Still Alive and Kicking: well poking at any rate

Little writing as I have the plague that rendered this 70 year old to a 90 years old in two weeks. One can only hope for recovery and a reversal process.

Ponder this, 90 percent of Americans support expanded background checks for gun purchasers; 67% of Americans like baseball. We subsidize one of those and ignore the other. Therefore, 67% must be more powerful than 90%; makes as much sense as Wayne LaPierre many statements. [Is there small but vocal and well funded anti baseball organization seeking to rid the country of all subsidized baseball stadiums and limit player and owner salaries? It is National Anti-Baseball Association (NABA)?]

Three cats, they’re too old to be kittens anymore, have taken control of our lives. How is that possible? Species superiority concepts are specious.

Words of wisdom – when spring appears to appear don’t get carryied away by putting the top on a gazebo. You don’t expect a foot of snow to fall on it and destroy the entire apparatus. But it will and it did. I my case I bought a new top but now have no gazebo.

Why do we get so excited about how poor people spend their money and food stamps? Many don’t know how to cook good nutritious inexpensive meals; rather than complain you could help teach them but that means you’d have to make friends with them. And escape mechanisms such beer may be more important that those who can afford expensive toys. Are they more loathsome than driving a Hummer to the grocery store or just driving a Hummer? Statistics show that in bad times it is a good idea to buy stock in booze companies.

I just purchased a new Kindle Fire HD. It seems much more complicated than a computer at this point and I have am having to do a lot of research just to learn how to do what I did with the originals ones. It is an intuitive as a flux capacitor. Fun though. I also bought a cover with a Bluetooth keyboard with very tiny, even miniscule keys to poke at. I also bought a $1 word processor for it, which seems incapable of opening a document, however, they offer lots of upgrades. Supposedly it is compatible with WORD documents

Cats seem curious about everything; I like that. But what do they think about curios? Shadow continues to steal my pens but hasn’t written a thing worth sharing yet. Perhaps I having found his writing; surely he has stolen paper as well.

One our granddaughters is getting married soon. My lovely wife has purchased umpteen wonderful grandmother’s outfits for it that are lovely. I’m wearing my robe; (I get to preach the sermon;) much less bother.

I notice that our backyard incline increased at least 13% over the winter. However, so many tree limbs feel down it gives you better grip while staggering up it. I’m speculating here as I haven’t really tried to walk up it.

My wife claims I lost a lot of weight during my plague. But why wasn’t any of it from my stomach; now I look like a four legged spider. No, that’s not true, I looked in the mirror the other day and was surprised to see Mahatma Gandhi staring back at me. Think I’ll start wearing a bedsheet.

Join the military and get sexually assaulted if you are female; more likely raped than killed by enemy fire. But numbers are hard to come by, as most don’t get reported for fear of reprisal; an estimated 26,000 last year up from 19,300 in 2010. 1,100 were punished for the assaults but what do expect when one who in charge of such cases is a sexual assaulter himself? So, why is it rising, and rising in the military in comparison to the rest of society.

“The only thing we have to fear is the lack of fear itself.” Just think about it for  a bit.

Philip Falcone and his partners at the hedge fund Harbinger Capital agreed to pay $18 million to resolve civil allegations by US regulators that he misused customer funds to pay his taxes, manipulated the markets and gave favorable treatment to certain clients…. Phil Falcone has a net worth of $1.2 billion according to Forbes. He went to Harvard. I wonder how he did in his business ethics course if he took one. Now he’s barred from working as an investment advisor or broker for two years. Ho hum, just a little fraud. Good thing he didn’t do something really bad like break into a store and steal paint or something. You can go to jail for that sort of thing.

Time for food for body than thought and a nap.

The Ten Plagues Were a Waste of Time

With some regularity in my life I have been telling God how she could of done things differently and better. Here is a case in point.

You all know about the ten plagues God rained down upon Pharaoh and his fellow Egyptians. That was over kill, why bother with toads, and locusts, floods, lice, flies, hoof and mouth disease, hail and thunder darkness and finally the death of each first born. All God had to do in inflict a good old Midwestern super cold on the entire population and the Hebrews could have walked out the country taking away anything they wanted.

This came to me as I a currently suffering from just a cold plague. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, everything hurts including my hair follicles, and I’m just plain puny. Don’t even show me a golf club; it’s that bad.

It is so bad the Patchtricia the tiniest of our cats took a look at me wobbling around, hurled herself at my chest and pinned both of my arms flat on the floor; then laughed. As a matter of fact they all came over and laughed. I haven’t seen them all this happy in a long time. Sadistic felines. Lamont said I didn’t have enough brain cells left working to cloud and he could pinned me with a single toe. Pawline just purred.

If you have not shed a tear of pity for poor old me you must in callous malevolent creatures indeed.

Think I’ll go in the garden and eat worms…oh, we don’t have a garden; probably couldn’t swallow one anyway. You know majority of the Psalms are Psalms of complaint. This is mine for today.

How Many State Militias Are There?

By my count there are twenty: 1) The Alabama State Defense Force, 2) the Alaska State Defense Force, 3)California State Military Reserve, 4) Georgia State Defense Force, 5) Indiana Guard Reserve, 6) Maryland Defense Force, 7) Massachusetts State Defense Force, 8) Michigan Volunteer Defense Force, 9)  Mississippi State Guard, 10) New York Guard, 11) Ohio Military Reserve, 12) Ohio Navel Militia, 13) Oregon State Defense Force, 14) Puerto Rico State Guard, 15) South Carolina State Guard, 16) Tennessee State Guard, 17) Texas State Guard, 18) Texas State Guard Maritime Regiment, 18) Vermont State Guard, 19) Virginia Defense Force, 20) Washington State Guard.

Now you may have noticed that Ohio has two, as does Texas along with Puerto Rico, which is not a state.

We should not confuse these with militia groups in the United States, of which there are 1,200. Then there are 1,360 radical anti-government “patriot” groups as of 2012. This seems rather scary to me. They also have nothing to do with the 2^nd amendment. Nor should we confuse them with National Guard Units which every state has plus Puerto Rico.

Trying to find out numbers about these groups is tough. Michigan has 200 members. Vermont had 35 members 3 years ago but now 500 volunteers; who knows what that’s about – there was a post about Militia, Zombies and Cheese related to them I chose not pursue. Washington has two regiments whatever that means. Puerto Rico apparently is one of the largest with about 2,600 troops most of them belonging to the National Guard as well.

Michigan State Militia 1913

It continues to amaze me that although 8 of 10 American citizens want background checks (and likely more gun control) congress voted it down. They are now finding out they have a bit of a problem back home.

It may be time to rethink the 2^nd Amendment, which reflected the fears of a fledgling nation. We live in an entirely different country today with entirely different concepts of military need. While Federal Reserve Forces make sense to me these other state militia don’t make sense to me, and the illegal ones are just that, illegal and a danger.

I still think people have the right to have sporting guns, which could be highly regulated, as in other countries, so sportsmen and sportswomen can go out as shoot at stuff. But heavy artillery is just too weird.

Maybe congress will rethink their position, but I wouldn’t count on it, they still seem to serve money interests rather the public common good.

Mr and Ms Congressperson What Are You Afraid of?

Are you afraid of not getting re-elected? Or are you afraid of not having friends in high places? Are you afraid of not pleasing your economic masters?

Here’s a thought – take a look and Jesus and his followers; the archetypical public servants who went into communities and hung out with the marginalized, the disenfranchised and the poor and helped them. They created communities of help and hope and then moved onto the next community of need and started all over again.

They were not afraid to take on the secular, economic and political leaders and demonstrated better forms of leadership. They moved people from fear-based lives to liberated lives of service and community. They bound people together rather than pitting them against each other.

Religious leaders, we need to look back at those same service based communities and look for ways to work together with folk of different faiths and beliefs or even non-beliefs. We need to reclaim our religious identities by what we do and how we work with each other rather than highlighting our differences. People of faith you do Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior, a disfavor when you do demean each other and do not search for common ground.

The common good is meant for everyone. We find the Spirit of God dwelling where we work together.  We all belong to the same tribe.

Watching Congress Is Like Watching Paint Dry

Five hundred and thirty-five men and women (though some may be from other planets) represent us in congress. With few exceptions, very few, they are dull. I’m not sure their reflections show up in mirrors.

What do they do to serve us? Pretty much nothing, well, they did get to kick the can down the road so planes could fly, but that seemed a bit of self-interest rather than public interest. If they don’t do anything why can’t they entertain us? The President is pretty entertaining, but think of a joke a member of congress has told; unless you just consider them a joke.

The least they could do as other governing bodies in other countries do, is get into a fistfight every now and then as the Venezuelan and the British have from time to time. How about be real donnybrook between Chuck Grassley and Michelle Bachmann. 

 

Perhaps there could be a good bout between the good, the bad, and the ugly but I’m not sure who would play the parts.

South Koren

Taiwan

Venezula

Where good ol shoe thumping Khrushchev when you need him.

Jesse Ventura showed you could run a state as an pro wrestler, why don’t we just draft the World Wide Wrestling League to occupy congress.

Woody Allen said, “90 percent of life is just showing up.” We probably don’t have fights because our congressional leaders just don’t show up. The house averaged 135 day in session each year and the senate 160 and it is getting worse. They can’t the spend 25% to 50% of their time fundraising. But we don’t want work them too hard as they only get 3.4 times the average salary of their constituents; that puts them in the top 5%, they just get elected by the top 1%.

And I vowed to stay positive today. Messed up again.