Fri, Mar 18th - 10:22PM

The Age of Napoleon, p. 267
53.9 miles
clearing then rain

98 recordings of 38 types.

Rasmussen: -21: 42/56.

I am really sick of Pelosi.

With the impending nuclear meltdown, two wars and everything else going on, however, you'll be relieved to know that President Obama did complete his NCAA basketball brackets on time. And he made Wednesday night's Democratic Party fundraiser too.

Despise not prophesying.

So, for the first time in some weeks, I took a look at "nearby caches" and there was one at the end of my street! Less than two tenths of a mile away! Rich had left for a walk with Pharaoh.  NO, I couldn't wait for him, so I slipped some shoes on and off I went with the GPSr in hand.  And realized, as I got to the end of the street, that it was time for the junior high school to let out. Finally the different groups of kids went off, and the landscaper got out into traffic, so the car behind could leave, too. Only he didn't.  He sat there and sat there. I walked around the corner then came back. I walked around the other corner. I stood at ground zero and took some surreptitious looks, I paced, I walked past the car, but finally I gave up and sulked on home.

When Rich got home, I told him the story and out we both went.  A school bus was stopped where we wanted to be, with the driver on a smoke break. However, we looked anyway, and Rich located the cache just as the driver finally got back into the bus and drove off. So we logged it and came home.

I've been going through our old finds in order to fill in slots on challenges (you have to find a certain number of a certain kind of cache. I'm running a spreadsheet to see where we are with the qualifications for upwards of a hundred caches.) I've seen some interesting logs, and this one amused me:

There once were two Codgers from Sacto,
Out without Sailor, in facto.
We looked high and low,
And came up with no
Cache, which we think has been hacked-oh!

After a certain time, though, I realize this is making me sad.  Today I got as far as our Death Valley trip. Such good memories!

Fri, Mar 18th - 6:54AM

The Age of Napoleon, p. 264
52.9 miles
cloudy

102 recordings of 38 types.

Rasmussen: -22: (looks like being "above the fray" isn't working for him.) 43/57. Is it 2013 yet?

0bamateurism of the day.
We got a number of e-mails complaining about Barack Obama’s golf outing on Sunday in the middle of crises in Japan, Libya, and on Capitol Hill, where the federal budget due last October still hasn’t received any Presidential attention.  Good news, readers — the White House has heard your complaints, and we can guarantee next weekend that you won’t find Obama on the links.  Instead, he plans on, er, heading to Rio for some public adulation.
...As the nuclear situation in Japan hits a nightmare scenario, as freedom fighters in Libya get annihilated, and as the continuing resolution funding the US government runs out and the government possibly shuts down, Obama will head for the carnivale in Rio.  What better way to show leadership than to run out of town when the money stops, and to go to Brazil for a hero’s welcome while Europe wonders when America will decide to engage on North Africa?

I’m pretty much at the point where I want him out of the country as often as possible, so I would actually consider this the rare thing he’s doing right. Let the adults handle governing the country, please. ---WesternActor on March 15, 2011 at 8:16 AM

Both my health tests (blood, bone density) came out fine. My doctor thinks I should/could take a calcium with vitamin D supplement. OK, I'd rather not have osteoporosis and I keep forgetting to do any exercises with the weights. (And I should, I *hate* my flabby arms!) I'm not doing the mammogram till after Rich's scan is scheduled.

Jonah Goldberg. "Perhaps the standard shouldn't be whether Japan's reactor was "invulnerable" but whether it succeeded by taking such a beating without threatening much human life?"

William Johnston
Obama: "The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries." --Tampa, Fla., Jan. 28, 2010. He's just the smartest person in any room.

Heh. 

Carney said the scam entailed pulling together demographic, social, cultural, and policy characteristics to create the most exaggerated Democratic candidate possible without stepping over the line into caricature.

"By combining empty, touchy-feely slogans like 'hope' and 'change' with far-left-wing policy planks and presenting them in the person of a racial minority from a major Midwest city with an Ivy League background, we thought we might be able to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe even capture the Democratic nomination," Carney told reporters. "But the entire country? No. We never, ever for even a second imagined the American people would elect someone who had served only half a term in the U.S. Senate to be the leader of the entire free world."

...As the 2008 campaign wore on, O'Keefe said, insiders grew worried Obama might actually win. They began dropping hints that the candidate was just a parody. They had him complain about the price of arugula to Iowa farmers. When that didn't work, Obama went bowling, scored a 37, and then joked that the almost impossibly poor performance "was like the Special Olympics or something."

Nuclear energy in context

Unless we start building new nuclear plants, we will have to keep existing plants with older designs in operation longer.  That extends rather than abates the safety issues that currently are receiving so much attention.  Either we keep existing plants open, or we will need to replace current supplies from nuclear power — which accounts for almost 20% of our electricity.  Given the administration’s push for conversion of transportation from gasoline to electricity, the need to replace that power will be immediate enough to require a greater use of coal and natural gas, both of which the administration opposes in either use or extraction, or both.

The absent President
    Japan faces an almost unparalleled crisis, Libya is in civil war, and we’re having another budget showdown after running up a $222.5 billion deficit in the 28 days of February. And after last week’s bullying summit, Obama is spending this week talking education reform.

Education reform would be important if Obama was serious about actual reform, rather than just finding ways to repackage the same system that has delivered 40 years of flatlining mediocrity.  Instead, he and Arne Duncan are looking at improving schools by, er, lowering the existing standards in No Child Left Behind so fewer of them get rated as “failing.”

... We need to address the budget crisis now.  The NCAA bracket picks should be secondary.

Whiniest President Ever.

Osama bin Laden famously talked of the weak horse and the strong horse. Obama is the show horse. ...Today, as in the late 1970s, the job isn’t too big, nor is the country too powerful: The man is too small.

Mark Levin
Sarah Palin's latest post. She's way smarter than Obama.

(yeah, but who's she picking for the final four?

Says John Podhoretz, “We’re going on four weeks now, or more, that Barack Obama has been reading My Pet Goat.” Except he’s not just reading it. He’s doing ESPN segments about it.

He’s not the Leader of the Free World…and by design. He went on an apology tour to remove that status from anyone’s memory. Relieving himself of that pressure allows him to be just another guy in just another country, with just another day, just another weekend to golf, and just another vacation from not leading and golfing, this time to Rio.
jamie gumm on March 15, 2011 at 9:18 PM

What good is the UN?

Chutzpah. Hypocrite, much?

Damwell should. The nurses and prison guards got us into this mess. Not to forget SEIU.