Peregrinating
2013

September

1 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

Good afternoon, everybody. Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. Yesterday the United States presented a powerful case that the Syrian government was responsible for this attack on its own people.

Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein, he is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

2 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

3 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

4 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

President Obama’s liberal activist base is adamantly opposed to military strikes in Syria, according to a new survey the Progressive Change Campaign Committee released Wednesday.
PCCC says more than 57,000 of its activists weighed in, and 73 percent of them opposed the U.S. taking action in Syria. Just 18 percent supported strikes, and just 14 percent said the U.S. should go ahead unilaterally if it can’t find any allies.
Indeed, a majority of the activists don’t believe Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry are being honest when they lay out their justifications for taking military action.

I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the president’s hide. That’s a bad position to put your party in.

5 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

6 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

Congress must vote down the war and make it clear to obama that if he defies the constitutional power of Congress he will be impeached.
If the US Congress is too corrupt or incompetent to do its duty, the rest of the world must join the UN General Secretary and the President of Russia and declare that unilateral military aggression by the US government is a war crime, and that the war criminal US government will be isolated in the international community. Any of its members caught traveling abroad will be arrested and turned over to the Hague for trial.

7 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

With the United States threatening to attack Syria, U.S. and allied intelligence services are still trying to work out who ordered the poison gas attack on rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus.
No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward.

8 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

The advocates of war against Syria have taken Theodore Roosevelt's advice and turned it upside down. They believe that in confronting Bashar Assad, the United States should speak loudly and carry a tiny stick. Some liberals like nothing better than the chance to thunder righteously against evil incarnate, and Syria brings out the moralist in them...
Faced with widespread slaughter and vicious atrocities, you may conclude we must be willing to do whatever it takes to stop the perpetrators...But if you think any of these advocates genuinely intend to stop Assad from using chemical weapons again, you would be wrong. Kerry promised there would be no American "boots on the ground." Menendez emphasized that President Barack Obama wanted to use only "limited force." The strike would amount to a firm rap on the knuckles.
The administration is striving not to evict a tyrant it has likened to Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. It wants to stop him from killing innocents with sarin gas, without diminishing his capacity to kill them in conventional ways.

9 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

On September 6 at the G20 meeting in Russia the leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US government attacks Syria without UN authorization. China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.” In other words, if you defy the world, obama, you are a war criminal.

10 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

11 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad's chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops.

America is not the world's policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong, but when with modest effort and risk we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.

“Don’t tell me that words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words. ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words. Just speeches. It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is that if we can’t inspire the country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many plans and policies we have.”

12 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

Blaming D.C. for America’s fiscal mess is easy, though largely wrong. Politicians are simply following the script that a plurality of voters is writing. When people pile up debts, and when voters allow their lawmakers the freedom to do so, too, they’re saying two things: 1) They want more from their lifestyle than their income can afford, and they’re willing to borrow at all costs to obtain it; and 2) their immediate gratification is so much more important than tomorrow’s financial security that they’re willing to risk poverty in the out years just to live large in the moment.
Increasing numbers of American voters – let’s call them the majority – have reached that point in history where they realize they can live large without much effort simply by voting for the politicians who will give them access to the national purse through ever-larger, ever more-numerous and overly generous federal give-away programs. And American politicians – Democrats, in particular – have reached the point in history where they realize that all they need to do to maintain power is give the voters exactly what the voters want – namely, access to the national purse.
So, prepare yourself for the possibility that Democrats will control politics in D.C. until a major crisis forces a rethink in America.

13 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials are seeking to monitor four out of every five U.S. consumer credit card transactions this year — up to 42 billion transactions – through a controversial data-mining program, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
A CFPB strategic planning document for fiscal years 2013-17 describes the “markets monitoring” program through which officials aim to monitor 80 percent of all credit card transactions in 2013.

14 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by 2013” that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off… by 920,000 square miles.
In his Dec. 10, 2007 “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.
However, instead of completely melting away, the polar icecap is at now at its highest level for this time of year since 2006.

15 September
Custer's Gulch RV Park
Custer, SD

16 September
Roadway Inn
Ainsworth, NE

17 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

18 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007.
"For some reason this guy still can't manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn't get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, "She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she'd like to meet him sometime." Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.

19 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

20 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

21 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last 8 years is to take out a credit card from the bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents. Number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back; $30,000 for every man, woman, and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

This administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. The largest in our nation’s history and our investments to rescue the economy will add to it in the short term. We also have long-term challenges; healthcare, energy, education, and others that we can no longer afford to ignore. But, I want to be very clear if the message was not effectively delivered by the three previous speakers; we cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, to the next administration, or to the next generation.
We are paying the price for these deficits right now. In 2008 alone, we paid over $250 billion in interest on our debt; 1 in every 10 taxpayer dollars. That is more than three times what we spent on education that year, more than seven times what we spent on VA healthcare. So, if we confront this crisis without also confronting the deficits that helped cause it, we risk sinking into another crisis down the road as our interest payments rise, our obligations come due, confidence in our economy erodes, and our children and grandchildren are unable to pursue their dreams because they are saddled with our debts. And that’s why today, I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But, I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay and that means taking responsibility right now in this administration for getting our spending under control.

In the next few weeks, Congress must vote to allow the Department of the Treasury to pay America’s bills. Alright. Our Treasury Department, that’s where we take in money and we pay it. Alright. Real simple. This is usually done with a simple routine vote to raise what’s called the debt ceiling. If you don’t raise the debt ceiling, America can’t pay its bills. Since the 1950’s, Congress has always passed it. Every president has signed it. Democrats. Republicans. Ronald Reagan. (laughter) Lyndon Johnson. It dodn’t (sic) matter. This is just a routine thing that you gotta do so that Treasury can pay the bills. If Congress doesn’t pass this debt ceiling in the next few weeks, the United States will default on its obligations. That’s never happened in American history. Basically, America becomes a deadbeat. If the world sees America not paying its bills, then they will not buy debt, Treasury bills, from the United States or if they do, they will buy it at much higher interest rates.

22 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

23 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

The center has been able to protect itself so far with one swindle after another, at the expense of the poor schnooks at the margins. The swindles are so abstruse and impenetrable that the schnooks don’t have a clue what is hitting them. At least so far.
Faced with such a quandary, the schnooks may opt for political suicide, which is apparently the program of both major parties. Out of this sort of tragic muddle, Great Men emerge to galvanize the potential energy of the swindled multitudes. Recent models of this archetype are not so reassuring: Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini. What history has in store for the USA is probably something that could only be cooked up on TV. One can hope that it turns out to be comedy, not something breaking bad.
Of course the inverse of the idiotic American exceptionalism story lies beyond the fact that were not as special as we think. There is a whole vast world beyond the podium of Ben Bernanke and in that big world other mouse-like creatures are working sedulously to take advantage of our exceptional fecklessness. Distracted by everything from same-sex marriage to Monday Night Football, we don’t pay attention to the attrition.

24 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

25 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

26 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

I searched for an article that was written for ABC News to make sure that my memory was correct. This is what was said in September 2008.
"Assuredly McCain isn’t comfortable talking about this — and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this — but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn’t use a computer or send e-mail is because of his war wounds.
I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again "playing the POW card," but it’s simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically. He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general, the injuries he sustained as a POW — ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair — mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.
Again, it’s not that he can’t type, he just by habit, avoids when he can, repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs."
I am so pleased that your war wounds have healed at last. Perhaps not completely but enough for you to play poker for extended periods while debate is happening in the Senate. I also see that you now are capable of sending Tweets. This is great! From being in a lot of pain from small tasks requiring repetitive arm movements only 5 years ago to have reached this level of activity shows what kind of war hero you are. Keep at is sir, perhaps when you retire from the Senate you will be able to work up to a level where you can send emails.

27 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

28 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

29 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

Most people, whether Democrat or Republican, agree that Ted Cruz’s planned filibuster in the Senate is doomed. It will do nothing to stop Obamacare’s inexorable path towards implementation.
Because Ted Cruz is nobody’s fool, I’m guessing that he too knows that it won’t stop Obamacare from getting fully implemented within the next few months. Why, then, is Cruz engaged in this quixotic effort? I think I have the answer, but you’ll have to bear with me, because it involves taking a little trip back, back in time . . . to the Battle of Thermopylae.
Even now, 2,500 years later, the Spartans’ brave stand at Thermopylae still has the power to inspire us. Victory wasn’t the point. The point was to fight and to educate Greeks about their merciless enemy and its overwhelming drive for power. Leonidas and his men may have died there, but their ghosts led the Greeks to eventual victory.
Which gets me back to Ted Cruz and his buddies in the Senate. They’re not stupid. They know that this filibuster will be futile. But they know two other things as well: Filibusters grab headlines, which gives them a golden opportunity to lift the cone of silence that the mainstream media places between Republicans and voters.

30 September
Methodist Cove COE Park
Alma, NE

It is happening throughout the country. The productive are choosing to become less so.
Rarely, however, does one do so in the fashion that Karl Denninger chose. Mr. Denninger operates a website known as The Market Ticker and is known for his financial analysis and intolerance of most things government. He has decided to “go Galt.” Going Galt is usually a process. Few decide to go “The Full Galt.”
Few are capable of going full Galt, but that is apparently what Mr. Denninger has chosen to do. Most of us can relate to his motives and many of us are already behaving, at the margins, in this fashion already. Few have the means and courage to go “Full Galt.” Even fewer have the vehicle of a website in which to explain why.
Do not discount the impact of Mr. Denninger’s public act. Its effects go well beyond a single man. Most of us think in similar terms but are unable financially to commit in the manner that Mr. Denninger has announced. The impact of the rest of us, however, is much greater than the full impact of a few going all the way. Most of us have already investigated the shifting calculus between effort and decreasing rewards. Altering our behavior only slightly takes a couple of percentage points off GDP. That is the difference between a growing and shrinking economy.