Year: 2015

Good morning, y’all. Another gorgeous day here in the high country. We’re needing a little rain, but otherwise, just gorgeous. I’d certainly like to get the precipitation in before it gets any colder, though. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to have real strong storms this Winter. I guess you might say I’m getting a case of pre-cabin fever. Being trapped in a 12X65 without power is one of those circles that Dante was talking about.

I guess thinking about apocalyptic situations consumes about fifty percent of the American zeitgeist now. Maybe it’s more. I’m not seeing anybody doing any studies on it. If there are studies being done as to why we are so consumed with bad news, the reports are not being published. At least in any media I’ve found. I suspect that those whose financial well being would be negatively impacted by such a report, are running roughshod on the news. Surprise! We’re not all going to “hell in a handbasket”.

Crazy as it sounds, it’s like all businesses out there benefit from our fears. Whether it’s based on the fear of getting a zit, or the fear of being gun downed at a concert, all advertising seems to exist to manipulate our fears. Now, I admit, there is a wide chasm between worrying if our face will clear up in time for the big dance and getting gunned down at the dance, but the marketing is basically the same. The drug companies at least have a bit of a constraint placed on them by the FDA. If you’re having a little acne problem, and you’re thinking about a solution, at least the makers of the drugs have to tell you about their side effects in the advertising. It puts things more in perspective to say, “I’m getting tired of being called ‘pizza face'”, or, “I could take ‘Zit Away’ and possibly go blind from taking the cure.”

I’m not sure how many folks objectively weigh the choices laid out in drug advertising. How many teenagers have said, “I’d rather die than go to the dance with my face like this”. At least with the FDA restriction on advertising, you know that dying might be a possibility. Not so with the purchase of a gun. Now, before you say “whoa Uncle Bud, you’ve crossed a line”, let me ask you when was the last time you saw any mention anywhere of what the proliferation of weapons in our society has done? Never. You’re likely to see an ad on all of the merits of owning a high capacity semi-automatic hunting rifle, ‘Guaranteed to bring home a kill, even if you’re blind‘. You’re never going to be presented with the “side effects” of gun ownership, as you would in a drug ad. 

The Gun Violence Archive reports there have been 49,095 incidents of gun violence in the U.S. in 2015, resulting in 25,105 injuries and 12,430 deaths. I had to Google that. Brenda Wood at Channel 11 News didn’t do a “Last Word” segment on it. Bashing guns, or actually reporting accurately on the effects of guns on our society, runs counter to the “fear formula”.

What is the “fear formula”?  I think it can be best exemplified by what happened after the Sandy Hook shootings. If you don’t recall Sandy Hook, on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, a nutjob with a gun killed 20 children and 6 adults. To me, seeing children being gunned down should have been the wake up call needed to do something like Australia did. Instead, gun sales went up by as much as 60% after the shooting.

Sturm, Ruger & Co., the largest publicly traded gunmaker, saw its net sales for the first nine months of 2013 jump 44 percent to $506.4 million, from $350 million in the same period a year before. Think about that, children are being gunned down in their schools, and our solution is to buy more guns. Why? Well, the head of the N.R.A. tells us that what’s needed to stop bad men with guns, is good men with guns.

Not to call the scummy sleazeball Wayne LaPierre a lying scumbag, but here are a couple of interesting facts that don’t support his assertion.

• In America, there are approximately 270 million firearms possessed by civilians, and only 897,000 carried by police.
• Approximately 20% of gun owners own 65% of the guns.
• The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports that about 5.5 million new firearms were manufactured in America in 2010. 95% of these were for the U.S. market.
• Close to 33,000 Americans were victims of gun-related deaths in 2011 and an average of 268 citizens are shot every day.

Let’s be real here, we have a serious, serious problem. It’s not fundamentalists of whatever persuasion, as the news agencies and the gun lobby want you to believe, it’s fundamentalists with guns. Take their guns away and then we can at least argue the merits of their beliefs.

By the way, George W. Bush, that great moralist, took away the ability to sue gun manufacturers for their “side effects” back in 2005. So much for that Republican value of accountability. The N.R.A., not regulating armageddon since 1871.

Good morning, y’all. Another beautiful day here in the Mountains. The optimist in my bones allows me the opportunity to project a mild Winter. The pessimist predicts waist deep snow with ice, and massive, long lasting power outages. Going to that dark outlook is, has always been, the problem. It probably started as a child, and my choices in life probably just reinforced the pessimistic viewpoint. I think the psychologists call it a “self fulfilling prophecy”.

Ok, spoiler alert, this is probably not going to be one of my happier reports. I come to this somber discussion quite innocently, though. I was listening to the radio, good old WNCW out of Spindale, N.C. A song came on that just sent my mind a tumbling. The song was, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All”. I know that probably all truth can be revealed by listening to country songs, from Mommas, to dogs, to prison, to trains, Jesus and girlfriends. I don’ t think I’ve ever had such truth revealed to me as those simple lyrics, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All’.

Now, I realize there’s nuances within the message, like, “it ain’t no trouble” because it is socially acceptable. From the “Mad Men” of the 50’s celebrating their achievements with martini lunches, to the factory workers filing into bars for a few shots at the end of the day, to the average Joe picking up a six pack of beer to drink on the drive home, it is socially acceptable to drink. In fact, one could say that drinking is encouraged.

The alcohol industry spends about $2 billion per year on all media advertising. The beer brewing industry spent more than $770 million on television ads and $15 million on radio ads in 2000, all by itself. That’s a lot of suds. Maybe Budweiser can send the Clydesdales out on a promo tour to all of the hospitals in America where people are dying from cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, breast, and colon-rectal region. I’m sure the folks suffering from cirrhosis of the liver will get a big kick out of seeing the Clydesdales play football in person before going to their final reward.

I know that family attitude has a lot to do with the, “it ain’t no trouble” component of drinking. Even within the rather homogeneous structure of the “average American family”, there are different levels of acceptance of drinking. Some families consider the fact that you can serve in the military at eighteen, but not drink until you’re twenty one, as being odious. Some families see the age of twelve as the time of passage when a child can be “safely” given a “little” wine with dinner. Some folks are so darn happy their kids are away at college so they don’t have to deal with them coming home drunk that they’re willing to turn a blind eye to the activity. “They’re going to drink anyway, I’m just glad they’re not on the roads”, is the mindset.

Sadly, we’re just pushing the solution to the next generation. Study after study has confirmed that the earlier you start drinking, the earlier you will experience problems. Those problems will become chronic, and I’ll just go ahead and say it, the drinker will become an alcoholic. Now, some drinkers won’t become raging lunatics that beat their wives and destroy property, but many will.

In 2013, the number of alcohol related traffic deaths in the United States was over 10,000. In fact, the CDC reports that: “Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.”

Think about that, 2.5 million years of potential life lost. That’s an awful lot of taxes that aren’t getting collected due to our collective turning of a blind eye to one of the leading causes of death in our society. Seems like Congress would jump all over that. Of course, they would have to weigh public good against political contributions. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the insurance companies to do the heavy lifting, like they did with tobacco.

Until then, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All”.

Good morning, y’all. Another gorgeous day in the mountains. So beautiful in fact, that my brother in law, Dr. Moore Payne, the noted brain surgeon, chose today to come out and gather mistletoe. Moore’s mistletoe needs are many, and you’d think he’d just stay in town and buy a truckload. He’s got that kind of money. When he loads his William and Son Sidelock to shoot down parasitic berries from an oak, it’s proof positive that some folks have more money than sense.

According to Forbes magazine, the 400 richest families in America have now accumulated $2.29 trillion in wealth, and growing. Reviewing a 2013 study by the Federal Reserve System, one finds that the wealth share of the top 3 percent climbed from 44.8 percent in 1989 to 51.8 percent in 2007 to 54.4 percent in 2013. Expanding the search to the top 5 percent reveals that “the wealthiest 5 percent of U.S. households own 63 percent of the wealth in the United States.”

An observation can be made that investments made by the 400 families have created thousands of jobs, it’s just that those jobs are located in China, India and Malaysia. Where would China be without the Walton family (WalMart)? Even Warren Buffet, who admits that he has a lower tax-effective rate than his secretary, has invested heavily in the next generation of autos being produced in China, not the U.S.

The economies of China, India, South Korea and Singapore have all benefited from investment from American firms such as Apple, Cisco, HP, Google and Microsoft. Microsoft is currently dealing with the dilemna of how to bring back to the U.S. 93 billion dollars in profits sitting in foreign banks. The dilemma is how to get the money without paying the 35% tax rate it owes on the earnings. Ironically, Bill Gates Sr., father of Bill Gates, is on record as saying that he thinks the rich don’t pay enough taxes. Listen to your Daddy, Bill.

The five companies mentioned above have at least 288 billion in profits currently sitting in foreign banks. The 101 billion in taxes due to the U.S. government could fund a lot of education, re-training and investment opportunities for U.S. citizens. For those who are not proponents of reinvesting in America, the 101 billion could be used to pay down the national debt. A “tax holiday” for these firms, similar to the “tax amnesty” back in 2005, will only benefit the “400” and do nothing to lessen the sting to those who have lost their jobs to foreign firms. This flight of capital to other countries, plus the unwillingness to pay taxes due on the profits, strikes me as the height of arrogance and extraordinarily unpatriotic.

Who are these fortunate few? Are these 400 families, the “job creators” we keep hearing about? The sad truth is that most of the 400 are not actively involved in the businesses that brought them wealth. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, “over 60 percent” of the Forbes richest 400 Americans “grew up in substantial privilege.” Many of the 400 are 5th and 6th generations of inheritance. They don’t work for their riches, it’s given to them. They don’t build new businesses, invest in factories or develop creative new ideas. Instead, they invest in money managers, lawyers, and lobbyists. They invest in people who influence our representatives to give them a bigger share of the American dream because they were born wealthy. They invest in PR firms to re-label the inheritance tax as the “death tax”, they invest in spinmeisters that lead us all to believe that some day when we hit the lottery, we’ll want these rules in place for ourselves.

Cousin Ike, named for President Eisenhower, grew up in the 1950s. Back in the “good old days”, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals peaked at 92% in 1952 and 1953. The Golden Era of American Capitalism occurred during the time when America taxed the rich at the highest rate. As Cousin Ike says, “A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey.” Maybe high tax rates for the wealthy are what’s needed to get the peacocks off their tails.

I certainly think brother in law Moore could withstand a little more pain at tax time.

Good morning, y’all. A cold bright day in the mountains. While the temps have dropped precipitously, the precipitation has stayed away, making life tolerable. It’s the time of year when the age old battle of , “I’m too cold”, “I’m too hot”, that most of us married folks play out with our better halves, is a stalemate. Mulva can just add a layer to obtain optimum, and I’m comfortably dressed enough to not be picked up for public indecency. Fall is a good time of year.

Speaking of public indecency, I still haven’t shaken off my encounter with the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread’s yahoo this past week. Now, I know, in truth, it was not in “public”, but it was certainly indecent. I’ve tried to discuss my feelings with Mulva, and let me tell you, as a confessor, Mulva lacks a lot. I guess Mulva’s constant request for “details” was confusing to me. I explained the events as well as I could, and I was hoping for help with the best way for us to extricate ourselves from this God-awful mess. I mean, the milk of our Christian charity of taking in the wronged Alva Bread and her seven hellions, has now curdled in the pitcher.

How can we allow the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread to continue to have his cake and eat it too? Particularly, with me buying the goldarned cake. If I was to get all judgmental, I’d point out that it looks like it’s not just one cake under consideration. I mean we know about Ms. Ophelia Bottoms, I suspect Ms. Anita Goodman, and my visit to Number Thirty Nine confirmed the conjugal status with his current wife. The mind boggles. How many women can one man “minister” to? Yes, I made a pun. Forgive me, I’ve got to try to laugh about some of this to quell the rage. To my credit, I haven’t used a “laying of hands” analogy, yet.

Mulva’s quest for “details” has offered me no opinions, no solutions. I need to know the best way to get the Reverend and his brood, as far, as quickly, from TackyToo as possible. Where some might see an “affair of the heart”, or even a Telemundo novela, I see the overwhelming potential for crime tape being wrapped around TackyToo. I’m envisioning the entire park wrapped up like a gigantic present, and here at Christmas time, no less.

As previously stated, our little community here at TackyToo rivals the National Guard Armory over in Blairsville for weaponry. Now, the Armory might beat us in sheer numbers of weapons and ammunition, and I’m saying might, I believe TackyToo has the edge in sophistication. It appears to me that private citizens can buy the new, really cool stuff on the internet before Congress can agree on how much and how many. Is there a chance that the general population has more sophisticated weapons than the local police? Hillbilly, please, of course.

Which brings us back to my concern of getting the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread and his family to heck out of here before I get another 7AM emergency call, and the emergency call is not a stopped up toilet. Folks in my neighborhood shoot people for “sneaking around”. Now, “sneaking around” can take the form of messing with somebody’s wife, or just being where you shouldn’t be at an odd hour of the day. Either way, you’d be “sneaking around”, and fair game in these parts. We have a season for shooting deer, people are always open season.

Since Mulva was of absolutely no help, I decided to clear my head by going to my bulb garden to plant some of the bulbs I’ve been gifted. The irony is not lost on me that I was cleaning up one mess that the Bread brood has created while I’m trying to noodle how to prevent another mess. After I got everything squared away, and all of the new bulbs planted in what I hoped would be an attractive pattern, I mulled over the idea of getting Mulva to go over to the Lowes and pick me up one of those ready made picket fences to border off my garden. I decided that Damian, I mean Devin, would just see it as a challenge and destroy the fence as well as the flowers. There’s nothing worse than being in a battle of wits with an eight year old.

I need to being casting my Breads out, just not on the waters, where I hear they’ll return.

Good morning, y’all. It is another perfect Fall day here in the mountains. It’s so pretty outside that I almost wanted to accompany Mulva to church today, almost. The drive to the church is one of the most scenic in these parts. The church is nestled on the side of a hill overlooking a valley with a stream running through the middle. The original founders of the little church found the perfect spot to bring people together in fellowship.

As it turns out, that’s one of our quandaries. Now that The Full Gospel Original Church of God is busting at the seams from the influx of new members, a decision must be made as to whether to stay or go. Literally, do we try to build on our existing site to provide seating for the burgeoning congregation, or do we seek another site? The congregation has managed to slap a mobile home down one side of the church to provide more seating, and I guess another could be added to the other side. It’s just that everyone believes these to be stop gap measures.

More and more of the folks that have been watching the simulcasts on Sunday on Channel 99 in Blairsville have decided to see for themselves what all of the fuss is about. Word is that once they visit, they keep coming back. Folks start queueing up for the 11AM service at about 10:15. This new reality has caused great consternation for the older members. Folks that were married at The Full Gospel Original Church of God, had their babies baptized there, and yes, had demons cast out there, feel like they shouldn’t have to jockey for the “good seats”. It is a dilemma the Elders need to solve before they lose their base. One of the options proposed has been to offer additional services on Sunday, like the Catholics do.

There could be a 7AM service, the usual 11AM service, and a 3PM service. Now, in my mind, this solution has a lot of upside. Some folks might be happy to attend the 7AM service, and well, get the formal proceedings over with. Then they’d have the rest of the day to do quiet reflection on their own. The 3PM service might fit the “hipster” lifestyle a little better, and we do seem to be getting more of these folks since the telecasts. Some enterprising young buck might put together a package for folks coming from Atlanta that might include, “Lunch with the Reverend”. I mean, the Reverend Helen Handbasket has got to eat anyway, why not have her show up at a local eatery and break bread with a bus full of folks brought in from the flatlands? Obviously, the Reverend and the bus driver would eat for free. There’s folks in Atlanta making a living off of Zombie tours, I think this idea has merit.

Now, to be fair, I do have to bring up the downside of the proposed schedule change. Like all good God fearing folks, The Full Gospel Original Church of God already has in place a 7PM service every Sunday night to just kind of tweak the earlier service, and make sure everyone is filled with the spirit before they start their week. The proposed schedule change would be basically doubling the Reverend Helen Handbasket’s workload, and I’m reasonably sure that the Elders are not going to consider a doubling of her pay. While the Reverend Handbasket’s feelings are of great concern, her feelings might not be our biggest issue. No one has asked the serpents what they feel about four shows a day.

We all know about the disastrous results of the serpents being asked to do back to back performances at the church fish fry this year. Are we prepared to lose another preacher like we lost the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread? I don’t think so. I don’t think the Elders are so avaricious as to “kill the goose that laid the golden egg”. So, if scheduling is increased to double the services, it will probably mean that a J.V. group of serpents will need to share the load. The Reverend Helen Handbasket has been busier than a one armed paper hanger, of late, so I don’t know who will do the wrangling of the J.V. team. We certainly want an experienced person for the job. It’s one thing to have a slip up in front of the locals, quite another to do it on TV.

Good morning, y’all. I tell you what, there’s one other thing that will put your mind right just about as well as a Zombie Double Feature, and that’s a college football marathon. How much fun was it watching the Gators getting stomped by Alabama? Too much fun, I tell you. Watching Carolina give Clemson fits was also fun, although I was ultimately pulling for Clemson.

Seems Clemson’s all world, Heisman candidate quarterback was a Mark Richt reject. Well, maybe not so much a reject as an ignore. The fact that Deshaun Watson grew up in Gainesville, always wanted to be a Bulldog, and holds most of the states records should have been enough to get him on the Bulldog roster. Some of Deshaun’s records include: total yards (17,134), total touchdowns (218), career passing yards (13,077) and career passing touchdowns (155). He also rushed for 4,057 yards and 63 touchdowns. He also led his team to a state championship. I like that kind of pedigree.

Apparently, Coach Richt didn’t see enough to woo Deshaun into staying close to home. Instead, Richt recruited two quarterbacks that have transferred out, and another that became our new punter. Hard to argue with that kind of success. Maybe it was Deshaun’s ability to avoid a tackler that tilted Richt’s scales to our current starter. Who knows? If we keep our current commit, Georgia will be starting a Freshman next year, backed up by a sixth year Senior. There are two prayers here, new kid doesn’t get hurt, new kid pans out.

So, I guess the story here is how did someone making minimum four million dollars a year decide that he’d just phone it in, and it’d be ok? Honest to God, I can’t come up with an answer that would satisfy a working man. For four million dollars a year most of us would kiss naked butts up and down the length of Peachtree Street everyday, and feel blessed to have the job. Something must have gotten severely skewed in Mark Richt’s “work life balance”.

That’s what Human Resources folks are calling it now, “work life balance”. It’s the catchall phrase they use when they find that you haven’t taken a day off in two months, or a vacation in two years. It might arise when the C.S.R. next to you keeps borrowing your stapler and not returning it. And maybe you’ve warned them repeatedly about returning your stapler and finally you say something like, “if you don’t put my stapler back where you found it, I’m going to stick it where the sun don’t shine”. The next thing you know the HR wench is talking to you about your “work life balance”, and perhaps you need to take more time off. You know you don’t need to take more time off, you’re just barely getting the stuff done they’re expecting you to do now, how could more time off help?

Anyway, I don’t think the “work life balance” thing played out this way for Coach Richt. If so, it was more, “I want to coach as little as I can get away with and do my own thing the rest of the time”. I guess we don’t have to speculate what his other thing was, whether it was chasing skirts or chasing souls, the end result was the same. He wasn’t chasing Deshaun Watson and other highly rated recruits for the Bulldogs.

Coach Richt’s “work life balance” apparently didn’t provide enough time to find quality coordinators, Jeremy Pruitt clearly being a fluke, or the time to see that his coordinators were preparing the team for the rigors of the SEC. To a sane rational person, and I’m including myself here, the decision to start the third string quarterback against Florida, the game that would decide if we would play in the SEC championship, was clearly sabotage. Was it the O.C., or was it Richt that came up with the idea? No matter, it was Richt that should have said, “hell no”, I need to win this game to save my job. Therein lies the rub.

Richt did not sign his last contract extension. Rumors abound that there was language in the contract that would have prevented him from proselytizing. Apparently Richt’s lack of commitment to the contract was played out in the arena. Now he’ll get the chance to save souls, and bring a football program up to mediocrity in Miami. So ends our fairy tale relationship with Mark Richt. Fifteen years for thirty five million in salary, I feel cheated.

Coach Kirby Smart is coming to Athens, and all of our expectations are sky high. So, I guess in a sidewise kind of way, this is my first column about him. The coach is dead, long live the new coach.

Good morning, y’all. It is getting harder and harder for me to come to grips with all of the bad news pouring in from all over. It seems that it is now a standard of the mentally unstable to have multiple weapons with copious amounts of ammunition. I think the fact that I don’t own a firearm speaks well of my emotional well being. I’m sound as a dollar. I’ll let that one sink in a minute.

I have a bizarre way of coping with events that swirl about me that I have absolutely no control over. Normally, I would watch Zombie movies until the mood passes, but since this is date night, I had to tame it down a lot. I chose to do a double feature tonight of the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Since the first version was made in 1956, in black and white, I figured that Mulva would be able to make it through without having to hide her eyes too much. The possibility that Mulva would still be awake for the second show, made in 1978 starring Donald Sutherland, was pretty remote. If she was awake, she would be aware of what was about to happen, and perhaps not be afraid.

As I have stated previously, I saw the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” when it came out and I was seven or eight. I did not sleep for weeks. The movie effected me like no other movie before. While I’d love to be able to say that I understood the underlying themes of McCarthyism and Communism, I didn’t. I was at “gut level” scared to death that all of the people I knew and loved would fall asleep and wake up as soulless drones bent on having me join them in their purgatory. My first thoughts after the movie were in deducing who among my acquaintances had already crossed over. I had a long list of candidates.

The American Film Institute has declared “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as the ninth best film in the science fiction genre. The Library of Congress has preserved the movie in the national Film Registry. While the original movie was shot in just twenty three days, on a budget of $450,000, it has proven to be such a success that it has been remade at least three more times.  The other three remakes, which just turns out are listed in chronological and scare quality are:

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 remake starring Donald Sutherland)
• Body Snatchers (1993 remake starring Gabrielle Anwar)
• The Invasion (2007 starring Nicole Kidman)

Without question, check all of them out. If not for the fact that I saw the original at a very impressionable age, I might give the scariest nod to the 1978 version starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy. If you thought Leonard Nimoy was spooky as a Vulcan, wait until you see him as a pod person. All of the acting and production of this version are first rate.

As luck would have it, Mulva was called away before the 1978 version fired up. It was probably just as well. I don’t think the 1956 version made much of an impression on her. It’s funny how accustomed we’ve become to color and high tech in our movies. It’s like we don’t get drawn into the story unless there’s a 3D experience going on. I guess I’ll see if Mulva’s still awake when I get back over to Number Two. If so, the message came across, even in black and white.

Maybe I’ll bring her one of these pod thingies I found:

Good morning, y’all. While we should all be making ourselves crazy worrying about our Christmas preparations, we are being driven crazy by the daily news. I would gladly take commercials for Popeil’s latest labor saving device twenty four seven over the current daily broadcasts of shootings. I know Christmas is the time of the year that stresses our mental health the most, but we’ve reached new heights.

The shootings in San Bernadino, California have shocked the nation. San Berdoo, the birthplace of The Hell’s Angels, is an otherwise non-notable city sixty fives miles East of Los Angeles. We just never hear about anything happening in San Bernadino, until yesterday. Now San Bernadino is the center of the universe for CNN and others to take facts and suppositions and weave them into a plot that can not leave Americans feeling safe.

All of America is waiting anxiously to hear the answer of how and why, and sadly, I must report, I was completely caught up in the coverage myself. I know better. I do, really. I know that it’s better to wait and read about events a week after they have happened than it is to stay glued to the TV as the events unfold. It wasn’t until the second hour of Wolf Blitzer asking loaded questions of “experts”, experts who had clearly been brought in based on their point of view, that I realized I was being played. Ok, big statement, if I’m being played, why, and who stands to benefit from influencing my opinion?

Let’s start with how the news was being fed to us. Initial reports were of three tactically armed assailants with “long rifles”. Let me interject here that the way Wolf loves the phrase “long rifle”, there must be something else going on here, maybe something Freudian. Anyway, the suspects, dressed like SWAT team members, broke into a facility charged with treating the disabled. The shooters were supposed to be dressed in full body armor, militarily trained and based off of their quick exit, carrying out a plan that had taken weeks to prepare. Speculation ran high that these “terrorists” were targeting a “soft target” where the people would be defenseless.

It took hours to report that the attack actually took place at a leased conference room that was being used by county employees for a holiday party. It took many, many hours to report that the police knew who they were looking for from the get go. The shooter was actually at the meeting and got mad, left and came back with his wife. They were wearing ammo vests that can be bought from Amazon for $34.99. No body armor, no extensive planning for a “soft target”. In one sense, just another pissed off mentally unstable worker that had had enough. I think we use to call it, “going postal”, before it became a requirement of all news agencies to look for an ISIS link.

The repeated interviews of terrorism “experts” through out  the broadcast was one of the clues to me, that I, and the rest of the public, were being played. I think the second clue was Wolf’s repeated call to carpet bomb all of the Middle East, Israel excepted of course, and turn the desert to glass. I would think that in the interest of maintaining the motto, “the most trusted name in news” that CNN would sit King Wolf Hyperbole down and explain the rules. Quit creating news “links” that support your personal agenda. The “news” are the verifiable facts that are known at a specific point in time, the news are not, “what if”.

I had to laugh out loud at one of the speculations by Wolf that only a terrorist would have four guns and thousand of rounds of ammunition in their house. I can stand in my front yard and see at least four homes that qualify as “terrorists” by Wolf standards. In fact, some of my neighbors would qualify as “ultra terrorists” by Wolf standards. The pipe bombs found by the police were a little more unsettling. But, I can go a hundred yards and find the same thing with one notable exception, little Danny Katz’s bombs actually blow stuff up. Danny’s been at it since he’s twelve, and is quite good at stump removal. I guess I better put Danny on my “terrorist” list.

Whipping the American people into hysteria is a shameless, but tried and true method used by the powerful people to foment their agenda. Why do we want the shooters to be Isis and not “postal workers”? Very simply, we don’t want do anything to diminish gun sales in the U.S. Part two, we don’t want to spend any money to help the mentally unstable get the help they need. We do however want to help all of those brave freedom fighters in foreign lands by providing them with all of the arms they will ever need. Perhaps another “fight them there before we have to fight them here” war is order. It worked really well in Iraq.

Sorry, I am a sad, cynical, old man that feels abused by the people who are supposed to being truthful with me. BTW, gun sales for Black Friday this year topped all records with 185,345 requests for background checks. That would be the people who are legally obtaining guns. See, CNN, advertising does work. I’m sure your check is in the mail.

Good morning, y’all. Well I was thinking today would be a better day than yesterday. Turns out, I am saddened again today, and birth control plays a part into today’s madness as well as it did yesterday. Let me clarify, mental health, the abundance of military weapons in our society, and boatloads of misinformation were the primary factors of today’s tragedy. Birth control is just the running theme to yesterday’s blowup at Number Thirty Nine and today’s blowup in Colorado.

In case you’ve been living in a cave, or Alabama, and haven’t heard the news, another nut job opened fire on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three. Now, first curious piece of business for me is, Colorado? Again? Colorado? Is there an underground newspaper I am unaware of that advertises to the mentally unstable? Is the magazine called “Go Nuts In Colorado”? Do they run ads that say, “Visit Colorado”, “Shoot Anything You Want As Often As You Want”, “First Thousand Bullets Are Free”?

I mean, Jesus H. Christ, what’s the attraction to the unstable with military weapons and Colorado? The most recent shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, was from Western North Carolina. It’s a stretch, but, I could have thrown a rock from my house and hit his house. Of course if I did, he would have opened up with an AK47. Maybe not, he might have had to throw me in the trunk of his car and drive me to Colorado before sending me to my final reward. It’s like an X-Files. There’s some sort of manic magnetism that pulls these folks to the Rockies to take out their lunacy on the innocent.

It seems that the authorities have been able to glean from Mr. Dear that he shot up the facility because of, “baby parts”. We can only assume that Mr. Dear is referencing the video being shown by the Repubs to overstate their case for the abolishment of abortion. While the validity of the film is very much in doubt, and the Repubs are doing nothing to provide information as to when, where and why it was made, the candidates are using the film to base their platform promises on.

Even Carly Fiorina has gone on several maniacal rants about Planned Parenthood. If a woman doesn’t understand the importance of a woman maintaining control of her reproductive rights, who do you trust those rights to? I guess just any nut with a gun gets to decide whether millions of women can decide if and when they will take on the hardest job in life, mother.

Who is Planned Parenthood, what is their mission and why do they rouse such ire in some folks? Wikipedia sheds this little bit of light on the topic. “In 2013, PPFA reported seeing 2.7 million patients in 4.6 million clinical visits. Roughly 16% of its clients are teenagers under the age of 20. According to PPFA, in 2013 the organization provided 3.6 million contraceptive services, 4.5 million sexually transmitted disease services, about 1 million cancer related services, over 1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services, over 325,000 abortion services, and over 100,000 other services, for a total of 10.6 million discrete services. PPFA is well known for providing services to minorities and the poor; according to PPFA, 75% of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.”

Two things that jump out to me:

1. Less than eight percent of their services are abortions.

2. That seventy five percent of their clients are the poorest of the poor.

Why are the richest of the rich consumed with the reproductive processes of the poor? The rich are not consumed by the prospect of the poor overpopulating, they’re consumed with the aspect that the poor won’t reproduce. The Repubs are obsessed with the poor reproducing even to the point of denying abortions to women who have been raped or are victims of incest.

Forcing children on people who can’t afford them, or more importantly, don’t want them is evil. In fact the book that the Repubs claim to guide their every movement on has addressed the exact situation. Proverbs 14:31 “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.”

Maybe the Repubs should change the tone and content of their message to ensure that the people who are on the fringes of mental health and in possession of weapons don’t act on the Repubs propaganda. It would be the responsible thing to do, it would be the Christian thing to do.

Good morning, y’all. I’ve started today off with several burrs under my saddle. It’s against the rules of humanity to have problems before coffee. Credit my sanguine approach to the cosmos and the belief that even though we all seem to be a bunch of random atoms hurtling through space, there is a positive force to our nature. It’s like Mammy Yokum used to say, “Good will always beat evil, ’cause good is gooder than evil”.

My day started with being called over to Number Thirty Nine, where my lovely wife Mulva has allowed the Mrs. Reverend Dale E. Bread to reside with her seven hellions while “she get’s her feet back under her”. Now if you remember, the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread had abandoned his wife and kids to seek the comfort of the choir director, Ophelia Bottoms. Such was the case until reports started coming in that the Reverend was “visiting his children” well after their bedtime. Well, let me report that the Reverend must have gotten to Number Thirty Nine early this morning to serve them breakfast, because he was there at 7AM when I got the call of a backed up toilet. Imagine my surprise upon entering Number Thirty Nine, to find the Reverend appearing from the back room with nothing between him and the Lord but a smile.

Let me just say that this puts me in a cross mood so many ways. I’ve been telling Mulva for years, I don’t need anger management, the world just needs to stop ticking me off. This would be one more prime example. Why have I been called out to unstop a toilet for the man and his family that are living off my largess? Ok, it’s really Mulva’s magnanimity, I never wanted to get involved in the situation in the first place. It is only through the Christian teachings that Mulva tries to exemplify in her daily life that we now have the situation that has forced me to come face to face with the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread’s yahoo. Red-faced doesn’t adequately describe the situation for any of us.

The Reverend retreated to the bedroom while the Mrs. directed me to the disaster zone, the hall bathroom. The good news is that, for the most part, we’re dealing with an overflow of water. The bad news, simple plunging isn’t getting rid of the clog. I will have to return with the Johnny Jolter, my super plunger. Trying to avoid Alva’s eyes, I tell her that I will return in a few minutes with a tool big enough to do the job. I curse myself all the way back to Number Two for all of the horrible puns that could be made from my choice of words. I take the long way around the park to see if I can locate the good Reverend’s car, and I do. He has parked in front of Number Fifty Three, Anita Goodman’s trailer. I make a mental note that I may have another problem that has not revealed itself yet.

I knock loudly to announce my return to Number Thirty Nine, and thankfully, the Reverend is not in sight. Three or four massive plunges clears the clog with portions of the clog returning to the surface attached to the plunger. Condoms. No, really, it’s condoms. Several are attached to the Johnny Jolter like wet pieces of cellophane. Now, my mind is already spinning like the Mind Bender at Six Flags over Georgia and this discovery has got me absolutely gob smacked. I am not naive enough to think that the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread is a man of such prowess that he has created this crisis from his over indulgence. No, I’m thinking that this is the work of his demon seed, Devin. The fact that Devin has remained out of sight while his siblings have been milling about also gives me the clue that Damian, I mean Devin, is laying low.

So it appears the first born Bread has got it in for his old man. Interesting. The sub plot of the son wanting to “out” his old man has turned my wrath from white hot to a manageable irritation. It will certainly give Mulva and I something to discuss over lunch. The luncheon where I will ask Mulva to start collecting rent from the Breads, or have the Bread’s start collecting their things. It should be an interesting mid day repast.