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....er, uh, that is,..What I meant to say is that IF I could write like this I would.
As it is all I can do is suggest that you click on this (above) or Ambulance Driver in the sidebar for some stories you'll not soon forget.
Yer welcome.
...in my own little paranoid little way ...
If anybody else thinks it strange that anointed O ne has ordered SWAT teams to the oil rigs in the gulf?? (as investigators??)
Come on folks.......do SWAT team members have some special qualifications that make them the instrument of choice to investigate the safety of off shore oil rigs? I know they like to get up high on things so they can shoot down into the top of a persons head.....but an oil rig? Seems a little far away from any target of opportunity out there......unless some of the roughnecks are suspected of being terrorists.......some of them could be returned veterans I guess.
Is it possible that the real reason for the disastrous explosion, fire, sinking and subsequent gigantic oil slick that threatens the gulf shores somehow be related to man caused disasters ?
How is an oil slick cause for Big Sis of Homeland Security to get involved?
Use of Navy assets to contain the slick I can understand....
But SWAT teams....
Could it be I need to up my medications so stories like these wouldn't give me cause for concern?
Tell me that you don't watch in your rear view mirror when you meet a patrol car on the highway and you're doing 58 in a 55 mile per hour zone.
Or do I need to apologize to little Suzy there?
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NOT
Quote from Fred, way back in '87.....
"If government is not possible, I reflected, neither perhaps is it necessary. And if the citizenry knew how they were governed, and by whom, those with a sense of humor would buy radiation suits and a ticket to Switzerland and the rest would head straight for the Mexican border."
Do we get the government we deserve?
You be the judge, most of you are better educated and more worldly than I.
Fred left for Mexico several years ago.......
I sometimes wish I could.
Corn on the cob, garlic green beans and wild rice. That's what's for supper.
Sounds to me like we're eating pretty high on the hog.
According to the White House spin masters and their captive economists we're all gonna be doing that any day now. I can hardly wait.
Of course they point to the recent increase in new home sales and the rise in the stock market as their prime indicators. Never mind that 3 years ago the number of new homes built was on the order of 2 million and today it is around 500 thousand; per capita the lowest level since numbers of starts were tracked and that the rise in the stock market is caused by people with money looking desperately to find some place to put it where they can maybe break even......
you sure can't park it in a saving account or CD's....where you are lucky to earn 2 to 3 %.
Some pundits are calling this the dead cat bounce.
“The U.S. economy remains in an economic depression, which is about to intensify anew. . .”
Damn if I know.....I just watch with a little bit of apprehension. Will the gov't deposit more electronic digits into my checking account on the first.......will they buy as much as they did last month? Not if you use the price of gasoline as an indicator. Or the price of precious metals.....both of the shiny kind and brass and lead.
Almost time to make the monthly raid on Wally World where if you can't find what you want or need you can amuse yourself by watching the people who go in and out.
Update 9pm; Home made Banana Nut Bread for a mid-evening snack. Yeah, sux to be me.
Perhaps this article from the Naples News will help in articulating to your liberal friends.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/apr/24/guest-commentary-new-rights-are-wrong/
there is no right to “the fruits of another group’s labor.”
The Declaration of Independence holds that rights are “self-evident.” However, it is the failure to grasp the true nature of rights which has brought this country to its current condition. It remained for the 20th-century philosopher Ayn Rand to explicitly identify rights as “moral principle(s) defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” Rights pertain only to “freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. ... Rights impose no obligations on (others) except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating (your) rights.”
The source of all rights is the right to life, and its sole implementation is the right to property, the right to use the products of your efforts to sustain your life. The rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the rights to enjoy your life and use your property. Rights are an objectively necessary requirement of human life, principles which apply equally to all persons and at all times. In sum, rights are freedoms for rational beings to take the actions necessary to fulfill and enjoy their lives. Any alleged “right” which violates these rights is not a right, but an excuse for a crime.
The only way to violate individual rights is through the initiation of force. A person who initiates force against you is attempting to negate your means of survival by forcing you to act against your judgment as to what your life requires. The only moral use of force is in retaliation against those who initiate its use. The sole proper purpose of government is to protect its citizens’ rights by banning the initiation of force and placing its retaliatory use under objective control. The purpose of the U.S. Constitution was, and is, to establish and maintain the supremacy of individual rights over our society and our government.
Consider, by contrast, the congressman quoted by Batten: “We have a moral obligation today, tonight to make health care a right.” That person believes he has a duty to force the providers of health care to work. Only a slave has no choice in the work he does. If health care is considered a right, then someone must provide it, willing or not. If too few people choose the profession of health care to provide for everyone’s “rights,” how will the need be met? Will doctors be jailed for the “crime” of leaving medicine? Will students be drafted into medical schools? If so, what kind of doctors will result? A doctor in Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” says, “A man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards,” let alone in an operating room.
The root of this evil is altruism, the perverse principle that “man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value” (Rand). Thus, altruism negates individual rights. If one has no right to exist for one’s own sake, one has no rights whatsoever. The health-care measures passed may be touted as “good-faith efforts,” as Batten stated, but the “good faith” is solidly rooted in an evil premise.
Altruistic ideologues, such as those running our government, believe that the initiation of force to counteract selfishness is not only permitted, but obligatory. To a committed altruist, anyone who refuses to sacrifice, to serve others at his own cost, is harming those others by denying them their right to the product of his efforts.
It was altruism, not selfishness, that gave rise to the horrors of communism and fascism. Both systems, variants of collectivism, deny that individuals have any reason for existence other than to serve others and advocate stamping out self-interest as a moral imperative. By contrast, this country was founded by men who did not consider themselves sacrificial animals, servants or slaves to the state. By claiming that rights are unalienable, they held that rights exist whether or not anyone chooses to recognize them.
There is no more time to evade this choice. Will we recognize the existence of individual rights and the full meaning of what they are and what they require, or will we accept the institutionalized slavery of enforced service of all to all, where ability is penalized and need is encouraged?
Richmond has a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in operations research. He was a software systems developer on Wall Street. He is now a residential real-estate appraiser. He is a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society for Individual Rights of Naples, an organization formed to bring Rand’s philosophy of objectivism to greater public notice.
Thanks to http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/index.htm
Founders Quote.
"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
Gotta love Jefferson. I wonder who the current Thomas Jefferson is..........perhaps Thomas Sowell. I've been reading his articles for a long time. A great thinker and educator. He should be president, but has perhaps, too much honor to stoop so low.
Greece and the European Union are in crisis, The United States and the dollar are in crisis, we're all labeled racists or teabaggers, the dimocrits hate the republican'ts, there are few positive leaders showing up on the radar screens for the 2012 presidential elections yet, just more of the same old tired has beens without a clue as to how to turn this nation back into the productive freedom loving beacon on the hill. The people are mad as hell and fewer and fewer are willing to take much more.
Where will it all end?
Damnifiknow, but I'm sure it will stress me the hell out and I'll have to rant and rave about some of it. So stay tuned.
Meanwhile I'm going outside and listen to the birdies and watch the nests of new ones grow.
At the end of another work week for some folks. Those without a job or those whose job is self imposed think of it as just another day to get out there and strive to earn their keep by the sweat of their brow.
If the pollen weren't quite so bad that cars are yellow despite whatever factory color was applied to the outside it would be a wonderful day. Oh, well, I've just taken my Alavert and hopefully I'm good to go.
Gonna settle a few things and then head up the road to Lula and environs. The Wife of my youth will likely attend me, along with the pooch, who as we're getting up to speed will hang his head out the passenger window and let his whiskers blow back to his ears. I guess this is his way of sniffing out where we're going.
Blogging has been light and may continue to be. Events such as the one posted last evening have a way of bumming me out and there are all too many of them. We have to support efforts to encourage those who are attempting to stem the rush to turn this Republic into an irreversible oligarchy and educate enough of the public to get them to join the effort.
Have a great day and go out and make something happen.
A great feel good movie from 25 years ago starring Michael J. Fox before he started shaking so bad.
I must confess that I enjoyed it back when I was 35. Not so much now, but I'm older, crankier, fatter and more jaded. I've seen it and really have no desire to see it again.
It does seem that we are going back as we plunge headlong into the future.
As a for instance......I've experienced bankruptcy, foreclosure and having to leave where I wanted to be for somewhere I had to be. Not complaining......I'm glad I had somewhere to be..
...many don't have that option.
One thing I didn't do was take it as a signal that everything was over.
I realized that it was one of the most liberating things that had ever happened to me. Suddenly I could think about the future again and not have to worry about the mistakes of the past. One of the beauties of the American system is that we can't be put into debtors prison where we can never work our way out. With determination and optimism we can build a brighter future.
Get to the point Kdzu....
The point is that sometimes I catch glimpses of the future.
Nothing so grand as visions or prophecy. I don't talk to dead people, although my daughter Diana is sensitive to that sort of thing. No, it just comes along as flashes, perhaps of insight, perhaps of having a bit of weirdness in me, that a possible course is more likely than another.
I was talking with a friend this morning, both of us bemoaning the general gone to hell in a handbasket shape the country is in right now, and he said, "We're Screwed".
I agreed with him and then started ticking of the four possibilities I saw for the future vis-a-vis this countries economic choices.
And it struck me.....
Economists speak with terror in their voices about default, which is not being able to pay the bills. If you consider the rate at which the national debt is growing and the amount of interest the nation pays on that each year there is only a short period of time in which we can make choices that will prevent us from spending more than we take in just on interest.
We already spend twice what is taken in in revenue each year and the projections is for that to grow. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel and its the 12:05 to disaster heading straight for us.
But perhaps we need to consider something on the lines of a bankruptcy, after all isn't that effectively what Russia did when it ceased being the USSR. All the debt was in the USSR's name and it had effectively died. There was no one to collect from and the heirs of the estate told the rest of the world to suck eggs.
Anyway here is my forecast for the future.......
states, cities, and entire countries will declare bankruptcy...
If we can keep from losing our heads when it happens......we just might emerge the better for it.
AFTERTHOUGHT: Of course it would all go for naught if we don't get rid of the assholes serving in elective offices and reduce the current number of bureaucratic teat suckers by at least 50%, preferably more, who will be, by far, the hardest to eliminate......perhaps firing squads....
Anyway, I thought you might like a blast from the past.....
Every so often I have to go through my inbox and delete emails both read and unread. Mostly by now I can tell by the subject line whether I want to look at it or not. Some are deleted out of hand and some are left to at least open for a glimpse then a quick decision......delete or read it all.
Sometimes it's important, whether it is from family or not.
Sometimes I find something that makes me sad that I didn't catch it the first time around.
Sis, I'm sorry I didn't open it when you sent it. Thank you so much.
Having seen the elephant, I can tell you that most of the people serving in the military don't think of themselves as hero's. They'll tell you they are simply doing their job or trying to make sure others in the unit get to go back to their homes and loved ones one day too, and if they don't, you never forget it.
The world in it's bustle and hustle to reach the future gives those, the fallen, scant notice, but to someone somewhere, especially those who served with them there is always a piece of you that is forever lost. You didn't have to know them well or even hardly at all, but they'll always be a part of who you are that is missing, leaving you just a little bit less than whole.
Sometimes I think that the real hero's are the ones left behind, waiting at home for someone important that will never come through that door again, or perhaps, the hero's are those who send them off, never knowing if they will return, and if they do return will they be whole, standing tall, or bent or broken. But then......
I consider that today, when military service to this country is a completely voluntary option, perhaps even those who serve others, no matter what their MOS, whether on the front lines or behind a desk somewhere, they all deserve to have this song played for them.
Likely they'll not hear it from my puny efforts, but maybe just the fact that it's out there will let them know that someone, somewhere, cares.
This week is just about to be closed out and put into the archives of weeks gone by, and it means that I've been drifting, lost in the Doldrums for that period of time. So it is with a great surprise that I learn The Darlin’ Miss Jean has suggested my name for this blog award....
I'll tell you, I worry about the girl sometimes. Perhaps its all those exhaust fumes from Daytona that have affected her after enough years. Maybe if she had done like Clinton and not inhaled....
Apparently I'm supposed to tell you five thing about me and then pass the award along. That's gonna be tough.....
Not the five things about me....
Rather picking five things about me that I'm not ashamed to let people know about....
One, I've been married 42 yrs, 4 mo's and 6 days. The astonishing thing about that is the wife still lets me hang around. Of course she has a sweeter and more forgiving nature than I.
We have 3 children together (2 daughters and a son) and I have a daughter by another relationship who I didn't know until she was 16. The astonishing thing is not that they all turned out so well, rather that all of them love me. Blessed I am.
Two, The Government used to pay me to kill people in the Southeast Asia War Games, (where we took Second Place) and now they pay me not to. Despite that, I love my country. I just don't particularly like the people who want us to think they run it. With medication and therapy I have found that I am the one who deserves the blame for all my misfortunes.
Three, In spite of the advancing years, and probable advanced dementia, I still think I'm gonna conquer my area of the world and will sometimes jump off into the deep end of the pool without my arm floaties. I'm as excited about the opportunity to have a small part of a potential new business as I was at the births of my children. My loving wife worries that it will just be another one of Larry's money losing dreams. Me.....ha, time will tell. Go for it....let's roll.
Four, I don't drink, smoke or use any of the popular hallucinogenics, just those mind altering prescription drugs the VA keeps sending in the mail. I don't mind if you do though... just try not to throw up on the rug or cause harm to any one other than yourself.
Five, I've been tossing things out into the interwebz for just over 5 years. Haven't made much of an impact but that's alright. Would I like to be read and enjoyed by thousands and change the world for the better..... yeah, but apparently not enough to work at it harder.
It's just another way to calm the voices in my head that keep my ears ringing, and it gets me to the computer where I have read writers that put me in my place every day without even knowing me. All of you have made my life better in some way. Thanks
Now who to nominate in order to keep the chain going?..........
How about Brigid who really is moving and Mike V who is trying, and succeeding, to make a difference.
"Been a long time pilgrim" .
"Seems long".
In a place that doesn't exist anymore because it was bombed into rubble, but at the time I was there was a small village with beautiful blue murals painted on many of the buildings, just outside the gates of an army and air force base that was the closest airfield to what was at that time known as North Vietnam, home to parts of the 9th Infantry Division, the 11th Surgical Hospital, some Air Force wienies, a 101st Airborne Air Artillery unit and...... Charlie Horse 3rd of the 17th Air Calvary... where a 21 year old, skinny Warrant Officer Cobra helicopter pilot one night heard on the Armed Forces Radio Station a sweet voice singing the most amazing song, without distraction of musical instruments, accompanied by the voices of two military choirs, that I had ever heard.
Many others have since tried to equal it, but this is the version I love the best....
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"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 57
Perhaps the founders should have strictly limited the ability to vote to the producers of wealth and defenders of the nation and constitution as well as those capable of completing a quadratic equation. Moochers firmly prohibited from voting until and unless they turn their thinking around and become producers.
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The real reason the FBI broke down and arrested the so called Hutaree's (supposedly Christian Militia) can be found (if you have any interest and a strong stomach) at
TPM
A word of caution, if you do watch the video, first place your keyboard where you won't get a little upchuck on it and have a soft damp cotton cloth handy for wiping off your monitor.
NSFW because of profanity and some nutty nudity.
Personally I think the FBI informant placed within the Hutaree group may have had a starring role in the Video and it was to prevent embarrassment to the Feds that they tried to hide the tape.
After all we wouldn't want anyone to get a negative opinion about anybody associated with the Chinese Fire Drill on the Potomac (CFDP).
I can't confirm, but sources close to the group suggest a strong contender for an Academy Award for best short film by an independent director category next year.
I give it one and a half stars.
Gooooood Day.
While we've had several nice days here in the Classic City, with temps reaching into the 70's, the urge to write has been dulled by all the screeching and shouting from the political class.
Perhaps I'll find that old urge soon......probably, as I can't go too long without casting bottles into the sea.
It's April 1.....April Fools day. That seems appropriate as I'm off in a few minutes to have my annual report to the IRS filled out and beamed to IRS Regional Headquarters attesting to my lack of work ethic and resulting low Net Income. If we'd pass the Fair Tax Legislation there would be Zero need to go through this effort each year.
Ya'll be good and play a prank or two on your local congresscritter.
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"Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities."
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34
