Dystopian Paradox

It’s been almost 15 years since I got a new pair of glasses. Monofilament nylon that runs in a grove on the bottom of lightweight plastic lenses secures them in the wire frame. Two times I’ve had to have the monofilament replaced.

The day before the election, the left lens fell out because the monofilament broke. I’m legally blind without my glasses. I figured there would be no one in Roswell who could provide a fix.

Wrong. Second phone call is to a locally owned eyeglasses place who knew what I was talking about and said they could fix them while I wait.

Ten minutes later I’m there. It’s in a strip mall. I walked in and they have frames on display and I could her a lens being ground by a machine. This place was its own lab.

A lady in her thirties said she would be with me in a minute. Off to the right was a baby in a carseat who was obviously the child of lady and her mate, who was behind the counter working on something.

I was embarrassed to show her my glasses they were in such sorry shape. I built a fiberglass airplane in those glasses and there is a glob of epoxy on one of the lenses. The wire frame had broken in one place and were so wobbly even with the monofilament in good shape, I had superglued the lenses in the wire frames to keep the thing together. Over the years, the nose piece disappeared and the plastic ear pieces wore through to the bare wire.

The lady didn’t look down her nose at me nor did she make any condescending comment. Rather she asked if I wanted to her to try to find another frame that the lenses might fit into. I said no, that I just needed to get these patched up so I can get back to Fort Worth.

After showing them to her husband, she came back out and asked if she should look for a new nose piece and ear pieces. I said yes.

Ten minutes later her husband brings the glasses to me, and like his wife, without any sort of patronizing behavior. He said it would be $7.00. I gave him a $10 and told him to keep it. He said, “Are you sure.” I said absolutely.

That sort of experience would have been great anywhere, but to have it happen while eight hours away from home and without a backup pair of glasses made it special. People like that will be the salvation of our country and the world.

October 7, 2008

Just before the presidential debate tonight, I watched a new Nova on PBS about dinosaur fossils found on the Alaskan north slope. Among the fossilized bones were those of two human beings.

The scientists were able to extract DNA from both the dinosaur and human bones. On a hunch, one of them was able to locate the bulldog that Sarah Palin lipsticked. Sure enough, there was some human DNA on the lipstick on the dog and DNA tests confirmed that the human bones were mostly likely those of Sarah Palin’s grandparents. Palin used her own lipstick on the dog. Gross.

When Barney the purple dinosaur heard about Palin and her grandparents and the dinosaur bones, Barney related to a reporter “I’ve been telling everybody that I didn’t get here on a space ship. Sarah shot my parents from a helicopter and buried them on the north slope next to her grandparents.”

DNA from Barney was a match to the north slope dinosaur bones. Authorities suspected that Palin buried Barney’s parents’ bones among those of her grandparents and brought her in for questioning. When served with papers, she asked, “What’sila all about?”

Sara Palin and others who reject the theory of evolution and are into creative creationism are planning a victory parade after the the elections are over.

“I hate to rain on her parade,” said Barney, “but I’m getting the SPCA on her case and I’ve hired an Alaskan lawyer to find out if she committed a jailable offense by killing my parents. If so, I’m filing a complaint with the authorities and either way I’m going to sue her for civil damages.”

The reporter said that Barney changed from boner purple to lipstick red during the interview. PBS fired Barney because of his uncharacteristic angry outburst.

Ridge Dickey

Chapters Eleven and Twelve of By the Sword are up.

Chapters Nine and Ten of By the Sword are up

Chapters seven and eight are up.

Al Jazeera reported this week that Pakistan was on the verge of defaulting on it debts. It’s foreign reserves dropped to $3 billion.

The Pakistan central bank reported today that it received a $1.5 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank. The Pakistani government said it needs $7 billion to avoid bankruptcy.

CNN reported back in June of this year that the U.S. hasn’t accurately tracked almost $6 billion we’ve given to Pakistan since 2001 to fight terrorism. The way we spend money, it probably would have cost us another $1 billion to track the spending of the $6 billion. Since we got nothing for whatever we spent, it’s good we didn’t spend the extra billion.

The Pakistani annual budget is only about $30 billion. That’s chump change. Maybe what we should do is make Pakistan the 51st state. At least for a while. That way, we could send in our national guard and air power to wipe out the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurrection going on the the tribal areas.

Since Pakistan is on the verge of bankruptcy, if the U.S. won’t annex the place, perhaps Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens will gone in together and buy it. Buffett alone is worth over $50 billion. Pakistan has undeveloped natural resources including large natural gas reserves, so paying a few billion dollars for the place might be a real bargain.

Not only that, Pakistan has nukes, so Buffett and Pickens LLC could be the first private nuclear power.

Chapter Six of By the Sword is up.

The Governator wants Paulson to loan California $7 billion to tide them over through Christmas. Paulson AKA Taxpayerfornicator may not have time to fool with a state or city because he’s pretty much tied up buying junk for us taxpayers from his buddies for dollars on the penny of market value.

We”re not going to have bread lines. We’re going to have cash lines. Like the Weimar Republic when Germans were using wheel barrows to carry their paper money to the store to get a loaf of bread.

We’re suppose to be great on human rights here in the US. However, the Reaganite-Bush brand of capitalism run amuck for most of the last 30 years is mass taxpayer rape.

That’s not human rights. That’s human wrongs. Now may be a good time to migrate to China.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube bit on McCain. He put his feet in his mouth so many times he decided to just leave them there. Both feet developed trench foot. Being a veteran he went to he emergency room at Walter Reed. Even though trench foot was obviously common among soldiers engaged in trench warfare and WR has reams of information on and pictures of feet with the condition, there was nothing among the pictures that came close to looking as bad as McCain’s feet. They did what they could and released him. The doctors also determined that the big bump on McCain’s left jaw was caused by having both of his feet in his mouth at the same time.

Expect him to be debating from a wheelchair next week.

Go to YouDeccide2008 to check out the YouTube bit.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/325.html

Some feel that the Bush administration is again using fear tactics a la Iraq war to force the Paulson bailout plan on U.S. taxpayers. Paulson wants the fed to get paid back when the bad assets are sold. Some economists are calling for implementation of the Swedish plan.

In the early ’90s, Sweden’s financial system had a meltdown and its government acquired an equity interest in the banks as a part of the bailout. If Congress doesn’t adopt the Swedish plan, and if our financial system survives, those who are guilty of bringing about this mess including private investors will be rewarded for it, all at the taxpayers’ risk and expense.

Those individuals complicit in setting up this house of cards should be banned from the financial industry, except in low level positions. They could become motor bank clerks. Since Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs two years ago when he transferred into the Bush administration, his part in the fiasco should be carefully scrutinized to determine if he has the cash-register honesty of a typical bank clerk. If not, then he can work as a clerk in a 7-Eleven.

Cheney-like rules should be put in place as it pertains to executives of the major players in prosecuting those responsible for this fraud. They should all be rounded-up and sent to Guantanamo Bay where they will be initiated into their new-found brother and sisterhood with a good waterboarding. Congress should make the Patriot Act applicable to the investigation.

Before any financial benefit accrues to the private sector, taxpayers should first recoup 100 percent plus interest and expenses for all fed funds going into all bailouts from Bear Stearns forward, and additionally be rewarded with a substantial amount of the appreciation in the equity of the companies as compensation for bearing all the risk in the bailouts.