Category: random

Not too far from the Steamboat Ditch Trail, east of Reno, Nevada, is a remnant of the U.S. Postal Service’s history. It’s a concrete slab in the shape of an arrow critical to the cross-country delivery of mail for the U.S. Air Mail Service in the 1920s and ‘30s.

There were no good aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball their way across the country using landmarks. This meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night flying was just about impossible.

As part of the effort to help pilots successfully navigate the route between New York and San Francisco, the arrows and an accompanying tower equipped with a gas-powered beacon were installed at roughly three to 10-mile apart across the country.

At first, I planned to go by myself, but my friend Kay insisted on coming along. Her reasoning was solid, asking, “What if something happened and you got hurt?”

Debate over – she won.

The hike follows a foot trail up to the Hole-in-the-Wall tunnel, then around the pre-tunnel ditch route and uphill to the arrow. The arrow’s located on top of a hill that overlooks the Truckee River some 400 feet below.

As we walked up to the tunnel, we saw a group of Asian women, using a selfie-stick to take a photograph of themselves in front of the tunnel’s entrance. They were from Reno and obviously not very interested in chatting with us.

However, following their departure, a lone bicyclist came rolling up. He hopped off his bike and came down in the ditch, where we were and immediately struck up a conversation with Kay and I.

He introduced himself as Frank Luchetti. We soon learned too our amazement he’s the father of one our favorite veterinarians, Tony of Baring Veterinary Hospital.

After parting company, we should have made an abrupt left and hiked up the steep trail over the tunnel. Though very steep, it would have been the shortest way to the hill-top where we believed the arrow to be located.

Instead, Kay and I continued along the tail to where it forks, staying to the right. This proved to be the long way around, but I’m glad we took this route as it provided us with a view of the valley we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

About a hundred yards below the summit of out target hill, we stopped to have lunch. There was very gentle breeze to off-set the warmth of the day.

Once back on trail, we slowly worked our way along what by then was nothing more than a goat path. It wound its way near the edge of a bluff overlooking the Truckee River, some couple hundred feet below, before turning sharply in and up the steep hill-side.

Kay saw the tip of the arrow jutting from the ground first, as she made it to near-level ground. We knew then —  though not the first to find the site — we had made it.

Admittedly, I thought of explorers like Francisco Garcés, Jed Smith, Peter Ogden and Joe Walker, who wandered the wild expanses of the Nevada Territory. They were some stout hombres.

Then I couldn’t help but think how double-tough the men were who built the arrow that Kay and I were standing next too. Think about it – they had to get the concrete and water to the location, clear the area, built the arrow’s form, pour it and then maintain it.

Today, the arrow’s cracked in some places, and disjointed from the shifting of the hillside over the last 90-years or so, but it is there — all 70-feet of it. I think it should be included in the National Registry of Historic Places.

There are two more arrows to be found in Washoe County along the same route, one by Derby Dam and the other near Tracy Clark. As soon as I’m sufficiently recovered from this trek, and before the weather turns too hot, I plan to go photograph those sites too.

Its par-for-the-course that Rudy Giuliani is being lam-based in the Progressive media for saying, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.” Meanwhile, no one in that same Progressive media has dared criticize Obama for claiming, “Here in America, Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since it’s founding.”

Guess, the mayor’s critics seem to have forgotten the 2008 presidential campaign, when Obama called then-President George W. Bush ‘unpatriotic.’ But that was seven-years, and to hear the Progressive media tell it, that’s nearly ancient history now.

This same Progressive media continues to aid and abet the Obama administration disavow the fact that the West is at war with ‘radical Islam,’ and instead claims the U.S.’s biggest threat outside of ‘climate change,’ is from domestic right-wing extremists. To bolster their claim, they point to a man who carried out a shooting attack on three TSA employees at Los Angeles International Airport in 2013, killing one officer and last years killing of two Las Vegas police officers and a bystander by a couple from Indiana.

It wasn’t right-wing extremists who flew jumbo jets into the World Trade Center in 2001, set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, burned a Jordanian pilot alive or beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians, so I wonder who the Obama administration and the Progressive media will blame when the real shit hits the fan in this country.

February is Black History Month. Topics include Reverend Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Jim Crow laws, civil rights demonstrations, segregation and slavery.

In declaring February 2015, “National African American History Month,” President Obama said, “Brave Americans did not struggle and sacrifice to secure fundamental rights for themselves and others only to see those rights denied to their children and grandchildren. Our Nation is still racked with division and poverty. Too many children live in crumbling neighborhoods, cycling through substandard schools and being affected by daily violence in their communities.”

His words sound great until you realize there is Black history being made in America now, and it isn’t being talked about.

The latest Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s Abortion Surveillance report says that roughly 548 Black babies are aborted every day in the U.S. All totaled, its estimated that since 1990, about 4.4-million Black babies have been aborted.

To put this in perspective, the most recent CDC numbers show there are 44 murders daily across the country. This means there are over 12-percent more Black babies aborted every day then there are homicides in the entire nation.

The Census Bureau says Blacks make up about 13-percent of the U.S. population. However, on average, the number of Black abortions is over 33-percent of the total number of abortions in the U.S. when seen against the CDC’s data.

With the CDC data, not every state’s required to report, so the number of abortions published by the agency is actually lower than the real number of abortions that occurred each year. That incomplete reporting can be found in every Abortion Surveillance report.

In the end, for February 2015’s Black History Month, over 15,000 Black babies will be aborted. This is self-inflicted genocide.

In: Handing our enemy our battle plans. Out: The inability to call our enemy by name.

Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt had let the Nazi’s know Allied forces were going to invade Fortress Europe in early June 1944 by landing a Normandy. It’s doubtful that the Allies would have won the war.

The Obama Administration is telegraphing plans to retake Mosul, Iraq from ISIS/ISIL before Ramadan begins on June 17. Five Iraqi Army brigades composing a total force of up to 25,000 Iraqi troops will be used.

To which ISIS’ISIL is saying, ‘Gee guys, thanks for the warning. We’ll be ready for you.’

It’s also been revealed that Qatar will host training sites for coalition forces to train moderate Syrian rebels. Other planned sites are in Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Included in the force would be a brigade of Iraqi counterterrorism forces who have been trained by U.S. special operations forces. The brigades include roughly 2,000 troops each.

The U.S. will provide military support for the operation, including training, air support, intelligence and surveillance. There has been no decision made yet on whether to send in some U.S. ground troops to help call in airstrikes.

Oh, and it comes with this warning: The attack will be postponed if it looks as though the Iraqis aren’t up to the task.

Has the Obama Administration even tried to get ISIS/ISIL to leave Mosul jus’ by asking?

Comedian George Carlin joked about the seven words you couldn’t say on air. Add two more — “Islam” and “Muslim” — but only if you use them in a less-than-flattering context.

President Obama proved this while giving an interview to the website Vox.

“It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” Obama stated.

He also refuses to use the words, ‘Jew’ or “Jewish.’

But there’s nothing ‘random’ about the attack on those ‘bunch of folks.’ In fact, the event was a premeditated, deliberate, and well planned act of violence.

So let’s connect the dots to these same ‘violent, vicious zealots,’ as they acted out their form of ’perverted Islam,’ on our shores.

In September 2014, a man in Moore, Oklahoma, beheaded a woman after calling for Islamic terror and posting Islamist beheading photographs on social media. Three months before this, in West Orange, New Jersey, a college student was gunned-down ‘in revenge’ for Muslim deaths overseas.

Two homosexuals were murdered in Seattle, Washington by a proclaimed Muslim, Ali Muhammad Brown in June 2014. Three months prior, in Port Bolivar, Texas, a Muslim man named James Cosby, beat his lesbian daughter and her lover to death, leaving a copy of the Quran open to a page condemning homosexuality.

While not as horrific as having one’s head lopped off, a man near Detroit stabbed two people at a bus stop after he made sure they weren’t Muslims. Several people there “engaged in conversation” until Terrence Thomas, “asked some of the folks there if they were Muslims.”

Two of them answered that they were not and were stabbed five times. A third man was stabbed in the hand as he tried to stop the attack.

Thomas told police he is a Muslim. But instead of treating this as a possible actor of terror, Southfield Police have contacted the FBI, which is investigating the incident to see whether hate-crime laws were violated.

As situations like this continue to mount, Obama continues to defend his decision not to label ISIS/ISIL as a “radical Islamic” group, as characterized by his remarks during his recent anti-extremism summit at the White House.

“We are not at war with Islam,” Obama said. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

Remember, in World War II, not all Germans were Nazi’s, but nearly all Nazi’s were German.

The headline on the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Facebook page reads, “Fiore takes heat over ‘hot little girls’ gun comment.”

It’s by Sandra Chereb, who writes: “The Nevada Assembly minority leader called on a GOP assemblywoman to apologize for comments she made in The New York times about rape, concealed weapons and women on college campuses.”

Here’s her comment in full: “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them,” (Michele) Fiore was reported as saying. “The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.”

“That’s how Progressives operate,” I responded to the post, “when they can’t debate the facts — they change the subject of the debate.”

Some one calling himself ‘Max Saiger’ replied, “Implying only one side does that.”

Saiger’s comment is actually a question, though he forgot the question mark. I took his question to mean I was attacking ‘Liberals,’ or perhaps, ‘Democrats, so I answered, “I didn’t say Left, Right, Liberal, Conservative, Democrat or Republican. Sorry if you’re feelings are hurt.”

This prompted a ‘John Bachmann’ to ask a couple of snarky questions, “Tom are you a split personality? Read your post and then read your reply. Feeling the disconnect yet? Wow!”

My response: “Obviously Bachmann, you are intent on changing the subject, which is allowing guns on campus, but Progressives like you try to dismantle it by focusing (changing the subject to) on her comment ‘hot little girls.’ Afraid you are the one disconnected.”

The debate before the state legislature is over whether to allow students, faculty and visitors to carry a concealed gun on Nevada Campuses of Higher Education. It’s not about “hot little girls,” as Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Marilyn Kirkpatrick, of North Las Vegas, would like to reframe the debate.

Hopefully, Fiore won’t be cowed into stepping back from her comments. As for this particular news item on Facebook I’ve turned off the ‘notification app’ as I don’t want to waste my time debating people who insist on changing the subject every time they’re beaten by the facts.

ISIS/ISIL has now burned 45 people to death in the Iraqi town al-Baghdadi. Some of the victims are security guards from nearby al-Asad Air Base.

The group seized much of the town last week. It’s also five miles away from the base, the recent site of ISIS/ISIL suicide bomber attacks, where about 300 U.S. Marines are stationed.

Also, the U.N. Security Council says it’s now investigating claims that ISIS/ISIL is selling human organs to pay for its terror activities in Iraq. Bodies with surgical incisions and missing body parts have been found in shallow graves around the country over the past few weeks.

As this occurs, a State Department spokeswoman says we need to create jobs for the radical Islamic group.

“We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians – they’re in this fight with us,” Marie Harf said on MSNBC. “But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs…”

She later went on CNN trying to explain her earlier comments, “We cannot kill every terrorist around the world, nor should we try. How do you get at the root causes of this? It might be too nuanced an argument for some, like I’ve seen over the last 24 hours some of the commentary out there, but it’s really the smart way that Democrats, Republicans, our partners in the Arab world think we need to combat it.”

Harf was supposed to be bringing awareness to the Obama administration’s three-day summit on “countering violent extremism,” where one of the strategies they’re reviewing is the administration social media presence. The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, created in 2011, will coordinate Twitter accounts, et al, and meet with Muslim academics, scholars, and community leaders to get the administration’s message out.

While Obama administration talks about what to do — Iraq is attacking ISIS/ISIL in and around Mosul, which has been held by the terror group since last June. The news comes as Egypt reports that it’s killed “64 jihadists,” in a series of aerial assaults launched in retaliation for beheading 21 Christians.

Everett Police are identifying the suspect in a shooting that took two lives and left a woman hospitalized. Tye Fleischer is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree assault.

Killed were Kevin Odneal and Denny Halverson. The injured woman was struck in the pelvis and is expected to survive.

Officers were at Odneal’s home in December 2014 to investigate a possible chop-shop.

In May 2011, a robbery at the home turned deadly. The target of the robbery told police he’d been hit in the head with a flashlight and began to lose consciousness as he fatally shot one of the attackers.

Odneal pleaded guilty to robbery and unlawful gun possession. He was sentenced to a year and five months in prison in 2012.

The victim was not charged. Police said he was acting in self-defense.

In 2008, a man was shot and killed at the same home. In that case, investigators believe three men, including Odneal, were arguing about drugs and a car.

The argument spilled outside, where the man was shot. The shooter pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Your help is still needed. An account has been set up by Denny’s aunt, Jocelyn Warriner, to help defray funeral expenses.

Nevada has more than 80 prison inmates on death row, but no one’s been put to death since 2006 and no executions are scheduled. Now state prisons Chief Greg Cox wants $800,000 to build a death chamber at Ely State Prison about 35 miles west of the Utah line and another $7.6 million for a hundred more guards.

Talk about another waste of tax money.

Nevada lawmakers should consider the route Utah is taking. A recent proposal to bring back Utah’s use of firing squads to carry out executions passed Utah’s legislature.

For years, states used a three-drug combination to execute inmates. But European drug makers have refused to sell the drugs to prisons and corrections departments out of opposition to the death penalty.

The drug shortage and trouble with administering lethal injections have led several states to begin revisiting alternatives during the past year. A bill to allow firing squad executions is working its way through Wyoming’s Legislature, while lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering legislation that would allow that state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.

A handful of inmates on Utah’s death row, sentenced before the law changed, still have the option of going before a firing squad once they’ve exhausted all appeals. It was last used in 2010 when Ronnie Lee Gardner was successfully  executed by five police officers using .30-caliber Winchester rifles.

Doug Fabrizio, one of a small group of witnesses described Gardner reaction after being shot to ABC News: “He clenched his fist and then let go and then he clenched it again.”

Two minutes later, Gardner was dead.

Washington D.C. – based, Death Penalty Information Center says firing squads are not foolproof because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death. One such case they point out happened in 1879 when Utah was still a territory.

In an article titled, “Six Men Legally Killed”, the New York Times’ May 16, 1879 edition describes Wallace Wilkerson’s death as he sat unrestrained before the firing squad: “Wilkerson leaped from the chair exclaiming, “Oh, God” fell forward on his face, and continued writhing and gasping for 27 minutes, when the physicians pronounced him dead.”

“My niece was walking out the door when the guy got out of his van and just started shooting everybody,” writes my friend, Jocelyn Warriner. “I’ve lost a wonderful person in my life. Her two daughters have lost a wonderful mom and my sister lost great daughter.”

“You will be missed Denny, rest in peace,” she adds.

She’s talking about 42-year-old Irene Denean Halverson who was better known to family and friends as “Denny.”

It began Friday evening, February 14, 2015 around 7 pm, when Everett, Washington Police arrived at a home on 75th Street Southeast to discover three people shot. When officers approached, they found a woman and a man dead and third person seriously injured.

Witnesses say a van pulled up to the home, where the gunman got out, took a rifle from the vehicle, walked to a nearby fence and started shooting. Denny died as she exited the front door.

After closing down the roadways in the area and getting help from King County Air and a SWAT team, police were able to arrest a suspect. He was taken into custody after stopping his vehicle at Forest Park and talking with police on a cell phone.

He is in the Snohomish County Jail facing assault and 2nd degree murder charges. The suspects name has not been released.

Another witness said he spoke with the suspect and one of the victim’s jus’ hours before the shooting. He told reporters that the suspect seemed level-headed but was struggling with his own sobriety.

Kevin Odneal, who shared the home with his mother, also died in the attack.

Local news agencies say two men were killed in separate murders at the home in 2008 and 2011. The house has also been the scene of many incidents including a search warrant in December by the Snohomish County Auto Theft Task Force.

Jocelyn and I have been life-long friends since our days together at Francis E. Warren AFB, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  She has set up an account to help defray the funeral expenses.

Please give any amount possible and keep Jocelyn and her family in your prayers as they grieve.  I thank you in advance.