Catching Up

First, it was my rotator cuff out of whack. Second, it was my husband's surgery. And third, it was my baby cat's illness after her dental surgery. All good reasons why I haven't posted anything for so long. So here goes with a few short thoughts.

1. Why would anyone marry Rush Limbaugh, he of Viagra and Oxycontin abuse? Oh, right, the bucks. She will earn them.

2. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues and the animals and birds keep dying. Obama says he has ordered 17,000 National Guard troops to the Gulf. Where are they? Where is the oversight of Big Oil? Republicans, Libertarians and, yes, Democrats have gutted regulations in recent years, regulations being a big, bad word much like liberal. Speaking of big and bad, where is Dick Cheney these days? He's usually out in front of cameras bashing Obama. Like his slick, slimy, fellow politico Sarah Palin, he looks like a complete fool and traitor when he has chosen to side with Big Oil over America's interests. Does he hate America? Does Palin hate America?

3. It didn't take long for those who hate big government to come running for handouts, did it? Folks like little Bobby Jindal, for example. And even run-at-the-mouth Michele Bachmann has asked where the government is down in Louisiana, why didn't Obama commandeer boats to help with the spill. Commandeer boats? Well, isn't that government takeover? Whose boats would she commandeer? Another loony who speaks before she thinks. Oh, yes, I forgot. She can't think.

4. Why are so many men puffing up their military history? One guy running in Connecticut, another in Illinois, both of whom were actually in the service but didn't do what they said they did. No doubt they're trying to draw in the fruit loop voters who never served but who promote veterans as heroes so they can keep wars going for nefarious reasons. Those of us who had loved ones in the service -- many in my immediate family -- know that they did their duty because they were forced to by the draft. They never considered themselves to be heroes and wanted to get the hell out as fast as they could. They don't hate those lying these days about their military service. They hate those who lie to get us into wars and those who never served but call for more wars.

5. What's with idiot Rand Paul? He had it made, winning the primary in Kentucky. He had the teapot crowd backing him and all he had to do is sit back and win in November. He may win in November -- it is the south, after all -- but now everyone knows what he really thinks. In a way I feel like a fool because I agreed with about 80 percent of what Libertarians espoused. Now I know they're just racists, bigots and haters like the Limbaughs, Becks and others. Paul never saw the time when someone couldn't get a sandwich at a lunch counter because they were born with a certain skin color. The Whites and Colored drinking fountains at county fairs and parks. He never saw the time when a black man and his wife couldn't get a room at a motel for the night. Paul doesn't care about those times. He cares only about businesses and what they want, no matter how discriminatory all of it might be. I hope he loses, but as I said, it's the south.

Enough for now. Time to get back to the book I'm reading, "The End of the Free Market" by Ian Bremmer. I usually have my nose in an English mystery, but this one caught my eye because of the way world economies are crumbling. Will let you know how it ends.

All for Nothing

My cousin Ronnie was 19 years old when he died in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. He arrived there in August 1969. Forty five days later he was dead, drowned in a rushing river while trying to cross it with a heavy pack on his back.

Recently I checked for Ronnie's name on www.VIRTUALWALL.org, where names and basic information are available through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It shows, for example, that he was in the 11th Infantry, his body was recovered, he was a ground casualty, he received a posthumous promotion, and where his name can be found on the Wall in Washington, D.C. All of this is informative, but it doesn't help to bring back the cheerful, intelligent boy I remember so well from the many times we visited him and his family on their Wisconsin farm.

I ask anyone to tell me why he died so far away from home. Does anyone remember why the U.S. went to Vietnam? Why we stayed there? Why we allowed the years to go by as young men died and were maimed by the many thousands? When anyone can answer those questions truthfully, I ask why we went to Afghanistan and Iraq, why we stay there, and why we allow the years to go by as young men and women die and are maimed by the many thousands.

Ronnie would have been 60 years old this year. He did not die to defend our country. He did not die to protect his family. He did not die working on the family farm like his uncle Jerry did. He did die to protect the military industrial complex. He did die to protect politicians. He did die to protect oil interests. He did die to satisfy old men's fantasies. My cousin's death, all for nothing.

Ronnie's mother died a few years after her son, at age 48, a heart attack, they said. We all said she died from a broken heart.

Have I Got A Deal For You

The wild ride the stock market took this past week was reported by major news outlets with some anchors and reporters asking if 401(k)s are at risk. Duh.

The stock market is gambling, pure and simple. People put their money in the market because they want and expect a greater return on it than what they can get at an FDIC-protected bank. They gamble that over the long run they'll get more out of the market than in a CD, for example. They gamble that they are too uninformed to make good judgments about their own money. They gamble that others are so very smart and will keep their own best interests in mind when handling their money.

Personally, I don't like giving over my money to someone else to decide where they want to place it. I did at one time, just like so many, many others. But these days there are too many variables, too much uncertainty, too many crooks, too many liars. If I want to gamble, I'd have a lot more fun going to the casinos where they offer great buffets and free drinks. At least there I'd have the fun of pulling the slots myself and not giving over everything to Wall Street and Main Street charlatans to play around with, making themselves rich. Cowardly, maybe. Able to sleep soundly each night, for certain.

The Devil Is in the Details

To those idiots who want the federal government to run healthcare and health insurance, energy, the economy, housing, banking, employment and labor, retirement income, education, urban planning, domestic and international trade, and just about every other human activity under the sun, I say wake up and smell the coffee.

I pull a mailer from the U.S. Postal Service out of the mailbox telling me that Saturday, May 8, is the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, run by the National Association of Letter Carriers and the USPS. What is this, I ask myself. I read that the USPS letter carriers will be collecting non-perishable foods to help hungry and poor families in the community. The mailer asks us to put our food donations next to our mailboxes on Saturday, May 8, before our letter carriers arrive with the day's mail. The carriers will take the food to the Post Office, where it will be sorted and then delivered to local food banks and pantries.

What a nice idea, I say to myself. I figure that I have a bunch of canned food I can donate, and head in to bag it up.

And then it hits me.

What day do you suppose I get this mailer delivered to my mailbox?

Drill, Baby, Drill

The recent oil rig explosion and resulting spill were and are very unfortunate. Lives were tragically lost and the environment has been at least temporarily harmed. Today's oil drilling industry takes numerous precautions to safeguard the drilling "footprint." No system is foolproof; accidents will always happen. The pertinent question is, How often? In the case of offshore explosions and spills, not often at all.

But listening to the uproar over drilling offshore, one would think those critics never bought gasoline, ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquid, deodorant, eyeglasses, CDs, DVDs, tires, ammonia, or even heart valves.

Cleaner energies should be developed, and they will be. That is the direction in which the developed world is moving. But before these newer, cleaner, more efficient energies are implemented, we can't just stop using oil, willy-nilly.

Today, here and now, we need oil, and so we have to continue looking for it and drilling -- and buying it from other countries. Sensible people would rather not have to buy oil from other countries, especially since most of those countries are not very friendly to us otherwise. So let's keep drilling for oil, while doing our best to safeguard our refinery crews and our landscapes.

Slimeballs All

I had written a four-paragraph post about the oil spill, the upcoming environmental destruction in the Gulf, the drill-baby-drill mentality of Limbaugh, Gingrich, Palin, and more. But once I finished, I felt like I had been slimed by the words of those idiots. I just couldn't post it. Plus, the thought of looking at pictures of Palin, Limbaugh or one of the other crazies to include along with my post grossed me out.

That said, I do look forward to Sarah Palin flying into Louisiana to clean oil off the beaches. Can't expect her to clean up the animals because she kills them, evil person that she is. Ultimately, I look forward to the day when that witch (hopefully covered with oil) slinks back to Alaska where she will shut up and have another four or five kids.

Glass Houses

The SEC-inspired rampage against Goldman Sachs is mob mentality at its scariest. When a mob goes wild, not only does it often wield injustice against the innocent, it also becomes completely blind to its own failings.

How many American consumers have asked themselves personally, in the midst of their feeding frenzy on the blood of the multinationals like Goldman and A.I.G., whether they should have been buying more house than they knew they could afford? A long era of disgustingly easy credit (it was the Age of the Credit Card Offers), low interest rates, and the asinine and irresponsible government policies (including subsidies) to push home ownership on absolutely everyone gave millions of consumers that buzz, that pleasurable anticipation of gluttony sated.

Every one of you who put little to no money down for a first-time -- or a bigger and flashier -- house, regardless of how meager your actual income may have been, share the blame for the collapse of the real estate market and, by extension, the world economy. You took irresponsible advantage of home value bubbles from 1998 to 2006 by borrowing against the equity you had for more and more credit. And for what? For Land Rovers, for swimming pools, for Carnival cruises, for home entertainment centers with 60-inch televisions . . . for brighter, flashier toys than your neighbors had. When you were mortgaged or leveraged to the hilt and the value of your McMansions plummeted, you lost your toys and your homes and even your jobs (because your employers don't operate in a vacuum).

Did you look yourselves in the mirror and say, "I shouldn't have bought all that" or "I shouldn't have borrowed so heavily" or "I shouldn't have eaten every last bit of equity I spent years acquiring"? Nope, you just blamed the Other Guy. And you're blaming him still.

Steeped in Tradition

The tea party participants have been taking it on the chin -- and worse -- for a year. The Left accuses them of bigotry, racism, and physical violence. The reprehensible, tendentious Rachel Maddow likens them to mass murderers in her recent MSNBC special on Timothy McVeigh.

Tea party critics never address the fundamental and solidly traditional view of the movement: A government that seeks to increase its power over the citizenry in the interests of ensuring their safety and security is no legitimate government at all but a tyranny. If the tea parties constantly bring up the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, it's because the philosophical principles of government and liberty are at the very heart of the tea party movement, and Washington's dangerous straying from those principles animates their anger and anxiety.

My Hero of the Day: Binghamton, NY Mayor

Matthew Ryan is the mayor of Binghamton, NY. He's sick and tired of the cost of both Middle East wars, the Afghanistan war being the longest in American history. He's tired of having to make decisions about what to keep open in his city, schools or police stations, fire or library. He has determined that the citizens of Binghamton have spent millions of dollars for the wars. So he has decided to install a digital "cost of war" sign in a prominent place to show how much the wars are costing local, state and federal taxpayers. A peace group is paying for the sign.

Good for you, Mayor Ryan. Sometimes I wonder if we're still fighting the wars because no one even talks about them. Fortunately, our local paper lists the dead soldiers from both wars on an almost daily basis. And the national cemetery nearby has weekly interments for dead military. Otherwise, not much is said or done regarding the wars. Congress OKs many billions every few months to keep the slaughter and defense thefts going. And President Obama should be ashamed of himself for lying about pulling out a brigade a month from Iraq 60 days after inauguration and not mentioning that he would direct a surge in Afghanistan. Like his predecessor, he must have no conscience regarding all of those dead soldiers and how the wars are destroying our treasury, all for nothing.

Mayor Matthew Ryan: A hero for our time.

God's Gonna Get Ya

Comments are often the best part about reading a story on the net. Today, CNN featured a piece about a "massive fireball" over Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and other parts of the Midwest. It particularly interested me for two reasons: 1) I've lived in Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin. 2) I've seen a large meteorite burn itself out as it crashed in the sea near the Cliff House in San Francisco. But the best part of that story was the comment section. These are my two favorite comments from the many offered:

"I am a member of the Tea Party and I think God is using the fireball to punish the Midwest for being too liberal."

"I'm a liberal and I think god is using the tea party to punish America for being too dumb."