Did Mr. T have a Son?

I am Relaxed

I think we are going to win this one.

John McCain is ahead of Obama in Zogby’s latest poll. Republicans almost always do better than the polls suggest. Republican turnout will be great, because we are more afraid of Obama than Democrats are of John McCain. And I can’t believe God would give us a socialist President who has announced his willingness to divide up Jerusalem. And the pride and smugness we’re seeing from Obama and those in the media who unethically supported him and smeared McCain and Palin…is it even possible that God would reward these people with victory? Such things happen, but to me, it looks like a humbling moment in the making.

I have been feeling relaxed about the election for quite some time. It’s strange, considering how I felt in 2000 and 2004. And it doesn’t mean I’m sure McCain will win. I generally have more serenity in my life these days, and I guess the effect applies to politics. That makes sense. After all, security and prosperity come to each individual from God, not from Uncle Sam or from the individual’s own efforts. So I am not afraid that my life will be difficult if Obama wins.

Obama is really exposing his inner socialist these days. First there was the Joe the Plumber moment. Now he’s calling people who want reasonable taxes “selfish.” Unbelievable. As Mike Huckabee says, wanting to spend your own money on your family is not selfish. It’s normal and healthy and righteous. It’s what human beings are supposed to do. Socialism, on the other hand, is clearly evil and cannot be implemented without a move toward totalitarianism.

When a government decides to take wealth from productive people and pass it around, it has to give itself new, unnatural powers in order to get the job done. It has to be able to locate wealth, and it has to be able to identify what it perceives as need, and it has to decide who deserves the money it has forcibly confiscated from working people. A small, limited government can’t do those things. To get those things done, the government will have to diminish our privacy and our property rights, and it will have to employ a lot of bureaucrats to stick their nose in our business and decide who gets what. A socialist America (truly socialist, I mean) will be like Cuba or any other socialist state. There will be boards and agencies manned by cronies of the chief executive, and they will funnel loot and power to their buddies before thinking about the public good. That’s how socialism works. Jesse Jackson has a history of going to meet CEOs and saying, “We have to get rid of this meritocracy.” That is literally the way he says it; no paraphrasing. Under socialism, government bureaucrats by the tens of thousands will be paid to say the same thing, as policy. When merit no longer determines compensation, other measures have to be used. And that means empowering bureaucrats to decide what the measures are, and to do the measuring. That’s the Obama plan.

I know these things already happen in our government, which is somewhat socialist in its present form. But it can get much, much worse.

By the way, let’s not forget: prior to 2005, Obama and his America-bashing, handler-muzzled wife gave less than one percent of their income to charity. When he got a ridiculous advance for the race-baiting book Bill Ayres probably wrote for him, they went up to between five and six percent. And those figures are deceptively favorable to Obama; they include donations to his church, which are not charitable at all. Church donations and charitable donations are different things.

When it comes to giving, observant Jews and Bible-believing Christians typically START at ten percent; that’s a baseline. And they make up a big portion of the “selfish” hordes that support John McCain. Obama doesn’t begin to measure up. Joe Biden is also incredibly stingy in this regard. So was Gore. So was Clinton. Then there’s Dick Cheney, who gives a colossal, multimillion-dollar portion of his income to charity. Bad, evil Dick Cheney. Giving more per month than the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Gores do, combined, in a decade. Once again, I have to ask: isn’t he supposed to be greedy and full of hate? If he is, how come Al Gore’s giving amounts to a tiny fraction of one percent of Cheney’s? Pope Prius I is not living up to expectations.

We all know conservatives give more than liberals, as a general rule, even as we complain about high taxes. We’re not complaining because we want to hoard our money. We’re just asking for the right to decide whom to give it to, instead of putting the decision in the hands of godless bureaucrats who reward laziness, perversion, dishonesty, and other evil traits. We know that private citizens do a better job of just about everything, and that includes giving.

Call me crazy, but to me, it seems like selfishness when you vote for a candidate because you want him to take other people’s money and give it to you. Am I missing something?

I think every conservative should learn to give. There have been years when I’ve been a real miser, and I am ashamed of it. Federal Express’s Fred Smith used to say no company got a union unless it deserved it. Countries are probably the same way. If we don’t give on our own, maybe we’ll be punished with a government that does it for us.

Anyway, I am optimistic and relaxed.

Don’t forget to vote, and make your friends vote, too.

Fine New Whip

You have to do me a favor.

Make me stop looking at this truck.

It’s a little confusing. It seems like the headlights and grille on this thing are different from the photos of other 2007 Silverados I’ve seen. But it’s automatic. It has the small V-8. And it has a regular bed with no ridiculous crew cab. And it only has 7,000 miles on it.

In some ways it’s fairly cheesy. The windows have cranks, and there’s no CD player. And vinyl seats? Won’t I stick to those? I like the durability, but I would think leather would be best, to avoid the staining you get with cloth, without losing breathability.

The appeal of getting a cheap used work truck is that it’s cheap. The downside is that I might want to make a truck my primary vehicle in a year or so, and then I’ll have no T-bird to back it up, and my only ride will be a pea-soup-colored truck with window cranks.

And Stay Off my Grass

Today is Halloween. Hooray, hooray. My plans? Business as usual.

I used to think that Christians who refused to participate in Halloween traditions were going way overboard. Now I’m not so sure.

Halloween got its start as a pagan holiday. A Catholic Pope moved a Catholic holy day, All Hallows’ Eve, to October 31, and that’s where we get the term “Halloween,” but October 31 was already sacred to people who worshipped vile spirits. And it still is. They claim it as their most “sacred sabbath.” And they are especially active on that day, even now.

On Halloween, we encourage our kids to commit vandalism. We don’t tell them to do it, but we laugh about our own stupid childhood acts, as if we approve, and kids hear, and they imitate us. A single egg can damage a car to the tune of a thousand dollars. It can take weeks to get toilet paper off of your trees or house and out of your yard. I am personally familiar with the nasty job of cleaning up splattered jack-o-lanterns. Yet the vandalism tradition continues. In some places, they even refer to the night before Halloween as “Mischief Night,” and young idiots are expected to go out and commit arson.

As for dressing up, we tend to dress as evil supernatural beings, which is surely not a good idea. A big percentage of girls and women dress as sluts, and they often live up to the appearance.

Here in Miami, there is a publicly owned mansion called Vizcaya. They have a Halloween party there every year. Most people who go are between 21 and 30. Everyone gets good and drunk, and you will see a lot of exposed female flesh if you go. I’ve seen women wearing nothing but body paint from the waist up. After the party, people drive home drunk. Liquor companies put up tables and serve their products.

In Key West, they’ll put on a festival they call Fantasy Fest tonight. If you want to see nude, painted gay men walking down a major thoroughfare, this is where you need to be.

Every year, I have to make sure my car isn’t outdoors, because of the vandalism. That ought to tell you all you need to know about the wholesomeness of Halloween.

This year I’m not getting involved. No pumpkin. No candy. Trick-or-treating is nearly dead in Miami anyway, because people think their neighbors will poison the candy. Maybe the best thing is to help the tradition die. If it were just costumes, I would be thrilled to join in. But the pagan connection and the crime and the sex and the drunkenness and drug abuse put it over the top. People point to pagan influences on Christmas and Easter, but no objective person would draw a serious comparison. Let me know when someone eggs your house on Christmas. Whatever it used to be, it is now a Christian holiday. As for Easter, it has never been much of an event for me, and given what I know now, I would rather celebrate it on Passover and call it by its right name.

Some churches sponsor Christian Halloween activities. To me, that’s sort of like Christian heavy metal. You imitate something negative, and by doing that, you maintain your connection to it and keep the door open for more of the associated negativity to enter your life. People eventually become what they imitate.

Anyway, no candy tonight. And hopefully, no vandalism. I have done a lot of hard work in the yard, and I don’t want punks ruining it.

Chili!

My yard has been sprayed with copper. The garage door has yielded to my efforts. To reward myself, I have decided to commit suicide with chili.

I made my famous Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili today, only I made a change. I took out 2/3 of the beans. I am trying not to be a giant obese hog, and the beans are what make chili sit in your guts like mashed potatoes. With the beans cut down, the chili isn’t so carb-heavy.

Believe it or not, I’m low on peppers. I have some white habaneros, but they’re all heat and no flavor. I managed to scrape together three habanero golds and one yellow habanero, and I made my own chili powder, which contained chipotles. I think I did okay. I put the cutting board and a few other things in the dishwasher, and after it had been running a while, I opened it to add something else, and I started coughing. The pepper residue from the dishes was rising up with the steam. It was like being maced.

Usually I don’t go for internal blistering, but today I felt like I needed some heat in my chili, so I am not playing. I got some cheddar to put on the top and some sour cream to go on the side. This should be tremendous.

Procrustes’s Truck

I got another truck question. Is a long bed worth it, or are the parking and turning-circle problems such a pain it’s better to have a regular bed?

Speak Up

I keep seeing F-150s and Silverados with 6-cylinder engines for sale, cheap. Does anyone know if these trucks are any good? I like the idea of the lower maintenance and repair cost of a 6-cylinder, but I don’t want to have problems with inadequate power. And who doesn’t love V-8 smoothness?

I know some 6-cylinder engines have high horsepower ratings, but those ratings can be very deceptive. If the horsepower rating on my T-bird meant anything, it would do the quarter in under 14 seconds.

I have mentioned my dad’s desire to get a pickup and a trailer; just to be clear, I am not planning to haul his trailer behind my truck.

It Will Pay

Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.

I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.

You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.

I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.

I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.

Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.

I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.

Call me a Cynic

Here’s something the media will never tell you.

When Joe the Plumber brought attention to Obama’s socialist agenda, the left went after him. The press dug into his past, and the Obama campaign smeared him with ridiculous and meaningless assertions. They pointed to a small and completely normal tax debt, and they told us he was not licensed to do plumbing in his part of Ohio. They also dropped the following bombshell: “Joe” is actually his middle name. That was the best they could do.

Now we know that people in the Ohio government ran checks on him, using state computers. One check was performed by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. They wanted to see if Joe was a deadbeat dad. The lady in charge of this outfit is one Helen Jones-Kelley. Her defense is that Joe made a public claim that he wanted to buy a prosperous business, and that suggested he had assets, so her people were obligated to see if he owed money to his poor battered and estranged wife and his starving kids–people who do not exist.

I feel very safe in assuring you that Helen Jones-Kelley is lying. Ohio has millions of citizens, and many are well-off, and many are well-known. I promise you, Ms. Jones-Kelley hasn’t run checks on all of them, or even on a significant percentage of them. Who is she trying to kid? Why don’t we start with the rosters of every professional sports team in Ohio? Let’s throw in every civil servant who makes over, say, $40,000, and then let’s throw in every well-known businessman in Ohio. If they haven’t been checked, her defense is a lie.

The press has admitted that Jones-Kelley donated $2300 to the Obama campaign, which is a big chunk of a civil servant’s salary. Here is what they probably didn’t tell you:

See if you can spot anything in this photo that might lead you to wonder if Jones-Kelley has a motive that goes beyond liberalism. Think hard. You’ll eventually figure it out. If you’re confused, post a comment, and I’ll give you a clue.

If other blogs are already posting photos like these, pardon me. I am far too lazy to go beyond the three blogs I read regularly.

Okay, I have done a cursory check. Looks like Ace has been here already. UPDATE: do yourself a favor and don’t click on his NSFW photo link. I wouldn’t have linked had I checked it first.

Hey, maybe Jones-Kelley has done this for other Democrat candidates, some of them white. Hmm…wonder if we could check her agency’s records and find out. Would you bet on the evidence supporting her defense?

I have a feeling one Change we can look forward to is a Change in the leadership of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. If Jones-Kelley is guilty of abusing her position, she needs to be replaced. When a government official does a thing like this to a private citizen, in order to squash his expression of political views, it’s not just a tort or a crime. It’s OPPRESSION. Which starts with “O.” Not that I’m suggesting anything.

Connect the dots.

Amen, Bubba

I feel like God and gardening are all I write about these days. I guess it’s monotonous for a lot of people. Can’t seem to do anything about it, however.

I think the physical condition of a house reflects the spiritual condition of the people in it. If you have filth and crud around your doors and on your walls, for example, I think it means malevolent spiritual beings go in and out freely and hang out inside and on the grounds. Just as the blood on the doorway of a Hebrew home during the Passover was a sign that a hostile spirit was not to enter, mildew and rust and mold and bug cocoons are signs that say, “Everybody come in and party; you will be welcomed here.” I can’t say I know of a biblical justification for this idea, but it still makes sense to me. So I can’t help thinking that the compulsion I feel to correct the neglect and decay on this property comes from God and reflects the turnaround I have made.

My mother was a realtor. In addition to selling property, she found tenants for condominiums. I used to paint empty condos for her, and sometimes I helped clean them.

In Miami, the presence of drug dealers and the necessity of doing business with them are facts of life. And it was worse back when my mother was alive. It was not unusual for her to rent properties to people she felt sure sold or transported cocaine or other drugs. I was often disgusted by the things I saw when I entered the places they had vacated. Very often I could smell the roach feces as I opened the front door.

Many of these people were involved in Santeria and other occult practices. Sometimes they left big black candles behind, which had become fastened to counters by wax that had melted. They had revolting shrines. If I recall correctly, sometimes they had photos of their children around the areas where they kept their religious items. Innocent-looking school photos framed in construction-paper borders. Imagine involving your child in Santeria. Why not just inject him with AIDS while you’re at it? Looking at those photos was like looking at photos on milk cartons. No hope for those kids.

The tenants kept liquor around, ostensibly to be used in worship. And they had so many roaches, their cabinets were littered with tiny brown pellets of reeking manure. For some reason, they had German roaches, which are much filthier than the bigger and scarier American roaches. German roaches are unusual in a clean home in Miami; it has been years since I have seen one. Avoiding American roaches is impossible, because they live in the trees and don’t need filth to survive.

I remember sponging out those cabinets and throwing out that disgusting Santeria trash. I wondered how anyone could be foolish enough to worship demons in their own home. Of course, this stuff still goes on here, and it’s not just among drug dealers. But with drug dealers, you can pretty much count on it.

These people welcomed demons into their lives; they spent money and worked hard to attract them. And their homes were like neglected animal pens. They stank. If you were to buy one of these condos, the only way to make them right would be to install new cabinets and replace the carpeting and blinds. The filth works its way into the particle board and fibers.

Santeria, spiritism, and voodoo are among the reasons I want to get out of Miami. These evil religions are the reason life in countries to the south of us are so miserable. In a country where Santeria is popular, no one should be surprised when a communist revolution erupts. You should expect things like that to happen; it’s the logical result. When you worship demons, a punishment like the Castro regime should be considered mild. And Haiti, where voodoo is practiced, is worse than India.

And here we are in the US, flirting with socialism, at a time when sick religions are more popular than ever. Coincidence?

I keep thinking about getting a truck. At first, I wanted one because I realized it was impossible to pursue my interest in tools without a decent vehicle that would hold things like dirt, bricks, scrap metal, and sheets of plywood. But lately, I have begun to think that every responsible person should have a truck these days. At least those that don’t live in cities. Hard times may be on the way; when they arrive, practical things will be a blessing, and Bentleys and Porsches will lose a lot of their appeal. And a person who has a truck can do things for other people, which can’t be done with a roadster.

Today I have to put poison on my mamey tree, which has termites. I have to trim a hedge. I should trim a tree that is getting a little close to telephone and electrical wires. Sooner or later I have to get real and fix the soffit where the bees were removed. I also need to remove a dead strangler fig from a cabbage palm.

Before too long, things will look presentable. I may celebrate by barbecuing every day for a week.

Paths Directed?

Man, did I get stuff done today. Washed half of the back of the house. Removed a 300-pound fragment of broken sidewalk. Planted shrubs. Then there is the key lime tree I already mentioned. I planted it, put manure around it, added gravel on top, and attached a wire mesh shield. And this stuff didn’t take much time. I finished quite some time ago. I managed to get out and get a flu shot.

Moving the sidewalk piece was an interesting job. I realized there was no way I would be able to right it and get it on a handtruck. It was close to a wall, and there was no way to get leverage. I thought I might use the rotary hammer to break it in half, but I didn’t want to blow $30 on a chisel bit. Then I decided to take my 3/4″ masonry bit, drill a series of holes across the concrete, and snap it in two.

Believe it or not, this worked. This concrete was unbelievably hard, probably because of its age, so it took maybe 30 seconds to drill each hole. Still, it was easy, because a rotary hammer doesn’t require much pressure. Soon I had about ten holes running across the fragment. I tried to pry up one end with a crowbar, but the fragment wouldn’t snap. I got a machinist’s hammer and a chisel and busted out the concrete between two adjacent holes, and when it went through, the whole piece broke in half. Not bad! I’m going to get a chisel bit; this job would have taken thirty seconds had I had one.

I managed to get each piece on a handtruck and put it on the trash heap. I hope the trash people can’t pick the fragments up. Their crane keeps digging out the ground in the trash area, and I need something hard and heavy there to keep them from turning the whole thing into a pit.

There is NOTHING like having tools. Without a handtruck, a rotary hammer, a hoe, a machinist’s hammer, and a big chisel, I would have been out of luck today.

The weather is fantastic. I think I’ll go stand outside and stare at my handiwork.

Her Bugs and Fungi are no Match for my Gardening Kung Fu

I am a gardening juggernaut.

I got me a second Key lime tree. I feel like they’re free; Home Depot is charging like 20% of what slightly bigger ones cost at nurseries last year. And Home Depot’s trees are much nicer.

Home Depot is generally a bad place to buy fruit trees, because they have a pathetic selection. No mameys, plantains, guavas, papayas, or other worthwhile tropical stuff. But they do okay with citrus.

A funny thing happened while I was unloading the tree. A crew was doing something or other across the street with a lo-boy and a backhoe, and one of the guys came over and offered to put in a hole for me. Didn’t say anything about money. I was too startled to take him up on it, and there was another consideration. If someone does something for you free of charge, there is a limit to how much you can holler at him to get it right. No, I’ll go out tomorrow before the sun gets hot, and I’ll put it in the ground myself.

I had a problem with some ornamental flowers by the door; I didn’t have enough of them, and they vanished from the market for a year. While I was shopping today, I noticed that they were back. Now I got that fixed. Finally.

While I was looking for a good bag of excrement to buy, I learned that excrement comes in different quality levels. There was an ad thing over by the Black Kow manure display, cautioning me on the deficiencies of inferior manure. So I bought the real thing. Evidently the cheap stuff is only part manure. The rest is old Band-Aids and Run, Hillary, Run stickers that have been put through a grinder.

I paid good money for dirt again. I put about 400 pounds of it in an area where the dirt had simply gotten up and walked away.

I poisoned the snails and ants one more time. You just can’t poison them enough. This morning I found a carpenter ant with me in the shower. Explain that. Seems like every time I poison them, we have two days of torrential rain which carries the poison away. It’s sunny today and the humidity is an incredible 48%, so I took advantage.

I washed the front of the place with a Windex product which works pretty well.

Now I have to go out and build little mesh shields for the tree trunks, because it has become obvious that different illegal aliens are mowing the yard every time, and it is pointless to tell them to quit cutting into the bark with weedeaters. Someone needs to invent a device that grabs the weedeater line, rips it out of the machine, and sends a giant shock up into the illegal wielding it.

I can’t believe all the stuff I’m getting done. Maybe in ten years the difference will be apparent.

It’s Freezing

Mish Weiss has an infection. According to her blog, this is normal, after a bone marrow transplant. It happens because marrow recipients endure a period during which they do not produce white blood cells. Still, it’s upsetting to read about. Her fever was over 103 today.

Keep praying.

Also, don’t forget to check out Agent Bedhead’s blog. As stated yesterday, John Malkovich mentioned her in Esquire magazine! Bloggers are the new media! Resistance is futile!

It’s a beautiful day, at least compared to the mess we’ve been having lately. It’s BELOW 70 DEGREES! That will probably change in the next half hour, but it’s still encouraging. I’m very tempted to get a second Key lime tree and plant it.

Key limes are essential, if you live in Florida. In fact, if you have room to grow them indoors, they are probably great to have, no matter where you live. They bear fruit practically all the time, and the fruit is very useful. And if you make pies, you can go through a whole lot of limes. I think Persian limes are better for many jobs, but store limes tend to be dry and unripe.

Persian limes are supposed to bear fruit about ten months out of the year, but that has not been my experience.

Blogger Pal Rivals Hedda Hopper

First off, Agent Bedhead is now famous. In a recent interview with Esquire magazine, John Malkovich mentioned her blog. I won’t spoil it by quoting him here; go read. And because this is a crummy Sunday link, I will mention it again tomorrow.

I’ll bet Orson Bean is jealous.

In other news, George Moneo of Babalublog had a car accident yesterday. You may want to do him a favor and pray that things will work out with minimal conflict, and that everyone involved will be physically healed. As of yesterday, George and a person from the other car were having neck pains.

Mish Weiss is still recovering from her bone marrow transplant, so don’t forget her, either. If you’re wondering how Leah Friedman is doing, she is apparently strong enough to deal with a home full of kids. That’s more than can be said of me at my best.

It’s funny; prayer is like tending a garden. Every day you get up and you tend to this person or that one, just as you would go from tree to tree in your yard.

I am making a determined effort to find a decent church. I’ve really enjoyed Perry Stone’s work, so I looked up his denomination. Turns out it’s the Church of God. Hard to argue with a name like that.

Made an interesting score at Costco yesterday. I bought a bag of pummelos. These are like grapefruit, except a small one weighs maybe four pounds. The big ones are like volleyballs. I can’t remember the last time I had one, but I believe they are dryer and less bitter than grapefruit. Guess I’ll find out this morning.

I remember these because when I was picking grapefruit on a kibbutz, there was talk of switching over to pummelos. Europeans were excited about having pummelos for breakfast, so Israelis were eager to grow them. Not sure how to pronounce it. On the kibbutz, they said “puh MELL oh.” But wouldn’t that imply “tan JELL oh,” which is wrong? Tangelo rhymes with Angelo.

I am thinking I need to keep putting in fruit trees. I like the idea of having them all around the place. Some people down here don’t like putting fruit trees in their front yards; that seems silly to me. They look just as good as ornamental trees, plus–hey–fruit! I’d love to have a pummelo tree, if I could find one.

The neighbors would steal all the fruit, I suppose. That’s Miami for you.

Time for a pummelo.

Cream Puffs

It is impossible for me to go to Costco without buying something stupid. Today’s crime? Creampuffs.

I’m sure you’ve seen them, frozen in their big white bucket. Like me, you must have had an almost morbid fascination, wondering what a frozen creampuff in a bucket would be like.

Anyway, I bought them.

The verdict? You will not mistake them for fresh creampuffs. On the other hand, you could slop some raspberry sauce or chocolate sauce on them to cover the bucket flavor.

I managed to resist the odd-looking P’tit Basque cheese.