Here Is Your "Existential" List, Bro

This week, while embracing the conspirators who sponsored Lee Harvey Oswald in his assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Obama  stated that even though they have free rein in Europe, there is no "'EXISTENTIAL"  threat  from these people for U.S. citizens in America. 

Well, here is some enlightenment on that point:

1. We KNOW what the word "existential"  means.

2. Here is a list  of  the "existential" fatalities in the USA brought about by  devotees of the "Religion of Peace", Islam, 
NOT including Sirhan Sirhan's murder of Robert F. Kennedy :

Date Country City Killed Injured Description 1972.04.14 USA New York, NY 1 3 Ten members of a local mosque phone in a false alarm and then ambush responding officers, killing one. 1973.01.19 USA Brooklyn, NY 1 1 Muslim extremists rob a sporting goods store for weapons, gunning down a police officer who responds to the alarm. 1973.07.01 USA Bethesda, MD 1 0 An Israeli diplomat is gunned down in his driveway by Palestinian terrorists. 1973.07.18 USA Washington, DC 8 2 Nation of Islam members shoot seven members of a family to death in cold blood, including four children. A defendant in the case is later murdered in prison on orders from Elijah Muhammad. 1973.10.19 USA Oakland, CA 1 1 Nation of Islam terrorists kidnap a couple and nearly decapitate the man, while raping and leaving the woman for dead. 1973.10.29 USA Berkeley, CA 1 0 A woman is shot repeatedly in the face by Nation of Islam terrorists. 1973.11.25 USA Oakland, CA 1 0 A grocer is killed in his store by Nation of Islam terrorists. 1973.12.11 USA Oakland, CA 1 0 A man is killed by Nation of Islam terrorists while using a phone booth. 1973.12.13 USA Oakland, CA 1 0 A woman is shot to death on the sidewalk by Nation of Islam terrorists. 1973.12.20 USA Oakland, CA 1 0 Nation of Islam terrorists gun down an 81-year-old janitor. 1973.12.22 USA Oakland, CA 2 0 Nation of Islam terrorist kills two people in separate attacks on the same day. 1973.12.24 USA Oakland, CA 1 0 A man is kidnapped, tortured and decapitated by Nation of Islam terrorists. 1974.01.24 USA Oakland, CA 4 1 Five vicious shooting attacks by Nation of Islam terrorists leave three people dead and one paralyzed for life. Three of the victims were women. 1974.04.01 USA Oakland, CA 1 1 A Nation of Islam terrorist shoots at two Salvation Army members, killing a man and injuring a woman. 1974.04.16 USA Ingleside, CA 1 0 A man is killed while helping a friend move by Nation of Islam terrorists. 1977.03.09 USA Washington, DC 1 1 Hanifi Muslims storm three buildings including a B'nai B'rith to hold 134 people hostage. At least two innocents were shot and one died. 1980.07.22 USA Bethesda, MD 1 0 A political dissident is shot and killed in front of his home by an Iranian agent who was an American convert to Islam. 1980.08.31 USA Savou, IL 2 0 An Iranian student guns down his next-door neighbors, a husband and wife. 1989.11.06 USA St. Louis, MO 1 0 A 17-year-old girl is stabbed to death by her parents for bringing 'dishonor' to their family by dating an 'infidel' African-American. 1990.01.31 USA Tuscon, AZ 1 0 A Sunni cleric is assassinated in front of a Tuscon mosque after declaring that two verses of the Qur'an were invalid. 1990.11.05 USA New York City, NY 1 0 An Israeli rabbi is shot to death by a Muslim attacker at a hotel. 1993.01.25 USA Langley, VA 2 3 A Pakistani with Mujahideen ties guns down two CIA agents outside of the headquarters. 1993.02.26 USA New York, NY 6 1040 Islamic terrorists detonate a massive truck bomb under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over 1,000 in an effort to collapse the towers. 1994.03.01 USA Brooklyn, NY 1 0 A Muslim gunman targets a van packed with Jewish boys, killing a 16-year-old. 1997.03.23 USA New York, NY 1 6 A Palestinian leaves an anti-Jewish suicide note behind and travels to the top of the Empire State building where he shoot seven people in a Fedayeen attack. 1997.04.03 USA Lompoc, CA 1 0 A prison guard is stabbed to death by a radical Muslim. 2000.03.17 USA Atlanta, GA 1 1 A local imam and Muslim spiritual leader guns down a deputy sheriff and injures his partner. 2001.09.11 USA New York, NY 2752 251 Islamic hijackers steer two planes packed with fuel and passengers into the World Trade Center, killing hundreds on impact and eventually killing thousands when the towers collapsed. At least 200 are seriously injured. 2001.09.11 USA Washington, DC 184 53 Nearly 200 people are killed when Islamic hijackers steer a plane full of people into the Pentagon. 2001.09.11 USA Shanksville, PA 40 0 Forty passengers are killed after Islamic radicals hijack the plane in an attempt to steer it into the U.S. Capitol building. 2002.03.19 USA Tuscon, AZ 1 0 A 60-year-old man is gunned down by Muslim snipers on a golf course. 2002.05.27 USA Denton, TX 1 0 Muslim snipers kill a man as he works in his yard. 2002.07.04 USA Los Angeles, CA 2 0 Muslim man pulls out a gun at the counter of an Israeli airline and kills two people. 2002.09.21 USA Atlanta, GA 1 0 Muslim terrorists gun down an employee at a liquor store. 2002.09.21 USA Montgomery, AL 1 1 Muslim snipers shoot two women, killing one. 2002.09.23 USA Baton Rouge, LA 1 0 A Korean mother is shot in the back by Muslim snipers. 2002.10.02 USA Wheaton, MD 1 0 Muslim snipers gun down a program analyst in a store parking lot. 2002.10.03 USA Montgomery County, MD 5 0 Muslim snipers kill three men and two women in separate attacks over a 15-hour period. 2002.10.09 USA Manassas, VA 1 1 A man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas two days after a 13-year-old is wounded by the same team. 2002.10.11 USA Fredericksburg, VA 1 0 Another man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas. 2002.10.14 USA Arlington, VA 1 0 A woman is killed by Muslim snipers in a Home Depot parking lot. 2002.10.22 USA Aspen Hill, MD 1 0 A bus driver is killed by Muslim snipers. 2003.08.06 USA Houston, TX 1 0 After undergoing a 'religious revival', a Saudi college student slashes the throat of a Jewish student with a 4" butterfly knife, nearly decapitating the young man. 2004.04.15 USA Scottsville, NY 1 2 In an honor killing, a Muslim father kills his wife and attacks his two daughters with a knife and hammer because he feared that they had been sexually molested. 2006.06.16 USA Baltimore, MD 1 0 A 62-year-old Jewish moviegoer is shot to death by a Muslim medical student in an unprovoked terror attack. 2006.06.25 USA Denver, CO 1 5 Saying that it was 'Allah's choice', a Muslim shoots four of his co-workers and a police officer. 2006.07.28 USA Seattle, WA 1 5 An 'angry' Muslim-American uses a young girl as hostage to enter a local Jewish center, where he shoots six women, one of whom dies. 2008.01.01 USA Irving, TX 2 0 A Muslim immigrant shoots his two daughters to death on concerns about their 'Western' lifestyle. 2008.07.06 USA Jonesboro, GA 1 0 A devout Muslim strangles his 25-year-old daughter in an honor killing. 2009.02.12 USA Buffalo, NY 1 0 The founder of a Muslim TV station beheads his wife in the hallway for seeking a divorce. 2009.04.12 USA Phoenix, AZ 2 0 A man shoots his brother-in-law and another man to death after finding out that they visited a strip club, in contradiction to Islamic values. 2009.06.01 USA Little Rock, AR 1 1 A Muslim shoots a local soldier to death inside a recruiting center explicitly in the name of Allah. 2009.11.02 USA Glendale, AZ 1 1 A woman dies from injuries suffered when her father runs her down with a car for being too 'Westernized.' (10-20-09) 2009.11.05 USA Ft. Hood, TX 13 31 A Muslim psychiatrist guns down thirteen unarmed soldiers while yelling praises to Allah. 2009.12.04 USA Binghamton, NY 1 0 A non-Muslim Islamic studies professor is stabbed to death by a Muslim grad student in revenge for 'persecuted' Muslims. 2010.04.14 USA Marquette Park, IL 5 2 After quarrelling with his wife over Islamic dress, a Muslim convert shoots his family members to 'take them back to Allah' and out of the 'world of sinners'. 2011.04.30 USA Warren, MI 1 0 A 20-year-old woman is shot in the head by her stepfather for not adhering to Islamic practices. 2011.09.11 USA Waltham, MA 3 0 Three Jewish men have their throats slashed by Muslim terrorists. 2012.01.15 USA Houston, TX 1 0 A 30-year-old Christian convert is shot to death by a devout Muslim for helping to convert his daughter. 2012.11.12 USA Houston, TX 1 0 A 28-year-old American man is shot to death by a conservative Muslim over an alleged role in converting a woman to Christianity. 2013.02.07 USA Buena Vista, NJ 2 0 A Muslim targets and beheads two Christian Coptic immigrants. 2013.03.24 USA Ashtabula, OH 1 0 A Muslim convert walks into a church service with a Quran and guns down his Christian father while praising Allah. 2013.04.15 USA Boston, MA 3 264 Foreign-born Muslims describing themselves as 'very religious' detonate two bombs packed with ball bearings at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and causing several more to lose limbs. 2013.04.19 USA Boston, MA 1 1 Jihadists gun down a university police officer sitting in his car. 2013.08.04 USA Richmond, CA 1 0 A convert "on a mission from Allah" stabs a store clerk to death. 2014.03.06 USA Port Bolivar, TX 2 0 A Muslim man shoots his lesbian daughter and her lover to death and leaves a copy of the Quran open to a page condemning homosexuality. 2014.04.27 USA Skyway, WA 1 0 A 30-year-old man is murdered by a Muslim fanatic. 2014.06.01 USA Seattle, WA 2 0 Two homosexuals are murdered by an Islamic extremist. 2014.06.25 USA West Orange, NJ 1 0 A 19-year-old college student is shot to death 'in revenge' for Muslim deaths overseas. 2014.09.25 USA Moore, OK 1 1 A Sharia advocate beheads a woman after calling for Islamic terror and posting an Islamist beheading photo. 2014.12.18 USA Morganton, NC 1 0 A 74-year-old man is shot several times in the head by a 'radicalized' ISIS supporter. 2015.07.16 USA Chattanooga, TN 5 2 A 'devout Muslim' stages a suicide attack on a recruiting center at a strip mall and a naval center which leaves five dead. 2015.12.02 USA San Bernardino, CA 14 17 A 'very religious' Muslim shoots up a Christmas party with his wife, leaving fourteen dead.

Readers who wish to see the original information may go to http://www.religionofpeace.com.To whom we are eternally grateful !

Our Ghost Martyrs

Probably the main things we should have firm in mind are: 

(1) That the Benghazi massacre took place  on the anniversary of the World Trade Center catastrophic attack, that is, on September 11, 2012.... AND...

(2) That this date was less than two months before the election day that returned Barack Hussein Obama to the White House.

Benghazi was a fatal Statecraft failure and reporting it honestly and factually could have prompted harsh judgment from the U.S. electorate.

At 4:00 PM Washington time (11 p.m. in Benghazi) Obama and VP Joe Biden along with Defense secretary Leon Panetta experienced the Benghazi attack on DoD hook-up, from Drones hovering over the embattled compound in “real-time”. They were in touch with Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton.

Yet, despite the fact that Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in the burning destruction of the temporary “consulate”, Ms Clinton announced proudly this past weekend:

“We did not lose one person in Libya !”

My question is: What do these Hoity-Toity elite charlatans think we are?  Do they lump us in the garbage bin with the 20% sure-fire-voting illiterate great unwashed ? Are we considered  just  low info turnipbrained dullards?

Even after this tragedy, for nearly a week, all these people named above plus an automaton dummy named Susan Rice, claimed this murderous, brutally bloody attack was “just revenge” for a cartoon that allegedly left a stain on the prophet Mohammed.  Rice took a special occasion at the United Nations General Assembly to give vent to this apostatic lie.

And now in the heat of another presidential election, the former Secretary of State would apparently have us believe she has forgotten the four slain Americans.

Since we KNOW that all Defense department tape and film is eternally redundant, there is evidence aplenty in the recordings from the drones, which had to be onsite before the attack, because they were supplied to the “consulate” from Crete, about three hours distant.

As candidate the former Secretary of State has been visibly shaken physically by a series of coughing paroxysms that she cannot shake.

One wonders, if in  her bronchial expectorations, she has spit out a bit of brain matter here and there . That is certainly the kindest face to put on this performance.

As a matter of fact I wonder if even Leon Panetta knows how many Americans died in the Libya fiasco. 

Congressman Trey Gowdy’s committee is in “ongoing investigation” mode.  Wonder if he has his eye on accessing those Drone tapes.

It's always “Tapes” and “gaps”, isn't it ?  There was a poem about "the little man who wasn't THERE":

"I saw him standing on the stair
The Little man who wasn;t there.
 He was't thhere again todayu...
I wish that he would go away...."

Does she ever see Chris Stevens ?...The other men ?

Peril to Shun History

South Dakota, with a really significant American Indian population, ended the teaching of the first hundred years of American history at the beginning of this school year, through its State Board of Education.

There were hearings, but no legislation.

The idea seems to be, if we don't talk about it, then it never happened.

In Dearborn Michigan, where Muslims are significant minority of the population, the truth of the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews, Roman Catholics, Gypsies and homosexuals... Is no longer mentioned or even acknowledged as a historical event in any public education in that city. In Dearborn Michigan, for school attendees K-12, there WERE NO gas chambers, mass shootings, or
lime pits.

Just as the grisly history of  cannibalism, torture and massacre by both European Americans and native Indian Americans is terra non grata for social science teachers in South Dakota.

The ultimate result of the deterioration in the way Americans look at what happened before they were born is... Vacuous Ignorance.

In Washington DC, already, the people who live there do not know where the city got its name. CLICK HERE FOR EVIDENCE

It would be easy just to yawn and discard this blog in file 13 because it is cobbled together by a nonagenarian admittedly clinging to relevance through agile pomposities.

But if you didn't have the thoughts and tales, the laughter and tears... And the lessons from former generations in your family, your intellect and your spirit would be husks of dusty nothingness. Only the fool who thinks he will never make a mistake (and thus never learn)  could believe that trashing all our yesterdays  in a vain attempt to escape the basic error and fallibility that makes humans the learning machines and the conscious, constant mental and spiritual revolutionaries  that make all History , and burnish it with endless capacity for invention and renewal.

Surely if we turn our back on the lessons inherent in our ancestors' pitfalls and the glory of their endurance we are sentencing all our offspring and theirs to a Hell not dreamed of by Dante Allighieri or any of his vapid imitators.

Child Abuse

Is it permissible to comment on child abuse nowadays ?

Our average parent or grandparent is usually throttled, muted or trashed by educationoids because we did not get a license from a hallowed “teachers indoctrination unit-college” no matter what level of postgraduate achievement we have.

The child abuse to which  I have reference is the sort perpetrated by the president of the United States when he excuses his “swapping” of a murderous terrorist crew for a turncoat traitor by saying that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt all swapped prisoners of war because that’s what happens after a war is over.

Actually, George Washington was not elected president of the United States until five years after the Revolutionary war ended.

Abraham Lincoln was martyred before the end of the Civil War and FDR had his fatal stroke before the end of World War II— in either theater !

This lecture to media bootlickers from an erstwhile “constitutional lawyer” was never challenged at the time it was delivered.

But nevertheless, many defenseless underage, not-yet-citizens will go to their graves believing this drivel  and even argue that it is “delivered truth”.

A more recent profanation was delivered by a presidential candidate, while discussing gun-control, when she said that our  Constitution guarantees each one of us “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”!

FOR STORY CLICK HERE

But those words are from the Declaration of Independence, which came nearly 8 years before the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified.

Then, too, the Declaration was an enumeration of those gifts of God to mankind which the American patriots believed to be threaten by the British monarchy.

On the other hand, the Constitution was an illumination of structures and personal rights guaranteed by those governmental structures.  These rights are, as we all know now, Civil in nature, not “natural” or bestowed by a Creator.

It is at least one citizen’s understanding that it is almost criminal— whether by intentional obfuscation or by nescience or ignorance, to mislead even the smallest Town Hall audience on such salient truth.

But I guess that’s all we can expect from a lawyer who was fired from her first government job for unethical misconduct.

When...O when will the degradation of our brilliant National  History end ?

Hurt Feelings

The educationoids are as busy as bees and daughters and sons of bees with their Political Correctness onslaught.

In a Delaware school district, some subversive genius mailed out a "Hurt Feelings" Scorecard. Your fish wrapper or local "reality TV" deprived you of it so here it is: 

 CLICK HERE FOR STORY AND CHART

But the PC powers that be -- a group whose greatest fear is that somewhere someone is happily laughing at them-- scurried to recall and neutralize the effect of the hilarious document.  That did not happen.

Meanwhile, out West in Portland Oregon the Catholic University of Portland issued an order that all 4,000 students and faculty must report " any discomfort" to the University police office. This will probably  spill over ibto the surrounding countryside, Oregon being what it is--- the way it is... and you can look for it in some institution near you sometime during 2016.


The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is taking some big hits and is as inescapable as it is incremental that soon we will no longer be free to call each other "Dumb" or "Mean" or "Stingy" or "fool" or "stupid" or even "ugly".  

Many many years ago Casey Stangl brought his Yankees to Atlanta on the way back north from the grapefruit league. I have interviewed some of the team, I wrote a story in which I blasted a box seats fan who was heckling Elstom Howard. I called  the heckler "a Jerk". My then boss, sports editor Furman Bisher convinced me that there was no such thing as “a jerk” in the sports pages of the Atlanta Constitution!

 Who knew that Bisher was the vanguard of the PeeCee patterollers ?!

I’ve done a little scanning and searching of historical files, and I will admit that political correctness and a mouthful of Octagon / Lye soap might have kept Alexander Hamilton out of his fatal duel with Alan Burr, but I notice that Pope Francis shed his cloak of PeeCee speech to trash a prominent American from the other side of the Rio Grande River, so there are some very powerful people apparently, who do not share the sensibilities of some of our educationists.

We’ve seen for a long time that people running the colleges and universities in the United States are not properly tasked: they all ought to be either  teaching, or cleaning the quadrangles of debris. It is the proper role of the students in such places to question one another in bull sessions and confront professors in classrooms...Even in colorful language born of the greatest American tradition: words like “buffoon”, “dork”, “doofus”, “Honkie”, and the one most applied to me during my wild, young adulthood:  “N-word-Lover”.

Finally it is not unhealthy to recognize some words as coarse, ugly and unrepresentative. But let’s remind ourselves that our feelings cannot be “hurt” without our participation. It is never what another says that so stings our soul and hurts our heart. It is what we tell ourselves about ourslves relative to what they say that causes pain.  I’ve tried to teach young people who come within my orbit that if I called them a  paperclip, that would NOT  make them one !!

That’s the sort of thing we should be teaching. Not the nonsense of PeeCee.

Nature's God ?

Pathetic sophomoric journalism is a favorite hobby of mine, since I was a pathetic journalist once upon a time when I was 12 or 13. 

Now I find in one of the great publications that I read for 50 years, has hired numb-knots.

A presentation of that once great purveyor of scientific truth as well as honest inquiry, exhibits a photograph of one of  the great statues of the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, on an Asian promontory.

Beneath it is an article which announces that the adoption and worship of omniscient and punitive gods by small nomadic groups, led to larger more complex and cooperative civilization. 

Well....Um....Yes.

But there IS no punitive or omniscient God to worship in Buddhism, which is largely based on the Noble Truth that  Gautama spoke when he stepped from the Bodhi Tree:

"To live is to crave. To crave is to suffer. Therefore only with an end to craving can there be an end to suffering...."

I know it is nasty of me, but I always see evildoers in the shadows. Therefore I think that the great magazine Nature has been hijacked by progressive 2016 politically-correct cutesies.

Otherwise, they certainly would have  pictured a cross or a line drawing of Moses and the tablets, wouldn't they ? Or maybe to be more stylish, a man in a black balaclava waving a black ISIS banner...

The whole point of the "study" being reported here was the SHOCKING  revelation that "fundamentalist" RELIGION was the spark that ignited the spread of cooperation and finally, civilization! 

But the first few paragraphs of the "report" were taken up with telling how people in isolated gulags on the globe exhibited more "honesty" and "fairness" if they believed in a deity that kept track of their tribulations and triumphs and fashioned retribution and reward accordingly.

Just about any overage runaway apostate who left Sunday school, or their role as an acolyte or their synagogue-based shul would have been glad to tell the "researchers" THAT.  All that travel experience to isolate 600 people in disparate "native" locations was a waste of money and time, in the name of "Science".

Still and all, it is gratifying to have another (obviously clueless) portion of the population aware that basic arithmetic, and mathematics, the creation of languages including conjugation of verbs and the flowering of metalwork, drawing, painting, music and dance, the Renaissance, Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and the Era of Space travel ---ALL  came about because mankind learned to obey "Natural Rules".

I don't know about you but I'll go to bed with a little more optimism and we should all sleep a little more soundly knowing that maybe several pseudo-agnostics  and naysayers have stumbled on Truth.

High Level Blind

Not many readers of this blog subscribe to any of the foreign newswires such as  Agence France-Presse, Xinhua or Al Jazeera, and our British and American conduits did not get the drivel to your local fishwrapper or leftwing talking-heads, so we will supply the words straight from the mouth of our Chief Doofus,  S-o-S John Kerry (He served in VietNam) prating nonsense in public in Europe:


At a conference in Rome, of coalition members allegedly tasked with fighting ISIS yesterday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said members of the terrorist organization " are not Muslims..." but, rather " apostates of Islam."

 “Daesh [ISIS] is in fact nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers and thieves,” Kerry said. “And they are also above all apostates, people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceive people in order to fight for their purposes.”

Puerile scribblers nowadays are prone to use hyphenated  explosions such as breath-taking and jaw-dropping.

I call these extraordinary  remarks vomit-gushing.

I Am sure these words were handed to Kerry by some pointy-headed insulated nincompoop who would probably be SHOCKED  to learn that the OTHER JFK was assassinated by a communist traitor, and that Islam has built its theoretical superstructure on the foundation of all the bad qualities mentioned by Mr. Doofus K, since the year  622 AD, beginning with the slaughters at Medina  and Mecca.

Thus we have, in a 24 hour "expanse" the US president stating that Mohammedanism "has always been an intimate part of America.." (A tacit lie unless you count in the defeat of all the Barbary Muslim Pirates by Stephen Decatur and his newly minted US Marines in the early 1800s). AND  the US chief diplomat dismissing the New Caliphate that is gobbling up most of Syria and Iraq as we sleep.

This is not the sort of thing that lends itself nicely to politicizing, but that is the direction that the people in office seem to have chosen. 

The GQ Score is the only thing in doubt !

Gullibility Quotient, of our people, that is.

Geezer ? Or Fogey ?

My 67-year-old son, Michael, leaned over my desk and heaved a great sigh.

“Daddy,” he announced, “I am now joining you in Geezerdom !”

I was shaken but not so much that I didn’t correct him archly: 

“ It’s GeezerHood, NOT “geezerdom” I said. “And it is really unsettling that the Li’l Feller that I taught to trout-fish is nearly bald with a goatee....”

My hilarity in discussing this was that of a jackass gnawing on barbwire, but after he took his departure, I did some “musing”.  Not real hard cogitation you know... Just some mind- flight.

So I had to accept my oldest son as a Geezer ! That makes me a Supra-Geezer, I guess, simply by dint of years. 

It was pleasant to realize that neither of us have rotted into old-fogeyness.  I maintain that what separates Geezers and old fogies is the fact that old fogies turn their heads away and even curse when they see the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.  Geezers, on the other hand, vicariously bask in the sunshine of whatever exotic beach the ladies have chosen this February.

There are other lovable things about Geezers. Unlike fogies, they occasionally change their minds, and still believe they can teach a grandson (or great-granddaughter) how to drive a stick-shift silkily... Without stripping a single gear tooth.

A fogey will stomp out of a computer room in frustration while a Geezer will ask the young ones to show him one more time how to dissolve the bad guys–OR superimpose a banner of instruction over a photo. 

The Geezers usually have treasure troves of information that they dearly love  to share, especially if it will bridge the triple generation gap. Mike and I were talking about one of those little snippets just before he came up with  “Geezer” shock.

It involves finding an undisturbed backwater on a trout stream, very still, with some debris gathered or settled on its bottom. In this debris, there will be a number of  small sticks that look like they are glued together. But when you separate them carefully you find a small white worm encased in a sheath that joins the two sticks. This is the larva of a mayfly– or maybe another fly, waiting for metamorphosis into a winged insect that trout fishermen in all of Creation attempt to mimic with feathers, wool, and deer hair. We Geezers call the worm "Stick-Bait".

It is the keenest and most exciting form of “cheating” to tip off the hook of your Adams or Coachman, with this fat little worm.  It never fails to get a strike no matter how many variations you have failed with. (There is no guarantee of getting the trout into your creel, however.)

Purists-Astream, as I noted, view this   as “cheating”. But we, solid Geezers that we are, believe what the greatest of quarterbacks, Joe Montana once said:

“If you ain’t cheatin’, then you ain’t tryin’ !”

We in the Geezerhood only apply this to fishing, horseshoes and football. And in this sphere, as well as in most spiritual and romantic pursuits, Old Fogies are 100% losers.

Atheist Dawkins Concedes

We truly never understood the meaning of  "it's an ill wind indeed that blows no good" until we learned this morning that supreme foe of gods in general, and Christ in particular Richard Dawkins  had cried "Calf-Rope".

He was quoted by an interviewer as saying that only Christianity can now save the world from the darkest excesses of a blindly hating and death worshipping savagery that threatens every continent.

You can read the details  HERE !

But taken as an event, the Dawkins adoption of Christianity as a "Savior" of civilization would warm the heart of the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, whose "Wager" is mostly familiar to those who spend some time discussing the efficacy--- or even the possibility--- of buttressing a belief in the Deity.

Blaise Pascal lived to be less than 50 but in the 17th century he challenged all his contemporaries with mathematical discoveries and the well articulated and brilliantly faceted logic of his "Pensees" (Thoughts). 

Pascal's Wager is probably his most famous contribution to apologetic philosophy. 

He simply said that we have a choice, similar to tossing a coin in a "heads / tails" game.

If we choose not to believe, we have nothing to look forward to except the meager assembly of short-lived earthly trinkets and 
questionable reputations, limited and finite.

But if we choose to believe, to use faith to measure the Infinite and follow the commandments of a faith, then even if that faith turns out to be without reason, all we have lost is evil while we gained the ultimate structured beneficent life. Even Donald J Trump would call that an Artful Deal.

We have watched a lot of people come  and go since 1925.  And despite all the haughty  smears and snears of the  elusive nonbelievers, we have yet to see anything more delightful to watch than an agnostic or atheist reduced to shuffling soles  and sudden uncertainty as they grasp for the Wager of Blaise Pascal.

Let us all welcome frere Darkins to his new comfort. May many follow him.

Clean Up Your Shriek

One of the most disgusting things about living halfway into the second decade of the third millennium is the widespread sovereignty of ignorance.

On Wednesday a senior editor for a defunct newsweekly scampered to delete his twisted adolescent screed on Twitter to the effect that Sen. Ted Cruz and all of his followers are Nazis.

There’s a lot of that going around. People who were not even born in 1940 or  taught anything seminal about World War II in school, who know nothing about the National Socialist German Workers Party of the 1930s, glibly go about spewing that diagnosis of Nazism, clueless to the meaning of the word.

It’s a monkey-see-monkey-do thing. Anybody to the right of Earl Warren must be a Nazi, they figure, for some reason— having no idea that Nazism was the extreme brand of  collectivist insanity, it’s admitted most hated rival, Russian communism (an older more entrenched hypnotic promise of pie-in-the-sky.)  (It’s a lie !)

Do these puny- headed twits grasp that the partnership between the Nazis and the Reds before World War II erupted was the well-planned “safe house” interlude during which the German Nazis “got ready” for Gotterdammerung ? That is, the pause during which the timetable was set  for killing an as-yet-uncounted millions of Christians, homosexuals, Gypsies, academic intellectuals and Jews?

And yet these Frothy-mouthed  fantasists play with their favorite epithet “Nazi” to pin it on Donald J Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Ron Paul and even Ms Carly Fiorina.  Now, we KNOW none of these mildly conservative standouts has called for nationalization of industry, or an end  to collective bargaining by unions... Or the burning of books, or "rendering" of corpses for soap, OR the fashioning of lampshades  from  children's skin. 

If people were paying attention, there would be 1000 petitions, each  with more than 100,000 signatures calling for sanctions against these glossolalic lame brains.

This sort of thing (epidemic of casual ignorance) is becoming institutional.  

Some time ago, in greeting Syrian refugees a collection of Canadian child-Choristers  sang  a song to welcome  mostly Muslims  into their new country. 

After all of this was over, according to The American Thinker online, some inquisitive young scholar or journalist discovered that the song was a celebration of the slaughter of Jews.   

This sort of herd mentality, jumping before looking behavior is all right for the sidelines at a major collision of athletes.

But it just won’t DO as representation of a nation’s soul.

Or of a pygmy’s hateful envy and spite.

D A N C E !!!

We just completed a New Year's wish for our number one non-family confidant that seems now to be rather sterile and incompetent.

The "greeting" offered wishes and prayers for a "Renaissance" of common sense to replace the straitjacket of  "correctness" that plagues clarity of emotion and 
communication these days.

That sounds really fatuous and condescending  as one  reads it back out loud.

So, let us amend it.

How about:  "More dancing,  less shuffling and plodding in 2016 ?!!

There is, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, if my memory is intact, the reproduction of carvings and drawings on an Algerian  wall  more than 10,000 years old, that shows many people dancing with the same attitudes and the same utilization of  artifact in their dance.

In case you care,  Wikipedia is very weak on "dance" and "dancing". But it is pretty clear that the North African area abutting the Mediterranean and the subcontinent of India are the first places that evidence dancing as an avocation of "early" populations.

Long before people had language, they danced to convey emotions and beliefs that were natural and, perforce, brought  forth song  and then language and  communicative cooperation.

Therefore nothing could be more human and faithful than to make 2016 a Dancing Year.

The song or melody can be supplied by the individual "heart"--- Spirit  or  imagination.

But, in the face of fear, anxiety or dilemma, Dancing really is a valid prescription. There is scriptural evidence aplenty that dancing including the use of bells and castanets proceeded from prehistory to the time of Abraham. In the fourth century, BCE, Aristotle delineated "Dance" in his Poetics.

Traditionally, celebratory dancing filled the Temple. The first thing that happens after marriage vows and the kiss is The Dance. In the synagogues of old, all the men danced with clasped hands. They still do. 

The Druids danced at Stonehenge. Egyptian  hieroglyphics show ceremonial as well as single person expression in the dance.

Dancing, in some societies, is still utilized as potent anti--Demon fare. There is no shortage of demons among the seven continents as we begin 2016.

Dance is freely available therapy and protection available anywhere anytime. One must have a certain amount of fortitude and devil-may-care goodwill to apply the balm of the "solo" dance.  But we have all seen the secretary do her terpsichorean best when she gets a raise. Similarly an Oklahoma cowboy does a single whoopp-de-doo  after staying glued on the back of a heaving bull.

The best places to really cut a figure are: the kitchen, the bath shower, the baseball dugout, center court at Wimbledon, American Idol finals, and commencement week at any high school or college.

So Dance, all you children ! 

But, don't stomp, whirl or leap to sounds of your ancient  Walkman or modern iPhone in the company of.… A Muslim friend.

It might cause "hurt feelings".  Centuries of Qu'ranic, Hadith and Sharia Law bans the use of musical instruments, song, or dancing by observant   Muslims.

Any twisting, shaking prancing or wiggling in Islam is reserved for seminaked slaves and a handful of devout  Sufi Dervishes who whirl in circles until they reach ecstatic oneness with a many-splendored, woozy climax.  

One can only understand the severity of this sanction if one had a hardshell Baptist, anti-dance  grandmother.

But in these parlous days, She would cut quite a figure, herself, to get some Serenity ! So, Dance ! 
  

Birthday Chords

This Christmas, we will share our two favorite Christmas poems. The first one has been called “wistful” and the second, “bitter”. They were created by two of America’s  most gifted purveyors of thought and passion. We prefer the appellation:  “POWERFUL”.


December 25

By W. H. Auden

...Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long. 

~~~|||~~~

To Jesus on His Birthday

By Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)


For this your mother sweated in the cold,
For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;
Up goes the man of God before the crowd;
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel
He drones your humble gospel to the proud.
Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows
Are all your words to us you died to save.
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!
How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.
The stone the angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

Cry "Fascism"!!! ...(Or Sumpthin...)

Frst it was goofy New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg autocratically  banning the sale of "soda" carbonated drinks in the Big Apple.

Then it was Ms. Obama's  Calorie Cops, pushing kale and limp lettuce at Taco-toasting skool populations.

But now, in Massachusetts of all places, they have ( as all the left-wing and otherwise demented media types holler) CROSSED THE LINE !!!

In Worchester, public housing residents have been notified in a huge block-lettered missive that at least one person in a household must be either gainfully employed or be a full-time responsive student in a recognized learning facility, or...OR... Face expulsion from public housing!

Surely the author of this anti-Brave New World  threat will end up with chains and and anvils rusting on his extremities in the Charles River.

You may see the original story  H E R E !

This sort of  high-handed , ham-fisted treatment has been tried before by legislative giants  seeking to rid welfare rolls and public housing of drug addicts, dealers, loan sharks and sexual predators.

But usually some air-headed judge who has never read the Constitution or the first 10 amendments thereto, will step in and proclaim the sanctity of  anarchy, deviance  and perfidy pursued by  all citizens.

The idea that free housing is only for those people who go to school and / or work for their spending money, is almost as insurrectional and revolutionary as printing the truth in these Parlous days. 

We, who still practice the regimen, should all pray for the folks in Worcester --- that the housing official either recants or change jobs so he may live on, and that no one barters his next breath on any immediate compliance with the fiery do-or-die Dictum.