Army Post Road

     Today is the day we remember, commiserate about, and mourn for all the men and women who have come before us and sacrificed their life and limbs in the defense of our nation and union. Many have died with long stories of valor and honor. Many others have died in relative anonymity. They all left their families to meet their nation’s call to arms and gave the last full measure of devotion to the same. Whether those sacrifies were made here on our own soil or at points across the globe, it is all the same. Many of those men and women were brought home to find their final resting place either amongst their fellow professionals-in-arms or in the soil of their kin yet many others lay in the countries where they died defending liberty and freedom and others still lay where they were slain. No matter where their bodies lay and no matter where we are, their sacrifices will be remembered and cherished. Their gifts to us will never be taken for granted and may they never be forgotten.

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you’ll only drink the best beers in the world. Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them. When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don’t know well. But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

What’s Your Beer Personality?

     Anybody disagree?

     It saddens me that it’s come to this but Congressman Barney Frank (D-NY) took Congressional Republicans to task and he was right and they deserved every bit he handed to them. Via the Club For Growth Blog, here is what he had to say concerning agriculture subsidies:

Mr. Chairman, I am here to confess my reading incomprehension. I have listened to many of my conservative friends talk about the wonders of the free market, of the importance of letting the consumers make their best choices, of keeping government out of economic activity, of the virtues of free trade, but then I look at various agricultural programs like this one. Now, it violates every principle of free market economics known to man and two or three not yet discovered.

So I have been forced to conclude that in all of those great free market texts by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and all the others that there is a footnote that says, by the way, none of this applies to agriculture. Now, it may be written in high German, and that may be why I have not been able to discern it, but there is no greater contrast in America today than between the free enterprise rhetoric of so many conservatives and the statist, subsidized, inflationary, protectionist, anti-consumer agricultural policies, and this is one of them.

In particular, I have listened to people, and some of us have said let us protect workers and the environment in trade; let us not have unrestricted free trade; but let us have trade that respects worker rights and environmental rights. And we have been excoriated for our lack of concern for poor countries.

There is no greater obstacle, as it is now clear in the Doha round, to the completion of a comprehensive trade policy than the American agricultural policy, with one exception, European agricultural policy, which is much worse and just as phony.

Sugar is an example. This program is an interference with the legitimate efforts at economic self-help in many foreign nations. So I appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from Arizona [Jeff Flake] and the gentleman from Oregon [Roy Blumenauer]. Here is a chance for some of my free-enterprise-professing friends to get honest with themselves, and now maybe we will see some born-again free enterprisers in the agricultural field.

Huzzah for the gentleman from New York.

     We’ve put another week in the history books folks. This one wasn’t quite as busy as last and it was a bit more fun. We finished up training the unit we’d been working with which means the rat race will go back to the way it was. I had all sorts of fun playing OPFOR; my mother was alternately entertained and disturbed by me having so much fun lugging around a machine gun (a SAW specifically) and talking about making the good guys go dead in massive fashion. It really is just plain fun to go out there and do what we got clubbed into us during basic training.
     In addition to all the fun we had out in the field rolling around in the grass (and on tick nests apparently in my case) it turned out to be a pretty good team building time. Before doing this OPFOR stuff I hadn’t said much more than “boo” to any of the guys on the team and then just this past week we all went out to dinner together twice. Wednesday night we all went out together and that was quite a blast (and not just because of the ladies that joined us either). It’s one of those good times to be in the Army.
     I’ve been reading Marginal Revolution and Professor Greg Mankiw’s blog a lot (in addition to being quite enamored with Megan at FromTheArchives) and it really reminds me of how much I want to get back into school and start studying again. It also gets me thinking about the Fed Challenge competition we did as seniors at Central and how much I enjoyed that (especially the trip to Chicago with the guys). I really wish we’d gone further in the competition but it was still one of the best learning experiences I’ve had. I know I can take classes here and stuff but it really isn’t the same as being an undergrad and sitting in a class and actually getting to listen to a teacher and absorb from them instead of taking it all in from just a computer screen and book.
     This is one of those lucky periods in my life where I’m happy what I’m doing but I’m also looking forward to when it’s over and what’s next.

     I was busy the past week. Monday and Thursday I played OPFOR (killed off lots of the good guys, it was all sorts of fun) and Tuesday and Wednesday I did driver’s training basically all day long. I am now legal on operating a HMMWV and a 5-ton truck. The eventual goal for my vehicle lincensure is to be able to drive tractor-trailers. Now that’ll be all sorts of good fun.
     On Monday when I was doing OPFOR stuff I got bit up about as bad as anyone could. No mosquitoe bites, just ants and ticks. I’ll spare you all lots of details about it but when I saw the doctor yesterday morning about it, there were enough tickbites that he was sufficiently concerned that I might get Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Now if that isn’t a disease with a bad-ass name I don’t know what is. On top of that, I got some poison ivy (or oak or sumac, I never saw what got me so I couldn’t tell you for sure what it was) on my forearms so I am just one big, bad itch-machine. Now for the lesson out of all this: plan your clothing selection for a day out in the field better than I did. When the day started out, I was good. It was cool, I had a long-sleeve, hooded sweatshirt on. As we got to runnin’ around goin’ “bang-bang”, I got too hot and stripped off my sweatshirt and only had short sleeves covering my arms. That’s how I got the poison ivy on my arms and that, combined with not having my pants tucked into my boots, is how the ticks got under my clothes. How have we remedied the situation for future missions rolling around in the mud and grass? I dug out my 100% DEET bug spray (mmmm cancer causing), bought a couple long-sleeved t-shirts to wear, and we’re going to be blousing our pants inside our boots from here on out.
     Even if I have been out doing all sorts of fun stuff out in the mud and grass (and vehicle cabs) all week, I haven’t missed out on everything. Earlier this week I watched Rumor Has It… with Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, and Shirley McLaine. Kind of predictable but funny nonetheless. Good enough to warrant the cost of renting. Last night I watched Elizabethtown with Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. Quite funny. First Orlando Bloom movie that wasn’t an action movie that I cared for. Having gone to basic training at Ft Knox (which is just south of Elizabethtown, KY) I had a very good appreciation for what Western Kentucky and it’s people can be like and the movie does a good job with that (one thing that should be used universally is the video of a house blowing up as a video pacifier for children). What Kirsten Dunst’s character said about being a substitute person resonated with me to a certain degree, especially the part about liking people to come and go regularly and not always be around. It isn’t always true but some people are better enjoyed in doses rather than streams. Megan’s post on From The Archives about being a Back-Up Wife reminded me of it.
     There was plenty of good stuff this week on Marginal Revolution starting last Monday with a pointer to a bit about lottery tickets that contribute to your retirement. In the piece they point to an EconLog piece about who’s more irresponsible that I thought was very excellent.
     When in Iowa City, I get asked why I’m a Republican all the time. People there just can’t fathom what goes through a person’s head that makes them a conservative or even a conservative-leaning moderate. Well, here’s one woman from California’s reason why she’s a Republican. Amen.
     More from me later.

I just read this Zits comic from April 30. Truly reflects where a young man’s priorities should be.

I laughed quite heartily when I read the following quote at aetheric shade:

And now I’m off to the mall to play Dee Dee Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Pirate style.

     Professor Greg Mankiw, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, deftly defeats the diminuative former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s specious claim that President Bush’s tax cuts have been disproportionately and unfairly tilted towards the rich.

     Facebook is a changin’ to keep up. It’s not just for college kids anymore. They’ve expanded it to include high school networks (which they did earlier in the year), geographic networks, and networks for your company. I am proudly a member of the University of Iowa network, the Des Moines, IA network, and the United States Army network. Go and see if you can join now, too.

     digg.com directed me to a neat little thing about Color-Changing Bath Tiles. They’re heat sensitive so as the water warms the tiles, they change color. It’s pretty cool.

     BusinessWeek Online’s Blogspotting had an excellent post the other day about Why journalists should ask dumb questions. I’m not making fun of journalists, for once.

     Was there actually an opinion piece published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen with some sensibility and intellectual honesty?  Does someone in Iowa City actually realize that Big Oil isn’t to blame for the gasoline prices of late?  Kudos to Beth Cody and in turn the PC for standing up agains the socialist arguments for price controls and windfall taxes.