Whym Rhymer
You'll find me opinionated and most of the time politically incorrect. I belong to no political parties or social groups, preferring independence and open options over the mindless, scripted group-think that pervades our society. Make no mistake about it, however, I am an American first and foremost -- I love my country but I'm not blind to it's imperfections -- imperfections you'll find me griping about very often. In other words, I live in the 'center' and the center is really a tough place to be. You don't have any extremists handy to give you guidelines about what to think, say or do so you have to actually figure out things for yourself.
Whymrhymer
Whymrhymer
Contact Information
Articles by Whym Rhymer
April 14, 2008
Obama's political enemies have happily labeled Obama as an "elitist" since he spoke about the reality of bitterness but that is an obvious distortion. If anything Brack Obama's "bitter" remark (as it's being called in today's news stories) shows that he may be the only candidate who can, at least occasionally, be trusted to say what he sees as the truth -- as unpopular as it may be.
April 07, 2008
There will be a next attack! They have been here on our soil before and they will be here again; how much damage they will do the next time is very much dependent on how well we have decimated their forces in the Middle-East and on how much damage we have done, up to that point, to their desire to destroy us.
April 04, 2008
The news of late has been full of pleas, propositions and petitions calling on a U.S and/or world boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics by not sending their athletes. If the world really wants to send a message to Beijing, here's how it can be done; with personal boycotts.
April 01, 2008
When Justice H. Walter Croskey ruled that "California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," he set off a firestorm of protests from homeschooling parents and organizations, not only throughout the state but throughout the country -- and rightly so.
April 01, 2008
Yesterday (3/31/08) one dream of many Cubans came true when Raul Castro did away with the laws that forbade Cuban citizens from staying in, or even entering, the island's luxury hotels and resorts. Today more dreams are coming true! Starting on April 1st cubans can now purchase things like computers, plasma TVs, electric powered bicycles and cell phones; until today those items and many other imported consumer products were only available to companies and foreign tourists.
March 26, 2008
Since it was disclosed last week by the State Department that some contract employees were caught prying into passport information about Barack Obama and John McCain the State Department has launched an investigation. They are not the only ones investigating!
March 22, 2008
Take it from a typical white person, stereotypes or not, I can certainly understand his grandmother's fear of walking past certain people (be they white, black, Hispanic or other) on any street.
March 21, 2008
Look beyond the oratory and beyond the humble facade in Obama's speech and you will see that Obama truly believes that racism in the U.S. today is a problem that the president and the U.S. government can somehow, eventually, legislate out of existence.
March 17, 2008
There was supposed to have been a time when religion was a very personal thing -- the widely circulated rumor was that if you "believed" and behaved according to those beliefs, you had a chance to save your soul to spend the eternity after this mortal existence in a paradise. On the other hand if you rejected religion or misused it there was the promise of 'brimstone.' By some standards, those must have been the good old days.
March 13, 2008
Barack Obama is where he is today, which is very close to becoming the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party, because he is intelligent, an excellent speaker and possesses that nearly mystical quality of 'charisma;' in short, he is all the things Clinton is not. Does anyone think . . . or COULD anyone seriously think that this happens only because he is black?
March 06, 2008
The Times of India reports that the atheist government of China is set to "implement the regulations on religious affairs" in order to promote "social harmony."
The statement that notified the world of this new Chinese government policy came from Jia Qinglin, the chairman of something called th...
March 03, 2008
The stink is in the air! The bitter stink of defeat! Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, can smell it in what he hopes is a victory for one of America's Liberal candidates. Either one would be fine by him -- Obama and Clinton are both poised to rapidly abandon Iraq and he, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is...
February 25, 2008
Louis Farrakhan, Minister of the Nation of Islam, spent nearly an hour last Sunday praising Barack Obama. This comes well after Obama clearly denounced Farrakhan's anti-Semitic statements and criticized his long-time friend and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Junior, for honoring and praising Farrakhan.
Was Farrakhan's praise sincere or did he intend to 'stab Obama in the back'?
February 22, 2008
The brain trust at the U.S. based John Templeton Foundation is giving $4 million to a group of British researchers to spend the next three years answering the question: "Why do people believe in religion" sounds fishy to me!
February 18, 2008
Its a Presidential Election Year and this year besides choosing the lesser of two evils you get to help decide the fate of the United States. There are many issues but some, it should be obvious, are more important than others.
February 18, 2008
Our troops do not choose their battles, our government does! Some battles may be distasteful or even flat-out wrong in the opinion of some of our military men and women and in our civilian opinions — they (the troops), however, do not have the choice to dissent, WE DO and if we do dissent — if we speak out against a conflict that we honestly see as just a waste of American lives, our protest is the best way we can support the troops!
February 04, 2008
Whymrhymer's P.O.V. can also be found at the My View from the Center and at the Blogger News Network
November 26, 2007
"Islamophobic!" It seems to be the accusation d'jour lately. All one needs to do to be accused is express concern over the new Moslem mosque being constructed down the street or about the population statistics that show an increasing Moslem population or even just make a comment about a news story t...
November 19, 2007
NOTE: In case anyone has noticed, I've been away from this forum for awhile; I'm back now and I'm as opinionated (or, if you prefer, obnoxious) as ever.
One of the big debating points between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their recent Las Vegas debate centered around which one of them woul...
October 03, 2007
The National Public Radio (NPR) website today (10/2/07) reports a discussion on their daily radio show, "All Things Considered", about the religious right's new stand on the possibility of Rudy Giuliani winning the Republican presidential nomination:
"This weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah, a group...
October 01, 2007
The rhetoric is flying fast and furiously over the president's promised and certainly pending veto of the newly expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The SCHIP has actually been in existence since the majority Republican congress passed it in 1997 and for 10 years it has been p...
September 27, 2007
The Washington post has a web based forum called: "On Faith" which has guest columnists who touch on all religious and, to their credit, anti-religious topics. Today's (Sept. 26th) guest columnist, clearly from the anti-religious side, is Christopher Hitchens, the iconoclastic 'Bard' of the atheist...
September 26, 2007
Soon the U.S. Supreme court will hear a case that will determine the constitutionality of requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote. The case they will hear was brought by the Democratic party in Indiana. Indiana, it seems has the strictest voter-ID laws in the country and the Democratic party ...
September 25, 2007
Kudos (or mega-kudos, as Rush Limbaugh might say) to Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger for giving Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the type of introduction he deserved: harsh, critical and insulting.
Bollinger received a lot of criticism for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak at the U...
September 24, 2007
It's a damn shame that there are places like Jena, LA where racial prejudice not only lives but thrives! Places where a black kid can get beat up by white kids because he choose to sit under the wrong tree, places where children have been brought up to hate based on the color of a person's skin and ...
September 16, 2007
The Wall Street Journal today (9/15/07) published an excerpt of Mark Lilla's new book titled: 'The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West'. Mark Lilla is a professor at Columbia University.
Judging from the WSJ excerpt, Mr. Lilla has done a credible job of taking the reader from a...
September 05, 2007
There have been many, many commentators quick to criticize the new CBS "reality show" Kid Nation; while much of their criticism is unfounded even more borders on the ridiculous.
General criticism's have been based on CBS's promo: "Forty kids with no parents, no teachers . . . anywhere." This has ...
September 04, 2007
Adding to our world-wide web of worries: Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran -- not to mention North Korea; China has now added to our already large pile of China-related concerns.
It's not bad enough that China's manufacturing industry is out of control and trying to poison our children with toxic toys ...
August 30, 2007
On Tuesday of this week, a force of about 300 federal, state and local officials raided the Koch Chicken Processing Plant in Butler County Ohio and arrested 160 people suspected of being illegal aliens. The men and women arrested are not just Mexican's, they were from eight countries -- not all of t...
August 28, 2007
We've all heard by now about the self-described pedophile who has been effectively 'run out of' California and who is playing hide-and-seek with bloggers around the country who say they're trying to track his movements.
His name is Jack McClellan, he maintained a website (now removed from the Int...
August 26, 2007
(Title based on a quote by Andrew Sullivan)
On August 31st televangelist Bill Keller will insult his last Muslim (or Mormon) on the CBS affiliate station in Tampa Florida, WTOG-TV. He's being forced to move on.
Who's to blame for the termination of this fiery, shock-and awe, God-Smacking preac...
August 23, 2007
A fast-paced and witty (at least to some of us) piece of writing by Robert Weitzel appeared in the Atlantic Free Press this month. Weitzel is a freelance writer and outspoken atheist whose writes regularly for The Capital Times in Madison, WI as well as several other papers and journals. The Free P...
August 21, 2007
Elvira Arellano entered the United States illegally in 1997, she made it all the way to Washington State where she was caught and deported.
Not the end of the story!
Elvira Arellano once again entered the United States in 2000, this time she was pregnant and very aware that a law was in place...
August 19, 2007
From the "Electionline" column in Friday's (8/17/07) USA Today we find that there is a proposed ballot initiative in California that would change the way the state's electoral votes are divided up during a presidential election.
The current method, a method used in all but two states (Maine and N...
August 18, 2007
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a former Southern Baptist minister, is considered by many to be the Christian's leading choice for president. One would expect, however, that Huckabee is thinking some very unchristian thoughts today about one of his most vocal supporters, the Rev. ...
August 16, 2007
Patrick Syring, a Virginia resident and outspoken Arab hater, is being charged with sending threatening e-mail messages and leaving threatening phone messages at the offices of the Arab American Institute last summer.
Apparently free speech in the United States has hit another new low, at least ...
August 15, 2007
When the pathetic old man of talk radio, Don Imus, insulted the ladies on the Rutgers Woman's Basketball Team, in April of this year, by calling them "nappy-headed hos" he was 'called on the carpet' by his radio station and their bosses, and rightly so. Yes, he always does stuff like that and yes, t...
August 15, 2007
One would think that a company that makes children's toys, considering the high-risk nature of their products and considering the thousands of safety standards in place for toys, would be very, very careful about the toys they put on the market. One would, perhaps, think that! Well Mattel has certai...
August 14, 2007
President Bush's long-time friend, confidant and chief political adviser, Karl Rove, has resigned his post and is leaving Washington.
This relationship between Karl Rove and President George W. Bush is the best argument currently available for limiting the president to one (six-year?) term in of...
July 08, 2007
They came asking only for a chance, a chance at freedom from poverty, freedom from corruption, freedom from their state-owned lives
They came any way they could On foot or packed in vans in the dead of night in the hell-like desert heat
They came to be productive and send 'dollars' home to ...
July 08, 2007
Dirty Little Secretssucking chest wounds of the psycheinflicted by social stigmamay be terminal if left untreated
They come in a varietyof shapes, sizes and intensitiesno one-fits-all mentalitywe all have unique propensities
They recognize no class distinctionsare politically correct and color...
July 02, 2007
Iran is a question mark in the eyes and minds of most average Americans.
Right now, one of the most important questions raised by this backward theocracy is: Why should we believe Ahmadinejad when he claims that Iran only wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes? Here is a man who acts like an...
June 30, 2007
When the Supreme Court, this week, very narrowly ruled that using race as a criterion for assigning children to schools was unconstitutional, they set off attack after attack claiming that the Supremes have negated the "advances" made under the Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling.
There were...
June 22, 2007
Ben Shapiro's sermon at Townhall.com this week (I wonder if he wears liturgical vestments while writing this stuff or, at least, sits on a Holy book) is titled: Dreaming Of A World Without God. No need to hear the entire sermon, if you know the Townhall crew, you already know that you either believ...
June 22, 2007
In 1992 New York State's highest court ruled that it was legal for a woman to go into public without covering her breasts. Many people have derided that decision -- most calling it immoral -- and by most moral standards they are probably right. In most places in the world, covering your body is cons...
June 06, 2007
It is obvious, and sad, that an individual American citizen's life, health and welfare is no longer that citizen's responsibility. Our government clearly has a responsibility to protect its citizens from harm that may be brought about by outside forces, e.g., terrorists, unsafe public transportation...
June 04, 2007
This past week, New Hampshire joined the ranks of the very few states who are beginning to return some rights back to the people by "recognizing" civil unions and granting some legal status to those who can qualify for the civil union status.
This is a bitter-sweet story for those of us who beli...
May 02, 2007
It is perhaps a little known fact but it IS a fact that May 1st each year is a legal holiday (but not a "Federal holiday") in the United States. Before becoming a legal holiday, May 1st had been known as "Americanization Day." Americanization Day was started in the early 1920s as a response to the "...
April 15, 2007
It appears that the Democratic presidential contenders are pretty much all agreed that the FOX News Network is biased in favor of the Republican party and, as a result of that perception, the front runners on the Democratic side are avoiding debates and other media events sponsored by FOX. It has go...
April 03, 2007
The U.S. Congress is in the midst of a two-week "spring break" after delivering a war funding bill that is absolutely loaded with spending that has nothing to do with the war and that has an exit plan that they know will be vetoed by the president; this shows that we have elected a majority of senat...
March 27, 2007
After studying the current field of presidential contenders, with the intention of picking a favorite, I've found that the most difficult hurdle I've had to overcome was to learn to spell Giuliani. The rest was simple (at least for me) because Rudy Giuliani is a spokesman (and the ONLY one right now...
March 26, 2007
Is it possible to, as the overused, anti-war shibboleth suggests, support the troops without supporting the war? I say yes, absolutely!
Currently, the "Top Story" on Topix.net is a story from the CBS affiliate, KDKA with a headline that reads: Cheney: House Doesn't Support U.S. Troops. Here is ...
March 23, 2007
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection"
That is a quote from Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. as he struck down a Federal law known as the 1998 Child Online Pro...
March 20, 2007
Five years ago, Joseph Frederick, then a Juneau, Alaska high school student, pulled a prank that got him in trouble with his school. The Olympic torch was passing through Juneau and, as chance would have it, it was to pass right past Joseph's high school. The school administration allowed the studen...
March 15, 2007
In an interview Monday (3/12/07) with the Chicago Tribune, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy (which has been in place since it was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994).
In response, General Pace s...
March 14, 2007
Reportedly, three major advertisers have pulled their ads off of Ann Coulter's website and at least one newspaper, the Mountain Press -- a small Tennessee newspaper, announced today that it is dropping Ann Coulter's weekly column because she referred to John Edwards as a "faggot". They call Ms. Coul...
March 04, 2007
Valentines Day 2007 was a day for lovers, but not all lovers. This year, on Valentines Day, the Alabama Supreme Court rendered a decision that people who's loving relationships included "sex toys" we're out of luck, at least in Alabama, where the law that prohibited their "commercial distribution" (...
February 28, 2007
In Sunday's "Between the Lines" column on ZDNet, bloggers had the opportunity to preview some of the thoughts of Andrew Keen, the author of a soon to be released (June 5th) book titled "The Cult of the Amateur." The subtitle of Keen's book is very telling: "how the democratization of the digital wo...
February 24, 2007
On Friday (2/23/07) morning in Parrish, Florida's Kingsfield Lakes subdivision, in southwest Florida's Manatee County, the students of the Manatee School for the Arts were just getting to their bus stop and, as he usually was, 13-year old Clay Moore was zooming around on his skateboard to kill time ...
February 20, 2007
The Supreme court, even as it did the right thing by throwing out a $79.5 million punitive damages against Philip Morris, sent the wrong message to smokers and to business in general.
The large sum of money, awarded by an Oregon jury and later validated by the Oregon Supreme Court, was awarded to...
February 08, 2007
The following is the first sentence in an AP story that made some papers Wednesday morning:
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats may try to override a decision by President Bush to leave stopgap children's health insurance money out of his 2007 emergency war spending proposal."
What's wrong with this...
February 02, 2007
President Bush, in his SOTU message last week, renewed his determination to "resolve the status" of the millions of illegals already here in the United States "without animosity and without amnesty." Its a clever line and a 'technically' correct interpretation of the president's proposal, but some i...
February 02, 2007
Emilio Gonzalez, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service is proposing an increase in the fees people pay to apply for citizenship and the fees paid for applicants for legal permanent residency. If the new fee schedule is approved the application for citizenship will go from $330...
January 25, 2007
This weeks spectacle of hundreds of thousands of "Religious Conservatives" and "Social Conservatives" descending upon Washington to March against a woman's right to choose, should be repulsive to "genuine" Conservatives. Not, however, because these activists are speaking out! They have that right!
...
January 17, 2007
A proposal in the Virginia House of Delegates that calls for an "apology for slavery" to Virginia's black citizens was being debated on Monday (Martin Luther King's birthday) when comments that Virginia Delegate Frank D. Hargrove Sr. made to the Charlottesville Daily Progress newspaper were brought ...
January 16, 2007
An Associated Press story out of Portsmouth, Rhode Island tells the tale of Patrick Agin, a Portsmouth High School student who has a passion for all things medieval. He and others in an association he belongs to, the Society for Creative Anachronism, study and recreate the lives and times of knights...
January 16, 2007
The elation over the rescue of Shawn Hornbeck is gradually turning to ugly accusations and suspicion. These accusations against the now-15-year old have not been expressed but they are implicit in the headlines: The Arizona Daily Star headline asks "Why didn't abducted boy run?"; many papers are mor...
January 16, 2007
"You have to get permission from the government to do almost anything. If that is the definition of a police state, that you can't do anything unless the government gives you permission, then we're well on our way."
This is the complete text of a very brief video clip; the speaker is Republican ...
January 16, 2007
My brain is just about fried with American troop increases in Iraq (is it 'about time' or is it 'too late'?), fried with threats from that nut case in Iran and counter-threats from our side, fried with Republicans bashing Democrats and Democrats bashing Republicans and, just in general, fried with t...
January 11, 2007
In the movies there are "Snakes on a Plane" but lately in real life there have been scorpions. The latest incident, according to this Associated Press report from Yahoo News was this past Sunday when a passenger on a Miami to Toronto American Airlines flight was bitten by a scorpion while the plane...
January 08, 2007
Pizza Patrón, a Dallas-based pizza franchise that specializes in locations in Dallas' Latino neighborhoods, will start accepting Mexican Pesos for their pizza. The promotion started today (Monday) and is supposed to run at least until the end of February.
Some people are trying to make this mark...
January 07, 2007
When parents are faced with a tragedy such as a child born with an incurable medical condition, they can stand up and deal with it the best way they can figure out how to deal with it, or they can turn it (the problem and the child) over to the state to deal with. This is a story of parents who 'sto...
January 04, 2007
The new Democratic majority is set to take over today (Thursday). After a strategy meeting, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell appeared before the cameras to talk about what is likely to happen during this session of the Senate. What they said is not important, their words are politician's words . . . m...
January 02, 2007
I don't know how it escaped my attention for the past 30 years but every year since new year's day in 1976, Lake Superior State University, Michigan's smallest public university, has published a list of banished words (and phrases) that have been deemed misused, overused or just plain useless.
W...
December 30, 2006
The quick execution of Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, after his long circus-like trial was welcomed by many and condemned by some but the timing of Saddam's death is a thing of wonder! Saddam's death came at the end of the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, and as a prelude of sor...
December 14, 2006
When you see a headline like the one on FOXNews.com this morning (12/13/06): Virginia Teacher Suspended for Painting With Genitals you just HAVE to read on! 'They reported and I decided' . . . I decided that the headline is quite misleading and the teacher in question was wronged.
The story go...
December 12, 2006
At Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport in the past few days:
Holiday Trees went Up
A rabbi wanted a menorah too
His lawyer said he would sue
The airport didn't know what to do
Holiday Trees came down
The rabbi became a hated man
He had to quickly develop a plan
lawsuit plans went in the can
...
December 12, 2006
The big news story today is that 67 "foreign researchers" from 30 countries are meeting today and tomorrow in Tehran to discuss the Holocaust. The conference was organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies at the request, no doubt, of Iran's Presiden...
December 11, 2006
The Iraq Study Group's 79-point plan that landed on the nation's doorstep last week was received with mixed, but very predictable, reactions. The Left was elated and assumed that finally President Bush will have to admit his mistakes, start withdrawing troops and kow-tow to the Iranians and Syrians ...
December 05, 2006
On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases that address the concept of using race-based quotas to achieve a racial balance in public schools. A description of the specific arguments in these two cases can be found in this Christian Science Monitor article (as well as in every other major news...
December 05, 2006
Columnist and radio talk-show host Dennis Prager is openly critical of Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) because Ellison, a Muslim, plans to bring a Qur'an to his House swearing-in ceremony in January. Prager's contention, expressed here in an interview with the Jewish Journal, is that Ellison's u...
December 03, 2006
Fresh perspectives on today's news by: Whymrhymer
It comes to light now (thanks to yet another White House staffer who leaked yet another classified document to the New York Times) that two days before resigning as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld sent a memo to the President urging a change...
December 02, 2006
Soon to be Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi announced that she has selected Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) to take over the lead of the House Intelligence Committee.
In general, Reyes seems to me to be a very conservative (if I dare use that term) choice for Nancy Pelosi which i...
December 01, 2006
Fresh perspectives on today's news by: Whymrhymer
Several school districts around the country have taken the idea of a state lottery and given it a new twist, with high school students as the 'lottery' players. This Associated Press article from Salon.com tells the story.
High schools are off...
December 01, 2006
One side chants "civil war," another side insists it's "sectarian violence," the more cautious say "it could be . . ." and, in the meantime, someone at NBC is grinning like the Cheshire Cat in the tree in Wonderland.
The news media loves to step outside its role as news reporter into the 'tasti...
November 29, 2006
The Reverend Jessie Jackson knows what he wants! Rev. Jackson wants the "N-word" banned from the entertainment industry and additionally, to "punish" comedian Michael Richards for his "N-word" outburst in response to some black hecklers during a performance at an LA comedy club, Jackson wants everyo...
November 29, 2006
Fresh perspectives on today's news by: Whymrhymer
The Inspector General of the The United States Department of Justice, Glenn A. Fine, has informed the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee that his department has already conducted "initial inquiries" into the NSA's (National Security Agency's...
November 27, 2006
On Saturday, the NYTimes.com website reported that the New York Times has obtained a "classified United States government report" that shows that insurgent groups in Iraq have become financially self-sufficient through activities such as oil smuggling, counterfeiting, phony charities and the receip...
November 26, 2006
Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, has apparently 'thrown his hat in the ring' as a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. As a one-term governor and a one-time unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate, his qualifications to run an entire country are, frankly, not ove...
November 24, 2006
This ABC News report from Baghdad this morning details the Shiite response to Thursday's murder of 215 Shiites by Sunni terrorists. In response to the murders, the Shiite Malitia did NOT seek revenge by locating and destroying a Sunni terrorist cell, nor did they track down and kill any known Sunni...
November 23, 2006
When U.S. Representative Rangel (D, NY) went on Face The Nation last Sunday and dropped his 'let's reinstate the draft bombshell,' he may have been surprised that so many people believed that he was serious. I believe that Rep. Rangel, sly old fox that he is, made his proposal to reinstate the draft...
November 23, 2006
On Thanksgiving Day we have a BBC news report of three car bomb explosions in Baghdad killing "at least 138 people" and injuring more than 200 others. That, unfortunately, is such a common occurrence in Baghdad it is not really even news any longer. In October a new monthly 'record' was set with 3,...
November 23, 2006
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was interviewed on British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) television Sunday morning and when asked about the possibility of a "military victory" in Iraq, he dismissed the possibility . . . at least in any "acceptable" timeframe. He said, "If you mean by 'military ...