WHAT was she thinking?

Track-A-Crat has a picture that is worth much more than a thousand words. If you want to know what kind of people take and spend your hard-earned dollars, get a load of the broad who's First Lady of the United States.

This is so embarrassing...when my daughter was 2, she had more fashion sense! She was always kinda advanced that way. Granddaughter is 20 months, she might find this 'pretty' - she has the excuse of her youth and inexperience!

What a classless, clueless bunch.

(shudder)

Internet and phone were down for a major portion of the afternoon and early evening. I'm almost sorry they came back!

But thanks, Track-A-Crat and Paco - now, if y'all will excuse me, I think I'll go bleach my eyes.

As Ohio goes, so goes the Nation?

From The Farm Gate - "the place to go to find integrated information across a variety of disciplines, including crop and animal sciences, ag economics, ag engineering and veterinary medicine" - via one of my contacts in Australia.

Not living in farm country anymore, with family in the business too distant for me to follow what they do, I don't pay lots of attention to crop and animal sciences as an everyday habit, only a glance when I read my home state newspapers online. So thanks to an Aussie, I read the blog, then the summary:

Summary:
Political initiatives may change many US livestock production practices, rather than the marketplace or science-based research. Those efforts may cause massive changes in the livestock industry, including how livestock is produced, or even result in a phase-out of US production and transfer to foreign nations.

There is NOTHING in your life or mine that the politicians of the United Nanny Socialist States will leave to your personal discretion. If you think this is only about the evil meat-production industry, you are sadly mistaken.

Truly humble people shun acclaim.

Reading those last columns left an icky taste in my mouth. Rabbi Twersky has written something that washes it right out.

I'm a member of a group that works at combating the Seven Deadly Sins - character defects - in ourselves. Rabbi Twersky's work has been of great assistance to me, and to a few others who've discovered it.

He could give lessons to our Elected Officials, but most lessons of this kind can't be learned without a willingness to change, and Politicians in general only want US to change, not themselves.

Read it anyway, it says some wonderful things about my favorite Hero of the Bible - Moses.

Birds of a Feather

Dave Weinbaum

All you West Coasters who love Obama, get ready to say adios to your casas. Either that or learn to speak Espanola, if you haven't already. There should be an abundance of work if you stay.

Jonah Goldberg

He's not a member of anything other than the crazy caucus. Von Brunn's True North is conspiratorial anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. He's not a member of the Christian Right. In fact, he denounces Christianity — just as Hitler did — as a Jewish plot against paganism and Western vigor. Nor is he a capitalist. Again, just as Hitler did, he hails socialism as the solution to the West's problems.

Mitch Albom

I bring this up, because it happened, in Pakistan, less than a day after President Barack Obama made his ballyhooed speech to the Arab world. In that speech he called for understanding between Muslims and the West. He insisted the United States was not and had never been at war with Islam. He even began the talk with the Arabic greeting "salaam aleikum," which means "peace be upon you."

I wonder who he was talking to.

Anne Beyefsky

In fact, Obama's Egyptian hosts would have been only too familiar with Arab anti-Semitism during World War II (and beyond). After all, Obama was speaking in the country that schooled and later welcomed back Grand Mufti Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini as a national hero. This was the man who spent the war years in Berlin as Hitler's guest facilitating the murder of Jews.

Priorities

It's not quite 8am, it's almost 80 degrees outside...but seems to be less humid, so I'm out there with the Pixie while she entertains herself and I try to hem some jeans. Got a nice article to post later, so please come back by if you get the chance!

Dear BarryO...You scare me, too.

I swiped this from Swampie's site, because - though I read it at Snopes, too - it was the easiest way to copy & paste. If you've read it before, I apologize. I'm tired and cranky and not terribly cheerful. Anyone got a solution for muscle spasms? The ones in my shoulder and neck are about to drive me half crazy. I even swore - LOUD - at the cat yesterday. Except for the fact that she didn't curse, I sounded like my little grandma...and he DID curse, so I also sounded like her son, my dad!

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

Note from Snopes.com: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated “open letter.” “I did write the ‘you scare me’ letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or published it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

No 'simple serfdom' for me, thanks

I found this article last week, but have just re-read it.

From the Wall Street Journal online:

Never mind that in the past 20 years, thanks in part to the explosion of American consumption, hundreds of millions of people around the world, now with jobs to meet U.S. import demands, have eaten three meals in one day -- for the very first time in their lives. This is a War on Poverty that we are winning! Snobs would rather downsize and turn victory into defeat.

I try to keep my life "simple" - but I certainly don't advocate a return to the days of disease, malnutrition, or a severely shortened lifespan. I've lived in a rural area where indoor plumbing was NEW. I went to a country school in first grade that had electricity, and His & Hers outhouses. It's not my preference at the grand old age of 53. I prefer small-town life but recognize the convenience and blessings of living in this city. I love my cell phone, my refrigerator, central air conditioning in summer and a furnace in the winter. I've been the beneficiary of some of the medical miracles that came from the greatest Nation on Earth. I'm unwilling to give them up. I also have a small vegetable garden.

There's a balance to what I do and what I have - I have all I need, and more, to live a productive life in this society. I am content, and I am - and have - enough. If you wish for more and can produce that, good on ya. My ego can live with the fact that we're different that way.

Evidently not everyone is so blessed.

"Edgy as a soccer ball"

I haven't stayed up late enough to watch "Late Night" in many years. I DID stay up for Carson when I was younger, and even Leno once in awhile. I'm not hip enough - and never have been, I guess - to stay up that late now, hoping to partake of what the Cool Kids watch. I do, however, keep up with Lileks and the goings-on at Jasperwood. Dave's being too too cute again, I understand?

What’s amusing is how unamusing he is in the clip. How sour he seems. Compare him to his predecessors: Carson was all midwestern charm, with unreadable yet mannerly reserve; Steve Allen was almost as smart as he was certain you thought he must be, but he was cheerful; Parr was a nattering nutball covered with a rich creamy nougat of ego, but he was engaging. Letterman is empty; he’s inert; he stands for nothing except disdain for people foolish enough to stand for anything - aside from rote obesciance to all the things Decent People stand for, of course, all those shopworn assumptions passed around in the bubble.

Cool and hip, maybe I'm not. But I'm also not unkind to children, even those who have parents more well-known than I. Thanks, James, for watching the dreck (so I don't have to) and writing so well about it.

(Tip of my cap to Lileks at the Bleat. Small towns create lots of wonderful people like him)

Thomas Sowell Tuesday!

You don't need to listen to (or read) my blather when you can read the words Thomas Sowell.

Today, he's written about doing nothing. Here's a bit:

"...thanks to the United Nations, there is a place where political leaders can go to do nothing, with a flurry of highly visible activity — and the media will cover it in detail, with a straight face, so that people will think that something is actually being done.

There may be televised statements and counter-statements — passionate debate among people wearing exotic apparel from different nations, all in an impressive, photogenic setting. U.N. resolutions may be voted upon and published to the world. It can be some of the best nothing that money can buy."

On a more pathetic note

I had an idea that I might skip putting anything flagrantly political up today. If I say that to myself again, I have to remember to not visit most of the websites I go to for news and commentary!

From JewishWorldReview,com comes this column by Richard Z. Chesnoff, formerly a senior correspondent with US News and World Report, now a columnist with the NY Daily News, and author of "Pack of Thieves: How Hitler and Europe Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History."

From the column:

And why beat your breast over American involvement in the 1953 overthrow of Iran's Mossadeq regime. If Mr Obama thought he was reaching out a conciliatory hand to the Mullahs of Tehran, he missed it. The mullahs who seized power in 1979 have tried to use Mossadeq now as a martyr. But they always opposed and despised Mossadeq who was a secular nationalist. Nor was his regime "democratically elected". At the time Mossadedeq was overthrown with CIA help, he had autocratically suspended elections and ruled Iran by "emergency decree".

As David Frum put it, "for the United States to apologize to the present Iranian regime for the overthrow of Mossadeq would be a little like President Eisenhower apologizing to Josef Stalin for the murder of Trotsky."

BarryO is a real putz. A very dangerous putz.

Anniversary Plans

The Chief (retired) and I got married 22 February 1985. Went to the courthouse on a Thursday afternoon and met with a judge, she did the honours, then we drank a bottle of Asti Spumanti and spent the night at my apartment in Memphis, took him back to base at zero-dark-thirty, and didn't see him again till Monday or Tuesday. We have taken our honeymoon in increments, weekends here and there to do something fun, interesting, different. Honeymoons for people that have been living together for over 3 years seemed a waste of money and effort, in my mind. I've much preferred our way, it's never OVER, this way. I flew to San Diego from Washington for the weekend once when the ship was in. Same with a trip to Hawai'i when the ship was there picking up the Tiger Cruise passengers. Came back to Florida in 2000 & spent a few days with him in the barracks while he was re-training on P-3's, before we transferred to Hawai'i.

In 2004 we left Maryland and spent 2 nights and 3 days in San Diego, so we could see a Padres game in their new ballpark. (I also went to 3 AA meetings where I first learned the basics about living life based on the principles of the 12 Steps.)That was how we celebrated 20 years of marriage. You'll notice that the DATE is FLEXIBLE! I was a NAVY WIFE, fercryinoutloud, flexibility is a requirement. Adjust and adapt. We celebrated 6 months worth of holiday dinners in a 4-day weekend (The ship was leaving the Monday after Thanksgiving) before USS Nimitz deployed on the Med cruise that later took it to San Diego. Flexibility, adjustability, adapatability is KEY to any successful Navy marriage, and we succeeded for 22 Navy Family years.

Next February will be 25 years of wedded bliss. Holy blinkin' cow, Batman! What to do, what to do. This week, we figured out what to do. One weekend in September we're going to Damascus, Virginia. We're taking the kids and grandkid, spending one whole day and 2 nights there in a lovely little bed and breakfast in the heart of one of my favorite towns. The kids and the Chief (retired) will ride bicycles down the Virginia Creeper Trail, while I hang out with the Pixie...if I want. Which I will.

Don't know if Handsome Son-in-law has seen "autumn" or mountains in his whole life, or been on a road trip further away than Tampa. THAT is going to change, if he's gonna be part of THIS family! I think (and I really really hope) he'll enjoy it, and I know Lovely Daughter will.

I love my life. I'm so glad I get to share these things with them.

Very tired now, think I'll hit the rack so I can be on top of it tomorrow when I pick up the Pixie. Y'all have a fine evening, please come again some time!

I believe...

I BELIEVE that what comes down
can also quite possibly go up.

I BELIEVE that all bad things
come to an end.

I BELIEVE that the journey of a thousand miles
begins with a map.

I BELIEVE that the shortest distance between two points
is a leap of faith.

I BELIEVE that dreams come true
for those who put their hand to the plow
and never look back.

(H/T to American Greetings card I bought my hubby a long time ago...)