Sunday, June 19, 2022

Happy Father's Day Dad...

My dad passed away almost thirty years ago...he was just sixty-five, but the damage done to his lungs from the smoking habit he picked up as a boy in WWII had him tethered to an oxygen generating machine and he was unable to leave his house for the last year of his life, even though he kicked the habit cold-turkey years before. 

He was divorced and lived alone, so his five children took turns in that final year spending the night with him, preparing his middle of the night breathing treatment, trying to make him comfortable, and getting to know him better than we had during all those years he worked so hard to raise us and teach us. 

He wasn't a perfect man, or a perfect father, and he would spend some of his talks with us as we took our nightly turns, apologizing for what he thought were his failings...i'm glad I was able to tell him this: there was never a day in my life -and believe me when i say i was an imperfect son- that I had any inkling of doubt of his love and devotion to me, or that he would give up his life for me in an instant. That to me is the very definition of success as a father, and I told him that if I could just leave my own three children with that knowledge, and the love and peace and security that it imbues, then I will consider myself a success.

It was my turn to take care of him the night that he died, and I was on the way from my Sebring home to his in Belle Glade by Lake Okeechobee, about a two hour drive, when a spell of difficult breathing caused his heart to overwork and give out...That was before everyone had cell phones, so my brothers and sisters waited for me at his house to give me the news, and even though we knew it would happen eventually, when it did it felt like being slammed in the chest by a truck. My sister and brother in law lived close and made it there in time so he didn't die alone, and I know it would have been hard, but I wish I could have been there when he left us. 

I love you, Dad...I think of you, feel you in my heart, and hear you in my mind all of the time when I need your help and am asking myself, WWDD (What Would Dad Do?); I can't believe you've been gone nearly 30 years...but i know I will see you again someday. God bless you and keep you until then.

Sunday, January 16, 2022

Up in Smoke...

The little rural two-story stucco Canal Point, Fl elementary school where i attended 3rd-6th grades in the early '60s is burning to the ground at this moment. I had recently written about my Dad and mentioned the old school and its library; here's part of that... ..."so we kids were Dad's hobby, and my interest in shooting, was sparked by a gem of a Canal Point Elementary school library book. I started there toward the end of third grade when we moved from West Palm; there was just one classroom for each of grades one through eight in that old schoolhouse, and coming from a city school i was shocked and delighted that half the kids went barefoot, and the other half was barefoot too after recess. The book was "A Boy And His Gun"; reading it, feeling it, loving it resulted in my badgering dad unmercifully as  I progressed through the BB gun phase until on Christmas morning when i was ten, the most beautiful little Marlin single shot .22 appeared beneath the tree..." 

Abandoned for years, the school caught fire this morning about 2 a.m. and firefighters are letting it burn out while containing it and protecting power lines...what's left of the tiny Lake Ckeechobee farming community of Canal Point is only about two hours from my home in Sebring; I drove through there alone recently and stopped at the old school; at the time I didn't know why...now I guess I do. My Mom left a voicemail for me this morning to let me know about the fire; she had such a sad sound as she told me i didn't need to call her back...and I didn't because i don't really want to talk about it right now. 

Maybe the old school deserves a post of it's own later on...I'll think about it, but right now there is just a dull hurt and sadness as I remember some things about that old school and the people I knew there.

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

biff burger...

Came across a story on the old Biff Burger chain today, and it brought memories flooding back...Friday night was date night in our little town of Pahokee, Fl, on the shore of Lake Okeechobee...my girl and I were 16 and would go to the local drive-in theater in nearby Belle Glade (think Burt Reynolds as Gator McCluskey, though i'm afraid we didn't see much of the movies ;) .Then it was back to Pahokee to hit the Biff Burger for a shake and a sack of fries to munch on as we joined the cruise circuit through downtown, up to the dike (levee) overlooking the lake, and back again in a continuous meandering circle in my Mom's nearly-new 1969 Plymouth Fury III...  That was 1970, and with a baby on the way we were married the following year at age 17 (like i said we didn't see much of the movies), had two girls by age 20 and a boy ten years later...next week on December 18th we will celebrate our 37th anniversary, have four grandkids and a good life in Sebring, Fl, only about sixty miles but a whole world away from Pahokee, and a mountain place in north Georgia. Pahokee is (was) an agricultural town in western Palm Beach County; the sugar cane business is in decline now, and along with it Pahokee and Belle Glade; the Biff Burger closed along with most other businesses in Pahokee long ago, and though the Belle Glade location lasted longer, it too is now history... And what a history it is to us...the Glades Drive-In Theater and the Biff Burger are some of our fondest memories; we will never forget them. Little did we know that we on those Friday date nights in 1970 were some of the last teenagers that would enjoy the pleasures and freedoms of two of this nation's most melancholy memories and cherished institutions...drive in movies and burger joints. I'm sorry they're not around for our kids and grandkids to enjoy...and remember.

Saturday, April 3, 2021

Luke...I Am Your (Grand)Father!


 My son the life-long Star Wars nut finally at age 37 gets to utter that to his first-born son today...




Saturday, August 31, 2019

OMG We're All Gonna Die!

Daughters taking off on the Hurricane Hype...

                                     This from the older girl, always the more...un-PC one.

And this from the younger, kinder, gentler one...but with killer humor; how funny is that?

Best Frog Cartoon Ever...

Wifey and I loved this so much because it seemed made just for us...it's from 1983 and it sure looks like B.C. or ID but we whacked off the name when we put it on the fridge where it has remained for all these years...important to know wifey's name is Frances (Fran).


Old bullfrog was so proud with his chest out and a nice confident smile...until wifefrog brings him back to earth (or lily pad) with the hard truth. Just love it.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Officially an old fart...

Well, turned the big 65 today and officially fit in now with all the old farts here in the retirement mecca of Sebring FL. Ever since we came up here from Palm Beach County back in '82 so that the daughters who were entering middle school could have a little more of a small-town atmosphere instead of the big city where things were already a little rougher by that stage of schooling, I've been telling my wife for all these years that when they're through school we would move on to a place more to our liking and where most of the residents weren't in their 7th 8th or 9th decades...

But those girls are now 45 and 47 and here we still are...now firmly fitting into the Q-Tip profile. Man, life happens before you know it. But it could be worse, we are comfortable and the three kids (added a son back in the 80's) and grandkids are all within a couple of hours.

Guess I'll go out on the highway and drive 40 in the fast lane with my right blinker on for a while. 

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Nice little pre-65th birthday present!

A visit today from my favorite political cartoonist...three or so hours of good conversation, laughs, and lunch. Even though the deadbeat bailed on the bill (inside joke) I enjoyed it immensely. Wifey and son's old dachshund Ozzy liked him too, and that's good enough for me.

Thank you, Chris Muir of Day by Day.

Friday, August 2, 2019

My Baby is a PILOT!!!


My sweet grand girl got her private pilot license today...from her Amelia Earhart costume at age two to just after the examiner passed her oral and check flight exams today at age seventeen in the blink of any eye, this gorgeous young woman is about as perfect in body and soul as a person can be...What is it they say? No brag, just fact.

How proud can a Papa be? Way beyond what my words can say, but I'll try. Not just because of her dedication to achieving this and the concentration and effort that she put into this amazing accomplishment for the past two years, but for the love, compassion, empathy, and selflessness that she has exhibited her entire life. Always excelling in school, dance, drama, and music (she sits down at the piano after hearing a piece and plays it through beautifully the first time), she amazes even more in her pure heart and her love for God and family.

This incredible girl will be a senior in high school starting in a few weeks and will be dual-enrolled for the second year in addition to all of the above, so she will graduate next May with her HS degree and an AA degree in business, to be followed by a full BA in that discipline and full time training at Christian-focused Southeastern University in their Commercial Pilot program at nearby Lakeland Linder Airport. That's right, she will be in the left cockpit seat of the big jets in one more blink of my eye.

Thank God for giving me, her Nana, and her incredibly devoted Mama (fourth grade teacher at their Oldsmar Christian School for many years, touching so many childrens' lives) this gift straight from Him.

Forever and ever, Amen.

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Happy Happy Birthday Baby!!!

My girl turns 65 today, took her to this goofy animal pic, dinner, and coldstone creamery friday and she loved it, 'cause that's the kind of girl she is. I know I'm a lucky guy, but even though I won't be 65 for another two months she looks 45 and I look 85...go figure.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Mama's gone. But not really.

What is love? Total, complete, and selfless sacrifice.
God sacrificed his Son for us and taught us that lesson.
I and my four siblings are so fortunate to have had parents who knew it and lived it and passed that love on so we could live it ourselves and pass it on to our own children. They were not perfect like the Father, but I can say this; there was never a moment in my life that I doubted that they would sacrifice their own life to save mine without a second thought or hesitation; that to me is perfect love. I too am far from perfect but if I have instilled that same perfect love and knowledge in my children then I can say I too was a success as a person and a parent and that God will welcome me Home when the time comes.
The time came for my Mom who died this morning. She was 86, ill and in a nursing home since a fall two years ago. She was ready to go and knew the legacy she left as we all were able to tell her that she gave it to us and left us with that perfect love to pass along.

She lives on, in my heart and with God, until we meet again.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Repealing the repeal?

I had thought that DT had gotten this little troll to refocus on the real bidness at hand but I guess old habits and old totalitarians die hard.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/legal-pot/sessions-end-obama-era-policy-legalized-marijuana-n834591

You'd think he'd know the history though:

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-prohibition-1779250

Question: Would repealing the 21st automatically restore the 18th, or would it be necessary to repeal the repeal of the repeal?

Yes, he's after the pot not the booze...somebody tell me where the difference lies?

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Happy Holy Healthy 2018!

Started New Years morning here in Heartland Florida by the pool with good strong Folgers, enjoying a pretty blue sky dotted by light clouds and temps hovering around 70.

Started to do a little work on a small tilt trailer I’m rebuilding that will tote a Kawasaki powered lifted golf cart I got for the grandkids to enjoy when they’re here (I’ve lived on this neighborhood golf course for 26 years come April; it’s nice for the open green space but I’ve never swung a club there, just not my thing).

But my piddling was interrupted by the expected front moving through; greying skies, and a misty rain that would be sleet if we were up at the North Georgia mountain place. Here it is prelude (finally!) to some mild wintry weather to kick off 2018..several days with crisp clear skies and highs in the fifties, and it might even plunge into the mid thirties in the overnights. Just about perfect for my taste, at least for a while, the warm and muggy eighties like we had for Christmas might sound mighty welcome to some right now, but I do get sick of it.

As I say that however, I am mindful of my Dad’s favorite old trilogy of connected truisms that have guided me quite a bit: “familiarity breeds contempt”, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, and “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. Reflecting this day on the past, present, and future I am fully aware of how blessed we are and while I'm not much for resolutions I do always try to resolve not to become complacent and take our good fortune for granted.

On that note, I will take this opportunity to wish the world and especially the greatest nation on earth a happy, holy, healthy, and thoroughly Deplorable 2018 and beyond!

JTC

Monday, August 28, 2017

Happy B-Day To Me

More just as a placeholder than anything else; the old blog has been pretty moribund for a while and no reason anybody would stop in...

But today is b-day 63 for me, notable because another hurricane is flooding the hell out of the upper gulf...last time that happened it was birthday 51 and I was moving my son up to Cherokee County in north Georgia. Even that far from ground zero in New Orleans that trip was some very surreal shit; very end-of-the-worldly vibe, scarce gas, and of course I was leaving my good 21 year old boy up there with his fiancé...it's pretty cliché to say, but it sure is a deja vu thing, pardon my French :)

Anyway, I felt old then, but now? Hell I'm just numb to it. The world is no better off after the devastation wrought by Bush's war fuckups and a decade of the zero...there is some hope now but it's going to be an exhausting and unhappy process. If it weren't for not wanting to leave such a mess for my babies and grandbabies, I'd be about ready to shuffle on off this morbid, mortal coil.

Anyway yeah, happy birthday to me...I'm a lot better off than many, with a loving family and a comfortable life; I just hope they can say that too when they are where I am now.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

We never learn...

This letter from one of the most brilliant economic advisers ever to the then drug czar Bennet could be retitled "An Open Letter to Jeff Sessions and President Trump" with no other changes other than to note that the problem has only worsened in the decade since I re-posted it as a comment in a thread regarding rampant no-knock warrants and the tragedy that often ensues...in this case it was related to the killing of an inoocent elderly black lady in Atlanta. And of course as the piece notes the situation had already radically worsened in the nearly two decades before that...leftists and elites are not the only ones to repeat the mistakes of the past over and over expecting a different result...the old saying is that is the definition of insanity. Not sure about that, but this is indeed insane.

******************************************************************************
An Open Letter to Bill Bennett
by Milton Friedman, April 1990

In Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish.

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.

Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and Drugs." The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition.

Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, "crack" would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built.

Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier.

Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable.

Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.

Reprinted by The Pawnbroker on April 6, 2008 at 11:53 PM
Delete

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Jeweler to The King

What a good, kind, and unassuming man Lowell Hays is. I caught this recent story in a trade journal

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/lifestyle/7890275/elvis-presley-jeweler-reveals-untold-stories-of-the-king

and on this 40th anniversary of the death of Elvis, I had to tell my own tale of a decent and inspiring man who was not just his jeweler, but his dear friend. I do hope Mr. Hays reads the article and my comment there so he will know the impact he had on my son...

In 2005 I sold my Sebring, FL jewelry and pawn store and let the refrigerator sized TL-30 safe go with it. My son had wanted it for his planned move to near our vacation place in North Georgia to open his own store at age 21. So in early 2006 I found an awesome ISM TRTL vault, 7ft by 4ft by 3ft, for sale on eBay along with some miscellaneous bench tools. The safe did not attract many bids I am sure because people knew the difficulty and expense of transporting it.

Then I noticed the small wording saying the seller might deliver a short distance. It was in Memphis, we were an hour north of Atlanta. On a chance, I made contact and asked about delivery and they said yes...they would make the more than 400 mile delivery, included in the very reasonable price! I don't remember at what point I found out who the seller was, whether through research at the time of sale or when it was delivered; there was no mention on eBay that this was the store safe of the Jeweler to the King, I think due to Lowell's low-key approach and reluctance to try to capitalize on his friend's memory, although later he realized those stories needed to be told and starting publishing them online...and they are amazing. But who it was was Lowell Hays and his son who had decided to discontinue the historical jewelry business and concentrate on I think land development. Father and son both made the trip in a dually pickup truck and a goose-neck flatbed trailer...I think as a chance to be together on a road-trip adventure. I had rented a forklift capable of 8000 pounds and it struggled to lift that safe off, but the younger Hays adroitly stood it up, lifted it, and set it beside our building. Afterward they graciously chatted, took some pictures, and I asked for an Elvis story, but nothing bad. Lowell said he didn't have any bad stories about Elvis, that he was the kindest most decent man he ever knew. And then they loaded up and headed back the 400 miles to Memphis.

We had to remove the front door and plate glass to get that monster safe inside, and it took my son and I most of a day to inch it on pipes to the back corner of  the store. The door was like a bank vault, heavy and slow to open, but when you locked it up and walked out the door at night you had no worries. A few years later son and his fiancée called it quits and he sold the business and moved back to Florida. It would have been a major expensive undertaking to take the safe back out, transport it to Fla, and since we didn't have a new store yet to put it in, we'd have had to store it and then pay again to move it into place when we did start a new business...so we left it.

We did a new jewelry store for him in our little central Fl town (and the gold boom had kicked in so I stayed on to help with that) from '08 to '12 and by then son had honed his skills, become proficient with his  LaserStar, and was ready for the upscale custom, repair, and estate jewelry business in Palm Beach Gardens where for five years now his skill, personality, and a lifetime of experience since he was a toddler have made him and his business The Jewelry Doctor one of the most highly rated and reviewed shops in an area full of high-end chains. He's even had some celebrity clients including Susan Lucci whose mom's estate he purchased, Miss Florida Brie Gabrielle, and a ranking military attache to Ronald Reagan whose WH presentation jacket buttons he repaired with his laser.

It would be wonderful to have Mr. Hays vault in his store, on display as where some of the most iconic custom jewelry ever made had been secured, along with the original molds for some of them, and just as importantly the place where one of the most talented, famous, and gentle artists of the trade had kept his creations, but that was not to be.

Still, I am convinced that the contact and transaction with those gentlemen was an inspiration to my son, and that the traits and trust that Lowell Hays embodied in his career and in his dealings with us, have helped guide my son in how he runs his business and serves his clients, famous and not-so-famous alike. Thank you and God Bless you, Mr. Hays.

And God Bless you too, Elvis Presley...you were an imperfect man like all of us, but God knows a good soul and no doubt yours is residing with Him now, along with your beloved Mama, and with all the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches you want, weight be damned!

Sunday, July 30, 2017

"Bubbles gonna bust...it's what they do."

From a way too long comment at another blog mocking the Republican party for not living up to its hype and rep as the "party of smaller government":  http://www.saysuncle.com/2017/07/28/the-party-of-smaller-government-31/#more-90731

One aspect of the POSG is true to type, what Tam at VFTP finally admits is a “Gun Glut”. She’s even partly right about its cause.

But while the expectation of The Beast in the big chair was a driver of producers, wholesalers, and retailers gearing up and stocking up, that’s been going on for the better part of a decade. The tendency of the market to put supply ahead of anticipated demand has indeed glutted the market for much of that time but actual demand absorbed enough supply that all those three prongs of the industry kept expanding in a perverted version of “irrational exuberance”.

Until now. To riff on the commercial, “bubbles gonna bust, that’s what they do.” I took some heat for calling this more than a year ago, but I was seeing it from the inside of the retail prong, and even though the prospect of an anti-gun anti-Constitution anti-deplorable prog prez with balls to replace the one without them was a driver (and HEAVILY touted by the supply side), inventory levels had already started backing up with more buildup of the three prongs every day. And with the actual market largely satiated (have you SEEN that 10-year NICS chart?), it was a textbook example of the pendulum of actual as opposed to anticipated suppy/demand and the bubble pop would have happened albeit to a lesser and less immediate degree, even if the bitch had gotten the nod as expected.

Now as I’ve also said before, changes in regs and rules are pretty certain to up the market for heretofore artificially stunted materiel and a whole new supply/demand cycle will ensue, but cans can’t (heh) help absorb the millions of ar’s and glock clones that cram the warehouses and showcases right now…only reduced prices and disappearing profits will do that. And it will, there’s a demand for anything even when in oversupply if it’s cheap enough whether it’s guns or houses…which will take care of the glut in firearms themselves and through what will certainly be an accelerated attrition, the glut in the supply chain too…only the strongest will survive.

That’s just how capitalism works, and it’s ultimately a good thing. But don’t tell that to my buddy Tom, who after his 30-yr. retirement from LE sunk everything he had and everything he could borrow into a brand new 7000 sf state-of-the-art facility with a 2500 gun inventory, opening for business in October 2016. I did try to dissuade him for the whole year prior, much as I tried to tell blind investors in 2011 to stop having me order them 500-oz “monster boxes” of silver eagles when the crazed market had pushed them to over $50 per. Not that I’m any kind of guru; I in 40 years in those businesses never speculated or anticipated because there is way too much manipulation in every market. But I would have had to be blind not to see that something wasn’t right and was bound for “correction” as it were. Some lessons just have to be learned the hard way.

Anyway. “Gun Glut”. Regardless of the whens and whys, it’s a fact.

Friday, June 9, 2017

happy happy birthday baby...63!

Today my baby turns 63...

Eight years ago I did a little pic post on her 55th with granddaughter Grace at her dance recital.

http://poetnthepawnbroker.blogspot.com/2009/06/happy-happy-birthday-baby.html

Then last week she and Grace, now 15, recreated the pose after her last recital.

Fran seems to have found Ponce's elusive fountain; not me, even though she's a couple months older she looks twenty years younger..I'm a lucky guy to have her going on 46 years, and not just for her young looks either, but because all of those things I said in that prior post are even more true now than then.

BTW, I said this was Grace's last dance recital and that's not just for this year but altogether because although she loves it and excels, she has discovered that her true love and very strong plan for her future, involves dancing in air...this is her first lesson; she plans to have her private pilot license before her driver license and is sure she wants to be a commercial pilot! And without the dance makeup she looks even more like her beautiful Nana.


Monday, January 16, 2017

An Irish Reflection on the 2016 Election in the Colonies

By: Ian O'Doherty,  columnist for the Irish Independent

Tuesday November 8, 2016 — a day that will live in infamy, or the moment when America was made great again?
The truth, as ever, will lie somewhere in the middle. After all, contrary to what both his supporters and detractors believe — and this is probably the only thing they agree on — Trump won’t be able to come into office and spend his first 100 days gleefully ripping up all the bits of the Constitution he doesn’t like.

But even if this week’s seismic shockwave doesn’t signal either the sky falling in or the start of a bright new American era, the result was, to use one of The Donald’s favourite phrases, huge. It is, in fact, a total game changer.
In decades to come, historians will still bicker about the most poisonous, toxic and stupid election in living memory.
They will also be bickering over the same vexed question: how did a man who was already unpopular with the public and who boasted precisely zero political experience beat a seasoned Washington insider who was married to one extremely popular president and who had worked closely with another? The answer, ultimately, is in the question.

History will record this as a Trump victory, which of course it is. But it was also more than that, because this was the most stunning self-inflicted defeat in the history of Western democracy. Hillary Clinton has damned her party to irrelevance for at least the next four years. She has also ensured that Obama’s legacy will now be a footnote rather than a chapter. Because the Affordable Care Act is now doomed under a Trump presidency and that was always meant to be his gift, of sorts, to America. How did a candidate who had virtually all of the media, all of Hollywood, every celebrity you could think of, a couple of former presidents and apparently, the hopes of an entire gender resting on her shoulders, blow up her own campaign?
I rather suspect that neither Donald nor Hillary know how they got to this point.

Where she seemed to expect the position to become available to her by right — the phrase “she deserves it” was used early in the campaign and then quickly dropped when her team remembered that Americans don’t like inherited power — his first steps into the campaign were those of someone chancing their arm. If he wasn’t such a staunch teetotaler, many observers would have accused him of only doing it as a drunken bet. But the more the campaign wore on, something truly astonishing began to happen: the people began to speak. And they began to speak in a voice which, for the first time in years in the American heartland, would not be ignored. Few of the people who voted for Trump seriously believe that he is going to personally improve their fortunes. Contrary to the smug, middle-class media narrative, they aren’t all barely educated idiots. They know what he is, of course they do. It’s what he is not that appeals to them.

Clinton, on the other hand, had come to represent the apex of smug privilege. Whether it was boasting about her desire to shut down the remaining coal industry in Virginia — that worked out well for her, in the end — or calling half the electorate a “basket of deplorables,” she seemed to operate in the perfumed air of the elite, more obsessed with coddling idiots and pandering to identity and feelings than improving the hardscrabble life that is the lot of millions of Americans.
Also, nobody who voted for Trump did so because they wanted him as a spiritual guru or life coach. But plenty of people invested an irrational amount of emotional energy into a woman who was patently undeserving of that level of adoration.

That’s why we’ve witnessed such fury from her supporters — they had wrapped themselves so tightly in the Hillary flag that a rejection of her felt like a rejection of them. And when you consider that many American colleges gave their students Wednesday off class because they were too “upset” to study, you can see that this wasn’t a battle for the White House — this became a genuine battle for America’s future direction. And, indeed, for the West. (Emphasis mine)
We have been going through a cultural paroxysm for the last 10 years — the rise of identity politics has created a Balkanised society where the content of someone’s mind is less important than their skin colour, gender, sexuality or whatever other attention-seeking label they wish to bestow upon themselves. In fact, where once it looked like racism and sexism might be becoming archaic remnants of a darker time, a whole new generation has popped up which wants to re-litigate all those arguments all over again. In fact, while many of us are too young to recall the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of the 1960s, plenty of observers who were say they haven’t seen an America more at war with itself than it is today.

One perfect example of this New America has been the renewed calls for segregation on campuses. Even a few years ago, such a move would have been greeted with understandable horror by civil rights activists — but this time it’s the black students demanding segregation and “safe spaces” from whites. If young people calling for racial segregation from each other isn’t the sign of a very, very sick society, nothing is.

The irony of Clinton calling Trump and his followers racist while she was courting Black Lives Matter was telling.
After all, no rational white person would defend the KKK, yet here was a white women defending both BLM and the New Black Panthers — explicitly racist organisations with the NBP, in particularly, openly espousing a race war if they don’t get what they want.

Fundamentally, Trump was attractive because he represents a repudiation of the nonsense that has been slowly strangling the West. He represents — rightly or wrongly, and the dust has still to settle — a scorn and contempt for these new rules. He won’t be a president worried about microaggressions, or listening to the views of patently insane people just because they come from a fashionably protected group. He also represents a glorious (middle finger) to everyone who has become sick of being called a racist or a bigot or a homophobe — particularly by Hillary supporters who are too dense to realise that she has always actually been more conservative on social issues than Trump.
That it might take a madman to restore some sanity to America is, I suppose, a quirk that is typical to that great nation — land of the free and home to more contradictions than anyone can imagine.

Trump’s victory also signals just how out of step the media has been with the people. Not just American media, either.
In fact, the Irish media has continued its desperate drive to make a show of itself with a seemingly endless parade of emotionally incontinent gibberish that, ironically, has increased in ferocity and hysterical spite in the last few days.
The fact that Hillary’s main cheerleaders in the Irish and UK media still haven’t realised where they went wrong is instructive and amusing in equal measure. They still don’t seem to understand that by constantly insulting his supporters, they’re just making asses of themselves.
One female contributor to this newspaper said Trump’s victory was a “sad day for women.” Well, not for the women who voted for him, it wasn’t. But that really is the nub of the matter — the “wrong” kind of women obviously voted for Trump. The “right” kind went with Hillary. And lost.

The Irish media is not alone in being filled largely with dinner-party liberals who have never had an original or socially awkward thought in their lives. They simply assume that everyone lives in the same bubble and thinks the same thoughts — and if they don’t, they should.

Of the many things that have changed with Trump’s victory, the bubble has burst. Never in American history have the polls, the media and the chin-stroking moral arbiters of the liberal agenda been so spectacularly, wonderfully wrong.
It was exactly that condescending, obnoxious sneer towards the working class that brought them out in such numbers, and that is the great irony of Election 16 — the Left spent years creating identity politics to the extent that the only group left without protection or a celebrity sponsor was the white American male.

That it was the white American male who swung it for Trump is a timely reminder that while black lives matter, all votes count — even the ones of people you despise. You don’t have to be a supporter of Trump to take great delight in the sheer, apoplectic rage that has greeted his victory. If Clinton had won and Trump supporters had gone on a rampage through a dozen American cities the next night, there would have been outrage — and rightly so. But in a morally and linguistically inverted society, the wrong-doers are portrayed as the victims. We saw that at numerous Trump rallies: protesters would disrupt the event, claiming their right to free speech (a heckler’s veto is not free speech) and provoking people until they got a dig before running to the media and claiming victimhood.

But, ultimately, this election was about people saying enough with the bullshit. This is a country in crisis, and most Americans don’t care about transgender bathrooms, or safe spaces, or government speech laws. This was about people taking some control back for themselves. It was about them saying that they won’t be hectored and bullied by the toddler tantrums thrown by pissy and spoiled millennials, and they certainly won’t put up with being told they’re stupid and wicked just because they have a difference of opinion.

But, really, this election is about hope for a better America; an America which isn’t obsessed with identity and perceived “privilege;” an America where being a victim isn’t a virtue and where you don’t have to apologise for not being up to date with the latest list of socially acceptable phrases.
Trump’s victory was a (middle finger) to the politically correct.
It was a brutal rejection of the nonsense narrative which says Muslims who kill Americans are somehow victims. It took the ludicrous Green agenda and threw it out. It was a return, on some level, to a time when people weren’t afraid to speak their own mind without some self-elected language cop shouting at you. Who knows, we may even see Trump kicking the UN out of New York.

Frankly, if you’re one of those who gets their politics from Jon Stewart and Twitter, look away for the next four years, because you’re not going to like what you see. The rest of us, however, will be delighted. This might go terribly, terribly wrong. Nobody knows — and if we have learned anything this week, it’s that nobody knows nuthin’. But just as the people of the UK took control back with Brexit, the people of America did likewise with their choice for president.


 

Friday, January 13, 2017

Very cool...and very proud.

My son, having grown up in the estate jewelry and firearms businesses, is now at 32 a very accomplished custom bench jeweler (The Jewelry Doctor) in Palm Beach Gardens FL. He’s had several semi-famous customers come to him in his unassuming but highly reviewed shop for difficult or intricate repairs (Miss Florida2016, Susan Lucci, Dr. Ben Carson, several well-known golfers) and crap-tons of loaded retirees tooling up in their Bentleys, Aston Martins, even a 70-year old hottie in her hubby’s new Lamborghini, many with rings or watches worth as much as a house, he schmoozes ’em, they love him, and they entrust their high-value heirloom pieces to him for repairs and restoration. But today…

Today a customer brought him a button. Not even a gold button. Just a stylized brass button that had its attaching loop broken off, because son uses a high-tech laser welder, mostly becauses it’s pinpoint fusion won’t transfer heat that can harm fragile gems, but also because unlike the traditional jewelers torch, it easily handles the properties of platinum, silver, and non-traditional metals…like brass.

And this particular brass button is pretty special, from the jacket presented by Ronald Reagan at his inauguration to Richard Feldman, a Reagan adviser and appointee to the Commerce Dept. and then later Executive Director of the American Shooting Sports Council, former National Rifle Association Regional Director, and author of the widely acclaimed book – Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, and now President and CEO of the Independent Firearm Owners Association and legal advisor to Global Digital Solutions, heavily involved in the guidance of high-tech cyber arms manufacturing.

The button is embossed “Inauguration of President and Vice President Reagan and Bush.” Here's the text and picture that he sent me a few minutes ago to share with y’all. It doesn't have any real monetary value, but like I told him in reply, “It’s as precious a thing as you’ve ever had entrusted to your care in your shop.”

Like I said, very cool. I’m pretty proud of him, that such a figure would have been referred to him and personally bring such a treasured thing to him to repair, but even more so that he recognizes and appreciates the significance of what it represents, and spent time talking to and enjoying a conversation with Mr. Feldman

. At his age, that’s pretty rare I think, and perfectly in line with the understanding and sentiment of the text he sent me late on election night: “Wow, we might have just been given a new chance to help save America and the world.”

Monday, October 10, 2016

Okay, forget about the religion aspect and the jihad...

THE MUSLIM PROBLEM



Written by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Centre.


Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.

The vast majority of civil wars over the last ten years have taken place in Muslim countries. Muslim countries are also some of the poorest in the world. And Muslim countries also have high birth rates.

Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis.

No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn’t going away.

The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbours both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be.

The Muslim world had lost its old role as the intermediary between Asia and the West. And it has no economic function in the new world except to blackmail it by spreading violence and instability.

Muslim countries with lower literacy rates, especially for women, are never going to be economic winners at any trade that doesn’t come gushing out of the ground. Nor will unstable dictatorships ever be able to provide social mobility or access to the good life. At best they’ll hand out subsidies for bread.

The Muslim world has no prospects for getting any better. The Arab Spring was a Western delusion.

Growing populations divided along tribal and religious lines are competing for a limited amount of land, power and wealth. Countries without a future are set to double in size.

There are only two solutions; war or migration.

Either you fight and take what you want at home. Or you go abroad and take what you want there.

Let’s assume that the Iraq War had never happened. How would a religiously and ethnically divided Iraq have managed its growth from 13 million in the eighties to 30 million around the Iraq War to 76 million in 2050?

The answer is a bloody civil war followed by genocide, ethnic cleansing and migration.

What’s happening now would have happened anyway. It was already happening under Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad has one of the highest population densities in the world. And it has no future. The same is true across the region. The only real economic plan anyone here has is to get money from the West.

Plan A for getting money out of the West is creating a crisis that will force it to intervene. That can mean anything from starting a war to aiding terrorists that threaten the West. Muslim countries keep shooting themselves in the foot so that Westerners will rush over to kiss the booboo and make it better.

Plan B is to move to Europe.

What's This?
And Plan B is a great plan. It’s the only real economic plan that works. At least until the West runs out of native and naïve Westerners who foot the bill for all the migrants, refugees and outright settlers.

For thousands of dollars, a Middle Eastern Muslim can pay to be smuggled into Europe. It’s a small investment with a big payoff. Even the lowest tier welfare benefits in Sweden are higher than the average salary in a typical Muslim migrant nation. And Muslim migrants are extremely attuned to the payoffs. It’s why they clamour to go to Germany or Sweden, not Greece or Slovakia. And it’s why they insist on big cities with an existing Muslim social welfare infrastructure, not some rural village.

A Muslim migrant is an investment for an entire extended family. Once the young men get their papers, family reunification begins. That doesn’t just mean every extended family member showing up and demanding their benefits. It also means that the family members will be selling access to Europe to anyone who can afford it. Don’t hike or raft your way to Europe. Mohammed or Ahmed will claim that you’re a family member. Or temporarily marry you so you can bring your whole extended family along.

Mohammed gets paid. So does Mo’s extended family which brokers these transactions. Human trafficking doesn’t just involve rafts. It’s about having the right family connections. 

And all that is just the tip of a very big business iceberg.

Where do Muslim migrants come up with a smuggling fee that amounts to several years of salary for an average worker? Some come from wealthy families. Others are sponsored by crime networks and family groups that are out to move everything from drugs to weapons to large numbers of people into Europe.

Large loans will be repaid as the new migrants begin sending their new welfare benefits back home. Many will be officially unemployed even while unofficially making money through everything from slave labor to organized crime. European authorities will blame their failure to participate in the job market on racism rather than acknowledging that they exist within the confines of an alternate economy.

It’s not only individuals or families who can pursue Plan B. Turkey wants to join the European Union. It’s one solution for an Islamist populist economy built on piles of debt. The EU has a choice between dealing with the stream of migrants from Turkey moving to Europe. Or all of Turkey moving into Europe.

The West didn’t create this problem. Its interventions, however misguided, attempted to manage it.

Islamic violence is not a response to Western colonialism. Not only does it predate it, but as many foreign policy experts are so fond of pointing out, its greatest number of casualties are Muslims. The West did not create Muslim dysfunction. And it is not responsible for it. Instead the dysfunction of the Muslim world keeps dragging the West in. Every Western attempt to ameliorate it, from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping operations, only opens up the West to take the blame for Islamic dysfunction.

The permanent refugee crisis is a structural problem caused by the conditions of the Muslim world.

The West can’t solve the crisis at its source. Only Muslims can do that. And there are no easy answers. But the West can and should avoid being dragged down into the black hole of Muslim dysfunction.

Even Germany’s Merkel learned that the number of refugees is not a finite quantity that can be relieved with a charitable gesture. It’s the same escalating number of people that will show up if you start throwing bags of money out of an open window. And it’s a number that no country can absorb.

Muslim civil wars will continue even if the West never intervenes in them because their part of the world is fundamentally unstable. These conflicts will lead to the displacement of millions of people. But even without violence, economic opportunism alone will drive millions to the West. And those millions carry with them the dysfunction of their culture that will make them a burden and a threat.

If Muslims can’t reconcile their conflicts at home, what makes us think that they will reconcile them in Europe? Instead of resolving their problems through migration, they only export them to new shores. The same outbursts of Islamic violence, xenophobia, economic malaise and unsustainable growth follow them across seas and oceans, across continents and countries. Distance is no answer. Travel is no cure.

Solving Syria will solve nothing. The Muslim world is full of fault lines. It’s growing and it’s running out of room to grow. We can’t save Muslims from themselves. We can only save ourselves from their violence.

The permanent Muslim refugee crisis will never stop being our crisis unless we close the door.
ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Centre, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Immortalized in the best political 'toon in the homestretch of the most pivotal political season of our time...thanks Chris!

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/believe/

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

They call him woollllyyyyy...Wooly Booger!

At Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoon, the gang at the Double D ranch are infiltrated by anti-Trump protestors (really just rabble rousers paid by Bernie's money man). They are met pretty angrily by the resident bad-ass Texas Longhorn bull known as Tabasco who was fitted with a warning bell, and I got to remembering old Wooly Booger.


I grew up along the shore of Lake Okeechobee where our rented house was surrounded by a small, about 12-15 acre pasture where the landlord (a big boss at US Sugar Corp.) kept his little hobby herd, maybe 20-25 mixed breed cows lorded over by Ol’ Wooly Booger*.

See, USSC in addition to its cane plantations and mills was at that time a major player in the champion Brahma Bull world, with operations in Australia, Costa Rica, and right there on the Big O. They did some breeding experiments too, and Wooly was a hu-mon-gous Brahma/Angus mix…a Brangus, and he was one mean ol’ sumbitch. Get into *his* pasture, especially anywhere near *his* cows, and your life was truly in danger. No horns, just a huge curly-maned head, with shoulders and chest like a double or triple sized buffalo. And he was fast; he could be on you all the way from the other side of the pasture before you knew it, so you had better stay within a few yards of the board ‘n bobwahr fence, which he could have easily ran right through, but he knew his domain was inside its borders and you were safe if you stayed outside.

So Mr. Stacy put a big old cowbell on Wooly Booger as a warning for us five young 'uns out there, and when you were playing ball or whatever in that pasture and had your back turned and you heard that thing clanging, you better drop everything and head for that fence as fast as you could go. Only Mr. Stacy dared stand up to that bull, he was a huge man and he carried a big lead pipe with him when he was out of the truck; I think that bought him some mutual respect from Wooly, even though he could have easily stomped him down. I saw the bull prove that point one time when Mr. Stacy drove his company car into the pasture and the bull did not like that one bit, so he butted the front of that car head on and it seemed like lifted the front wheels clean up off the ground, then one time rammed it from the side caving in the whole side of that new chevy biscayne (like I said though, Stacy was a big shot and he had a new car I think the very next day).

Anyway. A bell on a big ol’ bull has a very practical purpose, and pays to pay heed, whether rowdy kids playing in the pasture or those dirty hippies doing their dirty deeds.

*Named by my Dad for his massive and mean curly-headed countenance way before the old song song Wooly Bully came out…we lived out there when I was 8 to 13, 1963-68, and the song by Sam and the Shams was I think in '65, but it sure seemed to have been written especially for ol’ Wooly Booger...maybe my Dad should have gotten royalties!

Ol' Bob Wahr

In an episode of my favorite online editorial cartoon, Chris Muir's Day by Day, the guys do some fence work at the ranch, and the wife of the younger is concerned his inexperience will result in him hurting himself at the hands of the treacherous barbed wire, and I couldn't help remembering and commenting about when that happened to me:


What did somebody say upthread, that Bob Wahr bites? Oh yes indeed he do.

The little pasture around our old Lake Okeechobee house, the same one that contained ol’ Wooly Booger the giant Brangus bull that was featured in an earlier post, featured a couple of rickety gates made of 2X8’s, that we ignernt daredevil yard apes liked to tightwalk on, not too easy as it would rock back and forth as you made your way across the 12 or so foot span…lose your balance and fall into Wooly’s space and you’d barely have time to get back over the fence or else just say your prayers.

So one Sunday when it was my turn I get almost to the end and start to lose it, Wooly watching intently from close by, and in an effort not to get stomped to death I tried to leap the last few feet to the little platform we had nailed to the end post. That didn’t work and I instead fell onto the 90 degree adjoining fence section, straddling that rusty ol’ bobwahr. I had on the typical boys tough levis so it didn’t do the damage that might be implied by that landing, instead it ripped my inner forearm flesh open like a ragged can opener, the blood starts spewing and I and my brothers and sisters start screaming.

Like I said it was Sunday, my hardworking Daddy’s one day off. The house was maybe a hundred and fifty feet away, and he was enjoying the Sunday paper while visiting the crapper when he hears the commotion, and as he later told me, he “cut one off in the middle”, pulled up his pants and ran outside, sure he was going to find one of his young’uns under Wooly's hoof. Instead he extricates me from the grips of ol’ Bob, throws me in the back of our ’65 Falcon wagon (two door, like a little Nomad!), and floors that little six banger the six or seven miles into town to Everglades Memorial’s ER. I lived, they sewed me up, but the ragged scar remains to this day, I’m looking at it right now.

 You’d think such an experience would lend a bit of judgment and reserve to a 12-year old wild child…but no, I did a whole lot of stupid shit after that…sometimes even still. Ain’t it a wonder that we survived?

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Of posers, plagiarists, and the truth...

A few days ago when some blog awards were handed out, my favorite editorial cartoonist Chris Muir was a winner for his awesome Day By Day daily cartoon serial. In reviewing the other award winners, one particular blog caught my attention and stuck in my craw. When I commented at DBD, congratulating Chris, I also used the opportunity to criticize that particular site and compare it to the long-running theft and misattribution of another outstanding gunnie essay; it so happened that Ted Nugent had been mentioned in the same thread, and as explained below, he played prominently in the misuse of this writer's essay, making the comparison a good illustration of my opinion on plagiarism.
When another commenter and apparently occasional contributor at the award-winning ripoff site complained about my complaint and said they were the awesomest gunnie site in the whole wide, I was prompted to answer his thusly, and since it would be improper to drag Chris Muir into the mud, I reactivated this long dormant erstwhile blogsite of mine just for the purpose.


@Cliff H, my criticism of TTAG as a user and abuser of others’ work product without attribution is hardly unilateral, and is nothing new; this dirty-laundry list is more than two years old:

http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2012/10/the-truth-about-the-truth-about-guns-and-robert-farago.html

But my recent comment after seeing that poser site given accolades in the company of genuine editorial artists like Mr. Muir here, was brought on by this very recent pathetic and sickening example:

http://twowheeledmadwoman.blogspot.com/2015/12/stop-thief.html

And it so happened that in the same DBD thread was mention of Ted Nugent, one of the few celebrity types on our side, but who unfortunately was responsible for another pretty egregious misattribution in his book “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto”, where two full pages are devoted to the reprint of Marko Kloos’ essay “Why the Gun is Civilization”, listing the non-existent Maj. L. Caudill USMC (ret) as author. The same thing happened at the huge Front Sight Firearms Training Academy website, and was later correctly attributed.

In the case of the Why the Gun essay, most of the reprintings and forwardings are inadvertent, except of course by the original scoundrel who created the marine Major out of wholecloth (a case of reverse stolen valor?). Still, even unintentional intellectual property theft is harmful, and does nothing to feed the true creator’s bulldog.

But at TTAG there’s nothing inadvertent about it; it is instead a long and documented pattern of intentional use of others’ work product without attribution, and when called out as in the case of that creative little gunshow jingle, it is simply deleted, without explanation or apology.

Cliff, I’m sure that you and many other contributors there are unaware of this nauseating behavior, and I guess my own long and close connection to the business and principles of RKBA causes me to react strongly when I think those principles are being crassly and commercially exploited and mocked…but that’s the truth about “The Truth About Guns”.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Further to my wallowing...

Today is Tam's VFTP 10 year mark. She doesn't take comments anymore, so no congrats sent, but there is some benchmark overlap to note...

8/28/05? That was my birfday 51! Katrina/Labor Day weekend too; moved my son up to Cherokee County Ga. then, what very surreal shit that was. Soon after, wifey and I bought a mountain place a little north of there. And soon after that we semi-retired there and while front-porch sittin' I started to dabble at the blog thing too, thanks largely to Xavier, Kevin, and Tam... she was my first commenter. She's the only one still bloggin' away...the others bailed and so did I in '09 after moving back to Fla (wifey couldn't take being so far from the grandbabies in Tampa); I had said what little I needed to and after son moved back too we started a new biz for him that needed much of my time.

So happy blogversary to Tam; all else aside, that girl can turn a phrase as well as anyone I've ever seen.. Not so much happy for me; this is birfday 61, ugh, and I thought I was old back then.

Monday, October 13, 2014

If I could...


In a comment to a blog post wherein the writer is in search of the area code for 1994 so as to call and brag to her younger self about where she is today, some reflection had me instead wallowing in regrets and wishes, and I wrote:


I don't want to phone 1994 me, or better yet, 1984 me. I want to go back there, and shake me, and wake me, and tell me in person what a fleeting moment my 30's and 40's and 50's would be. Oh to have them back again...little did we know.

And with apologies to Shakespeare and to Dowson, I even went a bit wistfully poetic:

                                  They are not long,
                                  These salad days,
                                  These days of wine and roses.
                                  We slumber through, and dream of life,
                                  But live the dream, in spite of strife!
                                  For yon light does not beckon,
                                  But bears down!
                                  And a dream is just a dream,
                                  While life is but a blur.

Familiarity breeds contempt, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...ain't it the truth.

JTC

Thursday, August 13, 2009

another boomer icon gone...

les paul died today. a guitar legend and father of the electric guitar -some would even argue the father of rock and roll- his name and his influence have been ubiquitous throughout my lifetime of interest in music.

him being 94, and his death coming as the 40th anniversary of woodstock has us in reflection mode, i'm feeling even older than usual today. beats the alternative, i guess.

jtc

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

healthcare.gov; the post office of the medical field!

you gotta give bobo credit: it's a pretty honest assessment of how efficient federally controlled healthcare would be.

i guess instead of a dead-letter file there'd be the dead-patient file. kind of problematic...you know, storage space, bad smell, etc. of course, this whole thing stinks to high heaven anyway.

still, it's a great (and accurate) analogy. i can see the advertising blitz now: "healthcare.gov...all the efficiency of the u.s. postal service with the customer service you've come to expect from amtrak..."

jtc

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

chris matthews hyperventilates...

in his sad little attempt to play "hardball", this pathetic little fart sniffer actually provides a perfect foil for the new hampshire guy to make his case calmly and simply. matthews so desperately wanted this guy to be a foaming-at-the-mouth crazy that he decided to show him how it's done.

hi-f'n-larious. and a really great job by the interviewee in keeping his cool and stating his case.

them there new hampsterites are starting to look like my kind of yankees.

jtc

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

hippie, please...

irritated at a bumper sticker proclaiming "health care is a human right", the munchkin wrangler loosed a tirade that included that simple phrase...

while my son pointed out that it is a shameless riff off of the old black-on-black exclamation "nigga, please", i myself thought that in marko's context, never had so much been said with so few words.

so i and others badgered him to set up a cafe-press inventory of stickers and shirts to buy for ourselves. he did, and i did. and here are the results:
i thought it particularly appropriate for my hemi 4x4 truck...


and even for my um...ample and obviously carniverous self.

thanks, marko.

jtc

Monday, August 3, 2009

no loaded guns allowed!

seems an odd rule for a place where shooting is the point. but discussion at tam's centered around exactly that rule at the range she frequents. there they require bringing in unloaded/cleared firearms only...necessitating what she and shootin' buddy point out is the distinctly dangerous practice of unloading range guns as well as carry-ons in the car or parking lot, etc.

but as i said in comments there, that same logic holds for any place with such a rule. and there are many, sadly including even most gun shops, which often feature a big sign on the door; "no loaded firearms". that made a bit more sense in the days before carry permits and most guns coming in the door were for sale, trade, repair, etc...but now, with perhaps a majority of those who frequent ffl's carrying concealed, it has become an absurdity...and a decidedly dangerous rule. combined with the many places -public and private- that ban loaded firearms on the premises, it brings into focus just how often the need for permit holders to unload -or offload- their weapon in the car before they can enter these premises unnecessarily endangers everyone in the vicinity, as manipulating mags, slides, and cylinders requires much touching. and though some anti's would have you believe the very presence of guns can cause random carnage even when they're safely in their holsters, it's all that touching that can result in an n.d.

it's a big problem that many don't really think about, and there's not an easy solution...maybe the best one is to just avoid such places whenever possible.

jtc