In my opinion, for the past 20+ years Americans have sacrificed infrastructure for social programs that have yielded little if any benefit — except perhaps to create an entire “needy” class dependent on government and to eliminate males entirely from black families. And, of course, to ensure we keep the constant flow of worker drones (i.e., Mexican laborers) funneling into our country so as to continue the consistent underclass.

In that amount of time, however, we have done our level best to ensure that the necessary infrastructure to accommodate all the additional people has been seriously curtailed.

And we are just now beginning to see the toll that this lack of focus and priority is creating.

Ask yourself if the way I typify Sacramento, Fornicalia (the place where I work) is the way you would typify your local community:

Meaning: we build and we build but we consider infrastructure not.

What do I mean by infrastructure? That would be the logical essentials, such as:

And that’s just the tip-o-the-iceberg; not being a civil engineer there are certainly other venues I am soon forgetting, clearly. Likely you will remind me of some.

The fall of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge is just a small taste of what’s in store for us in the immediate future. This is just the beginning of what is known as a Cascading Event Chain. If you think your taxes have been going to the constant monitoring and assurance that your bridges and roadways and trestles and overpasses are safe — well, think again. Just ask your local governmental civil engineers. Your tax dollars have been diverted to assuring that, at least in Fornicalia, with CDC, the male inmates desiring to so become women have been getting their penises surgically nipped in clean and sterile environments.

Commercial air traffic is at its worst since on-time and off-time statistics were first kept in 1987. Our controllers are working with equipment that is outdated, outmoded, and their hardware and software won’t be fully upgraded until 2025.

Las Vegas, for example, may reach a crisis in terms of sufficient water in three meagre years. It’s called “building a city in the desert,” for Christ’s sake.

The same for New Orleans. Rebuilding New Orleans is an excursion in stupidity and tilting at every possibly-ridiculous windmill known to Man.

We cannot sacrifice the many for the few. Even good Trekkies know that. Spock said, in “STII, The Wrath of Khan“:

And we, as Americans, have consistently gone out of our way to avoid this bit of common sense since the 60’s. I said it ten years ago and I’ll write it now: our country will only be better off when my generation, the Baby Boomers, the self-absorbed, completely die off. The sooner the better. Bill Clinton perfectly exemplified my generation, thank you — which is what you shall get in his wife, should you elect her.

We HAVE sacrificed the many for the few exceptions — and to our eternal detriment and, I submit, damnation.

We are only now beginning to realize the price we shall now pay for our shortsighted foolishness.

This is witness in our social programs, our HIPA act, our ADA, our classifying as “disabled” those parolees who tattooed their foreheads with offensive letters and graphics because they cannot get jobs.

In the meantime, what we really need — serious infrastructure as listed above — gets shunted aside for social programs that coddle puerile emotions but yield little benefit. We ARE sacrificing the many for the few!

But no.

We’d rather argue about fairy shrimp or vernal pools or some such bullshit.

It’s not because we CAN’T make these things happen; it’s because we bow to the FEW who would have us return to, as Spock once again said, the age of “stone knives and bearskins.”

We can sacrifice the many for the few;

Or we can take back Logic.

I have two feral cats that seem to have adopted me at home.

There are two more on the periphery; a gray-and-white unit and another younger tabby unit. I can pet the first two. The second tier cats are standoffish and skittish.

The first two cats seem to have made my house their home.

Where I live, there are bears and raccoons and bobcats and, likely, cougars.

Over the years, since I’ve been here, I’ve lost 3 cats and, after we broke up, my ex-girlfriend later lost Ida, a large Red-Boned Coon Hound. To our local big-ass brown bear, I’d wager. A bear I have personally seen, at 2 am, in front of the local post office parking lot about a month ago. He was about 4′ high at the shoulders.

Those who have read my blog can recall I got my own cat, named Mose, in 2005. He came from a local cat rescue organization and had his very own stuffed white teddy bear (which, the staff insisted, go home with him!). I raised him from a kitten and a finer cat never existed. He became bi-coastal — meaning, he had two homes; my home in the mountains and my wife’s home in the valley below. Unfortunately, whilst at my wife’s house, he exited out the dog door one evening and never returned.

I don’t think he was predated; I believe he wandered off and was captured by a local neighbor.

He was a great cat; friendly, loving, swift to ramp up the Cat Motor. I can only hope that he found a good family who are treating him well. He even won over my wife, who is a Dog Person and not a Cat Person in the slightest.

I miss Mose to this day. I miss him terribly. He used to be my blogging buddy (see the photo) and would lay on my upstairs desk with his head over the keyboard as I would create posts, snow falling outside the window, warmed by my desk lamp.

In Winter he would also jump up on the bed and nose himself under the covers, and sleep at my side or at my feet. If I lay on my side, he would curl himself up between my arm and my body. He knew where the Heat Generator was located.

Because of my inconsistent schedule, I cannot have any more animals at my house. Sometimes I’m at my house three days a week; sometimes I’m here four days a week. Sometimes I’m at my house for only one day. Sometimes, schedule-dependent, I won’t hit my house for two weeks. The fact that I cannot have another cat disappoints me greatly.

I still work, I’m not retired, so I am subject to work.

I’d love to have my own dog, or my own cat. But quite frankly, that is not in the cards.

I must settle for my Feral Cat Duo. They greet me, loudly, when I return home, no matter the time, no matter the day. And they always manage to bring a spontaneous smile to my face.

I would not want to be a crew member on the shuttle Endeavor.

They have what is termed a “gouge” or a “divot” on the bottom of their shuttle.

NASA has decided that an EVA to repair the gouge is too dangerous to be warranted. First, the facts as reported from CNN via NASA:

Endeavour’s bottom thermal shielding was pierced by a piece of debris that broke off the external fuel tank shortly after liftoff last week.

The debris, either foam insulation, ice or a combination of both, weighed just one-third of an ounce but packed enough punch to carve out a 3 ½-inch-long, 2-inch-wide gouge and dig all the way through the thermal tiles. Left completely exposed was a narrow 1-inch strip of the overlying felt fabric, the last barrier before the shuttle’s aluminum structure.

Stop right there. Read that carefully.

“Left completely EXPOSED was a narrow 1-inch strip of the overlying felt fabric, the last barrier before the shuttle’s aluminum structure.”

Meaning: yes, the “divot” is small but it extends completely to the aluminum frame of the shuttle itself.

Let’s review a few facts:

The shuttle Columbia broke apart on February 1st of 2003 when a piece of insulation the “size of a small briefcase” broke off the main propellant tank during launch. The debris struck the leading edge of the left wing on the number 8 reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) tile, damaging the shuttle’s thermal protection system.

Lest we forget, the Columbia astronauts literally burned up during re-entry because the massive temperatures generated whilst the BOTTOM of the shuttle contacted the increasing oxygen of earth’s atmosphere created horrible jets of unimaginable heat which bypassed the thermal tiles into the frangible and delicate frame and structure beneath (oddly enough, you can purchase a tile from Russia’s space shuttle, the Buran, on the internet) — each shuttle containing more than 34,000 custom-cut separate tiles.

Space shuttle tiles have to accommodate temperatures ranging from -250 degrees in the bitter depths of space, to 3,000+ degrees during re-entry.

I suspect at this point you can do the math or what I call the “logical extension” yourself. Tiles provide massive protection to the shuttle.

I have some major concerns for STS-118 Commander Scott Kelly and his crew.

Tiles on the space shuttle range in thickness from 1 to 5 inches.

This “gouge” proffers a route directly from the external skin of the shuttle, unimpeded to the “felt fabric” and its basic metal structure — bypassing its mitigational tiles.

The American space shuttle system has had its tragedies, beginning with Challenger and then morphing to Columbia.

My post and my concern have nothing to do with denigrating America; it has everything to do with technology and our refusal to upgrade each and every shuttle platform.

I will willingly pay for an upgrade to our shuttle system in order to impose our will into space; in order to service and insert our satellites into space; in order to rule over this arena; in order to snatch foreign satellites from space and destroy them; in order to recover our technology or recover threatening technology or rescue our citizens.

But for God’s sake, let’s not sacrifice our own people simply because it is either expedient, because we are stupid, or because we have various corporate and/or government cultures in conflict.

We are better than that.

Let us abandon this shuttle system and create a NEW and a more effective and efficient platform to enable our space goals.

In my opinion, the STS program is far beyond moribund.

I can only hope we do not have another Columbia/friction/re-entry disaster.

Another reason the Dutch aren’t respected — or don’t even truly “factor” in terms of world events — and are primarily ignorable:

Catholic churches in the Netherlands should use the name Allah for God to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians, says a Dutch bishop.

Tiny Muskens, the bishop of Breda, told the Dutch TV program “Network” Monday night he believes God doesn’t mind what he is called, Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported.

The Almighty is above such “discussion and bickering,” he insisted.

Muskens points to Indonesia, where he served 30 years ago, as an example for Dutch churches. Christians in the Middle East also use the term Allah for God.

“Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years,” Muskens said. “In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can’t we start doing that together?”

Number One: “Tiny Muskens”? You’re kiddin’ me. . .

Number Two: Why stop there? Let’s just get it over with and start praying to Mecca five times daily, eh?

So: Moonbat or insane?

I say: dangerously stupid; a nice triumvirate.