Happy Valentines Day

Happy Lupercalia day Lovers and seekers.

I hope you all are out this evening eating prime rib washed down with expensive wine in the hopes of a chocolate covered dessert when you get home.

Me......I'm sitting her resting my tired ol' feet and thinking about a bed to sleep in.

I was up early (for me) at 5 am in order to go the the Peach State Archeology Society Show in May-retta (Marrieta GA) this morning.

In my never ending quest to garner shekles to pay the green grocer and other tradesmen for some of the necessities and niceties of life, I've jumped in the deep end of the pool once again and opened a website arrowheadantiques.com to move some of the (some would call junk, others fine collectibles) Stuff that I come in contact with. Today was an opportunity to Network as the youngun's say.

I'm always finding something that sparkles, and like a crow, I swoop down and snatch it up to carry away to my nest....where there it remains neither eating nor sleeping, but like the unworthy servant it also doesn't earn any return on the talents given for it.

We had a fine ol' time. Lots of dealers and members from the society. Unfortunately there were few buyers......whether due to the economy, or not enough people informed of where we were, ie, lack of advertising.... to sample our wares.

Still fun was to be had. I introduced young Serenity (all of a grown up 9 years old) to the pleasures of eating lamb, which made her go.........ooooohhhhh, wrinkle her nose up, and then chow back down with a hearty appetite. (Good girl)

One of my pieces of Pottery won the certificate for best pottery piece. I also cleaned up at the raffle held just before we wrapped up for the day, bringing back to the table a very nice Anasazi pot (small but extremely nice), and a replica pipe donated by the Etowah Indian Museum.

So a fine day.

The Missus and I will likely go out for Chinese on the morrow to celebrate at least 42 Valentines days, afterward to waddle back to the Kudzu Grotto stuffed to the gills........and later.....who knows? Maybe somebody will get lucky.

Ideas for a Stimulus Program


1. Payroll Tax Stimulus. With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.

2. Real Middle-Income Tax Relief. Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.

3. Reduce the Business Tax Rate. Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.

4. Homeowner’s Assistance. Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.

5. Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget. This begins with eliminating Congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.

6. No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud. Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.

7. More American Energy Now. Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.

8. Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains. Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.

9. Protect Our Right to Vote in the Workplace. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union.

10. Replace Sarbanes-Oxley. This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups. Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.

11. Abolish the Death Tax. Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.

12. Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure. This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.


Whadda YOU think??

What are you going to do??

I was talking with the ol' Grump at the lunch table today and he said something to me that caused me to start thinking, "Ya know, I'm not so sure this country is in as bad a shape as everyone is saying it is."

To put that in a little perspective you'd have to know that he's 80 years old, with a 3rd grade education, 6 years in the army during the mid-fifties, ran a plumbing business when I first met his daughter (a master card), and was the second ranking plumbing inspector for Dekalb county (GA) when he retired about 15 years or so ago.

Today with about 20% heart function he mostly sits around watching the TV news, or Judge Judy, and whiles away the time sharpening his little pocket knife and watching the great grand children when they come to visit. All that and keeping up with his doctor visits which come about once every 6 months since the wife got his eating habits and medication timing straightened out.

So taking to heart the counsel that "He who walketh with wise men, shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed" I thought at some little length on the matter.

I concluded that if a person had a steady job, or a secure income, this period of time is not very concerning to him. Many there are that have not yet come to the point of fear about the future. Indeed there are many who are optimistic and anxious to see the new days coming. Perhaps we should be asking them for their opinion rather than those who see nothing but Armageddon ahead, or at least would have you think it is coming so as to more easily deceive you, or control you.

Now... if you have just lost your job or had your hours or wages cut back, perhaps you might be feeling just a bit of anxiety. Does weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth get you anywhere......or does rolling up your sleeves and buckling down at whatever work or tradeskill you possess and maybe taking a job that pays less than half of what you used to make and cutting back on some of the un-necessities make more sense?

Me thinks the ol' Grump is not as stupid as might be thought.

Below can be found some ideas to consider.....not mine...but people who council together, whatever their leaning politically, and try to apply principals that work.

Bullshit

The world awaits with pregnant anticipation the implementation of the SPBO's (sitting president barack obama's) economic package and like many another hopeful fool I turned over to his little harangue on many of your local channels last night.

I see many ads on the internutz saying his IQ is 122 and inviting you to come check your own IQ. I have no earthly idea if is IQ is really that high or not. If it is, the last check of mine placed it significantly above his........maybe not...who really trusts those things anyway??

All I know is that I was raised on and owned a dairy farm for a number of years, and I've got damn near 6 decades of bad and good decisions behind me.

Trust me.....(or not).....what I heard last night was BULLSHIT of the finest type. I mean they reached 5 feet up that bulls ass to get the best they could for SPBO to spout last night.

A sixth grader would have more sense than that. Let one do the math (if you can find one that knows how to use a pencil and even let them cheat by using a calculator) and they'll tell you what a load of shit he was spouting.

Just answer me one question. Why has his message of hope and change suddenly switched to Doom, Despair and Agony on Me??

Buy all the precious metals (both shiny and leaden) while you still can. Plan those Victory Gardens now. Start scratching up the ground to put in a few peas and tomatoes.

Just sayin'

Go ....

Go now over to www.velociworld.com and read the words of the mighty lion of the blog-o-sphere, V-man his-own-self.

Stop the Change We Can Believe in

Belief leads one to think of Faith, which, I think it was Paul, described as "knowledge of things unseen".

I'm not from Missouri.....but I've always been of the "show me" persuasion.

Nothing I've heard coming out of the POTUS's mouth has appealed to what little common sense and experience that I have and made me believe the that the so called "stimulus package" of almost a Trillion dollars will help us dig out of the current economic doldrums.

Perhaps......if we could keep some of our own money...or maybe be given some of what has been taken from us.......we could do some real stimulating.

Consider..

Just Sad

After the wife and the pooch have given it up for the night and hit the sack, I come creeping into the computer room in stockinged feet to catch up on the news and activities of some of the other denizens of the world wide web.

I'm trying to flush out the garbage I watched as the Bill O'rielly show was broken into to show the new sitting POTUS addressed the elite of the Dim-0-crit party at their soiree down in Virginia and harranged them to quickly pass his spending bill lest the so called recession (really depression) becomes in reality a depression (really TEOTWAWKI).

All I could find on The Drudge Report was This little tidbit to assure me that our public officials are doing any thing productive at all.

We are not going to allow ourselves to have the sacred roles of women in our society usurped by a couple of plastic women........well, considering the amount of plastic and silicone on TV these day....we may possibly be too late.

Which makes one wonder........why can't a man have a consensual relationship with an inflatable date? Do we fear that some of the ladies going in and out of the Publix would be put out of business and have to start applying for food stamps or other methods of Stimulus ?

Well, we certainly don't want to put law enforcement officials, jailers, magistrates and lawyers out of business. Me thinks maybe this is a time for an enterprising young attorney to do a bit of advertising (trolling) for customers who might have a similar problem with John Q. Law.

Gives me hope for the whole human race, that does.

Cold

Colder'n an Eskimo witch's tit in a brass Büstenhalter.

That's what it felt like around here today.

Of course I know that the states north of here have been colder......but I don't care about them.......they deserve to be colder.....I on the other hand....because of my genteel Southern Nature am like a delicate orchid......beauteous, fragile, deserving of nurturing in a hot house....sprinkled with warm water and fed on bull shit from the talking heads in Washington........Well, 2 outa 3 ain't so bad.

But then, on the other hand, by the weekend it'll be getting up into the 60 degree range or better.......So all you Yankees.....kiss my ring.

Wanna Do Something

Then don't let these be the only voices heard. Add your voices to them in directly contacting your Senators.

For Immediate Release Contact: Alex Rosenwald

February 4th, 2009 Phone: (703) 383-0880

“The tide is clearly turning against the

Obama trillion dollar debt stimulus plan.”

—ALG President Bill Wilson.



ALG President Joins Conservative Leaders in Urging Senate to Defeat Trillion Dollar Spending Bill



February 4th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today in a letter joined with 18 free market and limited government leaders in strongly urging members of the Senate to defeat the spending bill that “will total some $1.2 trillion when interest is calculated over the next decade, and represents an unsustainable growth of government.”



The joint letter is critical of provisions in the legislation already passed by the House of Representatives, and leaders believe it will not boost the economy.



“The irresponsible expansion of the budget to bail out state governments from their own budget deficits, expand Medicaid, boost education spending, food stamps and unemployment benefits, build federal buildings, provide more for public housing, construct climate change supercomputers, erect trade barriers overseas, create refundable tax credits, and make special interest payouts will not stimulate sustainable economic growth,” according to the letter.



The letter calls for permanent tax relief for businesses and individuals. The leaders believe that “individuals and businesses only change their spending and investment habits significantly when they expect policy changes to be permanent.”



Specifically, the letter advocates “[p]reventing tax increases on individual income, capital gains and dividends, changing the tax code to allow full-cost, first-year expensing for business equipment rather than the arbitrary IRS depreciation schedule, and lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate, among the highest in the world, would yield much more bang for the buck in ensuring a rapid economic recovery than the current package of massive spending with a sliver of targeted tax cuts.



The letter portends that the U.S. “is running the serious risk that it will default on its financial obligations, as the nation's creditors during the current economic downturn may be unable to continue sustaining the uncontrolled growth of spending, leaving the nation in financial ruin.”



The current national debt is $10.7 trillion. That includes $4.3 trillion owed for Social Security, Medicare, and other commitments, and $6.4 trillion held privately, $3 trillion of which is held overseas. 40 percent of the debt held privately comes due this year.



“The only way for the government to pay [the debt coming due] is to borrow yet more money,” the letter reads.



The organizations represented disagree with the idea that additional spending is not necessary to stimulate economic growth.



As an alternative the free market and limited government organizations call upon the Senate to deliver “a real plan for change, to finally set the nation's fiscal house in order, to provide permanent tax relief to businesses and individuals, to free the American people from the boom-to-bust economic cycle, and to at last retire the national debt.”



Wilson believes that the legislation can be defeated in the Senate.



“The tide is clearly turning against the Obama trillion dollar debt stimulus plan,” said Wilson in a statement.



“It is now up to Senators who do not wish to engage in generational theft to stand up and make their voices heard, and vote 'no' on the 'stimulus,'” Wilson concluded.



# # #



Interview Availability: Please contact Alex Rosenwald at (703)383-0880 or at arosenwald@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.



###



Americans for Limited Government is a non- partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms,private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.

Do You Know?

Words

.
..on a page...

.....on a monitor..

What is it about words??

Damnifiknow.

I was fortunate to be raised in a family of readers.....back before TV made of ours a world of visual images....dominated by the boob tube, the silver screen, Pong and video games, Entertainment Tonight...I watched my dad read the Atlanta Constitution, Hoard's Dairyman, Sports Afield and Progressive Farmer. My mom read Readers Digest, Redbook and anything else she could get her hands on. I once found some of her old books from before she married.....Raymond Chandler's Perry Mason, H.P. Lovecraft's horror tales, syrupy romance novels, classics and mind candy, short stories, Hemingway and Encyclopedia Brittanica.

As soon as we could read Run, Spot, Run or Dick and Jane we were off to the public library in Lawrenceville, a one room building set on the Northeast corner of the Courthouse Square, and allowed to check out as many books as we thought we might read during the next week. Some weeks I'd have six to ten and run out before the next trip to town. Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, outdoor adventure books, books on war, Ian Fleming's 007, cartoons in the Sunday edition of The Atlanta Journal...
..Lil' Abner, Snuffy Smith...

....words......I still luv 'em....books don't have commercial breaks every 5 minutes, and no talking head is trying to convince me the world is going to end if we don't pass this or that stimulus package of pork.

Lest I start ranting, I'll just click down a few that caught my eye this evening...
...and while they are almost 2000 years old, still cause the gray matter twix' my ears to clatter and clank together, sending up sparks and puffs of smoke from burning electrical connections.

Who said this??

"What's the matter, mortal
with you,
that you coddle yourself with all this sorrow?
Why moan and wail at death?
If your life's benn happy and blessed,
and all those blessings haven't been poured into a leaky pot
to spill away, with nothing left to give thanks for,
why not, as a man who's feasted full of life,
retire contented - fool - and rest in peace?


There's more, that I'll strain my eyes to see, ere I switch off the light and drop the mask down over my face, and
Sleep

The economist

They say that an expert is anyone over 50 miles from home ( for no prophet is recognized in his own land), with a briefcase and the audacity to proclaim that "he knows what to do".


The economist that everyone should be paying attention to is
Gideon Gono.

Inflation is coming back in style. And Gideon Gono is its star. While
other central bankers flounder, he’s proven that you can have
inflation...and have it more abundantly than you want.

Gono, if you haven’t heard of him, is Robert Mugabe’s right hand man. And
Robert Mugabe is the number one man in Zimbabwe, an African country with a
real ‘riches to rags’ story. It was one of the wealthiest and safest
countries in Africa when it was run by Ian Smith in the ’70s. But the
meddlers and world-improvers couldn’t leave well enough alone. They helped
put Mugabe in power. Since then, the place has gone to Hell.

Gideon Gono, 47 years old, lives in a 47-bedroom mansion in Harare. He
says he doesn’t drink, only sleeps 4 hours a night, and runs regularly. He
is known as “Mr. Inflation” for his Olympian efforts to increase the
country’s money supply. He does this the old fashioned way – by printing
pieces of paper will lots of zeros on them. Newsweek Magazine seems to
have found him in a talkative mood:

Asked what he thought of the worldwide credit crash, he replied:

“I sit back and see the world today crying over the recent credit crunch,
becoming hysterical about something which has not even lasted for a year,
and I have been living with it for 10 years. My country has had to go for
the past decade without credit... Out of the necessity to exist, to ensure
my people survive, I had to find myself printing money. I found myself
doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF
asked the US to please print money. I began to see the whole world now in
a mode of practicing what they have been saying I should not.”


I haven't met Mr. Gono, wouldn't know him if I ran into him......but I've been hearing from a lot of his litter mates for a while now on all the boobtube information (or dis) broadcasts.

Starting off a little rainy

here at the KGHQ (kudzu grotto headquarters).

Of course yesterday the gray clouds never let the sun shine through either. Mid-winter blahs seem to be settling in and my inner-most child cries, "I wanna go to the beach".
No sand and surf for the wicked though.....although I'll be heading north to Toccoa "the beautiful" in a little while in an effort to stay away from CNN, which the ol' Grump says, "Shows everything over and over for at least 3 days".
Even with the black wand of power in his hand, he'll be mesmerized by the 62" wide eye into the world and sit there till his eyes glaze over and his head falls sideways, as his jaw drops to his chest and soft rumbling come from his inner-most regions.

The following caught my eye as I trekked mightily through the badlands of the interweb emails and other stuff..........





Scary stuff right there.....that's what that is.

But what does it mean for the humble and lowly??? Hmmmmm???

As I've stated before........stock up on food, guns, precious metals (both the brass, and glittery stuff.....keep your head down and your powder dry.

Oh yeah......if you have a chance......pick up a few extra Big Texas Cinnamon Rolls (they'll last 2 or three weeks if'n you don't mind them getting a little bit hard, and maybe a few extra rolls of Charmin. Maybe even some hip waders and rain gear since the amount of BS coming out of TAOTP (the asylum on the Potomac) is gonna continue to get a doctorate....Phd......(piled higher and deeper).

Twilights gone

and dusky dark envelopes me......

as I sit on the squirrels nut cracking stump.

Above the sky has turned to steel gray, with five condensation trails drifting slowly northward, as a sealed, pressurized, aluminum cylinder crossed them to the southwest, heading to Atlanta, or maybe Birmingham at 6 miles high, doing roughly 7/10's the speed of sound. Too high to hear, it's only companion in the night, Venus, shining steadily in the western sky, maybe 25 degrees above the horizon.

The squirrels will likely have larger and plumper kits come spring. The acorn crop was tremendous in the back right quarter of the lot this year. While the treerats have been busily running up and down the trees socking provisions away for the winter, winter it's self has crept up on them and seemingly passed them by, as today it got into the lower 60's. Surely there'll come a colder spell in the next few weeks which will make them curl up with their tails across their nose as they snuggle down into their beds of leaves.

I'm later outside than usual. I'm trying to get my work to a point where it can settle overnight and I can start again as soon as the sun tries to push it's self above the eastern horizon.

I don't mind the onward creep of dark tonight. It's quite except for an occasional car hurrying it's occupants home after a day of work or school. Nothing to intrude into my head except to check on progress every once in a while. After 15 years it's almost automatic.

Soon I'll put the lid on......weigh it down with a rock and step gingerly back to the house. My feet hurt and I look forward to kicking back in the recliner and watching the grand daughter and Nanny making things with the Play-doh.

Doing a little prospecting this morning

I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it --
Came out with a fortune last fall, --
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon



"There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; it's luring me on as of old. But it's not the gold that I'm wanting, so much as just finding the gold."-Robert Service, 18-th century miner/poet.

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8336/robertservice/spell.htm


You have to be careful the 'Gold Fever' don't grab you by the 'nads and never let go.

From the Daily Reckoning

Comes this little bit of gristle to gnaw on...


O! Bama! Where is thy bounce? Perhaps it is already over. From their low
in November, to their high a couple weeks ago, stocks worldwide recovered
about a quarter of what they had lost. Now, they seem to be going down
again.

We don’t know what the stock market sees, but we see a lot more trouble
coming.

Houses in Southern California are down 35% from their peak.

Japan says its economy is “worsening rapidly.”

“Air France warns loss is likely” is one headline in Europe this morning;
“German retailer to cut as many as 15,000 jobs,” is another.

But the big news is in the banking sector.

U.S. banks are “effectively insolvent,” says Nouriel Roubini. He figures
losses in the United States might rise to $3.6 trillion – most of it in
banks and broker-dealers. Which leaves the sector a little short. The
banking system in the United States only has $1.4 trillion in capital.

Last week, Bank of America posted a quarterly loss of $1.79 billion...the
first loss it’s taken in 18 years. Citigroup out-did it, with a loss of
$8.29 billion for the last quarter of ’08.

As in Japan in the ’90s, the economic boat cannot right itself until this
bilge is dumped overboard. But the feds are against it – fighting the
correction with every tool they’ve got.

Obama says his team with be “bold and swift” in its efforts to deal with
the problem. But the action they take will be timid and slow. That is,
they will try to hold on...to protect what we have...to prevent change at
all costs. “Yes we can!” they will say. But they can’t make the mistakes
of an entire generation disappear – especially if they try to prevent a
correction.

The truly bold and swift solution, on the other hand, would probably get
him impeached. It would be to simply announce that the Obama government
was letting nature take her course. No more bailouts. No more stimulus
packages. No more federal guarantees or ‘refund checks.’

“Keynes is dead,” Obama should say; “the bankers will get what they
deserve.”

In a matter of days, the whole banking sector would go bust...along with
GM (more about that, below)...and thousands of businesses all over the
country. Millions of people would lose their jobs. Stocks would crash down
to 3,000 on the Dow...maybe lower. There would be keening by widows, whose
husbands had jumped in front of trains or slit their wrists...there would
be gnashing of teeth by millions, whose hopes of getting something for
nothing were suddenly dashed...there would be mobs in the street and
revolution in the air.

A few days later, banks that were still solvent would pick up the pieces
of those that had gone bust. And gradually, the economy would pick
up...building on a much more solid base.

But don’t trouble yourself about it, dear reader. That won’t happen.
Instead, Mr. Obama will take the more cautious route... More below.

*** What can the Obama team really do? He plans a rescue for banks – above
and beyond the $825 billion fiscal stimulus. He will “reform” health care
– our guess is that he will want to make a system of European-style
national health care his legacy contribution. He will offer more
guarantees, more bailouts, more stimulus. He will probably turn the banks
into quasi-public utilities...heavily regulated, with little appetite for
risk and little taste for capitalism.

“Creeping nationalization,” is how Bloomberg describes the process. In
Britain, the Royal Bank of Scotland will serve as a ‘guinea pig.’ It’s
lost 3/4 of its share value in the last two days. The government will keep
it alive...but it will become a ‘zombie’ – more dead than alive...more
ward of the state than independent financial institution.

Of course, these fixes will do more harm than good. They will retard,
delay, and detour the inevitable correction. Which will cause the Obama
Administration to turn to other, more desperate measures. Here’s the real
story...

Yesterday’s front page headline from the Financial Times:

“Treasury gives go-ahead to ‘print money.’”

We felt like saving the paper. Like the Times edition that announced the
German invasion of Poland in 1940, it is probably the start of something
big. Something catastrophic.

*** GM announced yesterday that it would probably run out of money in
March. As to a bailout, we turn to a letter that appeared last week in the
Manufacturing and Technology Journal. It is from a man who seems to have
grease under his nails and a brain under his hat. Greg Knox, president of
Knox Machinery in Franklin, Ohio, explains why he is not in favor of a
bail out for Detroit.

“Politicians and Management of the Big 3 are both infected with the same
entitlement mentality that has spread like cancerous germs in UAW halls
for the last countless decades, and whose plague is now sweeping this
nation, awaiting our new ‘messiah’, Pres-elect Obama, to wave his magic
wand and make all our problems go away, while at the same time allowing
our once great nation to keep ‘living the dream’... Believe me folks, The
dream is over!

“This dream where we can ignore the consumer for years while management
myopically focuses on its personal rewards packages at the same time that
our factories have been filled with the worlds most overpaid, arrogant,
ignorant and laziest entitlement minded ‘laborers’ without paying the
price for these atrocities...this dream where you still think the masses
will line up to buy our products for ever and ever.

“Don’t even think about telling me I’m wrong. Don’t accuse me of not
knowing of what I speak. I have called on Ford, GM, Chrysler, TRW, Delphi,
Kelsey Hayes, American Axle and countless other automotive OEM’s
throughout the Midwest during the past 30 years and what I’ve seen over
those years in these union shops can only be described as disgusting. Troy
Clarke, President of General Motors North America, states: ‘There is
widespread sentiment throughout this country, and our government, and
especially via the news media, that the current crisis is completely the
result of bad management which it certainly is not.’

“You’re right Mr. Clarke, it’s not JUST management...how about the
electricians who walk around the plants like lords in feudal times, making
people wait on them for countless hours while they drag ass...so they can
come in on the weekend and make double and triple time...for a job they
easily could have done within their normal 40 hour work week. How about
the line workers who threaten newbies with all kinds of scare
tactics...for putting out too many parts on a shift...and for being too
productive (We certainly must not expose those lazy bums who have been
getting overpaid for decades for their horrific underproduction, must
we?!?)

“Do you folks really not know about this stuff?!? How about this great
sentiment abridged from Mr. Clarke’s sad plea: ‘over the last few years
...we have closed the quality and efficiency gaps with our competitors.’
What the hell has Detroit been doing for the last 40 years?!? Did we
really JUST wake up to the gaps in quality and efficiency between us and
them? The K car vs. the Accord? The Pinto vs. the Civic?!? Do I need to go
on? What a joke!

“We are living through the inevitable outcome of the actions of the United
States auto industry for decades. It’s time to pay for your sins,
Detroit.

“I attended an economic summit last week where brilliant economist, Alan
Beaulieu, from the Institute of Trend Research, surprised the crowd when
he said he would not have given the banks a penny of ‘bailout money’.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘this would cause short term problems,’ but despite what
people like politicians and corporate magnates would have us believe, the
sun would in fact rise the next day... and the following very important
thing would happen...where there had been greedy and sloppy banks, new
efficient ones would pop up...that is how a free market system works...it
does work...if we would only let it work..."

“But for some nondescript reason we are now deciding that the rest of the
world is right and that capitalism doesn’t work – that we need the
government to step in and ‘save us"’...Save us my ass. Hell – we’re
nationalizing...and unfortunately too many of our once fine nation’s
citizens don’t even have a clue that this is what is really
happening...But, they sure can tell you the stats on their favorite sports
teams...yeah – THAT’S really important, isn’t it...

“Does it ever occur to ANYONE that the "competition" has been producing
vehicles, EXTREMELY PROFITABLY, for decades in this country?... How can
that be??? Let’s see... Fuel efficient... Listening to customers...
Investing in the proper tooling and automation for the long haul...

“Not being too complacent or arrogant to listen to Dr. W. Edwards Deming
four decades ago when he taught that by adopting appropriate principles of
management, organizations could increase quality and simultaneously reduce
costs. Ever increased productivity through quality and intelligent
planning... Treating vendors like strategic partners, rather than like
‘the enemy’... Efficient front and back offices... Non union
environment...

“Again, I could go on and on, but I really wouldn’t be telling anyone
anything they really don’t already know down deep in their hearts. I have
six children, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of wanting someone
to bail you out of a mess that you have gotten yourself into – my children
do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, as I did when I was their age. I
do for them what my parents did for me (one of their greatest gifts, by
the way) – I make them stand on their own two feet and accept the
consequences of their actions and work through it. Radical concept, huh...
Am I there for them in the wings? Of course – but only until such time as
they need to be fully on their own as adults.

“I don’t want to oversimplify a complex situation, but there certainly are
unmistakable parallels here between the proper role of parenting and
government. Detroit and the United States need to pay for their sins. Bad
news people – it’s coming whether we like it or not. The newly elected
Messiah really doesn’t have a magic wand big enough to ‘make it all go
away.’ I laughed as I heard Obama ‘reeling it back in’ almost immediately
after the final vote count was tallied...‘we really might not do it in a
year...or in four...’ Where the Hell was that kind of talk when he was
RUNNING for office.

“Stop trying to put off the inevitable folks ... That house in Florida
really isn’t worth $750,000... People who jump across a border really
don’t deserve free health care benefits... That job driving that forklift
for the Big 3 really isn’t worth $85,000 a year... We really shouldn’t
allow Wal-Mart to stock their shelves with products acquired from a
country that unfairly manipulates their currency and has the most
atrocious human rights infractions on the face of the globe...

“That couple whose combined income is less than $50,000 really shouldn’t
be living in that $485,000 home... Let the market correct itself folks –
it will. Yes it will be painful, but it’s gonna’ be painful either way,
and the bright side of my proposal is that on the other side of it all, is
a nation that appreciates what it has...and doesn’t live beyond its
means...and gets back to basics...and redevelops the patriotic work ethic
that made it the greatest nation in the history of the world...and
probably turns back to God.

“Sorry – don’t cut my head off, I’m just the messenger sharing with you
the ‘bad news’. I hope you take it to heart.

“Gregory J. Knox, President, Knox Machinery, Inc. Franklin, Ohio”

The Audacity of Hope

Now that I have your attention.......

I totally missed the inauguration today. We were in the truck with the radio on and could hear the crowd cheering and the announcer, announcing.......I looked over and asked, "do you want to hear this""? To which I received a firm "no". So over to the country station we flipped.

Then we drove and hour south to find some snow flurries and a Property for sale that we had been trying to get info on for almost a month now.

A Plantation house with 29 acres. Built around 1830, so we were told. We were in a freaking graveyard so far as cell phone reception was concerned, but using the new # posted on the for sale sign got the owner/agent to call us as we were knocking at the front door.

Long story short, she told us where to look for the key and we let ourselves in for a visit.

Needs one hell of a lot of work and money. I figured the land at about 3K per acre and after looking at all the work needed.......complete rewiring which will require that all interior walls have to come off and of course a complete new set of plumbing which was jury-rigged to begin with.......rebuilding of all of the chimney and fireplaces......AND the installation of any kind of heating and air conditioning, plus of course, insulation, of which there was never any except the application of newspaper on the walls under either paint or wallpaper.

I decided the house could either be rebuilt for around $300,000 or refurbished for approximately the same.........take your pick.

The Agent/owner wants half a mil and owes $300K.

I started to tell her we'd take it.......if they would pay me $350,000.00 and reduce the price to 200K.

That is Audacity of Hope right there......that's what that is. They are going to need a lot of luck.

Old times

As I stopped in the living room to cadge a handful of popcorn (not enough salt to my taste) from the wife, I saw that she was watching the PBS show 'Vietnam'. As chance would have it they were showing the part about the battle for Khe Sanh in '68.

It was interesting for a couple of minutes to point out various locales that I'd visited (albeit a couple years later, when we went back and rebuilt it......then I remembered a few other things and decided to bug out.

Supposedly those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I'm too old to repeat it, and don't particularly like thinking in depth about it.



I've never found an audience who appreciate the humor in the story of the wheel coming off a landing HC 130 Hercules.....bouncing through the refueling area where we were taking on JP-4 and landing in the swimming hole below the waterfall just to the south.

Maybe I don't tell it right.

It many not be justice....

.......but it is Mercy.

I'll not say more as it'd probably devolve into a rambling rant.

Just a little bit more

.
......if this lemon pie and I'll probably have to go put the PJ's on since they have a stretchy waist band.

I readily admit that I didn't cook it myself. WTH I'm at the top of the freaking food chain.....there is someone on the next rung down to do the cooking....

Actually....that's not exactly true. I can cook..and frequently do....just not very well. I'm much better at just eating whatever hasn't turned green in the refrigerator.

We were looking tonight..the wife and I...she settled on something and I got the two boiled eggs sitting there in a little sandwich bag. "Oh goody", I gushed, "I can have egg salad without those damned relish pickles being in it, or celery".

Anyhoo........is there anything more satisfying that being to go to the pantry or Refrigerator and being able to pick from among a variety of items something that strikes your fancy as being edible without too much preparation. Starving waifs in UN protected countries in Africa can't do that. No.....they have to have sex with the piece keepers before that happens. Just goes to show you that there is no free lunch anymore. Well, for another day and a half or so, according to some bitch lawmaker from Maryland I saw on TV news this evening. They're looking for a Federal Government stimulus package to help them out.
Good luck with that.

Well, I better wash that last bite down with a gulp or two of cows milk.

Ya'll have a good night.

Classify this!

It seems that I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out where I fit in exactly.....and seem no closer to having an answer than at any other time in which I engage in a bit of navel gazing (the belly button kind, not watching ships at the port in Savannah).

Husband, father, son, brother, smart, stupid, Soldier, aviator, world traveler, dairyman, cow inseminator (artifically ya perverts), farmer, redneck, real estate mogul, former foreclosed upon real estate mogul, explosive expert....well really I just packed what I thought was enough dynamite in the holes and let it rip...with sometimes unfortunate consequences.......(Honest boss I thought the curb would look better on the other side of the street), house builder (most of which still stand) reluctant advocate for selling people who really needed a job more life insurance they didn't want and wouldn't pay for, killer of trees both evergreen and decidious, cutter of same into boards that were almost smooth, finder of lost, forgotten and unwanted treasures, seller of some and hoarder of others that serve no useful purpose The trail has led to some unexpected places of pleasure and others of pain.

This weekend found me working at some of the latest insanity.....taking pictures of and posting items for sale on eBay. The mix seems to follow the path already worn in that it is an eclectic mix of things. To wit......

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=110338909264

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&item=110338976630

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&item=110339707090

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&item=110339627058

There should be a time when a man decides what he wants to be when he grows up. I reckon I've still a little more growing up to do. On the other hand....in another 143 years when I'm ready to shed this skin....maybe heaven will need a handyman. Either that or I'll wind up just one more stoker of the fires in Hades. Maybe I can install some air conditioning.

Sorry, I guess you'll have to do a bit of copying and pasting on the links. Suck it up.....I'm not the PEBO......I'm not going to do everything for you.

Join Up Here

Too Much........Ya think

I am really trying to not get all het up 'bout the up-coming coronation of His Most High Glorious Re-incarnation of Honest Abe, Emancipator of million....Nay Billions, the Most Magnificent Arab-Kenyan-Kansasian-Hawaiian-Indonesian-Muslim-Neo-Christian, All things to All People, the Right Awesome-Reverend Wright Protege, husband to her Worship Mistress Michelle-the Once and Future Queen-Bee, The High Browed-Big Ear-ed PEBO His Own Self.

But the fact that the country has to declare a state of Emergency to help pay for the Swearing in of this High Yeller Crook from Chicago causes a RCOB (Red Coating of Blood) to fall over my eyes, and I want to scream and shout that, "The Emperor has no Clothes", till I'm blue in the face.

This is Lunacy on a scale never before imagined by anyone with an IQ of 50 or greater.

Before we are over it, the current World Wide Economic Crisis (WWEC) will make the depression of 1929 and subsequent seem like loosing $2.00 at Keno.......
........and they want to spend H.O.W M.U.C.H????

One Hundred and Ten Million Pounds

I don't know what that is in Monopoly Money but to spend that much at this time should cause any sane American to weep, gnash their teeth and pick ol' Betsy from over the mantle and march on The Asylum on the Potomac shooting politicians and bureaucrats from the local stripe on up, leaving them writhing on the ground in a tangle of their intestines and blood (I was going to say brain cells 'til I remembered that they have none.

If there was ever a time for REVOLUTION in this country it is now.

I would ask God to help us................but am convinced that they have seen into our hearts and have decided that we are not worthy of saving, and have turned their collective backs on us.

Ask me if I care....

.
......Not much.

I guess that PEBO made a rousing speech over the weekend talking about all the great things he'll be doing in just over a week to get us out of the current economic mess.

I didn't listen....

And Lame Duck George Bush made a speech today, talking about his accomplishments and failures.

I didn't listen again........

Not because I'm not interested.......I am......passionately. Rather it's because I've determined to live my life as disconnectedly as possible from the edicts and pronouncements to emanate from AOP (The Asylum on the Potomac). I've learned from much past experience that they are guaran-damn-teed to do just the opposite from what good ol' common sense would show as the correct course. For instance....

75 years of history proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that socialism will cause even a huge country with natural resources coming out of their ears (see former USSR) to fail.

70 years ago a government tried Fascism (see Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy) and followed a madman into the bowels of hell on earth.

Since the 60's the government has paid unwed mothers to birth bastards or to murder them before birth at government expense, and we have both more bastards and murderers.

Since the 70's our schools have tried to pull up the incompetent or unwilling at the expense of the competent and willing, and we have more unwilling incompetents, and higher paid teachers and exponentially more supervisors.

We got all these things by listening to those who told us they knew what to do for us, so we abandoned Common Sense in favor of believing The Leaders of the Cult of No Personal Responsibility.

My Question is.......are we willing to once again take up the mantle of personal Resonsibility?

Hot off the presses

And 52 years later...

The Wall Street Journal writes about it......

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years


*

By STEPHEN MOORE

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."

In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.

The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."

Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page.


You can find the article above at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html

Ain't it th' truth

To all those who have been by my side.........or need me to be by theirs, watch this and see if you don't feel goooood.



Maybe you'll say you don't need any Kum-by-ya in your life.........
........just wait, you will.

I'm so embarassed

I'm an embarrassment to Barack!


I only scored 14 on the Obama Test

Ouch!!!

Drove for two days.....

My ass is tired and numb.



Feels kinda like he looks...............but then..... he can carry a tune.

Money

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!

That's what every one is shouting these days. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

G.I.V.E..........M.E.

Besides as ol' Everret Dirkson (I think) once said, "A Billion here, a Billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
I suppose it's not difficult to substitute T's for B's.

It seems to me, that one of the things that got us into the economic mess that we find ourselves in today is the creation of trillions of new $ bills and throwing them out into a market place where they artificially jacked up the price of everything from houses to hookers. Easy money is like power.......it corrupts.
Throwing more (like they are going to do, I guaran-damn-tee it), is just going to corrupt even more. The fruit has been drawing fruit flies for a while......it has a way to go before the mold gets fuzzy and the stench drives you out of the house.

We are a long....long....long......long.............long way from seeing the bottom of this particular cesspool. Hope you have your snorkel on.

A New Years Wish

This is a New Years Wish that I can really get behind.

Go Here

We often don't think of what the wounded go through either physically or mentally. One thing that is as true now as 40 years ago is a burning desire to rejoin your unit and comrades, no matter how tough the fight they are in.

God Bless Them.

Here at last

Let's hope that 2009 has a lot of goodies in store for us.

I rang in the new year last night about 9:30 in the traditional way...Wish it was more than once a year...........just kidding.

The wife cooked a huge pot of Collard greens and another huge pot of blackeyed peas yesterday......then today after they were safely ensconced in the freezer we went down to the SIL's and ate their peas and collards. No ham hocks though.........had a delicious rotisserie yard hen for the protein portion. Served with a lovely vintage.....well really, stirred together today, lemonade.......we chowed down till a little more than full.

Hope we can afford to eat so well next New Years Day.

I'll not bore you with prognostications of the future, nor with wildly unattainable goals for the coming annual circuit around Sol.

I'll just say that I'm gonna do whatever I can to make sure me and mine are warm and well clothed in 2009. If that involves actually going out and looking for what we need......so be it.......damned if I'm gonna wait for the idiots on the Potomac to dictate what I should do or tell me how much they feel my pain.

I bought some scrap on the last day of 2008, which will ensure that there was no profit to be shown on the 1040 so they can suck wind over getting anything more than sales and fuel taxes outa me, and I'm gonna do everything I can to do the same in this year. Maybe I will buy a bit more precious metal for the SKS, the Marlin .22, the Franchi .20 guage and some of the other bits of antique iron works I don't have.

Let's make this the year we pass The Fair Tax bill.

Tick Tick, Tock Tock

Both of the pocket watches hanging from the wire shelf above the computer here are doing their thing......springs unwinding and cogs and wheels turning....letting me know every time I look over there that bedtime is approaching.

I intend to beat ol' man 2008 to bed and wake up at my customary time......30 minutes after the eggs have gone cold so's I have to zap them in the microwave for 20 seconds.

A new day, a new year ahead of us. What will it bring? I have no idea, but will be willing to bet a buck that at the end of 2009 we'll look back (should we be so lucky as to make it through) and be glad to see the ass end of it also.

May you live in interesting times has been said my more than a few to be a Chinese Curse. Hope that you will all prove that to be wrong in the New Year.

So Happy New Year Friends and relatives. I won't be there to sing 'Auld Lang Syne' and give you a big ol' kiss.........but if I were, I would.....so count yourself Lucky.

An exercise in futility

Or at least so This would seem to me.

I mean.........come on......if you look at a nighttime satellite image of that part of the world (Korea) you see only darkness above the 38th parallel. Kim ding dong has continued the process of sucking the life and money out of the country and they can barely produce enough to feed themselves a starvation diet.

I don't know why I bother to comment on this event except it happened right after I got married almost 41 years ago and at the time was a big deal, yet the US was as hapless in dealing with it as so many other episodes over the years.

Yes.......we have a judgment....given by a Federal judge in this country as a result of a lawsuit that N. Korea didn't even bother to respond to. Do they ever think they'll get a penny of the award?

Now if they had been given the authority to use any means they could come up with to collect the money or other satisfaction they might deem appropriate against the leader of N. Korea, including letters of Marque allowing them to seize (if they could hold it) property anywhere in the world, or to take a pound of flesh, blood, or bone from nearest his heart. (I wouldn't make the mistake that one of Shakespeare's characters made.) Then they might feel that they obtained justice.

Still they have to remember that the Crew of the Pueblo were spies and and as such really shouldn't even be having this conversation. They knew the risks when they signed on.

I'm tired of this topic.........

What's coming in '09 ??

I have to confess that I am not optimistic.

Some other people are not either.



I post it..........you decide. Either that or ignore it and wait and see. Methinks that is what most people will do, to their peril.

Torture

I'm all for it.

Lately I've attempted to do a little walking, in order to prepare myself to do a little hiking and exploring in the N.E. Georgia hills.

Did you know that NE Ga contains the only rain forest east of the Mississippi?

It's true........a small area just north of Clayton in Rabun county Georgia receives more that 150 inches of precipitation a year. The coves and valleys there are verdant with flora and fauna both..........many not seen in any other area.

I digress however, from the topic of Torture in the heading.

I decided I'd try to reduce the amount I consume daily (a task that is somewhat difficult around the Christmas Season as there are so many goodies to get rid of).

A small remnant of some of the things I have to eat for the Holidays yet.



I also decided I'd go to the park and walk around the track...........Ha

More like hobble around. It's 6/10 of a mile and by the time I'd gone half way around it my heels and feet told me that Plantar Faciatitis was not a thing of the past, but an all to real present. Likewise just a few strides further let me know that shin splints will nearly make and old man weep. I finished the circuit, but was passed by little old men and ladies half again my age and by one ol' gal with a walker. One joggers dog thought I was a light post and tried to piss up my leg...
.......f**king mutt.......I'd have kicked at it but didn't feel up to having my ass kicked by an 18 year old Coed.

Just Damn!!

Both the above problems are caused by tendons and ligaments which are too tight for one reason or the other.. Much stretching and taking of pain potions are in order.

Since I don't seem to get enough benefit from the amount of stretching I do, I'm reduced to wearing the below torture device for several hours each night. I'm supposed to wear it all night, but somehow it comes off during the night.



Alternating it between feet on successive nights and increasing the amount of tension on the straps to pull my toes toward my shins has given me some relief as has a new set of insoles to compensate for high arches.

You'll be glad to know that I can now walk completely around the track and the last time out only developed shin splints during the last 100 feet. But more torture and walking will remedy that hopefully and soon the hills will be alive with the huffing and panting of my-own-self as I pull myself along from Rhododendron to Pine tree, all in pursuit of the end of the rainbow and the Fountain of Youth. I'll keep you posted.

Very, very good

While munching on chocolate covered cashews (yum) I learn that my sister's youngest son is home from Iraq. Missed Christmas but just in time for New Year.
Life doesn't get much better than this.

I wish I were more tech savvy..........I'd copy and paste the picture of her hugging him. Her smile would light up America's Mall for weeks.

Thanks Seth.........Welcome home.

Home again, Home again

Jiggity Jig
I ate enough to stuff
a rather large pig.

Merry Christmas late in the day.
We've arrived back from the eldest daughter's home where we ate and laughed, broke open the presents and scattered wrapping paper to the four winds.

We guys sat and stood around laughing at ourselves, Obama, the kids and Grandkids running amok. We talked about hunting and fishing and the ills of the world.
The women folk put on a feast that would have fed twice as many.

I was treated to a Japanese Fruit Cake by the eldest daughter for my birthday...Yum!!
Brought most of that bad boy home so will have to delay the diet for the new year till all is consumed. Right now I am feasting on the requisite Pistachios I receive every year for Christmas. That will aid in the scrubbing of the colon which I undertake at least once a year by consuming several pounds of those salty bits of goodness as fast as I can shuck and gobble them down.

I hope you all had the best Christmas of your lives, whether young or old. I certainly did. At least for a little while the looming depression, recession or EOTWAWKI was eclipsed by something greater than our puny cares.

God Bless us all, Everyone.

Winter winds

Winter blew in yesterday with blustery arctic gusts that while not too bad in the morning, were brisk enough to drive a person indoors before the sun set. On a positive note though,.......it was sunny and bright.

Today also dawns sunny and bright, with the thermometer reading down about 26 degrees......low enough to put a thin film of ice in the water bucket. Droplets froze on the sides of the dipper as soon as it was exposed to the air.

The leaves are all down on the ground and blowing around where they are dry enough. I don't guess a little tannic acid from the oak leaves will hurt the dogs water. Probably cure her insides a little making her tougher. When I first went outside she was in her little house ( a plastic 55 gallon drum wrapped in two layers of quilt, then wrapped with a double wrapping of plastic tarp, the inside layered with cedar shaving and wheat straw set on the porch of the tool shed), all the way in the back with just her nose stuck out of the straw. I don't know how warm it was but will say that I was tempted to get in there with her.

Later:
We loaded up the car and went down to the mother-in-law to spread a little Christmas cheer with her and the sister-in-law. We went out to a local Chicken Express where every one except me got the Catfish plates.......and I got the chicken livers. One might be excused for ordering 12 livers when you consider the average sized chicken.

They must have bred these chickens with Pterodactyls because they were each the size of a Cornish hen. I did my manly duty though and only had to give away six of them. I think the guy doing the counting went to the same high school I did. Lets just say that it looked like more than twelve.

Of course by the time we arrived back home it was time to take a nap......er..I mean meditate, in the Lazy Boy.

The economy must be really bad............I had a lady this evening try to sell me a plastic bag of sand, calling it gold. Claimed it had been tested at a lab and everything. I hope she kept her receipt and kept up with the boyfriend who gave it to her in exchange for a small loan. She'll have to get repayment for that by taking a pound of flesh from nearest his heart. LOL

I'm guessing that the investors who gave Billions to Bernie Madoff might be feeling much the same way.

Another cool night on the way, the a start on a new year with a warming up spell...
.......near 70 degrees by the weekend. It's sure tough living here in the South. Must be that Global Warming we've been hearing about.

Where do you find Barney Frank?

I read and make snide remarks.............you decide.

AN ERA OF DELEVERAGING
by Byron W. King

Clearly the Fed wants to spread more cheap liquidity around the world. But
is the world’s problem really not enough cheap dollars? It seems to me
that we got here – deep in this current recession – with too many dollars
floating around. Too many people borrowed too much cheap money. Now the
big blowback of history is that we’ve entered into an era of deleveraging.
So the biggest concern for most of the world’s governments, businesses and
households is overall solvency. Can people pay down their bills as they
come due? For far too many people, the answer is “No.”

My inner-Austrian economist tells me that what the world needs is more
savings and more capital formation. The world needs more basic
productivity. Instead, we are getting more bailouts and government
programs that will benefit people and firms of dubious productivity.
That’s not capital creation. That’s capital destruction.

And pity poor OPEC. Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at $60 per barrel or so
just to cover its national budget. At $45 per barrel, they are losing
money. Russia needs to see oil at $75 to keep its accounts in balance, and
that’s before they lay the keels for the new fleet of aircraft carriers
they are discussing. And those poor souls in Iran? Mr. I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket
needs $100 oil to meet payroll. While Generalissimo Chavez of Venezuela
needs $125 oil to cover the national outlays. So OPEC wants to cut output
and try to drive the oil price back up.

Will it work? Don’t bet against OPEC on this one. They want to cut output
by over 4 million barrels per day. That’s a lot of crude. So expect to see
oil prices heading back up in 2009. We won’t see $147 again any time real
soon. But expect higher oil prices as 2009 unfolds, and expect to see
higher prices for everything else within the energy chain.

OPEC’ predicament just goes to show. The key OPEC players sure got used to
high oil prices in a hurry. They believed their own press releases. They
thought that oil was high and going higher, as if there was never an oil
bust before.

So you can have a lot of money, but not know anything about how money
works. Then again, we in the U.S. shouldn’t gloat at OPEC, let alone
laugh. Not as long as we keep electing the same members to Congress, year
after year.

Speaking of that, did you see Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on CBS’s Sunday
evening show 60 Minutes the other day? That noted public intellectual
Leslie Stahl interviewed him. Along the way Ms. Stahl called Mr. Frank
“the smartest man in Congress.” Wow. If that’s true then we’re in trouble.
OK, Rep. Frank is smart. He sure is not dumb. He came across as bright and
quick-witted. Ms. Stahl made sure to tell us that Rep. Frank “went to
Harvard.” (Big deal. So did I.)

But Rep. Frank came across as an angry and bitter man. From what I saw on
60 Minutes, the meaning of money does not register with Rep. Frank. He
just wants to spend dollars on things that make him feel good. And if you
disagree, he has a prompt explanation for why you must be a bad person. He
will give you a non sequitur of a comparison for why his subjective
feelings are better than yours. And if you persist he has a personal
put-down. He’ll call you an “idiot” or something worse.

Well, Rep. Frank is what I think we’re going to look back on, one of these
days, as a “financial sociopath.” He comes across as just in favor of
spending the national wealth with no regard for the long-term
consequences, as if the $10 trillion national debt is not already
crippling the nation. As Ronald Reagan once asked, “Where does this
country find such men?”


In Barney's case........my guess would be to look for the asshole on the end of a dick.

It just goes to show about 60 Minutes. They can misquote you. Or worse,
they can quote you correctly.

Until next we meet,

Byron W. King
for The Daily Reckoning

P.S. I’ll keep you updated on these issues, and on other news about the OI
portfolio, in future articles. In the meantime, check out my latest
report...

http://www1.youreletters.com/t/1609910/11023915/1598689/0/

Editor’s Note: Byron King currently serves as an attorney in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law in 1981 and is a cum laude graduate of Harvard
University. Byron is also co-editor of Outstanding Investments, and editor
of Energy & Scarcity Investor.

Let us Scam

Sung to the tune of "let it snow"

Let us Scam, Let us Scam, Let us Scam.

This from CNN's Cliff Mason...

"But I can't deny the similarities between how social security operates and what Bernie Madoff was allegedly doing with his investors, or should we call them marks?

With the Social Security system, workers pay 12.4% of their salaries into the system to cover payments to retirees, who themselves paid into the system when they were working. Except the original recipients of social security in the depression never had to pay payroll taxes because the system didn't exist when they were working.

Now look at the definition of a Ponzi scheme courtesy of wikipedia: "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit from any real business."

As a creation of the previous Great Depression, the Social Security System may find its end in the coming years, as Baby Boomers begin to collect their dues and the system's obligations begin to rapidly outpace new deposits. Indeed, should the next few years be as turbulent and costly as 2008, the system could simply unravel.

But many of you are already either fed up or frustrated. You've had enough, and you just want to know something for certain. You want to know the truth. And rightfully so, because so much of the world economy really is just lies piled on top of more lies piled on top of even more lies.

The charts and graphs that give ‘economists' all their power...are honestly just a sham...

But hey.........interest rates are at zero %.......I'll refinance my house which is now worth less than what I owe on it and live large off of the money I'll get back.

Revolting

Dear Sam Jr.

Hope to hear that you are doing well and looking forward to a nice Christmas. We continue to get along and are glad that we don't have to worry about our jobs like so many other folks at the end of this year. It's hard to miss what you don't have. So we are fortunate in that respect.

The economic turmoil and almost daily revelations of losses and scandals by heretofore well respected and supposedly well funded financial institutions has cast a pale of gloom over this country and much of the 1st and 2nd world countries. The third world just keeps trying to find enough grasshoppers to exist on.

It is interesting to me to note that the country which first gave the world a Democratic form of government, Greece, is experiencing Riots over the shooting of a young man that threaten the stability of their government.

Although ours is supposed to be a Representative Republic, it is devolving rapidly into Democracy to the point that even Represetatives to the Congress don't know any better. Will our populace ever reach the level of disappointment that the Greeks are experiencing? Wouldn't be a pleasant thing to go through, but may in the end be necessary.

Time will tell.......I suppose.

Till next time.

Kudzu

Too soon spoken

.
Found to my dismay that the Elgin, spoken of in the previous post, will need a little loving attention paid to it. Seems to be a bit tired after 98 years.
Fortunately I know a competent watch and clock man. Since it ran so good and smooth it may just need a little cleaning and adjusting.....perhaps a new mainspring.

Would that the current financial problems that supposedly plagues the world be so easy to fix.

Perhaps if the Fraud of the Federal Reserve hadn't been allowed to exist for the last ninety-five years, we wouldn't have so many corrupt politicians and so called money managers around.

If the presidential election was to be held in 2009 (and not 2008) would that make a difference for Ron Paul?

One of Washington's most conservative of fiscal conservatives; Ron Paul preaches the ways of small federal government, hard money and an end to the Federal Reserve/Bankster regime that's decimated the global economic system. I for one believe his message would have resounded with a much larger audience in today's economy than it did a year ago.

After all, US$8 trillion in taxpayer promises could probably swing a few votes.

Especially when those promises are combined with the shady actions of those in power.

It is even more apparent now that everything possible was being done to keep the cracks in the system from becoming huge gaping chasms until the election cycle was in the bag.......so to speak.

We cracked open a bit of the food storage the other day. I'll have to replace that and add to it, and the ammo storage before too long.

The tree rats in the back yard are good and fat from the abundance of acorns this fall. If I can hold off till the next crop are started in the spring, maybe I won't have to cause this particular bunch to go all extinct.

Stuff

Stuff like This fascinates me.

Quite possibly because I am more adapt at tearing things apart than putting them back together, so that anything with clockworks draws me in like a moth to a flame (or a light bulb, since I don't use lots of flames now-a-days).

And if it is wrapped in 14kt gold like this little # 12 Elgin pocket watch I picked up yesterday, while stopping in at the Jewelry Store where the Portuguese Beauty works, well......... all the better.





I would have brought home the PB (Portuguese Beauty) but I'm pretty sure the wife might have objected.

Oh well........I'll just have to be content with small treasures....er..I mean Stuff.

I also got a small ladies pocket watch made by Champ Watch Co. Switzerland in 14 kt gold with small mine cut diamonds set in a moon shape on the back.

The Elgin keeps perfect time so far (24 hours)....the Champ....not so much.







Now-a-days you can get the time from your cell phone......

......but it doesn't have the same STYLE.

It is just so much more satisfying in drawing your watch from your vest or pants pocket and gazing at it for a few seconds.......maybe holding it to your ear to make sure it ticks and tocks.......then giving a couple small turns to the winding stem. Then placing it back in it's pocket and giving it a light pat to make sure it's secure.

In a time of political change, economic upheaval, doubts about the future.......we can look at something crafted with pride one hundred years before, then think of all the upheavals since that time and know that some things can be counted on.

It's sort of comforting in a way.

Good Evening Cousin Sam

"The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it."

Good evening cousin Sam jr.,

Hope the letter finds you well. It seems that much of what we hear now-a-days gives the feeling of doom and gloom. People are uneasy about the economy and how the greater amount of government, with new laws, will affect it. A great deal, I suppose depends on what the new Democratic Administration will try to do. They are all ready making pronouncements, even though, as of tonight, technically, Obama isn't even the President Elect as he seems to think he is. Tomorrow the Electoral College meets to make every thing official. Don't foresee any thing changing the outcome, but, one never knows.

The Asylum on the Potomac (AotP) has ceded much power to the Secretary of Treasury, Hank Paulson, over spending a huge amount of money in any way he sees fit. The Cowards in the Asylum want to have someone else they can point to if anything goes wrong. Abrogating their responsibility seems to be the new in thing up there.

This has caused me to think much on the matter of What is Law, and why do we have laws. Do laws grant us rights, or do we grant rights to lawmakers?

The Declaration of Independence states in part that we are given rights by our creator, and in turn give rights to a governing body;

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"

......Suggesting that since a Creator has given us life......whether you believe in a Creator or not........that since we have life, we have the right to preserve, develop and to perfect it, to the best of our individual abilities.

We take our abilities and apply them to the resources available to us, convert them into products and use them. They become US so to speak......our production....a part of us.....our property. But, since it is in the nature of man to want to survive with the least discomfort possible, and work or labor is discomfort to some, they will seek to take from the producers and use those products to preserve their own life....or comfort......without work.

Since we have the right to life, hence to the produce of that life, we, if smart, will join together to preserve each others life and property and freedom, or liberty against those who would take with out effort on their own part. In other words we have the right to defense, carried to a logical joining together, to preserve, defend, and protect those rights.

But, some how, we have gotten away from many of the ideals that my Uncle so proudly stood for.

I will continue to think on these matters Sam jr., and invite you to send me your thoughts when you can.

Love to you and your family,

Kdzu

It's beginning

There be times when I am a little slow to get the Christmas Spirit. Not so this year. I've already bought the one present I have to buy each year........well, I do pay for most of them......but, I don't have to do the shopping.

We listened to Celtic Women sing "Oh Holy Night" on PBS and I've already been dancing to Christmas songs with the youngest Grand Child. We are keeping her tonight so her Mom and Dad can go out to eat for their 3rd anniversary.

She was dressed in her new Princess Dress.
Here is a shot of her and Nanny with the dog and his chew bone.

Good ol' Fred

There seems to be very little good news on the economic horizon......or above it or below it, these days. For those who might have flown back during the dark ages you might remember having to cage the gyros. This consisted of holding them steady until they were spinning at the proper speed. If you didn't, you might find yourself following an apparently level horizon into a spiraling turn into the ground......where upon you would suffer a gruesome death caused by recto-cranial inversion.

But there are those out there who have been in the midst of the AotP (Asylum on the Potomac) for long enough to be able to translate the gibberish they put out so we the great unwashed can understand.

In an effort to further your education and enlighten you (and because I have nothing original to say myself, I present Professor Fred.



I freely admit to swiping the idea from Guyk who got it from someone else.

Why, Oh Why, didn't he run harder? Of course I don't blame him.........the mindset of at least 51% of the population is one of plunder and likely will be for as long as it takes for envy to be reduced to tolerable levels once again or the producers of this country all fly away to a Galt's Gulch somewhere. Current and future leaders will be blamed for this debacle for a thousand years. But only by those who understand......or have the ability to learn.

Dr. Gary North wrote a book over 25 years ago called "The Politics of Envy". As usual he was a prophet unrecognized but by a very small Remnant. A watchman on the wall that no one wanted to listen to when giving the warning of the Barbarians approach.

Dear Cousin

11/27/08

Dear Cousin Sam,

How ya doin' cuz? I know that it has been a long time since I contacted you. I'm sorry that it takes something like a death in the family to bring relatives together.

Your father and my Uncle was a great man. Do you still go by Junior, or is it Sam now?
It would seem strange to call you Sam. Your old man left some mighty big shoes to fill. I'll just keep calling you Jr., or maybe Sam Jr. That'll help me keep things straight, 'cause you know your dad and I were very close.

I remember as a teenager how much I looked up to him.......and he was always willing to reach out and give me guidance and wisdom, gleaned from a long life full of experiences, both good and bad. His falling out with his parents gave him a perspective that he was able to share with me when I disagreed with my father. Because they were later reconciled and able to recognize each other as equals and partners, he was able to get me to see the longer term picture.

His battles with his brothers taught me to work harder on patching up the disputes I had with my siblings. Standing up for freedom for everyone, even in foreign countries, motivated me to also fight for that in a place that most people would as soon forget. Thinking of him and Aunt Libby and the disagreements that they had with you and your brother and sisters taught me that sometimes we can learn from both those older and younger than ones self.

This being Thanksgiving, I just wanted to write and let you know that I believe your dad is still around.........maybe not as close as once he was, but his spirit still lives on, and I'm thankful for his example and for all the rest of my family, even as spread out as we are. Even though the times may be hard and unsettled, I have a confidence that as long as there are a remnant that remember him and all he stood for, there will be a brighter future to look forward to. We may have to exert ourselves a bit more to achieve it, but tried and true principals and commitment to them will bring us through.

Anyway Sam jr., I just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking of you and look forward to communicating more in the future.

Kdzu