It’s late Sunday afternoon on the Left Coast and, sitting on the second floor of my Sierra Nevada aerie, I’m watching the sun shoot through the branches of the conifers and onto the last remaining deciduous trees, their yellow leaves slowly settling to the rich, needle-covered earth below. I moved wood this weekend, from my big woodpile to the secondary wood source on my deck, and then stocked the pile inside the house next to the stove. Winter is coming and I need to be ready.

I know that winter is here when I remove all the chairs from the deck, the umbrella, the tables, and take them below to the shed. I did that this weekend too. I could use a propane fill; I’m at 65% and it’s time to get on the list for a topping-up — I wonder what I’ll pay?

I’m rambling and I know it. It just feels this way. I originally was going to post about the Republicans, about President Bush, and perhaps post my Moonbat of the Week award. That just went out the window. For today, for right now, I’m over politics. Don’t want to go there. I’m just going to go where the muse takes me and, for now, it takes me to cats.

I’ve had cats all my life. I have to admit I’m a cat guy and not a dog guy. Dogs are too loud, too needy, too over-the-top. Sure, I’ve had dogs but only when I left home. We always had cats at home — that’s probably why I am why I am. I didn’t have a dog as a kid. I’ve had a few dogs but they just didn’t satisfy like a good cat. How weird is that? You thought chicks only dug cats? Well, I’m guessing it’s my personality getting in the way.

Here I go with the admission: I’m pretty much the iconoclast. I am not by nature a People Person. I dislike big cities, noise, bustle, loud people, too many people, people in general. I would not do well in New York. I lived in San Francisco for a time when I was very young but couldn’t do that now. I work in Sacramento, Fornicalia. But if I stay there too long I become anxious. At the end of my work week I cannot wait to flee. I drive over the speed limit up I-80 to reach my offramp, 70+ miles away.

I get up here, amidst the pines and blue skies and clouds and wandering roads and railroad tracks and I know I am home. The weight comes off my shoulders. The second I open the door to my house I feel totally unfettered. Make no mistake; when you get home I wish you the same feeling. If you can find that feeling in a housing tract or an apartment, more power to you. I know people who could not survive if they were more than 40′ from a Starbucks or a bus line, or a mall, a theatre, a museum, a Thai restaurant, a freeway, a Pier 1 Imports.

That’s them. It sure ain’t me.

So this weekend I went looking for another cat. I found a small cat rescue facility in lower Placer County, in Auburn. I found this great place where rescued and adoptable cats are kept in little apartments where actual people could enter the actual apartments and actually touch the cats. What a concept!

That’s how old I am. Animal shelters now keep the adoptees from the potential adopters. They cite reasons like cat viruses and diseases and the like. And they’re probably right, I must admit. But you can’t touch the animals. You can maybe stick a finger into a cage but, if caught, you have to swab gross stuff over your hands and atone. Say three Hail Marys and turn around a couple times. And then they kick you out.

Because you had the actual TEMERITY to want to touch the animal you’re thinking of saving.

Yeah yeah yeah, go ahead, rag on my ass: you don’t understand, you don’t get it, they’re keeping the cats disease free, blah blah blah blah. And then they put all those cats to death and they burn them and brush their ashes into bins and they go out with the rest of that day’s trash into the green dumpster. No big deal.

Turns out this out-of-the-way shelter has a higher placement rate than all other regular shelters. I wonder why this would be?

In any event, turns out I put in my chit to be a volunteer at the shelter. Because I felt I could actually make a difference in that place. Because it is different. And it’s not smack dab in the middle of a Massive Population — so they can afford to act and be and present themselves as they are. In ancient Egypt, for example, the cat had a special place in its culture. They were highly valued, not least for the practical reason that mice and rats could destroy a town’s food supply. Cats were often given golden jewelry and allowed to eat at the human table. Killing a cat was a capital offence and when a cat died the household would go into mourning. The Egyptian god Bast was a cat-god.

Which brings me to this weekend: I got my pneumonia shot and I got whacked in the eye. Both were painful.

I found, by sheer whimsy, a place that was delivering flu and pneumonia shots. I opted for the pneumonia shot for one very solid reason: the avian flu is coming. One does not die from the flu; oh no. One dies from pneumonia contracted via the flu. Hence my shot. I’ll be receiving an additional flu shot later this week. I would recommend your doing the same. A day later the injection site pulsed with a dull throb. But I’d do it all over again.

Later, whilst at the shelter I described above, a cat tagged me in the right eye with her paw. I think her claw might have been out for a moment. In any event, my eye swelled shut, teared up and is still somewhat painful. It’s sensitive to light and, 24 hours later, is red and uncomfortable. It feels precisely as my eye felt when I once contracted conjunctivitis.

So sorry. No amazing political post. Just a stream-of-consciousness post that doesn’t mean much of anything to anyone. Except to me.

I’ve always had cats and I want another cat. I’ll work for a rescue cat shelter. And what of Schrodinger’s Cat?

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Here’s Schrödinger’s (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

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I posit: was it worth killing the cat?

From Wikipedia:

All conservatives value tradition. Tradition does not mean simply custom, habit or nostalgia for the past, though custom does inform tradition and sustain it. For a conservative, tradition is composed of standards and institutions that have been shown to promote the good, and therefore they find authority in tradition and apply it in politics. This authority, be it a person, a literature or a way of life, is rooted in the past, and thus cannot easily change .

To keep tradition alive, conservatives pass it down from generation to generation, embodied in the eternal verities or the sophia perennis.

Conservatives accept traditional values as authoritative, and judge the world around them by the standards they have come to trust. Many conservatives believe in God, and believe that He is not only the creator of the universe, but also the Author of those conservative values they espouse.

Since conservatives believe tradition supercedes the political process, the laws and constitutions of liberal democracies that permit behavior that conflict with traditional values cause friction in their eyes. Conservatives in a democracy choose to participate, separate, or resist. They often participate in liberal republican politics, using government policy to impose or preserve their values. Good examples of this are the Christian Democratic parties in Europe.

Another method of conservative reform, imposing their values on the public, is common among nationalist or religious conservatives. This can take a relatively benign form, such as Conservative Christians trying to order public school students to pray, or a more violent form, such as Islamists putting to death anyone who blasphemes. Armed conservatives who consider their tradition to be absolute for all may become revolutionary conservatives. In Europe the Catholic-nationalist-conservative regimes of Salazar and Franco are examples.

Though relatively rare, a modern example of conservatives who withdraw from society and attempt to live their lives in traditional ways is the Amish.

The above is a common thread from the internet regarding conservatism.

Some of my high points regarding Conservatism, would be:

• Self-reliance, individual responsibility
• Fiscal conservatism
• Belief in a higher power or authority
• Smaller government
• Traditional mores, values and familial structure
• Nationalism and sovereignty

There are many, many more, of course; these are but a few that come immediately to mind.

So:

In your mind, what is a Conservative? Not a Republican; a conservative.

What are your bullet points and, in addition, what is the first or most important aspect of a true conservative?

I suspect we’ll be a bit of “all over the map” but, once in, I plan to assemble the responses and see if I can list, in order, the most important points of conservatism. There’s a reason for all of this; temporarily, just humor me if you would be so kind.

Take it away:

God Bless America.

The finest, most powerful, most beneficial, most reviled political experiment any group of mongrels, misfits, rejects and risk-takers ever assembled into a nation.

And let’s please say Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps, celebrating its 230th year — the few, the proud, the Marines — and once a Marine, always a Marine. Semper Fidelis.

After several attempts by the American colonies reconcile the Crown and the American people, the Colonial Congress decided to assume a more serious attitude. A congressional committee drafted a resolution that created a new unit: the Continental Marines. The entire legislative body approved the resolution on November 10, 1775, the celebrated birthday of the US Marines. Robert Mullan (owner of Tun Tavern, the Philadelphia inn where the original resolution was drafted) was named a Marine Captain, and Samuel Nicholas (owner of another local tavern) was designated commandant of the Continental Marines.

By the time you read this, it will be Friday, November 11th, Veteran’s Day. I wrote this post three times; the first was a lengthy missive detailing the history of the US military. Too long. I wrote a second piece; still too long and too over-the-top.

I’m making the newest post much shorter, and it gets down to this: 652,000 + Americans have given up their lives for this country, with almost 1.5 million wounded. The United States is an honorable and good country, no matter what anyone says. And our soldier have been, are, and always will be the best of the best.

Without a strong military, without men and women willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, without secure borders, everything else we do is secondary and, truly, of little consequence. How quickly we seem to forget this, even on Veteran’s Day.

If you see a soldier today, walk up to them, shake their hand and thank them for their service. Go to Soldier’s Angels and support a young soldier in Iraq. And take a moment, if you will, to reflect on what it means to be an American — and ask yourself why it is that so many people, if we are such a bad country, still die trying to reach our shores.

Yes, God Bless America, and God Bless the American soldiers, for they keep us safe and secure.

I just left some comments on Fetching Jen’s blog (go there now and read her newest post!) and those comments got me to thinking: time to expand on similar issues here.

Using a phrase I like, “doing the logical extension,” I have attempted to forecast and plot the future for the Fornicalia Republican party, and here is what I conclude:

We conservatives and Republicans left Arnold twisting in the wind yesterday. Unfortunately, he didn’t do himself many favors either.

I believe, in general, Republicans need to get out of the Nice Guy mindset and start to FIGHT. I want Bush to fight. I want Arnold to fight. Show me some guts! Show me flame and spirit! Yank out the truth and trumpet it long and hard! Precisely what Arnold didn’t do when the Dem Machine made the propositions not about the issues, but about him. He needed to do that the microsecond the Dem gloves came off.

To me, Arnold has shown a growing interest in carrying out a number of conservative ideas: no licenses for illegal immigrants, no gay marriage blessing, repeal of the fiscally onerous vehicle registration tax, the advocation via our recent propositions of state fiscal responsibility and accountability, the limiting of those very special interests, redistricting —

Okay, sidebar rant for a moment: Thank you, John Doolittle, Republican, for spending GOP money to oppose Proposition 77, you conehead! By the way, sir, I live in your district so take a wild, fanciful guess who I’m not voting for next time around?

Ideally, for governor I’d like to see Tom McClintock sitting in that chair, period. Despite the fact that I sent him $500 of my hard-earned money and received nothing in recognition — I just wanted a “thank you” letter, sir, though I see you cashed my check. I dislike being set on Ignore Mode. Grrrr. . .

Despite that, McClintock can be a bit overwhelming because he’s too logical for a politician and may actually scare people with his laser beam-like issue focus. The best part about Tom McClintock? He actually has answers to issues. Detailed answers, insights and, more importantly, actual solutions and ideas.

McClintock can, admittedly, come off as a tad aloof and arrogant. But there’s no denial that his thoughts and plans utilize logic, common sense, and are based on his senatorial and political experience. He is no neophyte to the political or budgetary games in Fornicalia.

Thinking further, McClintock is in the running for Lt. Governor of Fornicalia. We could theoretically end up with Arnold re-elected, and Tom as LG. If so, it would seem, to me, that it’s always easier to make a run for governor from the inside, so to speak.

Therefore: Arnold needs all the support he can get so that McClintock can step up when Arnold steps down.

We left the Austrian Oak wafting about last Tuesday and that was wrong; now we need to support him more than ever for two reasons: to enable the fruition of his visions (please don’t go centrist, Arnold), and to slot McClintock in for the future governship.

To those of us in the Right-thinking vein, this gets applied under the “common sense and logic” category; to some strata of overeducated white people and some Liberals, there will be a severe intake of breath and perhaps even an attempt to push a very important study to the side.

Go here to see the abstract of a referenced study from the November 2005 issue of the journal Pediatrics. Go here if you wish to see the full text of the article.

The point of the article is this: young children who live with their mothers’ boyfriends or other unrelated adults are 48 times more likely to die from child abuse.

Not twice as likely; not ten times as likely. Almost 50 times as likely.

Please first note what isn’t here: not likely to die from fathers.

Also: single parenthood is not the culprit, mother or father.

It is the “presence in the household of unrelated adults, usually a male boyfriend, that dramatically increases the risk.”

The core of their paper:

The purpose of this study was to evaluate household composition as an independent risk factor for fatal inflicted injuries among young children. We analyzed 8 years of the Missouri CFRP data to test 2 hypotheses: (1) that children residing in households with adults unrelated to them are at higher risk of inflicted-injury death than children residing in households with 2 parents and no other adults; and (2) that children living with a single parent were at no greater risk of inflicted-injury death than children living with 2 parents as long as no other adults lived in the home. Secondary objectives included conducting a descriptive analysis of perpetrator characteristics including gender, relationship to decedent child, and whether the perpetrator was a member of the decedent’s household at the time of the child’s death.

Two important factors the authors discovered:

• There was no increased risk to children in households with step or foster parents or with a single parent and no other adults.
• It is a misconception that children in single-parent households are more likely to die from inflicted injury.

I repeat (and will continue to believe, as will many of my fellow bloggers): there is no other ideal for a child other than a full and complete traditional family to include one biological mother, one biological father, and a strong, lasting relationship between the two.

On one level: a very important study. On another: so very sad.