Give Me Land, Lots of Land…

23. August 2013 · Comments Off on Give Me Land, Lots of Land… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Home Front

… And the starry sky above, don’t fence me in. So goes the old pop song – but I’m not asking for lots o’land, just some small bits of it for which I will pay. Not too much will I pay, though – since I am not one of the economic or political aristocracy, for whom corners are cut and favors rendered. But I do have a point and I am getting to it, round-about.

A long time ago, when Sgt. Mom was first-term enlisted airman and only newly a mom, I reenlisted into a high-demand military specialty, for which act of reckless patriotism I was awarded a rather generous reenlistment bonus. (The last one ever awarded, since the broadcaster career field began contracting shortly thereafter, and the Air Force had sufficient broadcast technicians and managers on hand to meet administrative needs.) Of which the federal government skimmed off their usual cut for taxes, since I was not canny enough to hire someone to do my taxes for me who would find a way to minimize the ‘mordita’ abstracted from the bonus. But I was sufficiently foresighted to invest the remainder in a long-term CD (after purchasing my baby daughter the biggest damned stuffed bear that I could find on the local market) and to continue to reinvest the interest. And then I believe I rolled the CD over into another one, when it matured … which left me with a sufficient nest-egg by 1985, when my daughter and I scored a free round-trip home from Spain to our home of record – this being a bonus for signing up for another tour in place at the current assignment. It costs a bomb to pack up and shift a family to another base – so by way of reducing expenses, the Air Force encouraged a military family to do another three years by offering round-trip airfare home for the whole family in between tours.

By that time, my parents’ home and mine of record was the building site on their scenic hilltop outside of Valley Center – so we went back for a very pleasant stay over Christmas of that year, and I began to consider following Mom and Dad’s example. That is, to buy a nice little bit of rural acreage, and eventually retire and build a house on it. So – we popped around while I was there, and looked at some nice bits of rural and semi-rural land – not long enough to find anything that I liked straightaway and could afford, but for Mom and Dad to get an idea of what I would like. Eventually and after my daughter and I had returned to Spain, they located a nice little 3 acre plot of unimproved howling wilderness in the mountains near a scenic little burg called Julian. I approved their choice, sank my nest-egg into it as the down-payment and for the next ten years, every month I sent a check to a nice retired couple in Iowa. I think I actually visited my land precisely once in all that time … but it figured in my long-term plans, when I finally came to my last assignment at 20 years of military service. I’d buy a house through the generous auspices of the GI Bill, work for another twenty years after leaving the military, then sell that house and use the funds for building the retirement house; just as Mom and Dad had done.

And then … that plan was diverted. I began to like Texas very much … and realized that sale of a house in Texas probably wouldn’t bring me enough to build much more than a garden shed in California. And then the current political and economic situation put me off that plan even more. In the meantime, one of my jobs is for a local ranch real estate guy – I bring some order to his office, and put together the brochures for the properties that he is working … and I won’t soon forget the one that I was putting together, when I decided that I would sell my California real estate and take up something in the Hill Country instead. It was for a multi-million-dollar property near Leakey, with a beautiful green natural spring-fed creek lined by huge cypress trees, and I kept looking at the pictures that I was editing into the brochure and thinking, “I want a bit of that.”

So, about three years ago, I consulted with Mom and Dad (who was then still living) and told them that my plans were changed. I wanted a bit of the Hill Country, which I could at least visit on weekends, not something I needed to drive for two days to see. I was partner in a Tiny Bidness which was so locally-focused that taking it anywhere else just wasn’t possible, I was connected through an interesting array of people, I was a member of a local Tea Party, and I had written three novels about the place … heck, I even have a pair of ornate western boots, although the pick-up truck and the hunting rifle are still in the future. The die was cast. I listed the three acres with a local realtor, and waited and waited and waited. Honestly, it’s a hard tract to sell, not being appealing to every taste; on the edge of a national forest, miles from any seriously scenic attractions, no electricity (most of the neighbors depending on generators) and having to dig a well for water. Well, that was why it was affordable to me in the first place. But this week I finally got a bid on it which would allow me to break even on what I paid for it. And I took it. Honestly, what I wanted was something close to what I had put into it in the first place, although I think my ranch real estate friend is convinced that when it comes to land sales I oughtn’t to be allowed out without a responsible keeper. He thinks the terms are eh-to-barely OK. But I have accepted them – the sale goes into escrow today, and in another few weeks, the ranch real estate friend and I and my daughter will take a long drive into the hills to look at what we can see. I am looking forward to that – and having my own little bit of paradise close by.

Still, it’s a bit of a wrench – I loved living in California very much, loved growing up there, hiking and riding in the hills, being able to go from the seashore to the high Sierras in a few hours. I loved the smell of citrus orchards, and the look of the hills, golden-tawny and spotted with live oak trees, dusty blue in the distance, the little pre-war cottages like my grandparent’s house, purple jacaranda blooming at Christmas, and palm trees rustling in the wind. That California still is there of course – but in increasingly smaller patches. Time to move on.

(cross-posted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

One of Those Weeks

20. August 2013 · Comments Off on One of Those Weeks · Categories: Ain't That America?, Home Front, Local

And it’s only Tuesday, too. It’s also Red Hat evening, for the ladies of the small group who are in the habit of sampling the delights of a select restaurant, on the evening of the third Tuesday of the month. Hey, I need a social life, or so says Blondie. It’s about the only darned time I do eat a restaurant meal – and the informal rules of the club are that the person whose’ birthday falls in that month picks the restaurant, and that it be a reasonably priced one. So an evening out in the offing tonight – although it will be a goodish drive over to the venue for this evening.

Otherwise, it’s been kind of a mixed bag; this morning I had an email from the California realtor who is listing the once-wooded and now-possibly-wooded again acreage that I own in Julian, California. I’ve been trying to sell it for almost three years now, and the realtor finally had a good solid offer for it, which he wanted to run by me. Well, the offer is for $5,000 more than I paid for it myself, which I am perfectly happy with. The last serious offer was for $10,000 less – and that I considered a bloody insult. So … when the check is in my hot little hand, then I will go to my ranch realtor friend and sometime employer, and see about a couple of acres in the Hill Country. I did up a brochure for him yesterday, with pictures of a little place in Frio County – not that I want that place, but it is something like it that I would be looking for. Meadows dotted with large oaks, a water well and two tiny and rather ramshackle appearing cottages on it. Something like that, I told him – something small and unpretentious. If it’s structurally sound, repair and renovate the house (or houses) and if not, tear down and build something like it. I wouldn’t be interested in a big house, either – just a small one with room for a little guest cottage or two. So, if the sale goes through – then, one step closer to my dream Hill Country retreat.

The Tiny Publishing Bidness has a couple of clients on board, and a prospective big project in the offing – but my business partner, the original owner of it – has not been entirely well this year. She’s in her eighties, and this week is going in for treatments. Both her mother and her brother died rather painfully from pancreatic cancer, and so of course she is dreading the same fate. Naturally, her mind is not the least focused on work. Still, she is in better shape than one of Blondie’s regular employers, another sweet elderly lady living around the corner. (Blondie cleans house for her once a month, and is on call for errands and to drive her to doctor appointments when the sweet elderly lady’s daughters are not available. She has not been well either; and has been hospitalized for several weeks. Her chronic problem is back again, and she is not strong enough for chemotherapy … or anything, really. She was released from hospital, into home hospice care, and it’s a matter of just waiting, now. Blondie is gutted, of course – she is very fond of both these senior citizens.

The friend that Blondie was going to go into business with – to found a little art enterprise which would eventually support both of them – that one fell by the wayside, although we both rather saw it coming. The friend loves drama, having that traditional artistic temperament. We thought that she could at least focus on business matters sufficiently to be able to avoid inflicting the drama on Blondie … but nope. All is not lost, though – Blondie is going to forge ahead with the origami art, and set up a website of her own, and go through all the hoops and requirements of getting the sales license, and setting up a boutique business of her own.

And I am just fiddling with the final format of The Quivera Trail – the next book, which will roll out at New Braunfels’ Weihnachtsmarkt in November. And as soon as I am done with that, and the other Tiny Publishing Bidness projects, I will start on the next book…
And that’s my week. Yours?

Lese Majeste

15. August 2013 · Comments Off on Lese Majeste · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Politics, That's Entertainment! · Tags: , , ,

That useful concept (thank you, the French language for putting it so succinctly!) is defined “as an offense that violates the dignity of a ruler” or “an attack on any custom, institution, belief, etc., held sacred or revered by numbers of people.”Well, it appears that our very dear current occupant of the White House is certainly held sacred by a substantial percentage of our fellow citizens. How else to account for the perfectly earsplitting howling from Missouri Democrats and the usual suspects over a rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask to yuck it up before the crowd – most of whom seem to be laughing their heads off. All but the desperately sensitive, who breathlessly insisted that it was just like a KKK rally, practically. The rodeo clown’s name apparently is Tuffy Gessling; his supporters, and those who, as a matter of fact, support the rights of a free citizen to mock authority figures of every color and persuasion, have set up a Facebook page. He’s also been invited by a Texas congressman to come and perform the skit at a rodeo in Texas.

Never mind that sitting presidents long before this one have been ridiculed, mocked, hung in effigy and otherwise made fun of by one and all and in all sorts of venues. Such ridicule is usually defended as being a matter of free speech, man! And so it is. Occasionally distasteful, sometimes unfair, and always infuriating to partisans of the one towards whom it is directed. But there it is; either we have the freedom to ridicule the elected head of state of either party, or we have a monarch whose dignity demands that we peasants hold our tongue … lest we be banned from performing or doing our jobs, or else get investigated by the Secret Service and/or the FBI at the request of the Missouri Chapter of the NAACP … who at the very least seem to be a little vague on the whole freedom of speech concept. (Hint, people – freedom of speech does not mean that you are free from being offended.)

I wonder if it’s the preference cascade beginning; quietly and without much fanfare at first, ordinary people are beginning to openly mock Obama. There was a story about a country fair where contestants were throwing darts at a picture of him – the picture taken down and a hasty apology made … but people were participating gleefully, just as they were laughing at the rodeo clown in the Obama mask. I have heard mention in certain right-of-center blog comment threads of a ‘pin-the-tail-on-Obama’ game. How much of this mockery is bubbling under and breaking out at county fairs, over a late summer where the job situation is not getting any better, the cost of groceries is creeping up, and the smoke and fallout from various fires – like Benghazi, Fast-n-Furious, and the IRS-facilitated abuse of political opponents grows thicker? Could it be that parties like … oh, I don’t know, the head of the Missouri NAACP and the leadership cadre of the Democrat Party and the old news media (just to mention a few) are surprised and disconcerted to discover that the current president is not worshipped and glorified universally? Has it come as a complete surprise to those luminaries that people living from slender paycheck to paycheck, or facing cutbacks and layoffs might very well resent the heck out of a president ostentatiously going to Martha’s Vineyard (the playground of the 1%) for his fifth vacation of the year after not doing very much in particular to address those problems?

Later on this month, Mad Magazine’s new issue is lampooning Obama for the various electronic eavesdropping programs. I can hardly wait. Let the ridicule begin, loud and long. It’s the American way. We don’t do lese-majeste here.

(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.com)

What She Said …

15. August 2013 · Comments Off on What She Said … · Categories: Ain't That America?, Politics, Rant

I am Spartacus.

Here.

Celebrities Behaving Badly

14. August 2013 · Comments Off on Celebrities Behaving Badly · Categories: Ain't That America? · Tags: , ,

How very interesting that über-celeb (and possibly former über-celeb) Oprah Winfrey has now tried to walk back a very publically-made accusation of being treated with racial bias in an expensive Swiss handbag shop in Zurich with one of those lame apologies which aren’t really apologies, more of that sniveling, ‘I’m sorry that you were offended,’ statements which are framed so as to throw blame on the offended party merely for being offended. At least, she has skipped over the second part of the pro-forma excuse and non-apology, which is usually some variant of, ‘gosh, don’t you have a sense of humor?’ Both statements of which, I am obliged to confirm, do not remove the sting that a party thus abused takes away from the experience. Or even that that such an apology has been honestly and fully rendered to the aggrieved party.

I have to say, though – that the handbag alleged to be in question is butt-ugly. My own reaction at being told the price of it was $38,000 would have been to walk away, laughing. That Ms Winfrey reportedly didn’t want to buy it at that price is about the only believable statement that I take away from her version of events.
I am not particularly well-versed in the protocols of very-high-end retail establishments in Zurich, Switzerland – but I have had a brief but intense experience in high-end retail in San Antonio, during the year after I retired from the Air Force. One of those places – a fur salon in the Marshall Field store which was closing the San Antonio location – paid a small salary and a commission on sales, which had the effect of concentrating one’s attention on service and attentiveness to the customers who walked through the door.
One of the lessons learned in those venues was that you could size up customers swiftly and often with considerable accuracy, regarding their background, real income and ability to pay for what the place was selling and if they were the ‘right sort’.

The second lesson was that such a judgement was not anything like 100% accurate; being dismissively rude a customer on that basis – yes, failing to be attentive to any customer, even the ones who at first glance looked like they had wandered in from the nearest trailer court (or from under the nearest highway bridge) – was a bad call and liable to rebound disastrously. Anyone in retail for any length of time has stories about the surprise customer and oftentimes many of them. Mine was of the girl who looked about the age of my then-high-school-aged daughter, who wandered into the fur salon on a mid-afternoon weekday, and began asking about the coats. There were no other customers and I was bored out of my mind. To pass the time, I gave the apparent-high-school girl a tour through the racks, the usual lecture about furs and the quality thereof, unlocked a couple of nice coats and let her try on a couple in front of the triple mirror … and then she utterly floored me by selecting the nicest of them and getting out her credit card. She told me that she had just passed the Bar, had a nice job lined up with a prestigious firm – and had promised herself that she would buy herself a nice fur coat to celebrate. Well, color me all over astounded – she didn’t look as if she was old enough to drive alone, let alone go to law school.

And she bought the coat, of her choice and thanked me very graciously. Chalk that sale up to the principle of making an initial assumption and being polite and helpful anyway. The ones who can’t really afford the stuff in the shop will go away, with all the speed they can muster. The others will perhaps purchase something. 2% off a $38,000 price tag would be a nice chunk o’change. Snub a likely customer – even a badly-dressed one – and give that up? Pull the other leg, sweet-cheeks – that one has jingly bells on it.

So, the takeaway for Oprah’s ‘bag-gate’, as it has been dubbed – is that it was most likely – because of the convenience of the timing – an effort to gin up publicity for the movie The Butler, in which she has a part. Sigh. This whole thing is becoming just too transparent. And sad, and pathetic – as well as rather unthinking as to other results on Ms Winfrey’s part; yes, spin a tale of Swiss retail racism, just as your movie is about to open, get a whole-lotta-media coverage for your tale of woe by one of America’s most well-compensated celebrities=mysterious transmission=profit! I really don’t have any particular insight into the workings publicity for this particular movie, but it strikes me that this is really the case – it is pathetic on so many levels. Sure, one of the wealthiest and most well-known American television personalities deliberately accusing a woman working in a high-end shop with an accusation of racism, just to gin up some interest in a movie … which, curiously, touches on racial matters. What a coincidence.

But Oprah’s big problem, and possibly the one she didn’t see coming was the fact that the national race card is about tapped out, along with the several former industrial cities, the job market, and your favorite charitable food pantry. Ms Winfrey’s little buddy from Chicago has been elected to the highest office in the land – twice! Really – and take it from me – in the wake of that event, white people who don’t harbor any particular racial animosity are getting damned tired of being accused of it … especially if the person whipping out the race card gets some material advantage from doing so. Since the director of The Butler also saw fit to stunt-cast Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan, this attempt at promotion may all have been all for naught anyway; conservatives and military veterans will give a miss to it on those grounds alone.

(Crosss-posted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

Filthy Filner, Sarah Palin, and the Withering of Political Feminism

28. July 2013 · Comments Off on Filthy Filner, Sarah Palin, and the Withering of Political Feminism · Categories: Ain't That America?, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Working In A Salt Mine... · Tags: , ,

You know, I am reminded of my own relative naiveté whenever I open a tab on my browser and go to my usual news and political websites these days. I remember when I could innocently assume that the elected representatives of the greatest democratically elected republic on earth could be assumed not to be professional sc*mbags not primarily interested in re-election and being able to soak up enough goodies through their connections to be able to retire as millionaires. I remember when it was confidently expected that they would do the business of administering to the needs of the republic – at least most of the time – with some pretensions at doing what would benefit the public at large, not just themselves, their scummy relations, present and former staff, and their media enablers.

I remembered when feminism meant basically that women should have the same opportunities for education, for employment – and without lowering the standards for either – the same pay for doing the same job, to be considered creditworthy without regard to sex, not be fired from your job on the instant of marrying and/or becoming pregnant, and to have the opportunity to seek election to any political office in the land. Big damn whoops there! Apparently the program of modern feminism means that you can be as ugly to the males in your personal life and those misfortunate enough to attend class or work with you as you please, to have unfettered access to abortion at any stage of the pregnancy, and to demand that your birth control be paid for by others. OK then – and that being considered for any political office while possessing the uterus and tits from your original issue – is also contingent upon being a graduate of an approved university, possessing a non-hickish accent, being the spouse or spawn of one of the accredited political families, and genuflecting before all the right altars of properly progressive thought.

So, when Sarah Palin swam across my ken, upon being honored with an invitation to become the GOP VP nominee, I was delighted. No, really – and so were a great many ladies of certain age of my acquaintance, many of them actively employed or retired from a lifetime of work at it, some of them in defiantly non-traditional specialties, and living arrangements. Intelligent, hard-working, happily and bountifully married, popular in her district and among those she had served, and who had elected her, outdoors-loving, and a partner in hubby’s enterprises, educated in much the same way that I was – community college and upper division at a state school? Hey, what wasn’t to like? A serious woman in serious business, and about to ascend politically as had not been seen since Gerry Ferrero in ’84. Well, as Bertie Wooster would have said in a much more innocent age and place, “Huzzah! Huzzah, and Huzzah again!” A woman in the second highest political place in the land! A woman’s place is in the House … and Senate … and in the VP’s office. Women-power has arrived, baby! Alas, not to be, for it seemed that Sarah Palin was Not The Right Kind, Darling, and the blowback was vicious beyond anything that I had ever seen, save maybe the savaging of LBJ in the late 60’s. The upper-class, establishment-elite, academic, and capital-F feminists were the most vicious of all. So much for sisterhood, ladies; not what I assumed feminism would be – what you have is Mean Girls writ large and nationally. So sad, ladies – it seems that the women’s movement, despite all claims to the contrary by the officially-declaimed mouthpieces summoned up by the established media/entertainment orgs, is only for the benefit of the properly anointed. The rest of us are on our own. We have the support of husbands, churches, communities and friends, I guess. But not the anointed Official Capital-F Feminists.

Which brings me to the thoroughly filthy Honorable Mayor Mr. Filner … good thing that neither my mother, daughter or I ever had the bad chance to be within his ken and reach, else he’d be minus a testicle or two and we’d be up on charges of assault … or whatever they would call it when you suddenly step backwards and grind your sensible 2” heel into his foot, shoot an elbow into his ribs, or a knee into his crotch after a swift pivot, while saying brightly, “Oh, I am so sorry, you startled me!”

So, he is only the most recent and most notorious establishment-blessed letch, although he and the risibly-monikered Anthony Wiener are about neck and neck for the title of Sexist Pig o’ The Day. Ted Kennedy firmly held those sorry laurels for the last couple of decades; most disgusting in personal conduct when it came to the hapless and unfortunate women in his personal orbit, beginning when he swam to the surface at a water-crossing and let a young woman drown in his car. Apparently, according to this representative of Official Capital-F feminism, Dem pigs are OK because they just are, and those horrible GOPers are untouchable (no matter how gallant they are in personal conduct) because in their Official Legislative Conduct, they vote for policies which Harm Teh Womyns! Gosh, it’s as if slogans like ‘The Personal is Political’ have vanished down the memory hole, along with the memory of every yearly briefing that I had to take about sexual harassment. Yes, dear official feminist operatives, I had to take that class, and I remember quite well what we were told. If it’s sauce for the military gander, it must also be sauce for the civilian goose. Otherwise, I am left with the conclusion that working-class women must put up with a certain degree of bad behavior from upper-class and elite male sexist pigs… because it’s duty or something.

Damn, I thought we had moved on from the 19th century Victorian standards of conduct with regard to sex and class. It does look like the Official Political Capital-F Feminists are lining up to urge Filthy Filner to resign, so maybe they did sit down and have a good think about it.

(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)

What Happens When…

24. July 2013 · Comments Off on What Happens When… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, Politics, sarcasm, Stupidity, That's Entertainment! · Tags: ,

… it was a farce the first time around, and then it comes around again? I speak of Anthony Wiener’s wiener, of which the candidate for the mayoralty of the Big Apple is so insensately proud that he continues thrusting it – or the pictorial evidence thereof – into the public sphere, through the medium of Twitter … which I categorically insist is a fiendishly clever means of proving celebrity idiocy beyond all doubt and ensuring life-time employment for their public relations experts. But I digress … and yes, the grade school impulse to make fun of someone with a thoroughly risible name is something one never quite outgrows.

But seriously, Mr. Huma Abedin – how stupid are you? How stupid do you think the voting public is, that you could offend with the sexts and the pics of your unclothed bod, humiliate yourself and your spouse, and for all I know, the rest of your family and your neighbors – and then turn right around and do it again! Usually reckless impulses of this pellucid-pure stupidity involve the phrase “Hold my beer and watch this!” and a Darwin Award nomination, but since this involves a member of the bi-coastal ruling elite, that famous last-words phrase likely didn’t apply.
Sigh. Look, y’all in New York, it’s all on your heads if he is to be your next mayor. On the positive side, maybe tweeting pics of the mayoral junk far and wide will just be seen as an amusing personal foible – and a welcome distraction from fussing about salt consumption and the availability of large soft drinks.

Motor City Circles the Drain

22. July 2013 · Comments Off on Motor City Circles the Drain · Categories: Ain't That America?, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Tea Time, Working In A Salt Mine..., World · Tags: , ,

You know, it’s sad and depressing, going and looking at the pictures of wrecked Detroit; seeing all the rows of once-tidy houses along straight-ruled streets, and most of them are burned-out, boarded up, and covered in graffiti, while grass and small trees come up through the pavement, and the open prairie and woodland slowly creeps back to reclaim it all. These were the homes of the working and middle class, in which they took pride. They raised their children, sent them to the local schools, went to church on Sunday … and now those homes, and churches and schools are crumbling. So are the factories which powered the working class and the small independent businesses that powered the striving and entrepreneurial middle class. Looking at the Detroit Ruin Porn is like looking at stills from some kind of post-apocalyptic movie. Here was the pride of industrial America, who put America on wheels, and Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan on their knees … and within five decades, the cities’ political elite have managed to destroy it all. For short-term and immediate gain, of course; making the city difficult for small businesses and hostile to whites – especially the middle-class, entrepreneurial sorts – came at a cost that is only coming due now. Hell, even the enterprising working-class-to-poor have decamped from Detroit, appearing to leave it all to the low-life segment of the population and the life-time bureaucrats. Welcome to the hell you made, folks. Nearly half the adult population are functional illiterates, which is a whole ‘nother category of special all on it’s own.

Look, as a person of pallor, an entrepreneur and a tax-payer – I don’t really mind paying taxes. Well, not very much, as long as I am getting some value from that portion of my income which I must turn over to the municipality, the state and the federal government. I’d like to know – and know first-hand, and without a doubt that the streets are being paved and maintained, and patrolled by law-enforcement. I’d like to be assured that the courts administer justice fairly and impartially, that the municipal authorities refrain from being anal-retentive and over-controlling morons, enchanted with the power of their own authority, and that I could walk three or four blocks through my own neighborhood on a regular basis in perfect safety and security. I’d like also to be assured that my property and others in the vicinity would be free from the threat of vandalism and arson. I’d like to be assured that the high school up the street is graduating eighteen-year-olds with a firm grasp on literacy, numeracy, and the obligations of being a responsible citizen, although I accept that I probably may not be able to count on that last with a hundred-per-cent assurance. The presence of art galleries, convention centers, parks and museums are all a negotiable benefit – nice to have in addition to the above. Doubly nice – in addition to all of the above – is not to be screamed at by the city administration and called a racist every day and twice on Sunday. It would also be nice also to not be called a racist for moving the hell out of the municipality which had become hostile to those small listed ambitions of mine.

In all of these modest ambitions, the city of Detroit has failed, utterly, repeatedly and over decades. So, let them reap the whirlwind. Don’t even think you can appeal to me with pleas of ‘think of the children!’ or any other media-ready cliché. Don’t care. Can’t be made to care. You broke, you own – my city and state has problems of it’s own (although since I live in Texas, those challenges are relatively minor in comparison), and my tax dollars are already dedicated. Although I hate to seem so callous, because I used to be a nice and rather liberal, charitable and tolerant person – in this current economy, I got over it.

Goodbye, Detroit. Nice to have had you with us – sad to see ya go. Revert to prairie and farmland, that’s my most helpful suggestion. Forget that you were ever the glory of the industrial upper mid-west.

2-Minute Hate

17. July 2013 · Comments Off on 2-Minute Hate · Categories: Ain't That America?, Good God, Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant · Tags: ,

I guess that I must still be an astonishingly naïve person – for although I fully expected riots in inner cities across the US in the wake of the jury in the Zimmerman trial coming to the decision that they did – I did not expect the veritable tsunami of calculated hatred and willful ignorance washing over the mainstream media, four days later. I was astonished that the six jurors stuck to their guns, so to speak, and delivered what I consider a just verdict, although that might just be my own inner white bigotry speaking. Given what was gone over in painstaking detail in the courtroom, I can’t see that they could have come to anything else, but I guess that logic and obedience to the letter of the law are all constructs of racial superiority, and it’s all the fault of those jurors that they couldn’t bring themselves to do the will of the mob.

That mob, of course – and I include a number of black celebutards and so-called intellectual lights among them – believe with the faith of holy writ everything which was first put about in the national media regarding the case. And everything which was first put about with regard to George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and their fatal encounter on a rainy Florida evening – turned out to be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong – so wrong that it can’t possibly be anything but a deliberate attempt to mislead on a grand scale. The professional black activists pushing the matter as they have are promoting what a propagandist like Josef Goebbels called ‘the big lie’ – no matter how outrageous the falsehood is – just repeat it often enough and from the mouths of as many as possible – figures of authority especially – and eventually the lie is accepted as the truth.

It has been educational to see ‘the big lie’ in action this last year. It is also interesting and educational to see a high-tech lynch mob gearing up, and to realize that the color of the faces involved don’t seem to make it any more or less ugly and bigoted.

Department of InJustice

13. July 2013 · Comments Off on Department of InJustice · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Media Matters Not, Rant, Tea Time · Tags: , , ,

I don’t suppose it’s news to anyone on the independent or libertarian/conservative side of the blogosphere that the actions of certain offices of Eric Holder’s Department of Justice with regard to the Martin/Zimmerman trial were, to the very least, questionable. That office deliberately injected their activists into a local investigation with what would appear to be a desire to pour ever more gasoline on what would have been barely a squib of an incident otherwise. They appear to have connived with malice aforethought and the equally malicious assistance of mainstream news outlets to insist on prosecuting a case which the local constabulary had already investigated and concluded was pretty open and shut. A budding seventeen-year-old semi-delinquent with delusions of career thuggishness on a mama-directed visit to his biological father in a semi-enclosed townhouse development, who once there had a mad impulse on a rainy evening to walk to the nearest convenience store … and on his return apparently attracts the attention of a resident Neighborhood Watch volunteer, who has the temerity to notice a young teenage-something who he doesn’t recognize, seeming to prowl around the development in a suspicious manner. The concerned volunteer calls the police on his mobile and follows after the apparent interloper for a short distance. Upon being told that he doesn’t have to follow any farther and assured that the forces of professional law and order are on their way, the volunteer returns to his vehicle … where he is accosted and knocked to the ground by the innocent young scamp who sits on his chest and appears to be then bent on smashing the volunteer’s head repeatedly against the sidewalk … oh, heck, I shouldn’t need to repeat this.

It’s all out at the trial, for which I give mad props to Legal Insurrection. I suppose that the part of this saga that I am most indignant about is that everything about this case that was first put out by the national media was wrong, and in some details and elements, certain national media outlets lied outright. They edited and fudged the material. They lied, in service to a constructed narrative. That’s the part that takes my breath away. They lied. Coldly, openly, and with the appearance of – if not malice aforethought – then with the mission of upholding the carefully constricted narrative of a cute middle-school teenager on an innocent errant, coldly stalked and gunned down on the front porch of his father’s townhouse by a raging white racist. Again – none of what we were told, by this narrative was true, although the usual suspects – the low-information-voters and the fellow-travelers who feed them their daily requirement of politically-correct crap still believe it. Which is a depressing prospect, actually; against all evidence to the contrary, I had reason to expect better from the public at large.

When did that egregious and notorious race-monger, Al Sharpton, become the epitome and standard-bearer of honesty and truth in matters of race? And he is just one of the guilty parties, in media, entertainment and in so-called intellectual circles perpetuating this narrative. I still cannot imagine why he was given a contract and a position in the higher reaches of the establishment news media. That he was so honored is likely indicative of how we are being steered down the rat-hole by our current political elites, towards a third-world and faction-ridden society – where the colors (and perhaps religion) of the accused and victim matter more than what actually happened and can be proved in a court of law.

Look, I live in a socially and racially mixed neighborhood myself; and most of the other residents take a proud interest in our homes, our gardens and the general welfare of our neighbors. We do notice things, people, events like yard-sales or robberies – last year there was even a double murder (by a disgruntled former employee of a resident), which freaked out everyone, as the murder ran off on foot through the neighborhood, to be apprehended a short time later in the parking lot of the nearby HEB grocery store. We have a volunteer patrol – and while I doubt that they actually patrol while armed, it’s a safe bet that the number of concealed carry permit holders here is above average. I do believe that we in Texas generally can and will resist. But the knowledge that being concerned and taking action with regard to the welfare of your neighborhood might make you the focus of political show-trial with a pre-ordained verdict – that has got to have a chilling effect on the individual, at least as much as the IRS vendetta against Tea Party associations did for organizations.

Walk Like an Egyptian

04. July 2013 · Comments Off on Walk Like an Egyptian · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General Nonsense, GWOT, Politics, sarcasm, War

Well, if that wasn’t one for the record books – a selection of Egyptian relative moderates taking back their country from a Muslim Brotherhood hard-liner through a protest-coup-counterrevolutionary thingy. Not quite certain how stable the reactionary moderate coalition actually is – or even if they are very moderate at all, or only in comparison to the Muslim Brotherhood gang o’thugs, but still – interesting. It did seem as of Morsi and his Brotherhood, even though freely elected in the wake of General Mubarak’s forced departure – were about to run Egypt straight off a cliff at speed, and perhaps this new coalition can only slow down the acceleration a little. As little as I know, I am fairly certain that the current American administration knows even less; late will the lights be burning tonight at Foggy Bottom, as the denizens of the State Department try and come up with some kind of reason, rationale and talking points. Of course, as a former Secretary of State remarked, “At this point in time, what difference does it make anyway?”

So, the good middle-of-the road and middle-class citizens of Egypt had a good bracing dose of what Islamic rule would mean and so spat it out of their mouths. The women, the Copts, the intellectuals, the middle class, the military, those who made their living through tourism, and I-don’t-know-how-many others, all rebelled at being ridden over rough-shod by increasingly stricter Islamists, just as the younger and more defiant Iranians have, although the Iranians are still simmering, while the Egyptians seem to have – at least for now – put their Islamic fundamentalists back into the bottle and jam in the cork tight. But Egypt, which once was the breadbasket for the Roman Empire – is reduced to importing food. The profitable tourist trade is wrecked beyond redemption, for who will want to come and look at the Pyramids, the temples of Luxor, and the museums full of antiquities, save the daring-to-the-point-of-suicidal Western backpacker types, who commonly don’t want to spend much money on expensive hotels, guides, transport and souvenirs.

And where are we – as Americans in all of this? Alas, nowhere – and thanks to our very dear President Kardashian, who has effortlessly managed to alienate and piss-off just about every party in Egypt, save Morsi and the Brotherhood who probably despised him anyway. It’s an interesting kind of gift, being able to alienate allies, while sucking up unsuccessfully to enemies. I’d deeply enjoy the taste of two scoops of schadenfreude, with a bit of chocolate syrup, whipped cream and a sprinkling of toasted almonds … but alas, we ordinary Americans will probably be cleaning up the damage from the Obama administration for decades after the principal architect of this Mid-east disaster has retired to a mansion in Hawaii and a series of well-paid speaking engagements.

The purely ironical part is that President Kardashian was so very, very popular with the usual Euro-lefty crowds, and in the Middle East – and now the bloom is so very much off the rose. I can hardly wait for the snippy Guardian-editorialists and readers, and all of their fellow-travelers to begin to whine about why did we stupid Yanks elect him to office in the first place.

(And for whatever NSA peon tasked with monitoring this blog, or perhaps me personally; we’re having turkey-burgers for supper, and I can make some extras. Let me know if you want a plate. Come by at 6ish or so – you know the address.)

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

04. July 2013 · Comments Off on IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. · Categories: Ain't That America?

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Rebooting the Lone Ranger

01. July 2013 · Comments Off on Rebooting the Lone Ranger · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Media Matters Not, Old West · Tags: , , ,

Well, the early critical reviews are out and the knives are in: the latest movie remake of The Lone Ranger looks to be tanking like the Titanic,(the original ship, not James Cameron’s movie fantasy) although the some of the reviews posted at Rotten Tomatoes are favorable, most of them are entertainingly vicious. Jerry Bruckheimer again goes over the top from the high-dive with a half-gainer and a jackknife on the way down, all with the noisy special effects, Johnny Depp was promised that he could wear bizarre hair and a lot of makeup and it appears as if the ostensible lead character is just there…

There have been so many iterations of The Lone Ranger, on radio, television and in the movies, and each one added its conventions, characterization and images that now it has become a creaking tottering edifice built of clichés. No more growth is possible, just a recitation of the same old verities. I believe that we can do better by the old Wild West, and so I propose a very, very radical solution; to reboot the Lone Ranger by amputating it from the post Civil War never-never-land of mid-20th century imagining and transplanting it squarely back in pre-Civil War Texas, with forays perhaps into Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana, and to New Mexico – perhaps even as far as California. John Reid would be the sole survivor of a ranger unit ambushed and wiped out by – oh, whoever would be the villainous gang of the time; a scalp-hunting gang, villainous Comancheros, cattle and horse thieves from the Nueces Strip. Really, any sufficiently well-organized gang of baddies from the period would serve. He could even be a survivor of the Mier Expedition, escaped from Mexican custody and found near-death in the wilderness by Tonto … who could be a Lipan Apache or Tonkawa scout.

And thereafter, the two would roam the southwest as it was at that particular time, with attention to actual historical figures and facts. They could do all the fighting of evil-doers and injustice that the plot would require; a pair of fearless and adventurous friends. (Ix-nay on any suggestion of gayness, mostly because I’m damned tired of that particular character development.) Keep the horse named Silver, though. But lose the silver bullets, the white hat and the mask. Sorry – but the first is impractical, given the weapons of the time, second given the custom of the time … and in the days before wide circulation of photographs, you could be a total stranger once you were five miles away from where you lived and worked. One didn’t need a mask – in fact, in the real Wild West that would have made the lone Ranger even more noticeable. “Hey, who was that masked man? Did you ever see the like? Oh, I heard tell of him …” Whereas, sans mask: “Hey, who was that guy? Oh, just another saddle tramp, passing through; don’t pay him no mind…”Keep the sense of honor, though – the chivalry, the sharp-shooting and the unwillingness to kill, unless there was no other way. I know this seems radical – and loosing the mask might be seen as heretical – but the situation calls for radical steps. Look, this latest version had Tonto with a crow squatting on his head, so I believe we have reached the point where something must be done to resuscitate our popular cultural heroes.

(Crossposted at Chicagoboyz.net at at www.celiahayes.com)

Memo: On Considering Independent Publishing

29. June 2013 · Comments Off on Memo: On Considering Independent Publishing · Categories: Ain't That America?, Health and Wellness, Media Matters Not, Rant · Tags: ,

From: Sgt Mom
To: Ms Paula Deen
Re: Your Latest Cookbook

1. I would like to make it clear that I have never actually been one of your fans, or indeed of traditional southern cooking, outside of BBQ and pecan pie. Frankly, the general run of traditional southern food is just too fattening, too sweet and too light on fresh vegetables for my taste. I much prefer Italian food, and if I am a fan of any TV celebrity cooks it would be a toss-up between Ina Garton and Ree Drummond. As a Tea Party libertarian type, I also find your enthusiasm for the current administration off-putting. And the down-home southern maw-maw shtick strikes me as overdone, and eventually grating – but since it has likely brought you more income in a week than I have ever made in a year – eh. But it was a bit … ill-considered, pushing all those rich recipes out into the public, and then belatedly outing yourself as a diabetic. This might account for much of the current animus; hypocrisy, rather than racial hatred. Alas, your apology tour has not made your situation any better – in fact, it appears to have made it all much, much worse.

2. This animus, with the subsequent economic shunning on the part of the Food Network, those corporations who had previously signed deals with you, and most especially your publisher, who apparently took it amiss that your fans who put your next cookbook at #1 on Amazon are guilty of double-plus-un-good-thinking, all strikes me as being exceedingly unfair … random, even. Alec Baldwin goes all homophobic on a reporter for a tabloidish British newspaper this week, and allowances are made for him, and yet you are the one essentially burnt at the stake for injudicious use of a racial epithet years ago.

3. So – all that being said, Ms Deen, if I may offer you some advice in the wake of Random House dropping your next cookbook as if it were suddenly plutonium – go indy. Claw the publishing rights back from them, make a separate arrangement with the co-author, and hie the over to Lightning Source International, and establish yourself as your own publisher. Should the materiel still need editing, formatting (interior design) photographs and cover design – go out and hire freelance talent to accomplish that. Then upload the files to LSI, set your retail price, and arrange to have the book distributed by Ingram and in their catalog, where it will appear on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and be available for brick and mortar stores … and there you go. You probably won’t need to hire a publicist – and that’s the good side of all this. A lot of people still want your book.

Sincerely, and with my best wishes, although I probably will never actually cook from it – I remain, Sgt. Mom

Considerations on the N-word

26. June 2013 · Comments Off on Considerations on the N-word · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine...

The injudicious use of which has led to Paula Deen being booted from the Food Network, never mind that she was speaking under oath, and is a lady of a certain age and of a background where the n-word was … well, I honestly can’t say how current was the use of that word back in Paula Deen’s early days. It’s certainly scattered generously all over 19th century literary works like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn like chocolate sprinkles on a frosted Krispy Kreme donut, and piled on by the handful in the 20th century oeuvre of rap artists and edgy comedians of color.

It’s a word that I don’t use, myself. The very first time I brought it home – in the first grade, I think, having heard it on the playground, Mom landed on me like a ton of bricks. I don’t think I actually got my mouth washed out with soap – Mom wasn’t that old-school – but the lesson came through loud and clear. The n-word was not to be used, ever. The fact that I had gotten to the first grade, or thereabouts and had never heard it is likely a strong indication of how generally it was frowned upon in middle-class and mid-century So-Cal suburbs anyway. Matter of fact, I can’t even bring myself to use it in writing my own books, where it would certainly be appropriate and historically correct. I just can’t – I have to smooth it out and write it as it might very well have sounded phonetically. No, the use of racial epithets was frowned upon, as being low-class, tacky, and rude at home – and in the military it was even more strictly verboten. So there you are – very likely I could swear honestly and truthfully to never having used the n-word, ever.

I’ve never been particularly a fan of her show or her cooking; too much fried and way, way too rich for my taste, but I might be willing to extend some indulgence to Paula Deen, being of certain age myself. My daughter, though, is most definitely not inclined to indulgence, when it comes to the n-word, although I have repeatedly pointed out that the only people who seem to be able to wield it with impunity are the aforementioned rap artists and edgy comedians of non-pallor.

To judge from some of their output, if they couldn’t use it, there would go about a fifth of their vocabulary – but I digress. I only wish to point out the basic hypocrisy. If it is an ugly, demeaning and degrading term, then it ought to be across the board, without exception. One is reminded of how a certain kind of feminist wishes to reclaim the word ‘slut’ and proudly throws it about at slutwalks and such-like events, but comes totally unglued when the term is applied to say – Sandra Fluke, proud professional feminist.

So – circling back around to the original thought – Paula Deen dropped from the Food Channel for … essentially being honest, old-fashioned and perhaps consciously or unconsciously reflecting values of a different era and at somewhat at variance with the expected TV norms, and having the bad luck to be drawn into a legal imbroglio with a perhaps-vengeful former employee. One wonders … but I honestly don’t know enough about the case, or the people involved to venture any sort of opinion but this one; what if? (Firmly donning my tinfoil hat here…) What if the Food Network has established a preference for the young, urban, urbane and smoothly trendy metrosexual male chefs/restaurateurs or decorative young to young-ish and non-threatening of the female variety, and that would account for the rush to ditch Paula Deen, simply for the crime of being not-young, urban, urbane and smoothly trendy, etc.

If such is the case, I hope that Ree Drummond (rural, devout Christian, non-minority and home-schooling) has no skeletons in her metaphorical closet. Otherwise, she might very well be next on the chopping-block.

All academic to me, though – now that we have ditched cable and gone to a Roku box and a couple of paid subscriptions – but still food for thought, eh?

(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)

The Elephant in the Room Manifesto

23. June 2013 · Comments Off on The Elephant in the Room Manifesto · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, My Head Hurts · Tags: ,

Or, An Open Message to one Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, a body (hah!) most particularly noted for inability to actually educate those inner-city students to the point where they might be mistaken by the charitable and understanding observer for being literate, responsible and well-spoken citizens of a republic …

Where to start? Oh, better get the sophomoric taunts out of the way, first. Dear lady, asking when someone is going to address the elephant in the room is – considering the evidence of your person – extremely risible. Obviously, you have not missed too many meals in the last couple of decades. I myself am not the glass of fashion or in perfect Pippa Middleton shape of late, but I daresay that if I arrayed myself in tasteful garments of black and white in hue, I would not be mistaken for Orky the Killer Whale by the casual observer. And I can still hike three or four miles easily at a steady walking pace, whereas I doubt the same can be said of your considerable person. Or as a crueler comment posted at the inestimable Rantburg had it – “Did she rescind the bounty on Han Solo, yet?”

As for blaming the crisis in Chicago schools on rich white people thinking they have anything to do with the education of black and Latino children … I’m just not seeing the connection there, unless it’s something to do with the fact that it’s rich white people, or at least middle-class white people paying for that education through their tax dollars. Karen, sweetie, you never heard the axiom, “They who pays the piper calls the tune?” Apparently not. OK, some home truths, here; the state of public education in those large cities historically controlled by a certain kind of big-city political machine is indeed disgraceful, but certainly not for lack of money poured into them. Parents who do not value the advantage of a good education, or are too strapped trying to keep above-water economically to ride herd on their kids, appallingly low academic standards, unqualified and incompetent teachers, a lack of actual physical security for students, coupled with the exodus of practically everyone who wants a good education for their kids and is tired of beating their head against the system all contribute to the rancid compote that is public education in too many machine-controlled big cities. And as a matter of fact, Ms. Lewis, teacher unions themselves contribute a fair amount of dysfunction to the public school junction, so at the very least, I suggest looking into the mirror.

Finally, blaming rich white people, poor white people, or white people of any socioeconomic strata for those woes of the black community which are largely self-inflicted is getting to be pretty tired. Whipping the race card through the dispenser for another round of sweet creamy white guilt to slather over your shortcomings … well, I never felt much racial guilt anyway, as hard as the diversity drones tried to make me. I suspect a lot of other persons of similar pallor are feeling the same exhaustion. Which may be why you are trying so hard to squeeze out just a little bit more, before Chicago starts sinking like the Titanic. Which major American city will hit bottom first, I wonder? Gary, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan … or Chicago, Illinois.

The Cover of the Next Book

21. June 2013 · Comments Off on The Cover of the Next Book · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Literary Good Stuff

QuiveraTrai; Cover 1My clever little brother the graphic artist has come up with the cover design for The Quivera Trail – it’s based on two of my own photos, merged together.
The book will be out in November – I’ll be taking pre-orders for it in late October. More at by book blog/website, here.

Shell-Shocked by Scandals

16. June 2013 · Comments Off on Shell-Shocked by Scandals · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant · Tags: , , ,

That’s actually what it feels like – all these revelations about the NSA possibly-maybe-likely snooping wholesale through personal communications for exactly how long – and how long does this go back? As far as an excuse note from my mother getting me out of 8th grade gym class? You know, I wouldn’t really mind whatever they were doing, if it had actually prevented something like the Beantown Blaster Brothers, Joxer and Speed-bump, from setting off bombs at the Boston Marathon, or if the Fort Hood shooter had been bounced out of military service before he even pinned on his bars. Actually catching Islamic fundamentalists with terroristic plans seems to have been just too hard; it’s much easier, spying on law abiding citizens, just like it’s too much trouble for incompetent police departments to put a crimp in the activities of the gang-bangers, so they substitute harassing the law-abiding instead. Lets not get into the over-militarization of our local police forces, or the mass-molestation of anyone wanting to travel by air these days.

Then there is the IRS, that organ of the FedGov which everyone loves to hate, weaponized to harass, hinder and hamper conservative-oriented organizations, while making the way smooth for liberal ones … that will not end well, seeing as it was authorized and encouraged from everywhere but a few low-level rogue agents in Cincinnati. And spilling private information on donors to political opponents … that will not end well, either. Nor will the EPA carelessly releasing private information on farmers and ranchers to environmental groups – we all know how grounded, considerate and civil some of the more radical enviros have been, when it comes to protesting. Then there is the possibility that future elections will be massively fraudulent, and that the last one might very well have been, that our political class seems to be only concerned with what they can grab in the way of short-term gain, that certain blue-state cities such as Detroit are circling the drain, that our establishment press is so deep in the tank for Obama – still! – that they need a deep-sea diver’s suit and an air hose. The military is being steadily demoralized – even as our Kardashian president seems to think intervening in Syria is a wonderful idea. Oh, and there still hasn’t been a reasonable explanation released by the Obama gang as to what the hell happened in Benghazi … or why so many upper-tier and influential senior officers so suddenly retired.

Speaking of circling the drain, our establishments of higher education teach less and cost more for the privilege, and those of the lower persuasion seem to be obsessed with kids playing with guns and drugging rambunctious boys into placidity. I have told my daughter that any children she has will be home-schooled, by me, if necessary. She will probably have to work several part-time jobs as an independent contractor to support them anyway, as the imposition of Obama care will do a number on those small business which provide the larger portion of those jobs which we still have.

On the up-side, it has rained here rather generously for June, and I bagged the cable TV package in favor of a Roku box, which saves me a good bit of money a month, and will allow me to pay of my very last creditor even sooner. So there is that. And it does seem like the global warming delusion has been pretty much thrown over by all but the dumb and die-hard, so there is room for hope.

Something Tells Me…

15. June 2013 · Comments Off on Something Tells Me… · Categories: Ain't That America? · Tags: , ,

Cornerstone of FreedomThat the man who sculpted and cast this, is already on an NSA list somethere. Likely that I am, too. Send me CARE packages, when we all get hauled off to the camps.

This is one of the very heavy metal sculptures set up in an outdoor display area along River Road in Boerne

A Useful Explaination

11. June 2013 · Comments Off on A Useful Explaination · Categories: Ain't That America?, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

… of how metadata can be used. The actual mathematics of it made my head hurt a little, since I am an English major, but the end-result is powerful stuff.

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

Found through a link at Belmont Club, but Ace of Spades HQ has also linked.

L’esprit d’ escalier

10. June 2013 · Comments Off on L’esprit d’ escalier · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Old West

King William - Steves Mansion_smaller

That was a concept that I was reminded of Sunday afternoon, as Blondie and I drove away from the King William historical district – those witty and cutting remarks that you only think of later; in the staircase, or as happed with us, after we merged into traffic from the onramp from Commerce Street.

Our trouble was not that we didn’t think of appropriately witty and cutting remarks at the time and place; it’s just that what we immediately thought of to say would have been rude, even slashingly cruel, and totally ruined the popular image of Southern (and Texan) courtesy and hospitality to guest, even clueless ones. I don’t know from how far out of town this family group came, who chose to wander around King William on a Sunday mid-day; their accents were non-specific American … but from what they did say – rather loudly – upon wandering into the parking area behind the Steves mansion, I would guess that They Are Not From Around Here.
I would also judge that their knowledge of local history was conspicuously lacking, which most immediately offended me, straight off – and might have led to me saying such cutting things, or delivering a furious parking-lot lecture of at least twenty minutes in length … but even Blondie was angry, and it was more to govern her tongue that I told her to just leave it, and drive away. Even if she rolled down the passenger window on the Montero as we backed out of the parking lot; no, neither of us delivered a parting shot.
The overheard remark which so raised our ire was – as this extended family wandered within earshot and regarded the outbuildings at the back of the Steves Homestead was, “That’s the slave quarters.”

The slave quarters.

Jesus jumping everlasting Key-rist on a pogo stick; it’s as if every big mansion south of the Mason-Dixon Line built before the mid-20th century had slave quarters as a matter of course.

Perhaps we should have said something, which is what we agreed on as soon as we were on the highway. I write my books to amuse and educate – and there went a chance to educate a party in the direst need of it that I ever saw in the flesh. Except that my own first remark would have been along the lines of, “I assume you must be a graduate of our finer public schools.” No, not a good start to a lecture on the history and background of the various families who established fine houses in King William … in the decade after the Civil War and well after slavery had been abolished. Lately I have begun to doubt any graduates of our finer public schools are acquainted with the details of abolitionist sentiment in Texas; or are even acquainted with the exact dates of the Civil War, any of the other nuances involving that war, or anything much to do with the peculiar institution itself, other than the immediately obvious.

So here was the thing – which I would have liked to have been calm enough to pass on to the family of visitors: the Steves Homestead was built in 1876 in a very showy French Second Empire style for one Edward Steves, whose family had originally settled in Comfort. Mr. Steves owned an extremely profitable lumber company, and the complex or buildings behind the house included an indoor pool, since Mrs. Steves loved swimming, a wash-house, to process laundry, a carriage house, and a small building which provided housing for the gardeners and the stable hand. Mr. Steves was prominent in city government during his life, and also in the many doings of the substantial German community, and contributed to the construction of the True to the Union monument in Comfort. In fact, two of the Unionists dead in the Nueces fight included Edward Steves’ brother and brother-in-law. So, no – the Steves and their friends and family were most emphatically not slave owners – and the casual assumption that they were struck us as insulting and ignorant in the extreme.
True to the Union

And that’s why we didn’t even begin to calm down until we got to the highway. Sigh. I missed a clear opportunity there to shed enlightenment. But I just didn’t think I could have held on to my temper. Which is why I could never have been an academic – I just don’t have that kind of patience.

A President Who Listens to All Americans

09. June 2013 · Comments Off on A President Who Listens to All Americans · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm

White House Down

Comment would be superflous, so I’ll just say I found this little gem in the comment thread here.

Security Theater

07. June 2013 · Comments Off on Security Theater · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Politics, Tea Time

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin.
“The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful. That database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” Rep. Maxine Waters

Who expected that 1984 has arrived? I recall that in the actual year of 1984, a great many commenters in the political arena rejoiced that the whole Big Brother thing had not arrived, but it looks like such rejoicing was premature. Now we have the NSA collecting telephone records from Verizon wholesale for the ostensible purpose of security reasons … not so much for tracking specific suspected terrorists, but rather for data-mining … and very likely for opposition research. The revelations of the IRS stalling Tea Party groups’ applications for 501 status? Almost certainly this distracted or discouraged those groups from going all-out in last years election season, which I believe was the primary purpose.

Back in the early days of starting the San Antonio Tea Party in 2009, one of our board members – a very thoughtful corporate lawyer and businessman – did have a warning for us who were in leadership positions; as soon as we began to make waves, he pointed out that those of us with embarrassing skeletons in our personal closets should adjust to the reality that those skeletons might magically appear, thanks to oppo research efforts directed against us. As it eventually turned out, several of those people did have rather substantial dark marks on their personal record; I might have been one also, but I had gone to the extent of blogging and writing about them all; my life was essentially an open book, available on Amazon for a modest fee.

Our lawyer member had the right idea, but I don’t think we fully grasped that we might be running a danger from a politicized IRS. I think he was not quite so cynical as to see that coming. But such was the tenor of the very invasive questions asked by the IRS of those later Tea Party groups – asking for information about group leaders and contributors, one might suspect also that this was part of a massive opposition research operation. Map the groups and their connections, get information about individuals; it worked very well in Iraq, in tracking down Al Qaida operators. Now I suppose it is being done wholesale on half the country who doesn’t think Obama is the greatest thing since canned date-nut bread – and this will not end well. The Tea Party group that I am still in connection with sent out an email last week, explaining that they had never applied for 501 status and so could assure anyone contributing toward or participating in their activities that their names were never confided to the tender mercies and the leaky data files of the IRS. Which certainly must have come as a relief to anyone who made big donations … because, curiously enough, information about big donors to various right-of-center causes and politicians just seemed to leak out all over during the last election season; how very curious was that, eh? Up to this very minute, I believe most Americans disliked and dreaded having to do anything with the IRS, but assumed that the revenue-collecting agency delivered their abuse of members of the public on a fair and ecumenical basis. And now to find out that such abuses were not just the actions of a few rogue agents, but directed and controlled from near to if not actually the top?

Congratulations; now at least half the taxpayers in the country now have even better reason to dislike and dread the IRS.

So, this IRS thing is one shoe dropping; I wonder if the EPA accidental-on-purpose releasing a wide range of personal information about farmers and ranchers – which they just happened to have accumulated – to a whole range of environmental groups, many of whom seem to be opposed to the whole concept of farming and ranching. Trotting around afterwards and asking for the information back is like shutting the barn door after the horse is gone, to use an agricultural metaphor. It is almost as if … I don’t know … someone is laying the ground work for a campaign akin to radical animal rights activists targeting research facilities which use animal testing. Would the ecological crazies start harassing farmers and their families in flyover country? I wouldn’t have thought so a couple of years ago, but time change. Congratulations, however – a great many food producers in our blessed nation now may have cause to fear and dread agents of the federal government from more than one agency.

This being a Friday afternoon, I confidently expect some other exciting confession from the Ruling Class to be dropped into the news cycle, in the fond hopes that it will die the death over the weekend, and be old news by Monday.

Another Pictorial Diversion

01. June 2013 · Comments Off on Another Pictorial Diversion · Categories: Ain't That America? · Tags: ,

Rear Foyer and Stairs

A foyer in the Spanish Governor’s Palace here in San Antonio. Which was neither a palace (only a rather rambling and much-added onto building), nor the home of the governor. It rather served as residence for whomever was captain of the Bexar garrison, so at least the Spanish part of it applies. Although since it was extensively reconstructed in the 1930s by an architech who had extremely romantic ideas of what it must have been like … maybe not even that much Spanish after all…

Leadership Advice…

29. May 2013 · Comments Off on Leadership Advice… · Categories: Ain't That America?

From Harry Gordon Selfridge, of department store fame. Obviously, our current administration cadre in Washington, D.C. knows not of these precepts:
“The boss depends upon authority, the leader on goodwill.”
“The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.”
“The boss says ‘I’; the leader, ‘we.'”
“The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.”
“The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how.”
“The boss says ‘Go’; the leader says ‘Let’s go!'”

Cutting the Cable

28. May 2013 · Comments Off on Cutting the Cable · Categories: Ain't That America?

We took the plunge this last weekend – a step we have been considering for months; we bought a pair of Roku boxes (new) and a flat-screen TV (a slightly used model which had been a floor display unit and subsequently marked down) at a local Sam’s Club, and now we are going to cut our cable TV service. (But not cable internet, which is completely necessary for me as well as being totally reliable from our provider, Time Warner, if anyone cares.) Two or three reasons for this; for the first, the cost keeps climbing from year to year, and I am sick to death of paying through the nose for it, when we watch only a handful of programs regularly. Many of those same programs are available through Hulu, Amazon, or Acorn … and if we are willing to wait a few months, the whole darned season of a program will be available on DVD, with minimal commercial filler.

Really, I would have been happy to have a basic cable plus a certain amount for an ala carte selection of a few additional channels, but Time Warner doesn’t work that way now, and I can’t wait any longer for them to get a grip on reality and change. The way that it was explained to me was that Time Warner has to accept those little-watched channels from their providers in order to acquire the madly popular ones, and so they pass on the little-watched channels to the public and demand that customers pay through the nose for the whole ball-o-wax. But no longer; I dropped the land line last year, upon realizing that we both used our cellphones on a far more regular basis. We already had a wireless router, Blondie has been watching a lot of her favorite classic programs on her computer anyway … and it just seemed like a good time to cut the Time Warner monthly bill by two-thirds and starve a portion of the media conglomerate beast.

Installing and programming the Roku boxes went rather more easily than expected; I feared that it would take a couple of hours and several trips back to Sam’s or Best Buy for necessary cables or connections or something dire, but it was only an hour and one short trip to CVS on the corner for a box of batteries. Sometime this week, we’ll go turn in the two Time Warner DVR units and take Blondie’s big-screen and heavy TV set over to Goodwill. This was the only big purchase, other than replacing our computers, that we have made in years, so if the economy improves microscopically in this fiscal quarter, that would have been the reason why. No one can say that we didn’t do our bit.

For Memorial Day

27. May 2013 · Comments Off on For Memorial Day · Categories: Ain't That America?, Military, War

Arizona Flag 1971 Flag, over the Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.

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