A Wednesday morning rant about much of nothing...

Okay, so Willy ’n I went for our morning S&P tour of Ol Fair Oaks ’n there is definitely a touch of Autumn in the air…’bout time to put on socks,jeans rather than shorts ’n long-sleeve tee-shirts…almost…

We’ll still have warm days, days in the ‘90s are not uncommon in October, though we’re not apt to see any more triple digit days but they’re not unheard of…

October is usually a dry month here in NorCal so the fires that have stunned California this summer are still a danger…don’t take much, a careless camper, a tossed cigarette, a hot muffler sometimes ’n with a whoom and a whoosh, another acre bites the dust…

If we do get those torrential downpours that the weather people are predicting, it’s gonna change the topography of California again, what with mudslides, etcetera…back in the Gold Rush Days, those rugged miners used gigantic water cannons to blast the hillsides and turn them into raging rapids of water, mud ’n stone…California is a beautiful state ’n I especially love the mountains but I often wonder what it must have been like before the ’49ers went bonkers…on a side note, I grew up in a Kentucky that was in the process of recovering from the depredations of the coal companies that, while they didn’t use water cannons, would carve the tops off the mountains in search of that glistening black coal that powered so much of 19th ’n 20th century America…changed the topography of Kentucky then,poisoned the streams and fields, killed off the animals…I was told as a boy that Kentucky had just simply been over-hunted but that wasn’t the truth…the coal companies raped the land then and are still at it in point of fact, slicing the tops off mountains in West Virginia and carving out huge slabs of Montana…There is a promise to recover, of course. If you watch television, I’m sure you’ve seen actors representing the ‘big energy’ companies telling you how much better the land will be once they get all that messy coal out of it and are able to recover and re-plant and make it all like a brand-new Garden of Eden…in my youth, one of my favorite radio (anyone remember) shows was Fibber McGee ’n Molly and a recurring line was spoken by Molly at least once in every show…”T’ain’t so, McGee!”

I don’t live in Kentucky anymore but I hear that the hills are making a comeback on their own, (God’s help, not human)…the forests are thick again, fish in the streams again and bears and lions are back…I recall my grandfather telling me that the last lion kill that he remembered was back in the early ‘20s and he only heard about it, didn’t witness it…

Mother Nature has a way of reclaiming her own, cleaning up after humans make a mess of things…Mount St Helen’s is a good example…expert humans predicted that it would centuries before that forest regenerated itself but old Ma Nature doesn’t work on a  human time-table…

We humans have a lot to be ashamed of in our treatment of this planet we call home, we rape and pillage the land that sustains us without a thought for the generations that are supposed to follow us…in the settlement of America, there was a practice called ‘slash ’n burn’ which consisted of cutting out the timber to open the land, burning it because we couldn’t think of any use for it, then plowing up the grasses that held the soil so that normal rain wouldn’t wash it away. The crops that we planted were short-term that depleted the soil they grew in…when the soil wouldn’t hold them anymore, the people simply moved to another location and did it all over again.  

It ain’t a practice that was unique to early  Americans…people all over the world did much the same, including those wanna-be ‘guardians of Mother Earth’ so-called Native Americans…the only reason they didn’t wreck so much of the land is that there were not enough of them but the ones that were here did a pretty good job of it…they just don’t like to remember it that way.

Today, oh boy, today, we are much more enlightened…why, we can destroy and deplete millions of acres with a single match…more than that, we can drop a bomb that will stop Mother Nature in her tracks for centuries…or, at least, we think we can…I don’t think we’re nearly as omnipotent as we like to think we are…there’s a lot of talk about how humans are disrupting the climate, responsible for possibly destroying the earth completely…I don’t believe it but many people do…none of these people want to do anything about it personally, y’understand…Nah! They just want to force other people to act in their stead...

Big headlines t’day…water on Mars…proof of the possibility of life…have all our vaunted space scientists been wrong all these years…does this have anything to do with climate change?  

We humans tend to have a lot of what my Grandmother use’ta call ‘gall’…

First, that we are the superior beings on this planet,that all the other creatures, great and small, are somehow inherently inferior to us…

Secondly…We have looked for ‘intelligent life’ and not found it so we must surely be the only creatures cast in the image of God, which loosely translated means that God looks like us, so…well, draw your own conclusions…

Which brings me to Numero tres (three for those folk who believe that the rest of the civilized world should learn to speak good old American English…which brings me to the subject I really wanted to comment on t’day…namely, Climate Change…

Climate change use’ta be known as global warming, at least among the intelligentsia of the progressive liberals who have taken it on themselves to instruct all the rest of us in the proper way of doing everything…

When the theory of global warming began to collect so much doubt that it was in danger of being laughed out of business, the savvy Liberals decided to ‘change’ the name, not the game…’n they replaced the term global warming with the term climate change. (Liberals tend to do a lot of shuffling non-essentials around 'n calling it progress)...

Now, no one can actually argue with the term climate change because climate actually refers to weather and the weather, as we all know, is constantly changing…a tired old bromide that everyone complains about but no one actually does anything about...

Anyhow, the progressive liberals who have a really high opinion of themselves, being made in the image of the God that they tend to deny, observed that Man was responsible for climate change…that Man, by his own exertions, created poisonous gases that rose to the heavens and blocked the sun…oops, that would lead to global cooling and that ain’t the subject today…but man has created a blanket of gases that let the heat of the sun through but blocks any natural cooling and the result is going to be…global warming where the oceans are going to rise and flood the worlds most expensive properties (doesn’t matter that every junion high school science teacher proves an entirely different theory when they allow ice to melt in a full glass of water and the water never spills over the top)…

Oh well, Bill Nye the science guy swears that if the polar ice melts, why we’ll have exponentially more water so naturally, the oceans will, unlike the ice in the glass of water, will rise and flood the earth…(and here we won't say anything much about Al Gore, the leading proponent of global warming, using just some of the profits from his book 'n movie to buy a very expensive house in Malibu...just saying)

So, if you point out the seeming incongruity of this to those who embrace the theory that religions are false because one must accept them on faith alone but science is real because it is fact-based and you can’t argue with the facts…but first, one must accept that facts are true and it takes a leap of faith for everyone to believe…sort of a round robin carousel…like a circle in a circle or a wheel within a wheel…

Anyway, it’s a quiet (so far) Saturday morning…I’m on my last cup of coffee…I didn’t get to view the Blood Moon last evening (cloud cover) but I’m so old I recall seeing the last one back in the early ‘80s and the world didn’t end then ’n it ain’t gonna end now…makes me wonder when we oh so superior humans kill each other off and somehow the world just keeps spinning, what specie then will rise and believe they’re the special ones???

Curiouser ’n curiouser...

I don’t  know but I think it’s suspiciously ‘FUNNY’ that under the Democrats and their ‘share the wealth’ philosphy, their FREE education and FREE health care that all Americans are ENTITLED to simply by virtue of being in the good ole US of A…don’t really have to be a citizen, y’understand, you just have to be HERE and the Democrats have sworn to take care of you…’n it ain’t all free Obama phones neither…Nosirreebob, they’ll pay your rent, buy your groceries, give you FREE dental and health care, including, at least in some West Coast cities, medical mary-juana, which as we all know from listening to the pundits is 'way more potent than it use'ta be back in the good old daze when it wuz gas, grass or ass, nobody rides for free...

ANYWAY. what I’m thinking is peculiar is that under the Democrats and the Obama administration, the only people making MO’ MONEY are the already wealthy, the ones who could and did contribute to the Obama campaign…The Tesla guy, the GM guy, the GE guy, Warren Buffet ’n all those friends and compadres of the inner circle Democrats who created ostensibility out of nothing, the GREEN REVOLUTION…you recall, I’m sure Solyndra ’n t’other solar companies that couldn’t get start0up monies from private investors so Obama made sure they got gov’t grants so they wouldn’t have to invest their own money…anyway, they made millions out of those green companies going bankrupt and the only losers were the taxpayers who, for some unknown reason, guaranteed that none of the ‘investors’ would lose any money…something along the order of taxpayers giving them money to start a company and when they lost it, why those same generous taxpayers coughed up more money to replace the money that had come from the taxpayers in the first place…’n folks, if all that sounds like an Abbott ’n Costello comedy skit, well that appears to be the Democrat Way...

ANYHOW, the middle class is shrinking, well actually has shrunk, and the poorest of the poor Americans are making less and less actual money…Black Americans who, somewhat justifiably feel they’ve been stuck at the bottom of the totem pole for a long time are still there under Obama. If black Americans feel like they got screwed first and most often in a lily-white America (just in case anyone actually wonders about the real reason they riot so much~makes me wonder if they’re protesting higher living standards) then Obama sure wasn’t a game-changer for them…

Latinos aren’t doing much better…well, except for the underground economy that somehow, magically goes on ’n on because, as everyone knows, even the poorest of poor white Americans won’t work in the lettuce fields of California…I can’t remember the name of the white Democrat politician who asked who was going to wash her car or mow her lawn if we actually enforced immigration law…

NOW, Democrats are understandably worried that nasty old Republicans are attempting to subjugate Muslims by not allowing them to run for POTUS…it’s alright if they run for Congress, the Senate or the House would welcome them with open pocketbooks,that is, of course, if the Muslims come with open checkbooks...

Speaking of open pocketbooks, I think the American public should shut down the welfare bank for our political class…I don’t see any reason why their salaries should be any  higher than the national average and there is NO WAY they should receive a pension, especially after serving only one term…C’mon, no working person gets a life pension after working two years…the political class not only ain’t any better than the average person, all I’ve ever really known all my life is average people and I c’n tell you without hesitation that any average person is, on the average, more credible than any average politician…

ANYWAY, on this, the day after my 78th birthday, that’s my opinion ’n I don’t give a tinkers dam (dam, not damn) whether anyone agrees with me or not….

Sincerely, Justin Other Smith

Sept 22, 2015

I think the motto for the California legislature is (or should be)…Don’t worry if Plan A fails, there are 25 more letters in the alphabet…I think maybe we’ve run the gamut ’n started over a few times….

The People’s Republic of Kalifornia is burning down…or should I say, up!  Well, doesn’t really matter, the State is on fire…and a smoky haze casts a pall over much of the landscape…there are multiple fires, fires to the east of us, fires to the west of us, fires to the north and the south of us…fires burning all ‘round us but, fortunately for us, there are no fires here in Olde Faire Oakes…we’ve been lucky!  

The firehouse down the street is being kept busy as are all the rest of the firehouses in Kalifornia…I’m told we’re getting help from other States as well, although some of those other States (specially western States) are also on fire, covered with smoke and soot and drifting ash…

The fire up the hill from us, the one called the Butte Fire, is an especially egregious blaze because there is so little water in those hills and the planes have to go a pretty good distance to pick up water and/or fire retardant and then because of the heavy smoke, they can’t always find a place to drop the stuff…what use’ta be referred to as a Catch 22 situation, damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

The countryside where the Butte Fire is blazing is, or at least was, some awfully pretty country…I spent quite a bit of time wandering thru those hills 30 years ago, nice little towns, small farms ’n ranchos…several places up there where I would have liked to bought property…biggest problem ’n the one that ultimately kept me from actually buying there is the lack of water…gotta drill some really deep wells ’n still won’t get enough water to actually make the country thrive…Oh, you can do alright in wet years, those years when NorCal actually gets what is termed ‘normal’ rainfall along with a decent snowpack…thing about those so-called ‘normal’ years is that you c’n quite often go a lot of years inbetween ’n generally, those inbetween years are dry…not usually as dry as the last 4 years have been, we’re maybe setting some records this time but Kalifornia is, for the most part, an arid State ’n I’m not talking state of mind altho’ that seems t’be a little on the arid side lately what with our love affair with socialism…

I figure if the Feds go conservative republican, they just might pull the plug on some of that federal funding that our socialist legislature depends on…’n then we’re probably gonna become the biggest damn Greece the modern world has ever seen…

“G’nite, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are!”  J. Durante

The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity and the magnitude of the effectis substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.  Langmuir


It seems that we bypassed warm this morning ’n went directly to hot with the prospect of getting hotter this afternoon…ah well, they say there’s a fine line between genius ’n crazy…here in our People’s Republic of Kalifornia, there seems t’be only a few degrees separating Paradise ’n the other place…
Headlines in our ‘only’ newsrag,the SacBee,declares joyfully that our esteemed legislature is about to pass the assisted suicide law so that we won’t have to be bothered by the expense of taking care of our elderly and infirm for those protracted periods of time that our advanced medical expertise now provide…
That ain’t the way they describe it, howsumever…Nah!  They prefer to call it death with dignity!  I personally fail to see the dignity in killing off our old ’n infirm (specially since I’m approaching my eighth decade ’n will almost certainly find m’self eligible for that death with dignity thing).
I don’t really find it amusing when other people take it upon themselves to tell me how I should be living my life. I suppose that’s why I get so darn uppity with this increasingly progressive liberal society.  I know some of those legislators ’n they don’t do so well taking care of the problems in their own lives, can’t understand why they seem to believe that they should be making judgments for the rest of us…
We shouldn’t smoke or drink alcohol; and soda pop is just plain bad news in so many ways; and transfats, do you need to ask;and salt…in New York City, restaurants are going to be forced to take each ’n every customer aside ’n whisper in their ears just how much sodium their favorite lunch contains because as every one knows, salt plugs up the arteries ’n causes strokes ’n heart attacks ’n other bad stuff, not withstanding the fact that humans need salt in their system in order to survive.  It’s a small but salient fact that our overseers fail to mention in their quest to ensure that we, all of us, lead healthier ’n more productive lives, earning more money ’n paying more taxes to allow the elite among us to live the long life that they deserve…
“Some animals are more equal than others.” George Orwell

Ah, the doggy daze of....oops, it's September already...

Everything has a moral...if only you can find it....L. Carroll



I tell people that the first thing I do ev’ry morning is check the obits in my hometown newspaper…if I don’t find my name there, I check my own pulse ’n if it’s still thumping along, I have a cup of coffee ’n get the day started…
Well, I tell people that ’n they’re prob’ly getting a little tired but them are the jokes, people…you get what you pay for…
Anyhow, that’s what old people do, more or less…mainly to see if any of their friends took the opportunity to slip away overnight…not that you want to find any of their names, y’understand, it’s just that you want to be aware of it when it happens and it’s a certainty that it’s going to happen…not a certainty that you get to read about it, but a certainty that it’s going to be somebody, maybe even yourself…
Folks, it’s gonna be somebody…we all come with an expiration date, like milk…Sometimes, the expiration date sneaks up on you and you only find out after you’ve laced your morning coffee with sour milk, took a sip, made a face ’n dumped the whole thing…then, you’re stuck with trying to get  the sour taste out of your mouth…I swear, it’s almost enough to make a body give up cream in their coffee…
Which is something that I actually did years ago…remember when, overnight, the world came out with faux creamer for your coffee?  All of a sudden, in every restaurant and coffee shop in the whole US of A, the cream (in most cases, half ’n half) was replaced with imitation coffee creamers and they were universally bad….I mean B A D!  Anyhow, that’s when I gave up ’n began drinking my coffee black…reminded me of when I was a child ’n I wanted to drink coffee the way my grandfather, John Sam Smith did…strong, black and in a saucer!  I was maybe five or six years old at the time and it seemed really cool…
Later in life (still before I was twelve) I began to take my coffee the way my mother did,with cream…not milk or half ’n half, but cream…the serious stuff…and I drank it that way for years, modifying it of course to circumstance…no cream? use half ‘ n half…no half’n half, use milk…up until that  fateful day when somebody ( probably the creator of that durn pet rock thing) came up with the idea of faux creamer…prob’ly made out of plastic…
Millyrose, she who must be obeyed, gave up coffee several years aog…altogether!  For several years, she drank various teas ’n herbal stuff until one day she went with a friend to Starbucks ’n got hooked on mocha latte’s, or whatever…mostly whipped, frothy cream with a touch of coffee…then, we (the editorial we, of course) began buying a bottled version at our local Shop ’n Drop…but, they didn’t always have what she wanted so in my incredibly brilliant way, I suggested that she simply make her own at home…Y’know, I don’t care if you’re a good husband or a bad one, sometimes you just shouldn’t open your mouth because…well, just because…
Anyway, she who must be obeyed rises earlier than this old miscreant and makes the coffee…hard to ask for more’n that, y’say…Well, it has its good side ’n it’s got the other side as well…’cuz sometimes she drinks darn near the whole pot of coffee…
I buy a half-gallon of milk at a time becuz that expiration date c’n get tricky…Millyrose doesn’t drink milk but she uses half’n half in her coffee…we began with the small pintsize, graduated to the quart ’n now we get the half-gallon size…sometimes, two of them…’n she doesn’t worry about the expiration date…sort of like when we had a houseful of kids, we didn’t worry about the expiration date on a package of potato chips…
When I wuz a boy, there wuz a popular joke that got told over’n over.  “T hat’s Life!”
What’s Life?…A magazine!  What’s it cost?  Ten cents!  I don’t have ten cents! Well, that’s life!”
Nothing in that joke is relevant in t’days world ’n some days, I feel much the same about,,,well, things in general…
Hope y’all have a good day…..Justin Other Smith

Mr. Smith complains whether anyone listens or not.....

"Of the people, by the people, for the people..." Gettysburg Address, A. Lincoln


The United States was founded as a democratic republic with the idea being a citizen government, representatives to be elected by the people. The idea, I believe, was that representatives would be chosen from the more successful among the people to serve for a short time,do their duty for God and country and step down. Go home with the thanks of their country. And nothing more. Nothing more! Not a free ride for the rest of their lives. Not a government pension. Not a team of Secret Service bodyguards. And certainly not a burden on their country. Too damn bad it didn’t work.
I think it was probably a laudable idea,at least in the beginning, but as  we all know, things change over time and our citizen representatives ‘evolved’ (such an interesting word) into what has become a ‘political class’…citizens who view politics as a profession. Citizens who become wealthy at the expense of those who honored them by electing them to public office. Citizens like the venerable Jerry Ford. A modest man who, as a public servant in Congress, never earned more than $40,000. per annum, yet after serving (unelected) as President for three years,was able to retire as a multi-millionaire. Oh, he didn’t amass a lot of millions,only three or four because,at heart, I believe, he was not a greedy man,but it does raise questions.
Only about 12% of the American people believe that Congress is doing a good job in their representation which means that at least 88% evidently believe all our Congressmen are corrupt. It is my sincere belief that not all of our public servants are corrupt but enough of them so that 88% of us have grown jaded and cynical about all politicians, republican, democrat, independents, ad infinitum.
We live in interesting times, an aphorism if there ever was one, and today, we are given another chance at re-forming our government,taking back as some of our GOP wanna-be’s are phrasing it, becoming once again a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
The cynic in me tells me that it ain’t ever gonna happen, folks. The entrenched political bureaucracy ain’t gonna give up. They’re going to fight like the very Devil to keep their political position, their power, their place at the trough. All because,as a nation, we’ve become too complacent,too lazy,too involved with our own pursuits,our everyday lives and allowed this professional class to become a political bureaucracy and, as we all know, once a bureaucracy is formed, its main focus is on maintaining that bureaucracy.
We shouldn’t make any mistakes about our Congresspeople. They are the creme de la creme, rising to the very pinnacle of their profession by being the meanest darn sharks in the pool,taking a back seat to nobody as they climb that political ladder.  And once there, they ain’t gonna give it up easily.

“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” George Orwell