This mornings news

I too as a friend of mind in Rock Island did, got up this morning and as usual turned on the local news to see what has happened overnight and what new turmoil has erupted in this crazy world. I expected to see what was next on Gadhafi's schedule, will he leave Libya or will he kill everyone except his corrupt family until he and his are the last ones left? Or maybe I could find out about what has happened with all the devastation in Christchurch, New Zealand, hundreds dead and missing, aftershocks, it's so hard to fathom what they are going through.

I was also curious about where the market was heading after yesterdays down turn and how the price of oil is affecting the world markets.

Lastly I was hoping for an explanation on why those Somali Pirates are still alive and why they will be tried in the US when they should have been tried at sea at the scene, Guilty, firing squad walk the plank! As you can see I was ready to be informed on the top stories and come to find out the top story of the day was Justin Beiber got a freaking hair cut, holy shit now I am up to speed. I feel I will be totally depressed until the time Justin lets his hair grow back, this was devastating news. Just one more reason to watch FOX news if you want real news and not learn about this crap or how to make a good biscuit or salad with Matt and his crew!

So now we leave the Beaver story...........or Beiber story and what’s next, Lindsay Lohan and her continuing saga. You gotta love this judge in her case, or at least I do, he basically told Lindsay like it is:

"If you plead in front of me, if this case is resolved in front of me, you are going to jail," Schwartz said. "Period."
This is what is needed, this gal has been in and out of so called "rehab" and on and off probation and has broken probation more than once and still hasn't spent any time to speak of in jail like the rest of us poor smucks would have. Her Dad is blaming the media for sensationalizing her story and escapades and blames all this on her addiction..........which addiction is he talking about, drugs, alcohol, kleptomania, driving while intoxicated, driving in a reckless manner with excessive speed, which one? She was picked up or cited again Monday my Sheriff's deputies for speeding, 59 mph in a 35 mph zone and the hits just keep on a coming!

Now I don't know who this Beiber guy is and I've never seen or heard Lindsay sing, act or whatever she does so I can't speak for how they are with respect to their callings..................... but I don't give a rats whether the guy gets a hair cut or not and the rest of the country like me I believe just want to see Lindsay put behind bars for 3 to 5 years. This stuff is not news no matter what Matt Lauer or Meredith and Roker think, so don't pretend to report the news on these morning "news" shows. These folks should join the ranks of the Food Network and then at least when we tune in we know what we're going to get.................cookies and biscuits!

OJ and Apple juice next luxory items?

In November the people of the USA told Congress and our President to do two things, lower our debt and reduce spending! I'm not so sure our President got the message correct or at least he's still being his arrogant self and trying to go Frank Sinatra on us (doing my way)!

Do we devalue our way to prosperity, is that the way this administration wants to take our country? That just doesn't seem like what we had in mind when we voted last November, it seems we the people might know better than this one person.

Inflation: A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.

Inflation: "An increase in the amount of currency in circulation, resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and rise in prices: it may be caused by an increase in the volume of paper money issued or of gold mined, or a relative increase in expenditures as when the supply of goods fails to meet the demand."

This administration loves to print money and it's killing our country...............over the past six months here are a few price percentage moves to consider:
Cotton up +125%
Sugar up +82.6%
Corn up +59%
Coffee up +41.4%
Rice up +40.5%
Oats up +36.6%
Copper up +36.1%
Lumber up +33.8%
Oil up +25.1%
And now in the same six month period the Dollar ($) is down 6% in value! This is simple economics, print more money and the $$ goes down and prices go up! Have you bought a cotton shirt lately or a carton of OJ or stopped by the pump and fill up the car? Is this what the people asked for last November? The Congress wants to cut spending by a billion dollars a year and are being fought by the Democratic controlled Senate and the White house, this is what the people asked them to do in November!!!!

Our Presidents new budget proposal which is a 3.73 Billion dollar budget will be the BIGGEST one year debt jump ever in our history up 2 Trillion dollars! That is more than the combined GDP of France, Italy and Ireland........more than these countries will spend, buy, sell for one year and that equals Obama's budget.

Our President said "We need to get our deficit under control" and yet in the past two years our deficit has increase 3 times what it was, we've tried spending and spending to stimulate the economy but it seems that is only like putting gas on a fire!

Cuts need to be made across the board, health care, Social Security, Defense, all entitlements and yes teachers of Wisconsin even you, the unions need to join the seniors in cutting..........can Wisconsin teachers do simple math? Do the math folks, we need to cut in order to reduce our deficit, not just by raising prescriptions cost for seniors Mr. Obama!

"Friday Night Lights"

If you haven't seen or don't know exactly what's meant my "Friday Night Lights" well I'm sorry for you because you missed something. Sure a lot of you don't spend much time in front of the tube (TV) but this series is one this writer thinks was and turned out to be a must see.

Friday Night Lights is the name of a made for TV mini series written and produced by Peter Berg (Google him you'll quickly remember) and aired first for Direct TV customers and later on the networks. Having Direct TV 101 I've already seen the entire 5th season including the finale yesterday. I'm not going to say I was completely happy with the last episode, the final show of the series but all in all Peter Berg did tie all loose ends and made it very enjoyable. I can say Bev and I will honestly miss viewing our Texas families and small town Texas goings on. I mentioned Direct TV 101 which aired the series to Direct TV customers first then later in the Fall on network TV, so come Fall you all can tune in to at least season of this series.

I first came into contact with high school football and it's importance to the folks of Texas and Oklahoma while living in Oklahoma City for awhile in 1970. High school football between Texas and Oklahoma was as intense if not more so that college rivalries there and elsewhere. High school football in Texas is a big business, with fierce competition and not just the large cities but maybe more so in places like Midland or Odessa to name a couple. This is what folks in those small towns live for and die for and the players rule the communities and coach's are paid like those in the college ranks. Passion is the word when it comes to Texas and high school football and the communities they represent and these boys and girls grow up fast in every way.

"Friday Night Lights" is the saga of a small Texas town's football team and then teams and the players, coaches, girl friends, wives and boosters and families of these teams. In five seasons we've seen player go and new ones come and mature as far as players and men, and also the women in their lives grow and mature as women. If it isn't already it will no doubt be a box set of DVD's soon and if you can check out season's 1 - 4 and then watch season 5 and I hope enjoy as much as we did.

"Friday Night Lights" I miss you already and thank Peter Berg whom I liked for years for giving us such a powerful series to watch.

To RV or not to RV?

Last summer we took an extended trip in our motor home and thoroughly enjoyed most every minute of the trip. The 3 1/2 month trip really got us to thinking about if and when we go full-time and how it would be to do so. By the way, going full-time means living permanently in your RV/motor home. We love our motor home and since it's 37' with 3 slides it's actually plenty roomy for us, besides you always have a patio it seems no matter where you park it. We actually both seem to even sleep better in our motor home bedroom than in our at home now.

Anyway with the housing market the way it's been for the past 3 to 4 years here in Arizona and the values just down at the bottom of the tank, we've been thinking more and more about living in our motor home. Not just to be living in an RV or motor home, but the adventures that naturally go along with it intrigue us a bit. It's now just the two of us and a 3000 plus square foot house on a acre that consumes a lot of our time and energy and money to maintain, and with myself retired and B very near retirement we wondering if we really need all this. We've actually been toying with the idea of downsizing in the biggest of ways, into our motor home. We plan on doing this for sure when Bev retires officially and basically following the sunshine across this great land of ours. As far as work goes she actually worked while on that 3 1/2 month trek with no problems no matter what part of the country we were in, technology today allows for most anything from anywhere and that's good.

I'm not sure by writing this blog that I'm asking for comments or not or advice one way or another, but I as usual welcome all comments with reference to any blog I write. And like I said we're toying with the idea and hoping to make some kind of a decision in the next few months as to what we do with the house, furniture and junk we really don't need or won't need. We know it would be a big step in our life, and to downsize that drastically is a big move and we know it and will pray hard about it.

With all the reading and talking to full-times that we've done the vast majority wouldn't trade it for anything, and make and have friends literally all over the United States. The grand kids and our children would and will be probably the biggest stumbling block of the entire decision, we're a very close family and it was even hard to be gone the 3 plus months last year. With laptops, skype, and video conferencing we can still see each other but we will most likely have a home base of some sort in and around the Phoenix area because God knows we love this place so much! So as you might imagine there is so much going into this decision, much more than just a house or the finances of one over the other just so much to think about.

Pray with us and for us as we make these life changing decisions....................

Super bowl 45 (XLV)

Well another Super bowl down and another comedy of errors from the game to the stadium to the half time show to the singing of the anthem.

Lets start with the Anthem sung by Christina Aguilera, Aguilera botched the national anthem something fierce before the Super Bowl. Aguilera started out all right, but she had a problem with the ramparts -- specifically, the "O'er the ramparts we watched" line, which she left out altogether. Aguilera tried to make up for it by combining two lines -- "What so proudly we watched," instead of "What so proudly we hailed", but let's just say that it was too late to reverse the error. You'd think these folks would take it serious enough to practice and learn the words, I can't believe it would be nerves or any other excuse for someone used to preforming on large stages in front of 1000's of people.

Then the Stadium, the Jerry Jones Jewel of Dallas....right! The weather caused them to have multiple problems including ice and snow and roofs collapses to 400 plus ticket holding folks to be without seats! I guess there were 400 fans who paid $900 or more dollars for their tickets that ended up without seats, they were put outdoors in a party plaza to watch the game on TV. There were an additional 800 fans that had their seats moved because of another seating snafu and those left out in the cold were understandably unhappy! Jerry added additional seats to the stadium and the fire Marshall had not inspected them yet and they could not be used instead sat empty for the game. The fans were told they would get 3 times face value for the tickets and inconvenience caused but most had paid more than face value and as much as $3000 a ticket and were not happy campers.

Then how about a bonus goof up, a great "fly by" by the USAF in the F-35's after the debacle of an anthem. With the roof closed no one saw them or the fly by, Oh yes we at home watching to TV saw the fly by but no big thing to those folks at the game! If you've been to an event with a fly by you know how exciting and chilling it can be at and in the moment.................too bad those folks that paid mega bucks to see all the goings on missed this one.

Then one writer put the half time show this way....... "Black Eyed Peas Vs. Tron: A Super Bowl Contest No One Wins". "Like counting the times in just the past few months we've seen the Black Eyed Peas on television doing pretty much this same shtick they did at the Super Bowl. If you want to make sure you have the least anticipated Bowl half-time in modern history, a sure bet is to book a group that would show up to play a supermarket ribbon-cutting." "What could the Peas possibly do that we hadn't already burned out on? Bring out the Tron dancers, as it turns out. If you felt like Tron Legacy missed a bet by not having Jeff Bridges lead a war platoon's worth of boogieing hoofers at the climax, Super Bowl XLV made up for that missed opportunity." The live-or-Memorex questions that typically fly after a halftime show were rendered moot here. The Peas' hits usually involve more shouting than singing, anyway, so staying on pitch was not going to pose many problems except in a handful of Fergie moments.
But there might not have been this uneventful a Bowl intermission since the Up With People era of no-name half-time shows. Come back, AARP-rockers, like Tom Petty, The Who, Bruce Springsteen.....all is forgiven!

Then we have the game itself, not a bad football game but still a bunch of over paid cry babies playing a school yard game! Who made out, the city of Dallas, the owners for getting all that TV money, the over-paid players with the big checks to spend now on the break between seasons, and the FOX network cashing in a multi-million dollar 30 second spots from advertisers. The best money spent went to your local grocery stores where we all spent more money than we should have to feast while watching all these comedy of errors and a just another so, so football game!

Oh yes, we'll all do it again next year and everyone but us idiots will cash in on our wasting another 4 to 6 hours in front of the tube while they rake in bundles of cash..................who's laughing now I guess?

Things might have been different........

I was talking to a friend about "fire water" and how some folks hold their liquor better than others it seems. While in Alaska I had occasion to become friends with some of the Aleut Indians of the area I was in, they would come to the radar site I was stationed at and join in on our holiday and special occasion parties. These folks had a very low tolerance for liquor and became quite intoxicated after just a few drinks, and it was the same each time they visited. I also have had other native American friends that it seemed to be the same, a low tolerance for liquor and became drunk easier than most. Hey not all bad, it was a cheaper drunk for those with low tolerance so maybe if that's your thing it's not all that bad.

Anyway while discussing the Aleut's and other native Americans, and not to leave out anyone some of the rest of us also have the same problems with regard to alcohol. While discussing Indians and the West I thought of General Custer and how things might have been different if he say brought Sitting Bull and his tribe together for drinks before they battled. "Hey Sitting Bull, how about a drink before we undertake this battle?" or lead the attack with a few wagon loads of whisky for Sitting Bull and the boys to take part in. I do believe if the General had been thinking he might have saved a lot of soldiers lives and made it easier to win the battle had he handed out bottles of "fire water" to the Indians before he yelled charge! I can't remember ever seeing any of my native American friends not wanting to join the troops in a drink or two to celebrate the occasion.

I'm just saying, it might have turned out a bit different..............................................