Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

The Gang That Won’t Shoot Straight
It began when ol’ Dubya gave Al Gore the boot,
Those gun-hating Dems really started to shoot.
Their weapons of choice though leave much to desire
For they’re usually off-target and so often misfire.

In his blustering barrages, as everyone knows,
Al Gore is most likely to blow off his own nose.
And in hitting his targets, Teddy’s chances are slimmer
He’s no better at bombast than he was as a swimmer.

John Kerry took aim at Bush’s war in Iraq
But salvoes from Swiftees left him smoking black.
Daschle went to Dakota with all barrels loaded;
When the smoke finally cleared, he had clearly imploded.

They were gunning for George, but without enough practice
And ended up full of holes, their butts full of cactus.
That dimwitted cowboy turned out muy mal
Blew the Libs clean away at their O.K. Corral

Howard Dean, more than most, embodies the phrase,
“Shoot yourself in the foot,” yet may see better days.
If DNC chiefs decide the Party needs Deaning,
Shooting yourself in the foot will have Party-wide meaning.

Senator Boxer shot holes in her own reputation,
Taking potshots at Condi before the whole nation.
We can’t wait for the chance to see Nancy Pelosi,
Take aim at ol’ George: “BAM!” there goes her toesy.

We’ll not tolerate lying, fumes Senator Dayton,
A lightweight compared to the lady he’s baitin.’
But he shoots from the lip and quite clearly he misses,
While eighty-five colleagues hand out Condi kisses.

This “Gang that won’t shoot straight,” is really no puzzle,
Did you ever see a Lib knew his butt from his muzzle?
Have you fathomed the lesson that runs through this poem?
All guns should have locks if there are Libs in the home.

Russ Vaughn

If there is one thing most of us can agree upon, both left and right, is our need to break the hold Saudi Arabia has on our politicians and diplomats.

Center for Religious Freedom has posted some information that it spread through mosques in the US by Wahhabi evangelicals.

Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations;

One of the reasons, unspoken, for invading Iraq is the need to remove our forces from Saudi Arabia. To realize the fruits of this relocation, Iraq must become stable. Only then will we have the luxury of snubbing our noses at the House of Saud.

Of course, that is precisely what some in State and Congress fear–the loss of future employment at huge salaries to act as lobbyists for the princes.

For those of you who sent email to my bunker@ address and wondered why I never responded, my mailbox was packed from the comment spam attacks earlier this month. I managed to finally get into it through the host control panel and clean it out after I realized it would let me in once I increased to storage limit.

And since I had comments going there (which is why the spam took it down) I didn’t always see comments which were posted. SO, please don’t think I was ignoring you, unless (of course) I really was!

I think all is better now.

Larry has an interesting perspective on the train derailment in California:

Such is the case in any accident in which an SUV is involved. The car is transformed into a mangled mass of smoldering metal, while the SUV that caused the wreck remains virtually unscathed. Is that fair? How many more limbs does Max Cleland have to lose before we ban these expensive death machines from the highway?

Apparently, Jim Lago has now hit the big time! He has now been written up in Fort Wayne’s Journal Gazette.

It all started with the survey I wrote about last week which cited Fort Wayne as the dumbest city in the country. Corpus Christi came in second (or next-to-last, your choice).

Competition is in the wind, although neither city is really sure they want that medal.

Story Here.

The reactor at the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant was shut down Monday afternoon after a coolant leak was detected, officials said.

I’m no expert on nuclear power, but I do know something about heat exchangers–vital components in all nuclear power plants. What happened in Michigan was that a heat exchanger developed a leak. No radioactive material escaped.

American nuclear power plants are the safest, most monitored facilities in the world. There are multiple safeguards in place, and alarms to indicate not only problems with the system, but with these safeguards. Instantly, a pressure differential in the cooling water system or a humidity sensor tripped an alarm and the system was shut down until the reason could be discerned and fixed.

Perhaps we’ve matured in this country. The headline on Drudge, once flashing red, is now gone. I had to do a Google search to find anything about the “nuclear accident” as something like this was once called. That eases my mind about our collective reaction to such events.

We live in a country which requires copious amounts of energy–just stating the obvious. We are consumers, every one of us, including the activists who whine about our level of consumption. We fight “wars for oil” and destroy the ozone layer by using things which create ozone-depleting vapors or increase the greenhouse effect with carbon monoxide and dioxide. Yet the very people who complain about such things are the same ones who would march and lie down in the streets if any community attempted to provide the cleanest, most efficient power production vehicle known to man–nuclear power.

“I don’t want an atomic bomb in my back yard.” Well, a nuclear power plant cannot explode. It can burn, and it can melt, and it would release nasty things if that ever happened. But it can’t explode. But the emotion trumps any logical discussion.

What about waste?

Yes, there is waste. Yes, it is radioactive. It is about as radioactive as natural uranium which is scattered underground throughout the western US. It can be easily contained and buried in such a way as to not even be detectable.

We have had nuclear power plants operating in this country for forty years. The only “accident” we’ve had in that time was Three Mile Island, which resulted in panic by the usual environmental suspects. Unnecessary panic:

Estimates are that the average dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem. To put this into context, exposure from a full set of chest x-rays is about 6 millirem. Compared to the natural radioactive background dose of about 100-125 millirem per year for the area, the collective dose to the community from the accident was very small. The maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem.

When politicians and activists complain that we have no energy policy (as did Hillary Clinton this week), someone needs to point out the safety record of nuclear power and demand that we build and use such generation capability until the time when the Holy Grail of alternative energy becomes known.

Jim saw this before I found it. That’s okay–he beats me to a lot of good stories.

I wish our political parties could be as creative.