Obviously the start of the Hurricane Season is the time to send the Guard to Iraq. The 226^th Area Support Group of the Alabama National Guard is on its way for the second time. This is a “voluntary” deployment, because it is illegal to order guardsmen overseas more than once every five years.

When does the media start calling a lie, a lie. If the military had enough people we wouldn’t be sending same Guard units over every three years.

The 226^th is important to hurricane preparation because they were the unit that established the Alabama Guard command center after Katrina. They are a logistics unit that gets everything to where it’s needed.

On the other hand they can check on all of their equipment, which they had to leave in Iraq at the end of their first tour.

The Wen Ho Lee case has finally been settled with the media paying $750K and the Feds paying almost $900K for destroying the Doctor’s reputation and holding him in prison for 9 months.

I haven’t heard that the data analyst at the VA has been thrown into solitary confinement, nor branded a spy, for a more serious breach of data security than the Doctor.

The FBI has been out of control for a long time. Something needs to be done to convince them that they are supposed to be enforcing the laws, not breaking them.

For some reason the governor of Texas is known as “Good Hair”. I don’t think it looks much better than Ann Richards’s hair, but I guess Rick Perry will take what he can get.

From this BBC article, Web users to ‘patrol’ US border, I conclude that he will be giving more than taking.

He’s planning to install a network of webcams along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo river that will be streaming to the Internet and people can log on to a web site and monitor the border from the comfort of a cantina with a Dos Equis in their hand and figure out where La Migra isn’t working and plot a path appropriately.

Of course, others will be sucking down a Pearl in bar and planning on coming up the other way, throwing a bag over the camera, stealing it, and flogging it on E-Bay.

I hope they’re solar powered and the whole system is sold as a unit.

When I driving across the country while I was in the service one of the “guilty pleasures” of the process was gorging myself at truck stops. It is a right enjoyed by highway warriors to have a couple of chicken-fried steaks with mashed potatoes and beans awash in pepper gravy before going to bed and then waking up to a short stack, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a slab of ham. Of course, it’s terrible for your continued health, but you only do it when you travel, right?

So I was disturbed when I read Jack’s piece at Wagon Tongues on a push by the Feds to cut portions.

Then I considered the process and relaxed: Denny Hastert will never allow this to happen.

Back to the Basics

You must believe you’re a circle. Tighten it up, I see an ellipse

[Editor: Under Sox’s professional eye, Ringo practices sleeping positions.

Friday Ark