Illegal Immigrants, Communists, History, and a Long Rant

So apparently on May 1st, 2-3 million illegal immigrants are taking the the streets to "demand" amnesty. Demand? Are these people going out of there way to try and make me mad? Like I said before, they really need to get organized enough to get their PR function under control, because I'm guessing such "demands" are going to go over about as well as waving Mexican flags at the rally.

And they said you couldn't round up 12 million people? Looks to me like we can cut the number to 9 million by Tuesday! :)

In related news, I caught this quote in the AP story about the upcoming protests:

"Organizers have timed the action for May Day, a date when workers around the world traditionally have marched for improved conditions."

No surprise, but this is a mostly true statement shrouded by information they don't give you. May Day was a day associated with labor marches in the late 1800s. In more modern history, May Day is associated with shows of stregth by hard line Communist and Socialist governments. Given the earlier article I shared on the association between these "immigration" protests and communism, I guess this shouldn't be a surprise.

From the wikipedia:

"In the 20th century, May Day received the official endorsement of the Soviet Union; celebrations in communist countries during the Cold War era often consisted of large military parades and shows of common people in support of the government."

And in case you still don't believe me, you can look at this Immigrant Rights Action Packet, brought to you by the Communist Party USA. Nice.

In fact, the photo shown here was the very first result when I searched for "May Day Parade" on Google.

You know... I can't help but think about this sudden huge push for communism all around us, while at the same time a push for religious fascism in the middle-east... And now for a history lesson:

*Way* back in the day - the days of the Roman Empire that is, there was also a time when the folks back at home lost interest in the empire of Rome, wanted to let outsiders do all their work (including, incidentally, the work of the army), and worry about problems back "at home". That focus led Rome to be the first state to impose a property tax that fed the earliest of welfare systems. Meanwhile, the Roman defenses failed, Rome was overrun by Germanic nations and Mongol raiders, whose goal was to steal the riches of Rome for themselves. In the end, Rome fell, the raiders squandered their new wealth away, and it took the western world 1000 years to recover. That recovery was basically a backwards cycle from what these communist types are suggesting we do now.

First it was anarchy, then feudalism emerged, which is really nothing more that socialism among many very small city-states, then mercantilism and the start of capitalism, monarchy, constitutional monarchy, and eventually capitalism. Not that it was all smooth getting through that, mind you, but that's the general flow if you look at the 1000 year period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance.

Not by coincidence, Rome was a largely capitalistic state, and even during the time of the Caesars, was run by-and-large as a states republic. The individual provinces largely governed themselves, but were in fact part of the Empire. It wasn't wholly unlike the way states function in the United States, although it would have been more similar in earlier US times than now where the federal government holds most of the power.

Anyway, now, right here in the U.S., I see people who believe we "need" all this foreign labor because we won't do the work ourselves... taxes are higher than they've ever been, and the solution to cash shortages is seemingly always higher taxes... and there's this massive push by those that want our wealth to hand it over -- to "demand" that we accommodate them -- supported by those whose underlying, flawed, philosophy thinks that by taking wealth and passing it around that we'll all move forward.

But history tells us that they'll squander those resources, and civilization will slide backward for centuries before it recovers. Alright, end of history lesson. I guess I should add "history" to the list of classes that I feel everyone should be required to go through each year until they understand it. The other two are: civics and economics. If everyone understood how the government worked, understood basic economics, and had some historical perspective, I believe this country would be a much better place.

And you know you've lost your mind when...

Iran is named vice-chair of the U.N. commission on global disarmament. Since logic tells me this can't be the case, the only explanation is that I'm living in a fictitious world. Perhaps I had a car accident years ago and now I'm starting to regain consciousness...

Other "fun" U.N. facts:

• 54% of UN members are *not* democracies
• The United States pays for 22% of all U.N. expense - our contribution is about $900 million a year.
• The UN's "anti-racism" commission was started in Libya and is really nothing more than an anti-Semitic racist organization, sponsored by the U.N. From the website of EAFORD: "...EAFORD has focused on the ideological systems of apartheid and Zionism, as well as the conditions of the indigenous people within colonial settler societies."

Arni on Illegal Immigration

I stumbled onto this letter by my former governor, Arnold, on the whole illegal immigration thing, and thought it was pretty good. A quote:

We can embrace the immigrant without endorsing illegal immigration. Granting citizenship to people who are here illegally is not just amnesty … it's anarchy. We are a country of immigrants, yes. But we are also a nation of laws. People who want to be citizens will want to do it the right way.

Viven de largo los Estados Unidos

Ah yes. So the old 'hood makes the news because of a rumblin' tumblin' fistfight between groups on all sides of the illegal immigration issue at a local protest. Good to see some positive press rolling out of "da region."

Most amusingly, among the participants of the protest (apparently on the pro-illegal immigration side) were some folks from the Progressive Labor Party, a group that openly supports a communist revolution.

So, I'm not saying that the proposed legislation is perfect -- however -- if you weren't' sure what side of the issue you stood on, allow me to point out that the "protesting" side, those that oppose harsher penalties for illegals, are BEING SUPPORTED BY OPENLY COMMUNIST FREAKS!

Unbelievable.

Fish Fry in Evansville

On Friday afternoon, Amy said "too bad we weren't in Evansville, we could go to a fish fry with everyone" - and I said "well, we still could!" - it was a really nice day and it gave me an excuse to fly the plane.

So, what the heck, Ames got the stuff ready while I headed over to the airport and got the plane fueled up and ready to go. It turns out that the flight to Evansville is just about the break even point vs. driving when you consider the time it takes to drive to the airport, load up the plane, do the run-up, and take off. The flight time is just over an hour, but it's a half hour to drive to the airport, a half hour of loading time and preflight, and then another 30-45 minutes after we land to get reloaded up and drive to Gene & Linda's house. Amy left the house at 3pm, and we made it to their house at about 5:40pm. If we drive and have no stops, it takes just under 3 hours to get there, so you can see this doesn't really save us much. And for me (because I leave early to preflight the plane and get it out of the hangar), it's actually a net-negative on time.

BUT - it's a lot more fun to fly anyway, and it's less than 90 minutes of sitting in the plane vs. 3 hours of sitting in the car, so that's a positive. And - we're actually losing quite a bit of time because of our lack of proximity to Greenwood airport (25-30 minutes) and then because we have to fiddle with the car seats. Kaitlyn's booster takes no time but Hailey's car seat probably adds another 10 minutes to the ordeal. And then of course the drive after we land of 15 minutes.

Amy took some pictures on the way back, so hopefully I can post those up shortly.

Sin City Survived

Ames and I have returned successfully from Vegas. We did well enough that (1) we didn't hit the ATM machine at all and (2) we were satisfied even though we technically lost money. However, if you're headed to vegas, I'd recommend betting on red-32 on the roulette wheel. It didn't come up a single time while we were playing, and the odds of not getting 32 once in, say, 300 spins, is reasonably low.

Granted, unless you believe in funny math, the odds are still 1 in 38 for the next spin, but hey, I'm just sharing the information I have.

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing Penn & Teller at the Rio. Ames was very excited that she got to talk to Teller after the show (and he really can talk!) You can check out her blog for more info on that. I did get to pose for this photo with Penn, who, at 6'-6" was still a good 5-6 inches shorted than the super-tall woman we saw at the show with us. Now that's tall.

We also saw the Blue Man Group at the Venetian. This was also a good show, but we both liked Penn & Teller better. Blue Man would have been better had they played more music and dropped some (or most) of the "(fake) audience involvement" gimmickry. If I were to pretend to be a critic, I would call those aspects "cute", however they seem really out of place when compared to the drum-beats-gone-wild musical aspects of the show, which were very cool.

Las Vegas Celebrity Sighting

So toady Ames was quick enough to spot James Brown (JB) of FOX Sports broadcasting fame. Considering that I see him every week during football season, but it was my wife that had to point him out to me, I'm not sure what that says about me.

I'll go out on a limb and say I'm not always the most observant fellow when it comes to seeing things around me. Ha ha.

Turns out tommorrow is the Vargas vs. Mosley title fight, so I'm sure that's why he's here - unless of course it was just because he heard we'd be here and was hoping to spot us.

KHFY to KRID

The weather was nice again today so I had the chance to make a quick flight after I finished up a few meetings. About 4:30 I got off the ground and headed from Greenwood to Richmond Municipal Airport, just on the Indiana side of the Ohio border, and more or less due East of Indianapolis.

I headed out from Greenwood to the Shelbyville VOR (not very far), and then took straight vector to Richmond, which has it's own VOR as well. It gave me a chance to practice a little VOR navigation on the way there, and some simple pilotage on the return trip (in layman's terms, that means navigating by looking at a map and the ground to figure out where you are).

It's a short 120 nm round-trip, and I made it twice during my training -- so to say I had to rely strictly on these navigation techniques is a bit of a stretch, since I was familiar with the route already. The point was to use something besides my fancy-pants GPS and prove that I won't be a basketcase should it ever crap out on me.

For some reason, I've never seen anyone else flying around this airport, despite 2 intersecting 5500' x 100' runways (and a third that's no longer in use). The runways seem a bit dilapidated, which is a shame given that it seems like it could be a pretty nice little airport.

Random Music

While I was in the car this morning, I started the iPod in a random spot in the "My Top Rated" playlist. I haven't really gone through the trouble of rating even a small percentage of the songs on there - that's something I pretty much do to pass the time while trapped on a long airline flight. But, there are enough in that list to make for a reasonably sized list.

Anyway, I thought the assortment that came up on my short drive was interesting. This may seem like a wholly random assortment, but for those of you know me you probably won't be surprised. It was a bit slanted to the heavy metal, but that's probably a product of what I've actually rated more than anything. Here's the list:

• My Way, Frank Sinatra
• Mr. Brownstone, Guns-n-Roses
  
• Don't Tread on Me, Metallica
• Dragula, Rob Zombie
• Learning to Fly, Tom Petty
• Heart Shaped Box, Nirvana
  
• Down with the King, Run D.M.C.
• We're Not Gonna Take It, Twisted Sister (LOL)
  
• Sunday Bloody Sunday, U2

I blew away my blog and all I got was this lousy plane...

Ok, so not to be outdone by my wife, who is not to be outdone by Susan, who is not to be outdone by her husband who is not be be outdone by me, I've restarted my blog. In summary then, I'm in competition with myself, I appear to be losing, and I'm squarely in last place.

Either way, here is is, in all of it's glory. To get started, let me tell you about my Sunday mini-adventure.

Sunday was a clear, sunny day here in Indiana, except that it was all of 20 degrees. I decided to take the plane up for a flight, except, I couldn't get it started because, yes, it was freaking cold outside. It would barely even turn over. As I sat out there, another one of the pilots came up and after chatting about my (relatively) new plane, he said he had an old engine preheater that I was welcome to have because he didn't use it anymore. It was of the "homemade" variety, and he hoped "that the mice hadn't chewed up the inside of the heater".

What the heck, it's worth a shot, I thought.

This apparatus, which you see here, consists of a small ceramic space heater which sits inside of a bit of ductwork connect to a hand-cut flange of sorts that fits nicely inside the cowling opening of a late model Piper Warrior, and convenientlyfor me, also in a late model Piper Archer.

To give it some hight to reach, you see it sitting on a pastic bin which I happened to have. For it's previous owner, it sat on a nice piece of cinder block, but I didn't have such amenities laying about the hanger.

I looked for mouse dropping and dusted it off. Other than being in a bit of banged up shape, it looked okay. I hooked it up and gave it a shot - however - the cold wind was keeping the heating element from reaching the temperature required to get the fan to kick on. I took my coat off and draped it over the enclosure. to let it get warm.

Luckily, I had a light jacket in the car to throw over my sweatshirt. But - after waiting about 5 minutes, I realized that the cold wind was blowing right inside the opening on the other side of the cowling. So, I removed my second jacket, and stuffed it inside the hole.

Standing in 10 degrees with just my sweatshirt, I waited 20 minutes, ensuring that neither my jackets, the space heater, or the plane would burst into flame, moved everything to the side, and started the plane right up. The engine ran pretty awkwardly for a few seconds but then settled out just like it should. It could be that one of the cylinders wasn't firing properly yet, and was a bit worrisome, but it subsided quickly and everything sounded and ran fine after that. Next time, I'll let it warm up for a good half hour first.

I got almost 2 hours of flying in. I ran into a bit of light snow on my way to Robinson, Illinois, which caused me to divert over to Brazil/Clay County instead. Light snow isn't really an issue, but there was already an icing AIRMET for that area and the visibility was sure to deteriorate, so why chance it. Then I did a touch-and-go in Greencastle (of not particularly high quality) and flew back to Greenwood where I had a real nice landing.

I've got just under 70 hours now of total flight time, which isn't much by anyone's standards, but I'm proud of it anyway. It will be nice when the weather finally breaks and I can get more regular flying in. This is about the time last year that I started taking lessons very regularly, so I'm optimistic that more regular VFR weather is just around the corner.