A BUZZARD EGG OMELET 2017

Why do we need a C in our alphabet?   You could easily replace it with a K and 90% of the words would sound the same.   For the few words where K won’t fit an S would work just fine.

And let’s drop the requirement for U to follow Q … qeen, qack, qake, qeer.  It would make Scrabble easier. 

Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.       P. T. Barnum

A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge.    Salman Rushdie 

I didn’t wash today.   I wasn’t dirty.  If I’m not dirty I don’t wash.   Some weeks I don’t have to shower at all.   I just groom my three basic areas: teeth, hair and ass hole.   To save time I use the same brush.

George Carlin

I would enjoy living in a sane asylum.

Hanlon’s Razor:  Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.  

If all civilian ammo clips were limited to nine rounds the Orlando night club shooter would have had to reload 23 times.

A Texas sharp shooter:  You shoot a hole in the barn door and then draw a target around it.

You can never wade in the same river twice.

It is not that I am obstinate; but if I were to drown my wife would first search for me up stream.

If militia nuts want to carry and play army with assault weapons they should join the Marines and actually defend the Constitution of the United States - but most wouldn't make the intelligence cut.   

Why do vampire hunters always arrive at the crypt just as the sun is setting?

Americans are at the bottom of competency test in math and science when compared to other industrialized countries, which accounts for their willingness to buy into the most outrageous fallacious claims. 

Philip Ward 

EARTH’S POPULATION

1800:  1 Billion

1930:   2 Billion

1960:   3 Billion

1974:   4 Billion

1987:   5 Billion

1999:   6 Billion

2012:   7 Billion

11:47 a.m. 12/22/17:   7,590,879,794

2050:   10 Billion projected

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

If you are preparing for the zombie apocalypse you have a long wait; because regardless of what Christians chose to believe, zombies do not exist and never have.

Logic Argumentum ad Ignorantiam – something is so because it has not been proven it is not so… and the reverse.

All politics is local.   All education is local.

A single sperm has 37.5 megabits of DNA information.   A normal ejaculation transfers about 1,587 gigabits in about three seconds; and you thought 4G was fast.

Unknown – but I read it somewhere

Homo Sapiens have expanded to 7 billion and we threaten every other species on earth.    Marcus Chown

There is someone in my head and it’s not me.   Pink Floyd

Sex is a bad thing because it rumples the clothes.  Jackie Kennedy

For we live to know is known

And all we seek to keep is flown

Let life than as the day flower fall

Tamerlane - Poe

There are surely other worlds than this – other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude.   Edgar Allen Poe

We are just an advanced breed of monkey on a minor planet of a very average star.   Stephen Hawking

DID I RUN and AM I TIRED?

the Ol’Buzzard

HIGHLIGHTS OF 2017

EXHAUSTION

FUCKIT 

the Ol'Buzzard

MEN BEHAVING BADLY

An MSNBC spokesman has confirmed a report saying a news channel staffer had been paid and left the job after complaining she was sexually harassed by ‘Hardball’ host Chris Matthews nearly two decades ago.

The spokesman said Sunday the woman approached CNBC executives in 1999 to report Matthews made inappropriate comments about her in front of others. CNBC is a sister company of MSNBC.

The company declined to identify the comments, other than to say they were inappropriate and never meant as propositions. The spokesman said Matthews was formally reprimanded at the time.

time.com

I have written a couple of post over the past few weeks concerning the vulnerability of most men to an accusation of sexual harassment from some time in their past.  The posts were not to justify inappropriate behavior by men, but to warn against a ‘lets clean the house’ mentality – a social inquisition aimed at all men by women.  

I had in mind to write a third post on the possible consequences of a perceived war against men; but decided that it would come off as sexist to the female readers that might visit my blog – and I would regret that.  

But today on Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski voiced the comments I would have written.   

I believe this world would be more peaceful and saner with women in charge.  For women to attain positions of authority, especially in corporate America, they must compete for positions with men. 

It goes without saying that the work place should be safe and unthreatening for women; it also goes without saying that a man who makes a female uncomfortable in the work place should be censured and that men who are sexual predators should lose their jobs. 

But, there must be a flexible standard.   A purge mentality against all men for past indiscretions will backfire. 

Any business man looking to hire a permanent staff person, with two equally qualified young applicants – one female and one male - must decide which applicant can smoothly transition into the position as the best fit to the existing staff.   

However, the young female, from the very beginning, is at a disadvantage.   It is a given that some time in the future a temp will have to be hired and trained to replace the young woman while she is on paid maternity leave.   

Now add to this the specter of having your whole business disrupted by a sexual harassment charge leveled at some male member of your staff.   As an executive you must now think twice before taking a business trip with a female employee, you must think twice before having a private business lunch with a female employee, and even a private business meeting or evaluation meeting alone with a female employee would be uncomfortable.   This is the new business atmosphere concerning female employment. 

The obvious choice: hire the man.

 I don’t have an answer to this; and it is not right; but in the business world that exist today, this is a reality. 

It is also a reality that a man’s career, his employability, his finances, his family, and his life can be destroyed by one accusation of sexual harassment from his past. 

In the military we use to say: One ah-shit can nullify ten attaboys.  

the Ol'Buzzard 

RAMBLINGS OF AN OLD MAN

We all live in a yellow submarine.

No it’s not it’s green.

Yes it’s a yellow submarine.

You’re color blind you monkey shit you.

I am out of step and it is part of my chosen aging process.    

Age is a separate universe.   You can’t explain getting old to younger people, they don’t want to hear it.  Young people see themselves as the masters of the space ship Enterprise, while old people are from the plant Pathetic.   They know old people aren’t pretty, don’t walk right, are slow and always in the way, and obviously aren’t as smart as themselves.

 I am not complaining.  It is just a shame that your body breaks down  about the time you can kick back, become comfortable with yourself, and are able to enjoy yourself.     

Age doesn’t confer wisdom any more than education confers intelligence, so my take is strictly persona and an old man’s prerogative.

I see this as a crazy fucking time, and I believe we are seeing the decline of our once great nation.   When we say history repeats itself we are actually saying that we move through time, technology advances our lifestyles, but we are still doomed by our human fallibility, and so we recreate the same dilemmas over and over.

At each attempt at social governance there comes a point where the under educated and under intelligent masses rise up to support a charismatic con man and end up destroy a functioning society. 

 The ‘working man’ brought Stalin to power; the ‘working man’ brought Hitler to power.   We could go back farther but you get the point.   The white ‘working man’ has brought Trump to power.

We are seeing a repeat of the inmates organizing and taking over the asylum.  It is a shame that George Orwell didn’t live to write 2016.    

This is a dangerous time: the environment is striking back, and unstable men have control of nuclear weapons.   

Big brother is consolidating power and the masses are falling into line.   All it will take is for one more Supreme Court Justices to be replaced by the Republican Party (INGSOC) and the takeover will be complete.

But, I don’t have a future stake in this game because I am old – and I don’t have much confidence in the outcome.  

Fool, by Christopher Moore is the story of King Lear as told by his jester.

"Goneril went to her father and told his hand, ‘yes father you are old.   Very old.   Really, really, extraordinarily, mind-boggling… ‘

She turned to me for a clue.

‘Dog fuckingly’, I suggested.

‘…dog-fuckingly old,’ said the duchess. ‘You are feebly, incontinently, desiccatedly, smelling-of-boiled-cabbage old.   You are brain-rottingly, balls-draggingly…’

‘I’m fucking old,’ said Lear. 

 ‘We’ll stipulate that,’ I said."

And I’m fucking old said the Ol’Buzzard.

 We will stipulate that

The Ol’Buzzard

  

THE ALABAMA CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST VOTER

The fundamentalist Christians down in Alabama are willing to vote for Roy Moore because he is anti-abortion and they claim to be concerned about the unborn child.   

But it is all bullshit because they don’t give a rat’s ass about children.  

They are willing to vote for a man who prays on children; they are willing to vote for a party that voids health care for the very young; for a party that cuts school lunch programs, for a party that kicks thirteen million people off health care – many low income single mothers; for a party that cuts funding to education; for a party that cuts funding for pre-schools; for a party that opposes family health care subsidies; for a party that opposes food stamps for low income families with children; for a party that increases the cost of student loans…

It is not about children, it is all about sex.

Their real concern is controlling young women’s sexuality: they consider women who have sex outside of marriage as immoral, and believe that if a woman of loose morals gets pregnant she should be forced to carry the pregnancy to term as punishment for her sins.

Along with opposing abortion they also oppose women’s health clinics, like Planned Parenthood, that educate and assist women with birth control.   I am surprised they haven’t tried to legislate that a woman who has had an abortion be tattooed with a scarlet letter A.  They are the Christian version of the Taliban and their goal is to eventually enact their Sharia laws.  

the Ol’Buzzard

SOME OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM GEORGE CARLIN

1.     What kind of god damn disease is anorexia?  I don’t wanna eat!   How do we come up with that shit?

2.    Bulimia.  There’s another all-American disease.   This has got to be the only country in the world where some people are digging in the dumpster for peach pits while other people eat a nice meal and puke it up intentionally.

3.    Auto racing is a sport that is very big in the south; a perfect marriage of fast cars and slow minds.

4.    Most of the racing fans are soldier sniffers and patriotic halfwits.   The’d be honored to have the occasional military jet slam into the crowd and send a couple of hundred of them off to be with Jesus.

5.    White people fucked up the blues.

6.    The only good thing ever to come from religion was the music. 

the Ol'Buzzard

KILL UM ALL AND LET GOD SORT IT OUT

 What is happening now is challenging a old social norm on the behavior of men toward women in the work place.    Because of this moment women of the future will work in a safer and less threatening environment.   

But the torches are out, and every man is guilty and every man is vulnerable for some behavior in his past. 

 Mika, on Morning Joe, was asked if she had the power to have any man on MSNBC fired with an accusation by her; and her answer was yes.  


SHOULD ONE ACCUSATION COST A MAN HIS JOB?

 It has Harold Ford Jr. 

There needs to be some perspective for accountability between shaming and (to distort the old Vietnam adage) ruin them all and let God sort it out. 

the Ol'Buzzard

AN INTERESTING STATISTIC

The Republicans just ran up our National debt by one point four trillion dollars ( $1,400,000,000,000.00)

If you were to bang a hammer on a surface once every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year - it would take you forty-fore thousand years (44,000) to equal the dollar value of the Republican National debt increase.  

ONE TRILLION DOLLARS IS A FUCKING BIG NUMBER. 

the Ol'Buzzard

REPUBLICAN TAX CUTS

Just sent this as a letter to the editor of a local e-newspaper.  You are welcome to reuse all are any part for your local paper. 

The Republicans in the Senate just pulled out the credit card and charged one of the biggest tax cuts in our history. 

At a time of record unemployment, record stock market gains, and big business booming it is hard to justify the need for a tax cut. 

One point four trillion dollars ($1,400,000,000,000.00) will now be added to our already massive debt; and maybe it is worth it.   Now we can repair our road system and bridges, modernize our national power grid, construct a high-speed rail system connecting the east coast and west coast, create millions of high paying jobs, make Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security solvent into the distant future.

But that is not what is happening.

The Republican tax bill gives huge tax breaks to multi-national companies that are already raking in record profits.   It cuts taxes on multi-millionaires and billionaires (and if you don’t believe Trump stands to make hundreds of millions from this tax cut, I have some swamp land in Florida I will sell you.)  This is one of the largest giveaways to the mega-wealthy sine Reagan.  

This tax bill, also makes massive cuts to education – including student loans, cuts to health care that will leave millions uninsured, cuts to hospitals and emergency services, and cuts across the board to social programs.

In two to three years, claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility, the Republicans will cry the that the national debt is unsustainable, and they will demand cuts in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to bring down the deficit.

 

Hard working middle class people that voted Republican, as well as the rest of us, now must pay the price.

 

 Republican voters have been duped by the Republican shell game and allowed to find the marble with God, guns, gays and abortion under the obvious paper cup; now the bait and switch has been accomplished and rubes must now pay the huckster.  

It is time to remove the emerald glasses and realize the man behind the curtain has just pulled the leaver on you; and vote out the Republicans in the 2018 election.

the Ol’Buzzard

GARRISON KEILLOR OF PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION WAS FIRED FROM MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO

The past coming back to haunt you....

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion was fired from Minnesota Public Radio on allegations of improper behavior.   MPR has severed all ties with Keillor and will rename The Prairie Home Companion, which is now hosted by a different MC.

An excerpt from Huffington Post quotes Keillor:
‘in an email to MPR’s news boss Wednesday afternoon, Keillor wrote “I think the country is in the grip of a mania – the whole Franken business is an absurdity – and I wish someone [would] resist it, but I expect MPR to look out for itself, and meanwhile I feel awfully lucky to have hung on for so long.”

There needs to be some perspective, because at some point in our lives all men are guilty; except Jesus and Gay Guys - which is probably the same category.

Setting aside the ilk of Roy Moore; there was a time when the tolerated sexual misconduct of men toward women was overlooked, and this should be brought to light.   This behavior is something that should stop and end here.    But it bothers me that a man who made advances toward a woman or made an inappropriate comment in the past should be painted with the same brush as Roy Moore, should lose his job, his reputation, traumatize his family, and place the stigma of his actions on his wife and children to carry into public and into the future. 

This is a definitive moment in time - a change in culture; but we need to move through it without a mania for revenge.   

I'm fucking old

and I am looking at this through an alpha male's eyes

Sorry

the Ol'Buzzard

INHERIT THE WIND

Light the torches

Get out the pitch forks

There is a man in sight!

Matt Lauer fired from MBC.   If we are going to get rid of every man that made a pass at a woman, soon there will only be women on TV, women in the movies and women in government.   Actually, that last might be a good thing.  

We are starting through a new era, like integrating the south in the 1960’s, where previously accepted norms will be no longer accepted.  

Throughout history, and definitely all of my life, men have been in charge, men have had the power, men have made the rules.   It has been a Man’s World.

Now there are women in combat, women CEO’s, women in government, women in charge.   They are not going to take it anymore; and a lot of men will fall by the way side for what was once considered acceptable behavior in the Man’s World.     

the Ol'Buzzard

WINTER IS COMING

This year in Maine weather scientist are predicting a record breaking snow season.  

1.    The warm temperatures this October broke all previous records.   October temperatures have been a hall mark for predicting snow levels:  Of the twenty years of highest recorded October temperatures, seventeen of those years were the seventeen highest recorded snow falls.

2.    A  La Na Nina in the Pacific is an indicator of winter trade wind routs across New England.  The Alberta Clippers follow the trade winds, and the more advanced the La Nina the more snow fall we received in Maine.    This year there is a La Nina in the Pacific and it is due to peak in mid-winter.

3.    Ocean waters off the coast of Maine are the warmest on record.   Warm waters in the Gulf of Maine tend to create more frequent winter storms and more severe snow events (nor-easters.)

This year we are looking at a trifecta, with snow falls in the western mountains of Maine expected to be in excess of 100 inches.  

 My wife and I are winter people, and I love this.

the Ol'Buzzard

BIONICS BRAIN MODIFICATION

Back in the 60’s the TV program The Million Dollar Man (a mechanically modified super hero) was considered way out Sci Fi.  

Today, men and women with mechanical prosthetics are a reality.   Without us realizing it, technology has taken us one step further.  The cell phone, though not implanted, has become an attachment to our brains, to the point that many people go through severe withdrawals when deprived, for a few days or even hours, of access to their cell phone. 

Especially young people are known to check their phones two to three times within every waking hour.  Technology and social networks are now an addiction, and likely modifying the brain patterns of the younger generation, as children are introduced to computers and cell phones at a very young age. 

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a scientific research was discussed; the results found that adolescent girls who spend an excess of five hours a day plugged to social media have a seventy percent increase in depression and suicide attempts.   Boys don’t seem to be affected.

For many professionals their life is on their cell phone and separation from their phone is unthinkable; but, it goes further – the average person has become dependent on this technology, and feels naked without their phone.  Cell phones have truly become the opioid of the masses.

 There are a few of us that are hold outs.

the Ol'Buzzard