This Summer I Hear The Drumming

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
-Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809) American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary.


I have voted in every city, state, and federal primary and election I have been entitled to since 1972. My mother taught me to never vote a straight ticket but instead to vote for the person who I thought would do the best job.

This advise came from a woman who was a diehard Democrat. I was also a registered Democrat until about 20 years ago when I switched to unaffiliated. Even though I wasn't part of either major political party, I still adhered to my mother's advice. This year will be different. This year I will be voting a straight Democratic ticket since this election is too important to do anything else. Our craven Republican Congress must lose control of both the House and the Senate if we are going to continue as a democratic nation.

This Republican Congress has put their party before country, Donald Trump before national security, law and order before the Constitution, and the rich and corporations before the people. It advocates a Christian form of sharia law and a fascist form of government where the checks and balances written into the Constitution is overridden by presidential executive orders.

It has a Senate leader who quashes any legislation that threatens that power instead of letting the democratic process function the way it is supposed to function. The Republican Party has lost its way and should no longer be a major political party. I am going to do my part in making this happen by using my greatest weapon, my vote. You must do the same.

Vote-let Donald Trump, this Republican administration and this Republican Congress know we reject their cowardly, venal, corrupt, bullying ways.

Vote- no matter what, don't throw away your greatest weapon.

Who Are You? Who, Who, Who, Who?

When Trump went off script during his Naval Academy commencement address, he repeated himself, rambled, bragged about himself, and, unconsciously, told us a lot about his fears and insecurities :

-Thank you. Thank you. Hello, midshipmen, hello ( Let me say to the entire brigade—please be at ease—enjoy yourselves, because we are all here to celebrate the amazing class of 2018.) Amazing job. Thank you. Really something.

-for the record, this year, Navy beat Army 19 times. And I will not mention, I promised, who won the football game. I will not mention it. I refuse to say it. But that is a great achievement.

-And let me take a guess, you are still not tired of winning. Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Winning is such a great feeling.

- Hello, folks, back there.

-(Victory.) A very important word.

- And we are respected again, I can tell you that. We are respected again. A lot of things have happened. We are respected again.

-(Bruce Voorhees.) Well-known all over.

-(he spent most of his time teaching the city slickers from the east the correct pronunciation of Nevada.) And I had to learn that, too, to win the state. Great place.

-(he was just like you in many ways.) Just like you. Not a lot of difference.

-(and 35) very tough, very well conditioned (Navy SEALs.)

-And in case you have not noticed, we have become a lot stronger lately. A lot.

- No money for the military? Those days are over.

-you have read all about it,

-a $700 billion, largest-ever amount of money to support our great war fighters. And I might add that next year—the $700 billion, not million. They’re liking the sound of million, but billion is better-the $700 billion goes to $716 billion,

-and we are going to be stronger than ever before. We will have the strongest military that we have ever had, and it won’t even be close. And when did we need it more than now?

-That means new ships. You like that. We have now the lowest number of ships we have had since World War I. And very soon, we are going to get to 355 beautiful ships. That is almost a couple of hundred more ships. So you will be around for a long time. We are not running out of equipment. We’re not running out of ships. And that has been approved. And we are honored by it.

--(You are going to have new equipment, and well-deserved pay raises. We just got to a big pay raise for the first time in 10 years). We got to a big pay increase, first time in over 10 years. I fought for you. That was the hardest one to get. But you never had a chance of losing.

-We are going to take care of our veterans. We are doing a great job with it. We are taking care, finally, after decades, we are taking care of our veterans.

- (We passed VA accountability.) Everybody said it could not be done. If you didn’t do a good job, ou could not get fired. Now, you don’t do a good job and take care of our veterans, they will look you in the eye and they say, “Jim, you’re fired! You’re out! Out!” Get him out of here. They all said you could not get it. They tried to get it for 35 years. We will say, “Get him out of here, he doesn’t take care of our vets.”

-And hopefully, we never have to use all of this beautiful, new, powerful equipment. But you know, you are less likely to have to use it if you have it and know how to work it. And nobody knows how to work it like you.

-(Victory, winning,) beautiful words, but that is what it is all about.

-(We are rebuilding our defense industrial base to forge American iron, aluminum, and steel,) which, by the way, we just put tariffs on when it comes in from other countries. Okay? We are taking in a lot of money now, our country. They pay that big, beautiful tariff and it goes right into building new ships.

-(Don’t give up the ship.) Famous phrase. We even use it in business. Things are going bad, you say, “Don’t give up the ship.” Keep fighting. Don’t give up the ship. But it’s really—you guys started it.

- (“Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”) Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

- What should I do? What should I do? I’ll stay. I’ll stay. I will stay.

This Little Light Of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine

I followed this car for a couple of miles at lunchtime and we finally got stopped by road construction. Now you know why America is so messed up. It's because we are messed up. Those who love and admire Jesus are aggressive, hateful, and dismissive as hell. The irony is they do not see the irony in that.

Top left- You Give Peace A Chance

               I Will Cover You When It Doesn't Work

Top middle- Do You Follow Jesus This Close ?

Top right- You Have Your Family
                 I Have Mine
(Above a row of assault rifles and handguns)

Bottom left- Get Off My Ass Before I Inflate Your Airbags

Bottom middle- I Miss John Wayne & Real America Values
(With profile of John Wayne in a cowboy hat.)

Bottom right- Box with Cross (Pro God), Box with Gun (Pro Gun), Box with Heart (Pro Life), Box with Obama for President logo and a line drawn through it (Anti-Obama).

Under licence plate- I Miss John Wayne

S'Wonderful

I drove down to Denver today to have lunch with my sister at the Punchbowl Social in the old air traffic control tower at Stapleton. (Tip- if you are a grown up without any children, eat in the bar on the second level.)  After that we went to Rare Finds Warehouse which has furniture and an eclectic bunch of stuff.  We spend almost a couple of hours wandering around looking at everything. And then I saw this:

So now I am a proud owner of my own piece of Denver history.  This five-loaf pan still has bits of crust attached around the top edges.  The darn thing weighs about 10 pounds.

Cosby Found Guilty As Sexual Assault Awareness Month Comes To An End

I know this is a snarky headline but Caitlin Doughty is even better at snark than I am.

Read article about guilty verdict here.

What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday with 40 MPH winds and over-tilled soil.

Today.

Every Morning I Make Three Beds

Before

After

Okay, Venus? Okay, Steve. Right, Let's Go!

-Opening lines of Fireball XL5

Why does this supposed high tech spy device that Homeland Security says is being used by bad guys to track phones in Washington DC look like something built by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson for one of their Supermarionation puppet series?

Physical Education

-Systematic instruction in sports, exercises, and hygiene given as part of a school program. (Dictionary.com)

The Internet is a dangerous place. Ran across this photo and had a flashback of myself wearing one of these and standing in the Morey Jr High School gym. The gym had a strip of wood about a foot wide just above our heads that went around three of the walls. There were number painted on it from 1 to  somewhere in the hundreds. After we changed into some version of this lovely garment, we had to line up along the walls and under our assigned number. When the gym teacher blew her whistle we put our hand over our number and she walked by us and marked down any number not cover by a hand. It was a good system but it seemed to take forever. I swear my number was seventy-two. 

Where Have All The Children Gone?

I took a bus down to Denver Saturday for the March For Our Lives and the driver on the bus back shared his views on gun control (against) with some of the people on the bus. I was only half listening to him. At one point he started talking about human trafficking and said 1,800 kids a day disappear in Colorado. I got out my phone and did the math: 1,800 kids/day x 365 days/year = 657,000 kids/year. This, according to the US Census Bureau, in a state were the number of children between the ages of birth to 17 is 625,190. If what he said was true, I think we would notice. People have got to start questioning the crap they are being told.