Blinders

Occasionally we hear reference to someone wearing "blinders". In this modern age, does anyone still remember blinders?

Well into the 1940s, horses were used to move freight short distances in large cities. Teams of two, four or more large horses pulled huge wagons. Usually this freight was moved only a few blocks from one factory dock to another. I remember, as a teen, being cautioned not to pet the horses! These were not gentle ponies. They were huge working animals and, perhaps expecting food, were inclined to bite any hand extended near their faces.

I remember a lot of noise associated with this activity... steel wagon wheels clattering on brick or cobblestone streets, teamsters shouting, and so forth. No teamster wanted his horses distracted or frightened, and efforts were made to isolate the big animals from the surrounding bustle. Blinders helped. Attached to the horses bridle, the blinders totally blocked the view to either side, allowing the horse to see straight ahead only.


People are accused of wearing blinders when they see only one point of view and are blinded to any other. It is a way of saying the person's vision is blocked by some external object, as with the horse. It is a perfect metaphor. And, it is a bit more polite than accusing someone of being too stubborn to see another point of view.

Oh, My Papa

Eddie Fisher has died. I am saddened.

I was never a big fan of Eddie Fisher. As a matter of fact, I never very much cared for his work. But I kinda liked the guy. In the Army, it seems everywhere you went there was a guy from Philly. He was always sorta loud, a bit overbearing in the eyes of a shy Midwestern farm boy. Fisher was from Philly. He seemed to fit the mold. But in an okay way.

I admired Fisher's success in the music industry. I pitied him in his multiple failed marriages.

In the early 1950s I was a disk jockey at a Kansas City radio station. One time Eddie Fisher was booked into a a Kansas City nightclub, for perhaps a week. As was the custom in those days, the record distributor for the visiting star arranged for Fisher to visit all the deejays in the city. So, we had had an opportunity to visit with Fisher and he was nice enough.

I am a little fuzzy on dates and details. People ask "How could you forget?". You must remember that in the early 1950s (perhaps also today) thousands of young singers and musicians were trying to make it in the industry. The vast majority failed. Being in radio, we met many of them. None were terribly impressive at the time. Most we just forgot outright. Those few who did make it remain somewhere in our memory, but dimly.

Anyway, Fisher had been in the Army in Korea. As I recall, he talked of a U.S.O. show coming to his Army unit to entertain. Maybe he participated - can't remember. Anyway, Debbie Reynolds had been part of the show, and he fell for her big time. That's all he talked about in Kansas City. So, we were not surprised when he courted her and persuaded her to marry him. In fact, we thought that was great.

But, their marriage broke up. Then came Elizabeth Taylor. We thought she was hotter than Debbie. Did fisher agree? But that marriage also broke up, and I lost track of Fisher's marriages.

Eddie Fisher was a scant three months older than me, born on August 10 before my birth date on November 6 - same year. Don't know what kind of husband he was. As a visiting entertainer, I thought he was a nice guy. When the Korean War broke out, he did not shirk his duty, which made him a patriot in my eyes.

Rest in peace, Eddie Fisher.

Diamonds From the Sky

Yesterday afternoon we had a beautiful sun shower.

Growing up in Missouri and Kansas, I don't remember sun showers. When it rained there, it was usually cloudy from horizon to horizon, gray skies in every direction.

Here in the high desert Southwest, that is not always the case. Often on a sunny day, a small patch of clouds will pass overhead and it will start to rain. I have driven down a highway and seen rain pouring off to one side while the sun was shining off to the other side.

Sun showers happen in the afternoon when the sun is lowering in the west. At our high elevation (4,300 feet) skies are especially clear. The sun, at a lower angle, shines brightly with blinding light. Then, a patch of cumulus clouds moves overhead and it starts to rain. Big clear drops of water pour from the cloud. The sun, shining under the cloud, illuminates those drops of water and they sparkle. Like diamonds from the sky! That is what we call a sun shower.

There is another angle to the diamonds description. In the desert, water is precious. As of the first day of fall, our 2010 rainfall has totaled only 8.94 inches. Through all those weeks... through all of winter, spring and summer, our rainfall has totaled less than nine inches. Believe it or not, we are a little ahead of normal this year and everyone is talking about how green the desert looks! Those raindrops truly are diamonds!

Independents?

I find it hard to be excited about people who have a wishbone for a backbone. I place "Independents" in that category. People say they are not a Republican or a Democrat... they are an Independent. My, my.

I am a Republican. I largely adhere to the principles of the Republican Party. Certainly I do not agree with all Republican politicians, party leaders or spokesmen. Some who wear the Republican label are far removed in their beliefs from those beliefs I hold. I am still a Republican.

I don't know any person today who is a true Democrat as I once knew Democrats to be... one who believes their first goal to be the advancement of the working man. Every "Democrat" I know today is really a liberal... a politically correct, environmentally agitated, apologist blinded to reality by their beliefs.

I do not personally know anyone who claims to be an Independent. That's good. Because I view Independents as people who don't quite have enough courage of their their convictions to stand up for them.

They hide behind a meaningless label to pretend they are above the fray of political discourse. Or, maybe they just relish the label, thinking they are one of the special voters the political parties will have to woo.

Labels.

We've been taught... Don't judge a book by its cover. Yet we do. People form judgments based solely on labels.

Some 30-odd years ago I first read the book "The New Left - The Anti-Industrial Revolution" by Ayn Rand. A friend walked into my office just as I was looking at the cover of the little paperback. I held up the book and made some remark about it being a great book to read. My friend saw only the words "The New Left", and immediately declared he would not read such a book. I didn't know my friend's ideology (still do not) and he did not know what was in Rand's book. But he had made a firm judgment, all the same.

We frequently hear someone say America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Some non-religious people I know cringe at that label. Neither Jew nor Christian, they nonetheless have deeply held principles and resent being told their principles are founded in a religion they do not follow.

If their problem is with only the label... not the principles, where did those principles originate?

I believe that when the earliest humans began to live in social groups, they surely discovered that their peaceful existence depended on the acceptance of certain rules of conduct. Further, I believe those rules evolved and became more perfect over time.

The early Jews and Christians clearly articulated those time-honored principles and recorded them in written language.

If you are troubled by the Judeo-Christian label, try the Greek Philosophy label. In about 300 B.C., the Philosopher Epicurus said (translated here), "Justice never is anything in itself, but in the dealings of men with one another in any place at any time it is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed."

Not to harm or be harmed. Sounds like The Golden Rule to me.

Ancient traditions are traditional because they have stood the test of time. If you want to label your traditions, your moral principles, fine. If you do not want to say your beliefs sprang from an ideology with which you do not always agree, fine. Reject the labels. Not the traditions. Not the principles.

Mosque building - Koran burning...

Someone keeps telling us... "Be tolerant - it is the American way".

Someone keeps telling us... "Don't put our troops in further danger by insulting Islam"

Now, I want to tell you, it is time to back off and look at the big picture! And, just in case you missed the big picture, Michelle Malkin redraws it for you. Here is her column today, reprinted without permission, because every American must read it:

The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage

by Michelle Malkin

09/10/2010

Shhhhhhh, we're told. Don't protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don't burn a Koran. It'll imperil the troops. It'll inflame tensions. The "Muslim world" will "explode" if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national security-threatening impudence, but when is the "Muslim world" not ready to "explode"?

At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways.
Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah's avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch. The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London's St. Paul's Cathedral. A Kashmiri law enforcement official later concluded the protests were "premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere."
Indeed, art and graphics have an uncanny way of vitiating the Muslim world's atmosphere. In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company's "Air" logo looked like the Arabic script for "Allah." In 1998, another conflagration spread over Unilever's ice cream logo -- which Muslims claimed looked like "Allah" if read upside-down and backward (can't recall what they said it resembled if you viewed it with 3D glasses).
Even more explosively, in 2002, an al-Qaida-linked jihadist cell plotted to blow up Bologna, Italy's Church of San Petronio because it displayed a 15th century fresco depicting Mohammed being tormented in the ninth circle of Hell. For years, Muslims had demanded that the art come down. Counterterrorism officials in Europe caught the would-be bombers on tape scouting out the church and exclaiming, "May Allah bring it all down. It will all come down."
That same year, Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death 200 people in protest of the Miss World beauty pageant -- which they considered an affront to Allah. Contest organizers fled out of fear of inflaming further destruction. When Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have approved of the pageant and that "in all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them," her newspaper rushed to print three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn't stop Muslim vigilantes from torching the newspaper's offices. A fatwa was issued on Daniel's life by a Nigerian official in the sharia-ruled state of Zamfara, who declared that "the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty." Daniel fled to Norway.
In 2005, British Muslims got all hot and bothered over a Burger King ice cream cone container whose swirly-texted label resembled, you guessed it, the Arabic script for "Allah." The restaurant chain yanked the product in a panic and prostrated itself before the Muslim world. But the fast-food dessert had already become a handy radical Islamic recruiting tool. Rashad Akhtar, a young British Muslim, told Harper's Magazine how the ice cream caper had inspired him: "Even though it means nothing to some people and may mean nothing to some Muslims in this country, this is my jihad. I'm not going to rest until I find the person who is responsible. I'm going to bring this country down."
In 2007, Muslims combusted again in Sudan after an infidel elementary school teacher innocently named a classroom teddy bear "Mohammed." Protesters chanted, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!" and "No tolerance -- execution!" She was arrested, jailed and faced 40 lashes for blasphemy before being freed after eight days. Not wanting to cause further inflammation, the teacher rushed to apologize: "I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone, and I am sorry if I caused any distress."
And who could forget the global Danish cartoon riots of 2006 (instigated by imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips)? From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight, and brave journalists who stood up to the madness were threatened with beheading. It wasn't really about the cartoons at all, of course. Little-remembered is the fact that Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time. Yes, it was just another in a long line of manufactured Muslim explosions that were, to borrow a useful phrase, "premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere."
When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah's avengers, it's a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago.

History: re-writing or just ignoring?

Growing up on the farm, we had no TV and precious little radio, our rural address was beyond the delivery limits of a daily newspaper - which my parents could not afford anyway. So my early education in current affairs came from listening to adult conversation and observing firsthand the grinding poverty of the depression.

Dollar bills were so rare that when we did get our hands on one, we read it! A fun riddle was "How many ones are on a $1 bill?" If you got hold of one, you counted the ones... both the numerical version and the spelled-out version.

I also remember that those old $1 bills did not say "Federal Reserve Note". Instead, they said it would be exchanged for a silver dollar, on demand!


Can you count the 14 "ones" on the Silver Certificate above? (Sorry - I could find no picture of the greenback side)

One thing I did learn from the $1 bill of my childhood was that Henry Morgenthau was Secretary Of The Treasury. His signature was there on the front of every $1 bill. Morgenthau was appointed by FDR in 1934 - the year I turned six years of age and entered the first grade of school. He served until 1945, the year I turned 17 and entered the U.S. Army. $1 bills with his signature lasted a lot longer. (The $1. bill on the bottom (above) was printed when Andrew Mellon was Secretary of The Treasury. Mellon was appointed by Warren Harding and served through most of the Hoover Administration.)

I knew his name, but I didn't know anything about Morgenthau. I realize he must have been an important part of the FDR New Deal, by simple virtue of the fact that FDR kept him in the cabinet until his (FDR's) death.

In the ensuing years, I have learned a lot about the New Deal, details I did not hear or understand as a kid when I listened to adults complaining that the policy was a total failure.

One gem came from the heart of the New Deal, from the mouth of that man whose signature was on the front of every $1 bill: Henry Morgenthau. Reflecting on the New Deal in 1939, Henry Morgenthau said:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!"

So, how do today's progressives view that fact? They say Roosevelt should have spent more. Can any intelligent person believe that? Agree with that? Morgenthau said "It does not work." Do today's experts know more than the guy who was at the heart of it?

Apparently, if history does not support your point of view, the history must be wrong!

A Rose By Any Other Name
Would Smell As Sweet...
-Wm Shakespeare

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson got himself in trouble for saying Social Security was like a cow with 300 million tits.

No, they did not object to the reference that the program was indicative of a nanny state. They did not seem to resent his inference that millions were being sustained at the public trough.

They were mad because he used the word "tits".

Raised on a dairy farm, I spent many morning (and afternoon) hours on a three-legged stool pulling on cows tits, filling a bucket with warm milk. And tits is exactly what we called them. It was a nasty job sometimes, especially in rainy weather when the cow had been lying in a muddy barnyard. And when she slapped you up the side of the head with a cockle burr-filled tail.

Even my patient, tolerant wife was offended by Simpson's remark. Said the word tits was degrading. Even if Simpson was talking about a cow.

Now, wait a minute!

I see quail hens lead their chicks to our back yard to scratch in the dirt for seeds we spread for them. Robins and other birds pluck a worm or a wiggling bug from the grass and carry it back to their nest to cram it, alive and dirty, down a gaping throat. A hawk kills a mouse and tears the tiny creature apart to stuff pieces of raw meat into the beaks of her young. Other creatures, like sea turtles, lay their eggs in the sand and swim away leaving hatchlings to fend for themselves.

But not mammals! From the body of the mammal mother comes a clean, precious, complete food... untouched by hands, hoofs or paws, fed directly into the mouth of her offspring, snuggled warmly against its mother's loving body! In addition to nourishment, and unlike the bird's germ laden bug or diseased mouse, mother's milk also imparts her immunities, protecting her offspring! How fantastic is that?

Degrade mammary glands? Impossible! An entire class of creatures are named for them. We (humans, at least) are not named for our five-toed feet, our opposing thumbs or any other physical feature... we are mammals... named for those miraculous mammary glands.

What an incredible possession for any mammal mother... be it a cow, a doe, a sow... or a human! And, in the case of the latter, those breasts are also alluring, a thing of beauty, proudly displayed to accentuate femininity!

As a child we chanted. "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me". So call them breasts or boobs, tits or teats, jugs or hooters - doesn't matter. Nothing can degrade this miracle of mammalian life.

Sacred Honor

I first read (or heard) The Declaration Of Independence many years ago. Can't remember exactly when, because it didn't have much impact on a young farm boy. I've read it many more times down through the years. That long list of grievances against the King of England always lost me. It was foreign to my sphere of knowledge. It read like some sort of legal document: a lot of verbiage on the peripheral of my comprehension.

In recent years, I have come to understand that, apart from the list of reasons for declaring independence from the King, that document contains powerful and beautiful language: ...all men are created equal... unalienable rights... Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... precious words, indeed!

The signers concluded with another powerful statement; we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Get that? Our sacred honor! To these men, their honor... their integrity, their honesty, their truthfulness, were sacred! How many of us today believe that?

In a business transaction where you suddenly discover a hidden fact, or a mistake, that would unfairly benefit you - would you consider it your sacred obligation to point out the error? You are walking down the street and find a billfold containing cash and other items, would you consider it your sacred obligation to restore it to its owner?

I once had a business partner who often repeated the slogan "There is no part time honesty!" Think about that. You are not an honest man because you are honest 99% of the time. One dishonest action, makes you a dishonest man.

My Dad used to say, "If a man doesn't have his word, what does he have?"

It doesn't matter how much money you have, how big your house, how luxurious your automobile... you could lose all those things in the blink of an eye. Your honor is your truly valuable possession, because no one can take that from you. It is yours alone, to keep or lose. Keep it sacred!