Tag Archives: philosophy

Too much non-military spending is the problem

Posted on October 10, 2013 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

The cats and I were trying to understand what all those useless eaters were fighting about in Washington DC.  Decided it must be unhappiness about the way the money was spent in 2013, so I went for a look.

As you can see, a huge percentage of the discretionary money wasn't spent on National Defense in 2013.

As you can see, a huge percentage of the discretionary money wasn’t spent on National Defense in 2013.

Turns out there are two types of spending going on.  Mandatory spending is one, discretionary is the other.  The chart above depicts where they spend the money coming out of taxes and they can tweak.

The “Social Security & Unemployment” and “Medicare & Health” take on a major fraction of the federal spending, amounting to about 58% of the total outlays, whereas “Military” spending appears to amount to just 18%. The problem with this representation is that the Social Security & Medicare are parts of the mandatory spending directly financed by the dedicated revenue raised from payroll taxes, as imposed by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), not through the Federal income tax and thus represents a different Treasury account.

If we separate the mandatory spending and look only at the discretionary spending component appropriated by Congress on an annual basis and for which all the federal programs compete, a very different picture arises.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/10/us-military-spending-the-17-foot-tall-insectoid-robo-warriors-from-the-planet-zandor-2788430.html

Probably that enormous portion of the budget being frittered away on non-defense spending is what has those people upset and shutting down the government.  Each one of those non-defense slices could be halved or quartered easily so’s to provide a means of continuing and even increasing defense spending without anyone feeling the pinch.

There's no way any US citizen has any business feeling safe when we aren't even matching the combined rest of the world in military spending.

There’s no way any US citizen has any business feeling safe when we aren’t even matching the combined rest of the world in military spending.

The US isn’t even spending half as much on national defense as the rest of the world combined is spending on theirs.  It’s no wonder those elected representives and senators are digging in their heels.  They’re scared.

Congress knows their primary responsibility is to protect the citizenry from foreign invaders and likely they won’t give an inch until they know they’re doing it.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Current Issues, Government, Military

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Superstitious flies

Posted on October 9, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi readers.  When something doesn’t march lockstep to scientific theory it’s superstition.  So a lot of what honest-to-goodness scientists spend their time doing is finding out whether what they’re observing is superstitious or not.

Scientific investigation reveals most, but not all flies here are superstitious.

Scientific investigation reveals most, but not all flies here are superstitious.

I was having a plague of flies around the door to the RV because of the cat food in bowls inside the door.  The neighbor told me he’d had good luck running most of the flies off by putting water in baggies and hanging them around.

superstition 2

Approximately 2.749% of the flies at this location are scientific, allowing them to rest in the vicinity of the RV surface.

“Hmmmm.  Superstitious flies he’s got up there,” thinks I.  “Wonder if it’s the same breed trying to eat the cat food.”

Though a few scientific flies do come to rest around the door, sometimes on the baggies, they appear to be stupider than superstitious flies. They're one hell of a lot easier to swat.

Though a few scientific flies do come to rest around the door, sometimes on the baggies, they appear to be stupider than superstitious flies. They’re one hell of a lot easier to swat.

So naturally I gave it a try.  Swarms of hundreds of flies are darting around ten feet from the door but not approaching.  These are obviously the superstitious flies.

Naturally being a scientific sort of guy I don’t pay much heed to superstitious flies.  But the scientific ones piss me off enough to swat them because the theories they guide their lives by aren’t the same ones I’ve memorized to say to people.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, Science

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“It’s just you and me here. Do we want to go to war?”

Posted on October 9, 2013 by | 17 comments

Hi readers.

An email acquaintance who has a mining claim on Federal land in New Mexico sent out an anecdote to his email friends about an incident this weekend.

He headed out to his claim, bypassed a barricade, and began doing what he always does there.  He was spang in the midst of doing it when he looked up and a guy in a USFS law enforcement uniform wearing mirror sunglasses was scowling down with his hands on his hips.  “Come out of there.  You are going to jail.”

He scrambled up onto the bank and stood face-to-face with the sneering mirror sunglasses.  “This is a filed mining claim.  My fees are all paid, everything’s legal here.  I have a right to be here.  What law do you think I’m breaking?”

Mirror sunglasses ran his fingers over his holster.  “This is Federal land.  You are trespassing.  You’re either leaving or going to jail. “

“I’m armed too.  Get your hand away from that holster and don’t even think about pointing a pistol at me unless you want to shoot me.  I’m not doing anything illegal.  You are.  Get the hell out of here, or try handcuffing me and we’ll see what happens.  It’s just you and me here.  Do we want to go to war?”

Mirror sunglasses stepped back and assumed a gunfighter stance, the ghost of Billy the Kid in a USFS uniform.  Then he must have considered what he was doing and come to his senses.  “I can have backup out here in half-an-hour.  If you’re still here you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

He backed to his vehicle, glared again, and drove away.

The miner did some thinking on his own part and decided the price of a shootout with the Forces of Darkness wasn’t the lesser of evils in this situation.  Loaded his gear and headed back to civilization, figuring he’d meet the US Cavalry on the road.

But he didn’t encounter anyone.  He says he hasn’t decided whether to try it again next weekend.

Claude Dallas is evidently alive and well in the boondocks.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Government, Police

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Defeating the Forces of Darkness with a screw-driver

Posted on October 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers. 

These fall pre-dawns are probably what the Universe intended as an injection of involuntary joy into the lives of our ancestors.  Knowing they’d come through the hard times of summer and that hard times of winter were on the way, likely the Universe figured a pre-dawn sky would perk them up and remind them life is bigger than second-best. 

Made progress on the trailer yesterday, and as soon as the cats and I get Old Sol prayed up I’ll be out there, hopefully finishing off the job today.  The neighbor up the hill had screwdriver heads with stars, which is speeding things up. 

Gives me the shudders to think how hacked off it probably makes the forces of Darkness to have someone actually using the proper tool to apply.   The guy who thought of using arcane fasteners requiring special tools to hold things together is probably getting extra pokes with pitchforks down there where things are hot.  Likely the same guy who designed the starter on the 1991 Toyota 4 Runner and placed a bolt so’s it couldn’t be approached without a cutting torch.

I’m guessing he was probably the same guy who worked for General Motors in the 1960s and designed a distributor on a 283 engine placed in such a way as to require  a previously unimagined wrench to adjust the timing. 

Sunrise is working into the east since I began writing this.  Looks as though we’ve got a red morning coming up on us, but the cats and I aren’t sailors, so I’m figuring Chevi 283 timing bolts and Toyota 4 Runners aside, I’m going to get that door the rest-of-the-way fixed this morning.  Then go on to bigger things and get the trailer lights working, though that might require rewiring the whole shebang from the tongue to the red lenses at the back.

Working on something fairly good in concept that’s been beat-to-hell by years and use has a refreshing side.  At least it does once a person gets past the engineers screaming their heads off down in hell because you bypassed planned obsolescence.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America

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I wonder if we oldsters are different

Posted on October 8, 2013 by | 16 comments

Hi readers.

The representative democracy elected government useless eaters and the various space aliens running things know younger people are nothing but a bunch of sheep trapped in career paths, credit ratings and compulsive consumerism.  They know most of them have never stepped far outside the boundaries of control-created behavior and never will.  They know their heads are loaded with frenzied propaganda-induced rabidity of opinion safely within the fences.

But what those useless eaters in the White House, Congress, and all the societal traps of career paths have never been is old, been-there-done-that on most things, and trapped in promises made by useless eaters of the past.  Promises that if we handed over pieces of our incomes for half-century, they’d set it aside, nurture it, and feed it back to us when we got too old to make a living.  One month at a time, every month.

Come rain, shine, four horsemen of the whatchallit, apocalypse, Chinese invasion of toasters, utopian government sawbones free-for-alls, Drug Wars, supporting our Freedom Fighters against their Terrorists, whatever.

We oldsters have broken enough promises in our lives to recognize what a broken promise looks like.  And a lot more of us than anyone might imagine don’t have a lot to lose.  Whole different animal from those on the under-side of 65 circuits around Old Sol.

Some of us also have a mean-streak we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to subdue during our lives.  And some of us probably figure when it comes time to get off the pavement going through the fence is as good as going over it.

I say this because of the workings of my own, personal mind.  And that doesn’t assume the way my mind works necessarily rhymes with the workings of the minds of others in my situation.

For myself, I’ve got three cats I’ve got a contract to feed as long as I’m alive to do it.  It’s a contract I hold dear, as important to me as anything in my reality.  Those cats are going to eat one way or another, so long as anyone in the United States has a plate of food in front of him.  So long as I have the ability to make it happen, by any means whatsoever.

The promises made back when I was feeding the US government pieces of my income and trusting them to set them aside were written into law, and those laws haven’t changed.  But when the US government jumps the tracks and becomes a legion of lawbreakers and the laws they break influence whether my cats eat, all bets are off. 

The government can prove by prima faci evidence they didn’t mean it when they made their laws.  But they can’t do it surgically, selectively.  If the laws don’t apply to them, they don’t apply to anyone.  Not just the laws they picked to break, but all the laws on the books.

But hell, that’s just one old guy saying it.  What the hell do I know?

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Government, Politics

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Name that species: competing space aliens – recognizing our breeders

Posted on October 7, 2013 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

For reasons not fully understood two competing species of our space alien breeders are in a slugout over the mothballed NASA space shuttle launch site in Florida.  Evidently they’re after a backup plan to get the hell out of Dodge in case human beings become restive about being selectively bred for food.

This, of course, is of no consequence to most of us because we’re loyal to the general concept and do everything we can to cooperate with their goals.  We don’t know enough about the differences in the aliens to prefer one set over the other.

For that reason, the battle between the two species offers a rare opportunity to study and recognize subtle differences in appearance between the ones who prefer fat human meat in their diets, and those who enjoy the offspring of beefy football types joined with cheerleaders.

Notice the subtle differences.

These rare photos depict examples of the two species currently competing for the Get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge bolt hole NASA’s offering to lease.

As you can see, species #1 makes no attempt to disguise the fact hair doesn’t grow easily, whereas careful examination of species #2 at the hairline clearly shows the artificial surgical placement of entire scalp.  The eyes and lips are a dead giveaway to allow us to recognize the differences, as well.

But pay particular attention to the ears of species #1.  That ear was obviously taken from one of the food items after a certain amount of struggle, probably during the course of a meal.   Meanwhile, species #2 has natural ears that only needed trimming to allow for adequate disguise as human ears.

For we menu items the issue of which species gets the Space Shuttle launchpad is probably of no consequence.  But it does provide a means to better understand the sort of creatures we’ll end up providing sustenance for.

We are, after all, what we get eaten by.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America

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The European circumcision crisis

Posted on October 5, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Most of us probably go through life without doing a lot of thinking about circumcision.  I know I have, though I recall being fairly pleased I’d been through it as an infant when my old friend Vic had to have it done at the age of 30.

But in Europe I suppose someone decided just anyone ought not go around cutting the foreskins off male babies unless they’d had a bit of medical training.  They passed a law saying so.  Which thoroughly pissed off Israel, who pronounced it racist.  Evidently Jews and Arabs do it all the time and it’s worked out more-or-less okay.

I suppose if I had to choose and someone was going to take a knife to my pecker I’d rather they knew a little something about what they were doing, but I honestly don’t have a clue.  Mine might have gotten chewed off by a space alien for all I know.

Back in the 1960s there was a joke about a guy, said he got a job at a hospital as a circumcisor.  Said it paid 30 skins a week and a chance to get a head.

And during the ’70s Homer Henderson and the Dalworthian Garden Boys recorded a song, Hillbilly Pecker, about a kid who wasn’t circumcised.  Experienced some trauma when he discovered everyone else was.

HOMER HENDERSON Hillbilly Pecker .

But other than that I haven’t done much thinking about it.  Don’t know whether it’s racist, or not, just anyone taking a blade to a foreskin.

Likely there’ll be shots fired over it before the Europeans and Israel get it worked out.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, Current Issues

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Gorilla war in Columbia – perfect timing, cheaper and more dope than Afghanistan

Posted on October 2, 2013 by | 3 comments
That gorilla's loaded to the gills with nose candy. It's no mystery why that war's lasted 50 years.

That gorilla’s loaded to the gills with nose candy. It’s no mystery why that war’s lasted 50 years.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I saw on Yahoo news yesterday there’s a gorilla war going on in Columbia.  The what?  President?  Prime Minister?  Dicktater? anyway the sadly weakened strong-man in Columbia was saying they needed help from Cuba or Venzu-whatchallit-wala to put an end to it.

Help from  Cuba?  Hell man, we can send General Arnold Swartzkopff some trucks and move Fort Hood Texas straight through Mexico be down to help them in a New York minute.  While the government’s shut down.

Corner the market on addictive drugs worldwide quicker than you can tell about it.  Have the rest of the world vomiting and trembling and begging us for something to snort or shoot that’s more satisfying than shooting Muslims.

Sure, there’s the shale oil probably in Mexico we’ll pick off on the way down there, but oil is so damned 20th Century.  Cocaine’s where the future is.

Strike while the iron’s hot and Congress can claim they didn’t know because they were fretting about the budget.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Current Issues, Government

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Minneconjou Lakota Texan – another busted stereotype

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 2 comments

Long memories

A few old guys of the same species sitting around Kerrville, Texas wondering where the world went.  Each too different from the others to guess which parts they missed.  Old guy the others knew walked up and sat down.

Silver gray hair in a ponytail, 70ish, shorts and sandals with athletic stockings, heavyset.  We shook hands and I studied his features.  In Texas he looked definitely out-of-place, though he could have been Hispanic throwback gene pool.  But something in the features and skin pigment had me suspecting he was a Navajo or Apache.  A curiosity because Native Americans aren’t much drawn to Texas as a home.

Finally my puzzlement got the best of me.  “Where are you from?”

He grinned at the others, then at me.  “I’m Swedish.”

“Yeah, but what TRIBE Swedish?”

Minneconjou Lakota, it turned out.  Born in a US Public Health hospital on the Rez in Minnesota.  Mama a party woman, no idea who his pappa was.  Reared by his grandma, then sent off to Indian School.  Learned to be a welder and pipe-fitter.

By 1970-or-so he was up in Alaska on the North Slope a few years building the first Alaskan pipeline across the permafrost.  Had a few stories to tell about that, then all of us began picking his mind for all manner of details.  “How deep did they have to go setting the pilings holding up those pipe joints?”  “How were you housed?”  And so on.

Turned out all the oil from that field was shipped directly to Japan.  US refineries weren’t tuned to that sort of crude.  But the fields are still producing.

Guy has a tribal census number, but never went back to live on the Rez, but visited his grandma there until she died.  Brought tears to his eyes thinking about her.  Never used the free health-care/dental-care for life benefit available to him because of the tribal census number US Public Health Service offers.

“I worked hard all my life and settled here.  Paid my own way every step along.  Making a lifetime job of being an Indian didn’t appeal to me much.  When they quit shooting us they tried to offer that as the next best thing. 

“They’re still trying, got all those liberal white people to worship blanket Indians.  Better than getting shot, but not as good as kicking the whole damned mess.”  He shook his head.  “Damned white people and their congratulations for being victims will finish off all the ones left.”

Nice meeting him.  I hope I see him again before I head for the tall timber.  Being born into a trap doesn’t mean there’s no escaping it, I reckons.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Texas

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Comprehending Corner-of-the-eye creeping craziness

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 18 comments

Hi readers.  There’s something weird going on in the US you probably aren’t aware of unless you happen to be someone who plinks with a .22 rifle or pistol.  Or maybe a firearm of some other caliber.

But it’s been going on two years now, still going on today.  Ammunition manufacturers in China, Mexico, Russia, Czechoslovakia the US and elsewhere are working three shifts turning it out and shipping it t0 retail outlets and online suppliers.  They’re nowhere near satisfying the demand.

WalMart stores, for instance, get a shipment in during the night and before the store’s been open an hour there’s no more .22 ammo and damned little of anything else.

For reasons nobody anywhere can explain US citizens are filling the closets and garages with ammunition, mostly .22 caliber.

This silent, subtle fact is lurking in the periphery of something a lot larger, and I’ve spent a lot of time discussing it with anyone who might have ideas as to why it’s happening.  Everyone has ideas, and everyone admits they’re as mystified as I am what it means.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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