Good day at the Library and blood on Wall Street...

I am a boomer, and have invested in stocks and IRAs and expected that my wife would have a better retirement because we planned for it (kind of). But someone somewhere wants FEAR to run off the fools so they can feast on the hard work of others. They are doing a fine job, from Y2K to WMD in Iraq, to Hope (which seems to rest on one smooth talking man) the Media pumps the current Knowledge (global warming anyone?) at the folks most hardwired to the message. The Sky is Falling, and sure enough, it is. Anyone old enough to remember what happened when Johnny Carson said, during one Oil Crisis, that there was a TOILET Paper shortage? For the next week there was, the shelves were emptied. The power of the press in panic.

One needs vision, faith, trust and no time to fool around following - get out and lead. For sure the government is lost and behind, but they aren't doing it for Earl, they don't even know my name unless it is tax time.

I am in fix me mode, found all my dollars and today being a pay day I have control of them, I know I have three debts to my Credit Union, what the payments are (and the interest rate is fixed), and I am paying off the two credit cards. Come to think about it Citi Corp canceled one of my unused credit cards, which is fine with me I don't think it is a good time for more debt. I will leave the excess money for y'all to fight over. I am not selling anything that I have invested, today being Friday I will plug in the numbers at the closing bell and find how badly beaten my Mutual Funds and stocks have been had - but they were for my wife's maintenance not really mine. Truthfully, there are some really great companies out there that are sliding down to below their base value, and the wolves are waiting to bite.

Remember it is a MARKET and the last sale price was an agreement between the buyer and the seller. So that couple of trillion dollars of value lost in the market is a measure of how much the last High seller took away from their sale and the current LOW seller took away from their sale. Both of them walked away with money going out of the market (well, yes they did) and the buyer is holding paper to believe in for the future. The government is going to love to compute the taxes on all these sales, and some investors are going to love losers to offset the winnings (I will never understand that, but I don't have that kind of piles of profits to plunder - tax me!)

Yep, time for breakfast gruel and to remember that the Tango is beautiful, but you have to get on the floor with music to make the magic happen, wall flowers and frightened fools just watch in wonder - how did he get such a hot babe? Get out and dance - the economy is only measured by the government; the workers, shoppers, business men and crafters are the economy and I am sure Frank James is looking at his portion and the next year differently than Uncle Sam - unless you understand that Hope comes from a great heart and a love of doing the best one can.

As I watched the media influence me for meds...

The news is on, it is Sunday, and I find the US Supreme Court is going to decide if the Second Amendent is an individual or collective right. I am betting the US Supreme Court already knows the answer to that question, and what they will be deciding is how to make it other than it really is because guns in the hands of law abiding citizens might be dangerous - they had an expert testifying to America that a gun in the house was twenty-two percent more likely to harm one of the family than bad guys. Yep, that kind of expert -- the one that they didn't ask how many guns are there in the United States, how many have been used in harming any humans, and what is that percentage of the total lawfully held. They never ask that, and the media didn't want you to think you should read the Constitution yourself, you do read it every year don't you, but that the learned justices must read the English language of the late 18th Century and tell you what the Founding Fathers really meant or how they couldn't have foreseen. It isn't Latin or Greek, folks, just English.

Okay, you think the media is reporting the question of firearms fairly, well, they followed with a story about doing away with the penny because it costs more than a penny to produce. Almost two cents per penny. So sway you to that side, get rid of the penny. I guess I won't get rich picking them up on my jogs, but do they tell you that the DOLLAR doesn't buy anything like it once did, that it has been steadily sinking in VALUE the last ten years? No, they want you to believe that it will be cared for by the Federal Reserve Bank and the Secretary of the Treasury. But if the Dollar were worth what it was in 1998, making a penny wouldn't cost one cent, it would cost less. What is truth? Why would I buy any medications advertised on television shows that don't really tell me the whole truth? Because I am old, gulible and plain old stupid? Well, maybe one day but not today and probably not on Tuesday when the Supreme Court deliberates about something even I read and do understand.

One of the stories I did like hearing prior to America's invasion and conquest or liberation of Iraq from Saddam, was that Saddam was about to start selling oil for Euros. Couldn't have been much truth to that, but it might have made American interests upset that another currency might share position as a standard. But then I like conspiracies unproven, and other fictions.

A Hal Day, or turning of the slug

Not wanting to be a total slug and get moldy in the moist Northwest I decide to jog and shoot today, there is a Homeowner Officers meeting in my house this afternoon and my wife is focused on finger food and cleaning for it. But me, I am a slug and I take off - jogging joyfully down the road, picking my feet up and laying them down. I am passed early in the jog by a young woman that says hello and tears off, there was a day I didn't think that fast was fast, but speed is relative or was it time? She was going so fast she missed the shiny quarter on the shoulder, I didn't and I stopped to pick it up. We put a thousand dollars in a Credit Union account on rolled up change, most from pockets and purses but considerable from roadkill. I suspect that young women and their boyfriends throw the coins out at intersections wishing for love and infertility, thinking something mystical might happen. Nothing so mystical, some old guy picks the coins up or they get ground into the dirt for the archeologists of the future. I get the normal dogs barking at me, I respond with a hello, and then a woman in a car stops to ask if I have seen a German Shepard pup, but I haven't. I always think one should walk in ever larger circles when looking for a lost pet, driving doesn't help the dog at all, scent and sound being shut inside. There are some heart walkers out, but the cold and the misty rain keep most inside today. I find a dime and then a penny. I only need to find a nickel to make it a perfect Hal day - finding one of each coin. The nickels are the hardest to find, they don't have the utility and circulation of the others when getting change for a dollar. I finally come back home, sweating a bit, puffing a bit and happy a lot - not bad for a slug, one hour seven minutes and thirty-three seconds, do deep breathing exercises on the walk to cool down. Quick, change into jeans and GorTex camo and drive down the road to Range 16. Shooting twenty-two and forty-five pistols, won't bore you with the target, I did take the final one's picture but as long as I am happy - no need to disturb you. I wonder why, since Global Terror is something our Presidential leadership fears why they haven't decreed shooting at a range at least monthly for all good citizens, and jogging down the roads daily? Wouldn't that make me a wonderful guy, instead of just a slug? They like us better as a slugs?