As this magical hour approaches – magical, for me, since it is the split second shared by both the Marine Corps’ Birthday and Veteran’s Day – I cannot help but stop to think how blessed I am to have had the opportunity to serve my country. A lot of people in the current administration make it seem like it isn’t MY country any more, and in fact they want YOU to feel like YOU don’t own it, either – that you should, in fact, be sharing it with the rest of the poor, undeveloped world because it just isn’t FAIR that there are haves and have nots in this world.

I’ve got news for those who feel it isn’t FAIR – “fair” is a county thing, maybe a state thing, where you show off your livestock and your produce, the product of your own hands and sweat equity and your skills. You know, all those things the intellectuals of the world would have you believe are beneath contempt. If it wasn’t for the ones willing to get down in the trenches, both literal and figurative, the intellectuals would be crying for someone to save them. It is those who are willing, who were willing, and who will be willing in the future to lay there lives on the line for this experiment we call The United States of America that allow the intellectuals the freedom to whine about how unfair it is that we, the United States, have the largest base of manufacturing in the world. Well, we did, until the intellectuals determined that they could make all the icky manual labor jobs go away if the corporations who provided those jobs were forced to pay more for the privelege of operating within our borders.

Sorry – got off track for a bit.

I tend to do that when I think of how many family members, through the years, and tribe members and fellow sheep dogs have forfeited their lives so that We The People could have the life we have, and know that if the intellectuals had their way we would be chasing down the mighty Tofusaurus on the wide open plains for tonight’s supper – since intellectually, farming hurts the earth, and cows hurt the earth, and cars hurt the earth, and breathing hurts the earth…

Sorry, sidetracked again.

To all those who have served and are currently serving: THANK YOU. To the members, the fewer and fewer members, of the Greatest Generation: THANK YOU.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

New Corps – I am not slamming you or “dissing” you or anything like that. Tradition is that all Marines are jarheads. Live with it.

Fred – Happy Birthday to you AND the Corps. Figures, a crusty old leatherneck like you would have to share the birthday with our beloved Corps. It fits, you know?

I rent my domain name(s) from GoDaddy.com. I got an e-mail from Bob Parsons (another Marine, for those who weren’t aware) pointing to his annual Birthday Tribute: USMC 234the Birthday Tribute. Quite good. It’s even got my favorite quote about Marines in there, from Ronald Reagan.

Two more things, to all my fellow Marines, past, present, and future:

1. Ooh.

2. Rah.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Ended up working all week – the dishwasher called in sick on Tuesday and Wednesday – and quite frankly, I’m not getting enough sleep. So, again, the blog(s) suffer. Sorry about that.

Part of the not-enough-sleep issue is not getting notified when anyone makes a comment – so, if you have made a comment lately, and I did not comment back, I am not ignoring you – I just haven’t been on except to check my e-mail and try to my farm going in Facebook. If I didn’t get a notification, because WordPress is demanding I update (again!), then I apologize. And, as soon as I am within a hair’s breadth of being caught up again, I will catch up on all the comments again.

Another part of the whole “busybusybusy” thing I seem to be living in is that the BlogTalkRadio auotmatic scheduler didn’t. I was not aware of that until I tried to call in to host my show this morning. By the time I figured out what was going on (or, more correctly, what wasn’t going on) it was too late to get a show started. So, I just did stuff around the house instead. Now, here it is the late afternoon, and I realized I hadn’t even posted my usual reminder to Wear Red.

I am such a slacker. Why do you keep coming back?

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Everyone else in the house is asleep – TMBWitW, MEG, and the dogs (who apparently assumed that since I was out here, emptying and filling the dishwasher with a background of NASCAR on the TV that I wasn’t going to nap out) are all sprawled and oblivious. MEG was really testy all morning, and she finally exhausted herself and fell asleep on the sofa – my sofa – while the dogs are spread all over the big bed wherever there is room. That is, room for them – there is no room for me now.

So, I figured I would clean up my mailbox a little bit, and came across this little tidbit that I had marked as possible fodder for a post. It’s dated September 23, 2009, but even a month later it will answer so many questions you may have about a certain leader of the free world.

I received the piece from a TEA Party member here in Arizona, and she pointed me to the article, which was written by Victor Davis Hanson for the National Review Online.

Barack Obama, College Administrator
Our commander-in-chief seems to think he’s president of the University of America.

By Victor Davis Hanson

If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense.

Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics. It shows. In his limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House.

Note how baffled the administration is by sinking polls, tea parties, town halls, and, in general, “them” — the vast middle class, which, as we learned during the campaign, clings to guns and Bibles, and which has now been written off as blinkered, racist, and xenophobic. The earlier characterization of rural Pennsylvania has been expanded to include all of Middle America.

For many in the academic community who have not worked with their hands, run businesses, or ventured far off campus, Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires. They are an emotional lot, of some value on campus for their ability to “fix” broken things like pipes and windows, but otherwise wisely ignored. Professor Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, summed up the sense of academic disdain that permeates this administration with his recent sniffing about the childish polloi: “The American people . . . just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act.” Earlier, remember, Dr. Chu had scoffed from his perch that California farms were environmentally unsound and would soon disappear altogether, “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Read the rest: Barack Obama, College Administrator

Now, that certainly explains a lot. Like why he is so clueless about what we, the people who actually have to live and earn a living in the United States, think about what he is doing as the leader of the US. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

(apologies to those of you who are not fans of “Madagascar” – I’ve heard that line way too many times recently)

Good show this morning at The O Word. At least, I think it was a good show. Go give it a listen and let me know what you think…

I had mentioned a while ago about getting the Hope Chest (the Project That Will Not Leave) to the point where the customer’s color choice is needed. Here are the pictures – first, a series of close-ups showing the detail of the front panel (remember that there is no color on the walnut, and walnut varies from bone white to a dark ash color), click to enlarge:

This one shows the new drawer I had to build, and the veneer laid out to put on the front of the bottom rail and drawer front:

View of the bottom, showing the new drawer:

And, finally, a view of the full face:

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!