Thursday, October 30, 2008

"Liberal" Women Who Lie To Themselves

Liberal women were all drooling and cheering over Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, but when Sarah Palin arrived on the scene, suddenly they focussed on Obama as their hero.

I could make national headlines if I hung Obama in effigy as a "Halloween decoration" - and back east I'd probably go to jail for a hate crime, get hate mail and death threats. But the news media thinks it's funny that a liberal hangs Sarah Palin in effigy.

You can't have it both ways. Either you really do admire a woman who has worked her ass off (in a "man's world") to achieve all that she has achieved, or you don't. Either you are honest or you are allowing yourself to be played by the liberal angst and fanaticism to only like certain women who fit a certain ideal - and all the others are nonentities, scrap on the man-pile, grist for the man-mill. Women who pontificate about how men have kept them down or abused women are amazingly silent on the Palin effigy. They should be outraged. They should be angry. Yet - they are not. What does that tell you about their real agendas, their honesty, their integrity, and their admiration? That they are all lies. Maybe they truly don't know that they are lying to themselves, but they are.

When it is ok, even FUNNY, to hang a white woman in effigy, but not ok to put a noose in a tree or on a locker, depending on who the victim is, that completely decimates their whole politically-correct mantras, and exposes them for what they are - mouth breathing, media-run panderers to liberalism and falsehood.

Don't talk to me about supporting rights for all, and equality, and fairness. You wouldn't know fairness if it dragged you into a courtroom and prosecuted you for your own stupidity and gullibility. You wouldn't know equality and freedom, hiding behind your support for only 'particular' women whom you are told should be admired. And most importantly, you are living and promulgating a lie, a falsehood, a weak-kneed pathetic attempt at fair play that only separates, not unifies, women... and patting yourselves on the backs for it!

Go play with your other weak minded liberal simpletons, and grouse about how women are STILL treated shabbily, isn't it AWFUL, we need to get behind a woman who is independent and forthright and not only believes in what she says but acts on it. Go pee in your own sandbox and try to cover it up. The grownups are talking. Don't bother us.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Exactly Why

A good friend of mine wrote this week once again that he believes, he KNOWS, that we must return to the gold standard both nationally and globally. However, in his post, down near the end, he wrote, "It would scuttle the grand plans of the political con artists who yearn to get rich by running the paper-money printing press overtime." And that to me is exactly why we will not ever return to a gold standard.

People don't even understand the basics of economics. Not their fault; of course, they believe what they are taught and told by people whom they trust, from teachers to professors to politicians. They don't understand that the stock market is a large imaginary, mutually-agreed-upon loss and profit quagmire. Its promotion solely depends on those who will profit the most from it. In good times, this is fine, it's ok, to be a little bullish, faithful, aggressive. In bad times, bearish times, folks are frightened. But of what? Common sense will dictate your investments, if you understand enough to ignore the hoopla and passion and to determine for yourself where the next boom (or bust) will lie. Never play with money that you don't have, don't trust a certificate but cold cash. Simple - yet all too easily run amok by ugly and talentless American Idol wannabes who know that people, especially gullible uneducated people, will follow hype instead of reason. Nevertheless, remember in the back of your mind that until your stock splits or sells and you have cash in hand, the whole stock market is purely imaginary; betting on products or services that have not even been invented yet. The dot com boom and bust, the Enron debacle, the housing boom and bust - all of these were led by people who knew exactly what they were doing and how money works - and who overhyped their products and seduced the gullible (as well as paid off the politicians) to keep their pockets lined at John Q's expense. They counted on the fantasy and excitement, the get-rich-quick eagerness and swallow-it-whole philosophy of the purposefully, determinedly ignorant. (The top three orchestrators of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle are now Obama's financial advisors. Hand in glove, hand in glove, follow the money!)

Our dollars are built on the same fantasy, the same false sense of security. They have no grounding in gold, no basis in anything valuable and rare. If you print more dollar bills based on nothing at all, then you are being paid with nothing, are spending nothing. It is for this reason that prices of everything go up and the dollar's worth declines. The fantasy is fine and it works - for a little while - as long as people believe in it. But when it stops working - as it inevitably does, as more and more dollars are printed with no basis for their value - then people start scrabbling around for something that they can trade, or hold, that is valuable.

It is for this reason I believe that, by either force or suasion, the governments of the world will gather up all of the gold held in the hands of individuals. As governments take over banking and finance for their countries, they and they alone must hold the basis of that finance to make a profit or even to stay solvent and stable.

Have you ever known anything run by a government bureaucracy to make a profit or even to stay stable financially? Their attitude of - "If we need more money, will just raise taxes!" or "If we need more money, will just print more!" has gotten us where we are today. And it is a fantasy swallowed whole once again by the American people. There's really no hope for those who insist that they know nothing about economics, but insist on letting, even demanding, that their government or their stockbroker buy them into prosperity.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Don't Bug Me - My State's Voted

OK, well, part of us have.
Several years ago, the State Legislature took into account that they were spending a lot of money to open polling places and keep them open 12 hours. In our very rural areas, it was a huge waste of money and time. So what they do now is - the second week of October, they send out paper ballots to every registered voter, with self-addressed stamped envelopes to the county Election Commission. You fill out your ballot at home, pop it into the envelope, and mail it off. No voting machine expense; no machines to break down or to be tampered with. No poll workers and poll managers to pay. You can take an hour or more to read the amendments and questions, if you want. And no one stands behind you at a machine, no one stands waiting on the porch. Fill in the circles, zip, pop, sign, done.

Our county Election Commission folk are the most laid back people you'd ever want to meet. They'll sit and chat with you for an hour or more - about everything, about nothing. Why not? No stress. No problems. Everyone does what they are supposed to do; the folks who get the ballots can read and write, understand the importance of what they do, and send them back promptly, clean and crisp, just like they received them.

Out in the County, no one talks politics. Well, maybe some local politics - like Joe has seven kids and doesn't need to be on this Board any more, he's tired and wants to quit... no ranting, no screaming, no in-yer-face THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO. Every once in awhile a TIC or sharp little comment about Obama, but that's all; eyebrows and shoulders shrugging, no fanatical shrieking. It is a given that the Fed Gov will screw us no matter who we put in; nature of the beast, not as important as getting the calves loaded in the trucks this morning.

You know, in SC this could never happen. Too many emotional people and too much angst and mayhem, last minute 'revelations' that, for people who know how to read and who vote on lasting reason instead of burbling passion, are not revelations at all, but simply examples of what they already knew. Unlike the fellow we worked on in the wreck one Election Day, who told us he couldn't go to the hospital, that he had already voted in Point South, Ridgeland, Bluffton, and Switzerland, and still had to vote in Hardeeville and Savannah before the polls closed, or the infamous Jasper County Election Commission member who showed up to the Election Commission office with three hundred signed and voted absentee ballots in his hand; no cheating, no lying, no posturing for this candidate or that. It's over.

So all of those screaming and hissing telemarketers and pollsters can be ignored with the simple phrase, "Already voted". We have more important things to do now. Go away.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Making New BlogFriends (Who Really Dug the Hole?)

I still get emails from all of my fun Conspiracy Theorist friends. We have great times, sending each other links, ranting about this or that. The other day I got an email from a friend, that had a link to a blog in it to a fella named Ron Smith, a talk show host and fellow ranter in Baltimore. Well, his disgust with Congress and the media were evident. He asked, "Who Dug the Hole?" in which we now find ourselves, and demanded that Congress stop pandering to multibillionaire concerns. So, well, I wrote him an email back...

Dear Ron -

It is so easy to blame Congress for the woes of the economic collapse, and
the media for ignoring and ridiculing Ron Paul. But, as Walt Kelly stated in
his long-ago (but still pertinent) cartoon political commentary - "we have
met the enemy, and he is US!"

WE as a nation have repetitively sneered at people like Ron Paul, while
supporting fiscal irresponsibility and social injustice in the forms of
Senators like Obama and McCain, or Presidents like Bush and Carter. WE as a
nation insist that our children learn black or Native American history and
literature as separate entities, while ignoring economic and uniracial
history. WE as a nation demanded cheap Wal Mart products, even after their
melamine killed our pets by the thousands, and their powdered milk - spiked
with the same plastic - is now killing thousands of children. WE as a nation
demanded housing for everyone, whether they had any inclination or
ability to repay the loans for that housing or not. WE as a nation have
decided that robbing Peter to pay Paul is more than expedient, it is morally
right and cosmically just - as long as we are Paul and not Peter. People get
the government that they deserve.

WE as a nation demanded that news be entertainment, not facts. WE as a
nation refuse to read anything but publications that originate in our
country, never taking into account the opinions or experiences of people in
other nations. Worse, if anyone 'across the pond' dared to comment on what
we did, they were suddenly the Anti-Christ - as if WE were alone the
purveyors of truth, justice, knowledge, and religious fervor itself. WE
encouraged the lack of education in our schools, so that newspapers are now
written on a fourth grade reading comprehension level - those newspapers
that have survived the lack of interest and knowledge of the American
people. WE demanded that our children learn that everyone gets a prize,
instead of the fruits of honest work and competition.

WE elected these pandering, mouth-breathing, vacuous morons to office, and
we keep re-electing them as long as they promise to save us from ourselves.
WE not only dug the hole, we urinated and defecated in it to fill it, and
what sprouted was something not rich and strange, but twisted and unhealthy
and rotten from within. So to hear the blame placed at the feet of the
morons whom WE chose to plant into this pit of excrement is to deny that
they are the fruit of our self-enforced lack of reasoning, character, and
willingness to work for ourselves and succeed on our own. WE are a nation of
pasty-faced, whining, ignorant, emotion-driven slugs, with grasping pincers
in our ever-open mouths, looking for the next 'reality' show to give us
meaning to our empty and worthless lives. WE got what we asked for - why is
anyone surprised, shocked, or even angry about it?

Dear Wiley,

This is one of the best rants I've ever read. Not only is there much truth in it, but the passion is so great and the expression so keen, I can only offer my sincere admiration for what you've written.


Cheers,
Ron

It's nice sometimes to communicate with people who still, in spite of everything, can read, write, and comprehend.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

All I can say is...wow

Yup, I'm working at the high school across the street.

This is a very weird place.

Yesterday half of the school was gone. To a cattle-judging clinic. Today and tomorrow there are a bunch of kids out - they are showing cattle in Rapid City, or helping their parents move their cattle to another pasture. All of these absences are excused. WHAT? Unheard of! Preposterous!

But why?

These high school kids have purpose and direction. They know what they want to do with their lives, and are - happy. Yes, HAPPY. Not for them the teenager angst, rebellion, drugs, suicides - nope. Their pants are cinched tightly at their waists. There's no graffiti, no gangsign.The bathrooms all have doors. Some lockers stand open, and are not gone into or broken. They know how to wear their hats - and to take them off inside. They are doing what they love and daily learning more about it. The classes they take are classes like marketing, Agriculture research, economics... oh, yes, and literature and history and geometry and trig. Everything they learn relates to the world around them. This weekend we have two kids going to the tryouts for the State choir. We have a band that practices every day after school, and really rocks the football games - and two (count em - two) performing choirs. All in a school of 150.

You could say that it is the smaller classes and personal attention that makes a difference. And that might be true to a certain extent. But the teachers here WANT to be here, love the area, know what they are teaching, and work together to interrelate instruction at all levels. Everything they learn relates to what they already are, and where they are going, what they want to be. Some are going to be lawyers and doctors - some of course vets and ranchers. But all are eager to learn, come to school every day, most early so that they can get a head start on their first class.

Class times and even class change times are quiet; the kids are intent on where they are going and what they are doing next. No one stands in the halls or takes off without signing out - and a good reason. Kids that DO start to slack off or go astray immediately are called in to the principal's office along with their parents, and everyone puts their heads together to figure out how to make this child's life better, how to help him to get what he wants and where he needs to be. Teachers volunteer to tutor kids on their 'planning' - off-time - periods. And the whole goal is to educate children; not to one up each other, not to prove their worthiness, not the teachers, the administration, nor the children. Everyone already knows that they are worthy - so they help each other.

"Feel I'm slippin into the Twilight Zone..." this is reality, not fantasy, and no exaggeration. I could tell you more but I am eagerly looking forward every morning to getting up and going to be a working part of this. And you probably wouldn't believe it anyway...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

commacomma down doobie do down down...

Winter's coming.

Sunday night we're supposed to get snow.

Comma comma down doobie do down down... come on down....

It's been getting gradually cooler here, as each successive low front passes through. If it does snow, it means that winter this year will be hard; and as we go, so goes the country.

But not all snow is bad. Snow is precipitation; and snow provides the water to our river and our underground aquifer. We got so much precipitation this past spring - more than in any recent memory - that the river, normally pumped almost dry for irrigation and cattle, is still running fairly high. There were two hay harvests instead of one, so the winter feed is going to be good, which means that the cattle will be fat. (So will the wild critters.) Snow acts as an insulating blanket if the temps drop below freezing. (It doesn't snow when it is below freezing - it just gets that way after the front passes.)

I'll still be walking to work every day; the high school is across the street and down a block. Part of the reason they hired me is that, on snow days, I can go to school early and call within my snow ring, to tell parents not to bring their kids or let them drive on dangerous roads. That sounds harsh, but I'm looking forward to it. The folks here in town will come in anyway, and make sure that the power and generators are on and that the heat is running to keep the pipes from freezing. The cooks will come in. If it gets really bad, and power fails for a while, the school is the shelter for the elderly to stay warm and fed.

Back at the house, I'm all set. The wood box on the house is full of dry tinder, kindling, and logs; I open the door next to the woodstove and there it all is, ready to start the fires. I can cook on or even IN a woodstove; done it. I can build a fire and keep it going for three days in the pouring rain; I've made a fire so hot in a cast iron stove that the stove turns red all the way up to the pipe. And this firebox is small, which means that I can get it really hot, and it won't take much to get it that way and keep it that way.

My new friends (and some of my old friends)are all very worried about how two southerners will weather the winters here. Cracks me up. We didn't live down south our whole lives, and a couple of places I've lived in the winter didn't have electricity run to them. We've spent the whole summer tightening every air and cold leak in this house; securing the barn roofs from the cold and harsh north winds. We know what's coming. We know what to expect.

I'm looking forward to it, actually. While my friends back east will be sweating in their tree stands, I'll be tracking my deer and antelope through the snow. When I make my kill, I won't be dragging it through mud and skeeters, but sliding it on frozen ground and snow. And the turkeys are fat and pretty on the hill already; we saw them yesterday morning.

This week I have to finish raking the leaves and pile them around my plants and dig my amarillis and star lily bulbs; everything else will be buried under leafy mulch. Finishing up the Halloween yard decorations, and looking forward to the Christmas ones! If it freezes this week, the potato farm down south will swing into harvest, and I'll get a 50 lb sack of potatoes (not the little nubs we used to get back east; BIG tubers the size of your two fists held together) and put them in the basement next to the other food storage.

Winter's coming. And this little squirrel is getting her nest ready for it... and the big devastating financial hits that are predicted to go into full swing this winter will roll over us like the snow. Preparation is always a good thing.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Can you be Saved?

"Something's Wrong in the World Today". And the singer may not know what it is. But I'm thinking that I do.

I was perusing the news stories this morning. I prefer the silence of my computer to the yammering and simpering of the folks on the TV, especially in the morning, before my first cup of coffee is finished. People who know me, know not to talk to me before coffee. My BP is so low in the mornings (about 90 over 60) that communication is a baaaad thing. When I traveled, there always had to be a coffee maker in the room; I would not go out in public, not even to a 'free breakfast', without coffee. So every morning I sit with my cup in front of my computer to find out what happened overnight and see what's going on in the world.

A man in Vermont raped and killed his niece, and convinced another girl that her death was because of a 'termination' organization that would kill little girls for not having sex with him or otherwise misbehaving. A 'mother' killed her foster kids and put them in a freezer. Caylee's Mom is 'now' a suspect. The millionaire adventurer's plane was found in California (weren't they searching in Utah? Whoa. Someone needs Mapquest badly). An Omaha woman, a teacher and a mother of a 9 year old girl, was found guilty of taking a 13 year old boy to Mexico to have sex ("He seemed like a man to me" - granted the kids here are more mature than their citified peers, but WHUT?).

WTF is going on? Well, it seems pretty simple to me. People simply don't feel the need to practice self-control any more. We have become a 'me first' society, where our own immediate desires aren't even thought about, simply acted upon. SOMEone will bail us out, SOMEone will save us. Even the politicians are promising things to 'save' us, from each other, from terrorists, from bad investments, from our children, our parents, our neighbors. There's no need to take responsibility for ourselves any more - there are legions of volunteer, non-profit, and state and federal organizations to save everyone. So no one protects their children from rapists or molesters - someone else will save them. No one takes responsibility for the jobs they undertake, so even foster children, put into the system to 'save' them, are molested or die. Kids are like Doritos, any more - "Go ahead and crunch them - we'll make more". Teachers entrusted with the health and welfare of their students in their care decide that they can be used to satisfy some sick controlling need for sex. The very people whom busy parents trust to 'save' their children in foster care or in the school are the ones corrupting and killing them.

No. One. Can. Save. You. You come into this world alone, and you will go out the same way. No matter how many friends you have, none of them will save you - they are all too busy trying to save themselves. Terrorists? There is no salvation from a crazy person. Child molesters and killers? No one can save your children from them - all you can do is BE THERE to protect them from their uncles or their teachers or the weirdo up the street. But you have to take responsibility, you have to take charge of your own life and your children's lives.

Our daughter is the kindest person, the most giving person, I have ever met. She'll help someone in a heartbeat. Even though she took karate for six years, and will not hesitate to use it to defend herself, she is still soft-hearted and loving. Looking back at some of her boyfriends over the years, I am well aware that sometimes the only thing that kept her from being an abused girlfriend was her ice-cold father's comment to every one of them - "This is my baby. You hurt her, I kill you." He meant it. They believed it. They should have. Now, her dad is a kind and gentle man, normally - but he took and still takes responsibility for his daughter, and makes no bones about it.

No, that song is wrong. There's not "something wrong with our eyes" - there's something wrong with our minds and hearts, that we permit child molesters, abusers, all of the selfish and self-seeking predators among us, to live and perpetrate themselves on others, over and over again. There is something wrong with masses of people expecting "other people" to take their responsibilities off of their backs, out of their hands, and to save them. The choice to abuse drugs, to let drink or drugs control us, to misspend money or time, or to harm ourselves or others is still a choice, and not only indefensible but inexcusable, and should be met with swift and direct consequences. There is something wrong with expecting any politician, government, bureaucracy, or teacher to do what we refuse to do for ourselves or our children. And that's what's wrong, what's missing - our accepting our responsibilities to protect and defend ourselves and our children. There can be no excuse for rescinding our responsibilities to others for our own safety, our own welfare, our own lives, our own children, our own stupid mistakes or selfish actions. We are "livin on the edge" - but it is an edge of our own making, of our own whining refusal to accept the responsibility of our lives and the choices we make, to fob off our lives on someone else, anyone else.