Time waits for Norman

Yes. We are pulling for Greg Norman in the Open Championship.

Per the incomparable Elliott at JOM, the title of this post is a first for this occasion.

We do what we can.

In 1996 we worked at a golf course in Denver (Golden, CO, to be precise). It was a stormy day in which we hunkered down in the club house...when the pilot of Greg Norman's private jet entered and regaled us with stories of Norman's various travels.

Being 1996, only one story was important, of course. It was that year that Norman had undergone the monumental collapse in the Masters, losing to Nick Faldo.

It was in that conversation with a not-so-insider, insider look that we got a feeling of Norman's professionalism.

Norman, upon that collossal collapse, reached the plane with little visible external emotion. It was, "Eh, things happen. Let's go."

He may have been hiding the understandable pain, he may have been repressing the self-anger at letting such a championship slip from his grasp.

We don't know -- we have only the account of this pilot to go on. But this account comported with the experience of highs and lows, wins and losses, triumphs and defeats that portray Greg Norman as an unusually grounded professional athlete.

We don't know what we don't know about him.

But what we think we know, from that conversation and from causual observation through the years compels us...

Go Shark, go!

Poultry politics

In my American Thinker blog post yesterday, the basic conclusion was: Obama is a chicken.

Charles Krauthammer, in his Washington Post article today, comes to a different conclusion: Obama is a preening rooster.

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Barackadoodledoo!

MORE: Let’s welcome Kathleen Parker to the fun, basically calling Obama a hen-pecking candidate in her National Review article:

Barack Obama's levity-free reaction to the now-famous New Yorker cartoon leaves one reluctantly wondering: Is he humor-challenged? Perchance, does he take himself too seriously for a nation of wits and wags?

So soaring has been Obama's rhetoric and so dazzling his smile that we've missed the possibility that the Illinois senator is less the lanky rock star and more the purse-lipped church lady, clucking his tongue in disapproval of the chuckling masses.

Campaigning for versus serving in office

I have a blog post up at American Thinker. It begins:

Obama apparently isn’t much of a cyclist. But he is a runner. In fact, Obama is a world-class runner.

Enjoy.

Gratuitousness revisited

Rick Moran at American Thinker notices a poll from the New York Times and says:

Is it possible that Obama's recent spate of flip flops has so damaged his reputation as a man of principle that the voters now see him as something less than a savior of America?

If this New York Times poll is to be believed, that is exactly the case. By a 51-43 margin, voters now believe Obama says what people want to hear rather than what he thinks.

Now stay with us, this is going to be a little circuitous, more than a little non sequitus [sic], and hopefully on the cutting edge of being very gratuitous.

Now, it is neither surprising, nor shocking, nor appalling, nor extraordinary that a politician puts his finger to the wind before opening his mouth. And it is not new to those paying attention that Obama is just such a politician, his lying about being above such cynical political acts notwithstanding.

And while we are grateful that an increased number of voters recognize this, let’s address this from the opposite angle. Why? For the gratuitousness!

If Obama says what he thinks people want to hear, do you think he wants people to say to him what they think he wants to hear?

Why ask that question, you ask?

Because there was one brave candidate in the primaries who boldly stood on the principle that he would not stand for people simply telling him what they thought he wanted to hear!

His name?

John Edwards

And, well, based on that stand we mocked him in such a way so as to catch the eye of James Taranto and his Best of the Web Today. (scroll to the last item)

What can we say? He brings out the gratuitousness in us. (Edwards, that is, not Taranto)

Syntactically challenged

Obama wants to make sure everyone knows that his comment about Jerusalem remaining undivided does NOT reflect a lack of foreign policy experience (h/t Jaime Sneider at WWS):

Senator Obama, in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." The next day, an unnamed adviser tried to "clarify" the statement to suggest it left room for Palestinian sovereignty.

On Sunday in a CNN interview, Fareed Zakaria questioned Mr. Obama about his AIPAC speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. Mr. Zakaria asked him, "why not support the Clinton plan, which envisions a divided Jerusalem."

Mr. Obama responded, "the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech" and a reminder of the need to be "careful in terms of our syntax." He said his point had been "simply" that "we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war

Hmmmm, didn’t he use the “syntax defense” before?

Why yes, yes he did:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday that he "mangled" his words when he described small town Americans as "bitter" at a private San Francisco fundraiser.

Obama spoke to the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board last night, after a long weekend spent clarifying his statement that many small town voters had grown "bitter" over their economic status and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."[…]

"My syntax was poor," Obama said.

Question is, should Obama be made to write “I will use proper syntax” 100 times on the chalk board, or should he be made to diagram the sentences in all of his speeches?

His speeches as prepared for delivery, of course. If he tried to diagram transcripts of his speeches, where in the world would he put all the “uh’s” and “um’s”?

There's no reason to stop loving Obama

The old saying goes:

“You cannot reason a man out of a position he was not reasoned into.”

And that may worry those of us who have reasoned our way into antipathy toward Obama.

We can present our case, reasonably, logically, intellectually, irrefutably until we are blue in the face. Yet some Obama supporters will not be moved – especially if they arrived at their support for Obama, not through their heads, but through their hearts.

Which brings us to this harrowing account of a disillusioned Obama supporter, as told by his father, Democratic analyst Bob Beckel (h/t Greg Pollowitz):

Far from needing encouragement, his supporters were energized by the New Hampshire defeat. My kid kept bugging me to get behind Obama. I tried to tell him as a political analyst for Fox News I had to stay neutral. He wasn't buying that and reminded me that his grandfather (my dad) had been involved in the civil rights movement and "if granddaddy was still around he would be for Obama". That was followed by "you're a wuss".

So I was a little surprised last week when my son asked me, "What's wrong with Senator Obama?" I asked why. "Because he sounds different", he says. Thinking the kid was referring to Obama's recent moves to the center on some issues I tell him every candidate for president repositions for the general election. My son gives me one of those teenage 'what planet are you on' looks and says, "never mind."

It took awhile but I realized my point about Obama's repositioning on Iraq, FISA, etc meant nothing to my kid. All he knew was that the "Obama of Summer" was somehow different than the Yes We Can "Obama of Winter" - and it bothered him. To my kid it wasn't a question of issues, but a perception that somehow Obama had changed. As Barack Obama learned this week it is a perception shared by thousands of his supporters who do understand the issues and, unlike my son, can vote.

Let us offer another saying that may provide comfort to people of reason, reflecting on young voters who may prove similar to Beckel’s son:

“Hell hath no apathy like youthful romance scorned.”

Don't drink and drive, continued

We are back home from vacation. The trip consisted of driving through parts of the following states:

North Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia
Kentucky*
Indiana
Illinois
Missouri
Iowa
Nebraska
Wyoming
Idaho (where we spent our vacation)
Montana
Colorado
New Mexico
Texas

From Texas we took a flight that took us through Philadelphia before returning home.

Our wife and kids remained in Texas, and in three weeks we will fly back and then drive with them back home. This will take us through:

Louisiana
Mississippi
Alabama
Georgia
South Carolina

In all, we have driven just under 4,000 miles so far, with roughly 1,400 remaining on the Texas back to North Carolina trip. $4 gas isn't so much fun for such a thing. But now, another problem for such a trip is beginning to ripple around the news. The idea of bringing back the federal 55 mph national speed limit.

American Thinker covers the issue today. One point made in that article goes thusly:

Take for example coastal industries. Turn a three hour drive each way into a four hour plus drive each way to get to the beach, and you'll see far fewer folks doing it for the weekend. Turn a 12 hour drive to the Florida or Carolinas beaches into a 16 hour trek, and the week long vacations won't happen.

We certainly admit that our vacation is extreme, one not one undertaken by very many people. But let's do the quick calculation on the difference between the trip we have made at current speed limits, and the trip if 55 mph again became the federally mandated speed limit.

Our trip from North Carolina to Idaho was nearly all interstate, and we averaged just under 74 mph while the car was in motion (our GPS records such things). The trip from Idaho to Texas was a little less interstate, and we averaged just over 68 mph. To simplify for our purposes here, we will round the overall average to 72 mph. And for our purposes we will assume our trip from Texas back to North Carolina will also average 72 mph.

By the time we make it back home in three weeks, we will have spent 75 hours traveling 5,400 miles.

Now, if the posted speed limit was 55 mph maximum -- and we assume our overall average would be 58 mph -- slightly over the maximum speed limit -- our same vacation would consume 93 hours of drive time.

14 more hours.

Or to put it in terms this blog favors, it would have made a 27,000 bottles-of-beer-on-the-wall drive into a 33,480 bottles-of-beer-on-the-wall drive.

That's nearly 6,500 extra bottles of beer.

Now, as much as we like beer (and we really love beer), one can only take so many down and pass so many around before one is driven from being a fun, family road trip dad to a menacing road rage threat to any and all other vehicles along a 20-state route.

It would be enough to drive a man to drink.

MORE MATH: Adding the states up, we will have visited 40% of these United States by the end of the summer vacation travels.

TO BE CLEAR: We are using the traditional count of states, and not the Obama new math, which would put us at a mere 33%.

*Thanks to Strawman in the comments for pointing out my oversight in forgetting Kentucky.

Photo of the day

Old Faithful geyser, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of the day

Falls on Darby Creek, Teton County, Wyoming. This is still on the western side of the Tetons.

Obama is full of it, continued

We've avoided the election since arriving here on vacation.

But Obama and cynicism is a hobby horse that we simply cannot help but drag up onto our soap box. So here we go.

Via Yuval Levin at the Corner, we come to this account from the Caucus Blog at the NYT of an appearance, in which Obama wants to refute this dastardly notion that all his recent flip-flopping is cynical, political flip-flopping:

“One of the things you find as you go through this campaign, everyone becomes so cynical about politics,” Mr. Obama said. There is an “assumption that your must be doing everything for political reasons.”

There you go. All those cynical Obama moves we went to lengths to document in the original "Obama is full of it" post?

Phooey, says Obama. It is not he who is cynical, it is people like us -- voters.

It comes as no surprise that he holds voters in such disdain, of course, since we've been paying attention. But it is surprising to hear Obama state it so blatantly.

According to Obama, Obama is too pure to be doing any flip-flopping out of base politcal motives. Obama transcends the ability to act cynically. Rather, it is the rubes who cynically attribute cynicism to Obama that they themselves cyncially project onto a cynicalless post-partisan, trans-political Messiah such as Obama.

Obama basically says, "who you gonna believe, me or your cynical lying eyes?"

Pheh. With our right eye tied behind our back we see right through this BS. Tie our left eye behind our back too, and we would smell it.

Let's quote ourselves from back in February (the second post we ever did on this blog and the first non-introduction post, in fact):

It is not without evidence that such a charge is leveled, Senator. It is not without justification that many of us find ourselves very cynical about your message of change – about both your ability and your intent to make the change you promise where it conflicts with your self-interest.

The change you are promising to bring, Senator, is simply not something we can believe in. Not when it is premised on you being the one to deliver it.

Go ahead and call me a cynic -- I deserve it. But so too have you earned my cynicism.

Obama has made people call him cynical the old fashioned way -- he's earned it.

For him to say differently means he is either lying or delusional. In either case (or both! Why either/or when it is just as likely to be both/and!), he is someone not to be trusted as president.

Photo of the day

If you're trying to maintain a field of grass here in the Teton Valley, here is your main enemy: The Thistle.

Photo of the day

View of South Teton peak*, through an irrigation wheel in an alfalfa field, Teton Valley, ID.

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* We inadvertently identified this peak in abstentia in a previous post as the Grand Teton, but have since been disabused of this notion by a full-time resident in the Teton Valley. The Grand lies to the north of this peak (that's to the left on your computer screen).

Photo of the day

Teton mountains from Antelope Flats Road, Grand Teton National Park

Photo of the day

Gros Ventre River tributary, Grand Teton National Park

Happy Independence Day

The second best part of the 4th of July parade we went to in Victor, ID today:

The best part was the lead procession -- five veterans representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, carrying the flag. We stood, applauded, and shed a tear.

God Bless America.

Go, balloons!

It was a beautiful morning. It began at 5:30, which is a wee bit early. But it was worth it...

Go, balloons!

Keep coming, balloons!

We need more balloons!

All balloons! All balloons should be going!

"That’s right — six exclamation points"

While on vacation, we are keeping one eye on the news back home.

So, what could be more exciting than news from the local airport? Nothing, actually.

Credit: Joseph Rodriguez / News & Record

Army Spc. Lee Howerton faced a difficult choice as he strode up the airport hallway, suitcase in one hand and a black beret clutched tightly in the other.

Up ahead, the surprise welcoming committee of 31 people included his fiancee, mother, brother, even his fourth-grade teacher.

So after a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq, who gets the first hug?

Howerton’s family made the decision for him. A white-haired man seated in a combination wheelchair/walker held a homemade sign in his trembling hands: “Pop gets the first hug!!!!!!”

That’s right — six exclamation points.

Robert “Pop” Mitchell , an 81-year-old former Navy man, cried just a little as he embraced his 21-year-old grandson.

Lanette Ezell speeaks for us:

The family and friends gathered at Piedmont Triad International Airport were obviously proud of Howerton.

They were not alone.

Lanette Ezell and Joel Roach stood a short distance away. They were fellow passengers on the flight from Memphis to Greensboro, the last leg of the soldier’s cross-country journey from Fort Lewis.

“I don’t even know him,” Ezell said. “I just walked by and saw all the people here, and I got all choked up.”

Ezell dabbed at the tears in her eyes as she watched loved ones greet the tall, broad-shouldered stranger in the smart dress uniform.

“They should all get this kind of welcome home!!!!!!”

We admit having taken some editorial liberties with that last sentence, giving it the "Pop" Mitchell treatment.

That’s right — six exclamation points.

MORE: Thanks to Blog-ah for the link. Blog-ah focuses on Fort Lewis -- and should be read...repeatedly...

AND MORE, MORE: Thanks, too, to Mudville Gazette for the link in their Dawn Patrol section. The Dawn Patrol is a "daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics" at Mudville Gazette -- and is a daily must read.

Photo of the day

Here is the lower pond at our house. At the far end, you can barely make out the little waterfall that was in the video in this post, which is mostly obscured by the aspen leaves.

Because of the difference in the light between the pond and the mountains in the background, the Grand Teton is washed out in this picture. It's not a full view of it -- just the tip peeking its head up over the foothills and keeping an eye on us here down in the Teton Valley.

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UPDATE: See this post, where I am reliably informed that the Grand does no peeking down on us; rather, it is the South Teton peak that is washed out in this photo. Apologies to both peaks for the oversight.

Flora

According to the calendar, summer has begun.

For us here vacationing in the Teton Valley of eastern Idaho, we are definitely still in spring. The snowfall was near record level this year, and the temperatures have been mild.

We are reliably informed by our brother who lives here full-time that as recently as last week, we could have gone sledding at Grand Targhee -- the snow pack still reached to the base of the mountain.

It's warmed up now, of course -- but the flowers are blooming here several weeks later than normal.

We are not complaining. Not in the least.

Here are some of the shots we took today in a traipse around the property with our five year old daughter. One of the pics she actually took, though we won't tell you which one.

Columbine:

Columbine:

White Lilac:

Pink Lilac:

Goat's Beard:

Flax:

Lupine:

Streaming video

We've arrived in Idaho. It's just...so...peaceful. Yesterday we were treated to a cool overcast afternoon with a few sprinkles. Today it is sunny and warmer.

Let's share some of the sights and sounds around here.

We have two ponds and a stream that runs between them. This is a source of much of the peacefulness here. The sound of the water running over the rocks, which you can hear so very clearly if you open the windows at night, provides the background for the best sleep ever.

We'll embed one video of the stream here and link the others:

More videos here and here.