Straight Shootin'

Mother Teresa said 'kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless' - When George Bush speaks he can't hide the fact that he is a person like most of us -

The liberal left finds much humor in the way he speaks and sometimes how he twists the meaning of some words. They refer to him as a cowboy just off the range and much worse.

The social elites of the east coast ridicule him for the way he smiles or smirks when he makes a certain point in his speeches. They hate him because he is a common man with bright ideas. The hate him because he is one of us.

It's these little things that grind away at the liberals. God - Compassion - Liberty - Country - Democracy - Freedom. They don't understand these terms. They are simple, easy to speak and packed with meaning. It drives the liberals crazy.

Little Things

Van Gogh wrote ' great things are done by a series of small things brought together' - Sometimes we have to look at this in reverse - bad things happen when a series of small things come together.

Can the American people have there own point of view when the major media is continually forcing their agenda down our throats. Like death by a thousand cuts, we don't notice the little lies that are always on the screen or front pages of the local papers, but when they are there week after week and month after month with always the same drum beat of hate and despair, it will take its toll on many people -

And it's not just the choir that they are signing to, it's those people in the pews who want to believe that we are headed in the right direction but don't have a firm understanding of history or are not well read enough to be able to sift out the truth from the disinformation.

I think the President has to come out and start singing our tune more so those in doubt will have somebody to point to and follow - What we need now is another 9/11 George Bush. America is desperate for leadership. He could take the country by Strom again -

I think Rush Linbaugh is doing a great job in this area as well as others on local stations.

We have the means to get the word out, we just have to get off our butts and start singing and believing in this country and it's history.

Burned Out!

I think that the press has finally blown a fuse - they wanted to destroy Carl Rove so badly they that they are talking about Lewis Libby like he was the pivot man in the White House. Two weeks ago nobody had ever heard of Lewis Libby.

The press wants blood, Carl Rove blood and nothing else will do because they think if they can get him, the next logical step is Bush - The liberal left and their Democratic puppets are going nuts - they lost all sense of reality - the name calling and fantasy indictments were proof again that they have lost their grip -

I have had enough of this stuff from the news media. I need to back off and watch the left disintegrate from a safe distance.

Taking a stand !

I just received my annual letter from my church asking for a financial commitment for 2006. They stated that is was a sad saturation that 20% of the congregation was responsible for 80% of the total of the budget. In a previous letter they stated out of 1300 families that attended services, 900 did not contribute anything. Now they are asking for me to increase my giving due to a short fall in revenue for this year and the new budget will be even higher for next year.

I have a problem with this, not the giving part, but the church in general and it misguided divergence into liberal left politics.

The church, all 5 million members, sent their representatives to the annual council meeting some months ago and voted, about 750 to 550, to condemn Israel for building their security wall and they say it is built on Palestine land.

They made no mention of the Palestine suicide bombers that have killed well over a thousand Israelis; men, women and children. They were killed in restaurants and street corner. They have been killed on buses and in night clubs across the country. Apparently the church has no problem with this, but I do.

The question then is, why should I contribute to this organization when I think they are wrong to become involved in a depute that has raged for hundreds of years and seems to have no viable solution. And, why does the church even take sides in this dispute? And why condemn the only democracy in that part of the world.

I believe the Israelis are fighting for their very lives and have a right to exist.

The world in general does not have this opinion. Israel has only one true friend and that's the United States, and even here only 60% give them their full support.

The wall has save many lives and it will in the future provide the needed edge in protecting itself from the ever increasing attacks from the Palestine terrorists of Hammas and Hezbollah. Again, the church does not consider this a problem. I do!

Success and Failure

One way to discuss the failure of the Democratic Party is in this saying from William Feather, "Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go".

President Bush is going forward with his attack on the terrorists that murdered 3000 Americans in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. He has a grip! He is hanging on. He has not given up on destroying the killers that planned and carried out this crime against us or given in to the forces of the liberal left that want to see him destroyed out of fear for their personal safety and lack of vision and courage to do what George Bush has accomplished. They hate him because he is successful. They hate him because he has an agenda and he sticks to it. The Democrats and the liberal left have neither.

Democratic Party members have no grip on anything because they have let go of there base, people that believe that the Democratic Party can still regain it's footing by standing up for the principles that it was founded on - rejecting the liberal left's grip on their throats that is forcing the party from democracy to a Marxist state. They gave up years ago of ever having a meaning full agenda. Their success ending with eight years of Bill Clinton.

People like Howard Dean, Patrick Leahy and Joe Biden are just a few of the puppet master's main crew. There are many more, many more ready to do anything for power including loosing their morality and self respect, that is if they ever had any.

Watch and listen, then you decide who is a success and who is the failure!

Where Are You Going?

There is a saying, a Proverb really, 'where there is no vision, the people parish'. Doesn't this sound like a lot of people in the news these days? They seem to have every excuse for not having an original idea about critical issues that plaque this country, but they are never short on reasons why someone else is not measuring up to their standards.

You have to ask yourself why it is so important for these empty people to tear down anyone that propose new and fresh ideas for the future. They are not part of the solution, they are the problem.

It seems they are blind to their own lack of courage and native intelligence or just plain common sense when they demand that this country not defending itself. Or why this country is wrong to think that it has a duty to defend freedom around the world.

When people reach out and ask, help us to gain our freedom, we do the best we can. But there are those that see this as none of our business. It is best to remain above the fray, they say, as thousands die at the hands of dictators and despots like Saddam Hussein.

I am always looking for an answer for the thought processes that these people have to rationalize their criticism of good people that are trying to make a difference.

Back From The Heartland

Just got back from the great heartland of the this country, North Dakota. It was a fun trip and a fruitful one in that my brother and I had a great visit with our dad and, during the trip out there, we had a great opportunity to visit with each other.

We don't get to see each other that much, he lives in the Minneapolis area and I live in southern Wisconsin. I know that isn't that far away but when you get involved in life's little struggles, time just seems to slip away.

But you know, I found North Dakota a forgotten paradise of sight and sound, natures purest. I know everyone has seen the movie 'Fargo' and from that farce knows everything there is to know about that state. That movie was a typical Hollywood master piece of fantasy - what garbage. Why would anyone think that the Hollywood empty suits could or would produce anything of any substance when it comes to the Midwest?

Okay it's flat as flat can be but that's only one of it's qualities. Roads that stretch out in front of you clear to the horizon. Corn fields the size of Road Island and marshes by the road teaming with yellow headed black birds. Stop by the side of the road and get out, don't worry about another car coming along because it's more than likely that won't happen for at least half an hour, and listen, what do you hear? Yeah, that's right, only the sound of the wind in the rushes along the marsh and the chirping and twittering of our feathered friends busily going about God's business. Why do you think they call this God's country.

The people are fantastic too. True, they are few and far between but that's what makes them so genuine. They are all neighbors that care about each other, they know who everybody is. They wave at you like you like you belong.

So come here and look around, test the water - maybe you can make a connection with a past life of hard work and pride of survival, not just an existence.

Chances are you won't stay, of course, but just the view of a sun set that goes from as far as the eye can see and the sounds of a power greater than you is such a sensory overload that it makes every second spent here, away from the crush of the city, a gift.

It's my third trip and it only gets better.

Gone Till Oct. 24

I'm gone until October 24th - I am making a trip to North Dakota to see my dad who is 98 years old and living in a nursing home - My brother, from Minnesota, and I are making the trip together. It will be much better than making the trip alone - that part of the country is not very inspiring. later Be better than good!

Slide Into Retirement

Probably the most difficult thing to do in retirement is to allocate your free time. I know that I have discussed this before but I am finding that it is the most important aspect of retirement.

Vanderbilt once said that inherited money is to initiative that cocaine is to morality. But for our purposes we will just use the first part of this little ditty and say 'too much free time is bad for initiative'. For someone that has been working for 40 years in a structured environment and then dropped into an environment that has no structure, that person had better be prepared to make a new life.

I am finding that there is a powerful urge to do nothing every day. I have a lot of things to keep me busy right from the get go but there are certain things that have to come first, like maintenance of the house and cars as well as the tractors for cutting the grass and tending the garden. Not to mention several new projects that I have started but not finished, as well as others that Barb and I have in the planning stage. When will those get done, she asks? hmmm

This all sounds routine and a little bazaar but it gets to be a big deal when it has to be done on a regular basis. When I was working, I did only the bare necessities and everything showed the neglect. Now I have the opportunity to make a difference in every project that I start because I can keep on it until it's done. Sadly it doesn't happen this very often.

We all have these preconceived ideas of how retirement should go, reading a good book in the afternoon and vacations to Mexico or some place that you have always wanted to go. Well that's fine and you should do these things but when you have completed the cruise and read a few books it will start to get old and you will find that you need structure to help get you through the day.

What it is then is you need to be productive. You have to add structure to your life on your own. No one can do it for you. Well, your wife will if she is retired as well because she doesn't want you turning into some kind of blob in front of the TV or worse, getting in her way as she goes through her routine for getting things done.

You have to have some kind of plan each day to get you started and then keep you going through out the day. Every day.

I know that I have posted on this in the past but it is really important for everyone to get a handle on this before they actually get to a point in time where they wake up one day and say, what am I going to do to day?

Plan ahead - years ahead for what you want to do with your self for the next twenty five years. It will save a lot of head scratching and stress. In retirement? Stress? Oh yah - Still I wouldn't give it up to go back to work, maybe if I had to but otherwise, no way - I love my freedom of movement and the challenge of making a new way of living a real life on my own.

Gun Ban

Have you heard about the proposed gun ban in San Francisco? They think that taking all of the guns away from the law abiding citizens will solve the crime rate in that city by the bay - Again the left is try to solve problems using an agenda that will, in the end, destroy the city. Even the left doesn't want destruction, they just want to enslave the populace.

Gun confiscation is just one more way the liberal left wants to control the population of this country - this how it started in Europe and look what happened there. Another example of the results of a gun ban is Washington D.C. The murder rate has increased three times since the ban went into effect. Washington and Chicago are ranked in the top eight in the country for violent crime. Chicago instituted the ban in 1980's.

Australia did the gun ban country wide and now they have a crime rate that is rising at an alarming rate. They can't figure it out - they took all of the guns from the law abiding citizens but the crime rate didn't go down. Strange.

Ray 'school bus' Nagin tried to confiscate all of the weapons that law abiding citizens had to stop the criminals from attacking police, what police there was, in New Orleans after Katrina hit that city - what was he thinking? Even some of Nagins police force was involved in the looting. Maybe this what Nagin had in mind, take all of the guns from the citizens and that way he and his police can steal everything for them selves. That way they won't have to share any of the loot with the common criminals.

The left is always looking for some way to reduce the population to it's lowest common denominator. This way they will be controllable and criminals, like Nagin, will have free reign to do what the liberals do best, loot and steal from the common citizen while he is helpless to defend himself.

A court order stopped his rampage after the lame stream media, by accident, caught the thugs of Nagins and the Louisiana National Guard on tape kicking down doors of helpless citizens. They even had to returned the guns to their rightful owners. Justice!

Where was the outrage from the left about the rights of people being marginalized and disenfranchised by Nagins actions. Maybe it was because the thugs hit neighbor hoods that were not effected by the storm and people wanted to defend their property and animals. Does this sound familiar? What happened in countries like Russia and the whole Soviet empire when the communists took over, Marxist socialists - take everything that you have a divide it up so everyone has nothing, except those in power. Nagin Feinstein

Senator Dianne Feinstein has the same attitude. She has tried three times in the past to take all of the guns from the citizens of San Francisco when she was mayor of that city - Senator Feinstein said that if she would have had the votes, she would have forcible taken the guns from every law abiding citizen under the gun ban that was proposed by the Clinton administration. She and other Marxist liberals, like herself, have made it clear that they want this for the whole country.

Who are these people?

Does anyone think the liberal left Democrats have the best interest of this country at heart?