All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

3/31/2010

Name Dropping

My daughter, Little Ms, made her debut into politics today.  Apparently she got to meet Dave Freudenthal  our Governor.  Not much is being said about the meeting, it was a semi private affair with a handful of select constituents. No doubt she wowed him with her understanding of politics and her plan for straightening out Congress.  She is very good when it comes to hitting people on the forehead with her open hand.  I'm sure most politicians would benefit from a good smack up side the noggin.  Of course I'm speculating.  The only thing I've been told is that Gov Dave dropped in and saw her.

3/29/2010

Alisa Rosenbaum Was Right

I'm a fan of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, have been for years. I find her to be on of the most interesting philosophers that Russia ever produced.  In my mind she is also the best Russia has ever offered and one of the top 10 philosophers of all time. As a little girl she witnessed first hand the horror of the Russian Revolution.  She never forgot it.  It became a defining period of time in her life.  She became one of the most intelligent and outspoken critics of collectivism in all its forums.   She was a contemporary of and acquainted with Ludwig von Mises.  

In the 1950's Alan Greenspan started dating painter Joan Mitchel  and Joan introduced him to Mrs. Rosenbaum.  Allan claimed to share her philosophical views.  Mrs Rosenbaum helped to get Greenspan's essay "Gold and Economic Freedom" as well as several other of his works published.  Greenspan's association with Mrs. Rosenaum was one of the factors in his reputation as an economic conservative.  When Greenspan was sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (under Nixon) she attended the ceremony.  Greenspan latter proved himself a traitor to both the Austrians and Mrs Rosenbaum personally.  Mrs. Rosenbaum maintained her relationship with him until her death in 1982.  Perhaps she was hoping that Allen would put his professed ideas into reality on a national scale.

Mrs. Rosenbuam was an unique women.

When she appeared on the Tonight Show, Johny Carson had planned on having her on for about 5 min at the end of the show.  After taking with her, he scrapped the show and spent most of the hour visiting with her.

The New Republic (leading intelligentsia socialist rag) is still complaining about her.

She was a Jew turned atheist (OK not uncommon or unusual).

Mrs. Rosenbuam's books continue to be widely sold and read, with 25 million copies sold as of 2007, and 800,000 more being sold each year. In 1991 the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked what the most influential book in the respondent's life was, one of her books was the second most popular choice, after the Bible.

Recently I started rereading her works.  With the passage of ObmaCare and the coming Barackcalypse.  I found that she was more in tuned to the social destruction coming to American than I ever expected.  She was right about many of her predictions back in the 1960's and 70's.  I wish she wasn't.

Quotes:
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."


"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody than oneself, anything goes. "


"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."


"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. "
I guess Allen Greenspan and those who voted for the Obamanation That Bringth Desolation, the Barackcalypse, Obama Care, forgot about that last one.

3/26/2010

Changes

I've made some changes on the blog.  I've got rid of some links to blogs and sites.

Reason #1 If your blog is gone its silly of me to link to it, and the Google goons think I'm running a spam blog.  They send me nasty emails threatening to take away my blog.  I'm caving in to the man on this one.
Reason #2 If you changed your blog to an invite only affair, its kinda pointless for me to link to it.  This is especially true if you didn't invite me so I could read it. Eric.
Reason #3 You used to be a regular reader here and you used to post on your blog but you don't any more.  If you haven't posted in the last 12 months you got cut.

If you have a new blog or I deleted you by mistake, and you want a link I'm happy to link back to you, just send an email.

Missing Her

The way my job is, I sometimes have a lot of down time with little to do.  Sometimes I have A LOT more down time than I like.  Recently some of the guys have started bringing magazines to read out to work.  Most of the mags don't actually require "reading".  Thankfully this last week a number of hunting and fishing rags showed up.

I started reading them.  "Big Buck Feed Plots", "Bass Masters Turney" "Get Your Goose, Gobbler and Groundhog", OK I made the last one up.  You get the idea though, straight forward hunting and fishing stuff.  Two of the articles hit me right in the gut.  One was on dog training and the other on grouse hunting.

I wish I never had picked the darn things up.

The first time Abby got on a wild ruff grouse she was just about 3 1/2 months old.  It was early fall in northern Michigan.  My buddy still owned a cabin that backed against state land out side of Gaylord.  I had permission to hunt it.

Up north in the fall is a great time of year.  The colors start to change.  There is some frost in the air but the days are pleasant. Sometimes you get a little rain over night, sometimes though the dew is so heavy that it seems like rain drops on the ferns.  The magic morning it was dry.  The leaves were only starting to change color, none had fallen. The ferns were just starting to turn brown.  There was just the slightest hint of a nip in the air.

Abby was all bird dog from birth.  She loved casting for scent.  Not 5 min walk from the house she started to shake her tail more quickly.  "Find a bird girl", I told her.  Then her whole back end started to quiver. She crept through the ferns with every fiber in her body trembling so violently that she could have exploded.  She was beyond birdy, she was orgasmicly hunting. It was as if Artemis or Skadi herself came to life as Drahthaar. Abby worked the scent trail.  Then just this side of a downed tree trunk, she froze solid.  Every fiber of her body a wash with the pleasure only a dog can know.  Right in front of her nose was ... a bird, but not just any bird, a ruff grouse, one she had smelled, she had trailed and she had found.  Her right front paw floated off the ground shaking like a aspen leaf in the autumn breeze.  It locked backward and her nose locked dead on to the bird just 18 inches or so in front of her under the log behind a cluster of ferns.

I gave the "whoa" command for her to hold steady on point.  I was wasting my breath.  Abby would not break point.  She could not break point if she wanted to.  The passion inspired by the fresh warm scent filling her nose was so intoxicating that all she could do was point to that which brought her pleasure.  The Bird.  Her Bird.  That Bird.

I moved.  Gun ready.  Looking down.  Kicking sticks. Trampling ferns.

A burst of feathers and leaves.  I brought my gun level with my eyes which were fixed on the bird.  I have no memory of the gun going off, but it did.  The bird fell from the sky.  Neither Abby or I heard the shot.  I saw where the bird fell and marked the spot.  I looked down for Abby.  She was still transfixed on the spot the grouse had held up.

I gave the OK command.  She couldn't move.  I gave the fetch command.  She jumped forward, nose into the fresh scent of the place the bird had just been.  "Go fetch it Abby" I said with perhaps just a tad more excitement in my voice than what she was feeling.  And go she did.  I have never seen another gun dog do what she did next.  I know that she never saw where that bird fell.  Her eyes were on "the spot" and she never would have seen anything over that downed log anyway.  She jumped up on top of the log and cast for scent in the air.  Then she took off for the right with her nose high in the air.  She made a big loop around a tree and ran forward about 20 more yards.  Then she picked up the bird.  The trail she followed was the exact one the bird flew when it flushed and I shot it. 

The next thing Abby did was run.  I mean run hard.  She had that bird in her mouth.  Those wonderful feathers and warm birdy goodness just filled her with such a overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment that she ran as hard as she could back to her master with the bird held as high as she could raise her head.  Abby's tail was wagging hard, she was happy.  I said "good girl" and "give".  She wagged her tail and held that bird.  I said, "give it".  Resting my shotgun against a tree, I reached down to take it from her.  Her mouth was locked.  She wasn't hard mouthing the bird.  She had a case of lock jaw, she couldn't open her mouth.  She had the bird held perfectly but she couldn't let go.  I had to pry her mouth open.  Which I did.  She just stood there looking at me with an open mouth.  Suddenly she regained her composure and shut her mouth and cocked her head, with a look on her face that said, "Oh was I doing that".

The next look was one I immediately knew.  "Lets do it again master", was what it said.  Abby knew she was my dog the first time I met her.  This day she learned everything else she ever needed to know to make her happy. She was my dog, a hunting dog, A BIRD DOG.  It was what she was bred and born for.


I walked down the two track and she worked the cover.  We had our limit before lunch.  In the whole time we were together if she ever missed a grouse or a woodcock I never knew it.

Writers doing two page dog layouts in hunting rags never seem to tell you about days like that.

3/23/2010

Economic Stimulus Payment Explained

Economic Stimulus Payment Explained

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. No, they are borrowing it from China. Your children are expected to repay the Chinese.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Oh, be quiet.

Sorry its the best I can do, I'm in the middle of my days on.

3/16/2010

We Rock!

Just one more reason I like it better here.

Wyoming Law Fines ATF Agents and Provides Felony Jail Time.

If you live anyplace else, you live in a state full of pansies. Governor Dave Freudenthal is a Democrat, apparently someone forgot to take away his DNP membership card. I'm sure they will get around to it.  Now if we would only amend the state constitution to allow for succession from the union.

3/07/2010

Sports Fans

 

Even if you aren't a Sports Fan this is Very Interesting!


36 have been accused of spousal abuse,
7 have been arrested for fraud,
19 have been accused of writing bad checks,
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses,
3 have done time for assault,
71 repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit,
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges,
8 have been arrested for shoplifting,
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits,
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year,
Can you guess which organization this is?
NBA Or NFL?

Give up yet?

Its....



Neither, it's the 535 members of the Congress.
The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

In other news:

3/05/2010

FYI

This recently came to my attention.

It is for real.  It was passed on to me via a buddy who wore the trident for most of his adult life.



Here is the link to Support the Seals

Here is a link to view the declassified Navy charge sheets.

While it is possible these men chose a court martial as a way to defend their collective honor, it should have never came to that.

3/02/2010

Drinking It In

When I was a kid I couldn't wait for the next "big thing".  I wanted tomorrow to come so that I could get to the next thing that I wanted to do.  I wanted to be "big" or "older".  I was eager for it.  I couldn't wait.  Many older folks would tell me to "slow down" or "just enjoy today".  Of course they could stay up past eight, eat ice cream whenever they wanted, had finished school, could ride their bike out of sight of the house, didn't have to come home when the street lights came on, watch TV all night if they wanted, could drive a car etc.  What did they know?  They could do all the fun stuff.

I on the other hand couldn't.  I would round up my age when people asked.  I was almost six since I was five and a half.  The year I turned fifteen I was almost sixteen the whole year.  How old are you? Almost sixteen.  When is your birthday? 362 more days.  Eighteen was going to be golden, except it wasn't.  I legally became an adult, got out of school and had to start planning my "real life".  The upside of eighteen was this girl I was dating.  I thought we were it.  I had every intention of marrying her.  We even took a month long trip to Europe together, good times.  She went off to U of M and that, as they say was that.  Sure we dated that year but when it was said and done, it was done and nothing else was to be said.  Grown up and grown up heartaches go together.

Twenty-one would be the next big milestone.  My birthday was a major blizzard, three feet of wet heavy snow.  The whole state basically closed down.  I spent the day in my rented house in what was a working class neighborhood that was only working on becoming a slum.  No party, no booze, no big deal either, I had been drinking in bars since I was 16.  Something happened that year, drinking/partying lost most of its appeal for me.  In fact the last time I got drunk was a year or two latter.  That wasn't partying, that was trying to kill the pain of having a series of bad choices destroy the second great love of my life.  Several years latter "The Next Big Thing", marriage.   Then no more big things for ten years.

Now I have kids of my own.

Me and the Mrs are a bit of the odd ones out in our age/social groups.  People our age are having their kids graduate college or are almost ready for the last one to leave home in short order.  We are potty training with two to three more years of diapers for the youngest.

The next big thing in my life? Tomorrow.

I'm off work for a couple of days.  I called the wife at work and told her to cancel day care.  It's fun day with daddy.  Daddy, by the way, is my name in real life.

Every day is an adventure.
Every pillow fight an epic battle.
Every trip to the China Buffet (the only restaurant we can go to anymore) is a major feast.
Every tickle fight is a laugh fest.
Every trip to the park, a safari.
Every fish caught is a whale.
Every smile is art.
Every storybook a literary masterpiece. 
Every time a boy jumps on my back, I'm a racing stallion.
Every game we play is the world championship.
Every day I'm daddy is ambrosia, and I am drunk on it.

I was at Sam's club with a cart full of diapers.  I was walking out and a guy and his wife were walking in.  He called out to me "I'm so glad that part of my life is over".  I smiled back and said, "I'm not, I love every minute of being a dad".   I do too.  Tonight we went out to China Buffet.  We used to eat at nicer places.  Now when we go out being able to say, "show daddy what you want", is a necessity; otherwise I just bought a meal that the kid won't eat.  The ice cream topping bar and almond cookies are sure sellers for the under 48 inches crowd.  Next time I'm going to see if I can get my senior discount.  After the mess we left I doubt they let us back in.  I had to pay with a credit card too.  Normally I hate to do that.   I had no choice.  It was after 5pm and I don't think my banker would have brought me enough cash to cover the tip I had to leave after both my kids finished redecorating the place in lo mein and melted ice cream with sprinkles and ice water.

Yes I said ice water.  One of the things moms "teach" their children is that whenever you eat out at a Chinese place you must get your after dinner clean up via either a.) a napkin dipped in ice cold water, or b.) the spit bath.  My mother did this to me.  My grandmother did it to her.  Apparently this female phenomenon was genetically passed on to my wife from her mother as well.  I know I have seen her sister do it to her kids.  I know its a rite of childhood.  Res Jr has learned it too.  In fact he has the ritual down so well that tonight he was handed some dry napkins to get the first round of gunk off.  He finished that part of the deal, at least to his satisfaction.  Then the little guy who is standing next to me in our both, grabs another napkin, reaches over to the full glass of ice water, that I wasn't done drinking, and proceeds to wring out a good half gallon worth of freezing water on my leg.

I felt myself getting mad, good and gosh darn spanking mad.  I saw this little twinkle in my wife's eye.  I saw a little tyke, in all earnestness doing his duty to get cleaned up, oblivious to the sudden case of involuntary hypothermia he was inflicting on his progenitor.  He was being a helper, a good boy.  I saw several tablespoons worth of sherbet and whipped cream with sprinkles that had been drizzled in a Picasso like pattern being effortlessly washed off the now slightly less stained seat on to the floor.  I smiled to myself.  I won't have to pay to have this seat professionally steamed cleaned after all. 

Tonight was puzzles, tickle fight, then we picked out a pie recipe for mommy to make for daddy's birthday.  There was a gang pile on daddy in the living room, some stories and a pillow fight and wrestling match, followed by a daddy supervised hose down in the shower, more stories, hugs, saying prayers and lights out.

Tomorrow is "fun day with daddy".  It's the next big thing in my life.  Unlike earlier chapters I'm in no rush to get on to bigger and better things.  I am daddy, and I am quaffing this elixir as deeply and heartily as a man can.  Too soon the cup will be empty.

Speaking of daddy's up coming birthday, when Res Jr is the same age as I am now, he'll likely have to change my diapers after feeding me ground up food from the buffet.  If he ever tries to give me a spit bath at the table, he will get a good butt whopping of apocalyptic proportions.  I won't care what the other geezers at the Golden Corral have to say about it either.