When my folks thought I was asleep, I really had my transistor radio at my ear under the covers. So great to hear Vin Scully will keep on next year.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/story/_/id/11283819/vin-scully-los-angeles-dodgers-return-2015-66th-season

The powers that be would have us believe Russia is the devil. That is why, out of all the info on this, I picked an RT video.

Not that joining the military wouldn’t carry the risk of being sent into harm’s way. Like the drug war we have to wonder… do these people mean well? are they stupid? or are they sociopaths?

The U.S. State Department evacuated its embassy in Libya and recommended all American citizens leave the country following clashes between militias near its offices in Tripoli.

Finally a smart foreign policy decision from the State Department. The downside is that Neo-cons will not have someone to blame for US losses such as those in Benghazi. Those deaths were not a result of “the administration’s” bungling a defense of Americans overseas. They were because Stevens and the others were there; plain and simple. Would we blame a drowning on someone’s failure to throw a life preserver when someone else pushed the victim into the water, knowing they could not swim?

In the age of instant communication there is no reason for any embassies. There is no reason for Americans to be saddled with the responsibility of protecting Americans abroad. They should do it on their own dime if they choose to go there so our Defense Department can defend Americans within its jurisdiction and do it well.

Here’s the story on Libya today: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-26/u-s-evacuates-embassy-staff-in-libya-to-tunisia-due-to-violence.html

Here is a Paul Desmond rendition of the theme from The Americanization of Emily that was sent by my friend Hans in Sweden. There are certain things that music students should be indoctrinated with to graduate. This is one.

… but it’s still corporate welfare.

Our State senator, Amanda Ragan was bragging about taking from the poor and giving to the rich as she listed tax credits for “renewable” energy. Our representative in the statehouse, Linda Upmeyer, was singing the praises of taxpayer funded job training in community colleges. all this in today’s Hampton paper.

I would expect such bs from the Democrat, Ragan. And come to think of it, Linda as well. There really is no difference. Whoever buys the candidate gets the spoils. They are in the position to legalize the crimes they commit.

Since someone might read this who doesn’t know me I’ll explain. Iowa’s taxpayers don’t owe trained workers to businesses or tax breaks to inefficient energy schemes. If an industry needs tax breaks or free worker training to exist it shouldn’t exist.

The carbon footprint Ragan mentions should be on her posterior as she exits. Unfortunately any power gained by individual victims is soon corrupted as in Iowans for Tax Relief. We have a democracy now so publicity rewards with “policy.” Policy = another word for wealth transfer, no crow-bar or gun  needed.

On Huckabee’s morning radio show he said Gov. Perry may be in the wrong deploying National Guard troops to enforce the Texas border because federal law opposes military involvement in border enforcement.

We may as well save some money and do away with the military altogether if they aren’t allowed to do their job. This is more evidence that the US government is now in power only to prop-up corporate interests (as in their involvement defending assets overseas and foreign entities), individual citizens be damned. If our military was in place to truly serve our nation it would be screening immigrants as fast as it could and turning away destructive elements. Immigrants seeking to improve their lives through opportunity furnished by common law is what brought us to be this incredible place (less so at an accelerating pace). It is the screening process and welfare state that need to be addressed, not just a secure border. 

Friday, July 18:

U.S. Says Missile Downed Jet

Saturday/Sunday, July 19-20:

U.S. Blames Attack on Rebels

Monday, July 21:

West Lays Blame With Russia

Is it just me, or is there a new definition of “facts”?

Seems the WSJ pines for the Cold War days.  

I’ve had the theme from Maverick going through my head lately. Next to my mom and dad, James Garner was a role model for me. Kinda weird because, as Maverick, he played a gambler. The loader operator I worked with for Columbia Helicopters taught me not to gamble by taking every new guy’s first paycheck in motel crap games. Gambling is dumb, so of course, our state government runs it.

Garner filled the role of “scrounger” in the Korean War, where he won (odd word choice) two Purple Hearts, one of which was from a buttocks wound as he dove into a foxhole fleeing friendly fire from a U.S. fighter jet. His scrounger role stuck with him in two timeless movies; The Great Escape and The Americanization of Emily. Scrounger meant he had a sense for economy.

The Rockford Files probably had a more lasting influence because Garner played a private eye whose irreverent attitude was the key to helping ‘down on their luck’ crime victims find justice in spite of roadblocks thrown up by the perverted justice system. I might consider watching TV again if there was something like Rockford on there.

Garner, whose name was originally Bumgarner, was a Democrat, but I don’t hold that against him. I think there is plenty of misguided hate directed at people because of the label they carry. Labels get in the way of the solutions to the problems we are trying to solve. Calling names never fixed anything. In fact, calling names replaces solutions.

Words are labels, of course. We couldn’t communicate at all if labels didn’t allow us to define what we are trying to say. The problem arises when policies are never questioned because we end the conversation at the name calling with the idea we’ve done all we can do.

There doesn’t seem to be any label specifically for one who creates money out of thin air, unless it is the Federal Reserve Bank. It isn’t much fun to say, for instance, “you dirty inflationist.” Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe that will help us skip the labels and focus on the issue.

The international community is steadily moving away from The U.S. Dollar as the monetary standard in world trade. They see no end in sight to the increasing supply, and thus decreasing value of the dollar. They also see, what conservatives describe, as a weakening of the United States position as a world power. That power is being weakened by the use of empty threats through sanctions and bullying, and an arrogant attitude toward foreign peoples. While Russia and China make arraignments to trade without dollars, we focus on a downed airplane. Sad as it is, the downed plane is small potatoes compared to the end of the dollar as world reserve currency.

What once made the United States an exceptional country is now just a fond memory. And yet name calling is as far as we go in describing the failures our government has perpetrated on the rest of the world. Other countries used to look at us as an example of opportunity through individual freedom guaranteed by our government. Now we are looked at as meddlers and bullies abroad. And every intervention has produced mayhem and death (Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine). At home, opportunity has been changed to opportunity to access other peoples’ wealth (disability benefits, eminent domain, bail-outs and subsidies).

All of these failures are a result of our government acting in areas where they should never be in the first place. The strength of the United States rests in its (former) role as protector of the rights of individuals to control the fruits of their labor as they see fit. It does not rest in military might spread too thinly over the entire globe while ignoring the people it is delegated to protect.

After hearing James Garner’s speech again in The Americanization of Emily, I wonder how in the world he was such an avid supporter of those California Democrats who are so ignorant of economic science that they are unknowingly destroying the U.S. economy that backs the world’s reserve currency. The irreverence portrayed in many of Garner’s roles should be an example to us all in our relationship with politicians.

Please find a way to view James Garner’s speech in his favorite movie, The Americanization of Emily.

Otis Spann – piano

James Cotton – harp

Francis Clay – drums

Clear Creek – guitar (back in the stone age, when I bought this album for $2.50 it was widely thought Buddy Guy was on guitar, anonymous because of a label contract) Poor Buddy Guy sucks at guitar today and tries to make up for it by using the F word to appeal to the degenerate youth.

unknown second guitar and bass 

recorded 1966 in San Francisco

An article in the War Street Journal July 11, “In Defense of Killer Robots,” elicited this letter:

“Mr. Schechter attempts to allay concerns about the development of killer robots by arguing that these devices could be equipped with an “ethical governor” that “measures the proposed action against the rules of engagement and international humanitarian law.” Such a governor would either depend on a rules-based system of unimaginable complexity that will, nonetheless, fail in the face of infinite specific contingencies and an enemy intent on deception or on a yet to be invented technology that proceeds based on human powers of understanding and judgment. If the latter, these devices would no longer be rightly classified as robots and their ethical governors might very well object to being sent into battle or to being otherwise treated as a means to someone else’s end.”

Jim Reardon

San Diego

Our constitution has failed to protect individual rights because humans, so easily, stray from principle to address special circumstances. The last part of this letter implies that a robot army could stifle the intentions of an evil government such as our own. I realize computers don’t make mistakes; that it is the user or programmer. But this is food for thought.