcare, not jobs, is their priority and have decided to sock it to the small businesses in order to pay for their dodgy, social experiment that still leaves 30 million Americans without healthcare insurance. Does this make any sense? Any congressperson who votes "yes" for Pelosi’s bill should be ousted from office.

Michael Cannon. Cato Director of Health Policy Studies : If House Democrats hold a vote on their health-care overhaul this weekend, they might as well vote to abolish the Congressional Budget Office too. It would be no more audacious (and much more honest) than the way they have gamed the CBO's rules to hide $1.5 trillion of the cost of their legislation -- which has to be the biggest fiscal obfuscation in the history of American politics.

Regardless, the Friday night TV pundit consensus was that the bill would pass but never become law. The Senate is all over the lot on health care, fortunately.
　
Meanwhile, how could any President have had a worse week? He campaigns hard for the wrong candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, who then get whipped. His stimulus package gets ripped by the rise in unemployment to over 10 percent Then, after a Muslim shoots up soldiers at Fort Hood, he goes on TV and first thanks an Indian group honoring its “medal of honor” (oops) medal of freedom winner before touching on the Texas tragedy.
Speaking of which, here‘s Ralph Peters in the NY Post:
“Hasan isn’t the sole guilty party. The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood.
Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor. . There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
　
And here’s John Hinderaker, in Power Line: President Obama took another pass at commenting on the Fort Hood massacre in the Rose Garden this morning:
This morning I met with FBI Director Mueller and the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women. We don't know all of the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all of the facts.
"Don't jump to conclusions" is an all-purpose tautology, like "Don't panic."... One wonders, though, exactly what conclusions he has in mind. I think it's safe to predict that President Obama will never reach those conclusions, let alone jump to them.

The most informative and straightforward account of the massacre I've seen is in London's Sun newspaper. It pays tribute to policewoman Kimberly Munley, who was on a routine traffic patrol and became the first officer on the site. (There were lots of soldiers there, of course, but they were all unarmed because it was a "gun-free zone"--sort of a microcosm of the adage that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.)

The thought arose. Here was a building full of troops trained and ready to deploy and presumably versed in the combat arts, and nobody could have rushed and subdued the shooter?

Oh well. On to more serious matters, like global warming:
The Washington Examiner has this column (Plants need more CO2, not less,
by H. Leighton Steward):
Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.
In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution.

Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.

For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.
　
And, from The American, a piece by Samuel Thernstrom...
Reading the climate-change news in recent weeks, one might wonder who won the last presidential election...When asked about whether the president has decided to skip the December climate summit in Copenhagen. United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer has concluded that it is “unrealistic” to expect the conference to produce a new, comprehensive climate treaty—which also describes the once-fond hopes for passage of domestic climate legislation this year—or even in Obama’s first term.
This is not how it was supposed to be.
Among all the things that President Bush did to infuriate environmentalists, none was more inexcusable than his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and it was assumed that Obama’s election meant a triumphant American return to the Kyoto fold—symbolically, at least, if not literally. Backed by large majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama was widely expected to quickly pass a Kyoto-style domestic cap-and-trade program....

-----But not to worry. It’s getting cooler as we speak. And footballs are flying.

Honor our bravve veterans

　
With all the chatter our county and state elections stirred up this week, it will be all too easy to let next Wednesday pass as just another day off. It’s not. It’s the nation’s special tribute that is Veterans Day
.
It brings to mind something I read recently: “Veterans know that our great country is protected, not by politicians, but by the young men and women in the military serving our country...So support our troops and their families. Please remember that there are literally thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen far from home wishing they could be with their families....We live in the land of the free, only because of the brave.”--adapted from a tract on the Internet.

As time goes on, however, there are fewer and fewer brave veterans for us to honor. That’s because nobody gets drafted anymore, a draft that first fueled the vast military machine to defeat Germany and Japan. World War II veterans are indeed elderly now and without many of their buddies who have gone on to greater glory.

In that total war, America produced, not only millions of war fighters but also tremendous firepower, for example nearly 13,000 of our famous bombers, the B-17 Flying Fortress. I saw one on special display at the Stafford airport. Too bad most of you weren’t there to appreciate how the aircraft’s crews operated so heroically in such tight quarters to help destroy Germany’s Third Reich.

My presence there was mainly to honor my brother-in-law who had piloted one of those B-17s, and been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bringing his shot-up craft to a safe crash-landing back in England. Rufus Grisham and my sister still enjoy life in Lubbock, Texas.

Again a personal note: James Bryant, my grandson-in-law and a Sergeant now serving in Korea, had also seen combat duty in Iraq as an expert rifleman in a unit that won special commendation.

Like others of today’s heroes, his patriotic mates are fewer in number but all the more to be honored for having volunteered to fight for our country.

My personal Veterans Day tribute must also recognize friends and neighbors here in Stafford. A partial list would include Aquia’s Joe Duffey, a lifelong native of Stafford, who manned a minesweeper in the Pacific.

When the Japanese were about to give up an island, they would mine the waters nearby and thus stall our ships’ supplies to our troops. Joe helped clear those shipping lanes.

I also want to again mention Frank Lewis, the regular cartoonist for our Stafford County Sun, although he‘s pushing 90. :Frank had engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the Philippines to help free Manila of Japanese control. Much later, with the U.S. special forces, he helped train and lead Montagnard tribesmen against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese along the Cambodian border. A diminutive guy, and shy--you’d never guess the extent of his valor.

Also, forgive me, Joe Spagnoli, Frank Withrow and Bernie Wise. I’ve run out of room to again acknowledge your and other friends’ World War II exploits.

Finally, do this: Click on this site for “Here’s to the Heroes,” by Ten Tenors. Awesome.
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL-0mdEg0U4&feature=related"

Heartening election

GOOD Morning, friends.....(Bensblurb #503)

Nice. Virginia again is nearly red. Blacks and the young stayed home, unlike a year ago, and we adults--despite constant harassment from the Washington Post --swept the state offices clean of Dems.

And now it feels good again to re-read a recent hopeful analysis by Pajama Media’s Jennifer Rubin: “If McDonnell and/or Christie succeed, many political obituaries for the GOP will need to be torn up. And a few assumptions about the new era of liberal dominance may go by the wayside as well.”

Let’s hope so. We’re off to a good start. Change will certainly be refreshing in Richmond, after surviving the mushy incompetence of Tim Kaine in the governor’s office. He’s been spending most of his unproductive time recently chairing the Democratic National Committee. They deserve each other.

But I wasn’t so much against Kaine (and his planned carbon-copy replacement, Creigh Deeds) as I was for McDonnell

One of the winner’s campaign quotes that attracted me:

“On energy, our opponents will say no to offshore drilling, no to clean coal, no to nuclear and no to new jobs and investment that comes with it. When it comes to promoting energy independence, they’ll just say no, we’ll just say yes.”

Sounds good. And now, more than ever, my own “Happiness is...being old, male and Republican.” That headline referred to a story about a recent Pew Research Center survey. It found that Americans generally grow happier as they age, and that tendency is holding up as the economy endures today’s difficult times.

There were a lot of us old geezers celebrating in Stafford County last night. Not only did we elect McDonnell and his crew, we also threw out the liberal majority on our county board of supervisors--with a resounding, welcome thud. Brooms were scarce in stores today.

A year ago, I had looked on in disappointed awe over the mobs in Grant Park celebrating the stunning victory of Chicago’s youngster. Obama’s was, in retrospect, a miraculous campaign featuring his speaking skills. Only one problem today. A year later he’s still campaigning. He plugged strongly for Deeds and for Corzine in New Jersey. He should have stayed home and talked with his military appointees about what to do about Afghanistan. The question remains: Can he get anything done?

But let’s put all that aside for the next week, bask in yesterday's glow, and honor our brave veterans again on Nov. 11. And include the youngsters fighting our battles today. Unlike so many of us old guys, they weren’t drafted, they volunteered to serve our great country. We owe them our devotion and support.