9/11/2001 - 2008

Lest We Forget

The evil is still with us. If we let our guard down - It's "Lights Out!"

Family Time

R J Ranch, August 14, 2008

(CLICK photo for a larger image)

We can learn a great deal from something as simple as a family of quail. To see this family strolling through our yard is a heart warming sight, indeed. Leading the family is "Daddy Quail," followed by the "kids," with "Mom" bring up the rear to keep stragglers in line.

We see this new family out looking for food, almost daily. Usually, they head for the garden to see what bugs and insects are available. Always, they travel together as a family.

My thoughts are: Why can't our modern-day families be as loyal, trusting and devoted to the well-being of everyone. Quail mate for life, so unless somthing happens, the parents stay together forever and raise each new family until they are off on their own.

If something scares the quail family, they seem to fly off, somewhat in the same direction, but always find their way back together again.

The World and it's Creatures are a wonderful experience!

PS: Don't even think about asking if you can hunt quail on the R J Ranch!

Food For Thought - Two People's Opinion

-----Original Message-----
From: ####
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008
To: #### (Blog owner)

Subject: Income Concentration at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows.
Yeah for the tax cuts! It would be nice if they actually benefited anyone other than the mega wealthy. Here's some good info for you thanks to your buddy W who's had such a hard, hard 8 years. As he said, "It's hard work being the President." N_ s*&^ Dick Tracy. Can't wait until he's gone. Worst President Ever. Undeniable.

http://www.cbpp.org/3-27-08tax2.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~//~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi: ####
Point 1: In my mind I see this way: Those people that "get it" are earning more money, building more job creating businesses, paying more taxes and generally doing quite well ... Thank You! The lower earners are those that listened to their iPod's and text-messaged their buddies during school time ... And joined the 40% of the current US crop of "students" that dropped out of school, ended up in dead-end jobs, went to the Emergency Room when they were sick (because they preferred to have a "hot car" and/or a gigantic plasma TV rather than medical insurance) and ... complain loudly about the great division between "have's and have-not's." The later group is in the "I want it NOW" group, but have no desire to WORK for it.

Point 2: While I certainly don't endorse everything JWB has done, (Or Carter, Clinton, Nixon, Johnson, JFK or Theodore Roosevelt and many others, for that matter) the problem is the country has needlessly become very polarized, like a school-yard fight. No one listens, or wins, but even worse, no one learns. J W Bush has done an excellent job under an excruciating situation. It's almost unforgivable to toss tomatoes when you are comfortably sitting at home in the greatest and safest country ever known to man. Easy to do ... But not too smart, in my opinion. "Worst President Ever. Undeniable" ... I don't think so!

Best regards, ####

Ps: I wish I were Bush's "buddy," but I don't run in those circles. About the only thing we have in common is we both flew F-102's. Everyone I knew that flew F-102's was a very accomplished person. (The F-102 was a single-engine, single-seat, supersonic all-weather fighter-interceptor. You either "had it together" or you made like a lawn-dart!)

NASCAR: No help here

Believe it or not, typical NASCAR race attendance is 100,000+, although some races, such as the Daytona 500 host twice that many.


There are typically forty (40) cars in each race.


Let's assume that the average race distance is 300 miles ... they range from 150 miles to 500 miles. If 40 cars drive 300 miles, that is a total travelled distance of 12,000 miles (40 x 300).


If each car averages three miles per gallon (a very realistic number: I know, I've been there and done that), the race will turn 4,000 gallons of fuel into polluting exhaust fumes.


If 100,000 fans drive to the race with an average of two people to a car, that means 50,000 cars drive to each race. Let's also make a WAG that their average driving distance TO the race is twenty-five miles. Since most chose to drive back home after the race, that's another twenty-five miles. This means that 50,000 cars drive 50 miles to see the race and return home. That is a total distance travelled for all cars of 2,500,000 miles - TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES! (50,000 x 50)


If those 50,000 cars average 25 MPG (Somewhat optimistic) they will consume 100,000 gallons of fuel!


Bottom Line:

Forty race cars burn 4,000 gallons of fuel in order to attract 100,000+ fans who, in turn, burn 100,000 gallons of fuel to see the race.


Seems pretty dumb, to me ... and this is just for ONE race! There are dozens of NASCAR races each year.


Gas shortage - Smash shortage!

Is "The Fix" in?

The following is from a good friend of mine who is a staff writer for one of the largest newspapers in the US. (NOT a liberal or conservative newspaper)
The observation made seems reasonable to me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~//~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 11:09 AM
To: roger@daisley.com
Subject: re "president" item

The other night I watched some very smug OPEC types being asked if they would increase oil production. When they answered in the affirmative, the reporter next asked if they would bring down the prices and they laughted as if to say surely you jest.

I think they are doing this to ensure a certain person will be in the white house next year and after he's been elected they will lower the cost and all will go back to normal with "their man" leading the USA.

Welcome to Toastmasters

I received the following piece as an email today. I thought it was interesting enough to share on this site. Whether you agree, disagree, love or hate it ... it does make for interesting reading, don't you think?

Welcome to Toastmasters, June 13, 2033. That's right: 2033!

Today Rick Campbell, one of our senior members at age 87, is here to reminisce a bit and give us a history lesson. He says he is so old that he learned to drive an internal combustion engine car (remember those) with a manual transmission. He once owned a typewriter. He remembers when bicycles had one speed, phones had two-party lines, and cameras had something called film. As incredible as this may seem, he says that when he was young, it was common for people to smoke in restaurants and public places. He is from a different time; almost a different world.

I'm sure all of us are far too familiar with the tragic events of 2010, so Rick is not going to plow that fertile field again.

Instead, he is going to give us a personal look back at the conditions which led up to that fateful year, in a speech titled '2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President.'

As we look back on history, it appears that some Presidents had an easy ride --- times of growth and stability. Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK come to mind. Those were good years to be President.

Others were elected just when the Republic was facing terrible crises: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush. They rose to the occasion, even though they were controversial and widely hated while in office. Not such good years to be President.

Just a few years prior, in 2008, the country began foundering. We were in the sixth year of the Iraqi Occupation, and the economy was flat. The mainstream press clearly wanted a Democrat elected. Although we didn't know it until some years later, oil producing nations had colluded to secretly buy their own oil on the open market, driving oil prices to shocking levels above the true demand price- reaching a high of $162 a barrel in October, 2008, just before the general elections.Their purpose was simple: to effect regime change in the United States. And of course, the U.S. economy was already in a real estate slump and also suffering the curse of stagflation; slow growth and high inflation. There were a million home foreclosures. Independent truckers went under by the thousands. Airlines failed. Airlines with names now long-forgotten: United, Delta, Northwestern, American. All now merged, of course, into the one lone U.S. carrier we love so much: Southwest.

Against this backdrop of weariness of the war on terror, and economic distress, the American people were ripe for a demagogue, and they certainly got one in Barrack Hussein Obama.

He and his running mate Kathleen Sibelius inspired them with vague notions of hope and change; of a world in which diplomacy settled all international problems, of free universal health care, of abundant alternative energy, of peace and love. It was a vision too good to resist. The Republican nominee, a name you probably haven't heard in years. Anyone remember him?

Yes, it was John McCain, an obscure Senator from Arizona had no clue how to run a national campaign, and a platform nearly as liberal as Obama's. The selection of Condoleeza Rice as his running mate looked brilliant at first. Unfortunately, black voters viewed her as white, and women voters viewed her as one of the guys. Even so, the McCain/Rice ticket would have won the election if it were not for the fact that 16 percent of conservative Republicans voted for [Anyone remember?] That's right, Bob Barr, another name that's a footnote in history.

After Obama's narrow win, thanks to recounts in Broward County, Florida, the country was positively giddy. A Democrat House, Senate, and President. At last an end to gridlock in Washington. Camelot! When Congress convened in January, 2009, the 44th President of the United States did something unique in history: he made good on his campaign promises.

Certainly most Americans never really thought he was serious during the campaign. But whether because of inexperience, idealism, or simply incompetence, he followed through. In Obama's first One Hundred Days, the Democrat Congress passed his initiatives, and he signed them into law as he said he would. He repealed the Bush tax cuts, and increased capital gains taxes. He enacted a windfall profits tax, and instituted price controls on gasoline and diesel fuel.

He passed universal health care, which added an additional 10 percent tax increase on all working Americans. He signed the Immigrant Amnesty bill which created 12 million new citizens instantly, each with entitlements.

He closed the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and summarily released all the detainees. He repealed the Patriot Act, and cut funding for espionage, and eliminated all terrorist listening and wiretaps. Most important, he began the complete and immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. He ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to retain bases in Kuwait and Qatar. Instead, he went with the recommendation of Secretary of Defense Dennis Kucinich, and ordered all troops back to U S. soil.

Viola! In One Hundred Days, by May of 2009, it was all done, and the vision was complete. He did exactly what he said he would do. And so it was in the summer of 2009 that things began to unravel for Obama. Of course, the economy needed a tax cut, not an increase, and unemployment quickly rose to 12 percent. Even attorneys and economists were put in the bread lines. Hard times were here! Price controls on gasoline immediately led to shortages and gas lines.

The global cooling trend we have seen for the past 25 years first became obvious in 2009, exposing the CO2 global warming fraud. People were justifiably angry. Federal deficits increased massively because thousands of baby boomers, facing job loss and much higher taxes, simply gave up and took social security.

Although the superb U.S. health care system was thrown into disarray, the bright spot was the creation of the Federal Department of Health care, and the immediate hiring of 250,000 administrators, inspectors and auditors, the only job growth in any economic sector in 2009.

By February 2010, the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq was complete. It was a very expensive undertaking. And then in March, the gradual Shiite insurgencies from Iran turned into a true Iraqi civil war. In May, Iranian tanks crossed the border and quickly took Baghdad. Although the exact number is not known, at least 230,000 Sunni Iraqis died as we stood by and did nothing. Iran also quickly moved into undefended Kuwait. President Obama did exactly what he said he would. He sent Secretary of State Maria Cantwell to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. After two weeks of high level talks, the United States agreed to allow Iran to retain Iraq and Kuwait to create stability in the middle east, with the understanding that Israel would not be disturbed.

Cantwell returned to Washington, and explained the agreement in her famous speech, in which she proudly noted that the Obama administration had finally achieved 'peace in our time' in the Middle East. So there was some surprise at the rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on August 14th. President Obama said, 'This is not the Ahmadinejad I knew.' The Obama administration decided it would be de-stabilizing to take sides in the conflict, and approximately 29,000 Israeli civilians died during the summer and fall.

American Jews were appalled at the inaction. Yes, in 2010 most American Jews were Democrats, but because of 2010, they are solid Republicans today. As awkward as it was, everything might have turned out all right for the Obama administration going into the fall mid-term elections of 2010, if it hadn't been for the dirty bomb in the Port of Long Beach. The administration had cut funding for the inspection of containers, because they felt it showed a 'lack of trust' in the international trading community.

It wasn't really a very big bomb, and thank goodness, not a real nuclear device, but nonetheless it contaminated some expensive real estate --- Newport Beach, Palos Verdes Estates --- and ultimately caused the death of 14,000 Americans. People were especially annoyed that Disneyland had to be closed for decontamination.

And so, in the midterm elections, Republicans regained control of both the House and Senate, and the rest is history. The impeachment proceedings against President Obama for 'failure to protect and defend' were swift and nearly unanimous. Vice President Sibelius resigned. Newly-elected Speaker of the House, J.C. Watts, became the 45th President of the United States. But you know the rest of the story well. Republicans finished the war on Islamic fundamentalists, largely by aiming ICBM's at Mecca and Medina.

No Democrat has been elected President since. Republicans have held both Houses of Congress. History of Western Civilization and Economics are now taught in all public schools, and in English only. Marriage is defined as one man and one woman. And there are border fences, north and south. We old codgers remember the ancient Confucian curse: 'May you live in interesting times.

'Well, 2010 was an interesting year, but it was not a good year to be President.'

Well ... DAH!

A poll this week indicates that 76% of the American people want off-shore and ANWR oil drilling to begin right now. Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? After all, it is obvious that we are becoming more and more indebted to foreign countries that are not our friends.

The democratic presidental candidate say's: "No, we should NOT start increased drilling right now because (get this ...!) it would not change the price of gas at the pump RIGHT NOW." Well ... DAH!

It seems clear to me that, once again, the democrates would much rather CONTROL our lifestyle, rather than upset the tree huggers.