Tuesday, March 24, 2009

A passing observation for the non-political


I am getting too tedious about politics, screaming “I told ya so!” repeatedly. There are too many firearms in the house. This is a formula for disaster, although formulas for disaster seem to be the guiding national policy these days.

Ah, well, enough of that. I only have one question these days: “Are you worried yet?” When the answer is “Yes”, I’ll pop from my spider-hole like any good NVA. Until then, I am not running; I am taking cover as a good soldier taught me, and staying out of the way of incoming that has become too intense to dodge.

What chaps my hinder this week is something I have been catching between news snippets for far too long.

I’m a newshound, and my bedroom TV wakes me with the—so far—reassurance that America hasn’t been attacked again, and the world as we know it isn’t ending. Then, I play for a half hour with the notion I can play Russian roulette with a clip-loading pistol, then I try to get a more constructive perspective on the day.

First, there was a clever ad for a “home security” company featuring a man and his alluring wife in bed; their first night in their new home. She wakes up. “Honey, I hear something downstairs.” “I’ll go check,” he says bravely. Then he creeps to the bedroom door, peeks out like a nervous 12-year-old girl. When the burglar kicks open the back door, he pees himself and runs to hide until the B----- Security Company calls to make sure it isn’t a false alarm…which in California will get you a $250 fine from the locals.

So now we have a teenager who kisses her parents good-night for a night on the town. She then climbs onto an exercise machine, plugs in the rock ‘n roll, and begins making the miles. Seconds later, the two hulking thugs who have been stalking outside the large, plate glass window smash the front door open. May I write the rest of this script?

[Dispatcher] (in some state 600 miles away): “This is B----- Security. Are you all right?”

[Terrified teen]: “Two men just broke the front door down! The alarm went off!”

[Dispatcher]: “I’m sending help right now! Unfortunately, the local authorities will take twenty-to-twenty-five minutes to arrive. In the meantime, these men will drag you out of the house, drive you to a secluded location, where they will rape you and stab you repeatedly before dumping your body under a freeway overpass. Your parents will come home to find the police standing around waiting to give them a citation because five neighbors called to complain about the hooting siren at your house. They might drop the charges when your parents notice the blood trail and the fact you’re missing. Do you own a gun?”

[Terrified teen]: “No! It’s against the law!”

[Dispatcher] “Well, good luck, kid! Please stay on the line for further assistance.”

Yeah, I’m a sick puppy for thinking of this kind of stuff. On the other hand, you think this kind of stuff doesn’t happen every day?

Okay, what’s wrong with these respective pictures? It’s not like finding Waldo, or Elmo, or whoever. What common household tool, according to the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution—a tool that lies there and does nothing unless you pick it up to use it—is missing from these two scenarios?

If you live in LA, or Georgia, or New York City, do you really want to depend on a well-meaning dispatcher in Arizona to call your local cops at 3:00 in the morning and tell them haul ass to your home because the siren is hooting?

I can think of at least one sound that is a lot more disturbing, and familiar, to the average sociopath than the wail of a rooftop siren. It’s the distinctive “click-clack” of a .12 gauge shotgun racking a shell into the chamber. Second place goes to the “click-clack” of the slide actions of any number of semi-automatic pistols charging a round.

A lot of states still have the “make my day” law. After the “click-clack”, you don’t have to turn on the lights, or yell “Freeze”, or any of that movie stuff. Good combat shooting dictates you ascertain your target is clear and hostile, and then you go for it.

Firearms have saved more lives than they have taken. I have kept large-caliber handguns in or on the headboards of my beds for decades, and never once have they jumped onto the floor, run out the door, and journeyed down the block to rob the local 7-11. I strongly resent the phrase “gun crime”.

So, Sponge Bob Brave Jammies might feel more protectively macho, and Terrified Teen might still be alive if there had been something slightly more lethal, but equally benevolent as a hammer around the house somewhere.

There is a political aspect to all this, but I’m not going there right now. Those People aren’t just picking your pockets; when they finally ruin your country and you want to revolt, will you have anything more threatening than a finger to wave at them?

The choice is yours. Would you like that siren on the roof, or would you feel more comfortable with that “click-clack” when your children are sleeping just down the hall?

It’s just an uncomfortable advertising trend I see these days. Call me crazy, go back to sleep.

Friday, March 20, 2009

More [last] politics for a while

I am having so much legislation rammed down my throat these days!

I’m trying to lay off politics, and wait for the current administration to self-destruct. I have never seen politicians in so much trouble, so fast.

I guess I missed history in the making when I didn’t watch the rock star president show up on Jay Leno’s late night show. He apparently said something about bowling scores and retarded people that reveals a true side of the Manchurian Candidate. I make such a comment, I’m a mean-spirited, hurtful SOB. Superstar Obama says it; it’s all in good fun.

I am a child of Watergate. I thought I saw a presidential administration foundering as quickly as possible, but pardon me, I hadn’t lived long enough. What is happening today takes my breath away.

I told myself I am going to take a holiday from politics. I keep saying I am going to hide and watch. I will do so, and when I come back yelling “I told ya so!” it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Into retirement and loading the firearms on Scorpion Hill…

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By the alphabet

I may have a burning desire to stay drunk through the Obama administration, but it has not clouded my judgment to the point that someone can sign in to this blog as my “significant other”. That dog don’t hunt, as we say down here in Dixie.

(A) My soul mate and I have a simple arrangement. We don’t discuss politics. She can be a bit of a bitch under the best of circumstances, and I can be a bastard at the drop of a hat. I mentioned the other night that when America—under the astute leadership of gray people like Harry Reid and the most dangerous woman in America, Nancy Pelosi—goes completely to Hell, I will be there to gloat. I look forward to screaming “I told ya so!” That’s my political agenda, past, present, and future. Someone left a comment under a pseudonym “significant other” at my last exasperated rant. I appreciate all feedback; my readership is down

(B) You cannot, in good conscience, brand me a racist based upon stereotypes of the Southern male. I disapprove of bad behavior, regardless of skin color. I say things about people of different ethnicity, gee, apologize me, I disapprove of bad behavior. My family led liberation in South Carolina. Under the historical precedent of the times, we never owned slaves. Look up the sharecropper system. It ain’t pretty, it ain’t perfect.

(C) My “other” is from Yankee land. She grew up in Detroit. I can not imagine a more perfect Hell. She has years of maturity in Georgia, and cannot visualize a better place.

For the first time ever, I woke the other morning with the feeling that my humble abode is crashing down upon me. I have an ongoing conflict with my local tax commissar; he says I owe, I say not on my watch. We need to get out and go to Bubba's Bar-B-Que, the Rib Shack, or Pizza Hut.

(D) I am (so) amused by the person who posted a comment on the last blog as my “significant other”.

I published your comment. I have track back tracer; secret technology enables look backs that defy imagination.

(E) I never look for “payback”. I post a blog so’s I can get response. Most of my Constant Readers are friends of a like mind; I am preaching to the choir, as the saying goes, and this is not my intent. I love challenges to my points of reason. I arrived at my personal point of view through a life of blood, pain, and death. I appreciate the name-callers. Call me a “wing-nut” or worse. I relish it; it’s truly shooting spitballs at a battleship. I would like more dissenting discourse at UPI. I want to know where I am going wrong.

(F) My readership has declined. People from all over the world have less interest in what I have to say. I say things that are unpopular, so sue me. My voice means little. I influence no one. I am some crazed United States citizen crying against darkness. I suppose opposing incipient socialism and opposing a rock star president makes me some kind of bitter old man.

(G) My significant other—the real one—left for her job at 0700 this morning. I asked “Are you leaving?” Her reply: “F--- you!” Life is beautiful.

Otherwise, spitballs at battleships. Bring it on!

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

The atmosphere of fear.

Let me get this straight.

According to his pseudo-State of the Union address at the end of last month, President Obama is going to nationalize the banks, socialize medical care, and cure cancer. Then, next week…

I have a problem with alcohol abuse. Booze is the universal solvent, which is why the Volstead Act—Prohibition, for you young pups and non-students of history—didn’t work. I always used smooth bourbon as a cushion against reality. AA defines “functional drunks” versus the sad, rock-bottom cases you may pass by in a big-city gutter, as opposed to someone who can do their job despite obvious impairments.

Barack Obama used the term "crisis" 26 times in a speech the other day. He used the rhetorical device "catastrophe" an equal number of times.

I’m a blue-collar kind of guy. My jobs have always required physical involvement. During my working career, I always got the job done, with one notable exception. The only “tie-‘em-ties” I own are my father’s; I use clip-ons with my one all-purpose gray Armani double-breasted suit—good for weddings, funerals, and formal show-up-at-the-office occasions.

Ah, but I digress, as usual. All I want to do these days is get drunk and laugh. For the sake of domestic tranquility—my significant other voted for Bill Clinton, but we forgive youthful foolishness—I gave Osama Bamalama a chance. The inauguration was not a travesty. I heard brave words.

It is March. My last post addresses the flack from left field, i.e. “you want this to turn to [crap].”

Yes, I do. This is Rush Limbaugh territory, but I must reiterate my perception; how can socialism be good for America?

I am bailing out early. There is a lot of talk about “bail-outs” these days. There are billions of dollars for Osama’s spending plan. I say “bail-out”, I am speaking of Airborne Rangers jumping from flaming aircraft over Belgium on 5 June 1944, the night before D-day. There is an analogy here; go find it.

I watch the morning news, waiting for the next 9/11. It will happen. When thousands of Americans die for the historical precedent of electing the first African-American president, it will be because he allowed them to die through inaction and misguided social policies. The jihadists are temporal; there is an old Little Feat song that proclaims “Everything Happens in its Own Good Time”. That is the guiding philosophy of the Islamic ters: hide and wait. We’ll get you eventually. The passage of time is irrelevant to the triumph of the ideology. The President has already announced our surrender date in Iraq, rendering the sacrifice of so much blood and treasure meaningless.

The Dow index continues to drop, and 697,000 jobs were sacrificed in February alone. Franklin Delano Roosevelt—the most dangerous man in American history—said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”.

Roosevelt pulled us out of the worst of economic times by allowing War II to happen. He had a ready-made enemy, and an excuse to marshal the nation’s resources against a common enemy: the Nazis in the West and the Jappers in the East. He also indulged in massive federal spending to undo the laxity of the Hoover administration. That didn’t quite work, although my impoverished father from South Carolina was grateful for his—strong back—jobs with the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] and the gig as a forest ranger in Yellowstone Park. Growing up in hard times ain’t easy.

Roosevelt got away with spending us out of a depression because it had never been tried before. News flash for president Obama: been there, done that. It won’t work a second time.

I think the American people are beginning to wake up and realize the bill of goods they have been sold. “Change you can count on” was a slogan for the uninformed; those who earnestly desire better happenstance for everyone but have no clue as to political reality need to think again. Thinking back to age 17, my cousin, a Green Beret major, told me in my face, “You have no idea.”

My significant other has a recession-proof job that she loves, and I will be gone of old age before the final collapse comes.

“Change” was just “business as usual” in the lexicon of re-election politics.

Besides my career as a major [screw-up], I worked in the low food chain of the movies. I never thought I would be working in a movie as a speaking participant, but I am reliving the second re-make of “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Nobody pays attention to my opinions; the flack I catch is shooting spitballs at a battleship. I think a lot of people are afraid of our new president because the average American has a gut instinct—whether or not they voted for Obama—he “ain’t the man”. Despite their voting preferences, folks who live in the real-life, real-time of today are scared of what they thought would be a cat’s-ass leader. The people who build your house and pump your septic tanks are scared of Osama Bamalama.

I have only one advantage over the average American: I am old, I smoke, drink, and am devil-may-care about health issues. Under “socialized medicine” according to the Obama regime, I will have to wait far back in line if I claim state-funded treatment for lung cancer or a liver transplant. “You caused this by smoking despite our warnings! Get in line!” There are plenty of people out there in line; mine are personal choices. When the government revolves around individual health care, I will be punished. I smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey. This is not acceptable to New Age, nanny-state thinking.

I thank God that my age will catch up before some bureaucrat has to make a choice: me or them. I will be punished for what they consider “bad” personal decisions; when my choices to smoke, drink, and be happy-go-lucky about health care collides with a social-engineering project about who deserves health care; I’m going to the back of the line. The fact that personal decisions were a part of my life will never enter the factor; I am condemned because I don’t buy the party line, nanny state philosophy. I have found peace in my life as of my last birthday; I came to terms with the notion that I'm nearer the end than the beginning.

For you passing students of history, check out the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. They were the most powerful nation on earth. America has entered this final phase: we elect totally incompetent leaders to open the gates to the barbarians.

It didn’t take me a lot of time to fall out with Obama. His agenda as “The Manchurian Candidate” sent my red flags skyrocketing almost immediately. There was an immediate cave-in to the Left on spending. All the pork-barrel earmarks remain in place. My best friend, a liberal named James, has a constant—and very astute—point that the government never seems to get around to paying off the national debt. He blamed this on GWB. So does president Obama. My pal can get away with this indefinitely. My significant other says she lived in Hell for the eight years of the GWB administration.

You cannot blame George Bush forever. I think the pundits say you have a honeymoon year. My timetable doesn’t run that long. I am at the cynical point of “Oh yeah, he’s lying. His lips are moving.”

The February jobs index says we lost 697,000 jobs, or 651,000, or whatever. Anyone who lost their job in February is not comforted by statistics; misery does not love company in this case. Asked about federal spending as a solution, the vast majority of Americans say “no!” They are scared. They don’t know why. The majority of them voted for The Messiah as president, and they are unable to understand why this man is letting them down. Get a clue, and ignore me when I trumpet “I told you so!”

I see an instinctive fear out there. The American people will not accept socialism.

You voted for him, wake up to “The Manchurian Candidate”.

When this country goes to Hell, I will be, in the words of my daddy, “drunk as a lord” and laughing all the way. I had a scenario for nuclear holocaust during the Soviet threat; if the bombs detonated, I’d rush the local liquor store, hijack a case of the best, and eventually gas myself with carbon monoxide through a tailpipe hose in the window. The alternative is a Federal Express through the head. (“Federal Express” is a term for a large bullet that will tear your head off, based upon a commercial ammunition peddler who sells munitions under the label of the same name. They are reliable and well-balanced out of the box.)

The local tax commisar should be satisfied. He got his check from the royal bite out of my shiny ass, and the new National Commisar of Taxes doesn't pay his. I live in the updated version of the Soviet Union. We wait for the supply truck like East Germany. Someone will be along to take care of my crippled ass, when they get the time on their hourly worksheets. Meanwhile, we sit by the side of the road and stare longingly into the distance. Welcome to nanny-state America.