Yay, it’s county fair season
No matter where you live, it is county fair season.
County fairs everywhere are celebrations of community, family, simple pleasures, and simple, easy fun. That fun usually includes eating really naughty, high-fat, high-carb, high sugar food you would never, ever eat any other time of the year, like funnel cakes.
Yum!
If you get the powdered sugar on your funnel cake, don’t take it on a ride until you’ve eaten it, or you will have a white powder imprint of the funnel cake on your face or shirt. Guarantee it. The small-town carnival machines populating county fairs everywhere specialize in jerky motions to entertain the riders, and those jerky motions always catch people unaware, shoving their food right back into their face or chest.
The fresh smell of farm animals there for show mingles with the smells of the fried food, and it is an acquired taste of a smell, I must say.
Last night I was at the Perry County Fair, which I have gone to for years, out near Newport.
Volunteering at the Duncannon Sportsmen booth is a lot of fun, because I get to interact with the happy public, as they good-naturedly try their hands at small games of chance for a non-profit, educational purpose (the club). Such as, when a little kid lines up the little plastic crossbow loaded with the plastic dart, getting them to shoot it at one of the club members’ hat, instead of the deer target that will win them a soft (“plush”) toy. Laughs all around, as the club members good-naturedly take the abuse. The kid gets the toy anyhow.
One thing we are missing is a dunking pool. I’ll work on that for next year, because there are several guys I just really want to see get wet, in public. And no doubt, we could raise a lot of money with a dunking pool. The Duncannon Sportsmen money goes right back into Perry County, like local 4-H, Boy Scouts troops, volunteer fire and ambulance crews, etc. As my folks would say, the money is just making the rounds, going from one hand to another to another and eventually it finds its way right back to where it started. That right there is the essence of community, ‘all in this together’.
And that is probably my biggest enjoyment of local county fairs, including the Gratz Fair in northern Dauphin County, where I live: The sense of community, the ties that bind us all together. In a time of really fractious political rancor, pushed by the establishment media more than anyone (I mean gosh, have you noticed how all the mainstream media outlets have the same exact message, which is 97% hyperventilating and aggressively negative about President Trump, all the time?), isn’t it nice to get a breath of fresh air and hang out with your fellow citizens in an environment of fun and relaxation, away from all that noise?
County fairs are like a big family picnic, where long-lost cousins show up once a year. Friendly people you wouldn’t otherwise see or interact with, but now you do, and you enjoy it, because people are neat. And at county fairs, everyone just wants to have a fun time.
I like that.
Historic American Art vs. NAZI ISIS People
In the 1930s, the German NAZI party identified “degenerate” art that was supposedly representative of “degenerate” culture, officially unfit for Germans.
Paintings, sculptures, drawings, pottery, books, poetry, you name it, if it had any artistic value, the NAZIs scrutinized it carefully. And if that art did not match the NAZI’s new standards, then it was forbiddden, burned, destroyed, or looted and hidden away, to be ransomed and sold off to future buyers outside of the ‘culturally supreme’ Deutchland.
Entire museum collections and privately owned collections throughout NAZI-occupied Europe were looted, damaged, and or destroyed, because the art did not comport with the new standard these Ultra Germans had created. Priceless artifacts were lost forever, at best melted down for their precious metal value.
If you want to see the long-term impacts of this intolerant approach to art, use www.duckduckgo.com to search the phrase “nazi looted art,” and marvel at the sad results. Real Western culture took a huge hit from the neanderthal NAZIs, and the ill effects are still felt today.
Fast forward six decades to ISIS, the puritanical Muslim movement that uses extreme violence and sadistic cruelty to achieve political domination. A lot like the NAZIs, come to think of it.
ISIS has a thing against most art and even historic artifacts, if they do not fit neatly into the Sharia law that ISIS followers believe in.
Ancient Buddhist cliff carvings, imposing and inspiring…detonated into rubble, by ISIS.
Ancient Assyrian cities, buildings, from the beginning of recorded human history….bulldozed and detonated into shards of broken rock, by ISIS.
Important archaeological digs providing useful history, bulldozed by ISIS.
Entire churches looted of anything of immediate value, then burned down, by ISIS.
Entire museum collections either destroyed, or looted and re-sold on the international black market, by ISIS.
Fast forward just a few years to ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, etc., and now we have priceless American artifacts that belong to the public being outright destroyed by mobs from these groups.
Irreplaceable and beautiful bronze statues of long-dead generals and soldiers are being removed and destroyed either by street thugs enabled by big city mayors, or by the big city mayors themselves.
This is a war on history and art no different than the NAZIs or ISIS.
At the very best, this is simply the mistake of applying new understandings to old history.
Oh sure, the neanderthals claim that these statues are memorials to bad ideas, and sad times, and to some extent there may be some vague shred of truth in that. But to keep these cultural artifacts, these works of high art, is no endorsement of what they may have once captured long, long ago.
Rather, these statues are mute testimonials to our nation’s history, its struggles, and its triumphs. The fact that the Confederacy did not win, due to the intervention and huge sacrifice by hundreds of thousands of Caucasian men from the north, is the real story of these old monuments.
Today we have one American political party that is increasingly at open war with every basic value and idea that undergirds America, as it was founded. These public square symbols are caught up in that party’s war.
That political party has more and more officials doing cheap political stunts, like seizing old bronze statues in the public square, and declaring them “Cherem” (unfit, like ISIS does to the churches it burns), and culturally unfit, like the NAZIs did.
Frankly, there is zero difference between these mayors, and Virginia governor Terry McCauliffe, and the other totalitarian movements that preceded them, like the NAZIs, ISIS, and the Soviets (who tore down beautiful old Russian statues and replaced them with boring, utilitarian statues of Lenin and Stalin meant to project an intimidating political message).
Whether these mayors and governors act unilaterally and use publicly owned machines to take them down, or if they allow their allied street thugs from ANTIFA and BLM to tear them down, while the city police are ordered to make no arrests, it makes no difference.
In the end, these mayors and their violent street soldiers are no different than the worst people in history. But if they win, you can bet they will erect statues of themselves, glorifying their total transformation of America to…God knows what.
Now they are talking about destroying the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. No lie.
I say we make a stand like a stone wall to protect this historic American art, and stop this insanity, stop this assault on America, by these modern day NAZIs and ISIS thugs.
Help! My bank account self-identifies as a billionaire
Although I had put only twelve hundred bucks in it, my bank account recently decided to start self-identifying as a billionaire.
It is true that there were not billions of dollars in the account, but that didn’t stop it from saying that there should be, and, even more important, it didn’t stop it from SPENDING like it had a billion dollars.
We had a talk, the bank account and I.
We spoke about responsibility, restraint, honesty, objectivity, working for what we want, embracing life as it is and not as we wish it would be, and so on.
I mean, come on, Bank Account, I am not a billionaire and I cannot place a billion dollars in you to cover your personal feelings and desires and all the costs associated with satiating them.
Unfortunately, the bank account then went on a wild spending spree, which I ended up being on the hook for, and which I had no money to pay for.
Our next talk turned to angry accusations.
What can I say, I was frustrated. I expected better behavior from the bank account, and I expected reasoning with simple math and logic to work. Dollars and cents. What money goes out must be covered by money coming in.
What the bank account said in response made no sense to me, but I had to accept it.
The bank account called me a bigot, and mean, and hurtful, and disrespectful of its most personal wishes.
This shocked me, and made me question myself. Was I really such a bad person for insisting on the most rudimentary good behavior?
I wasn’t sure where to go with the relationship as the bills were stacking up, and the bank told me that ultimately I was responsible for the behavior of my own bank account, so I would have to pay the bills in the end.
Believe it or not, things got worse.
When I opened the bank account, it was just me spending the money that was in it. After the bank account self-identified as a billionaire it had developed a taste for luxury items.
And then, because of feelings once again, my bank account decided it was against the simple safeguards meant to keep others from spending the money in the account.
Even worse, the bank account developed a taste for financial largess to others that bore no resemblance to the twelve hundred bucks I had originally deposited, much less the billion dollars it pretended to! Before I knew it the bank account was partying hard with all kinds of new friends, and letting them withdraw money that they wanted to spend on themselves.
That kind of generosity with my money made the bank account feel awfully good about itself, and it made others like it more than boring, crabby old me, always whining about balancing expenses with income.
When I went to the bank to complain, I was told that the bank account was in my name, and although it had obviously gone off the deep end, I was going to have to pay all the bills in the end.
So I decided to self-identify as a hermit, and I abandoned the bank account. I just withdrew from the relationship altogether. I couldn’t afford it.
Last I heard, the bank account still self-identified as a billionaire and was still living large, with all kinds of hangers-on and new-new friends, all with expensive tastes, living it up every day and night. The bills are piling up, and I have no idea who is going to pay them.
It’s berry season!
For about 150,000 years we humans have been hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle that follows the migrating animals and the growth of plants our bodies can eat.
Edible plants were a huge component of hunter-gatherer food, easily dried and carried, many of them lasting well into October and November after plants have gone dormant in most places. Unlike meat, dried edible plants do not easily rot, or attract nibbling animals.
Among edible plants, fruits and wild berries reign supreme.
That is because fruits and berries contain an unusual mix of carbohydrates, sugars, minerals, and vitamins, all of which are necessary for survival. Especially vitamin C, a crucial ingredient in a healthy human body (think scurvy).
The fact that wild berries taste especially sweet and supplement other foods with extra flavor is a big draw.
Sweet-tasting foods rarely occur in Nature.
Blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, wineberries, and many others grow abundantly here in Pennsylvania and across the Eastern US.
Plains Indians like the Lakota, Pawnee, and Comanche made a mix of red meat and berries called pemmican. Ripe berries were turned into a big mush and then worked into meat strips. Usually the mixture was dried on wooden racks in the open air and sunlight, and the dried slabs and sticks were then put under the horse saddle to be worked and broken down into what we would call jerky today.
“Jerky” gets its name from the gentle jerking motion of the horse saddle, as horses step forward. The motion slowly breaks down the meat fibers, making them easily chewed and digested.
So here we are, a bunch of sedentary Americans, mostly eating out of cans and bagged frozen foods.
One antidote to this somewhat unhealthy arrangement is to go outside and do stuff.
Hike, walk, sit and read or sit and chat with someone face to face, fish, canoe, grill out, etc., so many easy outdoor activities.
A really easy outdoor activity is berry picking. Sure there are some thorns, but so what. The benefits are fresh, delicious, healthy berries that are not sprayed with chemicals, or bagged in plastic bags, or frozen. The whole family can do it. Go find a field edge, and bring some hard containers, and start picking.
Humans have been berry picking in that Summertime window of opportunity for a really long time. So long that it can be measured in ice ages come and gone, ice sheets advancing and retreating. That is a lot of years.
If we have been doing that activity for that long, you know it is good and natural. That the whole family can do it, and then make pies together afterwards, makes it all the better.
Just watch out for poison ivy!
Wailing, gnashing of teeth…real simple
You know all this wailing, caterwauling, and gnashing of teeth about the political situation?
The “Russia did it” theme.
The “SHE WON” theme.
The street battles, the brutal assaults by anarchist ‘antifa’ and paid party hacks on MAGA and Trump supporters peacefully and legally assembling to voice their opinions, the unending, partisan mainstream media assault on the First Amendment and the truth….yeah all that.
You know what this is all about?
It is about the loss of power.
These are sore losers who watched ultimate control of government and citizen slip slowly through their fingers, and boy are they mad about it.
Throwing up a dustcloud of obfuscation is just an attempt to ‘fire all your bullets and see which one hits.”
Russia did it?
Did what?
Made Hillary Clinton publicly sick and privately untrustworthy?
Russia made Hillary’s campaign avoid key states they took for granted, but which ended up voting for her opponent, instead?
No one really believes this. Chanting it, screaming it, talking seriously about it on TV is just designed to cast a shadow over a political outsider who threatens the entire house of cards built by BOTH political parties over the past five decades.
“She Won”?
Really? Didn’t Bernie Sanders actually win the Democrat primary race, but because the Clintons had already paid off and scooped up every delegate from Boston to Beijing, it didn’t matter that Bernie would win a state primary.
He’d win a state primary, and yet Hillary’s delegates would increase more than Bernie’s.
Then it came to light that the DNC staff and leadership was working for Hillary. Actually giving her the answers to upcoming debate questions ahead of time. Because, as we learned from the spilled emails, those same leaders and staffers did not believe she could properly or persuasively answer the debate questions without having written answers in front of her.
That was cheating, cheating, and more cheating, so no, Hillary did not win, Bernie really won.
Either candidate would have tried to cement in place the vast government over-reach the Obama administration had engaged in since taking power in 2008. The examples of that over-reach are too numerous and too severe to repetitiously list here, and if you are at all inquisitive, then you can do a quick internet search and learn for yourself about all of the illegal legal shenanigans, the daily bypassing of court orders, the ignoring of the laws and our Constitution.
All in the pursuit of amassing power and control.
And that today is what is driving so many people crazy. They were so close, so very very close to having that power and control, and Trump took it away from them.
And until yesterday, US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was one of those most aggrieved people, yelling and screaming and accusing and making all sorts of wild claims, easily gobbled up by the mainstream media.
Now it turns out, DWS is likely a criminal, illegally selling DNC data to fraudsters working on her staff!
Yup, those are today’s headlines in a few corners of the Internet where people are more interested in actual facts than in power and control.
And in those corners the sunlight is shining, and it looks awfully clear that DWS is going to jail alongside her two aides, one of whom was arrested yesterday while trying to flee to Pakistan, where he had just wired a lot of money.
Folks, this yelling and screaming is a giant sore loser attempt to cover up incredible amounts of corruption.
The lid is about to come off the worm can, and we are all about to look deep inside at the mass of seething slimy worms. And whatever your party affiliation or ideology, none of us are going to like what we see.
Even the fake protestors will take a breather, because what has been going on is both totally wrong, and it must end.
PA’s Keystone Fund: Symmetrical Program in an Asymmetrical Political World
If there is one rule or overarching principle that taxpayers want applied to how their hard-earned money is spent by government bureaucrats, it is symmetry.
If taxpayers put money in, they expect to get money, or value, back out.
Gasoline taxes? Show me the newly paved highway! Etc. Real simple symmetry.
This is the most elementary social contract between citizens and their self-selected governments, and today ain’t Ninth Century Europe, where armed tax collectors come knocking and begin turning the humble home inside out in search of hidden wealth to take, er…collect.
Today, when the government takes your money by threat of coercive force, you grudgingly turn it over, expecting to at least see some benefit from it.
At budget time is when the legislature and the executive negotiate over how the collected resources of a state or nation are going to be spent. Right now it is budget time in Pennsylvania, and there are no guarantees. Neither the governor nor the legislature has my trust.
Both are up for re-election.
In the middle of it all we have the Keystone Fund, Pennsylvania’s conservation engine. The Keystone Fund is used to run most of Pennsylvania’s “Ranger Rick” – style conservation programs. State parks, state forests, land acquisition, new kiosks, etc. Good stuff. Worthy stuff. The kind of stuff that makes the taxpayer say “Hey, I finally got my money’s worth back!”
The Keystone Fund is funded by taxpayers, but also in large part by the net returns from timber and natural gas sales from public lands. There is an appealing, nearly holy symmetry to any government program that uses money from its own programs to pay for its own programs.
It is the way government should be run!
Now, the Keystone Fund is at risk because it is a symmetrical program living in an asymmetrical political world populated by career politicians who disburse public funds to win public favor, and votes.
Instead of returning the proceeds from timber and gas sales back into the very natural resources that produced them, we now see the likelihood that elected officials will use this income stream to buy off their favorite constituencies. So they can get votes, and get re-elected.
How sad to see one of the very few examples of good public policy, the Keystone Fund, fall victim to something so crass, vulgar and common as an elected official.
To quote Mark Twain: “I think I can say, and say with pride that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.” (Speech 7/4/1873)
Judge, Jury, and Executioner…Judge, Congress, and President
Federal Judge Watson from Haw’aii has demonstrated a passion for power far beyond his designated duties, but similar to the recent approach of the Venezuelan court.
How?
First he ignored US law and the US Constitution, and ruled against an executive order over which he had zero jurisdiction.
Then he actually stipulated details in his holding, as if he had written a law passed by Congress and signed by the president.
Then, after the US Supreme Court overturned his holding, he immediately accepted a new, repeat appeal of the same executive order that the US Supreme Court had just upheld, and then overturned the holding of the US Supreme Court, actually once again throwing in new requirements as if he had just written a law.
Judge Watson is behaving exactly the opposite of how a federal judge is supposed to behave, and he is also directly challenging the authority of the the entire US government, and most worrying, the US Supreme Court, to whom you would think he had some shred of loyalty.
Judge Watson wants to be judge, jury and executioner. Or in these exact conditions, he wants to be judiciary, congress, and president. And he is acting just as he wants to be, despite our nation’s law and Constitution clearly prohibiting his actions.
Judge Watson wants to rule by fiat, by declaration.
Judge Watson wants to be a law unto himself, unaccountable even to his fellow judiciary.
Judge Watson is a rogue political actor, abusing the legal process clearly defined by our laws and Constitution, for the narrow purpose of advancing his political agenda.
Making Watson’s actions worse is the cheering section he has among millions of Americans, who care only for process when it suits their goals and caring for it not at all when it gets in the way of their goals.
This cheering section also cares not for abiding by laws they disagree with, and they will therefore use any source of power or authority they can find to contradict the laws that have passed through the procedure by which we all agree to live.
So they cheer on Judge Watson the anarchist judge.
That this is the most elementary anarchy and not just corrosive but destructive of America’s foundations seems not to deter the cheering section. It is the end of the rule of law.
“Win at any cost and in any way” is their motto.
How anyone can live harmoniously with this shattered approach to governance is anyone’s guess. This is exactly how the American Civil War began in 1860, and it may well lead to another civil war in 2017.
Making this situation worse is a president and a congress who believe in not only playing by the rules, but excusing every rule infraction of their opponents, with the silly notion that somehow their opponents (the cheering section for anarchist Judge Watson) will eventually come around and accept the fact that they lost an election and are not, therefore, able to consolidate power and control through yet more abuse of the system as they had planned.
Our current president could take a lesson from prior presidents, who, having had quite enough of over-reaching judges, simply encouraged those judges to go ahead and enforce their unconstitutional holdings in the face of a lawful president doing what he was elected to do, enabled by law and Constitution.
Lacking the means of enforcement, those overreaching judges were forced to simply watch events pass them by, having undermined their own authority by their own hand.
Our current Congress could take a lesson from past congresses, stop being such limp di#ks, and act out their Constitutional authority, such as impeaching and removing from the judicial bench those rogue judges who threaten to tear down the very society they are sworn to uphold and protect. Like anarchist Judge Watson.
Friends, none of us has an idea of how this is going to work out.
About a third of the nation is in open, violent rebellion in the streets, and in the few halls of power they still control, against established laws and against the Constitution.
About a third of the country is itching for a fight to get the first third back in line, because we cannot afford the high cost of these illegal antics.
And another third of the country is drinking beer, eating hamburgers, going to summertime baseball games, and wondering aloud when the other citizens are going to get this all worked out.
America is equally divided into thirds, perhaps in the potential roles as judges, juries, and executioners, or as judges, elected representatives, and chief executives.
We are very close to working this all out peacefully, if we all agree to just stay within those established roles, because then we will have restored the balance of power among the three co-equal branches of government that has always defined American government.
Now everyone line up into three lines, pick one line, and stay there. Then vote, and stick with the result like adults.
Our public lands are not for sale
Apparently many Republicans are just downright jealous of all the craziness on the left, with all that destruction and removal of historic public monuments and the resulting revision of history to fit politically correct narratives.
So now we get a bunch of Republicans who actively pursue their own form of crazy, just bound and determined to undermine whatever electoral and public trust gains they have made in the past few years. Among a surprisingly wide circle of GOPers and conservatives, the selling off of public lands is a surprisingly popular policy goal.
Nothing hidden about this goal, the proponents of selling off public lands are quite open about their intentions. Apparently they want the public to watch them crash and burn, because the public is going to do that to them, electorally speaking.
Because the public overwhelmingly identifies with and passionately loves our public lands.
Maybe I am some sort of leftist kook, at least according to these proponents of public land sales, because I also sure do enjoy public parks, and public forests, and public recreation areas, public wilderness areas, and public hunting areas, and public monuments. Yes the government runs these places, and while I am not a big fan of government, public land management is one of the very few things that government tends to do pretty well..so..what can I tell you, this is a not-so-secret Communist plot: As an NRA life member, trapper, and lifelong hunter, I am proud to be part of this plot to “steal” Americans’ property rights, which is one of the ways that public land is described by advocates of bargain basement sales of public property.
Seriously.
Advocates of public land sales actually equate the existence of public lands with the diminution of private property rights.
Never mind that nearly all (my highly experienced guess is about 99.5%) public land has been purchased at fair market value from willing, even eager sellers, who love their land so much that they want to see it remain as wild, open, untamed places for wildlife and the wild people who pursue wildlife, and not turned into ubiquitous, dime-a-dozen cookie cutter asphalt and concrete jungles.
Never mind that in many remote areas, public land is an economic engine that keeps running, and running, and running without much expense.
Isn’t it ironic that the people who want to sell off public lands also want to stop and prevent people from selling their private land to wildlife and parks agencies? They bizarrely claim that public land’s mere existence is a de facto refutation of private property rights!
Oh c’mon! These armchair conservatives are the ones monkeying around with private property rights, when they try to stop sales of private land to public agencies.
They are “armchair conservatives” because these are people who do very little outside an air conditioned office. Maybe they ski at a ski slope with artificial snow as their outdoor lifestyle. But they do not hunt, trap, camp, canoe, fish, hike or do anything else indicating that red American blood flows in their veins. Nope, these are strictly dollars and cents on paper people, no real life experience. They’d sell you their grandma for ten bucks, too. No heart, no soul, just money money MONEY.
And that is how they see public lands: Easy money, easy development.
There is a useful story about money, I think it was about a mere thirty pieces of silver being accepted for giving up one’s soul. Something like that, with the point being that money and self enrichment isn’t our primary purpose in life, and that the people who singularly pursue these two goals are often soulless enemies of all that is good and wholesome.
Several weeks ago the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that a local park could not be taken from the taxpayers and sold to a developer to build homes on. You’d think this is a plainly obvious forehead-slapping fact, but it demonstrates that the effort to liquidate public lands is not just a Western phenomenon, but an East Coast idiot parade, too.
Fortunately, the new US Department of Interior secretary does not believe in selling off public lands, unlike the other candidate who was on her way to being nominated before this issue tripped her up with the Trump Administration. The new Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, is a retired Navy SEAL, hunter, and Western outdoorsman. He knows personally how important public land is to the identity of Americans everywhere.
Let’s hope Zinke can help his fellow Republicans wake the hell up on this issue, that our public lands are not for sale, before these fools get a good dose of electoral comeuppance from the American people who are barbequeing, hiking, biking, camping, fishing, and star gazing on public lands from sea to shining sea right now.