7 Weeks

Bird season in Georgia is about 7 weeks away. By birds, I mean quail. Time to get the dogs polished up on some commands, and day dream about days afield not too far away...

Jake might be smelling birds from the truck









Casting about...

























Belle with the retrieve...







Photos from a 2006 hunt just around Thanksgiving...

Gubmint Bailouts

I don't think I am smart enough to figure out a way out of the current economic morass. Apparently a lot of other people aren't smart enough either, since it happened and there are supposed to be a whole lot of smart people making sure these things don't happen.

Well, another thing, a large percentage of people are not as smart as they think they are. Not everybody scored in the 90th percentile on their standardized testing. That's why it's the 90th percentile. If you scored that high, you probably went to Harvard, or Yale, or some other fine institution which grooms the financial leaders of tomorrow. People in the lower percentiles who are good looking go into television media, the ones who have a face for radio do their thing, and the rest of us blog. There's just not enough smart people to go around. It's not the Media's fault...how could you explain Calculus to a four year old when you yourself couldn't grasp fractions?

In fact, maybe there are people smart enough out there, but they have been too busy making money. So busy in fact that they couldn't pause long enough to realize that what they were doing would lead to economic collapse. Or maybe they were really smart and figured out that all of the other people who went to Harvard and Yale but had family money and went into Politics would write a $700 Billion government check. The first group, the money-makers, looked at all the risks and contingencies. In fact, they analyzed, they ruminated, they ran what-if scenarios, and ultimately, they knew their classmates would write that check.

What about holding indivduals accountable for their actions? I am not talking about criminally liable, I am talking about financially liable. I am talking about all those too stupid or too bold or both to realize that they stuck themselves in a place they shouldn't be. Why should we, the taxpayer, subsidize stupidity of people who borrowed more than they could ever repay? Why not let it collapse, re-value, go through a market-correction, and let some good old fashioned natural selection financially trim some of the fat.

Pretty hard & cold I know. But what happens after you spend the $700 Billion to bail out the homeowners, the financiers, the insurance companies, the credit card holders and the rest of the motley crew? Has any learning taken place?

Yes there has been some learning. They learned that it doesn't matter what I do, Uncle Sam will take care of me. And so they'll charge ahead, literally, leveraging everything again, and create a bigger fiasco than before. Meanwhile, the government will slap so much regulation on Wall Street that it will be impossible for you and I to ever realize any kind of return out of the market.

I don't think you can fight it...there are too many stupid people and too many willing to subsidize the stupidity and hamper the capitalist engine along the way. So, I just want to know, where do I line up and where do I sign to turn over my mortgage and my credit card debt to the government so I can start over too.

Nobama '08

'Nuff Said.

Well maybe not. In general, as a rule, I don't care for politics, or politicians. Every 4 years I go to the polls asking myself if these 2 clowns are the best we have to offer up? The question is of course, no. These are the best 2 clowns that had enough money and connections to make it through the political process and be nominated for President of the United States, and leader of the Free World. I have a feeling there is some dude sitting in a cabin in Idaho or Montana, that would make a fantastic president, but he doesn't have the millions required to run a campaign.

I carry a strong suspicion that the Republicans and Democrats are playing the public to keep themselves elected for life. How many Representatives or Senators take themselves out of the game after 4 years and go back to being productive members of society? Maybe more than I am aware of, but in general, it seems politics is a lifelong avocation.

In fact, I am so suspicious, I imagine back in the day, the likes of Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich get together in some Georgetown bar and decide which elements of society they will patronize in order to get elected and stay elected. Newt decided to take anti-abortion and Teddy took Pro-Choice. Teddy wanted the black vote, so Newt took the whites. Teddy took on the mantle of tax and spend while Newt decided espouse Reaganomics. Etcetera Etcetera, Ad Nauseum. Even now, I am sure Nancy Pelosi sits down with someone and divvies up the country's votes.

When Gore was running against George W., I asked myself who I would rather hang out with. In addition to agreeing with some of what he was about, Bush was the Lesser of Two Evils. At least you had the sense he would kick ass when needed, and wouldn't back down. Texas is always better than Tennessee anyways. A lot of Texans trace their lineage to people who had the good sense to migrate out of Tennessee in the first place.

Gore is a tool. He is also apparently unstable. All the pot heads I knew years ago didn't handle stress very well, and Gore was no exception. I just googled images for a photo that came out after his post hanging-chad-election meltdown. Couldn't find it after a 30-second ADD search, but he looked like a mountain man that had been raped in prison. Not the kind of guy to be running the country. At least the terrorists are scared of Dubya, even if he's not a great public speaker. Who cares anyways, we all probably sound stupid in Arabic.

Remember the Mother of All Battles boast by Saddam? He sounded like a moron in English, but I bet it was a pretty scary statement in Arabic. Just something lost in translation. All it did for us was give birth to the MOAB-Mother of All Bombs, and we know what happened to Smack-Talking Saddam.

Anyhoo, back on point...Gore was RAISED to be president. His dad was a Senator from Tennessee. Gore is what most people refer to as a Legacy, like Flounder in the movie Animal House. Based on what I can tell, Gore was a pot-smoking fun-loving college student with a girlfriend named Tipper. Word is they weren't exactly saints back in the day. Then they straightened up, got respectable, and then rose to political stardom. Gore then lost the election, and went off the deep-end for a few weeks, emerging in his caveman disguise. Remember too that he claimed to have invented the Internet. Now he is jetting around the world, crusading against global warming, leaving perhaps the largest carbon footprint of anyone on the planet.

For me, I say Nobama '08 because Obama is More Gore. He has been raised, groomed, and prepped for the Presidency with no experience to boot, so he is worse than Gore. Media darling, sound bites, slick talking, and I have to admit, a heck of a speech giver. He has the Clinton-esque ability to tell you something you can't stand to hear, yet he charms you into listening- a gift indeed. Obama is hailed as a savior, and propped up by the Democratic party as the panacea to all things Bush & Cheney which have ruined this country (if you believe it), but at least Gore had been in the system a while. Gore was like an automaton with programming for every scenario, only he had no program for losing the election he was supposed to win. Gore was predictable, but thank God it was Bush in charge to react to the 9-11 Attack. Lord only knows what would have happened with Gore in office. We probably would have seen Caveman Gore. However, we have no idea what Mr. Obama would do in a crisis or national emergency or God-forbid an attack that surpasses Pearl Harbor and 9-11. He has said he would open up dialogue. I don't want dialogue, I want someone that would open up a whole case of whoop-ass. It makes our enemies think twice about trying to poke us in the eye, or worse. Say what you will, but 9-11 was a direct cause-effect of weak US policy towards terrorist activity and attacks in the previous 8 years leading up to the election of 2000.

People with no experience in leadership scare the crap out of me. Forget that I disagree with Obama on the whole socialism issue and taxation. If you want all that, there are lots of countries in Europe to choose from and Canada is real close. Forget also that I disagree with Obama on just about every other issue too, and I think he would say anything to get elected, catering the message to each audience he addresses. If he deigned to try and personally convince me to vote for him, he would probably wax eloquent on quail hunting, extol the virtues of youth football, and tell me what an all-around great guy I am and that he wants the same things I do.

And true, there are some things I don't like about McCain. but if anything, the President is the Executive and Commander-In-Chief and if that's what the President is supposed to be , then in my opinion, McCain is the man for the job. Barack Hussein Obama as Commander-In-Chief does not make me sleep well at night and feel good about my children's future on this planet. There are a lot of people that don't like the United States, and a fair amount of them are clamoring for Obama. Some of them live here in the US. For me, this time, its a clearer choice.

And if not enough people see it my way, Plan B is to move to Mexico where there are tons of quail and a little cash goes a long way.

PS I am so, so glad that Cheney is not running, because if he was, there is no wrath like that reserved for a man that shoots another bird hunter.