Random Thoughts

Nancy Pelosi on TV described extended the current tax rates for those earning over $250k, including I understand 250,000 small businesses, as “giving” $700B to “the rich.” So remember, every penny in your salary is not earned, it is “given” to you by the government because they didn’t tax it away from you.

Now that the Chinese have opened up markets, does that mean they are SINOs? (Socialists in Name Only.) and are Democrats really SIRs (Socialists in Reality)?

In the Great PC game, Muslim now trumps Black and Hispanic. Everything trumps truth and facts, of course. Not sure if Green trumps Muslim or the other way around. I know—it’s hard to keep up. You may not recognize your sin until a reporter yells, “Gotcha!”

They should make a new “I see Dead people” movie, about voting in Chicago.

If you can recall when political attack ads were based on at least a grain of truth, you’re an old timer.

When folks thank me for my service, I say, "It was the privilege of a lifetime to wear the Marine uniform."

There are so many phony heroes around, claiming service and medals they don’t deserve, I’ve started wearing the ribbon for my National Defense Medal on my lapel. When someone asks me how I won it, I modestly say I don’t want to talk about it. (If you don’t get why this is funny, you didn’t serve. Everyone got the National Defense Medal. We used to call it the fire watch ribbon, for standing fire watch in boot camp.)

My highest person decoration is a richly-undeserved Good Conduct Medal. But I earned the title “Marine,” and got to serve with heroes who call me brother. That is distinction enough. I don’t have to claim gongs I didn’t earn.

If you think Marine Boot Camp is brutal, you’ve never been near a war zone. It is tough training that brings troops home alive. Some of them, anyway. Soft training is a brutality, as it leads to your troops being slaughtered by tougher, more ruthless, better trained enemies.

People who think the 2010 Midterm GOP election victory means Obama is finished in 2012 don’t understand politics or history. Every election features different candidates, different campaigns, different issues and different voters. Thus very different dynamics. Just because your team beat another one during the regular season doesn’t mean it will beat the same team in the Superbowl.

I didn’t marry until I was 46. I didn’t like the statistics. Half the marriages in the US end in divorce. The other half end in death. Bad outcome either way.

Living here in “Crook County” Illinois, you can’t open the paper with out reading another story about political misfeasance or malfeasance. I’ve started using the term “Demo-corrupt” for their party. Yes, there have been Republican crooks. Not in the cities much anymore. Republicans are protected by the game laws here.

Looks like long suffering Chicago is going to have Mayor Emanuel rahmed down their throats. Joy.

After a fight, I got the evaluation on our condo dropped from $210k to $167k, only a little more than we paid for it. Which meant our property taxes only went up $900 this year, about a 33% increase.

One quick way to improve the whole fabric of American society would be for football teams to stop displaying their adolescent stupidity by pouring Gatorade over the coach whenever they win a moderately important game. It’s gotten really old, boys.

Thoughts on beer: They say it takes 3,500 calories to make a pound of body fat. The average beer has about 150 calories, meaning you have to drink about 24 beers to gain a pound, maybe fewer or more depending on the brand of beer. As I write, I weigh about 214 pounds, though I’m working on it, as the doc says if there is less of me, I’ll need less bottled O2, thus will live a tad longer with my IPF. But 214 times 24 equals 5,136 beers. I’m sure I’ve drunk way more than 5,000 beers in my life, not to mention Scotch, wine and other libations, all also with calories. Conclusion: If I’d been drinking water instead of beer, I’d have disappeared completely years ago.

The “birthers” are wasting their time. You could have a video of Obama being born on Mars, and the courts would find a way to rule he was a natural born citizen. They won’t over turn an election with a clear, large majority voting for him. In this case, that is double so, as judges removing the first black president would result in massive riots in our inner cities, with thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damages, with the resulting shock to an already weak economy. IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. Focusing on it takes time, energy and money away from fighting him on the issues, electing folks who will oppose him, and defeating him in 2012. The “birther” movement is a great gift to Obama. Get over it.

Have you noticed that the far right and the far left spend more time trying to purge their side of folks who aren’t 100% pure (RINOs and Joe Lieberman come to mind) than trying to defeat the people on the other side who are 100% opposed to them. The attitude is I’d rather be right with a small minority than win with a majority that includes folks who don’t agree with me on every issue.

People who think being Gay is a “life style” choice must have, at some point, thought about making that choice. No matter how angry or hurt I was by a woman, the thought of sex with men never crossed my mind. So it never seemed to me to be a “choice.” If you think it’s a “choice,” maybe you should look deep inside.

The four great mass murders of the twentieth century are, in order: 1. Mao. (Doubtless why the Obama’s honored him with his picture on an ornament on the White House Christmas Tree and why Obama appointees quote him admiringly). 2. Stalin. (His created famine was a masterpiece, much better than death camps as it got so little contemporary bad press.) 3. Hitler (Who despite being in third place, had better PR so gets all the attention. 4. Rachel Carson. (She is gaining, however, as her junk science book, Silent Spring which got DDT banned still kills black, brown and yellow folks, many of them babies or kids, from Malaria in the third world every day. Silent Spring is probably the leading environmental disaster in history.)

I asked for 8 or 9 things for Christmas this year, all but one of them books. Despite having piles of yet-to-be-read books around the house. So little time.

Do you “Support the Troops”? If you haven’t sent a care package to someone serving in harms way this Christmas, I don’t think much of the magnetic yellow ribbon stuck on your car.

Marines like to say we were green before green was cool, green being a Marine color. But I was also green the current way. I’ve always shopped at consignment stores, flea markets, yard sales and places like Goodwill. I hardly have a suit, sport coat or pair of jeans that didn’t come from one of these sources, or the 80% off clearance racks at Kohl’s. You can get some nice Christmas presents there, stemware and the like. We have two leather sofas bought for a total under 4500—new—at Goodwill. Haven’t run into Al Gore shopping there though. Nor John Kerry or Barack Obama.

Yes, I stole this "Random Thoughts" format for little snips from Dr. Thomas Sowell. Only one of the many things I've learned from that great intellect. His is a first class mind, far better than mine, coupled with a talent for expressing his ideas in clear and understandable language.

And that's enough for now.