My life is for the birds

This is a letter I wrote to the editor and which was published on Monday:

"Note to everyone who knows me or even has a passing acquaintance or who thinks he might need to contact me, let it be known than from dawn to dusk from now to somewhere in the coming spring, I am probably going to be very hard to contact. Okay, I do have a phone next to my computer, but that is as good as it gets. I will be glued to my computer watching two bald eagles building their nest, reacting with one another and, I hope, raising their young. What could be more important?

Many tasks will simply not get done: Dishes may pile up. Weeds may grow beyond acceptable limits; I may lose pounds because of failure to cook or even snack; shopping is out of the question (so much for Christmas!); the only clean room in the house is my computer room, but I may have to bring in a food supply, a mini fridge and microwave if I am to survive. The best plan is probably to become totally nocturnal and squeeze in all my eating and sleeping and all human contact between sunset and sunrise. If anyone wonders about me, wait until after sundown, although even then I will be rather busy catching up with my daily necessities.

Today I woke up to the two birds building, or more likely refurbishing, their nest. I really had to leave for church, and when I came back home, the nest was at least twice as tall, but not (as it seemed) wider. It is getting to look “cozier,” perhaps for an upcoming intimacy? Hmm. Just before sundown, they both came back to the nest, went beak to beak for a while. (Hi, Honey, how was your day?) Then one got interested in the rear end of the other. Is something going on here? So much for privacy! Then came the evening blackout. My alarm is set for sunrise!"

These eagles have an interesting background, and they come back to this nest every winter after a summer in Alaska where the salmon are more plentiful. Their nest here is very close to some loud and disruptive bridge construction, but they are determined to use that same nest year after year despite the noise and distraction and despite the efforts of the California Fish and Game people and the California Transportation Department. If anyone has the interest and the time I highly recommend visiting this site as often as feasible. They will be there for at least a couple of months if they successfully incubate and raise an eaglet.

Go to http://turtlebay.org/caltranseaglecam.php during daylight in the Pacific Standard Time zone, approximately 6 am to 5 pm at this time of year. Tonight, they were still rebuilding their nest and flying in and out. They are truly fascinating.

We are known by the company we keep

Barack Obama has been intimately involved in recent years (during his entry into political campaigns) with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant, anti-American, bomb throwing terrorist for many years, but claims that Ayers’s past is irrelevant because Ayers’s confessed bombings of the New York Police Station and other terrorist acts occurred when Obama was 8 years old so is just ancient history. He pretends that this has nothing to do with Ayers’s recent or current beliefs, etc. Fast Forward to 2007. He, Bill Ayers, was just recently presented with a ring that was fabricated from the metal of an American fighter plane shot down in Viet Nam, and he was so moved he left the room in tears. Ayers has been and remains as anti-American as one can get and has never regretted the carnage and other anti-American activities of his youth. This is the man who helped launch Obama into running for office, hosting his entry into one of his first campaigns. Also, within very recent years, Obama and Bill Ayers served together on the board of a foundation that has made donations supporting socialist agenda and some other leftist causes and activities. He has not severed his relationship with this man. Do you really admire such connection with man who would be President of the United States? Of course there is also the influence of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, a primer for revolutionists, which he dedicated to Lucifer. We all know who he is. BHO has other radical, leftist, anti-American influences that, although he has claimed to disavow, are a part of his background and political development—Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger, and the shady (now a convict) Tony Rezko. None of this can be attributed to youthful naiveté. It is more as if he is a puppet on the strings of an extreme, radical, leftist group which backs him and orchestrates his campaign, someone who will drag us down into socialism and ruin. Unfortunately, the American public is so ill educated that they don’t even know American history as recent as 40 years ago, and never heard of Alinsky, the radical extremist revolutionary and his ilk. I find this downright scary.

The Case Against Barack Obama

Regarding "Hope" and "Change": What HOPE has an unborn child or even a born child that results from an unsuccessful abortion? Obama doesn't know or has no opinion as to when a human being attains the age to be accorded the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or, as the question put to him lately, when does a human being become entitled to human rights? He really was afraid to offend one of his rich supporters, Planned Parenthood, one of the country's most powerful (and I might add tax-supported) abortion providers (and whose clientele is largely people of his own race, who are being the object of virtual genocide) and other powerful lobbies and a large part of his base who support abortion on demand. No matter how you stand on abortion, Obama is unwilling to admit his own position either way, which makes him a COWARD in my book.

As for "Change, what kind of change does Biden represent? Business as usual is not change. He opted for a dyed-in-the-wool Washington insider whose last wish would be change of the status quo. AND he is the third most liberal voter in the Senate (read higher taxes, more gov't control, more socialistic programs, etc.). He has been in the Senate since Obama was a little boy. So what is supposed to make us believe that Obama's "right hand man" in the VP position will contribute to that wonderful vague concept of CHANGE? Hah! How dumb does he think we are? Oh, and the latest thing Obama and Biden are touting is that Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Why? Even though he has not lived there for most of his life, PA is a swing state that Obama lost in the primary, so suddenly he becomes a Pennsylvania native son. Hand me my barf bag.

These are some of my spring bloomers: tulips and african daisies for starters.

Fun at the Equinox

Today is the Vernal Equinox, the only day of the year when you can stand eggs on end. I have even had the experience of standing a whole bunch of eggs and leaving them for several days when I went out of town and found most still standing when I got back. My mom taught me this trick years ago. Most people don't believe it, but here is living proof. I don't know if it works with cooked eggs, but I think I may try that also. One year I tried it at the Tropic of Cancer when I was traveling and couldn't get it to work, so maybe it has to be in northern lattitudes. It takes patience, but once you get the hang of it, it is rewarding fun.

Notes on candidates

I have been studying a lot lately on the various candidates running for President of the United States. To me they are mostly losers, but two of them will eventually come out on top. Hilary and Obama are apparently all that is left of the Democratic hopefuls. Hilary is a megalomaniac of the first water, out for power for herself and is probably the greatest threat to our republic. She is totally lacking in dignity and self control, and I simply cannot for the life of me figure out how she has managed to bamboozle (or is it blackmail) so many people. I know she is to the left of Lenin, but I have heard Obama described as left of Hilary based on voting records. I don’t know much about Obama’s overall voting record, but on abortion alone, I cannot in good conscience vote for him or recommend that anyone else do so.

Case in point: Obama, as an Illinois State Senator opposed a bill to define as “a person,” a fully born baby who survived an abortion. Before I go on, picture a fully formed and breathing infant who was caused to be born via labor induction. Should it then be murdered under the definition of legal “abortion”? Better yet, all you mothers, visualize your own sweet newborn lying on a gurnery alive, fully developed, and breathing. Can you imagine allowing it to be killed, because some law did not define it as a human being? Obama was Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee of the Illinois State Senate. He did bring up the bill for a vote, but voted against it.

The so called “born alive” bill came up in three successive years. In 2001 three bills were proposed to help babies who survived induced-labor abortions. (This obviously happened only because the little baby was born too fast for the doctor to bash its brains out before his whole self emerged from the vagina.) One of the bills defined a living homo sapiens “wholly emerged from his mother” should be treated as a “person, human being , child, individual.” On all three bills, Obama voted “present.” In 2002 he voted “no.” Gutless and heartless would be my labels for such behavior.

Obama is one of those who is an eloquent speaker who at the same time says nothing substantial. He speaks in great sounding phrases with buzz words like “change” and “hope” and “forward” and so forth but does not connect any of these high sounding phrases to any concrete program or plan. Besides the above described situation, I see him as an empty helmet, possibly with some vague good intentions but nothing to back up his vagueries. We need to look deeper into his voting record. I admit I do not plan to bother, as I have nor ever have had the intention of voting for him. This abortion issue just cemented my decision.

I feel sorry for the Democrats who have only two lousy candidates to choose from for the nomination. But if McCain wins the Republican nomination, we are guaranteed a liberal no matter who wins in November. Obama and Clinton are just to the left of Lenin, but it is a given that the Dems will always choose a liberal. I find it hard to believe that McCain has garnered so much Republican support. And I have noticed that even the Democrats like McCain, and would prefer for him to be the Republican nominee because even if they lose to him they still have someone of their own ilk. McCain has demonstrated time and again that he can out-lib the Dems. For example, there is the McCain Feingold bill that severely limits political speech, in direct violation of the Constitution. Bush wimped out on that one and actually signed it rather than vetoing it as he knew he should. I guess he thought he could pass that buck to the Supreme Court. Big Surprise, it didn’t work. That still dumbfounds me.

McCain would give the war criminals, or enemy combatants, access to our justice system with all its rights and privileges, which I find outrageous. He was also strongly supportive of the disastrous immigration bill that was defeated only because of the great and concentrated groundswell of opposition from the American voters last summer.

McCain is another of the gullible politicitians who have been suckered into the Global Warming Hoax and who have caved to the Enviros who are out to regulate us out of using our own resources. For example, he has 4 times voted against drilling for oil in ANWR. (In case you are of the persuasion that this would destroy the “pristine beauty” of the Arctic or destroy the caribou and polar bears, you need to know a few things that apparently either he doesn’t know or doesn’t want you to know. First of all, ANWR is a totally uninhabitable place and will Never be developed for human habitation or become a desired destination to visit and admire, It is millions of square miles of desolation, below zero freezing cold and dark most of the year. When the temperature does rise above 40º, the mosquitoes come alive and make life even more miserable for man and beast. They have been known to be so numerous and vicious that they can even kill a young caribou. It should also be pointed out that the caribou herds have actually increased since the construction of the Alaskan Pipe Line. They find warmth and shelter beside it. Furthermore, the area that is proposed for drilling is about the size of Dulles Airport. Think postage stamp compared to a football field. Tiny little spot it is that the enviros are so concerned about. As for damage to the tundra, there would be none possible, because the trucks that would be necessary for overland transport would only drive over layers of ice and only in the winter. These roads then thaw and leave no trace. But what if they did need a summer road? I have ridden over the 400 miles of “haul road” that was built for that purpose between Fairbanks and Deadhorse, Mile Zero of the existing pipeline, and it can hardly be held to have destroyed the entire region between those two points. A road is just a line on a map. It is not the whole territory. Believe me, even Dead Horse is not a tourist attraction except for the only thing there, the oil company’s operational headquarters, barracks type housing and general store, and windswept dirt streets). But ANWR is just one factor in McCain’s faulty energy policy.

I suspect he is also on the side of all those who would prevent our access to our own oil in other places such as the Gulf and other off shore areas. China and Mexico can drill in those waters, but we cannot, thanks to the likes of McCain. He consistently teams up with other liberals as Left as Senator Kennedy out to destroy our way of life, our liberties, and increase our taxes and regulate so as to prevent any solution to our energy problems.

I don’t trust him to keep taxes in line. He admits he is not knowledgeable about economics, an absolute requirement for the job. He has never worked in or directed or managed any part of private industry, which is definitely far far different from military, which has been his life long profession.

His lack of experience outside of military and government is also the flaw most evident in at least two others running for resident, Clinton and Obama . I don’t know about Huckabee (who, by the way is another one that the Dems hope to see as the Republican candidate because they see him as most beatable).

To sum up a few more of his unacceptable positions in my view: He opposed the Bush Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, which resulted in greatly increased revenue, more jobs and a healthy economic growth. He is against repeal of the death tax, would raise Social Security taxes, favors embryonic stem cell research, even though it is not necessary since adult stem cells have produced treatments and cures of over 80 diseases and ailments and show much promise in the future.

Finally, consider one more thing, his temper. He definitely lacks self control and the dignity befitting a president, another trait he shares with Hillary the harridan. I think of McCain as Hilary in drag. But whatever happens in this election, I hope we will not let the media pick for us.

Looks like the field is narrowing down to Romney, Huckabee or Ron Paul as far as I am concerned. Huckabee can't beat Obama or Hilary, so no point there, Romney looks good, but I may have to vote for Ron Paul as a protest. I am with him all the way except for foreign policy, and that is a big item. Toughest election I have faced in my lifetime.....

Sorry about the mixture of fonts. These are a conglomeration of word documents I have put together, and I am too tired to go back and adjust 'em. I would appreciate feedback, though.

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This is Max. He belongs to my son and daughter-in-law and family. They are out of town, so I get to enj0y his company. He is a delight.
When I tell him to seek and find, he listens for the object and when I say "shoe," he dashes into the bedroom and returns with a shoe. Of course, I send him back for shoe number two. In the morning I open the door and send him out for the newspaper by saying. "Get the paper, Max," and off he goes, but he may stop to pee on a bush, as, after all, he has been confined all night. He is mostly Lab, and has mostly Lab characteristics, as you can tell by the pix, but he has a fuller face and a black and pink tongue, which says that maybe there is some chow in there.

B-r-r-r-r-r-r

It seems that following 2007, the Year of the Small Appliance Breakdown, 2008 wants to one-up 2007, starting out with a furnace failure. Yesterday, Sunday, I left the house at about 9:30 after shutting off the thermostat in order to conserve on natural gas, it being a fairly warm day in the 50's. When I got home I noticed a strange sound which at first seemed to be water running somewhere through the plumbing. Couldn't find any water running indoors, so I went out into the patio and there heard a clackety, rackety sound from up on the roof. It was something wrong with the furnace/AC unit. The only way I could silence it was to cut off its power at the breaker box. Of course that meant shutting the whole system off, or more simply put, no more heat for Mary. I called my son, Jason, and he checked the offending fan only to find that it wasn't something he could fix. He advised me to talk to his brother-in-law in the morning, as he is manager of a heating and air conditioning supply company. So I bit the bullet, so to speak and made arrangements to manage through the night without heat. It was no where near the problem faced recently by Shyla and family, as our temps get down to the low 30's or high 20's only. But by the time the sun went down, it got pretty chilly. And at bedtime I got out my arctic underwear, put on a pair of sweats, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks and a hat, got out my down comforter and plugged in a heating pad, which fortunately has a timer on it, set it for 2 hours, and crawled into bed all set for the night. I was cozy warm all night and got up in the morning to a 50-degree house. Not all that bad. I just added a jacket, read the paper and ate breakfast and then called Jason's BIL. He was able to connect me with an electrician, who just happened to live on my street (!) and by 2:30 pm he had the bad part replaced and the heat was on again. It cost me only $295, a lot less than I expected, as I had envisioned replacing the whole unit in the thousands of dollars. I counted myself very fortunate when I thought of those sleeping under bridges, on subway grates and in cardboard boxes or those folks in Fargo without heat in winter far colder that here in northern California.