President or Comedian

Obama spends so much time on television doing comic routines it gives cause to pause and wonder if he really wants to be a comedian instead of president.  Ten thousand clowns out of work and he is being funny?

I now feel more safe

Its really great to have a president that can actually kill a fly.  It makes me feel so much safer now.  The primary duty of the president as Commander-in-Chief is to keep us safe.  Well, he did just that by killing a fly.  To paraphrase Bernie Goldberg the national news media slobbered all over themselves to report the president had killed a fly.  You would have thought he had killed Osama bin Laden.  The national news media is so in bed with Obama that they should get a motel room.

WATER

You don't realize how important water is until you have none, or at best very little.  We have a good deep (380 feet) water well with a 525-gallon pressure tank, all automated to serve the household, the barn, watering troughs for the cows, and the yard sprinkler system.  So what's the problem?

 

About 10:oo p.m. Friday evening my wife announced there was no water pressure at the kitchen sink.  I immediately went to the pumphouse.  Water was running all around the pumhouse and pressure tank.  The submersible pump in the well was running full force trying to fill the tank.  I immediately saw there was a major break in the water line piping directly underneath the tank.  I threw the circuit breaker switch to the pumphouse and shut everything down.  Using a flashlight I dug down underneath the tank and found the source of the leak, a break in the 1-1/2 x 6 nipple on the upstream side of the gate valve that controls the water flow to the sprinkler system.  I couldn't do anything that evening so we were without water, except for the one-gallon jugs of water stored in the garage for just such an emergency.

The next morning no water to speak of.  I spent a good bit of the day digging out all the dirt from underneath and around the end of the tank so I would have room to work.  A lot of digging.  Not easy.  Lots of roots.  Finally I got it dug out to where I could get down and do a close inspection.  I determined it was a job I could not do by myself.  If I was 30 years old, no problem.  Since I'm 80 past I know my physical limitations.  About 2:00 p.m. I called my good neighbor and friend, James.  He and his teenage son, Austin, came to have a look.  James said they could fix it, but had to take another son, Cameron, to a baseball meeting that afternoon.  They came back about 7:30 that evening and worked until about 10:00.  They replaced the broken  pipe nipple, cleaned up the gate valve, and re-installed to where we had water to the house, barn, and cows.

The next morning I got up at 7:00 a.m. and thirty minutes later was at the pumphouse digging a trench to uncover the water line to the sprinkler system so the 1-1/2 PVC pipe could be bent enough to engage the connector to the connection end on the down stream side of the gate valve.  Not easy.  Lots of roots.  I got the pipe connected, but was unable to tighten it enough to keep it from leaking a little.  I just don't have the strength.  James and another grown son, Ryan, came by this afternoon and tightened it up for me so now everything is back working like it is supposed to and without leaking.  Now we have water for the entire system.  

Its great to have good neighbors and friends.

 

REFORM

Obama is busily instigating all kinds of reform.  Here are a few reforms I would like to see:

*  Anyone filing to run for President of the United States of America should be required to present and make public a legal birth certificate to establish his/her natural born status as required by the Constitution.

•  Presidents should not be allowed to appoint czars to oversee any segment of the private free enterprise system or educational institutions.

•  Presidential executive orders, except in cases of extreme national security threat, should not become effective for 30 days after issuance, and must be ratified by Congress within 60 days else they become null and void.  Effective executive orders can be nullified any time by a majority vote of Congress. 

•  Term limits.  We have term limits for the Presidency so why not for Congress and the Supreme Court?  Eight years is enough for Congress and twelve years for the Supreme Court.

•  Pay limits for Congress.  Their annual pay and perks for each Congressional term should be reduced by a  percentage that the national budget deficit is of the gross national product.  If the budget deficit is 10% of the gross national product, then their pay for that term should be reduced 10%.

*  Politicians should be made legally accountable for the statements they make during a campaign versus what they actually do once elected.

*  Spouses and children of elected politicians should not be allowed to serve as lobbyists for any purpose, or to serve on the boards of corporations.

*  A photographic ID and proof of eligibility should be required to vote in any election.

*  The Provisional Ballot should be eliminated.  Its insanity.

•  A legal birth certificate or work visa establishing legal residency should be required for employment.

•  Voter registration must be accomplished by the applicant by personal appearance before a legal registrar with proof of citizenship and eligibility.

*  Public money should not be used to fund or help fund community organizing organizations such as ACORN.

  

CZARS?

What is all this "czar" business?

Obama appoints a car czar, an education czar, a pay czar, and other czars.  Who are these people?  What are their functions?  What powers do they have?  Who has any oversight over them other than Obama?  Where are the checks and balances?

This all sounds too ominous to me.  Russia had czars.  Why do we need czars?

Technological versus Societal Evolution

It's amazing that technology builds on itself and advances exponentially whereas society does not build on itself from one generation to the next and only advances linearly.  In fact, the societal linear chart looks much like a saw blade.  It advances with each generation only to fall back to the baseline with each following generation. We as societies never seem to learn the lessons of our forefathers.  We're doomed to make the same mistakes over and over with each generation.  Too bad we can't advance exponentially like technology does.

Case in point:  The people in control of our United States of America Government are making the same mistakes made by Germany in the 1920's and 1930's.  A charismatic smooth talking man has ascended  to the most powerful position in the land with the full backing of his party members that control all aspects of the government.  He has gained the unconditional allegiance of the national media and the labor unions.  In less than six months in power he gained majority control of major strategic business enterprises such as insurance, financial institutions, and automotive manufacturing while trying to gain control of the nation's health care business.  All the while he and his compatriots have leveraged us into an unsustainable debt, the greatest of all the history of the nation, which will take years to liquidate while children not yet born will bear onerous taxes to repay.  The Chinese, our primary debt holders, are beginning to get nervous.  In addition the Federal Reserve, at the behest of the government, is printing large sums of worthless paper money which is bringing us inflation of unheard proportions .  Notice the price increases in everything lately?

The men of history that have had the greatest impact on the world have been men that gained control over large populations and exploited them for purposes other than the good of mankind.  We appear to be treading the same pathway.  Like Germany earlier in the previous century our population mostly shrugs its collective shoulders and we hear refrains of helplessness and hopelessness.  We had better wake up soon and take positive action to correct the situation, else we'll end in disaster somewhat similar to Germany at the end of World War II.  Can anyone say CHINA?    

Presidential Education

I think it is interesting to note the formal education of each of our presidents.

Washington - no formal education
J. Adams - Harvard
Jefferson - William & Mary
Madison - Princeton (College of New Jersey)
Monroe - William & Mary
J. Q. Adams - Harvard
Jackson - no formal education
Van Buren - Kinderhook Academy

Harrison - Hampden-Sydney College

Tyler - William & Mary

Polk - University of North Carolina

Taylor - no formal education

Filmore - No formal education

Pierce - Bowdoin College

Buchanan - Dickson College

Lincoln - no formal education

Johnson - no formal education

Grant - West Point

Hayes - Kenyon College, Harvard Law School

Garfield - William & Mary

Arthur - Union College

Cleveland - no formal education

Harrison - Miami University at Oxford, Ohio

Cleveland - no formal education (served twice)

McKinley - Allegheny College

T. Roosevelt - Harvard

Taft - Yale 

Wilson - Princeton

Harding - Ohio Central College

Coolidge - Amherst College

Hoover - Stanford

F. D. Roosevelt - Harvard, Columbia

Truman - University of Kansas City Law School

Eisenhower - West Point

Kennedy - Harvard

Johnson - SW Texas State Teachers College

Nixon - Whitter College, Duke Law School

Ford - University of Michigan, Yale Law School

Carter - U.S. Naval Academy

Reagan - Eureka College

G.W. Bush - Yale

Clinton - Georgetown, Oxford, Yale Law School

George Bush = Yale, Harvard Business School

Obama - Occidental College, Columbia, Harvard Law School

I think there has been an over abundance of Ivy League (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia) educated presidents.  An air of elitism permeates from these educational institutions.  Our really great presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman, Reagan) had no formal education or were educated at small relatively unknown colleges.

Now we have a president that is not only an elitist but also a socialist Muslim.  He goes to Egypt to emote about his Muslim background and apologize to  the world for America.  I heard a comedian on TV say, "He should paint WE APOLOGIZE on the belly of Air Force One and fly all over the rest of the world at 500 feet."  All humor has to have an element of truth to be humorous. This humor is pathetically funny.