Rip Snorter's Blog

Gasoline:  $2.97, Albuquerque.  $3.09, Deming.

Traffic:  Truck traffic light.  Lots of deadheads moving, other traffic mostly tankers, UPS, FEDEX, Walmart.  Automotive traffic relatively light also, except lots of brand spanking new government vehicles on the road.  Lots.  New.

Roadkill:  Not much.  Three fresh coyotes and a badger, one mangled skunk and a mangled rabbit.  Number of coyotes high, especially with such light traffic.  Probably an epizootic, probably rabies or other distemper in the coyote population.

Behind the visor in the rental car:

Short people who ride in automobiles might want to keep this in mind.

No idea what this is, or was all about:

Logo on the side says, "Alert Simulator II". 

I'm thinking it won't fly.

Overheard in La Cochina Restaurant, TorC:

Middle aged waitress to younger waitress on smoke break talking about hurricane victim refugees:

"It's sad when people don't use any common sense and end up costing the rest of us so much money."

Gas Station between Deming and Columbus:

Old guy about my age, accentric looking with underside of hat brim painted black to keep out the sun glare, face furniture's a handlebar about like mine.  He's driving a recent, small Toyota, bragging he got 400 miles on 8 gallons.  Says on flat highway driving he's gotten 78 miles to the gallon a couple of times.  Says he doesn't care how high they go with gasoline prices.

Evidently all that Viagra's bringing out the best in RV oldsters:

This next one probably won't surprise most Americans:

 

That's about all for the moment, folks.

Jack

 

A couple of last things before I take it to the wagon yard and wake up in a new world tomorrow morning.

First:

I've been puzzling half the day about what this might be talking about.  I still haven't a clue.

But I think I might be in favor of it.

Secondly:

It's hard enough being against this war of yours without having people like this on the same side as me.  I can make you a good deal on them, lock, stock and banana peel..... Take them over to your side and let them do their drumming, chanting, dancing and face painting in favor of the war.  Thanks.

Finally,

The people down on the border are all stirred up because some crazies who call themselves Minutemen have decided the US Border Patrol isn't doing a good enough job (true) and that what's needed is the likes of them to pep things up by them riding around doing some SERIOUS patrol work on their own.

I'll toss them in on the chanter drummer peace folks just to sweeten the deal.  Your side, not mine.

Buenos Noches.

Jack

 

 

I figured on blogging tonight to tell you blog readers a few anecdotes about some interesting things happening in Palomas, Mexico, Columbus, New Mexico, Deming, and points northward.... gas prices, talk overheard in restaurants about hurricane victims, border guard stuff, all manner of scintillating monologue to excite opinion and pondering.

But now I see I'm gonna have to say a few words about Communists, instead.

From May, 1917, until 1990, the US spent unimaginable treasure, countless lives, stupendous energy 'saving the world' from Communism, seeing them behind every tree and bush.  Meanwhile, the Communists collapsed under their own weight, packed their tents and went home.

In America, the Communists of Marx and Engels today call themselves Democrats and Republicans.  Not Greens. 

That dog won't hunt anymore.  At least not with me.  If someone else wants to fret about pinkos, someone else will have to.

For me, here's the great Communist threat to America:

Cataclysmic Doggerel

 

A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni

Had canines subversive and loony;

Her Communist felines

Made neighborhood beelines

With doctrines both outworn and puny.

 

The KGB cat was a lean

And speckled-nosed beauty serene

In appearance alone

For her countenance shown

Multi-faceted plots as she preened.

Her Weathercat history was tops:

She sprayed on dozens of cops

With a Commie aroma

But joined Sertoma

Cavorting with phonies and fops.

The ringleader hound was a red

And curly haired rascal it.s said

Whose Trotskyish leanings

And Maoish gleanings

Were pondered curled up on the bed.

Princess Redfeather, they tells

Of this curly red bitch of the cells,

Forsook her fine lineage

To sip of the vintage

of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.

The worst of the felines, Bearboy:

Striped and cross-eyed and coy;

Politically weak,

Had claws that could tweak

Bourgeois carpet, and bedspread, with joy.

 

The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut

Was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;

Dog-tired, and dogmatic,

He thought,.Problematic:

dog-eared dialectic and glut..

The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie

Began as a dog-pound attorney

Commuted from gassing

He pondered in passing

Discretion.s demand for a journey.

A calico hound lying dormant,

Most likely a police informant:

A capitalist clown

Took his food lying down

Resisting the commie allurement.

The Stalinish kittenish spies

Spread foment and torment and lies

To Indian curs

And mutts that were hers

And War-Gods high up on the rise.

Princess and Ernie and, Spot,

And Chester, the narc-dog; the lot:

For half a piaster

Would bring a disaster

To Zuni, once called Camelot

 

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

 

Let this be a lesson.  Don't try to get me talking about Communists.

Jack

 

 

Every few months I make a trip to Mexico for some medications I take daily, because they’re dirt cheap down there compared to getting them in a pharmacy here. Prislosec use to run me $3 per tablet here and I was taking a couple per day. In Palomas, Mexico, they cost about 75 cents per tab. Now that it’s over-the-counter here they’re about a quarter per tab, compared to a buck here.

So it’s time to run down there again. I like Palomas because it’s a tiny berg, mostly pharmacies with lines of US oldsters stocking up on medications. It’s like the Powerplay option in reverse, stepping across the International Border into Mexico to buy prescription meds.

So, you parks the car at the border, walks across a couple of blocks, pays in gringo dollars, and walks back to the Border to be questioned and sometimes searched and hassled by US Border guards. They worry a person will pick up some anti-biotic for a friend, or anti-inflammatory for a rheumatoid arthritic acquaintance. So they like to ask what condition you’re taking the medication for while they thumb through the book and see if they can catch you out.

I've never had the body-cavity search, probably because I'm not female, but maybe just because I've never caught them on a boring day.

Sometime I’ll tell you an amusing story about a Japanese Jew pharmacist I used to buy from in Juarez who had an Israeli flag on the wall behind him, didn’t speak English. But it’s a long story.

Anyway, I go down through Deming to Columbus, the US town Pancho Villa raided in 1912, and got the US Army chasing him all over Mexico. That’s where General Blackjack Pershing won his fame. There’s still a lot of ruin from the raid all over Columbus, so it’s worth poking around the bear grass, usually.

I like to stop at this little shrine in Columbus, also. I’d guess the folks who built it in the 60s have grown old… I’ve never seen them there, but when I first saw it during the early 90s someone was still taking care of it, putting out palm branches every day. Now the place is showing a bit worse for the wear.

I also usually stop and scrutineer a little airstrip north of town with a windsock model of the airplane Pershing’s troops used to help chase Villa.

Everything goes well I ought to be back tomorrow night.

Jack

I owe you blog readers an apology for the last blog entry.  It was inexcusable, and I'm sorry.

That blog entry was a symptom of a pent-up fury I thought I had successfully obliterated.

I sincerely apologize.

For many years I've watched the deserts of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona ripped to shreds by strip mines for coal fired power plants to supply energy to satisfy the needs of Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and elsewhere on the grid.

They've torn up a piece of country dear to my heart, and the people who are responsible, city residents, haven't any idea what's being sacrificed for their hair dryers and air conditioners.  They wouldn't care, if they knew.

It's just empty country anyway.

I suppose what bothers me most is that the same people who find nothing objectionable about making molehills out of my desert mountains to serve their energy needs are so often frenzied in their objections to nuclear power plants near them, or anywhere.  They fear the cost of their energy indulgence might fall on their own heads.

But I've intended this as an apology, and I'm trying.  But now I feel my gorge rising again.

So, I'll quit with my original statement.  I'm sorry.

Jack

 

 

 

Rational Risk Assessment and Fuel Prices

America’s had a fetish with avoiding risk-taking for a couple of generations now. They don’t want to take any, no matter how miniscule, and they want to go into hysterics when they discover one out there they hadn’t thought of.

I’m sorry, bloggers, but Americans are (selectively) pure, yellow, lily livered cowards about doing things that might shorten their attention spans this lifetime.  Those red-white-and blue ribbons you've got sticking to your fender ought to be pure yellow, not because you support your troops, but because you are a disgusting, craven, snivelling coward.

They destroyed an entire Washington apple crop once because there was a one in 500 buzzillion chance the red dye used on the fruit might give someone cancer (turned out it didn’t)

They indulged in hysterics, first over people smoking in work places, then restaurants, and now almost anywhere because of the risk of cancer from second-hand smoke.

They put airbags on the steering wheels and hired men with guns to make certain everyone fastened his seatbelt to keep him safe and reduce risk and run the price up on cars so high a steadily decreasing number of Americans can afford one.

Fretted something awful about motorcycles ridden by guys they hated the looks of (me) riding around without helmets. Even tried to force motorcycle riders to wear seatbelts, knowing that would be a sure killer. Finally they all got old and affluent enough to buy full dress Harley’s themselves, and really didn’t care for the idea of being handcuffed to a scooter in the event of laying it over.

And so, ad infinitum.

Somewhere, lost in all that trying to live forever and create a zero risk reality for, not just themselves, but for everyone, they shut down the only near-zero-risk, cheap source of energy this country had.

Nuclear power plants.

If you wet your pants at the thought of nuclear power of the US variety you might find you’re more frightened of the consequences of gasoline at $5 a gallon.

One’s only about a zillion-to-one risk, whereas the other’s a lead-pipe cinch.

 

Jack

 

 

 

Asians want to live in refrigerators same as Americans. 

The greedy yaller perils

It isn’t a new problem, but it's different today.  Today there's a developing third world wanting to live the way 'Mercans been doing.  And they have the unfair advantage of producing products to make their currency worth something.

During the early 1970s, America was rocked by fuel shortages.  Americans, accustomed to paying 30 cents a gallon for gasoline suddenly found themselves paying a dollar at the pumps, provided they could get any.

A consortium of oil producing nations, OPEC, decided they had a finite oil reserves that would be depleted entirely by 2050.  It was the only exportable product most of those nations had, so they figured they’d better make hay while the sun shines.

They also wanted to encourage other nations to reduce fuel demands and develop their own oil supplies so the OPEC nation oil reserves wouldn’t be depleted so quickly.

Through several presidencies the pledges of each president included developing alternative energy resources and reducing US energy consumption.  Carter, particularly, made a valiant attempt to make it happen.

There’s a temptation to find a scapegoat, such as the greens, for these outrageous gas prices.  But this problem, same as the threat of that hurricane, has been hanging over our heads for decades and we’ve been ignoring it, increasing our dependence of foreign oil ever year.

There’s even a body of thought that the US government deliberately ignored the problem and remained silent on it in order to allow Americans to deplete oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere while preserving our own, so’s to be able to sell our own for higher prices when everyone else no longer had any.  There’s some evidence this is true.  The US oil patch and exploration infrastructure was allowed to completely deconstruct during the 1980s, and thousands of producing oil wells were plugged because, ostensibly, it cost more to bring it out of the ground here than it did to buy it from OPEC.

But whatever’s the explanation for shutting down the US oil patch, this isn’t an OPEC problem.  It isn’t a nasty ugly mean Greens problem.  It’s about consumption versus demand.

If we want lower prices we have to take a smaller piece of a diminishing international resource pie.

Those Asians, East Indians, people everywhere want refrigerated homes to live in because it’s cooler inside, more comfortable, same as it is to you.  And today, those people have the added advantage of actually producing things of value to add substance to their currency, whereas, we don’t.

Someone commented on another blog entry here that whiners and complainers didn't build this country.  She was correct.  People who produced things built this country.

Strange, but true.

Jack

 

Turn up the thermostat, summers. 

Turn down the thermostat winters.

Forbid these:

They're energy hogs something awful.

---------------------------------------------------

 

Legalize these for street use:

They're small, fuel efficient and cheap.  De-Ralph Nader them.

-----------------------

Deregulate these:

Let the marketplace establish the freight rates.  Get the ICC out of the price fixing business and let them compete for energy efficient freight transport.

It will bankrupt these:

But it will save lives, the highways, and fuel.

 

Meanwhile, encourage these:

And these:

Do these things this year and next year we'll be an energy surplus country.

Jack

 The Ugliest Thing on This Planet

 

And sometimes the most beautiful.

 

The human being.

 

10,000 people are dead and their relatives don’t even know who they are.

A quarter-million people are displaced from their homes.

A unique piece of America is destroyed, probably forever.

Environmental damages are inestimable.

Gasoline prices are beyond comprehension.

This disaster is not about the President of the United States.

The President of the US didn’t cause this, but it also didn’t happen to him. None of those floating corpses are his relatives. The White House is intact. His limousines and helicopters are tanked up with plenty of fuel and future tanks won’t come out of his wallet.

The President handled it no better, no worse than all the other wannabe presidents, than any other president in history would have handled it. This was a human failure. Not a political one.

But the political opportunists, the king worshipers the media parasites, the latter-day Joseph Goebbels devote their energies to attacking and defending the President.

This damned country is in trouble.

The President didn’t get us there and he probably can’t get us out of it. We’ve got an immediate problem of refugees and the aftermath of the storm, and we’ve got another immediate problem of the price of fuel.

Neither of these giants can be better brought down from the beanstalk by anyone spending another sentence attacking and defending the President.

Let’s give it a break. For once, lets nail the mouths shut on the demagogues, the opportunists, king worshipers, and devote our energies to the future. It’s time we tried to think of ways to get ourselves out of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Kings can’t do it for us, and wormtongue wannabes can’t do it for us.

Americans are going to have to figure this one out for themselves and demand real solutions from the imbeciles we’ve elected to public office and their spiritual brethren character assassins who’d profit by our turning our attentions to them, rather than to the problems at hand.

Let’s give it a break

Jack

I’ve been scrutinizing the photographs of the accommodations being prepared for the 6000 refugees arriving in New Mexico. The Albuquerque Convention Center’s been converted to something resembling an army barracks of pre-All-Volunteer US Army vintage. Clean, neat, adequate for a temporary situation.

This is precisely the sort of shelter that’s probably being provided all across the US. It follows the prescribed methodology for temporary disaster shelters when highways are shut down for severe weather and motorists need a place to hang their hats for a day or two until the situation returns to normalcy.

It’s a necessary measure and it had to be done this way, but it also needs to be recognized that these people are here to stay awhile. There’s nothing to suggest the quarter- million refugees will be able to return to their homes for the next several months, if ever.

Once the dust settles on the crisis the urban areas of America will see a new problem arise if immediate planning for ‘phase two’ doesn’t begin at once. When the shock of the disaster begins to settle these people will be idle, angry, poor and concentrated. A recipe for crime and other inner-city ills, but perpetrated by ‘outsiders’. City residents will have daily reminders in loving detail of what’s happening on the evening news, and perceive it as ingratitude, respond with anger and resentment.

The history is there for examination. The Job Corps Centers of the 70s are an example. Inner-city youths concentrated in dormitories for job training in such places as San Marcos, Texas. Inevitable crime waves where none had previously existed. Curses from the communities until the Job Corps was abandoned.

This is the Job Corps on a different order of magnitude.

We experienced a similar problem after the fall of Siagon, but on a smaller scale. The refugees from Vietnam were taken to emergency centers in Arkansas. But there was never any fantasy they could return to Southeast Asia, so the infrastructure for relocation was immediately begun. The result was one of glowing pride for America. Twenty years after the fact Vietnamese refugees were established in every walk of life, their children among the highest achievers in every school, recipients of the most coveted merit scholarships.

These unfortunates need to absorbed into the general population as rapidly as possible, disseminated into the neighborhoods, towns and villages of America. The fabric of our compassion and mercy is too fragile, our addiction to the minutia of daily news too complete to indulge ourselves and these refugees with delays and demoralizing false hopes for an early return to Atlantis.

Life has to begin again elsewhere, difficult as that might be to accept.  Most of the communities of America could profit by a tablespoon dose of 'Let the good times roll!"   

Jack

 

 

Early on during this hurricane drama one of the threads on LP began a shrill call for people to go down and buy bottles of water to send to the victims hours after the storm came in.  A time when little was known about conditions on the coast, except that people were in trouble.

That's the way we Americans tend to do things.  We jump in without pausing for reflection, anxious to do SOMETHING, even it it's a meaningless gesture.

We might, with this storm and these gasoline prices shooting through the roof, have reached a point in our history where we simply can't afford that sort of behavior anymore.  This disaster might well be a turning point, a maturing process for all of us.

In 2001, FEMA issued a report of the greatest threats to the US for the President.  Here's a list of the threats:

1)  A terrorist bombing of New York,

2)  A major hurricane hitting New Orleans,

3)  A major earthquake in California.

 

Take a breath, blog readers.  Pause a moment and scroll back up above that ashtray.  Read those three threats again.

Any gambler knows that sometimes a run of bad luck happens.  Wise gamblers also know that when Mama Luck frowns she tends to keep frowning a while.

Two of those three threats have happened to the US, along with this gasoline price debacle.  Anyone with half an eye can see things aren't going rosey for the US right now.

We have to feed, house, clothe, and provide medical treatment for these displaced refugees.  We need to do this as carefully, prudently and frugally as we possibly can do it.  Mercy also demands that we do as little as possible to add to the trauma these people, particularly the children, have already suffered.  We need to get them into a setting as secure and settled as possible, as soon as possible.

But having done that, we need to pause and consider many factors.  This country might well be facing a third disaster as devastating as this one.

We dare not exhaust all our resources behaving in our usual way in a devil-take-the-hindmost rush to rebuild areas located below sea-level.  Such as New Orleans.

 For once, we need to carefully consider the options, the sacrifices by all Americans, not just the anguished faces of the displaced.  We need to examine every option and the cost before we rush headlong into a rebuilding project that places these people back in harm's way.

Jack

 

 

 

Most of this is none of your business and certainly none of my business by the definition I posted a couple of entries ago.  But here it is, anyway.  Remember where you heard it first:

One headline: Congress May Act On Immigration.

Hmmm. Interesting timing.

A rising tide of national outrage over failing immigration policies will finally force some kind of action this session, says the ABQ Journal. Says US Rep. Tom Udall’s statement about it is, “Part of the reason we haven’t done anything is that it’s a political bombshell.”

There are bombshells, and then there are bombshells. Sometimes it takes a fast moving disaster to make people notice a slower moving one that’s equally devastating but harder to pin on any specific King, Congress or Agency. (Opinion)

It’s an ill wind, the bard shrewdly observed, that blows no good.

Seems what’s her name, ex-queen of the US is now a US Senator, thinks a good witch-hunt for those RESPONSIBLE for this hurricane event need to be hunted down and burned. No real surprises there. (Opinion) 

Poor old Chaos might be in for a tongue-lashing from her ladyship.

Meanwhile, seems they’re anticipating the need for $1.5 billion (deficit-bucks) to rebuild roads where the houri cane hit. But that point might be moot because gasoline’s gonna be so expensive nobody’s going to be able to afford to drive, and the places they might want to drive to will probably still be under water.

At least we can hope so. This issue of what to rebuild, where to rebuild it and how to rebuild it is a matter we need to pause a while to consider. (Opinion)

The Chinese are having to do some re-tooling of their magnet-flag ribbon industry. They thought they had it covered, yellow ones, blue ones, pink ones, red-white-and-blue ones. But now there’s black ones for the hurricane victims, which naturally caught the CHICOMs in their factories unawares.

We can probably trust that American know-how and ingenuity will fill the need until the CHICOMs can crank back up and get a few shiploads to us. Meanwhile, we’ll probably need to pay higher prices and put up with a critical shortage.

The refugees are pouring into New Mexico. 6000 expected soon for Farmington, Roswell and Clovis, and Albuquerque. Conspicuously missing are Las Cruces and Santa Fe, but those are towns with a lot of rich folks and tourists who probably don’t want the scenery cluttered up with New Orleans victims causing no end of unpleasant reminders that everyone doesn’t have a house to sell so’s to make enough money to buy one here.

Texas has taken the full brunt of this tidal wave of refugees with a quarter million and more coming. New Mexico’s got a thousand already, committed to 6000 but will probably have more.

But one of the other bloggers observed recently that we’re one country and always will be. That those refugees and victims are like family. So, how are the other States, the other parts of this one country that we are and will always be, coming along with accepting refugees?

Arkansas is getting them, Mississippi’s handling a lot, and Florida. Then there’s West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania pledged to take some. Most likely some of those other States will come in if it turns out everyone else can’t handle it.

Haven’t seen where any of the tribes are doing anything much, though there are some nice resorts attached to the casinos.

Other news. Seems the State’s considering cracking down on those high-speed Police chases that are so bad about killing people they were chasing, unsuspecting drivers of other automobiles on the road, and pedestrians. Too bad. Some carload 17 year olds comes to a ‘rolling stop’ at a stop sign, prowl car parked back somewhere with his lights off wipes the sleep out of his eyes, and the race is on at 100 miles an hour through city streets. Good way to get the juices flowing again after a little nap.

But I expect they might put a stop to it, make them just get their thrills just watching old Gene Hackman movies.

Ahhhh…. Only mildly related. Looks as though they’re contemplating mandatory jail time for DWI convictions, confiscating the automobiles to add to the police fleet (summarily upon arrest) and a few other measures to hopefully curb the New Mexico dark secret of being number one nationwide in drunken driver deaths.

Jack

 

 

You younger blog aficionado-types probably don’t remember the DEW line…. Distant Early Warning. It was a series of radar stations up in the arctic circle in desolate places, each manned by a dozen or so going-stark-staring-at-radar-screens GIs. Places, those were, such as the Bering Strait islands, maybe the North Pole for all I know.

They were forever seeing waves of Russian Bear bombers and ICBMs coming over the frozen horizon, pushing the buttons to scramble the Strategic Air Command and getting our own missile silos cranking back the doors and lighting fuses so we could get them back before theirs destroyed us.

Those dots on the screens were usually weather phenomena, UFOs, crop circles on their way to somewhere, or just a lot of bored young men with nothing to do. But I’d imagine it caused severe puckering in the Kremlin every time they saw those B-52s taking to the air and all those silos gunning their engines waiting for the next mistake.

But the reason I’m writing this is to tell you New Mexico has something equally effective established along our coastlines. A distant early warning system to keep those Gulf of Mexico storms and Pacific typhoons in their places, should they venture up this way.

 

First, there’s the warning system, alerting us they’re coming.

Then, there’s a series of concise warnings to those storms, defining precisely what’s allowed within the State boundaries, and what isn’t.

 

That’s followed by a polite threat, telling them what’s likely to happen if they try to get rowdy despite the warnings. You’ll probably quickly figure out on your own that Carla refers to Hurricane Carla, back in ’62, ’63.

But even with all that, sometimes one gets past the whole system, same as Bear Bombers and Soviet MIRVs probably would have done if they’d launched them.

Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and wait.

Jack

Morning blog readers.

The lure of news is almost as insidious as the lure of having opinions.  Both tend to sneak up and catch a person unawares.  A person can be going along fine, only picking up the occasional piece of news of the world overhearing conversations of others or a glance at a newspaper headline or two in a rack, then something happens to drag you in, and you're back into the game.

It's not just the particular thing you're interested in, once you're hooked.  Those newspapers are cunning in that way.  They throw in all this other matter that are none of a person's business, but that tend to snag the mind like a treble hook.  (None of my business, I define as things I can do nothing about, can't influence in any imaginable way, and aren't happening to anyone I know personally.)

 

Then, there you are (me), suddenly knowing a lot of things about what's going on in the world that I had no intention of knowing about, finding myself having opinions about them.

I see Biloxi was hit fairly hard.  Not much being said about it because it was lacking in the drama of the Super-dome anguish feeding frenzy.  Sorry for those Mississippians, sorry about Biloxi.  If Mississippians want to join the tribe of Native Americans that will almost inevitably be formed they'll probably have to have a name and a Reservation of their own.  Maybe Fort Jackson, SC, can be vacated and given them.

It doesn't work, putting different tribes on the same Rez.  The Navajo almost killed off all the Mescalero during those 15 years at Bosque Redondo.  It's better the Mississippians have their own Rez.

I see where old Judge Rindquist died.  Whew.  Haven't thought about that guy in a couple of decades.  I recall when Tricky Dixon appointed him, me, everyone so full of news and opinions, all of us young minds fairly certain it was the end of Life As We Knew It.  (I'll point out for you king-lovers that he had to have the consent of Congress, Tricky Dixon, appointing Rindquist.... I know it must gall you, but the Constitution required it.... might still for all I know)

In some ways I suppose it was nearing the end of Life as We knew it, though that appointment hadn't much to do with the matter.  A few decades of retrospect and the appointment was roughly a non-event, though it had our juices flowing at the time.  In those days everyone I knew was full of the opinion that what this country needed was a Supreme Court stacked with judges who could read popular opinion into the words of the Constitution, which it had been doing since Franklin Roosevelt.

What we didn't know was that it wasn't a good thing we wanted, but that the appointment of this one and a court full of judges who were 'conservative' by the post-WWII definition wasn't going to save the Constitution.  Those new ones couldn't read the words it said any better than the Douglas Court.  They just read it more to the flavor of Republicans, than Demos, which was considered an offense.

The framers of the Constitution wouldn't have liked either of those courts much.  They'd have chided themselves for not anticipating descendants who didn't want a hard-and-fast Constitutional document with things all nailed down with words that meant something, and maybe done something to prevent it.  But, of course, they'd chide themselves for not anticipating a lot of things they might have prevented, such as a series of presidents riding along on Emergency Powers for half a century fighting wars without declarations by Congress, getting the military and Federal cops into the business of kicking down the doors of Americans for various reasons, all that sort of thing.

Ah well.

I see a couple of 18 year old Albuquerquanisto youths got themselves in jail by going into a titty bar and having a series of 'lap-dances' they didn't know the cost of on a per-dance basis.... ran up a bill for $2500 bucks and didn't have the courtesy to pay.

That's the sort of thing you don't know unless you read newspapers.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

An honest, workable solution with a future

Those people are going to be a long time without homes, without jobs, without incomes.

What can we as a nation do to help?

You might think I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. This can really be done:

1)  Vacate Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Sill Oklahoma, Fort Wachuka, AZ, Abilene Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas..

2)  Create a new tribe of Native Americans Issue tribal census numbers to all the refugees and deed them each a residence and a few acres of land on the new Coonahss Reservations.

3)  Send them checks every month, let them have free health care from the US Public Health Service, same as other tribes.

4)  Assist them in building tribal casinos, but make it plain that THIS time the money has to go exclusively to the tribe, has to be used for the betterment of the individuals of the Coonahss tribe.

5)  Bring Bourbon Street, brick by brick to the new Reservation and allow them to use their own labors to rebuild it there as part of the new Coonahss Casino resort complex.

6)  Ship in truckloads of farm surplus that’s going to waste in grain elevators, or being shipped to other countries, so they can cook for themselves.

This is a plan that will work, blog readers. It’s a means of providing income, health care, homes to all those refugees at a minimal cost in deficit tax dollars.

All Americans have to do to see this happen is move a lot of troops to other military compounds and open their minds and imaginations to look for innovation as a solution.

But make no mistake about it.

These people are natives to America, mostly. They were born here, their ancestors were born here. They are certainly as deserving of a chance at a new life, a new start and any Native American born since 1900. They deserve the same rights and privileges derived from having been the victims of misfortune.

Jack