8/28/2008

A Piece of the pie

As I cannot seem to be able to figure out how to link to another blog, I have COPIED the below text from another bloggers site. It is called, "Home on the range". You can find it, and it is always a wonderful read. The below is an essay she just wrote recently and needs to be read by every single person in this country! Even those rabid Obama supporters. It will show you and them why dividing up the pie without making it bigger ain't going to work. And so:

Yes, I lured you in here thinking you'd see a piece of home made pie, but what I have to write tonight is personal, and it pertains to the election, and the future of our great country. If you've had your fill of political blogs and the news, come back in a day or two for something lighter. But sometimes there are things I have to say, even if only I read it.

"Most Americans don’t want much. They don’t want the whole pie. There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach. The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." - Michelle Obama

Let's all work harder to share the wealth with our less able brothers Michelle believes, while wearing a $900 suit. I too ponder on such sentiments, usually when I've re-read Atlas Shrugged, a book perhaps meant to be historical but becoming more prophetic.

The present state of our nation, the political events, and ideals of today are so grotesquely irrational and so disturbingly true to the base points of the book, that it can't be anything else.

If any of you haven't read Atlas Shrugged it is a book written decades ago that shows what happens to the world when the men of the mind - the originators and the innovators in every line of rational endeavor - go on strike and vanish, to protest again an altruist-collectivist Society, what our generation more popularly calls "the nanny state".

There are two key passages in the book that sum it up well. The first is a statement of John Galt:
"There is one kind of man who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished and have presented demands to the world claiming to be indispensable - except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do, and what happens they they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Tagger. This is the mind on strike."

The second passage, which explains the title of the novel is:

"Mr. Rearden, said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders, what you you tell him to do?"

"I. . . I don't know. what . could he do" What would you tell him?"

"To shrug".

My work has value. My mind has value. I won't do it for free. those that do that, are amateurs (coming from the Latin amator - meaning lover), not professionals. As a professional I expect to be paid. Nor will I do it to pay the rent and gas and food of those who aren't willing to put forth their own effort to the best of their own ability. A hard working person, down on their luck, I will help in many ways. I've added to the tip jar of many a hard working blogger, caught up in exploding cars, dysfunctional pets, and bad experiences with Comcast. I've helped people in my community, neighbors, suddenly and through no fault of their own, out of a job, with food and/or child care while they went to an interview; with assistance with crafting a new resume and getting them some job contacts. Helping those that actively worked to help themselves.

But do not ask me to support, through work or taxes or even my time, which has value of it's own, a class of people who only wish to take, because they feel they are owed it for breathing, for crossing the border illegally, or for being a specific race, creed or religion.

Now Mrs. Obama and her party say that the "rest of us" will have to give up a little more so there can be more for those that "don't have". I was getting a hair cut while out of town and the person cutting said she was voting for Obama because then she'd have "free day car for my kids and free health care for my kids". (she had multiple kids with various fathers I gathered from the pictures and her conversation). I replied "great. . now who is going to PAY for that day care and health care?"

She looked puzzled.

I replied "I AM. So that will mean I won't get a $50 haircut, I'll get a $11 haircut somewhere else, and less often, and forget the highlights and all the rest, I won't be able to afford it any more with the increase in my taxes. So will most of your customers. So you'll make half the money and won't have money for gas to work. But Obama will get you free health care. Good luck on the eating thing"

She failed to note the irony and as she had a pair of shears pointed at my head I felt it prudent not to expound any longer.

As this election looms, we are in a struggle between capitalism and socialism attractively packaged as "change". With someone and their supporting party, talking of controls and "sacrifices", taxes, and coercions they would impose, what arbitrary powers they would enact, what "social remedies" they would hand out, without really telling us, the American people, what groups these gains would be expropriated. What they do imply, though with their vague promises of health care, and free education and free this and free that, is clear. That is, with the help of increased taxes and more from the pockets of the working classes, their power over a nation's economy, any kind or degree of said power, rests on the basic principal of statism, the principal that the working man's life belongs to the state.

Obama talks about Change. Obama talks about freedom. Freedom in the political sense means freedom from government coercion. It does NOT mean freedom from an employer, from a landlord, freedom from the laws of supply and demand, or freedom from the laws of nature. Laws which do not guarantee prosperity to every man.

It means freedom from the coercive power of the state. Freedom to use your abilities the best you can to craft a life for yourself to the best of your ability. It means freedom to protect that which you have earned, from other people, in a manner that's true to the Constitution that founded this country. It means freedom to own a weapon responsibly. Certainly if Obama and Biden have their way, I wouldn't own a gun, making it even easier for someone to take what I have at the point of theirs, be it literal or figuratively.

The American political system was not based on "sharing the pie". It was based on a moral principal that defined what made America great; on the principal of man's inalienable right to his own life - meaning, the principal that man has the right to exist for his own sake. Not sacrificing himself or his or her family to others nor sacrificing others to himself. Social interactions are not done by handouts but by trading, men dealing with others as traders, by voluntary choices to mutual benefit.

The American economy, was not built up by "sharing". What is unique in America is we were the first to use the phrase "to make money", no other language has that phrase used in that manner, in history, men had always thought of riches as a static quality to be seized, begged inherited, shared or looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to truly grasp that wealth has to be created. Created with the efforts of individuals, who improved our world through hard work, and effort and earned money from it as a byproduct.

What this "change" appears to me to be is a social system based on the "nanny state", an altruist society, with it's code of self sacrifice, rather than the building of individual wealth, the antithesis of capitalism. It is socialism, which, in all it's mutated forms, fascism, Nazism, Communism, treats us as a sacrificial animal to be plundered for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the state. The final product of which would be a country in which the best and the brightest put down their thinking caps, and let their talents languish, as they derive no personal benefit from it.

A society in which, after giving and giving, so that all have a "piece of the pie", the best and the brightest, as well as the hardest working, will finally shrug.
Posted by Brigid at 7:11 PM

Now it is me again talking, Everett. I did read Atlas Shrugged when I was 18-19 years old and sitting in a frozen Quonset hut at the bottom of the world for 7 months. At that time in my life I was NOT a very good judge nor participant in life, only a few short years had elapsed. In the intervening 50 years, I had again read the book and it is where I developed my sense of Conservatism as opposed to the Socialistic, Way Left, Nanny state contrivance that professes to be our "government"! We had best look out who we vote for this time around because if it is Obama the only "change" you are going to see besides higher taxes and more give away programs, is the few coins left in your pocket! BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!!! TIFN

8/26/2008

Pictures of East Beach






Well those are the pictures that I couldn't figure out how to get on here, so I just took pictures of the picture an here they are, I hope! Right now I see nothing but a bunch of letters and numbers.
Mr. chicken anonymouse: This is the last anyone will see of your comments. On the good advice of some very smart friends, I refuse to enable you to continue to spew your invective here. If you care to clean up your thought processes, and post as someone with a real name, even if it is phony, you will be able to as long as you can be civil to all concerned. These pictures were taken back in the late 1930's and early forties,easily discernible by the cars up on the road. Nothing here is "photo shopped" or touched up in anyway as I don't have the technical smarts or the equipment or the desire to try and fool a fool!
Well here goes nothing! Hope they appear!TIFN
 

 

 

 


These were supposed to come through with the others, but didn't!
I had put captions on each picture but they didn't come through either. As you can see, there is a hell of a lot more beach in these pictures than there is down there right now. In the one looking north down the Neck Road, you can see the old original beach house that got taken out by Hurricane Carol in 1954. And a hell of a lot more dune and beach grass than there is at present.
"Two or three more paths"? Pull your head out of your ass next ime you go down there and count them. Or is that the problem? Can't count any higher than 3?
The ones with the horse and cart show that the beach extended way out there, or else that horse is a "Jesus" horse and is able to walk on water! And tow a cart full of seaweed at the same time!
So enjoy the pictures anyone who cares to! TIFN
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8/05/2008

Beach/Road Redux --- Again!

Well I'm sure this post will drag that guy who knows all about the beaches here on BI out of the woodwork to vilify and castigate me on my poor memory! Oh well, here goes.

Have you all perchance been down the Neck Road anytime in the last month or so? Have you happened to notice that the road to the north of the Trustum Dodge monument is now located practically ON the beach? I'm not talking about the beach right in front of the monument, but too the left when viewed from the road. If you stop and get out of your car to look, you will see the the minuscule bit of beach that used to be there is now gone! Imagine that! I wonder where it went? At anytime except dead low tide, the water is right up there next to the road! Got any predictions as to what is going to happen when the next good Nor'easter hit us?

And while you are there go slowly down the Neck Road and count all the NEW little paths that have been opened up this summer by the visiting populace! They climb over the dunes in new places while no more than ten steps away is one of the older more established paths!

I would like to know why NO TOWN COUNCIL in the last twenty years has taken it on themselves to DO something about the problem of people on the dunes!! The problem is NOT GOING TO STOP until drastic measures are taken to stop it and a FEW designated spots are maintained for access to the beach. If you can't see that there is a problem now, then your head is located in a place where the sun never shines and it smells really bad!

So Mr and Mrs Council Person, if you can't figure out what to do all on your own, send a letter or an email, or better yet, an emissary to one of the other beach front communities in RI or even on over to Nantucket or Martha's Vine Yard to see how they deal with the problem!

With all the fiscal woes of this State, when the inevitable comes to pass and the road is washed out just like Spring Street was in 1991 I believe it was, They will probably tell us to go "pound sand" as it were, because there is no money to fix that road. Has anybody down there in the town hall ever heard the term, "proactive" as opposed to "reactive"? I know I am pissing up a stump and NOTHING WILL BE DONE, but I feel better now! TIFN

8/01/2008

Guns for kids!

Well my brandy new Sig Sauer Mosquito .22 cal arrived today and what a sweet little piece it is. It is threaded on the front end of the barrel. Gee, I wonder whatever that is for:)? It was bought along with a couple thousand rounds of ammo to begin teaching my three preteen granddaughters and two grandsons how to use a handgun properly. Granddaughter number 4 will have to wait a few years, she is only 18 monnth's old.

After a little "classroom indoctrination" in the cellar, at the reloading bench, into the finer points of gun handling and where and how to point it, and most importantly, why and when to point it, we will then move on to how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble the weapon. If you can't do those simple tasks,safely and efficiently, you have no reason to be handling and shooting these things. As we all know, there are too many incidents of accidental shootings because of unfamiliarity with any weapon, be it pistol, shotgun, rifle or even a six inch blade!

Then when they are comfortable with these rote actions we will move on to the actual shooting of the piece. We have no shooting range out here on the Island, so we have to resort to using the bottom of a sand pit with a nice soft hill side to absorb the hot lead. Also being down there in the bottom, hopefully any errant shot that might hit a bigger piece of rock will be deflected into the side gravel banks. Hopefully after a few boxes of rounds they will be on the road to proficiency with this weapon. Then we will move on up to his, Mosquitos, big brother, Mr. Sig Model 1911 S/S .45 cal.!

I can hear the comments pouring in now, and most of them in the negative vein. Like why would you want those kids to know how to shoot a gun? What if they hurt someone with it? Oh God, are they going to bring it too school? Girls don't NEED to know how to use a gun! Oh yeah? They need to know how to use one a lot more than the boys! How many stories do you see on the TV or the radio every day about someone abducting a young girl or teenager? How many of them are ever found alive and unharmed? Other than Elizabeth Smart, not to many of them. So don't be so damned fearful of every person who has a gun on their person. If he/she is a law abiding person, you'll never know they had it. If it is criminal with one, every one will know he has it after he uses it to gain whatever had taken his fancy at the moment! Maybe your life! A lot of the kooks have absolutely no regard for any human life much less yours! So maybe that good guy over in the corner watching this unfold will take action with his concealed weapon and save yours, as well as other lives!

So I am going to give my girls and boys the mental tools as well as the physical ones needed to protect themselves and their loved ones when it comes right down to it. For all you know, I could have a concealed carry weapon stuck in the back of my pants and you'd never know it. But it would be there if the time ever came when it needed to be deployed. The right to own, use, and carry a weapon isn't worth a rats ass if it is locked up in a gun safe at home with a cable through the trigger guard and the ammo in the basement in another locked box! It has to be where it is going to be accessible when the pooh hits the rotating airfoil! That old robber dude isn't going to wait for you to run and get your piece and get it loaded so you can scare him off before he blows your ass away! And don't be too complacent just because of where we live. All kinds of weird folks come visiting out here. Just look at all the NY license plates!TIC!!! TIFN