Bread 'n circuses...

“What’s the GOP plan?”

I’ve heard that question from Obama, from Reid, from Pelosi, ’n from rank ’n file liberals across the country.  And there’s always a sneer attached to it.  What is worse, I’ve heard Republicans state that they need a plan to counter the Obama fiasco.

Oh yeah!  Like when one gargantuan fiasco ain’t enough, let’s put our heads together ’n come up with a really, really big one, one that c'n really put us down the old two-holer!

Back in the old days, before the Obama not really Affordable Healthcare Act, the USA didn’t have ‘A Plan’…all we had was the best damn healthcare in the world.  Expensive?  You bet!  But people who could afford it came from all over the world because IT JUST WASN’T AVAILABLE elsewhere.

And for those Americans (’n some others) who couldn’t afford it, well, they went to emergency services where it was, in most places, against the law to not help them... 

And since there wuz, like, 30 million of them (Obama admin figures) that was expensive’n paid for by taxpayers.  (At a cost far less than the trillion dollars or so that the Obama administration has spent so far ’n will continue to spend in the future.)

And so far as The GOP plan or any other government plan to take care of those poor, needy Americans who were unable (or unwilling) to take care of themselves, there simply wasn’t one or any need for one because in a free society, people are not only expected to take care of themselves but actually demand the right to do so.  

I realize it’s an arcane concept, considered by liberals everywhere to be hopelessly outdated but that’s the freedom that humans have not only wanted from time immemorial but to this very day consider it worth fighting ’n dying for.

I find it ironic that liberals here in a land that was founded on liberty, celebrate the fighting and dying in other cultures, other lands, as the human struggle for liberty continues around the world, front page news in our press every single day, in Ukraine, Libya, Egypt, the countries of Africa, in nameless countries that come ’n go but the struggle continues…

yet in this country, our country, our USA, that was founded on the principles of liberty ’n personal responsibility, we vote that precious liberty away in exchange for food stamps ’n welfare… Bread ’n circuses, the historians called it when they documented the Fall of the Roman Empire....

Ambling ~ walk or move at a slow, relaxed pace : they ambled along the riverbank

The really interesting thing about the Cheshire Cat t’me wuz not so much the role he played in the story but his exit where he gradually faded away ’til the only thing left wuz his grin ’n then even that disappeared ’n it wuz as tho’ nuthing had ever occupied that space….

Out ’n about on this quiet Sunday morn…Old Fair Oaks town center is a good place to amble if you’ve a mind that gravitates to that sort o' thing ~’specially in the Spring 'n I must admit that I do like these Spring daze…

Oh, I have friends back in the States 'n I’m aware that it’s still winter there 'n that they're facing another blast of arctic cold ’n I am sympathetic to them but over the years I've grown accustomed to the almost winters we have here in norCal 'n while I don’t really mind a few weeks of inclement weather, (sometimes the rain is quite nice ’n Gawd knows we need snow on the mountain…40 or 50 feet of it ‘ud be grand) on the whole of it, honesty compels me to state that sunny days with blue skies 'n moderate temperatures ain't hard to take...

’Course, the years when we get lots of rain 'n snow  only encourages the incorrigible politicians that run the state to encourage developers ('n baksheesh has no part in it at all) to build ever more homes to house ever more people…soCal has, I think, around 23 or so million people but only enough natural water supply for maybe a half of one percent of that many but, as usual, I digress...

Back in the really olden dayz, there wuz ‘The Gold Rush’ which brought people from all around the globe…depending on your viewpoint, fortunately or un…it also brought the developers ’n they pretty much been more or less in control ever since...

The first time I saw California wuz in 1956 when the USAF brought me into the Santa Clara valley for a short stay before shipping me to the Pacific~I thought then that the garden of Eden must have looked sumthing like…

Anywaze, when I returned to California in the ‘60s, I worked for a few weeks in Santa Clara ~ it wuz still beautiful but they were building ’n blacktopping as fast as humanly possible ’n a few short years later, the developers bought the last strawberry farm in that paradise, built a ginormous housing tract ’n moved on….

Which has nuthin’ to do with the Spring weather we’re enjoying here at this moment…

Digressing again, Spring here in California moves north at about 20 miles a day so it’s relatively easy, if you have the time ’n resources ’n, of course, the urge, to move along with it~which is not to say that I have such resources but in the short long ago, my job allowed me to choose pretty much where I wanted to work at any given time ’n I like Springtime so I followed along in the wake as much as I could….

“Those were the days, my friend, we tho’t they’d never end…..” Mary Hopkins

"I love a rainy night..."

"I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes."

W.C.Fields

I know we need the rain but I think I’d would’a liked it better in November ’n December…maybe, maybe not but, I know we need it…the doomsters among us wuz sayin’ just a few days ago that it wuz too little, too late…

Gov. Jerry turned off the tap ’n God turned it back on ’n it’s been raining for several days now ’n snowing up on the mountain which is where we really, truly need the moisture to accrue (sorry for the $10 word but it fits)…

Snow on the mountain is the only place where the omniscient politicians can’t waste the water, well, at least until it melts ’n comes downstream to the lakes ’n reservoirs where they c’n get their greedy mitts on it…

Anyhow, da boyz nag at me to go outside ’n when I take ‘em, they stand on the porch ’n stare at the rain before glaring reproachfully at me ’n going back to the door…plus, my shoulder has been hurting all day…(whining, whining, etc)

Well, the rain quit…at least temporarily, or so the ubiquitous ‘they’ say…’n da boyz ’n I went for a stroll, out ’n about…the Village wuz durn near deserted when we started but as we wandered, people began to appear, here ’n there, some of ‘em (at least one of ‘em) toting a furled umbrella….it wudn’t quite dry, Willie got his belly wet (he got short legs)..but Jan the barber wuz working ’n had some treats for the two of them…they are a little bit spoiled….

Anyway, it’s waffle nite at the Smith Manse this Sunday eve (Millyrose don’t want’a cook ’n I have what’s been fairly described as a ‘limited’ repertoire)…

I’m told Folsom Lake rose 8 feet ‘cuz of the last couple dayz but it’s spozed to dry out tomorrow with (hopefully) more rain on the horizon…

Oh yeah!  All this rain ’n a little sunshine ’n the Oxalis that covers the south forty will go crazy….Sacramento, CA