White News Letter
January 5, 2009
San Jose, Costa Rica
As Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bernanke announces the official
arrival of the depression, analysts are pinning their hopes on the latest
run of the mindless reality TV show to bolster confidence in the markets
and raise national morale.
Workers at the New York stock exchange cheered as the line-up for "I'm a
Celebrity...get me out of here" was released and shares surged by 10% in
the hours afterwards. Troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq laid down
their weapons and embraced their colleagues on hearing the news.
President Bush hailed the new series as the beginning of the recovery and
praised Fox TV for its selfless commitment to public service broadcasting
in these times of economic strife. President elect Obama weighed in
saying "It was the right thing to do at this time."
“The sight of Brittney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton and a
succession of other pointless nobodies crawling through piles of insects
and drinking monkey urine can only be good for us as we face the most
serious challenges of our era,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday.
“In the great depression of the thirties the American people had the
soaring oratory of Franklin Rooseveldt, strong communities and the can do
spirit to get them through. Now we will have Tom Cruise's wife in a
bikini climbing throuh a snake infested jungle in Costa Rica to unify the
nation. Together we can make the U.S. great again.”
Fox TV will air the program at prime time daily so as to get the largest
possible audience and impact on the psyche of the American people
in order to raise their spirits even though they don't have money to dine
out.
Bob
Bob White
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Distractions and Sedatives Induced to the American Masses
The latest up to date diversions and fears fostered upon the U.S. masses by the millionaire TV talking heads who shout up hate and fear and the more they do it, the more money they make and help themselves to ensure their position in the 24 hour cable TV news(propaganda) business. Oh yes, some right wingnut politicians both in and out of office are fanning the fear fantasys of the masses also.
Salmonella from eggs. Since most people don't eat them raw and cook them, no problem.
Just another hysteria that rears it's head like the various flus, lettuce, Dengue fever in Florida, etc. These media made hysterias come around just like regular return visits of hurricanes. Expect them.
Poor baseball player Roger Clemens. Imagine, congress is charging him with lying about steroid use. Gee, a bunch of truthful legislators are actually charging a baseball legend with lying. Imagine that!
Building a Muslim community center two blocks from the 9-11 site. Like who gives a shit. It neither causes me to lose money or make money, eat or not eat, have fun or not have fun. Religion is religion---the people infected by all religions are going to do what they want in their fervent zeal. Even the founding Father Thomas Jefferson said he could not fight against religious ignorance. Go back to the 1920s and see what an uproar was caused by putting up a Jewish Temple in certain neighborhoods. Or witness the outcry in the small southern Baptist towns when a Catholic church was being built in the twenties. Or more recently, A Catholic for President like Kennedy. Hell no.
The M&M's , Mexican and Muslim are going to be the object of hate and fear with that slice of the our citizenry who feel less than adequate. Last time I read our Constitution, the part about Religious freedom was not cut out.
For my part, I don't care for the dark forces of religious superstition and don't care for any religion. But, the Constitution allows anyone to build a structure to bay at the moon if they want to.
Illegal aliens and Arizona law and subsequent overturning of it in Fed. court. Why hell, those Spanish speaking Indo-Hispanics such as Juan the dishwasher are going to bankrupt this country and cause every English speaking person to be deaf , dumb and mute as they will not be able to understand what's going on. Every damn grape, cherry,tomato, orange picking one of them should be rounded up and sent where they came from. The same goes for every tile laying, brick laying, landscaping, framing and roofing brown skin SOB should be removed from our pure blood society.
Just because their work product help build America doesn't mean doodly squat. We need to change our Constitution and not allow their offspring born in the US, even those who serve in our military, to stay here.
Obama is a closet Muslim born in Kenya who wants to convert this country to Islam and while doing so wants to change our form of government into some socialistic, fascistic , Islamist, Nazism, communist form. He definitely is not
a Christian like our citizens. It's a good cynical ploy to distract from the real issues.
It's a high octane high for millionaire TV talking heads who pat their celebrity heads while promoting disingenuous diatribes about free speech and sacred free markets and the American Dream. The democrats are saying he needs to show more Christianity by seeing him prostate in prayer at a church and the republicans are saying he's a muslim. Not to all---Our Constitution specifically declares that there is no religious test or requirement to be President or hold public office.
This is: Saturday Night Battle of the Blowhards - the vicious video game of American media culture. Nothing is more fun than a zealot, a microphone and two minutes of hate. The ratings jump and the pundit's paychecks zoom higher in direct proportion to the level of controversy.
Gay marriage in California court case. Hell, that's going to affect our blissful heterosexual marital conditions in this country notwithstanding that 50 of modern marriages end up in divorce and 40% of children born in the United States are bastards. Poor Sara Palin's bastard grandchild--Deuteronomy 23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.Since gays do not produce bastards, it would see to be a good thing if they could marry and would encourage the morality of only having sex within marriage.
Returning the marginal Fed. Tax rate before Bush only for the couples making over $250,000--wow! going from 36% to 39.6%. Whoooo! A whopping 3.6% increase for those whose NET INCOME after deductions is over $250,000. ie the GROSS income would
generally have to be north of $350,000. We're paying the lowest marginal rates in my lifetime. U.S. Corporations pay the lowest effective tax rate anywhere. Because of the thousands of corporate deductions and use of offshore tax sheltering corporations. The right wing pundits would have you believe that our economy would get legs again if we lowered taxes and all would be hunky dory. You can't lower any lower than zero which
most oil companies pay.
Mandatory health insurance unconstitutional. Forget auto insurance which is mandatory and Homeowners and Flood if you have a mortgage. So mandatory health insurance is unconstitutional , but auto, home and flood no. Go figure Senator blowhard.
Al Quai da is under ever rock and in every country and if we don't hunt them down and exterminate every single last one of them, they will descend on us like locusts and cut our heads off. They will come by land, air and sea. They will sneak across our porous borders. They will fly in courtesy of American Airlines. They will make balsa rafts and mount a beach landing. Be afraid. Beeee very afraid. Common sense
tells any rational person that for every one you kill, you create two or more. Why we can spend trillions killing them through this century. Well, we could if we don't go broke first.
Lindsey Lohans future after being incarcerated. This is important to know and talk about.
Is Bret Favre really going to return and play for the Vikings?
Is Tiger Woods finished?
There's new ones every week. It's hard to keep up with the newest methods to sedate and divert the American public from serious issues that can bring down our
Republic like lowered educational expectations, off shoring of jobs, bloated defense(offense) spending, rising health care costs, budget deficits, trade deficits, etc
Meanwhile, China and Russia and I suspect a lot of other countries are patiently doing their thing and watching the crumbling of the American Empire due
to the disfunctionality of it's evolved social structure and diversion from reality. They can readily see that our political system is total chaos and our people
are fearful and confused with a crashing economy. They know that the military/industrial complex has ballooned for the sake of profit and is adverse to
the American citizen's interests. Most of the major corporate sectors such as Big Pharma, Medical and Hospital Corporations, Oil Corporations, Media
Corporations, Banking and Financial Corporations are adverse to the common citizen's interest. It's all about profit and corporate responsibility to society be damned.
Our elected officials, aided and abetted by millions of corporate lobbyists have become corrupt petty thieves for their millions in corporate donations.
You Joe Blow and Mary Nobody don't stand a chance against this corporate bribery. You nobodies are also being media manipulated against your own interests.
After a couple of days of driving through back roads(not the interstates) and rural communities which we do every summer, I can positively tell you we have a lot of growth in two
facets of American life. The growth of "Jesus" churches and the raw poverty of our people. If you sit in the comfort of your home watching TV, you might
not notice the "Jesusification" of America unless you listen to the many evangelical TV and radio stations. You definitely will not confront the raw face of utter poverty
that I have seen spread over the same back roads for 30 years. I now see every summer huge increases of rural poverty. Such increases have been
phenomenal in the last 10 years. I couldn't have imagined it.
I'm not hopeful. American's anger and fear has been manipulated against their own best interests and they haven't caught on. Diverted and sedated from
economic reality, there seems little hope. There's an old saying I learned as a young man from a farmer. "It's hard to have your head in fantasy land when
you're walking in cow shit." Well, in today's climate, it doesn't seem to hard.
So be it after a few days of being on the road again and experiencing the real Americana and writing about it and pissing off a few who might read this.
Bob White
PS Oh yes, thank you George W. Bush for the invasions of Muslim countries and allowing hundreds of thousands of Somalian, Iraqui, Afghanistan refugees to repatriate to our country to enjoy the freedom to practise Islam. Why over a 100,000 thousand of them were relocated to Florida alone. Does anyone think they are going to be converted to Christianity and not go on a Mosque building drive? Kinda reminds one of the Vietnam refugee wave doesn't it.
Salmonella from eggs. Since most people don't eat them raw and cook them, no problem.
Just another hysteria that rears it's head like the various flus, lettuce, Dengue fever in Florida, etc. These media made hysterias come around just like regular return visits of hurricanes. Expect them.
Poor baseball player Roger Clemens. Imagine, congress is charging him with lying about steroid use. Gee, a bunch of truthful legislators are actually charging a baseball legend with lying. Imagine that!
Building a Muslim community center two blocks from the 9-11 site. Like who gives a shit. It neither causes me to lose money or make money, eat or not eat, have fun or not have fun. Religion is religion---the people infected by all religions are going to do what they want in their fervent zeal. Even the founding Father Thomas Jefferson said he could not fight against religious ignorance. Go back to the 1920s and see what an uproar was caused by putting up a Jewish Temple in certain neighborhoods. Or witness the outcry in the small southern Baptist towns when a Catholic church was being built in the twenties. Or more recently, A Catholic for President like Kennedy. Hell no.
The M&M's , Mexican and Muslim are going to be the object of hate and fear with that slice of the our citizenry who feel less than adequate. Last time I read our Constitution, the part about Religious freedom was not cut out.
For my part, I don't care for the dark forces of religious superstition and don't care for any religion. But, the Constitution allows anyone to build a structure to bay at the moon if they want to.
Illegal aliens and Arizona law and subsequent overturning of it in Fed. court. Why hell, those Spanish speaking Indo-Hispanics such as Juan the dishwasher are going to bankrupt this country and cause every English speaking person to be deaf , dumb and mute as they will not be able to understand what's going on. Every damn grape, cherry,tomato, orange picking one of them should be rounded up and sent where they came from. The same goes for every tile laying, brick laying, landscaping, framing and roofing brown skin SOB should be removed from our pure blood society.
Just because their work product help build America doesn't mean doodly squat. We need to change our Constitution and not allow their offspring born in the US, even those who serve in our military, to stay here.
Obama is a closet Muslim born in Kenya who wants to convert this country to Islam and while doing so wants to change our form of government into some socialistic, fascistic , Islamist, Nazism, communist form. He definitely is not
a Christian like our citizens. It's a good cynical ploy to distract from the real issues.
It's a high octane high for millionaire TV talking heads who pat their celebrity heads while promoting disingenuous diatribes about free speech and sacred free markets and the American Dream. The democrats are saying he needs to show more Christianity by seeing him prostate in prayer at a church and the republicans are saying he's a muslim. Not to all---Our Constitution specifically declares that there is no religious test or requirement to be President or hold public office.
This is: Saturday Night Battle of the Blowhards - the vicious video game of American media culture. Nothing is more fun than a zealot, a microphone and two minutes of hate. The ratings jump and the pundit's paychecks zoom higher in direct proportion to the level of controversy.
Gay marriage in California court case. Hell, that's going to affect our blissful heterosexual marital conditions in this country notwithstanding that 50 of modern marriages end up in divorce and 40% of children born in the United States are bastards. Poor Sara Palin's bastard grandchild--Deuteronomy 23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.Since gays do not produce bastards, it would see to be a good thing if they could marry and would encourage the morality of only having sex within marriage.
Returning the marginal Fed. Tax rate before Bush only for the couples making over $250,000--wow! going from 36% to 39.6%. Whoooo! A whopping 3.6% increase for those whose NET INCOME after deductions is over $250,000. ie the GROSS income would
generally have to be north of $350,000. We're paying the lowest marginal rates in my lifetime. U.S. Corporations pay the lowest effective tax rate anywhere. Because of the thousands of corporate deductions and use of offshore tax sheltering corporations. The right wing pundits would have you believe that our economy would get legs again if we lowered taxes and all would be hunky dory. You can't lower any lower than zero which
most oil companies pay.
Mandatory health insurance unconstitutional. Forget auto insurance which is mandatory and Homeowners and Flood if you have a mortgage. So mandatory health insurance is unconstitutional , but auto, home and flood no. Go figure Senator blowhard.
Al Quai da is under ever rock and in every country and if we don't hunt them down and exterminate every single last one of them, they will descend on us like locusts and cut our heads off. They will come by land, air and sea. They will sneak across our porous borders. They will fly in courtesy of American Airlines. They will make balsa rafts and mount a beach landing. Be afraid. Beeee very afraid. Common sense
tells any rational person that for every one you kill, you create two or more. Why we can spend trillions killing them through this century. Well, we could if we don't go broke first.
Lindsey Lohans future after being incarcerated. This is important to know and talk about.
Is Bret Favre really going to return and play for the Vikings?
Is Tiger Woods finished?
There's new ones every week. It's hard to keep up with the newest methods to sedate and divert the American public from serious issues that can bring down our
Republic like lowered educational expectations, off shoring of jobs, bloated defense(offense) spending, rising health care costs, budget deficits, trade deficits, etc
Meanwhile, China and Russia and I suspect a lot of other countries are patiently doing their thing and watching the crumbling of the American Empire due
to the disfunctionality of it's evolved social structure and diversion from reality. They can readily see that our political system is total chaos and our people
are fearful and confused with a crashing economy. They know that the military/industrial complex has ballooned for the sake of profit and is adverse to
the American citizen's interests. Most of the major corporate sectors such as Big Pharma, Medical and Hospital Corporations, Oil Corporations, Media
Corporations, Banking and Financial Corporations are adverse to the common citizen's interest. It's all about profit and corporate responsibility to society be damned.
Our elected officials, aided and abetted by millions of corporate lobbyists have become corrupt petty thieves for their millions in corporate donations.
You Joe Blow and Mary Nobody don't stand a chance against this corporate bribery. You nobodies are also being media manipulated against your own interests.
After a couple of days of driving through back roads(not the interstates) and rural communities which we do every summer, I can positively tell you we have a lot of growth in two
facets of American life. The growth of "Jesus" churches and the raw poverty of our people. If you sit in the comfort of your home watching TV, you might
not notice the "Jesusification" of America unless you listen to the many evangelical TV and radio stations. You definitely will not confront the raw face of utter poverty
that I have seen spread over the same back roads for 30 years. I now see every summer huge increases of rural poverty. Such increases have been
phenomenal in the last 10 years. I couldn't have imagined it.
I'm not hopeful. American's anger and fear has been manipulated against their own best interests and they haven't caught on. Diverted and sedated from
economic reality, there seems little hope. There's an old saying I learned as a young man from a farmer. "It's hard to have your head in fantasy land when
you're walking in cow shit." Well, in today's climate, it doesn't seem to hard.
So be it after a few days of being on the road again and experiencing the real Americana and writing about it and pissing off a few who might read this.
Bob White
PS Oh yes, thank you George W. Bush for the invasions of Muslim countries and allowing hundreds of thousands of Somalian, Iraqui, Afghanistan refugees to repatriate to our country to enjoy the freedom to practise Islam. Why over a 100,000 thousand of them were relocated to Florida alone. Does anyone think they are going to be converted to Christianity and not go on a Mosque building drive? Kinda reminds one of the Vietnam refugee wave doesn't it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
False Advertising at Opening of Florida Mall-Satire
White News Letter
January 5, 2009
San Jose, Costa Rica
Shoppers at the giant new shopping mall in Fort Myers, Florida are protesting outside the mall, accusing the management of not delivering a clear improvement to their lives.
There was a blitz of pre-opening advertisement that claimed that shoppers would experience the ultimate thrill of shopping at the open air mall designed like a main street in Italy or Spain where unsold condos on the second floor remain unsold.
A large group of housewives, unemployed real estate agents and building contractors and teenagers are demanding a meeting with the mall's backer to explain why they still get home from shopping at the complex still feeling empty, bored and as though their life has no meaning.
Carmen White, one of the housewife protesters from Fort Myers, described her anger. "When this place opened, they promised us everything - happiness, joy, perceived wealth, and a brighter tomorrow. But every day when I get home from splurging on stuff and clothes, I'm still 66, married to a retired ever ready battery type of guy who constantly wants to be in some other place than where he is. I'm still living in a boring suburb with boring people and the money I spend is not doing what was advertised. Someone has to pay for this." Similar comments were typical from the protesting housewives.
They all felt they were skimmed by the ads suggesting that by buying things, life would be rosier.
Dwayne Collins, who is receiving unemployment benefits , told us how his days at the Coconut Point are generally aimless and unsatisfying. "The advertising promised that this place would be blinging, but I ain't got no money so I can't get no bling. They lied to us."
A request for a review by the U.S. Advertising Standards Agency is under consideration due to the alleged false claims made.
Bob White
January 5, 2009
San Jose, Costa Rica
Shoppers at the giant new shopping mall in Fort Myers, Florida are protesting outside the mall, accusing the management of not delivering a clear improvement to their lives.
There was a blitz of pre-opening advertisement that claimed that shoppers would experience the ultimate thrill of shopping at the open air mall designed like a main street in Italy or Spain where unsold condos on the second floor remain unsold.
A large group of housewives, unemployed real estate agents and building contractors and teenagers are demanding a meeting with the mall's backer to explain why they still get home from shopping at the complex still feeling empty, bored and as though their life has no meaning.
Carmen White, one of the housewife protesters from Fort Myers, described her anger. "When this place opened, they promised us everything - happiness, joy, perceived wealth, and a brighter tomorrow. But every day when I get home from splurging on stuff and clothes, I'm still 66, married to a retired ever ready battery type of guy who constantly wants to be in some other place than where he is. I'm still living in a boring suburb with boring people and the money I spend is not doing what was advertised. Someone has to pay for this." Similar comments were typical from the protesting housewives.
They all felt they were skimmed by the ads suggesting that by buying things, life would be rosier.
Dwayne Collins, who is receiving unemployment benefits , told us how his days at the Coconut Point are generally aimless and unsatisfying. "The advertising promised that this place would be blinging, but I ain't got no money so I can't get no bling. They lied to us."
A request for a review by the U.S. Advertising Standards Agency is under consideration due to the alleged false claims made.
Bob White
We Had Real Freedom. Not The Illusion Of Freedom Today
Freedom is just an illusion today.
When I was a young kid back in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the town was about 100,000 vrs the one million metro area today.
I lived one block from the large LSU lake and knew every single cove in it. The shoreline is long due to the many curves and you could be in some parts of the lake and not see other parts.
I had a Remington bolt action 22 rifle with a magazine that held about 18 bullets of short rifle shells or about 12 of long rifle shells. I normally used short rifle shells as they only cost 35 cents for a box of 50 and the long rifle shells were about 75 cents.Actually there were three 22 shells---shorts, longs and long rifles.
I would put the rifle crossways on my bicycle handlebars and pedal through the neighborhood until I reached the spillway of the lake which was about a mile and a half away. Going into the swamps below the spill way I would proceed to shoot anything that moved except human beings. Now mind you, I'm inside the city limits and not far from subdivisions.
Now imagine if you can, a 12 yr. going to the hardware store and trying to buy bullets. Imagine if you can a 12 yr. old casually pedaling his bike with a rifle on the crossbars going down through a city subdivision.
Today if this happened, there would be five police squad cars filled with militarized hostile cops and a SWAT team would descend with sirens screaming.
The owner of the hardware store where I bought the bullets would be arrested and tried for sale to a minor. My parents would be arrested and tried for
letting me do this and would in all likelihood end up incarcerated and I would be put in a foster home after undergoing psychiatric examination.
Times change.
I, and the rest of the kids, would always have our pocket knives on us. I wouldn't leave home without it. During recess at school, we would play mumbly peg. For those that don't know the game, it's where two people would stand facing each other about five feet apart. We would throw our knives down at our feet to stick in the ground to see who could get the closest to our feet. Each got five throws and the closest would win.
Today, if a kid brought a knife to school, the riot squad would be called out and the kid would be expelled from school and the consequence for his parents would be the same as the rifle incident.
I had a five horsepower Royal outboard motor by the time I was 12. Ran all over the lake with it completely unsupervised by parental restraint. Hell, the majority of the time they didn't even know where I was. Personal Flotation Devices???? Hell, we didn't even know what they were. We were our own PFDs. We could swim and we never took swimming lessons. We just learned on our own in the lake or the river. Today, the laws require a PFD on a kid under 18 and there has to be PFDs equal to the number of people on a boat and the Coast Guard is pushing to require them to be on all adults.
We would freely jump from the boat and swim and we did this even at night sometimes. Imagine that! We would go to the Amite river bridge and jump from it. It was a 50 foot fall into the water. We learned to point our feet and be absolutely vertical with arms tight to our sides at point of impact to lessen the hard entrance into the water. No one even thought about it. It was just kids naturally having fun. It's against the law now to
jump from a bridge.
We were in our glory being young and free and unfettered in our play.
We used a cane pole to catch catfish and bream. We didn't need any fishing license nor any parent to show us how. Parents were busy working and not worrying about and overseeing their little Johnnys like they do today. We were free.
I had a Doodlebug motor scooter in the 6th grade. It didn't have lights on it and the brakes were broken. I stopped by hitting the kill switch and dragging my feet on the road. Wore out a lot shoes doing this. I rode all over Baton Rouge in daylight and dark. There was no law requiring a license plate nor an operator's license nor lights. My parents didn't worry about it at all. People were different then.
Today, the kids are force fed Ritalin or Prozac to calm them down into being little zombies. Who wants to be around active kids right? You never heard about some kid taking a rifle to school and blowing away classmates back then. Back then , we supervised ourselves. We were good ol' southern boys that knew how to handle a gun responsibly and to hunt and fish without some adult hovering over us.
Schools did not have metal detectors or fences around them. There were no anger management classes. When a schoolmate was killed in an auto accident there were no group trauma therapy or counseling. That was just part of life and we accepted it and moved on without
mulling over it.
Responsibilities was not saddled on someone else. We matured faster.
We never heard of anorexia or bulimia. If you were skinny you were skinny and if you were chubby you were chubby and no one gave a damn about it. We had school fights. Yes, punches were thrown and wrestling was engaged in. No one would think of picking up
a tire iron, rock or knife or gun or kick you when you were down. We had ethics. We were responsible kids because we were free to develop that way.
My Dad gave me a chrome plated 32 caliber revolver with a holster when I was 14. I would strap it on when I went hunting with my shotgun for squirrels, rabbits and doves. Thought nothing of it. Anybody could carry a gun back then. Nobody gave it a second thought.
We were not strung out on crystal meth or pot. We didn't even know what that was. We would drink quart bottles of Busch Bavarian beer while driving our cars at age 14. We acquired driver's licenses at age 14 back then. If you could belly up to a bar, you could get a drink.
We were treated as adults at a early age and I suspect that is why we were so mature.
Our heads were screwed on correctly. We were allowed to develop naturally and we had freedom.
Now, I suppose this article will piss of a bunch of therapists, psychologists, school counselors, fruit juice drinkers and the parents
who wouldn't let their precious go out without being lathered with sun block. So be it.
Freedom is just an illusion today. We had real freedom back then.
Bob White
August 16, 2010
When I was a young kid back in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the town was about 100,000 vrs the one million metro area today.
I lived one block from the large LSU lake and knew every single cove in it. The shoreline is long due to the many curves and you could be in some parts of the lake and not see other parts.
I had a Remington bolt action 22 rifle with a magazine that held about 18 bullets of short rifle shells or about 12 of long rifle shells. I normally used short rifle shells as they only cost 35 cents for a box of 50 and the long rifle shells were about 75 cents.Actually there were three 22 shells---shorts, longs and long rifles.
I would put the rifle crossways on my bicycle handlebars and pedal through the neighborhood until I reached the spillway of the lake which was about a mile and a half away. Going into the swamps below the spill way I would proceed to shoot anything that moved except human beings. Now mind you, I'm inside the city limits and not far from subdivisions.
Now imagine if you can, a 12 yr. going to the hardware store and trying to buy bullets. Imagine if you can a 12 yr. old casually pedaling his bike with a rifle on the crossbars going down through a city subdivision.
Today if this happened, there would be five police squad cars filled with militarized hostile cops and a SWAT team would descend with sirens screaming.
The owner of the hardware store where I bought the bullets would be arrested and tried for sale to a minor. My parents would be arrested and tried for
letting me do this and would in all likelihood end up incarcerated and I would be put in a foster home after undergoing psychiatric examination.
Times change.
I, and the rest of the kids, would always have our pocket knives on us. I wouldn't leave home without it. During recess at school, we would play mumbly peg. For those that don't know the game, it's where two people would stand facing each other about five feet apart. We would throw our knives down at our feet to stick in the ground to see who could get the closest to our feet. Each got five throws and the closest would win.
Today, if a kid brought a knife to school, the riot squad would be called out and the kid would be expelled from school and the consequence for his parents would be the same as the rifle incident.
I had a five horsepower Royal outboard motor by the time I was 12. Ran all over the lake with it completely unsupervised by parental restraint. Hell, the majority of the time they didn't even know where I was. Personal Flotation Devices???? Hell, we didn't even know what they were. We were our own PFDs. We could swim and we never took swimming lessons. We just learned on our own in the lake or the river. Today, the laws require a PFD on a kid under 18 and there has to be PFDs equal to the number of people on a boat and the Coast Guard is pushing to require them to be on all adults.
We would freely jump from the boat and swim and we did this even at night sometimes. Imagine that! We would go to the Amite river bridge and jump from it. It was a 50 foot fall into the water. We learned to point our feet and be absolutely vertical with arms tight to our sides at point of impact to lessen the hard entrance into the water. No one even thought about it. It was just kids naturally having fun. It's against the law now to
jump from a bridge.
We were in our glory being young and free and unfettered in our play.
We used a cane pole to catch catfish and bream. We didn't need any fishing license nor any parent to show us how. Parents were busy working and not worrying about and overseeing their little Johnnys like they do today. We were free.
I had a Doodlebug motor scooter in the 6th grade. It didn't have lights on it and the brakes were broken. I stopped by hitting the kill switch and dragging my feet on the road. Wore out a lot shoes doing this. I rode all over Baton Rouge in daylight and dark. There was no law requiring a license plate nor an operator's license nor lights. My parents didn't worry about it at all. People were different then.
Today, the kids are force fed Ritalin or Prozac to calm them down into being little zombies. Who wants to be around active kids right? You never heard about some kid taking a rifle to school and blowing away classmates back then. Back then , we supervised ourselves. We were good ol' southern boys that knew how to handle a gun responsibly and to hunt and fish without some adult hovering over us.
Schools did not have metal detectors or fences around them. There were no anger management classes. When a schoolmate was killed in an auto accident there were no group trauma therapy or counseling. That was just part of life and we accepted it and moved on without
mulling over it.
Responsibilities was not saddled on someone else. We matured faster.
We never heard of anorexia or bulimia. If you were skinny you were skinny and if you were chubby you were chubby and no one gave a damn about it. We had school fights. Yes, punches were thrown and wrestling was engaged in. No one would think of picking up
a tire iron, rock or knife or gun or kick you when you were down. We had ethics. We were responsible kids because we were free to develop that way.
My Dad gave me a chrome plated 32 caliber revolver with a holster when I was 14. I would strap it on when I went hunting with my shotgun for squirrels, rabbits and doves. Thought nothing of it. Anybody could carry a gun back then. Nobody gave it a second thought.
We were not strung out on crystal meth or pot. We didn't even know what that was. We would drink quart bottles of Busch Bavarian beer while driving our cars at age 14. We acquired driver's licenses at age 14 back then. If you could belly up to a bar, you could get a drink.
We were treated as adults at a early age and I suspect that is why we were so mature.
Our heads were screwed on correctly. We were allowed to develop naturally and we had freedom.
Now, I suppose this article will piss of a bunch of therapists, psychologists, school counselors, fruit juice drinkers and the parents
who wouldn't let their precious go out without being lathered with sun block. So be it.
Freedom is just an illusion today. We had real freedom back then.
Bob White
August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Bush and Cheney Were Good
Clinton and Gore were laughing matters. Bush and Cheney by contrast are not laughing matters. Why I like Bush and Cheney:
I hated that rising stock market under Clinton. I hated welfare reform. We should have never replaced it with workfare. Why force people to work? That's cruel and unjust and Clinton was cruel to do it. He even ran on that platform. Shame on him.
I hated that budget surplus under him too.
Now, I like Bush because he's using our military correctly by invading and occupying a couple of countries. When it comes to the military , we need to use it or lose it or the big military contractor corporations will have to downsize and that's bad for employment.
I also like Bush for increasing our national debt to astronomical proportions and getting read of the surplus that Clinton saddled us with. It's downright silly to hoard money notwithstanding all those naysayer economist who worry about our growing deficit supported by foreign countries. If they are dumb enough to buy our bonds we'll just sell 'em more and more of them. If they even hint that they won't buy or want to sell, we'll threaten 'em with nukes. They'll get in line.
Also, I like a stock market that waffles sideways and down. That way I don't have much capital gains to pay when I sell my stocks. You know, I just hate to pay taxes.
Also, just because gasoline didn't go up much during Clinton's term doesn't mean it should not have gone up under Bush who is an oilman. I don't see any conflict of interest. Oil companies are the backbone of this nation and all that talk of their billions of dollars in profit and 50 billion compensation packages to the CEO's is just plain jealousy. The American way is to make as much as the traffic will bear and since the oil companies know there will be no repurcussions from the Bush administration , they are free to make some real money for a change by gosh. I'm for this. I think we should invade Iran so the oil companies will have an excuse to raise the prices even more.
Gasoline has been way too cheap in the past. I have the $804 to spend in filling up my boat and if you don't that's your problem. Go out and make a lot of money instead of getting some stupid little manufacturing job if you even find one left in this country.
Also, I don't think companies like Haliburton and Bechtel along with their hundreds of subcontractors need to bid on contracts. It's a waste of time. What the heck if Cheney is tied to Haliburton. Cheney deserves his money after having worked in government jobs nearly all his life. He worked himself up to CEO of Haliburton the correct way---with his connections to the defense dept., he started at the top which is the modern American republican way.
But I really like Bush and his push for Christianity. I think we should be more like the muslim countries in this regard and make religion and god part of everyday government. I agree with Bush that intelligent design should be taught as an alternative to evolution. I ain't no descendent from a monkey. To hell with the queers and gay rights. To hell with abortion. To hell with stem cell research. Stem cell research would only benefit young people and we ain't young so why should we be for it? I think we need more poor minority children so we can produce more rap music and let the record companies make bigger profits. Also, the clothing stores can sell more gang attire--Abolish abortion and I like that because I really like rap music.
Yes, I'm for giving our tax money to churches or as Bush calls them "faith based groups." I never believed in that stupid part of our constitution about separation of church and state. Jefferson, Washinton, Adams, Madison and Franklin were a bunch of athiests.
Just because churches don't have to pay taxes doesn't mean they should not receive our tax money. After all, there is no such thing as too big of a church you know.
I believe that Bush is right in unconditional support for Israel with money and war material for the occupying of Palestinian land and the subjugation of it's people. The sooner the Jews return to Israel, then the sooner you and I will be raptured up. Just can't wait and Bush is speeding up the process. We certainly have him to thank for this trajectory even though we have to confront the hatred in the Arab world and creation of terrorism becasuse of this. But hell, what's the lives of a few thousand in a building in contrast to the rapture we good Christians will have.
But what I most like Bush about is the singular fact that he has never vetoed a single spending bill. That is a record no other President in history can claim. He's increased employment of government bureaucrats by 1/3 and that's good for the employment figures.
You're right Clinton and Gore were jokes and that's no joke.
God bless America!
Bob
I hated that rising stock market under Clinton. I hated welfare reform. We should have never replaced it with workfare. Why force people to work? That's cruel and unjust and Clinton was cruel to do it. He even ran on that platform. Shame on him.
I hated that budget surplus under him too.
Now, I like Bush because he's using our military correctly by invading and occupying a couple of countries. When it comes to the military , we need to use it or lose it or the big military contractor corporations will have to downsize and that's bad for employment.
I also like Bush for increasing our national debt to astronomical proportions and getting read of the surplus that Clinton saddled us with. It's downright silly to hoard money notwithstanding all those naysayer economist who worry about our growing deficit supported by foreign countries. If they are dumb enough to buy our bonds we'll just sell 'em more and more of them. If they even hint that they won't buy or want to sell, we'll threaten 'em with nukes. They'll get in line.
Also, I like a stock market that waffles sideways and down. That way I don't have much capital gains to pay when I sell my stocks. You know, I just hate to pay taxes.
Also, just because gasoline didn't go up much during Clinton's term doesn't mean it should not have gone up under Bush who is an oilman. I don't see any conflict of interest. Oil companies are the backbone of this nation and all that talk of their billions of dollars in profit and 50 billion compensation packages to the CEO's is just plain jealousy. The American way is to make as much as the traffic will bear and since the oil companies know there will be no repurcussions from the Bush administration , they are free to make some real money for a change by gosh. I'm for this. I think we should invade Iran so the oil companies will have an excuse to raise the prices even more.
Gasoline has been way too cheap in the past. I have the $804 to spend in filling up my boat and if you don't that's your problem. Go out and make a lot of money instead of getting some stupid little manufacturing job if you even find one left in this country.
Also, I don't think companies like Haliburton and Bechtel along with their hundreds of subcontractors need to bid on contracts. It's a waste of time. What the heck if Cheney is tied to Haliburton. Cheney deserves his money after having worked in government jobs nearly all his life. He worked himself up to CEO of Haliburton the correct way---with his connections to the defense dept., he started at the top which is the modern American republican way.
But I really like Bush and his push for Christianity. I think we should be more like the muslim countries in this regard and make religion and god part of everyday government. I agree with Bush that intelligent design should be taught as an alternative to evolution. I ain't no descendent from a monkey. To hell with the queers and gay rights. To hell with abortion. To hell with stem cell research. Stem cell research would only benefit young people and we ain't young so why should we be for it? I think we need more poor minority children so we can produce more rap music and let the record companies make bigger profits. Also, the clothing stores can sell more gang attire--Abolish abortion and I like that because I really like rap music.
Yes, I'm for giving our tax money to churches or as Bush calls them "faith based groups." I never believed in that stupid part of our constitution about separation of church and state. Jefferson, Washinton, Adams, Madison and Franklin were a bunch of athiests.
Just because churches don't have to pay taxes doesn't mean they should not receive our tax money. After all, there is no such thing as too big of a church you know.
I believe that Bush is right in unconditional support for Israel with money and war material for the occupying of Palestinian land and the subjugation of it's people. The sooner the Jews return to Israel, then the sooner you and I will be raptured up. Just can't wait and Bush is speeding up the process. We certainly have him to thank for this trajectory even though we have to confront the hatred in the Arab world and creation of terrorism becasuse of this. But hell, what's the lives of a few thousand in a building in contrast to the rapture we good Christians will have.
But what I most like Bush about is the singular fact that he has never vetoed a single spending bill. That is a record no other President in history can claim. He's increased employment of government bureaucrats by 1/3 and that's good for the employment figures.
You're right Clinton and Gore were jokes and that's no joke.
God bless America!
Bob
They Are Scaring the Hell Out of Us
It appears that there is a concerted effort by the media and politicians to
keep the public in a state of fear and panic about just about everything.
Fear all the diseases that are coming. ( you can probably think of about 6 in the last 2 years that the media scared the hell out of the people with. Everthing from Dengue fever to Bird Flu)
Fear all the muslims that are coming.
Fear of all the children that may be kidnapped.
Fear of global cooling
Fear of global warming
Fear of gangs
Fear of Mexicans
Fear of schoolbuses without seatbelts.
Fear of being overweight
Fear of smoking
Fear of cats in the homes transferring diseases
Fear of dogs in the home doing same.
Fear of UFO's
Fear of not being raptured up to Jesus and his papa soon.
Fear of radio magnetic waves in home
Fear of cell phones
Fear of a dirty bomb
Fear of Radon in homes
Fear-Fear-Fear that's the motto and the mantra--The bogeyman is coming. I think it's a communist plot to make Joe Sixpack and Mary Mallshopper so fearful they will turn into a gelatinous ooze and will be to scared to resist a resurgence of the followers of Stalin or Castro or the evil devil incarnate Hugo Chavez who will attack the US with machete bearing peons.
Or worse, those Arabs will get on their camels and barges and make a beach invasion on our soil.
No wonder our population have become a bunch of drug addicts from pill pushing doctors. They probably need these pills to cope in the day a sleep at night with Lunesta or Ambien or whatever other drug they drug you with to sleep. It's a bunch of uneeded shit that in the long run does detriment to the body.
Note in the interest of not wasting anyone's time too much, I severely limited the list of fears.
My only fear is fear of our own government let by well intentioned men who are misguided. All of the founders and great thinkers made it clear
that the biggest danger to our republic lies in the government which is a ferocious animal--much worse than a Tiger.
Bob
keep the public in a state of fear and panic about just about everything.
Fear all the diseases that are coming. ( you can probably think of about 6 in the last 2 years that the media scared the hell out of the people with. Everthing from Dengue fever to Bird Flu)
Fear all the muslims that are coming.
Fear of all the children that may be kidnapped.
Fear of global cooling
Fear of global warming
Fear of gangs
Fear of Mexicans
Fear of schoolbuses without seatbelts.
Fear of being overweight
Fear of smoking
Fear of cats in the homes transferring diseases
Fear of dogs in the home doing same.
Fear of UFO's
Fear of not being raptured up to Jesus and his papa soon.
Fear of radio magnetic waves in home
Fear of cell phones
Fear of a dirty bomb
Fear of Radon in homes
Fear-Fear-Fear that's the motto and the mantra--The bogeyman is coming. I think it's a communist plot to make Joe Sixpack and Mary Mallshopper so fearful they will turn into a gelatinous ooze and will be to scared to resist a resurgence of the followers of Stalin or Castro or the evil devil incarnate Hugo Chavez who will attack the US with machete bearing peons.
Or worse, those Arabs will get on their camels and barges and make a beach invasion on our soil.
No wonder our population have become a bunch of drug addicts from pill pushing doctors. They probably need these pills to cope in the day a sleep at night with Lunesta or Ambien or whatever other drug they drug you with to sleep. It's a bunch of uneeded shit that in the long run does detriment to the body.
Note in the interest of not wasting anyone's time too much, I severely limited the list of fears.
My only fear is fear of our own government let by well intentioned men who are misguided. All of the founders and great thinkers made it clear
that the biggest danger to our republic lies in the government which is a ferocious animal--much worse than a Tiger.
Bob
My Plan for Global Warming
Ya know, I've been thinking about this whole global warming mess. When I starts to thinkin, I'sa get creative sorta.
All this talk with the newly minted jargon of "carbon foot print" and "carbon credits" makes a lotta sense right?
I think we need to get with the program. Everyone should send their gas eating carbon emitting vehicles to the junkyard.
Autos, truck, motorcycles, power boats, motor scooters, tractors(nothing wrong with mules) and airplanes. Hell we don't need 'em. Let's all acquire bicycles and horses.There is no reason we can't use them for most of our daily trips. Hell, we can walk to visit grandma even if she lives 100 miles away. Just allow more time for the round trip. It's actually healthier and we could put doctors out of business.
But, we can build rickshaws and hire Mexicans to pull us if you're that damn lazy. Incidentally, there is no reason why someone has not invented a sail to be mounted on a bicycle. I was gonna do it but it requires too much effort in this endeavor.
Just think of the new jobs this will create in construction of rickshaws, bicycles and building livery stables not to mention saddles and other things that go with a horse.
Not just those but, think if you want to travel to faraway places, you can go on a large sailboat. This would be a boon to the shipbuilding industry. We don't need a damn "Dreamliner" unveiled by Boeing yesterday. How in the hell is that gonna line my dreams? That's just BS marketing. If Boeing thinks they are going to "line" my dreams, they have to think of something else such as being 30 years younger and having a Lear jet with beautiful maidens helping me sip good red wine and giving me a decent massage. If Boeing can "line" your dreams with less, I feel for you.
Nobody needs these rapid transit devices. Let's slow down and smell the roses. Let's cool this frenetic pace that has wormed it's way into our culture. Just think, less stress and ergo, less heart attacks and strokes. It's a win win situation folks.
Let's build thousands of grids of electricity using windmills. The hell with the animal rights groups who say these blades kill and injure birds. With millions of these wind generators, we might just produce enough electricity to give us a couple hours of light in the day and coupled with solar power
we get to watch TV also if we don't have too many cloudy days.
I'm not sure we could run the air conditioner for too long though. But sweating is good for you and cleanses the body of the toxins produced by all that red meat you eat. My grandparents on my father's side lived to almost 90 years old eating red meat, lard and eggs everyday but, people don't live that long now eating this fare since they found out by eating like that they will not live that long. I call it the Law of Expectations of Longevity.
Yeah, we need to cut back on those emissions. I think we should nuke all of Latin America and Africa, China and the middle east plus India. Heck, this would probably cut the world's population by 70% or more. Just think in a few strokes we could reduce emissions by that much. Dead people don't emit anything.
Also, God's job of rapturing up the dead wouldn't be affected as most of those dead are not Christians so no loss there. We would end terrorism and illegal immigration as a by product. But remember, we would need a few illegals to pull the rickshaw. But on second thought, we have enough within our borders now to carry out this transportation plan of pulling a rickshaw.
Anyway, just some common sense planning and carrying out this plan that I have suggested might save our planet and consequently the ones of us that remain. You know how it is, if we don't think of ourselves, nobody else will.
I don't believe those Russian scientist who say it's not the normal tilting of the earth that has occurred thousands of times that's causing global warming.
What the hell do the Russkys know anyway. Just because they have a space station up there for many years that they allowed us to use doesn't mean they are technical savvy. They have been lucky that's all or bought it from aliens from another planet. Does anyone seriously think that a Russian who drinks a bottle of vodka daily could conceive of sending a satellite space station up? Get real folks.
I don't believe those photos I saw on TV recently that reflected that in 1932 there was the same or more of retreating ice on the polar caps. I think the photos were doctored to counter Al Gore.
Yeah, I think I have the idea of how to solve this problem. The big question is, will we Americans and Europeans carry it out?
Bob
PS They ain't gonna take my boat or my Harley except over my cold and dead body.
PPS Does anyone out there have a better plan than this one? If so, let it hang out.
All this talk with the newly minted jargon of "carbon foot print" and "carbon credits" makes a lotta sense right?
I think we need to get with the program. Everyone should send their gas eating carbon emitting vehicles to the junkyard.
Autos, truck, motorcycles, power boats, motor scooters, tractors(nothing wrong with mules) and airplanes. Hell we don't need 'em. Let's all acquire bicycles and horses.There is no reason we can't use them for most of our daily trips. Hell, we can walk to visit grandma even if she lives 100 miles away. Just allow more time for the round trip. It's actually healthier and we could put doctors out of business.
But, we can build rickshaws and hire Mexicans to pull us if you're that damn lazy. Incidentally, there is no reason why someone has not invented a sail to be mounted on a bicycle. I was gonna do it but it requires too much effort in this endeavor.
Just think of the new jobs this will create in construction of rickshaws, bicycles and building livery stables not to mention saddles and other things that go with a horse.
Not just those but, think if you want to travel to faraway places, you can go on a large sailboat. This would be a boon to the shipbuilding industry. We don't need a damn "Dreamliner" unveiled by Boeing yesterday. How in the hell is that gonna line my dreams? That's just BS marketing. If Boeing thinks they are going to "line" my dreams, they have to think of something else such as being 30 years younger and having a Lear jet with beautiful maidens helping me sip good red wine and giving me a decent massage. If Boeing can "line" your dreams with less, I feel for you.
Nobody needs these rapid transit devices. Let's slow down and smell the roses. Let's cool this frenetic pace that has wormed it's way into our culture. Just think, less stress and ergo, less heart attacks and strokes. It's a win win situation folks.
Let's build thousands of grids of electricity using windmills. The hell with the animal rights groups who say these blades kill and injure birds. With millions of these wind generators, we might just produce enough electricity to give us a couple hours of light in the day and coupled with solar power
we get to watch TV also if we don't have too many cloudy days.
I'm not sure we could run the air conditioner for too long though. But sweating is good for you and cleanses the body of the toxins produced by all that red meat you eat. My grandparents on my father's side lived to almost 90 years old eating red meat, lard and eggs everyday but, people don't live that long now eating this fare since they found out by eating like that they will not live that long. I call it the Law of Expectations of Longevity.
Yeah, we need to cut back on those emissions. I think we should nuke all of Latin America and Africa, China and the middle east plus India. Heck, this would probably cut the world's population by 70% or more. Just think in a few strokes we could reduce emissions by that much. Dead people don't emit anything.
Also, God's job of rapturing up the dead wouldn't be affected as most of those dead are not Christians so no loss there. We would end terrorism and illegal immigration as a by product. But remember, we would need a few illegals to pull the rickshaw. But on second thought, we have enough within our borders now to carry out this transportation plan of pulling a rickshaw.
Anyway, just some common sense planning and carrying out this plan that I have suggested might save our planet and consequently the ones of us that remain. You know how it is, if we don't think of ourselves, nobody else will.
I don't believe those Russian scientist who say it's not the normal tilting of the earth that has occurred thousands of times that's causing global warming.
What the hell do the Russkys know anyway. Just because they have a space station up there for many years that they allowed us to use doesn't mean they are technical savvy. They have been lucky that's all or bought it from aliens from another planet. Does anyone seriously think that a Russian who drinks a bottle of vodka daily could conceive of sending a satellite space station up? Get real folks.
I don't believe those photos I saw on TV recently that reflected that in 1932 there was the same or more of retreating ice on the polar caps. I think the photos were doctored to counter Al Gore.
Yeah, I think I have the idea of how to solve this problem. The big question is, will we Americans and Europeans carry it out?
Bob
PS They ain't gonna take my boat or my Harley except over my cold and dead body.
PPS Does anyone out there have a better plan than this one? If so, let it hang out.
Excuses for Bush and the Neocons to Attack
I was just musing and after observing the swarm of hummingbirds fighting for a perch at the feeders on my balcony, I decided to put the musings in a written form.
Terror scenarios that Bush and neocons would love.
Well, they could ask for a group of Mexicans to fly over the superbowl and drop jalapeno peppers. The fans would eat the jalapenos and there would be a mass asshole burning. Then Bush would have an excuse to bomb Paraguay as they are suspected of importing jalapeno seeds and might plant them.
Another thing they could ask for is a few Colombians flying over Washington DC in a rented cargo 747 and dropping thousands of pounds of cocaine, heroine and pot. It would incapacitate our government people and Bush would then have an excuse to bomb France as the
small company that leased the jet could have been located there and besides Bush doesn't like French Fries or even Cajun food.
A law would finally be passed prohibiting the term "French Fries." The Republican congressman (I believe from S.Carolina) who filed that law back in
2002 would finally see it passed. We all remember those dirty cowardly bastard French and Germans who wouldn't go along with dropping phosphorus bombs on downtown Baghdad at night in a sneak attack killing, burning and maiming thousands of little children. Shame on them.
Or since Honduras produces a lot of palm oil which is known to drastically increase cholesterol, there is fear that it might export vast amounts of it and infiltrate the American food chain and cause a huge increase in heart attacks. Therefore Bush could sex up the case for bombing Costa Rica because they just might do this in the future as they also grow palm oil and could potentially do this to.
Another would be Cubans flying over various parts of America and dropping Salsa CD's which would convert the populace to have a dancing addiction and make them lose interest in work. Horror of horrors! Workers productivity gone down the drain. Then Bush would mount a campaign to bomb Puerto Rico as they produce a lot of Salsa music CDs and they might just do it in the future so it's better to kill them now and not to wait.
Here's a good one also. India is fabricating and exporting to us all those skin piercing metal adornments that our youth are using for lip, tongue, eyebrow and nose rings thus dumbing down and desecrating their bodies. It it felt that China will begin to do this so let's bomb China.
The very best scenario is that the English writer who wrote Harry Potter has done a direct attack on our religion. All the Christian evangelicals are screaming that this is the devils handiwork and is an athiestic attempt to secularize our young. Then we should attack New Zealand as the movie was filmed there and we would prevent any more movies being made there.
It is specifically noteworthy that we did not bomb Saudi Arabia where the attackers in 9-11 came from and Prince Bander was a visitor on Bush's ranch where he was seen holding hands with Bush and Bush greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.
Isn't it fun to play with scenarios?
Bob
Terror scenarios that Bush and neocons would love.
Well, they could ask for a group of Mexicans to fly over the superbowl and drop jalapeno peppers. The fans would eat the jalapenos and there would be a mass asshole burning. Then Bush would have an excuse to bomb Paraguay as they are suspected of importing jalapeno seeds and might plant them.
Another thing they could ask for is a few Colombians flying over Washington DC in a rented cargo 747 and dropping thousands of pounds of cocaine, heroine and pot. It would incapacitate our government people and Bush would then have an excuse to bomb France as the
small company that leased the jet could have been located there and besides Bush doesn't like French Fries or even Cajun food.
A law would finally be passed prohibiting the term "French Fries." The Republican congressman (I believe from S.Carolina) who filed that law back in
2002 would finally see it passed. We all remember those dirty cowardly bastard French and Germans who wouldn't go along with dropping phosphorus bombs on downtown Baghdad at night in a sneak attack killing, burning and maiming thousands of little children. Shame on them.
Or since Honduras produces a lot of palm oil which is known to drastically increase cholesterol, there is fear that it might export vast amounts of it and infiltrate the American food chain and cause a huge increase in heart attacks. Therefore Bush could sex up the case for bombing Costa Rica because they just might do this in the future as they also grow palm oil and could potentially do this to.
Another would be Cubans flying over various parts of America and dropping Salsa CD's which would convert the populace to have a dancing addiction and make them lose interest in work. Horror of horrors! Workers productivity gone down the drain. Then Bush would mount a campaign to bomb Puerto Rico as they produce a lot of Salsa music CDs and they might just do it in the future so it's better to kill them now and not to wait.
Here's a good one also. India is fabricating and exporting to us all those skin piercing metal adornments that our youth are using for lip, tongue, eyebrow and nose rings thus dumbing down and desecrating their bodies. It it felt that China will begin to do this so let's bomb China.
The very best scenario is that the English writer who wrote Harry Potter has done a direct attack on our religion. All the Christian evangelicals are screaming that this is the devils handiwork and is an athiestic attempt to secularize our young. Then we should attack New Zealand as the movie was filmed there and we would prevent any more movies being made there.
It is specifically noteworthy that we did not bomb Saudi Arabia where the attackers in 9-11 came from and Prince Bander was a visitor on Bush's ranch where he was seen holding hands with Bush and Bush greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.
Isn't it fun to play with scenarios?
Bob
The So Called Texas "Cowboy."--A Satire
A few weeks ago I had occasion to visit a rather large metroplex located
in Texas whose name I would not reveal under any circumstance even under
threat of a firing squad- Its initials are DFW.
Being bored after the conduction of a rather lengthy business session that dragged on for 30 minutes I returned to the hotel. Still bored at 9 pm, I decided to go check out the night life.
The cab driver dropped me off at this huge garish metal looking building
surrounded by four wheeled drive pic-um-up trucks parked upon what looked
like 5 acres of paved parking lot. I thought that I would at last get to
see the fabled cowpeople of legend. What an opportunity.
Upon entering this cavernous arena I was struck by the music.
I thought it would be hillbilly. I suppose if you listened real carefully
you could discern an occasional hillbilly lick. The music sounded like a
blend of modern rock and polka sung by a frenetic young man who was
gyrating all over the stage. Gyrations would be the last thing ol Ernest
Tubbs , George Jones or Merle Haggard would do.
I thought for sure that the people in that place would be country, what
with all them pick-um-up trucks parked outside and four wheel drive to
boot. I just knew they would have them for something like carrying
branding gear to some remote north forty instead of climbing up the 30
foot long, ten degree slope of their paved driveway in suburbia. (99% of
buyers of four wheel drives have about as much need for them as tropical
jungle dwellers have for a snowmobile) I suppose there is this
psychological need to keep up with the neighbors or maybe if the roads
are destroyed by nuclear bombs, one might get around a little better. In
any case, I was disappointed in not finding any genuine cowpeople and
I'll tell you why.
Yes, those patrons of the club appeared at first blush to be genuine but
upon close scrutiny I feel they were duping each other and the public at
large. Close scrutinizer that I am, I immediately noticed their boots.
Yes, this is a dead giveaway. Most of them were made of some exotic bird
skin with little dimples on them and were not the color of cowhide. They
were also clean and shiny-a dead giveaway.
I know wherewith I speak on this subject of boots, as I was driving one
night near Sonora, Texas listening to the only radio station that was
clear. You know the kind---local AM station whose signal fades 5 miles
from the transmitter. After the announcer declared "come one, come all.
It's half price night at the dairy queen tonight ", he then proceeded to
educate the listeners about cowboy boots. He sounded like a real cowboy.
He said in his thick Texas drawl that no real man would ever buy any
boots that were not made of genuine 100% cowhide and of two colors-black
or brown. Anything else was a genuine fake and only worn by effete
wannabes who know so little about cows and horses that they would get on
a horse backward and think that milk comes from a plant that manufactures
it.
Armed with this tidbit of wisdom, I knew in this big dancehall, there
were no cowboys. Furthermore, they all had big bellys attempting to cover
that obvious defect with large long sleeve garishly painted shirts.
Everyone knows that a real cowboy is lean due the obvious fact of working
cattle all day on a bowl of beans. These shirts were so garishly tacky
with colored patterns that they would motivate a mandrill to mate and
those guys wearing those shirts would not have been safe in mandrill
country. (Mandrills have vivid red behinds considered sexy to other
mandrills)
Another clue was the fact that everybody had their cowboy hats on too. A
real cowboy would have taken it off indoors. Hell, even I know that it
doesn't rain and the sun doesn't shine inside a Texas dancehall. I do,
however, think there is a reason why they wear them indoors-it makes the
shorties appear a little taller and covers the head of the baldies so
consequently wearing a cowboy hat indoors fills some innate need they
have arising out of some deep seated complex about height and hair.
Sigmund Freud, if alive, could better explain it.
Almost all had a little leather case affixed to their belts. It was worn
on the side. I suppose it was a Freudian substitute for a pistol holster.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I then thought that maybe these
little leather cases housed wire cutters. Everyone knows that cowboys are
always on the range mending fences. My curiosity got the best of me so I
asked the guy what he was carrying in his little case. I might have
known. It was fingernail clippers. Why sho nuff you all, a real Texas
cowboy would die of embarrassment by having dirty or long fingernails.
How positively naive could I be! They aren't cowboys from Wyoming
for sure.
The fun began with the music. Real cowpeople dance together.
These imposters were in military like formation six to eight deep and
wide looking like an overweight aerobic class. They were attempting to
dance in lock step but failing miserably. I discovered white people can't
dance. I knew they couldn't jump cause I saw the movie. I also knew they
couldn't play football or basketball as I watch TV. Now I'm sure they
can't dance after visiting that club.
Oh maybe a few have rhythm, but the vast majority move like mechanical robots
with zero relation to the usic. Their faces were wrinkled up from concentration and
focus but it as useless. The music would enter the ears and pass through the brain
but then would be short circuited and not be articulated with theirbodies. That's the
scientific reason alto' I don't want to get to technical for the readers.
I hung around this place an hour or so ,observing this 20th century
anomaly. I should have known that cowboys ride horses and not four
wheeled drives. I also should have known that 99% of Texas is posted and
you can't enter much land other than known streets and parking lot,
unlike those few western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Montana etc,
where you can get lost with your four wheeler.
I came away disillusioned. The music was rock. The boots were not
genuine cowhide and they were were too clean and not genuine.
They couldn't keep time with the music like a cowboy could at a square dance.
The garish shirts were made in Taiwan with mandrill mating colors.
Their little leather cases on the held fingernail clippers. They didn't remove their hats upon
entering. Real cowboys know that hats are only worn outside for
protection from the sun and rain.
I now know as an absolutely irrefutable fact that the closest anybody in
the DFW area has been to a cow is the milk stain on the upper lips you
seen seen in the milk advertisements. One possible explanation of this fake
cowboy ethos is most of them probably took the TV show Dallas to heart.
Hell J.R. Ewing doesn't even own or ride a horse. He owns and rides four
different Harley Davidson motorcycles. Don't they even read the
personality section of the Sunday supplement?
Bob White in "cowboy" country.
in Texas whose name I would not reveal under any circumstance even under
threat of a firing squad- Its initials are DFW.
Being bored after the conduction of a rather lengthy business session that dragged on for 30 minutes I returned to the hotel. Still bored at 9 pm, I decided to go check out the night life.
The cab driver dropped me off at this huge garish metal looking building
surrounded by four wheeled drive pic-um-up trucks parked upon what looked
like 5 acres of paved parking lot. I thought that I would at last get to
see the fabled cowpeople of legend. What an opportunity.
Upon entering this cavernous arena I was struck by the music.
I thought it would be hillbilly. I suppose if you listened real carefully
you could discern an occasional hillbilly lick. The music sounded like a
blend of modern rock and polka sung by a frenetic young man who was
gyrating all over the stage. Gyrations would be the last thing ol Ernest
Tubbs , George Jones or Merle Haggard would do.
I thought for sure that the people in that place would be country, what
with all them pick-um-up trucks parked outside and four wheel drive to
boot. I just knew they would have them for something like carrying
branding gear to some remote north forty instead of climbing up the 30
foot long, ten degree slope of their paved driveway in suburbia. (99% of
buyers of four wheel drives have about as much need for them as tropical
jungle dwellers have for a snowmobile) I suppose there is this
psychological need to keep up with the neighbors or maybe if the roads
are destroyed by nuclear bombs, one might get around a little better. In
any case, I was disappointed in not finding any genuine cowpeople and
I'll tell you why.
Yes, those patrons of the club appeared at first blush to be genuine but
upon close scrutiny I feel they were duping each other and the public at
large. Close scrutinizer that I am, I immediately noticed their boots.
Yes, this is a dead giveaway. Most of them were made of some exotic bird
skin with little dimples on them and were not the color of cowhide. They
were also clean and shiny-a dead giveaway.
I know wherewith I speak on this subject of boots, as I was driving one
night near Sonora, Texas listening to the only radio station that was
clear. You know the kind---local AM station whose signal fades 5 miles
from the transmitter. After the announcer declared "come one, come all.
It's half price night at the dairy queen tonight ", he then proceeded to
educate the listeners about cowboy boots. He sounded like a real cowboy.
He said in his thick Texas drawl that no real man would ever buy any
boots that were not made of genuine 100% cowhide and of two colors-black
or brown. Anything else was a genuine fake and only worn by effete
wannabes who know so little about cows and horses that they would get on
a horse backward and think that milk comes from a plant that manufactures
it.
Armed with this tidbit of wisdom, I knew in this big dancehall, there
were no cowboys. Furthermore, they all had big bellys attempting to cover
that obvious defect with large long sleeve garishly painted shirts.
Everyone knows that a real cowboy is lean due the obvious fact of working
cattle all day on a bowl of beans. These shirts were so garishly tacky
with colored patterns that they would motivate a mandrill to mate and
those guys wearing those shirts would not have been safe in mandrill
country. (Mandrills have vivid red behinds considered sexy to other
mandrills)
Another clue was the fact that everybody had their cowboy hats on too. A
real cowboy would have taken it off indoors. Hell, even I know that it
doesn't rain and the sun doesn't shine inside a Texas dancehall. I do,
however, think there is a reason why they wear them indoors-it makes the
shorties appear a little taller and covers the head of the baldies so
consequently wearing a cowboy hat indoors fills some innate need they
have arising out of some deep seated complex about height and hair.
Sigmund Freud, if alive, could better explain it.
Almost all had a little leather case affixed to their belts. It was worn
on the side. I suppose it was a Freudian substitute for a pistol holster.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I then thought that maybe these
little leather cases housed wire cutters. Everyone knows that cowboys are
always on the range mending fences. My curiosity got the best of me so I
asked the guy what he was carrying in his little case. I might have
known. It was fingernail clippers. Why sho nuff you all, a real Texas
cowboy would die of embarrassment by having dirty or long fingernails.
How positively naive could I be! They aren't cowboys from Wyoming
for sure.
The fun began with the music. Real cowpeople dance together.
These imposters were in military like formation six to eight deep and
wide looking like an overweight aerobic class. They were attempting to
dance in lock step but failing miserably. I discovered white people can't
dance. I knew they couldn't jump cause I saw the movie. I also knew they
couldn't play football or basketball as I watch TV. Now I'm sure they
can't dance after visiting that club.
Oh maybe a few have rhythm, but the vast majority move like mechanical robots
with zero relation to the usic. Their faces were wrinkled up from concentration and
focus but it as useless. The music would enter the ears and pass through the brain
but then would be short circuited and not be articulated with theirbodies. That's the
scientific reason alto' I don't want to get to technical for the readers.
I hung around this place an hour or so ,observing this 20th century
anomaly. I should have known that cowboys ride horses and not four
wheeled drives. I also should have known that 99% of Texas is posted and
you can't enter much land other than known streets and parking lot,
unlike those few western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Montana etc,
where you can get lost with your four wheeler.
I came away disillusioned. The music was rock. The boots were not
genuine cowhide and they were were too clean and not genuine.
They couldn't keep time with the music like a cowboy could at a square dance.
The garish shirts were made in Taiwan with mandrill mating colors.
Their little leather cases on the held fingernail clippers. They didn't remove their hats upon
entering. Real cowboys know that hats are only worn outside for
protection from the sun and rain.
I now know as an absolutely irrefutable fact that the closest anybody in
the DFW area has been to a cow is the milk stain on the upper lips you
seen seen in the milk advertisements. One possible explanation of this fake
cowboy ethos is most of them probably took the TV show Dallas to heart.
Hell J.R. Ewing doesn't even own or ride a horse. He owns and rides four
different Harley Davidson motorcycles. Don't they even read the
personality section of the Sunday supplement?
Bob White in "cowboy" country.
Growing UP Ain't What It Used To Be
I remember when refrigerators didn't run on electricity......they ran on ice !
I don't know if I'm OLDER THAN DIRT.......but in the good ole days gettin dirty didn't mean shit to me ! ! !
'My son asked me one time, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. ! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' Eat up we were admonished as there are children in China starving. I could never figure out why I had to clean my plate due to this.
My parents never wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 40 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 13 and then mostly you saw just black and white snow or a test pattern. We had only one TV station in Louisiana at that time WDSU out of New Orleans. Since we lived in Baton Rouge we had trouble getting a clear picture.
I was 10 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' My parents took me to the only place selling pizza pie. It was called the Fleur de Lisle. When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.
The first car we had was a black Model A Ford. It had a hand crank in the front. Daddy would always warn me about the kick back hand crank he had to use when the battery was dead which was often. The kick back could seriously hurt you.
The second car we owned was a 40 blue Chevy coupe and then in 1946 when the war ended Dad bought the first being produced, a 46 black Nash coupe which I learned to drive in by stealing it at night when I was 13. We all piled into it one summer and Dad drove us to Mexico City through the narrow mountainous Pan American Highway. What an adventure.
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.
Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.
All newspapers were delivered by boys like me who received 2 cents for each one. The customer paid 10 cents and I could keep 2 cents.
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them
A happy day was when my parents bought me a pair of black hightop skate shoes. I hated the clip ons. I would wear out the City Park roller rink trying to imitate the best skater there who was named Termite Termini. Can you imagine naming your
son Termite. I'm sure he must have changed it later in life.
We spent a couple of Xmas times in Clinton, La.(Long Hot Summer was filmed there) at my grandparents White's home. They had no electricity. Santa brought me a Lionel electric train set. I took it out of the box and set it up on the floor and then realized I would have to wait until we returned to Baton Rouge where there was electricity.
I still love the smell of the kerosene lamps used at my grandparents and can still see her cooking breakfast on the wood stove using kindling wood. I was allowed to go gather the eggs in the back yard for breakfast.They were the best damn eggs I've ever eaten. Full rich dark orange yokes with firm whites. Today, they yolks are
pale yellow and the whites just fall apart. I think my grandmother must have made a pie every day of her life also.
My first encounter with bubble gum was on the grammar school bus. An older kid had a wad of Fleers Double Bubble in his mouth and stood up in front of the bus and we kids were absolutely awe struck seeing him blow bubbles. You couldn't hardly buy any as every place was sold out and we'd carefully put it back in the wrapper overnight.
After a few days, it became hard and you could not blow a bubble.
Momentous chronological points in my early life were getting a Red Ryder BB gun, a Remington bolt action 22, a 20 gauge single shot Harrington Richardson shotgun and later a 12 gauge Model 50 Winchester automatic. I must have killed a million snakes and turtles with the 22 rifle and thousands of squirrels, rabbits, possums and doves
with the shotguns. I also killed my share of songbirds with the BB gun. Kids didn't have any pity back then.
Endless summer days of swimming naked in the Bogue Chitto river with both white and black kids together.Catching crawfish with my black friend Nat and boiling them in a can by a little fire we lit and then going over to the little shotgun shack where he lived with his mother and then eating cheese and saltine crackers which his mother put out. I was about 10 yrs. old and hadn't caught the racist bug yet.
Endless summer days of catching turtles and fishing and running my 5hp Royal outboard on some wooden boat that I would steal if it was simply tied up around the lake. Many times people came to my home to tell my Dad to teach me not to take their boat. He simply told them to put a lock on it. I actually was doing this at 10 years old. Simply pulling on the starter cord of that motor for a 10 yr. old was tough.
Catching flying squirrels in our little wooden traps was a lot of fun. You had to handle them with a glove at first as they were vicious. We domesticated them this way. We would put them in a sock and swing the sock until they got dizzy and then we could handle them for a little while. After many times of doing this, they caved in and became tame. We would tie a string around their necks and keep them in our pockets ect.
I use to keep a pet flying squirrel in a drawer in my bedroom. He chewed his way out and would hide in the day and since they are nocturnal would only come out at night. He was free for a week in our home and I finally caught him when he flew from somewhere and landed on my chest while I was in bed one night.
I spent hours taming a young Raccoon which I named Bill. He was damn vicious in the beginning and I had to handle him with thick gloves. After a week or so, he became domesticated, but as he grew bigger, Dad wouldn't let me have him roaming around the house freely anymore as he was getting into everything. I even slept with him. Finally, Dad put him in a cage behind our home with his collar and leash on and poor Bill managed to get out of the cage which was high off the ground and we found him hanging one morning by his neck. I dug a grave and put up a small cross and cried like a baby.
I had caught several baby alligators and kept them in a large tub in my room. My grandparents came to spend the weekend with us and I recall my grandfather complaining to my Dad that he didn't get a wink of sleep all night due to the bellowing of the alligators. Dad made me remove the tub to the backyard.
I heard Sen. Biden relate how he was bullied by some kid and his Dad told him to go back and fight and said, "Champ, when you're down, get up and fight."
Well, something similar happened to me. Sonny Harris and Earl Frenzel who were a year older than me and lived down the street had bullied me and took my bicycle. I would have been about 10 yrs. old. I came crying home and my Dad read me the damn riot act. He scared the hell out of me that he was going to give me a whipping worse than those kids and if I did not go back out there and get my bicycle then don't bother to come home ever again.
He motivated me to the point that I ran with tears in my eyes down where they were and without saying anything charged them both with the ferocity of an adrenaline filled Lion. I beat the hell out of both of them and got my bike back. It was then that I had an epiphany. I realized that I was much stronger than most guys and had better reflexes and agility. I didn't much fear anybody the rest of my life.
That was one of the few lessons I learned from my Dad. He didn't give me many, I assure you. He owned Bob White's Silver Dollar Bar and Lounge which was a front for a gambling Den. He did make me open oysters on Saturdays for the customers and I believe I still have scars on my hand from doing this, but it was worth it to hear the country bands he hired to play on Saturday night.
The nearest side of heaven was drinking a Grapette on a hot summer day.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?
Bob White
I don't know if I'm OLDER THAN DIRT.......but in the good ole days gettin dirty didn't mean shit to me ! ! !
'My son asked me one time, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. ! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' Eat up we were admonished as there are children in China starving. I could never figure out why I had to clean my plate due to this.
My parents never wore Levis , set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 40 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 13 and then mostly you saw just black and white snow or a test pattern. We had only one TV station in Louisiana at that time WDSU out of New Orleans. Since we lived in Baton Rouge we had trouble getting a clear picture.
I was 10 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' My parents took me to the only place selling pizza pie. It was called the Fleur de Lisle. When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.
The first car we had was a black Model A Ford. It had a hand crank in the front. Daddy would always warn me about the kick back hand crank he had to use when the battery was dead which was often. The kick back could seriously hurt you.
The second car we owned was a 40 blue Chevy coupe and then in 1946 when the war ended Dad bought the first being produced, a 46 black Nash coupe which I learned to drive in by stealing it at night when I was 13. We all piled into it one summer and Dad drove us to Mexico City through the narrow mountainous Pan American Highway. What an adventure.
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.
Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.
All newspapers were delivered by boys like me who received 2 cents for each one. The customer paid 10 cents and I could keep 2 cents.
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them
A happy day was when my parents bought me a pair of black hightop skate shoes. I hated the clip ons. I would wear out the City Park roller rink trying to imitate the best skater there who was named Termite Termini. Can you imagine naming your
son Termite. I'm sure he must have changed it later in life.
We spent a couple of Xmas times in Clinton, La.(Long Hot Summer was filmed there) at my grandparents White's home. They had no electricity. Santa brought me a Lionel electric train set. I took it out of the box and set it up on the floor and then realized I would have to wait until we returned to Baton Rouge where there was electricity.
I still love the smell of the kerosene lamps used at my grandparents and can still see her cooking breakfast on the wood stove using kindling wood. I was allowed to go gather the eggs in the back yard for breakfast.They were the best damn eggs I've ever eaten. Full rich dark orange yokes with firm whites. Today, they yolks are
pale yellow and the whites just fall apart. I think my grandmother must have made a pie every day of her life also.
My first encounter with bubble gum was on the grammar school bus. An older kid had a wad of Fleers Double Bubble in his mouth and stood up in front of the bus and we kids were absolutely awe struck seeing him blow bubbles. You couldn't hardly buy any as every place was sold out and we'd carefully put it back in the wrapper overnight.
After a few days, it became hard and you could not blow a bubble.
Momentous chronological points in my early life were getting a Red Ryder BB gun, a Remington bolt action 22, a 20 gauge single shot Harrington Richardson shotgun and later a 12 gauge Model 50 Winchester automatic. I must have killed a million snakes and turtles with the 22 rifle and thousands of squirrels, rabbits, possums and doves
with the shotguns. I also killed my share of songbirds with the BB gun. Kids didn't have any pity back then.
Endless summer days of swimming naked in the Bogue Chitto river with both white and black kids together.Catching crawfish with my black friend Nat and boiling them in a can by a little fire we lit and then going over to the little shotgun shack where he lived with his mother and then eating cheese and saltine crackers which his mother put out. I was about 10 yrs. old and hadn't caught the racist bug yet.
Endless summer days of catching turtles and fishing and running my 5hp Royal outboard on some wooden boat that I would steal if it was simply tied up around the lake. Many times people came to my home to tell my Dad to teach me not to take their boat. He simply told them to put a lock on it. I actually was doing this at 10 years old. Simply pulling on the starter cord of that motor for a 10 yr. old was tough.
Catching flying squirrels in our little wooden traps was a lot of fun. You had to handle them with a glove at first as they were vicious. We domesticated them this way. We would put them in a sock and swing the sock until they got dizzy and then we could handle them for a little while. After many times of doing this, they caved in and became tame. We would tie a string around their necks and keep them in our pockets ect.
I use to keep a pet flying squirrel in a drawer in my bedroom. He chewed his way out and would hide in the day and since they are nocturnal would only come out at night. He was free for a week in our home and I finally caught him when he flew from somewhere and landed on my chest while I was in bed one night.
I spent hours taming a young Raccoon which I named Bill. He was damn vicious in the beginning and I had to handle him with thick gloves. After a week or so, he became domesticated, but as he grew bigger, Dad wouldn't let me have him roaming around the house freely anymore as he was getting into everything. I even slept with him. Finally, Dad put him in a cage behind our home with his collar and leash on and poor Bill managed to get out of the cage which was high off the ground and we found him hanging one morning by his neck. I dug a grave and put up a small cross and cried like a baby.
I had caught several baby alligators and kept them in a large tub in my room. My grandparents came to spend the weekend with us and I recall my grandfather complaining to my Dad that he didn't get a wink of sleep all night due to the bellowing of the alligators. Dad made me remove the tub to the backyard.
I heard Sen. Biden relate how he was bullied by some kid and his Dad told him to go back and fight and said, "Champ, when you're down, get up and fight."
Well, something similar happened to me. Sonny Harris and Earl Frenzel who were a year older than me and lived down the street had bullied me and took my bicycle. I would have been about 10 yrs. old. I came crying home and my Dad read me the damn riot act. He scared the hell out of me that he was going to give me a whipping worse than those kids and if I did not go back out there and get my bicycle then don't bother to come home ever again.
He motivated me to the point that I ran with tears in my eyes down where they were and without saying anything charged them both with the ferocity of an adrenaline filled Lion. I beat the hell out of both of them and got my bike back. It was then that I had an epiphany. I realized that I was much stronger than most guys and had better reflexes and agility. I didn't much fear anybody the rest of my life.
That was one of the few lessons I learned from my Dad. He didn't give me many, I assure you. He owned Bob White's Silver Dollar Bar and Lounge which was a front for a gambling Den. He did make me open oysters on Saturdays for the customers and I believe I still have scars on my hand from doing this, but it was worth it to hear the country bands he hired to play on Saturday night.
The nearest side of heaven was drinking a Grapette on a hot summer day.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?
Bob White
Florida Scuba Diver Hit by Lightening--It Happened To Me
There but for luck would the same have happened to me. When I was 16, I
was scuba diving on Lake Bistineau in Louisiana in the channel of the
river that was damned to make the lake. My diving buddy was Joe Coffield who
was 10 yrs. older than I and no longer with us.
The old river channel in the lake was about 30 ft. deep and we
was looking for outboard motors that had fallen off boats and any and
other junk from the days of the civil war when boats plowed the once navigable
river back then.
While I was diving and down for about 30 minutes I surfaced to find
lightening and rain. As I swam back to the boat, Lightening either hit my
air tank or very near. I was paralyzed for about five seconds. It was one
of the most terrifying experiences I ever had. After I realized I wasn't
dead or hurt I finished swimming to the boat and got out of there scared
the whole time.
Upon reflection why I wasn't killed, I came to the belief that it was
because it was in the month of December and I was wearing a Bel Aqua Dry
rubber suit with long underware beneath. I had on rubber gloves that were
sealed off with rubber cords at the wrist. The rubber cords wrapped
around a plastic grooved bracelet fitted underneath the sleeve of the Dry
suit. I was completely dry and sealed off except for the area around my
mouth underneath my face mask. I believe I would have been long gone if I
would not have had that dry rubber suit on. I would have been gone if I
would have had a wetsuit on or if it was in the summer and no suit.
Bob White
Fla. diver dies after lightning hits air tank
By The Associated Press
DEERFIELD BEACH — A 36-year-old diver was killed after lightning struck
his air tank, authorities said.
Deerfield Beach resident Stephen Wilson was diving with three others off
a boat near Deerfield Beach on Sunday, when a severe thunderstorm warning
was in effect in the area.
When he surfaced, “lighting struck his tank,” said Deerfield Beach fire
Chief Gary Fernaays. “He was approximately 30 feet from the boat at the
time.”
The three other divers struggled to get Wilson back into the boat and
radioed for help. Wilson was then rushed to the beach where a rescue crew
was waiting. He was given CPR and taken to North Broward Medical Center
in Pompano Beach, where he was pronounced dead, Fernaays said.
An autopsy by the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office determined
Wilson died of electrocution.
was scuba diving on Lake Bistineau in Louisiana in the channel of the
river that was damned to make the lake. My diving buddy was Joe Coffield who
was 10 yrs. older than I and no longer with us.
The old river channel in the lake was about 30 ft. deep and we
was looking for outboard motors that had fallen off boats and any and
other junk from the days of the civil war when boats plowed the once navigable
river back then.
While I was diving and down for about 30 minutes I surfaced to find
lightening and rain. As I swam back to the boat, Lightening either hit my
air tank or very near. I was paralyzed for about five seconds. It was one
of the most terrifying experiences I ever had. After I realized I wasn't
dead or hurt I finished swimming to the boat and got out of there scared
the whole time.
Upon reflection why I wasn't killed, I came to the belief that it was
because it was in the month of December and I was wearing a Bel Aqua Dry
rubber suit with long underware beneath. I had on rubber gloves that were
sealed off with rubber cords at the wrist. The rubber cords wrapped
around a plastic grooved bracelet fitted underneath the sleeve of the Dry
suit. I was completely dry and sealed off except for the area around my
mouth underneath my face mask. I believe I would have been long gone if I
would not have had that dry rubber suit on. I would have been gone if I
would have had a wetsuit on or if it was in the summer and no suit.
Bob White
Fla. diver dies after lightning hits air tank
By The Associated Press
DEERFIELD BEACH — A 36-year-old diver was killed after lightning struck
his air tank, authorities said.
Deerfield Beach resident Stephen Wilson was diving with three others off
a boat near Deerfield Beach on Sunday, when a severe thunderstorm warning
was in effect in the area.
When he surfaced, “lighting struck his tank,” said Deerfield Beach fire
Chief Gary Fernaays. “He was approximately 30 feet from the boat at the
time.”
The three other divers struggled to get Wilson back into the boat and
radioed for help. Wilson was then rushed to the beach where a rescue crew
was waiting. He was given CPR and taken to North Broward Medical Center
in Pompano Beach, where he was pronounced dead, Fernaays said.
An autopsy by the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office determined
Wilson died of electrocution.
My Bus Trips to See a Saturday Movie When I Was 12 yrs. Old
I'm 12 years old and it's Saturday morning.
I pick up the phone and call my two friends who happen to be brothers, David and Phil Vasser.
I say, I'm catching the next City bus and they answer that they will be waiting to catch it at their bus stop. They lived on Aberdeen St. and I lived on Hyacinth St. It was a quintessential neighborhood with tree lined streets and each home completely different than the other---No cookie cutter homes.
I'm but two houses down from the bus stop and they are about five blocks from me.
I see the bus coming. It's a red bus and it stops for me. I enter and deposit one shiny nickel into a contraption mounted to the right of the driver. It makes a whirring and clicking sound. If I would have put into it a dime, quarter or half dollar it would have whirred and clicked and given me the change back.
I don't mind confessing, I thought long and hard about how in the hell does it do that. To me it was magical.
With my nickle fare off I go and then five blocks down, David and Phil board.
We arrive to downtown and immediately go to one of the movie houses which I suppose we had agreed upon before. Generally it was a western where morality was taught to us. The good guys always came out on top.We generally had a chocolate candy bar of some kind while watching the movie.
After the movie, we would head to Sip and Nip Grille or Sitman's drugs. We would order a malted milk and a hamburger. Later we might stop by Dalton's Dept. store and stroll up to the shoe measuring device which is a large cabinet like structure where you stood up and pushed your feet into a slot and looked down and were able to see the bones in your feet and how they articulated with your shoes. Everything you viewed had an eerie green glow.
These were later outlawed. We probably received more Rems of radiation than the people around Chernobyl.We're still alive.
Houses were constantly being built in our area. We would climb up into the attic of a home that was 80% completed with the asbestos insulation blown into the attic. We would throw asbestos at each other. We're still alive. All pipes had asbestos wrapped around them. All ironing board covers were made with asbestos. Our parents lived.
All paint had lead in it. But, hell, we didn't eat it or chew on a window ledge. Who would do that? Well, I won't go there.
Mercury was a play thing. Kids would have it in school and we would shine dimes and nickles and dimes with it by rolling the coins in our hands with mercury. We're still alive. Today, if you break a thermometer in a school, they evacuate it and call
the EPA.
But, I digress. After we saw the movie, had the candy bar, ate our hamburger with a malted milk and bought our comic book and arrived home on the bus, we had twenty cents left over from a one dollar bill.
Bus--$10 round trip
Movie $.20
Hamburger $.25
Malted milk $.20
Comic book $.05
Till this day, I don't recall what I did with the $.20 I had left over.
All I know is that that one dollar bill had a some real purchasing power and value.
In most places today, you can't even buy a cup of coffee. You might as well use it for toilet paper.
Bob White
PS I really enjoyed my childhood even though my family relations were not exactly like Ozzie and Harriet.
I pick up the phone and call my two friends who happen to be brothers, David and Phil Vasser.
I say, I'm catching the next City bus and they answer that they will be waiting to catch it at their bus stop. They lived on Aberdeen St. and I lived on Hyacinth St. It was a quintessential neighborhood with tree lined streets and each home completely different than the other---No cookie cutter homes.
I'm but two houses down from the bus stop and they are about five blocks from me.
I see the bus coming. It's a red bus and it stops for me. I enter and deposit one shiny nickel into a contraption mounted to the right of the driver. It makes a whirring and clicking sound. If I would have put into it a dime, quarter or half dollar it would have whirred and clicked and given me the change back.
I don't mind confessing, I thought long and hard about how in the hell does it do that. To me it was magical.
With my nickle fare off I go and then five blocks down, David and Phil board.
We arrive to downtown and immediately go to one of the movie houses which I suppose we had agreed upon before. Generally it was a western where morality was taught to us. The good guys always came out on top.We generally had a chocolate candy bar of some kind while watching the movie.
After the movie, we would head to Sip and Nip Grille or Sitman's drugs. We would order a malted milk and a hamburger. Later we might stop by Dalton's Dept. store and stroll up to the shoe measuring device which is a large cabinet like structure where you stood up and pushed your feet into a slot and looked down and were able to see the bones in your feet and how they articulated with your shoes. Everything you viewed had an eerie green glow.
These were later outlawed. We probably received more Rems of radiation than the people around Chernobyl.We're still alive.
Houses were constantly being built in our area. We would climb up into the attic of a home that was 80% completed with the asbestos insulation blown into the attic. We would throw asbestos at each other. We're still alive. All pipes had asbestos wrapped around them. All ironing board covers were made with asbestos. Our parents lived.
All paint had lead in it. But, hell, we didn't eat it or chew on a window ledge. Who would do that? Well, I won't go there.
Mercury was a play thing. Kids would have it in school and we would shine dimes and nickles and dimes with it by rolling the coins in our hands with mercury. We're still alive. Today, if you break a thermometer in a school, they evacuate it and call
the EPA.
But, I digress. After we saw the movie, had the candy bar, ate our hamburger with a malted milk and bought our comic book and arrived home on the bus, we had twenty cents left over from a one dollar bill.
Bus--$10 round trip
Movie $.20
Hamburger $.25
Malted milk $.20
Comic book $.05
Till this day, I don't recall what I did with the $.20 I had left over.
All I know is that that one dollar bill had a some real purchasing power and value.
In most places today, you can't even buy a cup of coffee. You might as well use it for toilet paper.
Bob White
PS I really enjoyed my childhood even though my family relations were not exactly like Ozzie and Harriet.
How I Put Our Lives In Danger
I'm sitting at the computer thinking of how I put my life in danger as well as my wife's.
Four years ago we set off on the Harley to go to the Oregon coastal town of Newport. We love it there for the small town feeling of being on the edge of the mountains spilling in on the Pacific coast with it's thunderous waves that when they fall, actually shake the ground.
There is a particularly small motel that we love to stay out right on the beach where we throw open the sliding glass doors facing the ocean and enjoy the sound of the surf along with the cool temps during the summer. Also, it's within walking distance to some awesome pub where I actually met a graduate from the college I graduated from, Mexico City College. He was a successful and prosperous grower of Marijuana in the mountains of Oregon. We've gone to Newport about four times before and enjoy the heck out of it. I don't know why they don't change the name to Newpot. That's the biggest farming industry there.
Anyway, as we rolled through the western part of Utah on the bike, we have to cross the Cascade mountain range to head to the coast.
The way I go is through the roads least traveled and so they are two laned and not very straight. As we were crossing the Cascades on a twisty narrow two lane, a Corvette was tailgating me. The roads were wet due to the high altitude cloudy mist and it was about eleven in the morning.
The corvette was pushing me. I reacted in a stupid Neanderthal way by thinking to myself that this guy is not going to pass me. Mind you, Carmen was in the seat behind me as well as about 35 lbs of luggage on the rack above my rear compartment. On a motorcycle, this affects your handling and this is besides the stuff we had in the two metal saddlebags and rear compartment.
In thinking back, I get scared. Why did I do this. What is it about a man at my age then of 63 that would have the competitive urge to risk his wife's life as well as his own at this particular point in life. I don't have an answer. I suppose it's tucked away somewhere in each of our particular genes.
There were times in these wet curves that I thought there was no way I could make it without going down. I could out accelerate the corvette after the curves as I have the big bore kit and cam in the Harley. But , I would slow down more in the curves. Anyway, this went on for an hour or more till we reached the crest of the Cascades and then began descending. At this point, I let the corvette pass me and waved him goodbye and he acknowledged the wave with one of his own. All I know , is that I was not about to let the damn corvette pass me climbing up the Cascades. I was totally honed in and focused on that one small goal at that particular time.
I have no explanation for this except to say, that we are limbic driven creatures no matter our education or upbringing.or age. It's imprinted in us and to hell with reason and logical thinking. We're just flesh and blood as the saying goes.
I think of this all the time and I still get goose pimples. If we were to go down on the wet road , we could have fallen thousands of feet and if the driver of the corvette wouldn't have told anyone about it, we'd still be missing. I remember vividly, that so many times ,I just knew we were not going to make it without going over the side. If you've ever ridden a motorcycle , you can feel when you've gone beyond the limits in a curve at high speed. It's not a good feeling at all.
Would I do this again? Sitting her thinking rationally, hell no. But given the same situation, who knows?
Bob White
Four years ago we set off on the Harley to go to the Oregon coastal town of Newport. We love it there for the small town feeling of being on the edge of the mountains spilling in on the Pacific coast with it's thunderous waves that when they fall, actually shake the ground.
There is a particularly small motel that we love to stay out right on the beach where we throw open the sliding glass doors facing the ocean and enjoy the sound of the surf along with the cool temps during the summer. Also, it's within walking distance to some awesome pub where I actually met a graduate from the college I graduated from, Mexico City College. He was a successful and prosperous grower of Marijuana in the mountains of Oregon. We've gone to Newport about four times before and enjoy the heck out of it. I don't know why they don't change the name to Newpot. That's the biggest farming industry there.
Anyway, as we rolled through the western part of Utah on the bike, we have to cross the Cascade mountain range to head to the coast.
The way I go is through the roads least traveled and so they are two laned and not very straight. As we were crossing the Cascades on a twisty narrow two lane, a Corvette was tailgating me. The roads were wet due to the high altitude cloudy mist and it was about eleven in the morning.
The corvette was pushing me. I reacted in a stupid Neanderthal way by thinking to myself that this guy is not going to pass me. Mind you, Carmen was in the seat behind me as well as about 35 lbs of luggage on the rack above my rear compartment. On a motorcycle, this affects your handling and this is besides the stuff we had in the two metal saddlebags and rear compartment.
In thinking back, I get scared. Why did I do this. What is it about a man at my age then of 63 that would have the competitive urge to risk his wife's life as well as his own at this particular point in life. I don't have an answer. I suppose it's tucked away somewhere in each of our particular genes.
There were times in these wet curves that I thought there was no way I could make it without going down. I could out accelerate the corvette after the curves as I have the big bore kit and cam in the Harley. But , I would slow down more in the curves. Anyway, this went on for an hour or more till we reached the crest of the Cascades and then began descending. At this point, I let the corvette pass me and waved him goodbye and he acknowledged the wave with one of his own. All I know , is that I was not about to let the damn corvette pass me climbing up the Cascades. I was totally honed in and focused on that one small goal at that particular time.
I have no explanation for this except to say, that we are limbic driven creatures no matter our education or upbringing.or age. It's imprinted in us and to hell with reason and logical thinking. We're just flesh and blood as the saying goes.
I think of this all the time and I still get goose pimples. If we were to go down on the wet road , we could have fallen thousands of feet and if the driver of the corvette wouldn't have told anyone about it, we'd still be missing. I remember vividly, that so many times ,I just knew we were not going to make it without going over the side. If you've ever ridden a motorcycle , you can feel when you've gone beyond the limits in a curve at high speed. It's not a good feeling at all.
Would I do this again? Sitting her thinking rationally, hell no. But given the same situation, who knows?
Bob White
Calle Me Hard Heartied---Medicare and Scooters
A CASUAL OBSERVATION AND COMMENT
Yesterday, I was in the grocery store and this big blob of a woman who must of weighed in at 250 lbs almost hit me with her electric scooter.
I casually observed her shopping for food items and followed her around for a while. There she goes buying two big bags of potato chips, a couple of lbs. of hamburger meat, a gallon of whole milk, half gallon of ice cream, four of those big plastic bottles of regular coke, Saltine crackers, two kinds of blocks of cheese, Oreos and assorted other snack food. She certainly passed on the vegetables and fruits.
The thought occurred to me that she received this scooter free as Medicare paid for it. Then I began thinking about all the people I see here in Florida on those scooters. They are everywhere. Every one I've observed has two legs and
arms, but they are all bloated and fat. Very seldom do I see where it's really needed.
Now I can imagine her daily scenario as well as other scooter people like her.
She will go home and sit on her big fat ass and stuff herself with fattening junk food and watch television.
I see these fat scooter people every time I leave the house and we have several in the neighborhood. They all look perfectly fine except they become big blobs of soft mushy fat.
What they should be doing is walking and eating better and they could throw away those damn scooters.
What's in their head?
Medicare is paying out millions of dollars for these scooters because the doctors give them a prescription for it without really counseling them to get out and walk and eat right.
The Scooter Man is bombarding our televisions with his ads saying "I guarantee Medicare will pay for your scooter or it's free."
Now don't get me wrong. If a person is lacking a leg or has a spinal injury, etc I don't begrudge them. But, I see them get off the scooter in the parking lot and power it up a ramp into their van or use that little attachment made for the rear of a car and then calmly walk to the driver's door and get in.
I think it's a waste of our medicare tax dollars to pay for their scooters that can cost up to $4,000.
I think their doctors should not prescribe them to these people and should tell them to walk more, eat right and loose weight.
Call me hard hearted if you want.
Bob White
Yesterday, I was in the grocery store and this big blob of a woman who must of weighed in at 250 lbs almost hit me with her electric scooter.
I casually observed her shopping for food items and followed her around for a while. There she goes buying two big bags of potato chips, a couple of lbs. of hamburger meat, a gallon of whole milk, half gallon of ice cream, four of those big plastic bottles of regular coke, Saltine crackers, two kinds of blocks of cheese, Oreos and assorted other snack food. She certainly passed on the vegetables and fruits.
The thought occurred to me that she received this scooter free as Medicare paid for it. Then I began thinking about all the people I see here in Florida on those scooters. They are everywhere. Every one I've observed has two legs and
arms, but they are all bloated and fat. Very seldom do I see where it's really needed.
Now I can imagine her daily scenario as well as other scooter people like her.
She will go home and sit on her big fat ass and stuff herself with fattening junk food and watch television.
I see these fat scooter people every time I leave the house and we have several in the neighborhood. They all look perfectly fine except they become big blobs of soft mushy fat.
What they should be doing is walking and eating better and they could throw away those damn scooters.
What's in their head?
Medicare is paying out millions of dollars for these scooters because the doctors give them a prescription for it without really counseling them to get out and walk and eat right.
The Scooter Man is bombarding our televisions with his ads saying "I guarantee Medicare will pay for your scooter or it's free."
Now don't get me wrong. If a person is lacking a leg or has a spinal injury, etc I don't begrudge them. But, I see them get off the scooter in the parking lot and power it up a ramp into their van or use that little attachment made for the rear of a car and then calmly walk to the driver's door and get in.
I think it's a waste of our medicare tax dollars to pay for their scooters that can cost up to $4,000.
I think their doctors should not prescribe them to these people and should tell them to walk more, eat right and loose weight.
Call me hard hearted if you want.
Bob White
Why the Cowboy?
What is it in the American psyche causes us to have a enduring relationship with them?Upon analysis, they are but the initial phase in the processing of cow meat. That's right cow meat, not chicken meat, not sheep meat and not fish meat.Why isn't the chickenboy , sheepboy and fishermen given mythical proportions. Why does it have to be a boy? I know of deadly altercations caused by one calling another "boy". But when you add "cow" to "boy" then it is acceptable---real strange.
Why not cowmen or cowwomen? Except in the case of fishermen, all the rest are boys. Is it because fishing is the work of men and not boys? Maybe so. In deep see fishing , men are the only ones who can afford a 50 foot Hatteras.
In the processing of cow meat there are several phases including the caring and growing of cows, the slaughter of cows, the freezer plant middlemen and the retailer. All have a hand in presenting a nice plate of cow meat to Mr. and Mrs. Consumer.Why, of all these people involved with cow meat, does the initial phase of the process of putting cow meat on the plate receive special treatment by the public? What is so romantic about repairing fences, roping a cow, and branding it? What is so romantic about fleas and ticks? What is so romantic about living on a couple of plates of beans a day? What is so romantic about not seeing the other sex for months? They can't be that romantic as they haven't had enough practice. Besides they're just inexperienced boys. What makes an otherwise perfectly reasonable urban person attempt to mimic them? Too many movies watched?
Why don't we raise the status of the abattoir employee? For those that are vocabularianly challenged, that's a slaughter house. Why don't we mimic the dress of slaughterers by dressing in slaughter house clothes. You know, those white overalls covered in cow blood. Why not those big industrial square toed boots instead of those little pointy ones? The slaughterer is one step up in the cow meat process and with union wages makes more than the cowboy and definitely has a more romantic lifestyle, what with being in a local Pub or home at night with his paramour and not stuck off in some lonesome deserted area without a female in sight.
I know! I know! You're thinking of those big limpid pools of a cow's eyes when they give you that baleful look and make that cooing (Scuse me, "mooing" sound) But it's not the same--The eyes of the cow are bigger and rounder. Can't you see the look on your wife's face when you dress up in slaughterhouse overalls with those big square work shoes for a night on the town? Real trendy! But seriously, why not? It is the same as dressing up in the work clothes of a cowboy. One cares for the cows and the other kills the cows-both essential to chowing down on a good porterhouse steak.
What is a porterhouse steak anyway? Were the cows raised or killed at Porter's house? We have all seen menus featuring "porterhouse" steaks but can anyone but a benedictine monk tell you what significance that attaches to a piece of cow meat? Maybe the guy named Porter could ,but he probably took that little secret to his grave. Probably never even saw a live cow in his life either as he was just a smart marketeer. Kinda like on the menu they put in "roast beef au jus" or "potatoes al gratin". What the hell does that mean anyway? I suppose not knowing justifies a higher price and makes people think they are getting more for the money and not just roast beef or potatoes. How much are we being gouged for the "au jus" and "al gratin"?
I once asked a waiter to " eliminate" the "au jus" and "al gratin" and he said "yes sir, no problem". Five minutes later he returned to the table with a deeply apologetic tone informing me that he would have liked to eliminate these items but that the chef informed him that the "eliminator" was broken and had been sent to the repairman. Obviously an extremely dumb waiter and a brilliantly creative chef. I like to think that his answer was at least as good as my request.
Can't chickenboys and sheepboys be raised to leviathan mythology like cowboys? We all eat those little creatures that were tenderly nurtured and cared for by them too. Maybe they ought to make movies about them also. Of course those classical movie scenes of the cowboys going into Dry Gulch and getting drunk, getting a paid girly and then shooting up the town and each other and in that order would probably be not shot or cut if shot. However, I personally think that chickenboys and sheepboys can drink and shoot and get a girly with the best of em. I don't think one's occupation depends upon how well you can do these type of things.
My uncle Jack was a newspaper editor. He was the best I've ever seen at all three of these endeavors. A cowboy could not hold a candle to him and he had an aversion to cows. In fact of matter, he once told me he would have been a vegetarian except that he hated cows so much. You get it?
Speaking of drinking, did you ever see a cowboy do anything but belly up to the bar and quaff down a huge glass of straight liquor without so much as a grimace. They always tell the bartender to leave the bottle also. Didn't they know about cocktails or a good non-alcohol brew like O'douls? I recall as a child when I was watching a barroom cowboy scene when the " White Hat" guy walked up to the bar and ordered a sarsaparilla. The "Black hat" guy with the pointy nose and squinting eyes next to him said "only chicken livered yellow cowards order sarsaparilla". Yes, you bright people probably have already figured out the denouement to this scene. In any case this movie made such an indelible impression on me that throughout my life time I have never ordered a sarsaparilla in a bar.
That's as good as any reason to give to have a drink of the real thing. I realize that I have covered a lot of ground , But I would like someone somewhere to reflect on these many questions I have presented and come up with some solid answers to them----real deep well thought out philosophic answers. The last thing I need are shallow flippant type answers. After all, I'm highly educated, well trained with an innate ability to size up the problem and give cogent lucid answers. Unfortunately, I am unable to accomplish this in the context of the American cowboy's continuing larger than life legendary myth. I am now leaving to the local pub to have something other than a sarsaparilla and continue to reflect on the myth of the cowboy.
Bob White
Why not cowmen or cowwomen? Except in the case of fishermen, all the rest are boys. Is it because fishing is the work of men and not boys? Maybe so. In deep see fishing , men are the only ones who can afford a 50 foot Hatteras.
In the processing of cow meat there are several phases including the caring and growing of cows, the slaughter of cows, the freezer plant middlemen and the retailer. All have a hand in presenting a nice plate of cow meat to Mr. and Mrs. Consumer.Why, of all these people involved with cow meat, does the initial phase of the process of putting cow meat on the plate receive special treatment by the public? What is so romantic about repairing fences, roping a cow, and branding it? What is so romantic about fleas and ticks? What is so romantic about living on a couple of plates of beans a day? What is so romantic about not seeing the other sex for months? They can't be that romantic as they haven't had enough practice. Besides they're just inexperienced boys. What makes an otherwise perfectly reasonable urban person attempt to mimic them? Too many movies watched?
Why don't we raise the status of the abattoir employee? For those that are vocabularianly challenged, that's a slaughter house. Why don't we mimic the dress of slaughterers by dressing in slaughter house clothes. You know, those white overalls covered in cow blood. Why not those big industrial square toed boots instead of those little pointy ones? The slaughterer is one step up in the cow meat process and with union wages makes more than the cowboy and definitely has a more romantic lifestyle, what with being in a local Pub or home at night with his paramour and not stuck off in some lonesome deserted area without a female in sight.
I know! I know! You're thinking of those big limpid pools of a cow's eyes when they give you that baleful look and make that cooing (Scuse me, "mooing" sound) But it's not the same--The eyes of the cow are bigger and rounder. Can't you see the look on your wife's face when you dress up in slaughterhouse overalls with those big square work shoes for a night on the town? Real trendy! But seriously, why not? It is the same as dressing up in the work clothes of a cowboy. One cares for the cows and the other kills the cows-both essential to chowing down on a good porterhouse steak.
What is a porterhouse steak anyway? Were the cows raised or killed at Porter's house? We have all seen menus featuring "porterhouse" steaks but can anyone but a benedictine monk tell you what significance that attaches to a piece of cow meat? Maybe the guy named Porter could ,but he probably took that little secret to his grave. Probably never even saw a live cow in his life either as he was just a smart marketeer. Kinda like on the menu they put in "roast beef au jus" or "potatoes al gratin". What the hell does that mean anyway? I suppose not knowing justifies a higher price and makes people think they are getting more for the money and not just roast beef or potatoes. How much are we being gouged for the "au jus" and "al gratin"?
I once asked a waiter to " eliminate" the "au jus" and "al gratin" and he said "yes sir, no problem". Five minutes later he returned to the table with a deeply apologetic tone informing me that he would have liked to eliminate these items but that the chef informed him that the "eliminator" was broken and had been sent to the repairman. Obviously an extremely dumb waiter and a brilliantly creative chef. I like to think that his answer was at least as good as my request.
Can't chickenboys and sheepboys be raised to leviathan mythology like cowboys? We all eat those little creatures that were tenderly nurtured and cared for by them too. Maybe they ought to make movies about them also. Of course those classical movie scenes of the cowboys going into Dry Gulch and getting drunk, getting a paid girly and then shooting up the town and each other and in that order would probably be not shot or cut if shot. However, I personally think that chickenboys and sheepboys can drink and shoot and get a girly with the best of em. I don't think one's occupation depends upon how well you can do these type of things.
My uncle Jack was a newspaper editor. He was the best I've ever seen at all three of these endeavors. A cowboy could not hold a candle to him and he had an aversion to cows. In fact of matter, he once told me he would have been a vegetarian except that he hated cows so much. You get it?
Speaking of drinking, did you ever see a cowboy do anything but belly up to the bar and quaff down a huge glass of straight liquor without so much as a grimace. They always tell the bartender to leave the bottle also. Didn't they know about cocktails or a good non-alcohol brew like O'douls? I recall as a child when I was watching a barroom cowboy scene when the " White Hat" guy walked up to the bar and ordered a sarsaparilla. The "Black hat" guy with the pointy nose and squinting eyes next to him said "only chicken livered yellow cowards order sarsaparilla". Yes, you bright people probably have already figured out the denouement to this scene. In any case this movie made such an indelible impression on me that throughout my life time I have never ordered a sarsaparilla in a bar.
That's as good as any reason to give to have a drink of the real thing. I realize that I have covered a lot of ground , But I would like someone somewhere to reflect on these many questions I have presented and come up with some solid answers to them----real deep well thought out philosophic answers. The last thing I need are shallow flippant type answers. After all, I'm highly educated, well trained with an innate ability to size up the problem and give cogent lucid answers. Unfortunately, I am unable to accomplish this in the context of the American cowboy's continuing larger than life legendary myth. I am now leaving to the local pub to have something other than a sarsaparilla and continue to reflect on the myth of the cowboy.
Bob White
A Tale of Sin and Redemption We've All Heard Many Times
Hi everybody. My name is Doug Downs and I have a marvelous story to tell you of sin and redemption.
About 3 years ago I was cruising down a typical upper middle class suburb looking for something to steal.
It was about 9PM and I spotted this home with lights on. I parked my car and sneaked up to the windows and saw several people watching TV. I thought to myself, hell, I'm here and they won't put up a resistance when I come crashing in through the flimsy front door.
Well, I did it. I was confronted with a look of fear and surprise on the part of the husband, wife and 3 small children.
Well, look. I tried to be nice and quietly asked for their money and jewels. The husband took offence at this and was giving me a hard time and the wife and children were screaming their heads off. I told them to shut up as I was worried
the neighbors would hear. They wouldn't shut up and I lost it I guess.
I pulled my knife and stabbed the husband and wife and chased the kids upstairs where I killed them. Jeez! There was blood everywhere. I was literally covered in blood.
I saw where they had a half eaten pizza there in the den and since I was hungry I ate the most of it after getting a beer from the fridge. I confess, I've eaten pizza in nicer surroundings than a bunch of stabbed and dead bodies and blood everywhere , but you have to understand, I was hungry.
Shit, what did I know about DNA. It seems the cops extracted DNA from the beer bottle I had been drinking from and from a half piece slice of pizza that I had eaten from.
Since I have been incarcerated a couple of years ago for burglary, it seems they authorities took a routine sample of DNA from me when they asked me to put a cotton swab in my mouth. I sure as hell didn't understand the significance of that.
Anyway, the cops matched my DNA at the crime scene and in no time I was arrested.
I was convicted and sent up to prison for life. I've been in prison for 3 years now and the first was sheer hell and agony for me.
But now for the GOOD NEWS. I'm a happy and contented guy who wakes up every morning singing with joy in my heart for Jesus.
I've been reborn and have the grace of Jesus poured into my body. Jesus understood that I stabbed those people in a moment of panic because they wouldn't shut up. Jesus knows we are all just flesh and blood and make mistakes in this mortal life.
Yes, I woke up in the middle of the night and Jesus was talking to me. I begged his forgiveness and he told me , "My son, you have accepted and believe in me and therefore you shall have everlasting life and I forgive you." Gee, it was like a ton of guilt was removed from my shoulders.
I could get a good night's rest and wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with visions of those bloody people preying on my brain.
The visions were erased and all my visions are of the sweet anointing love of our beloved Son of God who himself was murdered with permission from his Father. Jesus understood these things.
I can tell you that I'm not the same man I use to be as I'm filled to the core with love of Jesus.
Ain't Jesus great? Haleluya! Haleluya!
And prison did not have anything to do with his talk with Jesus. The mind is a funny thing.
Bob White
9:30PM
August 14, 2010
Albuquerque, N.M.
About 3 years ago I was cruising down a typical upper middle class suburb looking for something to steal.
It was about 9PM and I spotted this home with lights on. I parked my car and sneaked up to the windows and saw several people watching TV. I thought to myself, hell, I'm here and they won't put up a resistance when I come crashing in through the flimsy front door.
Well, I did it. I was confronted with a look of fear and surprise on the part of the husband, wife and 3 small children.
Well, look. I tried to be nice and quietly asked for their money and jewels. The husband took offence at this and was giving me a hard time and the wife and children were screaming their heads off. I told them to shut up as I was worried
the neighbors would hear. They wouldn't shut up and I lost it I guess.
I pulled my knife and stabbed the husband and wife and chased the kids upstairs where I killed them. Jeez! There was blood everywhere. I was literally covered in blood.
I saw where they had a half eaten pizza there in the den and since I was hungry I ate the most of it after getting a beer from the fridge. I confess, I've eaten pizza in nicer surroundings than a bunch of stabbed and dead bodies and blood everywhere , but you have to understand, I was hungry.
Shit, what did I know about DNA. It seems the cops extracted DNA from the beer bottle I had been drinking from and from a half piece slice of pizza that I had eaten from.
Since I have been incarcerated a couple of years ago for burglary, it seems they authorities took a routine sample of DNA from me when they asked me to put a cotton swab in my mouth. I sure as hell didn't understand the significance of that.
Anyway, the cops matched my DNA at the crime scene and in no time I was arrested.
I was convicted and sent up to prison for life. I've been in prison for 3 years now and the first was sheer hell and agony for me.
But now for the GOOD NEWS. I'm a happy and contented guy who wakes up every morning singing with joy in my heart for Jesus.
I've been reborn and have the grace of Jesus poured into my body. Jesus understood that I stabbed those people in a moment of panic because they wouldn't shut up. Jesus knows we are all just flesh and blood and make mistakes in this mortal life.
Yes, I woke up in the middle of the night and Jesus was talking to me. I begged his forgiveness and he told me , "My son, you have accepted and believe in me and therefore you shall have everlasting life and I forgive you." Gee, it was like a ton of guilt was removed from my shoulders.
I could get a good night's rest and wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with visions of those bloody people preying on my brain.
The visions were erased and all my visions are of the sweet anointing love of our beloved Son of God who himself was murdered with permission from his Father. Jesus understood these things.
I can tell you that I'm not the same man I use to be as I'm filled to the core with love of Jesus.
Ain't Jesus great? Haleluya! Haleluya!
And prison did not have anything to do with his talk with Jesus. The mind is a funny thing.
Bob White
9:30PM
August 14, 2010
Albuquerque, N.M.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Israel vrs Palestinians---Brothers Fighting
The muslims lived side by side with the jew for a thousand years. They were the same people and treated each other like methodists and presbyterians do today.
There is nothing incorporated in Islam about Israel surviving or not surviving.
Look at Spain where they lived side by side for 500 years when southern Spain was the most prosperous and up scale country in the world until Pope Urban in Rome called on the illiterate Christian Visigoth tribes to go down there on a crusade to kill both jew and muslim and rid the continent of those infidels. Well that's what happened. The christians burned the books in the universities of Toledo and Salamanca which were the best in Europe. It is said that there there were only 60 books in europe at the time and these were in Rome.
The works in Spain included all the writings of the Greeks.. Half were burned. Many books were saved by four Irish monks who hid them from the christian rabble who over ran Spain. There is a great book called "Who saved Civilization" which explains how lucky we were that these four monks saved some works from Greece or we would not know about concepts of democracy, etc.
90 % of the worlds jews were in Spain at that time living side by side with muslims. After the christians took it over there were only three alternatives for the jews and mulims. The had to "convert" to christianity and were called "conversos." Secondly they could pretend to convert but practice their religion in secret in their homes and these were called "occultos." The pretend to convert were also called "marranos" which are pigs in English. Or thirdly, they could flee back south into Morocco and on into what is called Arabia. The inqisition was an attempt to determine if an alleged conversion was true or not. The christians used the star chamber and torture to accomplish this.
Jews and mulims were living side by side without a problem in all Arab countries up even until today with no problem. What happened is that the first zionists started coming into the Palestinian lands in the first part of the last century and there was no problem. Then after WWII many Akanazi jews started coming in from Europe and treated both the muslims and sephardic jews as low class. Anyway as Akanazi jews swelled the population, they formed the state of Israel and they wanted more land and started taking it from the palestinians forcefully. And that's when the shit hit the fan.
You have to know the difference between Askanazi jews and Sephardic jews. Sephardic jews were those that had spread up to europe hundreds of years before and had mixed with the europeans over hundreds of years and were generally lighter in color ala Kirk Douglas whose parents were Polish jews. Sephardic were darker ala actor Victor Mature who starred in the film Samson and Delila who was a classical Sephardic looking Arabic jew. Incidently, he fit the role of Sampson perfectly as he was a Sephardic Arab jew and they wrote the bible and the tale of Sampson within it.
Some scholars question how the Askanazi came about with some saying they originally came from regular europeans who resided in the Caucasus mountains and were converted by some sephardics gypsys who wondered into their area.
In any case, the Muslims generally were much more peaceful than the more warlike Christians who undertook four crusades down to the holy lands in an attempt to claim the birthplace of Christ for the Christians and in doing so destroyed universities and cultural centers of Arabs all over the territory. The oldest university was founded in Damascus, Syria. They invented the alphabet,writing and the western religions.
Christians have been invading and killing Semitic people be they jewish or muslim for centuries up to the present Bush in Iraq and Hitler with the Jews.
It's a crazy world brought about by religious extremism that knows no bounds . "Onward Christian soldiers marching on to war" the song goes.
Type in "sephardic" in google and it will open your eyes.
I don't blame people for thinking that God's promise to the muslims that Israel will not survive is incorporated into their religion. First of all Israel did not even exist until recently. The Koran makes no reference to this "incorporation." Most Americans know little or nothing re history of the middle east and religious history.
Both jews and muslims use the phrase "anti Semitic" you know. They are brothers against our European descendants who have invaded their lands for centuries but now the brothers are fighting between themselves over land that is being taken from the palestinians.
bob White
PS Later on when Martin Luther and John Calvin branched off from Roman Catholicism which comprised the only christians in Europe, not counting the Greek Orthodox catholic church, Luther and Calvin preached hatred agains the evil , dirty, vile infested jew and muslim residents in Europe and most of the muslims left but some jew remained in their ghettos through out Europe and eventually many became wealthy and financiers as both the muslim and christian religious didn't allow the charging of interest which biblical injunction now is ignored.
There is nothing incorporated in Islam about Israel surviving or not surviving.
Look at Spain where they lived side by side for 500 years when southern Spain was the most prosperous and up scale country in the world until Pope Urban in Rome called on the illiterate Christian Visigoth tribes to go down there on a crusade to kill both jew and muslim and rid the continent of those infidels. Well that's what happened. The christians burned the books in the universities of Toledo and Salamanca which were the best in Europe. It is said that there there were only 60 books in europe at the time and these were in Rome.
The works in Spain included all the writings of the Greeks.. Half were burned. Many books were saved by four Irish monks who hid them from the christian rabble who over ran Spain. There is a great book called "Who saved Civilization" which explains how lucky we were that these four monks saved some works from Greece or we would not know about concepts of democracy, etc.
90 % of the worlds jews were in Spain at that time living side by side with muslims. After the christians took it over there were only three alternatives for the jews and mulims. The had to "convert" to christianity and were called "conversos." Secondly they could pretend to convert but practice their religion in secret in their homes and these were called "occultos." The pretend to convert were also called "marranos" which are pigs in English. Or thirdly, they could flee back south into Morocco and on into what is called Arabia. The inqisition was an attempt to determine if an alleged conversion was true or not. The christians used the star chamber and torture to accomplish this.
Jews and mulims were living side by side without a problem in all Arab countries up even until today with no problem. What happened is that the first zionists started coming into the Palestinian lands in the first part of the last century and there was no problem. Then after WWII many Akanazi jews started coming in from Europe and treated both the muslims and sephardic jews as low class. Anyway as Akanazi jews swelled the population, they formed the state of Israel and they wanted more land and started taking it from the palestinians forcefully. And that's when the shit hit the fan.
You have to know the difference between Askanazi jews and Sephardic jews. Sephardic jews were those that had spread up to europe hundreds of years before and had mixed with the europeans over hundreds of years and were generally lighter in color ala Kirk Douglas whose parents were Polish jews. Sephardic were darker ala actor Victor Mature who starred in the film Samson and Delila who was a classical Sephardic looking Arabic jew. Incidently, he fit the role of Sampson perfectly as he was a Sephardic Arab jew and they wrote the bible and the tale of Sampson within it.
Some scholars question how the Askanazi came about with some saying they originally came from regular europeans who resided in the Caucasus mountains and were converted by some sephardics gypsys who wondered into their area.
In any case, the Muslims generally were much more peaceful than the more warlike Christians who undertook four crusades down to the holy lands in an attempt to claim the birthplace of Christ for the Christians and in doing so destroyed universities and cultural centers of Arabs all over the territory. The oldest university was founded in Damascus, Syria. They invented the alphabet,writing and the western religions.
Christians have been invading and killing Semitic people be they jewish or muslim for centuries up to the present Bush in Iraq and Hitler with the Jews.
It's a crazy world brought about by religious extremism that knows no bounds . "Onward Christian soldiers marching on to war" the song goes.
Type in "sephardic" in google and it will open your eyes.
I don't blame people for thinking that God's promise to the muslims that Israel will not survive is incorporated into their religion. First of all Israel did not even exist until recently. The Koran makes no reference to this "incorporation." Most Americans know little or nothing re history of the middle east and religious history.
Both jews and muslims use the phrase "anti Semitic" you know. They are brothers against our European descendants who have invaded their lands for centuries but now the brothers are fighting between themselves over land that is being taken from the palestinians.
bob White
PS Later on when Martin Luther and John Calvin branched off from Roman Catholicism which comprised the only christians in Europe, not counting the Greek Orthodox catholic church, Luther and Calvin preached hatred agains the evil , dirty, vile infested jew and muslim residents in Europe and most of the muslims left but some jew remained in their ghettos through out Europe and eventually many became wealthy and financiers as both the muslim and christian religious didn't allow the charging of interest which biblical injunction now is ignored.
Ileagle This and Illegal That
I keep hearing that Illegals immigrants are law breakers and what part of illegal don't you understand? Why didn't they term the Italian illegals as such. No, they called them WOPS short for "Without Papers."
Lawlessness has been rewarded down through history in America.
It could be said it began with the American revolution when this
lawless bunch of English settlers broke the laws of England and rebelled
against England. We wouldn't have an independent nation unless we has a
lawless group of people.
We wouldn't have had a Kennedy as president in all likelihood if it were
not for the fact that his daddy was a first class lawbreaker by
rumrunning. They would have been just poor Boston Irish trash without the money his
father made in breaking the law. There's a reward in there.
We wouldn't have acquired so much land if we had not broken the treaties
with the Indians whenever we wanted more land for settlement.
We would not have Texas unless by supporting the surrogate Texans and
breaking our treaty with Mexico.
We would have never had unions in this country to protect workers in the
first part of the last century. Workers illegal riots, illegal street
manifestations and strikes produced child labor laws, 40 hour workweek
etc.
We would have never had equal rights for blacks in this country until
they took to the streets in illegal marches and manifestations.
We wouldn't have equal rights for woman unless there was a lawbreaker
like Susan B. Anthony who was arrested many times for illegal street
speaking and causing rebellions.
It's entirely possible that if the South did not illegally break away
from the union and a civil war followed, then we night night be a nation
so united today.
We might have lost a few more thousand soldiers in the Vietnam war if it
weren't for the war protesters who were arrested for illegal sit ins and
demonstrations.
During prohibition, lawlessness was rewarded to the speakeasy owners and
the the people who liked to have a drink.
That's why I never make absolute statement about anything. Nothing is
absolute. Concepts, words, content , space, form and matter are not absolute.
I'm gonna eat some of them thar illegal Mexican picked cherries the wife bought
yesterday and my daughter is supposed to sell one of them thar illegal Mexican built
houses today to an illegal Mexican. I'm gonna put a coat of sealer on those pavers
that the Brazilian illegals put down and Joe Sixpack and Mary Mallshopper
are going to watch TV in their home that the illegals just re-roofed.
I ain't gonna worry about it anymore as I damn sure won't be around too
much longer. My children are well prepared. They both speak fluent Spanish.
You'll have a nice and contempletive day ya hear.
Bob
Lawlessness has been rewarded down through history in America.
It could be said it began with the American revolution when this
lawless bunch of English settlers broke the laws of England and rebelled
against England. We wouldn't have an independent nation unless we has a
lawless group of people.
We wouldn't have had a Kennedy as president in all likelihood if it were
not for the fact that his daddy was a first class lawbreaker by
rumrunning. They would have been just poor Boston Irish trash without the money his
father made in breaking the law. There's a reward in there.
We wouldn't have acquired so much land if we had not broken the treaties
with the Indians whenever we wanted more land for settlement.
We would not have Texas unless by supporting the surrogate Texans and
breaking our treaty with Mexico.
We would have never had unions in this country to protect workers in the
first part of the last century. Workers illegal riots, illegal street
manifestations and strikes produced child labor laws, 40 hour workweek
etc.
We would have never had equal rights for blacks in this country until
they took to the streets in illegal marches and manifestations.
We wouldn't have equal rights for woman unless there was a lawbreaker
like Susan B. Anthony who was arrested many times for illegal street
speaking and causing rebellions.
It's entirely possible that if the South did not illegally break away
from the union and a civil war followed, then we night night be a nation
so united today.
We might have lost a few more thousand soldiers in the Vietnam war if it
weren't for the war protesters who were arrested for illegal sit ins and
demonstrations.
During prohibition, lawlessness was rewarded to the speakeasy owners and
the the people who liked to have a drink.
That's why I never make absolute statement about anything. Nothing is
absolute. Concepts, words, content , space, form and matter are not absolute.
I'm gonna eat some of them thar illegal Mexican picked cherries the wife bought
yesterday and my daughter is supposed to sell one of them thar illegal Mexican built
houses today to an illegal Mexican. I'm gonna put a coat of sealer on those pavers
that the Brazilian illegals put down and Joe Sixpack and Mary Mallshopper
are going to watch TV in their home that the illegals just re-roofed.
I ain't gonna worry about it anymore as I damn sure won't be around too
much longer. My children are well prepared. They both speak fluent Spanish.
You'll have a nice and contempletive day ya hear.
Bob
To Be a Contemporary Republican, You Have to Believe These Things
To be a current Republican as opposed to the classical old time ones you need to believe:
1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's Daddy made war on him , a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a 'we can't find Bin Laden' diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Viet Nam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iran.
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex and just say no really works.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism except for Medicare. HMO's and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which tens of thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet .
13. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host like Rush Limbaugh. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
14. Under Bush's Faith Based Initiative, giving our tax money to churches is the best way to fight poverty.
15. In order to get God back in schools, the separation of church and state constitutional clause should be abolished.
16. Deficit spending is OK and there is no need to balance the budget.
17. 54% of our our annual Federal tax dollar receipts going to the military industrial complex is not enough. They need more.
18. Bush's increase in size of Federal bureacracy by a third was not enough.
19. We didn't need that antiquated law of Habeas Corpus anyway.
20. Spying on our citizens is perfectly OK and torture of prisoners is clearly moral.
21. The removal of home lending regulations in the last 6 years by the FSLIC and the FDIC as related to documentation, credit worthiness and downpayment requirements was a good thing for making home ownership universal.
1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's Daddy made war on him , a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a 'we can't find Bin Laden' diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Viet Nam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iran.
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex and just say no really works.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism except for Medicare. HMO's and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which tens of thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet .
13. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host like Rush Limbaugh. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
14. Under Bush's Faith Based Initiative, giving our tax money to churches is the best way to fight poverty.
15. In order to get God back in schools, the separation of church and state constitutional clause should be abolished.
16. Deficit spending is OK and there is no need to balance the budget.
17. 54% of our our annual Federal tax dollar receipts going to the military industrial complex is not enough. They need more.
18. Bush's increase in size of Federal bureacracy by a third was not enough.
19. We didn't need that antiquated law of Habeas Corpus anyway.
20. Spying on our citizens is perfectly OK and torture of prisoners is clearly moral.
21. The removal of home lending regulations in the last 6 years by the FSLIC and the FDIC as related to documentation, credit worthiness and downpayment requirements was a good thing for making home ownership universal.
The Basis of Morality--A Historical Perspective
Full-Name: Bob White
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 01:35:20 PSTInteresting to note, that Verne merely pulling a quote from Ayn Rand, about morality being a set of "values to guide man's choices and action" can precipitate Longshot's foray into religion and history.
Actually, there was more barbarity and immorality committed in the singular events of the Christian religious crusade or the Christian inquisition than in the last 100 years. Feudalism, servitude and slavery have decreased. Man is progressing. One gets a sense of it by reading history and recognizing how awfully bloody and cruel it used to be. Man's inhumanity to man has been less with the passage of time. Progress is not in a straight line, it has setbacks and looks more like a stock market chart. But by any definition, the process of socialization has improved.
More important Longshot gives his biblical version HOW "morality " developed and he said it was because "Adam and Eve disobeyed God" and constraining my imagination, we are consequently punished for the so called sins of our ancestors. The sin being eating an apple. So eating the apple against God's will caused all succeeding generations to be punished. Interesting concept. I would hate to know what would have happened if Eve would have really done something more sinister. Aren't you glad that your offspring are not punished by some of your indiscretions?
The Arabs that wrote the Book of Abraham (l'st Testament) had a definite sense of vengeful wrath about their god. Their god definitely believed in visiting the sins of the fathers onto the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and never stopping. This concept of heirs inheriting wrath still exist in the mind set of the Semitic people in the middle east. A common obscene curse in Arabic is not only directed at you but your children also. It's funny but in our culture we usually refer to the individual's parentage. We insult back in time and they in the future and forever--"a pox on your house" is one of the Arabic curses. The religious books of the bible and Koran contain hundreds of them.
The Arab people of the middle east who bequeathed to us our 3 great religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam(All springing from the same root) also gave us algebra, astronomy, our alphabet, concept of Zero, the fork, Arabic numerals and an Abacus to play with the numerals. They did and still use a lot of "A" in their writings.While the tribes in Europe were running around in a pathetically primitive way without a written language those Arabs figured out how to write down a language on paper which they figured out how to make from papyrus reeds growing along the edge of the Nile. Man, did those scribes start to write their" father to son" legends down on a portable medium instead of a non portable slab of rock or clay tablets.Naturally when you go portable you can bring the data to the people instead of bringing the people to the data.
A good analogy is the invention and use of our laptop computers today. They wrote and they wrote.ie Bible, Dead sea scrolls etc. That's why we know something of their historical events in going back 2500 BC. We know almost zip about any historical event as late as 750AD as set down by Europeans. Almost zip I say because there are cave paintings throughout Europe. Now without pursuing mythology further, I will offer the reality version of how "morality" developed.
When homoerectus begin to evolve into homo sapiens a million or so years ago there was a pressing need to band together for safety and furtherance of genome survivability. Just as you can see lions banding together in a pride acting out their "code of conduct" for perpetuation of the species. They band together to run down gazelle and defend against other prides etc. There has to be rules in a band or otherwise anarchy would prevail. In homo sapiens we call this banding together for the common good "the social contract."
Since the survival instinct is the basic drive of all biological life, then man grouping together could enhance his survival in numerous ways.ie. It was far safer to be a member of a tribe in numbers as there is strength and It was very difficult for one or two to kill a mastodon for meat. Within each tribal group, a set of rules, ritual and mores, etc were developed over hundreds of thousands of years.
Some obvious examples of these rules are "treat others as you would want to be treated." This rule within the social compact has been expressed in every religion known to man and has been traced back about 3500 years in written form to the Greeks altho it has existed in unwritten codes of behavior for tens of thousands of years before. It is a fairly obvious outcome of banding together. I don't like to be hit therefore I will not hit you.etc. I won't steal your woman, don't steal mine. I won't steal your club, don't steal mine. ect.
Current Western "morality" is no more or less than the workable contemporary mores that have been distilled from a few million years of homosapien's experiences on how best to survive and perpetuate the species to the same degree as a pride of lions or a pack of wolves have developed their code of conduct. Morality has been always been a relative concept depending upon the epoch you talk about. ie. at one time human sacrifices were the order of the day to satisfy a God or Gods in order to grow a bountiful harvest. Not so today.
It was perfectly alright to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the Christian religious crusades in the name of a God. Not so today except in real fundamentalist religious zealots. Holy wars were quite the order of the day in our past history.Thousands of poor women during the middle age were executed in Europe and in the US in places like Salem, Mass. Their crime was being suspected of being witches. They were burned at the stake under the Biblical injunctive authority of "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live."
I kind of think we are over the hump with that sort of malarkey until I look at the TV station Trinity Broadcast Network and see that guy Benny Hein(Spelling?) waving his hand and all the people falling down in front of him while he cures them immediately of cancer, heart problems etc. He has one upped Oral Roberts on this. All the while Jan and Paul are softly smiling in the back ground counting their money.You will never see those charlatans regrow a limb lost in fighting a war. You can just never underestimate the IQ of a certain segment of society.
Longshot mentions that "the Bible is the origination of British Common Law. I beg to differ. The British common law takes its name from the "commoners". Basically it was the customs of the common people as handed down and not codified. The Magna Carta codified parts of the customs. But even then the customs or as we call it "common law" had as its greatest influence Roman codified law after the Roman conquest of the British Isles. Roman Law, in turn was distilled from the Greek codified law long before the Arabic people wrote the Book of Abraham which is in most parts the bible's old testament which is essentially the same as the Koran used by the Moslem faith today.
In the Koran, Jesus is relegated to that of a prophet and not the son of God as Mohammed in his "revelations" came to the belief that no man shall claim to be the son of God.The reason that common law was not codified was that the tribes in northern Europe did not have a written language and the law was largely applied by being handed down word of mouth and the Judge using "stare decisis" pronouncing in effect that the matter in question has been previously decided.
In effect the common law became an amalgam of "handed down oral mores" with a healthy dose of Roman law hence the many Latin phrases found in the common law.
I've tried to be brief and simple in an otherwise difficult overview of a few million years of developing homo sapiens. But it has to be understood that the very core of our behavior or that of any behavior of life forms has at its primal drive the perpetuation of the species-The "social compact" and resultant body of social rules be it called "morality", "civilized" or "code of behavior" is but one manifestation of this phenomenon.
All behavior patterns of life forms are survival driven. Even a cancer cell or Aids virus is survivor driven and changes and adapts to the need to survive. That is why the damn things are so hard to stop. This survival at all costs behavior is embedded in all of biological life's creatures. The tree will bend to the sun and the human will use his more advanced brain to come up with ways to survive and endure with the limbic primal drive of gene contribution.
I have the notion that this old world will continue to rock on at an ever increasing pace of acceleration with us or without us. We collectively, as the highest evolved species, have the power to make it better or destroy our species as well as other species in the process of acting out the survival instinct.
As to the fundamental question of why all this activity has taken place or is taking place, I haven't a clue. As Hal the computer says"insufficient data". At this stage of the game I don't have a clue. But I can console myself with the thought that no body else has one either as stated many time by no less than Einstein. Where did I come from? Why am I hear? Where am I going? In answering these questions, some don't think about it and accept the mythology handed down by their tribe, some think about it slightly and waffle and some deeply think about it and concluded what Hal concluded-insufficient data at this point in time, on our little ball which is one of trillions of little balls floating out there.
I believe the following quotes are revealing:
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so---Will Rogers
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is almost nothing about which one can be certain--Somerset Maugham
Most of our future lies ahead-Denny Crum, Basketball coach
The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization---Sigmund Freud
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice---Will Durant
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers--Socrates 441 BC
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped---Arthur Schopenhauer
Idealism is what precedes experience: cynicism is what follows--David Wolf
What is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of mans--Friedrich Nietzsche
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon---Susan Ertz
A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were---Jean de La Bruyere.
Bob White in Brownsville, Tx.
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 01:35:20 PSTInteresting to note, that Verne merely pulling a quote from Ayn Rand, about morality being a set of "values to guide man's choices and action" can precipitate Longshot's foray into religion and history.
Actually, there was more barbarity and immorality committed in the singular events of the Christian religious crusade or the Christian inquisition than in the last 100 years. Feudalism, servitude and slavery have decreased. Man is progressing. One gets a sense of it by reading history and recognizing how awfully bloody and cruel it used to be. Man's inhumanity to man has been less with the passage of time. Progress is not in a straight line, it has setbacks and looks more like a stock market chart. But by any definition, the process of socialization has improved.
More important Longshot gives his biblical version HOW "morality " developed and he said it was because "Adam and Eve disobeyed God" and constraining my imagination, we are consequently punished for the so called sins of our ancestors. The sin being eating an apple. So eating the apple against God's will caused all succeeding generations to be punished. Interesting concept. I would hate to know what would have happened if Eve would have really done something more sinister. Aren't you glad that your offspring are not punished by some of your indiscretions?
The Arabs that wrote the Book of Abraham (l'st Testament) had a definite sense of vengeful wrath about their god. Their god definitely believed in visiting the sins of the fathers onto the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and never stopping. This concept of heirs inheriting wrath still exist in the mind set of the Semitic people in the middle east. A common obscene curse in Arabic is not only directed at you but your children also. It's funny but in our culture we usually refer to the individual's parentage. We insult back in time and they in the future and forever--"a pox on your house" is one of the Arabic curses. The religious books of the bible and Koran contain hundreds of them.
The Arab people of the middle east who bequeathed to us our 3 great religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam(All springing from the same root) also gave us algebra, astronomy, our alphabet, concept of Zero, the fork, Arabic numerals and an Abacus to play with the numerals. They did and still use a lot of "A" in their writings.
A good analogy is the invention and use of our laptop computers today.
When homoerectus begin to evolve into homo sapiens a million or so years ago there was a pressing need to band together for safety and furtherance of genome survivability. Just as you can see lions banding together in a pride acting out their "code of conduct" for perpetuation of the species. They band together to run down gazelle and defend against other prides etc. There has to be rules in a band or otherwise anarchy would prevail. In homo sapiens we call this banding together for the common good "the social contract."
Since the survival instinct is the basic drive of all biological life, then man grouping together could enhance his survival in numerous ways.ie. It was far safer to be a member of a tribe in numbers as there is strength and It was very difficult for one or two to kill a mastodon for meat. Within each tribal group, a set of rules, ritual and mores, etc were developed over hundreds of thousands of years.
Some obvious examples of these rules are "treat others as you would want to be treated." This rule within the social compact has been expressed in every religion known to man and has been traced back about 3500 years in written form to the Greeks altho it has existed in unwritten codes of behavior for tens of thousands of years before. It is a fairly obvious outcome of banding together. I don't like to be hit therefore I will not hit you.etc. I won't steal your woman, don't steal mine. I won't steal your club, don't steal mine. ect.
Current Western "morality" is no more or less than the workable contemporary mores that have been distilled from a few million years of homosapien's experiences on how best to survive and perpetuate the species to the same degree as a pride of lions or a pack of wolves have developed their code of conduct. Morality has been always been a relative concept depending upon the epoch you talk about. ie. at one time human sacrifices were the order of the day to satisfy a God or Gods in order to grow a bountiful harvest. Not so today.
It was perfectly alright to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the Christian religious crusades in the name of a God. Not so today except in real fundamentalist religious zealots. Holy wars were quite the order of the day in our past history.Thousands of poor women during the middle age were executed in Europe and in the US in places like Salem, Mass. Their crime was being suspected of being witches. They were burned at the stake under the Biblical injunctive authority of "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live."
I kind of think we are over the hump with that sort of malarkey until I look at the TV station Trinity Broadcast Network and see that guy Benny Hein(Spelling?) waving his hand and all the people falling down in front of him while he cures them immediately of cancer, heart problems etc. He has one upped Oral Roberts on this. All the while Jan and Paul are softly smiling in the back ground counting their money.You will never see those charlatans regrow a limb lost in fighting a war. You can just never underestimate the IQ of a certain segment of society.
Longshot mentions that "the Bible is the origination of British Common Law. I beg to differ. The British common law takes its name from the "commoners". Basically it was the customs of the common people as handed down and not codified. The Magna Carta codified parts of the customs. But even then the customs or as we call it "common law" had as its greatest influence Roman codified law after the Roman conquest of the British Isles. Roman Law, in turn was distilled from the Greek codified law long before the Arabic people wrote the Book of Abraham which is in most parts the bible's old testament which is essentially the same as the Koran used by the Moslem faith today.
In the Koran, Jesus is relegated to that of a prophet and not the son of God as Mohammed in his "revelations" came to the belief that no man shall claim to be the son of God.The reason that common law was not codified was that the tribes in northern Europe did not have a written language and the law was largely applied by being handed down word of mouth and the Judge using "stare decisis" pronouncing in effect that the matter in question has been previously decided.
In effect the common law became an amalgam of "handed down oral mores" with a healthy dose of Roman law hence the many Latin phrases found in the common law.
I've tried to be brief and simple in an otherwise difficult overview of a few million years of developing homo sapiens. But it has to be understood that the very core of our behavior or that of any behavior of life forms has at its primal drive the perpetuation of the species-The "social compact" and resultant body of social rules be it called "morality", "civilized" or "code of behavior" is but one manifestation of this phenomenon.
All behavior patterns of life forms are survival driven. Even a cancer cell or Aids virus is survivor driven and changes and adapts to the need to survive. That is why the damn things are so hard to stop. This survival at all costs behavior is embedded in all of biological life's creatures. The tree will bend to the sun and the human will use his more advanced brain to come up with ways to survive and endure with the limbic primal drive of gene contribution.
I have the notion that this old world will continue to rock on at an ever increasing pace of acceleration with us or without us. We collectively, as the highest evolved species, have the power to make it better or destroy our species as well as other species in the process of acting out the survival instinct.
As to the fundamental question of why all this activity has taken place or is taking place, I haven't a clue. As Hal the computer says"insufficient data". At this stage of the game I don't have a clue. But I can console myself with the thought that no body else has one either as stated many time by no less than Einstein. Where did I come from? Why am I hear? Where am I going? In answering these questions, some don't think about it and accept the mythology handed down by their tribe, some think about it slightly and waffle and some deeply think about it and concluded what Hal concluded-insufficient data at this point in time, on our little ball which is one of trillions of little balls floating out there.
I believe the following quotes are revealing:
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so---Will Rogers
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is almost nothing about which one can be certain--Somerset Maugham
Most of our future lies ahead-Denny Crum, Basketball coach
The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization---Sigmund Freud
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice---Will Durant
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers--Socrates 441 BC
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped---Arthur Schopenhauer
Idealism is what precedes experience: cynicism is what follows--David Wolf
What is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of mans--Friedrich Nietzsche
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon---Susan Ertz
A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were---Jean de La Bruyere.
Bob White in Brownsville, Tx.
Republicans Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The stock market went up from 3300 to 11500 under President Clinton and Democratic Admin.
After almost 8 yrs. under the President Bush and Republican operatives, the market closed out at 10917 today.
Right on Republicans, thanks, but no thanks for deregulating the financial markets and not enforcing the few regulations that remained such as oversight on home lending.
We went from a treasury surplus to a deficit that will prove to be insurmountable and hurt us even more.
History reflects, that with rare exceptions, the stock market went up under Democrats and either went down or went up a little under Republican administrations.
Shades of President Hoover Republican Administration, we're going back to Hooverville.
But, I will admit the Bush Administration did a damn good job at raising gas prices, foreclosures, food prices foreign and internal debt, unemployment and fear level. They also did a good job in causing the deaths of many of our people in that futile needless invasion and occupation in Iraq.
In that, they did a bang up job---no question about it.
Yep, let's reward the Republicans with another turn at the tiller. Oh yeah! Let's not let the facts confuse us.
Bob
Oh I forgot. The Republicans are up for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They have managed to turn the once almighty dollar into fecal matter. No small accomplishment.
After almost 8 yrs. under the President Bush and Republican operatives, the market closed out at 10917 today.
Right on Republicans, thanks, but no thanks for deregulating the financial markets and not enforcing the few regulations that remained such as oversight on home lending.
We went from a treasury surplus to a deficit that will prove to be insurmountable and hurt us even more.
History reflects, that with rare exceptions, the stock market went up under Democrats and either went down or went up a little under Republican administrations.
Shades of President Hoover Republican Administration, we're going back to Hooverville.
But, I will admit the Bush Administration did a damn good job at raising gas prices, foreclosures, food prices foreign and internal debt, unemployment and fear level. They also did a good job in causing the deaths of many of our people in that futile needless invasion and occupation in Iraq.
In that, they did a bang up job---no question about it.
Yep, let's reward the Republicans with another turn at the tiller. Oh yeah! Let's not let the facts confuse us.
Bob
Oh I forgot. The Republicans are up for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They have managed to turn the once almighty dollar into fecal matter. No small accomplishment.
When Are You Going To Prevent Them From Beating You
I watched the Palin "interview" tonight. It's amazing how much better she did when she was given the softball questions from Hannity before so her handlers could brief her on the right answers. She didn't miss a beat unlike her interview with Gibson where she was totally lost.
Why, she sounded like more of a Democratic populist than Obama. The old trick of co-opting your opponents message seems to be working. Why she said they were going to even out regulate Obama. Yeah, you can imagine McCain the 'ol deregulator morphing into a super regulator. He won't appear now to answer questions from the news people. If he did, they should ask him if he was happy that he supported his compadre Sen. Phil Graham's bill deregulating the many laws put in by the Roosevelt Admin. to prevent exactly what has happened recently.
Yes, Indeed. Old P.T. Barnum knew a circus and all about how to run one."There's a sucker born every minute," he said, giving historical inspiration to today's GOP. Unfortunately, most of the suckers vote. . . and too many of them are concerned with the fortunes of a couple of NASCAR drivers than with the mismanagement of their representatives in government.
Bamboozled by the superficiality of television, they confuse what passes as the daily "news" with soap operas, "reality" shows and old John Wayne movies. Even with true reality biting them in the ass, they are titillated by the superficial glitz and outright lies of the likes of John McCain, Karl Rove, George Bush and Sarah Palin--and their attention span has long since dissipated by the time anyone presents the actual truth as rebuttal.
Reagan was a bit mixed up in his thinking, but his remarks always resonated well. "The problem is not government," he also said; "government is the problem." Sorry, Ron. The problem is those who vote in a government, endure its incompetence and corruption and learn nothing in the process. As the philosopher Pogo, long a student of human nature, once observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
As Harry Truman said in reference to the middle class, "They are beating you in the head. When are you going to vote to stop the beatings."
Bob
Why, she sounded like more of a Democratic populist than Obama. The old trick of co-opting your opponents message seems to be working. Why she said they were going to even out regulate Obama. Yeah, you can imagine McCain the 'ol deregulator morphing into a super regulator. He won't appear now to answer questions from the news people. If he did, they should ask him if he was happy that he supported his compadre Sen. Phil Graham's bill deregulating the many laws put in by the Roosevelt Admin. to prevent exactly what has happened recently.
Yes, Indeed. Old P.T. Barnum knew a circus and all about how to run one."There's a sucker born every minute," he said, giving historical inspiration to today's GOP. Unfortunately, most of the suckers vote. . . and too many of them are concerned with the fortunes of a couple of NASCAR drivers than with the mismanagement of their representatives in government.
Bamboozled by the superficiality of television, they confuse what passes as the daily "news" with soap operas, "reality" shows and old John Wayne movies. Even with true reality biting them in the ass, they are titillated by the superficial glitz and outright lies of the likes of John McCain, Karl Rove, George Bush and Sarah Palin--and their attention span has long since dissipated by the time anyone presents the actual truth as rebuttal.
Reagan was a bit mixed up in his thinking, but his remarks always resonated well. "The problem is not government," he also said; "government is the problem." Sorry, Ron. The problem is those who vote in a government, endure its incompetence and corruption and learn nothing in the process. As the philosopher Pogo, long a student of human nature, once observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
As Harry Truman said in reference to the middle class, "They are beating you in the head. When are you going to vote to stop the beatings."
Bob
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