BR4 The Road Trip.

My departure was not well-planned. I threw some stuff into the car haphazardly, and forgot some things, and brought some things that I didn't need. Fortunately, when one takes a Subaru Outback station wagon all by himself, good packing isn't really necessary. Ambulance Driver came by the house on the afternoon, and we convoyed all the way to Sooper Sekret Site together.

Passing through some construction on the outskirts of Amarillo, I thought about how there was a helium plant nearby, and idly wondered, as a volunteer firefighter, if there were any special considerations for first responders there, with regard to what was basically an inert gas. I began giggling as I imagined the 911 call there:
         Dispatcher: "911, what is your emergency?"
         Caller: < Lollypop Guild voice > "Come quick, there's been an accident
                at the helium plant!" .< /voice >
 Well, it cracked my sleep-deprived ass up. I started to call A.D. in front of me, when we topped a hill, and drove through a scene of carnage.

Clothes all over the road. Debris. I swerved to miss what looked like a body. Already a silver SUV was parked on the right shoulder, with no lights on. I stopped, backed up carefully, and pulled in behind the SUV. I could see someone inside it. As I backed, I called Ambulance Driver, and told him that I was investigating and calling 911. He said that he was turning around and coming back.

I called 911 while looking over the car. No apparent damage. I've seen some cars roll pretty badly and still be drivable after the wreck, but you could see something that indicated that it had seen a wreck. I could see nothing. The female driver looked at me in her rear-view mirror as I made contact with Potter County 911. "What is your emergency?" she asked, causing my recently giggling mind to stop down for a beat with self-inflicted deja vu.

"Road blockage. Possible 10-50, unknown type. Copy out-of-state 28." I gave her the tag number and the location.  

"Oh, that. We've already had a call about that vehicle" the dispatcher said. 

"Well, send me a deputy again anyway, please. There's a bunch of debris in the road just beyond the crest of a grade, and someone is going to have a wreck avoiding it. At least one pile of clothes looked like a body in the road," I said. "It's not, though. I don't know what I've got. I'm going to make contact with the driver, and I'll call you back."

The driver was recoiling within her car, away from the window, as I approached. I could see a dog inside, and hear it barking through the cracked open rear window. I badged her and identified myself as a peace officer, and asked how I could help her. She flung open the door and began yelling at me. Without quoting here, I will tell you that she told me that she had been there for two days and that no one had stopped to help her. She said that her car was dead, and her cell phone was dead. She said that she had no food and no water during that time, and that her poor dog's stomach was rumbling from lack of food. I put my hand to the little dog's nose, and found it very moist. The dog licked my hand (I had been eating beef jerky as road food). Its tongue was very moist. That dog wasn't missing water. No food is bad, but it's water that I worry about.

We were on a significant highway, just outside of a city of more than 120,000 people, in a metro area of about a quarter million people. It wasn't like she was in the middle of the boon docks.

I interrupted her to ask about a traffic accident. She said that there had been none. I asked about someone else in the car. No, just her and her pooch. I asked her how all the clothes and debris got in the road. She got evasive and looked away as she told me that she didn't know how they got there. She amended her statement to say that they were like that when she got there. I looked at the SUV packed full of boxes like the emptied one on the ground. I looked at the slender women's clothes that were at a rough guess appropriate for a woman like the one that I was talking to.

I listened to the woman rail on a bit more. At about this point, Ambulance Driver came forward. He had his tactical light out (where was mine? Didn't I tell you that I packed poorly?), his hand was back behind his hip, and he gave me an eyebrows-up questioning look. I could tell that he had already at a distance been able to deduce what I had figured out: This woman was disturbed. She wasn't making sense.

I asked the woman if she was hurt or ill. She said no, and then said, "Well, I'm not feeling too well, right now!" I almost referred her to a paramedic that I knew nearby. But here's the thing: She was physically fine. She'd been moving around* just fine in that SUV. She gave NO indication of any kind of physical injury or trauma. She might have been emotionally disturbed, but she had made no indications that she was going to hurt herself or other people. She was clearly not telling the truth about it having been two days that she had been there, or of her having no clue about the clothing and stuff in the road.

"Ma'am, I'll get help. Stay in your car." I told her, and muttered to Ambulance Driver that she was 10-96.** I went to the back of her car, called 911 back, and updated them on what I had. They told me that a deputy had already been there, and left. "Well, send a deputy back here, please. She seems to have strewn things in the road, probably to get people to stop. You have a road blockage and a disturbed person here," I said.  I looked over to Ambulance Driver. "But we're leaving." He nodded. I hung up.  I hollered to the woman that a deputy was en route, and we proceeded on.

Back in the day, I would have stayed on scene until the deputy got there. I would have involved myself more. Possibly hours of my life I would have devoted to a person that didn't specifically ask for my help, when it wasn't my job to provide it.

As it was, I alerted the local authorities. I checked on her welfare, and on that of her dog. And I disengaged. It was my vacation.

__________________
*Some might say that she was gesticulating.
**Although he nodded at that statement at the time, A.D. later told me: "I didn't know that 10-code before, but figured, given the context, that it meant 'Crazy Person.'"

Shooting the kid.

The other day, Brownsville cops shot and killed a 15 year old boy who was brandishing a gun in a school with over 700 kids in it.

The family is upset, saying it was unnecessary use of force*. The boy was just an 8th grader. He was a Good Student**. He was a Good Boy. Active in his church. Not affiliated with gangs. It was only a pellet gun. They shouldn't have shot a minor and certainly not more than once, and DEFINITELY not in the back of the head. Tragic over-reaction, says the family.

Really? Let's listen to the 911 call.  Huh. People were bunkered down. The kid was roaming the halls of a school full of kids. He'd been told repeatedly to put the gun down. He was not in Taser range. He'd said that he was not afraid to die. He was displaying this:

I've posted my concerns about bullet magnets before, and written of an incident almost ten years ago with one. I recall how, at that time, when I presented the boy with his own Airsoft version of a CZ75 from my own holster, the kid didn't even recognize his own plastic gun:

In Brownsville:
The boy threatened people with the gun, which looked very realistic.
The boy talked about not being afraid to die.
The boy was mobile in a school full of potential victims and hostages.
The boy had been challenged, and refused to put the apparent weapon down.
Bullets from the gun of a juvenile kill people just as dead as those from the gun of an adult.
This was sadly a suicide by cop, performed by an unstable kid.

The Brownsville cops did what they had to do.
And that's a damned shame.



____________________________________________
*In that ridiculous story, the reporter does his Live! stand-up in Dallas, TX. Even using Google Earth to stretch a line from Dallas to Brownsville, it's 475 miles, and that takes you over the Gulf of Mexico. Google Maps says that the short route to drive it (through Victoria) is actually 529 miles. Why the network thought that it means ANYTHING to have the reporter stand outside in Dallas, TX is beyond me. It would make about as much sense to have a reporter stand outside of a mobile van in New York City to report on a shooting in Hampstead, NC. (which is the same distance by air.)


** Nothing like getting it right the third time. My 8th grader is only 13, and actually started 8th grade when she was only 12. By age 15, I was about 6'4", 200+ lbs, and wore my first beard as a sophomore in high school. Physically, I was indistinguishable from a grown man.

What's important to you?

Last night, either by some mechanical problem with their vehicle, or through mischief, someone set a chain of fires along a stretch of highway near town. I was on duty, and was called to assist. When I arrived, the flames were 12 to 15 feet high, and running south with the 26 mph wind (and 25% humidity) at about the speed of a child running, or a man jogging. By this point, my sergeant was already driving a brush truck across the prairie while its lone fireman fought the fire from the rear deck. I looked at traffic, decided that directing traffic (on the north side of the fire) was pointless, and hurried west of the fire to flank it and get south of it. There were houses a mile south of there.

As I moved west on the highway, I observed several smaller fires that were smoldering in the south ditch, luckily stopped by the recently plowed fields just across the ditch. I grew angry.

I got to the south side of the fire, and started notifying homeowners. My spiel went like this:

"Howdy, I'm Matt G with the Podunk Police Department. There's a fast-moving, growing wildfire north of here, and it's coming this way fast. Pack up what's important to you, right now. No furniture. Get ready to go. I recommend that you leave immediately, but if you stay, please leave when you see the flames. Please know that our fire departments are doing everything that they can to protect your house, and more fire personnel are en route to do just that."

Then I would move to the next house.

What mildly impressed me was that no one argued. They got right to it. At one point, I parked my car in the driveway of one family, and after I spoke with the ~50 year old man there, I moved to the three houses next door on foot. After having warned those people, I walked back to my car, and saw that first man fast-walking with two apparently heavy suitcases to his pickup. He gave me a quick nod before tossing them into the bed and quickly going back to the house. I could hear a woman and a child speaking to each other through the screen door. "Good man," I said. I went on to other houses.

We got a few dozen rural houses notified before the sixth or seventh alarm seemed to turn the tide. They got the fire line slowed, and started mop-up a few hours later. To the best of my knowledge, no habitations were burned, and only minor sheds and such went up, along with fences and a lot of dry vegetation. (You recall that we're in something of drought, right? Worst one in more than half a century?)

So last night, I was touched when I saw that my friend Don Gwinn had written:

[I] realized something today that's kind of trite, but it hit me hard: I don't have any problems I can't solve. I'm rich. I may acquire new problems I can't solve tomorrow--an aneurysm could burst in my head tonight--but I have no debts I don't have a plan to pay off early, no work I can't do, no loved ones I can't connect with.

Which is not to say I have no debts, or that there's nothing I'd like to have and don't, or would like to do and can't right now, or that all my relationships with my loved ones are perfect, or that my work is easy or even always makes sense. But today I have the sense that I have way to handle all of it, even the stuff that's going to be hard, painful or boring while I'm doing it.

What's important to you? What would you take if you had 15 minutes?
Are your problems really so insurmountable?

The border.

I don't ask much from our Federal Government. Actually, I ask LESS from it. Our Fed.gov gets up in people's business when it has no right to do so, a vast majority of the time. As such, it spends citizen's money without generating new income, without a compelling reason.

But there are a few things that our Fed.gov IS expected to do. Such as this little ditty:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." (Art. IV, Sec. 4, USC)

Now, there are those who would claim "well, there's not an official invasion going on at our border." Okay-- it's just domestic violence, then. Hey, I don't believe that the average immigrant that illegally crosses the border into the U.S. is violent. The vast majority of the violence committed by illegal border-crossers is committed by smugglers. And, for better or worse, they're smuggling in what our Federal Government declared war on, back in 1986.

Now, we've Declared War On A Noun.

And, the Other Side (the drug dealers) are coming into our country, illegally, to sell their wares.

And, our federal government, the guys who Declared War On A Noun (that aforementioned ware that's being smuggled in), doesn't consider this an invasion?

Think about what would happen if other opponents in other wars came into our country in an organized fashion. Think about what happened the last time a semi-organized group of Mexicans came into our country to commit felonies against U.S. citizens.

Look, I'm not asking that our federal government commit to a punitive expedition. I'm just asking that we see more done to secure the borders, rather than suing the states that are trying to do it themselves.

Over at Tam's place, she's commented on the situation, and there's an interesting interaction going on in her comments. Her libertarian-minded friend Shootin' Buddy is of the mind that the folks along the border should handle the problem themselves. "If you choose to live near the bear cage, don't complain about the smell. They clean the cage, or they can whine."

Funny thing-- they're trying to do just that, and are being threatened with federal suit by the same feds that have a duty to handle this.

And U.S. border residents aren't afraid to defend their turf; they're just afraid of their own government for attacking them when they do so. My friend Art, who goes by DesertRat in those comments on Tam's post, lives in the Big Bend region of Texas. As he says in the comments about Shootin' Buddy's derision of people US Citizens along the border: "Nuthin' more helpful than someone who doesn't know sheep dip from wild honey about other folks' problems."

Art's not asking for a handout. He doesn't expect the Nanny Government to hold his hand. But he'd like to see the same government that tells him it's now a felony to drive his pickup across the Rio at a convenient crossing for an evening across the border, do something to stem the flow of illegals threatening legal citizens.

The Bureau of Land Management has put up some very helpful signs on southern AZ BLM lands, to help would-be hikers and campers stay away from the problem, though.


We cops who work in the border states have been getting notice for the past year that the cartels are putting pressure on their mules not to give up their loads without a fight. Last week, direct threats were made to the Nogales, AZ police that they would be shot at if they worked too hard at stopping smuggled shipments.

My partner and I caught an undocumented alien this weekend, who lied about who he was, where he lived, where he was from. Due to state and federal law, I couldn't even run his fingerprints to see if he was a wanted criminal. All we had him on was a simple traffic ticket: No driver license. It wasn't until I had spent 2 hours researching and calling in database searches (IAQs) that we finally identified him as a person living under an alias, which made him un-accountable for his prior offenses. This made him guilty of "Fail To Identify," it finally got us a Class B misdemeanor, which allowed us to put an ICE hold on him, so that he couldn't bond out, to change his name for the fifth time in two years. Part of living in a society of laws is being accountable for your actions. When you're here illegally, you're not.

In Arizona, their new law makes it a jailable misdemeanor for a documented alien not to carry their papers, or a state jailable misdemeanor to be an undocumented alien. This allows them to quickly and easily put an ICE hold on them, for deportation. It also allows them to run the guy's fingerprints through the state system.

I wish we had that law. It would save a lot of time. It also would be fairer to the citizens that I arrest who ARE documented, who have to actually account for their misdeeds.

"Execution."

Since the murders in Lakewood, WA the other morning, the news stories have been filled with silly references to "execution-style murders." What they're referring to, one supposes, is that the actor intentionally went into a coffee shop, and methodically shot and killed three police officers before having to wrestle the fourth and killing him, too.

Merriam-Webster's first definition of "Execution" is "the act or process of executing: PERFORMANCE." Well, that's kind of vague, and basically means that every action is an execution. That would hardly be newsworthy, would it? Second definition: "A putting to death especially as a legal penalty."

Webster's Online's first definition of "Execution" is "Putting a condemned person to death."

Okay. "Legal penalty." "Condemned person." These are key terms. A true execution is a legal action. It is in fact an extension of the legal process. Whether or not you believe execution to be a moral act, in a real execution, the condemned person is being put to death by persons who are acting in good faith that they are serving out the law, and technically serving the will of the people.*

This does NOT describe the multiple-shooting of police officers in a coffee shop. No, not even the "premeditated" part does that. Actually, that's a component of the traditional definition of murder: "with malice aforethought." The thug was a murderer, not an executioner.

Now, who was the thug?

Well, his name was Maurice Clemmons, and he was a convicted felon, out on bail for child rape and assault on a police officer. How do we know that now? Because he just got taken down by Seattle cop** early this morning. Clemmons was in possession of a stolen car, and a gun that he had taken off of one of the fallen officers. Still more damning was the torso wound that Clemmons carried, given him by the last cop to die at the coffee shop, who had fought with Clemmons even after being wounded, and wrestled the murderer out of the coffee shop before being killed.

At this point, we're not being told the name of that fourth police officer who died while fighting. That's a shame, because "Tina Griswold," "Gregory Richards," "Sgt. Mark Renninger," or "Ronald Owens" are easier names to say than "The Lakewood cop who died fighting," while lifting your glass in toast. That's not to condemn the other officers. They were shot in the head, and any one of us could be taken down by a determined adversary. We can shade the odds a bit, but the truth is, beating the drop is very, very hard.

When you go to your favorite Third Place with your buddies, consider who's watching the door and the counter. If you must, demand the seat with your back to the wall, and appoint yourself that guy. But know that you're playing catch-up if the balloon goes up, especially if you pin a target on your suit. That's just part of it.

But if you are hit, and realize that you are hit, then you can probably still fight. If you must, avenge your own death. But at the very least see to it that the last action that your enemy saw you make was one of aggression toward him.

That fourth officer in the coffee shop was just lucky enough to have received a wound that didn't instantly incapacitate, and then he went on the offensive. Sadly, he didn't win. But he died fighting, and rendered a wound to his opponent that helped identify the bad guy and those who helped him. There are worse deaths. I raise my glass to you, Fourth Officer, until such time as I learn your name, so that I may say it properly.
# # #

A word about the Seattle officer. He found a stolen car, and sat on it until Clemmons arrived. He then challenged Clemmons, and recognized Clemmons as the murder suspect***. He shouted for Clemmons to stop, and shot him when Clemmons refused to. Clemmons was mortally wounded, and died later.

Under Tennessee v. Garner (1985), police can no longer shoot fleeing felons simply for being fleeing felons. We must have probable cause that the suspect represented a danger to the officer or others. Certainly Clemmons fit this description perfectly. He had killed, he was armed, and there was a warrant out for his arrest, which gave the officer good faith with regard to the probable cause. Nothing has been said about Clemmons "going for his gun." If nothing in world can convince you that the Seatle cops are retelling the incident without embellishment, then this should. It would be so easy, so neat and tidy, to have the officer best Clemmons as Clemmons went for his gun. But that's not how it went down. If it were, they would have told us that, right away. And I can respect that.

I expect nothing less, but I mention it for those foolish oxygen thieves who would yet again --and more flagrantly, this time-- misuse the term "execution."

__________________________________
*And let's have no nonsense that most Americans would stop execution, because that's patently false. Want to stop executions in your state? Become governor, and commute every death penalty. Enjoy your single term. Or better yet, have the Amnesty International Party field legislation to outlaw the death penalty. Why don't you do it? Because you don't have the votes to.

**Who will never have to buy his own drinks again.

***Doubtless, he had memorized Clemmons' mugshot and name, as a lot of us North Texas cops did after the "Texas Seven" murdered Aubrey Hawkins, back in 2001. I carried around an array of their mugshots on my clipboard.

I'm seriously thinking about getting my first tattoo.

The last couple of weeks, a good buddy's in-laws had been just a little too cute, about hiding the Living Will that my buddy's father in-law had written up years ago.

In black and white, it stated that he did NOT want to be put on a respirator. The man had health problems for decades, and knew what he was doing when he signed that document in front of a notary. He then told everyone in his family about it. Still, one of his children who could not deal with it bullied my buddy's mother-in-law into withholding the testiment from his healthcare providers. The advance health care directive was only honored after the other siblings (and my buddy, who was persona non grata for his troubles for a while) raised their collective voices that it be brought forth, just as the doctors were about to put a trachial tube into the poor guy.

The old gentleman passed away, at last, the way he had specified.

This morning, while doing my best to keep up 120 compressions a minute on the chest of a person at whom's side I had arrived just 60 seconds after hearing the call for the ambulance go out, I wondered: how long it had taken the family to call for an ambulance, and how fast was the dispatch? I did the best that I knew how, and passed the patient on to fully-equipped paramedics, and I thought about Ambulance Driver's T-shirt.

How small could I get that, tattooed on my chest, and still have it be legible?

Have a plan.

Lots of people fail to do what is needed in unusual, potentially fatal situations, because they just didn't have a plan of action ready. Many times, given a cool head and a minute, they could have devised a workable plan in less time than it takes to consume a cup of coffee or a cigarette. But in the heat of the moment, none of us thinks our best (no, not even YOU, Mr. Armchair Warrior), and that's not a good time to think. It's the time to act on what you have already thought out.

Would it be better to perform a preventive drill before? Sure. But when you get right down to it, there's just too many "what if's" to be able to drill for them all. What if your neighbor goes nuts and drives his pickup into your family-mobile while you're en route for ice cream? Are you going to practice rolling out of your car and shooting over your hood while your family egresses from the off-side of the threat? Are you going to practice this in your neighborhood street? What if the threat is your neighborhood Cujo, attacking your neighbor? What if the threat involves... uh... lava? Yeah, molten lava?

Okay, that brings up another point-- there's a point where we have to just stop. We can't live in constant concern of the world and how to deal with it. There are things you're just not likely to need to deal with. In N. Texas, lava isn't a real concern. In Hawaii, I'd give it a thought.

Think about how you'll deal with a given situation. If nothing else, it makes your day more interesting. And believe it or not, if you win [?] the lottery and the unlikely occurs, you'll have what amounts to some experience in the situation. Because, in a way, a part of you has seen it before, and you know how to deal with it.*

My dad and his bride noticed a spike in reports of a new method of home invasions in his area. They discussed it, and have a plan formulated. Is it the BEST plan? Oh, I can think of some ways to improve it. But because they have a plan at all, I'll bet on them, if the balloon goes up.

_____________________________________________________
*Yes, I know that I've harped on this before. But advising people to "have a plan" is worth repeating, don'tcha think?

Sneaking out.

I've been dealing with kids sneaking out a lot, lately.

The simple act of sneaking out doesn't bother me very much. I did it all the time, as a teen. I never smoked dope or such, and usually wasn't very successful in amorous attempts. (Thwarted by loud dogs on one occasion, by a conscience that said she didn't seem enthusiastic and/or mature enough another.) But I probably should assume the worst, because frankly, most kids don't have even the basic impulse control that I had.

I'm finding that very young teenaged girls will go to amazing lengths to sneak out. They will meet up on cell phones. They will meet up on websites like Tagged.com (shudder). They will meet up on social networking sites like MySpace. They will bring home prepaid cell phones that their parents have no idea that they have. They will make arrangements at school, then carry them out after lights-out. They will walk. They will bicycle. They will steal the family car. The drive to expose your gametes to their opposite number is very, very strong, between the ages of 12 and 25.

I've caught teens lying on the grass behind a south-facing market, having sex without so much as a blanket or a coat, as a bitter 20 mph wind blew in a 30 degree norther. No condom, no fears, and neither could recall the others' last name.

Conversely, I've caught teens camping in tents that they erected in the back yard of their paramours for that "special" night with someone they'd just met.

I've caught teens feeling each other up on neighborhood playgrounds, in full view of the street. I've caught girls taking their date to the school dance around to a dark corner behind the school, where I found them on their knees and unzipping their dates' trousers as I rounded the corner.

I say this not out of amazement, or disgust with "how it's gotten to," but just in acknowledgement of how hard the task is, to rear kids that can make it to full adulthood without becoming parents or infected with a disease, first. The tools to meet others are very powerful, these days. Our ability to contain kids is much harder, with so many leaks in the security system.

I'm looking into the cost of wiring my house for an un-monitored alarm system, that will chime in the master bedroom whenever a window or exterior door is opened.

I'm also considering printing and framing select blown-up poster-sized photos of the most egregious examples of advanced venereal warts, and mounting them on my daughters' walls.

Plate Match Results.

I may not have covered myself with glory, but abject shame was notably absent, as well; I shot at the center of the group. And given the abilities of the group, I'll take that.

Stop plate matches are great for the shooter who wants to shoot a lot for his entry fee. Typically, they feature five stages of five strings of fire, in which the shooter is expected to, at the buzzer, draw and shoot five steel plates, ending each string by shooting the plate with the red stem holding it up. That's 125 rounds, if you shoot it clean, with a minor demand on your shoot/no-shoot consciousness. I like 'em.

I shot... er, more than the minimum 125 rounds.

I also proved that you don't have to be a freakin' psychic genius to figure out why your gun is malfunctioning; you just have to pay attention to what's going on.

It only took me three stages, encompassing nearly 100 rounds, to figure out that I had a bad magazine. :( Sure, it said "COLT" on the base plate. Sure, it looked fine. But for three strings in a row, that mag caused a misfeed in my Kimber that caused the plating to peel back on the bullet when it struck the face of the chamber. This caused the slide to fail to seat fully. In two stages, I had two failures to seat, in a single string each.

Finally I took notice, and deleted that magazine. Bingo! No Malf. After the match, I loaded that magazine and fired it into the berm. Bingo! It gave the same malfunction.

Eliminate the magazine-- eliminate the problem.

I shoulda been a fair bit higher in the rankings. The match rules allowed for two mechanical "alibis," but I didn't take any-- the Real World (tm) doesn't offer alibis.

Scruit. I'm happy enough to have trained and found a problem, and to have fixed it.

This is why we train.

Not for sale.

For the longest time, online pal Claire used to have splashed across the masthead of her blog "Hell yes, I'm an American." Sadly, this seems like an odd statement for a resident of Mordor. But I sure as hell can empathize.

I was talking to my good friend Bill The Accountant on the phone the other night. He's realizing that his master's in Accounting isn't going to do him as much good as at the firm he's with as a master's in Taxation. So he's re-enrolled, and is on track to get his second master's in about 18 months, maybe less. I suggested that, with the results of the most recent election, more people than ever will need assistance with tax preparation. He agreed.

Anyway, he was talking about one of his tax professors, who was discussing how the goal of the tax accountant is to ethically represent his client, not by providing a tax statement with the least taxes possible, but by providing a tax statement that is as accurate as possible. A good tax accountant also can provide advice to his client, however.

Bill's professor had a client who came to her and asked about how to avoid the most taxes on his prospective income. He had done a lot of work on a device that he was about to patent, he said, and he expected a great deal of revenue from this patent, as it was in demand, and buyers were waiting in the wings. A price of $4.M was being thrown about. She advised him to move to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emerates, and give up his United States citizenship and obtain U.A.E. citizenship. You see, there is no income tax in the U.A.E.

He did just that, and saved a ton of money when his patent came in and he sold it.

"I couldn't do that," I told him.

"Sure you could," said Bill, who's no stranger to patriotism, himself. "After you thought about it, you could."

"Give up my birthright, as an American? Throw away my claim as a citizen of the greatest nation this planet has ever seen? I could not," I insisted.

"Look, it's not like the kids would have to give up their citizenship. Just you and your wife," said Bill. "And you could easily come back to visit. Do you realize how you could live over there with four million dollars? All the comforts, with paid help? You couldn't withhold that from your family. Not if you think about it."

"Nope. Not for sale. And if my citizenship were for sale, it would take a helluva lot more than $4 million," I said.

"Yeah, because you'd do it for $20 mil, right?" he jeered.

"I wouldn't even open discussions before they offered $100 million," I said with prim indignance.

"Well, now that we've established that..." he said.

"We're just dickering over the price," I sighed. I suppose it's possible that every man has one. But I didn't say I'd do it. Just think about it.

For all its warts, this nation has been pretty damned good to me. Why would I want to give that up? Men and women have died --in my lifetime-- to protect the way of life that I enjoy here in this nation. Many others have and do risk their lives to do so. Take a hard look at life elsewhere, and think about how good we've got it.

Hell yes, I'm an American.

We're living in the future.

Tamara links to Sippican Cottage, where the proprietor asserts that this ain't a bad time to be alive.

I've been saying this stuff for years. It sucks to live today for some reasons, but those reasons are offset by the fact that we're livin' in the future, man.

Cell phones have changed the entire planet in the last decade. In my profession (police), we've seen it change the way we receive and answer calls, and the way that we respond to them when we get there.

Computers-- especially laptops-- have changed the world. Hell, I'm at home, and I'm not even using my desktop. Why should I? the little notebook does it as well, and I can pack it with. In my patrol car, I can bring up a suspect's mug shot, criminal history, and what he paid for his house, without even invoking privileges given by the badge-- I'm doing that on the public side, through Internet Explorer.

My tired old Honda that's 11 years old and has almost 200k miles on it still gets 32 mpg, when I drive it like a bat out of hell.

Telephone service is cheaper than it's ever been in the history of ever. I can talk all day long to my friends in other states on the reasonable flat fee that I pay once a month.

Flush toilets. Air conditioning.

Clean water is taken for granted, my entire life.

I ate homemade lasagna Friday night. Unimpressive, right? But the pasta was a favorite brand of whole wheat. The cheeses were chosen among an impressive variety of them, still with an eye toward reducing the fat. The garlic was fresh but I didn't have to grow it. The basil was fresh from my windowsill. The pork sausage was made in my kitchen with a food processor a few minutes before we made the pasta dish. The oven was digitally regulated. The sauce was frozen, but was defrosted in the microwave. The food was dirt cheap, compared to my yearly wages.

Beer: It comes from all over now. And there's competition to make it better. Even when I was first legally able to buy beer, a good selection was a rarity.

Same for coffee.

Seafood: We who live inland can now enjoy it, too.

Entertainment: Shows are a LOT more complicated than they were as recently as the 1970's and '80s. Back then, 4 main characters was a LOT, with 8 being very complicated. I heard somewhere that that 24 show that some of y'all watch has over 40 characters. Huh. People are smart enough to keep up. Who knew? Also the variety is a lot better. Used to be, you had some goofy comedy, some game shows, maybe a western, and some cop shows prominently featuring car chases.

Music: Download. Order. Plug in an MP3 or burn a CD or whatever. It's an anomoly to have to cue a tape, these days. And setting a needle in a groove is a lost skill. Which I don't lament.

For better or worse, free speech is utterly guarenteed, with regard to obtaining access to information. Also, it ain't hard to publish an opinion, these days. Yes, there are draw backs to removing the vetting process of an editor or publisher, but there are benefits, too.

Computers are dirt cheap, relative to a few decades ago.

I'm relatively free from concern about contracting communicable diseases. While AIDS sucks, you have to participate in activities that I exclude myself from, to get it.

My daughters have a pretty good chance of living lives in which they are not constrained in their life choices, merely because they're female.

There's more. A lot more.

Quit yer griping. Yeah, there're problems. But check out the bennies.

Scare tactics and anti-news.

My heart is supposed to go out to Patricia Guererro, because she went from $70k a year to food stamps, and now can't figure out what she's going to do.

She's already burned through her savings to help make ends meet, and is drawing unemployment checks. She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month. In fact, her mother moved in with her to help pay the bills.

You know what? I am disgusted. Disgusted that she can't do the math, suck it up, and sell the house. No equity? Ditch it anyway. If she moves into a $1000/month apartment, she saves $18,000 a year, right there.

It doesn't say what industry she was in. It may be that the same necessary market correction that's dumping people out of their sub-prime mortgages is also popping the bubble on the west coast that has uneducated security guards making better than $50k.

CNN ran this story, nationwide, as news.

Eek.

Bleg to my fellow Texans

Our state is making a new license plate design, to accompany the rollout of the new 7-digit license plate format. (Bah.)

The state has decided to let the citizenry vote for which plate design is used next. Good idea, right?

Well, sort of.

I'm all for democracy. I think that creating a work that is generally pleasing to the eye of the citizenry is pretty cool.

But here's the thing:

Most people are going to pick the pretty ones, without regard to the function of the plate.

What's the function of a license plate?

Answer: To identify a given vehicle for administrative and emergency purposes.

Now, some of y'all might think "Screw it-- if the cops or the robot revenuers can't read my plate, that's just so much the better." But a license plate allows not just cops, but the general public at large to read a vehicle's identifying numbers, and to report that the vehicle was at a specific time at a specific place, performing a specific action. Hit and run? Get the plate number. Robbery? Get the plate number. Road rage? Plate number. DWI running people off the road? Ditto.

Plates are hard enough to read as it is. Road grime, soot, spattered asphalt, etc all make them hard to read from 50 feet away on a highway while driving at highway speeds, and still taking due caution to drive safely yourself. That's one reason why the state requires that the plate be kept clean. But when we remove the high-contrast of black on white, the plate starts off being harder to read.

I ask you, gentle reader, to help me out: go to the Texas Department of Transportation License Plate e-Vote Page*, and vote for "Traditional Texas:"

Classic. State of issuance is easy to read (more important than you might think, with multiple plate designs from 50 states, other territories, Canadian provinces, and Mexican states), high contrast, not overly busy, with the Texas Lone Star on the bottom. Superb.

Better than the current plate, in my opinion, which is listed as "My Texas."

I love bluebonnets, and think that our state flower is a wonderful representation of this great Lone Star State. But we don't need muted fields of them behind our letters. First, bluebonnets should never be muted in their colors. Secondly, it takes what should be white, and makes it the color of lead. Dumb. Please do not vote for "Natural Texas:"

While I find "Lone Star Texas" to be visually pleasing, it's still too busy for a license plate, and should be thrown out:
And while the contrast is okay with "New Texas," the design is horrid. Reminds me of a banner you'd see at a Gay Pride parade (not that there's anything wrong with that) during the Bicentennial. Ugh:

Yes, a secondary function of our license plates can be to show our state pride, but the foremost reason that we muddle with the sleek lines of beautiful cars is to identify them. Keep in mind that the number one cause of unnatural death and injury is by automobile. You, as a citizen, benefit when we can read the blasted things. And I don't have to tailgate your car as much when I'm running your license plate. And that's a Good Thing.

Thanks in advance.

_ _ _ _

*Note: two votes per household, and it doesn't seem to care whether you live in Texas or not.