Thursday, May 7, 2009

I got fired up...

...about something I read today on a comments section on a blog

Over at RedState, a post titled: Lefties Slam Soros, Barack and Michelle Obama. A commenter then tried to change the subject and asked a question I felt obligated to answer.

So I just spent the better part of 30 minutes responding. But before I hit "post", I am going to copy it here

"But EVEN IF, it cost lots of money, you did not address, in my opinion, the more important argument of begging the question - so if it’s OK for Limbaugh to make lots of money why attack Soros, Michelle Obama’s sneakers, or the inauguration?"

Let me try to articulate why there is a difference between Limbaugh and M. Obama and Soros.

Limbaugh has always promoted capitalism. He works for what he earns and makes no apology for his success. Rather, he celebrates it. He encourages everybody the world over to embrace capitalism and to be good at doing what you love to do because he believes that is the surest route to financial success and happiness.

G. Soros, while making buckets of money in various markets, funds movements that decry and undercut capitalism and American productivity and individualism. He makes no apology for it either. He rubs that in our faces. He is the provocateur.

First Lady Michelle Obama on the campaign trail encouraged Americans to avoid the "market" system and set their goals as teachers, nurses, volunteers, community organisers and the like. Yet she wasat that time a CORPORATE lawyer for a HOSPITAL pulling in 6 figures and then remarking to her audience that she understands how difficult it is for the common man because she and her husband had to juggle paying for the home (A mansion) paying off their student loans and paying for the girls camps and dance classes etc.(how can I possibly explain how insulting that was? $300,000 salary and she STILL hadn't paid off her student loans? She couldn't afford summer camp? but she lives in a multimillion dollar mansion in Chicago?) She actively promotes herself to be a frugal shopper, that she likes catalogue clothes like J. Crew and repeats using items in her wardrobe but then undermines her whole identity as a populist and "for the people" by wearing $540 designer sneakers. Especially after denigrating Pres. Bush's proposed refund to TAXPAYERS of $600.00, saying that that paltry amount gives her enough to go out and buy a pair of earrings. Earrings? And we were concerned at that POINT about buying gas to GET TO WORK!

Interestingly, that $600 is roughly the same amount her husband's tax decrease leaves in the paycheck after accumulating during the course of the entire year. I guess she'll have to open an earring savings acct to save up for her jewelry for next year.

As for the inauguration's cost: In Pres. Bush's second Inaug, the left howled that it was unseemly to spend so much money during a war on something so frivolous. Well, the war had not ended in 2009 AND we the tax payer are bailing out everyone but the Icelanders it seems, so why was it necessary to spend even more on Pres. Obama's inaugurations?

The bottom line is: If you earn it, you can determine how to spend it and how to talk about it. But don't tell everyone else that earning it is gauche and ought to be suppressed except for a select few.

Some pigs are NOT more equal than others. All pigs are pigs.

Lastly you wrote: "I thought the whole point of the tea parties was we should reward people who make money - why the attack on Soros? "

see, you missed the point of the tea parties. NO ONE is asking or demanding to be rewarded!!!!! We are asking to NOT BE PUNISHED. It is punishing to have been doing the right thing FOR YEARS in earning our way, paying our taxes, able to keep making our house payments because we bought a home we could actually AFFORD in the first place and then have the GOV'T bail out the institutions that caused the Housing Bubble and finance problem. Congress forced banks to make loans to people they knew could NOT afford conventional mortgages. These very people then purchased houses even I could not afford. THEY, Congress, changed the playing rules and the playing fields and the very players themselves and then sit back and take NO responsibility for it, while putting the burden of paying for it on my back. (They didn't even READ the bill before they passed it) So now these people continue to live in houses I still can't afford while my retirement savings disappear from the portfolio and my taxes are going to go up. I call that PUNISHMENT.
THAT is one of the most basic reasons for the tea parties. We are angry that we don't even get a say in this. Except to try to vote these politicians OUT. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein....... all of them are the greatest scam artists in recent history.

And the icing on the outrage cake: Sect. of the Tresasury, wonderboy Geithner couldn't pay his "fair share" of taxes even when the money was given to him by the IMF to hand back. Oh no, oh no..... he made a mistake. Several years in a row he made this "mistake.". In "Chicago" a convicted murderer sings.... "he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife TEN TIMES!" Geithner is no murderer but he is a liar and he's the go-to guy in this new transparent administration.

HEY, Mr. President....... since your home in Chicago is sitting empty, how about letting your illegal immigrant Aunt roost there for the next 4 years instead of living off the tax-payers dime in Public Housing in Boston? She'll take good care of it and YOU pay for her being here. Charity begins at home and she needs a little more charity from her relatives.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Magnolia Blossoms are Lovely

It's really too bad the trees themselves are so trashy. They lose all their leaves right about now. Right about the time the yard is looking clean and the grass is coming in strong is when the mag leaves litter the lawn. And then after about 4 weeks of that nonsense the trees look great with new soft green leaves and the flowers all gone. No, wait.... they turned to seeds. And in a few weeks the seeds start to fall and I get to clean up after them.

Honestly, living under live oak, pine trees and magnolias MAY be beautiful to some people. The yard-ape is getting tired of the clean-up.


The flowers are extraordinary. The tree directly outside our front door never bloomed. And even if it did the flowers were so high in the sky, you could only see the underside.

Pointless.
These flowers are from a tree across the cul-de-saq and the branch has draped to the ground so I got some good close-ups.

I wish a camera could capture fragrance. These are so sweet and clean-smelling.

Fun with Tomatoes

You MUST click on the first shot to get a little closer and compare the 3 tomato plants. The one in the container is a Celebrity and is growing in horse manure only and doing quite well. The one directly behind it is a volunteer Patio, (I think)that must have come out of the compost I added in the beginning when I worked the soil for this bed.
THE THIRD plant, that humongous creature devouring the entire bed itself is also a volunteer and is a Cherry 100 plant. Check out the growth difference!






















Here is another Celebrity in manure and you can see I am getting alot of fruit but the plant is starting to look a little peaked. I have added more manure but I think I will add some Miracle Grow soil to the container.





















And here is the first tomato to ripen for what is promising to be a good crop of tomatoes. I am really glad I planted a few in containers because if we have to be fully moved and out of the house before the end of the season, someone other than me is going to reap a heck of a harvest.





I get to pick him tomorrow! or her.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Really

OK, for the doubters out there, this is a female cucumber flower. Notice the miniature cucumber between the stem and the flower:















Unless insects help nature along or I interfer with the whole procedure, I'm not gonna be gittin' any of these:


I have now helped pollinate @ 6 cucumbers.









In addition, I'd like to help along the zucchini population in the garden as well but am hitting the wall of trouble I had last year with the cucs, namely, too much of one and not enough of the other
Here is a cluster of zucchini flowers, all male and I have around 11 plants.


















Lots of these. Males
















So far, only one female. I have read how people grow zucchini so well that they have to lock the door and hide from neighbors trying to offload THEIR overproduction of the squash. If this is any indication of things to come, I have to doubt if this will be our fate.

It's MAY!