Friday, November 28, 2008

Old Man Winter

This is a clipped post from facebook to my blog.
clipped from www.facebook.com
Source: video.yahoo.com
Poem from rhymecreek.com is great to send along to people who might miss the cold and the snow - or not! Sort of a video greeting card. Enjoy!
You might like to share this one with friends. Great poetry from MJ Trenker and video from Uncle Vic.
 blog it

2012 Pole Shift - Mayan and I Ching prediction

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Seaside, Florida


Seaside, Florida
Originally uploaded by Laura Travels
I like this place. It is not far from my hometown off the coast and inland in the cotton and peanut country of NW Florida.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Having a BAD DAY?

Think you are having a bad day?

Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned-out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask.

A postmortem test revealed that the man died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a positive identification. Investigators then set about to d etermine how a fully clothed diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.

It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the man went diving off the coast, some 20 miles from the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, had called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean and emptied at the site of the forest fire.

You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next, he was doing the breast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air.

Still think you're having a bad day?

A man was working on his motorcycle on the patio, his wife nearby in the kitchen. While racing the engine, the motorcycle accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding onto the handlebars, was d ragged along as it burst through the glass patio doors.

His wife, hearing the crash, ran in the room to find her husband cut and bleeding, the motorcycle, and the shattered patio door. She called for an ambulance and, because the house sat on a fairly large hill, went down the several flights of stairs to meet the paramedics and escort them to her husband.

While the attendants were loading her husband, the wife managed to right the motorcycle and push it outside. She also quickly blotted up the spilled gasoline with some paper towels and tossed them into the toilet.

After being treated and released, the man returned home, looked at the shattered patio door and the damage done to his motorcycle. He went into the bathroom and consoled himself with a cigarette while attending to his business. About to stand, he flipped the ciggy butt between his legs.

The wife, who was in the kitche n, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming. Finding him lying on the bathroom floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks, legs and groin, she once again phoned for an ambulance. The same paramedic crew was dispatched.

As the paramedics carried the man down the stairs to the ambulance they asked the wife how he had come to burn himself. She told them. They started laughing so hard, one slipped, the stretcher dumping the husband out. He fell down the remaining stairs, breaking his arm.

Still having a bad day? Just remember, it could be worse...

The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdes oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.

Still think you are having a bad day?

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically, almost in a dancing frenzy, with some kind of wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places. Up to that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

STILL think you're having a bad day?

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn , Germany . Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly. The two hapless protesters were trampled to death.

What?! STILL having a bad day??

Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with 'return to sender' stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

There now, feeling better?

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Time for a Laugh

Thanks to Clinton Wright for below. So true.
Rules of Montana , Wyoming , Idaho , WA & OR and the rest of the Wild West are as follows:
1 Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.
2 Turn your cap right, your head ain't crooked.
3 Let's get this straight: it's called a 'gravel road.' I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you're gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.
4 They are cattle. That's why they smell to you. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it? I-80 goes east and west, I-5 goes north and south. Pick one.
5 So you have a $60,000 car. We're impressed. We have $250,000 combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.
6 Every person in the Wild West waves. It's called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.
7 If that cell phone rings while a bunch of geese/pheasants/ ducks/doves are comin' in during the hunts, we WILL shoot it outa your hand. You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.
8 Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really want sushi and caviar you can get
them at the bait store on the corner.
9 The 'Opener' refers to the first day of deer season. It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.
10. We open doors for women. That's applied to all women, regardless of age.
11. No, there's no 'vegetarian special' on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham turkey.
12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah.... We don't care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat... IT AIN'T REAL CHILI!!
13. You bring 'Coke' into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring 'Mary Jane' into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.
14. College and High School Football is as important here as the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.
15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water hazards -- it spooks the fish and
scares off the ducks and honkers.
16. Colleges? We have them all over. We have State Universities , Universities, and Vo-techs.
They come outta there with an education plus a love for God and country, and they still wave
at everybody when they come home for the holidays.
17. We have more folks in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines than all of you put together, so don't mess with us. If you do, you'll get whupped by the best.
18. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump crap ain't music, anyway.
We don't want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!
19. a true westerner gets a bumper sticker from www.neworleansbest.biz that says,
"Don't blame me I voted for Sarah." A true Westerner will send this to at least 2 others!!!
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Where all the Money Goes - the Pit

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Great Crash of 2009

READ Carefully and Understand.
Article from "Seeking Alpha"forums. What got us here. What will happen. This was published in August but is only now finding a large audience. Pre or post election would probably not have made a difference .. this is largely beyond any current political mix.

Asiatic Fleet Survivor

USS Houston and POW survivor Stanley Woody ARTICLE. I had the pleasure of knowing “Woody” while I was growing up in Norfolk. He is a wonderful and inspiring person. Submited for this blog by Jim Outland -- Midlothian, Va. -- The Asiatic Fleet was to be supported when Japan attacked by the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. The support never showed up. www.usshouston.org.
EPITAPH FOR THE ASIATIC FLEET
they have no grave but the cruel
sea. no flowers at their head.
a rusting hulk is their tombstone.
at rest on the ocean floor

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

American Tune Changes - A History

The British at their surrender in Yorktown, played a tune called "The World Turned Upside Down". It happens sometimes. It happened in America this year. As one of the losing side in this perpetual argument we call a nation, I can sulk, or I can try to find some nuggets in this wreck of government that was never ideal to start with. I'll be looking for some nuggets to share with you over time. Meanwhile, I am presenting here an recent historical analysis of critical points leading up to the upside down world. The New American Tune (listen here)

Lyndon Johnson comes to a torn America and promises to heal it with a "Great Society" in a time when he also needed to prove he was boss on the world stage. So he added Vietnam to his agenda. Feeding money and lives into these two meat grinders left him damaged and weak. Nixon was the answer.

Nixon pursued Vietnam with a vengeance and brought it to an end with a token of honor. He opened a new front to save the environment. Money flowed freely. He was the most popular president ever. Then, his loyalty to staff got in the way of his legal obligations. His political enemies who had not yet realized their "Great Society" struck hard. America's media found itself with new power and soon destroyed any memory of Nixon's superb legacy. Ford was the result and without enough time to brand himself, a wave of emotion over the media invention of an evil Nixon (who was pardoned by Ford) led us to Carter.

It was a narrow win for Carter. Ford nearly regained the lead by election day because the public was beginning to see how flawed Carter really was. But it was too late. Enter Carter. In four years, he managed to open the gates to hell in Iran leaving the middle-east an open sore for the next 30 years (and counting). A failed energy policy and trade dynamics left the nation with inflation and a "misery index". Carter was morose. He blamed Americans - not policy.
It was one of those rare times in politics, "A PERFECT STORM". Reagan rode to the rescue with a positive message of free market capitalism and low taxes. This generated a huge surge in business and jobs and tax revenue to the government. The lingering "Cold War" with the USSR was draining world resources from better use and now Reagan saw an opportunity to bring it to a close. But vision for long-term value required up front cash for a big navy and some high tech space technology. The plan worked but the huge tax revenues from the era were not enough to overcome the deficit spending for the "Cold War" endgame.

This brought us to Bush 41 who began to pare down the military spending and to bring the deficit under control. It was working. There was an economic hit from reduced military industrial complex spending, the result being a mild recession following his Desert Storm expidetion. Given Bush 41's weakness with public image and his ill thought out alliance with Democrats to add a small tax increase - he was vulnerable.
Enter the one man who set up the nation for the Upside-Down-World that occurred in November of 2008. Ross Perot. This third party candidate ran in the two campaigns that followed and drew off enough votes from Bush41 and later, Dole - to hand over the presidency and eight years of blithe progress to Bill Clinton.

Clinton was able to ride the continuing Reagan wave of economic growth with little effort. He could add some social programs and managed to avoid any costly military expenditure or adventures. Things were so good, he could even raise taxes without much harm to the economy and still have high government revenue. A surplus was projected five years out. But there was a bubble of technology businesses that over-reached and fell to earth in Clinton's last six months. This would take the projected surplus to a projected deficit of huge proportions in the next five years. The superior image machine of the Democrats never allowed this fact to have an shelf-life.

With a busted tech bubble and crying investors, Bush 43 was able to wrest the ticket and win the 2000 election. Immediately taxes were cut and the economy was clawing its way back with prosperity for America and the world looking better every day. The tech crash deficit projection was turned around and a surplus was easy to imagine in only a few years. Then the world stopped on September 11, 2001.

It turns out Bush 43 had great economic plans for domestic growth and business that would lead to prosperity for everyone from top to bottom. He was not a great speaker but he was folksy. And he was loyal to his team. People accepted his leadership to take the nation to war against terror. He focused on that. While he achieved a number of domestic initiatives and foreign policy initiatives that were remarkable, he never publicized them. The Bush 43 image and the Republican image were never considered important to the task at hand.

His flaws began to wear on him and his party by late in term one. His loyalty led him to keep Rumsfield in charge of Defense after huge mistakes were made in the consolidation of Iraq. He should have been gone a year before the second term. He left his party hanging with no viable "president in training" by keeping Cheney as VP for the second term. Cheney could have been eased out and used as an adviser without the VP office. This campaign season began with nobody warmed up in the bullpen and with Iraq still hot.

From the time of Carter - the housing initiatives for the poor were building in size and scope. It was a Democrat domain - their strong suit - a social issue.

Corruption among Democrats and high finance and the Federal Mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie built up over time and led to massive sums of money at risk - and guaranteed by the taxpayers. It was like free money, but it was considered private investment. Meanwhile Bush 43 was encouraging government spending too. Both private and government spending were salvaging the mess of 9/11 and fortunes were made at the levels of high finance. A combination of things led to some mortgages failing in 2007. This was the crack in the dam. You know the rest of the story.

The Republicans who were no longer in control of congress and for whom congress had been already a paper thin margin earlier in the Bush 43 administration - were incompetent with explanations of how the economic disaster occurred. It was an easy task for the Democrats to deflect all attention to a failure of Bush 43 who presented his case poorly and used the most un-telegenic bureaucrats in history to make the case for him. Democrats understand the importance of Image. Rarely is this the case of the Republicans.

Image was everything in this election. McCain is a marginally better communicator than Bush 43. He could not get over the hump of "defending tax cuts"when people were watching the (mostly Democrat - strange but true) high finance officers from Wall Street walk away with billions in bonuses while taxpayers foot the bill for their failures. Meanwhile the Democrats again have successfully convinced enough uneducated voters that higher taxes will cure the problem - along with government jobs for those who want a job. McCain's Joe the Plumber came as close to explaining the issue for the public but even so - the whole image machine for McCain and the Republicans failed to connect with the people (the people that counted).

Obama had plenty of obstacles to overcome. This blog and hundreds more make it pretty clear that he is loaded with issues that will affect his administration in a negative way and will in many cases be very harmful for America. But if perception is what counts - he has certainly created one for a large segment of eager believers.

The nation is now is a difficult time. The choice was between free market capitalism under a low tax burden to generate a stream of tax revenue that serves the people or regulated capitalism that taxes achievement dearly at the expense of private jobs so that more government jobs can be supported. Add to that a redistribution of worldwide energy resources (cap and trade CO2) designed to hobble America's industry and allow emerging nations to compete with lower energy costs. I feel sure the people who most supported Obama will be the people who are hurt the most. Their jobs and their hope for a better life will be delayed. I am guessing 16 years - about the time it took to work through the Roosevelt-Truman years. And "peace" presidents are historically noted for "war" inititation which puts a lot of people back to work very quickly.

America is now in the hands of the Left-Wing Democrats who earned their stripes in the 1960's. They remain trapped in a social dogma that has already been tested in Europe and elsewhere and failed. But they insist they must carry that worn banner forward. They now control all of congress and their puppet president. America is theirs to lose. When they do, I am sure they will successfully blame the Republicans.