In the Cafe

As I sat in the cafe in town cuddling a hot coffee with my fingers against the cold of a late winter rain in April, a strange looking man in a dark long coat approached my table. He gave me a begging look and I nodded my head. He moved a chair out and sat down across from me in a slow and deliberate manner, adjusting the tails of his long coat about his thighs and the chair, removing his woolen gloves which were a greenish color but were mottled with spots of varying color and sheen. He placed his gloves down on the table and rubbed under his nose with the index finger of his left hand a couple of times, picked up a paper napkin and carefully folded it once and wiped under his nose again with the napkin then wadded the napkin in his left hand and tucked it into his coat pocket. With his right hand he signaled the waitress, the index finger extended properly up toward the ceiling, and said with a rough voice, "Coffee, please."

The waitress brought his coffee and topped mine up almost over filling my cup. I poured some out into the saucer to make room for the cream and sugar. I noticed the waitress was staring at the strange looking man sitting across from me, her mouth open a little bit and a look of disbelief in her eyes. Not a lot of disbelief, only a small amount. I, too, began staring at the strange looking man. He didn't seem to notice.

When it looked like he was settled in and had cream and sugar in his coffee and was cuddling his cup with his fingers against the cold I thought to start a conversation but was having trouble thinking of something to start a conversation with. I just sat in my chair cuddling my coffee cup with my cold fingers against the cold of the day lifting my cup up off the table for a warm sip now and then, looking around the cafe and at the strange looking man and I began to notice things. Things about the strange looking man.

I noticed he was wearing a knit cap like a Navy watch cap only it wasn't black like a Navy watch cap. It was the color of a bosc pear when it is ripe and succulent and most tasteful, a dark brownish yellow. The cap also had sewn on it a bright yellow Star of David like the ones the Nazis made the Jews wear in the ghettos in Poland during the holocaust, only it wasn't. It just looked like one. I wondered why it was bright and not dingy and mottled like the gloves and the cap upon which it was sewn. His long coat was probably not one color either but in the dim light of the cafe I could not see it as good as I could see the gloves and his cap.

I really didn't want to have a conversation with him so I stopped thinking about it. We both sat there, holding onto our coffees wrapped in our cold fingers and sipping some now and then, not speaking, only looking around the cafe and noticing things. After a while of this I began thinking that perhaps he thought I was strange looking and maybe he didn't want to do anything to start a conversation with me and maybe he stopped thinking about that too and just decided to just sit there and drink his coffee.

He took a good, noisy sip of his coffee and set his cup down on the table and gripped it moving his fingers around it like a golfer setting his grip on a driver so that the warmth could be spread to some of his colder fingers. "Cold out, ain't it?" he said.

Damn, I thought.

What I Really Do for a Living

I could tell you I toil away in relative obscurity on some 15th floor loft sweatshop, complete with all the teeming masses of exploited undocumented workers, backs bent over their sewing machines piecing together the latest fashions for the New York jet set, the dusty hot air that never seems to move unless with aid of a fan, the low light rendering most peoples eyes candidates for elimination on the next evolutionary change of the species, but I won't. I do work, in relative obscurity of course, at a national chain pharmacy which is the next best thing after a sweatshop, though not by much.

In the ten years I've worked in a pharmacy, the job itself has been changed from what I thought it would be like working in a pharmacy to what I never thought it would be like working in a pharmacy. In the olden days, before progress came to the company, we filled people's prescriptions, answered their questions, ordered their medicine when they sprung a new one on us and didn't have that one in stock and generally did what everyone thought pharmacies do. Not anymore.

Now, we call you up to seven days before you'll call us so we can ask you if we can fill a prescription for you today that you're sure to call us about in seven days anyway. It's sort of a I'll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today thing, only it takes valuable and scarce time to make a phone call to you about this of which you'll no doubt call us for eventually anyway later using even more valuable and scarce time. Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

But wait! There's more. My pharmacy uses computers to assist in the filling of prescriptions and while this makes the job easier, more accurate and better for all concerned especially in the area of making sure your doctor doesn't prescribe you something that will kill you when taken with another medicine your doctor prescribed for you last week, it also enables the tracking of metrics and statistics related to the filling of prescriptions easier as well. So, we now have certain parts of the pharmacy operations being measured and certain statistical goals must be met. There are quite a few areas that are measured which I won't expound on here mostly because I don't understand all that goes to forming the various statistics.

From all the measuring and publication of these statistical goals we get two unhappy phenomena. One is, all the goals are really mandatory minimums. That is, management gets very unhappy when your pharmacy falls short of the goals, er, I mean mandatory minimums. They have fired pharmacists and not just a few technicians either unable to meet the goals or who have given up on even trying, accepting their fate as the untimely death of a condemned murderer. The second is, we have all learned how to manipulate the prescription filling software in order to get the statistics measured by the computer to fall in the endzone. So, the bosses are happy, though completely ignorant of what's  really going on and maybe they do know but don't care since the numbers are right where they should be. A happy ending for all concerned.

So, in the end, my job has now become a manipulator of computer collected performance data so that the data will reflect a healthy business. We just fill prescriptions as an incidental sideline.

Remises

                I once read “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway.  As I have always had some urge, a desire really, to write and desperately wanted to know how, but never found that out, not even in school, I was very pleased when Ernest all but let out the secret to good writing in this collection of his remises. So I bought some pencils and not just a few Moleskine cahiers and a pocket pencil sharpener and set about to find me a good café as good as the one Hemingway found on the Place St.-Michel in Paris.

                Alas, to my eternal disappointment, I discovered there is not a good French café in my part of Georgia -only Waffle Houses.  One of them would have to do.  I tried a Waffle House but it was no good.  Too busy a place and they frowned at the proposition I would just sit there most of the day after breakfast, scribble something down in the cahier, sip on a cup of coffee or a glass of ice water and never order anything to eat for lunch then leave without an extra tip since the one I gave at breakfast.  Too busy a place for one guy to fill a seat that is no longer making money.

                As fun as it may be I decided to give up on writing in Waffle Houses.  I tried a Starbucks once but it was kind of like the Waffle House in that it too is usually a busy place not all that conducive to good writing.  It is after all hard enough to engineer the one true sentence in such noisy places let alone think of what should come next.  That café on the Place St.-Michel in Paris must have been a little less busy and certainly less noisy.  I decided to just stay home and write.  It has worked out well for me and it costs less to eat at home, though I admit the fare here is not as fancy as at some places I could go to but could not really write very well there.  Everything in life is a tradeoff.  This was no different.

                Thinking back to my school days I don’t remember anything about a class that covered the how to write part. Sure we wrote few essays and read a good bit of literature and studied the intricacies pertaining to the use of literary devices used by the great writers, fellows like Edgar Poe, William Shakespeare and Mark Twain among others I can’t think of now.  I remember well the reading of “The Glass Menagerie” which I enjoyed greatly.  I can’t now think of a single literary device we studied.  I wouldn’t know one by name though I may use one now and then.  Of course I never took any of that stuff seriously.  That was when I was young and foolish.  Now I’m old and still a little foolish but regret I didn’t take any of that stuff seriously.  If I had I might now realize that I was taught how to write only didn’t know it at the time.

                Remises:  in fencing, a further thrust, a remise, made on the same lunge to follow up a first thrust that has missed. Hemingway used this word to describe his work "A Moveable Feast."  At first I thought it was a short word for reminiscences but on finding it does not mean that I now consider he may have meant the reminiscenses recorded in "A Moveable Feast" are second or follow up thrusts of first thrusts (his life the first time round) that have missed.

A Quiet, Warm Afternoon

The old wheelbarrow set undisturbed against the old persimmon tree in the front yard, sort of upside down, with the wheel up where it would not hold water from the rains; not that it could hold water since it had a few small holes in its bucket. Under it in the cool shade sat a strange stray cat holding a mouse in its mouth, no longer struggling to live. We looked at each other for a while and I went back to my reading. A few pages later I noticed the cat had gone and a warm breeze had begun coming out of the south bringing with it the earthen smell of the empty field across the road and not a small amount of sandy dust.

I put the book down on the table and looked out across the road. I was amused for a while by the many small dust devils that would kick up here and there in the field, exist a second or two then disappear instantly only to kick up again a few yards away.

Stepping off the porch onto the grass I faced the setting sun with my eyes closed and enjoyed the sun's warmth on my skin with the earthen smell of the field still on the air and remembered the strange cat under the wheelbarrow with the mouse in its mouth. From somewhere over my shoulder up in one of the trees a dove cooed softly for a moment and then I heard its wings cut the wind as it flew close over me. I opened my eyes and saw the dove fly toward the setting sun and then turn a little bit to make it to the pond for a drink of the cool, still water there.

I then climbed up the steps onto the porch and picked up my book to go inside the house for a little nap. I took off my hat and set it down on my bedside table along with the book. On the top of my hat was a little bird poop. Well, it needed washing anyway.

I'm not much of a traveller

I'm not much of a traveller. I lived in England for a couple of years, 1979 to 1981, courtesy of the United States Air Force. Many years after that I spent some time in Saudi Arabia doing my part to convince the Iraqi Army occupying Kuwait they should leave. I spent a good deal of time living in Texas, about nine years all together, two years in Lubbock and seven years in Del Rio. Since I retired in 1995, I've lived in the first home I ever bought and don't intend of moving. No sir, I'm not much of a traveller.

Lately, on Saturday nights, I pick up a friend and we go to a diner in a nearby town and spend time eating and talking with other friends who meet us there. Everything from amateur radio, we are all ham radio hobbyists, to politics, guns and whatever gets talked about. Basically a little of everything. On the last outing I was thinking that it was a waste to go every Saturday. I thought I should arrange and plan for some sort of outing or quick overnight trip or something for my wife and I to do at least once a month. I know it would break up the tendency of me to get bored during those Saturday night outings with the fellas and I sure would like to do something different for a change.

A musing of late....

When my father died I was sad. And for a long while after I dreamed that he wasn't dead but somehow it was a mistake. Even though during my dreaming I knew he was cremated, he was at home sitting in his chair, just looking at me, talking with me and the others. I kept thinking how could he be there and cremated too? After I woke up I still wondered if he would answer the phone if I called.

And sometimes I would catch myself wanting to call him and see what he thinks about whatever it was I was bothered by at the time. And now, seven years have passed since he died. I no longer dream the strange dreams and catch myself almost picking up the phone. I have settled in my mind that I am alone in the world and able to cope without him. Which is what he always wanted for me.

Absalom Proclaims

"If only I were appointed judge in the land!" proclaimed one young man many centuries ago. His name is Absalom and his father, the King of Judah and Israel,  is David. Absalom conspired to usurp his father's kingship and in the end was killed by the king's men.

Today, we have many Absalom's not just asking us to appoint them as a judge in the land, but taking the judgeship as a matter of right. What right, you ask? No right at all. I speak of a handful of United States Senators and others who, by the fact of their longevity in the Congress, have assumed the right of judge and jury over us all. I speak mainly of Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein and perhaps John McCain, but there are others that belong in this group.

You can see them on the television pontificating about a many and sundry issues. Schumer and Feinstein are lately hawking gun control. And let's not forget Feinstein's sudden revulsion of CIA spying. McCain wants us all to believe he's God's gift to foreign policy. And to think I once voted for him. Not that our current president couldn't use some help. John Kerry included. But these folks are just folks. There is nothing special about any of them. But there is one thing they all have in common.

That thing they all have in common is the self perception that they are somehow super qualified, endowed by some mysterious fluid, kept from the rest of us don't you know, they have imbibed making them experts about many things of which they actually know very little.

Little Harry Reid is just plain offensive to anyone with a mind as is Nancy Pelosi. Yet these two have pontificated more nonsense than all the others combined. And get this. They are what qualify to be the Congressional Leaderhip of the Democrats. Isn't that a hoot?

In This Garden

In this garden the individual has been assaulted and touted as archaic. In his place a construct of a failed, yet tenacious, political theory has been put forward as the new man. This new man is not really one man but the collection of all men, thought of and treated as one man. This new concept is genderless as, according to the theory, we are all equal in every way, there is no need to distinguish between the genders. One world, one man, one law. Everyone is equal. No one is above another. And true to form, we will all crawl on our bellies before the one law to receive our equal due. And it will not be sufficient. There will be rebellion. For men are not ants, nor should they be made to be ants.

To Be an American

I think this nation is in great peril. I know, I'm not stating anything new. We've been in great peril before, and never in as much peril as the years 1929 to 1945. We climbed out stronger than ever but we had to fight a World War to get through it. Some fourteen years later I was born.


The first two decades of my life saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Senator Bobby Kennedy, Man's first steps on the Moon, the election and re-election of President Nixon, the first U.S. President to resign the office in disgrace, followed by the uneventful presidencies of Ford and Carter. All through this I was somewhat aware of the Cold War, though I didn't fully understand it until I began the first year of my third decade at RAF Lakenheath, England, where our only mission was to generate nuclear laden F-111F's to send east toward the Soviet Union to pave the way for the B-52's who would follow after us. Living in this world is serious business after all.


With Ronald Reagan at the helm we, I mean all us Americans, defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot, though the Soviets didn't actually fold until after George Bush's victory over Iraq's invasion and criminal occupation of Kuwait. I don't know if you noticed it or not but, after that show of superior American arms over Soviet trained and equipped Iraqi arms, I figure the Soviets finally threw in the towel, though I have read elsewhere the failed Soviet economy is what finally broke the Communist Party's hold on power. Though it happened on Bush's watch, Reagan set it up.


Life under William Clinton was nowhere as exciting as it is today, yet it wasn't exactly boring. Of course, he was the President that signed into law an ineffective "Assault Weapons Ban" that never really lived up to its intended purposes, though some may disagree with that. At the time I was in the Air Force and had my mind on other things and really didn't study the subject much. In fact, I even made fun of one of my buddies who owned an Uzi, saying "the last time you went hunting you killed three deer and wounded forty-two." We all laughed about it in good fun and forgot about it. I'm a bit older and wiser now and see how a ban like that can turn into something no one wants or ever intended, even those who originally supported it in the first place. Anyway, moving on I never faulted Slick Willie's penchant for the ladies though politically I opposed him.


George Bush the Second's presidency started off well enough then came September 11th, 2001. Then Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Then Bush's second term. Then what...?


The Betrayal. The open and no longer cleverly veiled aims of politically left statists in this country. The outright denial of the first principles that made it possible for us, this nation, to survive the perils of the Depression and then World War Two followed by the Cold War. We have not only been steered onto the road to socialism but the accelerator is stuck down with a brick named Obama and lashed down with bits of rope whose names are Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi, Napolitano, Holder, Traver and others who would make our nation into something less than our aspirations. Rush Limbaugh calls them the Blame America First crowd.


I knew we were in trouble when former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, with a straight face mind you, said of ObamaCare, "We have to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it." I have never heard a politician, or anyone for that matter, say anything as stupid as that. This is but one small sample of the mindset of our leftist opponents. If you get your information from many sources as I do you know what I mean. For the reader who accidentally stumbled here during the CNN, CBS, ABC or MSNBC news commercial break you probably won't have a clue to what I mean.

The most puzzling thing of all is the number of my fellow Americans who support the very political ideals that are so contrary to what it means, or meant, to be an American. Unbelieveable.

Billions and Billions?

I read an interesting article today, you may read it here, stating that scientists have arrived at an estimated 50 billion planets exist within our own Milky Way Galaxy and that as many as 500 million of those planets could harbor life. Read the article for more details, but what I got to thinking about after reading the article was life in general and exactly what is life and what is it's purpose? At age 52, I thought I may as well think about these things now rather than later. I might not have later.

Is not the purpose of life to live? At least long enough to reproduce and then after that who cares if you live much longer? And if it is something else, what is it? In my struggle in life I do what I must do to trade my skill set for money which I then transform into paid bills, shelter and food and clothing and the occasional luxury item. Basically, life is just a struggle to survive, but you know there exists somewhere out there a personal time limit and everyone's got one.

Life is short but only for those who are not suffering. For the suffering there is no life short enough, for a day with suffering is like a lifetime of suffering every twenty-four hours. But we are getting away from the main point.

If in this galaxy alone there are 50 billion planets and of those 500 million could support life, why do the mere mortal inhabitants of this rock think we're so special?

Let's pick one of those planets and ask some questions, shall we?

Q:You, on Omicron Six, do you have religion?

A:Oh yeah! It's the opiate of the people don't you know.

Q:Mmm.. we've heard that somewhere before. Well then, on Omicron Six is there a One World Government over what used to be hundreds of individual sovereign nations sort of like our United Nations does in keeping the peace between civil nations?

A:Oh...Is that what you use that for? We thought...uh, never mind what we thought. Enough of the questions already. We only came here to smoke a doobie with you and chill around the campfire and eat munchies. You guys are so uptight. Anyone have any San Gria?

I guess we are not so special after all. What do you think?

Don't Know Much About Christine O'Donnell

In an Op-Ed column by Frank Rich in the NY Times, titled The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O'Donnell, Mr. Rich opined:

"O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims." (Emphasis in italics mine.) Read here.

I don't know much about Christine O'Donnell, but I do know the Democrat Party is not now, nor has it ever really been, the friend of African-Americans. It took a while, about 30 minutes, but I did find a source for your perusal. Read here.

I also take issue with Mr. Rich's implication about the Republican Party representing the "Wall Street potentates and corporate titans" as if to contrast the good work of the Democrat Party to tax the rich into poverty as an essential strategy of its war on poverty.

There are a lot of points in Mr. Rich's Op-Ed column I would like to comment on, but I am but a simple man, not quite up to the intellectual level he is when discussing politics. Mr. Rich, there is a "real America" out here and it don't give a damn what you think about anything.

Scapegoat! Get your scapegoat here!

In a story about books in prisons, ACLU attorney David McGuire hits a nail right on the head. Read here.

"This is yet another case of politicians scapegoating expression as the cause of serious violent crime," said ACLU attorney David McGuire.

Now, let's replace one word with a short phrase. Replace the word "expression" with the short phrase "inanimate objects" and ACLU attorney David McGuire would still be right, regardless of the inanimate objects involved. But, I would suggest that the inanimate object or objects collectively could be firearms or a knife or a rock or a pencil or a pen or a porcupine quill.

The point made by Mr. McGuire is correct. I don't know how many times I've heard someone contemptuously parrot, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people blah, blah blah..." and so on with whatever clever ending to that soundbite they have.

The fact of the matter is politicians do a lot of scapegoating and not a whole lot of anything else.

Been Rippin'

What've you been doing?
Hey! Hey! Hey! It's like being stoned!
Where are you when the sun go down? So far away from me.
So far I just can't see. Money for nothing?
Where can you get chicks for free?

I can't live with or without you? Did U2 really sing that?
First time ripper here. Got it going on. Yep! Got it going on.

Been Rippin'
What've you been doing.

Complicity

Involvement as an accomplice in a questionable act or crime. With emphasis on the "involvement as an accomplice" portion of the definition, I would say without hesitation that most of the popular major media outlets, and you know who those outlets are, without doubt are engaging in complicit behaviour when they publish "news" stories that somehow contribute to the growing paradigm that citizen is an antiquated term that has been superseded by a more "progressive" dismissive as "the masses."

The individual is dead and really exists only as a small part of a greater whole, whose welfare is determined by self appointed philosopher kings, known otherwise by such terms as Senator, Congressman, Czar and President. City Councilman, Mayor and County Sheriff are soon to be added to the known as also list, you just wait.

Just pick up a newspaper, if there are any still being published where you live, and read a few of the stories. Find one where the government is somehow involved and think about how the role of the government is presented in the story and how minimal the role of the ordinary citizen is portrayed, if at all. Now think to yourself how the portrayal of government squares with the idea that our "elected officials" are our servants.

Like in the Allstate Insurance commercial: Confused? Don't be. That is the paradigm I speak of, where government is everything and we are nothing. It is the paradigm that the popular major media outlets have been complicit in supporting for decades. It is the paradigm they want you to become comfortable with. It is the paradigm that will be used to enslave you and your family, your neighbors and friends. In the end, government will be the Queen and We, the people, will merely be worker ants.

Complicity: Involvement as an accomplice in a questionable act or crime. But the good news is, all the reporters and talking heads who helped bring about the great ant mound will also be worker ants too. Not even they will be spared the disgrace, and in the great crime of enslaving millions in the once land of the free, that may be the only justice one can point to.

What's So Special About H1N1?

Headline on CNN.com "Obama declares H1N1 emergency." Whoopee-doo! According to the article about about 1000 persons have died from the H1N1 virus yet if you look up, here, how many deaths are caused by the regular annual flu in the United States it is estimated at 36,000. Where was the declared emergency for that this year. Or last year? Why only declare an emergency for H1N1?

Because it's sexy and it upsets the public more than worse news about a regular flu would and it makes things easier to usurp more power (for the Federal government, that is) because now we are in an emergency which is bound to scare even more crap out of an already crapped out scared bunch of dependent on the government for everything people. Whew! That was a lot.

When Obama was elected I told a couple of folks I work with, Democrats of course, that he was going to be dangerous to the liberties we all enjoy. Neither of them believed me. But lately neither of them have said a word about the great job Obama is doing being our President. Hmmm....

The Liberties of our Forebears

In a note to myself I scribbled the words "The liberties enjoyed by the generation of the Founding Fathers may well amaze most of us and, in fact, be deemed by us as too much liberty."

Is there such a state of being defined by the exercise of too much liberty? This seems to be the paradigm of the modern American citizen. We are used to the prospect of being stopped by the police for sundry reasons, most notably as a result of how fast we drive our cars. In fact we are probably more fearful of that inconvenience than being "inconvenienced" by a criminal act by someone we've never met and would never see coming anyway.

And that says volumes about where we are as a society than anything else. Are we more afraid of our government institutions than we are of complete strangers who share our habitat? In essence, are we afraid of our government? And if we are, why?

Perhaps many of us go about our business never giving a thought to this question, but it is worth asking. If we live in a society in which our worst nightmares are of arrest by authorities for "crimes" that were mere misdemeanors yesterday, and not even misdemeanors the day before, then we should begin finding out where that crazy idea that we are free came from.

When I was twelve years old my dad gave me and my younger brother each our own 12 gauge shotguns. We were permitted to carry our shotguns from the home, down the street, in broad daylight, with ammunition and then into the woods where we would load them and hunt or just shoot stuff. No big deal. That was 38 years ago.

I doubt that would be allowed to happen today. But why? What has changed since then? I never took my shotgun to school. In fact I never thought I should or even could. I never used it in a criminal manner and never thought to do so. But, something has changed in 38 years. Now anyone, especially a young person, is so suspect if in possession of a firearm that the whole scenario seems to draw way too much response and way too much judiciary review.

This is so not the same place in which Sam Adams sojourned. I have never lived there, even though I have lived here all my life.

Please, Stop Lying to Me!

It is apparent to me that since all gun control is proposed as a means to lower the crime rate and yet areas where guns are most severely prohibited have the highest rates of crime, the argument is a failed argument. So, what is the real goal of firearms prohibitionists?

The Brady Campaign voices its main concern as "gun violence" yet seems completely unconcerned about violence committed by other means. Why just gun violence? The same can be said about the Violence Policy Center and a host of other organisations bent on prohibiting the ancient right of free men.

Since the Supreme Court decision DC-v- Heller, Mr. Heller was "allowed" to register his weapon and be issued a license so he may have a firearm in his home to protect himself and his family from gun violence, and violence by other means, at the hands of an uncaring home invader. However it was not that simple. He was not allowed to register the weapon of his choice since it was by a cleverly structured definition a machine gun, but only considered as such by Washington DC authorities, he could not lawfully even possess it and had to settle on a revolver instead of the more utilitarian semi-automatic handgun he had in mind.

Now, Mr. Heller is a "Special Police Officer" in the District of Columbia and while on the job is required/permitted? to carry a firearm in order to fully execute his duties. Now, I ask, what is the real purpose of the gun prohibitionists when the law is used to prohibit handgun ownership of not only a law abiding citizen, but a law enforcing citizen? I can only conclude that the ultimate goal of all gun control schemes is to strip us all of our civil liberties and then, and only then, may one speak of "all we, like sheep."

Oh no! Not this crap again.

Paul Helmke, a contributing writer to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Blog, and officer of same, wrote a piece of propaganda that would even impress Joseph Goebbels. In fact, without even reading any of his other work I could probably say that as propaganda, they are all just as good. As an aside, I just noticed that Goebbels and Goering have only one word between them in my dictionary. If that has no significance for you read Inside the 3rd Reich.

Back to Paul Helmke. Paul's latest treatise seems to be about how well the Brady Instant Background Check system protects us by having denied 135,ooo dangerous people the ability to purchase a firearm in the last year and from one dangerous person in particular. You should go and read the entire article and then come back here.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/blog/?p=684

Did you read it? Good. Now, I concede that in the one case of Mr. Drew Douglas Grant, whose real name is Andrew Golden, that everything worked like it was suppose to. I think you would agree as well. However, where Mr. Helmke wanders into the deep end of deceit and lies, which is where the entire venture called The Brady Campaign originates, is his insistence that all 135,000 persons denied to purchase a firearm are really the dangerous persons he thinks they are or, rather who he wants you to think they are.

You see, not all Brady Denials are because Joe Criminal, who just got released from Sing-Sing for murder, went into a gun store and tried to buy a gun from a federally licensed firearm dealer and got denied because his background check failed. In this context James Jay Baker, Wayne LaPierre and Richard Gardiner, all spokesmen for the NRA, are correct in the statements they made that Mr. Helmke seems to be calling them on simply because he now has proof that at least one convicted killer did in fact attempt to apply for a concealed carry permit and got caught. Not the same thing as getting denied a gun purchase at a gun store but the background check for a concealed carry permit is the same as that for a gun purchase. Plus the investigation for a concealed carry permit requires checking fingerprints against the FBI finger print database.

Did a light just turn on in your head?

Question 1. Did Mr. Grant already possess a firearm and was just seeking a permit to carry it on his person? If so, did Mr. Grant already "pass" an instant background check to purchase the gun? Or was the gun acquired by other means? In any event Mr. Grant's scheme ended in disaster not because of the Brady Instant Background Check but because of the fingerprint analysis portion of his concealed carry permit application.

Question 2. Does Mr. Helmke realize that it was not the Brady Instant Background Check that busted Mr. Grant? If so, why does he go on and on and on trying to convince you that the Brady Instant Background Checks are all that stand between you and certain death?

I cannot say I know the answers raised by Question 1. But, for Question 2 I can speculate that Mr. Helmke is purposely being deceitful in order to get you to believe things that are not completely true.

Even I, after first reading the article, thought that Mr. Grant's scheme ended with a negative result from a Brady Instant Background Check. I had to read it more than once to realize the trick Mr. Helmke played on me. If you look around the Brady Campaign web site take a few notes and try to substantiate some of the claims they make, especially their statistics. They seem to be a little vague in their sourcing so you may have a hard time of it. I know I did.

After the Election

It's after the election, Obama got himself elected and now what? Probably nothing much since he is inheriting a complete cluster fuck but I guess he'll just love it since it was brought to us by the Democratic Party anyway. The Mother of All Bailouts has already been extended to the auto industry and since I haven't heard much more about any of it I guess the Bailouts worked. Or did they? I just don't know.

Israel is kicking butt in Gaza. I say more power to them. The last I heard anything they were considering a 48 hour recess. I say press on.

Anyway firearms sales in this country are up, way up. I got my Hi-Powered Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon Rifle Gun That No One Needs Anyway, because I need it in case Obama gets elected and signs into law a ban on Hi-Powered Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon Rifle Guns That No One Needs Anyway, back in October before the election on just a hunch Obama would get elected. Now everyone is out to get them a Hi-Powered Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon Rifle Gun That No One Needs Anyway before the next ban on Hi-Powered Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon Rifle Guns That No One Needs Anyway is made into law.

I know, you're thinking no one is going to take your guns away. But I know better and so should you. I know, you're thinking it's not that important. But I know better and so should you. Did you know that in the last 100 or so years, governments, not citizens, killed over 170,000,000 men, women and children through various means. This does not include soldiers killed in combat. It only includes civilians who were killed by a government entity. They were killed by such means as "being shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, worked to death, buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed from the sky or killed in any other myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens." Source: The Seven Myths of Gun Control by Richard Poe, paper back edition copyrighted 2001, Three Rivers Press, New York, page 21.

But first, they all had to be disarmed. So the next time you hear a politician pushing for a new law that has anything to do with restricting or registering firearms or firearms owners, ask yourself, why? And remember what you just read and gun control means controlling you, not guns.

What if Obama wins the election?

Instead of an Atheist Thought of the Week, and since this is my blog, I would like to ask a question. I have read an article or two on the consequences of Obama losing the election, with a hint there may be some rioting in some or all of the major US cities. That would certainly be a less than a favorable outcome under this premise. In one article it was put as perhaps being like the rioting after Rodney King was beaten by police. But what if he won? And then some ignorant, deep south, raving racist lunatic from perhaps Mississippi or Louisiana, though not limited to just those two states, managed to kill him. What kind of rioting would come of that? One can only hope it won't come to that. But I fear, though we as a nation have made great strides in learning to live together as civilised peoples, it has not been so long as to be certain there is not one or more determined racist that will not brook a black man as President.

The premise just outlined to you is not original with me. A friend who has more time to think of such things as I do put this in my head. It is something to wonder about and prepare for if only somewhat minimally however you may think you should where you live. Where I live I doubt anything will happen as I live in a very rural area of Middle Georgia, but the Cities of Macon and Atlanta a little north and just a bit farther north of me respectfully could see some outcries of injustice. And let's not discount the power and ability of Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan to exacerbate any situation to deadly proportions.

As it gets closer to November we should all think about this and prepare accordingly. Hopefully the election will go smoothly and the loser will be graceful and nothing else will come about as a result either way. But chance favors the prepared mind and perhaps that is all I am really saying here.

Good night, Gracie!