"Is anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order." - Spike Milligan

Local authorities arrested a woman in her 50's whom they found in her neighbor's chicken coop. She'd killed six of the chickens with a wooden stake. While making that arrest they noticed the woman's house next door had smoke coming out of it, so they went to see the cause. They found an exercise ball in the oven.

Our Home Depot doesn't rent trucks for getting stuff home so I've reserved a U-Haul trailer for Monday. It will only cost me $15 for the day and it will just hold a 4x8' sheet of T1-11 paneling. I went to Lowe's this afternoon to make sure they have what I want and discovered what I want costs more than I'll pay, so I'm getting primed composite sheets with a grove 8" on center.
Hey, it's a chicken coop.

I spent the morning doing more demo on Fred. Good progress, and I'm pretty sure those are ants.

I think there's something wrong with our refrigerator. It's old and primitive, but we just want it to last until we build our tiny house. I'm not sure it's going to make it. Runs and runs and runs and runs. All the while I can hear the electric meter spinning outside.

They're not terrorists. Their primary goal is not to incite terror, their chief aim is to bring down decadent western culture and replace it with an Islamic state that enforces Sharia law. Terror is just an added benefit. They are Islamic extremists, whether or not some politicians want to use that term.

There may have been a time when ISIS could be contained, but the events of the last month indicate their growth and reach has taken them beyond that point. They brought down a Russian airliner, carried out multiple attacks in Paris, took over a luxury hotel in Bali, and seem to run whole sections of Belgium. ISIS must be defeated.

Those who still believe ISIS will somehow lose momentum and cycle out of existence, or collapse under the weight of their ambitions should read up on Neville Chamberlain, the isolationist Prime Minister of England who refused to acknowledge the threat Hitler presented. We know how that went.

I read an interesting article earlier today but can't find it now. It made the point that our military is more than capable of destroying ISIS, and doing so in short order. Look at their successes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem: as good as our military is, our State Department sucks.

The allies won WWII by defeating the Axis powers, and then the Marshall plan helped Germany and Japan to rebuild, both in terms of economic and governmental infrastructure. The State Department could not or would not do the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so once our military left the vacuum was filled by opportunistic bad guys. The replacement was not much better than what we removed.

The article made the point that if we take out ISIS and end Assad's rule in Syria we'll be faced with another iteration of the same problem 5-10 years later unless we can work with the Syrians to rebuild their society as a functioning, stable country operating under the rule of law. That's what we should have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those were valid campaigns well executed by our military, only to be abandoned by our State Dept.

Yeah, interesting.