July 31, 2011

Some of the most important lessons are also the hardest lessons. We start with some relatively simple ones, often at an early age, and then progress to the more complicated stuff later. But each lesson taken and passed is generally learned through some pain or embarrassment. 

At some point when we were little kids, we got an allowance from our parents. It wasn’t a massive fortune, something like a buck each week, but it was free money and it showed up every week unless we broke some of the more important rules. And we could spend it on pretty much whatever we wanted. So some candy was purchased, or a coke or two, but we also had to remember to save up some of it for buying birthday and Christmas presents, for with wealth came added responsibility.

We knew other kids who got bigger allowances, and on the surface that didn’t seem fair. But when it was patiently pointed out to us that those kids were expected to shop for their own clothes and a few other things that our parents covered for us, we didn’t have a leg to stand on. My brother would have taken that deal, because he was no fan of the clothes Mom bought for us, being a style conscious individual and all. But not me…I hated to shop for clothes in those days, and come to think of it, I still do.

We were told that if we wanted more money, there was always the option of getting a job. In fact, Mom called around and found jobs for us, which we didn’t even have to volunteer for, cause she kinda suggested we just shut up and go to work. My first job paid 60 cents an hour, which simplified my record keeping. Wow, a whole penny a minute. And this was tax free in those days. I had more money than I possibly needed, being a man of simple needs in those days.

But then I entered high school and my needs expanded. Fortunately, I found a better paying job, and with 75 cents an hour I kept up with my needs. After high school I did much better, 90 cents an hour, but that next job was with a real business, and thus I learned about payroll taxes. And since I was now buying more expensive stuff, and gasoline, I found out about sales and fuel taxes. Suddenly, I learned a new lesson as my comfortable living was slimmed a bit by the take from the government.

With college came rent and food expense, along with books, and more darn clothes. I learned to stretch a paycheck for a month, and how to turn in those empty bottles for the deposit when the month lasted longer than I planned. It’s a hard lesson when you run out of money. And I had to smile when a friend’s kid looked at her mom with that perfect child innocence, and asked, when their month outlived the money, why couldn’t they just cash a check so they could get a pizza. Ah, the pain and embarrassment of an empty bank account. That was a hard lesson.

The laugh came when someone had to explain to one friend why she couldn’t keep writing checks that bounced. Seems she couldn’t understand that just because she had checks left in the checkbook, that didn’t mean she still had money in her account. The threat of legal consequences induced her to figure that one out. That was a painful lesson.

I was always motivated to work harder, in school so I could later make more money in my job, and at the job itself, so I could make more money at my job, so that I could buy all I needed and then some. I did reach a point where I could no longer limitlessly expand my income, for such is reality, and thus I do not own a Ferrari or even that 18000 square foot ranch house in Jackson Hole. But I get by if I match what I make with what I owe. And I still save up for those birthday and Christmas presents, and other silly things, like my retirement.

Now, I know that there are subtle differences between my need to balance a household budget, and the federal government’s teensy problem with its overspending. The experts from the government tell us that governments don’t actually need to balance their budgets. Heck, governments apparently don’t even have to pay off their debts at all, cause they get to make their own rules. Governments are unimpaired by that responsibility stuff that the subjects of said government still must obey.

Governments are allowed a printing press, but they will throw our butts in jail if we were to try that trick. Governments will deliberately create inflation, so that when their bills come due, they can pay some of them with increasingly worthless money, and thus make it look less egregious. And except for all those governments that have been overthrown by their own people, or simply folded because they didn’t or couldn’t pay their bills, I suppose nothing bad ever comes of this.

So I’m not sure what all the fuss is about in Washington these days. The problem can be fixed, but it won’t be. Heck, go ahead and raise the debt ceiling. Raise it next month too. Why stop here? Keep raising it forever. Why argue over whether revenue needs to go up to match spending, or spending go down to match revenue? Nobody has tried to make this equation work in a very long time. 

Trying to Increase revenue won’t net much anyway, for the cow is pretty much milked out already. The middle class has little more to give. Same with small business. Sure, you could go for a value added tax so you can clean out the lower class folks too, but that will just annoy them. Low income voters tend to favor politicians who want to tax those other people in order to give an allowance to them, so having a big tax laid on them won’t sit well. 

Tax the rich until everybody is equal sounds fair to some, but pretty soon you run out of rich people. And that will just make rich folks even more interested in taking charge of the whole mess, which we don’t need. Besides, we are in so deep that if you took every cent from the “rich” it wouldn’t put a dent in the current deficit. 

If I ran out of money I’d have to cut back on spending, because I cannot expand my earning in an unlimited way. This is true in government too, eventually. No choice in the matter. But asking a politician to do something painful but necessary to reduce spending only nets you promises and lies. And if you take away from folks the “free” things that flow down to them from the government, those ingrates will stop voting politicians into office for life. Doing what’s right never got a politician re-elected when so many who might vote want him to keep dishing it out. 

Folks who like free money, and politicians who care far less about the country than they do about getting re-elected, will block any attempt to rein in things. We haven’t learned. And we won’t. 

If you or I wrote rubber checks like this country of our does on a routine basis, we’d get locked up as crazy or crooked. What does that say about our politicians?

This great country is headed to the trash bin because it spends beyond its means. This is not an if, but merely a when. We are finished as a viable nation because of this corruption, if we do not learn the lesson from this painful experience. What a shame.

This column ran shortly before the last national election. Bon appetite.

We recently visited Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park in South Dakota. Wonderful places. I suspect most of you have not heard of these two parks, because they don't receive near the publicity as Yellowstone or Grand Teton. I suppose I should hope that they never attract the hordes of tourists these more famous parks endure, cause that would wreck things. I'm selfish that way. We had both parks pretty much to ourselves, except for the animals, and they were great!

We saw hundreds of wild animals in their original habitat, all acting uninhibited and natural. The grass prairie was peppered with herds of massive bison and thousands of tiny prairie dogs. Margins of the wooded areas revealed grazing mule and whitetail deer, and elk. Pronghorns stood out in the sunlight, highlighted by their vivid colors. And hawks soared above it all on thermals of joy.

No fences kept the animals off the roads or the people off the prairie. And although most of the human visitors were house trained, the animals clearly are not. The roads were conspicuously decorated with bison poop, which can best be described (you aren't eating now, are you?) as five pound plops of soft serve ice cream. Bison weigh in at one to two thousand pounds, and they recycle grass in prodigious amounts.

You can miss some of these road pies while driving around, but the law of averages catches up to everyone, and so you can plan on hosing off the bottom of the car when you get home. Which brings me around to my latest fantasy...

Historically, sitting presidents travel about the country in those last few weeks before elections kissing babies and wrapping their arms around the shoulders of their party's candidates, hoping that something good will rub off to collect a few votes. Popular presidents significantly improve a candidate's poll numbers simply by showing up. But when a disaster president visits, it can be the kiss of death to an election campaign, if some of the horrid performance adheres to the candidate.

Guess what is happening this time around?

It seems that the few candidates our current president will visit in the coming weeks have such large leads that the desperate man hopes to receive a boost for himself, rather than the other way around.

South Dakota sent a young congressperson off to Washington a while ago, hoping for good things from her. Folks in South Dakota have their feet firmly planted on the ground, and if you have ever experienced the wind there, you would understand this. So you can imagine how outraged those honest hard working people became as they watched their young congressperson voting with Nancy Pelosi time after time. Many in South Dakota farm the land, and they recognize bull “bleep” when they see it. The congressperson's re-election campaign is in trouble, and you won't see the current president dropping by to help this young lady, cause he's really not welcome there, or most anywhere anymore.

But I understand that the Democrat party is sending the first lady out on the stump, trying to prop up some failing election campaigns, cause they can still find a few people in this country who don't dislike her. So she just might show up in South Dakota in my fantasy. And of course, she would have to do the obligatory photo op at Mount Rushmore.

Now, I doubt Michelle or her hubby have much use for Mount Rushmore or those four dead white guys on it, cause those men are hardly relevant to the direction they want the country to slide. But they are savvy enough to realize that a few of us old fools still like the monument and what it once stood for, so if they have a chance at conning folks again in this election, they have to keep up the pretense.

So after the usual speeches and interviews in Rapid City, in my fantasy Michelle would enter the long black armored limo, and with the seven black armored Suburbans in line, she would head up the hill to the visitor center to stand before the cameras, and those four faces. And after that staged show, she might also be shuttled around the mountain to visit Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. Cause this all would look so good on the 6 o'clock news.

And if my fantasy comes true, Michelle steps out of the limo at a particularly scenic spot, and plants her size 13's into a still warm and fragrant, perfectly sculpted plop of bison poop. And she like-totally ruins a brand new pair of Gucci's. She will be DISTRESSED!

This story could end here, with what many would consider a happy ending, but not in my fantasy. No, I'd like to see where this would go given the current climate in Washington. The minions inside the Beltway would swing into action before the last dollop of putrid poop dripped from the toe of Michelle's shoe.  Something must be done to rectify this horrid situation, left over of course, from the Bush administration.

This is a perfect “shovel ready” project. So I have no trouble believing the current administration would come up with this solution:

Diapers. We need diapers, in extra giant size, for each and every bison in those two parks, so that no American will ever again step in bison poop. And we will need to change those diapers, several times daily, on each and every one of those hundreds of bison. Every time a diaper becomes soiled. Lots of diapers.

And rubber gloves. A change of rubber gloves for each diaper. Goggles too. And those heavy duty respirators to guard against the occasional methane leak. Got to keep OSHA happy.

PETA will want baby wipes. Scented ones. With lanolin. Don't want no bison diaper rash.

This problem will require study. Grants must be granted. Audits of course, cause this all must be transparent. And supervisors. Lots of supervisors.

We will need to hire people to change diapers. Lots of em. Three shifts a day, plus replacement workers on weekends and holidays. Overtime. And a union.

But therein lies the beauty of this. Jobs creation. We'd be creating jobs! Good Democrat voting jobs. And they say the president hasn't created jobs. Well eat your words, you skeptics. Bison diapers is a growth industry.

Funding might be a problem, since this will cost millions, if not billions. We will have to make allowance for this crap in Stimulus Three, or is that Four? There are lots of future generations coming along who will need to pay for this, but they don't vote now. The President isn't concerned; he will be retired on Maui, or maybe Indonesia, years before this chicken comes to roost.

There's a lot of bison poop out there, and it needs to be properly disposed. But who knows more about spreading “bleep” than our federal government?

Another old column. This one appeared shortly after the madman shot up Tucson

Remember when Indiana Jones was in Egypt, fighting with the Nazi sergeant next to the flying wing? He hit the guy several times square on the chin, and nothing happened. The guy simply stood there, laughing. Earlier, Indy had been running around the streets of Cairo, chased by all those Egyptians who were paid by the Nazis to be bad guys. He punched a few of those guys, and they each went down right away. And then when that big guy in the robes showed up waving the curved sword, Indy just shrugged, pulled out his revolver, plugged the bad guy once, and down that guy went. This was a movie, and in movies you can stray away just a bit from reality, and nobody notices.

OK, sometimes people notice. Indy's revolver was either a 32 or 38 caliber. Somebody out there will probably tell me, cause there are lots of people around who know more about these things than I. Anyway, revolver bullets from 32 or 38 caliber revolvers probably wouldn't have dropped the guy on the spot. Revolver bullets in 32 or 38 caliber in the 1930's were poorly constructed and traveled relatively slowly, and that bad guy was wearing those thick robes, which would have functioned a bit as armor against attack. If it wasn't a movie, the guy likely would have not cooperated with the writers so nicely. So although that revolver would have served to stop most of those regular bad guys that Indy floored with one punch, like the big Nazi sergeant the sword fighter was a bit tougher, and that revolver would not have been up to the task.

Back in the days when America actually was imperialistic for a bit, and we thought that owning the Philippines was a cool idea, (which you will all remember from your history lessons. Yeah, I had to look it up too. It was around 1896. Don't worry; in the schools today they teach that we are still imperialistic.) we sent in the army and navy to convince the residents of those islands that they really wanted us there. It was an unfortunate time.

Anyway, our army ended up fighting with these guys called Moros. Moros were Muslim natives who turned out to be exceptionally fierce fighters. Not only were they motivated to run off these Americans occupying their land, but they had the old religious thing running through their heads and some potent home grown stimulants running through their veins. They'd show up screaming, and ran directly through withering rifle fire until they could use their long knives to best advantage in hand to hand combat with our soldiers. Wounded many times, they would just keep on fighting as if possessed. It really was a mess. Of course, those 32 and 38 caliber revolvers that our soldiers used when the fighting was up close and personal weren't any more effective at stopping these warriors than Indy's should have been in the movie.

That's when the army decided it liked the 45 caliber pistol better. The model 1911 Colt semi-automatic pistol carried 8 cartridges instead of the 6 in a revolver, so one didn't exhaust the supply as quickly, and the bullet it fired was heavier and larger in diameter than those revolver rounds. This weapon functioned in battle far better than the revolvers. It stopped people right now.

This gun stuff is nasty business, and no one denies this. But since the time when our ancestors first stood on only their hind legs so that they could carry sharpened rocks in their hands as weapons to hunt for food and kill each other with something other than their teeth, people have been inventing better weapons to give themselves the advantage when competing with other people. It's been this way since we stopped calling ourselves monkeys. When I went on line to check on the name Moro, I found something like 8 other wars that were raging around the world at just about that same time. Somehow fighting wars is the thing mankind does the most, if not the best.

There may have been any number of people in history who decided they didn't like weapons and didn't like fighting, so they simply stopped using those and doing that, but they are not around anymore so I cannot ask them if that was the better way. Maybe, when it's time for the Starship Enterprise to come along, people will stop killing each other on this planet, but they will still arm the Enterprise to fight the folks they find out there, cause that's the way it is.

So fast forward to more modern times, the second half of the 20^th century....

Humans of course, were still fighting and killing each other. Some used weapons to attack, and others used them to defend against attack. And over time the weapons got more dangerous. Of course, the old good guy-bad guy conflict is a relative thing, but just for sake of convenience, I'm gonna call us the good guys, and those others that would hurt us we will call the bad guys. And to muddy the waters further, let's make the police and our military the good guys and those criminals and enemies of our nation the bad guys. Not politically correct but there is no time for that here. However, from time to time I will mention the people who think just the opposite of me about this, if it suits my mood.

Two stories follow for illustrative purpose...

Actually they are kinda the same story but one at a time. For years the police mostly armed themselves with 38 caliber revolvers. Six guns, cause they carried six cartridges. Everybody knew that they were not the most effective weapons (see above), but they were inexpensive, which the taxpayers liked, and they were less likely to kill the bad guys.  (?????) (Think Lawyers and The Media) The bad guys didn't worry about these artificial constraints, and they acquired any better weapons they could find (which they used to kill innocent people as well as each other). Some police officers carried the 45 Colt, but they were usually thought to be playing too nasty by the folks who hate violence in any form, and this was discouraged. So as a consequence, lots of cops got killed by the bad guys.

Finally, after several FBI officers were killed by one bad guy with a semi-automatic pistol, even though the officers had shot the bad guy several times with those 38's (before they ran out of ammunition and then got killed), somebody decided to get the cops better weapons, too. The 45 was still considered too effective, and since those more civilized countries we admire so (think Europe) used mostly 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistols, our police started to carry these. Large capacity semi-automatic pistols were just the thing when it came to dealing with criminals armed with the same. It’s what ya call evolution.

Except.... if you had a bad guy hiding in a car, which happens, and you needed to stop him from killing you by killing him, and you had a 38 or 9 millimeter in you hand, you'd get really annoyed when those bullets you fired kept bouncing off the windshield or doors of that car. This happened from time to time, including that time where the FBI guys got killed, and this was considered a bad thing. So somebody invented a steel core, jacketed bullet that would penetrate windshields and car doors, and could be used on these rare occasions, and maybe keep a cop alive. These were essentially similar to amour piercing rounds used by the military. And since they were abrasive to normal handgun barrels and would destroy said costly barrels, they coated the bullets with teflon. Only a few of these rounds were ever made, and they were sold only to police departments, but boy did they create a fuss.

A few of those people who hate violence of any kind live in most countries, and they spend a lot of time complaining, and we have a bunch in this country. Apparently, they think that the best way to get bad guys to stop hurting the good folks is to disarm the good folks. Unlike trickle down economics, which sometimes actually works, trickle down disarmament has never been a big success, but that has never stopped these people from trying it on the rest of us. Since many gun owning folks fail to see the logic to the disarming argument, they need to be re-educated into surrendering their guns. And if stretching the truth makes the re-education process work better (see propaganda), these folks who would disappear the guns don't hesitate to do this.

Do you remember when the Washington Post announced the arrival of the plastic gun that would allegedly evade metal detectors at airports and thus make every airliner a highjack victim? Well, they did announce that, and then demanded the gun be banned. The gun was the Glock, and according to the Post it spelled the end of Western Civilization. Just months later, when the Washington DC police signed up for a new and far better pistol for its officers to carry in the street, the Washington Post announced this as wonderful news. Western Civilization was saved. The pistol was the same Glock! One problem we have with our media....they often don’t have a clue what they talk about and they sometimes bend reality to suit their needs. And if they are gonna re-educated folks, sometimes this is what they choose to do.

Those steel core, teflon coated bullets that were designed to save police officer lives became COP KILLER BULLETS this same way. Somebody came up with the idea that they could claim these bullets might defeat the new body armor that the police were wearing, and therefore they should be banned. Since to these people, the saving of Western Civilization rested with disarming the good guys, a massive campaign to ban cop killer bullets resulted. How’s that work? Well intentioned disarm-the-good-guys people drove the mania about cop killer bullets, the media jumped on board, and they got their compliant legislators to write a law that would ban ANY bullet that could pass through light body armor. This was perfect! That's cause this law banned virtually every bullet used by hunters, too. Double whammy. Pretty soon with no ammunition all the guns would be gone! Surely the bad guys would give up their guns soon after, and peace would rein on earth.

Uh, no… Some of us, those 90 million or so good guys who own guns without using them to rob banks or kill people, objected. We know the benefit of guns, and resent the implication that they are the root of all evil on earth, so we suggested the law banning all ammunition be changed back into a law that would limit the sale of Teflon coated armor piercing ammo only to the police. There is a certain logic to this. It was those nasty degenerates at the National Rifle Association that suggested this revised law, and it was passed because of course the politicians are all afraid of the NRA. Which is why the good guys still can own guns.

To date, despite the media lies, the sum total of cops killed by cop killer bullets is zero. The number of good guys who have defended themselves when attacked by criminals (by using their guns, as if this argument isn't transparent enough) is somewhere in the many thousands. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the media to announce this.

The same arguments surfaced when somebody invented the term assault weapon, and decided to ban them. Since there isn't actually such a thing as an assault weapon, they had to come up with a definition, so why not include a whole bunch of firearms they’d like to ban? Those arguing for a ban could apply the term to most anything they chose. This led to some confusion, cause those of us who own these various firearms don't always know when we became a threat to Western Civilization or just another gun nut. Some stated that if a firearm looks kinda like a military weapon, it must therefore be more dangerous than any other. So we would loosen one screw and remove some extraneous part to alter the appearance of the rifle safely stored in our gun safe, and we made it legal again cause it was less scary looking. Others proposed that magazine capacity or firing mechanism made all the difference, but they still had trouble defining what exactly made one gun more demon-like than another.

It didn't help that with the exception of some gang infested areas in Los Angeles, nobody could find many places where their so-called assault weapons were much of a problem. Most police departments keep statistics on the weapons used in crimes, and few bother to track these weapons, since they are a tiny statistical blip.

None of this stopped the media from helping out. Whenever one of these weapons was actually used in a crime, it made national news, over and over again. It turned into the same feeding frenzy that the media created for pitbulls. By ignoring most incidents caused by other breeds, pitbulls became the Damien dog, even though most people also have trouble actually defining what a pitbull is. And in their quest for opinion bending “news” the large media organizations often bent this truth.

For instance, the reason many people think that assault weapons are fully automatic machine guns just might be because when the television news does a special on assault weapons, the camera always shows a machine gun in action. They did similar things when they deliberately set GM pickup trucks on fire when they could not make them burn in actual accidents. It's visually exciting and certainly persuasive, but it is also totally dishonest. Machine guns have been illegal since 1934, so the assault weapon ban hardly cleared the streets of these. All those “assault weapons” that were banned back in the 90's are still out there, cause the ban only affected the sale of those few that could not be cosmetically altered back to legal, so there are in fact many more “in circulation” now than at the time of the ban. And they still are hardly ever used in crime.

Oh, and remember when Mel Gibson set out to save the world, (before he became the drunken anti-Semite idiot) and he shot through a bulldozer blade with a “COP KILLER BULLET” to eliminate the villain in a silly movie? Mel's a big gun ban fan, and this abuse of the truth I guess is justified by him trying to save us from ourselves. This would be after he made millions for himself shooting up the movie screen.

That horrible crime in Tucson will of course rekindle the same arguments, cause those people who wish they could end violence forever have certainly been re-stimulated. The deranged murderer used a Glock, the plastic gun. It is a large capacity semi-automatic pistol. He used a novelty elongated magazine, which I suppose made it into an “assault weapon”. He set out to kill people, and people died. Oh, and the media has been mentioning it over and over again. (I'm reminded at times like this of the second worst mass murder committed in this country’s history prior to 911. This killer used gasoline, and he killed over 100 people within minutes. This mass murder lasted about a week on the news and did not result in an outcry to ban gasoline.)  (The worst mass murderer used diesel fuel and fertilizer)

A judge in California noticed that this state's new ammunition ban is unconstitutional. So of course a legislator mentioned on TV that this will turn all the criminals loose with cop killer bullets. The call goes out again to ban assault weapons, magazines, semi-auto firing mechanism, anything to “get the guns off the streets”. It's the guns' fault.

Meanwhile, bad guys do bad things. Nothing new here. Well intentioned people blame the good guys, and try to limit their freedoms in order to keep the bad guys in check. And good guys have to defend themselves from those well intentioned people for no good reason. And it keeps coming back to bad guys do bad things. The one thing that will never change in human behavior.

July 24, 2011

This has been a confusing week. Perhaps you’ve noticed. I haven’t begun to grasp all that has happened. The news reports have been incomplete, so none of us really know much of what we should about all that has transpired. Some of my thoughts will perhaps be exposed as total nonsense when more information surfaces. But I won’t mention anything here that doesn’t make a bit of sense in the atmosphere of partial knowledge. And maybe, some of what seems will become some of what is.

The scene was so familiar in the news report. Two transportation department police officers pursued a young man from a train, because he had not paid his fare. And then they shot him down. Because he hadn’t paid his fare. And of course, because of his skin color. The station platform was crowded with people, and each had a cell phone and each captured some of this drama on video. And before anything more was known about this tragedy, the media condemnation of the police officers hit full stride. It was the BART shooting all over again, and boy there better not be a cover up that frees the evil cops like they did last time.

The media was all over this one. And the rowdy people gathered in the streets to wreck things, cause that’s what they do in the face of racial injustice. The neighborhood was rallying in support of their fallen brother. The oppression by the police must be stopped. The cops, simpering wimps that they are, claimed the poor innocent youth was shooting at them, and so they had to shoot back at him. But where was the gun? Cover up, again. 

And then some of the truth came out. Somebody looked at the videos captured at the scene, and there was the gun where the man had tossed it, and somebody was stealing it. Gosh, what a surprise in that neighborhood! Oh, and that poor innocent youth struck down before his prime was already a career criminal, and he was actually being chased by the police because of a parole violation, again, and not because he hadn’t paid his fare. And he had gunshot residue all over his hands, from when he shot at the cops, and from when he shot and killed, himself. And the gun has been recovered and will be tested, and then…some useful information might be forthcoming.

None of this stopped the people from gathering in the street to protest, and when they got too rowdy, they were arrested, and no, they weren’t from around here. They weren’t the neighborhood’s oppressed people. Nope, these folks just wandered in from other places cause they like to protest and wreck things. Because that is what this bunch does for fun. And I missed the part where the media apologized to the police officers for condemning them before the facts were known.

A bomb went off in Oslo, much to the surprise of most. Who bombs Norway? Some wondered if Libya or those Islamic terrorists might not be responsible. And then the information came out that part of the same attack involved the murder of many children. Who could do such a thing?

Some of the deluded folks around here who give Islamic terrorists great praise for their resistance against the oppression by the West were quick to gloat, “I told you so…” when they thought that the Islamic terrorists were defending themselves by killing Norwegians. Grins filled their faces when such justice was done to the oppressors. Nobody much mentioned that the murders of innocent children just might seem a bit over the top, but that’s what ya can always expect with Islamic terrorists.  And so I guess that makes it OK.

And then we found out, long after so many had already spoken their personal philosophies, that one psychopath with a grudge against his own government did all these nasty murders. And the folks who praised the terrorists could no longer smirk, so I guess they will just cry out to ban guns again or some other useless thing.

None of this makes any sense. But I guess that’s life these days. It’s so crazy that ya really gotta hold back your opinions until the dust settles, so you probably shouldn’t pay any attention to me either.

Equal Opportunity Debunked?

Hi all

Another opportunity to trash Trasher from last winter.

Hi all

I suppose if you want this one to make any sense, you might want to peruse this link. More Steven Thrasher. Never hurts to know how some people think, particularly if you might think differently.

Dr Bob

 http://www.villagevoice.com/news/2010-02-23/news/inside-a-divided-nyc-public-school/

The same people gathered with their outrage in tow, in the same place they had arranged before, so everyone knew where to go. Familiar faces gravitated to each other, friendships and business relations rekindled, anticipation built. They waited for their chance to shine. They had time for this or made time for this, because this was their moment again. They live for these gatherings. And the faces in the windows looked out at them in disgust and fear, and that made them happy.

Circling like the scavengers they are, the folks with the cameras and the microphones waited too. They knew where and when to set up, for such purely spontaneous events are also planned and publicized in advance. The reporters too were filled with anticipation and hope, for the people gathered here provided not only their bread and butter, but they also validated much of what the reporters also held close to their hearts.

The disappointment was palpable when the realization finally seeped through the crowd gathered at the usual place. There would be no rioting that day. The damn judge had done the right thing, and the incompetent police officer who killed the criminal would not be released on bail, and so the purely spontaneous planned response to the outrageous abuse of these poor abused people couldn't happen, cause they hadn't been abused enough that day.

So when the cameras and microphones came out anyway, all the professional malcontents could talk about was how they usually are abused, rather than how they had actually been abused that day. Sure, they still had plenty to complain about, but that never is as much fun as rioting, tossing rocks through windows, and burning stuff. Ya almost had to feel sorry for them.

And the faces in the windows went back to work, and they canceled the orders for the replacement  windows. The people gathered in the usual place didn't bother to go back to work. That was a familiar behavior, too.

The officers wearing the helmets and face guards hung around a bit longer, just around the corner where they wouldn't offend the professional malcontents. Their duty involved standing between the mob and the faces in the windows, and they do this thankless job whenever needed. Which is often these days.

The police could have been out on the streets, diligently working to stop the young men in Oakland neighborhoods who murder each other every night, instead of baby sitting a mob of professional malcontents. They do that every day, in spite of the hate and resentment they face in the community, and the difficulty they face trying to pry the violent criminals out of the community, for the sake of the community. The community does little to keep these young men home and off the streets at night, and they deliberately interfere with criminal investigations, so the police often cannot arrest the young men after they kill each other. So it is the community that carries much of the responsibility for these murders, while the police receive all the criticism.

One man took advantage of the microphone in front of his face, to point to the group of police who stood around the corner, (just waiting to deprive him of his right to complain about everything), so he could complain about the police. He wanted to know why the police were there, intimidating him and his mob, instead of out in the streets where young men were murdered every day. And the lady holding the microphone simply smiled in assent.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the country, the new hanging curve ball I found (to feed me even better lines than my invisible friend) was holding court. Steven Thrasher wrote about two schools in New York City in the Village Voice. You might remember him from your homework assignment a couple of weeks ago. Mr. Thrasher does what I do. He looks around for things that seem wrong to him, and then writes about them. Some people agree with him, and others wonder if he should really be on a different planet. Ya know, kinda like people feel about my words.

Now, I’m trying to be fair here, so I will readily admit to having read only these two of Mr. Thrasher’s columns. Perhaps he does occasionally touch on other interests, but there seems to be a common, almost obsessive thread running through both of these columns. In short, if Thrasher sees something wrong with his world, in his mind it is always about racism and it is always White People’s Fault. He doesn’t seem to see much more than skin color in anything. And he writes as if he expects his readers to already believe that it is always White People's Fault. So as I attempt to paraphrase some of his thoughts, and then comment on them, I will use the expediency of simplifying. In this piece, if I’m paraphrasing Mr. Thrasher I’ll just use WPF. This should save space and time.

Thrasher wrote about two elementary schools, one old and one new. Both occupy the same building, an old brick classic named after some guy who drowned while swimming off the Titanic. The building and the two schools live in a squalid, impoverished neighborhood. New York City has many squalid, impoverished neighborhoods, and also many fancier, more affluent neighborhoods. According to Thrasher, the neighborhood in question is largely populated by brown and black skin. Other squalid, impoverished neighborhoods are populated by white skin, but Thrasher doesn’t mention these. Perhaps this is because when he looks at the state of the neighborhoods populated by white skin, he can't lay the blame on White People. (And in contrast you may notice that in this instance, I will)  As expected, according to Thrasher, the state of the neighborhood in his column, and all its problems, are WPF.

The old school is appalling. Vandalized by its students, poorly maintained, and under-staffed, it mostly passes on poorly performing, poorly behaved students to an equally poorly performing high school. And since its students have brown and black skin, this situation must be WPF.

The chaotic environment in the old school drags all its students down to a lowest common denominator, so the students moving on to high school, and eventually life, mostly are unprepared to succeed. So they don’t. Even the most talented students are often beaten down and swallowed up by the neighborhood, never to be seen again.

The new school is intended to correct some of this. It was created to provide an environment in which gifted students can take their talents as far as possible, without having the lowest common denominator effect stifle them. Several of these new schools are evenly scattered around the city, so a gifted student might have access to this opportunity without having to travel far. The new school is in the same building as the old school, so a gifted child from this squalid, impoverished neighborhood has the same physical opportunity to attend as any other.

Thrasher is outraged over the need to have separate entrances in the old building for each school, for he can make this seem racist. But (I wonder) doesn't the desire to not let lowest denominator effect destroy this education effort mandate separating the students?

To qualify for admission to the gifted elementary school, each child must pass a challenging screening test. To take the test, the parents of the child must apply for the opportunity. Many parents of successful applicants have tutored their children to improve their chances with this testing. And when some of these children are accepted to this new school, these parents often transport them great distances so they can attend. Thrasher points out that most of the students in the new school have white or yellow skin. Cause, you know…

Somewhere in this column Thrasher may have mentioned that yellow skin once caught the same racial discrimination in this country as black and brown, but I missed the part where he tells how they overcame that to the degree that yellow skin now helps populate the new school.

Thrasher mentions one girl who attends the old school. She is very bright, so she is bored in her classroom, because the pace of study is lowest common denominator. So she misbehaves. Thrasher mentions that most of the children in the class misbehave, and the result is chaos that the teacher must address, rather than teach. I suspect that Thrasher would like his readers to think that this girl would thrive in the new school, and perhaps she would, but I cannot wonder if the fact that she did not learn any manners in her family, along with so many of the other misbehaving children in the old school, might that not hinder her performance in the new school? And if her family had wanted her to go to the new school, shouldn’t they have tutored her and signed her up for the test?

Thrasher also suggests that there is a 50% likelihood that this girl will eventually drop out of high school, and thus permanently handicap her life. Because she has brown skin, he mentions. Obviously this is WPF, but doncha wonder…where are those same parents when this happens?

The kids in the old school rotate through a computer lab, where hopefully they are learning skills they can take along into adulthood. Thrasher mentions a class assignment, where the students are tasked with searching for information on successful black skinned men. Specifically, no athletes or entertainers allowed. Pouting, this bright girl types “boring African American man” into a search site. Apparently, success attained through nose to the grindstone work is too dull for this child, and she would rather have flash and bling. Wonder where she learned that?

Thrasher also mentions that some of these children who attend the old school don’t have computers at home, and the ones who do mostly play games, and rarely study. Thrasher goes WPF, and I just wonder…where are their parents?

Chaos does not rule the new school. The kids in the classrooms are generally quiet and well behaved. Thrasher attributes this to the better teacher student ratio, but apparently these kids actually possess manners. Perhaps someone at home insists on this? And the kids also seem comfortable with nose to the grindstone effort, as if this were expected of them, too.

No question, the new school offers its kids a better opportunity than the old school. That is why it exists. Many of these new school children will grab this opportunity and ride it through an entire education, which will open up other opportunities in their lives. This is a good thing, but by no means is it a guarantee of success in life. Some will fail in spite of it. Some will chose not to take advantage of this opportunity, and they take their chances through other avenues. Some may succeed wildly, and others may fall off by the side of the road after they toss away the opportunity presented them. Effort often makes the biggest difference

Thrasher mentions the PTA meetings at the two schools. The new school has an active, well-attended PTA that enhances the school experience for their kids, and the old school has only a few active parent members. Thrasher suggests this is unfair. I suppose he would call this WPF, but I don’t. The kids with actively involved parents often have the advantage. Thrasher may think that it’s WPF that none of the kids in this neighborhood have much of a chance, but in apparent defiance to him, some do. They tend to be the ones who have parents who teach them to try to succeed rather than the ones who waste their lives blaming others for their shortcomings.

In fact, I have to wonder when the blame simply becomes the excuse.

The parents in Oakland who let their sons run the streets at night, to kill and die out there, and the parents who stand firmly in the way of the police who try to stop this criminality among their kids are little different from many of the parents in one squalid, impoverished neighborhood in New York City.

Thrasher asserts constantly that the kids attending the new school have an unfair advantage over the other parents' kids, and this is WPF. Yet all of these parents have one thing in common. They all impact the fate of their children. And it is effort, or lack thereof, that often makes the biggest difference.

Ungrateful Bustard part II

Another old column. This goes with the column just below.

Good morning, class. I trust you were all good students, and that you read through the entire homework assignment I gave you last week. Perhaps you enjoyed this read, and completely agreed with the author. Or perhaps this essay put you off.

No fair tossing the thing aside because you grew confused or angry in the first three paragraphs, or felt hurt by that deliberate assault. It is important that we are all exposed to differing points of view, for the world is a complicated place, and not everyone agrees on whether the sun goes round the earth, or the other way around. Ya know, the glass can be half empty, or half full. And some people are born half black and half white. It all depends upon perception.

I’ve read some of Steven Thrasher’s other essays, and I can assure you that he is in fact the virulent racist that he appears to be. He flat hates white people and what he calls their culture, and he doesn’t mind using vile insults and dirty words to express that hatred. He seems to be trying to pass as black and he has adopted quite a few colloquializations one would normally associate with black culture. Which all is a bit odd I suppose, cause if you can believe the picture of him that I found, he is kinda white. Or maybe half?

He is entitled to his perspective, and likely is celebrated for it, because although most of them white folks have learned to suppress their racism, and rightly so, overt racism directed against those same white folks is not only accepted these day, but it is almost obligatory in the arts, the media, and in some of the neighborhoods.

Of course, according to Thrasher, white people did not lose their racism, and in his mind that is actually still the primary function of the white brain, or as he describes it, the “lizard part”. Presumably, he believes that every single white person wanted President Obama to lose, and voted against him simply because of his skin color. So of course, when our president was elected the entire white population collectively went insane. And when Obama asked for help as he tried to socialize healthcare, explode the national debt, nationalize industries, or surrender our national sovereignty, the only reason white people tried to stop him was because his skin was dark.

Thrasher insists that white people also now collectively hate dark skinned immigrants, (Thrasher graciously identifies these as Mexicans, just in case we are too stupid to get his point) but that apparently only began when the economy tanked, and not years earlier when massive illegal immigration became such a problem. Because suddenly the palefaces felt threatened by said brown skinned people.

Now, if you are reading this, and you have white skin, you might wonder about Thrasher’s conclusions, and you might even be offended by them, but don’t worry. You won’t be changing Thrasher’s mind on any of this. You will simply grow older, and then you can discover that he hates old folks, too. And if you are an old person, and you object to watching the country you helped to build being systematically torn down, and you resent having all you worked a lifetime to accumulate taken away to support people who didn't bother, well if you object, according to Thrasher, you only object because of skin color. So shame on you, you crazy white people.

Don't know how to break this to Thrasher, but some white people did vote for Obama. On purpose. No doubt a few voted against him because of his skin, but some voted for him simply because of his color, too. And other white people voted for him because they wanted to see the changes he proposed. And for these white folks, skin color did not enter the decision process at all. Many might even think that although Obama has dark skin, he acts more white than Mr. Thrasher.

I haven't asked, so I don't know if Thrasher cares that many black people voted for Obama simply because of his skin color, although he was outraged when Dr Laura mentioned this. Certainly many voted for Obama because of his policies. And I have spoken with black people who voted against Obama, because of those same policies.

Seems that not all white people fit Thrasher's mold, and neither do all black people. But, there is a reason why some will throw entire populations of people into definable groups, and that would be to demonize them. This is how we invent enemies. And as I have said many times before...if we didn't have enemies, we wouldn't need leaders.

Consider the plummet in value of a Steven Thrasher if he wasn't so good at demonizing those white people. Think anybody would read his stuff? Would any Moslem listen to Bin Laden if he didn't convince them that Westerners are their enemy? And would Hitler have had his ardent followers if he hadn't convinced them that everyone, and especially the Jews, were out to get them?

Remember that word that annoyed me so much last week?

Entitled.

A politician, or an author, or a community organizer, or a religious leader comes along and tells folks that they are entitled to this or that, and these people buy into that notion And then the politician or author or community organizer or religious leader tells them that those other folks over there are in the way. These people do not make these accusations to actually help anyone, but to empower themselves. They are trying to divide society, not to unite it, and certainly not to heal it. That is however, the process that nets us some of the scariest leaders in history.

Ungrateful bustard

Hi all

This one ran during football season last.

Suspend your reality for a bit if you wish, and follow me down a path.

Suppose there is a God (just for a moment, if you don’t believe in such a concept) and that this God, in His infinite wisdom and kindness, bestows upon one young man the gift of uncommon strength and incredible foot speed, to do with as the young man sees fit, which is what this God supposedly does in different ways to each and every person on earth. And this young man discovers that he is very skilled at the game of American football, and thus he devotes his life to this pursuit, presumably putting on hold his other goals of discovering the secrets to cold fusion and feeding the entire world with the fruits of his algae farm, while he spends some years in the National Football League.

This young man is one of that tiny fraction of one percent of humanity who is so gifted an athlete that he commands millions of dollars to play a child’s game in front of all those people each Sunday. He plays on a team that struggles to win, so he does not garner the praise and adulation that pours over some of the diva wide receivers in the NFL, but he makes far more money each season than most of the people watching him will see in many lifetimes. And it came to pass last Sunday that he was involved in a game, and this time his team was losing by only a few points as the clock wound down, and the play called for him to race far down the field to catch the pass that would score the touchdown that would win the game.

The center hiked the ball to the quarterback, who dropped back five steps. Meanwhile this young man ran into the heart of the enemy defense, faked into the center of the field, and then raced toward the end zone. The cornerback bought the fake, and our young man sped past him and was five yards ahead of anyone who could keep him from catching the ball when he reached the goal line. The quarterback saw him break into the open, and launched the ball in a magnificent high arcing trajectory, and it reached the speeding young man just as he crossed the line. The ball hit him squarely in both hands. The play was utter perfection, right up to the point where he dropped the ball. And because the young man dropped this ball, his team lost yet another game.

At the post game press interview, somebody asked this young man to explain why this happened. Let me summarize his response:

Obviously distraught that he had dropped the ball and cost his team the game, he stated that he would never, ever, forget how badly he felt at that moment. And then he told us all about how he had worshiped his God, and celebrated his God, and prayed to his God, and then he lambasted his God for letting him down at this crucial moment. Oh why had his God forsaken him?

Apparently, this young man was disappointed in what his God brought to the table for him to enjoy. In fact, he was outraged. Apparently, this young man thought he was entitled to more.

I watched this soap opera, and thought about it for a moment, and then I began to wonder...

If one believes in such things, God gave this young man everything he needed to become a football star, and thanks to this he made his way into a lucrative situation far better than any reasonable expectation, and then he was offered the chance to simply run down the field, where a perfectly executed pass laid the ball in precisely the perfect place for him to catch it, ie right into his two hands, and he could have been the hero. He screwed up and dropped the ball. God gave him everything he could possibly want to succeed, and with all that provided to him, he still dropped the ball. And he blames God.

Does any of this bother you? It bothers me. And what bothers me is that one word I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. Entitled.

Anybody watch LeBron’s return to Cleveland the other night? Me neither. But I heard about it. Feelings ran high in Cleveland last summer after one of the more excessively reported divorces in NBA history. Arguably, Mr. James could have handled things better, and the team owner could have handled things better, and the sports media could have handled things better, and this whole mess would have only fallen lightly upon us folks who really do have more important things on our minds. But with all the ruckus this silliness provoked, it was hard to ignore.

For those of you lucky enough to be out of the loop, LeBron James is an exceptionally talented basketball player who played for the Cleveland team for seven years, and pretty much single-handedly brought the local fans more success than they had seen since the dinosaurs retired. Apparently, these fans liked basking in the reflected glory of this one tall guy’s achievements, and many grew resentful when he left for greener pastures. The whole story is slightly more complicated than this, but for most rational folks it certainly is far less important in the whole scheme of life than most everything else.

Some fans probably took LeBron’s departure with a degree of equanimity, but the rest made angry calls to talk radio, burned his jersey on street corners, and made threats on his life. And when he walked onto the court in Cleveland for the first time since switching teams, those fans booed him and threw stuff on the floor, and generally acted like tantruming brats. They were angry with Mr. James, and they wanted the world to know.

And why, you might wonder? Well, maybe because they felt entitled to revel in the glory that they had done nothing to earn. And there is that word again.

This is the end of part 1. Next week I will have part 2 ready. (I hope) Your homework assignment will be to do a search on a guy named Steven Thrasher, and read his essay on how white folks have lost their minds since the inauguration of Obama, to be found in a recent edition of the Village Voice. Cause otherwise you might not be motivated enough to read part 2.

Bye

Moonbeam Again

Another column from the past, past election if you will

My invisible friend stopped by the other day. She wasn’t happy. And I guess she thought I was.

“I hope you are happy.”

“OK, I’ll bite….what am I happy about?”

“This election is going to change everything!”

“I thought that was supposed to be the last election.”

“That was different.”

“Yeah, I guess it depends on how you define change.”

“Why do you keep picking on President Clinton?”

“Never mind.”

I’ve already voted, via the mail, and I gave the PO plenty of time and postage to get the ballot there on time. I voted for a few of the propositions and against the rest. I picked some judges, with absolutely no information to use to decide pro or con. I selected for common sense with the local offices, I hope. And for the state and federal offices, I guess I went for change. Because from where I stand, the state and federal politicians have screwed up things far worse than the locals.

A recovering drunk once told me, “If you keep bumping into a wall, next time, turn”. So I pretty much didn’t vote to re-elect anyone. Actually, the recovering drunk said, “turn left”, and I cannot say I did that this time, cause I mostly voted against the Left. Which is why my invisible friend thinks I’m gonna be happy this time.

Because if the pundits are correct, the Left may suffer more casualties this go around in elections around the nation. And that would be because so many people are angry with them. Interestingly enough, the folks on the Right want those folks out of office for the usual reasons, ie they are too far to the left, and the folks on the Left want them out cause they aren’t left enough. No wonder Obama has that confused look on his face like he thinks he cannot do anything right, or was that left?

My invisible friend is one of those who is disappointed that Obama couldn’t haul the country even farther to the Left. She wasn’t happy with how he dismantled the best healthcare system in the world, but only because she wanted no less than total government control. She thought this was a mark against him, because although he wanted socialized medicine, he gave up too easily.

She has never balanced a checkbook in her life, so she had no problem with Obama's egregious deficit spending. My friend is opposed to closing the borders, cause we “owe those people cause we are too rich”. And she thinks his foreign policy is “cute”, and his naiveté when dealing with Islamic terrorists and Iranian and Korean Hitler wannabes is just “being polite”.

So my friend cannot for the life of her understand the angry voter backlash against Obama and the Democrat leadership that may well sweep in “change”. From my perspective, I don’t see how a single incumbent should be re-elected, from either side this time, so I’m not likely to be happy after this election, either.

Familiarity does not breed contempt when it comes to politicians and voters in California. Most any recognizable face or name can be re-elected indefinitely when we leave democracy to the average voter, which we are expected to do. Total amnesia. Term limits help, but these career politicians just run for election to another government position when they time out of the last one. So we keep electing incompetent, indifferent, ineffective, but hardly innocent machine politicians to state offices.

How else do you explain Jerry Brown’s lead in the race for governor? Does no one remember his last two terms? Governor Moon Beam II. Wonderful.

I hear that one of the medicinal marijuana shops in San Francisco is giving out free doobies whenever the Giants hit a home run in the World Series. That might explain some of this.

July 17, 2011

I pulled the trailer into the campground shortly after eleven that night. Tired and a bit frazzled from four hours of pounding over formerly state maintained washboard asphalt roads, I simply wanted a level campsite in which to park the rig, and some fresh sea breeze flowing through an open window to clear my head. I’m a man of simple needs.

Backing the trailer in the dark presents some interesting challenges, most of which revolve around that not being able to see a thing, thing. First, I got out with the flashlight to check the campsite on foot, hoping to avoid that crunching noise that can accompany backing into the hazards you cannot spot in the mirror. I walked into the campsite and poked my light around the place, looking for logs, rocks, holes, and any outer space debris that might have fallen from the heavens. My landing zone was clear except for one thing. And she was a trifle annoyed with me.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when you shine your flashlight at animals in your campsite in the dark, they look much larger than they do during the day. Maybe this is an optical illusion. Maybe it’s because you often are much closer to said animal when you surprise em in the dark. Certainly that raccoon or bear always grows when framed by the flashlight. And on this night, the deer that stood up when I hit her with the light looked pretty impressive. And I wasn’t expecting that.

I don’t know if she was asleep or merely ruminating upon something, but when I dropped into her bedroom in the dark, she stood up, eyes wide and ears spread, incensed. I apologized of course, but after a faux pas like that, what can you say? She chose to move her bed, but there was plenty of room for her in the area.

My campsite was nestled comfortably in a California state park. The deer do well there, as does that little rodent no one ever sees, the nearly extinct Aplodontia that live in the sand dunes, and so does the endangered  Snowy Plover which nests on the open beach. I do well there, too. I’m pleased that the folks, who once more wisely decided how to distribute my tax dollars, have spent a very few bucks to preserve this place. I’ve enjoyed the park for over thirty years, and I’m going to miss it when the latest bunch closes it down. But we have to cut spending somewhere, and California would much rather sacrifice its natural treasures than disappoint the folks who clamber for more government graft and spending. So the unions and illegals are safe, for now.

This paradise is on the list of state parks due for shutdown next year, because this monumentally mismanaged state of ours has run out of money again. It’s not the fault of the deer, or the Snowy Plover, or the Aplodontia. Heck, it’s not my fault either. I’ve paid my taxes and voted against ridiculous increases in government overspending. I don’t know what more you can ask from a citizen. Now all I can do is complain.

Complaining people recently put their feet down in Wisconsin and Minnesota when their state governments overspent, hoping for the resumption of sanity. Such reasonable thinking has become heresy in this country, where dependence upon government has reduced much of the population to simpering eunuchs, and our media, striving to sway the masses, cries out constantly for higher taxes, more government, and less freedom. But if the citizens don’t act to stop reckless government spending, who will?

Socialism failed again in Europe, and the citizens of Greece abruptly realized that they have been deceived by their rulers. After taking to the streets in desperation, they were crushed by their bosses. Several other governments teeter, hoping they can fake their way just a little longer. History teaches that totalitarian government always follows the failure of socialism, but the siren song of cradle to grave loving care by the government continues to play over and over and over.

I listened to the senior senator from California recently. She is outraged, because her lifelong goal of imposing government control over our citizens is being slowed by those few people in the opposition who don’t want to see our meager two centuries of freedom errased by overreaching government glut. Battle rages in the halls of power, as the spenders wail that the unreasonable opposition won’t let them continue to bankrupt our nation. Our senator whines that we need to raise the debt ceiling again, so that the spending can continue to outpace income. What can be wrong with this, she asks, since we have raised the debt ceiling over 100 times in the recent past? And this, mostly during her tenure in office. In a rational world, such logic would get her arrested, or at least institutionalized. But it is this version of corruption that has gotten her re-elected time and again by the fools and gullible.

Our senator claims that limiting government spending now will impact those poor folks dependent upon Social Security and Medicare, conveniently forgetting that under her watch, her version of government has stolen the funds for those programs for years to fund other nonsense. The thief calls the folks who would reform this outrage the problem. And the media chants its assent. 

We cannot stop runaway government without feeling some pain. But if we don’t cut the cancer out of the body now, it will die as the body dies. The senator will take her massive fortune and run, and she will do just fine. The rest of us will protest in the streets helplessly as the armed force closes in around us, and freedom will be a distant memory. And once again, we will have failed to learn from history.

If wishes could make it so...

This one ran last autumn, soon after I left the paper and before I left on vacation:

Well, I guess I don't have an editor anymore, so this is the director's cut.

When I was a mere lad, the Sears catalog was the size of a big city phone book, and if memory serves, it showed up several times each year. And it was full of EVERYTHING! There was clothing, for men, women, and kids. Tools, oh lord there were tools. If you knew what you wanted and what you were doing, somebody said you could build an entire model T Ford right out of the Sears catalog, one part at a time.

After the new catalog arrived in the winter, I'd find the toys right away. Tons of toys. And just in time for Christmas fantasy. I lusted for those toys. And you could buy a bolt action 22 rifle for just a few bucks. I lusted after those, too. And motorcycles! You could buy a motorcycle from a catalog! And when I got a little older, there was that HUGE section with nothing but lady's underwear, and that's a subject for some other essay, but yeah, I lusted after that once, too.

Sears doesn't send out catalogs anymore. Now I have a computer on my desk, and every morning before the workday begins I fire up that time and travel machine and go to bookmarks, and punch up codywy.org, and there live my webcams. And I get to look at downtown Cody, with no traffic to speak of on the main drag, and then down the page I go to Jackson Town Center with its elk antler arch, and then up to the return to webcams button, and I get to look at the Tetons through a bunch of different cameras, and then I look at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone where sometimes I can see bison or elk lounging about, and Old Faithful, and a bunch of other neat places, and I lust after it all.

A couple of weeks ago it snowed in the mountains of Wyoming, and I watched that on the webcams, and I went nuts over that. And now each day with my puter I monitor the onset of autumn color, as the cottonwoods and underbrush begin to change, and now finally the aspens are chiming in. And I lust after that. And I note that the color is late this year, and that means maybe, just maybe, we will find a lot of that color when we get to Wyoming next week.

I've got that anticipation ache in my gut just thinking about it. It's like getting the new Sears catalog. The options are not only endless, but they are all good. We get to go to Wyoming for a whole week! I have tags for pronghorn, and I'm hunting a good area, so the prospect for some fine wild game meat for the freezer are excellent. We should be able to get to Cody to have a cup of coffee on our property and say HI! to a few friends. We will probably get to see Yellowstone and Grand Teton again. And with any luck, I will have time to show Joie some really neat places, like Mt Rushmore and The Badlands and Devil's Tower. I am excited beyond belief.

I'm hoping for aspen color at Angel Creek, just out of Wells, NV, which is our first night's stop. And there might well be color along the North Platte, where there should be lots of cottonwoods. And I want to see Teapot Dome, the source of one of the first of many major corruption scandals that set the precedent for the sad state of our current government.

Wyoming has over 500,000 pronghorns, more than the total human population, and 25,000 of them reside in my hunt area. Game and Fish offers over 2000 tags for my area, and I have two. I have both rifles sighted in, the newer 7 magnum and the old 6 Remington that dates back to the early 50's. I've taken two pronghorn so far with the 6 mm, and it is my sentimental favorite.

I've made my lists and the gear is coming together. I checked the oil in the truck, and the windshield washer jug is full of the freeze proof cleaner stuff. Soon all I will need to do is plug in the GPS and the CB radio, and we will be backing down the driveway. I cannot wait. Anticipation is such sweet torture.

The value of having one's own electricity

I'm thinking about picking up a generator. You know, one of those tiny lightweight quiet portable embarrassingly efficient Honda gas powered electrical generators. We live in a neighborhood that is representative of the state of the infrastructure in this country. Only one electrical circuit serves our slice of the city, and when two drops of rain fall or the wind blows hard enough to ripple the leaves, the power goes away. We have no collateral circulation, so when that one line goes down, we revert to the 19^th century for a while.

We can live with this, for the lantern, camp stove, and if needed the sleeping bags still work just fine. But a big storm has taken us down for three days more than once, and I'd like the means to keep the freezer working long enough to save all that meat. And I'm ready to take a generator camping, at least part of the time. That last sentence is illustrative of the change that can occur as folks mature.

I vividly recall a morning in Yellowstone many years ago, where I had enjoyed a six mile run that began before dawn. Ground fog had closed off my world, limiting my view to about 40 yards as I progressed down the road. Elk mewed and buffalo grunted somewhere off in the gray mist, but I didn't see them. I turned around at the waterfall and ran back to the campground, the slap of feet on the pavement keeping me company. The fog dissipated by the time I returned to the tent, and folks in the campground were beginning to stir. Early morning sun filtered through the trees, and it was kinda gorgeous, quiet, and peaceful. Except for that one huge camper bus that apparently needed to run its generator so the missus could use her microwave to heat a cup of tea. I was completely locked into the moral superiority of tent camping, and had no use for RVs in those days, and I was outraged at this affront to my sensibilities. That noise was simply out of place in such a cathedral.

Now of course, we use a travel trailer for most of our camping trips, and although I will still occasionally roll out my sleeping bag and pass the night on the ground when alone in the wild places, and it can get chilly enough to freeze up my water jug solid, I don’t inflict such fun on my wife. So when the mercury dips down well below freezing, we will sometimes fire up the heater in the trailer. And that thing drains the batteries quickly. Having a generator along would make the electric power far more reliable.

We were in the Mojave a couple of weeks ago, in our special secret spot than my friend Dan found for me. It is 4300 feet up the side of a desert ridge, just a flat spot at the end of a quarter mile of two track, but we can park the trailer there legally and not bother or be bothered by anyone else. Our spot is smack in the middle of a Joshua Tree forest, with some yucca and a few small cacti, and the dry wash is right there, and across it are higher peaks and to the right are sand dunes off in the distance, and on the rise to the west you can see the old Mojave Road zig-zagging up the slope, a remnant of a time when wagons crossed this desolate place. Trains pass by a mile downslope a few times every day, and we can listen to this, and other than an occasional airplane and the glow on the horizon from the lights of Vegas, we are untroubled by the works of man.

This place was a pause on the way home, a Friday night, Saturday and Saturday night to be frittered away before the long haul back to work. I expected to wander about the desert on foot, read some, listen to music, and nap when appropriate. Instead we watched clouds fill the sky and then settle down around our heads until our view closed down to a few meters. Then as the sun was setting on Friday night, along came the rain, and then the snow. The thermometer said 35 degrees, so I knew the snow wouldn’t stick, but I’ve been wrong about snow before.

Joshua trees and yucca were capped by snow. The dogs left small tracks in the snow that covered the ground. Saturday morning was a winter wonderland, despite what the thermometer claimed. More snow fell during the day. The temperature dropped, and by midnight it hit 24 degrees. What had melted earlier turned to ice. We snuggled in the bed, under the comforter, with two dogs tucked in between us.

We saved the batteries that day, cause the solar panel on the roof of the trailer was covered in snow, so we could not build back the charge. That meant not as much music, and careful how many lights are on. From experience, I know that it must get down near zero before the pipes start to freeze in the trailer, so I used the heater sparingly. But I could have used a generator that day.  And my camping ethics have mellowed to the point where I can see the legitimacy of such a thing.

A few days earlier, while wandering around a BLM campground in Arizona, I couldn’t help but notice the signs posted about. Turns out those nice light weight portable electric generators are pretty easy to steal. Three had grown legs and disappeared from that campground in one day the year before, and a few others on other days. Don’t know who was doing the stealing, but it wasn’t me. When I mentioned picking up a generator, I kinda meant buying one, but if I do I guess a good lock might be in order. Cause human nature being what it is, if you buy it, they will come. And they will steal it.

This one was written soon after the guake and tsuanami in Japan

Part of the deal when we bought the trailer was harboring the notion that we could use it for backup shelter after the earthquake. Ya need to justify the expense of such a purchase, for it really was intended for fun and frivolity, which is a total sin to Puritans like us. And fun is not an excuse for the discretionary spending of that which should instead be sitting in the retirement fund, losing value (these days).

 A roof, stove, heater, water tank, collection of old cans of tomato soup, and last but not by any means least, a toilet could all come in handy once the earthquake finally arrives. When we pictured in our minds the two of us, for those weeks after the quake while waiting for the government to rescue us, huddling over a meager campfire on the front lawn of our flattened home, boiling shoe leather for dinner, the purchase of the trailer seemed totally justified.

The inevitability of the earthquake, and the need for food and shelter following same, has taken on the same urgency as the requirement for a fallout shelter back in the day, and you don't want to be the only one in the neighborhood left unprepared after the mushroom cloud, or the BIG ONE. And of course you want to be well armed if it turns out that you are the only one in the neighborhood to be so prepared, for then you would have the need to repel boarders when you realize that no one else bothered to be prepared. Life post disaster figures to be a trial either way. Having the trailer could be a life saver.

So, I woke up the other morning in the trailer sitting beside the wreckage of our home. No, we weren't trying to survive after a disaster, but we did have the house bathrooms torn up, pending a much needed rebuild, and thus we were using the shower in the trailer each morning while getting ready for work. See…the plan came to fruition! Anyway, I turned on the radio to the overnight talk host, cause it is refreshing from time to time to listen to this guy, because he is so good at blaming everybody else for the travails of those folks who listen to all night talk radio. You know, like it's all Bush's fault, and I just love scapegoating and rationalization when I'm coping with my life’s tribulations, too.

The subject he presented to his listeners in this last hour of his show was, “how are you coping with the tsunami warning?” and that caught my attention. It was the first I had heard of the earthquake in Japan.

Post shower, I rushed into the house and turned on the TV, and there were those first videos of the wall of muddy, debris laden water and bobbing cars flowing across the rice paddies. The visual horror presented wouldn't soon go away. And I spent much of the following days riveted to the news coverage of the disaster.

It took me a while to figure it out. Oh, not the earthquake and tsunami. That was inevitable. And not the disappointing efforts by the folks in government over there, because I've come to expect little more from entrenched bureaucrats and other public servants. No, I'm thinking about the news coverage, and how happy this horrible event has made those folks.

I was doing it. I was watching those same videos over and over again, of the wave blasting through the town, fishing boats bobbing under the bridge while the voice over promo-ed the next clip for after the commercial. I listened to the experts from the anti-nuclear movement as they expounded on the coming meltdown, and with exulted joy exclaimed, “I told ya so!”  And I waited impatiently through the commercials for it all to begin again. I was hooked.

Finally, it dawned on me how my addiction was being manipulated by the news coverage. First I wondered why only anti-nuclear experts were featured, with their dire predictions of global contamination. Where was the balance, the advice from other experts who suggested that a 100 times increase in insignificant radiation exposure was still just an insignificant radiation exposure?

And then there was the video clip that was promo-ed to show the wave of water actually overtaking and swallowing that little group of running people, and how happy that seemed to make the talking heads, and how disappointed those heads sounded when the video ended without actually depicting the deaths of those desperate souls.

I guess I am actually that naive. I expected reporting, and got agenda, and a greedy exploitation of a monstrous disaster simply to garner higher ratings, and more advertising revenue. This disappointed me. I thought I was smarter than that.