More on Kilowatts

After reading all the story and the comments in the BIT on Friday about the cost of electricity here on BI, I just had to drop in with this short observation.
The last time we had a full blown "energy crisis" here in the US, back in the 70's, we, Verna and I, decided after a lot of digging and homework to put up the WECS that still stands in our yard. Over the intervening 27 years this thing, and it's previous incarnation, the Jacobs windmill, has provided this house with a few HUNDRED THOUSAND kilowatts of energy! I have managed to actually lose the book that I recorded weekly totals in for 19 of those years, so I have no written records to fall back on, but the above estimate is a pretty fair one.

Just since the new inverter with all sorts of new innovations was installed in the winter, we have produced over 1800 KW's! For the month just past the total was 501 kws! That was enough to TOTALLY cover our usage from BIPCO if it had all been directly applied to our appliances. But as we are not a "stand alone" system, some of it goes back to the power company, and some we use directly.

Now the investment 27 years ago was a lot less than it would be now, but wind energy IS NOW AND ALWAYS WILL BE, a viable adjunct to power generation and usage here on BI. I don't give a rats ass what all the EXPERTS say, it is a workable technology! I think 27 years of daily contact with the technology should lend SOME credence to that statement.

So somewhere down the line, and in the not to distant future, a lot of people are going to have to give up their tightly held views of "view sheds" in order to be able to,"view-their-sheds" in the dark of night! I thought the comment by Kay Lewis was a very telling one. They are the people who would have an unrestricted view of those proposed WECS were they to become reality. They, apparently, unlike most of us, have open minds able to assess the future and its needs, and don't let personal feelings cloud and distort those ideas.

But while waiting for those gigantic ones to appear and a cable from them to be diverted to BI, (Yeah, RIGHT!!), what to do? If I was just coming to the realization that I needed to do SOMETHING, I would get in contact with the Bergy company out in Norman Oklahoma and see what models of WECS they have for sale. Then I would "hie me hence" to the Town Council and work on them to lift the STUPID RESTRICTIONS that were put in place by a previous council! Even "they" had to know that this day was coming, and here it is! Without much doubt in this feeble mind, I believe this little imbroglio is going to last a lot longer than the last one!

So in order to relieve the burden on your pocket book, don't be waiting for some pie in the sky innovation like wave generation and BIG MILLS to appear and save us all from 'Those Arabic Devils', take some of those pennies and cover the roof of your house with the new generation of solar panels and get ANY SIZED wind generator you can afford and start doing something with some sort of reality attached to it! TIFN

Immigration

Well this one is sure to piss off a few people, but I'm going to tell it like I see it. The Governor of RI has begun a process that just MAY spread all across this country! But not if the ACLU and all the rest of very liberal and vociferous lefties have their way.

What I'm talking about is Governor Carceri's (sp)executive order telling all employers in the State to check the citizenship status of all their employees. If they are not ALL here legally, "they are going to be deported back to where they came from"! And it is about time someone started to show some guts and take some action! The federal government doesn't seem to really do anything about the problem except mouth platitudes and pander to the lobby groups while filling everyone full of crap!

So right off the bat, the leader of the Hispanic republicans in RI quit his post in protest! Well good for him! Go and get another real job and pay some taxes if you have been or are an ILLEGAL ALIEN!

Just exactly why is it that people can just come and sneak into this country, and then take advantage of all of our social services, fill up the hospitals and schools with more illegal kids, get free medical care, food stamps, pay no taxes, and send a lot of the money back home,and when someone protests, use their NON EXISTENT, so called "rights" under OUR constitution to claim that all these things are theirs and that they are "entitled to them" just by the fact that they are here? The fact of the matter is, THEY HAVE NO LEGAL RIGHTS! In most other countries of the world, they would get kicked right out on their asses with a big boot to the aforementioned anatomical location!

I am NOT focused on just Mexican, Guatemalan, or other Central American natives. If you don't have a problem with American Indian descendants, then you shouldn't have a problem with these people either. I say that because if they are not pure blooded N/C/S Americans, they have mixed blood, and those "donors" came from Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries in Europe that were mostly white last time I looked.

I just say to send them ALL back to their point of origin and let them do it the legal way! If it is going to take them 10 to 15 years to do it, and they don't like the waiting period, gang together in your OWN COUNTRY, and get it straightened out instead of running away! Although I guess that's what most of us did way back in the beginning! I think one of my ancestors was trying to prove he didn't kill and eat one of the Kings deer when he decided to emigrate back in the very early 1600's!

So come on Governor, don't back down from all these loud mouths who talk a good game, but when it comes time to put up (THEIR money) or shut up, they seem to fade into the woodwork! And the next time that guy from the ACLU starts running his mouth, remind him of what the 4 letters of his organisation mean, AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union!! NOT ILLEGAL Alien Civil Liberties Union! Then kick his turncoat ass out the door to!! TIFN Okay Cyber man, it's your turn. I promise I'll leave your post up!

One (1) example of why Medicare and the SSA is going down the tubes!

When I retired from active military service after 20 years and came back to the Island to live, I bought a very small, about 200-250 customer LPG business from my cousin who wanted to quit. So for about $10K we began. One of the benefits of serving for 20 years in the military was the ability to get free medical care for me and my family for life. Kids only until they were 18. Being located where we were, made it very inconvenient to run to Newport every time you got a cut or one of the kids got sick, so we decided to invest in some sort of medical care that would take care of us very locally. So we joined the RI Blue Cross program and paid to it, for 33 years, some pretty damned huge fees to get this convenience to us. Over the last 33 years, the total has finally tripped over $1.12M. Why so high? because we chose to go with the very best program they had, that we could afford, in order to cover all possible illness's.

So there we were cruising along and only had to use the coverage a few times. One hysterectomy, not mine, a couple of heart stent implants, and numerous minor accidents, broken bones, sniffles etc.

Then one day not so long ago, I managed to reach the ripe old age of 65 and another check arrived from the government, telling me that I was to receive this money for having paid into the system since 1956 the money called, Social Security taxes! Wonderful says I to myself, "found money"! I thought it was long gone! But I thought at the time that I really didn't need it, at least not yet, as we had put away some money, had a good sized 401K and my military pay that would continue until I croaked. Plus I was doing that socially accepted practice of doing "consulting" for my former business and was receiving a small monthly stipend for that service. Oh yeah, I had to fill lots of 20 pound LPG gas grill bottles also on a daily basis, but I do digress.

In the middle of the page with the notification of the largess I was to receive from our rich Uncle Sam, was a sentence that said I was to have $98 a month deducted from my check in order to pay the fees for Medicare! I was to be AUTOMATICALLY enrolled, I wasn't asked, I was told I was enrolled, thanks to the foresight and promises of past politicians who thought that every person in the US regardless of wealth or lack thereof should be accommodated at the slop trough of public money! Screw the thought of where the money was to come from in the future to pay for their largess, just promise the folks back home unlimited access to the national treasury and let the chips fall where they may. Anything to enable themselves to stay there at the trough with their snouts shoved in so deeply they could hardly breath! Oops! digressing again!

Now this $98 a month was going to replace that approximately $2600 a month that had been the private cost to us before hand. See where this is going? So now I have my "Uncle" vying with RI BC/BS to see just who will "NOT HAVE TO PAY" for any medical bills I might incur! That's what happened! BC/BS knew damned well when I had crossed that 65 yr. threshold and still they greedily collected that annual fee from us, for FIVE years, knowing full well that they weren't going to be the primary payer as I had also joined in at the national slop though! So finally after 33 years they ejected us from the best program and put us in some other one that picks up only PART of any fees that medicare won't pay! And as yet they have felt no need to refund any portion of those fees collected from us for the past 5 years. No wonder half the "Wheels" up there are under indictment for one thing or another!

So I came across this news clip of the Administrator of the GAO, Government Accounting Office, (who is the fiscal watchdog for the "Entitlement give away boys club" e'er, that would be Congress in case you didn't know,) who has given up trying to talk to those boys about rectifying their ways, and is going directly to the public in the form of business owners, large and small, and just generally, US. He has been telling it like it really is, and what it "is", is that if they don't do some fixing starting right now, the economic future of this country as a viable entity is in absolute jeopardy of ceasing to exist!! Right now, my grandchildren have one for sure thing to look forward to for the next 75 years, and that is, that they are going to have to pay for all the entitlements handed out so zealously by the previous, present, and future STUPID, and GREEDY politicians we continue to elect. Mr. B Hussein Obama, and Shrillary will do NOTHING but continue to contribute to this slide into fiscal death! I do NOT exclude Mr. McCain from this group either. The only person I see who is trying to get handle on things locally is Our Governor Mr. Carceri (sp)!

It is Saturday morning about 5 am when I started this rant. I think I'll put a full bottle of Baileys in my coffee and start the day off right! TIFN!

More Sand Dunes!!

Went out for a Sunday afternoon drive yesterday to continue to do my part in wasting some of our precious natural resources. Coming out of the Neck I looked over at the dunes and there perched on the very top of one of the bigger ones was a group of people numbering about eight. There they were, waving their arms about and taking in the view. And I'm sure loosening up a few more roots of the dune grass. Moving along the road, I come to a big white van parked there with this name emblazoned on the side; "Northeastern University, Department of Environmental Sciences". So it just made me wonder which department it was that goes around contributing to the distruction of dunes! And did we invite them? Or did they just show up of their own accord? Wind, waves, and our own home grown vandals do enough to them without importing them from wherever! TIFN

Big Hole in the Road

Well I see Lisa Sprague's cry for fiscal responsibility fell on deaf ears as usual. I guess those "upstate" folks just had to spend all that money to fix something that was not broken. True, it will be nice for the front street all the way to the BIG to have nice sidewalks on both sides of the road, but all that dough spent on the Bridgegate Square renovation could have better spent by finishing out the sidewalk from in front of the City Drug down to the Old Harbor dock. Now there is a section that is in terrible shape! While out riding around on my "ped" and sticking my nose in other peoples business, I have seen three people take a dive to the ground between Ernies and the next building up the street. Can't remember what it is called this week.

The rains last night, and the ones to come later this week have already worked its relentless, continuing havoc on more of the Neck Road right beside the Trustum Dodge monument. Well I guess we have to wait for the waves to actually begin to break over the road before anyone will behoove themselves to get moving on some sort of preservation of what is left of the dunes there.

Actually, the dunes that used to be there are long gone!! Go down there at low tide and sit on the one remaining seat. As you look out to sea, you will see three large rocks sticking up from the seabed. They are almost in a straight line from the beach outward. See that one the furthest out? When I was between 1 year old and 10-11 yrs. old, that was where the edge of the water was located! My Mom had a big-assed old Packard touring car, about 20 years old at the time, that she used to park right where the monument is now. It would sit there pulled well off the road and perpendicular to it! That thing was about 24 feet long! We would gather up all the beach paraphenalia and make a mad dash to climb over two dunes of black sand, and then three lesser ones made up of white and black sand before even reaching the beach proper! Then it was another few yards the waters edge. Now in my lifetime, I'm now tripping over 70, the beach has totally disappeared. How much longer do you think it will be before those destructive waves will be crashing on the road ?

An alternative to building up next too the road would be to put a nice big long new breakwater from the Old Harbor all the way to Mansion Beach or further. That would stop the big waves, and make one hell of a nice protected harbor for all those yachtsmen who spend no money , TIC, to drop anchor! Wha chu 'tink?? TIFN

Pennies from heaven

Some of you folks who live here on the Island year round may have noticed that my WECS, Wind Energy Conversion System, otherwise known as a windmill has been in the "Bent" position for the last two and a half months. Most of the time it had been inactive was spent waiting for the Manufacturers rep to come and see what the matter was. Well they finally showed up one day in early January and took the guts out of the inverter and sent them to Norman OK to be repaired. We decided at that time to put out the money for a brand new inverter that is supposed to be about ten times more efficient than the old one which is 15 years old. So the new one arrived about three weeks ago and was finally installed yesterday, and the switch was flipped to commence those above mentioned "pennies from heaven" raining down into my oh so empty coffers! It was started at 1700 and as of today at the same time, it has made ALL the juice needed by this house for about two and one half days!! The meter reads a nice satisfying 52 KwH's produced in 24 hours! Hot Damn, those electrons are pouring into the basement in torrents! Just have to remember to go down there with rubber boots on in case there are any stray ones oozing around on the floor! TIFN

Rogers Ramblings

Did anyone else happen to see Roger Clements little appearance at a congressional hearing a couple days ago? Just what the hell was he doing there? What in hell ever motivated those idiots to call him there in the first place? Are they in some way trying to "protect our youth" from the evils of steroid use? It didn't work the last time they tried it, so other than getting themselves a lot more face time, I wonder just what it is that makes them tick?

The part that really frost's my butt is that they are spending all this money and time on something they have no business sticking their collective noses in! Is not 'Major League Baseball" a private enterprise? They have hundreds of rules about how to play the game and what you can and cannot do as a member of these teams. So if one of their players wants to stick needles in his ass to grow bigger muscles, just how does that come under the pervue of the US congress? It is up to the owners of these teams to discipline their transgressors.

If it was up to me, they would sign a contract when they first begin their careers that says,"if you use illegal stuff ONE (1) time, you will be fired and can never play again in this league". Do you suppose something like that will ever happen? Nah! Not in my lifetime, or yours. TIFN

And THIS MINORITY is selecting the next Dem POTUS candidate?

I hope the rest of the people in the US have at least a chance of voicing their own views at the ballot box this fall, and NOT a rabid few in the hinterlands!

Here are some interesting numbers from the Iowa Caucuses:

If you listened to the Main Stream Media, there was a TERRIFIC TURNOUT for
Democrats at the Iowa Caucuses AND MAJOR CHANGE is in the wind.

All FOUR of the TOP Republican Candidates EACH exceeded the TOTAL NUMBER OF
VOTES CAST for ALL Democrats.

In fact, it appears that NO Democrats even bothered to show up in Nine of
the 1781 Iowa Precincts. All 1781 Precincts reported Republican votes.

THERE WERE ALMOST 9 TIMES THE NUMBER OF VOTES CAST IN THE REPUBLICAN
CAUCUSES VERSES THE DEMOCRAT CAUCUSES.


Democrats Republicans

Obama4688 Huckabee40841

Edwards4194 Romney29949

Clinton4089 Thompson15904

Richardson298 McCain15559

Biden147 Paul11817

Dodd4 Guiliani4097

Kucinich0 Hunter524

Gravel0 Tancredo5

Total Votes:
13420 118696


WHY DIDN'T THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA REPORT THESE NUMBERS? THEY WOULDN'T BE
BIASED WOULD THEY? THEY WOULDN'T BE AFRAID THIS WOULD MAKE DEMOCRATS LOOK
BAD WOULD THEY?

Looks like it is time to change a popular phrase.

New version: "There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Main Steam Media Reports."
TIFN, The above was sent too me as an email. I didn't just dream it up on my own! Didn't have to!! The big long answer below wasn't authored by me either!! It came from an article on Pajamas Media and was posted by them from an author at The New Republic magazine. Don't know his name and cannot find the post on PJM anymore!

Beating a dead horse

I know I'm beating this dead horse and probably will continue to whip him but, here is one more reason to continue. Although I now see why my idea of not re-electing any incumbent will not work 'till everyone has an epifiny (sp)!

Once again, the power of pork to sustain incumbents gets its best demonstration in the person of John Murtha (D-PA). The acknowledged king of earmarks in the House gains the attention of the New York Times editorial board today, which notes the cozy and lucrative relationship between more than two dozen contractors in Murtha's district and the hundreds of millions of dollars in pork he provided them. It also highlights what roughly amounts to a commission on the sale of Murtha's power as an appropriator:

Mr. Murtha led all House members this year, securing $162 million in district favors, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. ... In 1991, Mr. Murtha used a $5 million earmark to create the National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence in Johnstown to develop anti-pollution technology for the military. Since then, it has garnered more than $670 million in contracts and earmarks. Meanwhile it is managed by another contractor Mr. Murtha helped create, Concurrent Technologies, a research operation that somehow was allowed to be set up as a tax-exempt charity, according to The Washington Post. Thanks to Mr. Murtha, Concurrent has boomed; the annual salary for its top three executives averages $462,000.

There’s been no report of Mr. Murtha’s profiting personally. “This is about jobs,” the congressman insists. But the Murtha operation — which has become a model for other entrepreneurial lawmakers — is a gross example of quid pro quo Washington. Every one of the 26 beneficiaries of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks in last year’s defense budget made contributions to his campaign kitty, a total of $413,250, according to the newspaper Roll Call.

I've written several times about Murtha's connections to Concurrent and other contractors, but Concurrent really exemplifies the way in which earmarks not only distort federal power, but also works to maintain incumbencies. Murtha created Concurrent as a vehicle for his pork power to reach back into his district. Setting it up as a tax-exempt charity allowed its revenues to remain in the district, rather than contributing to the same federal revenue that Murtha regularly raids. Its top execs make over $400,000 per year, a strange level for a "charity", and all of it coming from federal contracting where full multibid competiton comprised only 5.5% of their work in 2007.

In return for shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into his district with no opportunity for other companies to compete for the work, he gives a market advantage to his favorites -- and they return the favor. Knowing that Murtha is the only person who keeps them in business, and in Concurrent's case the reason for their existence at all, they churn out campaign funds in huge numbers for their pork king. Do you wonder why incumbents have a re-election rate of over 90%? This is the reason; people like Murtha get legal kickbacks in order to remain entrenched in power.

In any other context, Murtha would lose his job. If a businessman in the private sector received gifts like this from vendors, his company would kick him to the curb. Not so in Congress; on Capitol Hill, Murtha's colleagues on both sides of the aisle aspire to such low ethical behavior and compete to gain access to the federal treasury for their own political ambitions. And their constituencies reward them for bringing home pork and keep the vicious cycle in motion.

It will not stop until the constituents make it clear that they want Representatives and Senators who won't be bought or even rented. When people like John Kline and Jeff Flake stop being a small minority and gain access to the levers of power because the American electorate has sickened of the corruption and elected like-minded politicians, then the Congress may actually start accomplishing the people's business rather than existing as a sinecure for the compromised and incoherent.

The Sounds of Silence-Deafening isn't it?

- Ms. P, It has been well over 100 days now, and oil is now, $100 a barrel! What ever happened to our independence from foreign oil that YOU were going to deliver too us? Can't you get off your ass and motivate some of your cohorts into doing some "mandating" that would make all vehicles in the US flex fuel compatible by 20xx? Then maybe some of the small farmers in this country might have a chance to actually run in the black for a change! Oh Yeah, there will probably be some sort of rider attached to that bill that says only Archer-McDaniels can grow corn anymore!

- How is your program of ethics reform moving along? Dead in the water last I heard! Too many crooks who won't vote for it I guess huh? You could start with a "sign" program. You know like in kindergarten, plaster the halls of congress with big gaudy signs, in small words and big letters, describing what ethics are and how to introduce them into your daily lives. Oh damn, I forgot, most of you idiots can't read or by now you might have read the OTHER, "writing on the wall"!

- BTW, why don't you take Harry Reid and Richard Byrd into the cloak closet and give them a good talking to on the excess use of earmarks in their home states? I remember you made lots of grandiose statements about how you were going to fix that little problem also. Senile-ator Byrd just went over the 3 billion mark with his latest $36 million grab! How come no progress there? Oh yeah I see it now, you've got your hand deep in the jar and got such a big handful of bucks for your husbands projects that you can't get it out huh? Just like a monkey and the cookie jar!

- We are not exempt here in RI either. Sen. Jack Reed just got a quarter mil to restore the "John Brown House" Wasn't he the founder of Brown U.? Don't they own the house? How the hell come the taxpayer gets to foot the bill for the face lift?

- Why don't you in your capacity as speaker, try doing something about the the bloated and totally out of control "foreign aid" package? Why do we continually give money to countries that are actively plotting the downfall of the US? How can you people, in any semblance of rationality, continue to pour money down these rat holes? You say you do it to promote the good will of these people? You say you do it to get food aid to these poor people? You say you do it to stop genocide in these poor countries? etc. etc. etc.? Well let me tell you folks, IT AIN'T WORKING!!! The top dogs skim most of it right off the top and into bank accounts in Switzerland! And if you can't see that, it is because your head is shoved so far up your, err, dark smelly places, you will never see the light of day again! Just think what we could do with all that money if it stayed home! The first thing we could do with some of it, is to remove Joe Kennedy from the TV where he continues to blatantly shill for Hugo Chavez, Mr. CITGO himself!

-Time too quit. I have to go take a blood pressure pill before I pop a gasket. But in the meantime Ms P, hie thee hence in your Armani clad body, and your dhimmi covered head, and your wrinkle covered face, and connect with that other harridan Shrillary, and try to get at least one meaningful piece of work done in your, "House of Ill Repute" before you all go on summer hiatus. Yeah, good luck to us!! TIFN

Don' t Know How or Why She puts up with Me!

Well, December the 28th has come and gone, and I'm still here in the house with the same lady I married 45 years ago! 'Twas not an auspicious beginning, and all the nay sayers were predicting a very short run from the gate. HAH! Just shows, just how wrong some people can be. Of course the fact that she tried to "off" me twelve hours after the marriage might have been a contributing factor to their observations! Well, that's the story the way "I" tell it. Hers is a slightly different version. But as I am in control of the keyboard, you get my version.

We tied that knot about about 2100 on the 28th and in just about 12 hours later, I had my new bride out in the back yard and was instructing her on the proper way to load, aim, and fire a very nice Hi Standard single action, nine shot revolver. After standing beside her and getting the stance just right, and the noisy end of the gun pointed in the general direction of some old light bulbs placed on the side of a hill about twenty yards away, I said to her,"cock the hammer back till it locks, aim, finger on the trigger and gentle pull till it goes off". All was going according to plan till it got to the "pull the trigger" phase. At that point she turns to me and says, "I can't do this"! Finger is still on the trigger and loud end is now pointed at me when the sear released and a .22 cal slug was on it's way to meet me! Entered right thigh, exited through the knee. I went down just like I had been shot with a cannon! She hollers at me, "Stop doing that, it is not funny"! Well I finally convinced her I wasn't "funnin'" and we called the Local Rescue Squad. Off to the Doctors office for temporary repair and then off in a Navy helo dispatched from NAS Quonset Point to haul my still young Sailor ass off too the Newport Naval Hospital. While there for two weeks I was the center of attention as every single person in the whole place, doctors, nurses, corpsmen, and even patients, and the kitchen workers wanted a look at that guy whose wife initiated divorce proceeding with a gun! Most comments revolved around the theme of "disappointment" after the wedding night!

Okay, that's the story we told everybody, even all four of our kids for years till I finally had to 'fess up and tell what really happened. It's like this. We were out in the back but I was demonstrating my prowess with the aforementioned piece, in the art of "quick draw" and fire at those light bulbs that she was launching into the air for me to hit. As all of you gun nuts might surmise, my actions consisted of grabbing the butt of the gun, ahem---, holding the trigger back as the thumb pulled the hammer back and when the muzzle was aligned with the target, let the hammer slide out from under your thumb. Bang!! Bulb explodes! Hooray, I'm a Wyatt Earp!

Next try, procedure was going along fine till front sight, which I had forgotten to remove, snags on the holster, jerking thumb off hammer with the predictable result. Bullet went in right where I said it did and came out as also described previously, and with the same results. So, after recovery and release from the hospital, I was off too my new duty station up in Maine as a SERE instructor. For some reason they didn't want me any where near a rifle or a machine gun unless it had a BFA attached to the business end!

It has been an absolutely wonderful, loving, on both our parts, and satisfying relationship that produced four of the very best kids anyone could hope for. It had it's trying times, as in me going on various extended "cruises" for 9-12 months at a time, and leaving her in places where she knew no one, on her own, to raise those kids as best she could. As a young "Navy wife" she did it very well, and with outstanding results as far as I can see, for all the twenty years I was in! Living off the base and, "on the local economy" as it was called back then, she became adept at stretching our meager funds to the very limit. She has kept us out of the poor house for all this time together. Now, some of you who know her might understand why it is her vociferously voiced desire for the people who spend our tax dollars to be totally accountable for their actions!!

So Sweetheart, Happy 45th Anniversary and hope to see you for #46!! TIFN

Help! It snowed in my yard and I can't move!! Help!! Help!!

And with that title staring at you, you have some inkling of an idea of what kind of mentality has beseiged the people of this 2nd most corrupt state!

It snowed here a few days ago, anywhere from 2 inches to the 10 inches in the "higher elevations", that would be Foster-Gloster. But because the weather guessers didn't tell us soon enough,(they gave ONLY two days warning), how deep it would be in each individual yard across the state, why, we were totally unprepared for the unorganized chaos, is there any other kind?, that enveloped the whole state of RI. Apparently there was NOT EVEN ONE teleconference between ALL the business owners, The Governor and ALL his various minions, the National Guard, All the police departments, ALL school Superintendants and Principals AND Custodians, and every single plow driver in the state! And because of this gross miscarraige of group communication, every body decided to go home at the same time!! What the hell is going on here? Why didn't someone in authority TEXT ME and tell me just at exactly which minute of the day I was SUPPOSED to start heading home? How the hell am I supposed to be able to make that decision without at least 40 or 50 other PC people to help me with the deliberations? I am at a complete loss here trying to understand how the breakdown in communications was so total and so devastating to the people of RI. I also know that it is going to take many trips to the physche doctor to enable me to get past this latest influx of PTSD into my being! Thats Post Traffic Stress Disorder folks!

So, removing the tongue from the cheek I am here to ask, just when the hell did it happen that the people of this state, and country became such dissolute, lame brained, useless sheep, that have to be led by the nose in order to make a decision or a move on their own? When did they fall into the trap that they MUST have a 'Big Brother" to plan their every move? When was it that thinking for yourself, protecting yourself, fending for yourself, and every OTHER "for yourself" became passe in this culture? Somewhere, sometime in your life, you have to take a little responsibility for your self and your actions and quit pissing and moaning 'cause some one else wasn't there to wipe your nose and ass for you! Do it your own damn self! I tell you folks, I am really and truly fearful for the continued survival of this country and it's denizens. I can see our descendants morphing into H.G.Wells' Eloi and Moreloc's if they don't shitcan this Politically Correct bullshit mindset that has infected this whole population. Keep on leaning so far to the left, and sure enough,you are going to wind up on your ass, flat on your back, with a great big Jackboot grinding you into the dirt!

And BTW, have a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR and stuff that happy holiday crap where it will never see the light of day again!! TIFN

Democracy, Rise and fall of in America

I read somewhere recently, can’t seem to find it to quote it, about an English Historian from the17th century who was telling of the rise and fall of the various democracies that have arisen in the world and then their fall into just past history. He gave a few reasons of why they collapsed. There were a lot of them that are very recognizable as they are happening again today in this country. The one that finally brought an end to most of them, was when the populace discovered that they could by right of voting, deliver too themselves for personal gain, a piece of the public treasury! This was the final step, or straw as it were that eventually broke the back of these governments.

Do you see any parallels in the US here today? Earmarks by the “folks” that guide and make our laws that help only “selected” portions of our population instead of all? All sorts of “benefits” to themselves as our legislators? You know, free healthcare forever paid by you, free mail service paid by you, interest free loans paid by you and the list goes on ad nauseam. These are the people that will eventually be responsible for the end of democracy in the US. All because of their personal greed, although they will ALWAYS espouse to you that the only reason they have come into public life is to look out for YOUR interests! Yeah, right!

According to polls conducted by lots of various entities, most of the people of this country are highly dissatisfied with the performance of the US Congress, Senate and House! The last one I looked at said only about 17% of us were happy with their doings. You can bet they were the recipients of their Congressmen and Senators largesse. So what are the other 83% of us to do in order to fix this mix mash of incompetents, drunks, good ole boy networks, and just plain crooks?

Part of it can be done by dismantling the good ole boy infrastructure. How do you do that you ask? You do it by setting term limits for both houses. Two terms for each person in each house, and then you are out, just like the president! If you don’t have to spend your time kissing ass and sucking up to the committee chairman in order to achieve things, then maybe you could spend all your time building consensus among your cohorts on items of NATIONAL interest, and getting them passed! Four years as a Congressman should suffice, as well as twelve as a Senator!

So you say that in reality there will never be term limits set because the incumbents won’t do it! And you would be absolutely right. They won’t do it with out some sort of coercion. What is it we can use to make them do it? It is really simple. You do not vote for ANY incumbent in the next election. You let them, as well as the aspirants to their office, know in advance that if they do not get the term limits set in the next session of congress, they also will be out on their ass’s in the NEXT election! We just have to get off our lazy ass’s and DO SOMETHING about it! They all believe that once they attain this seat it is theirs by right of possesion for as long as they want it! Well it is time to stand up on our hind legs and let them know differently.

I can hear the argument already that there will be no continuity with people coming and going so fast. Fast? Two, four, or six, or twelve years is fast? Well the type of continuity that we have had for the past forty or fifty years is way overdue for a drastic revamping. I’m not talking about dumping members of only one party either. There is guilt and conspiracy enough in both the parties to go around.

So if you 83% really want to change the stagnated system for the better, this would be a good place for a grass roots type of action to begin. Form local action committees for the express purpose of letting those incumbents and those that want to be, just exactly what we would expect of them solely with regard to the term limits question. This isn’t going to work though if only one or two states follow through. It has to come from a broad spectrum of the people from all across the country. So spread the word as to what we the people want to happen. Personally, I read quite a few blogs that are in turn read by hundreds of thousands if not millions of folks all over America. I am going to forward this little rant to all that I read and hope that they will put it out there for all to see. Then if they really care about their, as well as their children and grandchildren’s future, they will take this to heart and run with it! It can be done and it is in dire need of being done!

Fire in the Wheel Well!! err, On the beach anyway!

Well now, two blogs down from here, I was lamenting about how a lot of our ponds were being overcome with nasty assed bushes. And that this presents a hazard to ALL homeowners out here as there are only a dozen or so fire hydrants on the Island and they are mostly all located in the downtown area.

So last night about nine o'clock all the pagers carried by all firemen and rescue workers blared into action to announce that there was a house on fire over on Coast Guard road. So we rolled every piece of equipment we owned and the first truck was on scene within four minutes of the pagers going off. By the time they got there the place was fully involved as the saying goes. There were flames pouring out of every window in the place. The house is situated on a small semi peninsula and has the Atlantic on one side about 50 yards away, and the New Harbor, (known in recent arrivee's vernacular as, "THE GREAT SALT POND") on the other side about the same distance to the water.

Now even with the the Atlantic to try and empty, which we did try to do for three solid hours of pumping, 'twas all to no avail. The fire just had too much of a head start. So the best we could do was to contain the grass fires that threatened to spread to other houses out there, and watch the place be reduced to a pile of ashes worth exactly nothing. Previous to the fire, it was a brand new two story house worth about three and a half million bucks or so I'm told!! It was within a few days work of being ready to move into. All gone in three or four hours!

It was not owned by any of my family or even close friends, but for some reason, a "frisson" ran through me and it was as if I could feel the incomprehensible loss of all those folks in La La Land at the loss of their homes in the recent fires out there. Having one so close to home happen, it brings home the reality that it CAN happen to you with startling speed! It gives you a whole new perspective on how devastated those folks must have felt at the loss of every damned thing they owned!

It was a beautiful house ,outside as well as inside. My sympathies go out to the Raymond family. They were a long time gas customer of mine and are a very nice family!

I Can"t Stand it Any Longer!

Have you noticed that Mr.& Mrs. DoomandGloom have been noticeably and conspicuiously absent from the airwaves in the last month or two. I refer to Brian Williams(NBC) and Her Doomness Katie Couric (CBS). And also the ABC guy whoever he is. I never watch him. You may have noticed that the War in Iraq has become yesterdays old news now that there are 80 to 90 percent less attacks on Our military, the Iraqi police, and mostly on the citizens themselves. Seems like Al-Queda(sp) is on vacation and has been for a good long time! Every night for the last three or four years all those MSM talking heads who have lead off virtually every evening broadcast with some horrific tale of our guys being torn to shreds by the latest IED blast. Oh my God, our youth, every one of them, to hear those poor mourning, and devastated TH's (Talking Heads) tell it, are going to be killed in the next few months for having the temerity to join our military and doing something that most of them are too chicken shit to do themselves! Remember that big footprint of a foul/fowl they use to emblazon on their shirts? Describes them most accurately.

So what is going on Mr. and Mrs Doomness? Why aren't you on the air now that the "surge" is doing exactly what The "most dishonorable" Gen. Patreaus said he hoped to accomplish with it? Where are your lead stories telling the people of this country about all the good things going on over there now? Why are you NOT now linking up with one of the only honest reporters over there to cover his story about the Christian church in Dora, a suburb of Baghdad? That church just recently reopened after the Al-Queda crew had been run out of town, after killing most of the Christians and a good part of the Sunni and Shiites also? Why don't you tell of people of the neighborhood, all Iraqi's who are asking publicly for their previous neighbors to please come home!! "We are holding your homes in trust waiting for you to come home and claim them". These people, all denominations went before cameras located INSIDE this Christian church and are deliberately letting their faces be shown. Something they would never have done a few months ago. How come you have nothing to say about the fact that some of the American soldiers that sat through a full two hour Catholic Mass with those Shiite's, and Sunni people have been thanked a thousand times for getting rid of Saddam and the Al-Q hoodlums. This is a BIG story that has been covered in most of the European press, but seems to have been totally missed by you and your compatriots in mis-information! NOT ONE WORD by you folks! Try hooking up with this link if you are at all interested in performing truly unbiased news stories not colored by your own heartfelt desire for this country to slip sideways and hard too the left and into a socialist state.
Micheal Yon : Online Magazine.com

Then back here on the home front, we have the Dumocrats trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American Public by AGAIN putting forth a bill that would in effect stop all funding for the war effort. This, to make all you folks blindly following the "Axis of Evil" in our congress, Clinton, Pelosi, Kennedy, Murtha, Reid, et al, believe that they are going to stop this war by hook or by crook. Well it is the Crook part that won out. In a little secret caucus that they had, they figured out where they could "steal" the money needed to continue the fighting by taking from pete to pay paul. This was all on the sly so that all the "sheep" out there in heartland America wouldn't be aware of what was going on. You would be lead to believe they were living up to their claims before the last election to "STOP THIS UNLAWFUL WAR" But there is at least one honorable man in DC and that would be Mr. Gates of the DOD. I believe he made known to the "Axis" powers in a rather forceful manner yesterday that he was not going to let them gut programs that are deemed essential to the security of the US without a fight in order to deceive the American public. When he told them that he would be sure and let the American public know just where the money was coming from to continue the fight after they had so loudly told the people they would stop the war, the vote in the Senate failed to pass the proposed bill! Again!! The perfidy of these people is just unbelievable! When Gates told them that if the bill passed, he was going to have to start laying off thousands of civilian DOD workers just before Christmas to "find" this money to continue the fight with, that announcement caused the dumocrats to go into full "Cover Our Asses" mode! So here I am wondering just what spin the dumocrats are going to come up with in order to cover their asses in this little fiasco. OBTW, Have you seen any of this on the MSM? NO, and you won't either. You have to go the Blogosphere to get real answers. Try this link for starters: "http://www.pajamasmedia.com">www.pajamasmedia.com. Just highlight the link, right click, press copy, then go to Google or whatever and paste it in the search bar. I'm not smart enough to embed these links into this post.Or maybe this one:IBDeditorials.com. Once you get to this one, Scroll down to the Editorial called, "Progress, Progress, and more Progress" You will be amazed. BTW, this site puts up editorials from the left and the right so everyone can find one to their own liking.

Does anybody out there care about this anymore?

Fire Water!

Have you noticed that ALL the ponds on the Island are slowly being infiltrated by swamp willows and Phragmities?(sp). Over the past 35 years, since I got out of the Navy and returned too the Island, and traveled ALL the roads every day in the pursuit of making a living, I have watched as virtually every single pond has lost a lot of their open water! Just take a ride around the Island and you'll see what I mean.

SO what you may ask. And my answer is, as we have only a limited amount of fire hydrants, and they are all located in the downtown area, what are the people in the outlying places going to use for a firefighting supply when their house catches on fire? That 5000gal tank truck is going to run out pretty fast in a fast burning house. And how far will he have to go to find a pond that can be accessed by the truck to get a refill? Almost all of them are surrounded by a ring of bushes, poison ivy, briar's, and vines, that make it virtually impossible to get to, especially with a fire truck!

The ever-so-vigilant, and in their own minds, knowledgeable biologists, sitting behind their desks in Providence, have MANDATED that there must be a minimum 50 foot buffer around each and every pond on the Island. Why? Why to contain all that runoff from rain running downhill and into the pond carrying all that dastardly dirt and deiterus (sp) and contaminating the water! Jeez, all the time I lived here as a kid and for the past two or three hundred years before that when all the land was cleared and farmed right down to the waters edge, there was no contamination of the water! Oh yeah, I forgot, there were not so many people putting artificial fertilizer on their fields and lawns. Duh--- Just how many are doing that right now at a level that would contaminate a pond I wonder?

Rob Lewis and myself used to have a wonderful little pond that abutted both our properties, and was home to all sorts of wild life. There used to be two different kinds of frogs in it as well as turtles, musk rats, ducks, small fish, and innumerable birds around it. In the 70's we saw what was happening to it and made application to the infamous DEM to clear out all the swamp willows that were overtaking it and driving it into oblivion. Well those people in their infinite wisdom denied the application because they said we would be "hindering" the natural transformation of the area from free running stream and pond, to an open and viable grassland environment! Well it has been well and truly "hindered" as of now. It is nothing more than a sluggish pitiful stream of water, running through an impenetrable forest of phragmities, swamp willows and briar's that is home to nothing more than millions of mosquito's with no natural predators to restrict their "unhindered" growth! This, the treatment of a man who was more concerned with the environment, and who has done more to preserve it, than three quarters of those folks just protecting their unneeded jobs.

So where does this leave us? I think that it is time for the Town Council and the Fire Department to get together and demand that these bureaucrats step out of the way and let us open up access to these ponds and keep them clear of the invasive growth that is slowly killing all of them and depriving the Island home owners of a ready supply of fire fighting water! Just look around you and try and determine just where the BIFD would lay their hoses in order to fight a fire in your home! Good luck to most of you the way it stands now! So if you are a home owner and you are in a place that needs a pond opened up, or cleaned out, write a letter to the TC demanding that they do something to give a modicum of protection to YOUR two or three million dollar home!!TIFN

Imminent loss of marker

If you go down the neck past the Beachead Rest. on the right you will come across a stone marker that refers to old BI history. Well I just happened to notice today that there is a pretty good sized washout hole passing directly under the middle of the marker base! If someone doesn't get it taken care of fairly soon, after a few more good rain storms, it will probably crack in half and dump the stone down on the rock pile in front of it! Guess I'll call the Town Hall and see if anyone gives a damn

Also, have you noticed the proliferation of access points to the beach this year? Seems like people just climbed over the dunes where ever they damned well pleased with NO REGARD as to the damage they were doing to our last bastion from the sea. Right past the monument referred too above, is a nice big one! It will most likely get washed out right back to the edge of the road during the next good Northeaster we get! It beats the hell out of me why the town cannot designate a FEW places for access and then make it stick!! They do this in almost every other beach community I have looked at. Are we so afraid of hurting a day-trippers feelings that we can't assess a fine for non-compliance of the rules! And the people who buy and own houses here are not much better! You'd think that as they profess that this is the place they would most like to be because of it's natural beauty etc.,they would be more conscious of what they are helping to contribute too! LOSS OF THE FREAKING DUNES!! Then comes the water. We may soon have two Block Islands if we subscribe to Oracle ALgore's discription of the immenient demise of us all due to drowning!

I would think that the TC could spend a few bucks for some well placed and excecuted signage that would lay out the access routes to the beach, and the penalties imposed for willful disregard of the same! In the places where you have to pass thru the dunes, those roll-up wooden slats held together with rope would go far toward keeping the people ON the path to righteousness! And they could be taken up in the winter if need be. I guess TIFN!

Rock Castles on the beach 

Castles in the sky

Fruits on BI-

NO! Not that kind! This has no relation to the last post.

This time I'm talking about the kind that grow on trees. This has been one exceptional year for all kinds of fruit trees. I have two different kinds of plumb trees and they put out bumper crops this summer. Also the peach tree that usually only has a few small and diseased looking examples, has been loaded with peaches as big as any you could buy at the store! And they tasted even better.

After riding all over the Island on my little "Mope-a-dope" (moped)and partaking of at least one apple from all those hanging over the road, and some in peoples back yard, it has to be noted that they are generally, much larger than usual, sweeter, even the ones supposed to NOT be, and with far less surface blemishes than most other years!

So why is that happening this time? I haven't seen anyone out spraying or pruning them. I'm thinking it has to do with the dry summer we have had and not much else! Anybody else got an idea or two?