Fools and Damn Fools

I see that Iraq is not as pacified as we might have been led to believe.
al-queda has staged a little comeback and thumbed their noses at us by temporarily planting their flag in Baghdad, along with killing a number of people who had no wish to die before old age took them.

The fools currently in charge (and I have no problem with civilian control over the military, as long as those civilians are responsible adults) of our military strategy in both Iraq and Iran remind me of nothing so much as the Dynamic Duo of Nixon and Kissinger in the late 60's & early 70's vis-a-via the late lamented police action in Republic of South Vietnam. You remember...
...the one we withdrew from with our tails between our legs, which led to a decade of American sniveling.

The lessons learned by our then serving and future military and civilian leaders at the expense of 58,000 + American lives, over 7,000 of our SEATO Allies lives, 600,000 South Vietnam (ARVN) military lives, over 1,100,000 North Vietnam regular army lives, another half million Vietcong lives, and God only knows how many civilian lives on either side of the issue.

I think I want to throw up a little.

General Norman Schwarzkopf certainly remembered when George Bush the 1st told him, "General Win me this war", in our first little tussle with the Iraqi's. But then he retired in disgust when he was stopped short of Baghdad. (Of course that's not how it was reported).

Seems like it was something like 106 days and only a few more than that number of American deaths before the surrender of Saddam.

We've been in Iraq, What,... 7 years now. Not quite as long as we were getting killed in Vietnam. The first American pilot was shot down in 1954 at Dien Ben Phu, we fled with south Vietnamese hanging off the tail end of Chinooks from the Embassy roof in 1975, splatting to what was surely a more merciful death than the North Vietnamese had planned for them.
So roughly 25 years.

I know we've said we'd be out next year. Just like in Vietnam we've given the opponent a timetable to hiss us off in ignominy. That has to embolden and encourage them.

My Question, asked several years ago, is why we didn't promise every Iraqi a share in the Oil proceeds if they would agree to live in a peaceful democratic Iraq. Give them something to fight to save. The average Iraqi has no stake in the current government and surely non in the coming Mullah's Dictatorship. Afghanistan is no different. You want to win their hearts and minds.......give them something more than suffering at the hands of whoever is in charge to look forward to.

The point is that that just as in Vietnam, our overlords negotiate our hard one victories away for political or personal gain, counting as dross the blood our men and women have watered the sand with.

During my litte adventure in SE Asia I was an aircraft commander of an AH-1G Cobra gunship. Part of a Hunter Killer Team assigned to patrol the area from the South China Sea to the Laotian border along the DMZ. For a year we fought, bled, some died to report where the enemy was. Our Assessment......15 Armored Divisions inside the DMZ on the Northern Side in complete violation of the Agreements, just poised to come across the Que Viet River, and come across they did in the Easter Offensive in 1972, about six months after I'd left. And thankful to be gone.

An offensive that We completely won, kicking their asses back to whence they came at huge losses in personnel for them, only to be held back and told to stand down while politicians negotiated away what American and South Vietnamese blood had won.

If you go to war with any other point of view other than the complete destruction of your enemies until they beg you for mercy and are willing to do anything at all to stop the slaughter you are playing games with the men and women who have been sent to do your dirty work and, in my opinion many of our current and former serving elected officials are guilty of war crimes against their own country for not playing to win.

They say we have the best trained, best equipped military force in the world. I believe that to be true. Many of them are re-inlisting to stay in the fight as long as their brother and sisters in arms are in harms way, but they have been forged in the fire and if their leaders keep breaking faith with them there may come a day of reckoning at the hands of those very pissed off people that once went overseas gladly, happy for an opportunity to serve Truth, Justice and the American Way Or it may be at the hands of their fathers and brothers who we bloodied in another place and another time.

A friend of mine says it's time to move to the hills and woods with our guns, ammo and stores.......I hope it doesn't come to that, but, if it does.....I've been shot at before so it won't be as much of a surprise as it will to those strutting peacocks in DC.

If not now........when?

Back in 1850

Do you know what happened 160 years ago this fall back in 1850?

California became a state.
The people had no electricity.
The state had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
There were gunfights in the streets.

So basically nothing has changed except back then the women had real boobs
and the men didn't hold hands.

Oh, and yeah, They didn't owe 42 Billion $ they can't pay and people were racing in covered wagons to get there to grab some of the golden prosperity that was waiting on them in the creeks and rivers.

That, my friend, is your history lesson for today.

27 July, 2010

Now there is a weak ass heading for you, indicative of the ennui which seems to have stricken this particular denizen of the Kudzu Grotto (KG) this evening. I find myself, clad in my Bull Moose PJ's, slouched down and back in the office chair, having to use my right eye which is adjusted for distance viewing instead of the left which is adjusted for reading distance. My slipper clad footsies propped on the rail under the desk, I'm in real danger of saying, "th' hell with it", and go watch the History Channel with the better half who is learning all about air combat in the first world war (WWI) and the swath of destruction cut by the infamous Red Baron, and his subsequent death, shot out of the air by a ground pounding machine gunner by a single .303 caliber round to the chest. An inglorious end to an eagle of the skies. With 80 kills to his credit in one on one aerial combat, you'd almost hope he got his come-upptance from another Ace of the Allied persuasion.

But then the ol' Scythe Swinger is no respecter of persons, cutting both the righteous and the un-righteous off at the knees with equal glee, in his own good time, if not necessarily ours.

Tis the silly season it seems, if not a particularly joyous one for many people who having lost their jobs are rapidly losing their bigger-than-they-now-can-afford-homes, their fine jewelry bought with surplus funds or credit when the good times were rolling, their gas guzzling SUV's which they try to sell but are too much upside down in them.

There seems to be no solid foundation under many of the things which we, happy in our ignorance and comfortable with it, had never paid much attention to before.

The French, for God's sake, are declaring WAR. Not the best timing Pierre, what with the currant limp noodles in power in Washington. It may be a while before the US can pull your chestnuts out of the fire again. Or it could be they know something I don't.

That Massachusetts Fudge-Packer slobbering Barney Frank gets in a pissing contest over one measly dollar when his sorry slack ass is as responsible for the debt crisis the US is facing as anyone. Maybe more, but then I think there is blame enough to go around.

Why even one of our beloved hollywood icons has had to issue an apology for succumbing to a severe case of head-up-ass-itis.

It's almost enough to make one slink back into the underbrush covering the Kudzu Grotto (KG) and wait until reason reigns once more.

Nah, that might take more time than I want to devote to it, although I do have a few bayonets that could do with a bit of sharpening, and I need to make another raid on Wally World in hopes of adding a few more rounds to the smallish hoard I already have.

No, I'll probably do as I did today, continue to get up in the morning with no plan other than visit a friend who asked me to drop by, and see if, as today, I come back home with pockets bulging and work for the next several days ahead of me.

Perhaps if more people showed by their actions that the pronouncements and proclamations emanating from The Asylum on the Potomac and other places of similar ilk really don't concern us enough for us to waste time with, that eventually they would get the message and crawl back into the sphincters they oozed out of.

A boy can dream, can't he?

To the Moon and Beyond

Not, as you might think, a clip from Toy Story, but something much more exciting and motivating.

Bill Whittle as per usual hits it out of the park, or as Jackie Gleason used to say, "To th' moon Alice, th' moon."

Go Watch Here.

SIN & SINNERS

Exodus 20: 16

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

With all the supposedly religious members of the NAACP such as the Right Reverend Jessie Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton and the Reverend Wright who has meant so much to PRESBO, you'd think they might be careful about who they were calling racists.

Herman Cain has some plain and simple words for them.

Calling Tea Party people racist is a S.I.N.
July 18, 2010
By Herman Cain

The NAACP is doing the dirty work for the failed policies of the Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats. Accusing the Tea Party movement as being racist shifts (S) the attention from the mishandling of the Gulf oil tragedy, the failed $862 billion stimulus spending bill, the lack of private sector job growth and an economy stuck on stalled.

The NAACP’s accusation also shifts attention away from the problems in the black community which they ignore (I) in their name calling (N) rhetoric, such as increased high school drop-out rates, increased incarceration rates, increased out-of-wedlock birth rates and unemployment rates among blacks that are 50 percent higher than the national average.

Although my invitation to the NAACP annual convention in Kansas City got lost in the mail, I suspect there were plenty of speeches blaming George W. Bush and greedy capitalists for those problems.

When NAACP spokeswoman Leila McDowell says “hardcore white supremacist organizations have participated in and occasionally lead Tea Party rallies”, the mainstream lapdog media jumps all over such a blatantly baseless claim. When asked what the claim was based on, she said academic research on the Tea Party movement.

Of the nearly two dozen Tea Party rallies at which I have been a keynote speaker, I have yet to see or hear of anyone doing a survey, poll or research asking attendees if they were white supremacists. Nor has any of the Tea Party organizers indicated that such research was ever requested or being done.

Although it was not a scientific test, at a Georgia Tea Party event I attended last Friday July 16, which included a live broadcast of my radio show, I asked all of the white supremacists and KKK members to raise their hands. There were none. When I asked a show of hands of all the people who want the big government spending to stop, the legislative abuse to stop and the coming tax increases to be stopped, the over 3,000 attendees almost cheered the roof off the place!

Since there have been thousands of Tea Party and citizen rallies across the country beginning in early 2009, those researchers obviously attended the ones I did not attend. I would love to see the research, or hear or see one audio or video clip of a Tea Party speaker uttering one racist word. It does not exist!

It is unfortunate that a once-relevant and impactful organization is looking for relevance in the wrong place, namely, race. It should be about solving problems and uniting people instead of dividing people with baseless claims of racism.

I have also been called a racist among other names for disagreeing with the president’s policies and those of the Democrat-controlled Congress. But that does not discourage me or other black conservatives from fighting for what we believe, or challenging so-called black establishment organizations such as the NAACP.

Tea Party people are not racist. They are patriotic Americans who want the greatest country in the world to remain the greatest country in the world. We are exercising our right to speak out against bad public policy, even if the president is black.

This isn’t about race. This is about results, and the results by this administration and this Congress are missing in action.

The NAACP has lost its relevance and its way forward. That’s a sin.

If you haven't heard of this man, you could do worse that check out his website.

http://www.hitm.brookswebsolutions.com/home.html

Knaves turned honest

A hive of bees is in a field,
Within a climate sunny.
It will survive to multiply
If work supplies the honey.

The queen supplies a stream of eggs
Which soon turn into workers.
Except for one dependent class
Who live full-time as shirkers.

These are the drones, and every hive
Supplies them with a living.
They dance and sing and whoop it up,
Consuming, but not giving.

The drones spend days and nights enthralled
By pleasures of a season.
Convinced that life is far too short
To waste on prayer or reason.

They are supported by the queen,
The mistress of seduction.
She has a plan to make them wish
They'd labored in production.

But that comes later, this is now.
Each drone, content, relaxes.
So, worker bees work extra hard
And grumble at the taxes.

And so, drones while away their time
In games and food and squander.
That is her plan, because she knows
That drones are prone to wander.

The drones play on and on for weeks,
Oblivious to hunches
That there might come a time to pay,
For hives have no free lunches.

To serve the drones, some other bees
Supply a range of vices
That only queens can subsidize
So high are vices' prices.

But where, you ask, does cunning queen
Accumulate the treasure
That celebrating hordes of drones
Can waste in weeks of pleasure?

The hive itself, without a plan,
Produces streams of honey.
The system runs on payments made
In liquid golden money.

The queen has passed a law of iron
That drones must gain a portion
Of honey gold, which they will spend,
Which workers think extortion.

So, in the hive two classes form
Which scheme like rival brothers
To profit from the hive's output
Without the claims from others.

One class grows rich by selling goods
To drones, who live by spending.
The other class works day and night,
In labor never-ending.

The drones grow fat, and specialize
In ever-greater pleasures.
While worker bees begin to plan
A host of counter-measures.

The workers come before the queen
Ten thousand wings a-humming.
She says to bide their time instead;
Payday is surely coming.

They are not sure she speaks the truth,
But great is their devotion.
They give her time to prove her case,
Suppressing dark emotion.

The merchants of the drones grow rich.
For honey flows like water.
The hive's economy hums on,
And drones foresee no slaughter.

The drones resent worker bees
Who grouse about the favors
Displayed to drones, who spend the wealth
Produced by others' labors.

They set aside some honey sweet
To hire a solution.
A group of masters of the arts
Of specious elocution.

These hired experts write reports
That show that flowing honey
Can only be preserved intact
If drones are spending money.

They say that worker bees do not
Perceive what makes hives wealthy.
To stop the flow of funds to drones
Is fiscally unhealthy.

You see, they say, the flow of funds
Must without drones be severed.
Without our drones, the stimulus
Can't save the banks, full-levered.

Without the banks, which serve the drones,
As well as worker legions,
The wealth of all will disappear
Into the nether regions.

So, we must save the hive without
The envy-driven blaming
Of useful drones who make us rich
By partying and gaming.

The worker bees do not perceive
How this concatenation
Of arguments implausible,
is valid explanation.

But these are experts with degrees
From famous institutions,
Which get their funding from the queen
And rich bees' contributions.

Therefore, the worker bees begin
To doubt their own suspicions
That drones are liabilities
Not worthy of provisions.

The hired experts collect their pay
For having duped the masses.
Then chortle in contempt of those
Whom they regard as asses.

They take their graphs and charts and chalk
And go back to their places
Of tenured and secure success
With academic graces.

And so the drones indulge themselves,
Which they find stimulating.
For that's what stimuli are for:
"Let's not be hesitating!"

Whenever their accounts run low,
And bankers grow suspicious,
The queen expands the flow of funds,
Which bankers find delicious.

And so the lending class gets rich,
For drones have endless shop lists.
To lend to them is safe, they think,
The queen will never stop this.

The lending class then borrows short
To lend long-term to spenders,
Short rates are low, long rates are high:
The system has defenders.

The experts back on campus see
The many permutations.
They think that they may strike it rich:
Computerized equations!

And so the tenured quants come forth
To serve the lending classes.
Who borrow even more from fools
Who wear rose-colored glasses.

And so the permutations spread
Throughout the hive's insiders
Complexity now reigns supreme,
With kooks the sole deriders.

And then, one summer's day, the queen
Calls forth her close attendants.
She lays the eggs that will decide
The future of descendants.

Each egg is fed, at her expense,
To test the heirs' survival.
One will emerge first and impose
A death sting on each rival.

Then up she flies, drones in pursuit
In hope of one last action.
A few achieve what all would like:
Their last full satisfaction.

"Payday has come," the queen declares.
"Free lunches now have ended."
The worker bees blockade the hive,
The golden fund defended.

The drones, now spent in every sense,
Beg for continued feeding,
But worker bees ignore their pleas:
The new hive needs no breeding.

Word spreads among the lending class:
The formulas so splendid
Have crashed the flow of funds outright:
Liquidity suspended.

And then the sellers who rode high
On drones' relentless spending
Discover they must switch careers:
Their sector is descending.

The money that the drones had spent
Will now be spent by others.
The queen cuts taxes and declares:
"You now can have your druthers."

The flow of funds continues on,
Though drones are not surviving.
The experts with their charts and graphs
Were wrong: the hive is thriving.

The lending class must now survey
The shape of new conditions
Without the hope of queen-backed funds
To guarantee ambitions.

The tenured experts, still employed,
Release a memorandum.
They all insist that these events
Were all black swans and random.

And so we see that scarcity
Asserts its jurisdiction.
There's greater wealth for workers now,
Due to the drones' eviction.

The worker bees survey the scene
Of greater wealth for labors.
There's always more down at the store
When drones are not your neighbors.

One worker bee begins to think
About the drones' defenders.
The tenured masters of the charts
Who justified the spenders.

"It seems to me," declares the bee,
"That other drones are living
High on the hog, beyond the rules:
They're taking without giving."

Considering consumption by
Those bees in tenured splendor,
The other bees begin to doubt
Their claims to legal tender.

Why should these experts with their charts
And graphs and dense equations
Be paid by all to generate
Post-crisis explanations?

What is the use of expertise
When experts tell you little
Of what will happen next, and why?
They're always noncommittal.

And so a wave of terror spreads
In tenured education.
To meet a market on your own:
A frightening innovation.

They live secure from having to
Explain their public errors.
Without the queen's own guarantees,
The world is filled with terrors.

And so they send a delegate,
A master of compliance,
To once again persuade the queen
Against their self-reliance.

She welcomes him into her court,
And smiles at his submission.
She loves to see her experts squirm
When facing competition.

"My queen," he says, "you must beware
Of worker bees' complaining.
You still get value for your grant
Of pay for all our training."

"We serve the court, and serve it well,
Delaying that dark day.
When worker bees at last decide
It's time to disobey."

"I see your point, and see it clear,"
She says to feckless minion.
"You serve me as the shapers of
The climate of opinion."

"And so I'll still extend your pay,
To guarantee the ridding
Of competition's terrors,
But you all will do my bidding."

"We've always understood the deal,"
Is his firm declaration.
"When it comes time to praise the court,
Expect no hesitation."

And so the minion brings the news
For academe's elation.
Between the market and the school:
A wall of separation.

So now I end my poem short
Of hival operations,
Of politics and pay and deals,
And queenly expectations.

But this one fact I hope prevails
From concepts you've now seen.
There's always value rendered sure
For benefits from the queen.

Bernard Mandeville, 1705

Pass it along

Doggie Days of Summer

Those days "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and Phrensies"

I had to look up phrensies too.

I have to blame the lack of blogging on something, don't ya know?

Actually it's not that there is nothing to blog about, but rather, too much that pushes my buttons these days. It's almost as if all the idiots in the world got together in one big group and decided to march around naked all day and fling shit at each other and the onlookers outside the cage as well.

Harry Reid says that there are no illegal construction workers in Nevada.

Big Sis tries to squeeze more of our nuts in her man hands.

That paragon of virtue Al Gore is being divorce by his wife of many years for being such a prude in public while he is sticking his tongue down the throat of massage therapists. But then again, he invented the internet so he could download porn. Maybe he has been watching too much.

Another one of the Kennedy Wives is having alcohol problems, and getting divorced.

BHO doesn't write his own speeches. Well Duh!!

Which leads, apparently, to some sort of credibility crisis.

We're all going to Die!!

We Owe More than we can pay and we're spending as if the party would never end.

And I'm having a hard time working up much of a give a shit.

Next year for sure I'm gonna go to the Redneck Riviera and bake in the sun.

Like Tits on Pam Anderson

Yabu points the way------->

Follow his link or skip straight over to The trail of frozen shark bait to the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Awesome Lady

That's all I can think to say about the inimitable LL of Chromed Curses after she gave me a shout out on this blog-o-thingy we spend time on.

Wow! the most visitors I've ever had in one day and it's not over yet.

Thank you dear, I am in your debt even farther now. If you've only come by here for the first time I have to give LL thanks for this blog-o-lanche as well as the header on top for she took the photo 'lil toni (who I still miss greatly) took of the kudzu and melded it with the words you see. So thanks again. I still take a look at the photo of you on the motorcycle every once in a while. Getcher motor running.....heading down the highway..... doesn't begin to do it justice.

This is for You

Crank your speakers up.....best enjoyed when heard through the soles of your feet.

Bare Naked......Idiocy

Come on......what else can you call the decision to make the foremost "Mission" of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) to be making the Islamic world feel better about it's self.

While it may be true that we have to give credit for the algebraic system of mathematics to thinkers from the middle east (not sure of the religious preference of said inventor or inventors) and without it or some other method of mathematics not know by this writer we couldn't have accomplished as much as we have, the mullah's have an inferiority complex so huge that they try to keep full one half of their populace in virtual bondage, forcing them to hide under voluminous swaths of (preferably black) coverings in an attempt to marginalize women, thereby making up for the smallness of their own inadequate male equipage.

Do we in the west have a responsibility to instill in them the self-esteem they think they deserve?

Did they set out to and then achieve the goal of sending men to the moon? I don't think so.

Did they invent the Aeroplane or build ocean going vessels capable of circumnavigating the globe? Again, don't think so.

They did however succeed in keeping most of their population in poverty and, educationally, the dark ages, herders of goats and raisers of poppy to dull the agony their despotic leaders were determined to keep them in.

Do we have a responsibility to make them feel good? Or rather should we show by example what can be obtained by free peoples, acting freely in what is in our own best self-interest?

There is an old saying here in the South that, "you can lead a mule to water but you can't make him drink."

There will always be those who strike out at those who have succeeded greater than they. We have seen much of that in the last two or three decades.

No doubt there have been things we should not have done. Anytime a person or society tries to impose their will on another person or society they have committed a crime against freedom as great as murder, for if you bend me to your will against mine, you as much as murder my freedom of choice.

But to think that the Islamic world has to be given some sort of wergild to pay for our success as opposed to their perceived lack of same just seems to me to be Idiocy on the part of the Obama administration.

You don't apologize for success. Rather you say, I did it, you can too, and if you do, we'll applaud your success and wish you well, but don't seek, because of envy, to tear down what we have built.

That way leads to Doom....... for us, or for you.

You don't have to be very bright

You don't have to be very bright to be elected to Congress from California. Hey, they elected Sonny Bono.

But you do have to be some kind of dumb to be elected from California, become the Speaker of the House and make a statement like this........



Sorry Nancy, when there is free money passed out for anything you get more of what you are passing money out for......

Witness all the welfare babies that were not born because the government paid young girls to download a shitpot full of young'uns since the mid 60's. That really worked out well, didn't it.

If you give people free money they will take it and spend it, but since it's not as much (hopefully) as when they are working, earning a paycheck, they don't have enough to spend to cause the economy to grow. It just sinks deeper and deeper into a funk as people realize that they don't have to work...those that do work can be robbed and forced to support more and more moochers.

If I was a conspiracy nut I'd almost believe it was planned.

Things of this nature never stop until the pain of providing them becomes too much to bear and the producers go John Galt on you.

Facing up to the pain

I stopped by a pawnshop owned by a friend today; Just to pass the time and see if there was anything worthy of spending a few shekels on.

He offered me a shiny silver looking mans bracelet.....supposedly of 14 kt white gold, it after all was stamped on the catch 14k. The feel was about right....73 grams. A quick check though prompted some questions as to whether there was any gold content after all.

"But it has to be gold, I checked it", he said. "I gave that guy $850.00 for it".

Considering that it might have been worth over $1400.00 scrap value it would have been a good deal for him. Had it been gold....

Oh, did I mention that he might have had a little bit of the grape coursing through his veins?

Oh Yeah.

I told him I'd be able to tell him with 100% certainty before dark tonight. It's not gold.

It seems that a large portion of this countries adult (and even some not so adult) population are beginning to realize that those golden gods we have installed in Washington, DC might not be as pure and as wise as we'd hoped for. Indeed, they're kinda like the watermelon the wife brought back from Wally World the other day. It looked good on the outside....when sliced open the smell made my mouth water a bit. But, when bitten into, with great expectations, was quickly spit back out by both the wife and I at almost the same instance.

Spoiled.....rotten to the core...awful it was. Quick rinses and gargles at the kitchen sink helped take the taste from our mouths. Quick dispatch out to the compost heap got it out of our sight. But the memory lingered. I'm sure we'll be a little more cautious about the next one we slice open.

Hopefully the electorate will remember the bad taste and odor seeping out of that swamp on the Potomac.

Maybe they'll choose with a little more care next time.

But......in the meantime.....do I call my friend tonight while his pain will be dulled from the grape, or wait until the morning when the pain will only be amplified by the harsh light of day? Will the pain be blamed on the messenger?

UPDATE: I waited until the next day. He moaned and groaned a bit, but not too bad.
Hell, we all make mistakes from time to time. What matters is that we continue on
on our journey, trying not to repeat them too often.

Looking for a bed in Athens

Not going to be too much longer. There is a pleasant kind of an ache in my shoulders and neck.
placed there by the drive to the mountain creek and back again, with a little help from trying to keep the dredge sucking water instead of air as the 10 yr old grandson and I tried to find the elusive bit of auric shiny-ness amongst the sand and rocks, with kibitzing from the wife and the pooch.

A week or so ago my friend Armando from El Salvador asked if I was watching the World Cup matches in South Africa beamed to a satellite and thence down to my waiting dish. I told him, "No".

"Do you watch baseball"?

"No".

"Football or college sports"?

Again, "no".

"What do you do for fun", he asked?

Do you know I had to think about that for a while. (This just prior to us climbing into the Red Ram and heading to Washington, GA to buy up a little scrap, which if you had to call anything my job, would be it.)

It surprised, and amused me both, to hear myself reply, "I like to work". And you know, I do.

It's not working on the space shuttle, nor saving lives in a hospital... nothing very important as all really, simply allowing people to convert unusable and unsaleable assets for a more convenient and readily accepted form of asset.

But, it's what I do. Going on 16 years now, off and on. Seen good times and seen bad times.
Sometimes I think I'd prefer there to be more good times.....but they all add up together, don't they.

So, today we went to a creek in the woods, the wife, the pooch, Lee and I, and although I could have been more tolerant of a 10 year old boy's fondness for just playing around while I was in a dead serious hunt for black sand and flecks of golden dreams, I was doing what I love the most. Working hard at whatever I'm doing.

I see lots of guys my age not moving around much and waiting on the day they retire from that dreaded J. O. B. To my jaundiced eye they seem much older than I, and I hope I never become one of them.

It just wouldn't seem like all that much fun.

Don't Taze my Granny

This, if true, and now-a-day I don't doubt it, makes me want to fire off a Scud Missle to the offending police dept. At the very least call for their firing.

Check it out

Just one more example of the them against them mentality that exist at all levels of gubberment service these days.

I'm gonna go play in the creek until I cool off.

Popcorn Farting

It rained in the Classic City this evening. In some parts it was like a cow pissing on a flat rock with cracks of lightning and booms of thunder.

Here at the Kudzu Grotto ...... ehhh... not so much. Just enough to settle the dust a bit and cause the grass to grow a little more. Swear it's the truth....I'm gonna cover my pitiful excuse for a yard with pea gravel and call it a Japanese Rock Garden. Crab grass and Dandelions we have in abundance. But will turf type fescue or Burmuda grass take a'holt........S**T no!

Been a while. The mood just doesn't seem to have hit me over the head in a while. All the thing I used to rant and rave about Glenn Beck is taking care of now. Time to pass the torch I guess. He's doing a much better job of it than I ever did. All I succeeded in doing was piss the in-laws and out-laws off with my bitching and moaning.

Blogging for going on six years now and I've had a few people visit, some even more that once, even an occasional comment by bloggers that I admire and respect. Those have fed my soul and nourished a timid desire to put my self out there where others can see, even take a shot at now and again. Churchill is supposed to have said, "There is nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at and missed". Some truth to that although it's been many a year since I had to dodge and weave. They used to say I couldn't fly a straight line if my life depended on it. I always considered that it depended on my wobbling and bobbling through the air more than getting there the quickest sometimes.

The same ol' same ol' is going on in the political and economic news. I'm getting dammned tired of it. Perhaps a new direction will be attempted after this coming falls elections, but it will mean little. The powers that be are controlled by the banksters that be and to bet against them can mean as much as your life. Don't take my word for it.....Ask JFK. Hell ask BHO. He can't take a crap without them telling him which hand to use to wipe his ass. So much for the devout mussleman question.

Anyhoo nobody wants to listen to that shit from a nano-particle in the blog-o-sphere like me, so I'm gonna attempt to steer clear for a while and think about nicer things. Things like the rainbow over Home Depot as I was trying to get off the by-pass in order to pick up some Chef Ming goodness for supper. It was one of God's better light shows......then along came the cow and the flat rock.

If'n any of you are in the mood for Chinese, either take out or dine in you could do worse than Chef Ming's. Check them out over by Kroger between Home Depot and Lowe's.

It's been a little over and hour and I think there is some Mushroom Beef left in the icebox.

Son........ Gooooooddddd!

Triple Fudge Walnut Brownies

with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Comfort food.

Needed quite a lot this evening.

An evening of thunder, lightening and rain. Much appreciated after the last few days of temps in the high 90's with humidity you have to slice with a sharp knife to walk through. A relief to hear the air conditioner cease sucking up the $ bills for a few minutes.

Of course the relief will be only short lived......already the thunder is becoming more distant and the rain not so fierce.

The need for the brownies occasioned by the absence of the pooch who is imprisoned in the local Vet's clinic for observation, re-hydration, medication all brought about by the finding of bloody stool this morning and a general off feed, whining, discomforting lassitude in our Toby Boy.

Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis...... which is vet talk for bleeding in the intestines for one or more of possibly a dozen and a half possibilities. Did you know that it's not wise to treat your dog with those rawhide chew toys that are everywhere these days? Neither did we.

What ever the reason our pooch is not at home with us and the wife is not happy about it, especially as the rumbling and flashing would be driving him under the bed were he home and around his packmates (the wife, the ol' grump and I).

Who knows what torments he's suffering alone in his wire cage there a million miles away from home, with no one to scratch behind his ears or rub his tummy and no snoring from me as he sleeps on the pillow above our heads at night.

So while you're getting ready to lie in your comfortable beds tonight, give a moment of silence and possibly prayer for the little pooch, who will no doubt be as miserable without us as we without him.

Poor, poor, pitiful Obama

You just have to almost feel sorry for the guy.

Somebody probably told him that all he had to do to be presidential was stick his chicken chest out and hold his head up high and we'd all follow him blindly where-ever his skipping and flute playing would lead us.

Never mind that Americans don't particularly like someone who is always looking down their nose at us, telling us that we don't know what is good for us, that we're gonna get screwed like there was no tomorrow and we'd not only pay good money for the opportunity but would gladly hock our children, grand children and great-grand children for as far into the future as you care to imagine, all the while looking back over our shoulder trying to get a kiss.

Sorry Barrack..........John Wayne hasn't been dead that long.



Of course The Duke never had to come up with some one to blame for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. If he had I expect he would have said something like.....,'Whatna hell do you expect me to do. I can't control the fickle finger of fate. If you want it cleaned up get off your ass and start mixing some loose hay in the water behind those fancy orange floaty things to soak some of that oil up. It's bad and gonna be bad......it'll be worse if you sit on your ass and point fingers, while doing nothing to help your own selves. Volcanoes erupt, floods come.....don't build on the side of a volcano or in a flood plain, don't start drilling 5000 feet below sea level without having at least two worst case scenarios planned for and trained for with all available equipment and personnel ready and trained ahead of time. Life is hard and it's harder when you're stupid'.

Politician exist because they convince us that they have all the answers and will always be looking out for our best interest.

I suspect if we could read their minds and knew what they were really thinking, there'd be an open season on them with no bag limit, bounties awarded for the use of the most creative manner in which they were lured into the kill zone and dispatched. Maybe we could turn it into some kind of a reality show, get those 2 British guys and some hot model to narrate it.

Should We Fear........

........or feel any remorse about possibly defaulting on our debt to the Federal Reserve?

Go yahoo and read, then analyze your feelings.

Am I a nut for considering the two largest Criminal Enterprises in the world to be;

1, The Federal Reserve System as part of a larger network of Central Banks around the world,

2, The current Government of the United States, as evidenced by the leadership of both houses
The President as well as top Bureaucrats at all agencies?

Tiny peeks inside my head on a Tuesday

If that title doesn't scare the 5 or 6 people that visit here on an average day away then they probably have a higher than average tolerance for boredom.

Thanks for coming, it was nice to see you.

I've always tried to keep people fooled as to my real ME by cracking wise or making off the wall comments. Maybe it's me that I've been fooling. No matter.

A couple days ago Yabu over at Bad Bad Juju asked the question of the moment.....

Are worldwide money systems beyond the point of no return? If yes, why, if no, why.

Dang ya Yabu, you planted an earwig in my head. Now I've got to scratch the itch. Not for anyone else, but to justify to myself the course of action I've undertaken to myself.

Very few people will read this in any event and I'm cossetted here in the inner recesses of the Kudzu Grotto (KG) where if the scratching gets personal no one will see.

If yes? Yes, they are. Why? In my opinion we have a greater hope of influencing the election results than of changing the world-wide system of fiat money-backed-by-nothing imposed by the (imho) Criminal Central Banks of the world.

That is to say that I hold out little hope of most of the worlds currencies becoming backed by any item of supposed value, whether gold or silver, neither of which can of course be eaten in and of themselves. The Swiss Franc was at one time fully backed by gold but they sold much gold while the price was lower. They still have that backing and with recent price increases may actually be in a position once again of have full backing, but I don't know if it is convertible by walking in to the local branch of USB.

Yes, when most of the worlds industrial countries spend more than they produce in goods and services, (which point the US has reached) and promise even more, they are in fact bankrupt, they just haven't filed the papers yet. Having filed those particular papers once upon a time myself I think I have a bit of an understanding.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, eventually both Peter and Paul get pissed at you. Paul because you robbed him and Paul because you finally broke Peter and are no longer paying him what he has come to think of as his right. It's not of course, (his right), but he's gotten used to getting something for nothing. Witness the civil servants of Span lying down in the streets in protest at proposed cuts in their wages. (Can you blame them? They've habituated themselves to a certain standard of living and don't want to go backwards).

If, as is proper, many of the recipients of government largess in The USA were suddenly removed from the teat they had latched onto since birth in many cases, what would you expect their reaction to be?

Would our society become a lot less civil in the near term? Of course it would and the rioters would consider they had every right to then take by force what they were formerly receiving as a matter of course to them and not much protesting by the rest of us because we'd really rather not deal with them if we could help it. Interaction would then become very much more interesting and potentially dangerous. This takes no account of the millions who (supposedly) work for government and produce reams of laws and excessive regulation for the betterment of mankind and to ensure they have a job and a pretense at legitimacy when holding their hand out for their share. IMO once again many of the personnel and bureaucracies could be eliminated with no effect at all upon the majority of the American citizenry.

I'll give you one example.........The US Agricultural Extension Service. As a former Dairy Farmer I have has some dealing with them and as a parent I've had children who participated in 4-H.

At the time of establishment the Extension Service was to provide updated and innovative farming information to the farmers of this country (circa 1930's). A worthwhile venture to be sure as at the time much of the rural citizenry we somewhat less literate than their citified cousins (although perhaps less aggressive and abrasive) and the information highway was not even a gleam in Al Gore's eye. A network of shared information benefited both the farmers and the consumers to the point that the US fed not only it's self but much of the rest of the world.

Today that information is readily available in many media forms and while much research can be attributed to the Agricultural Colleges and the Extension Services, the local offices spend much of their time babysitting children, teaching them to shoot bows and arrows and going on field trips. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I suggest the time has come to reduce by 90% that agency. There are many more just like it and in fact much more useless as producers of value for the money spent on them.

beyond the point of no return? if no, why

NO. Does it surprise you to read that from me after all the above?

I guess I am an eternal optimist. I believe this world is going to continue spinning around the sun which is it's self spinning withing the galaxy through space and will continue short of Impact with an object large enough to pulverize things.

Will humankind be smart enough to avoid destructive scenarios such as total melt down?

I think we can. Much like the bankruptcy process, first you must face up to the fact that you have to make a change and either repudiate all your debts as well as ownership of any assets of any value and walk away to start over (Chapter 7 Bankruptcy), or recognize that you need to stop the destructive actions and put a plan in place to allow you with time and hard work to pay off your debts, while removing the temptations of credit, of which you will emerge with none. (Chapter 13 Bankruptcy).

This could be accomplished by:

1st, Kicking the current crop if incompetents out of Washington, State Capitals, and County and local leadership positions, replacing them with principled Statesmen/women who have and understanding of the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States and the 1st Ten articles of the Bill of Rights. Who recognize that rights are an individuals by right of Birth, whether you believe they are God Given, as I do, or they exist because you do. Life, Liberty, Property and the right to protect all of these both individually and collectively. Holding the civil Servants accountable to the people by methods both Draconian and Transparently.

2nd, Place a freeze on payments to holders of government debt and stop the interest accumulation until a re-organization plan is put in place to allow the debt to be paid and no new debt to be incurred.....period! If you can't pay for it out of available funds, you can't have it. This is just common sense.

3rd, Enact the Fair Tax. If you don't understand how this would completely fund the government with no more money coming out of the people's pockets and bring industry and corporations streaming back into this country, you need to do your research and read the two excellent books that have been written about it.
We would be in short order able to resume payments on the debts and eventually eliminate them and be debt free as a nation and people thus removing the shackles of slavery that have been fastened around our necks by those very elected representatives we places so much trust in. In addition it would totally fund the Social Security responsibilities to those who have paid into it as well as Medicare and gov't pension and disability funding although we would have to eliminate the fraud that currently exists in these programs. People should be taught that they are the responsible party for their retirement if any and allowed to accumulate and fund that retirement at their discretion, while educating them of the hazards of neglecting this important part of individual responsibility.

4th, Eliminate the Department of Education and return the control of the schools to the local level. Ban teachers from entering any collective bargaining groups and make them accountable to the parents of the students they are hired to teach. The old trite saying, "those that can do, those that can't, teach" is all to true in many cases. Require teachers to have a complete understanding of the subjects they teach and if at all possible require them to have a successful record of producing goods or services in their chosen fields.
Require student to demonstrate not just knowledge of their subjects but require them to use that knowledge to complete a period of apprenticeship using those same skills. There is nothing more useless than knowledge not applied and used. Likewise knowledge and education is worth every penny paid for it, if you use it.

5th, Establish standards by which this country will interact with other countries, making them completely clear and transparent, making if clear that we will not tell other countries and their peoples how to live and demanding the same respect from them. Trade with those countries that agree to these standards and refuse trade with those who do not. And By REfuse I mean no intercourse with them, no trade, no visas. If they want to be a part of a world that trades and interacts in good faith fairly and freely we desire it. If they want no part of our society, very well, we'll respect that and expect the same.
If they take actions that are hostile to this nation we will squash them until they agree to play nice, at which time they will be placed on probation for a period of time to verify their good intentions, or we will totally destroy them, making it clear to their population our intentions so they can (hopefully) exercise control over their own leaders.
In furtherance of these standards and objectives institute a system of service to the nation much like that in Switzerland, which has been able to remain neutral and unattacked for 400 years. If this requires a draft or a volunteer system, choose which is best.
Personally I like that proposed by Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers where you voting rights depended on your degree of service to your nation for both men and women. This in an effort to make women feel equal to men in every way, although why they would want to so lower themselves I cannot for the life of me understand, but after 42 years of marriage I'm no closer to understanding the female of the species than when I was 6.

These are just some of the things that would allow us to overcome the current crises both monetary and political that I would like see come to pass and I believe it would allow us to honorably pay legitimate debts and put on the path of solvency once again.

I claim no divine revelations, greater understanding than the next guy on the street, certainly no higher education (although I have monitored enough classes at the School of Hard knocks to attain at least an Associates Degree) and would really welcome ideas of yours whether you wish to do it in the comments or would care to establish an e-mail correspondence with me. We've got to work on the problem......it will not go away on its own or because of wishful thinking. So Please, lets put our heads together.