View From The Porch 1-17-14

A large low pressure cell moved in, making the temperatures shoot above freezing.
So now we have melting snow, rain, and high wind warnings.
A real slop fest.
This is a hand held, four exposure HDR. ISO:200.

Ruminations On The War On Poverty

While visiting Samizdata, a very well written blog, I came across this comment, "The United States, since the times of the “Great Society”, has spent approximately 24 trillion dollars on anti-poverty programs, while the percentage of those considered to be in poverty has remained the same. With a 50 year track record as evidence of the utter failure of the welfare state, it amazes me that the public continues to buy into this form of wealth re-distribution."

An insightful observation.
Needless to say, you always get someone to disagree. So I decided to look it up as best I could in a short amount of time. Here's what I came up with after a brief search.


Federal spending, population and poverty totals [iii]

                    Total              People in           Welfare              Expenditure                   Population[iv]     Poverty[v]        Expenditures[vi]     Per Person                  (Millions)          (Millions)            (Billions)              In Poverty

1960           179.5                  39.9                  $17.7                  $445

1970           202.2                  25.4                  $43.9                 $1,726

1980           225.0                  29.3                 $128.8                $4,399

1990            248.6                 33.6                 $138.2                $4,116

2000            278.9                 31.6                 $205.4                $6,503

2010            305.7                 46.2                 $349.6                $7,571

2011           308.5                  46.2                 $369.2                $7,983

2012           310.6                  46.5                 $356.8                $7,674

These figures came from the Federal Safety Net site.
That totals $52,245 for a family of four even though the Poverty Threshold for such a family is $23,492


Next I went over to Wikipedia.



So, what's a person to make of this?
I think we could conclude that the 24 trillion dollars spent to fight poverty have been a failure.
Yet we continue to spend ever larger amounts to combat poverty and now also it's evil cousin income inequality.  Our current occupant of the White House has publicly stated he wants to "spread the wealth around." 
I paraphrase a definition of insanity (and stupidity) as 'doing the same thing over & over but expecting a different result.'

I fervently hope that it begins to dawn on those who still think this type of waste is actually good and a better alternative than growing the economy, that it is NOT about helping the poor. It never has been. It's about power, control, creating a dependent underclass who will always support you out of necessity.
Or as Lyndon B. Johnson said, "I’ll have those n*****s voting Democrat for the next 200 years."
His words, not mine.


Finally, let me leave you with two items via American Digest.

The first this comment.
 "There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a fascist state. The first is the most important. 1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people
2) Poverty – Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4) Gun Control – Remove the ability for citizens to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income)
6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to – take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion – Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools
8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
Does any of this sound like what is happening to the United States " 

And finally,

London Calling...

Arguably the westernmost phone booths in North America.  Taken at Dutch Harbor.

Boy Scout Motto; "Be Prepared"

A view of the transfer switch I installed this fall. A switch for the house and a switch for the garage.
The generator plugs in at the receptacle between the second transfer switch and the window.
It's nice to have a tested backup.

Happy New Years 2014

Here's to hoping that 2014 is better, in all respects, than 2013.

Here's a little something I saw over at American Digest.

It rings true and more succinctly sums up what I have tried to say in the past.

The "learned helplessness" is so deep it shows up even in our fantasy life. This is why I beg people to find ANY way to fight back. Stop looking for The One way to fight back. To make up for not fighting back we imagine we, or someone that will fight on our behalf, will find the one unguarded and vital target where we can attack and win in an instant. Politically, we fantasize about finding the weak spot in The Death Star and firing a kill shot.

The Left didn't bring the country under their control that way. The Left has published books on how to fight the system. They fought the system. They now own the system. The Left waged a Long March through the culture. We keep engaging in Short Retreats to the next "gated-community" that we hope will protect us from liberal domination.Start fighting in small ways, anywhere, and it will give you confidence to fight more and the tide will turn IF liberals find they can't rely on never finding opposition. Use direct language. Call them communists, racists, sexist, traitors, etc. You don't gain respect by speaking in moderate language about the people that are setting fire to this country.

This isn't Sunday School. This is a Civil War. The Left already knows it. They already fight like it's a Civil War. You might as well face up to it. Posted by: Scott M at December 31, 2013 1:14 PM

Merry Christmas

This year's Darwin Awards - H/T My Underwood Typewriter

1. When his .38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And Now, The Honorable Mentions:

 

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef’s claim was approved.

 

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

 

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.

 

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

 

6.. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer… $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

 

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

 

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, “Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”

 

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast… The frustrated gunman walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

 

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street by sucking on a hose, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had and the perp had been punished enough!

In the interest of bettering mankind, please share these with friends and family…. unless of course one of these individuals by chance is a distant relative or long lost friend. In that case, be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.

*****Remember*****

They walk among us, they can reproduce.

Cloudy Day Below

Morning's Light

This morning's view from the porch.  Our thermometer read -6 degrees F this morning.  As I was leaving to go to my daughter's hockey game, I saw this view and had to take a moment to soak it in, then get my camera and shoot it. Some things never grow tiring.

Happy Thanksgiving

From this site about comes this information about today's Thanksgiving holiday.

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."
Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln's.
The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

So, on that note, have a Happy Thanksgiving and may we all have more to be thankful for this time next year.

On today, 11/22/2013, the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination, reflect not only on the tragedy, but that Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist who lived in SOviet Russia for a short while and who was a supporter of Castro, would probably have felt at home in toady's democrat party.

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.