What Is That Hat For?

I saw something the other day that made me wonder what is what.” What would that be?” you might ask. Well, I will tell you what, after I explain to you that I, at one time, was a young person. I’m sure that I did some things that made older folks scratch their heads in wonder. I grew my hair longer than older folks normally did. I have to say, however that it wasn’t necessarily because of The Beatles. For some reason, I liked the look of much older folks of the masculine persuasion, like Ben Franklin, Buffalo Bill Cody, George Armstrong Custer, Jesus…  I think you get the picture. The point is I was, maybe, different than others of my age.  Never-the-less, kids my age tended to have longer hair and, as soon as possible, would grow face hair, if they could, and even when they couldn’t. Older folks didn’t care for it so much and would make comments like, “Isn’t that hot for the summer?” or “Doesn’t that itch?”  The answer was “I like it this way!”

In my town (Topeka, Kansas), during a few years in the 60s, there was a very strange phenomenon concerning clothes that I don’t think went past the city limits. It was very popular for guys to wear “flag jackets” (a kind of windbreaker with a large differently colored rectangle on the back similar to a signal flag that sailors used to send messages), Adler socks and very tight high-water 501 Levis that came down, maybe, to the tops of their Adler socks.  If they felt dressy, they would wear wing-tip-dress shoes—they had to be wing-tips.  I must admit that I never had a “flag-jacket”—I just now tried to google it but the only thing that came up was “American Flag-jackets.”  I did, however, wear wing-tips to church and other dressy occasions. What can you say? Wing-tips are very cool. I actually had a nice pair of black and white saddle-styled-wing-tips. I was the envy. I would get some to wear on stage today, if I could find some. I also wore Adler socks, because they felt good.  You maybe couldn’t tell that I was being stylish, because I wore my 501 Levis (I wasn’t completely out of fashion) longer than most everyone else. My best friend admitted to me much later in life that when we first saw me in junior high school he thought I looked like some kind of dweeb (probably not the words he used) and he was tempted to kick my butt.   Obviously his hesitancy to go down that road saved him from a terrible beating, but the point is that I was apparently not following the crowd to any great degree.

Before I get back to my original comment about “What is What?”, let me say that I don’t get the sagging britches thing that has been going on now for a couple decades or more. Why do so many kids and some young men wear their pants like that? Even some men in their mid-twenties are still wearing. Usually they have their underwear sticking up to the waste, but their britches about 4 or 5 inches below that.  Sometimes you can see they are actually wearing a belt, but how do they actually keep the pants up? It can’t be that they can run from the police any faster, holding their pants with both hands to keep them from tripping.

Then there are all of the piercings in different places in the face and hoops in the earlobes that you could put a clothes hanger hook through.  I guess it’s an attention-getting-thing, but it would be more simple to have a tattoo on their foreheads—they likely have many tattoos everywhere else, so one more wouldn’t be a big deal--that says “Hey, everyone, I am an idiot.” Am I being unkind or disrespectful? Probably. But I digress…

Back to my original “What is What?” comment. I was getting back in my truck the other day, after buying a cheeseburger to eat on the road. It was a hundred degrees out and I see two young fellows going into the burger joint. They were both wearing stocking caps! What is that about?  I suppose that they may have both gotten ridiculous haircuts and wearing the woolen stocking caps to hide their shame. I know, there probably isn’t and such a thing as a haircut so ridiculous that some young folks would be embarrassed over, but if there were, baseball caps would most likely have covered that.  Or, they could have had a killer air-conditioner in their car and their heads were getting really cold—they had their ears covered.  Of course, they may belong to the Michael Nesmith Fan Club, or have just been trying to cover the “Hey, I’m an idiot!” tattoos they had gotten the night before, when imbibing illegal substances.   

Where Is The Outrage?

I have to ask, where is the out rage? Seriously, I don’t like being angry and pessimistic all of the time, so I haven’t blogged much of late. Well, there is also the fact that I just can’t keep up with the multitude of things these days that keep me angry and pessimistic. Just about every one of the things has to do with the anger-making and pessimism-making president we have. Every time I think he has gone as far as he can go, he goes a little (actually a lot) further in doing and promoting stupid stuff that drags us lower and  lower. Is there really anyone who voted for Obama that thinks he is not an Israel hater?  Who thinks it’s a good idea to make it easier for Iran to create nuclear weaponry and at the same time reduce the United States military strength to pre-WWII levels? Maybe they are the same people who think it’s a good idea to fund Planned Parenthood, while Margaret Sangers’s ‘brain child’ harvests body parts from aborted baby human beings to sell on the open market. They are human babies, people. The thought that they are anything but humans is trully outrageous.

I have blogged about the evils of Planned Parenthood before, but the recent revelations of traffiking in baby body parts and financial gain for the greedy killers makes me beyond sick to my stomach; and I need to vent. Incidentally, does anyone else find the name, “Planned Parenthood as ironic as I do? Shouldn’t it be “Planned Un-parenthood?” Margaret Sanger was a racist proponent of eugenics. It was Sanger’s view, along with many of the progressives of the 30s and 40s, that sterilization of the feeble minded—morons and idiots, in her view—should be compelled to be sterilized. She was successful in this in 30 states resulting in an estimated 60, 000 sterilizations. Not unlike Hitler, Sanger was for culling negroes and Jews by birth control, Sterilizations, she said, “do not go to the bottom of the matter.” (“Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” Feb. 1919, The Birth Control Review).  She presented her beliefs to female groups of the Ku Klux Klan, and in a letter to Clarence Gable in 1939, Sanger wrote: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members” (Margaret Sanger commenting on the ‘Negro Project’ in a letter to Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939). If you are a big proponent of Planned Parenthood, as is Hilary Clinton, you get a Margaret Sanger award. 

Last evening I visited my daughter and my beautiful new grandson, to whom she had that day given birth. I looked at him and couldn’t help but think of the total number of abortions in the U.S. 1973-2013: 56.5 million. That is 219 abortions per 1,000 live births (according to the Centers for Disease Control); 1.058 million abortions every year; 2,899 Abortions per day; 120 abortions per hour; 1 abortion every 30 seconds. Is it not bad enough that we allow such carnage unabated in this nation? Do I have to help fund it too. Yeah, I’m angry and pessimistic about this nation’s relationship to God. So, I ask, Where is the Outrage? Soilent Green, anyone?

Who Are You Going To Believe? Me Or Your Lying Eyes And Ears?

President Barrack Hussein Obama to reporters: "Gruber? Gruber? I don't know anyone named Gruber. I thought you were asking me if  I knew 'Goober,' that brilliant economist from the Andy Griffith Show that we all loved to hear lecturing on Obamacare and how it was going to save everyone so much money."  That is not what Obama said of course, but what he did say is that he "hardly knew the guy who lived in his neighborhood". No, wait, that was Bill Ayers, the ex terrorist bomber from the 60s who is now a college professor in Chicago, who sat on several boards with Obama and, in who's home Obama kicked of his candidacy for the presidency.  Oh yeah, Gruber was the racist pastor, who married Barrack and Michelle and baptized their children, and was recorded yelling anti-American communist crap, which Obama never heard  when he attended church. No... that was the "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright who wasn't all that close to the Obamas either.  Was he the the Communist party hack/pornographer who was a mentor of Barrack's in Hawaii? No, that was Frank Marshal Davis, who Obama later tried to not remember.

Well, who is Mr Gruber? He's the latest persona non grata whom Obama and the the Democrat party wish had never been born.  He was somebody everyone on the Left knew, when they thought he was a "brilliant MIT economist who, while secretly in the pay of the White House, could be quoted ad-nauseum  about what a terrific deal Obamacare was going to be. Everyone left of center, including the liberal news media--basically everyone but Fox News--helped make the guy out as an unbiased brainiac councilor to the president.

All of that has come back to embarrass the left, when videos started surfacing this week where "Economist", Jonathan Gruber, bragged about how it was necessary to "lie" to the American voters--who are pretty stupid by the way--in order to get the the smelly and misnamed "Affordable Health Care Act" through congress and on to the president's desk.  Gruber said that, if they told the public the truth, that they would not be able to keep the insurance that like and the doctors whom they liked and that it would necessarily be more expensive for the majority of the middle class, they would never go for it. Ya think? Gruber apparently thought he and the Democrat politicians were pretty slick. Well, as slick as Pelosi, Reid and the other Fools On The Hill (TFOTH) can be considered slick (I know, they keep getting elected). But, I guess they were as slick as they needed to be at the time. Remember, "you have to pass it in order to see what is in it?"  If you could listen to that lunacy and still pull the lever for the Dems, I guess you might be considered a poster child for Lenin's (you fill the blank) and the president, TFOTH

The sad thing is that some of us aren't going to hear much about it if the left-leaning news media or the Fools On The Hill can have some say in the matter. I can't help but think of the joke where the punchline goes something like,"Who are going to believe, me or your lying eyes and ears?" Maybe Goober would have been better a adviser to the president. "Judy, Judy Judy".

I Woke Up This Morning. Did America Wake Up Last Night?

I haven't been inspired to blog about anything for quite a while. But this morning I feel like indulging myself a bit. Last night enough voters woke up politically and turned the Senate over to the Republicans.  There were several things that felt good to me. Number one is that Tim Scott won the Senate seat he had been occupying by appointment. The important thing is that Tim is of the black Conservative Republican persuasion.  Not only did he win, but he won big, by a bigger gap than fellow South Carolinian, Lindsey Graham did; Lindsey being of the white Moderate (liberal) Republican persuasion.Tim was the first black man elected senator in  South Carolina since reconstruction. What was it that Mary Landrieu said about whites in the south not voting for blacks? Of course she has her own problems getting only 42% of the vote for Louisiana Senator, against two republicans in her race. She will have a runoff with republican, Bill Cassidy, next month, to see if she can keep the seat that she has won at least a couple times before. Can she she suggest that men in the south just will not vote for a woman? Even though white men helped her get elected a couple times before, she will not be ashamed to suggest it.

My number two reason for feeling good is that the elections clearly showed that the Democrats' ridiculous "republican-war-on-women" mantra is getting extremely old and pathetic. Joni Ernst, the first female--republican or otherwise--elected from her state of Iowa. She is also the first female military veteran to be elected to the senate of any state.  Republican Shelly Moore is also the first woman in the state of of West Virginia to be elected to the senate. Then there is Republican Elise Stefanik who became the youngest ever woman (30 years old) elected to US Congress in history. It was also fulfilling to see incumbent Democrat Mark Udahl ride the "war on women" position into defeat in the Colorado senate race.

My number three reason is that Mia Love won the 4th district of Utah representative seat. I was really excited about her two years ago when she lost to phony "moderate" Matheson in a pretty close race. With Mia, we have perfect the answer to the liberal Democrats' accusations that conservative Republicans are racist and antagonistic towards women.  Mia Love is an excellent example of a Republican woman of color trusted by a generally conservative constituency. The old crap about racism and sex bigotry that the Dems trot out when they do not have a valid position to stand on is wearing thin and it looks like voters are getting wise to it.

My favorite reason for feeling good is that the deceitful, despicable and power-drunk (also creepy weird) Harry Reid will be out as senate majority leader.  In a couple months, the Senate will be able to actually vote on bills passed by the house of representatives. Since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2010, the House has passed over 350 bills and sent to them on to the Senate to be voted on. Reid refused to let them come to a vote in the Senate. Why? you may ask. Probably because  he is deceitful, despicable and power-drunk (also creepy weird), and did not want any of the Democrats in the Senate to be tempted to choose between doing right and wrong and embarrassing President Obama, by joining with the Republicans on anything.

Only way last night would have been better for me is if Obama had been on the ballot. But, in essence, he and his policies were on the ballot and the Democrats suffered because of it. I just hope the Republicans will have the backbone to take on the the left and fix the destructive stuff that the Democrats have been allowed President Obama to do. We have only two years to try to keep him in constitutional check before the presidential election in 2016.  They also need to shine the light on the corruption of this administration--Bengahzi cover-up, IRS cover-up, Isis debacle, etc.  Go team!!!

Along with Joni, Republican Elise Stefanik, a college freshman in upstate New York, became the youngest woman ever elected to congress,  And of course my                    Joni Ernst, Mia Love

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/05/245778/republicans-widen-control-in-senate.html#storylink=cpy

Naughty or Nice: Is it Not a Laughing Matter?

I had the opportunity over the weekend to see my son, Jesse, perform his stand-up comedy at the annual Salt Lake City Comedy Carnival. He was great. He got lots of laughs by using his intellect to expose the absurdities of life. However, I can't say the same about the other comics who shared the bill with him. The MC, who introduce each act, seemed to be trying to get as many obscenities  he possibly could in each sentence. The other three comics, apart from Jesse, followed suit, adding in descriptions of their deviant sexual behavior. Everyone at my table were incapable of separating the vulgarity from the truly humorous elements of the comics' bits. Where Jesse was able to get laughter and applause by his humorous takes on modern society's love affair "gluten intolerance" and  how work and jobs are like romantic relationships, The others found it necessary to shock the audience into uncomfortable laughter.

Maybe my friends and I are the exceptions, but we don't find gutter language and foul expletives funny anywhere else, so why should we think it funny or even slightly amusing on stage when a comedian uses it.  I work with the construction trades as a safety professional, so I visit job sites most days and get to hear expletives of all kinds and in more than one language. It never thrills me. I never feel compelled to laugh when I hear limited vocabulary of the meaner kind. It seems to me that the users of offensive language were once kids trying out the "adult" words, just as they did when they started smoking and drinking alcohol because it makes them feel older and more sophisticated, but they never realized the fallacy.   I suppose the same is true with the audiences who get a kick out of hearing the silly, offensive drivel.  I picture in my mind the little kids smoking behind the garage or barn looking at porn and giggling to each other and patting themselves on the back for their "adult" behavior.

It would seem to me that the "comedians"--I use the term loosely--who go in for the crude and racy material should look around to see who are some of the most successful in their chosen field, who shy away from the   Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Brian Regan, etc. are largely pretty clean comedians and have really broad fan appeal. Even the very mentally sick among us would agree that they are funny. I know that some will point to the likes of Red Fox and Richard Prior and say they were really funny and successful. I just say that they knew and played to their audiences. They didn't get really successful until they broadened their audience base, to include prime time TV and PG movies.

In my humble opinion, the truth is that clean comedians are funnier and more creative in their craft than the the crude and dirty comics.  They point out the humorous reality and absurdities in the world and help us recognize them and laugh at ourselves. The dirty comedians only titillate the darker natures of humanity. The thing we don't need is more crap thrown in our faces.

My Logic Is Unimpeachable! Sorry To Say, I Suspect The Same About BarackObama

Richard Nixon resigned as president because he knew that he was going to be impeached. He was advised by the Republican party leaders that he would not get support from them to withstand impeachment. The republicans knew at that point that Nixon had broken the law by knowingly covering up the illegal actions of his subordinates. Republicans regularly turn against their own when they know that one of their own has been clearly immoral or unethical in their behaviors.

With Bill Clinton, the democrat argument for Clinton changed from "You can't trust those sleazy trailer-park women he is accused of abusing" to "Come on, every body does it, and lying about sex is understandable". Even though he clearly perjured himself and coerced others to commit perjury, the democrat party circled the wagons around him and Bill survived impeachment.

Today, we have a president who has personally broken the law numerous  times, by presidential orders, making changes to the Un-affordable Care Act--yes, I know that it was called something else by the democrats, but I am calling it what it is--and refused to enforce numerous laws on the books, because he doesn't like them, or because he can score political points with a particular voting block by neglecting his duty as president. Though he has continually broken the law and deceived the public on numerous occasions, and merits impeachment more so than any president before him--maybe even more than Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson, it is impossible for me to see that happening.  Why? Because he is the darling of the media and the democrat party has shown time and time again that power trumps morality or ethics every time.

Now I know that because I find fault with our president that many think that I must be a racist. It is sad to say that that race card being played when ever anyone questions a liberal black politician's integrity or even their good judgment still seams to work for the democrats. At least it does for the most of news media. Sadly, the same cannot be argued for Allen West, Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Condolezza Rice, Michael Steele, Herman Cain, Ken Blackwell, Mia Love and many other black conservatives who have been labeled "Uncle Toms" or "White Men's Pets or something just as insulting by many on the Left black and white. Go figure. Oddly, these are some of the best and brightest among us. Because republicans are so frightened of being called racist, I cannot imagine the president being held accountable for anything, because the republicans think it would go nowhere because they believe, and probably rightly so, that the democrats will never do the right thing and will never put right before power. If the need should arise, they can look directly at the sun at midday and tell you it is midnight.

So, I  hold no hope that Mr.Obama will get his just deserts. That would require that the conservatives and progressives putting expedience aside for righteousness. Though I see my logic as being unimpeachable, I suspect the same can be said for Barack Obama in today's world.

Who Wants A Federally-Mandated Minimum Wage? Only The Gullible And Their Panderers

So, our panderer-in-chief said yesterday that “it is time to give the American people a raise”. He might as well have said “It is time to make even more American people unemployed or work only part-time and give the American people a raise in inflation”. It must also be the time for the president to try to repair his sinking poll numbers.  Everybody wants to make more money, so it is a feel-good thing to say that you need a raise.  Hiking up a federal minimum wage has been a staple of the Democrats—and some Republicans, who are afraid they might not sound compassionate—for as long as I can remember. When I was a dumb kid, I remember being excited about getting close to $2.50 an hour for a job that I needed no expertise to do.  But, on the other hand, I did not like the fact that comic books were going up in price to 15 cents. As a kid I did not see that higher wages were necessarily connected to higher prices.  As I got older I noticed that, as the minimum wage rose, so did the cost of living. 

Why are there so many adults who do not get the connection between the cost of labor and the price of a product? Maybe, it is the sorry education they received from public schools, but I am not convinced that these facts are lost on the Democrats and progressive Republicans in government who climb on the progressive bus. I am sure that most of them have studied simple college math and logic enough to get a grasp on some simple truths.  But, maybe I am giving them too much credit. Even so, I am cynical enough to believe that they are educated sufficiently to know that the ignorant masses will not make the connection and they can fool them into thinking they actually care about people more than keeping political power. 

Let me revisit the” When-I- was-young” argument to further explain the logic.  I remember my father earning about $400 a week as a roofer. When I was a baby, my parents bought a home for $6,000 with a 30-year mortgage.  I can remember my parents buying a new 1961 Chevy Impala for about $2,000. I also remember our doctor making house calls. I do not remember that health insurance was as big a deal as it is today and there were not as many frivolous malpractice law suits, requiring doctors to carry expensive malpractice insurance. You could go to the hospital and have a baby for around $200. I remember that I could buy a hamburger for 12 cents. I remember gasoline in the 20 to 30 cents range where a station employee pumped the gas for you.  In my youth, sodas were 10 cents. I collected bottles and turned them in to be recycled for two cents apiece. I would collect at least 25 of them during the week so that I could buy my way into a public swimming pool on the weekend or buy the comic books that I mentioned earlier. The truth of the matter is that people made less money in the good old days, but things also cost a lot less.

So, you might say that it was a wash, when you consider both wages vs cost of living, but you must consider that our standard of living is much greater in many respects.  Air conditioning, telephone service, digital media, medical advances, transportation; in almost any area you want to focus on, our standard of living for every American is far better than it was in the not-too-distant past.  And none of it had anything to do with how high the average wage has been.  The rise of our quality of life is due to technological advancements.

Supply and demand is the overall requirement for un-artificial raises in wages.  In many ways, advances in technology kill off a lot of low-end jobs. Construction and manufacturing, for example, used to be much more labor-intensive, requiring many hands to accomplish numerous tasks. Because of advancement in technology, many of those tasks are done by robotics or machinery operated by workers who have specialized training or education.  Today’s workforce often have to meet higher standards going to a particular job or start out on a job at a lower wage to get the training needed to perform tasks which pay more once the can do the job more efficiently.  Also, technology has changed the way may people shop for their needs. Today a buyer can go online and make purchase at a moment, rather than make a trip to store or mail-order a product that they want or need.  Such technology necessarily makes the labor forces shrink.

You can also argue that, if a wage needs to be controlled, that it should not be done on a federal level. If you think that a minimum wage is needed to match the rise in the cost of living, you have to look at the cost of living in various parts of the country. I know that my cost of living changed as I have moved from city ti city and state to state. How can you think that a $10 minimum wage would mean the same to a worker in Washington DC. as it does to a worker in Burlingame, Kansas?  Can you buy a decent $60,000 home with 3-bedrooms in Washington? If anything, a minimum wage, however stupid the idea is, could only be done equitably on a state or local level. But Obama wants everything under his control, especially the stupid things.

For logic’s sake, let us imagine that a business man, John, makes widgets and he employs 100 people. John pays 10 new employees who are largely unskilled and untrained in the widget making trade a wage of $10 an hour. His 60 employees who work on the production floor and have been with him for several years and know how to do their job in an efficient more productive manner he pays $15 an hour.  John has 29 middle and upper management employees who require specialized education in business and marketing who make salaries of make, on average, $75,000 a year. John is able to earn $500,000 a year with his company, in an average year. John is in a competitive industry, so tries to keep his quality wedges as cheap as he can to make the profit margin that makes his personal industry worth it to him. Then, the government passes a law that requires him to pay a minimum of $12 an hour to his employees.

Naturally, John finds himself in a dilemma: where can he cut the expense of manufacturing his good-quality widgets so that he can still be competitive in the market place and realize the same profit margin that made being a businessman worth it? He knows that when he pays more to his entry-level employees, his other employees will also expect a raise in their wages to be uniformly fair, especially if a union is involved. If his cost for labor is increased by even 10% across the board, John will have to charge 10% more for the widgets to meet the market place. Oh, wait a minute. We forgot that John’s material suppliers are faced with same dilemma and have to raise the price of their materials, because they also were forced to pay more to their employees, so raising the selling price of the widget may be another few percentage point higher.  So, everyone in the chain of production is faced with cutting something to remain competitive in the market place. They will, in many instances, cut the number of employees, so some folks will lose their jobs, because the profit margin requires a given number of dollars devoted to labor costs. Something has to give or the price of the widget goes up.

Now let us imagine a buyer of widgets, Barak, depends on widgets for his safety and welfare. Barak has limited income from the government—I really like the sound of that, for some reason.  Barak goes to the widget store and finds that widgets have gone up in price again. Barak wonders why the greedy widget manufacturers have raised the price again. Those @#$%$^%# widget makers!    I guess Barak needs a raise in his social security to meet the higher cost of living. That is nothing pandering group of politicians cannot fix.

Now, you may think that this little exercise in logic is too simplistic, but the math always works out the same. When we take from one place in the economy it has to be filled from another place. Free markets and supply and demand take care of the appropriate wages for a given type of work. When you do not have enough people wanting to do a certain type of work and the work is necessary from the market place’s perspective, higher wages will necessarily be offered. When the wages meet the laborer’s requirement, the job will be filled.  Just look at what menial labor is earning in North Dakota with the energy boom they have experienced.  I know that I would be just happy with $400 a week and a $20,000 home mortgage, 12-cent hamburgers, 29-cent-a-gallon gasoline and all the other stuff that went with it. A minimum wage should be set at what the individual worker is prepared to do and what the market will allow. If government did not try to manage so many things in our lives we would all be better off. 

All Hail The Scary Punk On The Other Side Of The Fence!

I will try to keep this short and sweet. Well, maybe not sweet, but short. And if not short, perhaps I can make this blog shorter than usual. I Heard Obama’s scary warning to Russia that sending its military into Ukraine at this moment would not be in Russia’s interest. It reminded me of a punky kid declaring from the safety of a tall fence that a bully should leave some other kid alone, because there could be bad consequences.  In my mind I see the bully just roll his eyes and give the goodie-two-shoes punk standing on the other side of the fence a really rude gesture with his hand while he continues to flex his muscles as he starts to slap the weaker kid on his side of the fence.  I think that is a pretty accurate comparison.  Obama is the know-it-all punk who really does not have a clue about how to deal with bullies, and the bullies are quite aware of it.

Vladimir Putin is a bully of the first order. After all, he was a KGB thug during the USSR days. It has been apparent from the beginning of his reign that his goal has been to maneuver Russia back to the totalitarian state that it was under full-blown communism.  He must have thought he hit the jackpot when Obama and the democrat punkers took control of the government after the economic smack-down the Soviet Union suffered from Reagan policies.   It is ironic that Putin has had the luck of his nation developing their gas and oil to fuel a pretty good economic growth and power base, while our president has been trying to stifle our own huge gas and oil development made possible by technology, such as fracking. We could actually be completely fuel-independent, if the silly sap would get out of the way.  In case you are wondering, economies grow or dwindle on the availability of cheap fuel.  It would appear that Putin has been able to grasp that simple economic fact, while Obama has been unable to get his “giant brain” around that idea. 

Putin must wonder how we could go from a true leader like Reagan to an easy mark like Obama in less than 30 years. The fact is that Putin has gotten the best of our guy every time they have had any sort of dust-up. He knows that the punk on the other side of the fence is all talk and no action—big hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas. Putin knows he’s just a punk,  and more and more, it appears like Obama might as well be Putin’s personal punk. 

You Bought Your Favorite Brand! Do You Really Like It That Much?

I have been wondering awhile now about why voters embrace one political party and reject another. You might instinctively assume that a voter would vote for the person who most agrees with the voter’s beliefs and principles, but I dare say that you would very often be mistaken.  I have talked with way too many people who agree with me on some pretty important stuff—like “The federal government is way too intrusive in our personal lives”; “The government needs to stop wasting so much money”; “Taxes are too high”, and “I am opposed to abortion”. Yet, when they vote, they vote for someone who is guaranteed to work against everything that voter says he or she believes in. You probably know who I am talking about—friends and family members who make you want to pull your hair out when it comes to politics. Sometimes I think I would rather not know how obviously crazy those individuals are, so I could sleep better at night.  But still I wonder what is going on in their heads, or, what is not going on in their heads.

 I totally understand why I vote the way I do. It is because the man or woman for whom I vote has led me to believe, rightly or wrongly, that he or she comes the closest to agreeing with my beliefs and principles.  I cannot divorce myself from a desire to vote for someone who is as much like me as possible. I also want to vote for someone who is as good a person—hopefully, even better—as good and honest as I am.  I hate to hear people say, “They all do it”, when some political figure does something immoral or dishonorable.  For example, in my mind, a person running for the office of President of the United State of America, should be a person who exudes virtue and morality and holds himself or herself to a higher standard. After all, they will be filling the position that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have held. Granted, George and Abe are no longer with us and it may be a little hard to find their like today, but we should at least try to put some thought and prayer into such an important vote. We should at least devote some time in doing our homework on these people.

Now, if you believe in communism or really big-brother-government or Keynesian economics, I understand where you are coming from. And I understand why you vote for the man or woman who comes the closest to agreeing with your belief system.  You are an ideologue and I am an ideologue, and we will always be in each other’s face, but—getting back to the point of why voters embrace one person over another or one party over another –why do so many of us vote contrary to our beliefs?

The answer, I think, is that they have associated themselves with a brand.  I have written before about my father being a die-hard Democrat.  His mantra was “Republicans are for the rich man and the Democrats are for the working man”.  I can also say that he was a die-hard Chevy-owner. He was also a die-hard fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals in the National League and whichever team was in Kansas City ( Athletics or Royals) at the time.  Though he was a FDR, Truman and Kennedy man, I am pretty sure he liked Ike—Ike was his commanding officer when he fought in the war, so he could break with one favorite team for an opposing favorite team, like the dilemma he would have had lived to see the Freeway World Series between the Cardinals and the Royals .  He could probably only be persuaded to vote Republican if there was an important emotional connection like he would have had with Eisenhower.  And, as most sports true fans are, he was a fan of his teams even when they were not very good. 

I have to admit that we all fall into that category when it comes to sports.  I root for the Royals, the Jayhawks, The Chiefs and the Jazz, even when they are stinking it up. Gratefully the Jayhawks are looking good again this year. And likewise, I detest the teams who may perennially beat my teams.  Because I grew up in a family who drove Chevys, I tended to prefer them myself.  I see that kind of fanaticism all over. Who has not seen a decal of a Calvin-like little boy urinating on a Chevy or Ford logo? I can safely say that there have been some good and bad years for about every make of automobile, but still people have their biases. Everybody can find something that he prefers because it is their favorite brand, even if there is substantially no difference in the product. Some people like Levis while others prefer Wranglers. And, it may not matter the monetary cost to the real fan. They are willing to pay a little more for the product because it is their brand. You might remember back when Coca-Cola tried to introduce “New Coke”.  The Coke Company had done a bunch of blind tests where the cola drinkers picked the drink that they liked best. They found that the taste testers more often preferred the Pepsi-Cola product. So, Coke decided to produce New Coke, which tasted more like Pepsi. Well, Coke fans went crazy and the Coca-Cola Company went back to what their fans wanted. I was happy with Pepsi either way.

In essence, this phenomenon of fanatical behavior—that is where the term “Fan” comes from—gives me some insight into why some people vote against their interest. For whatever reason—they were raised a Democrat, or Republican or Catholic, or Baptist and they refuse to give up their brand, even if it kills them, because it would cause their mother or father to roll over in their graves—they have become fixated by the brand.  I have heard people respond to me, when I ask them why they are going to vote for a Democrat, even when they know that it is a bad choice, that they just can’t pull the lever for a Republican.  This is precisely what I think is happening with many of the voters in America. They are not really doing their homework on the issues or the leadership qualities of the candidate, or thinking seriously about what they are buying with their votes.  When the time comes, they roll out of bed and pull the lever for their traditional brand, even though that brand now may not be as good as they remember it to be back in the day. Even when it looks to them like a Ford might be a better by than a Chevy in a particular year, they just cannot write the check for the Ford. Or they just cannot make themselves wear a pair of wranglers, no matter the fit or the price, because they would feel that they had been untrue to their team. And, what would their friends say? Well, I have a pretty good idea what I would say. I would say, “Pull your stupid head out”! “You thought you were buying a Ford Continental but you are driving around in an old Ford Pinto with a gas tank ready to explode when the inevitable rear-end crash comes!” And, If you keep this crap up, I guess I will keep beating my head against the wall in frustration.  But, I would say it in a friendly and loving way.

"Pay No Attention To Pesky Facts: The State Of The Union Is Strong!"

Obama has a big opportunity tonight to set the record straight in his State of the union Speech.  He has to say something that will help his failing image, something that will make his supporters not continue to flee from him like rats from a sinking ship. That is good accurate imagery, if I do say so myself.  To borrow a phrase from the Obama’s favorite communist pastor, the president’s “chickens have come home to roost”. Recent polling evidently shows that some folks who believed Barack Obama about the ‘Affordable Healthcare Act’—I won’t use the more popular “Obamacare “ sobriquet, because Pelosi, who claims she never called it that, no matter how many recordings show the contrary, and even Obama, himself have stopped calling it that, since it seems to be a stinker of a law—are now coming to the conclusion that the man they entrusted with creating a wonderful new healthcare system for the nation was doing one of the following:  (1) He really thought it couldn’t be that hard, because big government is the answer to all of the world’s ills; (2) He was lying the whole time because, being the Marxist Socialist that he is, he knew that the ignorant masses could be sold anything if you had said it enough times and the liberal media would stay in bed with him for the long run;  (3)He just doesn’t like the free market at all and knows that he is on the right road to prove the strategy of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven (Sorry about this extremely long run-on sentence, but I am writing in a stream of consciousness here);   (or 4), He’s just an idiot that thinks he understands how economies work.  At any rate his popularity really tanked.

 I suspect that if you were to make a test question in a multiple choice structure, “all of the above” would be the correct answer.  I don’t think he is a total idiot, by any means—he has admitted after all, that he was a bit of a slacker in school and often times slackers can get by on native intelligence (see my own history)—h e was smart enough to work the system to get through school and into the  Ivy League stepping stones to politics and other educated idiot positions.  Incidentally, he never attended public school. When he was with his mother in Indonesia, he went to a private Muslim school—you can read his books about himself. And when he went to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents he attended a posh private high school.  He also sends his own daughters to private schools and always has. At any rate, the point I would like to make is that he appears to not be the genius that so many lefties proclaimed him to be. ( I heard James Garner say that Obama was probably the most intelligent president we have had.  I really like Garner as an actor, but now I feel sure that he should not teach history). Obama is unable, it seems, to put ideas together in public without a prompter, and he does not know how to pronounce the word “corpsman”. Now, I know that there are a lot of people behind bars who are fairly intelligent, so raw intelligence does not make you a stellar politician who would be void of misjudgment.   Look at Biden … uh, look at Pelosi… or umm Reid… Well, I can’t come up with a very good example among the Democrats at the moment that would prove my point, but there are probably some out there.  And, I am not suggesting that Mr. Obama should be behind bars. That may come in another blog, but clearly the stuff involving the roll-out of the Affordable Healthcare program  seems to show that the President is still a monumental slacker. 

As to my second conjecture, that he was lying the whole time about what to expect with his healthcare plan, we only have to compare his claims prior to the roll-out with reality.  I remember last year when the president gave his State of the Union Speech that  a Republican congressman was so shocked by what the president claimed about his plans that the congressman blurted out “You Lie”. You might think it was rude of him, but I think I would have had a hard time swallowing that crap too. Seems he was right; Obama lies. A defender of the president could say that it was a well intentioned untruth, and you that you can’t expect perfection.  You can’t expect perfection from the most intelligent president we have had? That has to be a shock to James Garner and his liberal friends.  And, a defender might also say that it was the Republicans’ fault that he had to tell some minor fibs, in order to get the smelly thing passed.  That fact is that it was smelly from the beginning. Many on the Republican side new the idea would not work and tried to tell the public that it could not work, that it was going to be a huge train wreck.  Up until the day before it started falling apart at the website roll-out, Some brave conservatives even stood up to their own party leaders in trying to stop the thing.  Hindsight has been good to those individuals. However, the fact remains that Obama was lying and our Health Care System in possibly dying.  Isn’t my little rhyme catchy? It is almost as snappy as “Bush Lied and people died”. The left somehow knew that Bush lied, even though the Democrat leadership at the time, Clinton, Obama, Schuman, Reid, et al, also believed that Sadam Hussein  had weapons of mass destruction and voted  along with president Bush to invade Iraq.  It would seem that if it is good for the goose, as they say, it should be good for the gander.  Of course, the ultra -Left couldn’t see equivalency if it could be argued against them. The bottom line is that Democrats, almost to a man or woman, will almost always say “Me Too” when they think it could be to their political benefit, while some Republicans—not all, sadly—who are conservatives first,  will stand their grounds on principle. I see the votes that passed the “Affordable Healthcare Bill” through the house and Senate as a good example:. The Bill passed without one Republican vote, while a sizable nonpartisan vote supported the invasion of Iraq. Who has more political guts and who was lying? I feel sorry for the Democrats who exposed themselves to the political aftermath of voting for the healthcare debacle. Actually, I don’t. I don’t want to get caught in a lie.

The third possible reason for Obama’s Healthcare program is his desire to fulfill Cloward and Piven’s strategy for bringing down the US government.  Cloward and Piven were sociologists and political activists who saw the easiest way to reach their goals of a socialist revolution in America  was through the Democrat party. They wrote: “The ultimate objective of the strategy—t o  wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by outright redistribution of income” It was their intention was to create a crisis in the current welfare system by focusing on welfare law and eventually bringing about its collapse under its own weight, necessitating replacing it with socialist system guaranteeing annual income. This was to be done by encouraging the poor to demand more and more benefits or entitlements and overloading the system.   I don’t think that it could be plainer to a Martian looking down at us that we are heading full speed under Obama’s steerage to the destruction of our free market system. Now it may be happening faster than he might have expected and wished for—he has been recorded as saying that he favored a one-payer system for healthcare—because the unaffordability of his programs are beginning be obvious to more and more people. He may have tipped his hand too soon. I pray that he has.

The last possibility is that he is, indeed, an idiot; an idiot who has no understanding of how an economy works. However, it may not be his fault.  After all he was sired and raised by communists and there are a surprising number of people who are unable to understand the concept of living within their means. The whole Democrat Party suffers from this incapacity these days, as well as close to half of the Republican Party.  Just as there are, for example,  a relatively small number of people in the world who are color blind, unable distinguish between green and red, there exists a huge number, perhaps a majority of people in the world who are unable to grasp the difference between income and outgo.  This is a sorry state of affairs, exacerbated by the fact that too many educators are also income-outgo-blind. They teach, and liberals and progressives are susceptible to, the Keynesian doctrine of economics.  John Maynard Keynes held to the theory that a government could spend its way out of recessions and depressions.  This will sound odd to those of us who have been taught and have come to believe that when you are lacking in income you should logically spend less and save for a rainy day. It’s possible, I guess, that some Keynesians believe this as well, as far as an individual or a family goes, or at least I hope that is the case, but it is very different when it comes to nations and their expenditures.  For Keynes, somehow the fact that that governments could print more money when they thought they needed to, absolved them from natural laws of inflation and deflation.  For the Keynesian, inflation is not a very big hurdle. They apparently believe that, as long as you can ride the wave and print more and more money, a new norm will arrive and exist for a while, until the bigger demands on the government and economic bubbles start bursting.  Then, it is off to the races again, with higher government-controlled minimal wages and so called price controls which do little but anesthetize the unwashed masses.  The reasonable among us we look at that philosophical abortion and wonder how intelligent people could fall for it. I know it baffles me. We free marketers, who see the wisdom of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and see the opposition as crazy.   In fact, I think this picture of John Maynard Keynes supports my thoughts:     

He looks crazy to me.

So, tonight Mr. Obama will try again to make his State of the Union Speech believable , while laying the blame for his troubles at the feet of those dastardly heartless Republicans, and the Tea Party racists, especially the Black ones. Like the old joke about the man caught cheating by his wife, Obama will have to say, "Who are you gong to believe me or your lying eyes?"

T'was The Nightmare Before Christmas: An Obamacarol!

I would like to be charitable as Christmas approaches, but I need to post just one more politically motivated blog before I don my cap and settle down for a long winter's nap. I heard yesterday that the Obamas want us to discuss Obamacare with our families on Christmas. We might talk about it in my family, but I doubt that he would want to know what we have to say about it. I also heard that Barack Obama signed up for the bronze healthcare plan. Well, actually, he did not do it himself. He had staffers (minions) do it for him, because he and the First Family are currently on their Christmas vacation in Hawaii and everyone knows there are no computers in Hawaii or on Air Force One.  It is probably a good thing he had someone else do it, because he would have a problem being truthful on the application and he would likely screw it up, like everything else he has done. Yes, I know it was a symbolic gesture—as president he is the Commander in Chief and gets his healthcare gratis through the military—but could he not have qualified for the platinum plan? Would it not be fairer for him and the democrats in the Senate and House and all of their staffers (minions) to lose their wonderful health insurance plans, like millions of people who had health plans which they were happy and satisfied with before Obamacare forced the insurance companies to cancel them, to take the bronze plans? Well, seriously, would it not be fairer?  The democrats are always whining about fairness, are they not?

We were promised that Obamacare would be much better, that premiums would be reduced across the board, and that if you liked your current healthcare plan—you would be crazy, obviously (ha ha ha) because everything the federal government does is cheaper, less wasteful and better in every way—you could keep your  silly plan. Of course, I, and logical thinkers like me, knew that it was impossible for the scam of Obamacare to be anything but a huge failure and disastrous to the economy—socialism and governmental control of economies always make things more cumbersome and much more expensive. But, now some of the minions are coming to realize that Mr. Obama was not to be trusted with the nation’s healthcare system.  We, the ones who made the effort to actually check the guy out before he was elected and have paid attention after the fact, knew that Obama was a big phony at best. As has been pointed out by many conservative talking heads, Obama has never run a business, never worked at anything other than community organizing (rabble rising) and holding political office (lying, cheating and stealing). As a progressive democrat (undeclared Marxist), he disregards free enterprise and craves governmental power, preferably, dictatorial power.

Obama had to lie, of course, just like he has had to lie or claim ignorance about the myriad of scandalous events he has governed over in his presidency. If the ignorant people knew that their premiums would have to go up and that they would not be able to keep their preferred doctors, he would not have been re-elected.  But, do not feel alone on this, you ignorant healthcare users who voted for Obama, the insurance companies are also crying bitter tears. Obama promised them that they would make much more money with Obamacare in place. And why would they not make more money, if the government forces people to buy health insurance? They thought the fix was in. How were they to know that Obama was either an incompetent boob or a Marxist democrat trying to drive the country into a one-payer healthcare system?

Actually, I do not think Obama is any more a boob than your typical run-of-the-mill college-educated Utopian socialist pinhead.  Obama and his cronies understand that you have to tear down the prevailing system in order to get people to accept a pie-in-the-sky socialist utopia.  Socialists know that they cannot tell the truth about what they plan, because people want stability, and if they suddenly find their lives unstable or convinced that their situation is untenable, they will be accepting of drastic change. People do not typically elect to have a limb amputated unless they are convinced that gangrene has set in and it will eventually kill them otherwise.  But, what if the doctor proposing the amputation is crazy, and he thinks that a mechanical limb is much more durable and aesthetic? He would have to convince the patient that the natural limb is not a good thing. And, if he follows Machiavellian principles, such as the end justifies the means, as most tyrants do, he will tell any lie necessary to get the desired results.  Tyrants almost always know what is best for everyone around them. Of course, it does not usually apply to them.

 You may think my doctor-amputation analogy is a stretch, but I sincerely believe that progressive politics are lunacy. History has shown that socialism unchecked will destroy a capitalist free market God-fearing—this term actually means “God-revereing”, when translated correctly—society.  The conservatives know by practice and application that making more of a product and allowing for competition in producing and selling a product will cause the product to be more available and less expensive. Conservatives in Congress —notice I do not use the term ‘republicans’ here, because once upon a time there used to be conservative democrats like Harry Truman, and there are way too many progressive republicans these days as well—have tried for years to take the governmental shackles off of our healthcare system.  They have promoted the concept of allowing people to shop for health insurance across state lines and to reduce frivolous lawsuits through tort reform, but state insurance lobbies and trial lawyer lobbies have partnered with the democrats and liberal republicans to keep those costly encumbrances in place. Just those two things would save billions of dollars to the consumer and help bring more doctors into practices. If the progressive-socialists in our federal and state governments actually wanted to help and protect the little guy, they would forsake their ties to these lobbyists and quit trying to create villains out of people who EARN a lot of money and are paying the vast majority of taxes.

So, you might ask yourself, “What has this gem of governmental interference in our lives cost the taxpayers so far, including a website built by a Canadian company, CGI, which has “connections” with Obama’s peeps? According to the non-partisan Factchecker website, a conservative figure would be $70 million. A more modest figure would be $125 million to $150 million. Or, one could embrace the entire project, as outlined by GAO, and declare that it is at least $350 million. Now, if the number that the non-partisan Government Accountability Office is correct and the thing cost $350 million, I would wonder if it was money well spent, since the website was hard to navigate, kept crashing and the price tags of the healthcare options so scared the crap out of people that they are flocking away from Obamacare rather than to it.   Since our nation’s population is currently estimated at about 315,000,000, the federal government could have just given each and every person in the whole wide country a million dollars apiece and they could have opened their own healthcare savings account and not worried about an insurance carrier! Now, does that sound Crazy? Do you actually think Obama wants everyone to have more affordable health care, or is he trying to amass more dictatorial control? I rest my case.

Oh wait a minute, one more thought: It has been said that Obamacare is the law of the land and we just need to get over it. True, congress passed it unilaterally, and it was upheld in the Supreme Court, by calling a penalty for not obeying mandate a tax. But since then, Obama has rewritten numerous times by carving out special wavers for more and more special interest groups and delaying the mandate for large businesses and now some individuals. Some republicans—by this I mean no democrats—saw the train wreck coming and tried to get the debacle-ridden implementation of Obamacare postponed for a year, but Obama and his minions said, “No, we will never, ever, do anything you people want, even if it kills all of us, except when it will get us reelected”! Well sure, that is not what they said specifically, but is, in essence an accurate description of their mindset.  And, you might ask yourself, “Hey, according to our Constituion, doesn’t the President have to obey the law and see that it is enforced?”  Well, not if you are President Barack Hussein Obama. Again, I ask, do you actually think Obama wants everyone to have more affordable health care, or is he trying to amass more dictatorial control?  Now, your honor and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I really rest my case.

Merry Christmas! And, a Happy New Year! I hope.

If You Are Going To Do It, Please Do It Right!

I am a big reader. I read or listen as I drive, to many, many books in a year's time. I like books of all types, be they serious, comedic, fiction or nonfiction. I have read some books over and over again. I like a good story, whether fantasy or fact. But it needs to be good. With all of the good literature out there in the world and with fewer people willing to put the time in to actually read, it is understandable that film has become this generation's books. Now, I am not smug because I am a reader.  I am also a sort of movie buff. I like "good movies" and "good television shows" from every time period.  I particularly enjoy it when a favorite piece of literature of mine makes it onto the big or little screens. Of course the real primitive stuff, like Eadweard Muybridge's "Running Horse" made in 1878, were interesting and amazing for their time when still monochrome photography had only been around since about 1800, but they could not be considered masterpieces of any kind. They were curiosities and nothing more.

The first "movie" to tell a story was "The Great Train Robbery",  filmed by the Edison company in 1903. It lasted about 12 minutes and had a closeup and some pretty funny action scenes (by today's standards), but the story had no character development and was more like a news reel that we used to see in the movie theaters in the thirties and forties before television programming allowed for visual news to be reported directly to your home. But, the idea of moving pictures to tell a story was hard to resist. Instead of having to read popular novels or works of non-fiction, where you could only imagine the events in your mind's eye, you could now see a moving depiction of the material. Like they say, "before television and movies, we had books".

Of course it was still far from having a very realistic experience.  The movie world was monochrome and had no sound. You still had to do some reading to get a better gist of the story and you could not tell if the beautiful people on the screen were blondes, redheads, brown-eyed or blue-eyed.   Plus, you had an organist playing accompaniment to help get you excited or make you sympathetic at the right moments. It was hardly much better than reading, but was at least a step in the right direction. But, we had a little while to go before we would have the movie-going experience available to us today.

Color film actually proceed "Talkies" by about two-and-a-half decades. The 1903 French film, "The Passion Play" a depiction of the life of Christ, was done in Pathechrome, a process that involved staining parts of individual frames.  The process of capturing natural color would happen with Kinemacolor in 1914 and Technicolor would become the standard for color films in Hollywood by 1932.  So, color was available but it did not become the norm until the sixties. The color movies were, of course,  more costly to make and the expenditures for color movies were usually reserved for what were considered by the film companies as the more epic stories to tell. Of course, the advent of sound made telling a story easier. The technology existed since 1923 but it generally sounded like crap. When The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, sound was pretty much in to stay even though it continued to sound like crap for another few years. Everybody wanted to hear the same dialog, music and ambient sounds they were experiencing in everyday life.

Why, you may ask, did they start putting music in along with the natural soundtrack? If they are trying for realism, I think they are completely wrong. I know I don't have an orchestra or a snappy pop group following me around and playing music to match my mood or give my audience a nod as to what I may do next. I suspect it was part and parcel to the way silent films were watched, with a piano player or organist accompanying live at the movie house. Somehow, I do not begrudge the music too much, because there are times when it actually helps the action or lack of action on the screen.

Innovations in movie production have gone nuts since Star Wars in 1977. Special effects have become the norm for big budget money makers. People want to see what would have been impossible just a few years ago: Realistic-looking creatures and events that could not possibly be done outside of computer-generated images.   Now, 3D in film has been around  since about 1915, but it became a bit of a craze in the fifties and early sixties with mostly pretty silly monster movies, but they have really caught fire during the last decade with super hero and space-based movies. Where we had "Cinerama" in the fifties and sixties, which entailed a huge curved screen to help put you into the middle of the action, we now have IMAX, with really, really big screens and projectors that can project the big picture with amazing detail.  Now you can feel like an ant watching the action.  Audio has improved as well. In the sixties they tried a" Senssuround"  system to simulate the vibrations shown in the 1974 film, "Earth Quake", airplane take-offs and explosions in the film "Midway" of 1976--curiously both starred Charlton Heston--but it was not that much of a thrill to me. Now they have THX and  Dolby and Surround Sound to enhance your movie viewing pleasure, and if you want the vibrations, you can pay a bit more and sit in the special D-Box seats in some theaters which will vibrate and shake in conjunction with the visual action on the screen. Frankly, that particular advancement does little for me. In-fact, I find it extremely annoying. But I digress...

I began by saying I liked to read and was a sort of movie buff. Again, I really like movies of all shapes and sizes, if they are good and not overly pretentious. I, unlike my wife and some of my kids, really enjoy watching old movies in black and white with dated music, if they were done well. My wife is unable to enjoy anything that is shot in black and white and has dated sound. But I say good acting is good acting, and on-screen charisma is what it is.  It took a decade or two to get there, but eventually, the film industry developed directors and actors who understood the movies were not the stage and had to be more subtle.  I enjoy watching a play--I, myself have performed in some over the years--but it is obviously a much different deal than mugging for the intimate camera.  The movie has the better chance, or is better equipped in my opinion, of recreating for the observer a more complete entertainment experience when telling a story. However, they also have a greater chance of completely blowing it. If the powers that be in television and film cannot come up with their own original material, they go after what they think will make them the most money. I hate it when people with power in the entertainment media are only in it for the money. They will almost always get it wrong.

Movie and television producers, in my opinion, owe it to good literature to get it right.The way they usually blow it for me, is they try to tell a story that originated from a different medium and thunk they can make it better. Popular novels are most often abused, in my humble opinion. It is seldom that the movie is better than the book it was based on, especially when the movie producers think they can make the story better or change it in away that will make it sell better.  I have to admit that there have been a few times when I thought that the movie was better. For example, Jaws, the film, was better than Jaws, the book.  I understand that it is very difficult to include everything of importance from a book into a movie version and get it into a two-hour to three-hour time frame, so you may need to streamline the story a bit. However, when you take the stories of Edgar Rice Boroughs and his best characters like Tarzan and John Carter and come up with a completely different story and completely different lead character, you really start to hack me off. I do not understand why Burroughs let them get away with portraying his Tarzan as a moron when Burroughs wrote him as a genius.  Another example which comes to mind is the the attempt to make the Jason Bourne books into movies. I suspect that if I had not read the books, I would have thought the movies were okay, but the producers of those films thoroughly decimated Robert Ludlums brain child. If they were going to do a completely different story and make characters from the movie be the opposite of how they were in the book, why not just rip off the concept, give their characters different names and call the movie something else. With many of them you could never ever be charged with copyright infringement. Once the author of the book sells the rights, the movie producers can do pretty much what they want, and star pretty much who they want, who they think will sell the movie. How do they think the fans of the books feel about it? I do not think that they ever consider anything beyond what constitutes "marketability" in their own feeble brains. I know a bunch of people, as I do, who will not see a film that they KNOW is not a decent adaptation of a favorite book, or even a movie version of a popular TV show, which has happened many times in the last couple of decades. Money and power are often wasted on the clueless, I guess.

Since I just now turned this into a rant on stupid producers in Hollywood, let me vent a bit on the travesty that is the movie, Jack Reacher.  I know that Lee Child has been quoted as saying that he thought Tom Cruise captured the essence of his hero, but I mean really! For some reason, Tom Cruise is considered one of those charismatic movie star types. I do not get it, but I will allow that enough people like him to go see him in any movie. But, let us be realistic; Tom Cruise is at best five feet and six inches tall and weighs in at about 170 lbs., where the Jack Reacher of the Lee Child books is six feet and five inches tall and weighs in at around 250 lbs. The Jack Reacher in the novels is a scary dude, while Tom Cruise makes me laugh when I see him get tough. I have a pretty good imagination but it is not good enough to buy that.

So my request for the movie and television producers in the world would be that, if they cannot create something on their own, please do not turn silk into a sow's ear. You, Mr. and Miss Producer, most likely do not know how to make another artist's creation better, so go back to what you do best and have done over the last century: Keep coming up with new innovations and better and better special effects. But leave a good story alone. That's a wrap!

Sacajewea

The very first Americans, of course, were the indigenous population later known as “Indians”. From the very beginning, the Indian population was conflicted over the arrival of the Europeans and their colonization of Indian homelands. Some resented their coming, while others welcomed the newcomers, perceiving them as just another tribe with whom to share the bounties of nature. Ultimately, it became obvious to the Indians that the Europeans were there to stay and would eventually become the dominate culture. Some fought the inevitable and others embraced it. Sacajewea, whom I salute in this installment of my Profiles of Leadership in America, embraced it.



Sacajewea
c. 1784—December 20, 1884?

Americans, living today, owe much to our exploring pioneer forefathers. But, what of our exploring pioneer foremothers? In 1804, Lewis and Clark set out, with a company of some fifty men, to explore the Louisiana territory. The President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, had purchased the huge territory from France with very little knowledge of what it contained. He enlisted Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who had never set foot in that part of the land, to undertake this dangerous expedition and bring back that knowledge. Luckily for President Jefferson, and even more so for Lewis and Clark, the explorers met a young Indian woman on the way, who guided them through the most difficult and potentially perilous part of their journey. That Indian woman was Sacajewea.

Sacajewea was born a Shoshone around the year1784 in the area now known as the state of Idaho and was named Boinaiv (Grass Maiden in the Shoshone language). While still a child, she was stolen away from her family by the Minnetarres (an enemy tribe) and renamed Sacajewea (Bird Woman in the Minnetarre language) by her new tribe. Her Minnetarre captor later gambled her away to a French trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. She became Charbonnea’s wife and was living with him in the Dakotas in the autumn of 1804 when Lewis and Clark reached there. Sacajewea and her husband agreed to act as guides for the team of explorers. The group wintered at Fort Mandan where Sacagawea gave birth to her son Baptiste.

The Frenchman, Charbonneau, possessed marginal abilities as a guide, but his young Indian wife proved to be an excellent guide, showing exceptional courage and resourcefulness. On one occasion, Sacajewea risked her own life to rescue the records of the expedition and other valuables from an overturned canoe. She accurately directed the Lewis and Clark expedition to her own country, which she had not seen since she was a child. She also taught the company how to gather food and live off the land to survive when supplies began to run short.

When they arrived at the Shoshone tribal camp, she renewed her associations with old friends and family. It was here that she very likely saved the lives of the whole party of explorers. Sacajewea’s brother Cameahwait was now the chief of the tribe. His first inclination was to kill the white men for their belongings. But, because of Sacagawea’s influence, Lewis and Clark were able to procure food and horses from the Indians and were allowed to go on their way unharmed.

Sacajewea, finding that the rest of her family was dead, except her brother and her dead sister’s son, adopted her sister’s child (she named him Basil) and took him, along with her own child, on the Lewis and Clark trip. With her two children in tow, she continued as guide, leading the explorers to the Pacific Ocean, arriving on November 7, 1805. On the way back, they explored the Yellowstone region, which she also knew well. Upon returning to the Dakotas, Charbonneau refused all inducements to go back to civilization and Sacajewea remained with him. Little more is known about the rest of her life, but Sacajewea is believed to have married into Comanche Indian for an extended time and living  to the age of 100 years, dying around 1784 in the Shoshone Indian Agency.

The white men of the Lewis and Clark Company had great respect and affection for this young Indian woman, who, while mothering two small children, was able to lead, teach, and even protect tough explorers on a very difficult journey. She created good will and trust, for at least a short while, between Indians and white Americans. Without her help and guidance, the Lewis and Clark expedition would likely have experienced disaster, and President Jefferson would not have received the wealth of information that he desired. Sacajewea’s roll in the Lewis and Clark exploration exemplified peaceful cooperation between Indians and white Americans. Sadly, that peaceful cooperation was seldom repeated in American history. Still, Americans that live west of the Mississippi River today, like the men in the Lewis and Clark expedition and President Thomas Jefferson, owe Sacajewea a lot.

Samuel Adams

The American Revolution produced quite a few extraordinary leaders: brave and spiritual men and women who were willing to sacrifice all they had to create a country and government where freedom would reign, and where all people could pursue their individual life, liberty, and happiness (private property).  However, for the revolution to be successful, many at the time believed that faith in God and His endorsement of the colonists’ efforts to confront the greatest military power in the world would be paramount. Perhaps the most vocal exemplary proponent of this idea was Samuel Adams.
                                                                 

Samuel Adams, September 27, 1722 – October 2, 1803

Samuel Adams, like his second cousin, John Adams, the second president of the United States, was born into a religious and politically active family and was a graduate of Harvard College. Adams was generally unsuccessful in his business affairs.  His father’s attempts to create a “land bank” for the farming community had been impeded by the royalists in Massachusetts government and left the older Adams with substantial personal debt at his death, which in turn fell to Samuel to deal with.  Samuel never was particularly successful in business, but he flourished in politics.  In his masters thesis of 1743, Adams argued the case for colonial rights, that it was "lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate” to preserve the Commonwealth.

By the1760s, Adams had become an influential member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was vocal in his opposition to the efforts of British Parliament to tax the American colonies without American consent.  His publicized call for cooperation between the colonies was a contributing factor in the British order to have British soldiers occupy Boston, which in turn aggravated the Bostonians to the point of violence, culminating in the famous ‘Boston Massacre’ of 1770, where British soldiers responded to rock-throwing from a Boston mob with gunfire.  Ironically, it was Samuel’s cousin, John Adams, an equally vociforous voice for American liberty, but defender of law and order, who would defend the British soldiers in court for using deadly force to defend themselves against the angry Bostonian mob. A couple years later, Samuel Adams and other like-minded American colonial patriots organized links between their fellows throughout the other twelve colonies. The “Boston Tea Party” of 1773 and other later efforts by Adams and his fellows, who became known as the “Sons of Liberty”, resulted in further reprisals by the British government to quell the American rebellion in the form of the occupation of Boston by British troops, the “Coercive Acts” of 1774 which was akin to marshal law. Adams and his fellow patriots responded by convening a Continental Congress in 1775.  Adams was considered a traitor by the British at this point and they sent troops to both capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seize the military arms which the British had learned were stored in Concord. The battle of Lexington and Concord and the successful defense put forth by the “Minutemen” essentially began the American Revolutionary War and eventually resulted in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson said of Samuel Adams that he steered the Congress toward independence.

During and after the Revolution, Adams served on numerous committees. He promoted paying bonuses to the Continental soldiers for reenlisting when their enlistment was ended. He also called for the punishment of Loyalists to the British crown, banishing them and confiscating their property. His harsh approach to loyalists continued even after the war, opposing their return to Massachusetts, believing that they would work to thwart the new republican form of government. He was on the committee which drafted the articles of confederation with his emphasis on strong state sovereignty. Along with his cousin, John Adams and James Bowdin, Samuel drafted a new constitution for Massachusetts in 1779.

After the Revolutionary War, and under the Confederation, economic troubles began to trouble the new republic. The uprising known as “Shay’s Rebellion” and other difficulties with taxation led many to believe that the confederation needed revision. In 1786, delegates met in Philadelphia to try to revise the Articles of Confederation but ended up creating a new United States Constitution with a stronger federal government.  Adams had misgivings about a strong central government and was initially counted among the Anti-Federalists, but eventually he agreed to support the new constitution, with the proviso that amendments would be added later, which resulted in first ten amendments now known as ‘The Bill of Rights’.  With this ability to amend it, Adams became a staunch supporter of the new constitution.


Adams attempted to be elected a representative to the new House of Representatives but lost the election. However he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and then Governor. Samuel, unlike his cousin John Adams, aligned himself with the Thomas Jefferson and the anti-federalist party. He left office as governor in 1797 and retired from politics. He suffered from essential tremors and was unable write effectively during the last ten years of his life and he died at the age of 81 years on October 2, 1803. He was considered by his contemporaries, both friends and advisories as one of the greatest personalities among the founding fathers and a firebrand personality for individual freedom. In fact, much to his chagrin, John Adams, while serving abroad as a diplomat was often referred to as “the other Adams. Indeed, Samuel Adams was at the forefront of the revolutionary movement and with a loud voice for independence, ever vigilant, willing to sacrifice his own wellbeing for what he believed in, and was convinced that he was doing God’s will by creating a republican form of government.  The Boston newspaper, The Independent, Eulogized him as the “Father of the American Revolution”. There were many founders of our nation who could claim that they did their all for the birth of the United States of America, but few who were the equal of Samuel Adams.

I'm Sorry You Were So Gullible!

I really did not think I would ever see Barack Obama apologize for anything, let alone his “Affordable Care Act” (aka-Obamacare).  But today he sort of did, though he made it plain that he had been misunderstood--wink, wink, nod, nod--when he placed a “period” behind every outrageous promise he made while he was selling the public on it.  Of course he could not take full responsibility, because he is not capable to do that. It is much easier for him to say that he was misunderstood than to say, “I bald-faced lied to everybody about what they could expect, like being able to keep your insurance if you like it, or the average family will save $2,500 a year on insurance cost, when the average family will spend $7,500 more per year”.  The fact is that he, like the lovable Sergeant Schultz, of Hogan’s Heroes fame knows nothing: He did not know about ‘Fast and Furious’, He did not know that we were spying on our allies; He did not know that the IRS was targeting conservative organizations; He did not know that terrorists were involved in the murder of four Americans in Benghazi—in fact, we still do not know where he was that night and who told our military and CIA to stand down when those Americans were screaming for help; And, he does not seem to know that he has no constitutional authority to grant waivers to his supporters on Obamacare, or pick and choose which laws congress passes to enforce. But then, if we look at all of these things from Hillary Clinton’s perspective, what difference does it make at this point?  

Well, it makes a lot of difference to people of principle. I did not like it when Nixon lied. I did not like it when Bill Clinton lied. I did not like it when Carter was inept. And I do not like it when Obama is both inept and a liar, which is pretty much all of the time. He owes an apology for deceiving the electorate to get elected.  He knew that if he allowed the truth to be told in any degree, whether it be that it was not a stupid video that got four Americans murdered, or that Obamacare is an ill-conceived attempt to turn our healthcare system into a single-payer socialist monstrosity, that the public would not have gone for it. If he had been honest, which frankly is beyond his ability, we would have a president who actually understands business and economies, instead of a socialist nincompoop.  

I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings and my apology is every bit as sincere as Obama’s, PERIOD!