Remember

I've been out of the water, but I've been tracking the swells and watching the rest of you. While I think some have tried to make me feel like I haven't missed anything, the swell numbers, weather, and lines I've seen during the first part of the month lead me to believe I've missed something. Swell size has ranged from 4 to 12 feet at between 12 and 17 seconds with swell directions between 290 and 315. On the steep side, swells missed the Steps unless there was size, but on the west days it looked fun. Especially that swell that arrived with the strong offshores. I'm on the sacrificial alter, but maybe it's not enough. Don't lie - I've seen you guys having fun - Hot Dog? And what about Penguin acting like Chilly Willy in SoCal, while rubbing it in at the post. Waves, sun, and most of all, warm water. Fine. I've used the down time to get my sticks ready for my return; Ralph has been cranking out the ProWork and Rich made me a new set of fins so I could change the Falsa into a twinzer. The boards are stacked against the wall and calling. I was even shocked to hear from a shaper I ordered a board from two years ago telling me the board is shaped and being glassed - we shall see. I got a couple of remembers -

Remember the bumper stickers "Stand Tall" with an American Flag background? John Wayneish. I saw one recently. The colors had faded just like SPB's attention span. The war rages on, people killed and maimed, Palestine thrashed, the Mid-East Victim wails, and Afghanistan grows a bumper crop. Meanwhile, Rosie and Donald headline the news. If we are going to leave it all behind, then let's leave it all behind. Or are there profits to be made. Corpordinatio = militaryindustrial complex.

Remember when winter came to town and the traffic disappeared with the summer migration? Seems to me as each year passes the difference between summer crowds and winter respite becomes less and less clear.

Remember the meek investigation into WMD and the lead up to the war? The problem we were told was bad intel. You can get on to Google Earth and check out your backyard, but Corpordinatio couldn't tell what was up in Iraq. Nobody on the ground, no SR-71 spying, phone taps, Predator supercomputer following net traffic, defectors, Iranians with a grudge? Instead, just bad intel. I'm puzzled that with bad intel, why not consider the possibility of a bad decision. All the money spent to gather intel, decisions made, and propaganda spewed and in the end, no one is really responsible - it was the bad intel. What makes SPB think the intel is any better? And yet they ready themselves to stuff Iran - sure that they are building a nuc - so what? We get rid of nucs instead of pursuing them and ask the rest of the world to do the same. Instead of a militaryindustrial complex, what about a peaceindustrial complex? - the peace corp at war.

Now the argument for solving the Iraq clusterfuck is to send in more troops. Dub just doesn't give a fuck about what anybody says. I've even heard it said by committee witnesses that we need to send a massive force over, mow down the violence, take control, clear the streets, military curfew -MPs. Doesn't that sound like what the last guy did? Replace one military dictator with another.

OK - one last bit of spew. The latest group of politicians suggest that they can't do much about the war because Dub is commander and thief, and the Congress doesn't want to leave the troops with no funds. Reading the Constitution, I found that this talk is disingenuous. It's clear to me that the founding fathers did not want to leave the military in the hands of executive branch to do what it pleases with. Article 1, Section 8 gives the power to Congress to raise and support Armies and to provide and maintain a Navy, and to make rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces. Seems to me that if the Congress can raise the Armies, they can disband all or a portion of the Armies by law and fund the transition. Similarly, they can regulate land and naval Forces. The Congress could write law that would decrease the Armies to a point where America would have to stop its imperial threat. Then, start over with something more sensible and less beholding to the military industrial complex. The Constitution puts a time limit on appropriations of money for Armies of two years - seems to me their vision was that a military was to be used only when absolutely necessary, and only for a limited time. They didn't want the military and executive getting all-powerful and turning on the people they defend - you know, like for our safety. I think the Congress - and that is suppose to mean you and I, has more power than Corpordinatio would like us to believe.

In many communities, the Mayor is a repository of history. So it is with our own community, and The Mayor . With the pic above he shares some of that history - Lannita es mui bonita!

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)  ¶ 9:56 PM