Friday, September 24, 2010

Rose colored glasses

Depending on who you listen to or read in the U.S. today your probably have an apocalyptic outlook on the future: we'll either all be slaves to the tyrannical federal gubbermint or anarchists with no one to lead us down the prim-rose path.

Have you ever looked through a pane of antique window glass and seen a distorted version of what was really on the other side, or perhaps you've put on your Blu-Blockers and thought you could see the world more clearly. Does maybe the actual truth reside somewhere else?

One of the ideas presented in our group therapy sessions a couple years or so ago was the idea of questioning how we looked at and reacted to various pre-conceived notions long held.

I remember having looked at what used to be South Vietnam with the aid of Google Earth and seen towns where only villages were before. Where we had bombed into the stone age they were buildings and quarries and new roads. Fields were being worked where 30 years before only snakes, insect's and the NVA dared to go.

I was pissed beyond belief that as a country they had gone ahead with their lives while I and many others were still stuck in the past. Quite a shock to the mental system I must admit. I'd been looking at the world through glass colored differently that others and my vision was not clear.

It's the same with so many of us in today's political and financial climate. Because the glass we are looking through is colored by so many disparate versions of the facts we may well ask ourselves if we are seeing what is really there.

The following paragraph is from someone looking at us while standing in Hong Kong.

"The first action Mr. Bernanke should take is to resign. If I had messed up the system so badly, as he has done, I would have to resign. He has talked constantly about the Great Depression and what caused the depression but the problem is that he really doesn't understand what caused the depression, which was also excessive leverage at that time. I have to stress that in 1929 the debt to GDP ratio was of course minuscule in comparison what it is today. It was 186% of GDP but you didn't have Social security, Medicare and Medicaid and unfunded liabilities for Social Security and so forth. So, debt today, as a percent of GDP, is 379% and if you add the unfunded liabilities we are at over 800%. The Federal Reserve should pay attention to that."

If you ask our bean counters in the feeble gubbermint in the District of Criminals, their numbers are no where even close to those.

800% of GDP? WTF? One could be forgiven if they were to throw up their hands in disgust.

"The solution is, basically, for the government to move out and not intervene in the economy. There are economists who will dispute that the Federal Reserve is partially responsible for the crisis and there are economists that will still tell you that debt doesn’t matter, that deficits don't matter and they want to continue to intervene in the free market constantly. To these economists I respond: What about Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac? It was an intervention by the government into the housing market and into the mortgage market and the biggest bankruptcies—bigger than Citigroup and all the banks—are Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac—government-sponsored enterprises. The same economists will tell you that the government has to intervene and to these economists I say: Well, you have made so many mistakes already with interventions do you think that in the future your interventions will improve anything? Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but these economists and the Federal Reserve think that by more interventions with fiscal measures and more money printing they will improve things. No, they won’t. They will make things worse.."

Where does the truth lie? Beats the shite out of me. You'll have to do your own research and voting.

One thing of which I am very certain. We have to make great changes and if you don't vote you have absolutely no business decrying anything that happens as you couldn't be bothered to contribute your opinion.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

It's late

11:10 pm and my side of the king sized bed is beginning to call more urgently to me.

O'Course I'll likely have to shove the pooch off my pillow if he's slid down too low. I don't mind him sleeping above my head unless he starts one of his licking marathons where he licks the pillow over and over and over......almost as if it hypnotizes him and he can't stop.

There is lot's of news that I could work up a rightous rant about tonight, like What happened to Global Warming? But, the weather is starting to cool off here a little and it's just too nice to worry about.

And WTF is it about female School Teachers these days? It used to always be the male athletics coach that gave us all the problems. Do you think these products of our finest universities of higher learning have so emasculated the grown men in their lives that they have to turn to underage kids to get off. They could volunteer to tutor me......I promise to study hard and I'm old enough that they wouldn't be likely to get in to jail. Of course I might be shot by the wife, but perhaps it's a sacrifice I should make to keep the young boys from being abused like they have been.

The President is still on his mission to tear down the engine that runs the world.
Perhaps he should read Ayn Rand to find out what happens when TPTB try to do that. One day he'll look back and ask himself, "WTH".
Nothing more need be said about him and the dumbocrats.

Gold of course is setting new records for price every day almost. Understandable when the politicians and the banksters boast proudly that they are going to destroy the dollar.

That reminds me I need to pick up some more precious metals.......brass, copper and lead.

Mostly I just hear the news or read it online and shake my head in disgust or despair depending on my mood and then I go about my life.

I'm tolking with a friend who wants to sell his 100 + acres out in the country a ways. Nice place with lots of potential but it will all depend on the price I guess. I really like the fact that there are two little ponds dug on the place and just need some water diverted to fill them in. I've wanted to have a place to grow hybrid Bream for a while. They give a hell of a fight on a fly rod. Everybody else likes catfish but they're too much trouble to clean for my taste. The place also has an almost mountain like view without getting into the stratosphere of prices that those kinds of property fetch.

Life is interesting, which makes it fun, challenges energize me once more and I may jump into the deep end again........only this time with an inner tube to hold on to.

Ya'll come for breakfast, we'll have a couple of hen apples over easy with some kink of pig to go with them.......maybe even a cats head buttermilk biscuit.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Are We a Happy Nation?

Good question don't you think?

Right now I'd have to say that we're the least happy nation we've been in a long time.

Individually, we're probably thinking, 'well, I'm pretty happy', but as a nation we're a quarrelsome, bickering, kicking and scratching bunch of pissed off people.

No doubt there are plenty of things to be mad about.......national debt, personal debt, lack of morals, rectitude, fiscal responsibility among those sent to D.C. (Department of Criminals) and our heros of screen and stage seem mostly to have so few brains that we understand now why they have Directors telling them what to do. (Well, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne didn't have that problem but the Duke's not getting around much anymore and Clint.......well he became one of the Directors himself)

I have no immediate solution to all the problems that have us up in arms and spinning in a tizzy, but our First President offered a little advice in this regard.

""I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation." --George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783

Not a bad prayer.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

September Surprise

OR.....Abandon Ship , swim for the nearest tax haven.

Quite a week for the yellow shiny stuff.

Is this a time to fear, or a time to reap the harvest (or whirlwind)?

Read the article and give me your opinion.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Alive and well.

Elvis Presley is alive and well, living in Mingo, W. Virginia, which for some strange reason is not in Mingo County, but rather in Wyoming County, which is not in Wyoming, but rather....
....Well you get the point.

Srsly, I saw the dude, standing outside a store as we drove down the street. Hadn't aged a bit that I could tell.....course I was watching the road more than the sidewalks since in the steep valleys there everything is built between a creek and the road or the mountain and the road.

Many of the little towns were no more than two lots deep between either the railroad and the road or a creek and the road with the railroad on the other side.

I remember where I was when they reported on the radio that he had died......standing in the milking parlor of my dairy farm, between 12 cows, six on the side with a guy we called "Chunk" because of his girth....well that and the fact that he had the IQ of a chunk of firewood.

For all that he was a faithful employee.....always there in the pre-dawn hours ready to start the milking. If the light wasn't on in my house as he sped up the driveway he'd honk the horn telling me to get up and on the ball.....another 16 hour day was about to start.

I was 27 and while I'd been half-way round the world in two different direction was still just a snot nosed kid with big dreams and no real plan other than getting up each morning and walking out the door into work.

Elvis was hot when I was in school....at least up until the Beatles came along and then every body wanted to comb their hair into their eyes. I'd practice curling my lip and looking sleepy eyed. Looking back I can see that I was better at it than I had sense enough to realize.

Ahh, wasted youth.......somehow it seems wasted on most. If we had only realized.

A lot of conspiracy theories back then about Elvis just wanting to drop off the radar and staging his death. Can't say I blame him much, he had his share of troubles and trials. They say fame and fortune won't make you happy if you don't appreciate them. I think he just wanted to sing.

I prefer to think he really is alive in Mingo.......fat, happy, singing in the church Choir on Sundays.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Been there........ Done that!

I have been to the center of the Universe........

...and I've eaten at the Dairy Queen there.

Hinton, West Virginia. I'm almost reluctant to write the name, lest too many people discover the perfect place to sit on the upstairs porch at my Sister and Brother-in-laws get-away place.

Sitting in the New River Gorge on the side of possibly the second oldest river in the world after the Nile River, I thought hardly at all about the political or financial situation in the rest of the world.

We sat there till midnight just listening to the gentle roar of the river and watched the lights come on and go out, the stars twinkle brightly, and occasionally the sound of coal trains or Amtrak remble, creak and groan their way to where ever they were off to.......

.....we cared not where, we were just glad to be.



Over 1000 miles of driving over 4 days. Seven and a half hours to get to Hinton....
....12 hours to get through Southern West-by-God Virginia and Southern Kentucky to I-75 just north of Knoxville TN........Another 6 hours to get back here to Athens......tired and ass weary, but happy that we were blessed to see wide rivers, steep mountain hillsides...valleys so deep it seemed impossible that the sun could reach the bottoms more than an hour a day.

Glad to go........Glad to return.....can hardly wait to go back.