The lovely and beauteous Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has decided she wishes the equally-beauteous and sensible John P. Murtha to be House majority leader.

You recall John “Jack” Murtha — I made a few, ahem, “posts” about some of his proclivities and beliefs in the past. Those who recall know I typified Mr. Murtha, a war veteran, as one who is well grounded, logical, rational and having perspective and proportion. And then there was that Moonbat Of The Week thing.

A couple times.

Once I read of this decision, the little girl’s voice from Poltergeist rang in my head: “they’re here.”

From WorldNetDaily:

Some Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups say they are baffled that Pelosi would go out of her way to back Murtha’s candidacy after pledging to make the new 110th Congress the most ethical and corruption-free in history.

Oh c’mon, what’s the issue? — more crap spread by GOP fuddy-duddies? Perhaps something like this:

Though only 13 seconds of those tapes are available publicly showing Murtha conditionally declining a $50,000 bribe “at this point,” in his words, a 1980 Washington Post report by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative columnist Jack Anderson revealed a shocking transcript of recordings never released to the public.

Anderson characterized the Pennsylvania Democrat’s interaction with the FBI as “perhaps the saddest scene on the secret Abscam videotapes. … He refused to take the money, but his reason was hardly noble.”

“I want to deal with you guys awhile before I make any transactions at all, period,” Murtha explained. “After we’ve done some business, well, then I might change my mind. … I’m going to tell you this. If anybody can do it – I’m not B.S.-ing you fellows – I can get it done my way. There’s no question about it.”

Murtha went from boasting about his ability to get things done in Congress to explaining his hesitation about taking money.

“All at once, some dumb [expletive deleted] would go start talking eight years from now about this whole thing and say [expletive deleted], this happened,” Murtha says, according to the transcript. “Then in order to get immunity so he doesn’t go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people. So the [S.O.B.] falls apart.”

The FBI undercover officer then suggests: “You give us the banks where you want the money deposited.”

“All right,” agreed Murtha. “How much money we talking about?”

“Well, you tell me,” says the FBI undercover operative.

“Well, let me find out what is a reasonable figure that will get their attention,” said Murtha, “because there are a couple of banks that have really done me some favors in the past, and I’d like to put some money in.”

Here’s what Murtha says after the public video cuts off: “…You know, we do business together for a while. Maybe I’ll be interested and maybe I won’t. Right now, I’m not interested in those other things. Now, I won’t say that some day, you know, I, if you made an offer, it may be I would change my mind some day.”

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, CREW, questioned Pelosi’s endorsement of Murtha, listing the congressman in its report “Beyond DeLay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and five to watch).”

Just like Clinton: the “most ethical administration ever.”

Yeah right.

BZ

Today I awakened at 7 am sharp and could not go back to bed. Sunday is usually a great day to sleep in but that was not going to occur.

I ended up taking breakfast at The Summit restaurant in Soda Springs at about the 7,000-foot level in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Great breakfast!

I shot some photographs of the Donner Lake area and spied a Union Pacific train heading downhill past Shed 47, which is on the south side of Donner. I shot this next photograph in Norden as the UP train headed downhill in dynamic braking mode.

“Downhill” became a recent issue with another train where two Harsco employees recently lost their lives. I decided I would hike to this spot, to see if I could approach the area for photographs. This decision cost me four hours hiking, 7 miles over rocky ballast, and yielded an area not unlike that of a ghost town.

Two men died here. I could smell the diesel fuel all over. The winds blew and the pines shed their needles. Two light generators sat unattended. Pizza boxes were discarded about. A cardboard box marked “drinking water” sat atop a generator. I afforded myself a few of these bottled waters. Like most derailments I’ve seen, wheelsets sat pushed aside. At first blush, the train on which they were riding began to accumulate speed downhill and efforts to scrub this speed yielded no results. Perhaps by my accompanying photo you can see that the train derailed to the right on a curve to the left.

Union Pacific managed to re-open the two damaged tracks. The track on the left is the downhill or westbound track. The right track is for uphill traffic. A slow order is in effect for this area.

Of the cars present, I could see that those remaining had burned horribly. Whilst I was examining the wreckage, an eastbound #6 California Zephyr Amtrak passenger train passed at 10 mph under a yellow caution flag.

No doubt, each and every passenger, and every crew member looked closely at the wreckage remaining at this site where, clearly, two persons perished.

Passengers note this with amusement; train crews shake their heads and speculate: could this have been me? What will my family say upon my passing?

UP purposely opens the trackage as quickly as possible so that commerce can continue.

And the trains keep rolling.

BZ

My father was born on April 13th, 1920.

They married on April 24th, 1942, in Lake Tahoe amidst no one other than themselves — to the chagrin of their respective families.

From there my father was shipped to the 8th Air Force for his requisite tour and then back to California. It was decided that he would become an instructor in the B-25 Mitchell at Mather Air Force Base.

He said that, whilst there, he came across Jimmy Stewart who was more of a man than a greater percentage of others he encountered.

My mother died on May 14th, 2002. She ran out of air.

The rains of 2006 are beginning.

BZ

My grandfather, on my father’s side, served in World War I.

My grandfather’s name was Verto Alley.

He was born on March 13th, 1896, and passed away at the age of 82 years, 7 months, 21 days, on November 4th, 1978.

My father told me, even now, that his goal was to at least match the number of years on this planet by his father.

My Dad has survived any number of operations and, despite them, turned 87 this year. He has managed to survive his own father by 5 years.

As far as he is concerned, according to what he told me, everything past 82 is gravy.

In 1917, Verto was just 21 years old. Before that, he attended the Kansas City School of Law in 1914 at the age of 18.

Despite the potential of his attending law school, and his passing of high school at a remarkably young age, he served in World War I.

The photo at the right is what he carried during the war, of his then-girlfriend and later his wife, Kay Johns.

How glamorous and romantic is that?

That would be like pilots carrying photos of their girlfriends covering certain instruments on each flight they mastered.

On the earth, “ground-pounders” carried photos of their gals in the liners of their helmets.

Navy pilots carried their gals in their cockpits.

This specific photo carried my grandfather through World War I.

I knew my Grandmother as Katherine. I see that Verto called her Katy.

He did whatever it took to get him through.

He survived the war, married Katy, and my father was the result plus two uncles:

Richard: my father;

Bill: the youngest (and went down on the carrier Yorktown during WWII);

Jim: still lives in Highland Park, TX today.

There will be another post.

BZ