Are You Thankful Yet?

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What are you thankful for?

Would you be thankful if you could walk to an open market and afford one of these family meals?

If you had the money, the deluxe Thanksgiving meal is offered with or without the gizzard, heart, and liver. The basic meal is two chicken legs, two wings, and two pairs of scrubbed white chicken feet.

Or, if such a treat is beyond your budget, you can bargain for a live rat recently trapped in the muck of the receding Amazon.

With your holiday meal in the bag you can trek back to your hovel on stilts. These living quarters give homes to tens-of thousands.

The reason for the elevated structures is to allow for rising waters when once more the rainy season begins.

Would you be thankful to have a home? A home where oozing waste from the city on higher ground meanders among the neighborhood.

Are you thankful for a safe and cozy home with indoor toilets and a tub filled with soothing warm water to soak in? If you are, turn your heart toward this young girl who is happy simply because she has never experienced any of the comforts and material gratifications we have.

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."

BE YE THANKFUL

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Just Saggin

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Franz's Symbol of Wisdom

He goes by the name of “Slam," a wide shouldered fellow, accustomed of getting his way. In high school he proved his manhood on the wrestling mat. From his neck down a tattoo of an eagle sprawls across his back. The bird appears alive when flexing muscles dominate his opponents. The girls swooned.

After high school, Slam, happy with his status in life, doesn’t find the need of a marketable skill important. His high school fame however, gradually diminishes. The challenge shifts to be cool in his neighborhood. Cool now is the very object of his existence. A black spider tattooed on his neck, reaching for Slam's adorned left ear, is cool. A pierced tongue sporting a silver stud is cool. His shirt, silver and black satin, open to his belt line, showing off his glistening oiled chest, is cool. A gold plated chain with a large, black iron cross makes him a dominating, hard cool. 

Slam does not sit at home, but saunters down toward the main drag where he is apt to get the recognition he desires. Earplugs supply rap music adding an imperceptive beat to accompany his slow walk. With every other beat his left foot sags to the sidewalk ever so slightly, while his right shoulder compliments the bop. The dude has swag!

Slam hits the big time, the main drag. The sidewalk widens. Friends in cars, sub-woofers blaring, slow down to make eye contact with one of their kind. Slam the man holds his baggy, sagging jeans with his left hand while the other hand gives an approving signal; finger pointing forward. His stroll has now slowed to the rhythm of every fourth beat. 

Hanging suspenders decorate his hips having been demoted from doing their job. All is cool. Across his lower back his underwear begins to seek freedom. The skivvies pop in the sun like a liberated grader belt. A dog bone print on the fabric becomes obvious. The bones alluding to his masculine prowess.

Pooled at the bottom, his britches drag the ground as frayed strands of strings follow like dried worms. Slam is careful not to obscure his highly prized, over-sized sneakers. He also makes sure the touted brand is visible on the side of his brogans, the status symbol of his overall flare. The loose laces are opposite of black. Laced only through four loops, and gathered in the front. They add to being cool and casually drag the sidewalk, giving an air to the in thing.

Slam hears a long blast from a car horn. He partially turns to acknowledge the supposed recognition by a compadre. Instead he sees a long-legged shepherd pup weaving his way through traffic. The hound finds the neighborhood dude irresistible. He sniffs and playfully jumps on Slam. Slam now, being upstaged by this goofy four-legged pain, smacks at the dog. Not deterred, the playful pup nips at the sagging britches and finds the unravelling result exciting. The dog grabs the suspenders and pulls hard to detach them. At this point Slam is urged to forego the rhythm of his earplugs and begins to free himself from the new attraction on the main drag.

To ward off the playful critter, Slam forgets his styling and realizes his underwear is now in full bloom. When he attempts to make a run for it, he steps on his loose laces causing the shoe to come off. With his pants around his ankles, he loses balance and stumbles to the sidewalk. Frantically he reaches for his prized shoe before the hound finds the smell irresistible. 

The dog however, lets go of the stretched suspenders smacking poor Mr. Cool in the butt.

Slam raises his voice and whops the dog with his sneaker. The lively pup still thinks this is a great game and is convinced the cute bones on the skivvies are for him. Mine, mine! Yum, yum, exclaims the dog as he yanks the underwear into shreds and exposes Mr. Cool’s muscular, untanned full moon. 

Bent over, trying to pull up some cover, Slam notices a school bus stopped at the light. The bright yellow rig, full of the neighborhood’s kids, is not in the hurry. It hangs a while at the light as all its passengers crowd to the windows. Across the street, two people are raising their cell phones to capture the excitement to be shared with the local evening's newscast.

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Economics Extended

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The reason I feel compelled to harp on economics is not because I want to lecture on your personal budget, but set in motion a thought and a scenario which has happened in history over and over again.

When we as a country move away from free enterprise, upon which this country was founded, we can move in two directions: to the right, or to the left.

We can move to the right of the political spectrum with less government and less taxes, less intrusion and fewer dictates. We could go further to the right until most of the laws of the land are removed. And even more to the right until all the laws to govern the people have disappeared and all government is gone. At that point, knowing the basic wickedness of humankind, we would wind up in anarchy and undoubtedly be suppressed by the most brutal force or person. Simply, some individual or a power will always find a way to viciously dominate.


We can also move to the left with more government, more laws and dictates to ever more squash and suppress the free enterprise system. This path is sly and deceptive. It first begins with taxation and redistribution. High taxation stifles the free spirit to take chances and get ahead, create self reliance and personal wealth. Taxation also funds welfare to tease and hook the idle. (By all means, I'm not talking about Social Security or other safety net funds.) By hook I mean masses will become dependent on government. We all know human nature, it is always nice to get free stuff.

The second part of this deceptive drift is the suppression of job creators by dictating rules, in the guise of a cleaner and greener environment. This decrease of jobs adds more folks to the unemployed and under-employed count, and you guessed it, more folks looking for help from the government. Then the progressives also add massive amounts of government jobs. To add even more folks on the take, they remove the requirement to prove recipients actually are looking to get a job. They make work disability benefits more easy to receive, and therefore add tens of millions more on the dole. The deception continues. Now add all these programs together and you have masses that will suckle from the government until the milk runs dry.

However, to the smiles of the Socialists, dependency translates into votes. When dependent people outnumber the ones that generate the wealth which pays the taxes, you have a Socialist in power. And with the dependency voters in the majority, who of them would elect a leader who promises to reduce the freebees?

The problem with this setup is that soon the supply of moneys taxed will not be enough to support the idle. So, the government has to do one or two things, print more money, or borrow it. Both are bad. Printing more money reduces the worth of it. It reduces the buying power of the money you have earned and or saved. It buys less, because inflation has eaten up its value.

The government then is also forced to borrow money to keep the piglets fed. This is more cost to the folks that pay taxes. (We all have heard of the $16,000,000,000,000 debt we now have) This debt, owned a lot by the Arabs and Chinese, amounts to around $50,000 for each person living in the USA. Including every baby, man, woman and senior citizen. (It also counts the ones who do not pay any income taxes. . . your share of the debt just doubled.) Just think, we have to pay this debt back! Most likely our children will suffer for that.

Reasonable people know this trend can not be sustained. In the end the government collapses. Riots and thievery takes to the streets. Chaos and anarchy looms. The Socialist is now relegated to clamp down and suppress. This is called Communism.

Communism is responsible for well over 100 million corpses in the last century. Starting with the Bolsheviks in 1917. The latest research claims that Mao Tse-Tung was responsible for over seventy million deaths, and Stalin alone may have killed 60 million people in the USSR alone.

Like I said, the pendulum of basic economics can swing either way. The country was founded on a careful balance of it being at the 6 o'clock mark. (After all, this is why there is hardly anyone in the world that would not want to come to this country.) The closer we can stay at that 6 o'clock point, the longer this country will last.


See previous posts with the American flag as the symbol.

Also, please consider down loading my novel RED SOLSTICE on Kindle, or go to my website fxbiii.com to purchase a hardcopy. The novel exposes totalitarianism during the post WWII era.





  

The Flying Outhouse

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THE FLYING OUTHOUSE  (A story out of my book) 

As I got a little older and bolder, I was allowed to fully use the grownup’s throne room, a medieval masterpiece. 

From the backyard, it looked like a pair of giant bird houses stuck, high up, to the outside of the building. The “flying outhouse” precariously clung to the stone walls in the corner of the Gasthaus and the stable wing. An enclosed wooden shaft extended down fifteen feet to almost ground level. The double outhouse, a two-seater wooden structure, faced north. Inside, a couple of vertical boards partitioned the two perfectly round cut-outs. That partition displayed the only decoration in the room, a wire hook. To keep this hook filled with little squares of newspaper was my assignment. 

We entered the Johnny house from our front hall. The first seat on the left, in this most private chamber, was ours to use. The second seat was used by a man who we never got to know. He lived in an apartment over the Gasthaus about fifty feet from ours. Mother advised to gently knock on the privy door, no matter the degree of urgency, before we bounded in. We never bothered him when he used his assigned throne, and he never bothered us. He never spoke, so we shied away and hid from him. This went on for over five years until we moved. 

Our half of the throne room became a subject of study to me. The shaft, being in a corner of the buildings caught every breeze, as well as raging winter gusts, and amplified them up the shaft. My derriere was not enhanced enough to cover the entire opening on that wooden box. Needless to say, in times of excessive upward drafts, I did not linger. Often, sudden gusts caused the lighter liquid to splash back up. 

The wiping became a science not taught by the elders but by the physics of the situation. Usually the first wipe would force one to make the appropriate adjustment. You knew it was no use trying to fight the wind and the laws of nature when the used paper refused to go down into the hole, but rather stick to you or float around in the room. One soon learned to collect the used paper in one hand and when finished jump off the box, pants around the ankles, and face the hole. The next move took precision. With the free hand you'd grab the knob of the large wooden lid, and with a closely timed movement, pitch the handful of used paper down the shaft while quickly closing the lid. Now, as I said, the timing had to be very precise. If you slammed the lid down too fast, you would smash your hand on the way out of the hole. Conversely, if you were too slow, with your face now straight over the opening and the draft blowing up, you might wind up doing a little dance to get away from the airborne soiled papers. 

In less turbulent moments, I lingered on that seat and watched the drama of the great spider in the little window. The glass panes were long gone, so the spider could monitor the comings and goings of every fly. The drama of life and death in that window was great entertainment for a little boy. I don’t think I have ever seen a movie that surpassed it. 

The johnny house became a sanctuary to me, as it was and always will be to every man. A place to ponder, to think things out, a headquarters for inspiration and long range planning. Now sixty years later, blessed with a family and a business of my own, it is still the only board I ever sat on; . . . the one with a hole cut in it.

The medieval masterpiece continued to contribute to life during those times. Over the years, the pit just below the shaft had gotten full and overflowed. Its collection, with rain water from the roofs, oozed along the north wall and directly below our bedroom window. It was a shaded back yard and the murky substance mostly seeped into the ground along that back wall. During the wet season, however, the seepage moved further on and caught the walls of the stables. It then turned right onto a sunny area where Mom was allowed to have a garden spot. Ah, the bureaucrats of this day and age could have hyped and regulated over such a situation, but we grew cabbage!

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Deceptions

I recently gave my grandchildren a quick quiz. I said:

"In an athletic competition runners are competing in an event that requires the participants to run around the track for ten laps.

"At a point in the race the lead runner just crossed the point to start his seventh lap. How many more laps has he left to finish the race?"

Knowing that all my grandchildren want to prove how smart they are, they all spouted, pretty well at the same time, "He had three laps to go."


Now let us look at this in another way.

If I had asked the children the same question differently, the obvious answer would have been different.

Here is the same race, but worded differently:

"In an athletic competition runners are competing in an event that requires the participants to run around the track for ten laps.

"At a point in the race the lead runner had just completed his sixth lap. How many more laps has he left to finish the race?"

I know all would have said, "He had four laps to go."

Did I deceive the children with the first question? You bet I did.


A while back our president said he wants to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and extend it for the middle class for another year.

I'm amazed that no one asked the president, "What happens to the middle class taxes after that one year extension?"

In every statement by politicians there is wording that can be interpreted and expounded on to arrive at different conclusions.

A smart voter can pretty well see through the muck.

As an American that has gotten a hold of the American dream I'm leery of terms like "Hope and Change."

As a Christian I know where my hope is; it is not in government. The term "Change" pricks my interest and I immediately begin to question. 

As I analyzed the deeper meanings of "Change" during the last three or more years, I found exactly what I feared. I found that I do not like the "Change" that has deceptively been promoted. I have sensed a sly plan to dismantle the dominance of the United States of America in the world, toward a nation which flows and dissolves into an equalized partner among the other nations of the world. In other words, a underhanded move toward a One World Power with one currency, one religion, and eventually one Ruler over all. A world where all wealth is equally distributed, all revolts are crushed, and free speech is squashed. After all, isn't that the aim of the United Nation?

I'm not saying this will happen within a couple of years, I'm simply warning to look at the direction the country is moving under the current administration.

Now that the "Change" has been exposed, the term "Forward" has arisen to sweep along the masses that have become accustomed to the bait (benefits).

Deception is as old as the devil himself. Deceptions are continually at work, but one can not readily perceive them. They are like the termites which are eating away at the mighty oak of our freedom, the one last hope of mankind to be a free people.
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Scarlet O'Hara

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My Symbol Of Wisdom

Scarlet O'Hara-Hamilton-Kennedy-Butler, -- quite a name, quite a woman!

I just finished reading the epic story, "Gone With The Wind",  based around the time of the Civil War. The book, and its more than 1000 pages, brought to life people and their human traits. It also depicted a time in history to which most folks can not relate or even imagine.

The focus in the book is on Miss Scarlet. A prissy, flirting, and exceptionally enticing young maiden to whom the young men are drawn like flies to honey.

From this young maiden begins to flow a spirit and a determination, coupled with deception and underhandedness, which equals only the strongest willed human character.

Miss Scarlet's resolve and perseverance reveals a mindset, one that I as a man can hardly fathom. I have been around women, beginning with my mother, all my life. Although my mother was, and had to be, a strong minded woman. She or anyone else in my life could not be compared to Scarlet.


I like to read classic literature. Literature which uses the english language in a picturesque and descriptive way. Although the newer writings flow much more rapidly, like the staccoto rhythm of rap music, they often fail to reach the soul of human emotions and value.

By trying to understand why I prefer the classic writings, I came to a sentimental conclusion. I deeply believe that the love I have for this country makes me want to grow ever closer to its values and freedom by ever learning and comprehending more of its language.

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Big Bird = .oo1%

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Big bird, the lovable character of the government funded radio and TV corporation, politely has asked to be removed from the political fray.

Good for Big Bird.

What started it all was the statement the presidential challenger made during the debate. Mr. Romney simply stated that he would remove the government subsidy to the above mentioned corporation. His premise, the American government should not be a sponsor, or have control over the free flow of news and information. History has proven that the first step to establish a dictatorship is to take over the airwaves. There is a long list in recent history that proves this process was accomplished by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein . . . and as recently as Hugo Chavez.

The whiners on the left, as well as the clueless media, chuckle because the percentage of the subsidy is only .001% of the total government's budget. The point still is, the government should not have its fingers in the free enterprise system.

Of course the left don't get it. They think that government can do the job better than private enterprise.
Just like they think they rescued Government Motors by loading them up with a $29,000,000,000.00 debt. Just like they think that Amtrak, as well as the Post Office can run forever on an ever increasing annual shortfall. Just like the government's new health takeover will never run in the black.

The sad thing is, nothing run by the government has to be profitable; efficiency is not a requirement.

Only competition improves efficiency which translates to lower costs to the consumer.
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