Get Out While The Getting Is Good

Have you noticed how many career politicians are giving up their jobs and not running for re-election lately? Did you ask yourself why someone would give up a high paying job with virtually certain employment (over 90% of incumbents are re-elected.)? I've got an idea and it revolves around the subject phrase, "get out while the getting is good." Politicians are not stupid. They are probably corrupt and maybe inept, but not stupid. They have spend a lifetime suckling at the teat of the government cow, but they know that the cow is fixing to go dry. They, better than most of us, know how the system works and they recognize when the scam is about to play out. Like rats deserting a sinking ship, they are headed over the side. Better to be out in open water swimming than to be sucked down with the ship.

Most of the US citizens alive today were born and have lived in relatively prosperous, peaceful times. Sure, there have been a lot of wars and police actions, but they have been somewhere else. And sure, we have sent many of our brightest and best to fight and die in these places, but most folks did not have to go and were affected indirectly at most. No, its been guns and butter through out most of our lives and people tend to think that how it has been is how it's gonna be. Unfortunately for all of us, actions have consequences. As a nation, we have done a lot of imprudent things. We have told ourselves that we were doing the right things, but calling a pig's ear a silk purse does not make it so.

The politicians know this and they are taking their lifetime pensions with their superior health care plans and heading off into sunset. Best to be long gone when the shit hits the fan. Many folks I am sure doubt this, after all, things have been good for so long, and our intentions are good, but you can't spend more than you make, kill anyone that disagrees with you and expect it to go on forever. Sooner or later the cows come home and unfortunately, I fear our herd is quickly becoming dry.

One of these days ...

One of these days I am gonna drop dead. When I do, some of my friends and family will no doubt say they knew I should have been going to the doctor. If I had, they (the doctors) would have caught that and treated it. Well, they will probably be right, but it won't make me any difference because I will be dead.

So far in my life I have been blessed with very good health. Since I have not been sick a lot, I have not had to go to the doctor much. Sometimes I think that I have not been sick a lot because I don't go to the doctor much. It's funny about people and doctors. Who do you know that takes his car into his mechanic every year and asks him to check and see if there is something that needs fixing? Sure, people have their cars oil changed and they put additives in their gas tank, but that is just routine maintenance like taking vitamins and supplements would be for a person. And people check their coolant and oil levels and look out for their check engine light on their cars, much like getting a blood pressure cuff and regularly checking blood pressure would be to an individual, but who among us would ever consider driving up to a dealership and asking them to see if they could find something on their car that needed replacing?

But that is exactly what well care is all about. When you feel fine and you go to a doctor, he or she is going to find something that needs treating. Its what they do. They have a hammer in their hand; you are the nail. And what does all that treatment accomplish? Mostly it winds up putting you on prescription drugs that may mitigate the symptoms of one thing and create or exacerbate the symptoms of half a dozen others. In a recent article, Bill Sardi made this statement, "The only three proven medical technologies are (a) mending broken bones; (b) replacing cloudy cataracts; (c) repairing decayed teeth. The rest are questionable." When I first read this, I was a little taken aback, but then I remembered where I had read recently that it had never been statistically proven that anyone had lived longer because of heart surgery. How much of what passes for medicine today is really just "busy work"?

Now obviously there are people who suffer from conditions that need medicine and treatment. Insulin dependent diabetics are the first ones that pop to my mind. I am sure that you can think of dozens if not hundreds of other conditions, but these are people who are sick. And also keep in mind that insulin does not cure diabetes, it just enables the diabetic to live longer with the ailment. Clearly, I am not encouraging anyone to go against their own judgment. If you feel a need to go to a doctor, even though you fell fine, by all means go, but when you hear about me dying, don't despair. I may not have lived every minute possible, but I did enjoy some extra time along the way that others lost sitting in waiting rooms.

I lied

In my previous post I said that I was not gonna address the Okaloosa County Florida Sheriff's deputies arresting a 11 year old girl for throwing a plastic pistol at her father. I lied. I just can't let this go. I am gonna stay away for the obvious question of how in the hell did they find out about it. We all know that a lot of folks in this country should not have kids in the first place, but stupid people do procreate. Nope, I am not gonna get into that. What I am gonna say is that if Okaloosa County Florida has enough deputies on the force that they have time to go out and arrest 11 year old girls for throwing toy pistols, maybe they should look at their law enforcement budget. All I hear lately from bureaucrats and politicians all over the country is how they don't have enough money and they are going to have to figure out a way to raise fees or taxes and increase their revenue so they don't have to cut back services. Seems to me that arresting 11 year old girls for throwing toy guns is a service that folks could do without at least until times got better. I wonder how many other public "services" could be scaled back in these tight times.

There is so much wrong and ....

Back when I was younger, I used to hear older folks (people who were younger then than I am now) talking about how bad it had gotten and they just didn't know what was gonna become of all of us. I always promised myself that I would not ever get like that and I've tried my damnest to follow through on that promise.

I've always said "there is so much wrong and we are gonna have to do a lot to straighten it out." At least that is what I have said up until today. Then I read this news article." In case the link is dead when you read this, the article is about a 11 year old girl that was arrested by Okaloosa County Sheriff’s deputies for domestic battery. What did she do? She threw a plastic pistol at her father because he put her in time out. The plastic pistol cut his scalp. This is so wrong on so many levels that I am not gonna even start addressing all of them. You can figure it out for yourself. But this incident is the straw that broke the camels back. From now on, I am gonna say, there is so much wrong and there is no way in hell we are gonna straighten it out. As the mogambo guru is always saying, "We are freakin doomed."

They Got A Problem

I was just reading about some of the backlash by people upset with the recent passage of the health care bill. It reminded me of something I have read many times. To paraphrase, No government exists except by consent of the governed. On the surface, that might seem untrue. Many people will point to brutal dictatorships that exist currently or have existed in the past and say they exist through the use of force and not because of consent. But do they? Certainly they use force, but can force alone subdue all of the people all of the time? I think not. So long as enough people are reasonably satisfied with their circumstances, even the most brutal governments can hold on, but there comes a time when enough people are unhappy and they will demand and bring a change. If the people have confidence in the process, the change can be peaceful. Unfortunately for the powers that be, times are sort of rough for a lot of people right now. Couple that with the government passing laws that are unpopular with a significant portion if not a majority of the people and it creates a dangerous situation. Our government officials may not be in eminent danger of being voted out of office or worse yet being lynched, but I think they got a problem.

AL.com Comments

I know, I've bitched about them before, but I can't help it. I just finished reading some articles on AL.com and for some masochistic reason, I read the comments. My experience frustrated me so much that I just have to vent.

I have lived in Alabama all my life and have traveled in the United States a bit. I have met people in lots of places and for the most part, I found them all to be very similar. I don't think that the folks in other places are that much smarter or more impressive than the folks I have known in Alabama. But, when I read the comments on AL.com, I wonder who in the hell are the people that are writing them? I'm not talking about spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization or anything like that. After all, its the internet, those things don't count for as much and we all take short cuts. Nope, I am talking about stupid, stupid, stupid remarks. Who are these idiots that perpetrate this madness?

I could give you examples, but it pains me too much to recount what I have read. Better I just rant here to blow off a little steam. If you doubt me, go to AL.com and click on an article, any article and read the comments and then see if I am wrong.

The Problem

"It’s not what people don’t know that’s the problem, but what they think they know that just ain’t so." - Will Rogers

Spyder Solitaire

Well I have found a new distraction to eat up my time. The other day Linda told me that she had a game called Spyder Solitaire on her computer and that she had been playing it and loved it. She told me to check mine and see if I had it. I assured her I did not as I don't play games on the computer and never install them. Opps, turns out SS comes with Windows XP. I have only recently started using XP. I bought a refurbrished Dell on eBay and it had XP installed. Before that, I had used an older Dell with W2K. The old machine did everything I needed but an early morning thunderstorm took it out along with my phone server and my Ubuntu linux machine.

Anyway, I do have Spyder Solitaire and it is kind of addictive. I think I like it better than regular solitaire, and I love to play the regular version. For now, I am limiting myself to about a half dozen games at a sitting and no more than 3 or 4 sittings per day. Since the weather has been cold, I have been staying kind of cabin bound anyway, but when warm weather gets here, I may have to relegate myself to only late night games just before bedtime. To explain how bad this is, I've even located a linux version and loaded it on to my eee PC so I can play when I travel. I guess its just another life lost to addiction.

TSA Anal Cavity Searches

Not yet, but give it time. I just read this article on CNN about the TSA reaction to the attempted Christmas flight bombing. It's just a matter of time until some wacko sticks a homemade explosive device up his poop shoot and tries to detonate it while the plane is in the air. As soon as he does, the TSA will start immediately having passengers strip, (what difference does it make, their machine already lets them see you naked) bend over and be probed anally.

As for me, I would not currently get on a plane for any reason short of saving my life or the life of a close loved one.

Taking A Chance

Funny how when you get to thinking about one thing, it leads you to another, and then another and finally you are thinking about something far removed from where you started. All the current news about the "Bingo Raids" got me to thinking about gambling in general. Gambling, like drinking, religion, abortion and politics, is a hot button topic. Hot button topics are apt to stir up controversy whenever they enter a conversation. I'm not gonna discuss any of them here today but I am gonna recount a story that this topic brought to mind.

Years ago, at the company where I worked, we played a game called check poker. I'm sure it, or a variant of it was played through out the country. We got paid every other Friday and our company was big enough that all the checks had 5 or 6 digit sequence numbers in the upper right hand corner. Before the checks were handed out, a group of us, usually the same suspects, would put $1 each in a pool. Then when we got our checks, we would compare the check numbers as if they were poker hands, 1 of a kind, a pair, 3 of a kind , 4 of a kind, full house and straight were all possible. The person with the best hand took the pot.

Not everyone played. I suspect that some were too tight and afraid they might loose a dollar. Some didn't want to be seen as associating with "our" kind, except as work forced it. Others maintained that it was gambling and was immoral. When any one brought up the moral argument, there was a guy, whose name happened to be "Guy" who loved to tell the story of an old switchboard wireman that was in his crew when he worked in the field. The old wireman was named Tony. By all accounts, Tony was a good man and a hard worker. I met him myself and remember him to be rather loud, funny and good natured. He was of Italian decent and I suspect he was a good Catholic. I did not know him that well but Guy said that Tony was hard against any form of gambling. It may have been from a personal experience or from something that happened in his family, I don't know, but it is said that he hated any form of gambling. But Tony always participated in check poker. The more sensitive portion of our population would let something like that slid, but the folks in Tony's crew, in fact the folks in all of our field crews were not the kind of folks to let anything slide. They were the in your face types. If they sensed hypocrisy or inconsistency they would confront you immediately. When payday rolled around and check poker was being played, someone new to the crew or someone that had recently discovered Tony's hatred for gambling, would challenge him about the paradox of him playing check poker when he hated gambling. Tony's answer was that check poker was not gambling, it was just "taking a chance."

Often I tell stories because they reinforce some point I want to make but not this time. I told you this story because I like it. Of course it probably does not mean as much to you if you can't put faces with these names, but I can and as I said, I like it.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

Next Tuesday the final season of the TV series "Lost" begins. Last night, I watched last season's final episode on Hulu. Not to give away any spoiler info but in it Ben does what I would call a bad thing. Through out the entire series, Ben has been heard to tell people, "we are the good guys."

It is said, and I believe, that your brain works on problems while you sleep. Apparently, last night, my brain worked on the problem of Ben, a self proclaimed good guy, doing a bad thing. This morning I woke up thinking of this famous quote by Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson:

There is so much good in the worst of us, an so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.

I have to admit that it has crossed my mind that an alternate solution might be that Ben is lying about being a good guy.

I Do Too!

Maybe Bigger Is Better

I originally wrote this back in January 2010 but somehow it got saved as a draft and never was published. I was doing some house keeping in my blog files tonight (8 July 2010) and ran across it. I read it and still feel about the same way so here it is:

I was born and raised in Alabama and have spent most of my life here. It has always been my home. I have traveled often but usually in the SE US. I have made one trip to England, a couple of trips to Canada and 3 or 4 out west. After traveling, I have always returned and in my mind I've thought, there really is no place like home. But that has changed in the last few years. A few years ago, my daughters family moved to Texas. I've been out there to visit several times and I have to say that I really like Texas. Then in 2008, I drove up to Alaska. It was great. If I could get used to the cold in the winter, I believe I could live my life out in Alaska. I'm temped to say that bigger is better and that the big states have something the others don't. Then I remember that I was very impressed with South Dakota and figure It might be a good place to live as well.

Alabama is not the worse place in the world and I am pretty happy here but I definitely have found some other places that seem like they would be a good replacement.

Back From Texas

We got back from Texas this week. We had been out there for the birth of my second grandson. Ford Miller Jones. He is a sweetie, just like his older brother Gantt. Since he was born in Texas, he is a native texan. I guess one of these days he will be driving a car with two stickers on the bumper. One, with the Texas single star that says "Native Texan" and another on the other side that says "Don't mess with Texas."

Three Old Dogs Minus One

We buried Corky yesterday, he died just after noon in his sleep. Corky was an old schnauzer dog, how old, no one really knows. Our estimate was 16 but that could have been off by as much as two or three years. The first thing that any of us know about Corky was that he showed up at Mrs. Taylor's house in the Memphis TN. area. He was already a grown dog at that time. No owners ever came to claim him so Mrs. Taylor took him in. Mrs. Taylor was a customer of my uncle who was a veterinarian in the Memphis area at that time. When she got too old to care for Corky, she asked my uncle to find him a home. My folks had recently lost their schnauzer dog Buck to cancer so my uncle offered them Corky. At first my dad was reluctant but my mom said they would take him and she would take care of him. My dad had loved Buck and I think he did not feel like another dog could ever take his place. Soon, Corky had won him over. I'm am pretty sure that he loved Corky as much as Buck and quite possibly more. One of his favorite expression when he was talking about Corky was "That little boy, he's a little man."

My dad had a stroke in 2001 followed by several other strokes that eventually left him bed ridden. He passed away in July of 2002. By that time, my mom had taken over as Corky's caretaker. She had an accident in November of 2002 and died, and Corky came to stay with me. He was still young enough when he came to live with me that he could do all the things dogs do. He barked, jumped on the furniture and played with toys. The subsequent years since 2002 had taken their toll. By the time he passed away yesterday, he was blind, deaf, stiff with arthritis and slept most of the time. I know some folks would have had him put to sleep a long time ago but with all his problems, he never gave any indications that he was suffering. Up until the last month, he had maintained a fairly steady routine of eating and sleeping and he would still nozzle up to you when you rubbed him between his ears. On his last vet checkup in November, his doctor was concerned with his weight loss. I tried changing his diet and feeding him more but he just didn't seem to have a good appetite. Also over the years he had developed several food allergies and was limited in what kinds of food he could eat. I did manage to get him to gain back a couple of pounds but after that he just went down hill. He had a good day Monday, the best day he had had in the last six months but then Tuesday morning, he just wanted to sleep. I got him up and he drank some water and then went right back to sleep. His breathing was shallow and slow. Just after noon he stopped breathing completely. Linda and I took him down to Slickhill and buried him with the other dogs and cats. He will be missed.

35 Inconvenient Truths

If you are like me and have always found man-made climate change a bit implausible then you should find the paper 35 Inconvenient Truths by Lord Christopher Monckton very interesting.

Or if you are someone who has been convinced that man-made climate change is real, you should find 35 Inconvenient Truths very enlightening.

And finally, if you are among that group of people who see man-made climate change as the basis of a new age religion then don't waste your time reading 35 Inconvenient Truths . You will just think it blasphemous.

Is Nullification Our Last Best Hope?

In this article Michael Boldin talks about various states using nullification to fight over reaching federal laws. Has our societal pendulum finally begun to swing back in the direction of sanity?

Telling It Like It Is

This lady tells it like it is:

Alabama Poutine

Last year, when I drove the Alaska Highway to Alaska and back, I spent several days in Canada. I had been to Canada one other time in my life in 1962, but that was just to Kenora, Ontario and I didn't remember all that much about it, besides, a lot has changed everywhere since 1962 so I really did not know what to expect.

I found that Canada is an interesting country with interesting people. They may share a continent with us, but they certainly have their own culture. Virtually everywhere I went, the people were very nice and fairly laid back. In a lot of ways, they reminded me of folks from the southeastern USA.

Every since I got back from my trip, I have been kind of keeping up with Canada. I've been watching CBC newscasts via internet, reading articles about Canada and things Canadian in the Wikipedia and this year I even listened to the Grey Cup. I have learned alot and come across some interesting things. Recently I discovered a uniquely Canadian food, poutine. For those of you that are like I was and have never heard of poutine, it is a dish that was developed in the province of Quebec and seems to have spread throughout Canada. Basically it is fried potatoes sprinkled with fresh cheese curd and topped with gravy.

Now no one likes fried potatoes any better than I do and gravy is a staple in my household, but cheese curd? If anybody makes cheese in Alabama, I don't know about it. Fortunately my daughter is a cheese guru so I called her up out in Texas and asked her where I might get some fresh cheese curd. She said that the closest place that she knew of to me was Sweetwater Tennessee but that I could probably get the same general effect from fresh mozzarella and that I should be able to find that at the Publix down the street. Sure enough I went to Publix and there was the fresh mozzarella, See, I told you she was a cheese guru.

Anyway, I brought the mozzarella home and diced up some of it to about the size of the cheese curd that I had seen in a picture of poutine on a web page. I put some frozen french fries in the oven to cook and set about to make some gravy. Now you probably noticed the title is "Alabama Poutine." There is a reason for that. In addition to using mozzarella instead of cheese curd, I intended to use gravy of my own design. Many of the webpages that discuss poutine mention using canned gravy. I had a different idea. I was gonna use home made tomato gravy. So I put a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of flour in my little cast iron skillet and started to stir. Fifteen minutes later I had a fine little roux. To that I added about 2/3 cup of beef broth and 2 tablespoons of chipped up tomatoes. I let the gravy simmer while I retrieved the french fries from the oven and sprinkled them with the chopped up mozzarella. Next I spooned some of the tomato gravy over them. Voilà, Alabama Poutine. Not a bad dish. I went back for a second helping.

Sending A Message

I like to think of myself as a fairly easy going guy. I am sure that there are those that would disagree with me being easy going, especially if they knew me several years ago and have not been around me lately. As I get older, things that used to wind me up tight not longer have the same affect. There are a lot of things in this country that I find distasteful and many that I find troubling but I try to remain philosophical and if it does not affect me directly, I attempt to let it slide.

But, there is one thing that will put my piss in a boil faster than a match will light a open container of gasoline. I hate, loath and despise the expression "sending a message." Everywhere you turn, there is some jackass talking about doing something to "send a message" or not doing something because it "sends the wrong message." What the hell does that mean anyway, send a message? What do I care what message something sends. We need to make decisions in this country on the basis of right or wrong, not what kind of damn message it sends. Of course, therein lies part of the problem. We long ago got away from considering what is right and wrong. Now we worry about what is legal and what is illegal. Well I can tell you one thing; right trumps legal every time. If what you are doing is wrong, but legal, sooner or later its gonna come back to bite you in the ass regardless of the message you are sending.