Grandma's House

The World Series starts tonight. Yeah, I don't really care either. I'm picking Philly in six games. Not betting, I save that for football. On that subject, I'm leading the pack in the home football pool so far. As of the end of week seven, I have 340 points, Shauna has 277 points, and Sir Mugley has 263 points. He's gonna get hit pretty hard next week, as both of his teams are on their bye week. My teams, on the other hand, have already had theirs so I'm good for the rest of the season. The daughter hasn't had a bye week yet, either.

I think I have a new favorite poet. Her name is Erica Morgan, and she is a student (I think) at Stanford. I give you, Ode to Obama. It was truly moving.

A member of the Kansas legislature is planning to submit a bill to amend the Kansas Constitution so that they can "opt out" of any health care plan coming down the pipe from Washington. Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook, along with some other congress critters, believe they can get it to pass, needing a two-thirds vote, and then getting voter approval in 2010. Perhaps some other states should consider the same?

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just vote for people because of who they are or what they can accomplish, and not because of their party? Apparently not, according to the Justice Department.

The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

Isn't that special? The Justice Department thinks black people couldn't possibly figure out how to vote unless that little "D" was on the ballot. How pathetically condescending can you get? I'm pretty sure that black people can figure out when they're being talked down to, and I'm pretty sure that they can remember who it is that treated them like drooling morons.

Bo has survived his first year of life, even though he lives in the White House. So naturally he had a birthday party. In the Rose Garden. After all, isn't that what every middle-class, down to earth family does for their dog? He even had a cake made out of veal. I can't afford to eat veal, let alone feed it to a dog! Sheesh!

Okay, here's a few news items I haven't had time to share:

The Democratic Party in Alabama has decided that it's not enough to get dead people to vote for them, now they're gonna put them in office.

Speaking of dead, I heard yesterday that Soupy Sales had passed away. He was a great comedian. He brought a lot of humor into the lives of those who saw him on television, and he will be missed.

Another man who passed away and should be remembered is Willard Varnell Oliver, one of the famed Navajo Code Talkers who served so heroically in the Marines during World War II. Mr. Oliver was wounded while serving. Sadly, the article does not do him justice, as there is no listing of his rank. But God knows that another one of his warriors has come home.

On a bright note, it has been discovered that Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, has enough water to support life. In fact, it has more water than Earth does. So I suggest we do this: Let's take all the people who believe this planet is in danger from global warming, and send them to Europa. That way, we won't have all their hot air messing up our planet, and they can protect that one from us!

Yeah, I know. You try finding time to post when you're dealing with finals and fighting a mild case of the flu. That's what I get for going out during the flu season, even if it was just to go to the doctor for a checkup.

On that note, I can say things are looking up a little bit. I've lost seven pounds (yea!) in the past month or two (I know I have a long way to go). I've also got much, much better cholesterol numbers than I had before. So maybe I can avoid following dad's side of the family down the old heart attack rathole.

As far as my breathing situation goes, I was told that I'm not using enough oxygen. Two liters per minute is fine if I'm just sitting around, but if I'm going to be active he wants me to increase it to four! So far, it's been a lot better. At least I don't feel like I'm gonna pass out just walking to the truck. It had been fairly nerve-wracking. On the day of my appointment, just walking into the doctor's office dropped my pO2 level to 77. It's supposed to stay above 90.

More stuff going on. Let's see. I just finished my accounting class, which was mostly a repeat of everything I'd already learned. My next class is Business Communication, and that one starts next Tuesday. Sir Mugley is back in school, working on his second Master's Degree. This time it's Psychology.

My daughter and son in law are still living with us. Mark is a pretty good cook, but he's not gonna be too active for a bit. He had a nasty cyst on his lower back and the doctor lanced it and packed it with gauze. Blech! He is supposed to replace the gauze every day until the wound is better then they are going to operate to remove the "pouch" and sew it shut. He's gonna be laying on his tummy for a while. Shauna is coping as well as she can for a horny old married woman.

Spoiler alert! We're 90% sure that she's gonna have another beebee. It's not doctor-official yet, but all the signs are there. They've wanted to have one for quite a while now, but they just didn't take. After 3 false starts they may finally have done it right. It is a little complicated though, since her ex-husband and his new wife just lost their twins. I don't think she was very far along, but it still could cause problems emotionally, watching Shauna blossom, so to speak.

Got this in an email today:

John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced. This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.

Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells. John's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover. To John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize, but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well. Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

Think we should start calling Bambi "Butch"?

Much to my chagrin, I've had to drop someone from my blogroll. I will no longer link to Little Green Footballs. I know that's not such a big deal, considering my readership, but it's the principle of the thing, as they say. I cannot in good conscience link to a website that reviles Christianity the way Charles Johnson does, not to mention the trash talking about people who believe in creationism and/or conservative issues.

I am a Christian. I believe in creation theory AND evolution. How, you ask? Well, I believe everything was created by God, including the heavens and the Earth and mankind. I also believe that people and animals evolve, or adapt, to changing surroundings. I do not believe that one species can evolve from another. Men were never apes, nor will apes ever be men.

I am also a conservative. I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat. I believe in conservative issues.

Another thing. I am also a Patriot. I believe that America is the greatest nation on this planet, and the foundation of this nation is the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. I do not believe in hyphenated Americans. It's fine to be proud of your heritage. I certainly am proud of mine. But that is the past. I believe America has to come first.

One last thing. This racist crap has got to stop. If you look at someone and see a color, there's something wrong with your eyes. I don't care what color a person is. It matters not. There are at least three different ethnic groups encompassed in my family. We all get along fine, as we should. We are all Americans. As Americans we have to put our country first. FIRST. NUMBER ONE. Enough said.

Feel free to slaughter me in the comments. I can take it.

Time for some personal stuff. If you don't want to know, don't read it.

Looks like my son is moving back to Oregon. I am so tired. His wife moved back there last month, leaving him with the three boys and a nasty cold. Now he's trying to pack everything, take care of the kids and his cold has graduated to pneumonia. He sounds terrible.

My daughter and her husband are living with us now. They plan to buy this dump from us, tear down the house and build another one. We're going to move into a mobile home here on the property. That's the plan. There may be a few monkeys wrenching around, though. We're having trouble finding a cheap trailer, Mark is having trouble finding a job, and the dark clouds of child problems are looming on the horizon. But other than that, we're doing fine. I'm surprised we don't fight more, actually, but things are running smoothly right now.

I have to go see a Pulmonologist on Friday, then back to my doctor on Tuesday. There's a chance I don't really have COPD. It may just be a problem with restricted breathing, which is no surprise since my spinal curve is compressing one lung. We'll see how it goes.

School is dragging right now. It's pretty much just a basic accounting class, but we have team projects and my team of three can't seem to get coordinated. So today I took over control and told the other two what jobs they were to do this week and to have them done by Friday. We'll see how much flak I catch for that.

I'll be back to posting Phriday Phideaux probably this week. Stay tuned.

I got this from Ed Emery, Missouri State Representative today:

Considering my Oath

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Patrick Henry

As your elected representative, two things concern me. The first is how little of a relationship there is between my oath of office and the expectations imposed upon my office. The second is the lack of a public outcry over that disconnect. I have reprinted here the entire oath of office: "I do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Missouri, and faithfully perform the duties of my office, and that I will not knowingly receive, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable thing for the performance or nonperformance of any act or duty pertaining to my office, other than the compensation allowed by law." Emphasis mine.

To “support” the constitution means to keep it from falling or hold it upright in its place. The intuitive question is – why does it need protecting and from whom. Patrick Henry’s quotation gives a clue. Government’s nature is to grow ever bigger and more dominating. A constitution is a fence around government, limiting its powers. My oath is to maintain those limits.

If government were no threat to liberty, a constitution would be unnecessary; an organizational chart would suffice. However, then the organization would be its own master and ours. Such was not the intention of early Americans. Early Americans had escaped powerful kings and monarchs, and they deliberately limited the government’s jurisdiction and power. While they needed a central government to protect against external enemies, their experience proved that unlimited government was itself a threat to life, liberty, and property.

My oath of office is to maintain (support) your protections against unconstitutional government. Somehow, however, we have failed to educate Missourians as to the difference between threats to liberty and threats to health, wealth, or comfort. Only the uneducated or naïve believes that a government can protect from both. Thomas Jefferson said it well: “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

In other words, government is not to protect me from the consequences of my decisions; it is to protect my right to make those decisions. It is not to protect Missourians from ever being poor; it is to ensure that poor Missourians enjoy the same protections against lawbreakers as the rich. Government cannot make everyone rich; it can make everyone poor. The natural laws of science, economics, and reason all contradict the notion that the supply of everything can be made to fully meet the demand.

Regardless of political party, when we ignore constitutional limits on government we exchange personal liberties for false promises that government cannot fulfill. If we cannot agree on this basic element of our constitutional republic, then we will continue to impose counter-intuitive, unattainable, and unconstitutional objectives for government, and America will cease forever to be the land of freedom and prosperity.

Isn't he wonderful? Why can't the critters in DC think like this?

Yeah, that was my first reaction to hearing Bambi got the Nobel Peace Prize. That's right, he got it, he didn't win it. He didn't win anything. The Norwegians gave it to him, the way grade school teachers used to give an award to the slower kids in the class to encourage them to work harder In order to win something, you have to put forth a little effort. Of course, that's about all he can put forth is a little effort. He should have told them, "Thanks, but I haven't earned it", but we all know he'd never do that. His ego is too big. So he will go to Oslo and accept an award he doesn't deserve, while the rest of the world laughs at him behind his back. I wouldn't care ordinarily, but he's making us all look bad.

He should decline the award, and try to actually do his job for a change. We have young men dying every day in Afghanistan because he's sitting on his thumbs rather than send in the additional troops needed to finish the job. No, he's sending 13,000 support troops instead of the 40,000 line troops the generals have requested. They don't need paper pushers over there, they need men and women who can get the job done so all our troops can come home.

Isn't that a great pic? I stole it from Gateway Pundit. I don't think he'll mind too much, since he got it from someone else. Anyway, I just want to know why the liberals are so bent out of shape over Rush Limbaugh being a member of a group that wants to buy the St. Louis Rams? Seriously, what exactly is the problem? It's not like he'll be playing on the team, or even forcing everyone who comes into the stadium to pledge their loyalty to the conservative movement. You'd think the whining morons would rather he spent his money on a football team, as opposed to, say, backing conservative programs and candidates. Frankly, I think Rush should tell his detractors to stuff it, let the Rams vanish in the mists of sports history and use his millions to get rid of the cancer spreading in DC. Or he could adopt me. I'm not too proud.