Farewell My Friend

The last time I saw Dave, I took this photo of him and his dad leaving St. Elias Hospital in Anchorage.  Dave came to work as a mechanical piping designer at the engineering firm I was working at, about 2002.  Being next to each other, we got acquainted and became work place friends.  Every morning we would go out and get a cup of coffee together. 

 

Dave was a character.  His dad, (in the photo) was a hard working & hard drinking longshoremen. Dave also had a younger brother I never met, who was a deck boss on a Bering Sea crabber.  Dave projected a rough persona, a hard rocking, Dodge pickup driving, ex-linebacker red-neck hard ass.  But at his core was a really good hearted and decent person. More sensitive than he let on.

 

I think that sensitivity was not a good thing for him in his circumstances growing up. He told me a few things about his upbringing, which was rough. But we usually talked about work, current events and mundane things.

He told me stories that made us both howl with laughter.  He told me all through his youth, his dad & uncles would tell them that they were part Cherokee.  They would huddle around campfires during youthful summer nights and listen to the adults tell stories about their Indian heritage.  He said an aunt of his did some research and had verified it. She had cadged a thousand or so from his dad and who knows how much from other relatives and produced some dubious paperwork stating they were part of the Cherokee tribe.  They even received official tribal membership cards and numbers. The paperwork claimed to be official and from the Cherokee Tribal Acrchives in North Bend, Oregon.  Everyone bought into it and the matter was settled in their minds. But not in Dave’s. 

Dave did his own research and even called the actual Cherokee tribal offices in Oklahoma.  The numbers and paperwork were bogus, but the aunt who had foisted this scam on his family was now dead.  His image of her getting over on them, was her laughing from the grave like the old woman in the tub in room 237, in the Shining. 

 

Dave liked his vodka.  A lot. At first it didn’t affect his work. He was a tough son of a bitch. But as the years rolled on, I began to notice what I call ‘slippage’.  I’ve seen it a before in alcoholics who are stepping up to the varsity drinking team.  A mistaken memory of an event you were present at, or missed pickups on design drawings.  Little things at first. Then the coming in late, or not at all. The smell of alcohol oozing out from his skin. The puffy weight gain.

Dave finally lost his job.   I had moved on by then, to another firm.  We kept in touch via e-mail, telephone, and the occasional lunch.  I was busy, a family and job, a house, a life.  I received a call from a mutual friend who said that Dave was in the ICU at a local hospital.  I went to see him in the ICU. He was in a coma. When I first walked in, I was walking down the corridor looking in rooms as I walked by, trying to find him.  I saw a yellowish and waxy looking old man, propped up in a hospital bed with hoses sticking out of everywhere.  I walked past looking for Dave when a nurse asked me who I was trying to find. I told her and she pointed me back to the room where I had seen the waxy yellowish old man.  I walked in and took a hard look.  Here was a guy who was younger than me by ten years, but who looked like a concentration camp inmate on life support.  What I saw brought tears to my eyes.

I and others frequently went to see him.  After about a week, he came out of his coma.  Everyone, including the doctors thought he was going to die, but here he was talking to us.  He spent almost a month in that ICU.  He slowly got better.  Eventually he was moved out to a regular room.  One doctor even told him that he hoped Dave appreciated the gift he had been given because they gave him a ten percent chance of leaving the hospital alive when he came in. 

 

He did leave the hospital alive though. The photo above was taken the day he and his dad walked out of there and went back down south, to Oregon.  I kept in touch though e-mail and the occasional phone call.  He was doing better and slowly getting his life back together.  I was busy with my life.  The river of time ever flowing on.  I wanted to fly down next year, rent a car and drive to southern Oregon to visit him.

 Today at work, I got another call, from the same mutual friend who had told me a few years back that Dave was in the hospital.  Dave had died.  Dave had been drinking again.  He didn’t know if he been back on the drink for a while, or if he had just started back on that night, but his brother came over in the morning and found him dead. Given how ravaged his body had been before, I suspect it wouldn’t take much at all to put his system into a tailspin.

I know a lot of people personally and professionally, but I have very few friends.  Despite the distance, I considered Dave a friend.  Though we were vastly different in many ways, and in most circumstances would not have gotten to know each other, we did. He was at this core a good person. That’s more than many more accomplished people can claim.

I especially remember one winter night when my daughter was small and my wife called me in distress because her car had broken down on the road. She got it off to the side, but was stuck several miles from home with our young daughter and it was dark and cold. I called Dave. No question. He showed up with his truck. I had the tow straps and we got that car safely to my garage so I could fix it.  When the chips were down, he was the one person I called and he came through, like I friends do. 

 

Tonight I sit here typing this and wishing I had been a better friend.  Time and age accumulate silently, like snow falling in the woods. I was busy with my life and all of the other petty and mundane daily concerns that steal the time of day and cloud our vision.  There are lots of reasons to put off that e-mail, or call, or visit, but life is short and there’s only one shot.  Tend to what’s important.

Dave, I wish you peace and rest and I pray to God that you find the peace that was denied you in this life.  And I promise, I’ll be down to visit. Too late, I know, but better late than never.  Goodbye friend.

Lake in the Clouds

Down Hill

I tried to upload this directly to this web-site, but was unsuccessful.  So here you go.
Made with a GoPro Hero 3, Black edition. It was mounted on my handlebars.  Anyway, enjoy.

Autumn

From Hatcher's Pass

Leaving Anchorage

Leaving Anchorage, a photo by tpeters2600 on Flickr.

For some reason I have yet to discover, I cannot upload photos to my blog directly from my computer.
So, for the time being, I will have to upload them from my Flickr account. 

Please stand-by, I'm having technical trouble uploading photos.

Ship Lake Pass

I visit American Digest on a regular basis. It's a very good site. I usually like what he has to say and how he says it.  Many of the links are very interesting as well.  However, today, I ran across a link that made me laugh, derisively. 
Here's a link to the specific post.

Traveling through or across America, especially its wonderful west has been a more or less permanent theme since Europeans first landed here and began their westward expansion. The classic account (in my humble opinion anyway) is Lewis & Clark's epic journey.  There are many others following in that noble tradition.

In more recent times Kerouac's "On the Road", Steinbeck's "Travel's With Charlie" come to mind. Making it seem somehow more cliche.  Searching for the soul of what they perceive to be America. Kesey's journey was written about in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" or drug addled college kids take a trip, in every sense of the word. Taking along Neal Cassady to lend a hint of working class, street frisson.

In my best Rod Serling voice.
"Fast forward to today, we have arrived, as we are reminded on a daily basis, at an age of farce.  Meet Hank Butitta, budding architect, with a freshly minted Masters of Architecture degree in hand.  For his thesis project, young Hank buys a bus. Renovates it and goes off on a journey across western America. To lend a tone of seriousness, he says, that it's in furtherance of the 'Tiny House Movement'."

 I love the blurb,  [my comments  in bold]
"As the economy recovers uncertainly and the real estate market remains tenuous, many Americans
are looking at novel, alternative ways to live and save money.  And buying a school bus is just the way to do it! (In fact, we are moving to the suburbs in lower numbers than ever before). Hank Buttita saw this trend, took the ante, raised it, and went all in. With who's money? Buying a bus and tricking it out as we see is not exactly something most grad students can afford. He doesn't pay a mortgage or rent an overpriced apartment he maybe has rich parents, or a trust fund, he does, or would pay some serious change though to heat it in the winter. Then there's that whole shower & personal hygiene thing. or succumb to the soul-withering blackhole of the post-graduate job market. No, sir. Hank bought a bus." 

 Looking at the interior, it's evident that this is not some hippy bus. At first I thought laminate floor, but then saw the striping on the floor which appears to be from a basketball court.  No, no laminate, nothing but oak will do.  I'm sure the rest of the bus is similarly done.  As I said, no hippy bus.  And gas. I'm sure the bus doesn't get thirty miles per gallon. A spendy little trip.
Along the way, we get such pearls as, "The first time I visited Portland I knew I should never live there, but I really wanted to. In Portland, I would have become complacent. There was no machine to rage against."  Rage on brother.

Even NPR got 'on the bus' so to speak.  I'm sure that just happened.And of course there's a photographer along for the ride too.  Kind of reminds me of when Sean Penn took a photographer along when he tried to rescue New Orleans after Katrina.

Somehow, I don't think Hank will be living in a small house himself, but he will design them for all of us grateful little proles.

If you have the money, and you want to buy a bus, trick it out with oak gym flooring and such, then travel across the west with friends & family when you finish school , all without a job, be my guest.  If you want to promote yourself on NPR, fine. But please, don't pretend to be doing it for some obscure so-called noble cause.

This hits me as the sort of callow self-absorbed  arrogance that someone who has spent the better part of his life in school would come up with.  I laughed when I read he was an architect.  Sooo typical.  I've spent almost my entire adult life in construction and engineering.  I've met some really good architects who were also really good people. Very few. I don't know why is it that architects so often seem to be arrogant, pompous asshats, whose smug self-absorption clouds around them like the stink from a bad fart. I guess it just attracts those type of folks. 

Maybe he'll write a book about it too.

H/T to American Digest
A little something worth a few minutes of your time, in my humble opinion anyway.

Misty Mountains

H/T Instapundit,

Fireweed, Late Summer

Sweet 16!

Happy birthday to my daughter!



The real reason Obama is so busy cynically inserting himself and thus prolonging the Trayvon Martin trajedy.

Bikes

My twin passions

Ship Lake

A belated happy Independence Day.

Wide Angle, A View From Crow Pass

The View From Above

A view of the Anchorage area.

Via Instapundit,

The Sun Setting on Western Civilization?

Only if the liberals have their way...

In sorrow for the British soldier who was butchered on the streets of London, while many except a few brave women did nothing but watch, I reprint this article from Mark Steyn in its entirety. 
When I first read about it and then saw the video of these craven barbarian murderers, I wondered why no men grabbed a pipe, anything and tried to stop it. Is it against the law to even carry a knife there?  What if just one person had been carrying a gun?

British lions come up lambs in Woolwich.

 

By  Mark Steyn

On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill.

As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: It took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his “fellow Britons” about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver.

If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”
That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming.

Once, long ago, I was in an altercation where someone pulled a switchblade, and ever since have been mindful of Jimmy Hoffa’s observation that he’d rather jump a gun than a knife. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing passivity to this scene: a street full of able-bodied citizens being lectured to by blood-soaked murderers who have no fear that anyone will be minded to interrupt their diatribes. In fairness to the people of Boston, they were ordered to “shelter in place” by the governor of Massachusetts. In Woolwich, a large crowd of Londoners apparently volunteered to “shelter in place,” instinctively. Consider how that will play when these guys’ jihadist snuff video is being hawked around the bazaars of the Muslim world. Behold the infidels, content to be bystanders in their own fate.

This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette’s that seems to be a chronic side effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC’s Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being “of Muslim appearance,” but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there’s anything “of Muslim appearance” about a guy waving a machete and saying “Allahu akbar.” A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing “by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” yet it’s the BBC reporter who’s apologizing for “causing offence.” To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby’s horrific end was “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”

How does he know? He doesn’t seem the most likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman’s show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words “Magna Carta,” which has quite a bit to do with that “British way of life” he’s so keen on. But apparently it’s because he’s been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night sweating for Sharia 101. So has Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together,” and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister: “You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody,” he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. “It’s a very peaceful religion.”

That’s why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the last week Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by “youths.” Any particular kind of “youth”? The Swedish prime minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as “hooligans.” But don’t worry: The “hooligans” and “youths” and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, “they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values.” Actually, they’ve already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both prime ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, “The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day.” But what do they know? They’re only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called “Key Points,” declined to mention the “Allahu akbar” bit or the “I”-word at all: Allah who?

Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”

One in ten Britons under 25 is now Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British-born and -bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in southeast Vienna. Today, the Dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That’s a “betrayal” all right, but not of Islam.

Metropolis

I guess it depends on your frame of reference.  When a few lights are the only lights, they seem pretty big.

In case you've been living in a cave for the last several months, it would appear that this cursed administration's chickens are coming home to roost. Please take a few minutes to watch Rep. Mike Kelly explain reality to the former head of the IRS. And I do hope higher up in the IRS go to prison, though I know it won't happen.


You might also want to take a look at this.

Finally, something a bit more pleasant to watch via Kate at Small Dead Animals
London in 1927 from Tim Sparke on Vimeo.

Springtime!!

It brings out the best in a yard!

Shadows & Light

A B/W of a photo I took yesterday morning near Portage Lake.

The photo fits my mood as the writing on the financial wall becomes ever so much clearer.
Rather than a repudiation of failed policies and a return to sound fiscal management, our so-called leaders, those who think they know more than us, have decided to throw gasoline on the fire.
A couple of weeks ago, the media was shocked, shocked to learn that in Cyprus, part of the solution would be to seize a portion the savings held in its banks. Needless to say this didn't go down so well with some people, you know the type, those who work hard, save money, plan for a modest retirement, that kind of non-sense. Let's call them Kulaks.
After the 'unexpected' outrage, the government backed off a bit and decided to only take the savings of those who had accumulated 'more'. Damned Kulaks. That way it would be somehow made more palatable to the rest, or more morally justified because they had more than others, so they must have gotten it illegally, or through some dodgy scheme, right?

But this is just the beginning, Portugal came out with the brilliant idea of paying its workers in treasury bills. Not to be outdone Austrailia quietly doubled its tax on retirement savings. So instead of letting the market take care of the bad loans foolishly made, the government and the central banks will now step in with our tax dollars to protect the well connected few from the effects of their selfishness & greed.

I received "The Great Deformation" by David Stockman this past week. Though not finished with it yet, I recommend this book to everyone. In it Stockman spares no one. So he has already attracted the wrath of conservatives and liberals alike. I think he makes many uncomfortable by speaking truths they would rather not hear.

From the first chapter,

"In the second decade of the twenty-first century, America is faltering under the weight of a dual crisis. Its public sector teeters on the ragged edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse. At the same time, its private enterprise foundation has morphed into a speculative casino which swindles the masses and enriches the few. These lamentable conditions are the Janus-faces of crony capitalism - a mutant regime which now threatens to cripple the nation's bed-rock institutions of political democracy and the free market economy."

 I recommend this book to anyone.
Finally, some quotes. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the sources, but I have to agree with the sentiments expressed;

1.In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.
-- John Adams

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-- Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Pete r to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Fred eric Bastiat, French economist(1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-- P.J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
-- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
-- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress.
-- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-- Thomas Jefferson

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-- Aesop

Industry, Gone & All But Forgotten

An all too typical scene these days back in the mid-west.  Dead or dying industry in once vibrant communities. Buildings that once hummed with the activity of production now lie idle and unused. Slowly decaying.

Where's the Global Warming When You Need It?

I took this Saturday evening. It had snowed hard all day. But it was close to freezing. I figured it was winter's last hurrah and would melt away in a day or two. Boy was I wrong.


Sunday was cold & cloudy but with some sun, now today, it's been snowing most of the day and as I write this, it's coming down very hard. This morning when I went out for a 4 mile jog, our thermometer was reading around 10F.

To wit...

Winter Weather Advisory

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ANCHORAGE AK

410 PM AKDT MON APR 8 2013

AKZ101-091330-

/X.CON.PAFC.WW.Y.0033.000000T0000Z-130409T2000Z/

ANCHORAGE-

INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ANCHORAGE...EAGLE RIVER...INDIAN...

EKLUTNA

410 PM AKDT MON APR 8 2013

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON AKDT TUESDAY...

* LOCATION...ANCHORAGE BOWL AND HILLSIDE.

* SNOW...TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATION 3 TO 8 INCHES THROUGH NOON ON TUESDAY. HIGHEST AMOUNTS WILL BE ALONG THE HILLSIDE AND ACROSS EAST ANCHORAGE.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL INCREASE THIS EVENING INTO THE EARLY OVERNIGHT. SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL PERSIST THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING. MINOR ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS OF SNOW ARE POSSIBLE THROUGH TUESDAY NIGHT.

* IMPACTS...TRAVEL MAY BE DIFFICULT. VISIBILITIES MAY BE LIMITED IN HEAVY SNOWFALL.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES...AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

                          ..............

It's April, the days are getting pretty long again. We're little more than two months from the summer solstice and shortening days again. A week ago, I had the bike out and was doing 10 mile rides after work. I figured I might get lucky and get some substantial mileage in during April. No such luck.

You always have to assume that there's 'one more' coming. Until about mid-May anyway.
Oh well enough whining, I guess I better head to Wal-Mart, buy my self some straws & suck it the f**k up. 

(Taken Monday evening around 8PM)

 

03312013 View From The Porch

Foreboding news over the weekend here.

Happy Easter

Despite all we have to be depressed about, Easter heralds God's triumph over the trivialities of this existence.  I truly wish that come tomorrow at least for a day, I can forget about the impending train wreck we are heading for.

However, I'm doubtful, I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about our future. As he usually does, the Diplomad eloquently sums up pretty much how I feel about unfolding events.

The western world continues on a totally unnecessary suicidal path. What was once common sense is no more. Everywhere one looks, the insanity is evident: The refusal to deal with real issues and the insistence on taking up marginal or even totally extraneous issues instead is stunning. Here in the USA, our economy remains stagnated for no logical reason. Instead, for example, of freeing up the exploitation of our vast fossil fuel resources, we continue to push money at phony green industries, throw road blocks in the way of our private sector's ability to get those fuels, block importation of fuel from our friends in Canada, and blather on and on about discredited, voodoo science global warming. Our leaders rulers take lavish vacations on our dime, push ruinous tax and spend policies, including the criminally destructive Obamacare, and avoid cutting even a bit of our bloated spending. A hypothetical "threat" to reduce ever so slightly the rate of growth in spending is declared disastrous and the equivalent of a nuclear attack. We get wrapped up debating gay "marriage," and "control" of mythical "assault" weapons when neither of those topics has any bearing on real issues facing the vast majority of real Americans, as opposed to Hollywood's fake Americans.

The entire post is worth reading. 

And if you think for a minute that it can't happen here, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you, for gold only, of course.

Finally, I'll leave you with this.

And this, to not end on a down note....