Kent Conwell's Blog, page 8
August 10, 2011
How to Publish your
Publish a Book-For Free
That’s true. I’ve done it within the last few weeks, which have really been busy for in addition to putting the books together, my wife and I have been spending a lot of time with our grandkids.
Those little squirts are a handful, though a joyous one. The boys, Mikey and Keegan are two years apart, and as cousins, they have a great time together—for a few minutes, and then war breaks out.
Most of you are smirking because you know exactly what I’m talking about here.
Now Mikey is going on five and Keegan seven. If we buy something for one, we automatically buy one for the other.
Soon, we’ll be buying a third for the other grandchild, Kenli, who is ten months. We’ve taken pains not to spoil her, not much.
Right now, she’s crawling, and doing her best to stand, so the days we have her keeps us moving. Fortunately, she takes long, long naps.
Ooops. Sorry. Got carried away with the kids. We were going to talk about publishing a book.
I’d been working hard on my mysteries and westerns. When I dropped a western in the mail to my publisher a couple weeks back, I finished off an effort to get about a year’s worth on the shelves ahead of time. I decided then it was time to look into ebooks.
By the way, I will shamelessly inform you that one of my westerns, ‘Reckoning at Dead Apache Springs’ is coming out sometime this month. A mystery, ‘Diamonds of Ghost Bayou’ is coming out sometime after the first of the year.
Anyway, I found myself with some extra time, so I pulled out some of the Young Adult mysteries and thrillers I’d tried to market in the past. They were similar to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a youth. Of course, they’re set in the Twenty-First Century, but have, I hope, the same fast pace and suspense as those two series loved by so many.
From my repeated rejections over the years from probably three hundred agents and publishers (just kidding-more like 275), suggests they believed that type of YA novel was passé’ as in out-of-fashion and outmoded.
I didn’t think so. Still don’t.
Now, I don’t know if ebooks are a thing of the future or simply a passing whim, but I can tell you from personal experience that one of my other publishers dropped a mass merchandising line of paperbacks and headed for the ebook and trade paperback business model.
On impulse, I decided to put those three YA, two mystery/thrillers and a paranormal horror, on Amazon’s Kindle.
Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as I thought, especially for an old coot like me whose computer savvy pretty much ends with turning the machine on and off.
There was special formatting, but instructions led me through it.
I had to have book covers. Oh, they’d put one on, but it was plain, like unsweetened oatmeal. If I wanted one that caught a reader’s attention, I had to come up with something myself.
That meant I had to delve deeper into Photoshop and learn the ins and outs of images and putting words on them. I managed to put them together after a lot of mistakes and frustration. I even figured out how to put them on my facebook page. Take a look and see what you think.
But, all three are currently on Amazon’s Kindle at $2.99 each.
My next ebook challenge is for Smashwords, a big player in the ebook business. Their requirements are much more stringent for they market the book in several formats so they be readable on any e-reading device including Kindles, Apple iPad, personal computers, iPhones, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, Android smart phones, etc…
The big question with for any writer is ‘will they sell?’
I don’t know, but I know for a certainty, they sure as heck won’t sell sitting on the shelf of my bookcase or residing in a file hidden away in the cyber netherworld of my computer.
To be honest, the major problem in this sort of publishing is that you must do ALL the work, the writing and copyediting. If you don’t have a command of grammar, sentence construction, etc.., then you might have to pay for those services.
Neither venue, Smashwords or Amazon, charge to publish the book. Of course, like I said, you do all the work, writing, editing, covers, editing, editing, and more editing.
I have a couple friends on various chat groups who publish ebooks, but they hire people to edit their stuff.
If you’re curious, go to either Smashwords or Amazon and research the process. Oh, there are others, but I haven’t looked at them yet.
Will you make any money at it?
If you’re like me, probably not, but then, miracles happen.
What do you have to lose?
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
That’s true. I’ve done it within the last few weeks, which have really been busy for in addition to putting the books together, my wife and I have been spending a lot of time with our grandkids.
Those little squirts are a handful, though a joyous one. The boys, Mikey and Keegan are two years apart, and as cousins, they have a great time together—for a few minutes, and then war breaks out.
Most of you are smirking because you know exactly what I’m talking about here.
Now Mikey is going on five and Keegan seven. If we buy something for one, we automatically buy one for the other.
Soon, we’ll be buying a third for the other grandchild, Kenli, who is ten months. We’ve taken pains not to spoil her, not much.
Right now, she’s crawling, and doing her best to stand, so the days we have her keeps us moving. Fortunately, she takes long, long naps.
Ooops. Sorry. Got carried away with the kids. We were going to talk about publishing a book.
I’d been working hard on my mysteries and westerns. When I dropped a western in the mail to my publisher a couple weeks back, I finished off an effort to get about a year’s worth on the shelves ahead of time. I decided then it was time to look into ebooks.
By the way, I will shamelessly inform you that one of my westerns, ‘Reckoning at Dead Apache Springs’ is coming out sometime this month. A mystery, ‘Diamonds of Ghost Bayou’ is coming out sometime after the first of the year.
Anyway, I found myself with some extra time, so I pulled out some of the Young Adult mysteries and thrillers I’d tried to market in the past. They were similar to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a youth. Of course, they’re set in the Twenty-First Century, but have, I hope, the same fast pace and suspense as those two series loved by so many.
From my repeated rejections over the years from probably three hundred agents and publishers (just kidding-more like 275), suggests they believed that type of YA novel was passé’ as in out-of-fashion and outmoded.
I didn’t think so. Still don’t.
Now, I don’t know if ebooks are a thing of the future or simply a passing whim, but I can tell you from personal experience that one of my other publishers dropped a mass merchandising line of paperbacks and headed for the ebook and trade paperback business model.
On impulse, I decided to put those three YA, two mystery/thrillers and a paranormal horror, on Amazon’s Kindle.
Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as I thought, especially for an old coot like me whose computer savvy pretty much ends with turning the machine on and off.
There was special formatting, but instructions led me through it.
I had to have book covers. Oh, they’d put one on, but it was plain, like unsweetened oatmeal. If I wanted one that caught a reader’s attention, I had to come up with something myself.
That meant I had to delve deeper into Photoshop and learn the ins and outs of images and putting words on them. I managed to put them together after a lot of mistakes and frustration. I even figured out how to put them on my facebook page. Take a look and see what you think.
But, all three are currently on Amazon’s Kindle at $2.99 each.
My next ebook challenge is for Smashwords, a big player in the ebook business. Their requirements are much more stringent for they market the book in several formats so they be readable on any e-reading device including Kindles, Apple iPad, personal computers, iPhones, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, Android smart phones, etc…
The big question with for any writer is ‘will they sell?’
I don’t know, but I know for a certainty, they sure as heck won’t sell sitting on the shelf of my bookcase or residing in a file hidden away in the cyber netherworld of my computer.
To be honest, the major problem in this sort of publishing is that you must do ALL the work, the writing and copyediting. If you don’t have a command of grammar, sentence construction, etc.., then you might have to pay for those services.
Neither venue, Smashwords or Amazon, charge to publish the book. Of course, like I said, you do all the work, writing, editing, covers, editing, editing, and more editing.
I have a couple friends on various chat groups who publish ebooks, but they hire people to edit their stuff.
If you’re curious, go to either Smashwords or Amazon and research the process. Oh, there are others, but I haven’t looked at them yet.
Will you make any money at it?
If you’re like me, probably not, but then, miracles happen.
What do you have to lose?
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
How to Publish Your Book-Free
That’s true. I’ve done it within the last few weeks, which have really been busy for in addition to putting the books together, my wife and I have been spending a lot of time with our grandkids.
Those little squirts are a handful, though a joyous one. The boys, Mikey and Keegan are two years apart, and as cousins, they have a great time together—for a few minutes, and then war breaks out.
Most of you are smirking because you know exactly what I’m talking about here.
Now Mikey is going on five and Keegan seven. If we buy something for one, we automatically buy one for the other.
Soon, we’ll be buying a third for the other grandchild, Kenli, who is ten months. We’ve taken pains not to spoil her, not much.
Right now, she’s crawling, and doing her best to stand, so the days we have her keeps us moving. Fortunately, she takes long, long naps.
Ooops. Sorry. Got carried away with the kids. We were going to talk about publishing a book.
I’d been working hard on my mysteries and westerns. When I dropped a western in the mail to my publisher a couple weeks back, I finished off an effort to get about a year’s worth on the shelves ahead of time. I decided then it was time to look into ebooks.
By the way, I will shamelessly inform you that one of my westerns, ‘Reckoning at Dead Apache Springs’ is coming out sometime this month. A mystery, ‘Diamonds of Ghost Bayou’ is coming out sometime after the first of the year.
Anyway, I found myself with some extra time, so I pulled out some of the Young Adult mysteries and thrillers I’d tried to market in the past. They were similar to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a youth. Of course, they’re set in the Twenty-First Century, but have, I hope, the same fast pace and suspense as those two series loved by so many.
From my repeated rejections over the years from probably three hundred agents and publishers (just kidding-more like 275), suggests they believed that type of YA novel was passé’ as in out-of-fashion and outmoded.
I didn’t think so. Still don’t.
Now, I don’t know if ebooks are a thing of the future or simply a passing whim, but I can tell you from personal experience that one of my other publishers dropped a mass merchandising line of paperbacks and headed for the ebook and trade paperback business model.
On impulse, I decided to put those three YA, two mystery/thrillers and a paranormal horror, on Amazon’s Kindle.
Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as I thought, especially for an old coot like me whose computer savvy pretty much ends with turning the machine on and off.
There was special formatting, but instructions led me through it.
I had to have book covers. Oh, they’d put one on, but it was plain, like unsweetened oatmeal. If I wanted one that caught a reader’s attention, I had to come up with something myself.
That meant I had to delve deeper into Photoshop and learn the ins and outs of images and putting words on them. I managed to put them together after a lot of mistakes and frustration. I even figured out how to put them on my facebook page. Take a look and see what you think.
But, all three are currently on Amazon’s Kindle at $2.99 each.
My next ebook challenge is for Smashwords, a big player in the ebook business. Their requirements are much more stringent for they market the book in several formats so they be readable on any e-reading device including Kindles, Apple iPad, personal computers, iPhones, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, Android smart phones, etc…
The big question with for any writer is ‘will they sell?’
I don’t know, but I know for a certainty, they sure as heck won’t sell sitting on the shelf of my bookcase or residing in a file hidden away in the cyber netherworld of my computer.
To be honest, the major problem in this sort of publishing is that you must do ALL the work, the writing and copyediting. If you don’t have a command of grammar, sentence construction, etc.., then you might have to pay for those services.
Neither venue, Smashwords or Amazon, charge to publish the book. Of course, like I said, you do all the work, writing, editing, covers, editing, editing, and more editing.
I have a couple friends on various chat groups who publish ebooks, but they hire people to edit their stuff.
If you’re curious, go to either Smashwords or Amazon and research the process. Oh, there are others, but I haven’t looked at them yet.
Will you make any money at it?
If you’re like me, probably not, but then, miracles happen.
What do you have to lose?
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
Those little squirts are a handful, though a joyous one. The boys, Mikey and Keegan are two years apart, and as cousins, they have a great time together—for a few minutes, and then war breaks out.
Most of you are smirking because you know exactly what I’m talking about here.
Now Mikey is going on five and Keegan seven. If we buy something for one, we automatically buy one for the other.
Soon, we’ll be buying a third for the other grandchild, Kenli, who is ten months. We’ve taken pains not to spoil her, not much.
Right now, she’s crawling, and doing her best to stand, so the days we have her keeps us moving. Fortunately, she takes long, long naps.
Ooops. Sorry. Got carried away with the kids. We were going to talk about publishing a book.
I’d been working hard on my mysteries and westerns. When I dropped a western in the mail to my publisher a couple weeks back, I finished off an effort to get about a year’s worth on the shelves ahead of time. I decided then it was time to look into ebooks.
By the way, I will shamelessly inform you that one of my westerns, ‘Reckoning at Dead Apache Springs’ is coming out sometime this month. A mystery, ‘Diamonds of Ghost Bayou’ is coming out sometime after the first of the year.
Anyway, I found myself with some extra time, so I pulled out some of the Young Adult mysteries and thrillers I’d tried to market in the past. They were similar to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a youth. Of course, they’re set in the Twenty-First Century, but have, I hope, the same fast pace and suspense as those two series loved by so many.
From my repeated rejections over the years from probably three hundred agents and publishers (just kidding-more like 275), suggests they believed that type of YA novel was passé’ as in out-of-fashion and outmoded.
I didn’t think so. Still don’t.
Now, I don’t know if ebooks are a thing of the future or simply a passing whim, but I can tell you from personal experience that one of my other publishers dropped a mass merchandising line of paperbacks and headed for the ebook and trade paperback business model.
On impulse, I decided to put those three YA, two mystery/thrillers and a paranormal horror, on Amazon’s Kindle.
Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as I thought, especially for an old coot like me whose computer savvy pretty much ends with turning the machine on and off.
There was special formatting, but instructions led me through it.
I had to have book covers. Oh, they’d put one on, but it was plain, like unsweetened oatmeal. If I wanted one that caught a reader’s attention, I had to come up with something myself.
That meant I had to delve deeper into Photoshop and learn the ins and outs of images and putting words on them. I managed to put them together after a lot of mistakes and frustration. I even figured out how to put them on my facebook page. Take a look and see what you think.
But, all three are currently on Amazon’s Kindle at $2.99 each.
My next ebook challenge is for Smashwords, a big player in the ebook business. Their requirements are much more stringent for they market the book in several formats so they be readable on any e-reading device including Kindles, Apple iPad, personal computers, iPhones, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, Android smart phones, etc…
The big question with for any writer is ‘will they sell?’
I don’t know, but I know for a certainty, they sure as heck won’t sell sitting on the shelf of my bookcase or residing in a file hidden away in the cyber netherworld of my computer.
To be honest, the major problem in this sort of publishing is that you must do ALL the work, the writing and copyediting. If you don’t have a command of grammar, sentence construction, etc.., then you might have to pay for those services.
Neither venue, Smashwords or Amazon, charge to publish the book. Of course, like I said, you do all the work, writing, editing, covers, editing, editing, and more editing.
I have a couple friends on various chat groups who publish ebooks, but they hire people to edit their stuff.
If you’re curious, go to either Smashwords or Amazon and research the process. Oh, there are others, but I haven’t looked at them yet.
Will you make any money at it?
If you’re like me, probably not, but then, miracles happen.
What do you have to lose?
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
August 3, 2011
Reaping the Whirlwind
If you’re like me, you watch how you spend every dollar. Now, I’m not talking to those almost fifty percent of American citizens and global corporations who paid no tax. They’re part of the problem.
Florida’s Senator Rubio stated the problem succinctly. “We don’t need more taxes. We need more taxpayers.” Right now almost half of the population pays no income tax. The rest of us pick up the tab for them.
In the earliest days of our democratic republic, citizens and businesses complemented each other. From the very beginning, fees, tariffs, taxes, call it what you may, were essential to help government provide in its small way that which would serve the citizenry in a beneficial manner.
I know I’m probably stepping into Never-Never-Land when I state that ‘you’d think the president would take into consideration the economic difficulties we face today before making any financial decisions.’
But, you can decide for yourself when you see how he volunteered a hundred billion (100 B) of your tax money to the United Nations over the next three years.
According to the U.S. State Department, the Obama Administration has agreed to contribute $4 billion to the United Nations Global Fund to fight AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria.
That is a 38% increase of previous U.S. commitments and comes at a time when our jobless rate is over 9% and the economy is still staggering to recover from the recession and we have just increased our debt limit.
Says U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a total of $11.7 billion has been raised from all countries for this global fund.
Do the math. Obama generously volunteered the American taxpayers to account for one-third of the Global
Fund.
One-third!
Oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and the Arab Emirates will contribute next to nothing. China, which as you know holds most of our $14 trillion dollar debt, agreed to contribute an embarrassing $14 million.
I don’t know what the man was thinking.
Sure, I know we’ve always been the
biggest contributor to the UN, but in hard times like this, that extra $1.4 billion could have been used here at home for the people from whose pockets it came.
And that isn’t all.
In addition to this contribution, President Obama agreed to provide billions more for various other United Nations projects.
Take a look. Here’s what else you’re giving the UN.
· $63 billion to the Global Health Initiative during the next six years
· $1 billion annually to education programs
· $475 million to the Global Agricultural and Food Security Program’
· $800 million from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa. An additional $3.2 billion will be provided by private equity capital sources to these Muslim nations
· Unspecified millions made available through USAID for developing tech hubs in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, and Senegal.
· $80 million through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation for small to medium enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa.
· $2.5 billion annually to 90 countries to “strengthen governance and democratic institutions.”
· $30 billion for Obama’s Climate Change Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
· $100 billion a year will be provided through taxpayer and private resources to deal with the alleged threat of global climate change.
· The United States pays 22% of the U.N. regular budget and 27% for the U.N. peacekeeping budget. The president has requested an addition $516 million for the regular U.N. budget and more than $2.182 billion for the peacekeeping budget for this year
It isn’t just Obama; it’s all those jokers in Congress. They haven’t done their jobs. They’re too interested in being reelected to make tough decisions. And if we keep letting them get by with it, we’re as much to blame.
A democratic republic must have an informed and conscientious citizenry.
Since only about forty percent of us vote, that means the rest of you are shirking your responsibility to our country.
In Hosea from the Hebrew Bible is the quote “They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” Best we remember that.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
l
Florida’s Senator Rubio stated the problem succinctly. “We don’t need more taxes. We need more taxpayers.” Right now almost half of the population pays no income tax. The rest of us pick up the tab for them.
In the earliest days of our democratic republic, citizens and businesses complemented each other. From the very beginning, fees, tariffs, taxes, call it what you may, were essential to help government provide in its small way that which would serve the citizenry in a beneficial manner.
I know I’m probably stepping into Never-Never-Land when I state that ‘you’d think the president would take into consideration the economic difficulties we face today before making any financial decisions.’
But, you can decide for yourself when you see how he volunteered a hundred billion (100 B) of your tax money to the United Nations over the next three years.
According to the U.S. State Department, the Obama Administration has agreed to contribute $4 billion to the United Nations Global Fund to fight AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria.
That is a 38% increase of previous U.S. commitments and comes at a time when our jobless rate is over 9% and the economy is still staggering to recover from the recession and we have just increased our debt limit.
Says U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a total of $11.7 billion has been raised from all countries for this global fund.
Do the math. Obama generously volunteered the American taxpayers to account for one-third of the Global
Fund.
One-third!
Oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and the Arab Emirates will contribute next to nothing. China, which as you know holds most of our $14 trillion dollar debt, agreed to contribute an embarrassing $14 million.
I don’t know what the man was thinking.
Sure, I know we’ve always been the
biggest contributor to the UN, but in hard times like this, that extra $1.4 billion could have been used here at home for the people from whose pockets it came.
And that isn’t all.
In addition to this contribution, President Obama agreed to provide billions more for various other United Nations projects.
Take a look. Here’s what else you’re giving the UN.
· $63 billion to the Global Health Initiative during the next six years
· $1 billion annually to education programs
· $475 million to the Global Agricultural and Food Security Program’
· $800 million from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa. An additional $3.2 billion will be provided by private equity capital sources to these Muslim nations
· Unspecified millions made available through USAID for developing tech hubs in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, and Senegal.
· $80 million through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation for small to medium enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa.
· $2.5 billion annually to 90 countries to “strengthen governance and democratic institutions.”
· $30 billion for Obama’s Climate Change Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
· $100 billion a year will be provided through taxpayer and private resources to deal with the alleged threat of global climate change.
· The United States pays 22% of the U.N. regular budget and 27% for the U.N. peacekeeping budget. The president has requested an addition $516 million for the regular U.N. budget and more than $2.182 billion for the peacekeeping budget for this year
It isn’t just Obama; it’s all those jokers in Congress. They haven’t done their jobs. They’re too interested in being reelected to make tough decisions. And if we keep letting them get by with it, we’re as much to blame.
A democratic republic must have an informed and conscientious citizenry.
Since only about forty percent of us vote, that means the rest of you are shirking your responsibility to our country.
In Hosea from the Hebrew Bible is the quote “They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” Best we remember that.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
l
July 27, 2011
Cat Poor
Cat Poor
We’re cat poor.
I imagine many of you know exactly what I mean. Oh, you might not be cat poor, but maybe car poor, or dog poor, or gun poor, or clothes poor—you get the idea. You have so many of a particular item that its cost is outrageously out of proportion with your other expenses.
Folks dump cats our in our area, and my wife hates to see any animal abused. I don’t know how many times we’ve sworn ‘no more cats!’
Guess what?
Next morning, a soaking wet kitten wanders up meowing pitifully. Naturally, we have a new boarder.
It’s nice to have one or two cats around. When they’re small, they’re cuddly and bouncy, darting here, jumping there, pawing at first one thing, then another.
As they get older, they’re not as cute. They eat more. Some grow surly. Whenever you go outside, they rush to meet you, curling around your ankles, doing their darnedest to trip you.
It’s next to impossible to maintain a neat yard, for they sleep everywhere, doo everywhere, leave their hair everywhere, leave piles of feathers from unlucky birds everywhere, and strew half-eaten rats about everywhere.
If you provide sleeping quarters for them, you have to include litter boxes, which they not only fill up regularly, and I mean regularly, and cost to refill. And then you have to buy plastic bags in which to dump the used litter and carry it out to the road for the garbage truck. Contrary to the widely held myth that cats are clean, they can soil an area faster than Obama can blame Bush for the next crisis.
Naturally, if one becomes ill, there is the visit to the vet. Suddenly you find yourself involved in shots, preventive tests, and necessary treatments. More expenses.
Cats are expensive, make a mess, take time to clean up after, tie us down, and seems like they always are trying to trip us.
And that is something to look forward to?
Without them, I’d save money, the place would be clean, we’d have extra time and wouldn’t be tied down, and as we aged, we wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over one and busting a hip or arm.
In the last six years with about the same number of cats, food and care have escalated by twenty-six percent. Another fifteen years, my bill will have jumped by 100%.
Retired teachers have not had a raise in the last six years; social security recipients in the last three. If this continues, I’m going to have problems in the next ten or fifteen years.
I would imagine there are millions out there just like me, making it today, dreading it in the years to come.
With no changes, in the coming years, I’ll have to choose between air conditioning and cats; food and cats.
Party’s over.
Essentially the same relationship exists between 50% of the American citizens and their local, state, and federal governments.
When the financial meltdown comes, and as things are now, it will, what will that 50% do when there are no more handouts? Cats can survive. They can forage.
You say it won’t happen?
You know yourself, governments spend like the proverbial drunken sailor, but when he’s out of money, he has a ship and bunk at port.
Unless you’ve been hiding with Alice down in Wonderland, you are aware of the country’s 14 trillion mess; of Beaumont’s Ford Park’s fiasco that will never be forgotten. Now Beaumont’s neighbor, Port Arthur, is falling into the same trap.
They’re buying an armored car, but, their selling point is that the taxpayers only have to pay a hundred thousand, saving three hundred that the government will provide.
That is the core problem defining our wasteful spending.
The feds will give us our tax money to buy something we could well do without, but because they give such a large chunk, our ‘leaders’ (a laughable use of the word) decide to spend our tax money on an object that would indeed be nice to have, but which we’ve done without for decades and will probably collect dust in the garage except on days the city puts it in a parade.
Port Arthur and Beaumont’s leaders can’t complain about federal waste of money. They waste taxpayers’ money with the best of the Washington spendthrifts.
Forget the armored car. Put that hundred thousand to work on infrastructure; instead of cleaning one block a month, hire unemployed to clear ten blocks a month. That helps more of the citizens.
Unfortunately, you can’t put clean city blocks in a parade.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
We’re cat poor.
I imagine many of you know exactly what I mean. Oh, you might not be cat poor, but maybe car poor, or dog poor, or gun poor, or clothes poor—you get the idea. You have so many of a particular item that its cost is outrageously out of proportion with your other expenses.
Folks dump cats our in our area, and my wife hates to see any animal abused. I don’t know how many times we’ve sworn ‘no more cats!’
Guess what?
Next morning, a soaking wet kitten wanders up meowing pitifully. Naturally, we have a new boarder.
It’s nice to have one or two cats around. When they’re small, they’re cuddly and bouncy, darting here, jumping there, pawing at first one thing, then another.
As they get older, they’re not as cute. They eat more. Some grow surly. Whenever you go outside, they rush to meet you, curling around your ankles, doing their darnedest to trip you.
It’s next to impossible to maintain a neat yard, for they sleep everywhere, doo everywhere, leave their hair everywhere, leave piles of feathers from unlucky birds everywhere, and strew half-eaten rats about everywhere.
If you provide sleeping quarters for them, you have to include litter boxes, which they not only fill up regularly, and I mean regularly, and cost to refill. And then you have to buy plastic bags in which to dump the used litter and carry it out to the road for the garbage truck. Contrary to the widely held myth that cats are clean, they can soil an area faster than Obama can blame Bush for the next crisis.
Naturally, if one becomes ill, there is the visit to the vet. Suddenly you find yourself involved in shots, preventive tests, and necessary treatments. More expenses.
Cats are expensive, make a mess, take time to clean up after, tie us down, and seems like they always are trying to trip us.
And that is something to look forward to?
Without them, I’d save money, the place would be clean, we’d have extra time and wouldn’t be tied down, and as we aged, we wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over one and busting a hip or arm.
In the last six years with about the same number of cats, food and care have escalated by twenty-six percent. Another fifteen years, my bill will have jumped by 100%.
Retired teachers have not had a raise in the last six years; social security recipients in the last three. If this continues, I’m going to have problems in the next ten or fifteen years.
I would imagine there are millions out there just like me, making it today, dreading it in the years to come.
With no changes, in the coming years, I’ll have to choose between air conditioning and cats; food and cats.
Party’s over.
Essentially the same relationship exists between 50% of the American citizens and their local, state, and federal governments.
When the financial meltdown comes, and as things are now, it will, what will that 50% do when there are no more handouts? Cats can survive. They can forage.
You say it won’t happen?
You know yourself, governments spend like the proverbial drunken sailor, but when he’s out of money, he has a ship and bunk at port.
Unless you’ve been hiding with Alice down in Wonderland, you are aware of the country’s 14 trillion mess; of Beaumont’s Ford Park’s fiasco that will never be forgotten. Now Beaumont’s neighbor, Port Arthur, is falling into the same trap.
They’re buying an armored car, but, their selling point is that the taxpayers only have to pay a hundred thousand, saving three hundred that the government will provide.
That is the core problem defining our wasteful spending.
The feds will give us our tax money to buy something we could well do without, but because they give such a large chunk, our ‘leaders’ (a laughable use of the word) decide to spend our tax money on an object that would indeed be nice to have, but which we’ve done without for decades and will probably collect dust in the garage except on days the city puts it in a parade.
Port Arthur and Beaumont’s leaders can’t complain about federal waste of money. They waste taxpayers’ money with the best of the Washington spendthrifts.
Forget the armored car. Put that hundred thousand to work on infrastructure; instead of cleaning one block a month, hire unemployed to clear ten blocks a month. That helps more of the citizens.
Unfortunately, you can’t put clean city blocks in a parade.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
Cat Poor
Cat Poor
We’re cat poor.
I imagine many of you know exactly what I mean. Oh, you might not be cat poor, but maybe car poor, or dog poor, or gun poor, or clothes poor—you get the idea. You have so many of a particular item that its cost is outrageously out of proportion with your other expenses.
Folks dump cats our in our area, and my wife hates to see any animal abused. I don’t know how many times we’ve sworn ‘no more cats!’
Guess what?
Next morning, a soaking wet kitten wanders up meowing pitifully. Naturally, we have a new boarder.
It’s nice to have one or two cats around. When they’re small, they’re cuddly and bouncy, darting here, jumping there, pawing at first one thing, then another.
As they get older, they’re not as cute. They eat more. Some grow surly. Whenever you go outside, they rush to meet you, curling around your ankles, doing their darnedest to trip you.
It’s next to impossible to maintain a neat yard, for they sleep everywhere, doo everywhere, leave their hair everywhere, leave piles of feathers from unlucky birds everywhere, and strew half-eaten rats about everywhere.
If you provide sleeping quarters for them, you have to include litter boxes, which they not only fill up regularly, and I mean regularly, and cost to refill. And then you have to buy plastic bags in which to dump the used litter and carry it out to the road for the garbage truck. Contrary to the widely held myth that cats are clean, they can soil an area faster than Obama can blame Bush for the next crisis.
Naturally, if one becomes ill, there is the visit to the vet. Suddenly you find yourself involved in shots, preventive tests, and necessary treatments. More expenses.
Cats are expensive, make a mess, take time to clean up after, tie us down, and seems like they always are trying to trip us.
And that is something to look forward to?
Without them, I’d save money, the place would be clean, we’d have extra time and wouldn’t be tied down, and as we aged, we wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over one and busting a hip or arm.
In the last six years with about the same number of cats, food and care have escalated by twenty-six percent. Another fifteen years, my bill will have jumped by 100%.
Retired teachers have not had a raise in the last six years; social security recipients in the last three. If this continues, I’m going to have problems in the next ten or fifteen years.
I would imagine there are millions out there just like me, making it today, dreading it in the years to come.
With no changes, in the coming years, I’ll have to choose between air conditioning and cats; food and cats.
Party’s over.
Essentially the same relationship exists between 50% of the American citizens and their local, state, and federal governments.
When the financial meltdown comes, and as things are now, it will, what will that 50% do when there are no more handouts? Cats can survive. They can forage.
You say it won’t happen?
You know yourself, governments spend like the proverbial drunken sailor, but when he’s out of money, he has a ship and bunk at port.
Unless you’ve been hiding with Alice down in Wonderland, you are aware of the country’s 14 trillion mess; of Beaumont’s Ford Park’s fiasco that will never be forgotten. Now Beaumont’s neighbor, Port Arthur, is falling into the same trap.
They’re buying an armored car, but, their selling point is that the taxpayers only have to pay a hundred thousand, saving three hundred that the government will provide.
That is the core problem defining our wasteful spending.
The feds will give us our tax money to buy something we could well do without, but because they give such a large chunk, our ‘leaders’ (a laughable use of the word) decide to spend our tax money on an object that would indeed be nice to have, but which we’ve done without for decades and will probably collect dust in the garage except on days the city puts it in a parade.
Port Arthur and Beaumont’s leaders can’t complain about federal waste of money. They waste taxpayers’ money with the best of the Washington spendthrifts.
Forget the armored car. Put that hundred thousand to work on infrastructure; instead of cleaning one block a month, hire unemployed to clear ten blocks a month. That helps more of the citizens.
Unfortunately, you can’t put clean city blocks in a parade.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
We’re cat poor.
I imagine many of you know exactly what I mean. Oh, you might not be cat poor, but maybe car poor, or dog poor, or gun poor, or clothes poor—you get the idea. You have so many of a particular item that its cost is outrageously out of proportion with your other expenses.
Folks dump cats our in our area, and my wife hates to see any animal abused. I don’t know how many times we’ve sworn ‘no more cats!’
Guess what?
Next morning, a soaking wet kitten wanders up meowing pitifully. Naturally, we have a new boarder.
It’s nice to have one or two cats around. When they’re small, they’re cuddly and bouncy, darting here, jumping there, pawing at first one thing, then another.
As they get older, they’re not as cute. They eat more. Some grow surly. Whenever you go outside, they rush to meet you, curling around your ankles, doing their darnedest to trip you.
It’s next to impossible to maintain a neat yard, for they sleep everywhere, doo everywhere, leave their hair everywhere, leave piles of feathers from unlucky birds everywhere, and strew half-eaten rats about everywhere.
If you provide sleeping quarters for them, you have to include litter boxes, which they not only fill up regularly, and I mean regularly, and cost to refill. And then you have to buy plastic bags in which to dump the used litter and carry it out to the road for the garbage truck. Contrary to the widely held myth that cats are clean, they can soil an area faster than Obama can blame Bush for the next crisis.
Naturally, if one becomes ill, there is the visit to the vet. Suddenly you find yourself involved in shots, preventive tests, and necessary treatments. More expenses.
Cats are expensive, make a mess, take time to clean up after, tie us down, and seems like they always are trying to trip us.
And that is something to look forward to?
Without them, I’d save money, the place would be clean, we’d have extra time and wouldn’t be tied down, and as we aged, we wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over one and busting a hip or arm.
In the last six years with about the same number of cats, food and care have escalated by twenty-six percent. Another fifteen years, my bill will have jumped by 100%.
Retired teachers have not had a raise in the last six years; social security recipients in the last three. If this continues, I’m going to have problems in the next ten or fifteen years.
I would imagine there are millions out there just like me, making it today, dreading it in the years to come.
With no changes, in the coming years, I’ll have to choose between air conditioning and cats; food and cats.
Party’s over.
Essentially the same relationship exists between 50% of the American citizens and their local, state, and federal governments.
When the financial meltdown comes, and as things are now, it will, what will that 50% do when there are no more handouts? Cats can survive. They can forage.
You say it won’t happen?
You know yourself, governments spend like the proverbial drunken sailor, but when he’s out of money, he has a ship and bunk at port.
Unless you’ve been hiding with Alice down in Wonderland, you are aware of the country’s 14 trillion mess; of Beaumont’s Ford Park’s fiasco that will never be forgotten. Now Beaumont’s neighbor, Port Arthur, is falling into the same trap.
They’re buying an armored car, but, their selling point is that the taxpayers only have to pay a hundred thousand, saving three hundred that the government will provide.
That is the core problem defining our wasteful spending.
The feds will give us our tax money to buy something we could well do without, but because they give such a large chunk, our ‘leaders’ (a laughable use of the word) decide to spend our tax money on an object that would indeed be nice to have, but which we’ve done without for decades and will probably collect dust in the garage except on days the city puts it in a parade.
Port Arthur and Beaumont’s leaders can’t complain about federal waste of money. They waste taxpayers’ money with the best of the Washington spendthrifts.
Forget the armored car. Put that hundred thousand to work on infrastructure; instead of cleaning one block a month, hire unemployed to clear ten blocks a month. That helps more of the citizens.
Unfortunately, you can’t put clean city blocks in a parade.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
July 20, 2011
Chicken Little Is Alive and Well
Chicken Little Is Alive and Well
The last few weeks, we’ve been bombarded with dire threats that the sky will fall if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. The president’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner claims a financial crisis more severe that the one from which we are now recovering will occur if the ceiling isn’t raised.
The president also insists that eighty percent of the American public wants the ceiling raised. If it isn’t raised, Armageddon is upon us.
He says, if we don’t, perhaps no social security checks, mortgage rates will rise, housing sales will plunge, panic on the world market, destruction of the value of the dollar, and no more kid meals at McDonalds.
Whew!
Now, I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but there’s enough incandescence remaining to realize I’ve just been subjected to a prime example of Chicago politics, 2011 style.
Bully and frighten the people with unverifiable consequences that threaten that which they hold most dear.
Armageddon? Not quite. Despicable politics? You bet!
Did you know that in December, 1973; March, 1979; November, 1983; December, 1985; August, 1987; November, 1995; December, 1995; January, 1996; and September, 2007 that debt ceilings were not raised by the deadline, and the sky didn’t fall? Yep, there was no default.
How can the president and his staff claim such when the 14th amendment to the constitution explicitly says debt payments must be made before any other spending?
If I’m not mistaken, the president is a constitutional lawyer, so he has to be aware of that law.
In late ’95 and early ’96, during a government shutdown, President Clinton used incoming revenues to pay interest on the debt to ward off default.
Many of us who haven’t the good fortune to be born with a silver spoon have been forced at one time or another to pay interest on a bill. You might not have thought of it as interest on your loan, but simply as a gesture to your creditor of you intention to maintain your credit. That’s all the whiz kids in Washington have to do, pay the interest, a mere 20 billion a month.
Let’s talk more about the social security checks. He said he didn’t know if there would be enough money to pay them. He is either prevaricating or ignorant, and no way could you convince me he is ignorant. If he is the ‘professional politician’ he claims, he knows very well over two hundred billion a month flows into the government coffers.
That is enough to cover all social security, Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, defense, federal law enforcement and immigration, all veterans’ benefits and—and interest on the debt, according to John Lott, economist and author of ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ from University of Chicago Press, 2010.
The present administration claims mortgage interest will rise if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. That doesn’t make sense. If there is less money available, there will be less spending. Lending institutions would be foolish to raise rates, making those reluctant to spend even more disinclined.
I find it hard to believe in policies that have yet to cut the deficit, lower unemployment, or create 200,000 jobs a month.
Now, what about the dollar losing value?
Look at it this way. If the government doesn’t borrow more money, it won’t need the taxes to pay additional debt. If it doesn’t need the taxes, rates could drop eventually, and lower taxes would make the United States more attractive for businesses from other countries.
Pie in the sky? No more than the misrepresentations designed to frighten those on social security and other entitlements.
Oh, yeah, he mentioned that eighty percent of the public supported raising the debt limit, yet CBS News and New York Times poll showed Americans against raising it by 69-24 percent.
Our president dismissed the poll with the condescending response that American citizens do not have the comprehension of the debt ceiling like ‘professional politicians’.
You know what the definition of ‘professional politicians’ is, don’t you? Professional crooks.
You and I have to share some of the blame for this mess. After all, we, the citizens who voted and the citizens who did not vote, are the ones who put those guys up there.
The hubbub reminds me of the spoiled kid whose parents finally got tough and refused to give in. The kid falls down on the floor, kicks his heels, bangs his head, and says he hates you.
Sound familiar?
The sky is still there, and it will be there long after you and I are gone from here.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
The last few weeks, we’ve been bombarded with dire threats that the sky will fall if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. The president’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner claims a financial crisis more severe that the one from which we are now recovering will occur if the ceiling isn’t raised.
The president also insists that eighty percent of the American public wants the ceiling raised. If it isn’t raised, Armageddon is upon us.
He says, if we don’t, perhaps no social security checks, mortgage rates will rise, housing sales will plunge, panic on the world market, destruction of the value of the dollar, and no more kid meals at McDonalds.
Whew!
Now, I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but there’s enough incandescence remaining to realize I’ve just been subjected to a prime example of Chicago politics, 2011 style.
Bully and frighten the people with unverifiable consequences that threaten that which they hold most dear.
Armageddon? Not quite. Despicable politics? You bet!
Did you know that in December, 1973; March, 1979; November, 1983; December, 1985; August, 1987; November, 1995; December, 1995; January, 1996; and September, 2007 that debt ceilings were not raised by the deadline, and the sky didn’t fall? Yep, there was no default.
How can the president and his staff claim such when the 14th amendment to the constitution explicitly says debt payments must be made before any other spending?
If I’m not mistaken, the president is a constitutional lawyer, so he has to be aware of that law.
In late ’95 and early ’96, during a government shutdown, President Clinton used incoming revenues to pay interest on the debt to ward off default.
Many of us who haven’t the good fortune to be born with a silver spoon have been forced at one time or another to pay interest on a bill. You might not have thought of it as interest on your loan, but simply as a gesture to your creditor of you intention to maintain your credit. That’s all the whiz kids in Washington have to do, pay the interest, a mere 20 billion a month.
Let’s talk more about the social security checks. He said he didn’t know if there would be enough money to pay them. He is either prevaricating or ignorant, and no way could you convince me he is ignorant. If he is the ‘professional politician’ he claims, he knows very well over two hundred billion a month flows into the government coffers.
That is enough to cover all social security, Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, defense, federal law enforcement and immigration, all veterans’ benefits and—and interest on the debt, according to John Lott, economist and author of ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ from University of Chicago Press, 2010.
The present administration claims mortgage interest will rise if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. That doesn’t make sense. If there is less money available, there will be less spending. Lending institutions would be foolish to raise rates, making those reluctant to spend even more disinclined.
I find it hard to believe in policies that have yet to cut the deficit, lower unemployment, or create 200,000 jobs a month.
Now, what about the dollar losing value?
Look at it this way. If the government doesn’t borrow more money, it won’t need the taxes to pay additional debt. If it doesn’t need the taxes, rates could drop eventually, and lower taxes would make the United States more attractive for businesses from other countries.
Pie in the sky? No more than the misrepresentations designed to frighten those on social security and other entitlements.
Oh, yeah, he mentioned that eighty percent of the public supported raising the debt limit, yet CBS News and New York Times poll showed Americans against raising it by 69-24 percent.
Our president dismissed the poll with the condescending response that American citizens do not have the comprehension of the debt ceiling like ‘professional politicians’.
You know what the definition of ‘professional politicians’ is, don’t you? Professional crooks.
You and I have to share some of the blame for this mess. After all, we, the citizens who voted and the citizens who did not vote, are the ones who put those guys up there.
The hubbub reminds me of the spoiled kid whose parents finally got tough and refused to give in. The kid falls down on the floor, kicks his heels, bangs his head, and says he hates you.
Sound familiar?
The sky is still there, and it will be there long after you and I are gone from here.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
July 13, 2011
A Billion Here; A Billion There. Just Money!
If you’re like me, I’m getting tired of every time I pick up the paper or watch the news, I’m slammed between the eyes with horror stories about the lousy economy.
And it is lousy, although throughout most of Texas, it isn’t as lousy as elsewhere.
What if you lived in Reno or Detroit or Flint? All three have 16+% unemployment and staggering job losses from industry that will never return.
General Motors once employed 80,000 workers in Flint. Today, 8,200. Detroit has lost 323,400 jobs; Reno, 36,000.
We could go on and on, but why torture ourselves?
The economy stinks and Washington is doing little to help.
I know one step to take, and after reading this, I believe you will agree.
I’ve often wondered why our government doesn’t cut out some of the monies sent to other countries and instead use it here, in our country. I don’t mean as gifts, although recent statistics on taxes suggest that almost fifty percent of our citizens (those who paid no taxes) would kill to be first in line for something for nothing.
I’d like to know what percent of that group of non-payers are the true deadbeats; the third and fourth generation entitlement recipients; the welfare cheats; the unemployment thieves; the social security swindlers—
Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away on our deadbeats.
Last year, the U.S. handed out billions in foreign aid to other countries for various reasons. That’s bad enough, but wait for the kicker. Sixteen of those countries each hold at least ten billion in U.S. Treasury securities-many hold much more.
In other words, we’re giving foreign aid to some of the world’s richest countries.
Ready for another kick in the rear? We then turn around and borrow money from those to whom we’ve given it.
No wonder we have a $14 trillion dollar debt those incompetents in Washington are arguing over.
That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s Washington. What do I know? I’m just a average Joe Dunderhead trying to stay within my own budget and pay my bills.
What they’re doing is like you making a gift of a hundred bucks to your neighbor, then turning around and borrowing fifty with the obligation to repay it.
Make sense to you? Doesn’t to me either.
And that isn’t all.
One third of all foreign aid goes to Israel (2.25 billion) and Egypt (1.5 B)for armaments, yet neither is a ‘developing’ country, a prerequisite. (and Egypt hates us except for the few seconds they stick out their greedy hand for the annual check)
Columbia received 561 million for drug abatement; Jordan 540 million to leave Israel alone (that’s right- no mistake); Pakistan 734 million to chase terrorists (your guess as to where they chase them is as good as mine); Indonesia, 159 M for oil reserves; Kenya, 437 million to do as it wishes (no lie here either); and then amounts from 69 million to 474 million for drug abatement to over another twenty-odd countries ranging from India to Russia.
Oops! I forgot Bosnia--43 million for reparations. What reparations? The war ended sixteen years ago over there, and our only involvement was NATO and brokering a treaty between the warring parties.
The list goes on and on.
China-27 million; Brazil-25 million; Mexico-316 million; Philippines-128 million, and Thailand-16 million. Oh yeah, can’t forget Turkey at 8.2 million. And Obama signed a bill that, among other things, gave the Palestinian Authority 500 million.
Now, I know you don’t like looking a figures- math ones at least, but bear with me.
To whom do we owe money? Where to start?
Well, let’s begin with the big boys.
China-1.1 trillion; Brazil-193 billion; Russia-127 billion; India-39 billion; and Egypt-15 billion.
There are more, but you get the idea.
So tell me, how do we stop such flagrant waste of our tax money? Seems to be we get nothing in return.
This suggestion is a simple one, but I’m a simple person. If we give money to a country to whom we are in debt, they must deduct the amount we tender them from what we owe.
We need to do something. I’m no ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal. Sort of a mish mash between them, but I know that sooner or later, money will either run out or we’ll have hyperinflation of 50% monthly like Zimbabwe.
What kind of spark will it take to ignite outrage against the wastefulness with which Washington blows our money?
If I knew, I’d sure as heck touch a match to it.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
And it is lousy, although throughout most of Texas, it isn’t as lousy as elsewhere.
What if you lived in Reno or Detroit or Flint? All three have 16+% unemployment and staggering job losses from industry that will never return.
General Motors once employed 80,000 workers in Flint. Today, 8,200. Detroit has lost 323,400 jobs; Reno, 36,000.
We could go on and on, but why torture ourselves?
The economy stinks and Washington is doing little to help.
I know one step to take, and after reading this, I believe you will agree.
I’ve often wondered why our government doesn’t cut out some of the monies sent to other countries and instead use it here, in our country. I don’t mean as gifts, although recent statistics on taxes suggest that almost fifty percent of our citizens (those who paid no taxes) would kill to be first in line for something for nothing.
I’d like to know what percent of that group of non-payers are the true deadbeats; the third and fourth generation entitlement recipients; the welfare cheats; the unemployment thieves; the social security swindlers—
Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away on our deadbeats.
Last year, the U.S. handed out billions in foreign aid to other countries for various reasons. That’s bad enough, but wait for the kicker. Sixteen of those countries each hold at least ten billion in U.S. Treasury securities-many hold much more.
In other words, we’re giving foreign aid to some of the world’s richest countries.
Ready for another kick in the rear? We then turn around and borrow money from those to whom we’ve given it.
No wonder we have a $14 trillion dollar debt those incompetents in Washington are arguing over.
That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s Washington. What do I know? I’m just a average Joe Dunderhead trying to stay within my own budget and pay my bills.
What they’re doing is like you making a gift of a hundred bucks to your neighbor, then turning around and borrowing fifty with the obligation to repay it.
Make sense to you? Doesn’t to me either.
And that isn’t all.
One third of all foreign aid goes to Israel (2.25 billion) and Egypt (1.5 B)for armaments, yet neither is a ‘developing’ country, a prerequisite. (and Egypt hates us except for the few seconds they stick out their greedy hand for the annual check)
Columbia received 561 million for drug abatement; Jordan 540 million to leave Israel alone (that’s right- no mistake); Pakistan 734 million to chase terrorists (your guess as to where they chase them is as good as mine); Indonesia, 159 M for oil reserves; Kenya, 437 million to do as it wishes (no lie here either); and then amounts from 69 million to 474 million for drug abatement to over another twenty-odd countries ranging from India to Russia.
Oops! I forgot Bosnia--43 million for reparations. What reparations? The war ended sixteen years ago over there, and our only involvement was NATO and brokering a treaty between the warring parties.
The list goes on and on.
China-27 million; Brazil-25 million; Mexico-316 million; Philippines-128 million, and Thailand-16 million. Oh yeah, can’t forget Turkey at 8.2 million. And Obama signed a bill that, among other things, gave the Palestinian Authority 500 million.
Now, I know you don’t like looking a figures- math ones at least, but bear with me.
To whom do we owe money? Where to start?
Well, let’s begin with the big boys.
China-1.1 trillion; Brazil-193 billion; Russia-127 billion; India-39 billion; and Egypt-15 billion.
There are more, but you get the idea.
So tell me, how do we stop such flagrant waste of our tax money? Seems to be we get nothing in return.
This suggestion is a simple one, but I’m a simple person. If we give money to a country to whom we are in debt, they must deduct the amount we tender them from what we owe.
We need to do something. I’m no ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal. Sort of a mish mash between them, but I know that sooner or later, money will either run out or we’ll have hyperinflation of 50% monthly like Zimbabwe.
What kind of spark will it take to ignite outrage against the wastefulness with which Washington blows our money?
If I knew, I’d sure as heck touch a match to it.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
July 6, 2011
On Reflection of Paul Revere's Ride
On Reflection of Paul Revere’s Ride
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Most of us have been able to quote that particular stanza of Longfellow’s from memory since childhood. I don’t know if it is still taught in public schools or not.
But, I bet when old Paul leaped into the saddle that night and spurred the animal for Lexington, he had no idea the furor his ride would create over two hundred and thirty-odd years later.
Of course, everyone reading this knows exactly to what I am referring, the brouhaha a few weeks back over Palin’s remark about Paul Revere warning the British.
I’ll be honest. I thought she had goofed. Warn the British? No way!
So, I did what many of her critics should have done. I researched the ride, discovering a letter Revere had written of that particular ride to Clergyman Jeremy Belknap, a gentlemen who held counsel with many of the rebels like Revere.
On page four of his letter, he writes of being captured by the British. They asked his name. Here is what he wrote, without editing. “I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and added, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.”
His words, as he wrote them.
‘There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time.’ Now I don’t about you, but to me, that is a warning.
So why all the fuss about Palin?
Some say she is intellectually dishonest; some say she tries to dictate other people’s opinions; and others claim she is ignorant. (and all this time, I thought those were the prime prerequisites for a successful politician)
Not being a national pundit who is smarter than everyone else, I can’t say whether she is guilty of the assertions.
I do know it was not Sarah Palin who said “I’ve been in fifty-seven states. I have one left to go.” Nor was it Palin who uttered the unbelievably insensitive remark “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today. . .”
Nope, those eloquent observations were delivered by the silvery, but slippery tongue of President Barack Obama.
One pundit jumped her case because in her discussion of Paul Revere, she rambled. I saw the video, and she did. Who doesn’t as Obama’s speech at a recent campaign stop illustrates all too clearly.
“What they'll say is, 'Well it costs too much money,' but you know what? It would cost, about... it. .it. . . it would cost about the same as what we would spend. Over the course of ten years it would cost what it would costs us. All right. Okay. We're going to. It. . . It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about. . hold on one second. I can't hear myself. But I'm glad you're fired up, though. I'm glad."
Now the previous paragraph has to be a strong contender for a playoff spot in the World Series of ‘Rambling’.
All politicians ramble. That’s how they avoid answering us, but the media plays favorites, and Palin makes a good target, which gets them off the hook when they overlook Obama’s pathetic explanation for health reform in this disjointed remark.
“Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven't had much sleep in the last 48 hours."
All of us garble our messages at times.
I always got a big kick out of George W
and his Bushisms, but Barack O can match the W goof for goof.
When I first read the following remark, I honestly attributed it to George, but it belongs to our president, “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings, and inefficiencies to our health care system."
I knew immediately the source of the next remark because of the first sentence. “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”
Obama? Right. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known someone to want to be so absolutely clear about everything.
Palin is a politician like the others. Good points, bad points.
You know what tickles me. The media who pushed to have her emails made public came up with zilch—called egg-on-the-face.
If the media isn’t careful, they’ll start pushing voters her way. No one likes to see another treated unfairly, and that’s they way it seems to be going.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Most of us have been able to quote that particular stanza of Longfellow’s from memory since childhood. I don’t know if it is still taught in public schools or not.
But, I bet when old Paul leaped into the saddle that night and spurred the animal for Lexington, he had no idea the furor his ride would create over two hundred and thirty-odd years later.
Of course, everyone reading this knows exactly to what I am referring, the brouhaha a few weeks back over Palin’s remark about Paul Revere warning the British.
I’ll be honest. I thought she had goofed. Warn the British? No way!
So, I did what many of her critics should have done. I researched the ride, discovering a letter Revere had written of that particular ride to Clergyman Jeremy Belknap, a gentlemen who held counsel with many of the rebels like Revere.
On page four of his letter, he writes of being captured by the British. They asked his name. Here is what he wrote, without editing. “I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and added, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.”
His words, as he wrote them.
‘There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time.’ Now I don’t about you, but to me, that is a warning.
So why all the fuss about Palin?
Some say she is intellectually dishonest; some say she tries to dictate other people’s opinions; and others claim she is ignorant. (and all this time, I thought those were the prime prerequisites for a successful politician)
Not being a national pundit who is smarter than everyone else, I can’t say whether she is guilty of the assertions.
I do know it was not Sarah Palin who said “I’ve been in fifty-seven states. I have one left to go.” Nor was it Palin who uttered the unbelievably insensitive remark “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today. . .”
Nope, those eloquent observations were delivered by the silvery, but slippery tongue of President Barack Obama.
One pundit jumped her case because in her discussion of Paul Revere, she rambled. I saw the video, and she did. Who doesn’t as Obama’s speech at a recent campaign stop illustrates all too clearly.
“What they'll say is, 'Well it costs too much money,' but you know what? It would cost, about... it. .it. . . it would cost about the same as what we would spend. Over the course of ten years it would cost what it would costs us. All right. Okay. We're going to. It. . . It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about. . hold on one second. I can't hear myself. But I'm glad you're fired up, though. I'm glad."
Now the previous paragraph has to be a strong contender for a playoff spot in the World Series of ‘Rambling’.
All politicians ramble. That’s how they avoid answering us, but the media plays favorites, and Palin makes a good target, which gets them off the hook when they overlook Obama’s pathetic explanation for health reform in this disjointed remark.
“Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven't had much sleep in the last 48 hours."
All of us garble our messages at times.
I always got a big kick out of George W
and his Bushisms, but Barack O can match the W goof for goof.
When I first read the following remark, I honestly attributed it to George, but it belongs to our president, “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings, and inefficiencies to our health care system."
I knew immediately the source of the next remark because of the first sentence. “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”
Obama? Right. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known someone to want to be so absolutely clear about everything.
Palin is a politician like the others. Good points, bad points.
You know what tickles me. The media who pushed to have her emails made public came up with zilch—called egg-on-the-face.
If the media isn’t careful, they’ll start pushing voters her way. No one likes to see another treated unfairly, and that’s they way it seems to be going.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
http://www.kentconwell.blogspot.com/
www.goodreads.com/author/show/13557.K...
www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JPCK26
June 29, 2011
Fourth of July, 1940s Style
Why is it that many of the most pleasant memories we have are those when we were young? Well, I could ruin the nostalgia of the moment and stay it’s because psychiatrists say our brains weed out the bad from the good, but I won’t.
Let’s just say we remember them because they were they way we want them to be.
And that’s how I remember the Fourth of
July in the little town of Wheeler up in the Texas Panhandle.
The small town was home to eight hundred and forty-eight people, counting sixteen Indians camped just inside the city
limits on a small creek north of town.
The only reason I know the last little tidbit is because Dad did the census.
The Fourths most vivid for me were around the mid-forties. I was ten and going into the fifth grade.
For a month ahead of time, along with my best friends, Donald and Jerry, I hoarded every penny I could scrape up for fireworks. To us boys, the Fourth was fireworks. Black Cats, torpedoes, baby giants, and rockets. The spray type fireworks were too tame for us.
We wanted noise and excitement, which we achieved by seeing who could explode a can highest into the air. We mangled every can on the premises, and some we shouldn’t. But, the truth is a ten-year-old boy with firecracker in hand can come up with some far-out ideas.
We even tried tying a string of Black Cats to the tail of a kite, but could never manage to get it airborne before the string blew itself out.
And then we’d play ‘naval war’ by tying a rock to a box of Rit Dye, stick a baby giant in the box, light it, and toss the whole conglomeration in the pond.
When it exploded underwater, the dye swirled to the top, just like oil from enemy submarines did in the Hollywood movies. That was great fun.
Black Cats would not work in the submarine trick. Their fuses were not waterproof like the baby giants.
Now all of this was usually going on around the periphery of the family or community get-together, a feast with every imaginable sort of goody from fried chicken to chocolate meringue pie. And Mama Conwell always included a couple of her bean pies.
I know, I know, ‘Bean Pie!’ Ugh.
Well, you can say ugh all you want. Just let me have your portion. They taste somewhere between sweet potato and pumpkin pie. Absolutely delicious.
One of the most spectacular fireworks events I ever witnessed was the Great Watermelon Explosion. At the moment of the event, I regretted not thinking of it, but when I witnessed the retribution given to one of my chums, Donald, I thanked my lucky stars I had no part in it.
There were about sixty or seventy folks down at the park, which consisted of a meandering creek, thirty or forty giant cottonwoods, two croquet courts, and about a half acre of freshly mown grass.
Folks were sitting in clusters; kids were running around and laughing; some of us boys were chasing each other with torpedoes; everyone was having a good time.
I had stopped for a glass of iced tea when I spotted Donald with his family gathered around a could split watermelons. Without warning, one melon exploded, sending red chucks of melon flying in every direction.
Curses broke through the startled exclamations. Donald took off running.
His older brother took off after him.
Now, Donald was small but fast.
Unfortunately, his brother was bigger and faster. He caught Donald at the creek, and to everyone’s encouragement, grabbed him by the shirt and seat of his pants and tossed him into a deep pool, after which he jumped in and held Donald under water, not once, but half-a-dozen times.
Old Donald came up coughing and gagging, but his ordeal was far from over. His brother dragged him back to the destroyed watermelon and made him pick up the pieces and eat them.
He ate most of it, then threw up. He threw up a second time when his brother told him if he threw up anymore, he was going to eat that. Somehow Donald kept it all down.
Now those are memories.
They just don’t make Fourth of Julys like that anymore.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
Let’s just say we remember them because they were they way we want them to be.
And that’s how I remember the Fourth of
July in the little town of Wheeler up in the Texas Panhandle.
The small town was home to eight hundred and forty-eight people, counting sixteen Indians camped just inside the city
limits on a small creek north of town.
The only reason I know the last little tidbit is because Dad did the census.
The Fourths most vivid for me were around the mid-forties. I was ten and going into the fifth grade.
For a month ahead of time, along with my best friends, Donald and Jerry, I hoarded every penny I could scrape up for fireworks. To us boys, the Fourth was fireworks. Black Cats, torpedoes, baby giants, and rockets. The spray type fireworks were too tame for us.
We wanted noise and excitement, which we achieved by seeing who could explode a can highest into the air. We mangled every can on the premises, and some we shouldn’t. But, the truth is a ten-year-old boy with firecracker in hand can come up with some far-out ideas.
We even tried tying a string of Black Cats to the tail of a kite, but could never manage to get it airborne before the string blew itself out.
And then we’d play ‘naval war’ by tying a rock to a box of Rit Dye, stick a baby giant in the box, light it, and toss the whole conglomeration in the pond.
When it exploded underwater, the dye swirled to the top, just like oil from enemy submarines did in the Hollywood movies. That was great fun.
Black Cats would not work in the submarine trick. Their fuses were not waterproof like the baby giants.
Now all of this was usually going on around the periphery of the family or community get-together, a feast with every imaginable sort of goody from fried chicken to chocolate meringue pie. And Mama Conwell always included a couple of her bean pies.
I know, I know, ‘Bean Pie!’ Ugh.
Well, you can say ugh all you want. Just let me have your portion. They taste somewhere between sweet potato and pumpkin pie. Absolutely delicious.
One of the most spectacular fireworks events I ever witnessed was the Great Watermelon Explosion. At the moment of the event, I regretted not thinking of it, but when I witnessed the retribution given to one of my chums, Donald, I thanked my lucky stars I had no part in it.
There were about sixty or seventy folks down at the park, which consisted of a meandering creek, thirty or forty giant cottonwoods, two croquet courts, and about a half acre of freshly mown grass.
Folks were sitting in clusters; kids were running around and laughing; some of us boys were chasing each other with torpedoes; everyone was having a good time.
I had stopped for a glass of iced tea when I spotted Donald with his family gathered around a could split watermelons. Without warning, one melon exploded, sending red chucks of melon flying in every direction.
Curses broke through the startled exclamations. Donald took off running.
His older brother took off after him.
Now, Donald was small but fast.
Unfortunately, his brother was bigger and faster. He caught Donald at the creek, and to everyone’s encouragement, grabbed him by the shirt and seat of his pants and tossed him into a deep pool, after which he jumped in and held Donald under water, not once, but half-a-dozen times.
Old Donald came up coughing and gagging, but his ordeal was far from over. His brother dragged him back to the destroyed watermelon and made him pick up the pieces and eat them.
He ate most of it, then threw up. He threw up a second time when his brother told him if he threw up anymore, he was going to eat that. Somehow Donald kept it all down.
Now those are memories.
They just don’t make Fourth of Julys like that anymore.
rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
June 22, 2011
The Legal Truth About Anchor Babies
I had an interesting response a few weeks back in regard to an article I’d written concerning the president’s birth certificate.
The writer presented a very intelligent and insightful look at the ‘natural citizen’ requirement set by the constitution for the office of president. There is a simple citizen requirement also, but that counted only back at the time the constitution was adopted, 1789, and there ain’t none of them folks walking around now. That means a natural (born here legally) citizen is the one citizenship requirement for the presidency.
Now, all of us know that the Fourteenth Amendment states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
If foreign diplomats and like persons give birth to children while in this country, the child is not an American citizen because the parents are subject to laws of their own country, not ours.
That’s what the ‘jurisdiction thereof’ means.
Now, that is pretty simple to understand. (except in Washington and by many judges who render culturally biased decisions)
Countries around the world use various methods to determine citizenship. The U.S.A. uses jus solis, which means citizen-by-location, location meaning within American boundaries. Japan on the other hand uses jus sanguinis or right-of-blood, which means only children whose parents are citizens can acquire Japanese citizenship. No naturalized citizens. In the U.S., just being born here gives babies citizenship.
Or does it?
Not in every case, and here is why.
Raoul Berger, the Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History at Harvard University, wrote “that for a better part of a century the Supreme Court has been handing down decisions interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment improperly, willfully ignoring or willfully distorting the history of its enactment.”
Now, that is pretty strong stuff, but he happens to be right. Here’s what took place.
In 1898, The Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 U.S. 649, in a 6-2 decision, rejected arguments that the petitioner was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because the phrase meant to exclude children born to foreign diplomats and children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country’s territory.
The Court held the petitioner, a child of subjects of the Emperor of China whose parents were lawfully living in the United States where he was born, was a U.S. citizen by birth. His citizenship status could not be revoked just because his parents were not American citizens at the time of his birth.
In simple language, the 1898 decision said if foreign parents are lawfully living in the U.S., their offspring are born citizens. But, you ask, if the parents are not citizens, how can they be lawfully living here? Simple, they came legally and are in the process of becoming citizens.
The other side of this sword obvously is that if parents are unlawfully living (i.e. illegal aliens of all cultures) in the U.S., their offspring cannot be citizens.
This is Raoul Berger’s point. A pretty simple one.
Illegal aliens’ offspring cannot become automatic citizens.
The 1898 decision became law, yet for over a hundred years, court decisions have ignored it.
Deeper research into the 14th Amendment also reveals that, as Mister Berger stated, “the authors of the amendment . . . intended only to protect the freedmen from southern Black Codes that threatened to return them to slavery."
It does not protect anyone who sneaks into the country at night to drop an anchor baby. (I said that, not the authors of the amendment)
Now, don’t go expecting lawmakers in Washington to do anything about the situation. The majority are too busy working on their next election or covering their indiscretions.
Oh the other hand, a few lawmakers and activists have proposed abolishing jus soli in the United States.
That might not be a bad idea. From jus solis to jus sanguinis.
Simply put, children whose parents live lawfully in the U.S. can be granted citizenship according to the 1898 Supreme Court decision. That includes parents who are natural citizens and parents who are here legally.
If the current Supreme Court refuses to support the Constituion which strangely enough happens to be the Law of the Land, what next?
Just more of the following.
Parkland Hospital Dallas is the second busiest maternity ward in the U.S. In a recent year, 70% of the women giving birth were illegal aliens. For the 11,200 babies, Medicaid paid 34.5 million to deliver, the feds 9.5 million and Dallas taxpayers 31.3 million.
Makes a gent want to cuss, don’t it?
The writer presented a very intelligent and insightful look at the ‘natural citizen’ requirement set by the constitution for the office of president. There is a simple citizen requirement also, but that counted only back at the time the constitution was adopted, 1789, and there ain’t none of them folks walking around now. That means a natural (born here legally) citizen is the one citizenship requirement for the presidency.
Now, all of us know that the Fourteenth Amendment states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
If foreign diplomats and like persons give birth to children while in this country, the child is not an American citizen because the parents are subject to laws of their own country, not ours.
That’s what the ‘jurisdiction thereof’ means.
Now, that is pretty simple to understand. (except in Washington and by many judges who render culturally biased decisions)
Countries around the world use various methods to determine citizenship. The U.S.A. uses jus solis, which means citizen-by-location, location meaning within American boundaries. Japan on the other hand uses jus sanguinis or right-of-blood, which means only children whose parents are citizens can acquire Japanese citizenship. No naturalized citizens. In the U.S., just being born here gives babies citizenship.
Or does it?
Not in every case, and here is why.
Raoul Berger, the Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History at Harvard University, wrote “that for a better part of a century the Supreme Court has been handing down decisions interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment improperly, willfully ignoring or willfully distorting the history of its enactment.”
Now, that is pretty strong stuff, but he happens to be right. Here’s what took place.
In 1898, The Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 U.S. 649, in a 6-2 decision, rejected arguments that the petitioner was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because the phrase meant to exclude children born to foreign diplomats and children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country’s territory.
The Court held the petitioner, a child of subjects of the Emperor of China whose parents were lawfully living in the United States where he was born, was a U.S. citizen by birth. His citizenship status could not be revoked just because his parents were not American citizens at the time of his birth.
In simple language, the 1898 decision said if foreign parents are lawfully living in the U.S., their offspring are born citizens. But, you ask, if the parents are not citizens, how can they be lawfully living here? Simple, they came legally and are in the process of becoming citizens.
The other side of this sword obvously is that if parents are unlawfully living (i.e. illegal aliens of all cultures) in the U.S., their offspring cannot be citizens.
This is Raoul Berger’s point. A pretty simple one.
Illegal aliens’ offspring cannot become automatic citizens.
The 1898 decision became law, yet for over a hundred years, court decisions have ignored it.
Deeper research into the 14th Amendment also reveals that, as Mister Berger stated, “the authors of the amendment . . . intended only to protect the freedmen from southern Black Codes that threatened to return them to slavery."
It does not protect anyone who sneaks into the country at night to drop an anchor baby. (I said that, not the authors of the amendment)
Now, don’t go expecting lawmakers in Washington to do anything about the situation. The majority are too busy working on their next election or covering their indiscretions.
Oh the other hand, a few lawmakers and activists have proposed abolishing jus soli in the United States.
That might not be a bad idea. From jus solis to jus sanguinis.
Simply put, children whose parents live lawfully in the U.S. can be granted citizenship according to the 1898 Supreme Court decision. That includes parents who are natural citizens and parents who are here legally.
If the current Supreme Court refuses to support the Constituion which strangely enough happens to be the Law of the Land, what next?
Just more of the following.
Parkland Hospital Dallas is the second busiest maternity ward in the U.S. In a recent year, 70% of the women giving birth were illegal aliens. For the 11,200 babies, Medicaid paid 34.5 million to deliver, the feds 9.5 million and Dallas taxpayers 31.3 million.
Makes a gent want to cuss, don’t it?
