High Plains Drifters- The Monday Collage

It's time for the annual motorcycle ride.

We've done Glacier Park, the Lost Coast of California, the Grand Canyon. This year it's the Black Hills.

South Dakota and the Black Hills might just be my favorite place on the planet. I am leaving Tuesday and meeting the crew in Idaho Falls. It was 108 degrees in Boise today so we've got that going for us.

I actually wrote a Sunday collage but it sucked. The bar at Frankenstein Government is set pretty high and I know that my readers are busy fucking off living their extremely important lives and only have a limited amount of time with which they devote to reading.  So I don't want to waste their time. That's the selfless, caring, blog owner that I have become.

That and I am burned out. So this trip comes at a pretty good time. Gawd, I love the summer.

I'll try and post photos and some of the stupid shit that is bound to happen. It should be a good trip- I hear Jason's leaving the Indian behind so we can actually ride- rather than spend our time hanging out in mechanic shops and service bays.

In the meantime, don't let the bastards grind you down.

Urban Goat Herds, Illegal Pedestrians, All Season Women

I like Seattle.

If it wasn't for the rain and clouds, the atrocious cost of living, traffic, taxes, shitty jobs, gobs of people, and most of them statists- it would be a great place to live. I mean how can you knock a place that passes helmet laws for bicyclists, bans smoking in public places, and requires anybody that gets into the water- to wear a life vest? I mean, how did mankind survive prior to King County? Luck, mostly. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/King-Co-requires-life-vests-for-swimmers-1432255.php

I haven't been to Seattle for a few years. So what I thought I would do here is let some of you people in on a little secret. It's how stupid ideas get traction. For years, I used to sit in on city council meetings and county commissioner meetings in Hailey- a geographic area which I lovingly refer to now as Moonbat Valley. Every once in awhile, some "yay- hoo" would come in with a ridiculous idea during the open business part of the meeting. Often, council members would dismiss these awful ideas while acting all concerned and nodding solemnly but every once in awhile, one of those shitty ideas would actually get a little traction- particularly if it was some green idea like outlawing idling cars or fining people for not picking up dog poop on the bike path. Statists love to hear ideas about criminalizing some act of human conduct that does not effect them.

This is the micro managed world that we live in. So I was not shocked to see an entire herd of goats fenced in and underneath several highways near downtown Seattle. The goats are there to eat weeds. Clearly this is a far more efficient way of clearing weeds than sending in 10 or so lazy parks workers or  a few inmates. Instead, some goat herder guy in a trailer sits there for days and weeks, until the weeds have been eaten by the goats. This is one of those silly ideas that not only found traction for some unspecified reason (err, collective bargaining) but it is probably much easier to expect some measurable, attainable results from goats rather than expect much from unionized city employees.

So how much does it cost to rent a herd of goats for a couple weeks? Apparently, that part of the goat story is missing. Do they send out invitations for bids from competing goat herders? Just listen to the unidentified moonbat in the news video selling the goat idea. That's how this stuff gets done. Goats save human lives.  http://q13fox.com/2013/06/24/goats-hired-to-gobble-down-seattles-toughest-brush-stickers-and-all-yum/#axzz2XT3ORFCA

I am almost afraid to talk about this. Once when I was a kid, I agreed to pull out all of the weeds in a vacant lot for 20 bucks. This was in the days before weed whackers. After two hours of solid work and bleeding hands, I lit the lot on fire. Those weeds were gone in 30 minutes at about the same time the fire department arrived. The owner stiffed me. What I wouldn't have given for a herd of goats back then.

Seattle's Weed Abatement Team, Lounging Around

Moments before this picture was taken, I saw a sanitation worker sweeping around a trash can with one of those dustpans with the long handles. He spotted a syringe. Rather than sweep it up, or don some rubber gloves and pick it up, he swept it under the trash can and called someone else to pick it up. I think he called it a "signal 6" or some silly shit like that. Apparently, a specialized Seattle trash-hazmat team has to come over and get it. This is union labor at it's finest. I was tempted to push the trash can over and grab the syringe- just to cause some sort of urban ruckus but there were a couple kids with me and I was on my best behavior.

Now I wanted to mention a sign that I had spotted on a Seattle light pole close to the goat herd. It was a no walking sign- you know the kind with a big red slash through the pedestrian guy. It was mounted right over a sidewalk of all places- and obviously it was there to protect me from something. It was a harrowing experience walking on that sidewalk, knowing that death could visit me at any moment. I survived despite my poor judgment and I had hoped we could put the picture of that sign in here but on second thought, maybe I am better off not posting that picture. If I confess to the crime of illegal pedestrian, the City of Seattle might just send me one of those mail in tickets.

From the goat herd we ventured up a couple of blocks.

We went to the fish market where they throw the fish around. This is cheap entertainment and so we watched some fish getting tossed about, bought a bunch of cinnamon rolls and other nutritious things, and headed up to one of the eighteen hundred Starbucks coffee shops in Seattle.

That's when I spotted this guy. He was looking for an "all season" woman. For those of you who don't know, an all season woman is a woman that keeps you warm in the winter and provides shade in the summer. There are also "all season men" but he wasn't after one of those. Please note the excellent penmanship and artistic design on his sign. I gave him one of those flattened out cinnamon roll thingys in exchange for this photo.

I probably sat outside of the Starbucks and watched this guy for 20 minutes. I was in awe. He was dead serious. I had never contemplated this direct approach to dating, and I could see some drawbacks. I probably would have included an age range just to weed out some of the older ones.

In Moonbat Valley, I could have busted this guy in the old days. I think his sign is non conforming with respect to our sign ordinance. If nothing else, we could have debated it for an hour and a half along with all of the other important stuff we used to talk about in staff meetings.

Yesterday, we traveled home. Unlike the trip up to Seattle, I did not attract the attention of one state trooper on the way home. Boise it seems, is behind the times. Our cost of living is right at the national average. Our taxes are pretty low. We don't have to wear bicycle helmets while riding our bikes or life preservers when floating down the Boise River. We don't have any weed filled lots strewn with hundreds of syringes and I haven't seen any goats east of Nampa. The only real statists live on the north end of Boise and I don't see them anymore now that I have relinquished my socialist YMCA membership.

Maybe I need to go to a council meeting or two to remember how it was.

Ecuador to Take Snowden, Offers U.S. Money For Human Rights Education

This Snowden thing just gets funnier and funnier.

Now even Ecuador is giving the U.S. the finger. Seems the world's caught on to us. I giggle every time I think of Obama going on that worldwide apology tour in 2009- and then changing absolutely nothing- from closing Gitmo to allowing drone strikes.

Same shit, different day. http://iroots.org/2013/06/27/ecuador-prepares-to-accept-snowden-offers-u-s-23-mil-for-human-rights-education/

What Kind of "Coward" is Edward Snowden?

The best Edward Snowden read on the intarwebs. I think you'll like it.

http://danbojangles.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/what-kind-of-coward-is-edward-snowden/comment-page-1/#comment-56

Hong Kong to Eric Holder. Go fuck yourself. Heh.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/06/hong-kong-to-eric-holder-stuff-it.html

Irony, Justice Coming On Swift Wings- The Sunday Collage

You want to know the pure definition of irony?

Irony occurs when the greatest spy nation of all time, charges one of it's own spies, for releasing secrets directly related to the extent of their spying. 

This week the government that brought you the Patriot Act, worldwide eavesdropping, bugs designed to destroy computer networks, the capability to intercept anything you do or send on a computer or phone including GPS which is able to track your movements, places cameras in public venues, embeds microprocessors in your passport, operates drone aircraft able to photograph a mole on you ass from 4 miles away, and a hierarchy that has the power to shut down every means of communication available to you if it feels threatened, has charged Edward Snowden with espionage.

That is some rich shit, indeed.

In a world turned completely upside down, where the cowards and traitors of Congress, point fingers at Ed Snowden and tell us that somehow his telling the truth is treason and that their own lying and stealing trillions from the American taxpayer and giving it to bankers is virtuous and patriotic. Who are you going to believe? What is the litmus test? 

Edward Snowden told the truth. Nobody is charging him with lying. Ed Snowden embarrassed that culture of criminals and ne'er do wells that inhabit D.C. He exposed the extent to which government can pry into our lives while ignoring the Constitution. He embarrassed all of the Congressmen and women who really don't give a shit what government does so long as they get theirs. The only time they get angry is when some government contractor kid exposes their shitty oversight and work habits- which of course jeopardizes their ability to win re-election.

That's what this is really all about. 

The sycophants are out in force. The government stooges and statists, carrying our corrupt governments' water for them, are telling us how Ed Snowden had no right to do what he did. He was supposed to go through "proper channels" by telling the same worthless bastards in Congress that allowed all of this to happen in the first place- what was happening. 

They would have buried that information along with Snowden. His information would have been discredited, his life ruined. Snowden was smart enough to know all of that. You know what really pisses them off? Snowden has outsmarted them. Some punk kid, sans an Ivy league law degree, has made them look like the ineffective boozehounds that they are. How much does Snowden know? What if he listened in on a few of their conversations, maybe grabbed an email here or there? Oh the possibilities...

Snowden is who he says he is. A patriot. I'll take what little I know of him over that pile of garbage in D.C. any day of the week. If Edward Snowden represents pure irony, then the young voters who voted for Obama in the 2012 election are about to receive some pure justice.

For years I've been saying that the job losses of 2008, catapulted our country into a complete health care melt down. Young, healthy people lost millions of jobs with benefits and they quit spending money, money they didn't have anyway, on healthcare or COBRA. With the loss of billions of dollars in premiums, the insurance and health care oligarchies went into panic mode. Their margins were getting crushed and they ratcheted existing member premiums through the roof.

The only way to get all of that lost money back in- was to shove healthy people back into the health care system via the force of law- so that they could subsidize the costs of the unhealthy and improve profit margins. That is all that Obamacare boils down to- a law that compels and takes money from the young and healthy- and delivers it to the healthcare oligarchy on behalf of the elderly and sick.

The entire left hemisphere has bought into the ridiculous notion that the ACA is some benevolent program devised by their loving government to help them. I absolutely giggle at the naivete' of people who believe things like that. It's always about money. If you don't give it to them voluntarily, they'll just pass a law and take it from you anyway.

So here's the justice part. The same people who re-elected Obama in 2012 after the ACA was passed are now going to have to pay the premiums for Obamacare. I read a story this week that said the average 25 year old pays about 800 bucks a year for healthcare right now. Under Obamacare, those making 40,000 a year are going to be asked to pay premiums totaling 5000.00 per year. (silver, gold plans)

So the same demographic that voted for this buffoonery is the same demographic that will have to pay for it. Now that might be some measure of justice but it gets better...

Young people are not going to buy in. Why? Because the penalties are far cheaper than the worthless coverage. Here's the best part. Young people won't have to buy it at all...until they get sick! Remember that pre-existing clause? There is literally nothing stopping anybody from not purchasing health insurance until they actually get sick. Which is precisely what I would do.  http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/implementing-obamacare

Should young people buy in? No. That's what this article says. This article makes two excellent points. There are SIXTY pages of questions to sign up for Obamacare. Wow. Welcome to government. This article also give an example of a 27 year old, making 30 grand a year and having to pay 300 a month for Obamacare. That is the basic plan. The "you almost don't have insurance" bronze plan. I hate it when articles don't identify costs by plan. The silver or gold plan would cost more. I don't think people will take the bronze plan. The out of pocket expenses render it almost useless. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351661/young-people-should-say-no-obamacare-john-fund

So in addition to the young Obama voting demographic being on the hook for this mess- giving far more in premiums than they will be receiving- I really don't think they'll buy in. I am referring to those people making a decent wage.  The people making 20 grand or less will get their healthcare for free essentially. So they'll sign up. This will ultimately cause an even bigger problem than the one they sought to avoid. Health care costs will shoot through the roof some more as the pent up demand of that class of people who previously had no health care receives attention- while the people making a livable wage continue to opt out only until they get seriously ill and at that point opt in and add to our systemic losses.

The healthcare industry needs sweeping reform from top to bottom. The ACA will be a financial disaster. Not for political reasons. It just won't work. People are broke. They can't afford this. Nobody is going to make a payment the size of a house payment for something they will very likely not need for 30 years. Maybe we needed the ACA for all of the wrong reasons. Maybe it will lead to a serious effort to reform a bloated, thieving industry, where virtually every player is gouging the American public for the absolute maximum amount of money. If a catastrophic failure occurs with the ACA, perhaps that will lead to intelligent reform. The unintended consequences of bad legislation may actually lead to something much more palatable or cost effective.

Edward Snowden never stole a dime from me. He has never lied to me.
The traitors in Congress sold our country out long ago. It started with the bankers in 2008.

The people in this country are broke. The ACA fixes nothing. It just steals more money from the haves and redistributes it to the have nots. The system is coming apart at the seams and the ACA is no fix. Not even short term.

We have a real problem in this country. We cannot tell the true from the false. The brave men are labeled traitors, the traitors call themselves patriots. The Affordable Care Act is a lie. It is not affordable nor does it care who it hurts. It is simply a tax which forces in the young and healthy and takes their money.

I keep thinking people will get tired of being lied to. But not yet. Justice has a way of settling these things. I hope it doesn't take too long.

We Return You Now To Your Regularly Scheduled Financial Apocalypse

Just a hint of tapering off. Bernanke's remarks yesterday had Wall Street bankers running for the exits. Bond yields ratcheted up. Markets sold off in dramatic fashion.

Bank repo rates in China last night were quoted beyond 25%. That led to the greatest stock market loss in the Hang Seng all year, a nearly 3% loss.

Hong Kong Hang Seng Index

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HSI:IND

20,382.87604.02 2.88%




Three days ago, on CNBC, every guest and host said "buy stocks." That's the same shit I've been listening to since this manufactured QE recovery began in Mar. of 09.

It's always been a liquidity crisis. The world is awash in a sea of debt and even the masters of the universe can't change that. Extend and pretend time is over. The "spend our way out of debt" exercise is wrapping up. There is no "jobs recovery" just job splitting to evade Obamacare rules. There is no building renaissance as lumber prices tumble, no demand. In Boise, they've built a few apartments and condos- maybe a few high end homes- but that's about it. Vacant commercial property is still every where.

I think people are buying manufactured homes and plunking them down on rural land to avoid taxes.

A small bag of groceries at Whole Foods still costs 70 bucks. Gas has remained steady at just under 4 bucks a gallon. The government tells us there is no inflation as they massage input figures and data while raising our taxes.

Is the end of QEternity here? I doubt it. If they stop QE, financial armageddon arrives. Look what happened yesterday when Bernanke just hinted at slowing bond purchases and tapering off. The actions of international markets in the last 24 hours should scare the begeezus out of them.

Last night, I clipped this comment from a Zerohedge story on Chinese bank repo rates.

It’s about fucking time... Can we get this impending collapse shit underway already? My food stockpiles are nearing their expiration dates.

This morning futures are down sharply. Silver went below 20 bucks. Bond yields continue to rise. There will be no shortage of cheap stock salesmen on CNBC telling you to buy the dip today.

The spend your way to prosperity experiment is over. We return you now to your regularly scheduled financial apocalypse.

Debate Team, Why Does Obama Cause So Much Conflict?

Taking the long route today.

Debate club, old man style. That's why I like Huffpo. Debating causes me to think. I am in awe at some
of the positions liberals take.

I am not kidding when I say this. Dyed in the wool leftists often cannot grasp why government would lie. They simply give government officials, particularly "theirs" the benefit of the doubt. It defies belief. But in as much as they defend "theirs" they hate "yours." Leftists always think they know your agenda.

Whenever I am debating an issue, let's say in the case of the Congressional Budget Office's allegation that this year's deficit will only be 642 billion, I stick to the facts. Generally what happens is this. a) Intelligent people realize when they are wrong or at the very least, realize when they have been mislead. They will go quiet. b) Every once in awhile, I actually have a decent back and forth discussion with an intelligent person without name calling. This causes me to re-think or reinforce a position with fact checking. It happened last week. c) Some ego maniac will start calling you names when you disagree with an unsubstantiated position that they have taken. When they start calling you names, you win. It is always that simple.

The single greatest conflict generator of my entire life is Barack Obama. I have never ever seen an individual more adept at lying than this guy. He is a pure professional. When I see his particular quality of deception- I am in awe. Even when caught in a lie, Obama simply shuts up. Thus he gives the detracting side no credibility and no power- knowing full well that the issue will fade. Benghazi, and where he was during that 7 hours, is a perfect example. He has never addressed the issue.

The reason that Obama causes so much conflict is because he is so damn good at being deceptive. Bush was a piker compared to this guy. Even ardent conservatives had to agree that Bush was a shitty liar. So Bush didn't generate the kind of entrenched conflict that Obama does. It doesn't hurt that Obama is black either. Supporters will often use the race card anytime they are losing a debate involving Obama.

I don't think I have ever researched anyone more thoroughly than Obama. I certainly have never researched anyone, anywhere, who is a bigger enigma than this guy. His entire life makes no sense to me.

e·nig·ma  (-ngm) n. 1. One that is puzzling, ambiguous, or inexplicable.

Let me tell you a little story which will make sense once you think about it. Hillary Clinton, while in college, aspired to be President. She had actually stated that to classmates in the 70's. So Hillary got the right education, made all the rights moves, protected her husband from scandal which included a cocaine habit and a 12 year year affair with Gennifer Flowers. Eventually, Bill made it to the White House. Now I have a friend who attended school with Hillary and claimed Hillary was gay. She has told me that she had always believed Hillary was a lesbian. For all of our alleged "open-mindedness" in the U.S., it is highly doubtful that a female, moreover an openly gay female, could ever be President. At least that was the America of Hillary's youth. So Hillary, ever the master planner, got married and had one child. She manufactured a life that was acceptable to voters. A facade. Hillary could care less who Bill screws around with- that was never important to her. What is important to Hillary is her ego and ambition. I have always believed the whole marriage, kid, thing was just a cover story for a Presidential run or two. There are now rumblings that in Hillary's upcoming book, she is going to disclose that she is bi-sexual. So after 4 decades, maybe the truth will come out.

That was never a mystery to me. So why is any of this important? Because it showcases the great lengths that people will go to satisfy their ego and ambitions. What are you willing to sacrifice, to do, to get what you want? That is the great lie that is Hillary's life. Hillary Clinton is no enigma. She is simply a woman who has gone to great extremes to cover up who she really is to get what she wants. Hillary knows sacrifice.

It's a bit pathological really. But Hillary is not an enigma. In fact, she is quite transparent at least in this stage of her life. Which brings me back to Obama, the man with two biographies. The one he presents to the public and within his books, and the real man- the enigma.

How do I know this? Because quite simply- his life and the piecemeal narrative he gives us- does not make any sense.

For five years, I have studied Obama. I have read his books, looked at every childhood picture I could find, read accounts. I am amazed at how difficult it is to place him anywhere at any given time- the lack of specific times and dates- in any of his books.

I know he left Indonesia sometime in late grade school. Pictures taken in Indonesia and Hawaii with his sister make it difficult but not impossible to at least take a general stab at how old he was when he landed back in the United States as Barry Soetoro. He looks much older than he claims to have been. (5th grade) I'm not even sure where Obama lived before college. With his grandmother I suppose- while attending Punahou school in Hawaii. His real mother, father, and grandparents are all dead. That doesn't make this fact finding any easier.

The truth begins to take shape only as you examine his sister Maya. She was born in Jakarta when Obama would have just turned 9. Read her "early life" in this wiki entry. Pay close attention to the second paragraph, one line. Barack's mother went back to Indonesia with Maya and left Barack behind? Is that what is implied? Maya was born an Indonesian but home schooled by her mother there? Does any of this make sense? Do you leave one kid behind and take another? Clearly Maya is an Indonesian. Was Barry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Soetoro-Ng

Don't take issue with wiki. I have read this in other places.

Things get really murky about the time Obama's mother leaves Indonesia to go to Hawaii, drop Barry off (I guess with grandma) and then return with Maya to Indonesia. I don't understand that.

The more I read, the more puzzled I get. Pieces and years are missing and then all of a sudden, a high school prom picture shows up. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-prom-photos-resurface-1979-article-1.1352743

How could Obama afford to attend Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard with little or no money? He has no discernible income and he certainly didn't come from a wealthy family. Did he have any jobs? Not that I know of. Wealthy relatives, inheritances? Nope.

The problem I have with all of that of course- is that I went to school at the same time. School was expensive. There is little doubt that Obama would have required financial aid. Where are the records of grants, scholarships, student loans? Undisclosed, of course.

Unlike Obama, I had nothing to hide. I received grants, a student loan, borrowed money, and I worked. In Obama's case, a person who should have been vetted and scrutinized far more than I ever was, I am not sure anybody even bothered asking him how he financed that college career.

So either Obama was a fantastically good drug dealer, had financial help, or the world recognized how gifted he was and gave him a free pass. (I worked three part time jobs) How about ex-girlfriends in college? Was Obama a-sexual? How come nobody ever steps up to say, I dated Barack in college?

What of that 1981 passport Barack used to travel back to Indonesia? What happened to it? What's with the social security number assigned to Obama from Connecticut? He never lived there. What I am going to do here is clip a Snopes piece that purports to debunk the origins of Obama's social security number from a state he never lived in. In an all out effort to twist the truth, Snopes postulates that Barack's social security number was a clerical error! I'm not kidding. (Paragraph 7) When I was a kid, my number 516 was assigned to all Montana residents. They did not give me a regional Wyoming number by mistake nor did they say we assign numbers according to regions. That is complete bullshit. In my youth as a cop, numbers were assigned according to states- not regions. We were taught that as a matter of fact and I used that fact to solve a number of identity riddles amongst people I arrested and who were trying to hide their identity usually because they were wanted in the same state as their SSN was issued in. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ssn.asp

At no time, in literally hundreds of cases, did an individual living in New Hampshire get a regionally generated number- let's say one normally assigned to Vermont. Not once did that ever happen to me or anyone I worked with in 25 years. Snopes is full of shit.

Less than two years in the Illinois legislature and suddenly a man that most of us never heard of, Barack Obama, surfaces and becomes President??

I will summarize with this. The more I have looked at Obama's life the more confused I have become. Nothing makes sense. As a retired police officer with a quarter century on the job, let me offer this. If I had discovered something as inexplicable and confusing as Obama's life while on the job, I damn sure knew that I was missing a number of facts. In an investigative sense, when people with hold routine facts about themselves, or fail to present innocent and harmless things about themselves, they do that because they are hiding something. They are hiding something because they know that the truth will bring them a boat load of trouble. It's as simple as that. Always.

Obama has single handedly polarized this country into two camps. The people who believe his bullshit and those of us who don't. Debating who this guy is becomes a zero sum game. It doesn't matter at this point. Well, unless you live in the middle east underneath the shadow of those drones or you are trying to get health insurance from one of these state sponsored exchanges come January.

Obama's skin tone is a non issue. Unfortunately, the left was reluctant to vet him because that might raise the specter of racism among their anointed appointee. I honestly think that's why Obama has gotten away with his half assed story. If some old white guy with Obama's history had run for President the media would have dumped him on his head. Look at the NSA kid, Edward Snowden. I knew more about Ed Snowden (where he went to school, his employers, his parents, and everything about his life) in two days than I do about our President. It's a fantastic comparison really. To see how well the media works when it is not compromised by the credentials of an Ed Snowden, and to see how poorly it works when it has a dog in the fight that it desperately wants to win. The media has always been for sale but never as cheaply as it is now.

Obama causes conflict because he is non transparent. He is deceptive. He punishes his enemies while smiling at them. He has chosen his side and by his very actions, he demands that you get on board with him. He is not a unifier or collaborator. He is that kind of guy who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. He wants you to cooperate with him because he knows what he is doing and you do not. He believes that. He is forever the knowledgeable college professor and you are the lowly student. Everything is a teachable moment- because you are just too naive to understand anything. Obama cannot understand why anybody would question his credentials. Truth be told, it would genuinely puzzle him.

I can't wait until Obama's term is over. That will be our first opportunity to really find out who this guy is- without the interference of the media or the leftist minions. To actually figure out who this guy is without starting WWIII. Unlike Bush, I think Obama is going to entertain us for years to come. No matter who we elect, if I ever see a picture of Obama with a word cloud over his head that says, "Miss me yet?"

I will simply reflect, "Barack, if that is your real name, I hardly knew ye."