The Blaisdell Blog

On March 9, 2010, at a meeting of the Legislative Conference of the National Association of Counties, Nancy Pelosi uttered the stupidest, laziest, most arrogant comment I have ever heard from a living Congressman.   You all know it, “…we have to pass the [health care] bill so you can find out what’s in it…”   Personally, I would be ashamed to take a salary for writing laws that I publicly admitted I had not read and did not comprehend.   But, personally, neither would I have cosmetic surgery that made me look like I was permanently goosed by Barney Frank.   Of course, Pelosi’s only qualification for office appears to be that she was daddy’s little girl and, unfortunately, it shows—all the time!             Now that Obamacare is upon us, the reality of finding out, “…what’s in it…” is falling upon us like a hair vest.   Typical of the function of hair vests, we all have to do penance.             I thought you might like to see what kind of penance we will be doing in dollars f

The United Nations is at the center of a perfect storm of meteorological misinformation. This effete debating society, loaded with upper caste socialists and pseudo-intellectuals, has decided it likes playing, “chicken little.”   They have adopted a highly questionable and deliberately edited paper blaming global warming on humans.   Not just any humans of course.   The culprits are invariably Judeo-Christian, capitalistic, self governing and successful.   The United Nations is unable to blame bad things on genuinely bad people.   Instead, they like blaming only those people who actually pay the bills for these free-loaders.   It’s the same reason teen-agers despise their parents—a combination of jejune guilt and jealousy.   If you are a failed/fascists/socialist/third world/Islamic human you get a pass.   The rest of us get blamed for the apocalypse.   Oh, wait a minute.   “Apocalypse” would endorse a Christian viewpoint and we know Christians are part of the problem, so not the a

What do these four people all have in common:   Roy Rogers, Chuck Yeager, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Vice-President Dick Cheney?   Yup, they have all taken part in the historic Lander, Wyoming one shot antelope hunt.   My father talked about, and yearned to take part in this hunt for as long as he lived. The one shot hunt began around a campfire in 1939.   Two hunters, Harold Evans of Lander, Wyoming and Hank Dahl of Golden, Colorado talked about the difficulty of hunting with muzzle loading guns where only one shot was possible before the animal (dinner!) was on the run.   Evans and Dahl ended up challenging each other to such a hunt, selecting the high flying antelope as their prey.   By 1940, the One Shot Antelope Hunt became a reality.   It has continued ever since, excepting the war years of 1942-1945.   Teams were originally from Wyoming and Colorado ; Texas joined the competition in the second season and the teams grew to the present 8, each with three members.

There are certain markers of encroaching old age that can not be ignored.   I am not talking about your first gray hair (no, not the ones on your head).   Nor am I talking about the first time a waitress turns your menu to the back and points out the senior specials.    I am talking about the official, irrevocable evidence that you have entered your declining years which comes from the mouth of babes.               Sunday I was out for my morning walk.   I passed a cute little girl, playing on the lawn while her Dad was washing the car.    She was all in sequins and tutus, with black patent leather shoes.   I waved at her as I went by and said, “Hi, Sweetie, aren’t you pretty!”    As I passed by I heard her call out, “Daddy, I just met a really nice Grandma.” Grandma! Yup, one look was all she needed.   Those lines?   Those wrinkles?   That skin?   I qualified.   I am a grandma, period.    I took the comment with a smile (ruefully damn it, but I smiled!).   Now, mind yo

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, met for the last time to sign the document they had created.   The Constitution, even more than the Declaration of Independence, makes us the finest country in the world.   Many of these names are familiar to us (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin…) others are unknown (George Read, Jared Ingersoll…), but they all get the credit for this amazing document. The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to not only govern themselves, but govern

Americans are an exceptional people.   We don’t think that gives us license, but it does give us cause for pride.   It ought to give others reason to pause.   We are graced with this exceptionality by the culture we created from being a frontier people.   Our ancestors were the ones who left the security of the known for a land that offered two things, both in extraordinary abundance: toil and opportunity.   We have precious little patience for those who are not willing to accept both of those.   I am guilty of the hubris of thinking that being an American is better than being from any other country.   That does not equal imperialist ambitions.    We would do nothing but adulterate out strength and character by acquiring additional territory.   Neither do I think that we are better intellectually than other people.   I know that genius and inventive acumen are equally distributed throughout the human population.   That means, by the way, that the third world countries are an int

Theodore Roosevelt is one of our five best presidents.    He burned hot, bright and fast, and died in his bed at just 60 years old.   Roosevelt was a brilliant man, a voracious reader and a working human dynamo.    Teddy Roosevelt was also the first United States President to win the Nobel Prize for Peace.               Here is the back story:   Early in the 20 th century Russia and Japan were imperial powers fighting over the cold bones of Manchuria and Korea .   Neither country had a legitimate claim to the territory, but those who are in the wrong are always the most belligerent.    Russia wanted the warm water port of Port Arthur , and the Japanese were feeling their oats after the Sino-Japanese War (it’s pretty easy to defeat people who are binding the feet of their women).   War broke out in February of 1904 when Japan attacked and decimated the Russian fleet (a lesson not lost on them some 37 years later).             The Russians, who saw their last effective

I first wrote this two years ago, and repeat it today in honor of all who died to satisfy the wanton lust for blood of a pusillanimous madman.    I had slept in, taken my morning walk late and was just making my first cup of coffee when my daughter called me.   “Mom,” her urgent voice said, “I saw the plane fly into the tower.   I saw it, Mom!   I was watching the television in the break room and that plane just flew into the second tower.”   That is how I learned that our country was under attack.   America began its emotionally tumultuous day— Pearl Harbor laid out before our eyes.   My husband and I are in the habit of having a glass of wine with dinner and toasting to any small, significant or touching thing that happens during our day.   That night, as I raised my glass, we both quietly spoke the words that were uppermost in our minds, “To the United States of America.”                 Of all the lessons that can be taken from that day, one of the least discussed a

Marion Robert Morrison was not the best actor in the world.   He certainly was never up to Shakespeare, but he knew that.   Mr. Morrison, better known as John Wayne, knew exactly who and what he was—Hamlet, “no,” Hondo, “yes.”   There are few actors who seem so entirely comfortable inside their own skin.               I was reminded of all of this when I watched the movie, McClintock! last night.   There is absolutely nothing about McClintock! that is politically correct.   But there they are: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara (a frequent co-star) and an all star cast having too much fun, drinking too much, acting in stereotype, and having the best mud fight of any movie any where.   “You’ve caused a lot of trouble here, Pilgrim.   Somebody should teach you a lesson.   But I won’t.   I won’t.   To hell I won’t.” This may not be the best movie the Duke ever made, but it makes my top ten.   Whether playing the damaged, weary pilot, Dan Roman, in The High and the Mighty or the

A man, so clearly filled with evil, was standing in a hunched, guarded posture on the balcony of a high rise apartment.   He had a woolen ski mask pulled over his face.   Earlier he had gunned down two Israeli Olympic athletes.   Nine more were being held hostage in the interior of Building 31 of the Munich Olympic Village.   The date was September 5, 1972—41 years ago, today.   His photo is instantly recognizable.               If you are my age, you know how this ends.   Barely 24 hours later, in a criminally botched transfer of the hostages and terrorists at a NATO airbase, all nine Israeli hostages and five of the eight Arab terrorists died amid gun fire, explosion and fire.   Three of the terrorists were captured alive but, incredibly (!!!!), were released by the German government when Lufthansa Flight 615 was high jacked on October 29.    The man who engineered this massacre died of kidney failure at the age of 73, an unapologetic murderer to the end.   I hope he suffered