Lasik....like computers, better and cheaper.

So why doesnt all medicine follow this model?

Fixing health care is so simple that anyone except government can see it and do it.

Every time I buy a digital camera or Imac it is better and cheaper than the previous model. Why dont we see this model in high tech medicine?

Hat tip to instapundit.

As welcome as the Klan.

Swiss voters....not the politicians, figure it out.

If you want diversity, religious tolerance, womens's rights or gay rights, you can't have Islam.

Last Issue of the Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas Morning News Sunday Front Page: "Improving Cuba Relations? Check." A University of Texas at Dallas chess team just made a trip to play in a tournament in....el Cuba! The front page has a photo of two of them passed out on a bed and another wearing an army cap with red star and a stogie. La Revolucion! So zany! So fun! Playing chess in a dictatorship: exhausting!

Front page and a double page inside. What did Fidel do to improve these "relations?" Free a political prisoner? Grant some visas? Open up the press or the internet? Nope, nope and nada. Instead, these TOOLS went down to spend some bucks, play some chess and put a nice face on a mass-murdering criminal enterprise. No mention of firing squads, political prisoners or 50 years of dictatorial rule. The sponsor of the trip Magaly Spector and her family actually boated off the isle-prison in 1980 for Key West. If caught, she would have been jailed or shot.

She returns to betray the Cuban patriots languishing in Fidel's prisons or sleeping in unmarked graves. The article does mention the "azure seas" of an island paradise where Fidel chased off the nasty US corporations so that the Cubans wouldn't live under the iron yoke of economic progress and opportunity like the rest of us.

Nice job, UTD!

My favorite photo in the spread is of one of the Dallas young men playing chess while eight hip-looking young women watch from the nearest rope line. You KNOW these young ladies are chess fanatics! One even has a belt buckle on her low-riders that says "pinup." They couldn't be brought in just to distract the visitors? And I'm sure the regime long ago quit encouraging prostitutes in the tourist-only hotel district. (photo in the slide show that goes with the story)

So, with that, I end my daily reading of the DMN. I didn't subscribe, I BOUGHT a newstand copy nearly every day at Brady's Coffee (1.00 Yanqui American) or Sunday at a gas station on the way to Cafe Tazza (3.00 Yanqui American) where I drank coffee and ate breakfast brought to me by the economic engine driven by US Corporations driven from Cuba......

God bless the Cuban People. I pray for their freedom from the Castro brothers who have enslaved them for half a century.

Three bucks this morning. I'm going to call and ask for my money back.

But that's it. I'm done. I'll never buy a Dallas Morning News again.

Update: My letter to the Dallas Morning News reporter and Belo Board of Directors:

Mr. Granberry: You've heard the old joke about arguing with idiots- they drag you down to their level and then beat you up with their greater experience, so there is little point in listing the grievous and ahistorical points of your front page story in the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News. I should point out one salient fact: The Castro Regime REPRESSES the free press in Cuba and kills or imprisons those who dare speak out or protest. YOU are in a business that makes it's BUSINESS, (or used to), to present facts, speak out and publish in a free manner. You should perhaps give some thought before acting as a tool for such monstrous criminal enterprises as the Castro brothers.

The publication of your story on it's front page ends my forty years of buying and reading the Dallas Morning News. I'll never buy another issue.

Robert Langham
Tyler, Texas

Update: Their letter back to me:

Goodness gracious, Mr. Langham, was it that bad? First of all, I appreciate  hearing from you and love the fact that you have read us for 40 years. THANK  YOU! Let's see if we can make this right for you. I have gotten some very angry  e-mail, which was hardly my intention. Keep in mind, this was A CHESS MATCH,  played between kids in their 20s. Magaly Spector, the focus of the story, CHOSE  to leave Cuba because of its lack of freedoms -- which is made clear in the  story. She neither condones nor celebrates the Cuban government, nor do I. Far  from it. But Cuba is full of good people, who, like any of us, long for peace  and prosperity. They're stuck with what they've got. And they have an incredible  resolve despite the obstacles put in front of them. I do take issue with your  suggestion that my story is inaccurate or poorly reported. Quite the contrary,  sir. We'll just have to agree to disagree about that. But you have no idea how  deeply we appreciate your being so loyal to us over the years, and if one story  is able to derail that, I am truly sorry. As for me being an idiot, well, get in  line on that one. Have you been talking to my ex-wife? I am also sorry that you  thought I was acting as a "tool" for the Castro brothers, who in many, many ways  have been despicable. But again, not the point of my story, whether they have  been or not. Again, chess and peace among normal peoples were the reason for the  UTD trip, which was carried out in spite of the Castro regime, not because of  it.   Again, thank you so much for your loyalty. I would hope that you would  re-consider your decision and give me and the paper another chance.   All the best, Michael  

Capt. Scott Speicher found

Everything is somewhere. After many fits, starts and false leads they can finally bring the pilot home.

I don't know why this is getting news play today as most of the stories are tagged from August 2. Glad to have it resolved for his family.

More here.

Truth to Power

It's ugly.

Update: I think I stole this from Breda. If so, THANKS!

What's the par on Tiger?

He looks like a long two-stroke to me. Tiger Woods gets beatabutta by wife....with golf club. Any gunnie worth his google-fu knows that more folks killed by doctors than guns in Obama's America, more folks injured and killed with blunt objects, (like a #3 wedge) than guns in Obama's America and more domestic violence injuries by hands and improvised cudgels than guns. Golf isn't a very safe sport, say compared to.....NRA Highpower Rifle Shooting! People of Obama's America, please! Lay down those Hogan drivers and topflites and take up guns! For the children! Most golf courses could and should be converted to skeet and smallbore ranges, with some Long Range and Highpower, plus action pistol thrown in. It's just common sense safety, after all.

So I'm not surprised. Nascar Drivers are statistically safer than golfers around those dangerous blunt objects. With all those wedges, drivers and putters laying around the house, Tiger was a domestic violence 9/11 call just waiting to happen.

Black Friday AM/PM

The Good Doctor came up to hunt. He held the chair in the corner and I was in my tree. Scrapes freshly worked....a lot. Nothing on cam. (I wonder how they do that?) 37 degrees, so it was like.....cold and junk. No wind. Nothing was going on until a doe crashed by Sneed with tail flagged up, followed by the sound of dogs...and another doe darting into the tall grass. She worked her way close to me and HID in the grass. I think she went to her knees. I could just see her head periscoping up watching the pooches. One of the dogs, a big lab, zig-zagged down until he was ten feet away from her. She held her ground until he actually looked in her eyes and then ran...straight at the Good Doctor. Sneed said she looked like she was going to steamroll him or jump over his shoulder at the woodline but swerved at the last moment. One of the dogs looked at him and growled. Civilized dogs. One had a collar. Black lab and a heeler mix. Bad business, chasing deer.

Nothing this evening. I'm officially hanging up my rattlin' horns. I think the deer have worked out all their regional differences.

Update: We shot his rifles at 500 to check the groups. From his 100 yard zero he was about four feet lower at 500 with his Cooper and Remington 700. Both of them were still grouping about six inches.

SS says: Obama safe!

Sure he was. His security couldn't do the FIRST thing you try to do: limit attendance to folks actually invited, but the Big O was safe. Never in danger.

If you believe that you are safe when your security can't do the first and simple things, then you are going to LOVE nationalized health care, which, I might add, won't cost anyone a dime.

Update: Noonan: They're amateurs.

Update the second: They did get their hands on the O. For this, the clamor arises to prosecute them. The press and hacks get it bass-ackwards, as usual. They deserve thanks for exposing shoddy security. The heads of SECURITY should roll.

Update the third: Unserious folks stroll through security, that means ZERO, Niltch, NADA serious folks are even TRYING to get to the President, or Biden, Reps, Senators, Bureaucrats, Tax Collectors, LEOs or their families, or anyone. Serious folks could have any of these peoples heads in a sack by next Thursday, but they aren't even making an effort. Great Satan indeed. So there's that very good news. We are wide open to attack at any point from any quarter at any time, but nobody is interested at present or we would be in ruins.

If it was Swiss or Germans, instead of Jihadic mass murderers, we'd be toast. Assimilated Islamonuts in the Army can slaughter folks with a pistola in the middle of the biggest Army Post in the known universe, but the organized folks aren't bothering to field 10 Malvo and Muhammed old-car sniper teams (for about 200K, delivered, total), to shut down the US economy. Be thankful they are leaving it to amateurs, part timers and Harry Reid. We'd be beatabutta.

Update the fourth: No Dithering!

Squantofest

Tisquantum: a man in full.

A Patuxet man. Widely travelled. Crossed the Atlantic four times. Exploited for his multilingual skills by everyone who chanced by. Last of his kind. Warrior, farmer, survivor. Like most of us, he might have preferred for various folks with guns and plans to leave him the heck alone so he could deerhunt, fish, farm, have a family and live with his people in peace. History rolled over him and that wasn't to be his fate.

Honorary Texan of Thanksgiving, 2009: Squanto!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to each and every one of us but especially the folks working to arrest our slide into socialism and those fighting militant Islam around the world.

By next year Iran will will either have a working nuke or the Israelis will have cancelled the program. By next year cap and trade and government "medicine" will have destroyed the economy or not. The show trials in New York will be in full throttle. The Taliban in Afganistan will either have won or be crushed. If we can avoid destroying ourselves or being destroyed by our enemies until November 2010 we might have a much happier Thanksgiving next year.

I just hope to make it to New Years, then my birthday, still be on my feet at Camp Perry, then gear up for.....next year's deer season.

Update: I can't believe there isn't a mixed drink named after one of my favorite people: Squanto!

Wednesday PM: Bob the Cat

Dawns early light. Little buck who seems to own this scrape. If I was a painter, this is what my paintings would look like. What light!

Doe in heat on the 22nd.

He looks good from this angle but only is about seven inches inside spread.

Does on the licking branch.

A very animated young lady on the across the creek cam.

Across the creek on crunchy afternoon leaves, wading the rushing creek to the first cam, then drifted up the logging road to my chair looking into the hillside core area of a little buck. I gave it about ten minutes and then shook out a little rattling session. Two minutes after I sat back in the Walmart chair a healthy looking leggy Bobcat came down the opposite slope. Watched through the crosshairs. Coyotes never stop but Bobcats kind of flow along. He paused for a face rub on a sapling.

I get the feeling that Bobcats, like many cats, KNOW you are there, they are just ignoring you. This one never gave me a sidelong glance. Very spotted, like a little leopard. Never took the safety off. Couldn't think of a good reason to interrupt his flow. He disappeared upstream where I heard furious, cursing squirrels all the way up the hill. He must not ignore THEM.

No deer. In the dusk I swapped cards and left.

Wednesday AM: Wrens and Squirrels.

Spike on cam.

Crispy and splendid morning but nothing moving except fussing wrens and rattling squirrels. I got down at 9:30 and the little 1 1/2 year old buck that's been on cam a lot over here was coming out of the treeline. He didn't puzzle me out but went downwind and blew a few times in the cover of the brush. Handsome fellow but not wide enough to be legal. Too small to interest me. I didn't bother to shrug my rifle off shoulder.

Scrapes all freshly worked and added to. Two new ones up the treeline. Second rut? Cool weather? I moved my cam back to an old spot. One spike on the card.