EEEEEEEBOLA!! Or, Please Pass the Popcorn

Yeah, I'm not freaking out.

I knew it was going to happen. How could it not?

"The New World Order", where travel is rampant, illegal immigrants flood our shores and our cities, everyone is mobile and busy and involved. You can make your products in deepest darkest Africa, and with an Internet webpage or even a Facebook account, you can sell anything to anyone. I can type this and hit "post" and suddenly you can read it in England, Australia, Russia, or China if you, too have Internet and the inclination. We are up each other's butts 24/7. We can order English toffee straight from England, Irish sweaters and china straight from Ireland. We can tell people off on pages that are read all over the world, we can tag or poke our kids and grandkids, we can communicate instantaneously.

So I moved to the back hills of Nebraska, because even I could see that this instantaneous and overpopulated sea of dreck and profit was going to wash over everyone, and the salt of ambition and greed would get in their eyes and blind them to the pitfalls. Friends of mine caught antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, and invariably the first question out of the doctors' mouths was "Been around any illegal immigrants?" We are swarmed with people from all sorts of countries, carrying all sorts of diseases, and we pretend to ourselves that God is in his heaven, we have antibiotic wipes and soaps, we'll be fine, all's right with the world.

Guess where I get my food? My 60 acres. Guess where I rarely go? Places with a population over 2000. Guess Why?

Three months ago, I sent all of my children an email. It told them to pack their bug-out bags, to get paper maps and plot at least three routes to our farm, to never ever let their gas tanks get below the 1/2 full mark. To be ready to bug out, before the quarantines, the panics, the insanity ensued. To be alert and watchful.

Not because I fear the Ebola virus. But because I know that, when the shit gets even close to the fan, everyone is going to freak, to panic, to "when in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout". Once the politicians can't lie any more, once the virus starts taking off and becoming widespread - even slightly or sporadically - suddenly, and without warning, people in power are going to freak. They are going to start demanding restrictions - on travel, on food supplies, on freedoms. This will cause the public's safety to decline rapidly. This will cause panic in the streets - because as usual the idiots will have waited until it is too late to do anything else. Suddenly trucks will stop bringing in supplies, suddenly people will be running to the hospitals for a sneeze or a fever, suddenly those who are really carrying the virus will be exposing tens, then hundreds, then thousands, running back and forth, like chickens with their heads cut off. FREAK OUT!!! Then the hysteria starts, then the looting starts, then the travel restrictions and the quarantines start, and those who never had any chance of getting sick will suddenly be throwing themselves or dragged into situations where they WILL get sick. Guaranteed. This snowball is already rolling downhill, and it is picking up all of the filth, twigs and pointy goathead-burrs of terror and misplaced power.

Me, I'm going to sit right here and watch.

Didja ever see the National Geographic's documentaries on "Earth Without People"?  Or Stephen King's "The Stand"? Yeah, they're wrong.  They make it seem like people will die off relatively peacefully, that most buildings will still be standing, that most infrastructure will remain intact. Oh, sure, there might be some trouble in the bigger cities - gangs trying to steal peoples' food and cars, trying to escape, even shooting some folks; it might be a little dangerous, but that will be brief, and the survivors will have plenty of remaining choices for their shelter and food.. This is a lie. The panic, when it begins, will be on a scale not even imagined by those who wrote abut the Black Plague, the Spanish 'Flu, or who lived through Katrina. Most cities will not be left standing; they will be huge conflagrations all across the countries, as the living try to get rid of the dead, as the looters destroy what they cannot take, as the dead and dying leave their propane heaters and gas stoves running until an errant spark flares... Dying people will be fleeing in fear, running into other dying people, causing massive wrecks and still more fires. Dying people will group together for survival, killing each other off wholesale, as they raid the remaining hospitals and grocery stores for one last drug, one last mouthful of food, before the disease or their neighbor kills them off.

 The politicians and other folks who have talked wisely about "population control" and 'thinning the herd' have literally no idea that they, too, are on the slaughter agenda. Like the kings and nobility during the plagues, they think that their money and position will save them. They are wrong. Even if they make it into the rumored safe houses and enclaves, most people cannot survive for long, locked away with a selected group or even alone. They can't stand themselves or each other for any broad length of time now; they will certainly run amok once the terror and stress of being encapsulated strikes home. The crazy comes out then, and, 2 years from now, there won't be a single survivor in those places, no matter how well equipped or supplied they are.  

Know who survives? Those who don't panic. Those who have a plan - a self-perpetuating plan - in place. Those who like being independent and don't mind being alone. Those who have prepared; who have been prepared, for months and years, for any eventuality - or none at all. Those who didn't bury themselves in the empty, mindless busywork of the cities, where nothing matters except tomorrow's paycheck and the next day's night out. Those who didn't spend half of their lives on Facebook and the other half texting their friends.

No matter how this plays out, I have a front-row seat to either the massive death and destruction of disease, or the massive hysteria and pontificating that results from the fear of it. And even if nothing happens at all - I've still got my cows, my chickens, the wood for my woodburning stove, my bullets, my guns, my already-canned garden produce and their seeds to grow more; my bees and my honey and even wax for candles. I'm comfy, thanks. Please pass the popcorn. The world is my stage, and I'm going to watch it all from right here... until the power goes out and the stage goes dark.

Thoughts on Marriage, Tigger, and Eeyore

My darling daughter married the love of her life this past November. We like him; he is smart, funny, and he really, really loves her - not the 'her' that everyone else sees, but the fiery, passionate, completely determined little girl we raised to become a fiery, passionate, intelligent woman. What drives her is a thirst for knowledge - and a determination to achieve, to become, to create. I love that in her. It's how I used to be and what I still - occasionally - strive to be.

I don't know how to tell her that marriage isn't always going to be that way.

When Mike and I were married, he was Eeyore and I was Tigger. We formed a contract about our marriage ( I had come out of an abusive marriage and was determined never to end up there again). Life was hard - we lived on $8000.00 a year, with 2 kids and one on the way. We fought and sought other jobs to keep the family moving steadily upward, both in income and in experiences. We had passionate sex, quite frequently; it was the expression not only of our love for each other, but because we rarely saw each other, due to our jobs.  Even when we worked together on the ambulance, we had passion - but we were so closely aligned that, depending on the call, one or the other would take the lead in the call, while the other supported. We didn't fight over calls, like most married emergency service workers did. We didn't have to. We knew each others' strengths and weaknesses, and the best one for the situation always took lead.

When Mike got hurt, all of that changed. His damage was not only physical, but mental and spiritual. The endless pain and the daily drugs took a toll on him that simply can't be explained. But, more than that - he had always defined himself by what he could DO. And suddenly - he couldn't do anything any more. Couldn't be a firefighter. Couldn't be a paramedic. Couldn't even hang blinds (his part-time job) or fix cars. It hurt to move. It hurt to not move. He became a mean, nasty, angry bastard, even occasionally violent.

It was daily painful for him to hear sirens and not respond; hard for him to even drive past the fire station or go to EMS base. He didn't want to be that soul-sucking guy who, unable to function, hangs around his old haunts, still trying to be a part of it all, and making everyone else distinctly uncomfortable. But yet, after 28 years in Emergency Services, he couldn't let go. It was tearing him apart.

So, yeah, part of why we moved was to give him a whole new life, away from the sound of sirens and car crashes, the smells of smoke and that copper-scented smell of blood and open guts and the occasional putrid gangrene, the cordite smell of gunshot wounds. At first he didn't want to do it - at all. He was scared of new things (always had been, which is why Tigger had to bounce him out of it). He didn't know anything about farming or farm animals, except our little backyard garden and the times we worked on Peggie's farm when she was out of town. He didn't want to let go of what was hurting him so badly.

So I made him. I forced him. I didn't give him a choice. I was hard and cold and mean and pushed him right out of his comfort zone, and into a whole new life. Those who truly know me, know what a hard-and-cold, awesomely brutal bitch I can be - and I was. On purpose. You see, to me, Tigger was a compleat asshole, always bouncing, pushing, demanding, and forcing people to go along with him... yet somehow it always turned out right, with Eeyore grumbling in the background, always looking for his tail, always seeing the dark side.

Now Mike works in all weathers, snow and ice, hail and storms, heat and tornado threats. He doesn't work long; he can't. But the animals are fed, the grass is cut, the chicken run gets built, the wood for the woodstove gets cut, all over time. He fences like a rancher, strings barbed wire like a pro. He has a lot of new tools - come-alongs, a 4-wheeler, a wood-splitter, a complete woodworking shop, etc - that most ranchers don't have, that make his job easier, and keep him able to do these things. I thrust him into a totally unfamiliar, hostile environment - and made him adapt to it. And excel at it, in spite of himself.

We haven't slept together in 8 years; mostly because we can't. I have a nice pillow-top mattress upstairs in my BR, and he has a hospital bed in his BR on the ground floor, where he sleeps in a  V  position.  There is no sex, and hasn't been for 8 years. Oh, there's occasional hugs and cuddles, but his mind and his body cannot feel those things any more. No pills and no injections or roll-ons can help with what the pain and drugs have dome to him, continue to do to him. My life is all about working to pay the bills, and planting things, growing things, and taking care of him. Yet - oddly - it is a good life now, with a lot of intellectual bantering and debate, and a lot of (partially-drug-induced) stories about cows taking over the world, subversive meaty terrorists plotting in every pasture.

This is not the marriage every girl dreams of, "growing old together", etc. This is not the Cinderella fantasy of marriage. This is two people who still remember what they committed to, and who are doing their damnedest to keep it alive, any way that they can. Sure, it would have been easier to say, "Screw this and screw YOU!" when he became not-Mike, became someone else entirely. And don't think that I didn't think about it - I'm not noble, and it was HARD to make the right choices, to do the move and everything else on faith, and believe - insist - that it would all work out OK.

How do you tell that to two fresh-faced, eager and happy people who have just started their life together? You can't. You don't dare. If they knew how agonizing it could be, they might never take that step at all. All you can do is smile happily and let them have their moments of joy - and hope that they will be strong enough to stand together when the hardships come.

Yes, I am still Tigger, bouncing happily thru life, pretending that everything will work out for the best, smiling and joking - and I am still that asshole underneath, determined to make things work out. Mike is still Eeyore, grumbly and dour, with occasional humor and smiles that peek out through the pain. Some days it's OK, and some days better than OK, and some days it's hard. But that's life. Real life, not the storybook world.

A Novel about Hardeeville? Not Happenin' - but...

When I left Hardeeville, Sal Arzillo wanted me to write about my experiences on Council and in City Government. I declined. I was planning on being too busy - and I still am. I reinvented myself and my life (not the first time, BTW); I have a whole new life now.

But this past week's election has driven people to call, email, and even PM me on Facebook. What are my thoughts on all of this? Well, my first thought was - Geez, leave me the fuck alone. What makes you think that I still give a shit? I scraped that dung off of my shoes six years ago, for Crissake. As my dear EMS partner always said "Happiness is Hardeeville in the rear-view mirror." Like the resurgence of shingles years after you've had chicken pox, the infection is still in my soul, though. I still love my friends that remain there, and want to protect and save them from what is about to be inflicted on them. But, of course I can't. It's why I finally gave up  - you cannot save people from themselves.

So here it is - in summation. Eight years ago, my BFF Rodney The Mayor and I pushed HARD for a redistricting of Hardeeville, to ensure that the locals would always have seats on the City Council. Sal Arzillo was one of the ones (Bronco Bostick and Bill Horton were among the others, and they convinced poor elderly and easily-led Brooks) who spoke out vociferously against it. They all insisted that the idea was stupid, that there was no way that the gated communities we annexed would ever get that big, they ascribed a hidden agenda to our attempts to make it fair. Basically they insisted that they wouldn't ever even entertain the thought that a Sun City or other gated community would ever have or want any representation on Council. Rodney and I simply shrugged. We saw the writing on the wall even then... that the foolish arrogant ignorance that was and is endemic to  Hardeeville was on the rise once again, and that nothing would stop it.  LOL. That's all you can really say. LOL, and shake your head.


They self-righteously used SLED to go after my 'brother', Jimmy Hubbard, who is one of the most decent, kind, and honest people I have ever had the pleasure to work with - as well as a good and sincere Christian, Shane Haynes. If Shane ever had a fault, it was trusting and believing that people were basically good and would always do the right thing. But - just as when, all those years ago, my beloved Jimmy was accused of child sexual abuse, and I made him get an attorney and fight it (including fighting his own backstabbing boss) and Jimmy was exonerated because of a lack of evidence - the damage was done, just as it was intended to be, and purely for personal gain on the backs of the innocent. The most recent newspaper stories about this trumped-up, self-serving witch hunt only illustrate the reality. 

Now the Council is made up of four representatives from those gated communities, and if you think that Bronco Bostick will survive the next mayoral election, you are sadly mistaken. Sun City and all of those gated communities - who pay the most taxes, who volunteer in the schools, who have made themselves aware of just how the city is run and where their money goes (and they proved it by 'outing' the most recently ousted Council members over their nonpayment of taxes), who not only can actually read and write and cipher, but who know how the game is played -  will put him out, just as they put the others out. Suddenly now Sal is screaming for redistricting. Go ahead and scream, Sal - you're outvoted and outmaneuvered.  

One of my callers wants to run for Council to represent the Old Town. I advised her against it. The fallout from what has been happening in Hardeeville is about to hit the fan - and she doesn't want or need to be anywhere near all of that. David Tedder, one of the most decent and smartest lawyers whom I've ever had the pleasure to work with (and that is saying a lot), refused to do something illegal for the Council, and was 'invited to leave'. Ted Felder and a host of others who threw their knowledge and expertise, as well as their hearts and souls, into the City, were 'invited to leave' as well (non-disclosure statements all around). Chief Nagy - a consummate professional, who not only led the police department with a firm and trustworthy hand, but who once helped me personally by resolving a very sticky law enforcement problem - was let go for doing his job as a professional who was not supposed to be swayed by belligerent elected officials. I am quite fond of Sam Woodward, but he has a long row to hoe and he wouldn't (at least under the most recent administration) be given the implements he needs to chop away at the roots of the problem. Expecting Sam to play dumb cop and good ol' boy, who winks at the infractions of those in power while over-enforcing against others, would have eventually been a sure invitation to ultimate disappointment.  I have nothing against Rose Dobson-Elliott; I consider her a good friend. I actually felt sorry for her when they hired her to become the sixth administrator (interim) in as many years. Things are going to be really nasty in Hardeeville for at least the next two years, with recriminations, accusations, and legitimate demands and outraged refusals. The residents are going to be looking for a scapegoat - and no one wants to be that.

I have to admit that I am chuckling over the 'latest idea' by Clementa Pinckney, proposing a redistricting of the school districts in Jasper County. So many people are up in arms, insisting that it is ridiculous, unnecessary, and that they will fight it tooth and nail. BWAHAHAHAHA! Knock yourselves out. Clementa is nothing if not observant. He too has seen the writing on the wall - first in Bluffton, now in Hardeeville, and soon to be in all of Jasper County. If you think that it feels as though, politically, you are slipping down into the increasing black gumbo beneath your feet - you're probably right. But it is a gumbo of your own determined and self-inflicted ignorance, and you deserve it. Ignore Clementa, ignore history, ignore everything that has been placed so plainly before you for the last six years - at your own peril. Wallow in your ignorance; enjoy it, scarf it down like manna - it's what you have earned, what you have demanded, after all.

The next two years will make for great newspaper copy, if nothing else. If you thought Sam Gregory's viral Facebook post (I even found it in Pennsylvania, of all places!) humiliated the citizens of Jasper County - you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Now, 'scuse me - I'm planting peas today, I have to put the queen excluder on the beehive to prep for the honey harvest in July, and I'm planning my trip to the John Wayne Birthday Celebration next weekend. A rodeo, shooting competitions, a real western-style barbeque, pie-eating contests, and free John Wayne movies all day. What's not to love? I am a real rancher now, a real Westerner - like so many before me, who scraped off the hysteria and mendacity of the East for the freedom and decency, the hard work and outright honesty, of the West.Yes, there is a real difference - sadly, most of my friends back there will never know it.
 

Ah, Mother's Day- You Reap What You Sow

Today, my nephew Joshua, who moved out here a year and a half ago, is taking me to dinner with his kids.

My own children are scattered all over the country, each doing what I raised them to do - follow their dreams. My nephew, on the other hand, came out here to get away from his ex-wife, his mother, his uncle, and all of the people who - in his words - were 'using him like an ATM machine'.

When he was 14, his mother - a completely unstable drama queen, liar, thief, and 'hurray-for-me-fuck-you' type of person, decided to leave her longtime girlfriend. She insisted that Joshua help her pack her pickup with, not only her own possessions, but hundreds of dollars' worth of valuable goods belonging to her soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. They were caught and arrested - and Joshua's mom made him take the full rap for the thievery, because, as she said, "You'll get less jail time as a juvenile'. So she went free on bail (paid for by the ex-girlfriend) and her son went to jail for 6 weeks. Immediately afterward, she dumped Josh on us, because she 'couldn't handle him'. In other words, she had used him to the best of her selfish abilities, and now that she was flaunting herself and her obnoxiously gay lifestyle, she had no use for him any more. (I have nothing against gays - just drama queens of ANY orientation.)

This sweet kid was confused, frightened, lonely and angry. He took his anger and pain out on us - which we totally understood. We loved him anyway, and taught him right from wrong - mostly against everything he had been taught up to that point. When he left, to go live with his grandparents, he was still angry and resentful. He dropped out of school, and was dissolute, directionless, living for the moment, not understanding what or why.

But, suddenly, he had a personal epiphany. In his own words - "There I was, working as a busboy, washing dishes, and I remembered what you told me in the car when you had picked me up from cutting school (again). You said, "Do you WANT to be nothing and nobody, and wash dishes the rest of your life?" And I suddenly realized that you had been right, all along!" The kid went back to school, got a job working for the Ports Authority, cleaned up his act, got married, had two kids, and was supervising 50 employees when he was run over and crushed by a truck. After his wife (another drama queen like his Mom, also a drug addict and alcoholic) had stolen all of Josh's money, with his own mother's help, Josh's wife left him high and dry for another man, even dumping their kids on Josh, who was crippled and in need of help that no one would provide. His mother then told him that he and the kids could come live with her and her new girlfriend - and she took every last dime she could get from him, to support herself and her girlfriend. She even took out a second mortgage on her home, claiming Josh's income as her own.  Sleeping on couches, with no privacy and constant drama, poor Josh was in pain, confused, worried about his kids ever having a future. So I told him to get his ass out here and bring the kids. Packing what little they had in a battered old pickup truck, he drove out here with his children.

Now he has a brand new pickup truck, that he bought with his own money. He is renting with option to buy a house for himself and his kids. He is independent, tough, and making it on his own. His kids attend the local school - and they are fitting in to the local lifestyle of hard work, honesty, independence, and integrity.  They have a strong and stable family and home life. All we did was tell him in both word and deed that he was a good and strong, decent human being, who had a right to his own life, and to raise his children how he saw fit - without drama, without hysteria, without agony and cruelty, thievery and lies. We gave him with his children the foundation and home base from which to grow, and prove himself, and be happy.

Josh credits us with raising him and teaching him. He doesn't speak to or contact his mother nor his ex-wife in any way. They still try to wrap their tentacles around him, but he will have none of it. He is a free, independent, proud and happy father of two children who love and depend on him. Neither his Drama-queen, grasping, thieving, lying mother nor his manipulative, drug-addicted, drunken ex-wife have any hold on him any more - 1700 miles and a completely different world has put him back on his feet and made him a whole and complete man once again. We are very proud of him and all that he has done and become. We knew he had it in him - all he needed was a chance.

Yet his mother still whines "Do they ever think of me?" No, actually, they don't. "Do his kids know that I am their Granny?" No, actually, they don't. YOU did that to him, YOU made him that way. 
YOU did your damnedest to control, manipulate, steal from, use, criticize, and destroy him. YOU sit in your drama-infested world and wonder what happened, how people could hate you so much, why no one loves you or gives you the accolades that you feel that you deserve, simply by the act of giving birth.

I, on the other hand, get to have dinner, laughter, love, and an honest, decent relationship with a part of my family whom I cherish, and who cherishes me.

You reap what you sow.
Sucks, doesn't it?
 

Going Postal

Yup, I was hired by the United States Postal Service this week.

I know, WTF am I thinking, thought you were opposed to the FedGov, how the heck did they hire YOU if you are as radical as you say?

Well, bluntly, there are danged few jobs in this area.
The school district where I am employed didn't give anyone but the teachers contracts of employment this year. They are going to have to make cuts - and rather than cut a teacher who makes $50,000 a year plus full, completely paid for family benefits, they are going to cut a couple of low level staffers without benefits,  whenever they see fit, to balance the budget.

To this end they have cut the school year by 8 weeks; by both cutting off two weeks at the beginning and going to (mostly) four-day weeks throughout the year - but increased the daily hours for students to attend to 8 AM to 4 PM. This means that I get to work 4 10-hour days; one hour before school starts and one hour after. Um, Yay. I get to leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark, 4 days a week, all winter long. Also, by cutting off the days at the beginning of the school year, they've  cut me out of a whole month's pay.  Not to mention that the latest superintendent accosted me the last time I came in to tell me how much he trusted and admired me - and gave me still another job that one of his whiny, helpless, hapless (yet protected by union and tenure) teachers has refused to do for the last 3 years. About every 3 years I get a new boss - and each one is more arrogant, more misogynistic, and less cognizant of or concerned with the staff's jobs than the last.

Post office, I'll just be part-time - at first. Saturdays (3 hours) and then as a sub for the current postmistress when she's out. But next year,  due to contract negotiations with the unions, that will change, and I can work as many hours as I want. Also, from my date of hire (no matter how many hours I work in the year) it starts the clock of waiting - after a year, I'll be eligible for a mandatory week of vacation as well as medical insurance. Moreover, if I need more hours, I can sub at any PO in a 100-mile radius - or, if I'm happy with my paycheck and have things to do, I can stay home.

Let me think a moment... yeah, the school district is struggling to survive and getting ready to lay off workers and increase the burdens on those who remain, as well as kicking employees who do not have insurance to the curb so that they don't have to fund ObamaCare for them;  while the USPS will always have job openings, and are not looking to close this PO (too centrally located), and are contracted to provide, not merely vaguely promise, insurance for all employees. Not to mention I'll be making a dollar more an hour to start, with guaranteed regular raises - when it has taken me 5 years to get up to my current salary at the school district office.

There is no ideal job, no matter what the Obama-worshippers think. There will be shit work and crud to put up with. But no changing bosses every three years, no yearly threats of dismissal because of budget cuts, and no more dealing with other office workers'/teachers'/superintendents' personal problems that they drag to work with them every day, and take out on everyone else, because it's a 'helping', emotionally socialist environment, where the lower staffers are expected to put up with everyone else's angst, ennui, pretenses, delusions, and foibles. (Can't tell you how many times in the past 5 years I've had to put up with out-and-out temper tantrums from highly unprofessional  'professionals'.) No more emotional hemming and hawing, seeing and sawing, and demands that I "volunteer" my time because I am a lowly staffer and 'should work just as hard as the teachers' (who get paid for any extracurricular activity, above and beyond their salary). The new job won't be heaven. But it will be an improvement.

Vindication is a Sweet Pastry

Yeah, a lot of folks called me a Conspiracy Theorist when I told them that, thanks to the Patriot Act, there would be serious and egregious violations of the Constitution. I told them that the Bill of Rights would become the Bill of Permissions - where only certain people would have rights, especially their rights to speak freely and have their rights to privacy. I endlessly repeated Ben Franklin's quote - that those who give up their rights for security would have neither.  I was pooh-poohed and snickered at.  "That Could NEVER Happen Here - This is AMERICA!"

You may all bend over and kiss my ass now.

The only problem with being a Cassandra is that one is excoriated for what one predicts - even (and I should say, especially) when one is RIGHT.

Folks were derisive when I gave up my two cell phones for none. Didn't make much sense to have even one anyway - out here, you are lucky to hit a tower at all, much less have any bars. And 60 acres of untrammeled, non-wired peace is what I bought, on purpose.  Not to mention that I neither want nor need to be gotten in touch with constantly nor immediately. Nothing and no one is that important.

Yeah, I stay in touch with people thru FaceBook and emails, and yes, I know they are monitored, too. But - I never write anything I don't mean. Moreover, 20 years ago a group of friends and I published the list of 'FBI-words" (now, of course, they are HLS words) that the computers that recorded our transmissions would flag - and then we used the piss out of them. Damned straight. Our attitude then was "Yeah, so what? As an American I can say what I want!" Of course that is becoming less and less true - but let them come all the way out to Nowhere, Nebraska and say something, try anything. They won't. Out here I am a harmless ranting crazy old lady - and you betcherazz that's just the way I like it.

The time is fast coming, though, when people will have their income, jobs, and lives affected if they dare to raise a challenge to the omniscient, omnipotent juggernaut that we have created. "And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. " Check out those RFID chips, that are being touted as "The easy way to pay!" and "Protecting our children from being lost!" and even mandated in the endless pages of the Obamacare legislation. If you don't want the chip, and refuse it, can you produce your own food? Make your own clothes? Provide for yourself and your family with that little half-assed garden next to your house in that restricted neighborhood? Take care of yourself medically? I'm betting not. You'll knuckle and excuse yourself, just as you have always done. You'll have to, if you want to eat.

 And if you refuse to believe Cassandra on that as well - just wait. I don't give a damn what you believe any more; not going to try to sway you or influence you at all. Because you ignored me and others like me, or insulted us and made fun of us, you are about to reap what you so derisively sowed. You won't be able to come out here and kiss my ass, though - you'll be broke, restricted, and monitored.

And you'll deserve it. 

Extrapolation

• Did you ever wonder what caused 9/11? Really, truly, no pundits involved?
  My theory is that 3 things caused 9/11 - Welfare, the "dumbing down" of our
  children, and the Drug War.
  
  Bear with me a minute.
  
  There were other factors involved, of course - the fall of Russia, the
  socialization of England, Israel getting nuclear weaponry. It wasn't all
  our fault. And no, I'm not one of those ranting conspiracy theorists who think
  that there are a group of people, Skull and Bones, whatever, that rule the world
  and make all the decisions. Committees and groups of even the most like-minded,
  single-purposed types, just aren't that bright. Sorry, but they aren't. Those that do grasp cause and effect only see it dimly, temporarily, and with skewed perspectives. Those perspectives may be altruistic, or they may be purely selfish - but they are still human
  perspectives, with human failures and perceptions. There are no 12 or 18
  people up there in the stratosphere pulling the strings.
  
  What there are, is people who have what they think is a good idea and who
  have the (limited) knowledge to push it through - a legislature, public perception,
  whatever.
  
  Welfare was a good altruistic idea... on its surface. Save all those poor people from borderline starvation, help them so that they don't have to have gardens in the backyard just to survive the winters, so that they have more than one change of clothes, so that they can have the best start for their children available. Who knew that it would destroy the pride of the poor American families, that it would encourage once-strong families to split to get more money, that it would encourage teenagers as young as 10 to breed babies (liberals shut UP I've SEEN it) so as to bring more money into the household or to gain their 'independence' from a bad family, bad neighborhood, bad community? Who knew that people would lose their pride and self confidence to the point where they would lie, cheat, just to get an extra 20 bucks a month for which they didn't have to work? Who knew that folks would give in to their baser desires - sex, drug, alcohol, food induced stupors of overindulgence - just to get more money for which they did not have to work?
  
  Welfare weakened the society rather than strengthened it. Instead of raising up an 'underclass', it diminished it, paralyzed it, set it up for failure - and ready made excuses for that failure. It created more slums, as people who were given everything and worked for nothing became demanding, insisting that more and more was due them rather than using the handout to build something better for themselves, as Welfare was intended and was believed to be able to do. People in the slums destroyed any and everything - since they did not work for their homes, their food, did not have the satisfaction of achieving from their own hard efforts, they did not feel responsible for caring for the homes in which they lived, the children that they bred to satisfy the government qualifications, the partners that they chose to help them fulfill those requirements. They stopped taking care of everything around and attached to them - including themselves. Why not? The government would always provide more. Live for today, indulge any and every whim and vice, because someone else would always pay for it.
  Always.
  
  Bear with me a little more...
  
  Next and hand-in-hand with this was the dumbing down of our educational system.
  First math facts were thrown out the windows of the schools; "close" became
  good enough. Then the accent on "dead" languages and literature, history, basic psychology and sociology were tossed out, as educators determined that memorization was far superior to phonics, that there ws too much to teach and too much to learn as time had passed, so 'feelings' rather than facts were posted as truisms in children's minds. Why teach a child to learn throughout his life, when most children could not understand the reasoning process anyway, and they needed to learn only the basics supplied to them to establish a career?

Welfare made our children disposable, and education made them further understand that achievement and success were not predicated on their own efforts, but on the mutual efforts of everyone around them. Why try to excel when that made other children who didn't try feel badly about themselves? No, everyone must be the same; receive the same trophies and rewards as well as the same punishments. From both Welfare dependent parents and their own teachers, children learned that they were no better than anyone else, and that their lives were to be nothing but a series of endless satisfactions and indulgences. With these two altruistic and helpful policies, they set children up to indulge in drugs for escapism, as well as for profit and play. For what else is a brilliant yet uneducated child to do, who is not taught self-discipline and effort will result in rewards - but rather, taught by example that rewards come whether they are earned or not? These two social policies paved the way for - the Drug War.

For if so many American children and adults had not turned to so many drugs - to either blunt their own knowledge of their inabilities and inadequacies, or to sell to others to increase their profit and thence their feelings of worth, or even to gain a power denied to them by a lack of training or ability to meet lifetime educational, achievement, and life challenges - there would have been no real need for the Drug War. In every generation; even in ancient China, there have been members of the population who gave up their lives to addiction. Previously to the Drug War, these people were basically ignored or pitied or left to indulge their own vices, away from the general population ("opium dens") or taken care of quietly by family, friends, and pharmaceutical suppliers.

The Drug War changed all that. All drugs were deemed illegal; heavy fines and exacerbated prison time was given to sellers as well as users. But where were the main suppliers of the drugs?

Afghanistan. Asia. South America. Poor areas with no real income, eking out a living with their supplying local and home-grown addicts, suddenly had a world of opportunity in America, thanks to the increasing numbers of addicts to, as well as purveyors of, drugs. When the American judicial system made the drug war a priority, it set up the drug world to no longer be a place where those who indulged could live out their lives in their own private haze - it made them criminals, it made their world a violent and vicious place, it made the mere buying of a joint or a gram of coke dangerous. It also, because of the billions involved, made cops and judges and even juries susceptible to bribes. Justice was bought and sold, crimes that were only crimes against oneself were prosecuted far more zealously as crimes against other people.

The Taliban with all of its faults and extreme punishments and ways of life banned drugs, thought they were reprehensible. The only people who remained to fight them were the people who bought and sold and provided America with its ever-increasing demand for drugs. Americans were told that the Middle Eastern states were wrong, Muslim, hated us, and were evil. The CIA - long purveyors of the trade of drugs-for-weapons, instigators of dictators and unrest for political gain and the usurping of not only individuals but whole governments and countries, worked their magic. It was the US, after all, who put Saddam Hussein in power, given guns by the CIA. We were told "Well, if WE don't sell guns to them, then Russia or China will!" Yet the whole time these diverse tribes were playing one country against another, buying guns from The Big Three, using American drug money to buy Russian and Chinese armaments as well as American armaments. The CIA encouraged hyper-fanatical regimes and governments, thinking that they 'owed allegiance' to America - and only 'finding out' much later that these peoples' only allegiance was to themselves and the proliferation of their own ideologies. (Seriously, if they didn't know they were being manipulated to begin with, how really stupid could they be?)  As with the Welfare State, those poor peoples, made rich by the CIA's machinations, grew to resent American manipulation and infiltration of their economies and lives, and 'hated Americans'. Well, duh. They attacked us over 118 times before the WTC bombings - the Lockerbie plane bombing, numerous attacks on our embassies as well as on individuals and businesses, even the first WTC bombing, which few people remember or talk about, that was 'unsuccessful' (a garage bombing that didn't take down the Tower as planned). 

These people don't want us in their countries, taking all of their resources (everything from poppy fields to oil) and trading guns for power, then kicking successive self-built regimes to the curb. But their protests and demands go unanswered and unacknowledged. When they react with violence against 'innocents' from our and other '1st world' countries, they only see it as retaliation against the murder of their own innocents, caught between the CIA, Big Business, and Big Oil, as well as the power players in their own countries - power players who would never rise to power if they had not been supplied and trained by these same first-world countries.

That's not to say that I support the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization. But I do understand them, I do 'get' them.  Even now, on self-described "Patriot" websites, people are talking about killing the invading forces from China, the terrorists from the Taliban - taking up arms and defending America from the invaders. How is this any different from the Middle Eastern countries attacking our own soldiers, sent into their countries to protect their poppy fields and empower their dictators and terrorists?

I Hate to Say it, But Joe is Wrong

First let me say that I consider Joe Wilson to be one of my dearest friends in politics; he really is one of those weird people, an honest statesman. Several years ago he was vilified by the House and Administration, for simply - under intense pressure, because at no other time could such an honest and caring man be forced to do so - stating the obvious - "You Lie!" - and of course it turned out that Joe was right.

But this time, Joe is wrong and I cannot convince him otherwise. I am talking about the Keystone pipeline.

Let me say this - I devoutly believe that we should use our own oil and let the rest of the world find their own. I am a firm proponent of "Drill, baby, drill!" And I am certainly no greenie, slavering away after every false flag invasion on our environment, wanting everyone to go back to wearing leaves and hugging nature, hanging up their iPads for smoke signals.

But the Keystone Pipeline is wrong on several levels.
1st, even the 'revised' path of the pipeline goes across the sandy sections of Nebraska, over the Ogallala Aquifer. That may not mean too much to east coasters, I know. But the sandy soil of the Sandhills region supports not only dryland corn growth, but masses of cattle - that provide the east coast with its hamburger and steaks. Thousands of cattle roam hundreds of thousands of acres... and in the recent drought, the Aquifer was the only thing that kept Nebraska agriculture alive and competitive. But even a devout vegan has to understand that the aquifer provides water for six states, our own inclusive. Run a tar-sands oil pipeline across the sandy soil that covers the aquifer, and you have a potential disaster that far exceeds the recent pipeline leak in Arkansas. A former Keystone employee testified that this type of leak would be devastating to the aquifer. Like the rest of us 'flyover state' protesters, he was ignored.

2nd, the problem with gas prices will not be solved by running the Keystone pipeline, any more than it was solved by running  40 other pipelines that criss-cross the US, any more than it was solved by the Alaska Pipeline. The problem with gas prices starts at the feet of Congress, who, in the 70s, and in collusion with Big Oil and the greenies, limited the number of refineries that could be built and maintained in the US. Where are most of the refineries? On the coasts of the US. Where does most of that refined fuel go? Overseas, most recently to China.

3rd, the exhortation that it "will bring thousands of jobs to the US!" is a boldfaced lie. The most jobs it will bring is not 100,000, not 50,000 (the numbers keep going up, year by year) but - 6,000 jobs. Most of those 6,000 jobs are part-time, and only for the construction of the pipeline. After the oil starts flowing to the refineries at the Gulf, those jobs are over. Anything else is a lie. What would bring real, lasting, permanent jobs and lower gas prices would be to build refineries where the oil is drawn... but Big Oil doesn't want to do that, because then it would not be cheaper for them to sell their products overseas.

I could tell you things like the strong-arm tactics that have been used against farmers and ranchers, the threats of eminent domain (which is illegal in Nebraska) and the threats of supporters against simple folk who are promised 'get-rich-quick, sign on the dotted line' wealth, and criticized heavily for not doing so. That sort of stuff is typical east-coast tactics, not gentlemanly and respectful Nebraska politics. But the Pipeline has caused more contention locally - and purposefully - than anything else. The bottom line is that ranchers and farmers, generationally-long responsible caretakers of Nebraska's natural environs, multi-generational proponents of responsible crop rotation and cattle management, are being told that they should sell off quick and not care what happens to the property and aquifer underlying that pipeline. The problem is that they DO care. They also see that their resistance is classified under the 'greenie' hysterical banner, and this angers them. Being responsible caretakers of productive land is a far cry from the self-destructive hysterics of the green movement, and everyone knows it - except the politicians.

So, to those who don't live here, who worry more about the SRP's tritium in their water than about the infringement of tar sands oil into the waters that supply the far-distant breadbasket of the country, I plead with you - take a closer look at what is being said and promised. Then look at the facts... and realize that you, Joe Wilson, and the House in their grand gestures of salvation, are being lied to - once again.

"And That's all I got to say about that."

I hate liars and thieves.
Literally, gutwrenchingly hate them; badly enough to pop them in the face when they lie, or to grab their arms and twist them behind their backs - or worse - when they steal.

I know - I should say, I KNEW - quite a few.  Now - not so much. Most folks here are blindingly honest, whether it hurts you, or them, or not. It's nice. There's a couple of liars, a couple of thieves, but everyone knows it and steers clear of them. They do not profit.

What irritates me is when honest, decent people trust liars and thieves, and give them every opportunity to redeem themselves, and to become successful, intelligent, and cognizant human beings  - and the liars and thieves walk away, screaming 'Racism!' and "Prejudice!" and other epithets, laughing and sneering at the people from whom they've stolen for being such dupes.

What I see is a couple of people who lied and stole, purposefully, intentionally, and viciously, and a couple of others who trusted them until they were proven wrong - and then kicked them to the curb. Sadly, the decent folk are often persecuted as politically and as viciously as the former - because "they should have known". Riiiight. 

LITTLE-KNOWN LEGEND - Many years ago - so the story goes - a couple of Mormon missionaries went to a certain Southern-SC  town. They were harassed and vilified, even to the point where their Temple garments ("Mormon underwear") were hung up in the windows at the local dry cleaners, with the sign, "Mormon Monkey suits" plastered across them. Their church leaders told them to get out, and to "kick the dust from their heels" when they left - which was the Mormon way of cursing that town. (Matt.10:14 "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.") They did. Whether you believe in curses, or that the natural meanness and inbred viciousness of that town is their real curse, doesn't matter. To this day that town is cursed with innate cruelty, viciousness, and the virulent promotion and defense of meanness, lies, thievery, and depravity as a norm. To this day, no Mormon missionaries are allowed to live there - they can proselytize, but must be out by sunset.

Guess which town that is.

No matter how many people try to save, help, raise up, and promote them, the residents will either insistently drag them down to their level - or 'go after them' with every evil device to hand; to beat them down, to torment them, to impugn them. They are crabs in a bucket, each one struggling to pull another down, to keep everyone in the same swamp water that they pollute with their own feces. They cling to and wrap themselves in their ignorance and self-loathing like a filthy tattered quilt against the light, the truth, against God Himself. Their God is Mammon, and they vicariously glory in anything they can get from someone else; be it their innate decency or their money. (And, BTW, no, I'm not a Mormon - but I can see evil.) No, not all of them - but of the ones who are not, most will defend to the death and believe in the ones who are evil, against all rational and God-fearing thought or emotion.


Glad I'm out of that smarmy, politically-motivated morass of self-abuse, crab-clawing, and throat-slitting.Wish I could extend my salvation to my few good, honest, and decent friends who are still caught up in that Evil - but they have chosen their own paths.

"And That's all I got to say about that."

Pussies.

I love Fred Reed's blog; I can't help it. I may disagree with some of his misogynistic  tendencies - I was raised to be a tough independent woman with self-respect, not a clinging vine, dependent on a may-un, and I married a man who was a real man in his own right, and who wasn't intimidated by me - but all in all, Fred hits the nail on the head.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Guns.shtml

His latest is a great post - and is why I moved to where I did and do what I do.

We tore down an old falling-down garage on the property and put up a bright shiny new one - red and white metal, with electricity - and never filed a single permit. One of the older guys in town pulled up one day after we were mostly done, and had a beer with us while he went around the place. "Good job. I approve." And no money changed hands, no papers were signed, and we had a garage for the 4-wheeler and a workshop for Mike's power tools.

We rewired the basement to accommodate some new equipment, and re-plumbed the water pipes to the trough - and no one said a word. We put in fruit trees and gardens and a huge chicken house with a yard - and there were no ordinances to stop us, no cops driving by to measure the height or breadth of anything to write tickets. Rusty the sheriff lives two blocks away, and waves when he drives by. In two months I'll be putting up my first beehives - and the neighbors are thrilled to get the pollination activity.

We do whatever we damned well please, on the edge of a town where everyone does as they damned well please, surrounded by ranchers who do as they damned well please - and nobody gives a damn, no one infringes on anyone else's rights, nobody cares - we're all too busy.  When rabbits came down from the hills and infested our gardens, we took .22's into the backyard and dispatched them. When coyotes start howling on the west side of town, George turns loose his greyhounds and runs them until they get within range - then dispatches them. When wild turkeys swarmed our back hill, a teenager asked if he could hunt them - we gave him free reign.When my daughter and future son-in-law brought out their AR-15 to practice, we took them into the back pasture and let them blast away at tin cans lined up on the side of a hill - pointed away from neighbors or their cows, of course.

Fred's right but he's wrong; the cubicle-dwellers who panic at the thought of a big stick that goes BANG are the biggest problem - and we don't have that crap out here. Moreover, unlike Fred, we don't ever expect it to change - because no cubicle-dweller wants to come out here, no city-bound nervous nellie knows who or what's out here, and could care less. Even the city people who have to drive this way get distinctly nervous about being stuck out here; they won't stay in my neighbor's cute country cabins over night, they must flee at dusk to a city with a motel chain that they recognize, where they feel safe surrounded by neon and sewer pipes and fast food restaurants. They are appalled by the women who wear well-worn leather chaps over their pants to protect them when they go out on the range, or by the chunks of cow poop that fall off of the boots of old and young alike when they politely scrape their feet at the door.

And do you know how I feel about that? GOOD. Get the hell out. A blizzard's coming, where a foot of snow is predicted with six-and-eight-foot drifts, and you don't want to be stuck here - where we all open carry, even down at the local restaurant and bar, and no one ever gets shot or even shot at - because everyone else is carrying, too. Where we all have woodstoves to back up our propane heaters, solar-powered heaters and lights with fully-charged batteries,  and candles and kerosene lamps to light when the lights go out, and hand pumps to back up the generator pumps to back up the regular water pumps that go out when the power does.  Lock yourself behind your metal doors with multiple latches and tremble in terror when the neon lights or the heat go out, or the water gets shut off, or the grocery store shelves are empty because of some weather or civil anomaly, or the crackheads down the street start taking to the street. Scream for protection from the evil people or the evil guns, or the horrors of doing for yourself when all of your resources and expected pleasures and joys disappear or are inaccessible to you. Demand that someone, somewhere, take care of you and your children, and be responsible for you and enforce your rights for you. Yeah, that'll work out well for you.

Pussies.

Symbiosis, baby!

I just ordered my first package of bees. 
Yeah, I know, that's confusing as hell. How - or why - would you order a "package"  of bees? Bees come in, like, a package? Don't bees sting, aren't they dangerous, why would you want them?

Yeah, well, I'm not allergic to bees. The stings are painful and piss me off, but that's all. Besides, I have access to an epi pen if I need it.

First and foremost, there's the whole honey thing. I love honey. I cook and bake with it. I use honey instead of sugar, honey instead of corn syrup in my pecan pies... honey in everything. I use about 60 lbs of honey a year... that's a whole 5-gallon bucket.  Considering that you use less than half of the sugar measurement when you use honey in any recipe, that's a LOT of honey.

Second, there's the whole beeswax thing. I make my own soap and am starting to make my own lotions, and the honey and the beeswax are important parts of that. Candles? You bet. Beeswax is smokeless and pure, and most people with candle allergies are actually allergic to the petroleum in 'regular' candles. I'm not - no allergies here - but if I am going to make candles (and I am) why not use the beeswax?

Not to mention the royal jelly and the propolis ('bee glue') that are also good for you; heals wounds, kills bacteria, etc.

A bee "package" is a producing mating queen and 4000 or so worker bees. By the end of the summer, there will be 20,000 bees - workers and drones, along with the queen - in a single hive, from a single package.

But there are a lot of beekeepers out there nowadays who just don't seem to understand symbiosis. They brag about having hives that they ship all over the country to pollinate fruits and vegetables, and even alfalfa for cattle feed. They lament about the multiple drugs and pesticides they have to use on their bees every season, just to 'keep them healthy'. They don't understand the dichotomy there. If you are shipping your bees all over God's Little Acre, and mixing them with other bees (who may or may not be infested with mites or infected with all sorts of diseases), you are literally putting your bees in a swamp of potential disasters... and then wondering what happened to your carefully-bred Carnolian or Italian darlings, who can't even clean themselves or take care of themselves without your human intervention. More - the more you 'treat' your bees with insecticides and pesticides and all sorts of tainted products, the weaker and more dependent your bees  become - and the more likely your honey and even your wax will be tainted with the same things. Anything you therefore eat or inhale from your hive is likely to poison you, too...

So I found this guy in Nebraska who breeds a special type of bee. He doesn't ship them to hell and back, he raises and breeds them in Nebraska. They are specially suited for the cold winters here, and they are self-sufficient. He doesn't use miticides, pesticides, or any treatments - at all. He doesn't rob the hives; he takes less than half of what they produce, and leaves the rest, for them to overwinter on their own stores. This treatment produces - so he says - gentler, smarter, and more self-sufficient bees. Unlike the hybrid bees of other species, they clean each other, themselves, and their hive - constantly. They are tough and yet - not aggressive to humans. They are productive and make honey out of any and everything - because they aren't being shipped to this alfalfa field or that almond farm, particular about the types of pollen and nectar that they gather, and the honey that they produce. These seem to be the bees I've been looking for, to complete the plan.

It's about symbiosis. I have cows that eat grass (any type of grass) and poop fertilizer. I have chickens who eat scraps and poop fertilizer. In the process they feed us meat, milk, and eggs, all as casual byproducts. I have fruit trees and vegetables, fertilized with cow and chicken poop, soon to be pollinated by the bees that will produce the honey. Everything works together, everything provides something for the farm, and incidentally will feed us too.

Next week we'll pick up Ashley, our second hand-raised and home-bred steer, from the butcher. 480 pounds of burger, steaks, ribs, and roasts for a total of $250. That will last us all year long. The meat provides us with food, and the strength to go out and plow and plant, feed up and water, and build and harvest. Symbiosis. Everything working together, everything dependent on each other, everything working in harmony, breeding and producing endlessly and repetitively. A closed farm, a closed herd, a closed apiary, a closed orchard, a closed garden; all enclosed and working together without shipping anyone out - or in - to contaminate the perfection of it all.


The 10-year self-sufficiency plan is right on schedule, even a little ahead of schedule. But everything is working, and working out. 
 

"I'm Coming Out There!"

Um, no, you're not.

First off, you weren't invited.

Second, there's no place out here for you to stay. No fancy motels, no motels at all within 40 miles, and our home isn't some free  bed-and-breakfast where you can be catered to just because I know you, or am distantly (or dismally) related to you.

Third, you're the type of people I moved to get away from. Drama queens and kings, manipulative, lazy, foul-mouthed, and useless, you wander through life like it was your own personal stage play, all props provided.

This is a working farm - why should I spend money to feed, warm, and house your nasty azz, while you sit on it and play grande dame or grande master of all you survey - when you've never had a pot nor a window that you've earned on your own?

Yes, my nephew is here, with his 4-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. He was invited. He pitches in, shovels hay and cowshit, and feeds the chickens. When a neighbor needed help with her heater, he was on the roof clearing away the collapsed masonry around her vent pipe - in 20 degree weather, with a snowfall - to make sure that her heater would work and she would not be cold as the freezing temps moved in. His kids - unable to comprehend even the basics of living, working, and surviving without drama - are slowly getting to the point where they can function without thinking that a childish smile, giggle, and coquette will get them anything they want. They are doing things that they never did or could have done back east - too many lowlifes lurking around every corner, too many loudmouthed entitlement mommies shoving their children under everyones' noses, too many people and too few decent choices. They go to Wednesday Kids' Club to learn about Jesus in a non-invasive way. His daughter is on a small-fry basketball team. His son wears cowboy boots and walks around the chickens and cattle like a tiny cowboy.

Every other weekend, for $5, they go to the town theater for 'movie night' and eat pizza with their new friends. His son helped his dad and his uncle take the steer to the butcher. His daughter and I are planning her first vegetable garden. When they first came here, they wouldn't eat vegetables, didn't know what they were, wanted candy and potato chips and junk. Now they are learning from where food comes, and are amazed every day by what they can do. Last week after a particularly heavy snowstorm, the kids went sledding - down a hill about 1/4 of a mile high. Something that 3 months ago they would have been terrified to even look at, much less do; now they are enthusiastic and will do it for hours in 0 degree temps.















A couple of times a month we go down to the local bar/restaurant, where kids are always welcome. We sit with friends and talk about grownup things like weather and cattle, and the kids listen intently, or find their friends and sit and talk. We might drink, or we might not. But there are no staggering drunks, everyone is friendly, everyone stops by for a chat.



No, this is nothing like you are used to and nothing like you think. Types like you would be easily bored, looking for action, looking to start trouble and stir shit, demanding to be the center of attention, trying to find a drug dealer or a cadre of drunks with whom to get loud and play mindless, purposeless games. And that simply isn't happening here. Out here is real life, real emotions, real work, and real rewards. And, quite honestly, you couldn't handle any of it.

The Arrogance Of Government "Protection"

Today - 1700 miles and 5 years away from South Carolina - I received a letter from the Department of Revenue, State of South Carolina. It advised me that my 'account' - where I have filed taxes since I was 18 - was probably hacked and that I should be on the lookout for any use of my SSN, tax info, etc. The records stolen go back to 1998. Of course they hasten to assure me that no one has reported any use of this information, and that they have established an account for me at one of those 'information-lock' sites.

Seven years ago, I received a letter from the Department of Revenooers. That letter was not so nice. It said that they knew - HAD PROOF! - that I had worked for some place I had never heard of, and that I owed them $5000 more in taxes. Well, I protested. They shrugged. Not their problem; they had PROOF. So I found the owner (retired) of the business where they claimed I'd worked - and she said that I was not the first person to contact her. (I had to track her down in another state, btw.) Apparently I was one of several people. I faxed her what I had, and she faxed me a letter stating that I had never worked for her. I sent it all to the DOR. They sent me a brief statement that they had gotten it... but that I still had to prove that I had not worked there!

 Well, you can't prove a negative (as government bureaucracies intimately know). So I picked up the phone and called my buddy, Joe Wilson, and told him about it. After some investigation at the Federal level, it turned out that at least 15 people - and several companies - in SC alone had fallen prey to this scam.

This all puts me in mind of another bureaucratic fiasco; when, 15 years ago, our idiot SC Legislature wanted to sell all of their constituents' drivers' license info to a company that promised to put a "life-lok" type of credit assurance on every single person's ID. Well, I and several hundred other people testified at the Legislative Judicial Committee's hearing against this idiocy - even if the state would get $.07 per license out of it. The most telling testimony (and the one that shut the house down) was the friend who brought his laptop into the chamber with him... and with the flick of a few keys, pulled up the Chairman's granddaughter's full DL information. "If I were a stalker, sir..." he drifted off.   End. /30/. The Legislature voted to not do this... and two years later, we discovered that the whole thing was a scam - not by some salacious profit-seeking entity, but by our own Federal government, set up to gather as much info about as many people as possible.

With "watchdogs" like these guarding our 'precious' information, how - or, why - should we trust them with anything?

A Surge of Evil

Yes, everyone's talking about it; everyone's trying to figure out why, and some talking heads will sanctimoniously come up with one answer or another, and ponderously tell everyone that there is an answer, and that they have it.

They don't. Because the only answer is - there is Evil.

Most people shy away from this, just as they shy away from talking or even thinking about God or the fact that their lives are mere fleeting seconds in time and space, not the important and world-changing events that they believe them to be. They deny Evil, try to explain it, try to pretend it is something it is not, try to insist that there is an explanation for it, that cause equals effect, that it's about science or medication or even the chemical composition of some peoples' brains. It is none of these things.

They want to deny the creeping and resolute surge of Evil in their own families, neighborhoods, and communities. They want to blame GMO foods, the hapless weapons used to perpetrate the Evil, the social strata of the criminal or victims, even the very water and air that sustains them. They are all wrong. Like people insisting that they are going to ride out the next hurricane in their own homes, they wrap their arms about each other as the storm surge rises, higher and higher, and demand or plead for help that will not, can not, come. 

I know Evil. I have seen its face, looked into its dark, dead eyes, and felt its icy presence even when it smiled and laughed and tried to behave under a facade of normalcy.  I have seen it in the eyes of the man who has killed, without justification or remorse, in the eyes of the woman who has bludgeoned her own children or swapped her teenage daughters' innocence for drugs or favors. I have seen it in the smiling politician's face who has promised everyone everything they could ever possibly want, with that smirk in the corner of his mouth at the gullible stupidity of the masses who believe in him. I have seen it in the early morning light, when accosted by four men who thought that I was a helpless woman alone and open to their predation. I have seen it in the dark of night when three men tried to beat down my door, thinking that, through their size, force, and power, they could pursue their own pleasures. Both of those latter times, what stopped them was the barrel of a gun shoved in their faces, and the cool stare of determination that dared them, "one step further".  I did not know what they wanted, nor did I care. I knew what I wanted - and it was to survive, preferably unscathed. I did so.

Because, you see, Evil is only afraid of one thing - a bigger, more determined, and adamant faith. Evil believes in its own righteousness, its own ends, and only when faced down by someone who can - and determinedly will - put a stop to them, does it back down.  To prey, Evil must have prey. To fight Evil, one must determine to - not be prey. Not plead for help or succor from others. Not try to legislate or preach against it. Not try to turn it back to good, or educate it, or psychoanalyze it.  Not try to deny its existence or pretend that it will never encroach, because we are richer, smarter, better, and kinder than others. Evil is visceral, as one's reactions to it must be.

Long ago, my father taught me to always be at "code yellow", alert and aware of everything around me.  The guy walking between the parked cars at a shopping mall, the glow of concentration deep-set in someone's eyes in a crowd,  the hiss of a snake's belly sliding through the leaves; anything curious, out-of-the-ordinary, unusual. Folks pooh-pooh this, say it is living in fear. It is not. It is living in awareness, living life to the fullest, yet being always aware that there is Evil out there, that it waits to pounce, that it awaits weakness and fragility and helplessness as its encouragement to overtake, overcome, and even kill - without compunction, without remorse, without any emotion other than self-gratification.

Those who deny Evil's existence, those who believe that Evil can be ignored, legislated against, calmed, changed, or brought into the light are fodder for the further perpetration of Evil. It is they who permit Evil to grow, to flourish. By their denying that there are snakes living under their porch, allowing them to breed and perpetrate, unheeded and unmolested, they ignorantly and yet wholeheartedly permit Evil to flourish. Sooner or later their home becomes a den of snakes, and there is nowhere for them to go; nowhere the snakes have not infiltrated.

The battle between Good and Evil is not coming, it is already here - and those who choose to excuse it, placate it, or deny its existence will be its willing, hapless victims - or encourage it to take more and more innocents as its sustenance. Evil voraciously feeds on the innocent babes that ignorance and denial throw to It, to save their own sensibilities and protect their own hapless, mindless belief that "everything will be all right".

Secede Your Ass.

Yeah, right.

Growing up in South Carolina, I learned all about "States' Rights!" and the right of any state to secede. I also learned what happens to them when they do. The TRUTH of secession is that the South was richer than the North, and wanted to be free to buy their supplies from the lowest bidder - and the North insisted on putting more and more sanctions on them to keep them from buying anything from anyone other than the North. It wasn't about slavery - many Southern blacks owned slaves, while only 17% of whites did. But that s the emotional trigger that the gullible and ignorant use to arm themselves.

Now people from every State have filed secession petitions. They have literally NO idea of how intricately their finances, both personal and state, are bound so tightly to the Federal Government that extrication would immediately impoverish them and their home states. They are lucky that Obama is such an arrogant ass that he'd call in the National Guard and force them to remain at the point of a bayonet. A common-sense guy like Reagan would let them go, just as he did the air-traffic controllers, and watch them collapse.

Aw, but you don't believe me? Think about this...

Your educational system, from Pre-K to PhD, is built on government input. It isn't just the free-and-reduced lunch subsidies, that pay your schools for every lunch that they serve, not just the free ones. It's the high grant monies that go for Title I - SPED classes - some of which keep entire school systems afloat. The more kids you have in SPED, the exponentially higher your Federal income. (Which is one of the reasons schools see no need to teach children - smarter kids means less funding). They get federal grants for everything from anti-bullying classes to how many students they retain in school for a set number of days during any given year. Cut those out, and your schools, which are already swirling the drain scholastically and financially, die.

Then there's USDA grants for water, sewer, HUD grants for housing, USDOT monies to keep your roads from becoming graveled cowpaths. Protest against these all you want - the sudden recall of all monies that all communities relay on, to build, replace, and restructure would stop, and it is your local residents whose taxes will go up - incredibly - to foot these bills.

To secede means to cut all of those gossamer threads that bind you inexorably to the Federal government. Are you ready for that? Just in your own community, ask your Town board, City Council or County Council people what would happen if they were suddenly cut loose from all of the Federal monies - or had to repay them at a moment's notice. I guarantee you'll get a rapid education on reality, even though you may not want it, or want to pretend to yourself that you and your neighbors could survive it.

Stop wasting your time on endless and fruitless pursuits like secession petitions,  and grow a little fiscal comprehension.  Because if your state DOES secede, you and they will be broke in less than a year. Then it won't matter how many of your fictitious angels can dance on your fantasized pins...

 

Goodnight, Jim Demint.

Jim Demint has resigned from his elected position as the Senator from South Carolina, to take the position as the President of the Heritage Foundation.

Way to go, Jim. Get the fuck out while you can.

I know just how he feels. When the Stupid People vote in Santa Claus as their President, and continue to vote in liars, thieves, and charlatans at every level, the smart person can read the writing on the wall, writ large by the Fickle Finger of Fate. People who choose their own self-destruction over their own salvation deserve to die, as horribly, bloodily, and wretchedly as possible. There is nothing that you can do for them. You cannot stop them in their headlong, panting desire for self-flagellation. You can only stand up and scream, "YOU LIE!" so many times. (Yes, that was Congressman Wilson; thanks, I know.)  All you can do is back off and let them hack at their own wrists with their Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-dinner sporks. Masses of stupid people cannot be overcome. They cannot be stopped. They move as an insensate wave over everything, demanding, screaming, decimating everything in their path, bleeding everywhere, from every orifice, all over their own food, into their own wine glass, shrieking that all this blood is sloppy, messy, and always someone else's fault. They are right, they are good, they know better, they are going to change everything into hopeful happy pastoral goodness with the blood that they spill.

Nothing else to do but walk away from them, as quickly as possible. Let them eat their poisoned food and drink their tainted water, calling it manna and wine. Let them sully themselves in each others' beds and brothels, telling each other how grand it all is to be 'free' to do so. And let them die, unlamented and unwanted and unloved, curled into screaming emotionally-encrusted fetal positions, drooling, urinating, and defecating on themselves, while their progeny follow them down the same twisted and filthy paths, further into infamy. 

I have never called myself a Christian, mostly because I don't believe in fanaticism of any stripe or polka-dot. But I do believe in God and Jesus Christ - in a quiet, faithful, trusting way - no church-going, no praise-singing, but only in a firm belief in the black-and-white differences between right and wrong. I don't believe God is a judgmental prick Who likes to terrify people into behaving, any more than I believe that He has anything to do with good people coming to bad ends. Mostly I believe that God is a nice Guy Who likes to surround Himself with other nice guys; that He has a sense of humor, that He knows more than anyone, and that a person who strives to do the right thing will be rewarded, and a person who is selfish or ruled by selfish thoughts and actions, without any thought of responsibility or payment, will pay in the end... far more than they ever will realize. 

Its why I could smile when those arrogant pricks defended my ex husband's violence and abuse, and decided to make an example of me because I refused to bow to his and their pressure to 'be an obedient wife'. It's why I could grin and shake my head when those people insisted that I was offending them by choosing to take care of myself and my family instead of being their punching bag. It's why I laugh to myself when some people insist that they are right and they know it, why don't I fall in with them?

Flee, Jim. Flee the insensate and ignorant masses, who wrap themselves in the filthy swaddling of purposeful ignorance, sloppy and sodden self-indulgence, and endless entitlement demands. Flee the Stupid People and their encroaching self-annihilation.  They are their own Horsemen of destruction, and are too stupid to know it. Cast not your pearls before swine.

Cheese with your whine...

Wow.
Everything I posted last December has proven even more true.

Sorry, kidz, I've been busy. There's work, and then there's the farm, and if you think that isn't work, guess again. The drought this year decimated many of my neighbors' ranches and hay fields - bare hard dirt that blew in the wind, then fires that swept thru and ate huge acreages.

But not mine. Nope, my little cows were quite happy and had enough to eat, a small herd of small cows, vigorously producing. Ranchers here have to 'preg-check' their cows to make sure that their overbred bulls and cows are reproducing - we don't. Our bull loves his job so much that he wants to service everyone else's cows, too. Yet yesterday I went to the fence, and he came up and licked me with his big black tongue,  nuzzled me with his big furry head, and demanded his alfalfa cubes and 'scritches'. We traded two bred cows for hay - last year's and this year's - and at the end of the month, the next steer goes to the butcher... beef for another year. But it's OK - we have two more steers and a cow coming up, and the two older cows are pregnant again.

The potato farm south of us gathered in the harvest last month, and I got a truckbed full of free "leftover"potatoes; all I had to do was go pick 'em. I was a "cannin' fool" for a few days, and the rest are happily ensconced on a huge shelf in the cool basement, covered up with newspaper. I harvested and canned corn and green beans, too, and canned some nice pumpkin. There's a giant turkey in the freezer, cleaned and ready to go - when Tammy comes for an early Thanksgiving next week, we shall have such a party!

My nephew came to live with us last week, bringing along his 5 year old daughter and 4 year old son. Coming from uneducated SC - and Mike's miserably illiterate and drama-queen family - they were filthy and poor, and the children were whiners and criers, acting out the drama with which they were raised. I stopped that crap posthaste. Now those kids "cowboy UP!" and are learning to read and speak properly, as well as bathe and have a little respect for themselves. Damned straight. That's what I do and who I am. Two of our three kids - and our nephew, whom we raised in his teen years after his mother tossed him out  - did well under it, and learned from it. One of our own children did not - where he still gets the idea that we and the world owe him a living, I have no idea. He's a selfish jerk, and I have no time for him and his endless self-pity as an adult. He'll merely grow older, never grow up, and will blame everyone but himself his whole life. I have no time for that crap. Man up or shut the fuck up.

But that's kinda the way the world is going. Like I predicted last December, nothing changed, the pawns just rearranged. Stupid people proved themselves again this week during the elections - voting for whatever sneering, smarmy, useless bastard promised them everything that they deserved - from other peoples' paychecks. Blame the rich! Blame the poor! Blame the Illuminati! Blame Soros! Blame the Democrats! Blame the Republicans! It's Bush's fault!

Nope, it's yours. There's a blizzard coming in two days, and I have stacks of wood piled high for the woodstove, a warm and tight and toasty house, food in the basement, live and reproducing food in the pasture, barns, and coop, and a busy productive life. It sucks to be you if you don't, if you'll be waiting like the people of New Jersey and New York for someone to come save you, and I have no sympathy for you. Want some cheese to go with that whine? Tough shit. Like the little red hen, I grew it, I made it, I harvested it, I butchered it, and I'll eat it my own damned self.

  

2012 - The Political Storm that is Coming

Christmas is over; all of the bright lights and gifting is gone, and now it is time to get serious again. We haven't much time left, so - right into it.

Yes, I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I always have been.

This surprises no one who knows me well. They have gone with me to Ron Paul speaking engagements, many of which I organized, have sat at the same table with me and Ron Paul, and discussed politics and family and Americanism, long before Paul was a Presidential Candidate.  They have seen the pictures of  me at Ron Paul events, at straw polls, at Republican Party debates, from Columbia to Myrtle Beach, during the Presidential Candidacy of 2008. They know that hanging in my parlor is an 8X10 picture of me and Ron Paul shaking hands.

In 2007, I became very much aware of the lies that were being told to the American public, not only by Obama and the Democrats, but by the GOP and then-President Bush, as well as local candidates and governments. I realized exactly what would happen - that RINO McCain would be shoved down our throats as the GOP candidate of choice, that he had no chance against the Golden Boy Obama, and that there was collusion on the parts of both the Democratic and Republican Parties to quash the American People and their Constitution. I realized that I, as an outspoken and adamant individual, had two choices - to either stand foursquare on behalf of the American people and face vicious opposition, or to tell everyone to go eff themselves and go make plans for my family for the coming collapse.

It was easy to fight when I had a DH who stood foursquare behind me, backed me in everything I did; it was easy to fight for what was right and honest and true when I was healthy and strong and could take on all comers. When my DH became crippled, and his doctors gave us an expiration date for him of two years, and I was at the same time diagnosed with lupus, I took a hard look around me. I realized that the very people for whom I was fighting were following the passionate, emotional, and deadly freedom-killing rhetoric of my opponents. I decided to tell them, in a word, to "take this job and shove it". They were not worth it. Did it offend them? You Betcha. Did I give a shit? Not at all. I let them know - to their everlasting insulted shock - that they were not as important to me as my DH and my life.

So I did what I had always wanted and planned to do - I quit everything, bought a farm in the middle of nowhere, and started becoming self-sufficient - and silent.

DH's official expiration date has passed (thee years ago) now; and he is living a happy and productive life - as far as he can,  with the drugs and pain forcing him to take morning and afternoon naps, with it taking him five times as long as it used to, to accomplish even the simplest tasks. By eliminating not only much of the stress but the unwholesome food, contaminated Savannah River water, and humid miasma that passes for air in SC from my life, I am healthier, stronger, and can do far more than I used to, far more often.

So as I watch from a very remote location, I am merely struck by the continuing gross stupidity, gullibility, and simple-minded, mouthbreathing brainlessness of the Vox Populi. They are falling for the same old rhetoric and same old lies again. They haven't the wit or wherewithal to understand what is happening to them, what is being perpetrated upon them, what is being taken from them under the guise of promising them 'better' - at "someone else's" expense. They are still just as mawkishly stupid and emotionally driven as they have ever been.

I admire Ron Paul for still trying to educate them, but he casts pearls before swine. Most aren't bright enough to even read and understand their own Constitutional rights, or that they are being taken away from them. They are and will continue to be useless, emotional, mouthbreathing morons with the attention span of moths - battering themselves to death against any bright light the media shines for them.

They deserve exactly what they are going to get this year, and I have no sympathy for them. At all. 

Sadly, not even Ron Paul can save them from the Congresscritters they insist on re-electing to steal from them, the local-government morons who are lining their own pockets and making their own rules to suit themselves and their donors, that will leave their constituents poorer, less educated, and less free, month by month, year by year, one law and ordinance at a time.  Ron Paul cannot save people from themselves, and expecting that his election (or any Presidential candidates' election) will turn this country around is courting - even demanding - failure.

Oh, yes, at the close of 2011, I still See Stupid People -  but fortunately, it is through a telescope of time, distance, and space, like watching sunspots erupt on the surface of the gaseous star over our heads. They may eventually affect me, reach this far, but only minimally. They burst and burn with their own ignorance, their own emotional rhetoric, their own flaming desires - that all too quickly are swallowed by the great dark vacuum of Congress, Washington, and their own selfish and self-involved flares of sudden brief and brilliant ineptitude. Sound and fury, signifying nothing... at all.

Happy New Year! Or, as the Irish bridegroom said, "Brrrrrace yeself, Bridget!" - the foreplay is over, and now the hard fucking begins. Bend over and take what you asked for, begged for, and demanded for so long. 

Thoughts on Co-Prepping and "Home-Grown Terrorism"

Some links about "Home Grown Terrorism"

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13290698/The-Modern-Militia-MovementMissouri-MIAC-Strategic-Report-20Feb09-

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/wp-content/uploads/ColoradoFBISurplusStore.pdf

OMG! These are the types of people I live around.
This week was pretty hectic at work. I was pretty involved in a lot of various out-putting of 'fires' - everything from social-services-induced drama with some teenagers to co-teaching a class on American History (I was able to give the Southern perspective and some factual information about the War of Northern Aggression ).

Talking to one of the teachers about her horse ranch, we discussed the recent lifting of the ban on horse-slaughtering in the US. Yes, that's right - the ban that PETA and HSUS fought for six years ago has now been lifted, and horses will now be able to be processed for meat for human consumption. My friend actually owns two ranches, one here and one in Wyoming. We discussed what this would mean not only to the wild horses of the Plains, but to horse ranchers in general, as well as human consumption and availability of horse meat. (When the US was slaughtering horses, most of the meat went overseas.) Horse ranchers will once again be able to 'cull' their herds, and the price of good sound rideable stock will go back up. The cost of good animals will soon be higher - since the culls will soon be sent to slaughter. So if you are thinking about getting a horse or two or several, you may want to look into it rather quickly. If you don't know anything about horses, their care, upkeep, and requirements as well as their training, find someone local who does, to school you.

We had a 47,000 acre ranch sell here yesterday for $11.7 million. The bid opened at $10 million, and there were no takers. Since this ranch employs many of our local cowboys and particularly the managing family who are friends of mine, we were concerned. There was some spirited bidding between Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, some overseas buyers and some Ted Turner factions, but the winner was an American family from ND. This family of 7 brothers owns much of the land in ND, some in SD, and now a part of NE. It will continue to be run as a cattle ranch/hay-and-corn harvesting ranch. We are all breathing a sigh of relief that the land won't be brutalized and overgrazed by some get-rich-quick schemer, or turned into a holiday property with delusions of "ranch life" for the rich and bored. Life will continue; lots of beef, lots of production, lots of good solid investment in the future of not only beef but the ranching way of life that is all too quickly disappearing.

 One of the local large ranchers has a wife with whom I work. We were talking about the sale and the ranching way of life. She noted that many folks who call themselves 'ranchers' now might have only 20 head, where they used to graze 500. Some kids are growing up to go to college and never come back. Her own husband joked that, "If we had known what it was like 20 years ago, we'd have sold grandpa's property and gone to town and gotten jobs!" Ranching is a risky proposition even in the best of times; and takes constant application. Her DH and two sons are jacks-of-all-trades; dig wells, repair their own tractors and machinery, even bore out engines when necessary. But as she said, the most important thing is that they hold onto the property - because even if cattle go down to $.15 a pound, they'll still have their gardens and their own meat. Most of the folks around here are canning and dehydrating fools, and are stocking our basements and pantries and freezers with alacrity. We are a dawn-to-dusk beehive of self-and-mutually-reliant 'terrorist activity'.

"Winter" is coming, the dark winter of struggle and survival, and we are watching it from our High Plains location; investing in everything to ensure that we will have food, not just for ourselves, but for each other and even to sell. The lye came in, so now I can make soap from the 50 lbs of pigfat I rendered down for lard. This spring I will go East to attend a UNL college course on - beekeeping. Wax and sugar from tiny little critters to advance my own self-sufficiency, as well as to share, trade, or even sell.

Incidentally, our first steer that we had processed came out to $250 for 4 100-lb boxes of steak, roasts, and burger... guess that definitely makes me a terrorist, since I've got more than 7 days of food, not counting the 400 lbs of pig (including the backfat) we got from the processor last month. There are several hundred "terrorists" around me, though; all planning and prepping, stocking up and harvesting, so we are in good company. Every news story, every new development, from a ranch sale to a slaughterhouse, we carefully fit into our futures. We don't talk about it much; there are no meetings of preppers, no political organizational meetings, no shouting disagreements at the local bar or restaurant. We are too busy to Occupy other peoples' property, too busy to go to meetings or protests, too industrious to sit and listen while folks tell us what is coming. We already know. We share work and skills and output, recipes and materials, and we work together to make our own lives full - often without a dollar being exchanged.

Actions Speak Louder

Tomorrow I take a day off from work, and load our first prepped steer into the trailer, and take him to the butcher. We will fill our freezer with meat we have raised ourselves, on our own pasture, with our own labor. Grass-fed and plump, Springer will provide beef for the whole winter.

Friday is our big Veteran's Day celebration here in town. For weeks we have been planning. I put up a prize of $10 for the best "Thank You" card made by our local students (one at each school) , and those cards now decorate the large bulletin boards at the entrance to our schools. The Vets will come in and eat a huge Thanksgiving-day type meal, put on by our students. Then we will have students whom our American Legion has sent to the State Capitol over the summer talk about what they learned in those government classes. The school band will play patriotic music, and the assembly will thank the Veterans for what they've done for us. Afterwards, I will take down the handmade cards off of the bulletin board and give them to the American Legion Ladies' Auxiliary for their holiday trip to the Veteran's Home, and those cards together with the hand-packed 'ditty bags' , baked goods, and gifts, will be disbursed to the veterans there. (Many students didn't do it for the prize - they turned in their cards after the prize deadline, after the winner had benn chosen, to show their thanks for their Veterans.)

People live their lives according to their moral code. Even serial killers and psychopaths have a moral code (even if it differs from the norm). Your behavior is dictated by your beliefs. If there are things that you will not do - like shoplift, or rape, or scam others - that is your moral code; you follow a belief system. If you are Bernie Madoff, or Manson, or Dahlmer - you are following your belief system. You cannot divorce yourself from it. Your actions state who and what you are, even if you manage to fool a lot of people into thinking that you are otherwise.

A person who stands foursquare in the public eye against government waste, and then is elected and brings home endless pork-barrel projects like Roads to Nowhere or taxpayer dollars to support businesses that fail once the government money runs out, then your actions belie your statements. You support government waste, and you prove it by your actions. If you stand in front of the microphones and talk about "the sanctity of marriage" - and 10 years ago you dumped your wife because she had gotten cancer, even though she waited for you while you were a prisoner of war in a concentration camp, and took care of your broken body afterwards - you are a hypocrite. If you "fight to stop illegal immigration", yet have a construction company that asks no questions and profits by not paying taxes or Workers' Comp payments on the illegal immigrants you hire, you are a hypocrite. Your actions cannot be divorced from your words, no matter how passionate and well-constructed your phrases are. Your actions exemplify your true beliefs, and your words are meaningless in context. You therefore cannot be expected to stand for the things that you say you believe, because the moral code in which you believe - and that dictates your actions - causes you to do the opposite.

Sadly, most people do not take these things into account. They do not look at someone's successes and failures, their previous actions and those actions' results. They simply believe what they hear in sound bytes, and make their decisions accordingly. People believe the most passionate and most attractive speaker who caters to their own self-interests, and look no further. This is why we have serial killers and child molesters who can operate for years undetected, or con artists who can schmooze millions out of eagerly unsuspecting investors, or elected officials who can get re-elected, over and over, by promising whatever the electorate says they want this year. None of them have to take responsibility for what they have done or are doing, because no one is paying attention to anything but their words.


So listen to all those fancy speeches about "what we should be doing" or what we "should" believe. I live my life according to my beliefs - that grass-fed, home-grown beef is better than store-bought, that people can actually run their own lives according to their own beliefs, that support for Veterans isn't just a pretty picture or fanciful comment posted on a Facebook page to show your "friends" your "patriotism".

I live what I believe.