twotailcat's Blog

John took the whipper-snapper to the woodshed tonight and whooped his butt.
Can't wait for the next one.

Whatever your politics, however you lean, however you feel about the War on Terrorism, this report should open some eyes.
_____________________________________________________
___
Military losses, 1980 through 2006
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

These are some rather eye-opening facts.
Since the start of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sacrifice has been enormous. In the time period from the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 through today, we have lost over 3,000 military personnel to enemy action and accidents.
As tragic as the loss of any member of the US Armed Forces is, consider the following statistics: The annual fatalities of military members while actively serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2006:
1980 .......... 2,392 (Carter Year)
1981 .......... 2,380 (Reagan Year)
1984 .......... 1,999 (Reagan Year)
1988 .......... 1,819 (Reagan Year)
1989 .......... 1,636 (George HW Year)
1990 .......... 1,508 (George HW Year)
1991 .......... 1,787 (George HW Year)
1992 .......... 1,293 (George HW Year)
1993 .......... 1,213 (Clinton Year)
1994 .......... 1,075 (Clinton Year)
1995 .......... 2,465 (Clinton Year)
1996 .......... 2,318 (Clinton Year) Clinton years (1993-2000): 14,000 deaths
1997 ............. 817 (Clinton Year)
1998 .......... 2,252 (Clinton Year)
1999 .......... 1,984 (Clinton Year)
2000 .......... 1,983 (Clinton Year)
2001 ............. 890 (George W Year)
2002 .......... 1,007 (George W Year)
2003 .......... 1,410 (George W Year)
2004 .......... 1,887 (George W Year) George W years (2001-2006): 7,033 deaths
2005 ............. 919 (George W Year)
2006.............. 920 (George W Year)

If you are confused when you look at these figures, so was I.
Do these figures mean that the loss from the two latest conflicts in the Middle East are LESS than the loss of military personnel during Mr. Clinton's presidency; when America wasn't even involved in a war? And, I was even more confused; when I read that in 1980, during the reign of President (Nobel Peace Prize winner) Jimmy Carter, there were 2,392 US military fatalities!

These figures indicate that many members of our Media and our Politicians will pick and choose. They present only those 'facts' which support their agenda-driven reporting. Why do so many of them march in lock-step to twist the truth? Where do so many of them get their marching-orders for their agenda?
The latest census, of Americans, shows the following distribution of American citizens, by Race:
European descent .......................... 69.12%
Hispanic ......................................... 12.5%
Black .............................................. 12.3%
Asian ............................................... 3.7%
Native American .............................. 1.0%
Other ............................................... 2.6%

Now... here are the fatalities by Race; over the past three years in Iraqi Freedom:
European descent (white) .............74.31%
Hispanic ..................................... 10.74%
Black .......................................... 9.67%
Asian ........................................... 1.81%
Native American ........................... 1.09%
Other ............................................ 0.33%
The point here is that our mainstream media continues to spin these figures). Nothing more...its all about politics and about turning American against American for a vote.

(These statistics are published by Congressional Research Service, and they may be confirmed by anyone at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf
)

Now ask yourself two questions:
'Why does the mainstream Print and TV Media never print statistics like these?'
and 'Why do the mainstream media hate the (world wide) web as much as they do?' Ensure you do your homework before you place your vote.
'Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first..' ~ President Ronald Reagan

Does the stream of commercial messages from Obama pass the smell test?
This cat smells a rat.

Listen to what he is saying. "In order to fix Heathcliff, we first have to fix Washington."

The word "fix" has a special meaning to us four legged types.

Washington is a friend of mine that lives down the block. He's one crazy cat, old, scarred, and with an ugly disposition. Never been tamed. Comes and goes as he pleases. Writes his own ticket, so to speak. Had nine lives. Not sure how many he has left, but I can assure you, to fix Washington you gotta catch him first and he will claw the eyeballs out of anyone trying.

Obama "fixing" Washington...my money is on Washington. Heathcliff has nothing to fear.

We'll see who gets fixed. Wanna buy a ticket?

Didn't realize just how much he's missed, until I read and remembered some of the stuff he said... and stood for.
 
 

 
'Here's my strategy on the Cold War:We win, they lose.'- Ronald Reagan



'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'- Ronald Reagan


'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.'- Ronald Reagan


'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.'
- Ronald Reagan


'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.'- Ronald Reagan


'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'
- Ronald Reagan


'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'
- Ronald Reagan
'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.'- Ronald Reagan


'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.'- Ronald Reagan


'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


'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.'- Ronald Reagan


'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'- Ronald Reagan
< BR>

'If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation goneunder.'
-Ronald Reagan




 

I listened carefully to McCain's speech to CPAC, my ear well tuned after Mit withdrew from the race. I frankly feared McCain as a presidential candidate before his speech and still have reservations,but my reasoning is from a different angle.

What I have witnessed of this man over the years is a lack of conviction to the cause of constitutional revitalization or as more commonly called conservatism. I see the cause of re-establishment of our founding principles as the dominate struggle of our times as there are forces at work that are operating to the notion that we, the people are unable to self govern and the role of government is to insure the good of the one through the management of the whole herd.

We have cultivated the soil with promises that our government can and must do for us things that our founders never dreamed nor intended. Indeed the weeds of  "what the government can do for me" are fast overtaking the bed and choking out  individual responsibility and accountability.

McCain's  reaching out to the other side in an effort to compromise and form unity over substance and conviction, I believe is a vestige of the years he spent as a POW in Viet Nam.
Tortured and isolated he had but one light to hold out against all darkness, his belief in the words duty, honor, and his beloved country. These were not small candles for him to pray over, but the brightness of a several suns that warmed and sustained him while his enemy mocked him and tried desperately to extinguish his will.

But his belief  in the righteousness of his foundations in liberty made it relatively easy for him to stand up to the hypocrisies and false premises of communism and subordination of individual liberty to the good of the many. But his struggle left deep scares that to this day could blind any man from seeing within his fellow countrymen the same enemy he faced in captivity. Not  my countrymen. To think or suppose them to be from such a dark place is incomprehensible. So McCain is living in denial and reaches out to them in the hope that they will come back to the light.

His hope for their enlightenment is to the conservatives view, a mirage. Not real. But to John it is like winning over his enemies. I can just imagine his dreams lying on a hard floor in the darkness, seeing his tormentors transformed to good people who listened to him and suddenly embraced the belief of liberty and democracy.  That was a wonderful dream. The only price to pay for this transformation are small concessions.  What is small to John is a universe to the conservative moment however. The drive to achieve unity is what drives John today and this drive was tempered to steel in the Hanoi Hilton.

To achieve unity, John will make concessions. He will give up his convictions a small piece at a time with the false hope that he can win them over. He will never accept the notion that his fellow countrymen could move this country so far away from its roots.

So for this reason, I still have my reservations about John. To win, he will make concessions that we can not afford.

This past week, my SO (Significant Other) had a health crisis and had to be transported to Harris Methodist Hospital in Ft Worth. After three days and nights in the place, my observation is, there is no wonder why we are facing an epidemic of staph infections in our hospitals. The parade of human beings that march through the place is something you'd expect in a third world country.

Please people!
Have the (not so common) courtesy of cleaning yourself before you enter a place where there are sick and injured beings!

I could not believe the assortment of unwashed filth. No wonder there are dispensers of disinfectant foam hanging from every wall. You take you life in your hands pushing an elevator button.

That is not to say that the staff at Harris are not doing their job. The place is clean to the appearance. My SO however, discovered that her bed rails were covered with residue from tape. The stuff covered the rails and collected filth to the point they were black.

When she asked the cleaning lady to remove the gunk, she said she did not have anything to remove it. A word to the "floor manger",  that the rails were filthy, replied that the cleaning people do not carry those cleaning products on their cart. They have to "requisition" it.

This word "requisition" no doubt, having 4 syllables is the root of the growing crud. Its beyond their "comprehension" if not their language skills and so the stain grows darker and increasingly pathological with each passing hand.

I asked if they had some "rubbing alcohol". It works at home sometimes to remove the stuff. No, only in small packets used to drag a few germs around before they stab a nail through your tender inner arm.

I think, if I had anything to say about it, entry to a hospital would be more invasive than getting onto an airplane. There are after all, more lives at actual risk.

You would have to pass a visual screening of your cleanliness. I can hear the cries of discrimination and profiling already.

Wearing dirty clothes or showing dirty skin, hair or fingernails would put you in a line to disrobe, take a shower, complete with delousing, followed by issue of paper cover-alls, with rubber gloves and a mask. Come to think of it, maybe they could step up the power of those X-ray units to burn the germs off, before the shower.

Concern over sagging pants is funny when you think about. I have no concern with seeing someone's underwear as long as they appear to be clean underwear.

Oh, and please people.

DO NOT TAKE YOUR CHILDREN TO A HOSPITAL TO VISIT ANYONE!!!
I don't care what relation you have to visit nor the circumstances, a hospital is not the place for kids.

Further more, pajamas and house shoes of any sort are not appropriate in public and that goes for the nursing staff who appear to carry the fantasy of appearing on the set of ER or Scrubs. To anyone with any self respect, the uniforms you all wear are nothing but a set of over-sized or under-sized PJs. About as professional as Mr Goodwrench or a McDonald's employee.

Earlier, more of a joke than anything else, I suggested that we use our rebate checks to buy US Savings Bonds.

Our recent experience with the real world of US Bonds was a discovery that bonds can be a nightmare to redeem.

Our situation was a relative who is living in a nursing home and no longer capable of handling her affairs, bought US Bonds periodically back in the 70s & 80s. All were purchased and listed us as co-owners.

Redeeming bonds that show only co-ownership can be redeemed at a local bank, fairly easily. Present the bonds with identification that your are the co-owner and you get your money. But there is a twist here. You can not redeem more than $1000 if you do not have an account with that bank and there is a limit on how many bonds they will process per day.

The problem comes when the bonds are purchased showing "POD" on them (Payable On Death). The lack of instructions and misinformation about this circumstance has been extremely frustrating. We did not know what the "POD" on the bond meant and the only instruction to the meaning was passed to us like tribal knowledge...person to person.

We presented the bonds to our bank. The teller, a nice young lady was obviously not familiar with bond redemption and called her supervisor. The head clerk then looked at the bonds and asked, "Do you have a death certificate for the owner?".

"No, she isn't dead yet", we responded. "She's in a nursing home and needs the money for her care."

"Well", the supervisor says, " You can not redeem these bonds until she dies."

"But we have a durable Power of Attorney for her", we explained. Digging through our records, we pulled out a copy of the POA. The original POA is sitting in her attorney's office in Minnesota.

She looks at the copy of the POA and says, " We can not accept a copy. We have to have the original."

"But the original is in Minnesota!", we explained. Getting the attorney to send it to us is possible, but what if there is a mishap and the original is lost? She says, "Well, just go back to your relative and do another POA." Good luck on that bit of wisdom. Our relative is 92, going on 93 and is not really with us anymore.

"There is nothing more that the bank can do, under the circumstances, but we can make copies of your POA and send them to our legal department for review." "How long will that take?", we asked. "A day or two", was the response.

So we left the bank and called the attorney holding the original POA.

He said that we should have one of the originals, as three were signed more than 5 years ago.

Here's a warning to those of you who are caring for someone through a POA:
Many institutions providing services to the elderly require a copy of the POA for their records. Make sure you get your original back! We never checked, presuming that they kept the copy and returned the original. They didn't and two of the originals are sitting in one of a dozen or more offices. Who knows?

After a lengthy discussion of state law requiring the acceptance of a POA by a bank, he forwarded to us the original. It made the trip. Whew!

So off to the bank, bonds and original POA in hand.

Hold on pardner! Now the bank says, looking at our original POA, "This is not acceptable."

"What? But you said..."

"This POA is more than 1 year old. We can only accept a POA that is less than a year old."

"How is this possible? She doesn't know her name anymore and can only recall a few choice curse words and a horse she once had on a farm in South Dakota!"

So in disgust we carry of our butts out the door. Surely the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas can resolve this problem. The fed redeems bonds, don't they?

A call to the Federal Reserve Bank was another eye opener. They don't redeem bonds anymore in Dallas or anywhere else for that matter, in person. In fact, if you try to go into the fed you discover that all citizens are treated equally... as a terrorist threat. There is no admittance to ordinary citizens trying to exercise the right to redeem savings bonds.

This we were told is the result of Tim McVey and the Oklahoma bombing. The Federal Reserve Bank in Minnesota will answer you phone calls about bonds, but they do not publish this number!  You have to know someone on the inside to get it.

The only option is to go to their website and download the necessary forms. Then you pack everything up and send it off to the good Federal Reserve Bank folks in West Virginia!

Turns out the Federal Reserve website is useless regarding bonds, you have to go to the US Treasury website, where you can find every form of paper product imaginable without a single thread of direction. Dude, you are on your own here.

We were able to discern from the pile of forms that our signature was required...we knew this already...but the signature on the back of the bonds has to be "certified". Who can certify a signature on a bond? Your bank of course.

This means going back to the bank again. This was a bit difficult this time, as we had ruffled a few feathers along the way. The bank actually called us back after we walked out in disgust.

The supervisor, bless her heart, had actually made some calls to the fed and her legal department. She said that she had a packet of forms ready for us and the bonds had to be sent off. We told her, at that point, no thanks, as we were going to the Fed ourselves and added a few words from our attorney about refusal to accept a POA. The claim being that the bank was behaving illegally. This set her hair on edge. "No I never refused to accept your bonds..."

So hat in hand we returned to the bank. "Well, I had a packet ready for you, but when you said you were going to the Fed in Dallas, I tore it up", she said. The note of anger was palpable, but she was professional. Obviously armed with new intellectual power on all things bond related, she informed us that the bank can "certify" the signature and that was all they could do.

That would have been golden news a few days back. Someone actually knowing what they are doing, if not why. Why did we jump through hoops and risk losing our only original POA? No answer.

Then we learned about "certified POAs". Turns out that in order for a POA to be effective, it has to be renewed yearly through the county clerks office in owner's home town.

So getting the signatures "certified", we proceed to call the attorney about the certification of the POA. Of course he could do that ($cah-ching, $cah-ching). It costs...$cah-ching.
But you have to send me back the original. It would have been helpful if we had known this when we originally called. Learning about Minnesota law regarding POAs was a waste of time and another $cah-ching.

Now, certified signatures on bonds in hand, we face the prospect of a Fedex employee falling asleep at the wheel and seeing our POA get smashed beyond recognition along a ice covered roadway somewhere in the frozen north. At least you don't have to worry about a bridge falling with live TV coverage of a white truck bobbing up and down in the Mississippi river. Done that already. Paranoid? You betch'yah.

So off to Kinkos for copies out the yazoo. Copied all the bonds to secure the serial numbers. They can be replaced if lost, so they say. God only knows what steps through hell that would involve. Maybe a trip to Minnesota or Virginia?

We also downloaded the "Bond Wizard" from the web...yes, that is the name. You can maintain an inventory of the bonds you hold and it calculates their value. Makes us nervous however, that it connects direct to the Fed for the value. It could also tell the Feds who has what and when. Paranoia does not mean that there is no one out to get'ya.

Too bad the "Wizard" does not provide you with anything more than a spreadsheet without the ability to cut and paste the inventory into something like Excel. Some directions would be helpful...glossary of terms, procedures, who to call???? Nothing. Wizard in name only.
Get the feeling we're not in Kansas anymore?

So the original POA is off for certification. $Cha-ching. The bond signatures are certified and everything has been copied, scanned, back'd up, CD burnt, and packaged. $Cha-ching, $Cha-ching, $Cha-ching.

Now to the forms to complete. There are many. Happy first line reads:
Important: Follow the instructions in filling out this form. You should be aware that the making of any false, fictitious, or fraudulent claim or statement to the United States is a crime that is punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.
Oh Joy!

Have to completely re-enter all the bond serial numbers. Package everything up and trust in God that they make the trip to Virginia (Will it have to cross the Mississippi again?) and that the money shows up in "4 to 6 weeks". We may have a death certificate, or two or three, by then.

Then the attorney calls to say that we can transfer the bonds to our name! What' tha @%&? Turns out this takes going through the same process twice!!! Are you kidding me?

At this point, we want to join our relative in the bliss of cussing out hapless attendants and petting a beloved horse on the South Dakota plains. Sounds pretty good right now.

As to the rebates...just spend it! Doing anything else will not stimulate anything.

Last night on the Discovery channel there was another documentary expounding on the inconvenient truth or better stated as the Gore Hypothesis. One segment of interest was an atmospheric egghead with "proof" that human behavior can be a contributor to global warming and equal proof that when we change our behavior, we can make things better.
His proof was regarding lead. Measure of lead in layers of ice over the past several hundreds or thousands of years grew through the industrial revolution and peaked with our use of lead in gasoline. When leaded gas was banned the levels of lead have been dropping off.

OK...a convincing argument was made that we contributed to the levels of lead found in Antarctica.

But then I was reminded of what lead does to human beings and where I learned the lesson first hand.

Back in the 70's I was a school psychologist, as you may recall from earlier blogs. I worked for DISD and covered many schools in Dallas. One year I covered Arcadia Park Elementary, west of downtown. Have not been back there is years, but it was a poor community of hard working people with older homes. Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, came from there.

What was interesting and tragic was that referral to me of children suspected as having neurological problems was extremely high. Minimal brain injury was the classification used to define a child as needing special education services. If my tests and observations determined the likelihood of a problem, we referred the child to a neurologist (MD) to confirm it.

With high regularity my observations were confirmed. The children qualified for services as MBI, minimally brain injured. So much so, I started to looking into what might be happening to the entire school. I spoke with the principal and many teachers that reported that too many of the children were tired and slept all day. Their appearance was pale and many had brittle hair that came out in clumps when they combed their hair.

Since this was in the early 70s, I had never heard of environmental pollution, so I thought it must be about their diet. So I talked to school cafeteria people. They said that they saw a problem too. The kids ate only snacks, ice cream and high sugar foods. They had the highest volume of waste thrown away everyday than any other school.

So I contacted school health services and the MD of the schools, can't recall his name, came out to speak with the principal and staff. His conclusion paralleled mine, so we called in the dietitians who suggested the teachers to start teaching kids what foods to eat.

It wasn't until years later and the discovery of air pollution and the health effects that it dawned on me. There was a battery recycling operation at the top of the hill overlooking Arcadia Park. A huge smoke stack belched lead into the air from the smelting operation.

The kids were getting a big doses of the poison at a time that they could least afford it.
But then so were we all.

Could we all be dealing with the effects of lead exposure and minimal brain injury on a grander scale? Is that what is contributing to the dumbing down we see around us. Maybe not. Too many factors to consider.

But it does make me ponder...with the few brain cells I have left, that levels of lead exposure may be contributing to many of our social and political concerns like:
-critical thinking skills
-buying a house when you can't afford it
-inability to balance a checkbook or use credit cards
-sagging pants
-consumption of junk foods and obesity
 Maybe even the differentiation between republicans and democrats.

Friday Night 9PM News contained the most disgusting Voices and Email segment imaginable. What is the news department thinking?

Airing the babbling voices and sounds of the mentally challenged is not informative nor entertaining. It was disgusting and ultimately a slam to those of us who watch this channel. We deserve better than this. Please make an effort to fight the trend of  "dumbing down".

If you have concluded that your audience is composed of village idiots based on those that call into your phone number to slobber and babble incomprehensible nonsense, you soon will have only Bubba and his grandmother, suffering from senile dementia, watching your program.

To the Village People amongst us:
When the TV says call this number and we will record your comments.
Remember what Simon says on American idol, "Most everybody can make noise but only a few can sing".

To  deep?

When the TV news shows a number to call...GO POTTIE!

With full recognition of the improbability of the notion...
When you get your rebate...buy US Savings Bonds!

Just imagine. $150 billion back to Washington to pay interest on.
Maybe the shock would reverberate through their tiny brains that we want them to behave responsibly.

If you disagree, fine. Go to Wal-Mart and send your rebate to China.

Last summer we happened to be passing through Roswell,NM on the 60th anniversary of the crash. What an interesting collection of people, the die hard believers and those exploiting them. Stephenville and those reporting the sighting are in for a rude awakening as the exploiters and believers alike will descend on them like wolves. The believers for affirmation and confirmation and the exploiters for the smell of anything green. No doubt, a book is being readied for publication.

The cover up is already primed with the statement from the Naval Air Station revealing 10 aircraft in the area. To quote from Hogan's Hero's "I saw nuh-shing". MUFON is all over this, so expect a documentary on the History Channel.

Meanwhile the truth is unattainable. The experiences of the witnesses is undergoing revision and edit. Some getting bigger and louder with every retelling when others get smaller and quieter. It comes down to... what ever you want to believe. Some, no doubt will want to visit Roswell soon. Reports of alien abductions will follow.

What is curious about this report is that the craft/thing made two passes over the same area, by my understanding. Once from east to west and the second from west to east.
Considering that the military and the secret service maintains F-16s in Waco to scramble in response to threats to Crawford airspace, only 70 miles away. I find it credible that the USAF could have intercepted this thing, or at least tried to chase it. It would not have been the Naval Air Station that responded in all likelihood.

The USAF responded last summer as I recall when a private aircraft wandered into the no fly zone around Crawford. They followed him to Ft Worth where the FAA, FBI and SS welcomed him with more trouble than he ever bargained for.

My personal belief is that UFOs are real, but not of alien origin. UFOs are a cover story for real craft like the Blackbird, but of a technology that we are not remotely ready for disclosure as it violates the conventional laws of physics. Check out the work of John Searl in the UK, going back 50 years. The poor man is probably insane, but his work in magnetic levitation is very compelling, that he was on to something. There are many others going back over two hundred years.

So much effort has been expended to discredit non-conventional explorers in the field of free energy, one has to wonder what the resources of the US government could achieve
if anything close to the promise they represent are true or achievable. Silent craft moving at incredible speeds indeed.

The real question is, when will we be ready for the real news?

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google recently spoke to a gathering of the Republican Governors. His speech was carried on CSPAN.  The focus of his speech was  the impact of  information technology and his company on the political process. There were several points made that really interested to me. One was his answer to a question regarding bias in his Google  News.

To paraphrase, he said that he was approached with a question, whether his News carried a bias. His snap answer was to say NO. Google News was a compilation of 15,000 news sources and an algorithm designed to sort and compile topics for presentation. No human bias existed.
Upon returning to his office he called in the project lead for Google News and asked him the question. The answer was that there was no machine bias in the process. Skeptical of the answer, he rephrased the question, is there human bias in the process? His lead answered Yes, cricket. He likes cricket and there is preference built-in to bring cricket news to the top.

He then said it dawned on him that for several weeks he had seen more news about cricket than he had ever seen before. Now he knew why. Bias had crept into the machine. He said the bias was removed and the audience chuckled.

In my view, his revelation was a bit alarming. The program used to produce Google News has to be constructed with some sort of topical index and filtering function. Stories are measured against the index by factors like frequency or repetition. Sources have to be weighted by someone's assessment of relative credibility. Human bias in this process would have to be unavoidable because someone set the scales.

What is happening at Google lays bare the claims of media bias and it's denial.
The media sources deny a bias, but one could only conclude that bias IS and is used to shape our awareness of issues.

I am convinced that the issues related to the economy are manifestations of a bias to produce a recession. The smart guys got out of the market a few months back, and now are looking for bargains. The rich get richer and the rest of us are sheep waiting for someone to say cricket.