It’s coming because you didn’t stop it… but don’t plead ignorance; you must plead stupid.

Reid says Obamacare just a step toward eventual single-payer system

In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care “exchanges”.

But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot.

Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care…. and into the clutches of “single-payer health care”.  

This was the plan from the start… it was the plan when this was called HillaryCare.

As simply as I can put it…. this is what “single-payer” health insurance means: Single-payer health care is the government, rather than private insurers, paying all health care costs. Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from private organizations (as is the case in Canada) or may own and employ healthcare resources and personnel (as is the case in the UK).

In other words if this leviathan is not killed in its cradle……. you will have (not health insurance) but health care directly from the same people who have run our national debt to approaching $20 trillion and cannot get out of its own bloated way.

In other words…… welcome to the VA; I know of what I speak.

• Six weeks to get a doctor’s appointment. You cannot get an appointment with a specialist except through a referral from your primary doc. Once took me 4 months to get a dental bridge….. with three (of my chewing teeth) ground down to nubs.
• All day, every day VA hospitals are teeming and overburdened… I mean multiple hundreds of vets going to, coming from appointments, treatment or tests, waiting for same, waiting for paperwork, waiting for new appointment to be made.
• To see a specialist I have to drive to Dallas VA…. well past the Zoo.
• I once had an odd sensation that my throat was closing or swelling… I have allergies and I was concerned that I was having a sort of anaphylactic reaction; I wasn’t far from the VA clinic in Denton and dropped in.

Asked the office manager if I could just catch my doc or any doc between appts. to simply look down my throat. Absolutely not, not no way, not no how… Nobody gets into see the Wizard.

I replied that “I bet I could see a doc if I fell on the floor here and began screaming that I can’t breath.”

People actually do “narrow their eyes”.

I left, drove back home and got in to see a local doc I’d never seen before in an hour… $50 for appointment and $17 for ‘script.

While waiting I got a call from the VA clinic… they could get me in in an hour and a half.

• Once I was at the Dallas VA and had a root canal… they sent me downstairs to the pharmacy to pick up my pain meds and antibiotics. After waiting 30-40 minutes for my name to come up on the video monitor… I was told that the dental clinic hadn’t place my order.

Back on the elevator and to the clinic… closed. Luckily I ran into a staffer who had checked me in an hour before. She said she’d take care of it … back to pharm; after 20 more minutes and and now facing rush hour traffic, I said screw it and drove home.

The hole in my jaw eventually got infected and I self medicated with bourbon… a week later I got my anti-bios and pain meds in the mail.

• I once drove 120-mile round trip for a properly arranged and waited for appointment only to learn the someone got ill or it was an asteroid or the bridge was out or there was a homicide-suicide.

So the appointment was cancelled, as was a half-day’s work and then there was the cost of gasoline.

I self medicated with bourbon. This is why VA hospitals have armed federal cops.

But it will be worse for you…. M. Single-Payer.

Why? Because at least the VA has a stand alone, small community clinic system as an alternative to the hospitals. Single-payer health care doesn’t have any hospital or clinic system. Most hospitals… and most major hospitals are owned by churches and synagogues, and other charitable organizations.

Where will all you government-dependent patients go?

Of course, my fear is they will dump everyone on the VA system…. along with the leeches of society, including 11 million illegal aliens.

So, if you voted for Obama and/or support this kind of medical care…. I’m glad the same thing will soon happen to you….but it’ll be worse than the VA experience.

Why? Because at least the VA has had 85 years of running single-payer hospitals, just to get it running like the above examples. But your health care will be run by health care experts….. the IRS.

Bwaahhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

But hey… come on over for a shot of bourbon anyway.

Catcher in the wry….

As far as I’m concerned, catchers are born not made; not that all those who don the “tools of ignorance” are blessed with great athletic talents though some are, most of us just seem to end up a backstop. I was destined primarily by being a vertically challenged and calorie-infused young lad; I made up for this by being slow.

Must have been my second, third year in the community sand-lot youth baseball program we had when I was a ‘ute that I realized that good or bad, I had a specific place in the line-up.

Sure I wanted to make the fantastic, acrobatic catches in the outfield, but there was that lack of speed again.

Never had a yen for the mound… pitchers never seemed to have much to do except throw. Hell, catchers throw more than pitchers do…. every pitch, every game, all games.

So that’s when I began to notice Yogi Berra.

Lawrence Peter Berra

Positions: Catcher and Outfielder
Bats: Left, Throws: Right
Height: 5′ 7″, Weight: 185

Although I would get taller and heavier than he was…. I and all other catchers save a few, pale in comparison.

Appearing in a record 21 World Series, Berra is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history. He was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team fans in 1999. According to the win shares formula developed by sabermetrician Bill James, Berra is the greatest catcher of all time and the 52nd greatest non-pitching player in major-league history.

Heady stuff.

Catchers are “mudders” and “plodders”… stubborn, persistent, team players, pugnacious, usually good with pitchers (and human beings as well).

The necessary skills come naturally for the gifted; but for those of us with less talent these can be approximated by employing the above personal attitudes and endless practice.

Catchers are also offensive linemen–usually guards– and goalies—hockey, lacrosse or in soccer; but there is no explanation why anyone would want to play soccer…. pastime of the communists that it is.

In junior high and high school I moved around as my speed got better and the height:weight ratio evened out, but the plate was always mine.

This attitude would latter be summed up easily by an trash-talking NBA center who refereed to the paint as “my house.”

Therefore, collisions at the plate come with the territory. A good catcher can make a lot of great run-saving plays by blocking the plate with a kneeling left leg, hip and shoulder, simultaneously putting the often sliding runner off course to the side, and absorbing the impact to deny the plate.

The bang-bang plays always favor a good blocking catcher…. the runner has to go over, around or through you to score… that takes a a few extra milliseconds, giving the ump the best look.

Done correctly the catcher is in a low, kneeling crouch with his left lower leg parallel to the deck and his upper body braced to protect the ball in his glove or right hand. An upright runner is at a disadvantage, his pin to your bowling ball; and the sliding player often fairs less well, his impact area (feet, prone legs) is small, but he can kick at, thrust, stretch his legs to get around your block or swipe or reach with either hand. Like fighting an octopus for a second.

Sometimes its just an upright, mano a mano collision, like jousting with the game or maybe a tooth in the balance. To enjoy a longer career one should take care how this is attempted, it can be an end to your playing days. See Pete Rose v Ray Fosse, All-Star Game 1970.

Once in a round robin tournament in Fort Collins or Colorado Springs, I caught five games back to back for a total of 35 innings and we ended up 4-1 for the day…. our loss a one run affair after three extra innings.

Yeah you gotta be durable, but looking back it’s more a matter of determination and setting your limits higher and higher as it gets harder and harder and older and older; hell, they even moved Mickey Mantel to first a lot late in his career.

This is absolutely not to suggest that I would ride in a 100-mile desert bike race with President Bush … or anyone else.

In my 25 years of baseball and softball mostly behind the plate and at first base, I earned four AC joint separations (2 each shoulder), stretched knee ligament, a separated sternum and 2-3 cracked ribs, one concussion that I’m sure of, a badly pulled hamstring that bothered me a lot the last few years before I hung up my tools, and which still does should I have a nasty brush with exercise.

Catchers are involved in the game like no other player and are expected to keep laser focused, pitch-by-pitch, play by play; a lot of that is because the catcher is the only player who can see every player and the entire field from the best seat in the house.

How many outs, balls and strikes, the clouds, sun; know the hitters well enough to know if they are pull hitters, punch and judys, opposite field, slappers, plate crowders, and the particularly nasty guy with great speed out of the box who can embarrass you with a surprise bunt down the base line or send a slow roller back to the mound…. even on a 3-0 count.

The Umpire Strikes Back

With a good ump, you can usually say anything as long as it’s not profane, crudely describes his wife or mama, and if you don’t turn around; he’s right there over your left shoulder anyway.

“Damn, I’m sorry Blue, I stood up too quickly and blocked your view of that perfect rise ball on the outside corner, be sure and lemme know if that happens again.”

“I know the count and I can do it without a clicker!”

“I know a good optometrist.”

But when he says, “Okay, that’s one,” you can’t be sure you’ll get a second.

For all these reason catchers seem to make good plate umps and managers.

For example all four managers in the 2012 LCS were former catchers — Bruce Bochy of San Francisco, Joe Girardi of the New York Yankees, Jim Leyland of Detroit and Mike Matheny of St. Louis.

But it’s not just the win-loss stats that may or may not “prove” short-stops or pitchers are better managers… it’s also a lot of intangibles which in the long run are apparent among catchers. 

And we’re funnier than any other position player….

Bob Uecker — “Mr. Baseball”

One time, I got pulled over at four a.m.; I was fined seventy-five dollars for being intoxicated and four-hundred for being with the Phillies.

When I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth, I looked in the other team’s dugout and they were already in street clothes.

They said I was such a great prospect that they were sending me to a winter league to sharpen up.; when I stepped off the plane, I was in Greenland.

People don’t know this but I helped the Cardinals win the pennant; I came down with hepatitis… the trainer injected me with it.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965, my baseball card came out with no picture.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.

Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

“If the line isn’t drawn here and now then it will be generations before our youth revolts.”

Yesterday, I received a straight-forward and important question from a thirty-something, male friend:

“I want you to help me…. instead of bitching about the same ol Obama bullshit, I want you men and women to come up with a solution to my problem.

“I’ve tried talking politics to younger people but they don’t care. They only believe the five seconds they heard on MSNBC  I have the will and determination to change the world, problem is I just don’t know how.

“If the line isn’t drawn here and now then it will be generations before our youth revolts. What is a realistic plan to help the situation?”

I know the documentary– “Agenda” –isn’t likely to be watched, let alone embraced by the general sheep-public who have already earned the title of “useful idiot” for the communists.

(Editor’s note: see documentary here only available for a limited time:  Agenda–Grinding America Down .)

I suggest it more for Real Americans who are in a position to “teach others” if you will… someone like yourself; don’t bother with your “low information” peers… as you have seen, they are a waste of your time and effort.

It’s said that “all politics are local” and that’s where the individual can be most effective…. the Tea Party movement being a prime example of a grassroots, loosely-connected group of the like-minded with cells of local leadership which remain autonomous.

It’s not a showy march on Washington and it doesn’t need be… the tea party kept the conservative base of the GOP energized and carried the day in the 2012 election; imagine where we’d be right now if the communists controlled the House too.

And that was nothing more than friends, families and neighbors throughout the nation gathered around a central rallying cry of small, efficient federal government, a strong national defense and unfettered, free-market capitalism.

Glen Beck was probably most successful in getting results in his calls to arms which produced very large crowds… and that is a helpful thing for morale purposes among all patriotic groups.

I think that’s where the motivated individual needs to put his/her time and effort, and that’s where a truthful collection of connect-the-dots facts such as “Agenda” can be best utilized.

Before we know where we are going we need to how we got here and that’s what “Agenda” made disturbingly simple and obvious… by tracing communism from President Obama (the ultimate goal for the communists) all the way back through all its permutations to Karl Marx and his Communist Correspondence Committee formed in 1846.

That’s how long they have been at this…. communism never died or went away, it morphed into a most successful and pandemic evil by quietly taking over other groups (especially “feminist” and environmental groups), hollowing them out and forming something far different in their place. Do you think that the United States military and the National Football League would have catered-to, embraced, supported and fawned over gay “rights” and “gay marriage” 40 years ago?

Of course not, but that’s exactly what we have now… the gutting of two organizations, one for national defense and one which was a war-like, gladiator-like, Spartan-like sport… four decades ago; but now both organizations have mandatory “tolerance” “employee” brain-washing programs where they are instructed that gays are a protected class and if you don’t accept that, you do so at your own peril:

“Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, was so giddy over helping pave the way for openly gay sailors to destroy the world’s premier navy, said ‘We treat each other (gays) with respect or we find another place to work. Period.’ ”

Can we say that the moral, ethical and masculine heart of these two disparate organizations has been cut out and replaced?

Absolutely.

There is not a one facet, private or public, of our society that is does not face destruction by communists (progressives). They have destroyed to the black nuclear family which resulted in multiple generations of welfare- dependent  stupid (because they are under educated) sheep; this group, among others can be turned against the middle class, the workers and providers, the tax-payers. It is a standing army awaiting the  collectivists’ orders, no matter what political party is “in charge.”

Let me entertain a similar point at this juncture… the State Department is known for calling the new president and his administration “the temporary help”, no matter who is Secretary, President, Chairman… regardless of party; the civil service careerists run the place, cannot be impeached or recalled or balloted out of their highly-paid and protected positions.

The left wing philosophy begun under “progressives” like Woodrow Wilson remains in place to this very day.

But remember there are more of us that we realize, it’s just that the left has succeeded spectacularly in making 100 people seems like a thousand, and a thousand seem like one hundred thousand. That’s the payoff for working the last 40 years to infiltrate all of news media, publishing, entertainment, unions and most especially our educational system.

Understand… this cannot be fought against trusting either party. We know what the dimocrats are and have done… and the GOP leadership is simply “liberal lite” — Lindsay Gramnesty, McRino and the rest.

Taking control of the party from within (ala the progressive paradigm) and “growing” Constitutional originalists for elective office, the federal courts and especially as states rights governors…. is the answer.

But the question is “time…. how much do we have”?

Maddeningly, simply, not much.

Remember her well, Sweetheart.

As I pulled into the parking lot for Sparky’s vet appointment, the pickup parked haphazardly across three spaces near the front door meant something was not good.

As we entered a young girl, 12 or so, stood in the lobby, arms wrapped around her thin frame, she stared down the hall at an open door.

A small, dark-haired woman hurried out of the clinic, there were large blood spots on the leg of his jeans; she quickly moved down the hall and into the last room.

I asked the girl if she was okay…. “It’s my friend,” she said. “Her dog was hit.” The fingers of both hands pressed tightly against her chin; her red-rimmed eyes shed tears that stained her flushed cheeks.

The girl’s high-pitched wail came out of the room at the end of the hall and flooded the lobby.

“NO! She can’t be.”

“She can’t be.”

I turned my back for their privacy and choked on my own pain.

“She can’t be. No, she isn’t. No. There’s something they can do.”

The plea, the demand, came again and again… bashing against what she knew was true, and the dread.

All that was absent was the unspoken word… “dead.”

The girl emerged slowly, her mother’s arms wrapped tightly around her. They sat. The young friend stood frozen in the middle of the room.

The girl’s strangled tears marked the pace of her slowly dying hope and the cold reality that her best friend in God’s world was gone and that she was alone.

Still clutching Sparky to me, I debated and then moved slowly toward the sobbing child.

I pushed wet strands of hair from her face and touched her cheek. 

“I am so sorry sweetheart, so very sorry. Remember her well, won’t you?” It was all I could speak.

I hoped that if she remembered the words, she would realize I meant to remember her friend often and with a smile… and remember when she was whole and not in her last, tormented hour.

I wanted to say more, do more…. I was the only male in the building, I wanted to protect her and give her what I had learned about people and dogs… always our best friends.

I wanted to tell her about my Rusty who was with me as soon as I could walk, until the sixth grade when his health abandoned him and there was nothing we could do.

I would have told her how Rusty and I conquered vacant lots and chased squirrels, how we were together night and day and how we talked as kids and their best pals do. I wanted her to know that I shared in her grief though my loss occurred longer ago than her parents had been alive.

“But it is still as if it happened yesterday,” I’d have said.

But this mother and her poor sobbing daughter didn’t know me, a large crying man clutching a Pomeranian, making himself part of the worst day in her life… still I wanted to say or do more.

I would have told her that because of the overwhelming pain of losing Rusty I did not have another dog for more than 40 years… and that decision was a mistake.  As a result, even my best friends didn’t know I loved dogs, I never spoke about them, or had one.

Until I was in my late 40s I couldn’t talk about Rusty without crying.

“Don’t do what I did,” I’d have said.

“Dogs brings us joy and comfort, love and I missed out on 40 years of that because I feared the pain. I realized that not having a dog was unnatural for a guy who has a dog-shaped hole in his heart… so I got my beloved Tripoli and he changed my life.

“But then he too passed away and again I didn’t think I would survive the loss and grief, but I did; now I have four dogs that other people didn’t want or couldn’t keep.

“And now we all face the world together as best friends.”

So, Sweetheart, remember your best friend well… but be sure to open your heart to your next best friend when you are ready… you’ll know when you are.

Random and indiscriminate fire…..

You’re in luck, it’s Scatter Shot Monday:

The death of a Navy SEAL and veterans advocate, Chris Kyle, last week was a shock to the national veteran community.

It also prompted the left-wing ghouls to use the murders of Kyle and and his friend Chad Littlefield to blame the victims and pontificate about “evil guns”.

Unless you are a combat veteran, have vast experience in PTSD, have ever faced your own violent death, own guns and fire them, and are immersed in the brotherhood of firearms, then you need to shut your pie hole about what caused this tragedy.

All we know for fact is that Kyle and Littlefield went to help a fellow vet in trouble and something went terribly wrong.

When you are trying to help someone, especially a fellow veteran, you must meet him on “his level”.  In my 20+ years in treating post-traumatic stress disorder I would have been toast had I approached a client and informed him…. “My theoretical orientation is Jungian but I rely heavily on behavioral/cognitive techniques and Ericksonian self-hypnosis.”

I would simply say…. “I was a grunt in a Marine Corps rifle platoon in ‘Nam .” 

Kyle and Littlefield were meeting this allegedly troubled, combat veteran on familiar turf in order to tell him he wasn’t alone, that his brothers would help .

What would be more comfortable to a jarhead than a shooting range with military comrades ?

Bottom line…….. you want to criticize the dead who did far more for this nation by the time they have breakfast, than you will do in your whole life… STFU before someone punches a hole in your chest.

Child abuse…It was not a “tear-jerking performance” of the Sandy Hook Elementary Choir, for anyone with a brain; we know when we are being manipulated by the gun control crowd.

The only thing accomplished by bringing 25 little kids and their “parents” the the Super Bowl is making them “professional victims”; for some it will become their identity, their whipping boy and their excuse for all personal failings… “I was at Sandy Hook Columbine, Aurora, VaTech….blah, blah, blah.” 

Truly concerned parents and teachers will see to it, insist, that their children return to normalcy, and that is impossible if they are offered the spotlight, national TV and being famous–which requires victims… step right right this way Billy!  

Finally there was a Super Bowl ad voiced by Oprah Winfrey for Jeep which was commended for its cringing emotional manipulation and predominate black faces that our troops were all home and everything was just hunky dory in Obama’s America.

Does the America you see reside in that commercial?

Exactly……….

Soft targets…..

In the aftermath of the Newtown Connecticut school mass casualty attack, liberals who never “let a crisis go to waste” are again trying to disarm law-abiding American citizens.

Yes, it is exactly backwards, but then we’re used to that from liberals, no?

Nonetheless, lets us ignore these larger issues and focus on school shootings…. not shootings at schools which is the accurate description of this latest incident in which a student was wounded at my Taft California alma mater last month.

Why are schools targeted?  Simply because most “active shooters” are students or former students or have a direct connection with the school, and because schools are by and large “gun free zones”–a mind-numbingly idiotic non-solution to violence.

Especially in life and death situations, common sense should be the uppermost consideration; sadly, it is emotion, not thinking, that rules the day. Before the body bags have been carted off some left winger is attacking the Second Amendment.

The first question for such a non-critical thinker should be… “what does gun control have to do with dead children?”

Invariably, the anti-gunners immediately attack and blame law-abiding citizens instead of providing ways to stop these mad men who attack soft targets.

The simple answer, as the Sandy Hook School District has quickly learned the hard way, is that armed staff is the only answer to the mass murder of innocent children in their schools.

This community should be commended;  the citizens now realize (far too late) that violence must be met with violence or the threat thereof.

But they didn’t go far enough because the plan called for an armed law enforcement officer.

Once again common sense is in absentia; one officer with one firearm can only protect the area he occupies…. Take the recent Taft Union High shooter; he was in the science building, second floor as I recall. If the “resource officer” had been in the main building or the gym or the practice field at the time, it would have taken him minutes to get to the shooter.

Far too late; one armed officer is only effective in a one-room school house.

The answer?  Allow willing teachers and staff with proper training and education under state laws to carry concealed weapons. In military parlance, this is a force multiplier and once again, common sense. When schools are heavily publicized as having a concealed carry staff, the potential killer doesn’t know if he would face one gun or 50. As a result he looks for some other target or gives up his twisted plan completely.

I can hear the hand wringers already, but their arguments do not hold up. We have armed guards in banks protecting our money, but not our six-year-olds.  How can anyone defend such a position?

Armed guards protect any number of celebrities, politicians, CEOs, millionaires and others. Why aren’t the anti-gunners worried about these guns in public? Are they more concerned about Beyonce’s safety or their own children?

Parents think nothing of placing their child’s life in the hands of an 16-year-old lifeguard at the local pool, but insist their child should be left absolutely unprotected at school.

Does anyone doubt that each and every grieving family in Newtown (regardless of what they say in their five minutes of TV fame) wishes deeply that an armed teacher had been in those classrooms?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Doesn’t the Declaration proclaim that as human beings we have the God-given rights listed above? Then why do we strip those rights from teachers and staff facing a potential deadly attack on their schools.

Time and time again teachers and administrators have sacrificed their lives to protect our children; their courage and willingness to do so is not in question, so knowing they will face down a gunman unarmed, why do we deprive them of the ability to save their own lives and others?

Common sense.

How can we have liberty and the pursuit of happiness if we do not have life? If you are hired at the local school you are essentially saying that you are willing to die in a futile attempt to save the lives of your students whose parents denied you the right to save your own life.

Fair warning.

If not me, who? If not now, when?

Any community in America has all resources it needs to prevent or lessen the chance of school shootings.

Retired, reserves and former military. I have coffee every morning with a group of men who have a wealth of experience and training with firearms. This includes a former concealed carry instructor, a veteran of four decades of military and law enforcement experience with firearms, as well as other combat veterans.

And you are telling me that we would not volunteer to protect little kids for a few hours?

There are literally millions of retired and former military, reservists, former and retired law enforcement officers, competitive shooters–not to mention those who have private security backgrounds earned with top security agencies and contractors who have worked in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do we really believe that there is a valid, deep concern about the ability of these men to protect children?

• Read John Lott; hundreds of thousands of criminal acts have been routinely stopped by armed citizens.
• Too expensive?
• Bull. America is the most “volunteering” society in the world. I could get a volunteer group of licensed armed volunteers to guard a grade school in a few phone calls. They are the same men who responded to Bunker Hill and Lexington, and they will respond now.

This country was better off when we were called on by the sheriff to form a posse; it’s called “skin in the game.”

I wish liberals agreed.

It’s for the children.

On turning 65…….

“There’s just no arguing with 60…,” I used to say.

It seemed and still does seem like a line of demarcation in ones life from what went before and whatever GPS coordinates I inhabit now on Life’s Back Nine.

I’ve always had many older friends, mentors, coaches, co-workers whom I closely watched to see how they played the last holes… many of whom went beat The Reaper in regulation and went to the “sudden death” round.

And that’s okay, I figure that not knowing how much is left to play frees you to play as you choose. And I choose to play it as I always have… I don’t “feel” a hell of a lot older than I did in my 30s, but I am smarter and much wiser, so I should be living my life “better”.

I figure when you are 80 and beyond you’re playing on someone’s score card anyway, and “sudden death” takes on a new meaning entirely; all deaths are sudden and there’s a cosmic calendar date out there somewhere beyond which we will not see the sunrise.

And living life “better” for me has a lot to do with learning. My only disappointment at 65 is that I should know more than I do… a realization I face every day as I gain a clearer picture of how much I don’t know.

But strangely that too is a gift for a young boy who had recurring dreams… wonderful dreams… of being locked up alone in the local Carnegie Library for the weekend with….. all…. those…. books.

Technology has now given me that dream and more, in the form of this computer and the “Internet” which have allowed me to download on my iPad:

The Memoirs of U.S, Grant, all volumes of the Life of George Washington, the messages and papers of all US Presidents from 1843-1914, Common Sense, Edison, His Life and Times, The Writings of Samuel Adams, all the works of Rudyard Kipling, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, 10+ volumes of Custerania and a batch more.

And the best part…. all for free.

I’ll never even get to my modest goals of learning, but I am now old and wise enough to see that as a blessing, not a curse of my intellect being sabotaged by the ultimate failing of my physiology.

My grandmother was one of those “take me now Jesus” folks who I doubt lived a single happy day in her life. She settled on religion as her drug of choice and must have thought God had played a horrible trick on her at birth.

I was no more than 8 or 9 the first time I heard her wish her life away, seeming to insist that crossing over the River Jordan was what “good” Baptists do.

Thus I always looked on our summer visits to “grandma’s” as the real punishment it was.

God proved to me early that he had a great sense of humor…. my Grand mother lived until 96… and I don’t think see learned a damned thing about life in almost 100 years.

“We makes plans, God laughs.”    

Her youngest daughter, Bettye, my Mother, was much her opposite. I watched and learned a lot from Bettye, much of it having to do with living ones life.

Born in 1927 her opportunities (as a female) were limited to a certain extent, but her parents were worse impediments by far. Hence a marriage to my Dad in ’46 I think, and for the next 50 years she lived life for all it had to offer.

When the stroke came for her at age 76 on Christmas Day a few years ago, she was on a week’s vacation from her part time job as a home health care aide for a “a little old man” (80) incapacitated by an aneurysm.  Previously she had worked with “the little old people” at an assisted living facility.

So my Mom and my grandmother each taught me everything I needed to know about my club selection on the back nine.

I’ve always lived better than I golf… so I go on from here on with confidence that you grip the driver way down at the end of the shaft and rip the damned thing as hard and as far as you can.

Not good advice for a serious golfer perhaps, but in the Game of Life, it suits me and Bettye to a “T”.

“Fore!”

Glückliches Neujahr

I didn’t understand the rush to leave 2012… only to arrive in ’13. We survived last year and should have just remained there.

‘Thirteen holds little promise.

We have never faced an oppressive Marxist government that promises to crush our freedom as does this government.

I don’t see that as a reason to “celebrate”… 13 is an unlucky number… you may have heard; some swanky hotels’ floors jump from 12 to 14 without a thought.

So should we.

To think otherwise is to dance to the last of Nero’s fiddling.

We are literally in a desperate fight for our future… and this time (unlike the Marxists who routinely espouse it) it truly is “for the children.”

For those of us closing in on Social Security, the fight isn’t for us… it is for people 30 and below, who (if and when they awaken) must become the true Real Americans — conservatives — and if they do not my friends, then this is truly is our Thermopylae and we are The 300; for now, today we are Wake Island and Bataan and the Little Big Horn.

Without young Real Americans, we are but fighting a beau jest, defending what was previously the greatest societal experiment in the history of mankind.  And sadly it will end with a whimper, not a roar.

Nonetheless, I was fortunate to spend the last day of  2012 in the delightful company of Deanna, some of her friends, family, food and music.

And for that I am grateful.

I have more friends than I deserve (one-third are dogs) and I believe that even those who disagree with me will admit that I truly believe in, adhere to and vociferously defend everything I say.

Ride to the sound of guns…..

A Christmas present for John F. Kerry

I thought 2004 would be the last of John F. Kerry–who served in Vietnam (and Cambodia)  I’m told–but no; rising like a political third-string zombie he still haunts the Senate chambers contaminating its importance and history.

Worse, Kerry will soon be trotted out as Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State…. too bad for America, but a fitting twosome when you think if it.

As I recall, I met Kerry in the spring of 1972.

He came to Fresno State to speak and as editor of the Daily Collegian, I assigned the interview of the week to myself.

I found him to be… how do I say this?… a prick.

Sorry if your kids are reading this (even if they should).

Dressed in the intentionally working class Levis and Army fatigue jacket, his lanky frame was very Gary Cooper but he tipped the scales at probably 20 pounds less.

He sat for the interview for about 20 minutes in my office; I don’t recall a thing about it; his remarks (there were few real answers) were right out of the lefty handbook: “The People of Vietnam”… “Paris Peace Talks“… “Withdrawal”… “genocide”.

Blah. Blah.

I’d had better interviews with assistant profs in the FSU’s Oenology (look it up) Department.

I led him across the quad toward the Student Center ante room where he could gather himself before his speech at the amphitheater. I took a few pictures… which were about as boring as the lantern-jawed subject.

The student’s response to his talk about Vietnam was predictable; he was preaching to the choir.

But, his East Coast, patrician, condescending attitude rubbed the Vietnam veteran sons of blue collar workers the wrong way.

Most of my fellow vets had always been skeptical of his ‘Nam curriculum vitae, especially his three Purple Hearts, “earned” in as many months… no real leader would every use three paper cuts to get out of the war; I never anyone who even knew about the “three and out” rule. Had we, we would have thought it a lie.

Later, along with three million in-country Vietnam vets, I would learn that the circumstances that allowed him America’s oldest military decoration were indefensible. I needn’t belabor the details further.

Kerry had used his three “wounds” to grab a fast ticket out of Vietnam in 90 days, leaving his enlisted riverboat shipmates to their fate… unforgivable.

A Marine officer taking the same cowardly exit would have been despised, confronted and maybe even punched out for doing the same.

The last straw came with his speech before some Senate committee in which he betrayed all of us, maligned and savaged our service with the most despicable slander… “cutting off heads”?

Bastard.

Over the next 40 years I never changed my opinion of John Kerry… elected to the Senate, friend of the Kennedys and Gary Hart(pence), and finally, 2004 dimocrat party presidential nominee.

For Lt. John F. Kerry, Vietnam was nothing more that a photo op on the road to a politic career (boosted by the plagiarism of the real JFK’s war record).

All this, combined with throwing his medals back at the White House in 1971 (which turned out to not be his medals, or ribbons, or whatever), and his later statements, behavior, and actions made the junior senator from Massachusetts a traitor to his comrades in my book, and a pariah to all vets.

As we said in ‘Nam… “payback is a M**********r”; and following the lead of the Medal of Honor Recipient “Bud” Day and the “Swiftboat Vets”… we sunk the USS Kerry in 2004, driving a stake into the heart of the effete bastard’s political aspirations… a wound he did not survive.

Nonetheless, the dimocrats  have two teams… the Marxists and retreads like Kerry, Clinton, Reid and Schumer. When there is something that the Obamamarxists don’t care, about like Secretary of State (See: Ambassador, Benghazi), they go to the bench and pull out some has-been like Kerry.

There is a special place in VFW Hell for John Kerry; he’s there now; and to whatever extent possible, I hope somehow is aware of our ire…. like his buddy, Jane Fonda.

But… I doubt it.

Tiny caskets.

It was mid-fall in Colorado and my family joined other church families for a Saturday cookout at the local park.

In those days it seemed like every family had four children; as I remember the scene was Norman Rockwell-worthy replete with football throwing, joyous running through piles of dried, colorful leaves flavored wood smoke and sizzling hot dogs.

I saw them first.  A couple walked toward us, poorly dressed and unkempt. The woman carried a baby bundled in a blanket, pink as I recall. The man seemed hesitant.

I mentioned to my mom that maybe they were new to our church and didn’t know anyone. As always, my mother Bettye (for whom there were no strangers) walked toward them; she looked at the baby, I saw the couple brighten and they joined us at one of the wooden picnic tables.

I would later learn that they were transients out of work, down on their luck and in need of help. They picked the right group to approach because by the end of  day the church men had the man a job in the oil field; my mom found them a small house owned by someone willing to wait for the rent once the young man got his first pay check.

Late Sunday afternoon I answered the door to see the same couple standing on the porch. The woman was crying and the man asked of they could see my mom.

I remember being unnerved as the woman moaned and cried and the husband explained that the baby in the pink blanket had died in the night. It was hard to understand how a baby died, in my short life the event seemed limited to grandparents and famous people who got old.

I took my brother and two sisters outside to play. The couple’s car, an old Mercury, was parked at the curb. I walked over, looked in the back seat and there was the pink bundle. I stayed by the car until the couple and my Mom came outside; I didn’t think the baby should be alone.

A couple of days later the funeral service was held in our church; the tiny white casket draped in the pink, fluffy blanket my mom washed.

It was so heartbreakingly small and it struck me as so very wrong, out of order… a baby, an infant.

I see it to this day and hear the woman sobbing.

The image has come back frequently the last few days, especially  with the first Sandy Hook funerals as an entire community, a nation mourns the loss of innocents.

As a psychotherapist and critical incident specialist who worked the aftermath of Columbine and other murders and mass casualty shootings, I often struggled emotionally with my rage and the need to remain professional midst the carnage, the pain and the bottomless grief by which I was often surrounded.

It has been so since Friday. First rage and anger and a physical need to do something…. when there is nothing to do. So I write my rage and people wonder why I don’t just get in line with everyone at the candle-light vigils and talk about “letting the healing begin.”

That’s not the way it works, people don’t “heal” two days after they pick out a tiny casket; in many ways they never heal….  the loss, the pain is too crushing to dark and will be with them until they too pass from this life.

Yet time and time again I saw parents and families struggle, cope and eventually learn to benefit from their grief and somehow go on.

I never failed to be moved and reassured by such courage.

For myself, someone who has no children, I work hard with the rage I feel at the murder of children; I want retribution but only in  my dreams when I am the willing instrument of that retribution do I feel relief.

Sadly the Sandy Hook child killer did not wait for police gunfire and thus cheated us of our retribution. But it is probably just as well because this society seldom punishes in kind, let alone metes out swift retribution.

So I am not much for the candlelight vigils we have become so good at following national tragedies, the scripted speeches, the politicians elbowing each other out of the way for a piece of the spotlight…. and then, back to business.

Such ceremonies and funerals are necessary for the families and friends and perhaps the local community, but what about next time? And there will be a next time because we refuse to demand retribution and have become incapable of finding the will to end murder of the innocent, the small and helpless, because we do not care, we do not really care.

If we did care there would be no school shootings.

“Signing” a Facebook sympathy card is not caring.  It’s just easy.

We have the means to end school shooting and thereby honor the dead, and at the same time provide something real and meaningful for the grieving and the survivors.

It is simply this: shoot the gunman dead  immediately upon being identified, preferably in the parking lot.

One funeral, not 28.  It’s what we did to bin Laden why won’t we do it for 20 babies in tiny coffins?

When we do, then I’ll let the “healing” begin….. and not a moment before.