Becoming at One With Texas

04. December 2012 · Comments Off on Becoming at One With Texas · Categories: Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Local, Old West · Tags: , , , ,

It was a gradual process … the place grows on you, even back before it became clear that it was one of the states – out of these occasionally United States – which has a good chance of emerging comparatively unscathed from impending economic disaster. I don’t know why Texas should be so fortunate among states and nations, but perhaps it is because of a part-time Legislature. Yes, this might tend to discourage professional busy-bodies from taking up a full-time career dictating the teensiest minutia of every scrap of our lives, from the number of flushes our toilets need to the wattage of the light-bulb in our porch light and the knotty question of whether a puddle in the back forty qualifies as a seasonal body of water. The Texas Lege can only assemble every two years for a set period of time to consider these and other weighty matters, and so must find other and more remunerative means of earning a living and staying out of their constituents hair. There was an adage to the effect that work expands to fill the time you have available for it – very likely it works the same way for legislative bodies. Perhaps limiting the time available to them forces legislators to prioritize and focus their potential mischief on only the most necessary tasks. Still, what a thought, that Texas might be the last best place to survive the impending economic and political meltdown – who would have thought, eh?

So, Texas took us over, bit by bit – although it wasn’t without a struggle, especially when enduring the ghastly heat of summer, which occasionally felt as if it were lasting all year. Or when there was a highway alert because … er, there were stray cows on the roadway … Or when I could not get just-introduced men in a social setting to not straightaway start addressing me as ‘darlin’’. There were charms, insidious ones – the Hill Country, and sweeps of wildflowers in spring, breakfast tacos (the breakfast food of the gods, I swear), the many splendors of the HEB grocery chain, real Texas BBQ … oh, the list goes on and on. I suppose the first sign that assimilation had begun was when my father began to say that Blondie and I sounded a little more Southern in our speech – there was, he swore, a faint interrogatory lift in tone at the end of certain sentences, which had not been there previously. Blondie began to like country-western music, I began to giggle at Robert Earl Keen’s “Merry Christmas from the Family” … and upon finally retiring from the military I had to get a Texas driver’s license. And then I began to write historical fiction … and well, it was all over, then. Assimilation was complete, or nearly so.

I do like to dress up in a slightly western-fashion when I do a book event now; a long skirt, western-style shirt and vest – and I have let my hair grow long again, so that I can do it up in a roll with a curved Spanish comb in it – and I have been looking around for a pair of Western boots to complete the look. I’ve substituted a pair of high-laced old-fashioned ladies’ boots for now – but a pair of cowboy boots would really complete the look. But not just any boots – being thrifty but with high standards means that I’d like I. Magnin style at a Walmart price, so we’ve been checking out the various thrift and resale stores for a pair of good and broken-in (yet not broken down!) boots. We almost thought we’d found them at a little boutique in Boerne last week, but I couldn’t get one pair on, and the other was too big … for me, but not for Blondie. So, she has herself a pair of Tony Lama’s now, and for me, it is just a matter of time.

Assimilation complete. I got here to Texas as fast as I could.

Julian Fellowes and Beacon Hill Redux

29. November 2012 · Comments Off on Julian Fellowes and Beacon Hill Redux · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Media Matters Not · Tags: , , , ,

Seriously, I hope they have better luck than the last time American TV producers tried to riff off the success of the original Upstairs, Downstairs; it was called Beacon Hill, as I recall and a routine googlectomy confirms. It started with great fanfare and interest, and promptly fizzled out, probably confirming expectations that American TV just cannot do family saga/period drama in anything other than as a TV miniseries with a limited run. It’s certainly a wise choice to go back to the rip-roaring decades of what Mark Twain called the Gilded Age. Twain did not mean it as a compliment, though ; he meant something vulgarly over-ornamented, cheap pot-metal covered with a microscopic layer of gold. All flash and glitter, trashy glamor to fool the tasteless and/or newly-rich, of which there were a lot in post Civil War America, which was going industrial in a way and in a degree that made the genteel old-money established families, with fortunes based on land, trade, banking and the occasional eccentric invention look on in horror. So, it seems from the story linked above that Mr. Fellows is going to go for the New York Gilded Age elite; the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Carnegie and Morgan and all. Best of luck to him, as there was a lot of drama in them all, over the years. The trouble is, though – it’ll be hard to encompass the American Gilded Age in just one family, or extended family, or even set of rival families – especially if it’s confined to the New York upper crust of the time.

Ultimately, it might prove to be very boring. New York, contra to what the average Brit entertainment mogul might believe is only a very small piece of the United States, and how long the rest of the country might put up with watching the 19th century society glitterati contemplate their own navels is anyone’s guess. Based on Beacon Hill, probably not for long, but it might be amusing to watch for a couple of episodes anyway. But, how is he going do do it?

Darned if I know, but here’s how I’d set it all up, if it were my project. First, I wouldn’t tie the plot and dramatis personae so tightly to the New York setting. Although the place was the focal point for the glamorously wealthy, other places in the United States produced wealth, or had produced it in the relatively recent past, and often viewed New York as a necessary but easily avoided evil. Mining and transport wealth in San Francisco, transport magnates in the mid-west, old-moneyed Southern aristocrats, clawing their way back into the power game, up and coming steel manufacturers in the upper Midwest, Chicago stockyard barons, Texas cattlemen with adventurous old-money and European investors in the wild trans-Mississippi west! That would be a far more interesting mélange than a bunch of mustachioed, upper-crust suits and their corseted ladies, glooming through the overstuffed rooms of a 5th Avenue mansion. And I wouldn’t tie it to a single family …  boring, boring, boring.

So, start with a new-money family, industrial new money in fantastical amounts, made by a man from relatively humble beginnings and not much more than elementary school education, which then would be at least as much as a high school today; someone like Andrew Carnegie, only American born. Add to that, perhaps a rival or sometimes allied family –  even perhaps a single character from an old Southern land-and-cotton-rich aristocratic family smarting from the loss of the Southern Dream. This did happen, historically; Alva Erskine Smith, later Alva Vanderbilt and even later than that, Alva Belmont, was a Southern belle of a formerly well-to-do family, ruined by the War. Of a particularly steely and determined nature, Alva engineered her marriage to a Vanderbilt grandson of the founder of that families’ fortune; a fortune made in steam transport on land and sea, and later the marriage of her daughter to an English duke. Then blend in one of the pre-war industrialist empires –  maybe a stage-coach king, like Ben Holliday, who had the sense and vision to adapt his coach line as a profitable adjunct to the railroad, when completion of the transcontinental rail lines superseded his magnificent horse-drawn coaches.

A character like that would bring in a stiff breeze of old west personalities and frontier adventure. Or perhaps some characters and family based on early industrial innovators like the Colt family, of armament fame. Developer and mass manufacturer of a popular revolver through several iterations, Samuel Colt died in the early years of the Civil War, but left his entire enterprise to the control of his widow, making her one of the richest woman in America. Elizabeth Colt never really seemed to embrace that fabulously competitive social life and conspicuous consumption that typified women like Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and the New York society circle at its most rarified. Although she was a contemporary of it, and knew a great many people such as JP Morgan personally, she seems to have moved serenely in her own circle of good works and art collecting and care of her surviving family, as well as burnishing the memory of her husband. Finally, I’d work in some kind of western connection, if the Ben Holliday-type character didn’t make the cut –  perhaps a wealthy European aristocrat or remittance man, come to make a fortune by investing in the western cattle boom, like Antoine Vallambrosa, the Marquise de Mores, who came to the Badlands of the Dakotas with his glamorous wife, and made a small fortune in ranching and an innovative meat-packing plant. Of course, he had started with a large fortune …

That’s the way I’d start to set it up. It would be much more fun and typical of the time. But who knows if Mr. Fellowes’ version will last longer than Beacon Hill? I’d hope so, as one gets very tired of the everlasting TV triad of modern-day doctors, lawyers and cops.

The Legend of Sally Skull

24. November 2012 · Comments Off on The Legend of Sally Skull · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Old West · Tags: , , ,

It was said of Texas that it was a splendid place for men and dogs, but hell for women and horses. Every now and again though, there were women who embraced the adventure with the same verve and energy that their menfolk did; and one of them was a rancher, freight-boss and horse trader in the years before the Civil War. She is still popularly known as Sally Skull to local historians. There were many legends attached to her life, some of them even backed up by public records. Her full given name was actually Sarah Jane Newman Robinson Scull Doyle Wadkins Horsdorff. She married – or at least co-habited – five times. Apparently, she was more a woman than any one of her husbands could handle for long.

Sarah Jane, later to be called Sally was the daughter of Rachel Rabb Newman – the only daughter of William Rabb, who brought his extended family to take up a land grant in Stephen F. Austin’s colony in 1823; an original ‘Old 300’ settler. (In Texas, this is the equivalent of having come on the Mayflower to New England, or with William the Conqueror to England.) Rabb and his sons and daughter, with their spouses and children – including the six-year old Sally – settled onto properties on the Colorado River near present-day La Grange. Texas was even then a wild and woolly place, and several stories about those years hint at how the frontier formed Sally the legend – well, that and the example of her mother, a formidable woman in her own right. One story tells that Rachael and her children were safely forted up in their cabin, with hostile Indians trying to break in through the only opening … the chimney. Rachel threw one of her feather pillows onto the hearth and set fire to it, setting a cloud of choking smoke up the chimney. Another time – or possibly the same occasion – an Indian raider was trying gain entry by lifting the loose-fitting plank door off it’s hinges. When the Indian wedged his foot into the opening underneath the door, Rachel deftly whacked off his toes with one swipe of an ax.
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Weihnachtmarkt in New Braunfels

21. November 2012 · Comments Off on Weihnachtmarkt in New Braunfels · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

All the other authors and publishers whom I talked to over the three days of the Christmas Market agreed – as an author, and none of us being of the NY Times best-seller class – it is profitable and much less dispiriting to do an event like a Christmas craft fair in company with a bunch of other authors. Much less foully dispiriting than doing a single-author event at a book-store, which is usually total ego-death-onna-stick. First and most importantly of all – customers with money and the intention of spending it are plentiful at a craft fair or a similar community market event, especially in the holiday gift-giving season. Trust me; many of them can see books as the perfect gift, and they are inclined to buy. Secondly – it’s a venue where one is in completion with vendors of a wide variety of consumer items – not every other published author on the shelves. And thirdly – in the slack times, there are other authors to talk to.

Seriously, nothing quite beats the tedium of sitting alone at the Dreaded Author Table in a not-very-well-frequented bookstore, and watching the occasional customer slink into the store trying to avoid your eye. Or worse still, at a large and popular chain bookstore, observing them heading into the computer games or DVD movie section. Which is the trouble with the Hastings chain, as I experienced and other authors concur; the staff are wonderfully helpful, great about ordering and stocking the books, but alas, the client base usually is there for the games, the music and the movies, eschewing the printed word generally. Not even libraries are proof against this; another author told me of participating at a local author event staged at a big public library. He and the other hopeful authors watched as a large crowd assembled out side the library, every one of them anticipating that they would have a wonderful and author-life-affirming event … only to see that every one of those in line headed straight for the library computers.

Yes, the Author’s Life (especially as a not-very-well-known indy author) is full of little kicks to the ego as this – but an event that sells out half the stock of books that one arrived with, is indoors, well-publicized in advance, and mostly-well-attended (although Sunday afternoon slacked off considerably) and having the organizers being quite generous and helpful – this is one well worth recollecting with fondness and returning to again. The good volunteers for the Weihnachtsmarkt even had a vendor’s lounge, stocked with coffee and ice water and all sorts of home-made pastries and baked delights. New Braunfels is Little Germany – they DO that kind of thing here! The whole event is to benefit the local historical museum, the Sophienburg – and it did draw a good crowd. My daughter was afraid that I had pretty well tapped out the market for the Trilogy in New Braunfels; not so, as there were a fair number of fans who came and bought the follow-up books (Daughter of Texas and Deep in the Heart), or asked impatiently about the next book, and even two who bought the German translation as a gift for friends and family who would appreciate a German translation of the first of the Trilogy. In between all these high points though – I spent time studying the interior architecture of the New Braunfels Civic Center, briefly wandering down the hallway to other author tables and the occasional quick foray into the main sales floors. The shops set up in the main ballroom and the annex all featured a great many lovely things that I just cannot quite yet afford.

Ah, well – someday.

A Note for My Dedicated Commenters…

18. November 2012 · Comments Off on A Note for My Dedicated Commenters… · Categories: Local, Rant

I just came back from a long stint at the dreaded Author Table at New Braunfels’ Weihnachtsmarkt, and found a full 61 pages of spam-comments … over 1,200 accumulated in the last 24 hours or so. I am sorry, if you posted a legit comment on anything I have posted in the last couple of days, and it went to the spam-queue, I just deleted the whole lot, without even an attempt at scanning them for legit comments. I am tired, and the spam-generators seem to work overtime on weekends.

If either of you had a genuine comment in the last day or so, which has never appeared … this is why. My deep apologies – and go ahead and repost. I’ll screen the comment-queue properly in the morning.

Really, I am beginning to hate, with an unholy passion, Uggs boots, Laboutiene shoes, Moncler jackets, and a whole lot of other overrated and undoubtedly spurious merchandise.

For the Honor of Service

13. November 2012 · Comments Off on For the Honor of Service · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Military, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs, War, World · Tags: , , ,

It looks really weird to me, this last Veteran’s Day weekend … not even a week after the election results came in. A couple of days after General Petreus put in his resignation as head of the CIA – conveniently for the American news cycle – on a Friday before a three-day weekend. So, kind of astonished over that – a mere several days before he was to testify about whatever was going on with regard to our quasi-official establishment in Benghazi on the 11th of September last. Of course, the second most astonishing aspect to me is that the head of the CIA can’t keep an affair secret, and the third most astonishing is that someone so politically wily as to be able to pin on four stars would still be stupidly reckless enough to engage on such a very public affair. What, were they doing the horizontal mambo in the middle of the parade ground at reveille at whatever base they were at in Afghanistan? Ok, never undervalue the comfort of situational friendships between persons of the opposite sex in a far country, double if in a war zone. Been there and … err, backed off from doing that, in the physical sense. But the friendship was enormously satisfactory; a way of getting through a hard tour in a distant and unforgivingly difficult place, and a lot of people there with us and who noted that we were a quasi-official couple also probably assumed that our relationship included an ongoing sexual aspect. Which it did not; part of the friendship involved an understanding between us that carrying it that far would inflict unacceptable damage on each other, emotionally and professionally. I thought the world of him, and he loved his family, back in the World; that’s the way that responsible and caring adults manage that kind of situation. It’s in the field, and it ends in the field.

But the way that the Petreus mess is expanding is enough to cause me to raise an eyebrow – and now it turns out that the second woman involved – is she the South Beach Mata Hari or what? – also had a good friend of the multi-star adorned command-rank level, as well as the somewhat dogged interest of the investigating FBI agent, who sent her a pic of him shirtless… dear god, people – this is not high school. Or at least, I assumed it was not. As it is, I could swear I watched a story line like this on General Hospital in the late 1970s, only with doctors, nurses and consultants, instead of commanders, reporters and socialites.

It is curious though – the sudden retirements, resignations, and reassignments of high-ranking and notable officers lately. It’s almost like there is something going on: earlier there was that kerfuffle about General Carter Ham being relieved of duty, with dark hints that it was because of events in Benghazi. On the bright side, though – since General Petreus was deeply involved in the events of 9/11/2012 in Benghazi, it just might be that there might be a little more interest in what happened there than has been displayed so far by our mighty mainstream press.
Or not.

After Math – Thoughts on 11-07-2012

08. November 2012 · Comments Off on After Math – Thoughts on 11-07-2012 · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Politics, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Blondie and I went to bed Tuesday night around 9:30, already fearing that things were not going well as regards Mitt Romney’s chances of taking up residence in that big official governmental residence on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington … so it was not a totally incapacitating shock to the system on Wednesday morning to wake up (to the tune of our next door neighbor’s Basset hound incessantly barking –G*d, are we beginning to hate that dog!) in the wee hours, turn on the computer and discover that Michelle will have another four years of lavish vacations on the government dime.

Ah well – as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, there is a lot of ruin in a nation, and perhaps this turn of events might turn out to be a blessing in very thick disguise. Obama will be in office when all the various incontinent chickens – which he or his party launched in the first place – come home to roost. Fast and Furious, the overrunning of the Benghazi consulate and his administration’s inaction with regard to, the insupportable burden that Obamacare will place upon small businesses, the expected hyper-inflation Weimar Germany Style, Iran taking aim at Israel in a non-friendly and nuclear way, the Chinese edging into a tangle with Japan, domestic AND international threats to our First and Second Amendments, the fact that the nomination of at least one justice to the Supreme Court will be in his purview, the fact that his administration generally seems to be a rancid commingling of Chicago gangster politics, 1930’s style with the worst of the 1960’s academic Marxism … With the best intentions in the world, I fear that Romney would not have been able to clean out the Augean stables in any meaningful way.
So, let it happen and let it all be done. That percentage of the voters who wanted Obama most have now got him. Over the next four years they will continue to get him – good, hard and unlubricated, starting with the prices of gas and heating oil skyrocketing, the money being devalued, our industrial base being even more gutted than it has been already, and rolling brownouts becoming a regular occurrence, and the economy basically going over a cliff. Sometimes there is no way of learning other than to completely and utterly screw up.

What to do, personally? Well, life will go on, much as it has from age to age. Fortunate I am to be living in Texas – who might have thought that it would be our last best hope? Molly Ivins is probably revolving in her grave like a Black and Decker drill. Otherwise – consider the means of going mini-Galt, and ratchet up what we have been already been doing over the last couple of years. Buying second-hand as much as possible. Stockpiling food and other essential supplies. Starving the Beast by minimizing the taxes that I do pay, bartering as much as possible for goods and services. In the next year, we’re probably going to give up cable television – although we’ll keep the internet. Redouble the efforts to keep a viable garden. I gave up just about all of my print subscriptions to magazines and the local newspaper. Our list of entertainment personalities who will not be getting anything from us in the way of patronage of their music, movie and television show patronage is now several pages long. (Goodbye, Cher, so long Ken Burns; in my eyes you have joined the ranks of Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. Bow down and lick the hands of the new autocrats – enjoy the taste and forget that you ever thought of yourselves as free citizens.) I’ll continue supporting the Tea Party, and carry on with building a support network of like-minded cranky independents who voted with our brains rather than our lady-parts. Get more involved in local and State politics, and utterly reject any attempts by anyone who diminish any part of the Bill of Rights. OK then – it’s not the beginning of the end; it’s the end of the beginning.

Home Stretch

05. November 2012 · Comments Off on Home Stretch · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Politics

Alas and alack, I haven’t paid attention to this blog since Friday – all my attention and care was given over to getting the various bits and elements for the German-language version of Adelsverein-The Gathering all worked out. Including having my little brother the graphic artist having to re-do the cover, since the German translation worked out to fifteen pages more than the English version – and that without the dedication and the historical notes included. What can I say? I guess it’s the effect of all so many words being longer. For the next books, I will expect this. So, I was wrestling with formats and fonts and tweaking the spacing … and Blondie and I already went and voted on the first day of early voting in Texas anyway. As far as we are concerned, it’s over but the shouting.

Of which there is likely to be a lot, especially if the slightly-less-than Fresh Prince of Chicago goes down in a landslide of votes for Romney Ryan … which just might happen, if the enthusiasm at Romney-Ryan rallies is as unfettered as reported, and attendees at Obama Biden events are as dispirited. There will be a lot of disappointed people who are assuming that another four years is in the bag. And they will not be happy. Still, it will be interesting, in the way of that old supposed Chinese curse. Blondie and I are going to split watching election coverage between Fox, and NBC.

So, that’s how that stands: the print version of Adelsverein – Book One: The Gathering will be up on Amazon in about two weeks, and now we find out if there really are a lot of far-west adventure fans in Germany. I am assured that there are by the gentleman who staked a lot of his own time in translating for a share of the hoped-for future profits. But then perhaps we are both gamblers. And times always were interesting…

An Archive Post for Bubba

02. November 2012 · Comments Off on An Archive Post for Bubba · Categories: General

(Who was actually named Flash, by his family. He is/was a friendly and fluffy black cat of indeterminant age, who used to come up and hang out in my garden, before the advent of the dogs. This afternoon when we got home from a short trip to Boerne, a neighbor called with the news that Bubba had been badly mauled again by a stray dog, and this time it does not seem that he will survive. This happened during the afternoon, and was so public a happening that the police were called and the owner of the dogs involve was fined. It’s been a long time since Bubba came and hung out in my back garden, so in memorial – an entry from 2005, about how my garden was once full of cats … including Bubba.)

In The Garden of Cats
Posted on 20050307 by Sgt. Mom

My back yard is entirely fenced, and sheltered from the late afternoon sun by an enormous mulberry tree, and is usually at its best during two times of the year— that is, spring and fall. Summers are hot and harsh, winters are cold and dreary, and our gardening season is split into two short seasons by them. The first best time is beginning now, when the jasmine and the potted Meyer lemon trees are out in clusters of starry white flowers, and everything else is leafing out, recovering from the whatever winter freeze we might have had. It has been a particularly wet and soggy winter, rather than cold, so this year everything in my yard will be most especially green and lush, and may yet carry through summer that way

We only had a couple of days of freezing temps, but it hit the plants I put in last fall the hardest; a grouping of native Texas plants to attract birds and butterflies, around a green glass Japanese fishing buoy in a metal stand, where the bird feeders hang from a branch of the mulberry. The fire bush and lantana, the Esperanza and liatris are all putting out new leaves. I love to sit out on the back porch in the mornings and evenings, when the big rose bush and the Esperanza are alive with birds, and there is a constant flutter of wings around the feeders.

Sammie, the white cat from across the road— who was nearly blind— used to like sitting behind the potted plants, and pretending that he was stalking the birds going after the spilled seed on the ground. Alas, he was too blind to actually catch a bird, not unless it was a bird with a death-wish marching right up to his whiskers. Sammie, who uncharacteristically (according to his owner) developed a deep affection for Blondie when she was home over Christmas, grumpily tolerated sharing my garden with Bubba, the black cat from down the road who has been coming around for years. I think Sammie and Bubba looked on my garden as a sort of gentleman’s club; not in the nasty, titty-bar sort of way, but the comfy chair and old-port English manner of gentleman’s club. Alas, Sammie was side-swiped by a car one day when on his way over; he was not seriously hurt, just shaken up, and stays in his own yard these days, which is for the best.

Bubba, the wise and wily old survivor, who does not have to cross the road— he frequently arrives by strolling along the top of the fence that runs along the back of all our houses— does not have the place to himself though. For the last two weeks, another young cat has been trailing along in his lordly wake, at 6 AM and 6 PM sharp. Just as young Percival the sort-of-feral began hanging around for the food, and was eventually coaxed into tolerating caresses, and then the soft life of an indoor cat of the First Degree, I am contemplating doing the same with this one. But oh no, not for myself! I have four cats already; another one will be crossing the boundary into �crazy neighborhood cat lady, as well as being frowned upon by the code compliance section of the City of San Antonio.

This new cat— who may yet actually belong to a neighbor, just like Sammie and Bubba— has been coming around for two weeks now, and already accepts being petted, and tolerates me sitting on the glider and listening to the radio while he crunches through a bowl of finest Science Diet Light. It is another young male, all white underneath with a brindle brown and grey patch on his back, and on the top of his head. He seems touchingly eager to reject the call of the wild, and curl up on soft furniture and embrace the life of an indoors cat – I must be strong and resist! But as soon as he is tame enough to handle without shedding a couple of pints of my blood— and I know for sure that he doesn’t belong to someone (Judy, my neighbor who knows all this sort of thing, says no, he is a stray) he is off to the spay and neuter clinic, and on to the waiting list for the Animal Defense League shelter, awaiting a soft chair and a garden of his own.

(Sammie eventually became ours, the little male stray wandered off into another orbit, and now the only cats in my garden might be Ollie from up the road. Which reminds me – we should warn Ollie’s owner about the loose dogs…)

Fish and How they Rot

28. October 2012 · Comments Off on Fish and How they Rot · Categories: Fun With Islam, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm

Well, boys and girls, I think we have our October Surprise, freshly fresh and newly fit … even though it is a little bit whiffy from being left over from events occurring in September. You remember that little ruckus in Benghazi last month, on the anniversary of 9/11? Local American consulate burned and trashed, American Ambassador and three others dead … such deaths described by our chief executive and commander-in-chief as being unfortunate bumps in the road, as his administration swanned merrily on in an attempt to be the Little Friend of all the (Muslim) World … or at least, not seriously disrupt the narrative or the Obama reelection campaign.

Four people dead, any number surviving a vicious firefight at an American consulate in an Arab country, and yet barely a whisper in the mainstream media – no interviews with survivors, no logical and authoritative sequence of events – only the arrest and detention of a third party ostensibly the cause of it all. And now it turns out that the firefight and escape was being monitored at the highest levels in real time, and that rescuers were standing by but never got approval to move. It also turns out that the Obama administration flunkies were pounding the ‘protest by outraged local nationals inflamed over an obscure movie trailer on YouTube which got out of hand’ – never mind that that hardly anyone had ever even seen or heard of the trailer in question. What was Ambassador Stephens doing in Benghazi, essentially alone and relatively unprotected on the 9/11 anniversary? Is there something fishy going on with American weapons supplied to the Libyan rebels now being clawed back for transfer to … some other rebel group in the mid-east? Have high-ranking American military commanders in-theater who wanted to go ahead with a rescue effort against Administration orders been relieved of command? Questions, questions, questions …

It’s just too bad that it’s not a Republican administration at this time – we’d have had answers to all these questions, days if not weeks ago.

Alamein, Tobruk and Alex

24. October 2012 · Comments Off on Alamein, Tobruk and Alex · Categories: History, Literary Good Stuff, Military, War, World

I wouldn’t have remembered that this week marks another WWII battle anniversary – that of El Alamein which ran for nearly two weeks in October and November 1942 – but for seeing a story or two in the Daily Mail about it. (A reflection upon the death spiral of the mainstream news is that I have a relatively low-brow popular British newspaper among my internet tool-bar favorites, rather than my own local metropolitan publication … alas, that is how low those local newspapers have fallen. Seriously, stuff shows up on the Daily Mail page days before it does in strictly American-oriented media. Sorry about that, San Antonio Express News.)
That second battle at El Alamein which broke the back of the Axis, revived Allied morale, and saw the beginning of the end of any attempt by the Germans to get control of the Suez Canal was a significant turn in that campaign in the deserts of North Africa. The fighting mostly involved British and Commonwealth and a scattering of Free Polish troops against the Germans and Italians; back and forth in Egypt and Libya almost as if it were a sea battle – fought not in water, but in sand. It’s a matter almost out of historical memory, especially for Americans who really only got involved at the tail end. Our memories of the desert war are mostly retained in movies like Casablanca, or a television series like The Rat Patrol.
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After Math

23. October 2012 · Comments Off on After Math · Categories: Devil Dogs, Media Matters Not, Military, Politics, Rant, Veteran's Affairs, World

I own to being vaguely disappointed with our man Mittens’ performance in last night’s debate, as I had cherished fond hopes that Mitt Romney would mop the floor with the Obamster, and then clean up those little spills and smudges remaining with the hapless moderator, but then I am a writer and frustrated dramatist. I want the spectacular scene, dammit … but perhaps as other commenters have pointed out, Mittens was playing the long, cool game, and just letting the Obamster have enough rope to hang himself with. Lord knows, his crack about bayonets and horses, and about ships that have aircraft land on them and other ships that go below the surface of the ocean may have just finally and ultimately annoyed veterans and service members. As has been commented in other place, submarines are called boats … ships that go below the surface of the ocean are called ‘sunk’… anyway, my daughter very well recalls being issued a bayonet as a member of the Marine Corps. And milblogger Donald Sensing ran the historical numbers, comparing the present military and that of 1916 vis a vis bayonet possession. Oopsy – the US military does in fact have more bayonets now, than in 1916. As for horses … well, we probably do have fewer horses in inventory now than in 1916. Two out of three ain’t bad.

It’s a moot point as far as Blondie and I are concerned, as we went to vote at the early-voting polling place around midday on Monday, which was the first day of early voting in Texas. Any sort of malevolent October Surprise intended to depress voter turnout and Republican Party spirits on November 6th had better be uncorked real soon if it is to have any effect. The parking lot of the library was jammed, and the line to get into the room set up as the polling place wound halfway through the main library. It moved fast, though. The volunteers were on-point and very, very busy. It had been so, all morning long. Blondie said, “If it’s this way now, how bad is it going to be on Election Day?”

Two weeks today … fourteen more days. I would hate to be proved embarrassingly wrong about all this, especially if I were being paid big bucks to be a mainstream media prognosticator – but I am not. I will go far enough to venture that I do sense a turning of the tide, in favor of Romney/Ryan, and the Tea Party Libertarian/Conservatives generally. I don’t think I am being deluded by wishful thinking, or through being generally in a libertarian/conservative information bubble … or in Texas, which constitutes pretty much the same thing. In the whole of my neighborhood, there are only five or six Obama-Biden yard signs, another seven or eight signs for a Lloyd Doggett, a long-time Democrat Party senatorial candidate who apparently had to go district-shopping after being re-districted. Against that – twenty or more Romney-Ryan signs, and one or two more spotted every day. My gut-feeling is that Obama now has the stink of fear and desperation on him, now that he has a real-life record, rather than just soaring oratory and the slavish devotion of the mainstream media and the Hollywood establishment. There’s only so much that can be covered up, plastered over and excused when voters have their own experience to consult.

Really – who are you going to believe; Chris Matthews, and Eva Longoria, or the evidence of your lying eyes?

Hip To Be Square?

19. October 2012 · Comments Off on Hip To Be Square? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Politics · Tags: , , ,

As I contemplate the coming election, I do wonder if a sort of cultural turning point hasn’t been reached, which was elucidated lo these many decades ago by Huey Lewis and the News – that it’s soon might be seen to be hip to be a square. Or to put it in standard English – if being sober, responsible, cheerfully working at a blue-collar and non-corporate job, engaged in a traditional man/woman marriage, and living out in flyover country somewhere, and being a traditionally patriotic, fiscally responsible, striving small business entrepreneur and home-schooling more than the requisite one or two designer-perfect offspring … might be the default option for the rebellious and non-conformist? I mean, really – look around at the current social and educational landscape in some of our larger and supposedly more urban and urbane environments. Take a good long look; I have a stack of barf-bags handy. What could be more logical than to rebel against such decay, despair, conformity and criminality than to stake out a suburban (or even rural) homestead in flyover country somewhere and wholly become what the putrid 1960’s retreads were rebelling against in the first place?

Look, the standard-bearers of 1968 have taken over the higher ground, roosted in the educational, media and political establishments like a flock of grackles – shrieking to high heaven and splattering the surface underneath with a Jackson-Pollocking layer of artistic but bad-smelling dung. Well, really – what could be more fun to the naturally rebellious youth than to tell the baby-boom cohort of elders (who basically trashed every American institution as they moved through it, save perhaps the military, technology, the culinary arts – and possibly retail) to take a hike, I’m going to live like my grandparents, or maybe my great-grandparents? Plant a garden, go off the grid and make your own clothes, and preserved food? I know that Martha Stewart was responsible for a lot of renewed popularity with regard to home-making, but she always seemed to me to be someone striving for Right-Coast upper-class respectability. What does one make of web and cable cooking-show personalities like Ree Drummond, the accidental country girl who wound up on a ranch in Oklahoma, living a comparatively laid-back life, cooking and gardening, and home-schooling four children?

Could this rebelling by going back to basics account for the retro appeal of Mitt Romney? Staid, conventional, traditional 1950s-Leave It To Beaver-style marriage, large and happy family, picket-fence suburban ideal home – everything that the brigades of 1968 revolted against, and subsequently established a new normal of something completely different from it – and now a new generation is rebelling against that? Amusing to contemplate, anyway.

I just hope the fashion for girdles and wearing high-heels and stockings to vacuum the floor is one thing that never revives. That stuff is uncomfortable.

Upstairs, Downstairs and All Around the House

16. October 2012 · Comments Off on Upstairs, Downstairs and All Around the House · Categories: Ain't That America?, General Nonsense, History, Media Matters Not, Memoir, That's Entertainment!, World

My family was, for various reasons, devoted to the first Upstairs, Downstairs series, back in the day. Mom loved the whole dichotomy of the ‘family’ upstairs, and the servants, working away behind the scenes and below stairs – very likely because her father, my Grandpa Jim was engaged in practically life-long service to a wealthy family living in a magnificent mansion. Dad had a mild guy-crush on Rachael Gurney, who played Lady Marjory Bellamy – she was what Dad apparently considered the perfect upper-class Englishwoman. And I loved it all because it was … England, that very place that three of our four grandparents had come from, and during the two decades that were pictured in the show. The outer world of Upstairs Downstairs was what they would have remembered; the music, the manners, the fashions, habits and social customs, the scandals and events.

So we followed it devotedly, even as we admitted to each other that it was really a high-toned soap opera in period costume. I think primarily the reason that it succeeded on those terms was that it was entirely character-driven. That is, the characters drove the plots, and they were pretty consistent over the arc of the show; there was a womanizing rake – actually two of them, one upstairs and one down – the imperious lady and her devoted sour-tempered maid, the upright lord of the house, several charming ingénues – and their affairs of state and otherwise, personal crises large and small, courtship, marriages, birth, death … the whole enchilada, as it were. And always in the background there was history going on, but it usually took a back seat to personal lives and concerns. Which is how it is for most of us; what we do, the decisions that we take are driven by our characters and our needs. So, dialed up for dramatic purposes, the Bellamy saga managed a high degree of consistency that way.

And now we come to the new Upstairs, Downstairs iteration … and a couple of episodes into the second season, it is not going well, character and plot-wise. It was a good idea, to update Eaton Place to the 1930s, and bring in a whole new upstairs and downstairs family, with the character of Rose Buck to tie them together, but it’s already gone south, between season one and two … which we have easily deduced from the rushed manner in which the transition between the two was made. You mean – now they have two children? And the mother-in-law died? (And they killed the monkey… not a good start, FYI, and it matters little that it was a well-meant accident.) And Sir Hallam will be boinking his sister-in-law, who doubles as a Nazi spy? Hooo-kay, then. There could have been a whole season of character-developing high-toned soap opera worked in, between the end of one and the start of the second, but apparently everyone wanted to rush on to the drama of historical events. Pity, that – what they finished up with was plot-driven characters; where the needs of plot drove the characters to do things that radically changed what they had first appeared to be ... which is very likely why one of the key originators of the original and the follow-on series departed at speed, while the other had serious health problems.

No, it’s not a bad thing do do plot-driven characters, especially in the confines of a historical narrative, but abruptly contradicting the established character, and rushing over certain developments? Sigh. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next season of Downton Abbey. At least, they are not doing things in a mad rush ... although they did rather hurry through WWI, and muddled the sequence of the end of the war and the great influenza epidemic.

(Cross-posted at my book-blog website)

In the Shadows of Melting Monuments

11. October 2012 · Comments Off on In the Shadows of Melting Monuments · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Rant, That's Entertainment!

So, a week after the debate and stuff is still happening. Well, I think the preference cascade has well and truly begun. Once someone – or several influential someones came out and said that our esteemed resident of the White House has feet of clay and several other shortcomings, and didn’t get struck by lightening, or tied up and burned at stake by a vengeful mob … well, now it’s safe for everyone.
Look, he did a craptastic job last week; sweaty, blinking, repeating the talking points … apparently he believed that all he had to do was saunter out on stage and that ol’ 2008 magic would put everyone under it’s spell. Riding on a shoeshine and a smile … right up until everyone stops smiling back. Look, Mr. Hopey-Change – there’s some work involved in this Presidential gig; some long hard work, late hours, late nights … and not spent partying with J.Z. and Bouncy. (Yeah, I call her Bouncy. Easier to pronounce. Somehow, I don’t think the parties with celebs are going to go on quite as often, after November 6, no matter who wins.)

Oh, and about form letters of official consolation to the next of kin with an auto-pen signature? It’s not that difficult to have your staff vary the standard letter a little, and scribble a signature yourself. Governor Romney apparently generates personal, hand-written letters of consolation, if this story is correct.

Remember Benghazi, Mr. President – coupla of dead former Navy SEALS, and an ambassador dead? Bloody dragged fingermarks on the doorway of a consulate from which official US protection had been withdrawn? You don’t? Well, seeing that the major press lords are not the least interested in dead soldiers and ambassadors, the plight of the homeless and gas prices shooting up to $5.00 a gallon during a Democrat Party administration, I can’t really say I’m surprised.

So – looking forward to the debate tonight. Note to self – make a big bowl of popcorn.

Back Roads in the Hill Country

07. October 2012 · Comments Off on Back Roads in the Hill Country · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine...

Having reason to head up to Fredericksburg last Saturday, we decided to explore doing it by the back roads; honestly, I would rather – unless in a tearing hurry – travel across Texas by the secondary roads. (Unless it is in the dark, or in the rain, and when the deer are especially depressed and suicidal.) We decided to travel north on the old Bulverde road, and stop and take pictures of anything interesting – and of course, one of the first things we pulled over to stop for was a very charming vista of a turn-of-the-last century cottage painted yellow with aqua-blue trim, surrounded by oak trees, a mown field of grass, and backed with a couple of stone buildings. The nearest stone building still had a roof – the farthest didn’t. I took some pictures from the roadside, and then my daughter noticed that there was a driveway, and a sign; obviously the place was some kind of enterprise more or less open to the public. We’re the public … so we pulled in. From the circular parking lot we could see the screened porch on the back of the cottage, and a round table and four chairs under the huge ancient oak tree at the back – and in a moment the owner came out to join us. Essentially, we had a tour of the old buildings; it’s what remains of the old Pieper farmstead, which was established round and about 1850. (It’s now an event venue, and the cottage is a bed and breakfast.)
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New Chapter – From The Quivera Trail

05. October 2012 · Comments Off on New Chapter – From The Quivera Trail · Categories: History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

(This months’ installment of the current work in progress: Isobel and her maid, Jane, have arrived at the Becker ranch, near Comfort, in the Hill Country of Texas. But Jane fell ill with malaria, and could not go with Isobel and Dolph to establish a new RB ranch in the Panhandle region, which with the end of the Indian Wars, is now open to ambitious and hardworking cattlemen. What will Jane do? Sam Becker has a plan…)

The dreams tormented Jane, although in her moments of waking she could not remember what it was that terrified her so, other than an oppressive sense of being watched and pursued by her stepfather down the endless halls and staircases of Acton. She dreamed also of Lady Caroline dancing in the ballroom; her person and her gown curiously transformed into glass and shattering into a thousand animated pieces on the hard floor, while Jane herself attempted to sweep up every particle, chasing the moving pieces of Lady Caroline with a broom and dustpan, and Auntie Lydia looked down at her from an enormous height and scolded her, saying, “Oh, dear – that will never do, child. You must try harder if you want to advance in service.” At other times, she dreamed that she was buried in snow, shivering so violently that she thought her own bones would break with the force of it – and then she was hot, and so thirsty … but the water often tasted so bitter that she thought it must be poison and wanted to spit it out, but someone made her to drink it.

At the end of that interminable period of torment and fever, the nightmares dissolved, like the ice melting at the end of winter. One early morning, Jane opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling over her head, in a room that she didn’t recognize. Not the servant’s quarters at Acton Hall, or her parent’s tiny village house house … or any of the various small rooms she had slept in since her ladyship married. The last coherent memory she had was of her lady, and Mr. Becker and their party leaving San Antonio. Ah, she thought. This must be their house in the hills … but how long have I been here? Where was her ladyship? Surely, they would not have gone on without me? How would her ladyship manage without me? Suddenly apprehensive, Jane levered herself to sit up, pushing the bedcovers from her. Her head spun, and she held still until it steadied. She swung her feet to the floor, and sat for a moment on the edge of the bedstead to catch her breath. There was her own little trunk at the foot of the bed, her carpetbag sitting on top of it. Someone had thought to hang two or three of her dresses from the pegs in a little niche beside the tall window which served as a wardrobe, so that the wrinkles would not be so marked. And she was even wearing her own nightgown.
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Thoughts On the Debate

04. October 2012 · Comments Off on Thoughts On the Debate · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Tea Time · Tags: , ,

Well, that was interesting – Blondie and I watched about the first fifty minutes or so together, and then she watched to the very end, as I had already pretty much given up hope of the Obaminator melting down entirely … the consummation that I have been devoutly wishing for since his administration began. Well, he was looking a bit melty and sweaty, and what was with all the constant blinking? Reassuring that he can speak sort of coherently without the crutch of a teleprompter, so he had that going for him, but I have to say that he did not seem confident at all; good at coming out with the predigested and memorized talking points, but no sense at all that he really, really, knew what he was talking about.
Romney, on the other hand, was there – on point, knowledgeable and authoritative. I know, I know – Blondie and I have both had the experience of being briefed in a military setting by someone who knows the subject inside and out, and one who is just reciting the required materiel. We both of us can tell the difference. I was reassured by how good Romney was; as I said, neither of us had him as first choice for the GOP, but we are now thinking that he was a good pick after all.

Of course, the major media melt-down is grimly amusing to behold … in the same way that a massive, spectacular wreck on the interstate is. Reporters and reporterettes, you got sold – and you believed in the Obaminator being the superior being and sang his praises in four-part barber-shop harmony … and framed Romney as a bumbling and doltish caricature. Have fun, sucking up what little remains of the respect for your profession, trickling in little steaming streams out of the wreck. Trying to belatedly redeem yourselves in the eyes of conservatives, libertarians and Tea Partiers will be another interesting spectacle over the next few weeks. I look forward to it, and am making popcorn.

So – next challenge; an open town-hall meeting, and a possibly much more partisan moderator. This should be interesting, especially if Romney handles it all with the same aplomb, Obama sweats bullets, and the mainstream media goes into overtime-spin, explaining just one more time how Obama really, really came out the winner. Fun times … maybe I’d better get more popcorn.

PS – from the expressions on the faces of both the Obamas after the debate, I don’t think that celebratory anniversary nookie was in the cards last night.

ObamaPhone

01. October 2012 · Comments Off on ObamaPhone · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Tea Time · Tags: , ,

So, with a little more than six weeks to go to Election Day, this particular video is getting play, and no little amount of critical commentary, which does not actually surprise me in the least. What would surprise me would be to find out that the speaker in question actually is privately embarrassed, humiliated, and ashamed for selling her vote so cheap, and publically encouraging others to do also.

A phone, a simple cellphone; this is the price of a vote in this decadent age. Never mind that this ‘assistance to the unfortunate’ was something started several administrations ago, never mind that this particular interviewee seems to know history as well as your average potted plant, never mind … well, never mind several more observations regarding this particular person’s education level and personal background which might in all fairness be assumed from a brief interlocution with a video camera. Again – the most deeply appalling, unsettling part is how cheaply votes can be bought. Oh, at certain times and in certain places during the history of this grand republic, votes were bartered for goods or good-will. This was what built the big-city machines; Tammany Hall is of course the grand historic example, but other big cities in the late 19th and early 20th century also fell to lesser imitators; the Daley Machine in Chicago being presently the best known, and still poisonously effective, given the eminence of the present occupant of the White House.

But still … your vote is for him, because he gave you a cellphone? Gave all your friends and neighbors a cellphone? And you’ll sell your vote for that … the vote that men and women of color and otherwise campaigned, protested, marched, and went to war for, for those 200 and some years since the American Revolution and the founding of the republic? The considered choice of a thoughtful and involved citizen in electing fellow citizens to public is sold for a mess of pottage and a few trinkets. I have read many editorials regarding how republics eventually became corrupted once citizens realized they could vote themselves largess from the public treasury. You, my dear fellow citizen – would sell out for a cellphone. This particular brief video makes it almost nakedly obvious: he gave me stuff, so I’m voting for him. Which is probably why it’s been linked, posted and shared all over the place – the very scumminess of the exchange revolts viewers. One of them is Wretchard, at the Belmont Club, who wrote eloquently in the comments to his original post:

“It reminds me, horribly enough, of how politicians in Philippines buy votes for a bag of peanuts and bottle of Marca Demonyo Gin plus maybe the equivalent of a $5 bill.
And don’t imagine people don’t understand they are being bought. They do and that is the worst of it. To see in their eyes the awareness that they’ve fallen so low they’ll follow orders for chump change. The more intelligent of them hate themselves for it. But then … they haven’t been able to afford a bag of peanuts or a bottle of gin for a while … and maybe this chance won’t come again. You can watch the struggle until the hand goes out and grabs the gin.
This to me is the most terrible sight you can see. I don’t feel any superiority over the woman in the Obama Phone video. Just horror. Horror. And the worst of it is that I know that I fell so low I’d be in the same state. Just drooling over that cheap-ass phone. How terrible. How absolutely terrible.”

RuiNation

28. September 2012 · Comments Off on RuiNation · Categories: Domestic, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

So a little over six weeks to go until Election Day; I guess we can call this the final heat. Texas is pretty much a red state stronghold, although there are pockets of blue adherents throughout. Yes, even in my neighborhood, there are a handful of defiant Obama-Biden yard signs visible, although outnumbered at least two to one by Romney-Ryan signs. It amounts to about a dozen, all told; I think that most of my neighbors prefer keeping their political preferences this time around strictly to themselves.

I wasn’t all that wild about Mittens as a candidate, personally; too much the old-line country-club establishment Republican for my taste – but he’ll do, especially if Tea Party small-government fiscal conservatives overwhelmingly sweep the House and Senate and assist in keeping his nose to the small-government and fiscally conservative grindstone. So I will vote for him with reserved good cheer and considerable hope. There is too much at stake to consider otherwise. The next President of the US will have in their preview the elevation of at least one, and possibly two or more Justices to the Supreme Court, and that is just one consideration. Our foreign policy is even more shambolic than usual after four years of Mr. Hopey-Changey, the Middle East is melting down, our embassies in countries with a strong Islamic component are all but under siege, our rights to free speech are under threat in the guise of accusations of Islamophobia when exercising them in certain directions, we are more bitterly divided across class, regional and racial lines than any time that I can personally recall, the price of gas and electricity is skyrocketing, and our economy appears to be on extremely shaky ground. Which the mainstream media – god bless their little cotton socks – increasingly is reporting by putting a nice smiley face on the bad news, in the finest tradition of official government press organs everywhere, especially those where an in-law or second cousin of the Big Man is the owner of the largest newspaper and the sole national broadcaster. Those officially licensed pervs at the TSA are still feeling up three year olds and octogenarians in wheel-chairs the length and breadth of this blessed land, California’s best option may yet be to fall into the Pacific Ocean … and Texas needs rain.

A Romney-Ryan administration will, it is hoped, do something constructive about many of these problems, or so is our deep and abiding hope. At the very least, they might be able to delay the crash that many of us expect will be just around the corner anyway. It will be a hell of a job, anyway, being undermined, slandered and sabotaged by the die-hard big-Statists infuriated at the prospect of being cut off from the money trough. Our mainstream news media will definitely not be in their corner, along with most of what Angelo Codevilla called the ‘ruling class’. But suppose … just Obama/Biden wins on November 6th. It’s not entirely out of the question, and I am sure that there will be many who will rejoice initially, until all those chickens launched in the last four years come home to roost. So, do we want the pain of the economic and political crash to come in a series of agonizing jerks or one heartrending pull? Might it be better to have all the bad things that almost certainly will happen in the next four years land upon the administration responsible in no small part for launching them? Could it be that the Obama administration and the Democratic party generally having to wholly own the disastrous situation that they created and encouraged? Might the corruption, the abuse of state power, the sheer bloody incompetence bring the Democratic Party down entirely? Given enough rope in the form of a second Obama term, might they eventually hang themselves?

There is a lot of ruin in a nation – four more years of this may be more than we can handle and still be a confident, forward-looking and united country; the land of the free and home of the brave. Can we risk such an ordeal … even if it gives us a chance to put the new ruling class off their high thrones in the halls of power, if not once and for all, at least for the forseeable future? I have no idea, but this is certainly something to think about in the next six weeks.

Can You Cash My Check?

23. September 2012 · Comments Off on Can You Cash My Check? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Politics, sarcasm

(A bit of topical political humor, from one of those emails, going the rounds.)

President Obama walks into the Bank of America and says to a
cashier, “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me”? * *

Cashier: “It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please sho w me your ID”?
Obama: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think
there was any need to. I am President Barrack Obama, the president of the United States .

Cashier: “Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the Government
regulations, monitoring of the banks because of imposters and forgers, etc., I must insist on seeing ID.”
Obama: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”

Cashier: “I am sorry, but these are government and bank rules and I must follow them.”
Obama: “I am urging you please to cash this check.”

Cashier: “Look, this is what we can do: One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank lobby into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and we cashed his check. Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and served an ace shot directly into the center of our bank logo 90 feet away. With that spectacular shot we cashed his check. So, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you?”

Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: “Honestly, nothing comes to mind. I can’t think of a single thing I can do.”

Cashier: “Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?

The Shape of Things to Come

21. September 2012 · Comments Off on The Shape of Things to Come · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, Veteran's Affairs · Tags: , , , , , , ,

It’s been another one of those weeks, blog-fans … now, I do want you all (all both of you) to put your hands together and welcome back Radar, a contributor from away back, who has decided to get back into long-form blogging again. Yay, Radar! Welcome home!

As for the rest of it … well, welcome to interesting times. Now it is something like six weeks, give or take a handful of days until Election Day, and honestly, it cannot come too soon for me. Every week and every day there’s some new bit o’drama inflated by the lapdog mainstream media into something that spells Certain Doom for Romney/Ryan, and Glorious Victory for the Dear Leader. A sooper secrit recording of Romney talking to fundraisers and being bluntly honest that a certain percentage of potential voters probably wouldn’t vote for him and upset their entitlement applecart … oooh! Gaffe of the week, according to all the talking and editorial heads. That a good number of the conservative-libertarian blogger types taking note of all this would not have disagreed with this insight – although the exact percentage might be open for discussion – appears to be something that the usual media lapdogs have chosen to ignore. Also – that the tape was edited, and Jimmy Carter’s hapless grandson chose to do his bit for the Dems … jeese, doesn’t he have a real job to go to? Apparently many of these Millennial’s don’t. The Daughter Unit, better known as Blondie does – having several different jobs to go to, none of which offer health care benefits. Not a shock, considering that some of them are part-time, and for the rest, she is an independent contractor – and is qualified to go to the VA.

OK – back to election matters – wish I may, wish I might – know why Mittens Romney is the party of the clueless, disconnected rich, Thurston Howell-type … whereas, a candidate who has a fund-raising event at a venue owned by a fabulously wealthy rap music* entrepreneur and his performer wife featuring a tower made of $800 bottles of champagne and charging $40,000 a plate for the privilege is a defender of the downtrodden middle- and working-class. This is probably one of those mysteries, like that of Hollywood blockbusters which never turn a profit to pay off the hapless actors and writers who signed contracts for a percentage of the net profits.

But $800 bottles of champagne, all in gold – Talk about ghetto fabulous. I’ll shudder over the gross vulgarity of that and move on, while noting that if the stuff tastes any better than Crystal, I’ll be mildly surprised. And Blondie has sampled Crystal – through the offices of a date with a surfer dude she met in Ocean Beach, once upon a time. She tells me it didn’t taste any better than the $6 supermarket champagne that we buy for celebrating the New Year.

It does look as if the O-Man did, in his rounds of entertainment and talk shows, actually stumble into some real reporters, prepared to ask hard questions instead of the usually softly thrown Nerf ball. Just a hint, big guy – the local Hispanic community does care very much about what has been happening south of the US border for quite a while. Fast and Furious has managed to kill hundreds of Mexican citizens, many of them innocent bystanders to the drug gang wars. Meanwhile, the rest of us look at the Middle East going up in flames, and wonder if a brand-new Obama campaign motto and a logo featuring a re-imagining of the US flag with stripes bearing a curious resemblance to the dragging finger-marks made in blood on the doorway of the US consulate in Benghazi was all that good an idea. Your mileage may vary, however.

Let’s see … is Twitter a means for hapless celebrities to reveal themselves once and for all as utter morons and/or bigots? I guess so; the evidence is compiled at Twitchy. Alas, it looks like Bette Midler joins my steadily lengthening list of stars and personalities who have so pissed me off that I will never pay money for anything they are in. Bette, Bette, Bette … we do not, in fact, have a blasphemy law in this country. Citizens may not be arrested for saying things that embarrass the government or an established religion … and if they were, then Andres Serrano and the producer of The Book of Mormon would be in big, big trouble.

And that was my week – yours?

(* insert viciously skeptica quote marks around that word)

A Song, Startlingly Relevant

15. September 2012 · Comments Off on A Song, Startlingly Relevant · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, War

The Sixties never die … and oh, how I wish they would. But here they are, once again.

On the Defense of Free Speech

13. September 2012 · Comments Off on On the Defense of Free Speech · Categories: Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant

OK, so call me retrograde, old fashioned, a bigot or the ever-popular ‘raaaaacist’ but I actually believe in free speech and free thought; for everybody, not just the ones that I agree with.
There is the caveat to this, of course. If you depend upon the larger public finding your persona, your manufactured or intellectual output appealing enough to purchase it … well, there might be potential customers disenchanted and disinclined to do so, should they find your exercise of free speech insulting or offensive. They are perfectly free to refrain from partaking in your product or purchasing it … it is still, so I have been assured, still mostly a free country. Buy Chick-fil-A, or not. Listen to the Dixie Chicks … or not. Read the New York Times … or not. Watch Game of Thrones… on not, depending on how much you feel strongly about personal opinions. The right to speak is, has been, and ought to still be paramount.

Concurrent with that is the understanding that others disagree, or even be offended … but they do not have any right to silence the offending speech. Not with threats of violence, or the law, or even a faux-appeal to manners or to the perversion known as political correctness. The deity knoweth that Christians, Jews, Mormons, Baptists and all have taken their various lumps from comedians, artists and movie-makers in the last decades, or more. Why should the ever-offended elements of the Religion of Peace get a pass? Oh, yeah – because they go rabid, and blow up stuff and cut people’s heads off, and burn embassies every time someone looks at them cross-eyed. Look, this just won’t do, and it’s a serious problem, but it doesn’t look like going softly-softly is getting us anyway. If free speech can be abrogated by threats … well, then, it isn’t free speech any longer.

I find it bloody appalling that certain pundits, politicians and high military officers have had the bare-faced gall to suggest that in order to placate Middle Eastern mobs that criticism and mockery of Islam by free citizens of an independent and democratic republic should be off the table entirely … and in fact should be prosecuted legally. Again, are we, or are we not a free people? Do we surrender one of our founding principles that easily? Some years ago, in considering the Affair of the Danish Mo-toons O’Doom, and the alacrity which which our advocates of a free press declined to publish a set of relatively inoffensive cartoons, I wrote this:

There is an old saying, to the effect that the most binding chains are the ones we put on ourselves. And the most insidious and effective censorship is that kind that we also put on ourselves, the censorship that strangles the question before it can even be asked … thoughtful people, earnestly wishing to be polite, tolerant and sensitive of others, began moving down that path that eventually ends— if we are not aware— with our wrists humbly held up for the manacles of imposed censorship to be firmly snapped on. A drift that began with good manners ends with limits imposed by maladroit legislation or a baying mob, maybe even both, and all the important issues of the day, which ought to be discussed— vociferously, noisily and with all the thrown crockery at our disposal— are removed from the arena where they ought to be, to fester and simmer away in odd corners. What has been more insupportable in recent years, is that our courtesy in this respect is not even reciprocated: the vilest sort of caricatures and insult imaginable regarding Westerners, Christians, Jews, Americans and others too varied to mention have free and frequent circulation in Muslim and Arab-oriented and funded media.

That most of our print media outlets punted on the question of publishing the Mohammed cartoons told me all I really needed to know about how deeply they really felt about their much-vaunted principle of ‘freedom of the press’. Now, our government and media are telling us how really, really deeply they are attached to ‘freedom of speech.’

Look well, oh wolves!

(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)

See Here, Mohammad

12. September 2012 · Comments Off on See Here, Mohammad · Categories: Domestic, Fun With Islam, Good God, GWOT, Politics, Rant, World · Tags: , ,

It appears that once again, Sgt. Mom has to bring out the Mallet of Loving Correction that she has shamelessly copied from John Scalzi, and explain the whole concept of ‘freedom of thought’ and it’s fraternal twin, ‘freedom of expression’ to the inhabitants of those (mostly but not always) quarters of the world usually known as ‘Islamic-run hellholes.’
See here, we in the western world are known for a good many things – some of them good, some of them bad – but one of them is a sense of logic, and another is the freedom to speak our thoughts, suppositions and criticisms on any matter. Openly, freely, and through any medium available to us … without fear of prosecution by the forces of law and order. Unless, of course, we are inciting violence … umm, which to put it plainly, you guys seems to have a problem with. Actually, some of our own very dear Established and Housebroken Lapdog Media have a problem with that too, but that is an issue for another day.

And the range of topics which we may freely discuss and criticize includes practically anything, and everything; the current television season of the Alphabet Networks, the fiscal policies of our current administration, the horrible dress sense of the Kardashians, and the messy love lives of celebutards and neighbors … and religion does not get a pass. Scientology doesn’t get a pass, Catholics and Evangelical Christians don’t get a pass, Mormons don’t get a pass, and Islam especially doesn’t get a pass, much as you appear to wish otherwise. Yes, I know that the lickspittle media, our equally lickspittle State department, and Administrations past and present all made polite noises about the so-called Religion of Peace, and that Ibrahim Cooper and his CAIR-bots go off on a royal toot, and that Saudi Arabia have bought themselves into various academic establishments and existing mosques at the drop of a Danish Mo-toon … but Islam as currently practiced in such charming locales as Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon, Thailand, Indonesia, Detroit and certain cities in Britain and France is not in the least attractive to those of us in the Western tradition.

I don’t care how many museum exhibits, or how many TV documentaries about the marvelousness of the Golden Age of Islam get thrown at us like so much expensive confetti. The misogyny, the brutal practice of sharia, the Jew-hatred, the ignorance, the backwardness, the prosecution of other faiths, all speak louder than the occasional public relations offensive. … So we have critical things to day about it. Especially after seeing the stacks of dead bodies left in the wake of militant Islam. A lot of us can’t help noticing, and wondering – if Islam is so damn peaceful, how come all the dead bodies? For the sake of good manners, most of us refrain from saying so bluntly to those of our acquaintance who we know are Muslim … but what does our good manners get us?

You see, my dear little Libyan and Egyptian chickadees; we are going to discuss this, and we are going to be critical – on line and in home-made movies, in lectures and in books. Have tantrums all you like. Go so far as murdering ambassadors, blowing up tourists, inciting riots and inciting the murder of artists, writers, bloggers, Christian activists for exercising our rights of free speech – even speech offensive to you – and at some point in the near future, we might not be quite so polite. Those media, academic and political figures who have been the worst toadies … they might very well stop being polite also. Not holding my breath on that one, though.

Something on the internet is disrespectful to Islam? Have a cup of coffee, Mohammed, and get over it.

Eleven after Eleven

11. September 2012 · Comments Off on Eleven after Eleven · Categories: GWOT, History · Tags:

The anniversary of 9/11 crept up on little cat-feet this year. Not to say that I have forgotten about it entirely – but it is receding into the past, faster and faster. It is taking it’s place in history with other tumultuous and tragic events. So many anniversaries – of the start of WWII, and of WWI as well, of Gettysburg, the sinking of the Titanic, the destruction of Galveston by a hurricane, and the Nueces Massacre. Children who were babies and toddlers on the day that the towers fell in a vast gush of smoke and debris are now in middle school, on the cusp of being teenagers.

That world before is and increasingly a thing of the past, as far away in time for them as the high summertime of Edwardian England is to me. For those who lost parents, friends, coworkers and neighbors, the memory will linger much longer, until the end of their own lives. For those of us who were merely alive on that day, and spent it glued to the television or the radio, cold with horror and dread, feeling all the certainties of our world splinter invisibly, the horror will fade – has probably already begun to fade. In another decade, perhaps two or three or more, September 11th will be just another fall day, and only enthusiasts for historical trivia will remember the significance unprompted.

But time has not yet come. Today, we remember again.

Mika and Boo Boo

08. September 2012 · Comments Off on Mika and Boo Boo · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Rant · Tags: , , ,

So, Mika Brzezinski thinks that a train-wreck of a reality show that I have never, ever seen, “sums up everything I have to say about America.”

OK, then.

A smug television news personality like Mika Brezezinski sums up just about everything I have to say about smug, judgemental, fundamentally isolated television news personalities … especially those who got their jobs on the basis of nepotism.

So I guess we are even. You don’t even want to know how much I despise Nancy Grace and Anderson Cooper.

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