Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass...... 54 years ago today at about 2:00 P.M. a life altering event occurred in my life that remains with me even to today. It happened about three hundred yards from airport runway 9 at Clarksville Arkansas on highway 21. Whose fault it was or how it happened is of little importance now, what is extra-ordinary about the event and what stays with me is really about time and the speed that it passes, depending on circumstances at the time. Memory of that accident is one of the things that has interested and mystified me about time and its qualities my entire life. I believe that time is constant as a whole, but may vary in the realm of traumatic events and may also have a different passage value for other species. This makes me a crazy man in a world of rigid time structure, and in fact probably crazy in any other structure also, but 'things' sometimes simply consumes me if there are no absolute answers that you can go to bed with and still be satisfied when you wake up. I was waiting for my uncle to pick me up at the side of 21 highway and had crossed the road so as to be on the correct side for him to just pull over so I could tell him to wait while I told my mother he was there, and I could go home with him and spend the night at his little hill farm about 12 miles out in the sticks. In a short while his big log truck came into view and when he seen me by the roadside he pulled over to see what was up. I jumped up on the running board of the passenger side and shouted for him to wait while I went and told my mother I was going home with him. Not waiting for a reply, I jumped down and ran in front of his huge truck, engine still running, and ran onto 21 highway at fullspeed just as Emil Dlugosh was passing in his pick-up truck. No one knows for sure how fast Emil was going. Afterwards he said about 30, but until his death my Uncle Corby, watching from the drivers seat of his still running log truck, swore he was doing at least 50. When I collided with Emil's '48 chevy pick up, it was the most thunderous and consuming power I had ever, and to this day experienced. But what happened next was the most incredible journey I ever made, and am reasonably certain, never to make again. I connected first with the side of my head on the right headlight of Emil's pickup and it broke. It was an explosion in my ear with a tremendous amount of roaring, but that's when something happened to the passage of time that still fascinates me. When the headlight shattered, it was as if time slowed almost to a stop and I heard the glass tinkling and rattling and I felt the side of my face on it as it gave way. The tinkling glass took its time and I really don't remember leaving the headlight but I became aware of being airborne and the wind tickling my hair. I don't remember connecting back to the pavement, but when that happened I came down on the top of my head and peeled the hair off the top of my skull. The next thing I do remember was Emil's truck attacking me again as it caught up to me. This time the truck passed over me and I was aware of being wallowed around under the screaming engine that sounded like a thousand sawmills and was aware of the oil on the oilpan burning me as I was scooted around underneath the still moving truck. I believe I was about halfway under the truck when I felt my best pair of jeans being torn, and distinctly remember thinking my mother would probably whail the daylights out of me over that. I remember sliding and rotating around flat of my back and as the truck kept passing over me and it seemed like it had been a very long time at this point. Of course Emil was doing his best to stop, and I remember thinking as the truck rear wheel slid over one leg and I felt the shoe slip off my other foot, "So this is how it feels to die..." I don't remember being afraid or frantic, just resigned. The next thing I remember was relative silence, and someone standing over me shading me from the sun with his shirt, then I remember the ambulance backing up to where I was laying in the road, and my mother screaming. Later on, my Uncle told me the ambulance scraped me off the highway 66 feet from the original point of impact. Needless to say, my life was very uncertain for three days, and I really don't recall a lot of specifics for some time, but amputation of my left leg was discussed, but a grandfather I will aways be beholden to would have no such option considered, and stubbornly sat by my bedside daring the first to try it. He won out and 8 days after the accident, surgery far beyond its time was done on my leg. It was then 5 months in a body cast, 13 more months in a leg cast and it was time for me to learn how to walk again. I recovered and things are fine with me as I get old, but this 'time' thing..... how does that work? According to my Uncle, the entire accident happened in 5..maybe 6 seconds. But for me it slowed down enough for me to experience and remember what seemed to me a journey of near eternity, colliding with and rolling around underneath that moving pick up truck, with full awareness and specifics of what I was experiencing as it happened. Now when I think of time, is it the same for all things? Is the 17 day life of the housefly the same for it, as the 80 years for an old man? Is the year that me and my little dogs share the same for both of us? Or do they actually experience several years living while I'm experiencing one? Is the dimension of time as it moves through our world a phenonoma that has many dimensions outside our own personal space, or did that truck possibly warp my brain?......................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass.....While we stagger under the pressure of skyrocketing costs, as expected the government posts low inflation figures for the first quarter. Today I read figures of 2% inflation for the first 3 months of 2006. To be fair, there was a statement that excluded food and energy as a part of that figure. I guess that means that part of life is to be ignored in the rape of our pocketbooks. Even excluding food and energy I think it's a major stretch to convince anyone with enough brains to button a shirt that 2% is a reasonable appraisal of that portion of our cost of living increase. The Opec oil suppliers shrug their shoulders as they say they have no control over the cost of crude, (their cost today is very close to the 1980 cost of extracting a barrel from the desert sand) , the American oil companies are reporting such huge profits we cannot imagine how much money it really is, and saying a large part of the problem is supply and demand, and at the same time saying the refiners can't keep up. What? Then how come every oil company isn't breaking ground to build super refineries with some of these huge profits they're enjoying? The President and Congress are shrugging their shoulders while looking at the cameras helplessly and proclaiming "We just can't find any evidence of price gouging or wrong doing"....... what?.....What?.....WHAT? An inflationary expanding economy full of hyperdinkel crammed with gobbledygook is something that makes huge amounts of money on paper but consistently chips away at any gains made for the guy who gets up and goes to work each day. Most of America isn't able to get past the "WOW !! I'm making three, sometimes up to ten times what My Daddy made!!", while they're signing a lease to rent a car they will never own that Daddy bought on a three year contract in his day, and living in a home they have mortgages on for several times over what Daddy paid for his, also not likely to ever be free and clear, dropping their spouses off at work while Daddy's spouse stayed at home and lived comfortably off of Daddy's income, making what we nostalgically refer as 'the good old days'. There are so many telling comparisons to be made that it would take days for a Dumb Ass like myself to list them. But what would be the point? Most of the populace is crouched down in the comfortable shadow of government regulation believing their best interests are being served, satisfied in having their wits scared out of them about everything and only waiting for a darker shadow to arrive that they can be safer and more secure in. Most of my Republican friends believe things would be much worse for us if the Democrats had been voted in while my Democrat friends are happy to point the finger of blame on the Republicans and swear things would have been much better and the mistakes and silliness we've been victimized by would have never happened if only the Democrats had gotten in. This is indicative of our inability to look at who done what with honesty. They were all there while everything was being done folks, and took part in taking your independance, wrecking your economy, regulating you into submission and scaring you to death. Let those who are unable to see beyond the Democrat/Republican balderdash remain with their mindset. Let the rest join together with a new party that is representative of sensibility and freedom and be unafraid to mark a ballot accordingly when its time to send those who have and are destroying us home. Next question..... Who, and what party? I don't know. But one will show up. When it does, don't be suckered into being afraid, and do the right thing.......................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass...... Tonight I spent some time reading about goings on with clouds of gas and star burnouts and just things in general that go on in outer space. The activity that caught my eye was something the Hubbell telescope picked up within the constellation Pegasus. Space and time has always been a subject that could captivate me very quickly and tonight was no different. Of all the things a person could find interesting, space and time must be the one that is the most out of reach. Because no matter how hard you try to understand, its relative importance in your life is out of reach even beyond your wildest imagination. So why would anyone get hung up on something so irrelavent that no part of it can possibly affect your life as we understand life? I really can't answer that myself, even though my brain gets into a wad just wanting to grasp even a little of how it works and what it means if anything, always leaving me frustrated. In our present form I think humans are crude at best and incapable of logic thought as it applies to us and what heights it is possible for us to reach. We haven't yet learned to get along with each other, which is and always will be the greatest stumbling block to the greatness of the human race. We are dishonest even when it would be to our advantage to be honest. We are illogical much of the time even when logic is right before us and identifiable. We lie when the truth would be much more comfortable in the long run and will sell innocents down the river to save face. We will grasp at what we believe although we may not completely believe what we believe, and will defend stupidity down to the bitter end rather than consider that another way might have been much better. We are judgemental, selfish, and greedy and in the final analysis are all for sale, we're just not sure how much we want. We demand answers and explanations for most things but will accept untruth in the place of what is real, unable to simply view it as it is. A friend once told me he thought mankind was in its infancy and if it could survive into puberty without destroying itself chances were pretty good it would continue into maturity and achieve things even too great to imagine. I'm inclined to agree. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. A light year is the distance that light would travel unimpeded at that speed, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is 300 MILLION light years to the constellation Pegasus. What difference does it make what's going on there? None, I suppose. While I'm lost in thought about the constellation Pegasus and the activity within it, my life is being affected by people who yet ride camels and chase sand lizards, and we just can't quite figure out who the bad guys are. Hmmmm.......................................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass..... Then there's the story of the frog that was placed in a large pan of water on the stove, and turned to simmer. The heat came so slowly the frog never had a clue and never realized it was losing conciousness and didn't know when it died. That's the way it's been in America. It has been a degree at a time that our freedom has been lost and control has been placed on every facet of our day to day life until there is nothing left that is not monitered and/or dictated by our government. Oddly enough, America's next generation and its youth doesn't necessarily share my take on the situation, and perhaps they're right, but I will defy anyone to name just one thing outside of your most private of thoughts that are not regulated either directly or by association, and that wasn't so in my youth. My first public job had withholding covering federal, state, and local plus social security that amounted to about a whopping 8% total. Todays wage earner can look forward to about 37%, which makes it necessary for both spouses to work because of the tax load. And......, You're not done at 37% today. In my state whatever you buy retail has another 7 plus percent added in sales tax, plus added taxes on every corner for everything you buy with your wages that you've already paid taxes on to begin with, like 41 cents a gallon on fuel for your vehicle, excise taxes on tires, furniture, appliances and the list goes on and on. Property taxes on your property, licenses and fees galore, way too many to entertain. There are think tanks attended by qualified deep thinkers who claim that if taxes on everything in your life were truly counted and considered, the average working stiff would understand their TRUE tax load to be 85% of his gross and possibly more. I believe this to be true, and any other reasonable thinker could find far more than the 37% out of your check and the 7 more percent at the check out counter, which as any fool can figure immediately is already 44% and you're just getting started. A trip out to buy anything is an exercise in terror in itself. Gasoline that will be $3.00 plus in a matter of days in my neighborhood is bad enough but a trip to the grocery store is another eye opener. It's all in how you look at it I suppose, but here's how it is.A bushel of Granny Smith apples at my local store at $1.29 per lb. on a standard 48 pound bushel goes for $61.92, plus of course sales tax, a bushel of tomatoes at $2.19 and a standard 53 lb. weight is $116.07 plus tx, A bushel of grapes, or its equivalent of 32 quarts at $2.19 a quart is $70.08 and strawberrys and peaches depending on season can hit $180.00 a bushel. Soooo...... If you're sort of an average working kind of guy making 30 grand a year on 40 hrs. a week, before deductions, you're worth about three bushels of tomatoes and 1/2 bushel of Granny Smith apples for your labor each week, or $378.96. If that makes you angry enough to think about it, and you want to make some changes, don't fall into the trap of thinking The Democrats will be better than the Republicans or vice versa. That's how we got to our present predicament. Instead be angry enough and bold enough to really make a statement. Consider third party. I will and at this time I have no idea whom, but it won't be Frick or Frack. If either of those take the oval office again, our fate is sealed and recovery will be impossible........ if not already......

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass......... Time........ and its effect on the present............... I used to feel pangs of exhaustion approaching at a very rapid speed when some old man would start talking about 'what's wrong with things nowadays' and think to myself how he just didn't understand the world that he lived in any more and the way he wanted it was just a return to what wouldn't work anymore. Now I find myself the old man in the world which seems absurd to me, with the young completely comfortable with all that is so bothersome and not worried about what to me is so disastrous looming in our future. There are things that remain the same. Name calling of our elected officials for instance. With so many years to draw from ( I can recall Harry Truman as our President), I can remember at some point in time someone in hearing distance referring to all The President's as 'stupid', or 'dumb' at some point or other. That is self deprecating on our part and simply not so. There have been no stupid or dumb President's of the United States. There also have been no President's whose wish was to harm The United States in any way. Another constant is the belief that each one was doing something for covert and secret amassing of personal wealth. The record will show that throughout history no President has ever left the White House with the kind of wealth hid away that was possible to have gotten away with by ulterior motives. Our society and civilization (and I DO think the American way is a civilization aside from the rest of the world) has opportunity for an elected president to lose his way. This is power while they're in office, and even more dangerous is legacy building. Legacy is what we leave behind that make us hero's or villians, or ahead of our time's, or possibly thought of as visionary's and so forth. Given such an incredible opportunity to direct history, most President's have walked away leaving confusion in the arena of success. In my lifetime, while Harry Truman is credited with stopping world war two by dropping 'the bombs' on Japan, we now have guilt over it, and the same Truman is said to have failed in Korea. Eisenhower just didn't do much in his presidency except preside over a peacetime recession that had a very pleasant atmosphere ( the 50's). Kennedy wasn't as popular in life as he was in death. I remember very well those who took issue with him , and there were many. His handling of the civil rights movement wasn't popular with the masses, and his inability to control the peoples behaviour was duly noted at the time. The attack on Guantanamo Bay Cuba was an absolute disaster but on the other hand he stood eye to eye with the Russians and won, but created an enemy that remains today just 90 miles off our coast, Cuba. If he could come back and change his legacy, he would probably remove the advisors on Vietnamese soil that Eisenhower placed on the ground and wash his hands of that entire situation, but he expanded on it instead. Lyndon Johnson was a legacy chaser of the nth. degree. If he could call his time back, there certainly would have been no Vietnam. He would likely change his thinking on his plan for a 'great society' and the working mans taxes and big brotherism would probably not be so oppressive today. Nixon would rethink his handling of the economy that still suffers today because of his handling of it and his stubbornness in standing by the crooks who broke into Watergate thereby leaving him known as a 'crook' and costing him his Presidency, would surely not unfold as it did, if he could do it over. Ford was looked on as an idiot, and much of the time appeared to be so, but he was never elected and brought into the office by a dark period and consequently, no personal power or respect in his satchel, especially after his first official move was to pardon his predecessor who many thought should go to jail, me included. Jimmy Carter was a Presidential disaster who now is viewed as a statesman and sought after for opinion. But.... his Presidency was one of economic uncontrollability, military limpness, lack of power, no foreign policy, allowing the likes of Iran to hold hundreds of American hostages thumbing their noses at us day after day, month after month, while the rest of the entire world watched us wallow around in the pool of nothingness that bad leadership produces, ...... then he gave away The Panama Canal that is run primarily by the Chinese now..... Oh well. Ronald Reagan was one who could only have been criticized by those party wonks that will criticize simply because their 'guy' isn't in charge, because he brought us respectability in the world and allowed us to dream again. George Bush Senior gave us a relatively do-nothing time other than engineer a near perfect war in which he done exactly as promised from start to finish. President Clinton was a new generation of dishonesty that we will pay for in total forever in moral degradation, an economy that was false at the time and still is, and taught us that the 'big guys' really don't have personal obligations and should take care of their own even if it kills them..... and made us love it till the last day and we still beg for more. That brings us to Dubya. He has done nothing I like, broken every rule that I value, leading us to potentially the darkest time possible, and will certainly have a legacy that stands out. But he ain't stupid, he just lives in a bubble and can't see out...... I do hope we survive as the greatest of the great..... and now I'm the old man who exhausts those around him about what's wrong with things nowadays................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass.......Most people have a latent restlessness in their souls. It is a kind of unsatisfaction with whatever their lot is no matter what their station in life is. It is an incredibly imaginative and sometimes adventuresome passion and is that spark that keeps all of us from desiring exactly the same things in life as the next Joe Blow. Some may be born with such a wanderlust that they forsake all that is known to them and all that is expected of them, and no one, especially those close to them have a clue why it is so important for anyone to go off like a fool to chase their passion and leave all that is familiar and certain behind. It could be described as a disease of the soul never allowing some to be happy within themselves no matter how successful they are. Many successful actors deep down think they could be great singers, and might be, by whatever standard it is that says you're great. But they will never grasp the heart of feeling in a song that Johnny Cash could or the simplistic message that haunts but cannot be unraveled lurking between the lines of a ragged edged Conway Twitty song. But likewise neither one could have the stance and and believability of even a mediocre actor in front of the camera. We all have talents, sometimes never known to us and because of a myriad of reasons and excuses may go to our graves never knowing what we're capable of, instead settling for what ever we are because we get locked in to our lives and it's just easier to keep on keepin' on than to study butterflies in the Amazon. I once rebelled on those who wanted to control my life and walked away from what most would have been unable to do. But I was rewarded with an incredible time in life where I came to intersections in the highway and chose which way to turn by the flip of a coin. I searched for myself without realizing what I was doing and even found myself mounted on a rodeo bucking bull with a bunch of crazy Cajuns deep into the bayou Tesche country far off the beaten tourist path. I'm not sure at my advanced age if I ever actually found my niche and what I'm actually best at in life, nor am I sure that any person who ever breathed did no matter how successful they might have been. But I do know that if the spirit of passion ever breathes on me again that life and living will give me an opportunity to be all that I can, and me and those I love and love me will be richer for it. For those who may not realize it, this Dumb Ass post is about freedom, and it belongs to all who breathe..................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass..........Shouldn't The President be a man of the people, and as President strive to be among his people? President Bush visited my town a couple of days ago and as near as I can tell was anything but among his people. He was the fourth sitting President to visit the capital city and the first to show up promoting a political agenda without seeing the people. The first aircraft to land was a cargo plane with limosines and other vehicles necessary to haul his accompanying entourage followed shortly by Air Force One. The numbers of Missouri highway patrol personel is unknown but easily numbered in the hundreds. The Presidents stay at the little airport that nothing ever happens at was brief. He handed his medal for community service to an 80 plus year old volunteer at a day care center and they posed together for a picture, total time expended, maybe two minutes, then got into his limo for the 20 minute ride to the capital city. It was reported there were 21 vehicles minus the highway patrol's vehicles that left the airport. An alternate route to depart the airport grounds was chosen so the President wouldn't see the protesters who had gathered to demonstrate as he drove by. U.S. hiway 63 was closed to traffic the entire route of travel into Jefferson City and the convoy moved at speeds above 80 mph. Once in town, the President stopped at a nursing home that had been effectively shut down to accomodate his visit and as near as I can tell spoke to about 15 people about the new drug program and medicaid. Then it was off to the Performing Arts Center (about 10 blocks away) where the President spent a short time on a shared stage with senior citizens, again talking about the prescription drug program. The Center couldn't hold more than 300 and you couldn't get in without an invitation, so the entire audience was chosen. The hotel across the street was effectively closed down and the bank across the street was occupied and guarded by secret service and FBI personel to watch for any suspicious hombre`s while the President was in the area. Didn't hear what the time at the center was but I would guess at 30 minutes, at which time the reverse order of travel was made back to the airport at the same speed by the same people on federal highways that were closed to regular traffic onto the airport grounds again avoiding the protesters and Air Force One hurried into the skies to its next destination, out of sight, out of mind, which is just about the way it was. Save the few local reporters who were spellbound by the hoopla and the one ( and only one) local reporter who was allowed to travel with the President's entourage, and expected to share his camera footage with other local television stations, no one else seemed to pay much attention to it. Even our Governor was noticably absent, and he's a Republican too! There are no cost figures officially available for this Presidential visit to our sleepy little capital city, but those locals who have time to figure it up say $3 million minimal, and that's about where I would have put it. All this, for contact with a handful of people, little press coverage, and in fact I heard no mention on the national news of the Presidents stop here. I think the entire episode is screaming proof of a President who not only has scared the nation out of its wits with behaviour reminicent of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but has scared himself too. What a tiresome and dangerous predicament for the common man...... and me and you too......................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass........ Domination. We as a free people have willingly given over and accepted what even now we deny, domination. It has been a unified process a step at a time, we applauding the politician as they pass bill after bill regulating every aspect of our lives believing that life would be more equitable and secure when the 'system' was put in place and operating. The opposite is evident. We are counted and studied by ourselves, categorized, serviced and allowed to pay the most extravagant taxes in our history in return for near absolute control. The American scenario is a Karl Marx dream come true, but with some variation. While we have given our souls away in return for what we believed to be a government system that would protect and provide for us until life was over, which is what the bare bones of socialism is, other things have happened along the way. There is little resemblance of the world I grew up in left to enjoy today and its passage is cause for ponderance. I will go to my grave convinced that my father's generation and then mine squandered the greatest opportunity for mankind civilization has ever been offered, and in return, not only robbing future generations of the great experience of true freedom but relegating the children of today and their decendants to servitude in payment for our laziness and greed. 50 years isn't such a long time in overall history as it relates to civilization, in fact it's actually a very short time, but clues to our direction scream when the last 50 of the day to day common person's life is considered. 50 years ago there were no doctors who didn't make house calls, and a minute number of 'specialists. Today it is difficult to see a doctor, and then referral to another one is about the best that can be expected. The government urged us to insure our health, then got into the insurance business themselves through medicare/medicaid and now are in the process of requiring that all Americans have health insurance. The thinking behind this may have logic but in a real world all it really has done is create an insurance industry that now controls when you can see a doctor and how much can be paid in your behalf, and oh yes, a medical community that is guaranteed payment and an open door to take advantage of everyone that comes under their scrutiny while complaining about the cost of the insurance required to protect their interests. If called on about their attitude they get huffy and defensive, reminding us that 'in need' all this criticism will disappear and we will be glad to have their services. This may be true, but never the less, a little over 50 years ago I had a life threatening accident that required surgery, which without it I would have died, and resulted in not walking for months. The total bill for Doctor and hospital services was just over a thousand dollars which pro-rated at $50.00 per week (my step-fathers wages at the time), would tally out at 20 weeks labor. Who knows, but I would guesstimate that services and recuperation for the identical accident today would run most certainly in excess of a hundred grand, which at the 10 buck an hour level that my stepfather would occupy today would figure out at 5 years labor, before taxes, or when todays 35% withholding is considered, in real life terms would be somewhere over 7 years of labor. Of course when interest on a loan is considered it would probably be 12 years labor for the same result I recieved for 20 weeks of my stepfathers sweat. My grandmother died at 92, my father at 85, and they were not victims of pills, nor technology, but instead just simple uneducated and unassuming people. 50 years ago there were no nursing homes either, we all took care of each other. The bill for the nursing home resident today for a five year stay will come in at an approximate $400,000.00 bill when likely medical care and therapies are included, and this occurs after an average 17 year ride on social security benefits. What our real problem is, and what will surely cause our collapse, is that each one in the circle on the ride to oblivion has the mindset that they arent getting enough, and the result is the lack of respect is bred into every crack and crevice until we are all crooks...... those getting..... and those recieving...........

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass........ Time and achievement has always been the benchmark to measure how we're doing and we're unable to find a medium to use as a constant reference in those two categories, consequently we're never sure whether life has been worth it or not. I'm always captivated by history and what it tells us about our progress. 12,000 years ago most of our diet was meat, much of the time raw. It took us 4,000 years before grains, fruits and vegetables would make up a credible portion of the food we ate. It took 4,000 more years for us to figure out a way to harness a water buffalo to pull a plow. Then we studied 2,000 more years before we could figure out a way to alter the same harness to fit a horse. A thousand years later the invading Mongols figured out how to equip their horses with stirrups and became the victors of their time simply because they could manuever their horses much better than their opponents and changed history. The last thousand years has been a struggle for survival accompanied by the same insecure and uncertain feeling that has crippled mankind all through history. The last hundred years has given us advances in every aspect of life. We've learned the basics of the wonders technology can grant us. We now know about a landslide in Turkey, an earthquake in Ethiopia or a flood in Japan almost as soon as it happens. We know which world leader says what as soon as it leaves their lips. We can leave wherever we may be and arrive on the other side of the earth in a matter of hours. The air we breath in our homes is heated to comfort in the winter and cooled to relaxation in the summer. The food we consume is healthier, cheaper. and more abundant than ever in history. We all still die, but throughout most of our lives we are generally protected from discomfort and pain by an unbelievably capable medical industry. Yet, when we look about us and listen to the news, it's apparent the happy ring has remained just out of our reach. I believe happiness is ours to have, but as a world wide state I think it may be a few more thousand years before we can enjoy what should be our greatest accomplisment, which of course is satisfaction within ourselves and with those around us. Now...... about that damned Couric and her new job. Who really cares. And who the hell really believes she's worth 15 million a year, which on a regular 40 hour a week job amounts to a little more than $7,500.00 an hour. I wonder how she'd do interviewing those marauding Mongels. And could she plow with a water buffalo? Why IS she worth so much money? I guess I'll have to keep on wondering about that. Just on the chance she's paid on a per viewer basis, I'm not going to watch her new damned show. She made me tired on the old one anyway................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass........... Why do we wait till things are out of control before we make a move to correct it? I'd rather not mirror current headlines if I'm going to Dumb Ass about anything to do with government, preferring instead to marvel at the way we behave and how we look at 'things' with an attitude of observance from afar. But then sometimes things that are in public debate tug at me till I make an ass of myself mostly because I'm too simple to get wrapped up in the complex way those smarter than I see an issue. What's got me shaking my head today is the immigration issue and the way those in power are addressing it. As usual, from where I sit it appears to me the ones elected to deal with issues are unable to get a handle on the problem or show an ability to do anything other than blabber the same balderdash common to their kind. The numbers are the first factor to consider. The heart of the issue is about Mexicans and those farther south. Best guesses say that between 11 and 12 million are currently in the country. This in itself makes the issue one that is just too big to make a snap decision that has even a remote chance of being effective. A good question to ask is who's hiring them? A better question is why aren't there more citizens available for the jobs they're doing? More so each day everybody's hiring them, and doing so because no one else is standing in line wanting the job that needs to be done. So where are all the citizens? Have we produced an economy so huge that there's more jobs than people? No. Welfare has made it possible to exist quite comfortably without working and subsequently has dried up the available pool of workers who would otherwise find a job attractive as opposed to the hunger induced by the fruits of unemployment and the absence of handout. When I was a child, public welfare was a companion at my house most of the time. It was looked down on by your peers and those in the community and I was ashamed at the thought of anyone knowing that was the way we survived and at first chance I got away from that environment to never participate in such a losers game again. But something happened along the way to my old age. Welfare became respectable and totally acceptable as a way to live. We gave it lots of different names and even convinced ourselves we were entitled to such an abomination. No one gives a second thought to a child taking advantage of a 'lunch program' at public school. Medicaid insurance cards is a duty for responsibility in health care by young and adult alike. Food stamps are given out like credit cards and the users proudly separate items not covered and pay for them with cash at the grocery store. Drugs are handed out as prescriptions on every corner and if their government checks get squeezed to hard to come up with a co-pay we can't go to sleep at night because of the guilt we must carry for those more unfortunate. We make sure transportation is available to those who fit the criterion and furnish drivers and vehicles to take them to the doctors and much of the time stand by till they're ready to go back home. We also maintain staffs of medical and domestic personel to do in home services. We now proudly pay taxpayer funds to family members, grandparents, sisters brothers, nieces etc. to keep and take care of the children of children who birth them then dump them to carry on with their jolly time. All the while, as America goes to hell, the Mexican who is so familiar with poverty but less familiar with welfare is thankful to providence for the chance to go to work at anything available and will show up and prove his appreciation by doing an honest days labor, while the welfarers look down their noses in disapproval at someone who is desperate for survival. I think the fact that someone other than an American has come to my country in such large numbers and brings with them the problems that are sure to be, is a testament to the sheer idiocy and irresponsibility of those who should be reporting to the jobs the illegals are doing each day instead of basking in the wonderfulness of the riches bestowed on the unappreciative who have come to expect something for nothing. If things should suddenly change and Americans start leaving the welfare couches for work, we then will be faced with the dilemna of actually sending the 12 million back home, and it can be done. All we have to do is stack ten of them in each of 1,200,000 toyota vans driven by the out of work auto makers and social workers who after finishing the delivery south of the border can report to the nearest meat processing plant and go to work......................

Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass........ General Motors is headlining right now and is reasonably certain to change the face of America in its metamorphis into whatever it's going to be. About 14 million bloggers and columnists and talking heads will bandy around whatever they think caused the coming collapse of our American giant as we knew it over the next few months. As General Motors and its American based competitors go, so will go the remaining remnants of the American dream for the workingclass. Not only will the nations highest paying production jobs and the accompanying status slide into our memory banks, the ripple effect from it will truly change our country forever. Ronald Reagan was correct in his economic trickle down theory and the next few years will bear this out, only this will be a true life experience, and it will be one of sadness and reinvention. It is true that George Bush senior, then Bill Clinton embraced and welcomed what would become known as ' A new world economy and globalization', the two of them and now the current President, instead of protecting us in any way, gave away everything and asked for nothing in return. Congress and the Presidents (all of them) hand in hand done nothing to level the playing field, instead letting the American worker and the products they produced suffer and die while preaching the dangers of isolationism and promoting the deluge of everything from anywhere except here. Regular down the street and next door Americans are not without fault in this tragedy and in fact as the keeper of the keys in the great historical experiment into capitalism and democracy, we were the engineers in charge of our failures. If in America, next Monday morning, the governments check writing ability to John Q. Public was suddenly rendered inoperable, there would literally be NO legitimate service or retail or any other kind of business open in 30 days because the long arm of the government has intruded into every aspect of life from the cradle to the grave, rooting out everything that was independant on the way to collapse. The Government has been a little like Amway. Those of you who've had a brush with an Amway enthusiast recognizes they make no room for a consumer in that they want everyone to be a dealer/distributor and never seem to be concerned about the art of selling a product to an individual, preferring instead to imagine all within their circle will magically be rich within their wildest dreams by the labors of yet to be identified workers. We Americans are all Amway operators. We accepted the cockamamie idea that we could all retire to a very independant and wealthy old age doing nothing but reaping the benefits of minimal investment while driving those cussed Toyota's and lining the pockets of Walmart and China. Out of 300 million in this country an estimated 130 million actually recieve a check from a government entity. When all those working on government funded projects ie. highway construction, aerospace, defense, military, medical (yes, doctors, nurses, hospital employees must be included because of medicaid/medicare) right on down to local police and educators are considered, not many are left and one must come to the conclusion that even those who vehemently swear independence, such as myself, owe their existence to those riding the government check machine, because my livelihood depends on those people too. It's just a sorry damned state we've came to, and I am incredibly sad about it. Pat Buchannon now says it's all over but the shouting. He must have read something I wrote 10 years ago...............