Monday, April 30, 2012

Mel Gibson; A Mirror To His Soul

                                           
They say that the eyes are a mirror to the soul.  Take a good look at Mel Gibson.  The man is only 55 years old!  He looks like he's pushing 70!  Does anyone remember the clean cut, handsome guy who did Mad Max?  What a change.  What has caused this dramatic change in Gibson's appearance?

Part of it is the drinking problem.  Not all.  Take a look at Dean Martin at the same age.  Dino love to take a snort or two and he looked like Adonis.

I don't know Mel Gibson personally but he's had his hateful rants on public exhibition for a decade now.  Rants against Jews, against Mexicans, against non-Catholics, against gays.  And I don't mean simply taking a social or political opinion about a particular lifestyle; I'm talking about Gibson's ability to gin up some serious hate against anyone who doesn't agree with his personal choices.

Of late, Gibson has developed a fondness for spousal abuse.  The recordings document his loud and extremely abusive rants against his last wife and they are truly frightening.

Now we have the latest recordings released in which Gibson totally flips out while hosting screenwriter Joe Esterhas and his family last December.  Ironically, Gibson was unhappy with the screenwriter's delay in getting a script to him.  The script was for a proposed movie that championed the heroics of Jews.  No doubt this was still another Gibson effort to re-invent his anti-Jew image.  But as one listens to the dry, raw screams of a man losing his last vestige of sanity, one wonders how and when it will all end.

Mel Gibson is a billionaire, having earned more than $2.5 billion dollars in the U.S. alone, through his acting, producing and directing efforts.  Being that wealthy, he can insulate himself somewhat from public opinion.  The fact that, despite this vast wealth, the hateful craziness still manages to ooze out to the public is a testament to the degree of hate burning within Gibson's soul.

Alas, even if Gibson was able to put a gag on every tantrum that occurred we might very well see it in his face.  Like a reverse "Dorian Gray",  the real Mel Gibson, the one with the white hot hate at his inner core, is appearing on his face, like a roadmap to his soul.  We've seen that same level of madness before:  take a look at those WWII newsreels and look into the eyes of Adolph Hitler.  One could see the fire of hate roaring from those orbs.  Take a look at the eyes of Charlie Manson.

I do not hate Mel Gibson.  I have long ago surrendered the luxury of hating anyone.  I refuse to diminish my soul by succumbing to hate.  Rather, I feel sorry for Mel Gibson.  Being someone who loves the idea of "redemption" I am cheering for Mel Gibson to somehow find the strength to conduct a thorough evaluation of Gibson, the man, and do whatever it takes to rid himself of his destructive demons.

But for now, forget Mad Max; it is Mad Mel who needs help.



Sunday, April 29, 2012

Curbing Lap Dog Co-Dependency

                                               
When your kids leave home you unconsciously begin looking for "kid substitutes".  Mine took the form of Chihuahua doggies.  I have two, a 13 year old and a two-year old and they are my "babies".  While they can't possibly offer the same joy one gets from kids, I find they're a damn good "second".  You need never worry about their report cards, who they're hanging with, and you never need to be monitoring a midnight curfew.

While I played "horsie" with my kids, swam with them, jogged with them, played golf with them, told them ghost stories, watched movies with them that I would never have chosen myself, my doggies require  a different form of attention and care.  Like children, my Chi's also have their own unique personality and require different things to make them happy.

My big girl, Ginger, has been with us for 13 years come June.  She's a fawn reindeer, who in her youth, was capable of extreme leaping abilities.  She has on more than one occasion, scaled a four foot breakfast counter in one leap, navigated the counter to saunter over to the stove and has eaten half a pot of chicken stew before she was caught.  A bowl of nuts or grapes or chips were never safe from her if left on any counter in the kitchen.  She has survived our wrath and has endeared her self to us by a single loving gesture.  When I get up in the morning Ginger always greets me with a a leap up my leg, waiting for me to say good morning.  She will not stop that happy and loving leaping until I say the words "good morning, gin".  She will not even go out to the bathroom until I have acknowledged our mutual love and early morning good will.  When she finally passes over the "Rainbow Bridge", it will be that enthusiastic leaping tag of me each morning that I will remember the best.

The younger Chi is named Rosie and was a replacement for a male Chi, named Rocky who we lost in October 2009.  I wrote an earlier blog about the loss of Rocky, and the hole that remains in my heart from his early leaving.  While Rocky was a very quiet, very dignified little guy, he starred in one remarkable talent;  he loved to sing.  His favorite song was the old Neil Diamond tune "Song Sung Blue".  As soon as I began singing it, Rocky's big ears would perk up, he would stick his snout in the air and began singing loud and strong.  He delighted in "our delight" of his singing prowess and loved to perform for us.  He was equally adept at singing Happy Birthday and seemed to take a particular pleasure in serenading those celebrating a birthday.

When Rocky died, our other Chi, Ginger, went into depression.  I bought her Rosie to keep her company.  It surely did and the old girl was rejuvenated by having an energetic and playful puppy for company.  They are now "sisters" soul mates.

While Chi's are a joy, before anyone acquires one or two, one must know that they are "lap dogs".  That fact should not be taken lightly.  Chi's love to occupy your lap, and failing that, at least ply a share of your recliner.  In winter, having a couple of furry doggies makes a great replacement for a blanket.  But, it is almost intolerable to put up with all the lap time in the heat of summer.  Fortunately, a "fix" for this evolved over a period of time.  I keep a metal container of Burt's Bees moisturising salve on the table next to my chair.  To combat dry lips, I will often open the can of salve and apply it to dry lips or hands.  One day I noticed that whenever I opened the salve cans the doggies in my lap would draw away from it; perhaps they didn't like the smell.

So, one day while applying salve I had a streak of sadism and boinked salve on two Chi noses.  Both leaped from my lap in indignation.  Ginger ran over to a corner and began lapping the offensive salve from her nose.  However, Rosie was extremely mad about this.  She ran over to her bed and began clawing at the bed, rubbing her nose into the bed material to get it off, then stopping to look back at me with real fire in her eyes.

After that, whenever I wanted to clear my lap of doggies, I simply opened the salve can and boinked their noses with salve and see them leaping to the floor.  Ginger's reaction never changed; she seemed to accept this indignation with a resolve that simply said "humans can be so silly".  However Rosie has taken her ire to whole new levels.  Once dobbed with salve she flees to her bed, paws ferociously at the material, rubs her nose to clear it; then, as I began screeching "oh, look how mad she is!..."she is so mad", "she's flipping out!"...Rosie begins doing circular flips, rolling over and over in the bed.  If I continue making fun of her antics she will continue flipping and pawing until I stop.  It has become a grand game that an old man and his dog enjoy immensely.

When I choose to be pro-active in the "anti-lap" war, as soon as the two Chi's begin circling my chair for a leap up for a "lap-nap", I simply pick up the salve can, which sends them fleeing back to the safety of their bed.

Rosie is also the most needy and the most demanding of it.  If I become too engrossed in a TV show, or am on the computer, she will maneuver around the room until she can achieve line of sight with me..if I continue to ignore her she will begin barking at me, very loudly.  She seems to be saying "hey!..pay attention to me!  I need attention!  I then have to take a break, pick her up, rub her ears, give her a little sweet talk, before I can resume what I'm doing.

The moral of this story:  If you choose to have lap dogs, be prepared to support their needed lap time...and   when you've had your fill of it...get yourself a can of Burt's Bees Salve...you'll find it can be quite entertaining!

Saturday, April 28, 2012

To A Niece Upon Her Birthday; Love Flows Like A River

                                                       

I love my niece.  Perhaps, more importantly, I admire her beyond measure for the the life she has made.  If I were to tell you I have spent less than a couple of weeks in her company during the last thirty years, you might think that statement remarkable.

But, sometimes, and with some people, you can see into the soul so very clearly...and when that soul is so life-enriching their "life force" washes over you, refreshes you like a cool rain on a hot day.

One of the problems I've had is that I've seen so little of my extended family over the last forty years.  I lived all over the world through 22 years with the Air Force, then spent a decade living and working in the Middle East.  As a result, a couple of generations of "family" have been born and flourished and my only familiarity with them has been a panorama of photos on a living room wall somewhere.  I am now getting to know my extended family through Face Book.  I see the family I grew up with and their faces are familiar.  Looking upon those faces I see crow's feet about the eyes, perhaps wrinkle lines in the forehead, the natural culmination of the years of "living".

When I look down the "chain" of family, I see the bright shining eyes of the younger generations and I struggle to figure out which child belongs to who.  I am getting to know all of them by visiting their "walls" vicariously through Face Book...and I like what I see.

My niece is something of a different story.  Like soldiers who have fought a battle together become brothers, my niece and I share a common tragedy.  Mine came somewhat later in life while she had to endure loss at a tender age, and when one is least prepared to deal with such a loss. No one can lose a child and not be scarred by it.  But one who has suffered this tragedy, and can still have the strength to persevere, to refuse to surrender to life's tragedies, who possesses a reservoir of love to give to others, has achieved great personal victories.  Surely, some of her strength derives from her grandmother who also lost a child, yet had more than enough love to give to four other children.  Now I see her family chronicled in photos and Facebook posts and it is clear to me that both she and her creator have worked together to build a rich, loving and rewarding life.  Beginning slowly, love has now flowed through her life like a river.

Admiration is a wonderful thing, but love is even more wondrous.  I fell in love with my niece ten years ago as my mother lay dying.  As we grieved, as we watched my mother begin her journey toward heaven, my niece was there every day, helping with feeding, helping with sponge baths, lending comfort by just sitting with her grandmother and holding her hand.  Sharing our pain and sharing her love.

I didn't have a lot of time during the caring period, or during the mourning period, to fully appreciate my niece's support.  But after a time, after contemplation is again possible, I began to think about what a remarkable young lady my niece had become.  Even later I began to think of the commonality of tragedy we shared and how this young lady had persevered through it and established a family where love thrives and life is reaffirmed.

I still don't see my niece very  often.  No matter.  It's enough for me to see her smiling grandly, with husband and children by her side, at a park, at Disneyland, or just proudly cheering her children on at a school event or around a Christmas tree.

Love only comes to you when you give it.  My niece has an abundance of it....as love flows from her like a river.  Happy Birthday, dear niece.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Obama Loves To Spend; Just Hates Paying the Damned Bill!

                                         
Well, The Anointed One is having another "snit fit".  He's traipsing around the country on Air Force One (at $2 million dollar per flight), to stand up before college students and tell them that the mean Republicans are blocking him from giving them an extension of their reduced interest rates on their student loans.

Know why Obama is upset?  The Republicans passed the reduced interest extension as Obama wants; they just included in their bill a means to "pay for it!".  Obama and his liberal free spenders want the bill to pass... but they want to add the bill on to the current $16 trillion dollar deficit!

It seems the Republicans targeted funds from a section of Obamacare to pay the $6 billion dollar costs of subsidizing the reduced interest student loan program.  The line item the Republicans have accessed was from Obama's slush fund meant to support free abortion and birth control for the "victim class".  Now Obama is screaming that the Republicans are once again threatening the health of women!  The only problem with Obama's rants is that he, himself siphoned funds from that same line item just last year to pay for another freebie program!  Now he's crying that it should be untouchable!

Can Obama's political rants be more transparent?  Are the American people really that stupid?  Are they going to buy this latest socialist rant in the face of the facts?  Well, Obama's gambling that you all are!

To be fair, Obama has always opposed any Republican effort to actually pay for any program Obama asks for.  He seems to love to spend...but he'll be damned if anyone expects him to pay the bill!

Bottom Line:  Take the credit card from this SOB come November!  We're tapped out!


"NBC; Our Saturday Night Babysitter"

                                                 
Can any of you tell me what your TV schedule will look like tonight, without the assistance of TV Guide?  I'll bet you remote cowboys can't.  Yet, long before NBC became a mouth piece for Obama, and the source for funneling liberal gruel to the masses, NBC once served as our Saturday night baby sitter.

Our mom often took waitress work at night and Saturday is always a busy night for waitresses.  But, having already reached our early teens we kids had to rely on NBC to keep us in line on Saturday night.  They succeeded.

Before we reached our older teen years we had to settle for having our fun in front of the TV.  And it wasn't a bad gig at all!  Mom always made supper before she left for work so we always had dinner together.

As she left for work we kids geared up for snacking and wallowing.  We were almost always rewarded with a six-pack of Pepsi (not an every day beverage as it is now), a bag of peanuts and a candy bar.  Thus, began the orgy of junk food and TV.

Even now I can tell you the schedule.  At 7:30 NBC presented "Flipper".  For those of you who just arrived on the planet, Flipper was about a very smart dolphin who,  from one week to another, performed feats as diverse as saving an injured Sea Lion to leading the good guys to a nest of modern day crooks up to no good at all.  Flipper was very intelligent and loving and thrilled us with his brilliance.

At 8:00 Jeannie came curling out of her bottle on "I Dream of Jeannie".  Long before Larry Hagman became the evil-doer on Dallas, he was just mild, slightly fumbling Major Tony, "master" to Jeannie.
Now this show worked in so many ways.  It was funny, yes.  But, for a teen age boy, Jeannie was as close to pure sex that you were ever going to get on TV in those days.  Though the network censors insisted that Jeannie cover her navel, those wispy halters that holstered those lovely breasts, and that bare mid-riff sent teen hormones into the stratosphere!  And Jeannie was always hugging Tony and kissing him and would do ANYTHING to please "master".  Folks, do I need to say any more?

At 8:30 Get Smart came on.  The show, produced by Mel Brooks, was extremely funny.  It featured a bumbling government secret agent named Maxwell Smart who, long before cell phones, had to remove his shoe to call his boss.  We hormonal teens were further rewarded by getting to see long, lanky and sexy Barbara Feldman who weekly saved Max Smart from disaster.

At 9:00, having plowed through a bag of peanuts, a candy bar and a bottle of Pepsi, we gained our second wind on a sugar high and settled in to watch NBC's Saturday Night At the Movies.  This was a great treat.  The quality of the movies was always first rate.  Of course, they were older movies, but they were movies with class.  Flicks like "Titanic", a bio of John Phillip Souza, "Casa Blanca", "Demetrius and the Gladiators", "Hercules" were all perfect fare for our viewing.

11:00PM  NBC surrenders national programming and our local NBC affiliate takes charge.  Another round of movies!  And this time it is the chilling, scare the hell out of the kids type movies.  And my brother and sister and I were prepared for it.  Run around the house, batten down the window locks, re-check the doors, then back to the living room where we dimmed the lights and waited to be scared to death.  We're talking "Dracula", "Frankenstein", "The Wolf Man", "House of Wax", "House of Usher" and all manner of other goulish fare.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...we've fallen asleep at sometime during the late evening and we are either awakened by mom chiding us for not going to bed, or we are awakened by that Indian on the screen signaling the end of programming.

The next morning we awaken in stupor of a sugar hangover and must get up and dress for Sunday School.  We whine about it but somehow know that the punishment of church is our due after the orgy of TV and junk food, a Saturday night debauching.  Besides, I needed to go and ask God for forgiveness at what I was thinking while watching Jeannie in that wispy genie outfit.

:)

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

"YOU WANT US ON THAT WALL!"

                                               

In the movie, "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson is being skewered by Tom Cruise on the witness stand of a Court Martial hearing.  Cruise is trying to get Nicholson to admit he ordered a Code Red on a Marine who was allegedly "not getting with the program".  In my mind this was one of the finest scenes ever staged in a movie.  Why?  Because, with both characters advocating for opposite points of views, the audience senses that both sides in the conflict are right.  In the end, the only "loser" are those who take no position at all!

While Cruise represents the smooth talking lawyer, adept at all the social niceties, schooled in the absolute rule of law, he is painfully naive about the real life consequences, and the necessary "modus operandi" that the American soldier must employ to execute the orders given him by his political leadership.

In that mesmerizing scene we see Nicholson tell Cruise in the most basic terms what it means to "Stand the Wall".  What Nicholson is telling us is that war isn't pretty, a soldier's life is more than the glorifying ideals that Americans wish them to be.  War is confusion.  War is ugly.  War is a hell-fire that is never "extinguished", even when war has ended.  And the participants in war, the soldier, will never be the same.

We also hear Nicholson say that the clever cynics like Cruise find it easy to speak glibly about the military mind, and hostile conflict at cocktail parties, while having the luxury of not knowing of the mechanistic horror of war.

And Nicholson is right!  Now that Americans are no longer compelled, with the ending of the military draft, to participate in the fighting, we find a significant contingent of the American people who see the military as a "necessary evil".  Unlike World War II, Americans are not asked to ration foods and material, are not asked to maintain air raid shelters, and are certainly not asked to enlist themselves in the fight.

And politicians, ever eager to commit our troops in ever-expanding world conflicts, find it easy to ignore the hardships of the soldier, and are uncaring about the effects those wars have on the minds and bodies of our military.  Thus, George Bush and Barack Obama can opt to spend $3 trillion dollars of our treasury and commit our soldiers to four or five combat tours toward an idiotic effort to democratize 300 million Muslims.

Now, after ten years of war, we find breaches in the idealistic image of the American soldier.  We find that a few of our troops who have gone off the deep end and savaged innocents in the combat area.  We find that some soldiers are found to have urinated on the enemy dead.  And we find photos of some soldiers hanging the carcasses of suicide bombers in total disrespect for those enemy dead.

Guess what America!  Take that five percent of American men and women who volunteered to serve their country, put that five percent into a culture that savages men, women and children, give them experiences where they walk into a school and see 30 dead children, killed for the crime of wanting to learn and think, then ask, if that were you, whether it would have an effect on you!

Arm that five percent, outfit them with body armor, put a 60 pound pack on their back, ask them to endure 130 degree summers and 30 degree winters,  force them to see their friends and teammates killed in firefights and IED's, and try to contemplate if those experiences might have an adverse effect on their psyche!

Nicholson is right!  Americans want us on that wall!  Sadly, you don't want to hear what happens to us while up there!  After three tours in Vietnam I came back to face the verbal onslaught of 'baby killer' and having Americans spitting in our faces.  Thank God our troops today don't have to face that.  But what they do face today is American apathy; apathy about what one goes through in war.

Whether it is the cop patrolling in Watts, or taking down a meth-induced crazy,  whether it is those Border Patrol troops guarding our border, or whether it is a soldier "Standing The Wall" in foreign lands, they are serving America!  You want all of them "on the wall"....you just don't want to hear the nasty details.

So, the next time you hear of a breach of discipline in the military, the next time you hear that an illegal immigrant got beat up, or the next time you read that a cop over-reacted in a pressure-charged criminal incident, have some degree of empathy and sympathy....or go stand the damn wall yourself!

                                               


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

From The Last Surviving American in San Francisco!


GUEST EDITORIAL!  I make no claims here...let's call this one "The Best of Craig's List!"
While I thought everyone in the Bay Area was a raging liberal, apparently I was mis-informed!  
Here's what the gent..or lady...has to say about his neighbors.  An added note:  When I post a link to my blog in Pelosi's back yard, I get flagged off in minutes because liberals censor any political viewpoint that they don't agree with.  I suspect the lifespan of this one is about 5 minutes max, so I thought I'd capture it for perpetuity.

I am a liberal


Date: 2012-04-22, 11:01AM PDT
Reply to: 4v7th-2972811416@pers.craigslist.org


I wake up each day with nothing to do

Shit man, is it a quarter to 2?

Turn on the tellie, watch Judge Judy

Thinking, my God, who can I sue?



I like my women with fat rolls and stringy hair

And complain all day life ain't fair

So I rolled me a joint

Because life has no point

I have no job and I don't care


I love Lenin, Stalin and Obama too

Public education turned me into a brainwashed fool

Forget Jesus Christ, I worship Karl Marx, cool.

Ain't he just another dead Jew?


Why should I be free

When I can be a ward of state

Gonna get me some food stamps

So I can buy me a big juicy steak

Though I am a vegan

and you should be too

but I am a hypocrite

screw you


I'm a liberal, that's who I am

Trying to screw you the best I can

Don't need to earn any money,

I've got yours to spend

Because I have got the Democratic Party

And the tax man


I hate my white skin, because I was born to win

Got a $1000 tattoo on my neck, but can't pay the rent

Now can't find a job So I joined an Occupy mob,

And now piss myself wet and sleep in an unsanitary tent


I am a feminist like Sandra Fluke

And have a face that will make you puke

I practice unsafe sex and have unlimited abortions

Those damn condoms and pills cost me a fortune

Force the Catholic Church to pay for my degenerate sex life

Or I will go after Rush Limbaugh with a knife



I follow worship Al and Jesse and feel bad for Traevor Martin yo

That George Zimmerman, he looks like a White Latino

And don't forget MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS

Propagating for liberals is what they do best


Illegal aliens invade everyday,

killing Americans every which way

And I don't feel guilty

Better to be a traitor leftie

than sing my country tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty


I'm a liberal, that's who I am

Trying to screw you the best I can

Don't need to earn any money,

I've got yours to spend

Because I have got the Democratic Party

And the tax man


Barack Obama ate my dog

Though liberals won't let me eat hog

Too much fat and cholesteral

Don't worry, Obamacare will rule us all.


America is broke, that ain't no joke

Gonna go on a disability folks, and buy me some coke

Better to leech off the state and break the bank

The public employee unions say, let them eat cake

Socialism is where its at, taking orders from a corrupt bureaucrat


I love black people, though they call me a cracker

We are white sheeple and Obama our master

Time will tell who will win the class war

I am a Marxist, hear me roar


I'm a liberal, that's who I am

Trying to screw you the best I can

Don't need to earn any money,

I've got yours to spend

Because I have got the Democratic Party

Monday, April 23, 2012

"I Desperately Need Domestic Help!"

                                     
Living by myself now, I find I need domestic help far more than I could have foreseen.  Don't get me wrong; I can still get around and clean my house, do laundry and clean up after my cooking.  It's just that I don't see the same things women often do.

Yesterday I took out the Lysol and the 409 and I removed everything from the tops of my kitchen counters.  I ran some hot water and grabbed some cleaning towels and scrubbed my stove down, then the counters and finally used Ajax on my 50 year old porcelain sink and managed to achieve a semblance of white after scrubbing.

Then, I tackled the bathrooms.  I Windexed the mirrors, scrubbed the inside of the toilet, wiped down the bathtub and mopped the floor.

I then vacuumed the carpet portion of the floors and then steam mopped the kitchen.  Voila, I'm done!

Then, this morning I walk into the kitchen and see that strange liquids have streaked my cabinet doors.  How could I have failed to see that during my cleaning?  I begin to look more closely at my handiwork.  As I run my fingers up into the kitchen vent hood I discover a greasy residue that I missed as well.

Later, as I go into the bathroom to recycle a cup or two of coffee consumed earlier, I notice some unappealing streaks running down the lower front of the toilet bowl.  I missed that yesterday too!

I go to the fridge to get a couple of eggs for breakfast.  But I notice a strange and fowl stench.  I bend to look at what's living in there and see a tupperware container, it's lid half opened, way in the back.  I reach in, grab the container, lift the lid and find a salad I made two weeks ago.  The lettuce is a sinewy brown mass, the cucumbers and tomatoes have soured and a glutinous gel covers the whole mess.  I hold the container as far away from my nose as I can and hurry to the toilet and dump it in and flush.  In my haste to dump it, some of the glutinous gel has now found its way down the front of the toilet bowl, meshing nicely with the mysterious streaks that were already there.

So, I've come to realize that I need domestic help.  No, not to do the work.  I just need someone to walk behind me and point out everything that I missed, and then bitch a little about it!  And, since I invariably leave a white cotton sock in my colored laundry, and end up having to pick cotton lint off of everything, I need a domestic to look through my laundry and find any fugitive white cotton.

I also seem to have a problem with dust.  Until it reaches the thickness of a No.2  pencil I have problems identifying the need to dust.  By that time I need a scoop to remove it.

So I may hire someone just to come over and bitch at me.  While I'm at it, I may hire someone to come over and program my DVR and "reverse engineer" everything I did with the remote that has me staring at a blue screen for hours.

Should any of you dear readers wish to comment on my shortcomings don't bother to try and "text me".  I wouldn't know a "u" from a "ur" so your efforts would be totally in vain.

Gotta go now and grab the broom...I just noticed bread crumbs and two ancient frito chips under my desk.


Sigh.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

Americans Renouncing Their Citizenship

                                                 
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog called "Man Without A Country; Me".  On that blog I lamented what America has become; an America I no longer recognize.  An America that believes we must punish the productive and reward the lazy.  An America, where the majority now pay no taxes and are satisfied with living off a government check.  An America that has become more socialistic than Communist China, and an America that is all too willing to saddle their children and grandchildren with massive debt and no hope for a better life than we have had.

I also said in that blog that, if I were younger, I would break my lance, retire my steed to pasture and give up dueling with the windmills of injustice.  I would find a little village in some small pocket of the world and tell America to go to hell.

Alas, I'm not alone.  Two days ago I read a news report that, for the first time in our grand history, Americans, by thousands, are now renouncing their American citizenship and opting to live out their lives elsewhere.    The report went on to say that this trend will intensify in the future as America becomes a hodgepodge of foreign invaders and a "victim class" of people who believe the government owes them free health care, free food, racial preference quotas for education, free grants for education, free housing, government debt forgiveness and, last of all, a free monthly government paycheck.

The war against the "producers" in America has been waging for decades.  Beginning with the massive government growth generated by the Great Society legislation in the mid 60's, politicians have found they can secure and maintain political power by establishing a huge block of "victim class" voters who time and time again re-elect politicians who will promise them the most... and ask of them the least.

Battles in this war have been fought state by state.  As state governments in New York, California, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Washington have evolved into state governments ruled by liberal socialists, the productive began to flee those states to other states that maintained the political and social principles that made America great.  That migration is becoming less and less possible.

Alas, the federal government has now grown so massive that it has managed to usurp the power of states to define their own destiny.  This has left both citizen and local government rights, as dictated by the U.S. Constitution, to be trampled by the heavy hand of Washington, D.C.

Whether it be religious freedom or immigration control or school choice, the federal government has made life untenable for those who wish to live in a free America.

With nowhere else in America to escape the long tentacles of the Feds, moral and productive Americans are now voting with their feet....and amazingly to nations that aspire to be what America once was!

Oh, the American dream is still alive, just not in America!   Sadly, those dreams espoused by our founders are emanating from small pockets of freedom seekers in Eastern Europe, in pocket of Asia and anywhere one is rewarded for having a moral compass, a willingness to work and achieve, and a place where achieving wealth and success does not making you a target of those who seek to take what you have earned.

America's fate?  We don't yet know.  Is there hope?  Well, there's hope if one remembers that 240 years ago a small band of patriots stood together against the mightiest power in the world...and defeated it!  And,  after victory, drafted the most powerful "freedom document" ever devised by man.  The very Constitution that is being mangled and trampled upon today.

Are there enough patriots left to turn things around?  Or will they all debark to a land with brighter horizons.  If that happens America will have to settle for "going to pot" in lieu of "the melting pot".

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/facts-and-myths-about-renunciation-of-us-citizenship/

Saturday, April 21, 2012

I "Time-Travel" Every Night To The 1940's!

                                             
I'm sure most of you have heard of 'deja vu', the concept that one has experienced something in the immediacy of now, at a similar place, but at an earlier time.  While I had many deja vu moments when I was younger,  I have none of them now.

Except One:  I have always felt as if I belonged to the 1940's.  I have always loved the old forties music of Glen Miller and Sinatra and the Big Band era.  I look at the clothing styles and find them appealing.  I love a time when newspapers were cheap, plentiful and complete in reflecting all of life.  I love 40's movies like  "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" and "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Casa Blanca".  I even like the idea of living during the 2nd World War when America really pulled together to defeat Tojo and Mussolini and Hitler.

Is it any wonder then that I love the Radio Classics Channel (Channel 82) on XM Sirius Satellite Radio!  Every night I am transported in time to listen to the old radio shows that my parents and grandparents listened to!  As soon as I plopped into bed I tune to Radio Classics and hear Jack Benny and Dragnet and the Green Hornet and Superman and Fibber McGee and Molly!

The station even leaves in the old commercials!  I love them!  Lux soap commercials, Post Grape Nuts Flakes, Lucky cigarettes, Halo shampoo and Chase and Sanborn Coffee!

I've already checked my schedule for tonight!  They'll lead off with Jack Benny, then Fibber McGee and Molly, then an hour of suspense with Suspense and The Shadow!  If my insomnia has kept me awake after that I can look forward to two episodes of "X-Minus One", a science fiction show that pre-dates but is very similar to the 60's TV show, The Twilight Zone.

Got to run, folks!  The Shadow awaits me:  "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow knows!"



Friday, April 20, 2012

Eleven Years Old And Can't Spell "prophylactic"

                                                      "  prophylactic "

When I was eleven years old my pre-teen social group came to know a "world sophisticate" named Chester.  Chester was one of the really "bad guys" in sixth grade.  He was already staining his lungs with cigarettes in the bathroom and, at 13, knew so much more about the opposite sex than we did.

I know I personally was taking my first tentative steps in my exploration of sex.  "Sex", god, it even sounded naughty!  I used to comb through a medical dictionary and seek out the medical terms for the woman's "equipment".  The page with the entry for "vagina" was well worn as I surreptitiously turned to that page many times.  Because this was a medical dictionary it actually showed an illustration of this wondrous body part.  Pornography!  This medical dictionary also had a chapter on sexual intercourse.  (My face flushed with excitement at this term!)  The dictionary had illustrations of the woman on top, the sideways position, and the ever popular "missionary position".  Though I had a rudimentary idea of how sex was supposed to work I really had little comprehension of how one sexual position was superior to any other.

Other than seeing dogs copulating I had no other exposure to the concept of raw sex.  Oh sure, my mother kept old issues of True Confessions and Modern Romance around the house.  Once in a while I would read one of these stories.  I must admit that these stories got my heart racing a bit as I read passages about deep kisses and heavy breathing, and the like.  However, in those moral times, women in these stories, who allowed passion to go beyond the kissing stage, inevitably ended up "preggers" and waiting for their white knight to come fleeing back into the their lives to save them from society's condemnation.  I guess I learned my first moral sex lessons from these stories;  you just NEVER want to get a girl "preggers!"

Then ole Chester came along.  Bad guy.  Man of the World.  Knew all about sex...and was actually having sex!  Just down "C" street, perhaps a block away, and across the street from the little neighborhood grocery, lived "Wild Wanda".  Yes, that is her real first name.  I remember her last name too but will be discreet here, lest Wanda is still living in the realms of old Selma.

Now, we had known Wanda far longer than Chester, the bad guy.  We knew that Wanda was somewhat of a tomboy, that she cussed like a sailor, and that she displayed a great set of gams when wearing those jean cut-offs.  But, never would we have dreamed that little Wanda would prove to be the first girl we knew that "did it!".

Indeed, it was Wanda with whom Chester was "doing it!".  I don't remember the details of where they "did it" but one day Wanda and Chester had apparently lost their place to diddle.  My friend, Corky who lived two doors down from us, and who had a working mom, had the solution.  He offered Chester and Wanda the use of a nylon lawn chair and his empty garage but only  if he was allowed to stand outside the door and "listen".  Wanda and Chester agreed to this and an after school rendezvous was set up for the next day.

Corky, basking in the glow of affording "lovers" with their nest, then proceeded to let us know of the "grand event".  Upon hearing of this luridness, we begged Corky for the opportunity to join him outside the garage door!  As I remember, to become a member of this aural audience, we had to surrender our nickel milk money that morning.

We couldn't wait for the big event and that afternoon we ran the half mile from Roosevelt Junior High school so that we would not miss a single "ahh" or "ooh".  After Wanda and Chester entered the garage, unknowingly serving as our "sexual gladiators" in our arena of sex, we all gathered at the door to listen.

As I remember, we didn't hear much that would have titillated our sexual emotions.  In fact, more than once old Wanda bitched about the nylon straps cutting into her ass...and asking old Chester if he was done yet.  Even with that, we all thought we got our nickel's worth.

The next day at school old bad Chester bragged about nailing old Wanda once again.  We all crowded around to hear all that he was willing to share.  At the conclusion of Chester's sexual lecture he pulled a chain of condoms out of his pants and gave each of us one.  He cautioned "you never want to get a girl "preggers".

I just knew that the world of sex was opening itself to me and, being a Boy Scout, I was going to "be prepared".  I pulled out my  Roy Rogers wallet, slipped the plastic wrapped condom into the bill section of my wallet and walked proudly back to class.    As I sat down at my desk I could literally feel the small lump of that condom in my wallet as it pressed against my behind.  It felt so naughty down there as I listened to the teacher reciting the importance of Hawthorne in our study of American literature.  Once in a while my eyes would wander to one of the girlies in the class and I would wonder if they "did it"..or if they wanted to "do it".

Flash forward to Sunday night of that same week.  I'm at home.  The whole family is there. My brother and I are sitting on the floor.  Bonanza is on and Pa and Adam and Hoss and Little Joe are having another gunfight with the bad guys who are trying to burn the sawmill on the Ponderosa.  I'm getting pretty worked up as Little Joe takes a bullet in the arm!

Before I know it my wallet has slipped out of my back pocket, flips flat and out pops my newly acquired condom!  Right in the middle of the god damned floor.  Soon I hear my little brother John squeal out "a balloon!"..."where'd you get the balloon?"...."I want that balloon!".    I panic!  My face is flushed red and I'm hyperventilating and am praying that the little bastard will shut up and quit drawing attention to my condom!

Miracle of Miracles, my mom is focused on Pa binding up Little Joe's wounded arm and I am finally able to wrest the condom from the greedy hands of my sexually naive little brother.  I stick it back in my wallet, mumble something about needing to go to the bathroom.  While the Cartwright family are whipping bad guy's ass I'm fleeing out the back door, walking out to the burn barrel and dropping my condom in it.

As I head back to the house I contemplate the degree of my loss.  I've lost round one in the development of the "sexual me".  I no longer feel as assured that I'll be ready when sexual nirvana meets opportunity.  After all, the last thing I want to do is get her "preggers".

Oh well, I retreat, back to the safety of our living room where Pa and Adam and Hoss and Little Joe are basking in the glow of victory....and they seem so happy, though there are no women on the Ponderosa and they have little need for condoms.  I figured I could wait a bit longer before I would need one either.


Thursday, April 19, 2012

Romney/Republicans; Tie One Hand Behind Their Back

                                                 
I like Mitt Romney.  I think he's a very intelligent, kind and decent man.  No, he wasn't my first choice as a candidate for President, but he'll do.  However, Romney is not likely to defeat Barack Obama and the Republicans will not garner an overwhelming majority in Congress, as is their goal.

Why?  Because Romney and Republican congressional candidates have tied one hand behind their back, thus making it easy for Obama and the Democrats to demagogue Republicans as the party of the rich.

I don't believe this is true.  I think the real enemy of the working man, and the working poor, are free-spending Democrats whose failure to join with the Republicans in cutting spending will eventually destroy  our social service safety net.  Compounding this massive failure to address the deficit will be the eventual storm of high inflation which always follows the easy money policies the Fed has managed for over three years now.

Let's look at how the Republicans will lose this one:

1)  Obama flits around the country promoting the "Buffett Rule", that seemingly magic fix for our budget problems.  Never mind that Obama's actual proposal is really taxing far more people than just millionaires.  While Obama squeals for a squeeze of "millionaires and billionaires" his actual proposal raises the taxes on anyone who makes over $200,000 dollars per year.

2) Americans love the sound of soaking it to the rich, especially the tens of millions who draw a check from the government.  Yes, the 52% who pay no income taxes.  Americans do not care to dig any deeper than Obama's demogoguery.  It's far too easy to attack the "fat cats".

3) The Republicans are bound and determined that we not raise the taxes on anyone.  They claim that far too many of those "millionaires" are really small businesses that gross a million a year but who fall far below millionaire status.  That's fine as far as it goes.  Fine, go ahead and say that.  However, when Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Mike Bloomberg are begging to have their taxes raised, why in hell won't Republicans raise them?  To counter Obama's goofy Buffett Rule proposal why won't the Republicans show compromise?  Why won't they say "okay, while we are concerned about job losses by punishing small business, we agree that those netting over, say, a million a year, yeah, let's raise their taxes".  But we absolutely oppose your plan to raise taxes on families making $200k per year".

This would take the wind out of Obama's class warfare ploy and then we can all take a good look at how much revenue these billionaires and millionaires would give us!   The Congressional Budget Office has already estimated new revenue of not more than $50 million dollars and would fund Obama's deficit spending for 38 minutes!  The Republicans could then throw the ball back to Obama's court and ask "how, now, Mr. President do you propose trimming that $2 trillion dollar per year deficit?

4) Mitt Romney and the Republican Congressional candidates are, for the most part, "mush-mouths".  They will never be able to talk as smoothly as Obama.  One reason is because Republicans tend to deal with the reality of life while Democrats paint bright and lovely dreams of making everyone healthy and wealthy and wise...but the dreams have no solidity to them.

Witness the Democrats' phony War on Women, based solely on conservative opposition to publicly fund birth control pills and late stage abortions.  Not one conservative, not even Rush Limbaugh, said women shouldn't have access to birth control; they simply don't believe we have to borrow more money from China to pay for it!

Yet, Democrats are winning the propaganda war.  Obama is winning his race war and his class warfare war.  Dems have come out swinging and providing what too many people want: easy answers.
The Republicans, like good parents, are pointing out the pitfalls and the costs for those easy answers.

And they do so with one hand tied behind their back.  If Republicans lose in November, we all lose folks.  This nation cannot endure another four years of Obama's broken promises.



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

"When I'm 64...today"



If you go to the website for the American Cancer Society you'll find all kinds of information about treatments and survival rates for all types of cancer.   The five year survival rates for lung cancer is a miserable 15%.  When I was diagnosed with lung cancer five years ago I went to the ACS site, read those chilling stats and began putting all important documents in one place and planning for death.

The ACS uses the five year point as a marker for declaring victory over the cancer because the prevalence of a return of the cancer is so overwhelming.  After surgery and six months of chemotherapy I began living my life tentatively and timidly; waiting for the Big C to come roaring back.  The chemo affected just about every hormone in my body and stirred things up, much as one of those tornadoes "re-arrange the furniture" in the midwest.  Every time I go for a checkup my blood tests results would serve as a good case study for assessing the affects of chemo toxicity on the human body.

Yet, here I am, five years later, one of the lucky 15 per centers.  It has now been five years since surgery and my last chemo session.  Like those first round bonus babies in football and baseball who garner huge signing bonuses, I too was given a huge bonus, in years, rather than money.  (If you were to ask Steve Jobs which is the greater reward he would have opted for life!)

I have no idea why I'm still here while others, far more worthy, have passed on.  My son passed too early.  The little girl in Tuscon who died in a hail of gunfire from a mad man deserved better.  Little Aliya Shell, six years old, who died at the hands of gang bangers in Chicago last month, deserved to live long enough to wear makeup, put on her first prom dress, and find the love of her life, deserved more.

I only know I'm here.  I've stopped questioning the will of our creator.  Maybe those who have passed are going to a greater reward far superior to what this life has to offer.  I lived to see two grand babies born and two others grow up to be beautiful young ladies.

Perhaps my soul requires further "refinement".  That wouldn't surprise me.  I really believe that if I could see God's report card on me he would be giving me a "C" for work and an "B+" for effort.  Like everyone else, to become a better person I have to overlook the negative experiences of my life and opt not to use them as a crutch, or an excuse, for not becoming all that He wishes me to be.

My accomplishments?  I served my country for 22 years, sometimes in peril and sometimes when loneliness was the only threat.  I was a good son to my mom.  I am one of the few who ever gave mouth-to-mouth to a poisoned puppy and fed it milk and sat up with it for eight hours, until it quit banging it's head against a wall and swaying like a drunken sailor...and was rewarded to see it completely recover.
I've written some poetry that I think is pretty good.  I've chronicled the lives of family so the later generations may know something of their past.  I've learned to "let go" of my loved ones so that they can sink or soar on their own.  I've planted trees that will give shaded comfort and sweet scents long after I've passed.

I will probably never write "the great American novel".  I will never be President.  I will likely never have my "15 minutes of fame".  Yet, there once walked a man on this earth who spoke of simple things and is majestically remembered in an essay called "One Solitary Life".  I've always loved that essay that chronicles the life of a man who lived for a brief three decades, but is remembered, and honored, some two thousand years after his death.

So, it may very well be that "simple" is a good enough remembrance.  Maybe I'll be remembered for making Chocolate Gravy one morning for my kids.  Maybe they'll remember a wacky Elvis impersonation, with lip curl and guttural rock and roll playfulness.  Maybe for a ghost story well told.  Maybe for the look of pride in my eyes at a child's achievement.

Maybe I have yet to build the legacy that assures my immortality.  Maybe that's why I'm still here.  My creator has decided that I must stick around until I achieve a better grade.  In the stillness of night, when the soul is more attuned to "the fates", when the noise of the day has quieted, He whispers to me and says "I'll let you know when it's time".

Meanwhile, I'll continue to enjoy the beauty of a sunrise, a "heart-melt" when I stare upon the visage of my children and grandchildren, when I hear the heart-stirring beauty of lyric and music, or, grandest of all, when the love of my family bathes me in the warmth of belonging.

Happy Birthday To Me.



Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Deareljay and Johnny-Mike's Excellent Adventures

                                               
My birthday arrives this week and, with every succeeding birthday, I become more nostalgic about everything that's gone before.  I have been writing recently about how, as I get older, the fog of ancient activity is lifted and the memories of long ago come flooding back in technicolor brilliance.

Some of my fondest memories are of the years when we had so little of the material world that the love and essence of family became paramount.  This week my brother and his wife sent me a photo collage of our extended family.  It is absolutely true that every picture tells a story, for as I looked upon the faces staring back at me from that lovely collage, I was taken back to a time and place when the warm cocoon of family enveloped me, protected me...and loved me.

My brother and I are the only ones left from our immediate family.  Since we live a distance apart I have to keep up with him through the ether realms of Facebook.  But, as I said, as we get older God peels back the fog and affords us a clear-eyed view of the golden days of youth.  My, some of them were indeed golden.

I remember when our little town of Selma was a pastoral playground and the weekend streets and sidewalks belonged to kids.  In the days before "Mortal Combat" and other video games, we created our own fun and adventure.

My brother and I lived just a block from the canal that runs along Mill street (?).  Hot summer days would find us sneaking down to the canal and plunging into the swift flowing and ice cold water.  Dumb but fun.

When Safeway opened a grocery store two blocks from our house on "C" street we rode our bikes down there and checked out our next foray.  What we found was a loading dock behind the store.  Safeway had been ingenious enough to build the loading dock below street level.  Directly behind the store they had laid your standard eight inch wide curbing set right on the edge of the loading dock drop-off.  Our youthful minds looked over our thee inch wide balloon bike tires, took a sharpshooter's assessment of that eight inch curbing, factored in a six or eight foot drop off to the dock below, and somehow decided we'd like to ride our bikes on that curbing, with the goal not to bring our bikes, and our fragile selves, toward crashing down on the hard concrete of loading dock below.  Somehow we survived several early evenings of mayhem.  Dumb but fun.

  One hot summer night my neighbor friend, Corky, my brother, John,  and I, were sleeping out in the back yard.  We kept talking about how hot it was, and how nice it would be to be swimming in the city pool.  We wondered if it would be possible to sneak into the pool at night and have a swim.  Apparently someone equally stupid had those same thoughts because the city had erected an eight foot fence around the pool.  Undaunted, we got our swim suits and walked the six blocks or so to the park and pool.  Upon arrival we reconointed the area and discovered a hole in their security.  Just adjacent to the pool fence was a set of wooden bleachers.  We deducted that if we were to climb the first set of bleachers we could leap from them, to the pool fence and over into aquatic nirvana.  It worked!  Well, kinda.  When I leaped from the bleachers to the fence I brought with me a four inch hunk of wood embedded into the sole of my left foot.  About the girth of a No. 2 pencil this was far beyond "splinter" class.  We're talking real lumber here.  Never the less, we were in and spent a good half hour dog paddling and swimming all over that pool!

                                     
We then left and I limped home, taking with me a hunk of pine in the bottom of my foot.  Now keep in mind, when you're ten years old you have no knowledge of tetanus so the only concern I had was how to get that hunk of lumber out of my foot without the aid, or knowledge of my mom.  I haven't a clue how I masked the pronounced limp I had for a good summer month, but somehow I got away with it.  Eventually, the pressure from walking, and the accompanying tissue damage around a foreign object, caused the skin on the bottom of my foot to begin splitting, allowing access to the wood chip.  I recall soaking the foot in a tub of water which softened the skin around the wood and allowed me to painlessly remove it from my foot.  Through the rest of the summer I had a deep and pronounced open ridge on the bottom of my foot and, thankfully, eventually it filled in and I returned to "pre-pool trespass" shape.  Dumb but fun.

I've saved our best "excellent adventure" for last.  If you look at this pool photo, you'll see a sand colored building in the background.  That building was the old Selma High School gymnasium.  Flowing northward on those same grounds was the old Selma High School.  The old high school was a majestic multi-story building that extended for a good city block.  When city officials floated a bond to build a new high school they condemned this proud and majestic old building.  Now, for those of you who don't understand, there is very little more intriguing to a young boy than the idea of checking out a condemned building.  One morning, my friends Augie and Corky and my brother, John and I strolled down the two blocks from our home to the old school.  We began assessing potential access areas and quickly found a broken window and crawled through to an area that was probably the storage basement.  Allowing our eyes to adjust to the dark we moved past a strange looking contraption that looked like a children's slide.  For the moment we by-passed it and began moving up the various floors of the building, mesmerized by old school papers and books and chalkboards and the refuse typical of an abandoned school.

We finally came upon what today would be termed "emergency exits".  What we found when we opened those doors would result in a good hour of entertainment, better than any Disney or carnival ride!  What we found was a huge, multi-floor emergency slide that was once used to ferry high school youth through the bowels of the building and safely away from a potential fire.  We immediately grasped the idea of a long, long slide through the depths of the building.  We calculated the distance from top to bottom and grasped some rudimentary idea of the speed one's body could be catapulted through the depths.  And we were just smart enough to be a little afraid.  Alas, not afraid enough.  Certainly not smart enough to think that, if some maintenance man had disconnected the slide at any level of the building we would be plunged, flailing in open air to our deaths far below.  I believe it was Augie who first put his life in jeopardy by entering the chute and taking the first plunge.  Once we heard from far below that he was still alive, we too entered the chute and slid and were swept in all directions in our descent!

After everyone had taken the first plunge we were eager to do it again and again.  Finally, tiring of it, we crawled back out the back of the old school and stood grinning at each other and squinting our eyes in the bright summer sun.  We laughed like hyenas, then took a look at ourselves.  We were black ghosts, our faces covered in soot, our clothes blanketed in soot.  I don't remember how we got home without being caught, how we got cleaned up without being caught, or how we got those clothes clean enough to be deemed "normal wear and tear" for my mom's laundry day.   But, God, did we have fun.  We didn't come to vandalize, we broke no windows and we took nothing from that old school, except a wonderful memory to endure a lifetime.

Dumb but fun.




Monday, April 16, 2012

Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber

                                                   
If President Obama continues his current rate of deficit spending the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that 80% of all tax revenue will go toward servicing just the interest on that massive debt.

The Medicare program is scheduled to be bankrupt by 2017.

During the last decade we have spent approximately $3 trillion dollars trying to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan.

The federal government is spending more than a trillion dollars more than we take in every year.

Our national debt is $16 trillion dollars and our total "unfunded liabilities" which include debt payments, social security and medicare exceeds $73 trillion dollars.

The number of two parent families have fallen by 50% in the last three decades.

80% of single parent families fall below the poverty line and must seek government assistance.

Republicans are too stubborn to accept tax increases for millionaires and Democrats are too cowardly to admit to their constituents that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid payments must be cut since they represent over 70% of all government expenditures.

For the first time in our recorded history has the President of the United States refused to enforce our immigration laws.

During the past 30 years America has lost over 30 million manufacturing jobs.

For the first time in our country's history we have more people who pay no taxes (52%) than those who do.

Three times more people are now on Food Stamps than three years ago.

Over twelve million homes are awaiting foreclosures.

Nationally, over 50% of high school students will not graduate from high school.

Nationally, almost 80% of first year college students require remedial reading courses to bring them up to a 12th grade reading level.

The American people are so enamored with pop culture that they have little time to exercise their responsibilities as citizens; educate themselves about issues that affect their every day lives.

American democracy is crumbling because less than 50% of eligible voters actually go out and vote.

Okay...now you can go back to reading only about Kim, Jennifer and Justin.

Sigh....

Saturday, April 14, 2012

"Illegals on Welfare and Naive Americans"

I can't count how may times I've read a message board on illegal immigration and read an American's post that says "illegals don't draw welfare", because they're not citizens.  Today, I'm going to cite proof that illegals do indeed draw welfare and a host of other social services.  Sure, there are a certain class of liberals that will deny the truth and will continue to avoid the facts.  This is for those who still possess sound reasoning skills.

First of all, all anchor babies are eligible for welfare and all other social benefits; it matters not that both parents are illegal.  Mexicans know this, take full advantage of it, and just hope and pray that enough Americans continue to be in the dark about this practice.  All that is needed to apply for welfare is to carry a certified copy of the anchor baby's birth certificate to sign up for welfare in the child's name. 

According to the latest census information, as reported by judicial watch, an astounding 75% of all illegals with an American born child, are receiving welfare benefits.  This is higher than any group of American citizens in any ethnic group.
http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/04/05/most-illegal-immigrant-families-collect-welfare/

http://www.judicialwatch.org/

Folks, as the government contemplates a government shutdown over the Republican's measly proposal to cut $61 billion from a $3.75 Trillion dollar budget, let's look at a few facts.  The Federal government's social programs are rife with waste, fraud and abuse.  According to this administration's own figures they say there is more than $700 billion of fraud in the Medicare system alone.  Obama plans to find $500 billion of it to finance his Obama care.  If government were to apply that same diligence to ferreting out fraud in FHA, The Student Loan Program, WIC, Welfare and Social Security SSI programs several hundred billion more is there to be saved.  Sure, we have more than our share of American citizens gaming every social program we have, to include gambling with Food Stamp debit cards and faking disability to receive Social Security disability.  Let's deal with our citizens who are cheating.

But first, let's deal with the cheating of those who have no business being here in the first place.  Let me present a scenario that plays out in America every single minute of every day:

1) Jose and Maria are smuggled into the U.S. so Maria can have an "American baby"
2) After the anchor baby is born Jose and Maria hightailed it up to the Welfare office to apply for welfare in the "anchor baby citizen"'s name.  While there downtown anyway, they sign up for WIC which gets them alot of groceries. 
3) Jose takes a job with a building contractor that's willing to pay him $20 bucks an hour in cash, no benefits.
Jose gets paid $2500 dollars per month in cash.
4) Maria takes a job as a hotel maid using a stolen social security number.  Maria makes $2,000 per month.
5) Little anchor baby is pulling in $1,000 dollars a month in welfare, just by being born here.

So how's things going for Maria and Jose?  $5,500 dollars per month in income!  A WIC debit card that pays for their groceries!  Free medicaid and dental care for little anchor baby and if either adult needs medical they just hop on over to the nearest Emergency Room!

But hold it!  The gravy doesn't stop there!  The IRS requires that everyone file an income tax return, regardless of legal status.  To accommodate Jose and Maria, the IRS issues a form W7 Individual Income Tax Return (INIT) for illegal citizens.  (The IRS is not allowed to provide the tax filer's address to Immigration and Naturalization, by law!)  Now Jose and Maria file a W7INIT to the IRS and claim Maria's $24,000 dollar income.  The IRS sees that this falls within the range so they send Jose and Maria a check for $3,000 for little anchor baby for a Child Tax Credit plus everything Maria paid in payroll taxes!

http://www.cis.org/child-tax-credits

I won't even get into the education programs; the overcrowded classrooms, the hundreds of billions spent to build schools to accommodate all the illegal kids or the preferential treatment they get in our nation's universities  Nor will I get into the tens of billions in the costs of illegal crime and the costs to incarcerate them.  The costs are staggering!

Why does all this go on?  Three reasons:  1) Dems encourage it because they are trying to build a huge hispanic voting block to keep them in power 2)  Businesses love illegals because they love cheap labor 3) You, the American people, sit there like dummies and pay for all this without complaint.


Is it any wonder then that illegals are marching in the streets against any attempt to stop illegal immigration?  These 20 plus million illegals are riding a gravy train that American citizens can only dream of!  When you see the hate and anger on those illegals' faces as they march in the streets, now you know damn well why!

So, folks, if you want to keep drinking the liberal Kool-Aid, by all means do so; but when they start raising your taxes even higher...and when they begin cutting your American citizen mom and pop's social security...and when Uncle Sam finally admits that we are bankrupt, you'll know why.

And yet......other than a small band of Tea Party folks, I don't see many of you speaking up, or writing your Congressmen...or marching in the streets against this massive foreign invasion and the rape of our social service system.
                                                      
Many liberals and open amnesty advocates said you can't send em home; it would cost $50 billion dollars!  Hell, it's costing us over a $trillion state and federal dollars every year to keep em.  America, get a back bone and Round up the buses!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

My Love Affair With Spam

                                               
About 20 years ago someone, somewhere, in some small pocket of America, started a joke about Spam.  Somehow it caught on and dozens upon dozens of Spam jokes began to surface in the cocktail bars and around the office water coolers of America.  It became fashionable to laugh at anyone who could even tolerate Spam in their diet.

Just a very few years later those dreaded ads began imposing themselves into your email inbox and the junk email began to labeled as Spam.  I really hated to see that happen.  I believe Spam got a bad rap, probably because I've always loved Spam.

For those of you who may not know it, Spam became popular in America during World War II.  During the war fresh meat was one of the many things rationed.  America, geared toward allocating nearly  every commodity toward war production, or feeding our troops, imposed strict rationing for any item needed for the war effort.  Spam was not, thus it became quite popular as a meat course during those war years.

Ironically, our troops also consumed tons of Spam throughout both the European and Pacific theaters.  My Uncle, who served with Patton's division in Europe ate so much of it that, following the war, he vowed to never eat it again for the rest of his life...and didn't!  But that didn't stop the civilian populace from taking a liking to it.  In fact, the Hormel company can tell you which states consume the most Spam, and for 65 years that state has been Hawaii!  It seems that, immediately after the war, the Defense Department had tons of Spam sitting in warehouses in Hawaii.  Because most all of Hawaiian foodstuffs must be shipped from the mainland, Hawaiians have always had to pay higher grocery prices than the rest of us.  When some clever entrepreneur relieved the Defense Department of their military surplus Spam tonnage, he began selling Spam throughout the islands.  Hawaiians gobbled it up!  My family and I were stationed with the Air Force in Hawaii for ten years and we avidly participated in the Hawaiian Spam craze.  Nearly every restaurant offers a choice of bacon, sausage or Spam with your morning eggs.  The favorite beach side lunch in Hawaii is called a "starchy plate" which consists of macaroni salad, potato salad, steamed rice and two or three slices of fried spam.  Go to Ala Moana Beach or Waikiki at noon time and watch the local swimmers and surfers downing a starchy plate for lunch!

Spam, for me, goes back to my childhood.  We ate a lot of it because we often could not afford fresh meat.  But, even today some of my favorite recipes are made with Spam.  For example, we love to combine the elements of asian food with spam.  My personal favorite are fresh stir-fried green beans with slices of fried Spam and a side of steaming white rice.  So good!  And, in lieu of pork or chicken, we slice and cut Spam into small cubes in our asian fried rice.  As they say in Hawaii, "so ono (good)".

The uses of Spam in meals are endless:  Spam, lettuce and tomato sandwiches on lightly toasted bread, Spam omelets, or simply slices of fried Spam with the morning eggs, ala Hawaii.

I recently read the Hormel annual stock report.  It seems that Hormel is doing great in this great recession of ours, largely due to the explosive sales growth of good ole Spam!  I suspect those "end of the worlders", those "survivalists" who are none to happy with the world these days, are also stockpiling Spam up there in Idaho too!  I would also think that folks, given a choice of having their home foreclosed upon, or choosing Spam over sirloin, are putting away Spam as well.

So, ease up on the Spam jokes, folks!  Pick up a few cans the next time you've in your local grocery.  Try the recipes for it...or just lay a few cans away in the cupboard, just in case those "99 percenters" take to the streets and raise havoc!  :)


Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Love Those 50's Commercials

                                               
I hate today's TV commercials.  They are loud and irritating and, thanks to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, they run those spoken caveats at the end of the ad; caveats that are spoken so quickly the human ear cannot comprehend them...or, when in print, are so small you couldn't possibly read and understand it in the 15 seconds allotted to meet FCC rules.

I especially hate those drug company commercials that are designed to get you to mention it to your doctor and drive sales.  But, because the FDA makes these drug companies list all of the side effects, you kind of figure you're better off with whatever condition they were designed to cure.

All of us know today's TV ads are dishonest as hell and are really no better than those we "elders" use to see on the boob tube in the 50's.  The big difference between then and now is that the old 50's commercials made us feel safe and made us eager to try the product being hyped.

Let's take cigarettes for example.  Today you won't find many ads for cigarettes.  They've pretty much been banned on TV and for most of the print media.  But back in the 50's, when 80% of America smoked cigarettes, the big tobacco companies went to great lengths to explain how smokes were cool, stylish...and actually good for you!   It seems inconceivable to us now but back then all of the tobacco companies had armies of doctors on the payroll to promote cigarette smoking.  The Doc would appear in print or TV and praise the smoothness of a particular brand..and how you would never suffer from "harsh throat" because their cigarettes were smooth..."and they are mild".  Doctors further advised that, when you are facing the stress of work or the day's ever-present conflicts, you need to lean back and smoke a Lucky or a Camel and your BP and heart rate would return to normal.  You felt great knowing you were following "doctor's orders".

Then along came the nation's Chief Doctor, the Surgeon General, who came out in 1965 and informed the nation that smoking causes lung cancer!  WTF!  Lung Cancer?  You mean that rosy-cheeked doctor who told me more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette was lying?  How could this happen?

And it wasn't just cigarettes!  In the 50's, if we used Head and Shoulders we would rid ourselves of dreaded dandruff immediately!  Serutan was a laxative that was "nature spelled backwards" and would assure you a gentle, hell even enjoyable bowel movement!  If you drank Coca Cola you could advance world peace, if you drank Dr. Pepper you were a "pepper" who surfed and swam with nubile young bikini-clad girls who would do anything to make you happy.  Pepsi tried mightily to outsell Coke by giving you four additional ounces; "Pepsi Cola hits the spot, 12 full ounces and that's a lot!"

In the 50's Kellogs and Post and General Mills were "pushers", hooking America's kids on Silly Rabbits,
Tony the Tiger, Yogi Bear, Sugar Bear and all manner of cuddly icons that assured parents that breakfast cereal would provide energy for your kids throughout the day...and indeed they did provide a burst of energy...about an hour after eating those 20 spoonfuls of sugar in a bowl of Sugar Smacks!  Your kids would be on a sugar high that was quite the thing to see!

Yes, I miss all those old 50's commercials.  They provided the hope that, if we consumed the products, we would be healthy, handsome, hearty and just make us damn fine people!

The FDA has just recently won a court ruling that forces cigarette makers to portray black lungs, smokers with holes in their throats, smokers with leathery brown faces on packs of their cigarettes.  Drug companies promoting an osteoporosis drug must now tell you that your risk of cancer increases by taking the drug, Head and Shoulders have stopped telling you they can cure dandruff.

Sigh, I miss the old days when, if you were having a bad day, you could pop a stick of Doublemint gum in your mouth, sit back and imagine those nubile young Doublemint twins with tight sweaters and "snow-cone" bras telling you how handsome and cool you are.