hey kids! learn how to have fun and profit from "the obama recovery"

the talking heads at the msnbc financial desk are telling us the three things we should invest in to profit as obama "fixes" the economy...yeah, those would be the same heads who totally missed (or worse, consorted to conceal) the falling domino effect as the various components of that economy fell hard and fast after being ballyhooed and cheered on to dizzying and unsustainable heights by...them.

me, i'll take a different tack; herewith, my own three-pronged plan:

1. guns and gun stuff. the widely reported boom in gun sales is really nothing new...something similar happened in '94 when the clinton ban enriched gun dealers nationwide by inflating the value of what had been common and not much in demand (a lot of 10 new-in-cosmolene norinco sks rifles was $690 wholesale in '92, you know what they are now); i was the serendipitous beneficiary of a lot of that...it was the most profitable period in my thirty years as an ffl...but it's different this time; the anti's learned some lessons, and disingenuous denials aside, there will certainly be a concerted if serruptitious effort to remove and ban hardware and supplies from the access of civilian Americans, backed up with legislation and a stacked deck of judiciary to make sure that those who would resist can be squashed for their impertinence. so after having divested most of my personal firearms inventory over the last eight years, i'm buying again...any and every decent firearm that i can buy "right", cases of ammunition, and though i never got into reloading, i'm also stocking supplies and dies for that...mostly because they don't want me to, but also just in case. and what better way to protect your assets and have some fun?

2. hard money. like guns, gold and silver are universal currency. because the values have skyrocketed over the last few years, much of what i had accumulated and kept when i sold my pawn store a few years ago in the way of gold and silver coins, bars, and heavy gold jewelry (heavy-link high-karat gold chains have for centuries been the favored mode of exchange in parts of the world where the politics are, shall we say, unpredictable) have been liquidated for profit. but now i'm buying again.

3. the pawn and estate brokering business. having spent thirty years behind the counter i was about fried and ready for some r&r when i sold out to clint in late '05, and i really still have little stomach for resuming the traditional-type pawn business. but my son, now 24 and back in fla with us, has sold his business in georgia and taken jewelry repair/goldsmithing school to develop a trade that will always be in demand...and with a major "redistribution" in the offing, people who have accumulated luxury items like jewelry, high-end watches, exotic cars and other unessential trappings of nouveau wealth, are going to be selling them off and/or using them as collateral to fund their expenses for the foreseeable future. so we're opening a nice little custom jewelry shop where eric can do his creative thing and do repairs and restorations, and i've kept my state pawn and estate broker's license active enabling us to do selective loans and purchases of expensive, but expendable luxury items.

not quite the path advised in the msnbc story, is it? yeah, well, that's exactly the point. let the "o" and his minions invest in his brave new "green" world, sink what remains of their cash into his "securities", and buy stock in the government-beholden "companies" that will do the fake make-work as the socialist regime re-enacts the wpa under their new, new deal...good luck with that.

ya'll go your way, i'll go mine.

jtc

thanks giving

the same simple lines from the blessing we said as children applies just as well today...no matter what.

Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything.

where were you forty five years ago today?

it's one of those iconic occurences that freeze us in time.

on this day in 1963 the young and charismatic president john f. kennedy was assassinated...and many say this nation's innocence was murdered along with him.

one thing is undeniably true; if you are old enough to remember that day, you no doubt have a sickening sense of deja vu when you think of it...

myself, i was a nine year old playing football in the schoolyard of our little stucco schoolhouse on the shore of lake okeechobee , waiting for the bus to take us home three miles out u.s. 98 among the sugar cane fields, when the word spread that the president had been shot; we didn't know until walter cronkite told us that evening in fuzzy black-and-white that he had died.

we kids didn't really know much about the politics of the day of course, but thinking of it now still brings an odd snapshot image back to me of that sunny play yard and a sense that the happy and carefree childhood that we were enjoying one moment was gone the next.

would history have taken a different course if kennedy had not been killed that day? would the events that were hurtling us deeper into a war in some tiny God forsaken place that none of us had heard of, but quite a few of us would soon find ourselves in -with some of us never to return- have been altered under his guidance? the powder keg of unrest, the uprising on our campuses, racial war and rioting in the streets...would it have been the same if jfk had remained at the helm of our ship of state?

my own sense is that history holds him in a frozen reverence that would not have been possible had he lived and found himself forced to deal with those issues of the era; the world was in upheaval and exploding all around us, perhaps speeded along by the shooting, but inevitable anyway...it would have been more than the legacy of any president, no matter how powerfully inspirational, could endure.

but we will never know.

jtc

the empowerment of cassie...

xavier has a new protege...the need for cassie to go into areas where potential aggressors lurk had her justifiably concerned...i think that apprehension will soon evaporate, and the areas where she works...and the world...will be the better for it. this was my comment on xavier's story:


she is very fortunate to have you as a friend and mentor...

an aside, though...there are no "menacing locations", just places where menacing thugs are likely to congregate and take advantage of the unprotected.

but thanks to you and others like you, cassie's armed and capable presence there along with a growing army of similarly determined and inclined free and fearless citizens are our best hope to reclaim those areas from the evil, opportunistic lowlifes there, and in the process free the good people who are no doubt the majority there to live their lives fearlessly as well.

ain't equalized freedom great? protect the right of xavier to teach and cassie to be empowered, and ultimately save the world...what a concept, and more critical now than ever.

and keep up the good work, xavier...you are an inspiration.

jtc

and so it begins...

didn't take the leftist msm cartoonists long to show their fear of the possibility of palin in '12...that oughta tell ya something.

jtc

thank you...

to every veteran, past, present, and future...for your service, for your sacrifice, for saving the world then as now...from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

the fat lady done sung...

and i really hate that tune.

i feel sick.

jtc

well, this is it...

get out there and vote, ya'll!

'cause like ol' yogi said "i loves picinic baskets!"...wait, wrong yogi.

oh, here it is..."it ain't over till it's over"...yeah, that's it...VOTE!

jtc

what it's really all about...

in the midst of a lively political exchange over at the munchkin wrangler, marko's blog system automatically placed a comment of mine in the moderation queu because i had insterted two links to posts at view from the porch.
when i questioned that, marko later answered that he had been busy feeding and preparing his children for bed...which brought focus anew to what all the chattering is really all about; our children (and in my case grandchildren).

here's three of mine (my oldest daughters two "kids" are not shown; they're teenagers for crying out loud!).

evan...


grace...


ozzy...


and evan and ozzy.