The Son, by Phillipp Meyer

A  short note to recommend a book I just finished, The Son, by Phillipp Meyer.

A novel chronicling two hundred years of history of a South Texas family.

We got plenty of secrets down here.

Read the reviews at the link to learn more.

The fourth amendment to the constitution

If you support the NSA indiscriminately collecting private information on American citizens, then grow the balls to publicly repeal the fourth amendment to the constitution which reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Otherwise, leave Mr. Snowden alone and prosecute the real criminals in this case.

Lies and liars

We all lie, to some degree. But not all lies are created equally.

My dad once said the worst kind of lie is when you lie to yourself.

We, collectively, the United States of America, are lying to ourselves on so many fronts, I don’t know where to begin.

The narrative goes something like this. We have the best system in the world. Despite obvious problems, all will be well if we just stay the course.

We’re awash in bad debt, but bad debt can be “cured”. It’s just a matter of creating more new debt to add to the old until we get out of this temporary slump. Keep pumping money. New growth will kick in and take care of things; we just need a bit more priming of the pump.

Well, I got news for you. We’ve been priming this goddamned pump going on six years and the real economy ain’t kicking in. We’re not even recovering new money dumped into the system, much less seeing gains on our investments.

Obama won the election on promises of change. Under the previous administration, we had seen wars fought on false pretenses, foisted upon the public by corrupt politicians and compliant lap-dogs in the press, including horrible acts of aggression and torture.

Rather than exposing these sins against humanity and the world at large, the Obama administration determined identifying the criminals and the crimes they committed a waste of time. We need to look forward, move on….

To more goddamned wars, based on lies foisted on the American public by corrupt politicians and compliant lap dogs in the press, including new and better horrible acts of aggression and torture….

We were promised a more transparent government.

And when one of our public servants tried to help with that cause, exposing unconstitutional, unwarranted spying on our own citizens, he, like others before him, but to a much more severe degree, has been declared an enemy of the public.

Fucking John Kerry had the gall to threaten pretty much every other country in the goddamned world if they offer asylum to the man.

Kerry’s latest shit-for-brains idea was to threaten to stop buying Venezuelan oil….

We’re getting real oil with fake money and he’s threatening them?

We’ve been told that domestic shale oil is going to save the day. I have a front row seat to that charade, living just a few miles away from the Eagle Ford fields. There is oil here. But input costs are so high and depletion rates so steep, I’m not sure we’re recovering the massive amounts of new money (or for that matter, the energy this money represents) being pumped into these fields.

It damn sure ain’t going to replace Venezuelan crude.

I enjoy advantages most farmers and ranchers don’t—land without a mortgage—the ability to irrigate in an area where most can’t.

We’ve been in and out of drought, mostly in, since 2006. We’ve consistently produced crops. And consistently have failed to turn a profit, when all costs are considered.

To be sure, I have made mistakes.

Like trying to grow non-genetically modified grains, which, under the current system, are not profitable or even marketable on any scale worth mentioning.

And I did waste a bunch of time squeezing milk from cows I can’t sell and making cheese I can’t sell and growing produce in a garden I can’t sell and shelling pecans I can’t sell.

Then there’s all those horses I failed to send to slaughter. Wait, that’s illegal too. Should have sold them to someone else I guess so they’d get stuck with my problem.

If I had only planted every square inch of my ground in Monsanto’s best and hung out at the local branch of the FSA to get every giveaway our benevolent government offers, things could have been better.

Hell, we might not have gotten audited by the IRS. Again.

Funny thing, the only receipts they requested so far are copies of non-genetically modified seed purchases.

I shit you not.

I’m sure you’ve heard that unemployment rates are down.

Why then do I have all these people calling me looking for work they wouldn’t even have considered a few years back? Begging for work is a more apt description.

Could it be that the new way we measure employment rates is a goddamned lie?

Keep telling yourself all is well; the stock market is higher than ever before. Ben Bernanke has saved the day.

Just so long as you remember, that too, is a goddam lie.

Update for my Facebook friends

Wednesday July 17, 2013

I decided to reactivate my Facebook account a couple of days ago. To my surprise, all this entailed was signing into my account which had been dormant since July of 2011. Aside from a few formatting changes, it’s as though I never left. It’s nice to reconnect with family and friends that use the site.

Consider this an update:

I’m older, uglier, meaner, walking on a bad knee, chewing and smiling with less teeth. But I chew and smile, nonetheless. I still milk cows every morning, currently three. We still have a semblance of a garden and raise food for the public: beef, chicken, pecans and grain crops. Also hay. I still love horses and watching them run and have acquired so many that it’s difficult to keep them properly fed, trained and cared for on my budget, a condition commonly referred to as being horse poor.

Leah still makes pottery and turns what milk I don’t drink into cheese. Our pantries overflow with canned goods, the freezers are full.

I’ve determined some people are good at turning work into money; I myself excel at turning money back into work.

I remain deeply troubled with my government and a society that would tolerate the shit they’re peddling.

The recent fiasco with Edward Snowden and the despicable way the press and our government have portrayed and persecuted this young man for doing his duty—informing the public of governmental illegalities and criminal behavior—really pisses me the fuck off.

Assholes, when you swore your oath, you swore to uphold the constitution of these United States and I damn well expect you to do just that. You work for us, motherfuckers. Not the other way around.

You should be ashamed of yourselves, but since you’re obviously not, I am ashamed for you.

As Ray Wylie Hubbard says Martin Luther King once said: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it swings toward justice.

I’d be quaking in my boots if I were you.

 

 

 

National ID Card

Hidden among 1,200 pages of legalese called the Immigration Reform Bill now being contemplated by congress is a law that will require all US citizens and immigrants seeking employment to obtain a national ID card.

This is not your run of the mill card, but instead a chipped card containing biometric information on the cardholder. All employees will be required to have this card and all employers will be required to scan the card before offering employment to a worker, thereby allowing the federal government to track us, one and all.

It's just a matter of time until all health related issues, purchases, etc. also require the use of this card.

One more step toward a totalitarian society.

From the land of the free....

War Criminals

A third party view of our last two presidential regimes, courtesy of RT:

http://youtu.be/rrTeBDetcfw

Heat Wave

It’s Sunday, about 9 PM and it’s still 101 degrees outside my door. The official high for the day was 108. I am told it’s worse out West. A couple of weeks back I told Sean Paul Kelley that we’ve done OK this year on rainfall. I lied. While we had timely showers during the spring, this killer heat wave has scorched the land, leaving green grass kiln-dried, like hay in a bale, and corn crops withered, several weeks before they should have.

We made hay on irrigated land, but what dry-land grass the heat didn’t kill, biblical swarms of grass-hoppers decimated. Livestock ponds are going dry and the fish die from the hot water. Without rain, and soon, we are in trouble.

Cattle hide from the sun’s sweltering rays during the day, coming out to eat only in mornings and evenings. My poor milk cows are confined to a paddock with limited shade. I fear for their lives when it gets like this.

I had a really nice garden this spring and Leah has filled the panty with canned goods. We have eggs and cheese and meat and grains, but money is tight. I need money to pay the bills.

Production costs on the farm are high, and while food costs may seem high to you, they’re not high enough. The same can be said for just about any essential product, including parts and supplies I think too expensive.

A lot of this comes down to the cost of energy and it’s not going to get better. Call it peak oil or resource depletion or what you will. I call it a fact. It affects everything we do. The cheap and easy oil is gone and gone for good, never to be had again.

We remain in a crisis period. It’s world-wide and it’s not going to get better until it gets far worse.

Politicians and preachers may tell you otherwise but they’re either full of shit or have something to sell.

Revolution is in the air around the globe. It will be long before it arrives here.

War will follow.

It’s better to know than not to know.