Are there any Honest Reporters out there??
A good question, and Orson Scott Card asks a few questions of the media to try and find out.
Well, I'll give Ann Coulter a while longer.
Anyway click on his name and read what he has to say.
Updated to reflect the accuracy of LL's astute comment. And of course Ann Coulter is also a commentator. Their observations are still worthy of thought.
In fashion typical to our family, today we bade adieu to my Beloved Aunt Margret, Matriarch of my direct paternal line. The Reins now pass to Uncle Jim.
As so many times in the past, we gathered at Tommy Wages Funeral Home in Lawrenceville, where the owners have laid to rest the remains of so many of my family over the past 50 years or so.
She struggled to shuffle off this mortal coil for a week after suffering a major stroke. Finally giving a last little sigh last Saturday morning.
We all gathered in the room with her casket and laughed and cried and fellowshipped with each other in a loud and joyful meeting and greeting of all of us who haven't seen each other since the last death. We're a talkative bunch.........always have been. I guess when you grow up close to the earth you know that death is a natural part of life and those that remain have to go on whether the dearly departed can talk or not.
A few funerals back we were gabbing as always with the noise level getting louder and louder, when the funeral director made an, almost fatal to him, effort to shush one of my aunts. He was soon made aware of the fact that this is how we pay our last respects and by damn if he didn't like it he could just go outside. The celebration of life well lived then continued until they shut off the lights for the night. We don't always suffer fools too well. This is our time to see friends and relatives from near and far, to catch up on what's happening in their lives. I'm pretty sure the dead understand. After all, they are part of a huge family, who, even if we don't always call each other up every week or so, still love and appreciate each and every one of the others........in-laws and out-laws alike.
One thing I think Aunt Margaret would have gotten a grand kick out of was my grandson Lee. Soon to be 9, and quick to inform you of same, almost as soon as we got there and he looked around, he started to go up to every one in the room, stuck out his hand and said I'm Lee. Knock me over with a feather..........I was under the impression of him as a shy young man. He claims he wants to be a soldier, but I think he might have a future as either a preacher or politician. Or maybe as a funeral director, as he had a great time helping the morticians lower the casket, take down the winch and fold up the chairs. He had to reach out to touch the vault as it was being lowered. I'm pretty sure his great-great aunt was thanking him for his service as the dirt was pushed in on top of her.
We may not be Kings or Queens in this life, but we know how to honor those who came and go before us.
So Aunt Margaret.........a last farewell to you.
Today was a reflective day.
I soon tired of the talk radio jocks as I drove up and down the highways. At my first stop they were busy as a three legged dog in a rabbit chase. Finally I sat my sorry ass down in a wheel chair outside the door and watched the customers come and go. Smiling every now and then at what people thought something was worth and what others were willing to pay.
I must have brought him good luck..........it was nearly two hours before it slowed down enough to have our little bit of business. The weather was just right for sitting in front of the store, high white clouds scudded across the robins egg blue sky. Rednecks and outlaws went in and out of the restaurant next door and the gas station was selling gas for twenty cents the gallon less than yesterday. I saw one place that dropped forty cents between morning and afternoon.
At the next stop I didn't buy anything but we talked each others ears off for two hours or so. He did have one bauble that was nice. If anybody wants a radiant emerald cut diamond so white and clear that it almost hurts your eyes, for a hell of a good buy, just let me know.
This evening I'm listening to Bob Wills and Asleep at the Wheel on you tube. Faded Love and Amarillo by morning are just a couple.
Enjoy......
...........but Lord I'm free.
Amen
For the first time in maybe five months or more I donned a long sleeved shirt today. I'd bought it and 3 others several months ago at a flea market/yard sale sort of place along Hwy 29. All brand new, brand name, still in the original plastic. The guy had maybe a thousand of them and I found 4 that were large (my size).....the rest were XL or bigger. Eight bucks apiece, about one quarter retail, I had been looking forward to the fall when it would be cool enough to wear them.
I look forward to fall each year. The cooler nights, while the days are warm and sunny. You can leave the A/C off and open the windows....let some fresh air in.
We drove west down Hwy 316, toward Lawrenceville, the four lane cutting exactly in half the old dairy farm I was raised on. The old homestead is gone now, the house, barns, trees and gentle hills scrapped flat in anticipation of another great slab of asphalt and concrete with shops and stores built thereon. The once fertile, productive sandy loam gone forever to instead grow monuments to consumption and the service society we have become.
But the trees that are left standing along the creeks and areas not yet ready to be developed are starting to turn here in early mid-October. The dogwood leaves are red, the poplars turning a bright yellow. Soon the mighty oaks and hickories will turn bright red and orange. They are beginning to shed now, but in a few weeks after a light frost followed by some brisk breeze, they'll shower leaves down to carpet the ground, crisp and cracking when it's dry and soft, spongy and quiet when wet.
Our destination is the Gwinnett Medical Center.........not a trip I had looked forward to......my Aunt Margaret is lying there, with an oxygen tube under her nose, he five feet nothing or less height shrunken against the pillow, daughters, brother, sisters, nephews, nieces and in-laws and friends gathering around, speaking quietly, smiling sadly as they remember a life well lived.
She's eighty four years old, she'll not see eighty five in the flesh, and to say she had a good long life seems to diminish her somehow, for she was not just old. She was a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt and great-aunt to so many nephews and nieces that I can't begin to name even a quarter of them.
Short she may have been.......she shrank even shorter as the years passed by. As long as I can remember her hair has been a beautiful white, like a glittering crown or halo on her head. Which seems appropriate to my memory, for I remember her as full of love........love for her family, not just for her husband (long gone) and her two daughters, but full of love for her extended family. I can never remember a time when she didn't show that love to all who knew her. Unconditional love that was evidenced by a concern for all of us. She seemed to beam when she saw any of us, even if like mine, the visits were not as often as they could have been. She would ask after us, our spouses, children and grandchildren, remembering their names, for she had a capacity for remembering them all.
Our family tree is a massive old white oak, the trunk still sound, the branches spreading widely with many a twig growing wildly, but her leaf will soon fall, to become compost for young oaks that have sprung up around her, who will hopefully stand the straighter and taller for feeding on her love.
I know it's in the order of things, but........
Damn, I hate the fall.
Of the Messiah is upon us............ready the young asses and strip off all the palm branches in the country side, for none other than John the Baptist, er that is, Louis Farrakhan has foretold it.
Bow down to the anointed one, for yea and verily his reign will begin in 25 days.
Bow down before our new master and saviour.
Someone should have spilled his seed upon the wall.
from reading books are many, and sometimes strange.
Tonight I read about and found this piece, albeit not by the original.
Enjoy.
As the sun started it inexorable slide down, between the towering sky scrapers standing like walls along the streets on the island of Manhattan, the daily late afternoon ritual began.
Like cattle, making their way down the chute, toward the final thump of the air gun just above and between the eyes, denizens of those same towers exited on the ground and basement floors and moved steadily along their designated routes. No eye to eye contact, no joyous chatter at being freed from their pen ‘til the next day, only a steady, straight ahead movement to the same destination they had every afternoon, the subway turnstile, the Checker Cab stand, the entrance to the parking garage, by the tens and hundreds, by the thousands and tens of thousands they paced patiently to their intermediate destination, to stand in line for something they wouldn’t remember in the morning.
For they were addicted, these chasers of the American Dream, addicted to the pleasures of needle sharp fangs, dripping with narcotic saliva, as they were applied to the inside of their left arms at the way stations along their route home, or to the eateries, theaters, and bars at which they would eat and drink, to replace the precious fluids and nutrients that had been delicately removed from their bodies, removed to satiate the ravening hunger of their overlords.
Mostly delicately that is, except for those occasional times when the hunger could not be satisfied with only a sip, or a mouthful, and the beast within came rampaging to the surface and instead of a slight sting and refreshed forgetfulness, they would be dragged to the ground and fed upon furiously, greedily, by beings with the instincts of packs of hyenas on the plains of Africa, consumed like the herd animals they were, their absence noted, if at all, by only a mild question in the memory of the rest of the herd, when one of their number didn’t show up at the designated time and place on the morning after.
He watched from the tops of the towers, hi-powered glasses at his eyes, just as he watched every evening…………..
This just doesn't apply to Forrest, but to our Overlords in The Federal Reserve System and their minions, the politicians and appointed officials such as the Secretary of the Treasury.
Go HERE to see what a Professor of Finance has to say about it.
Stock up on Food, Fuel, Firearms and precious metal in .45 ACP, 7.62mm, 00 Buckshot, and hemp ropes for the nooses when we catch one.
My views on politics these days generally go something along this line.....
.....A coalition of the unwilling lead by the incompetent.
Both of the candidates showed up with their shoes shined. Governor Palin's ass was much the nicer in that tight skirt, atop those great legs. After that I lost interest.
Besides, Jon Nadler says that we're fine.
Me worry??...........nah
So far I've hesitated to post anything about the current financial bru-ha-ha.
Politicians are shitting in their shoes because they know that a large part of the responsibility lies squarely on their collective desk. The remainder of the responsibility lies on the heads of the financial institutions that went along with the Ponzi Scheme.
Rather than give you my poor interpretation, and knowing you might not click on a link, I am going to paste in it's entirety a commentary written by a Harvard (let's not hold that against him just yet, shall we)economist. See if it makes as much sense to you as to me.
Editor's note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.
Economist Jeffrey Miron says the bailout plan presented to Congress was the wrong solution to the crisis
Economist Jeffrey Miron says the bailout plan presented to Congress was the wrong solution to the crisis
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.
Don't Miss
* Bailout plan rejected
* Financial rescue 101: the bill
* Commentary: Financial crisis a disaster
* In Depth: Commentaries
The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.
The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.
If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.
The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.
Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
The current crisis couldn't have been worse if somebody had planned it.
Crazy???
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Think I'll run off".
"Where ya goin'?"
"Where ya wanna go?"
"Aruba"
"Gotta passport?"
Sigh "No".
"Neither do I."
(both) "Damn"
As a youngun I was raised on a 300 acre dairy farm 35 miles from the capitol building in Atlanta Georgia. Today you'd be hard pressed to find a working farm of even a few acres that close. Mostly it's covered in asphalt or concrete and houses.........
......every where you look there are houses, of all stripes and colors. Big and small, until the last year when the house construction industry went tits up, the once fertile land grows only houses.
Still I learned many things there, how to find pecans in the grass of our yard in the fall, how to catch a baseball thrown up on the tin roof of the smoke house, rolling off into my bare hands, or later my first baseball glove. I learned to ride a used 36 inch bicycle even though my legs were too short to reach the ground on either side (I'd lean it over on a terrace row so I could get my leg over to the peddle and push off and peddle like hell till I got to the peach orchard where I'd grab a limb over my head and let the bike wobble on 'til it fell over............then do it over, and over, and over again. Later as my legs stretched out a bit, I'd spend hours and hours riding around the big turn around in front of the milk barn where the tractor trailer with the big milk tank would come to suck up our milk along with other members of the Atlanta Dairy Cooperative, to take back to Atlanta and bottled or made into ice cream and cheese, and sold all over Georgia.
I learned to read, in part, because the Atlanta Constitution newspaper was delivered ever day..........and while my dad and mom read the more important stuff I'd keep up with the adventures of Dick Tracy, Smiling Jack, The Phantom and many other characters on the cartoon page, or multiple pages in the Sunday edition.
Eventually the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution were combined into one paper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which today struggles like many papers around the country to keep readership in an era when many get their news and entertainment from the TV..........and more and more.......the internet.
I long ago stopped subscribing to the paper, because they'd grown fat on the advertising pages to the point that there were almost two pages of advertising to one page of news and business. I now fall into that percentage that gets most of my news from the internet or radio while riding in my Dodge Ram.
So it surprises me a bit to be posting a link Here to an article in the paper. (I did find it online)
It concerns a gift from old Sam Magill, (gone lo these many years) longtime publisher of the paper, to the surviving members of the 1st Marine division, who stormed, and eventually, after six months of fighting and dying, took the island of Guadalcanal during WWII, of an old and expensive bottle of Cognac, to be opened by the last surviving member of the division that actually fought on that terrible bit of rock and sand sitting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Read the story for yourself, think what you may about it and the members of what some have called our Greatest Generation. Maybe, like me, you'll raise a silent toast, either in your mind, or in fact, to those men, and one newspaper editor and publisher, who made a gift of a lifetime.
.......Or The Fix is in.
In 1980 I predicted that Regan would wipe the floor with Jimmy Carter after seeing a photo in the paper with David Rockefeller placing is arm across Regan's shoulders and announce "Regan's My Man".
Today a member of the Rothschild’s empire announced that she's for McCain.
As She was formally a Clinton backer I think this might be telling us something.
But then what do I know??
Call me a conspiracy nut if you must. I wear the banner with pride. If you think that people will spend a half billion dollars and more to elect a President who only makes $400,000.00 a year so that he can be in charge of things your are perhaps deluded..................
Or perhaps it's me. After all they pay me to be crazy.
UPDATE: Today it appears that Donald Trump is getting on the bandwagon.
When asked how she was doing today the young Portuguese lovely replied, "Peachy".
My mind was instantly transported to a vision of taking the first bite of the first peach of the season.
For weeks you've watched the young fruit grow from small and green to round and plump, tinted with first yellow, then pinkish, to pinkish red. You've had to restrain yourself from plucking it before it was fully ripe. Oh, they can be eaten while partly green.......but the taste is tart, almost bitter. How much better to wait..
..restraining your urges to indulge before the moment is right. Until that perfect moment, when you take the fruit into your hand, and can feel that it is firm, yet not too much so. With just the right amount of give, that indicates the flesh inside is fully ready........
You brush at the soft fuzz outside,. Not too much, you want the texture of it to remain somewhat on the flesh in order to feel it as you sink you teeth into it, feeling the skin burst, the yellow flesh yielding wetly as you press it into your mouth giving a slight sucking in order not to let any of the sweet syrupy goodness excape. But it does and as the juices run down your chin you take your fingers and wipe it up, not wanting to miss a single drop of it's peachy goodness.
Time is suspended as your senses can only process the smell,that peachy aroma that assaults your sinuses, the slippery texture of the fruit, so fully ripe that it seems to slide down your throat. The cares of the world drop away for that one perfect moment.
Just you and your peach. That's all that matters as you eat it down to the nut inside.
.........of people in large groups.
Every time there is the least little problem the news media makes it sound like the end times are here right now.
Yesterday gas in Athens was about $3.53........today over $4.50 and rising. All because the storm in the gulf has temporarily shut down some of the oil wells and a few refineries.
Do people not understand the words temorarily. Bejus, we're like dumb cattle being lead to the slaughter, rolling our eyes wildly and mooing enmasse.
The price of oil fell overnight to lowest price in a while and the pump price goes ballistic.
Oh what fools these mortals be.
Never surrender, Never give up.
There will be many remembrances of the attack against America seven years ago today. Many grand and glorious statements honoring those who died. To be true there were many heroes that day. Men like the firemen and police officers who disregarding the danger to themselves, sought valiantly to get as many people out of those towers safely as possible, despite their own fear, despite thoughts of their own families, they did their duty.
I've posted before about Rick Rescorla on this anniversary day. Who knows how many lives he saved at the cost of his own. Even if it were only one, how long would it be before they forgot him ?
Yet that was only the opening skirmish of a larger and longer war than we could at that time imagine. And many people have, it seems, forgotten. We are able to go about our daily lives, most of us safely considering we get there in machines that hurtle us along at 60 to 80% of a hundred miles per hour, and on highways converge at double that speed.
We need to remember, this day especially, and every other day, the unsung heroes who daily volunteer to put their own lives and limbs on the line. Sorta like this guy speaking his heart to a presidential candidate.
At first when I read the linked story I thought to myself, 'He's clogging his guts up'.
Then I realized that it's just Sad.
I mean after all, a diet of Big Mac's can be a healthy lifestyle choice.........if that's all you eat. You've got your meat, bread, salad, and vegetables all in one gut packing fist full. Not too bad. Probably ought to limit the soft drinks is all. For sure, none of the diet sodas, which are full of Aspartame.
He says he's in love with the burgers, which are the highlights of his days
.
Now, I can identify with him a bit more.
Where's the chocolate bar??
In fact I've heard that gluttony is one of the 7 chief Deadly sins.........
Not sure just who came up with the first list, but Evagrius Ponticus 4th century monk put Gluttony in first place. And he listed eight.
I'm guilty of all the rest (though not enough of the second) so might as well be perfect in something.
That being said however, is there anything edible more delicious than a warm slice off a loaf of Banana Nut Bread, with real black walnuts mixed liberally in it, real cow butter smeared atop, pinched off with your fingers so you can lick them afterwards??
Right now, I think not..........well except for the second piece which I have to try really, really hard not to go get. Made me have to get out of the slightly too snug khakis, and slip on the bull moose PJ's with the elastic waistband.
Thomas Aquinas took a more expansive view of gluttony, listing 6 way to commit that one sin.
* Praepropere, eating too soon;
* Laute (washedly), eating finely;
* Nimis, eating too much;
* Ardenter, eating burningly;
* Studiose (keenly), eating daintily;
* Forente (boringly), eating wildly.
I'm guilty of all these also.
Maybe I need to concentrate on some of the other sins more, and gluttony less. Whadda ya think?
