Shoot! I could have voted for Obama!

I never fall for "pie in the sky" promises from politicians, but it looks like Barack Obama will really make me rich if he is elected POTUS.

According to Tigerhawk, Obama and Biden are redefining "rich." Apparently, according to Obama, "rich" meant an annual salary of $250,000 just a few weeks ago. Now he is saying that the amount is actually $200,000. Joe Biden would like to lower that to $150,000.

If they win the election, by next year even I could be rich under the Obama plan. Now that's a change I can believe in!

I voted today.

Just some rambling thought here as I contemplate my indecision in the polling booth today.....

Waited in line for about 1.5 hours to vote. Every other time I have voted in my life, I have never seen such a large percentage of black folks. I would say that the percentage was 75% black, 15% white and 10% other. The Republican Party seriously should have put J.C. Watts on the ticket. I'm not kidding. I like him better than McCain.

There is a laundry list of reasons why you can vote early. Mine was that I will be working extended double shifts during the election. I wonder what the CPD is worried about? Perhaps the golfers out at the Country Club of Charleston are going to burn down the City Market if McCain loses? The area soccer moms are going to riot? Since we are so worried about conservatives rioting and burning down neighborhoods, perhaps they should give the whole police department the day off. After all, we're mostly conservatives. /sarcasm off/

There was a gentleman behind me in line at the polls. He spoke with a Persian accent. We had a nice conversation about cell phones. He mentioned that he would be traveling overseas for about four months and would not be here on election day. He was wondering if he should buy a quad-band cellphone and get a sim card at his destination, or if he should just buy a cheap phone. I asked him where he would be going and he said Iran. He has family there and is going home to visit for a while since he was laid off a few months ago. He apparently worked for a local medical equipment company. He invented a special bed that shifts air around inside the mattress and keeps the patient moving. It is used for people with fluid in their lungs, such as those with pneumonia. The company he worked for owns the intellectual rights to his work, so they paid him a small lump sum for his invention and then laid him off. I wish it was appropriate to ask people how they voted. I was dying of curiosity. (BTW- I told him to just buy a cheap phone in Iran rather than the expensive quad band one.)

So... indecision.

I got home and told Mrs. Warpiper that I had 'hovered.' As in, I hovered over the button for my candidate for POTUS. I had a choice between voting my party or voting for principle. During my reading this week, I was reminded of a quote by John Adams this week in the comments section of a local blog. He said,

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

The words came to me as I stood there, stuck in indecision. I had filled out my entire ballot with the exception of the one most important block. I voted against some amendments to the SC State Constitution, and I voted against a couple of liberal in conservatives' clothing folks. One of them was a sitting U.S. Senator who supports amnesty for illegal immigrants. In all, I mostly voted the conservative ticket with a couple of "take that, you asshole" votes. When the ballot was completely filled out, I came back to the POTUS. I had to ask myself if my indecision was partly caused by the fact that SC is going to be a red state no matter what I did. Did the knowledge that this election is not going to come down to South Carolina's electoral votes as the scale tipper make me suddenly more principled? Or, if I felt the election was going to go down to the wire even in SC, would my vote be influenced by that? I still hovered over the button.

As President Adams' words came back to me, my decision became so clear that I could not figure why I hesitated so long. I voted for a domestic (small government) immigration (secure borders and no amnesty), fiscal (conservative) and foreign (Boltonesque) policy that I can agree with. There was only one party on the ticket that fit the bill.

I looked in the mirror a little while ago. Adams was right. It is a sweet reflection.

Gratuitous Tater

So the last few weeks have seen Tater doing Fall things. Like hayrides for a buddy's birthday.

There were cows.

Tater ain't afraid of no cows. Not even cows with foot long tongues that try to slurp her little hands into their mounths.

Tater likes to eat pumpkin guts while the Warpiper carves. Well, not really.... she just tastes them and then spits them out. Yum.

Mrs. WP had to distract Tater so I could get the dang pumpkin finished. A true artiste cannot be distracted.

Happy Halloween!

Al Dora, Baghdad.

My buddy Steve has gone back to Iraq for a second tour on the police training mission. When we were there in 2004 and 2005 things were a little rough, to say the least. Steve sent me an email the other day with a BBC video report about one of the neighborhoods in our area of operations. Although we always knew that things were going to get better, it is amazing to see the changes in Al Dora.

Steve's email:

Hi All,

Thought you might be interested in seeing some news from Iraq:

** Return to Dora, Iraq **
Once known as 'the worst place in Iraq', the Baghdad suburb of Dora has made some remarkable changes for the better.


Video

Dora is a neighborhood in south Baghdad. When I was working at Rustamiyah we lived farily close to there and used to travel through now and again. We also had teams that operated in that area with and without military support. I don't know if it was the worst place in Iraq but it was pretty bad. (Erik, you can attest to that.)

With a lot of hard work the Iraqis and the coalition have made a lot of headway there and throughout Iraq. It isn't perfect by a long, long shot and the cooperation and relative calm are very fragile - anything could cause a return to the bad ol' days. Still, progress is possible and it is happening.

Interestingly, when I was here before (and now) there were (and are) US police advisors imbedded with those military units but they don't get mentioned in the news story. I guess that's fair enough. The military's signature goes on this project so they get the credit.

Anyway, the video is about 20 minutes and for the BBC, it is pretty even handed.

Steve

Baghdad is representative of Iraq as a whole. As Baghdad goes, so does the rest of the country. I would think that some places in and around Mosul and Tal Afar were worse than Al Dora back in 2004, but it was a very bad place nonetheless. I'll go out on a limb here and say that this story probably won't get much airtime here in the U.S. Probably because it doesn't involve a friendly body count.

Sometimes we follow these things up....

Confederate Yankee has the goods on a case of journalistic make-believe here.

Note to reporters: If you're going to make up allegations that someone shouted "Kill him!" when Obama's name is mentioned at a McCain-Palin political rally, make sure there aren't any Secret Service guys in the crowd. You see, we cops like to do follow up investigations (unlike a lot of the media these days), and we are generally able to get to the truth of things relatively quickly.

Chris Hackett of the Scranton Times-Tribune found out the hard way that Secret Service guys like to thoroughly investigate claims of threats against past, current or potential Presidents.

The ailing bachelor

So, Mrs. Warpiper hauled herself and the Tater off to D.C. for a week with her folks. Woo Hoo! A week of lounging around the condo in nothing but boxer shorts, watching the History Channel and C-SPAN, and occupying the reading room for as long as I want!!

Well, Robert Burns had it right as "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley...", because Sunday night after Mrs. Warpiper departed for the north, The Warpiper came down with an intestinal malady which has me laying around the condo in my boxer shorts, watching the History Channel and C-SPAN, and occupying the reading room for MUCH longer than I intended.

To avoid calling in sick more than one day, I am in a classroom setting at work in preparation for the new computer system we are setting up at the Cop Shop. The instructor thinks I am a very busy person in that I leave the classroom every ten minutes. Indeed.

Perhaps NYC could hire me to explain it to these people?

Yesterday, the union that represents teachers on the New York City public schools sued the school district over a policy that prevents teachers from wearing political buttons or insignia.

I think that the NYC public schools could save a lot of settlement money if they just give all of that money to me, and allow me to 'splain this to those teachers. Here's what I would tell them:

You are public servants. You are a representative of the government that pays you. As a police officer, (also a public servant) I am not allowed to wear partisan political insignia on my uniform. If the reason is not clear to you, then consider for a moment that I am wearing my McCain/Pain button on my uniform and you have an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on your car. I pull you over. (Not because of your sticker, but because you are speeding.) You could rightfully argue that I singled you out for enforcement because of your sticker, and your proof of my lack of impartiality is the button on my uniform. That's why I cannot wear political buttons, or any other partisan insignia that might suggest that I have a soft spot for one group or the other.

When you decided to teach in a PUBLIC school system, you gave up the right to espouse partisan politics during the course of your duties. Your argument that the ban on political buttons at work violates your right to free speech does not apply. You do not have the right to unbridled free speech when you are working on the puclic nickel. When you get finished teaching your re-written history at the end of the day and you go home, THEN you can put on your political button, and parade around naked giving your "O" hand salute and do your bong hits all you want. However, while you are performing your public duties to children whose parents are required by law to send them to your classroom you will toe the government line of impartiality and teach from the watered down, politically correct government-provided texts. You will dress professionally, without political accoutrements.

You may argue that our jobs are somehow different; that as a police officer, I have a duty to impartiality, while as a teacher, you do not. You would be wrong. If you teach at a private school, then you would be allowed to do whatever that school's policy allows. You could even wear political buttons if the policy permits. If parents were not legally compelled to send their children to your classroom (which would be the case in a private school), then you might have a case. Since those parents have little choice but to enroll their children, then their childrens' right to a free and appropriate public education outweighs your right to free speech through the display of partisan insignia.

It will be very interesting to see how this case unfolds. If the NYC schools settle or fold, shame on them.

Faces of the Tater

Tater, Let's go sit in the bouncy seat!




Let's change your diaper first.



Taken on 13Nov07. (2 months)

Isn't this one of the reasons we got into this mess?

I have tried and will continue to try to avoid overt political commentary on this blog. Perhaps at some point in the future I will create a separate blog. That way I can espouse my conservative views so that my liberal friends won't have to wade through the racism, intentionally starved children, guns, naked greed and general mean spiritedness to get to simple family news and pictures of the Tater.


That said, I think that the recent mortgage crisis is a political mess that affects even the least political citizens. In other words, we can't hide from it, no matter how detached we might think we are. The financial tendrils of the mortgage industry are everywhere. The fallout is going to be everywhere, too. (In case you were wondering, casual reader, the devaluation mess and resultant bailout are NOT fallout. No, the fallout is in the mail. We ain't suffered it yet.)


Anyhow, I cannot for the life of me understand why it is that we allowed Congress to ramrod this bailout through so quickly. It was bound to be full of pork, special interest money, and more. What is unconscionable to me is that not only is it full of the aforementioned, it also allows for the FURTHER devaluation of mortgages through re-negotiation and debt forgiveness. Why would we give organizations like ACORN a piece of the bailout when it is the practices of this and similar organizations that played such a large role in what necessitated the bailout in the first place? Michelle Malkin's blog has a very good article on this issue here.

This made my day.

An Airman returns home after a fourteen month deployment and greets his two dogs who have not seen him in all that time. Dave in Texas at Ace of Spades HQ posted the video here. Priceless.



"They never forget us." Indeed.


Thanks to Consul At Arms for finding this.

Argh.

Mrs. Warpiper, Tater and I went to Boone, NC this weekend to watch the Bulldogs play Appalachian State. Unfortunately, The Citadel's football team did not show up. Instead, there were a bunch of impostors wearing their uniforms who allowed ASU to run the score up to 41-7 at HALFTIME. To the Dogs' credit, they came out and played in the second half and held ASU to 7 points while scoring 14. Still, you can't spot the Mountaineers 41 points and expect to not be blown out. Hopefully this will be the wake-up call we need and the Dogs will come out hungry against Elon next week.

Other than the disappointing showing from a Bulldog team that was supposed to compete with ASU this year, the weekend weather was great. They actually have four seasons up here, as opposed to the two we have in Charleston (10 months oppressive and 2 months warm).