Bump's Stump

With apologies to my Democrat friends, Al Gore is just not one of my favorite people . The Clinton-Gore ticket was the first time Sleezy Al caught my eye. The pair won the election and went on to administer a fairly good political term. Clinton, to this day, is a brilliant, charismatic scoundrel, but Al Gore has not aged as well.  When in office, Al was a reliable supporter for the President. Granted, he didn't initiate much, but he wasn't supposed to. He simply did his job as the second banana. The glory years finally ended and Big Al  ran for President on the Democratic ticket against the Republican, George W. Bush. We began to see a very different Al Gore. The campaign was  nasty (as most Presidential bids are), particularly at the end. The vote tabulation was not handled right and the outcome could have gone either way, depending on the election officials. They and the courts administered the voting rules, and...

            The Commander Idiot           Torture will not leave my mind .  Perhaps it is because I've been reading so much about  Viet Nam recently. It's caused me to think about the relationship between torture and airpower. Yes, the two are related.  Since World War II we have dominated the air with our unbelievably sophisticated and powerful weapons. It was during the Korean War, however, that we learned airpower alone is much less successful when dealing with a mountainous terrain, and an agrarian society.    When we eased into Viet  Nam by way of advisors that multiplied into a major military force, we frustrated Americans began to increase the application of air power. At first it was to support our ground troops and we used propeller driven planes to strafe, bomb, and locate the enemy. The ...

There are a number of things I just don't understand. One of them is why so many of the anti-war crowd go thumbs down on torture. Our Radical Islamic enemy doesn't hesitate. In fact they often omit torture entirely, and simply lop off the heads of our soldiers. War is a dirty, ugly, and deadly business to be sure, but if one person is known to have information that would lead to the certain murder of two or more innocent persons, it makes perfect sense to use every tool available to retrieve that information.  Remember, the end of torture is not automatically death.  Interogation torture must end before death occurs.  But this opinion is not widely shared. The anti-war crowd sees torture as medieval and inhuman. They forbid torture under any circumstances and at any time, war or no war. Their position is blurred by the many opinions as to what constitutes torture. The precise definition is not uniform. When the hypothetica...

Let's assume that nations surrounded by secure boundaries remain the most logical divisions of both geography and people, and those thus surrounded are correct to insist their government defend everything within the borders including them. To prevent the government from being overwhelmed by the excessive demands of immigrants, a nation must, as a fundamental protection, insist on a gate-keeping control. All immigrants that desire to permanently change their residence and nationality should be required to accept and meet certain clearly described requirements: To be accepted as applicants for citizenship according to the date they apply. Pledge their to alligiance to America only. Understand that there can be no duel citizenship. Understand that English is the one official language. All documents, contracts, and government correspondence will be in English only.  Agree to observe and conform to all American State and Federal laws. ...

The oil spill in the gulf is a disaster. So far there has been no authoritative forecast about containment. Isn't that a bit odd?  Oh well. I assume the people that design and operate off-shore oil platforms have to follow strict safety regulations - yet I've no idea where such controls from. The industry? I doubt it. Since so much of America's industrial activity is regulated and controled by our Federal Government, I think it is a safe bet that's where the safety regulations come from - and If so,I would think it is the government's responsibility to enforce them. But first,  who is the responsible party?  British Petroleum leased the platform from Deepwater Horizon , who seem to have hired another company by the name of  Transocean to operate the rig. They each seem to have some degree of responsibility. The floating, drilling platform rig was located 42 miles off shore. There are many oil fields closer to shore and n...