Pink Chum (Spade)

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, Finewire Black Size 5
Thread: Danville 6/0 pink
Tail: Hot Orange Golden Pheasant Crest
Tag: Lagurtun gold, large oval
Body: Pink Chenille
Hackle: Orange Guinea Hen (sparse)

Ward's Spectrum Shadow

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, 1.5 (Bronze)
Thread: Danville 6/0 Red
Tag: gold Mylar followed by large oval silver
Body: purple chenille, followed by purple bugger hackle
Throat: claret guinea fowl
Wing: Three layers of Norwegian Arctic Fox (Sunburst Orange, Red, Purple) topped by Black Russian Silver Goat (Serebjanka)
Eyes: Jungle Cock Nails, lacquered

What was your face before your Mother was born?

There is an old zen koan an old girlfriend told me years ago: "what was your face before your mother was born?" Like all koans this one too, as I can now attest, is not solved by a declarative sentence, a true/false statement, but is felt beyond what the rational mind is immediately capable of affirming or denying. See, I've been sort of shut in recently and I got out for a bit today. The summer rains have pushed the river levels up really high and they'd dropped down to tolerable levels and I figured that maybe, on a lark, a few skamania steelhead might have made it up the Milwaukee River to the Estabrook dam. I checked it out and waded into the rich, tea-colored flow and drifted some spey flies through the foamy pools. I didn't catch a damn thing, though. But thats not important, you see, because in the dusky light blue herons flew overhead and caddisflies skittered off the surface film, I figured out that damned koan--or, rather, the koan solved itself. This suprised me, because I was not aware that I'd been working on its solution. As the orange sun was setting, the river sort of took me in as an old friend and partner, the ducks eyeing me with admiration from their eddies and rock islands. I felt clean and sharp, having shaved my beard some days ago and the old koan came up again what was your face before your mother was born? Somewhere between birth and death I got that one--I knew the answer to that question--wading in the river, fishing for a fish that was not there. Knowing the answer--or rather, feeling the truth of the question--I must have smiled. (I can't quite remember).

Feng's Steelhead Lizard

Bluebelly variant

Redbelly variant

The idea for the Steelhead Lizard came to me from a demand for a fly that could consistently close the deal on the redds. I linked two 20 mm waddington shanks together and tied the trailer hook (size 2 CuttingEdge) with a loope of 18# muskellunge braided line. Each shank is palmered with large marabou plumes: Bluebelly: ((black-violet)-(carribean blue)-(fluorescent blue)); Redbelly:((black-red)-(fuschia-pink)), collared with guinea fowl and/or gadwall flank. The eyes are red dot-enamelled nickel dumbbells. The whole action is one of a jointed 'up and down' motion: the weighted eyes leading the marabou plumes downward, the tension on the line leading it upward. The double joint imitates a lizard's swimming action and the puffy marabou is compressed under water tension, yielding a very lifelike action.I'd like to add a third shank and get a real snake like effect going. Stay tuned for the Sea Serpent. This thing will get clipped by a pissed off King or Alpha Steelie, sealing its reputation as a true redd cleaner.

Ward's Sunray Shadow

Mine is tied after the beautiful Atlantic Salmon pattern, the Sunray Shadow.

Hook: TMC 700, size 2 Limerick Bend

Thread: Danville 6/0 Black

Tag: Flat silver or gold Mylar, followed by silver medium Oval tinsel

Body: purple chenille, followed by purple bugger hackle

Collar: Claret guinea fowl

Underwing: Montana Flash, deep blue

Wing: Icelandic sheep, black

Eye: jungle cock nails, lacquered.

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today--the "20th Sunday in Ordinary Time" of the Roman Church calendar--we (M and I) attended Mass. I am aware throughout the mass of the parts of it, not as a theologian, but as one who wishes to avoid thinking too hard about the mysteries, to avoid the recognition that all these constructions of theology are of history, of past distinctions set in place for good reasons at that time. I am careful to avoid the distraction today of finding in Christ's saying "I've come to bring a sword" evidence of mischief, of intolerance. I find in it the proper reading--the reading which was no doubt meant, the reading that reveals the inner truth of love itself--love itself which divides, which is set at war against the world. In my heart I think of the young boy who is my neighbor whose mother works at Comfort Inn and whose father died when he was four. I think of this young lad on his bicycle, fatherless in this world save for the new boyfriend of the mom, the one from "Alaska". I pray for him and for his well being in the world. I pray for all those particular human beings like him whose lives are marked with loss, with tragedy. And, in praying, I am offering affirmation too that life will be good and that he will find the right path.

A friend said "How do I believe there is a God? Because when I pray I am believing". The love is now, right here, tears. The new atheists have harnessed their chariot to the demand for Evidence. They want evidence! Evidence! But evidence slides back into the past, into what is not. What is given to man is to be alive and that burden--that joyful burden--is to look forward to what is to be. I am on the verge of a transformation in this present.

Fiddling While the World Burns

The article below was published in USA Today on August 18th. It is by Cal Thomas, a pundit on Fox News and a widely syndicated columnist. In this article he challenges the global warming consensus of the scientific community. I thought it was a great article to examine forensically, for it is riddled with fallacies. What a disservice to the country that this asshole should be given the mike! Take him off the air!

I have included my comments in bold
Not so hot air

By Cal ThomasThursday, August 16, 2007


In every child's life there comes a time when childhood fantasies are shattered and he or she is forced to accept reality - there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy; parents don't always mean it when they promise to stay married until parted by death. Grown-up scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists and others who pursue facts and objective truths are rooted in reality and constantly adjusting their conclusions, theories and hypotheses when new information comes to light. Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism.

So it is with "global warming," the secular religion of our day that even has a good number of adherents among people of faith. Having decided to focus less on the eternal and whether anyone dwells there, global warming fundamentalists are pushing planet worship on us in a manner that would make a jihadist proud.

(This is an interesting tactic: to describe global warming science as a "secular religion". This is intended, no doubt, to evoke the culture wars so as to divide the 'secular humanists' from the faithful. The faithful--the intended audience of this piece--are invited here to see their faith being threatened by the secularists--the scientists on the opposite side. Here 'global warming fundamentalists' are trying to get us to worship the planet rather than God. This is a fallacy called 'poisoning the well'. But there is also a claim being made that global warming scientists are clinging to outdated data. This is a fallacy of 'distorting the facts', for the facts do not indicate that global warming scientists are clinging to outdated facts.)

There are at least two characteristics all fundamentalists share. One is the exclusion and sometimes suppression of any and all information that challenges or contradicts the belief one wishes to impose on all. The other is the use of the state in pursuit of their objectives, overriding the majority's will.

Setting up the two birds with one stone: scientists are fundamentalists who want to use the state to override the majority's will. This is a fallacy of appeal to authority--specifically appeal to the authority of the many. The idea is that the "majority" know whats true (or best) AND NOT partisan scientists who have their own fundamentalist agenda.

With global warming, some members of the scientific community - not all of whom are climatologists, who disagree among themselves - have circled the wagons, denying access and labeling illegitimate any scientist who disagrees with the "doctrines" of a recently warming planet. The big media have been complicit in this censorship or ridicule of alternative views, mostly refusing to interview anyone who does not push the global warming faith. CBS News this week broadcast a four-part series on "climate change." Newsweek magazine recently slammed global warming "deniers." That brought a counterattack in the Aug. 20 issue from Newsweek contributor Robert Samuelson, who termed the article "highly contrived" and "fundamentally misleading." In 1975, Newsweek was just as convinced - using "scientific evidence" - that a new Ice Age was upon us.

This is a widely deployed strategy by the far right: declare there is reasonable disagreement on scientific issues (the science is, so Cal Thomas maintains, controversial at best), and then declare that anybody who insists on the veracity and univocity of the science is being a fundamentalist for not integrating the controversial science. This is a fallacy of distorting the facts. While there is a range of estimates, some views are simply wrong and/or suffer from methodological errors and that is why no peer reviewed journal will publish their results. Thomas is distorting the facts here by implicitly insisting that all the written views of "scientists" are equally rigorous and deserve to be included in the overall picture and that those scientists who do not integrate these views are acting the part of religious fanatics. But this fails to take seriously the way in which the process of peer review works.

Many global warming fanatics have pointed to NASA as proof that their concerns about a warming planet are justified. They have repeatedly cited the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), whose director, James Hansen, has asserted that nine of the 10 warmest years in history have occurred since 1995, with 1998 the warmest. When NASA was confronted with evidence provided by Climate Audit, a blog run by Stephen McIntyre devoted to auditing the statistical methods and data used in historical reconstructions of past climate data, it reversed itself. Without the fanfare used to hype the global warming fanaticism it had earlier supported, NASA now says four of the top 10 years of high temperatures are from the 1930s. Several previously selected "warm" years - 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 - fell behind 1900.
GISS now says its previous claim that 1998 was the warmest year in American history is no longer valid. The warmest year was 1934.

By now they--the scientific consensus on global warming--have become "fanatics". Thomas thinks he has scored a winning point by showing that 1934 was the warmest year not what the political arm of NASA said it was, in the 1990's. Thomas thinks he has scored a big point here, as though disproving that one fact were enough to cast doubt on the whole global warming hypothesis. See, 1934 was a hot year! Its all good! Its happened in the past and theres nothing to worry about!This is an interesting example of fallacies of hasty generalization and of overlooking the facts. It is not a relevant defeater of the global warming hypothesis that there were occassionally very warm years over the last thousand years (anomalies). And yet, Thomas thinks he has the smoking gun here by surpassing the mountains of confirming evidence for anthropogenic global warming in favor of this one fact and then rushing to the conclusion that global warming science is a hoax!


Has any of this new information changed the minds of the global warming fundamentalists? Nope. Neither has much of it seen the light of day in the mainstream media, which continue to carry stories where seldom is heard an alternative word and the skies are polluted all day.
The New York Times ran a story in its Sunday Business section last week that said it would cost a lot of money to fight global warming. The implication being that this money should come from government (and taxpayers), along with more government regulations and control over our lives by the very people who seem to have difficulty winning wars and controlling spending.
The Earth has warmed and cooled over many centuries. One can get a sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps. Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.

Finally, we have the mack daddy fallacy of them all, the guilt by association fallacy: "One can get a sense of sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps...most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money..."
So, just to be clear, we went from scientists who insist that their science is true (or largely true) to their comparison to religious fanatics, to actually being religious fanatics, to "disciples", to tax and spend democrats.

This piece should be seen for what it is, namely, a crude hack job by a political operative. It is a shame that such opinions are widely circulated in our society.

Ringing the Bell

My father insisted that I be an altar boy and so I was. And, looking back on that time, I am grateful for being an altar boy, grateful not simply for participation in rituals which have, from time to time, ceased to have meaning in my life. But more than this or that ritual I am grateful for a sense of holiness, of holding out an honored place for the deepest truths of human dignity and its perseverence against a world run amok. For I have known many people--insincere, ironic types--quite common in our age without conviction or inner strength or depth of feeling. Theirs is a flat world of funny, cheeky lines and tepid pasttimes--a true throw away world for throw away people.

I remember in the summers riding my bicycle from my house to the Saturday afternoon mass, arriving early to ring the bell in the bell tower. The old priest giving me the nod and I, grasping hold of the long rope extending upward into the beams and rafters of the bell tower, hefting down on the rope with all my strength. The mighty gong of the bell rippling through our valley. Gong...Gong...Gong...Gong.

The miles I rode to complete my task I would now gladly traverse on hands and knees like some Tibetan pilgrim around the base of Mt. Meru, the world mountain. For in the end, the holy feeling can only come from sacrifice, from love of suffering for a just cause, from the transcendence of the ironic mind. There are other bells to ring now and I ring them, in my heart, with such feeling. Somber, deep, overcome with powerful joy.

Executive Privelege? Quid Juris?

posted July 26, 2007 (August 13, 2007 issue) The Nation
Dangerous Privilege
by Aziz Huq

It's time to do something about executive privilege.
Having stretched the Constitution to the snapping point, the White House now brandishes "executive privilege," talismanlike, to ward off discovery of its wrongdoing. White House counsel Fred Fielding not only refuses to provide specific evidence to Congressional committees investigating the firing of US Attorneys but makes the unprecedented claim that the President can block former advisers from appearing before Congress. Echoing an argument last heard in the infamous torture memo of August 2002, the President also claims unfettered control over federal criminal prosecutions--hence barring one way of challenging Fielding's startling arguments.

This obfuscation, though, is not merely an extension of the Administration's pet theory of monarchical executive power; it is also a calculated strategy to avoid accountability. The Administration knows that federal courts have long been reluctant to force secrets from the executive, and is thus willing to fight the House Judiciary Committee's contempt citations against Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers. By playing hardball until the clock runs out on the Bush II era, the White House hopes to eliminate accountability for warrantless wiretapping, partisan manipulation of the Justice Department--and even torture. Worse, it sends the message to future Presidents that they can do the same.

The case for limiting executive privilege by a clear law does not rest on White House shenanigans alone. In fact, executive privilege is a vague concept that has metastasized in a short half-century. To prevent it from undermining democratic government, reform is urgently needed.

Start with the Constitution, which makes no mention of executive privilege. To the contrary, only Article I--listing Congress's powers--even mentions secrecy. Article II, describing the presidency, does not. It is not surprising that the branch of government worst structured for keeping secrets receives the sole constitutional power to do so, for the Constitution embodies a presumption toward disclosure. It mandates elections, which are mere farce without information about what a government does. And by constraining government power to muzzle criticism, the First Amendment deepens the constitutional tilt toward transparency. Nevertheless, Presidents since George Washington have exploited the absence of clear constitutional rules to withhold information. With the exponential growth of government after the New Deal and World War II, such inchoate and ill-defined claims suddenly became a potent weapon in the battle over separation of powers.

By the time of Bush II, the President's personal right to keep conversations with advisers confidential had morphed into a bottomless well of secrecy obscuring not only the Oval Office but the entire White House. It extended to cover advisers like Miers and their conversations with people outside the White House. It hid from Congress the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief, which revealed that Bush had been warned about Al Qaeda's determination to attack. And of course it sheltered Dick Cheney, who made the startling argument that the office of the Vice President entitles him to keep secret not only conversations with Administration officials but also with private citizens.

The problem will not vanish in 2009. The executive branch has the greatest capacity to create secrets, thanks to its enormous intelligence apparatus. The growing risk of abuse, and the greater capacity for corrosive secrets, means we must find new ways to constrain the Article II leviathan. Moreover, arguments defending the privilege are much weaker than supposed. Foremost among these is what Bush calls the need for "crisp decision-making." Without secrecy, he implies, Presidents do not get candid advice.

There are three reasons this canard ought not to fend off a new law. First, executive privilege is never absolute: The Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon ordered the disclosure of intimate conversations between a President and his advisers. Second, claims for executive privilege are now untethered from any decision-making process that involves the President; they have been extended, viruslike, to the sprawling White House policy-making staff. Third, is it so bad for officials to feel the eyes of the people on their back? After all, they have a fidelity not only to the person who happens to sit in the Oval Office but also, via the Constitution, to the people. Why should officials ever forget their second--and arguably greater--obligation?

By contrast, the risk that Congress will abuse its investigative powers is smaller than generally imagined. Congressional overreaching is mitigated because the President's party is always on hand in Congress to publicize and condemn partisan investigations. Congressional misuse of power, unlike its executive counterpart, is always open to public criticism and condemnation.
An effective law on executive privilege would define and limit it. A law would clarify not only which communications are covered but when Congress can overcome the privilege: Allegations of criminal wrongdoing or violations of law would suffice to dissolve any absolute claim of nondisclosure. The law could then create mechanisms for threshold disclosure to a limited pool of legislators and staff. For disputes that persist, it would expedite judicial appeal. Courts would be obligated to resolve cases of constitutional moment quickly, to stop the clock from being run out. And clear sanctions would be imposed on the privilege's abuse.

The struggle over testimony today is but a fraction of a larger fight. The White House's effort to cloak its dismal legacy should not obscure the importance of the larger battle over the fundamental balance of constitutional power.

Wisconsin State Fair: Hog Heaven

pink pig

Harley men, tattooed, playing games

stuffed mixed martial art gorilla

A "playa"

she wins a stuffed tiger

garbage

Dough Boys Funnel cakes

crowd test driving performance lawn mowers

bottle game for mini choppers

clocks made out of hubcabs and sign "you just can't fix stupid"