GIVE ME A BREAK

Politics, Democrats, Republicans, Socialist, Hillary, Bush, Trump, Fox News, Police Brutality, Black Lives Matter,  MSNBC, The Market, Isis, Iraq, Iran…   Give me a break.

Check out from the monkey brain and chill out.   Disconnect.

Pop popcorn, open a beer, enjoy a glass of whiskey, open a bottle of wine or just smoke a joint – and spend the next hour watching an old TV series:

Kolchak, the Night Stalker

You are welcome

the Ol'Buzzard

WARNING – WARNING WILL ROBINSON!

I have a fairly fast computer but lately it seems it has been slowing down.

Yesterday I switched on the computer, brought up Internet Explorer and checked some of my regular sites.  After a few minutes a pop-up appeared that took up most of the screen.   It said there was a problem with my Microsoft programs.  The pop-up listed a telephone number to call and also asked me to click on a link promising to explain the problem.

I could not get rid of this pop-up even when I shut down and restarted the computer.

I noticed that my Norton virus icon was not showing on my desktop – so I called Norton.

  

It turns out this was a virus scam and I was well advised not to have called the 1-855 number or hit the button to open the link.

  

Norton fixed the problem for me in about fifteen minutes.

  

I have also been getting calls on my telephone from someone with an Indian accent identifying himself from Microsoft and stating that there is a problem on my computer with a Microsoft program.   I never engage with this caller – simply say I don’t accept non-solicited calls and hang up.

So be warned

The Ol’Buzzard

  

IT IS ONLY ROCK AND ROLL - GO WITH THE FLOW

Thanks to Nan's blog - ALL THE GOOD NAMES WERE TAKEN - I have rediscovered Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

Light up a joint if you have one, pop a beer, kick back and enjoy: because life is short and you shouldn't take things seriously.

I would love to be at this party.
the Ol'Buzzard

MY SHIT DOESN’T STINK – TOO BADLY

We are all of the same mentality, and the fact is we do get use to our own stink.

 

When we first got to Alaska my wife and I both smoked.   The Native kids would come over to the house and tell us ‘your house stinks.’   Native kids are refreshingly unabashed - they say what they think.

Our house was always clean, and at first we were somewhat resentful; because when we visited the Native houses there would be dried, smoked salmon on the counter, a chunk of moose quarter sitting on the floor in a cold corner of the room and perhaps muskrats being skinned in a tub in the kitchen floor.

  

It is the same thing in politics: our own opinions are reasonable and everybody who doesn’t agree with us is actually stupid or else conniving – looking out for themselves at the expense of others.

So where does that leave us?

I actually do believe that most people that vote Republican are on the down side of the IQ scale – or looking out for their own personal interest at the expense of others.

 

I know that what I think is true, because my shit doesn’t stink as much as everybody else’s.

the Ol’Buzzard

 

KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT IT OUT

At 11:02 am on August 11, seventy years ago today, the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan killing 70,000 civilians of the 270,000 population. 

We easily call similar atrocities genocide, mass murder or terrorism.   In our case we search for justification for this slaughter claiming a high ground that it saved American lives, and we are always the good-guys – manifest destiny. 

We must remember the winners get to write the history; and it goes down as genocide if you are the looser but justifiable if you win

If you are logical you could see how some middle-eastern nation exploding nuclear weapons in New York and Chicago could use the same argument of justification that we use for Japan. 

 It is human to personalize a vendetta as justified when it might affect us.   My mother was a Navy Hospital Corpsman and a member of the very first group of Waves sent into a war zone in WW-II: she was deployed aboard a hospital ship in the Pacific; and my stepfather was in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed.  Their loss would have been traumatic for me but I cannot justify the mass extermination of almost a quarter of a million men, women and children (non-combatants) in an act of racial genocide perpetrated by my government. 

I do understand emotion and war time mentality; for in Vietnam I readily bought in to the notion of KILL’EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT IT OUT.

BUT

This is a poor statement for the human race that we are readily capable of looking for justification for the butchery of our own kind.  

the Ol'Buzzard

ATTACK ON JAPAN WEEK

I am a combat vet.  I know the kill or be killed mentality - I had it.   I was willing to kill women, children, old, young... if they posed a danger.  Kill'em all and let God sort it our.    Fortunately the necessity did not occur.

But: it doesn't make it right.


Between Hiroshima and Nagasaki the death tole of civilians - women, children, old people, babies, fathers, mothers, noncombatants - is estimated at 420,000 - nearly a half-million. 
And no birds sang!
We can't justify that.
Dropping these bombs was a crime against humanity...we get to write the history and we have tried to justify our actions - to white wash the carnage by claiming unknowable statistics as justification. There is no justification for mass murder of civilian populations.
the Ol'Buzzard

We cant justify this claiming we are always the good guys. 

What if Germany had had the bomb first and dropped it  on New York and Chicago?   It is a good bet that they would have used the same justification when they wrote the history.  

O'B 

IT'S ALIVE

 

For decades the Republican Party has placated Christian fundamentalist with platitudes and promises they had no intention of acting on.   The same can be said for the gun owners and militia obsessed – the Party found it easy to vote down gun restrictions and give them lip service.   They have also played to the racial prejudices of the white southerners. 

As a result, the Republican Party, the party of the wealthy and privileged, for years was able to manipulate these groups and lock in their vote.  

Then something happened in 2008 when a black democrat was elected President of the United States.   The Republican rank and file encouraged the hitherto silent majority of their party – the far right radicals and wingnuts – to organize and to become a vocal, visible, angry demonstration – the Tea Party – against what they viewed as liberalism gone too far.  

The thing that the GOP did not count on was their inability to put the genie back in the bottle.  

Once embolden, the inmates took over the asylum.    In 2012 the Tea Party Republicans fielded a clown car of wing nuts to run in that presidential election.   This year the leader of the Republican Party may end up being Donald You’re Fired Trump.

It is their Frankenstein monster and “It’s Alive.”

the Ol’Buzzard