My Liberal Diary

Day 145, My Liberal Diary

There are a few things that both major political parties would have us all believe that are not exactly fact. One thing that comes to mind is the amount of spending, each party would have the believe the other is going to bankrupt our nation when the truth is, that our nation has not owned two dimes to rub together that were our own since we left the gold standard and let the Fed tell us how much our money was worth based on belief in the Great Pumpkin. Republicans spend as much as Democrats when in power, maybe more, but the Democrats want to spend the money on feeding a dependent population where the Republicans spend the money on wars and such. This might seem like a no-brainer but wars kill people and that alone reduces the amount of people dependent on the social tit whereas, feeding people gives them more time to breed, increasing the population of dependent people until we have to stack them in urban housing projects like firewood. Wars make money for powerful people, there are no ideological reasons for war, just practical ones. War makes jobs that allow people to feed themselves rather than relying on others. Wars create new industry and fosters methods of killing even greater numbers with less expenditure of resources. The problem is that we pick wars based of stupid reasons. We are spending trillions of dollars fighting goat herders in an area of few resources just to keep Boing manufacturing planes and bombs. The goat herders do not have drones or even indoor plumbing, for the most part; they have goats and AK47s. We develop high-tech methods of spying on them from outer space, send robot planes with hellfire missiles to kill them, and aside from the family’s supported by the manufacturing, transportation, and operations of these tech-gadgets and a reduction in over-all population, stand to gain nothing. Collateral damage for this is seen in the increased surveillance of people at home, militarization of our police departments, cavity searches to get on a plane, and more people on the government payroll than are employed elsewhere in the entire country.

I am all for having a war if it is actually for something. Why don’t we attack Canada? They are just up the street and we could take their beer industry. If we attacked France, they would surrender immediately and we could get some really great wines and cheeses to distribute to the folks too lazy to work building bombs and airplanes and nobody really likes the French anyway. If we went after Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, just think about all that money we could distribute to eliminate the War on Poverty. If we stopped the War on Drugs and invaded Colombia, take all the cocaine and pot from the Cartels and sold it on the street, we could have the richest nation in the world, after all the abusers died of over-dose. War is all about taking something that someone else has that you want. Apparently, we have some real perverts in Washington that think we should corner the market on goats.

 

Day 146, My Liberal Diary
A moron might think that two times two is five, a paranoid knows that two times two is four but it still makes him nervous. I am pretty good at taking basic information and coming up with accurate answers but they make me nervous too. I make my living in the marine salvage and recovery business. I hate to admit it, but as much death and destruction as a hurricane causes, I still find myself looking forward to them because of the tremendous amount of salvage work they generate. A good hurricane almost certainly guarantees me a profitable year. Banks and politicians look forward to wars because they know they will profit greatly. They risk little in the way of actual liability to themselves, not generally being anywhere near the line of fire but when it comes right down to it, wars are never about human rights, freedom, any of the flag waving horse-shit they feed us to get our kids in a uniform and shooting the terrorist of the day in some god forsaken shit-hole. It's all about the money, money, money, it makes the world sing, it makes the factories ring. In Viet Nam, I once read that 2.5 million rounds of small arms ammunition was fired for every one confirmed NVA kill. That's an awful lot of bullets that some factory turned out in a congressman's district and sold to our government that has a documented history of purchasing $100.00 claw hammers. That doesn't even begin to cover the manufacturing and sale of guns, bombs, green suits that make you look like a tree, boots, belts, vehicles, tooth-brushes and toilet paper for the soldiers, ships to deliver the stuff, airports and harbors to land the stuff, ware-houses to store it in here and there, and even flags for the ones of us that are too old to go fight and die to wave or drape over our children's or grand-children's coffins when they send them back to us in a box. And all some banker has to do is say "we need a war" and immediately Congress starts saying things like "We can make the bullets in my state" or "We will cut the taxes on a new factory to build bombers or submarines in my state". and the next thing you know, we get distracted by some terrorist incident and it's off to war again to stimulate the trickle-down economics.
When we can't find a real enemy with international borders and resources that we would like to control, we declare war on a concept like poverty, drugs, racism, terror...it goes on and on but the single common denominator is that it actually is a declared war and subject to the War Powers Act. If you read about the War Powers Act, you'll realize that it is just a means of subjugating our Liberty and Freedom then they make us think that anything else is not patriotic and therefore subject to the Patriot Act. That is why two times two makes me nervous.

 

Day 147, My Liberal Diary
Rosie McDonald is back selling video games. Discovered Polosium is the densest matter on Earth. I am tired and Snake Haven has now been placed on the map as wet-land wildlife habitat and I think an Osprey is building a nest in the handlebars of my dirt-bike. There are at least five sets of wet boots outside my patio door. Jerry just got back from visiting a Noah's Ark exhibit somewhere, wonder if he's thinking this rain might keep up a few more days?
I think I will take a nap.

 

Day 148, My Liberal Diary
My wife's buddy, O.J. Simpson, was about to be paroled from prison where he is serving a 33 year term for armed robbery and kidnapping; apparently he stole some baseball cards at gun-point. They first met on Grand Bahamas Island in a near traffic accident, sometime before he decided to begin his career as a kidnapper and robber but well after he got away with murdering his estranged wife and her boyfriend with a switchblade. It is all over the MSM headlines: He was to be granted parole from prison on October 1, 2017 but got caught masturbating in his jail cell and may have his parole revoked for jacking off; is this some new Republican conspiracy? Wait a minute, don't Liberals own the news media? Will kids now be denied driver's licenses for getting caught using too much soap in the bath-tub? I used to think that masturbation was a normal part of going through puberty and certainly has been a favorite pass-time for so many lonely evenings when there just wasn't enough coin left over to take Barbie to the Dairy Queen. I realize there are probably more productive things to do while in prison, like making shivs from tooth-brushes or reading the Koran, but shouldn't a grown man have a little privacy in his cell? The man is in his seventies now, I am sure his concerns about going blind or growing hair in the palms of his hands keep him from making this more than an occasional respite from watching rerun episodes of Snoop and Martha, it isn't likely that he will become a chronic masturbator, at least not to the point where he endangers the public. Why is this considered news worthy?

 

Day 149, My Liberal Diary
This morning, my wife the right-wanger and I were walking through a parking lot and I had my arm around her. An old black woman smiled and called us "Love-birds" and we laughed because we have been close now for nearly three decades and still hold hands when we take walks. We still greet one another with hugs that last more than sixty seconds because a hug that lasts seconds is a social enmity between people that don't really care for one another but feel that convention requires physical contact, sort of like those fake cheek kisses. I try to come home each day at lunch, not because I am hungry, but so I can spend a few moments with her in the middle of the day and reassure myself that she is ok and not pushing herself beyond what her health will allow. This is easy for her to do, especially given that she is the sole care-taker of her crazy as bat-shit mother and that takes extraordinary resolve and strength and patience far beyond what I am capable of providing. I have to work a lot more than I would like and that keeps me outside most of what influences her day. We rely on social media to keep the other posted and apprised on where we are in the scheme of things. I find it sadly funny that sometimes things we cannot find the words to express in person can be focused through the objective lens of what we share with our friends through social media. I am sure this could be a passive-aggressive means of tugging at a scab and keeping an old wound fresh and bleeding, but it also can be a means of hearing words that we cannot find the time, strength and circumstance to say in person. I suppose this depends almost entirely on the character of the people communicating.
Tomorrow would have been her son's birthday, were he still alive. I did not realize this until I read a comment she made to another friend on Facebook. She would not mention this to me because she doesn't want me to think she is weak or maudlin. Being a somewhat dense male, I knew something was a little off but when I asked, she just said everything was fine so I stayed really busy fixing things that I know how to fix because that is what I do; I fix what I know how to fix and try not to worry about what I don't know. Then I saw a heart-breaking comment she made to a friend on Facebook that made me realize that tomorrow would have been a day of celebration for her and her son and I now understand the sadness that she did not wish for me to share.

 

Day 150, My Liberal Diary
I like good people. I don't care what their politics are, was color they are, where they came from,or how much money they've got. A good person is an exceptional person and should be valued as such, raised well above all those that only focus solely on their personal agenda because good, by definition, is superior to venal, hateful, greedy, selfish, quarrelsome, bitter, or narcissistic. A good person wants you to succeed in life and happiness. They wish you no ill will and and have true admiration of your efforts without envy. A good person will not stand in the way of your success, they will help you with a smile. They might hold open a door for you. They will stand up for justice and not be swayed by peer-pressure or social stigma. This world needs more good people, it may be the only thing that can save us from ourselves.

 

Day 151, My Liberal Diary
I want to be perfectly clear about this, my wife, the right-wanger, did not give me this black eye! I walked into the open tail-gate of a SUV. This SUV would not have been in my way if the person that owned it had been able to afford to keep the pickup truck he had last week but had to buy a used vehicle that needed repairs instead. The repairs were being done and the tail gate, which opens from the top, was open and I walked right into it. Clearly, this is Donald Trump's fault. This accident could have been avoided if Obama Care would pay for me to get new glasses, my old insurance paid for eye exams and corrective lenses and if Trump had kept his promise and got rid of Obama Care, then I might have had new glasses. It may not have happened if my co-worker didn't have to repair an old used automobile instead of driving his pickup, I am sure by now, if Trump hadn't been elected, my co-worker could have made his truck payments with money saved from buying groceries, paying rent, and all the other free stuff we liberals think everyone is entitled too. I might have avoided this injury if I had been paying attention instead of walking with my head down, such has become my habit when in the presence of anyone that I suspect might not be as liberally inclined as me. Someone could have warned me to watch out for the open door but only white people were there and I am sure they were all racists. They could have put a warning label on that dangerous hazard such as "Caution: Open Tail-gates May be Hazardous to Your Right Eye". Nobody at the ACLU has returned my calls yet, so I probably can spend some time figuring out who I want to sue. I think GM is mostly responsible, since there was no warning labels. Maybe I can get on Judge Judy?
In the mean-time, I need to go get a couple of stitches but since my insurance deductible has gone up so much in the past several years, it is cheaper for me to put a band-aid on it and tell everyone that I was assaulted by a policeman.

 

Well...being an SUV, with a tailgate that "open from the top", it probably looks something like this.

 

One day, you'll push the release button and the failed damper will let that "gate" pop you in the jaw. (Don't ask.)

 

That's it! Does it have a warning label?

 

Well mine does NOW. How typical that the car companies expect us to do this ourselves. Disgusting.

 

Day 152, My Liberal Diary
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I was in Bienville, MS with a salvage crew removing wrecks from a rail road track. We were working for the Coast Guard, removing primarily vessels that were leaking oil and threatening the environment. The folks around Bienville mostly made their living fishing. Many of the trawlers were destined to be removed and destroyed. We had a plan for each vessel that had been approved by the Coast Guard. Sometimes, people would come by and plead for the return of their vessels so they could start back to work and begin rebuilding the life that Katrina has so devastated. It was heart-breaking to explain to them that we were working for a government program and could only recover vessels that they'd determined were a threat to the region. One boat on our recovery list that was marked for destruction, when the owner came down as we lifted it and pleaded for us not to destroy his boat. I agreed to hold the vessel in the water rigged from our crane to see if it would float and he could take his boat. While I was holding it, two Chief Petty Officers, each trying to be more petty than the other, came aboard and demanded to know just what in the hell I thought I was doing. I explained that the vessel's owner was standing on shore and wanted his boat back and if it would float, then I intended to give it back to him. That really set one of the Coasties off like a rocket. He literally screamed at me that I was in violation of our salvage plan and would immediately set the vessel on our barge and take it to shore to be destroyed. I told him that I had written the salvage plan and would write another one that would return the boat to it's owner and he got personal and in my face. He was red faced angry and shouting that I would follow the salvage plan or I would get my sorry ass off his freaking job immediately. I calmly explained to him that I was not in the Coast Guard and that he had crossed the line between professionalism and personal by referring to "my sorry ass" and he had exactly as long as it would take me to cross the short distance between us to either apologize or defend himself against a violent assault. The little SOB said I was threatening him and he ran to his vehicle and called the area commander while locked in his automobile.
I put the boat onto our barge and moved over towards the wrecking area and spudded down then told my crane operator to fake a problem with the crane and make sure it wasn't repaired until quitting time. At quitting time, the crane magically repaired itself and we set the man's boat ashore to await it's final disposition. I knew by morning, that the powers that be would talk with their legal people and decide that the boat's owner had a right to have his property returned and everything would work out for the better. In the mean time, the Coast Guard commander called me and asked if I had threatened one of his Petty-officers. I told him that the man stepped over the line and got personal and that I did tell him to either apologize or defend himself before I could get my hands on him. The Commander promised to look into it. Seconds after the phone call from the commander, I heard our excavator on shore fire up and looked to shore to see that the Chief Petty-officer had nabbed my excavator operator and was making him destroy the man's vessel while on over-time. About that time, my boss calls and says "What ever you do, do NOT destroy that man's boat"! oops...
When I explained it was too late, there was a pregnant silence on the phone then a muted "oh shit.."
I never heard from that particular Petty-officer again for a few years. I did hear from his commander. He called to let me know that Chief Petty-officer Dickhead was being reassigned to somewhere in Kansas or Oklahoma. My crew voluntarily began recovering vessels for local people that were not on our list, after our work day for the Coast Guard was done. Some nights, we worked all through just to try to help these desperate people out. Many of them were living in tents where their houses once stood. They were not asking for hand-outs, they were not complaining because the government wasn't there to give them a new boat or FEMA trailer. They were just trying to rebuild, salvage what they could and get back to work. My boss demanded that I not get involved with the local politics but I helped set up a citizens committee to demand the return of their vessels and they were able to force the government to recover their vessels when possible. We had fishermen bring us crabs, shrimps, fish, oysters nearly every day, hell they even would bring pots to cook them in and gallons of seasoning. We made some good friends there.
A few years later, I was at our Gulf facility and there was the vaguely familiar looking man working for us. He was extremely helpful, whenever I needed anything, he was right there ready to hop to it. Can I get you anything else, Captain? Would you like some ice water or maybe some tea? I'll get that.
I asked him if we'd met and he was quick to remind me that we had worked together at Bienville just after Katrina. Lord, the Gods do work in mysterious ways. That was the Chief that I chased beck to his automobile! I just starred at him for a moment and said "Mr., you are really going to enjoy working for me."

 

Day 153, My Liberal Diary
I awakened my wife, the right-wanger, at midnight to wish her a happy birthday and give her some chocolate milk. I bring her chocolate milk every night around midnight or so because that's usually about the time I make myself lie down and try to sleep a few hours before work. She is seven months and fourteen days younger than me, guess that makes me a cradle robber? When I was working over seas, I used to buy her emeralds or other precious stones, maybe conch pearls. Now I don't usually buy her anything for birthdays because she really doesn't like being reminded that we are getting older. I really don't feel much different than I did when I was twenty, maybe a little less agile and certainly more deliberate, but otherwise, just about the same. I cooked her favorite meal for dinner tonight, Southern fried catfish. She likes them whole and eats the crispy tails like they're potato chips. Since becoming a liberal, I have considerably less disposable income so I usually try to make her something for her birthday. This year, I wrote her a song and I worked the past three nights in my studio to record it for her. She loved it! It brought tears to her eyes and she told me it was the best gift I had ever given her. You can listen to the song on reverberation at I'm All In | "Mississippi River Crooks" Darrell Wallace
I'll share a secret with you: I really don't mind that she is a gun owning Republican conservative right-wing christian heterosexual person that is not in the least confused about her gender. She loves me.

 

No surprise she likes that song.

 

Day 154, My Liberal diary
I have issues with intolerant people. I have this liberal acquaintance on Facebook that is a decent enough musician but one of most intolerant people I have ever known. The paradox is that he is intolerant of anyone that doesn't espouse the same ideals that he has formed. He put a post up today announcing that he has a gender-confused child, I believed he referred to it as a Trans, whatever the hell that is, then stated that anyone that is intolerant of that, or racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or basically anything except whatever the hell he identifies himself as, should just drop him from their friend list. I did, but not because of any of those reasons, I dropped him because he is a pompous ass. If you are african, I got no problem with you, nor do I if you are native american, muslim, asian, caucasian, red-bone, martian, or baptist, I do, on the other hand, have issues with you if you are an ass-hat. I don't care if you are a republican, hell I'm married to one. I don't care if you are flower-child of the sixties, a redneck, a homophobe, a misanthrope, a sexist, racist, white or black supremacist, a LGBTQ, tree-hugger, PETA, ACLU, NRA, FBI, or a god-damned Walmartian. I don't have to agree with you but I will not get angry over the differences in our opinions or the differences in our lives, I will not be offended by anything you say unless it is specifically directed towards offending me as an individual, then we might have a small problem because of my Southern Redneck upbringing and i might punch you in the nose or shoot you. You see, I got this principal that I believe in; it's called FREEDOM. And basically the freedom to swing your arm in any direction should not be influenced by anyone else unless it enters the immediate air-space of their nose. I can give you a whole list of people that I do not care for, even more people that I think have less intelligence than a snail, I could write a book about the people that I disagree with. That doesn't make me special nor does it give me the right to tell you what you got to think, say, or do. If I think you are wrong about 20 things that I feel very strongly about, there will always be something about you that I find interesting, even if it is just curiosity about how you arrived at where you are in your belief system.

 

I see a song there, Your rights end where my nose begins!

 

Day 155, My Liberal Diary
It has rained every day for the past seven weeks and the heat and humidity is unbelievable. The tomato crops were ruined by rain, cucumbers grew the size of melons, too quickly for pickles. Mosquitoes are abundant, as are deer flies, at least when it's not raining. The local watermelon crop was ruined by all the rain, so was squash. Nobody at the farmer's market has home grown vegetables except for peppers and okra and a few peas and some corn. Most of the venders there have given up because they have to buy their produce from a whole-saler and people know this. Don't even think about trying to drive across Mobile Bay on Saturday or Sunday unless you want to spend an hour waiting to creep through the tunnel while everyone slows to a stop and go for no apparent reason. The city traffic planners thought it was due in part, to the Water Street entrance at the beginning of the tunnel so they closed it but it didn't do a darned thing to keep people from slowing to a crawl while driving through the tunnel. I don't understand why they do this, as soon as you reach the half-way point, traffic picks back up to 65 mph but has slowed to a stop until you get there. I always suspected there were a band of Jehovah's Witnesses in the middle of the tunnel, handing out pamphlets but by the time I manage the half-way point, they have left.

 

Day 156, My Liberal Diary
I have been thinking about how some things that are not real, have never even existed, are just total fiction or completely erroneous, have affected our lives. Tomatoes used to be called "Love Apples" and were believed to be extremely poisonous. Asbestos was an amazing new cheaply manufactured fire-proof product for the home. Tougher gun control laws prevent crime. Anyone that didn't care for Obama is a racist.
C3PO, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Jaba the Hut, Captain Kirk, Princess Leah, Darth Vader, R2D2, Spock, Yoda, all are forever etched in my mind but I have never seen a single Star Wars movie or Star Trek. It just wasn't on my list of things that had any interest to me so when someone would say "Have you seen Star Wars yet?", like it was something given that I would get around to, I just shrugged or asked about their family. Yes, I can recognize the names of the characters, I know sort of what a Storm Trooper looks like, but I couldn't tell you the story line and haven't a clue about what any of them did or didn't do. Dr. Spock might be a gynecologist, for all I know. I am not even sure which characters were in Star Wars or Star Trek, just that it pisses some folks off if I get them wrong. Now they are talking about finding water underneath the surface of the moon. They mention the possibility of forming colonies on the moon now that there might be a source of water but isn't water H2O? Where did the oxygen come from? I am sure that if we do colonize the moon, it will be solely to provide more surveillance of the people here on this planet and aim bigger guns at them We used to have a space program and I thought it was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind but ultimately, it just came out that it was a means of spying on folks and shooting them with bigger rockets and lasers. I find it sad that every advancement of mankind that I am aware of began with the need to better destroy someone. Think about the first primitive tool, the most common tool ever invented and used in every household world-wide to build and repair stuff, the hammer. It was not designed to drive nails, the nail didn't come until much later. It was designed to beat the living hell out of the guy that trying to steal the road-kill you had spent all day dragging back to the cave. It is still used in more murders than firearms, believe it or not.