while my right hand cradles your head as I

lower and bend you back.

Your hands slip under my arm pits to feel my

broad shoulders supporting us both.

As our lips draw close, your left leg wraps

behind my knees and your eyes close in

anticipation.

Our lips touch softly and then more firmly as

our passions rise.  Our lips hold this embrace

for a few moments, and then slowly peel away–a

gentle teasing helped by your lipstick.

I draw you back to vertical with my hands

cupping your shoulders.

“Happy New Year!”

Until storm takes us with fury
Welding us one to the other
In with the foam tide higher!
Out with the wave tide’s depths!

Something remains, treasured now
Hearts and minds joined for love.

What is more disturbing is how the national consciousness has absorbed the current state of affairs and turned civilian command-and-control of the military upside down.  As we are too often to forget or ignore, war is politics by other means.  Automatically flowing from this maxim:  1) there is no such thing as an apolitical flag rank officer; and 2) there is no such thing as an apolitical war.  The corollary to this reality of war is that flag rank officers will aggressively seek to insert themselves in the absence of firm political leadership.

There are signs that the Obama administration is willing to let the military call the tune in a manner similar to Bush II.  This may prove to be a greater threat to the Republic than terrorism, piracy, or fundamentalism ever was.

The only seals I saw as a child were at the Pt. Defiance Zoo.  Now, Harbor Seals seem to occupy most of the navigation bouys and can be seen feeding just about anywhere significant numbers of fish can be found.

To a lesser extent, birds on the Sound seem to be more common too.

However, the Salmon Fishery that closed when I was a teenager has only gotten worse.  From what I have read or seen, the major offenders are:  1) high-head dams grinding Salmon into chum coming and going; 2) further destruction of spawning habitat; 3) disease/parasite transmission from Atlantic Char (grown on submerged fish farms) to Salmon emerging from spawning grounds; 4) factory trawlers finishing off the last of the adult Salmon beyond the 200-mile limit.

Good things don’t seem to be happening for our Salmon.  Unless something is done soon, within my lifetime I believe they will be extinct.

I confess that I was irriated enough by this individual that my wife and my family left the Petco before I could jack this pseudo soldier up.

Now technically, 10 U.S.C. section 771 makes this individual’s behavior illegal, but like a lot of things in life legal, finding a prosecutor who will drop the hammer on such an individual is probably more difficult than winning at Powerball.

Nevertheless, I feel dishonored and frustrated by this punk.  If he we’re making a political statement, I’d be more comfortable, but wearing BDU’s like trash really yanks my chain.

Thank God the current threshold for a nuclear exchange is high, or I swear he’d find a way to get us in one.

Instead of conventional calculations of risk, I see calculations based on ideological purity and aggrandizement of personal power.  Rather than the way my father used to kick off military briefings during the Nixon administration where the briefing would begin with a list of who is in military contact with whom, who got killed or injured, and what is at risk, I see a Cheney briefing opening with which donor promised what, who’s unhappy in the neocon base, and how they can get even with Republicans Cheney perceives as having “deserted” the cause.

In other words, Cheney and “W” don’t perceive risk because they consciously don’t look for and wouldn’t know it if wacked them over the head with a Backfire bomber.  We’re ruled by moral cowards who believe power is their birth right and stewardship is something liberals do.  We’re really lucky it isn’t any worse than it is.  Really lucky . . .

No longer does a nice, neat, clean bullet pierce the heart of the fallen hero.  In modern warfare, our hero is much more likely to be incinerated beyond recognition.

Nor do our “invincible” tanks go hither and yon at will while all weapons bounce harmlessly off their flanks.  In the real world, whether you call them anti-tank mines or improvised explosive devices, is semantics next to the practical effects of such a device on a tank’s hull and crew.  Moreover, all recent HAWs (Heavy Anti-tank Weapons) will easily slice through the armor of any tank and incinerate and/or shread the crew inside.  Most of the improvements to me made in such weapons involve the survivability of the crew firing the weapon and not lethality.

The modern battlefield is not a pushing ground but a killing field.

The soldier’s rejoinder was extremely profane, but amounted to saying something like “a day late and a dollar short.” The rank-and-file understand this war in a manner their leaders seem utterly unwilling to come to grasp with.

As November approaches, the isotopes in possession of the Iranians capable of making a nuke vanish below a critical mass in any geometry. As the election nears, a planet in desperate need of a carbon diet might finally see the faint beginnings of change and escape velocity from the Event Horizon might finally be reached.

As the Event Horizon nears, we can only hope that those who have served the Nation and the national interest so poorly will fall beyond the ability to influence future events.

Lets shed some light on the Shahab-3 [Meteor-3]. The standard version is on its transporter above. It’s basically a slightly improved SCUD-C and based on a North Korean design. Interestingly, the FAS reports 1280km–not miles–which would put it out of range of Israel. Looks like the mainstream press needs lessons on the difference between a kilometer and a mile. Semi-professionally, this range figure looks good to me for the design because it’s basically the same as the SCUD-C and SCUD-D. Yes, there appears to be a lengthened version with 1500km range. However, the trade off is a smaller warhead, a heavier missile, and an even more massive transporter.

Just like the SCUDs, it has a horrific fuel mixture. The propellant is a mixture of gasoline and kerosene (the worst of both worlds). In fact, since the oxidizer is fairly volatile itself, better thrust would be achieved using hydrazine–nasty stuff. Hydrazine and Nitric Acid was the propellant and oxidizer of our Titan missile systems. The oxidizer is a wonderfully “stable” combination of fuming Nitric Acid and Nitrous Oxide. One of the joys of such fuel is that the oxidizer tank must be lined with paraffin wax. If the system gets too hot and the paraffin starts to melt or shift, the reaction could be–say–”energetic.” For example, dropping a wrench in a Titan silo was considered a good recipe for incineration when the metal wrench breached the oxidizer and propellant tanks mixing them together for instant and vigorous combustion.

To top it all off, the ignition sequence starts with a solid fuel rocket spinning the propellant and oxidizer turbines up to speed before primary ignition. I wouldn’t want anything to overheat or explode in those first few seconds–like solid fuel motors have a habit of doing. I probably wouldn’t want anybody shooting at me during this process either–imagine the effect of a small arm’s round breaching both tanks.

The mainstream photos make this thing look sleek and elusive–it ain’t! This is a humongous SCUD you can launch from a nice, prepared concrete pad or a highway. Even in the best of circumstances, this thing would be an iffy proposition to move cross-country and even iffier to launch without a thorough inspection first. Notice also that the stepped down cone on the missile pictured here is missing on most of mainstream photos. That’s the guidance package!
That being said, it has the beginning of an inertial guidance system, and it would be perfectly capable of blowing a four city block-sized crater through the keel of a stationary Nimitz-class carrier. A very stationary, as in moored tightly to its dock stationary, carrier.