Ronald Reagan was right...

government IS the problem - any government - every government! Not only that, governments START all the problems!

Russia is a long, long way from our Southwest desert, but from all I can tell, the Russian people are decent folks. Hard working, struggling against all odds to maintain their families, just as we do. Their government? Well, to be frank, it sucks!

But, all through the Cold War, our government kept trying to convince us that "The Russians" were our mortal enemies. Not their Communist government--- The Russians!

Now it's the Chinese. From the masses who build highways with their bare hands to brilliant professionals who excel at medicine and technology, the Chinese are exceptional people. The Chinese government, unfortunately, also sucks.

But we are often reminded that "The Chinese" are our enemies.

Yes, like Ernie Ford sang in his 1950s hit, Sixteen Tons, "We owe our soul to the company store", that "store" being the Chicoms. Why is this so? Because of the foolish behavior of our real enemy... our own government.

There was a time when people realized the failure of governments as they then existed and decided to form a nation where the people were the government. It worked beautifully, until people who yearned to gain, hold and exercise power worked to reach their goal.

Why old guys sometimes smile.

I grew up a poor kid on a subsistence farm. Sort. of. Actually my Dad also had a paycheck producing job, but much of our food came from the farm.

In those days before health czars demonized fat, lard was a staple in every kitchen. Every home cooked with lard. Lard was cheap and was sold everywhere. But if you lived on a farm and butchered your own hogs, you also made your own lard.

In the butchering process, the meat was trimmed of fat to the extent practical and desirable. When trimming, some bits of lean meat were trimmed along with the fat. In keeping with the old hog butchering rule that you use everything but the squeal, these trimmings were not discarded. They were the raw material for the making of lard.

The process was pretty simple, actually. The pork scraps were heated in a big kettle until all of the fat melted. Fat was then drained off and filtered through a cloth. This clear liquid was poured into tins - lard cans, if you will - and allowed to cool. That, then was lard, ready for frying, etc.

What was left in the kettle were the scraps of lean pork, now largely fat free and cooked to a crisp. We called them "cracklings". Actually we said "cracklin's", and found them to be tasty snacks.

Here in the Southwest, where Spanish language is in common use, the word for "Crackling" is "chicharron". And, mistakenly, they refer to them a "pork skins". As a kid, we first skinned our hogs and that skin had its own use. We sure didn't eat it!

Now, no longer a by-product of making lard, in New Mexico Chicharrons have become a specialty food, and people who "cook" them call themselves Chicharroneros! Imagine!

Saturday morning, they actually had a "chicharron cook-off" a competition to see who made the best chicharrones! And more such cook-offs are planned around the state! I wonder what they did with the lard, which has now become the by-product?

It kinda reminds me of when we drained the whey from the curds of sour milk. We fed those curds to our poultry on the farm. It helped fatten the turkeys for our holiday feasts. We usually saved some curds, added a little fresh cream and a bit of salt and called it cottage cheese. Today, cottage cheese has become another specialty food and is a staple for people not wanting to be fat!

Makes this old guy smile!

China has a new stealth fighter plane!

Wow! How'd they learn to do that? Don't know. But we also learned that the Pentagon computers undergo an attack by some ultra smart Chinese hacker 1,000 times a day. What? Do they have hundreds of computer geniuses (genii, if you prefer) sitting at their keyboards searching for access to Pentagon computers?

Maybe.

Hell, I can solve that problem.... just unplug the Pentagon computers from the internet. End of problem? Maybe not.

This summer I had a pacemaker implanted. A pacemaker is a compact little computer, actually implanted in my upper chest, with a couple of wires threaded down an artery into my heart muscle. Mine is programmed to see that my heart beats at least 60 times per minute. If my heart fails to beat at that rate, the pacemaker sends a little pulse down the wires to my heart muscle and makes it beat.

Last week I went in for my first pacemaker check. While I chatted with one tech about the operation of the thing, another tech placed some kind of sensor over my chest, near where my pacemaker was implanted, and did something on his computer. He then announced that he had changed the threshold (??) and added time to the life of my pacemaker battery. I now have ten years of battery life remaining! (To myself, I wondered if I could bring my digital camera in and have him work some magic on its battery!)

Then, I see a news report that unscrupulous persons can pass you on the street and, with the right equipment, read the data from your credit card - which is inside your purse, or your billfold. Whoa!!!

For all I know, the Chicoms could float a satellite high over Washington and hack the Pentagon computers as they pass by!

Maybe. Maybe not. But who knows?

High in the Sacramento Mountains,

just across the Tularosa Basin from where I live, is Sunspot, a solar observatory. I have no idea how the thing actually works, but it is a big deal. On a visit to Sunspot a few years ago, the scientist in charge pointed out that he has international students, doctoral candidates from around the world who come to New Mexico to study solar flares, sunspots, and whatever else they can see with telescopes trained on the sun.

My understanding is that, from deep underground, a long, narrow tube follows the sun. Telescopes pointing through this long tube offer a view of the sun shielded from extraneous light from all directions. I often think of Sunspot when I hear news from Washington, as it seems that some politicians look at the world through a long, narrow tube, seeing nothing but their image of what lies straight ahead.

They are blind to inevitable "side effects" as the pharmaceutical companies call those "unintended consequences" lurking just off to one side. And, of course, they are completely blind to what is behind them... that something called history.

These politicians persist in the belief that they are the first ever to advance their current idea - despite the fact that the same idea has been tried and has failed in the past.

After decades of government watching, I am no longer surprised by young fools who believe in ideas that old fools scrapped long ago. The failed ideas, they may believe, need only their magic touch to succeed.

Not surprised. Only saddened.

One week ago, today,

there occurred an event in Arizona that became known as "Tragedy in Tucson". There has been a lot of news coverage of the shooting of a member of Congress, a federal judge, a small girl, and numerous others. A lot of coverage.

There has been an outpouring of grief for the victims and their families. Like all Americans, I am likewise grieved.

Now I am wondering if I am the only person saddened by the hurt caused a couple of other people - two scarcely mentioned by news reporters, and not at all by the President in his memorial speech. They are the parents of the shooter.

We may never know if the mother and father of Jared Loughner were good parents or poor parents. We may never know if their actions, knowingly or unknowingly, contributed to that young man's mental state. But can you imagine the crushing pain they must now endure, knowing that their son, the child they nurtured, committed that terrible act on January 8? That their child is universally hated by millions of people? That their child may well be put to death by their fellow Americans?

I have always believed that mentally impaired persons are granted scant sympathy in our culture. We visually identify people with a severe physical impairment, and we cut them a world of slack. Not so with mental illness. We can't see it - so we don't excuse it. We talk of hate and anger. We rarely wonder what sort of demons had come to reside in that poor, afflicted brain.

It will take better brains than mine to resolve this problem. I just hope they can and will.