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I realize it’s an arcane concept, considered by liberals everywhere to be hopelessly outdated but that’s the freedom that humans have not only wanted from time immemorial but to this very day consider it worth fighting ’n dying for.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

Waiting for God....(to make it rain, c'mon)

STATE OF THE UNION

I’m not really going to comment on the State of the Union address last nite other than to say that Obama (thanks to rehearsals ’n the teleprompter) gave another good performance…maybe when he’s out of office he can team up with Arnie ’n do beer commercials for Budweiser which pretty much dominates the near-beer market in the USA…

Anyway, it’s Wednesday ’n I’m just waiting for the rain…it’s been 40some days or thereabouts, since we’ve had any rain….’n now, well now, they say we’re gonna get some, at least a little bit ’n it’s overcast ’n feels like it’s maybe gonna rain…churches around the area are telling their parishners to pray for rain…It could rain, wouldn’t hurt…snow on the mountain (Sierra) would help more…lots of snow, the kind of snow they’re getting in Georgia ’n along the eastern seaboard…what we need is some Buffalo snow, feet rather than inches, the kind of snowpack we had last year which our omniscient Democrat legislature pissed away…or allowed to be pissed away which amounts to the same thing….

Here in California (’n I can’t believe that we’ve been here just about 54 years now) we have dry years ’n wet years…during the dry years, we’re always reminded about how we live in an arid climate ’n we’re really dependent on rain ’n snow ’n if we don’t get it, we’re all gonna die or maybe have to move to Oregon or some such Godforsaken place ’n we should all give up our lawns (did that one years ago) but then we’ll have a wet year ’n everyone rejoices ’n all the lakes ’n reservoirs get full ’n we here in norCal sell water to the folks down south who cheerfully waste it on golf courses ’n swimming pools ’n washing their cars ’n the sidewalks ’n streets ’n make fun of us up here because we have trees…go figure…anyway, when we have lots ’n lots of water, our overseers get in a panic that the next year will be wet also ’n the dams ’n the lakes ’n the reservoirs will all have too much water so they, in their infinite wisdom (a bi-partisan thing) release tons ’n tons of water so that there’ll be space for all the new water that’s coming down the pike (in this case, mountainside)….then GUESS WHAT?  It don’t rain.  Drought is upon us ’n panic sets in ’n the political answer is to raise water rates, of course, because the only answer is to FORCE the people to conserve….

I believe that this may be a bureaucratic thing ’n partisan politics really has nothing to say about it because it doesn’t seem to matter whether we have Democrats or Republicns in office as we seem to go trundling along regardless…I guess it’s the bureaucracy that actually runs California ’n the real political struggle is for the shining stars to figure out how to get ’n stay in front of the parade…

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but that's because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth ain't." Mark Twain

Mendicants 'n other such.....

‘Way back in the long, long ago, the USAF, in its inimitable fashion (’n,  I tho't, with a certain amount of hubris) sent me half-way around the world to a posting that had absolutely no need (at least none that I ever ascertained) for the skill set that had so painstakingly been forced upon me…

After bouncing around thru a couple temporary jobs, I ended up being assigned to the base newspaper office where I wuz to do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to do…

I had a couple short lessons, very short, from the C.O. (editor) about how to write for a newspaper…I wuz told that the first law of journalism wuz that while readers may indeed have short memories, editors, especially military editors…don’t!  

That said, I wuz supposed to adhere to five things, 'n to that end, he held up his hand, fingers spread to enumerate, 'n proceed to tick off one finger at a time,  what, when, where, how ’n why…that, and no more, closed fist for emphasis, no adjectives, no adjectives, no adjectives...and not too damn many adverbs…simple, declarative sentences of no more than five words else I offend the sensibilities of any of the aforementioned editors... 

The lesson took less than 15 minutes ’n included showing me a desk, a typewriter ’n a stack of paper ’n carbon paper…I hated carbon paper then ’n to this date have absolutely no regrets regarding its demise….

My job wuz simple, at least in the eyes of the Major...I wuz to take the notes from the reporters, as dim-witted 'n unimaginative crew as wuz ever gathered in a bare-bones three room office, ’n remove all the beloved adjectives, most adverbs, ’n basically anything the reporters had thought provided colorful insight ’n turn their notes into easily digested information that didn’t take up too much precious space on the page...   
The unwritten rule of the newspaper biz is that one must never, never, never interfere with the real business of newspapers which was the sale of ad space…
An interesting concept since military newspapers as with all bureaucratic publications are not only not dependent on the sale of advertising but are pretty much forbidden from doing so…oxymoronic, but my first lesson in wherever you go, there you are rule of engagement….
I wuz pretty good at re-writing, tho’t I’d found my calling…rather than becoming a wandering mendicant, I’d be one of those ink-stained wretches inhabiting chattering, clattering newsrooms across the width ’n breadth of this wide land…’n then I found out how much newspaper jobs actually paid ’n tho’t maybe I’d make more money as a wandering mendicant….

In the meandering economy of our world today, wandering mendicants can make a pretty good living, especially if you can beg, borrow, or steal a child (the smaller, the better) to use as a front for your mendicancy but in the good old daze of my golden youth, standing by the roadside with a sign begging for help might well have got one in front of a local Justice of the Peace ’n 30 daze of picking up trash along the roadside as a vagrant…

I managed to avoid the occupation of mendicancy by stumbling onto a career course popularly known as ‘Marketing’….(My great-Uncle B.D. Parsons called it horse trading but the  ten dollar word is marketing)…

Anywaze, I wuz able to take some advice from that old-time sage, W.C. Fields who said, “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with your brilliance, baffle ‘em with your bullshit.”  

I tho't Mr. Fields, possibly a distant cousin, wuz an outstanding mentor, given as he wuz to booze 'n blather 'n it came as a pleasant surprise to find out that people would actually pay me to drive from bar to bar, boozing 'n blathering the day away....go figure....

Caveat Emptor 'n other sage sayings.....

If you just gotta buy a used car....

Back at the tail end of the 19th century, automobiles gained a toehold in the USA….by the early part of the 20th century, that toehold had made great and irreversible inroads on four-footed transportation (horse, mule, etc)…

Just telling this ‘cuz my great-uncle B.D. Parsons made his living as a horse trader….Now horse traders didn’t deal exclusively in horses, nosirreebob…horse traders ‘ud trade just about anything ’n ever

thing ’n Uncle B.D. warn’t no exception to the rule, ‘specially since there wudn’t all that many people still depending on horses ’n mules, at least not for ever’thing…

Uncle B.D. wuz what you might call ‘sharp’ when it came to wheeling ’n dealing, I mean, if you wuz dealing with him ’n there wuz a scale involved at all, you’d better keep an eye on his thumb or you’d pay the difference…

I ain’t sayin’ he wuz a crook, he wudn’t…he wuz honest as they come, at least for horsetraders…

Uncle B.D. was a strong believer in that old rule ‘Caveat Emptor’….in fact, that wuz the lesson he taught me at an early age ‘cuz B.D. Parsons didn’t take no prisoners when it came to dealing ’n age, kinfolk or the amount of the transaction didn’t make no difference…

Anyhow, Caveat Emptor is the rule that comes to mind when talking to people who support Obama ’n his administration…I never could understand why people ‘ud pay Uncle B.D. for his thumb more’n once ’n I can’t understand why normally rational people still argue that Obama ain’t cheating ’n it’s all the fault of those hypocritical godless republicans…I mean, Obama ’n his posse have been in charge for six years now ’n it seems like ever’thing he touches turns to crap…His signature achievement(?) of Affordable Health Care for the masses ‘ud be a joke if it wasn’t so damn expensive…’n his lying about just about everything is really hard to take…well, hard to take for those of us who can see that the Emperor’s new clothes ain’t….

I still have liberal friends that try to excuse Obama’s lies by stating emphatically that “Bush lied.”

Y’know, even if that is true (’n there’s been no evidence, WMD notwithstanding)…even a child knows that excusing one wrong by citing evidence of another will not work on a Mom…..

My Grandmother Smith gave me the best advice about dealing with Uncle B.D. ’n that  wuz simply “Don’t!”

A chance of rain...is this climate change or ?....

Sati’day ’n a chance o’ rain, or so they say~well, ackshully they say a slight chance of rain, just t’be precise ’n as a practicing conservative (have to practice cuz I ain’t quite there yet)…it’s overcast ’n gloomy, a much more fitting day in January than the sunny ’n dry Springlike daze we’ve been having…my fault, I suppose for having remarked t’other day that in about four more weeks, it’s spozed to be Spring here in norCal..

‘Course, we need the rain…or more precisely, snow on the sierra…lotz ’n lotz of snow on the sierra…an article in the SacBee, a veritable fount of min-information, t’other day stated that we’ve had three straight years of drought…not true…last year we had ‘way over normal amounts of snow on the mountain ’n the bureaucracy in charge of water squandered it (as usual)…

Ah well, it goes how it goes ’n there ain’t a damn thing you c’n do about it….which is paraphrasing a line from an old Barney Miller show…it’s 2014 now ’n let’s all of us hope  that it’s better than 2013 because, as so many of my neighbors have opined, 2013 just plain sucked….

Ariel Sharon died…I’m betting that Barry Soetero privately don’t give a big rats behind about that…makes me wonder whatinhell’s the matter with the Jewish communities throughout the goodoleusa that they still continue to support the liberal agenda…

The mainstream media is screaming about Chris Christie shutting down a couple lanes of a bridge ’n causing a massive traffic jam…it doesn’t seem to matter to them that it probably wuzn’t his fault, that he himself didn’t do it tho’ he did say that since some members of his staff did it, then he was ultimately at fault (which is a lot more responsible than Obama or Hillary have ever in their life done)…anyway, all the noise about the traffic jam seems to be drowning out the should have been noise about the IRS, Benghazi, etcetera, et al….ah well, the aforementioned SacBee (our local NYTimes Democrat propaganda sheet) has aspirations, I guess….

Things at The Homestead seem t’be meandering along pretty much as usual, the new gato, Lady B (Beatrice) is settling in ’n appears to have given up baiting Willy tho’ she still ignores all of his offers to play…