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A record 377,616 people showed up at McChord AFB this weekend to take in the sights illustrating the power of the U.S. military. Compare that to the number that showed up to protest the Iraq war at various times around the area.

I would have to say that the voices of anti-war loudmouths was officially drown out by the sheer numbers of people who support our men and women in the armed forces. It reminds me that the biggest protest I’ve seen was the support-the-troops rally outside Ft. Lewis that stretched for more than 8 miles of overpasses (as that 2003?). And that was actually a counter-protests. The protesters showed up and according to eye-witnesses didn’t even get off of the bus.

I wasn’t able to make the show because of other responsibilities. I heard it was great.

McChord AFB Air Show 2008 - fencecheck.com

Air Show Millitary Expo 2008 McChord AFB USA - YouTube.com

McChord AFB Air Show 2008 - Web site

As I’m reading a post on the Washington Policy Center’s blog I found myself somewhat stunned at the simplicity of the statement in this paragraph:

During our annual transportation event, Dr. Ronald Utt, a transportation and economics expert from the Heritage Foundation suggested that moving toward performance-based transportation decision making (and away from the current political system) means resources are distributed on getting the biggest bang for your buck. Instead, Sound Transit’s resource allocation appears to have very little to do with performance and everything to do with buying votes.

The more I’ve thought about it the more sense it has made. Over the years I’ve learned that there is great wisdom in simple things. A change in goals can lead to a complete overhaul of the way things are done. Focusing on a clear, attainable result can make a lot of choices along the way a lot simpler to decide.
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The first energy crisis, back in the 70’s, was created by foreign interests who hate America. It was people from the ilk that took American embassy workers hostage in Iran and blew up a marine barracks in Lebanon. And along came a Democrat U.S. President and Congress and made the problem worse with their consistently bad economic policy.

The next time the Democrats provided us with a president that same ilk reappeared and was re-energized by the lack of proper response to their threats and attacks. Now the oil prices are rising again, for many reasons. Partly because our enemies can get away with it, but mostly because we have no alternatives to buying their oil.

Thanks again to the Democrats, oil companies cannot drill in areas that have the largest oil reserves in the U.S. President Bush has lifted the ban on offshore drilling, which was half of the problem. The other half is caused by the Democrat controlled congress. Thanks to them and their continual resistance to using our own oil, we are stuck paying exorbitant prices at the pump, most of which goes to rich oil sheiks who hate America (but love American money.)
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I’ve been away, or at least a little preoccupied.  I was with my family dealing with the illness and death of my father.  I appreciate all of the thoughts and prayers of those who have expressed their concern.

I don’t know how much I want to say on this site about all that has happened.  I’m watching as many pour out well-wishes for the family of Tony Snow and recently for Tim Russert’s, but I’ve also watched as many slimy liberals have used it as an occasion to spew their usual venom.  This is something that I’ve experience before in a small way, and I really don’t want to deal with it now.  I realize that I’m small-potatoes next to those I’ve just mentioned, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

So for now I’ll just say that I’m back, and blogging will resume as soon as I’m caught up with things.

After several employees of the Tacoma ACORN office were indicted in Seattle, with the help of Tacoma prosecutors, we’re now learning more about corrupt practices within their organization.

Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation’s actions range from controversial to borderline illegal:

• AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens
• AHC relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
• ACORN’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages (which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
• AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and the aggressive political activities of ACORN

Not much of an advocacy / counseling group if they steer people wrong when they come in for help. Makes me wonder who’s interests they are really advocating. Actually, no it doesn’t. There’s ample evidence that they’re nothing more than a left-wing political group pretending to be something else.

When charges where filed in Seattle the organization was supposedly cooperating with authorities to prosecute their supposedly wayward employees. Considering there were several other cities where charges were filed against their employees, some of us doubted that these people were acting outside of their organization’s policies. Now we see even more evidence of corruption.

I’m not sure if this is a sign of improvement, but Puget Sound is ranked only 9th worst in the nation for drive time congestion in a recent report by Inrix of Kirkland. Some other lowlights from the report puts us 10th worst in overall congestion, 6th worst in their ‘Drive Time Travel Time Index’ and we have the 8th worst travel time hour.

Funny thing about these rankings, they don’t often show any improvement when a city’s rank changes. Instead they show that the other cities got worse. However, in this case we can claim that we have the 7th largest decrease in drive time congestion from 2006 to 2007. Things improved by a whopping 0.2%. Sounds like a new plank in the Democrat governor’s campaign. Finally she has something to hang her hat on besides quid-pro-quo legislation for her campaign donors.

In other news Silicon Valley can produce more then chips and disks. Scientists there have come up witha genetically altered microbe that eats agricultural waste and excretes crude oil. They wouldn’t put it in their own cars, but they think it will get us off of our Saudi oil dependency (no mention of Venezuela). Maybe someday I’ll be able to put my grass clippings into my SUV.
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Liberals are attacking the platform adopted by the WA GOP Convention in Spokane over the weekend. Some of their attack is based on misrepresentations and some is based on values that differ greatly from the people who actually adopted the platform, the WA GOP grassroots voters.

The WA GOP Convention

I’ve been trying to get a better feel for all that went on over the weekend. I wasn’t there since I didn’t even submit my name for consideration as a delegate in the Pierce County convention. I figured I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything there so it would be a waste of my time and money. From all reports, as I expected, it was politics as usual, something that usually turns the grassroots off and drives them away from the party (like it’s doing to me).
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It was frustration with the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) that first prompted me to refer to myself as a ‘Republican by default’ several years ago. It stemmed from all the trips to the voting booth where I couldn’t find a candidate that I could vote for so I ended up voting against the other candidate. I still voted Republican, but only because the other guy was worse.

That same feeling returned when I showed up at the caucuses in February of this year. Fred Thompson had already withdrawn and Mitt Romney withdrew shortly before we the event. The base of the party wasn’t having a party. We were stuck with a candidate who had kicked us to the curb several times in the last six years as he journeyed leftward, probably the result of his previous defeat in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination.
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I’ve been reading some of the posts over at TheNextRight.com. It covers the spectrum of Republican opinion with a majority of the posts being relatively conservative.

There’s a pretty good article about the Ron Paul campaign. It puts it into context fairly well. I’m not a Paul fan so I’m guessing that some of his die-hard supporters would differ with the opinion presented in that post.

The left-leaning side of the site is a mixed-bag on some of the ‘moderate’ (which I consider to be ‘liberal Republican’) posts. One such post, which I won’t link to, was a typical McCain supporter bashing principled conservatives with the usual tripe. I don’t bother pointing out the error when someone posts garbage like that because I’ve found that it isn’t worth the effort.

What McCain supporters are trying to do is to paint conservatives who continue to oppose him as though they are just being petty and emotional about the issue. I do understand some of where they’re coming from, and it doesn’t paint a very good picture of them.
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Does anyone remember the connection between Scott McClellan and Bush’s approval numbers?

On July 6, 2003, Joe Wilson’s op-ed appeared in the New York Times, where he claimed that something G. W. Bush had said months before wasn’t true. Putting aside the question of the validity of Wilson’s statements, the timing was interesting.

Over the next week, Ari Fleisher and Condoleeza Rice did an admirable job of explaining the situation and dealing with the incessant questions from the White House press corps.

On July 15, 2003, Scott McClellan took over as White House Press Secretary and began leading the press briefings. Here’s a link to his first press briefing. Personally, I think it showed his incompetence. That was the beginning of the end of Bush’s high approval ratings.
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