Thursday, April 23, 2015

JULIUS AND ETHEL ROSENBERG......HILLARY AND BILL CLINTON ??

Long ago and far away in what seems to be on another planet far far away, two Americans who turned over confidential documents to the Russians were arrested by the FBI, tried by the American government, convicted of espionage and executed.
      In a book released today called Clinton Cash, it has been alleged that for multi=millions of dollars through a nefarious scheme the Clinton's accepted cash into their trust Fund from foreign governments, and helped a transaction that channeled American Uranium through to Vladamir Putin, president of Russia. Benefits Bill Clinton also received were the opportunity to deliver a speech in the Russian capital for over a half million dollars.
     It is also alleges that at time, e/mails were transacted between General Electric in New York and the Clinton's who brokered the deal. As of this date, the CEO of GE refuses to acknowledge the existence of said emails. This is beginning to sound familiar.
     Since Iran is a client state of Russia and we are presently trying to negotiate with Iran to " please don't shoot us with any nuclear missiles" it seems likely that our negotiating position might be a little weak at this point.
     The Rosenberg's were electrocuted for far less than what it is ALLEGED the Clinton's have done.
      Also, on this date, a new federal Attorney General has been confirmed and it is believed she will be saddled with the task of an investigation into the above. At least we all hope and pray that she does.
####

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

FOX NEWS AND ME? -- SPLITSVILLE

I almost plugged my  television tonight. I have been a steadfast loyal consumer of Fox News - " fair and balanced." Yadda, yadda.
      Tonight was the last straw. I flipped off mid-way through Hannity. I can't take Prince Loud Mouth anymore. The pressure to leave has been building over the last weeks and months. And it hasn't just been Hannity.
      I have grown tired of listening to that over bearing super-heated Blondie lawyer with the hyper inflated ego and big mouth. Her persistent interruptions of her " guests " drive me . A derisive term, guests, she brings them interrupts them at every term, and blows them off the set before the viewer can grasp why they are even there. This evening, an older woman, a " feminist " lecturer on campus rape couldn't get a word in edge-wise as to why she was poison at some college campuses because Princess couldn't stop expounding. Exit stage left. I had no idea what the hell was going on.
nutz
     Hannity? Same story, Rudeness times 10. Why don't the save some coins and not invite guests and just lecture us on their pious points of view? That seems, of late what they're doing anyway.
     I'm looking for news, not jaundiced points of view and lectures. Fox just hit the skids for me and headed south. Somebody better fix that program.
###

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

CIVILITY? WHERE THE HELL HAS IT GONE?

George Washington wrote a book back then on the rules of civility. Every and then, somebody steals the idea, copies some of it and re posts the book under a new concept....doesn't matter. As our civility continues to circle the drain, we need it, like a life raft to a drowning man.
     I'm going out of my mind reading and watching stories of young mothers drowning their new borne children, stabbing their husbands 27 times, driving over cliffs, drinking themselves into oblivion, murdering their fathers!!! And, I wonder, what in hell is going on.
    Born in 1940, growing up in the 50 and 60s, I was exposed to none of this. Sure, alcoholics existed, troubled marriages were around, divorces happened, but not the rupture of civil discourse that seems to riven our society today. And, I know it's not just the US. Similar distress in Europe bleeds there, and some, but not all of the Pacific Rim.
    In my young and formative years, mouthing back to my parents would result in a violent clash of wills with me losing. Today, parents seem lost as to what to do. We can a ll draw a straight line from awful movies, violent television, commercially available sex, computers without limits, language that is uncontrollable, AND no consequences for bad behavior. Civility as we knew it, is no longer is demand.
    The fault lies in our INACTION. The continues DEBATE. It is time to stop talking about it and pick up the truncheon and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I know that the timid will say, oh, don't go off half cocked,  mistakes and all that.
     My retort?  SO WHAT? How often does the State Legislature subject US to laws that are harmful, screwed up and costly, that we have to retreat, recall them, and start over? Better to act in good faith and sit quietly and count the damage.
     Blame it on a string of bad factors all you want, but get off your hands and do something. We have a lot riding on this, and chances are, they're looking at you at the dinner table.
###

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Whatever Happened to WALT LONGMIRE ?

There was this deep voice, ragged piercing stare, and huge hands of his that when he sat behind his desk, leaned forward and asked you questions, you knew he was in control of the situation. 
     Everything was going to be alright. Walt was on the job.
     "I'm 911," he once said. 
     His limited extended family ran the gamut across gender, race and age. His best friend was the Indian bar tender at he town's watering hole. " Walt" he called him. 
     Walt's past haunted him and it wasn't a secret, wife murdered down south in Denver, daughter - a pretty little woman - growing closer to him. Eventually quiet close as the story went on. 
      Although he packed a six gun, rarely used, Longmire's signature was a long rifle, a tradition Winchester 30-30. He was never without it. Occasionally, he hit what he was aiming for.
      Like John Wayne, he was big and powerful, yet gentle, quiet and in control. His temper rarely flared but when it did, furniture flew. His audience was faithful, every week, missing dinner, appointments, school plays, what - not, to catch Longmire. 
      Like John Wayne, Walt Longmire was teaching a new generation of American Men how to act like men, something they seemed to have forgotten in recent years, a softening in the culture. A sense that we are weakening in our resolve.
      Let's just say the backers of LONG
MIRE grew weak in the knees. Money, ratings, reputation, something transitory this way comes. We'll give them that, won't we? BUT, THERE ARE LARGER THING IN LIFE THAN JUST MONEY. There are moral principles, truth character, country. And occasionally, power meisters see behind the pale, like the owners of Star Trek and they keep on funding it until it catches on.
      And now, eons later, we still celebrate the character and culture of that artistic and character building venture out of Hollywood, don't we?
      Don't we?
###

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Geneology - Mine

My grandmother (mom's mother) came from the mountains of central Pennsylvania. She had a delightful country/mountain twang to her voice. She was my favorite. When I was a boy, I often talked to her about where the family came from: i.e. our roots, our history.
    Her favorite retort was, " be careful not to go too far back on the family tree, you never know who you're going to find hanging off it." Grandma was a card.
    Now in retirement, I've decided to look.
    She was right. A long lost uncle was one of the more famous architects in America, living and working in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Married to a beautiful young woman who loved to flaunt her ....attributes, she worked in a gentleman's club of the day entertaining rich New Yorkers. One night after entertaining one a little too much, my great, grand uncle arrived pistol in hand and shot the suitor in the head, killing him. Headlines, everywhere, the trial of the century ensued.
     In 1804, Lewis and Clarke set out from St. Louis on the Oregon Trial with a bunch of people trying to find the Northwest Passage. In the group was one lone Army Lieutenant whose duty was to armament of everyone else, the horses and provisions. Lt. Alexander Graham Willard went on to be the only member of the Corps of Discovery every photographed in his 90's. I am one of his descendants.
     The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 hosted the Witch trials. Among the  12 witches hung was John Willard, last to be executed for witchcraft. Testimony at his trial indicated he caused one young lady in town to cause her to cease urinating. Verdict, guilty of witchcraft. I, also, am a descendant.
     Gettysburg battlefield was the largest conflict in this hemisphere and among the thousands of killed and wounded was Colonel Alexander Graham Willard, commander of the 124th New York Volunteers, my grand uncle. He died at the front of his troops during Pickett's charge on July 3 at about 3:30 in the afternoon. He was a descendant of Generals of the war of 1812 and of the Revolution.
     Little did he know, he fell in battle two days after General John FULTON Reynolds died just northwest of town on the first day of Gettysburg engagement. General Reynolds was an ancestor of my family's other branch, the two gentlemen did not know of each other.
     All of this comes as a shock and surprise to me, this late in life. I continue to investigate, to explore. To date, I have found no axe murderers, petty thieves or pirates.
###

Thursday, April 16, 2015

GUNS, INSANITY, POLITICIANS, VOTERS???

Why do they do it? The crazies are alive again, roaming the landscape, stirring up voters, they think. " We gotta get control of guns" they holler. Another town mayor tried to pass a law against pistols in his town and his own town council voted him down. Guess he's off his meds. 
     Things are so bad here in the USA, fringey, as my youngest daughter used to call it, that everyone is getting armed, and I imagine, stuffing them in their pockets. 
     I detect, as they used to say on Star Trek, a rip in the space time continuum. Communal stress if you will. Everybody is just a little up tight. The beginning of the funny season, a year and a half out, the politicos are out running around for president. Obamas staying out of traffic, which is hard for him to do, sucking up to every tv camera in Christendom. 
     At this writing, there are 27 Republicans running for the nomination. Our current president hiding under his desk in the White House as a Florida mailman just flew a helicopter right up to the Capitol Bldg, violating this country's strongest military air space without so much as a scratch. 
     National moods are below apathetic: nothing works, all the agencies seem dysfunction, most of us feel unprotected from the outside, at the mercy of an uncaring, predatory government on the inside. 
     Tax season just ended, the health care act has fostered nation wide stories of tax implications on Mom and Pops all over the country, late filings, lack of assistance from the agency, surly agency management personnel, indifferent government officials. Never have we felt so ignored and powerless than now. Without a voice.
     And this we must endure for another 15 months or more. 
     Or worse.
###

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

AUTO-GYRTO LANDING IN WASHINGTON WEDNESDAY

At this early stage, facts yet revealed, no matter how you feel about the dramatic video of the auto-gyro that landed on the grounds of the Capitol building, I believe it should have been shot down.
     The pilot, whomever he is, got within 100 yards of the wall of the Capitol. Nearby was a group of children touring that vast lawn leading up to the Capitol. The aircraft used it in his approach and landed on a patch of grass quite close to the building.
  • He came so close to those children, he could have crashed into them.
  • He could have been carrying a bomb.
  • Explosions near or on top of those kids would have been preventable disaster and loss of American lives.
  • Again-----where was the Secret Service? Where was Security? 
How often will Washington's Federal Air Space be violated without protection from those agencies who should have learned by now, from the experience paid for by American blood that this should never happen again? Some whacko with letters for Congress could have easily dropped them in the front door and given them to the mail clerk. Someone has to have the stones to make the decision and protect us.
      The man in charge of all this is the top guy - President Barack Obama. The VA hasn't improved it's waiting times, the IRS seems to be in cardiac arrest, late night comedians make fun of the NSA spying on us, Obama's own family are fodder for Saturday Night Live.
      Someone has to step up and do something. The time for talk should be over. We are in danger!!
###

THE KIDS ARE GETTING STUPID PART DEUX

I fear for our future. Author and commentator Pat Buchanan writes that our culture has no guarantee that we will last forever. Citing histories of others once thought to have ruled large portions of the planet and no longer exist, so too, he feels, our dwindling IQs seem to signal that seem inevitability.
     Public outcry over lack of credible local candidates for jobs from doctors to taxi drivers forces American industry to beg, borrow or steal from abroad. Late night TV hosts joke about Middle Eastern New York cab drivers and 7/11 clerks from India, while recent studies show whole towns in our country staffed by doctors from Arabian, Middle Eastern locals and Pacific Rim graduates.
     An immediate example that comes to mind is Yuma, Arizona where it's worth your life to get a doctor who was born in America, Anglo Saxon and speaks English. Former city administrators from Yuma, religious leaders and other folks of mid level importance, mount their automobiles and travel to San Diego or Phoenix for their medical care, eschewing local docs.
     Yuma has one psychiatrist from India who in her late 80's.
      As a result, medical costs to the public are through the roof.
      Our educational system not only fails or current crop of children, it doesn't seem to even care. Swayed by the politics of the moment, one can move from class room to class room and flip a coin as to the probable curriculum in each location.
       Meanwhile, our children are fed a diet of action movies where not one, three or five testosterone driven actors shoot up the screen, blow up each other or strip naked some poor defenseless actress for $6,00 a ticket, it's considered an " art-form." Police report some of the crimes in the movies are beginning to appear on the street. Some fun.
       Television backs up the inevitable collapse of the mind bending tortuous fall from sanity with reality shows that tweak the bottom of creativity. "Real Housewives" of someplace or other show adults acting like children, Motorcycle shows highlight huge brutes breaking down motorcycles that look like something out of a Hollywood horror movie, these guys are extras from a Muscle show, and the evening's entertainment runs the gamut from the 60's Leave it to Beaver down to today's "Abortion on Demand" and where to find it.
        Mom and Dad (if he's still around) are busting their humps making a living, the kids are latch key, a hold over from the 80s, if they bothered to go to school at all, and if the parents are lucky enough, they don't have to do guard duty in the school security office for having beaten up a 65 year old teacher.
        Not enough jobs for the young people?
        Bill O'Reilly's program on Fox News hosts " Watters World" an interview show where the young man hits the street stops young people and asks tough questions like, " who is the vice president?, or Who Won World War II?"
        No. They usually cannot answer correctly. Usually, Watters catches them on the beach, tennis court, at lunch, generally at play. NEVER WORKING.
        Not as many students are applying for college. And, those that do, more are girls now, than boys. Colorado just legalized drugs. You know what happens when you do something like that?
         Nothing. Nobody cares anymore.
###

Sunday, April 12, 2015

WILD BUFFALO WYATT HICKERODY

( dedicated to and authored by the late Glenn G. Boyer, author of many biographies of the Earp Brothers of Tombstone)

The gosh true ballad of Wild Buffalo Wyatt Hickerody
who was near as pizzen as the bad man from Bodie.

His job was on a bar stool down in sunny Arizoney,
fillin' them funny tourists full of historical baloney.

He rid the pine forest with Custer when his grand dad was a boy,
and camping with the James Boys was his other standard ploy.

He fit Injuns with a Bowie knife, he erred and he bowed,
and you should have seen them pizzened broncs that he hickerode.

Injuns are his specialty, why podner, he knows the oldest one alive.
For sure, he looks, 70, without the balooney, he's only 65!!
###

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

WATTER'S WORLD ----O'REILLY FACTOR ----FOX NEWS



I watch O'Reilly practically every night. I"m hooked. At times, I have to turn him off, his constant interruptions of guests and interviewees is too much and I turn on the music channel - I admit it.
      But, when he has Watters World on, I watch him faithfully. This is not funny to me, it's sad. Note the news clip. His weekly contribution to the collective ignorance of our younger generation is beginning to frighten me. Young druggies hanging out on beaches living on government hand outs while we cater to foreigners with advance degrees to fill in hi-tech jobs here in the US has my hair falling out with worry about our future.
      Watters World on the street interviews are much like this. What I fear most is " THE KIDS ARE GETTING STUPID." And, like the flu, it's catching,....upward into the news media. Look at this stupid paper.
       They actually paid some reporter AND editor to publish this moronic story.
       I know I'm above average in the IQ department, people have told me, but pulleezzee, this is too much. This must have gotten past two or three fact checkers and editors to even get into print.
       A collage of occurrences - what else in print is this egregious? And where?
###

HILLARY CLINTON, PRESIDENT??----THE GHOSTS OF BENGHAZI

Four Americans caught in the gunfire, running out of ammo, desperately looking for a helo, caught on a roof top in Benghazi. CIA people told to cover a base in Benghazi, an ancient base of ours that goes back beyond the second World War where we once launched B-24 bomber attacks against the Nazis in Europe.
     Our Ambassador, now dead at the hands of the savages bent on killing everybody, seek out the last remaining Americans. Coded messages for help.
     Remember the TV ads for president? Who is going to answer the 3 am phone call in case of a national emergency? Remember? Well, guess who DIDN'T ANSWER?? Hillary Clinton. No where to be found.
     Troops were ready to go, " an order" was given to STAND DOWN.

  • WHO GAVE IT?
  • WHEN ISSUED?
  • WHY?
  • HOW FAST COULD THEY HAVE GOTTEN THERE?
  • WHERE WERE THE JET FIGHTERS?
  • WHEN COULD THEY HAVE DONE A FLY/OVER?
  • WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
  • WHY COULDN'T THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SEE/HEAR THE HEARINGS WHERE ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE COULD TESTIFY TO THOSE QUESTION
  • WHY ARE THE TRUTHS COVERED UP? THE ARMY/MC CARTHY HEARINGS WERE MORE OPEN THAN BENGHAZI. WHAT IS HILLARY CLINTON HIDING? " WHAT DOES IT REALLY MATTER?" HILLARY. FOUR AMERICANS ARE DEAD.
Before Americans rush head long into electing another ERROR, we need to clear up this mess. Answers to this national disgrace should be brought before the American people for decision. 
     To say nothing of the lying and cheating over MISSING EMAILS.
###

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

IN PRAISE OF AMERICAN INDIANS

I don't know what your experience may have been with American Indians, or Native Americans as they like to be called, but I doubt that it has been in depth.
     Here's mine, having worked with them for years.
     They deeply value old folks, Indians venerate elderly tribal members to almost an exalted position within the tribe. They often seek them out, listen to their words and revere them for their " wisdom's."
     Younger Indians face modern day pressures left far behind by older, mature, elderly Indians and often they seek guidance from these council members. They, having traveled these trails of tears and often give advice in shedding their own tears to the young people. Tribal Councils often are peopled by seniors and they usually have the last word on what happens on the reservation.
       The old ones, they say, we stay on the reservation to stay close to them. That is a good thing, Many have told me.
      Another family quality not found outside the Indian Reservation is their habit of having children at home, at the dinner table at a certain time. No excuses, no lateness - home, supper. Mom and Dad.
If one of the children are absent at the proper time, it's a major problem. I've known Indian fathers in their trucks, riding up and down darkened roads, checking other houses looking for their " strays."
     Their community means the world to them. When they make a decision that affects them all, they meet in a large open house called a Hogan, Long House, Kiva Room, or other names depending on the tribe. Chairs are placed around the edges of the room and everyone in all the families sit in chairs,      The chief sits in the large chair by the door and conducts the meeting. He carries a big, very ornate, tribal stick, or truncheon. While holding it, he talks about the subject at hand and the decision that must be reached by the whole tribe. When done, he hands the stick to the first person on his left who begins to speak his mind for as long or as short as he wishes.
     The process takes a long time, going from person to child, to person around the entire room. When done, they decide. The whole community must be on the same page or they do not move on the subject they discuss. Total agreement, total uniformity.
     These are some of the warm and wonderful aspects of the Native American peoples that I've observed in the decade I've worked with them in Oregon.
###

Thursday, April 2, 2015

THE KINGSTON TRIO - TODAY

Back in the 60s there was a musical group called the Kingston Trio out of San Francisco. Can't remember what club they hung out in, the background for the photos was a brick wall. Years later when I worked for an airline I flew out there, and caught their act in that club. Loved it, they became my heroes. They had a signature song.
     Now, in my mid 70's I find myself humming it again, because so much of what goes in around me, in my neighborhood, in my town, certainly in America, and now in the world - brings back the uneasy, unsafe, jittery world of the Kingston Trio's song.
     " They're rioting in Africa ding, dinga ding, ding. ( musical notes.) Their starving in Spain. There's hurricanes in Florida - dum, dumde dum dum, ........and Texas needs rain. 
      The whole world is festering with unhappy souls: the French hate the British, the Germans hate the Poles. And we will be happy, and tranquil and proud, for man has been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud. 
       And, some happy day, when someone will pray, I will set the spark off ---and we will all be blown AWAY.!!!"
      (Reprise)
      We all felt that way in the mid 60's when Johnson sat in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Funny, now, that " The Amateur" as author Ed Klein paints him (into a corner) our national conundrum seems oh, far worse? 
       " they're rioting in Africa........'
###