Poking the Bear...sort of

Hope all had a good Thanksgiving...

The last blog seems to have either buoyed or pissed off some folks, judging by the exchange.

I am not a repoobican and am thoroughly disgusted by the party I used to belong to, Democrats, so i guess I am independent with Libertarian leanings, or something akin to that.

I do not hate Obama. I am however totally convinced that his conduct in office so far as illustrated how unprepared he was and still is to be Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the world's dominate economic and military force.

When he ran for office he had three things he kept chanting- Health care for all, Climate change policy, and Education.

1. Health Care Reform
2. Cap and Trade
3. Education Reform

Health care for all as currently constructed is a massive expenditure of taxpayer (me and you) money to cover very few of the uninsured while screwing up a broken system probably for a long time.  Implementing a National Health Care Information System alone will cost plenty and take a decade or more to get in place, if you were going to do it right. But what government program ever starts out right???

Climate change has some convincing stats, but it's hardly a fact, any more than evolutionary theory has been excepted as fact, our aloneness in the universe is fact, etc, etc. Theories remain theories until there is no doubt what so ever...you know, like the world is flat, the sun orbits the earth, stuff like that.

Rumor is that with all that is going on to dispell climate change science, and the economic consequences of the Al Gore Carbon Credit bank, Cap and Trade may not see the light of day in this session of Congress...

I am still waiting to see how Obama plays his hand on the universal college education plan...

Wonder why people are spending like crazy on Christmas...? I don't. People like Christmas, and they want to spend their money on stuff rather than give it to the government...but that's my silly view, whats yours?

 

The Big Know it all (Me)

We in California moved out primary elections up, so instead of being later (June) we voted in February 2008. As a good citizen, i went to the polls, and decided which candidate caused me the least amount of disgust, because i didn't like any of them. The one that I though was the most full of baloney, and was confident would not win the primary, is our current president.

In retrospect I have a theory how he was elected. Its a really simple thing, its called lying. Except in politics it isn't called lying, its called a campaign promise.

I recall that having voted absentee, we took a trip north, and were driving back to our cottage after spending the day in Seattle, and they were saying it was close, but it was still way too early. In the morning I got the paper from outside and was surprise to see the entire first page a photo of Obama...and then that sinking feeling hit my gut.

As i listened to him on the radio, prattling on about everything he wanted to see done, the calculator in my head was adding them up, based on things I already knew, or had read somewhere during the run up to the election. I never suspected what was coming.

Now here we are. We are the largest debtor nation in the world...trillions in debt, interest on the debt growing everyday.

Obama wants to have us pay for insurance in a way that does not sound warm and fuzzy to me, more like a jack boot on my throat, do it or go to jail...The current bill does not cover 100% of the uninsured, and is so packed with "extras" that it has been estimated it will raise costs for everyone. And the coverage does not start until AFTER Obama has been (not) re-elected, yet the taxes start January 1, 2011 when by happy coincidence the previously enacted revisions to our tax code end...

OK, so we know health care reform a load of hooey.  Lets agree thought that I was right- the guy in office now is learning on the job, and isn't doing to well.

Apparently the country has the same doubts as me:

" When it comes to seven specific areas, Obama no longer commands majority support on any. On only two — energy policy and global warming — does he have a net positive rating. On the economy, health care, jobs and Afghanistan, a majority disapprove of how he's doing."

"...26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15%. "

Its a topsyturvy world right now...

Remembering JFK

November 22, 2009

Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed as his motorcade drove through Dallas. At 12:30 p.m., a bullet struck Kennedy in the back and another killed him with a final shot to the head. The shooter, according to government investigations, was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy. Two days later, while being transferred from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by Jack Ruby on live television.

I was 10 years old when this happened, and vividly remember the day- mom had brought my brother and I back from the dentist, and was trying to get us to go to school. We made it to the corner, when a lady wearing a polka dot scarf on her head driving a two tone car slammed on her brakes, and started crying. She asked where we were going and we said school and she said "there won't be any school today honey"...which caused us to look at one another and then scurry home, just in time to see our dad, a policeman, swing his police cruiser into the driveway, run into the house to turn on the TV. I thinki I started crying then, and probably cried right thru Thanksgiving....I know dad told us this was history unfolding before our eyes, and giving us a hug...

I always thought this to have happened about 10 AM Pacific time, and the account above says it happened at 12:30 PM Central...so i guess I was pretty close...

For several years, i have tried to post videos of event like this one, mostly because people my daughters age have no idea why people my age get so upset. However the last 40 seconds of this video of Walter Cronkite really get me to cry...that a man who had seen so  much in WW II, including the London Blitz, covered the Korean war and elsewhere,  was force to fumble and quickly regain composure when it was confirmed the president had died. It really was a national day of sadness...

A Bit of Satire...or not???

Squirrel Valley News  - November 2024

Glorious Leader today thanked the electorate for returning him to a fifth term of the Presidency, possible after the Liberal Party rallied the votes to overturn the twenty second amendment to the Constitution. 

Buoyed by the surge in Liberal voters after the implementation of the instant citizen act of 2010, and outlawing the Republican Party as a threat to the republic, our Leader who once had a favorable rating of a mere 14%, garnered 89% of the popular vote, and all the electoral college votes.

Pledging to continue the war, the GL pledged to the nation that the ongoing struggle against the Conservative States of America would end soon. He blamed the unending conflict on the strength and support of the dreaded NRA, which was added to the terrorist organization list early in 2014 after it was linked to supporting the break away Republic of Texas.

 

And Now even MORE nonsense from me...

Why are the TV "news" channels all (yes even Fox) so geared to infotainment instead of presenting the news?
Well, to answer that I had to ponder how the world has changed - increasingly we are attached to technology. Today I brought that up at a meeting, about how everyone (me too) was looking at their Blackberry, and someone told about going to the movies and all the people in the audience having this faint glow on their faces during a  particular scene.

We (collectively, the world, not just USA) have become increasingly dependent on cell phones, the internet, social networking, and has these things move together, so that you can use a smart phone to text scour the web and tell people where you are and what you are doing/thinking (Facebook, Yammer, Twitter, etc, etc) the attention span shrinks...we are all becoming attention deficit, like it or not.

Pandering to that, trying to stay relevant has led, IMHO, to the news channels changing from what I grew up with ( Cronkite, Frank Reynolds, Huntley-Brinkley, Howard K Smith to name a few) to what we have today- if a story lasts more than a couple of minutes, its boring and change the channel...

Me personally I like the in depth exposure, so I tend to seek out things like the Bloomberg news, or Lehrer News Hour on PBS, knowing full well they all have an angle to their reporting...at least some stories get more than 15 minutes

And while I am on the subject, lets hope that Lou Dobbs departure from CNN does not mean he will only be on the radio from now on...

Obama Bows to Foreign Leader- Again

OK, maybe when our fearless leader bowed to the King in Saudia Arabia it was a mistake, or misunderstanding, but  when the LA Times asks "How low will he go?", well , I mean the LA Times gets it...the LA Times for crying out loud...

I know some people really truly like our president, and he probably is a nice man, but I sure wish he was still a law professor and NOT where he is....

 

Governor of Texas on Obama

Find more videos like this on Mywesttexas Chatter

More nonsense from me

For several years( really? years? yes I guess thats right) I tried to post a blog a day, pricipally on my Yahoo 360 page. Well that ended horribly when yahoo dumped 360, well, except for Vietnam, which i understand is still having Yahoo 360Plus (vn.360plus.yahoo.com/ ) 
Any way, so I moved over here to Multiply, and tried to stay up on my blogging habit until about a couple of months age my cousin comes back from Iraq and starts a Facebook page, trying to get the rest of the family to have one as well so we can all "stay connected"...which was really nice for awhile, especially catching up with his half sister, whom i had not seen in 25 years. Then we all got together in October, and there was the whole family again...and looking at the pictures, I realized something obvious..damn we're all old. My uncles are 80 and 75, my mom is 77, I am 56, my brothers at in their 50"s....my cousins are all in their late 40's or early 50's, except the one, she is 38....And then there was my niece and her two brothers..They are all in their 30's and have kids.  And suddenly I felt old, as I checked facebook everyday and found these snippets of life...almost like that insipid Twitter...

And i find myself sounding like a cantankerous oldster, asking my niece why she allowed her 13 years old to pierce her nose, or dye her hair purple, and why does she let her dress like...I dont know what. Pants so tight nothing is imagined, and so low riding that a stiff tug would drop them to her knees.

Or my other niece, who is nearly 18 and thinks everyone older than her is simply so boring, and she has some exclusive view on reality...

And so I gave up on the Facebook page I had for my family, and started to think more about this page. About where i seems to have found a diverse group of people who frequently share, share opinions, views, ideas, and often don't agree, but mostly agree that being disagreeable is unacceptable. (Or you get blocked )

So like a friend of mine said, in this month of Thanksgiving, we have much to  be thankful for.
Thanks for listening and being there..

Can i say something here???

I have refused to comply with political correctness since back at least to 1996...it just started being too weird to not call it as it is, to say something is right when its not, etc, etc.

I started blowing my top probably about 2004, as people i worked with increaseing saw fit to say conservatives and Republicans and even moderate Democrats were evil...Come on, evil??

Well a little over a year ago I wrote some notes while watching the newly elected Obama speak about what he "had to do" and I scribbled down some numbers....program A-400 billion, program b- 650 billion, and then I have "Comprehensive Health Care- 1.5 trillion plus"...I used to be an auditor, and have some idea what these programs cost...well now that he is well underway to trying to get these things, like they used to say, are we better off??

Unemployment not only stubbornly refuses to go down, it goes up, even as GDP goes up. We have a massive amount of borrowing in TARP, and yet hardly any of it has been used to do much of anything except bailout big banks thats are crapping on customers like me

Have you had you credit card lines slashed? i HAVE . Visa account w $5000 line, zero balance, slashed to $200 limit(really); another bank reduced a credit line to balance owed. Interest on all accounts hiked up...and here is a little secret...as the amount you go is compared to the credit available, it effects you FICO score...so the above little shennaigans by the banks caused my credit score to drop from Excellent to Good...thing what its doing to people with Good or Fair credit...its forcing them out of the credit marketplace..making buying things like the Government Motors cars more difficult and yes more expensive...

Lets talk about Government Motors and Fiat Chrysler....sales are dismal, because there is no confidence in their ability to be around, in the fact that buying a cars from them is like lending your crazy uncle money to built a house and then agreeing to buy it from him...at a profit...

What jobs have been created? Government jobs? I have a cousin who is gleefully collecting unemployment (he's a idiot) and is now overjoyed he gets an extension...meanwhile the US government (thats really us taxpayers) paid for him to learn to be a real estate broker...yet he can't find a job since the real estate market still sucks especially here in the west...

Our state of california was the laughingstock for being billions in the hole, yet today 9 more states are lining up to be broke as well...yet Obama says states have to figure it out- Hey, MR President, if the national economy is sucking badly, and there is massive unemployment, and the unemployed pay NO taxes, where are the states going to get the money? I mean after all, they rely on tax income to fund government...hello??? His answer= A Job Summit.

And then there is the so called "good war" in Afghanistan, where Obama has so far failed to lead . I dont know, people used to tell me making a bad decision was better than no decision. I guess they didn't teach that in Chicago. Its called leadership...and I think this country is sorely lacking any. Just watch CPAN, and see how Congress behaves if you think i am wrong.

Thanks for letting me rant here, and have a nice weekend. I am taking a long weekend since I have a salary cut ....what is it, 20% now...guess the government will have less to take anyway

(In a bit of irony, my pay raise became effective the same day they announced increasing the salary reductions for salaried employees- so my raise amounts to .07% (roughly $4.55)- what will i do with all that money? Buy an extra Big Mac?)

Veterans Day 2009

This day is set aside every year to honor those who served in this country's military, or are serving today. There are many expressions such as "If you love your freedom, thank a Vet" that have become fairly common since 9/11. If you should know or meet a veteran, please thank them for their service. I know men of my honeys age, Vietnam vets, are really appreciative, even 40 years later...Canice

YouTube - Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin

One of my favorite songs...I fell for this song as a teen...

Annie Lennox or Procol Harum-Whiter Shade of Pale

Annie Lennox - A whiter shade of pale
Uploaded by Sakasaki93. - Explore more music videos.