Posts Tagged → sacrifice
The beautiful power of a free market guitar
A lot of the recent discussion and reporting about the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is how hard the participants there are trying to centralize decision making, to aggregate power into as few hands as possible, and to control the choices that individual people have available to them all around the world. This effort to concentrate power and decision making in the hands of elites runs opposite and directly against the democratic forms of government that many people around the globe have fought and died to achieve.
Places like India, France, Britain, Israel, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the Philippines, and of course my home country of America, have all offered their citizens a maximum amount of personal freedom and opportunity. People living there can make all kinds of choices about what they want to read, to say, to wear, to eat, what kind of job they want to try, what kinds of products they want to try and create and sell. And that last part, the creating and selling part, is really at the heart of democracy. Because free markets offer choices not just in economic spheres, but which naturally blend into our own personal lives.
When a person, you the reader here, for instance, feels personally fulfilled by fully following your natural talent and curiosity, and by fulfilling your creative spirit, often also followed by greatly improving your physical living conditions, then you become a maximally happy person. This pursuit of happiness is one of the main reasons that America exists, and it is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. A nation filled with happy people is a miracle, because it is so rare in human history. So we see that free markets create the most happy, most fulfilled individuals, who are creative, educated, and opinionated.
And we also see with the WEF that the wealthiest people on Planet Earth are now scheming and trying to take that happiness away. The WEF people do not want “little people” individuals to make their own decisions. Instead, they want centralized decision making for all of us, by a very small number of ultra wealthy people. They do not support democracy or free choice or you having an opinion that threatens their power.
I want to share a neat related video with you. To me it is powerful because it touches on this subject of an individual who follows his dream to make the best guitars possible within the free markets that the world allows. He succeeds within the international guitar market, but because of a natural resource constraint – the almost complete loss of ebony trees, necessary for making guitar necks and frets – he takes a big risk, makes some big sacrifices, and ends up playing an even bigger and more positive role in the world.
Bob Taylor, of Taylor Guitars, uses careful market-driven management of rare ebony trees and their surrounding forests to create the conditions necessary for conserving the vast African rainforest jungle those trees grow in. When the local people no longer need to poach ebony trees to sell on the black market, they become protectors of the ebony trees. Economics and free markets keep ebony trees alive, and growing for the future, as well as the richly diverse jungle habitat in which ebony trees grow. This is powerful stuff only achievable by free markets.
The same dynamic is also at play with trophy hunting in Africa, where wealthy hunters pay much more to kill wild game than that same animal is worth as bush meat to the local populations. Because the locals get the meat from the trophy animal (99% of the trophy animal is immediately donated to locals, the hunter and the safari camp getting the other 1%) anyhow, and they also get the hunting and tourism-related jobs from the international visitors who want to see and hunt wildlife, the incentive shifts away from poaching and market hunting to the locals then protecting and conserving the wild game they once saw only as a meal. Again, powerful natural resource conservation as a direct result of free markets.
Long live free markets, personal choice, personal accountability, and personal reward for hard work and risk taking. May the World Economic Forum fail in its effort to end our choices and to make us “own nothing.”
Here is the Taylor Guitar video. I hope it speaks to you like it speaks to me.
(and here is the ten years later video, which is about ebony tree planting and husbandry)
Harrisburg Candlelight House Tour 2022
The Princess of Patience and I have an annual event we enjoy, and that is the Candlelight House Tour organized by Historic Harrisburg Association.
The homes are historic, often brick and stone, but increasingly being rehabbed and rebuilt to suit modern lifestyles. Mid Town Harrisburg is the center of a great deal of this gentrification and re-use, the reclamation of its former glory days by investors, young couples, and entrepreneurs taking empty dilapidated homes and fixing them up into tax-paying structures once again.
Often the true downtown homes are as-is-as-found-as-was, somewhat cluttered and dark, filled with holiday tsatchkes, very homey and comfortable. These downtown spaces are all smaller attached homes from the 1860s-1900s, whose original materials and design often require a significant boost to make them truly livable today. And yet so many owners keep the original pine flooring, which is as attractive now as it was 130 years ago. Many owners aggressively incorporate new steel I-beams and wall materials, and install new windows in the former closed brick, while maintaining as much of the original construction as possible. The result is always a fun and harmonious combination of antique and modern, and I would say that most of them make me wish I had it as a pied-a-terre.
One of the big efforts is taking old mansions and commercial buildings and turning them into apartments. This is not an easy or cheap thing to do. When I was in graduate school, I lived in an old Victorian mansion on Lyle Avenue that had been turned into apartments by an enterprising cocaine addict named Steve. Steve lived in one of the larger apartments that spanned from the basement to the roof. One day, while watching Steve hold his own, raging drunk, buck naked and armed with a single shot .22 rifle, in an armed stand-off with the Nashville police, who had taken cover with their service revolvers over the hoods and roofs of their squad cars and a humorously deployed bullhorn, I came to appreciate the thick, strong brick construction of the building I was in. If the bullets ever flew, I was without a doubt immune to dying from acute lead poisoning behind those bunker-like walls. Ever since then I have admired the must-be-crazy people who seek to bring these clunky dinosaurs into the current day and age as livable spaces.
One of the people I spent time talking with was Nathaniel Foote, who took the old Carpets & Draperies building and provided Harrisburgers with luxury loft apartments. His emphasis is on short-term nurse housing. Another entrepreneur I spent time talking with was Justin Heinly, who has restored both the historic Cottage Ridge Mansion and the historic Donaldson Mansion next block down. Justin told me true rehab war stories, like finding old brick chimneys upstairs that had been pulled apart downstairs, thereby leaving thousands of pounds of hidden unsupported weight bearing down hard on the floors below.
This historic home rehabilitation work takes real dedication, risk, and sacrifice by people who have slight streaks of both crazy and artistic creativity. This work directly benefits everyone who lives in Harrisburg, or who owns real estate in Harrisburg. Thank you Nathaniel, Justin, and all the others who are making Harrisburg’s old abandoned areas now livable and desirable once again, one building and one apartment at a time.
And thank you to all of the home owners who let the public enter their private spaces, and to Historic Harrisburg, for bringing us all together as the community we are.
A home place that was special in 1900 and is once again in 2022.
Real estate entrepreneur Justin Heinly keeps a smile on his face, despite encountering unbelievable engineering challenges resurrecting majestic old mansions for today’s renter
The Princess of Patience listening in surprise to home rehab war stories from entrepreneur Justin Heinly
Perfectly produced home tour booklet by Historic Harrisburg
A Uvalde Memorial Day weekend
In the spirit of this Memorial Day weekend, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the 19 child students and two teachers sacrificed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, last week, to advance the Democrat Party’s pursuit of absolute and total control over every American.
No deaths are ever too many in the Democrat Party’s pursuit of the latest bloody crisis they can leverage into illgotten political gains. From late-term abortions where the living child is literally euthanized after having been born, to innocent school children gunned down in defunded police-free schools, the Democrat Party stands proudly for one thing: Death to children every day. Because God knows, the Democrat Party must always have a crisis to exploit to help them move otherwise unpopular and poorly considered legislation, and no sacrifice for that is too big or too sad.
We must also acknowledge the importance here of the Child Molesting and Pedophile Groomers’ Lobby, aka the National Education Association and its many state and local affiliate teachers’ unions. They, too, wish to exert unchallenged control over all taxpayer-funded government schools, where they exploit small children in psychopathic social experiments pitting the kids against their loving, devoted parents. Nothing happens in public schools without the teachers’ unions lobby say-so, and so their well considered decision to leave public schools as vulnerable soft targets is implemented everywhere across America. They can’t have their bloody crises without the soft targets inviting them.
The teachers’ unions are A-OK with sacrificing children and even some teachers to move their political football down the field. Recall that a great many of the teachers and politicians and basketball coaches demanding gun confiscation today are the very same people who demanded that local police forces be defunded and also stay the hell out of schools yesterday.
Yes, it is true that these teachers’ unions and their political allies speak out of both sides of their mouths, but what is the point of being logical and reasonable when your end goal is the total collapse of American civilization?
We have learned some disturbing facts about the Uvalde massacre over the past few days: A teacher propped open a door that cross-dressing murderer Salvador Ramos then walked through unopposed, after he had spent TWELVE MINUTES shooting his guns at the school building with no apparent return fire or police response. He must have realized that the school was undefended and also welcoming to mass murderers, and so he literally waltzed in.
And apparently the law enforcement officials who did eventually respond milled about outside for an hour like a bunch of scared school girls, and not like the trained burly men with firearms they actually are. What a bunch of cowards. And then these same cowardly law enforcement officials turned their violent attention onto the terrified parents they were blocking from the school, tasing one father and handcuffing a mother.
In other words, the police at Uvalde were too busy “saving” the parents outside to go inside the school to actually intervene and save the kids from Ramos.
You can’t make this stuff up, but a lot of this failure has to be associated with the Democrat Party’s efforts to defund and defang the police across America. As a result, a lot of police everywhere these days feel confused and uncertain about what they are supposed to do, and how much trouble they will get into with angry Democrats if they actually shoot a child murderer dripping blood from his hands. Because a heroic police officer to you and me is always a cold blooded murderer to the Democrat Party….
Gun confiscation from law abiding citizens is the Democrat Party’s goal here, for the simple reason that an armed populace is impossible to rule over the way that the Democrat Party intends. So, what’s a few sacrifices here and there in the pursuit of absolute and total control of all 350 million Americans?
Those of us inclined to think of and memorialize bloody American sacrifice differently than this cynical Democrat ploy can recall that our Memorial Day tomorrow is not just about those military personnel who gave their lives abroad for our freedom here at home. We also recall that in our own War for Independence, many unarmed heroes gave their lives right here on American soil so that future generations might live in freedom from government.
And this is how I prefer to think of the Uvalde kids and teachers now, as domestic heroes whose sacrifice will not have been in vain. Because so many Americans are catching on now to the Democrat Party’s anarchic lawlessness, and they see through their calls for more government control over our law-abiding lives.
Democrat Party 100% owns Uvalde school shooting
The mass shooting in yet another school, this time in Uvalde, Texas, is like all the others: It was preventable and is 100% the result of the Democrat Party and its subsidiary, the teacher’s unions, who control government schools with an iron fist.
As we have seen over the past year, the Biden Administration’s DOJ and FBI have been treating justifiably angry parents of school children as “domestic terrorists.” Relying on the First Amendment, these parents formally object through long established democratic processes to the hijacking of their taxpayer-owned schools by anti-America indoctrinators posing as teachers and school administrators.
But because the Democrat Party is using the power of government to try to silence its political critics, and to protect the government school system from being taken back by the taxpayer citizens, they have teamed up with various private anti-America groups like the National School Board Association and the National Education Association to “inform” the DOJ and FBI on who to illegally target. While this behavior is obviously un-democratic and a grotesque misuse of government power and authority, it is in and of itself not the focus of today’s essay.
What the forgoing means is that government-run “public schools” are just another captured outpost of the Democrat Party and its anti-America, bizarro sexual and cultural groomers who must be defended at all costs from the peaceful citizens who actually own the schools and underwrite them via hard-paid taxes out of their pockets. It means that public schools are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democrat Party and its primary educational arm, the National Education Association teacher’s union and its affiliates. And what this means is that pretty much everything that happens inside public school grounds is either OK’d or enabled by the teacher’s unions and the Democrat Party.
Including school shootings.
Believe me, if the Democrat Party and its teacher’s unions did not want racist Critical Race Theory taught in public schools, it wouldn’t be. If they didn’t want school shootings, there would not be any. Teachers’ unions have an absolute lock on public schools, and so whatever happens in these schools happens because of careful decisions the Democrat Party and the teacher’s unions have made. They own all of these things.
One conscious decision they have made over and over is to leave public schools as purposefully soft targets, easily accessed by murderous criminals who wreak mayhem and bloodshed in school buildings almost at will. In the wake of previous school shootings, Democrats in Congress have voted to prevent armed police from being in schools. Just the other day, Democrat Party US Senator Chuck Schumer blocked legislation that would make public schools a thousand times safer by allowing administrators and teachers to be armed.
Why would there be a constant effort by the Democrat Party to keep public schools as soft targets, their school children, staff and employees disarmed and sitting ducks? Because the Democrat Party is addicted to bloodshed and crises, at any cost. Nothing moves the political ball down the field like a scary crisis with tons of innocent blood spilled, and so the Democrat Party and its teachers’ unions have cultivated the kinds of circumstances that allow these shootings to easily occur. Such is the Left’s desire for full control over America that no sacrifice is too big, there are never enough dead children and blood soaked headlines. Anything to gain control.
The Uvalde massacre shows once again that the Democrat Party is both arsonist and then fireman.
I know this might sound nuts, but given how much official skullduggery we have already seen aimed at illegally expanding the federal surveillance state against law abiding American citizens, I would not be surprised if we learn that some of these school shooters were paid to commit their crimes.
In the Uvalde massacre, the shooter (possibly an illegal alien) Salvador Ramos, 18, posted direct online threats that no one acted on, murdered his grandmother, then drove to the school and easily overcame an armed but untrained School Resource Officer. The police on scene did not enter the school to stop the shooting out of fear for their own safety, and a mother on the scene who did try to enter the school to help was arrested and handcuffed by one of the useless cowards carrying a gun and a badge there.
There are a lot of failures at Uvalde, and not one of them has to do with lawful, law-abiding gun owners anywhere in America. But as we have seen, the Democrat Party and its media establishment is hijacking this latest massacre that they created in order to generate the next crisis that can be leveraged into more anti-constitutional behavior by the federal government, namely gun-grabbing from law-abiding Americans who form the only real bulwark against federal government lawlessness and control. And we see that the Biden Administration is 100% all-out for full control of all of us through online media, controlling our bank accounts, etc.
And so we just have to ask this logical question: If the FBI, DOJ, National Association of School Boards, and the teachers’ unions are willing to repeatedly sacrifice innocent school children on their altar of disarming and completely controlling America, then what do they really have planned for the rest of us after they take our guns?
Probably a lot more bloodshed, and all for the Leftist cause.
Is the Democrat Party just a big pedophilia group?
Serious question here: Why is the Democrat Party full of so many people who publicly want so badly to sexualize children? And why do grown adults truly want to sexualize children? It can’t possibly be legitimate, so what the hell is this about? Why are we even asking these questions in 2022, and what the hell happened to one of America’s great political parties that it has sunk this disgustingly low?
(Truth in advertising: I used to be a registered Democrat, and in the 1990s, when I no longer recognized the Democrat Party, I left it. This does not mean that I am committed to any other political party, at all.)
When we say “sexualize,” we mean introducing children, like tiny eeny weeny children, to human sexuality, which used to be a private matter reserved for parents at home. And not just human sexuality, like “the birds and the bees” reproduction basics, but all kinds of abnormal or minority/ “kinky” and even violent sexual practices, that are or should be strictly a private matter among consenting adults.
To be fair to these advocates of grooming children for pedophilia, I mean the “professional educators,” they say they are helping kids develop their sexual identity in a healthy way. So that young people can know their truest sexual self at the earliest possible age. These pedophiles, excuse me, educators, say that they are preventing children from becoming unhappy with themselves later in life. Inside every child is a bi-tri-homo-trans-sexual just screaming to claw itself out, they say.
And to all of that I say horeshit. It is absolute nonsense. Nowhere in the history of our species has so much emphasis been placed on sexual behavior as now, and for fifty or a hundred thousand years before all this grooming began, humans did just fine, but in order to make 1% of the population feel most comfortable with itself, we are supposed to sacrifice the other 99%.
The other humans who sacrificed their children were the pagans of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and these practices are horrific and should never be tolerated. But I don’t think the sacrifice part of this thing is where it is at.
Historically, the age of innocence was a sacrosanct time in a child’s life when “Big Person” ideas and issues were not allowed in, so that children could just be children. Certain ideas like sex, violence, lies, manipulation, and other adult flaws were not allowed to children, for good reason. For a long time, adults in Western Civilization shielded children so they could grow into themselves without being bombarded by adult issues and challenges that will already arrive soon enough. Kids could have imaginary friends, carry teddy bears, talk to themselves, have tea parties with mud pies, and have many years of safe space to just be a kid before the cold realities of life began to trickle in to their awareness.
Civilizations that allowed children to be sexually exploited by adults were always considered barbaric. And yet, somehow, a significant part of America’s voter base is now fully on board with what is obviously pedophilia, in the guise of “education.” What other purpose could this aggressive sexualization of children be for than adults to eventually have sex with those children? It is like open sexual grooming, preparing children to be the subjects of pedophilia, as a plank in a political party’s platform.
Recent examples include Disney’s push to have a more aggressive LBQTABCDEFG agenda forced on children who enter into Disney’s grasp in movie theaters and theme parks, despite recent news reports of quite a few Disney employees being arrested for child molestation. No shame at Disney, apparently, because their CEO just attacked Florida governor Ron DeSantis over an anti-child-sexual exploitation law, the much mis-named “don’t say gay” BS. The Florida law is aimed precisely at preventing pedophiles from grooming children to become sex objects and zero to do with anyone being gay.
Child sex molester monster Jeffery Epstein and his mostly Democrat Party elite child molesting friends had an entire island dedicated to this illegal and revolting practice.
Public school teachers pushing child sex exploitation across America are openly defying taxpaying parents, school boards, and school administrations who are telling them to stop (when the administrators tell them to stop; usually they tell the teachers to keep going). This is not the behavior of an educator; it is the behavior of sex-crazed pedophile maniacs. And the teachers unions are predictably supporting these errant teachers (they are not educators).
And finally, the Democrat Party’s centerpiece, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson, whose long-term shocking leniency with convicted child sex predators can mean only one thing: She is personally quite OK with child molestation, child pornography, and the child predators who sexually exploit children.
Why aren’t rank and file registered Democrats speaking out about this problem? You know, something like a letter to the editor of East Succotash Newspaper: “Dear Editor, my name is John Doe, and I am a registered Democrat. While I do not support most conservative or Republican policies, I am concerned about the high level of support so many Democrat Party leaders and teachers unions have for sexualizing children. Sexualization of children is wrong, it is illegal in most civilized places, and something is wrong with a political party that makes this subject a focal point. I am unhappy about my Democrat Party going in this direction and I want it to stop.”
But guess what, you won’t see letters like this anywhere. I can’t tell if the registered Democrat Party voters are asleep at the wheel, or sheep-like lemmings that go wherever the party leaders wave them on, or do they actually agree with this crazy stuff?
If Democrats really want to challenge tiny children and get them to grow, eliminate their age of innocence, for the kids’ own interests, of course, then why not introduce them to economics and statistics at age five, so they can grow up into financially and fiscally literate and responsible adults?
If Democrats want to end the mis-use of firearms, and have safer schools, then why not have gun safety training in schools?
These are two legitimate policy subjects that could easily be incorporated into schools everywhere, and that would have tangible results right away. But nope, nothing doing. We just have teachers and school administrators obsessed with turning children into sex objects and props.
It is almost like the entire Democrat Party is just one big pedophilia and child pornography group, sad to say. Prove that this isn’t so. Anybody?
Anybody?
Anybody?
Right, I thought so, and I said so.
Update April 1, 2022: On afterthought, a political party or political movement that stands formally and officially for the killing of children after they are born, for the governmental crushing of individual liberty and dissent by coercively mandating unproven drug injections, for the government to steal children away from their families to be indoctrinated in government schools, for the allowance of pedophilia and child pornography, I could go on, but any political party or movement that stands for these things is really morally bankrupt. This is just pure evil. And for those of you who read this and roll your eyes, wake the hell up. This isn’t the Democrat Party of our youth or of JFK or of FDR. This is an authoritarian, anti-human, anti-freedom Democrat Party unworthy of having the word “democrat” in it. And if you are like me and you are revolted by this political party, you don’t have to join any other party. You can become an independent or a non-affiliated.
One thing Rush Limbaugh got right
Radio host Rush Limbaugh died a year ago, and people who enjoyed his show or his books are remembering him today. I am remembering him for two reasons. First, for his zig-zag career path and conventional/unconventional life path. Second, for a single political prediction he made in 2019 that was labeled “outrageous” and “dangerous” by his opponents, and which even raised a lot of eyebrows amid his supporters, but which has proven to be spookily prescient and 100% accurate.
First with number one.
Rush Limbaugh’s successful life path and career path are things worth studying, because so many Americans have been corralled into falsely believing your career must be, should be a straight and linear path forward. Even though that is just not correct, and in many cases it’s not healthy.
You know, graduate from high school, then go to college and spend an inordinate amount of money to be indoctrinated in nonsense and useless hokum, with the hope of getting a college diploma that “proves” you are smart and capable of making decisions. I don’t know if this linear career path idea is a natural result of the old guild mentality, where a son or daughter would apprentice in a particular guild (plumber, wood worker, watch maker, gun maker, horse carriage maker etc.), and then either take over his or her father’s work shop, or go start their own work shop/ atelier in some distant locale doing the same work. In truth, this guild and apprencticeship process offers a lot of value, not just three hundred years ago, but even today. It assures that young people go into work they enjoy, and that they are well trained when they are released unto the world as a certified expert. It also gives people a good income in what had been a feudal world of poor serfs and ultra-wealthy aristocrats.
But this guild approach to career saw its last vestiges swept away with the end of high school Shop Class and Vo-Tech programs that actually taught Americans how to do needed things of value.
And so Rush Limbaugh followed his own path in the radio world, and ended up being the most successful and well-known radio personality in radio history. His success did not happen in a linear way, but quite the opposite. He had to find his way. His stories about his first few jobs in radio, and about being fired by different types of radio managers for different kinds of real or imaginary infractions, and moving across the country several times to take radio jobs, are useful examples to those just now entering the work force or who are stultifying in old jobs.
Only after failing, or growing as it might be euphemistically called, did Limbaugh eventually get to sit behind the Golden EIB Microphone. It was his initial failures and zig-zags that eventually created his character and inner strength, his skills and abilities.
Lessons that Limbaugh learned were be yourself, be honest and forthright, work hard, take risks, make some sacrifices, and if you end up doing what you enjoy the most, then you will often be rewarded with material success and deep personal happiness. And as we well know, contentment is its own form of wealth (and as some of us know, there are a lot of very wealthy people who are also desperately unhappy and often cruelly, even destructively negative, to those around them), so becoming a high school shop teacher earning forty five thousand dollars a year may make you deeply content with your life, but your life partner is going to have to work, too.
But there is no such a thing as high school shop class these days….one should wonder Why…that is a separate issue.
Similarly, his personal life resulted in a strong and committed marriage to a woman, Kathryn, only after the two of them had been friends for many years. How rewarding it is to be married to both your lover and your best friend. That is the pinnacle of relationships, and Limbaugh’s marriage should serve as a useful template for others contemplating marriage themselves. Find a friend, and marry them.
Now about that crazy prediction Limbaugh made in 2019, the one thing he got right that at first sounded so outlandish and impossible…I remember shaking my head when he said that “the Democrat Party will seek a way to eliminate elections so that they can become the dominant and sole political force in America.”
“I don’t know how they are going to do it, but they are working on it,” Limbaugh said. “Oh, they will allow the trappings of elections, but they won’t be meaningful or fair.”
And I was not alone in my skepticism at such a huge claim. Many observers and listeners to Limbaugh’s radio program openly said that he was just being bombastic for the sake of poking his political opponents. No one in American politics could ever want to eliminate elections, the bedrock foundation of our constitutional republic, right?, we naively thought.
And yet Limbaugh stuck to this public claim several times more, and in the end he was proven correct with the stolen 2020 election, and the Democrat Party’s all-out hyperdrive to convert that theft into absolute iron control of Americans by any means necessary, including the federalization of elections and permanence of vote fraud activity.
It turned out that Limbaugh really did understand the Democrat Party and the American Left better than anyone else outside of those two movements. What is amazing is that the subject of his analysis, the Democrat Party, now makes no effort to hide its totalitarian ambitions. Everywhere American citizens have demanded audits of the voting machines or the ballots cast in the fraudulent 2020 election, they have been met with deviousness, rude defiance, threats, blocking lawsuits, and outright ballot-shredding skulduggery by the Democrat Party and its Republican Party enablers.
This is not the behavior of people committed to open and accountable elections, but rather the actions of the desperate and dangerous thief trying to keep his theft from becoming widespread knowledge.
America as a continuing constitutional republic is in huge trouble. Most of our institutions are overthrown and taken over by leftist activists, who then bend those cultural and political institutions against the American constitution and the rule of law. Rush Limbaugh was so deep into the political fray that like a champion prize fighter, he saw where his opponent’s next punch sequence was going to come from.
What is amazing is that the Republican Party still, even now, behaves like an amazed ringside commentator asking incredulously at the end of the fight how the champion prize fighter ever saw the attack coming and not only beat it back, but managed to land his own blows in order to win the fight. This just goes to show just how outside the political fray the Republican Party is; the GOP is barely an observer much less an actual participant in American politics.
We need Rush Limbaugh’s insights more than ever now, but he is somewhere else, and so the only bit of related wisdom or insight I can scrape up at this point is to say We must all be Rush Limbaughs, and each of us fearlessly stay in the fight for freedom and liberty.
And trust our gut instincts about our political opponents. Even if it seems like crazy talk to say that the Democrat Party or its Canadian political ally, Justin Trudeau, are hell bent on becoming absolutist totalitarian overlords. We must fight fight fight, or we lose everything.
Rush Limbaugh behind his EIB Golden Microphone, fighting for freedom and liberty. He knew politics better than most people and loved a constitutional America more than most
Limbaugh’s right-hand man, James Golden aka “Bo Snerdley” continues Limbaugh’s fight for liberty today
Red oak and rain: Taking a strong economy for now while America fights for an even better future
Our present tariff battle with communist China has some personal pain associated with it, but I and everyone in business I deal with say we are ready and willing to put up with it for the long term betterment of America.
“I am just sitting here watching the rain come down,” says ‘D’, a young forester I have worked with for almost twenty years.
A super hard worker, risk taker, and fourth generation forester\logger (he is the first in his family to have a college degree, and in fact he has a Masters in Forestry), ‘D’ has a young family to feed and a great deal of investment in time, equipment, and standing timber that he cannot do anything with, or earn money with, so long as it rains.
With incessant rain like we had throughout 2018 and now well into 2019, most forestry operations stop. Marking timber on steep mountain sides, building roads into timber, cutting, skidding, and hauling timber just is not safe or environmentally possible in rain. Then, as a result, the sawmills slow down. They cannot get the trees they need to make the hardwood lumber products so much of America and the world require for flooring, cabinetry, moulding, doors, tables, furniture, etc.
But the rain is only part of the pressure on the timber industry.
Almost half of Pennsylvania’s hardwood timber economy is comprised of the red oak tree, which grows a beautiful wood used around the world. Until the tariff spat began last year, China was the primary destination for almost all of Pennsylvania’s red oak. China took our exported red oak logs and manufactured all kinds of wood products that they then sold back to American companies. When the tariffs started to bite in 2018, demand for red oak logs began to slow, because Chinese companies could not afford to compete on that new level playing field. Their own tariffs on manufactured American goods had protected them from competition, and so with tariffs on their products, their own manufacturing slowed down, and their decreased need for raw materials followed. A year later, the demand for red oak lumber has nearly died. Spectacular high quality red oak trees, that six months ago were highly sought after in a fiercely competitive free market, are now being turned into railroad ties and pallet wood (some wood workers specialize in making beautiful furniture from homely oak pallets; well, guys, get ready for a whole lot of very nice red oak pallets to become available).
Standing red oak trees have lost over half their value since this time last year, and as a result, roughly a third of Pennsylvania’s powerful hardwood lumber industry is at a stand-still, with landowners, foresters, loggers, and sawmills trying to figure out how to make up that lost productive time, and lost revenue, and to find another tree species to take the place of the red oak.
Back to the rain… the forest products industry can weather this storm, as well as the tariff tiff with China.
“It’s for the best, for a better America, a better economic future for all of us” says Mike, a heavy equipment operator from Renovo, Pennsylvania, to me this morning, as he finally found time to discuss a timber project we have together, and the China tariff effects on it.
Mike, too, is stalled out temporarily by the non-stop rains, and he is also bitten by the temporarily slow red oak market.
“It hurts, but we needed to do these tariffs,” says Mike.
“It’s sacrifice and pain now, so that America will have an even better economy in the future,” says ‘D’.
I feel the same way. Pain and sacrifice, risk taking and hard work, all for a better future for us and our children. We will all be creative and find ways to make a living; after all, overall the economy is very strong.
Carry on, Mister President. We understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. The tariffs hurt, but we support you. It is about damned time that someone in Washington, DC, gave a crap about our country and we people who labor out of sight in flyover country.
Logger “Pete” takes a breakfast break on his log landing. A tough, super hard working little Irishman from central Pennsylvania, it’s Americans like Pete who keep our economy going from the ground up
The power of Dad
Call me patriarchal, but the power of “Dad” still awes me, as it has so deeply shaped all human cultures from our beginning.
At his best, Dad is provider, protector, guardian, best friend, guide, advisor, partner….Someone a boy looks up to all his life, wants to emulate, and shares his intimate life struggles with.
Dad is that one person you can always count on, no matter what. It’s a pretty potent symbol and subject. Everyone loves “Dad.”
Fatherhood is so powerful that it can be used to hurt, too, and some father figures don’t seem to recognize their own strength. Or worse, they revel in their ability to punish, or hurt, though that seems to be a dying breed these days.
Today in America, we celebrate the happy and hard working Dads out there who have busted their butts, hoed tough rows, sacrificed and taken risks for their families.
Heck, we see these Hollywood superhero movies and it’s impossible not to laugh. Reality is a lot more compelling!
Just getting our kids off to school on time in clean clothes with all their books and pencils is a real feat. Paying the bills? Now THAT is true hero stuff. It’s not easy. Parents and dads who pull that off are the real heroes, because without them, the wheels come off.
Here’s to the dads- three cheers.
Memorial Day, aka Thank You Day
How Americans came to take their success and security for granted is a mystery. It is also dangerous, because much was lost to gain what we now are giving away for free, as if it is ours to give away at all.
Our security belongs to future citizens.
Are so many of our citizens really eyeballs deep in TV entertainment, to the point where they ignore the real problems around us?
All of the happiness, wealth, success, security we enjoy are attributable to mostly men who risked and sacrificed their lives and limbs that the rest of us can BBQ in the back yard in peace.
Obama’s apology to Japan for the US winning the brutal war that Japan started is representative of the weak and shallow thinking dominant in America today. It passes for “thoughtful,” but it is disrespectful to our servicemen who sacrificed for us.
On Monday, Americans officially remember the many men, and a few women, who gave everything so that our daily lives can be enjoyed peacefully. I thank you, each and every one of you, for what you did for me and my family.
This weekend is devoted to those departed and wounded servicemen.
In their honor, fly the flag, or salute it, or have your family say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag as part of our collective remembrance and thanks. These are tokens of respect and appreciation.