Dogs - gotta love 'em

Simpson Springs Station - on the Pony Express Trail - West Desert of Utah

Simpson Springs was a water source on the trail west from Salt Lake City across the desert regions. It was first called Egan Spring for explorer Howard Egan, but renamed Simpson Springs for Captain James H. Simpson following his work to establish a military mail route to California in 1858.

The site was undoubtedly used by Native Americans and possibly the Fremont Indian cultures due to its good water supply. The old river bed several miles west has provided evidence of indigenous activity.

Simpson Springs was established as an Overland Mail station by George Chorpenning for mule train connection between Salt Lake and Sacramento.It later became an important Pony Express, Overland Stage, and later, Wells Fargo stations on the trail through Utah desert. The station was discontinued after completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. It continued to be used for local freight between Fairfield and Ibapah into the 1890s.

The location was used as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In January 1942, the U.S. military established Dugway Proving Ground in the area, which was occupied by military personnel through World War II. The existing building on the site was built by the Future Farmers of America as a replica in 1975.

top photo: Andrew McAllister

A metaphor for Obama's foreign policy.

It's fallen and it can't get up.

Netanyahu just put the smack down on Obama's foreign policy fecklessness in his speech to Congress.  We truly need some adults to be in charge of our country, which we certainly don't have now, and the Prime Minister just reminded us of what such an adult acts and looks like.

The Frozen Chosin - American ingenuity to the rescue

“This sixteen-foot hole was blown by Chinese soldiers in the single road from the Chosin Reservoir to the sea. Bridge sections were dropped by C-119s to span the gap and allow the retreat to continue.”

Is this not the act of a tyrant, a king?

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is "very interested" in the idea of raising taxes through unilateral executive action.

Seems to me that taxation without representation was the genesis of the revolutionary war.   Yet, in our current political climate, is not Obama safe in believing he can unilaterally declare a tax, given the craven support of the media for anything he does, as well as the treasonous agreement of the Democrats in Congress that he should have such power?  Is not nearly half the country dependent on government money in one way or another, and thus in at least tacit support for the plan to tax the productive and prudent by any means necessary to keep that sweet spice flowing into their pockets?

The next time you are out on the town, notice how many businesses and shops have signs out enthusiastically proclaiming that they accept EBT ( which is welfare money ).
That isn't just a sign of the times, it's a sign of the serious decay in society that such a huge number of people are on the spice of government money, which in turn is really your money forced out of your pocket by the threat of jail, and then handed over to the lazy, the indigent and the corrupt in exchange for their votes.

Now, to support the expectations of that giant constituency of freeloaders, the Great Leader is seriously considering simply declaring it his right to take more of your money.  His children must be fed, naturally!  

If he is allowed to succeed in this, then what is to stop him from anything else?

Next, Obama will be serving up baby elephants to eat at the White House, because why not?

But hey, that's Africa!

Robert Mugabe, tyrant of the state of Zimbabwe, celebrates his 91st birthday by feasting on baby elephant, while denouncing the practice of allowing white people to come to Africa on safari.

Here the 91 year old enjoys a bite of little Dumbo, while figuring out ways to keep the white devil and his money out of the country.

This was the predicament in which one local landowner named Tendai Musasa found himself when figuring out what he would get Mugabe for his 91st birthday party, which cost $1 million and was held this past weekend. “We regard him as our father,” Musasa said to the Los Angeles Times of a leader who has been in power for 35 years and is widely criticized for his human rights record, disastrous economic policies and impoverished citizenry. “Our provider, our hero. We regard him as a very courageous man.”

For such a courageous man, who years ago instituted violent and contentious land-redistribution policies, Musasa would bring out the big guns. He would kill a baby elephant.

But it’s not such a big deal, he said. The elephant was no good anyhow.

So it goes in the classic third world despotism.  

A wounded British soldier showing the shrapnel damage to his steel helmet caused near Beaumont-Hamel, on the Somme Front in December 1916.

Lucky man

Feels great until you have to get out.

Mondays are like that

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

 Baltimore painter Alfred Jacob Miller visited Fort Laramie in 1837, during the waning years of the fur trade. He painted this painting from sketches two decades later.  

Looking Glass, Nez Perce chief, was five years old out in Oregon when this was sketched by Miller.

Kulusuk, Greenland by Haukur Sigurðsson

Looking Glass (Allalimya Takanin) c.1832-1877

Looking Glass was the war chief who, along with Chief Joseph, directed the 1877 Nez Perce retreat from eastern Oregon to Montana and on to the Canadian border.  The son of a prominent Nez Perce chief, Looking Glass was born around 1832 in what is now western Montana.  Although he bitterly resented white encroachment on his tribal lands, he opposed going to war against the United States over it's plans to force the Nez Perce onto a small reservation assigned to them at Lapwai, Idaho.

When the Nez Perce and the US army first clashed at Whitebird Canyon on June 17, 1877, Looking Glass was already living on the reservation at Lapwai, as he had promised to do.  Nevertheless, General Howard believed that Looking Glass would soon join the fighting, and so sent a detachment of troops to arrest him.  As could be foreseen, these plans backfired when Looking Glass escaped arrest and did join the Chief Joseph, as Howard had feared he would do.

For better or worse, the flight of the Nez Perce exhibited the hallmarks of Looking Glass' leadership.  A respected battlefield commander, he convinced the tribe to attempt an escape to Montana, against Joseph's advice.  Looking Glass encouraged the Nez Perce to travel east and seek sanctuary with the Crow nation in Montana.  He had helped the Crow defeat the Dakota Sioux in a battle in 1874 and considered them friends. However, the Crow, fearing retaliation by the U.S. military, refused to grant the Nez Perce sanctuary.  Looking Glass then persuaded the tribe to stop at Big Hole, where he incorrectly thought they would be safe from attack.  After soldiers under the command of Colonel John Gibbon surprised the tribe there and inflicted heavy casualties, Looking Glass lost his prestige as a battlefield commander.

Nearly two months later, when the Nez Perce were exhausted and surrounded by General Nelson Miles and his troops in Montana's Bearpaw Mountains, Looking Glass remained stubbornly opposed to surrender.  At this extremity, however, Chief Joseph had concluded that  surrender was the only viable option, and on October 5th he rode out to Miles to turn over his rifle.  At this same time, Looking Glass set out to Canada to join Sitting Bull's band, but before he could make the border, he was shot and killed by a Cheyenne scout.  He died a free man, and a warrior. 

WTF is going on here?

Looks like disaster is imminent.

Flying close together

Bad cat