Flit(tm)

Ouch

Well, I don't regret supporting Fred Thompson but I certainly hoped that he'd stick things out longer. The Republican party needed him and he folded. The country needed him too and his withdrawal leaves us with unappealing candidates all around.

It's going to be a very sad 4 years.

My Guy for President

Now that I've got a job, I just donated to Fred Thompson. You should too. Here's a Fred donation link to make it easy.

This was my first political donation. It felt good. It also inflicted serious budgetary pain, but Fred's worth it.

Offer Letter

Well, it looks like Wednesday shall be my start day. That's ok, I got a better deal out of the offer letter when it finally came in writing. I guess using a recruiter can help even on the money end (though you never know these things for sure).

Getting Regular

I seem to have a bit of trouble getting regular.

No, not that way.

I've got the opposite of verbal diarrhea, a head full of ideas and observation and the prose just doesn't *flow*. So, I'm going to strain a bit and just toss my usual standards out the window. Bear with me, coherence and good writing should be back by February. Until then, you've been warned.

Citizen's War Duty

The Left complains that we don't sacrifice for this war. In a sense, that's a fair complaint, but only in a sense. As citizens and residents, what are civilians actually supposed to do?

The answer isn't just to sign up for the infantry. If the government wanted more trigger pullers, it could get them simply by raising the limits or innovating inside the current limits to improve the "tooth to tail" ratio. Yet the duty remains. People are dying for us every day. We need to keep faith with them but, in general, we don't know how. So what are we supposed to do about it?

The first answer is to simply not lose your head. Panic among civilians, especially voters, is the absolute worst thing to do. It is the one reasonable pathway to success for our enemies that doesn't have "and then there is a miracle" somewhere along the critical path. Panic is not reasoned. It is never productive. It is the worst sort of betrayal because it is an internal, and unforced, error. Citizen panic comes in both right and left forms so let's not imagine one political camp alone has a problem. Panicking into "make the rubble bounce" when it's uncalled for is as bad for the next generation as "cut and run" when we could have won.

Panic is very often a product of ignorance. We live in an information age yet we tolerate massive ignorance of our enemies, their weaknesses, how we can exploit them both professionally in our military and diplomatic action as well as using mass citizen action. If your news sources haven't told you about how mickey mouse Iran's economy and government are, or how much trouble even a mickey mouse government can cause, you're making yourself susceptible to panic. That's not keeping faith with those making direct sacrifices for this war of which Iraq is a mere campaign.

The ultimate expression of not panicking is to cast a good, well informed vote in every election so that those making direct sacrifices have decent backup in the elected political class. That doesn't just mean DC, but everywhere down to local town councilmen supporting returning veterans.

I don't think that not panicking, while necessary, is sufficient. But it's a good start, and for many, we're not even doing that.

So, Where Have I Been?

In short, I was outsourced in early December. I came to the conclusion that things I wasn't paid for went to the end of the line in terms of priorities until I got a job.

I start work Monday, 10AM.

I'm back.