Great Britain slipped into recession again this week. Its worth another view of how close we came to economic collapse:
The HBO movie was good. The book was so much better….and rather shocking.
Chuck Colson died Saturday. I think he will be remember more for his post Watergate actions than the Un-American acts he managed in Nixon’s White House. Regrettably today’s short attention span media will focus on the last years of his life rather than painfully share again with America the lessons of those in control of power in the beltway.
Chuck was a member of the Watergate Seven and will be forever tied to the illegal actions of breaking into the private offices of psychiatrist Dr. Lewis Fielding and stealing files relating to patient Dan Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers. We should not look past his role of authoring Nixon’s Enemies List and his role in the Vietnamization of the war in SouthEast Asia.
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Why I drive
Kinda forget over the last ten years the joy of driving this car. Thanks to a very funny cast for reminding me why BMW is the ultimate driving machine. The laughs really begin at 4:15 mark.
Best thing I ever did was christen a new set of break pads at Road America for a BMW performance driving event.
After reading 3,500ish pages I reached a breaking point. I set aside the remaining volumes of the Pentagon Papers and began reading Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War.
Much to my surprise this book has been very highly recommended. 
Sebastian Junger in the New York Times wrote “one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam—or any war.”
And Mark Bowden who wrote Black Hawk Down commented “(it is) so authentic, so moving and so intense, so relentlessly dramatic, that there were times I wasn’t sure I could stand to turn the page…There have been some very good novels about the Vietnam War, but Matterhorn is the first great one, and I doubt it will ever be surpassed.”
What struck me in The Matterhorn that has been echoing in my mind about the Pentagon Papers was the intentional misleading of enemy killed. At the end of the third chapter a firefight with canon fire killed two NVA soldiers. However as author Karl Marlantes described in the post battle briefing the number of enemy dead was increased as it was sent further up the chain of command.
Is this all possible? Great product marketing nevertheless.