Author: bill

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The Captain’s Journal » The Warrior as Vocation

The Captain’s Journal » The Warrior as Vocation

As opposed to empty-headed ideas of warrior as a job, those who fight have been called by God to war in our stead. It is not a job; it is a vocation. Totally aside from irrelevant issues about how much education our servicemen and women have, it is God who has put in them the desire to be warriors, it is God who sustains them, it is God who has given them their victories. It is God who has called them to this vocation.

I believe that servicemen and women are called into service when fate collides with reality. For military folks this is not just a job, it is a passion. Friends are going to die. You have to believe in your heart that you are doing the right thing or you should should go home and flip hamburgers. The option to go home is available but few take it. You call it a job. I call them heroes even though it hurts me. My son wants to be like them. He feels the call and I doubt he can explain why. It is tough being a parent to a teenage son when there is war going on.

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50 Tools that can Increase your Writing Skills – by Dumb Little Man

 

We found this while cruising though Bloglines last night. If you are writing anything at all, odds are you’ll improve your skills by spending some time at the Poynter Institute. So without delay, here is a list of a whopping 50 articles that we should all read (yes, I said we because my writing tends to lack in a few dozen areas!)

Source: 50 Tools that can Increase your Writing Skills – by Dumb Little Man

This is one of the few useful posts I have found on digg. I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I hated English when I was in high school. I was planning to major in engineering at college and was dreading college English. The quicker I got out of the English dungeon, the better it was for me. When I met with my college advisor, he said he would give me two quarters of advance placement in English based on verbal score  on my SAT. I was shocked. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.  Then he said I should take Honors English. I was dumbfounded! I still do not know what I was thinking at the time.  I took the credits and signed up for Honors English. Even now this moment of foolishness brings a smile to my face. My parents were concerned. They knew English was not one of my strengths and my studying skills left a lot to be desired.

Over that summer I tried to make up for every mistake I had made in English classes. That was a silly plan! For good reasons I was panicky about the impending Honors English class.  Gradually my preconceptions about studying English faded away. My curiosity about “good” literature led me to read several classics. Maybe if I read a few of the classics it would help me in the class. These books were so much easier to read when it was I who wanted to read them.  However, the biggest impact on my writing style occurred when I bought a copy of “Elements of Style”. I let this small book guide me toward the path of competent writing. I took its preachings about writing to heart. I had this vision that all of my fellow students in the class were already so much better than me. They were “real” Honors students. That Fall I slaved over every word and sentence in my Honors English class. I rewrote some pieces so many times I thought I was going to go crazy. I did not want the professor to figure out that I was a fraud. In my mind I was a mediocre English student who didn’t deserve the advance placement or to be in a Honors English class. I guess I fooled him. He gave me an A- and I never took another English class. Over the years I wondered about where my talents really lie but my appreciation of good  writing was forever changed that year. It is with fondness I will read the tips from the Poynter Institute. I will remember the summer I panicked and the gift that I found. My appreciation of good writing has stayed with me.

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Horses can teach us something about ourselves

My son and I take out horses in the evening. I have tried to encourage him to try and establish a relationship with the horses he is handling. I found that when you listen and respond to a horses needs, the horse is more willing to listen and follow your requests. If you ignore a horse they probably will ignore you, too. Last night a horse got loose when my son tried to release him into the pasture. When he tried to catch the horse, the horse would run away. This was fun for the horse! It was not fun for my son. He is almost sixteen years old and these chores are messing up his plans for the evening. He thinks horses are dumb and they should follow directions without discussion. The horse on the other hand does not care. Horses are almost always obedient to the implicit hierarchy of the herd. My son has set himself apart so the horse is independent, too. So the horse decided to have some fun! My son finally got fed up and threw the halter down at my feet. He walked away muttering, “You catch him!”

It took me about ten minutes to catch the horse. The horse wasn’t going anywhere dangerous so I had plenty of time. I calmly walked after him. Eventually he let me catch him. They always let me catch them. Since the “teachable moment” had long since passed, I patted him on the neck and quietly led him to his pasture. The excitement was over. Patience, humility, and a sense of belonging are real important traits when dealing with horses and humans. It would have to be another day for the horse to help my son understand a little bit more about he relates to others.

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Thoughts about immigration reform and H2B Visas

Pedro, our dogs, and us in happier times Last week we were notified that the H2B Visa for Pedro was finally approved. We really liked Pedro and his brother-in-law, Fernando. Over a period of about a year, Pedro showed us that he was both a good man and a good worker. He had the highest wage rate on our farm. His brother-in-law did a good job selling us on Pedro’s ability. He wanted us to pay him in cash but I declined. I wanted to see a social security number since I wanted to put him on our payroll. He fussed a little but he complied. I felt bad about withholding US taxes. I doubt he will ever collect the refund he is due. He was pretty close to the perfect employee for us. He easily did the work of two of our normal employees, high school students. He has a wife and three boys in Mexico. His wife’s sister is living near Milwaukee so his wife was interested in eventually moving to the US. It looked like a win-win situation. In April we applied to sponsor his new Visa. The lawyers led us to believe that the Visa would be approved for re-entry around June 15th despite a change in policy. The previous visa was sponsored by a horseman’s group. We were told that option was not available anymore. The new policy required each farm to apply independently. As long as we could get nine months of work out of him and the legal costs were not too onerous, we had a workable plan.

As you can see the visa came in late. We struggled to find help with the farm while he was gone. It is hard to stop being a farm. My wife and I ended up doing a lot of the work he would of done.My wife skipped some of the training she does with our horses to do barn work. I am starting a business and barn work took time away from that activity, too. The legal fees were much more expensive than we were originally told, too. Now that we have the paperwork in our hands, we can see it is valid through February. His visa is good for barely four months. If we want to continue to use him on our farm, we are already two months late in applying for the next visa. We cannot run the farm this way. We went from helping someone participate in the American dream to wondering how many dreams are being killed by this immigration mania. We are disappointed. As far as we are concerned the border is closed to Pedro and Fernando. He tried to do the right thing. We tried to do the right thing. It didn’t work. We will find another way to get the work done. Hopefully, Pedro will find a job that will feed his family.

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Ohio’s Fall Guy

Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell is the right candidate in the wrong year.

Link to Ohio’s Fall Guy

I have to admit that I voted for Ken Blackwell even though I think he will lose to Ted Strickland. I have to say that Strickland’s pro-growth strategy does not excite me. Its an important issue but a lower priority for me. Ted does seem to be a decent fellow.  The economy has filled the state’s coffers again so I am most concerned with spending as the economy slows down. Ken Blackwell is a fiscal conservative at the core.

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Voting Early

My wife and I filled out our ballots and mailed them in. It was our act of rebellion. We have three close elections in our TV viewing area. Nowadays close elections means lots of negative ads. So when we received an offer for mail-in ballots we took them up on it. I was pretty tired of the television ads. Frankly, I did not glean a significant piece of information from any of the ads on where they stood on important issues. So we voted for the people who we already knew.

We had several constitutional amendments on the ballot, too. I almost voted for the amendment to raise the minimum wage. I run the payroll for our farm and our Habitat affiliate. Although both organizations are exempt from minimum wage laws, we have always paid a wage rate than was higher than the minimum wage. Like most businesses we pay the prevailing wage rate. It is hard to get   and retain good employees. Minimum wage rate laws have never been important to our business. The problems we have had with our Habitat homeowners has always been them losing their jobs not the wage rate. As a result of my statistical sample of two, I do not find much value in the minimum wage rate increase to anyone except politicians and people who like to talk about how they are helping the working poor. I am sorry about my cynicism. God is not finished with me.

My problem was not the wage increase but all of the extra stuff they threw into the amendment with it. The amendment is almost a page long. It is as long as the other six amendments combined. I have insurance policies with less verbiage.  I am confused why we could not have a simply worded amendment to raise the wage rate and let the state government figure out how to manage it most effectively. I definitely feel like I was subjected to a bait and switch ploy so I voted against it.

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Back Talk: The Rich Were Better Off Under Clinton Than Bush

My main point is that the Democrats’ claim that the Bush tax cuts helped only the wealthy does not square with the facts, and I am both astounded to discover that this is true and discouraged to know that there is no possible way the American public will ever appreciate it. If the media hasn’t figured it out by now, they never will.

Source: Back Talk: The Rich Were Better Off Under Clinton Than Bush

This article was written by a professor who describes himself as a “registered Democrat, a liberal by most measures, but a radical conservative relative to the large majority of my colleagues.” I added this article because it was an interesting analysis of the effects of taxing policy. The professor substantiated his position by providing a link to the Tax Policy Center site which provided the raw numbers for his conclusions.

I have been skeptical that the tax cuts favored the rich based on my non-scientific polling of rich friends. If this was such a bonanza my rich friends were sure doing a fine job of keeping their new wealth quiet. Typically I will find someone who can not control their enthusiasm and will spill the beans.

I have a similar issue with the complaints about the Halliburton contracts. If Halliburton is getting such sweet deals from the government, their earnings should be going through the roof. Historically almost all of their earnings has come from the non-governmental side of the business, oil well servicing. Their stock price does not reflect any new found wealth from government contracts. Early in my career I worked for Bechtel when they had a “cost plus” contract to manage construction of the Washington Metro. I learned that “costs plus” contracts were used when the risks are large or difficult to control. The client assumes the risk. The client makes all of the key decisions. The contractor gets a smaller than normal profit and normally keeps their mouth shut. Talking about risk or bad decisions with the press is typically a lose-lose proposition. I have to assume the the Army has control over the decisions and is assuming all of the risk for the contracts in the war zone.

I also worked for Brown and Root early in my career. Brown and Root is the subsidiary of Halliburton actually doing the work for the Army. Brown and Root and the Army have a long working relationship going back to the Vietnam war. It is ironic that back in the 1960’s Brown and Root was closely linked with LBJ and the Democratic party. Herman Brown, LBJ, and several other mover and shakers in Texas politics used to have a regular card game in a hotel in downtown Houston.

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Site Maintenance

Over the last two days I have made a few site modifications that may cause people some problems.

  1. I moved/restructured the site so that it will fully use the alazycowboy domain. My previous setup worked but it was a little dorky. To get everything to work I had to access some features by including legacyfarmltd.com in the address. Since my host provider allows me six domains I decided to cleanly separate the blog from the business. This cleaned up things.
  2. Since I finally had the site using its own domain name, I went ahead migrated the feed with the new domain name address over to FeedBurner. This change should be transparent to the casual observer but I have heard that one before.
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Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate

Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” dated April 2006

We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq jihad; (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims all of which jihadists exploit.

I pulled this from the NIE report because this part of the report agrees with my gut feeling that the root causes of terrorism is Middle East poverty and lack of hope. When you combine poverty with inept, corrupt, and non-responsive governments you better have a foreign threat to focus the people’s anger elsewhere. If we are eventually successful in Iraq, it will because we helped the Iraqi government break the Middle East poverty cycle and the Iraqi government’s success gives hope to all Muslims in the region. The Iraqi government must be perceived as owner of the success for this to work. In this framework the US must be perceived as the meddlesome partner whose intentions were both good and bad.

It is not surprising that my key indicator for evaluating US foreign policy in the region is not the daily death toll but the Iraqi economic numbers. If the Iraqi economy can expand and spread the wealth, the terrorists worldwide will have lost not only the battle but the war.

The other stuff in the report does not reveal any new insight and looks pretty routine. The omission of the words Islam and Muslim in the report is interesting. I tend to view terrorists as Muslim and as perverting the teachings of Islam to justify their violence. This leaves the non-terrorist Muslims with quite a dilemma. How do you support change on your “entrenched grievances” without supporting terrorists? Rephrasing this question in a more proactive manner we get something like this. What progress have we made in separating terrorism from meaningful changes on “entrenched grievances” ? Considering the lack of facts that are not already available in the press or internet, this report could have been written by almost any journalist or blogger. It is amazing that this report got so much hype.