More Songs of Dying on the Highway

I just posted that song by the Barnyard Stompers because it's my favorite one that they do, but as I was reflecting on it today I realized that 'death on the highway' is a pretty significant theme for touring Texas bands. I guess if you are a band that makes its living on the road, and your roads happen to be in Texas, you spend an awful lot of time on those highways. Enough time, manifestly, for existential angst to set in.

Here's one by Bob Wayne, who is one of my favorites working today.

It'll probably be Sunday when most of you see this, so you might want to pass over that one until Monday or next weekend. 

Here's one that goes with the last post, because half of it's about dying on the road and the other half is about college sports teams.

There are doubtless more. If you have a favorite, add it in the comments.

Justice on the Gridiron

One rarely encounters anything close to true justice in the world; one never meets any Platonic form in the street, but Justice in particular seems unlikely to show its face among human beings. 

Today, however, we did see something close. The committee that decides such things had chosen to rank the University of Tennessee's football team #1 in the nation because it was undefeated, and had beaten Alabama. It placed the Georgia Bulldogs at #3 even though they were also undefeated and the defending national champions. 

What happened today was that Georgia played Tennessee.

It was a very professional, strategic destruction. Georgia went up three touchdowns to two field goals in the first half, and then spent the second half denying the field on a prevent basis. They didn't get greedy; they didn't try to run up the score. They just burned the clock. Tennessee finally scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter, but it never got close to coming back. Georgia only scored one more field goal, but scoring more points was not their tactical priority. They had plenty of points; they needed to bleed the clock for every point they allowed. The opposing quarterback, a promising young man named Hooker, was sacked six times. 

Justice is likely to be done in the next set of standings. 

Don't Mind Dying on the Highway

That's the Outlaw country / metal band known as the Barnyard Stompers. If any of you like that and are inclined to the highway, they'll be playing tomorrow night at the Bobarossa Saloon. 

By Their Fruits

Or, why black Republicans 'ain't'... er, acceptable. 

How can we distinguish between the different types of Black Republicans? Johnson contends, “we can judge them by their words and deeds.”

What type of Black Republican is Stuber? He was recruited by White Republican leadership to run against Ammons, the only African American clerk in Champaign County history. Like Deering, “the hard, overt and aggressive” White supremacist, Stuber is an election denier.

And like the incompetent, subliterate and coonish Herschel Walker, Stuber reiterates “massa” Trump’s talking points. Intimating fraud, he cast aspersions on the 2020 elections. Stuber alleged votes were not counted in Georgia and Arizona, and further declared, “Champaign County may have stopped counting. I don’t know.” But during a late August interview with The News-Gazette’s Tom Kacich, he dissembled when asked if Trump had won. Again, disingenuously claiming uncertainty, he stated, “I don’t know if he truly was the winner.”

About a month later, similar to Walker and nearly all election deniers, Stuber miraculously backtracked. Without explanation, he affirmed, “Joe Biden was legally elected president of the United States.” I find his reversal unbelievable. Indeed, I believe it’s a tactical move to deceive the electorate.

Now, if any of you had written anything like the remarks about Herschel Walker being forwarded there, people would be rightly outraged and deem the speech explicitly racist. 

I do wish people would stand by the honest and demonstrable truth that the election was illegal in that it was conducted on terms altered by executive branch officials without legislative input, and therefore unconstitutional in that the Constitution clearly states that the legislative branch shall set the terms of elections; and that, therefore, there is no legitimate government of the United States. That is, however, perhaps an unacceptable position for anyone of a conservative temperament: on the principle of 'the king is dead, long live the king,' the idea is that the government cannot be so impermanent as to cease to exist except in the most extraordinary of cases. To hold otherwise is to court the chaos of the world, which whatever else violates that most conservative principle of stability.

For people to be forbidden from raising the point that the election was extremely dodgy at minimum, however, is silly. It was conducted with radical departures from the rules established by the laws of many of the states involved in it, every one of which made it less secure. Questions about its legitimacy should be perfectly acceptable, as should be insistences that future elections abide by the law or that laws should be crafted to create more certainty and credibility for election results. 

Normality

It's hard to realize how bad things have gotten outside of the wilderness in which I have fastened myself. I used to go to this part of Union Station on a regular basis, and it was as advertised a thriving shopping district. Here, where we have happy children and dogs, hikers and backpackers, picnics and boat trips, everything seems like America hasn't changed all that much. I have to look at the news to remember that Washington, D.C. has turned itself into a post-apocalyptic nightmare -- as has San Francisco and many other cities. 

Probably a lot more Americans live in the parts of the nation that have horrified themselves than elsewhere, though. The country has been badly hurt even if there remain oases beyond the concrete. 

Search & Rescue in Panthertown

At least they picked a pretty place to get lost.

This morning was spent rescuing some hikers from the Panthertown wilderness. There is not and never was a town in "Panthertown." It is named for the panthers, which are still regularly attested by backpackers in this area. Panthertown also includes a bear sanctuary region.

A map of today's SAR area.

Aside from taking a while, this rescue went as well as you could want. The hikers had a chilly night. One of them had fallen into a creek during the previous day, so her clothes were wet. They were from Colorado, so they weren't used to land navigation in heavily forested country where even clear landmarks can be obscured by trees and ridges. Making a fire in an alpine rainforest like this is not like making a fire out West, either: it takes a special skillset to know how to obtain sufficiently dry wood and get it going in this environment. 

Still and all, everyone is fine and now back on their way to food and rest somewhere warm and dry. 

Halloween

The Fire Dog was worn out by all the children. 

Jack. 

 

Samhain