Maine has a blue collar governor in a now red state. Govenor LePage’s glib remark, after being constantly nitpicked at by the press about his not going to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual dinner in Portland with a follow-on breakfast meeting in Bangor, was unfortunately authentic.

Who has not become exasperated while being repetitively and repeatedly questioned about the same subject? The press uses this immature interrogative technique to get the juicy sound bite. Asked and answered is sufficient. Any repetitive persistent asking is needless needling and carping. IF you have kids, and taken them to the grocery story, you know what I’m talking about.

Govenor LePage’s rationale was practical – he did not want to establish the precedence of becoming beholden to the political agendas of special interest groups. Not to mention, as he states, there are only so many hours in the day and many demands on his limited time to tend to professional, personal and private matters.

Rachel Talbot Ross’s – President of the Maine NAACP Chapter - tone, as quoted in the Portland Press Herald is callous, telling and inconsistent starting with, “I don’t care who he’s got in his family”, and ending with “His son deserves better.” Rachel, you don’t care or do you care about Lepage’s family or son? Really? I doubt that to be true to who you really are. See how the selective sound bite is damaging?

Governor Lepage is not willing to join in the NAACP’s agenda of exclusive inclusiveness. The Maine NAACP wanted him to meet with the black prisoners in Maine’s prison – a race exclusive event. Governor Lepage declined unless the meeting was open to all prisoners – an inclusive event. The meeting was not held because of the NAACP’s inflexible commitment and blind allegiance to its dogmatic agenda.

As with any newly elected executive political leader, verbal gaffe’s are going to occur and be learned from. President Obama’s glib special bowling remark “It’s like the Special Olympics or something,” (168,000 Google Hits) on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is one example, but not an excuse. President Reagan’s “We Begin Bombing in Five Minutes”, (98,400 Google hits). I’m not going to go down the profane path of VP Biden.

Govenor LePage – the microphone was on. Consider all microphones to be on, live and recorded. Pause to temper your response by five seconds to mentally bleep the glibness while continuing to hold true to your values & beliefs of total inclusiveness.

1. A letter from my supplemental insurance carrier wanting me to designate up to three people to notify for if/when my premium payments are not made. Shred letter, recycle envelopes.

2. Credit card application. Shred & recycle.

3. Life insurance application from AARP. Shred & recycle.

4. Directv. S&R. When you offer the internet, telephone and channel bundle, we may talk. Until then. S&R.

5. Rockler - telling me that I am one of their BEST CUSTOMERS! It has been at least several years since my last expenditure. If I am one of the best, their standards and expectations are curious. S&R

6. Metlife Auto Insurance card identifying me as a Preferred Motorist and a Personal Identification Number. S&R

7. Discover Card offer. Apparently will never recall me kicking them to curb, for irresponsibly corrupting my credit rating, over 25 years ago.And never fulfilling their promise to take appropriate corrective action. S&R with a vengance.

Seven items for the week. You may ask yourself, as I ask myself, why don’t I register to Opt Out with the Direct Mail Association?

I certainly and quite easily could, but consider the employment impact throughout the junk mail supply chain. Loggers, paper mill workers, marketing folks creating the copy, printers, the post office and finally the recycling industry. Opting out would break this chain of employment.

So I’m not grumbling, only reflecting.

On the fifth day of the fifth month of 2010, five students at a high school in California were expelled for wearing patriotic attire. Several were wearing t-shirts with American flags, others were wearing patriotic themed bandanas.

This day is Cinco de Mayo day, a regional holiday in Mexican state of Puebla. This day, the fifth day of the fifth month is equivalent of the seventeenth day of the third month – Saint Patrick’s Day. Both days are and have become celebrations of cultural heritage and pride. Significantly, both days have also been adopted by drinking establishments as marketing events to drink pitchers of margaritas or greened-up beer.

The University of Kansas Medical Center has a comprehensive Diversity Calendar that lists many more events of cultural significant celebrations.

Back to Live Oak High School. The story is well known, has been extensively commented and complimented on. Essentially an Hispanic vice-prinicpal approached a set of five students who were wearing, until that day, allowed American patriotic attire – a blend of American flagged t-shirts and/or bandanas. The command was given to remove or reverse. They complied, were brought into the vice-principal’s office and were expelled for the day.

The fourth day of the seventh month is the day we celebrate American cultural heritage and pride. This is our, We The People’s, Independence Day. Our holiday lies outside the traditional school year. As such, there is no opportunity for collective celebration within the school system. (As a side note, our Independence Day does not exist as a drinking holiday.)

Throughout the school year, for elebration and educational opportunites, there are designated ethnic and culture awareness days and months. Again, the Kansas calendar link above provides a comprehensive list. Some of these days/weeks/months are self-proclaimed. Some are state or regional. While others have national interest and significance. For example, in 1999 the California Legislature adopted October as European American Heritage Month.

I do hereby proclaim the fourth day of every month as a celebration of the We The People and United We Stand Day. This day is to be celebrated with the wearing of patriotic attire and rememberances of our collective We.

“If you do nothing, you slip towards the darkness.” The soul has its own seasons and cycles, equinoxes and solstices. Seek light when available. Create light when needed and necessary. Otherwise, darkness descends and defeat accomodated.

S.TAO.177. Unfortunate

“Let us not hold ourselves above our fellow human beings, no matter how great the disparity.” Our times are tough. The truest disparity is to ourselves, living individually and collectively above our means. The debt becomes excessive, extended and then passed forward to unborn future generations. These times alone are our burden. Let us not be selfish with what is not, and never should become ours to take, steal and thieve. We are not above the unborn, to think this ways makes us dead to ourselves. For full freedom, live with less. Simplify.

We will keep our sanity when we do not create future generations of unfortunate

Not really, according to Einstein – we all have more energy than we can release in a lifetime.

E is Einstein Energy Quotion in joules
M is Mass measured in kilograms
C is the Speed of Light – approximate 300,000,000 meters per second

My mass is 77.18 kilograms (becoming marginally less daily – separate topic of latent success)

According to Albert Einstein, I am the container for 6.95 x 10 to the 18th, e+18, that is eighteen place holding zeros. 6,950,000,000,000,000,000.

This converts to the equivalent of 1.9e+12 kilowatt hours. See Formularian.org for other equivalent conversions.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, “In 2008, the “average” nuclear power plant generated about 12.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). “

Taking these calculations out one more level – I am the carrier of 155 nuclear power plants. (If my Microsoft Excel math is right.)

Apparently I do have enough potential energy.

A Son of Thunder by Henry Mayer. Subtitled: Patrick Henry and the American Revolution. 475 pages with 40 pages of Notes, and 8 pages of Index.

1st line: “People set out early, harnessing steaming horses in the post-dawn chill or walking across stubbled fields still drifted in mist.”

Boanerges is the origin of A Son of Thunder. From the Bible, Mark 3:17, “And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder” This title reflected Patrick Henry’s strength for rhetorical flourish embedded within his eloquent and evangelical revivalist inspired speeches. When he spoke, everyone listened. And there was tremendous substance beyond the style.

Patrick Henry, beyond his oft quoted rhetorical blast of

“Give me liberty or give me death”

is largely a forgotten patriot. Beyond the seven words of fame lies a self-made man, one who lived the American dream of steel-spoon background, and endlessly toiled for liberty.

PH was a second generation Scottish emigrant. His zeal for liberty was influenced by the Scottish clan culture. As quoted in How The Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman, in 1768 Patrick Henry told the North Carolina colonial assembly,

“We shall ever be more ready to support the government under which we find the most liberty.”

He was a member of the Virginia delegation before, during, through and beyond the American Revolution. But he was not a member of the Virginian aristocracy. He was and spoke for the common man who toiled endlessly for, and to a large measure achieved, a better life. This cultural and society division, coupled with his candid speaking talents, worked both for and against his best intentions.

His career spanned politics as a member of the Virginian House of Burgess, later as state govenor, military commander, lawyer, plantation(s) owner and land speculator.

Through Patick Henry’s engagement and advocacy, We The People now have our Bill of Rights. PH spoke out against the secret development of the American Constituion, seeing it as a consolidation of power with aristrocatic tendencies & ever less mention of persoanl liberty and threatened to erode the very rights that are the foundation of our Declaration of Independence. This was his one of his last political engagements and most intense in national politicals.

Last line: “Red Hill remains a secluded corner, far from the durge of modern life, and visitors come only by the handful and the hundred in search of the man who once spoke the language of thousands”

I am glad I read this book and learned even more about this remarkable patriot. My copy was purchased at Colonial Williamsburg after seeing a re-enactment of a Patrick Henry speech. Read the book. Then thank and honor Patrick Henry’s contributions to your liberty.

That even by itself is difficult to comprehend. Here we are, four months into tax preparation season and the code is not finalized. Blame the government for their quest to complete challenge the ongoing complexity of the tax code. Should be simple, make money, get money, send some to the government. Instead, with the unintentional consequence of economic stimulus/drag, a whole economic segment is in place to guide and assist tax preparation. IRS, begats accountants & lawyers, begats software developers, begats the consumer supply chain, eventually leading to the post office. A simplified tax code is the economic equivalent of the Detroit Three going out of business, thus begatting another gov’t bailout. I will always remain an opponent of income tax and an adamant proponent of consumption tax. Don’t tax me on how I make my money, but how I CHOOSE to spend. it. But I digress?

The IRS and software recommend sending in the returns via traceable methods. (AKA more directed economic stimulus) Another alternative is electronic filing. A fee to us, free to the government. (AKA another directed economic stimulus). [ever notice how every economic stimulus is designed to separate you from your money?] Since I am sending checks with my returns, they are going in via standard first class mail. My return receipt will be the sucking sound as the two more weeks of income is sucked out of my checking account. Surely the USPS and IRS won’t want to lose that opportunity. But I now digress into my main point.

The gov’t revenue services should be sending us Thank You notes on behalf of the president and govenor. This job creation, laundered through the USPS, office supply companies & contract printing service is job creation begatting economic stimulus.

The bottom line becoming, a courteous gov’t, of by and for the people, would let us know, We Got Your Tax Return.

Don’t hold your breath. I won’t be.

Our tax code is so long it makes War and Peace seem breezy. ~Steven LaTourette

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson

This is a repost from my first post,

“Words are not true reality”

RMSJr

Bridges ought to be the priority, for as we have tragically experienced, they are either poorly maintained or designed, and then overloaded and fall down. They ought not to be bridges to no where.

Roads, some are at and over traffic capacity. Some chronically and always, others – depends on the time of day. I know my commute on I295 from Portland to the third Freeport exit would be better with a third lane for the wanna be NASCARacers. As it stands now, the left lane takes all the nose-to-tail, passing traffic, leaving the right lane for us calm, sedate, and rational drivers.

A lot of Americans are losing their job. Primarily in the financial, then retail, then automotive sectors. Can’t be a trader on Wall Street anymore, here’s your shovel. No more consumer economic engine = less cash register attendants, here’s your shovel. Excess automobile inventory, fly the fat cats to Washington in private jets, beg for dollars, shutter some plants, here’s your shovel. We have shovel ready money for you.

Here in Maine right now, it is snowing. Nature’s way of providing shovel, plow and snow blower ready economic stimulus. Later this afternoon, I will be shoveling, then blowing, then shoveling some more. The National Weather forecast has snow through Wednesday.

The economic stimulus is slight. At most, gas will be consumed then reserves topped back off for the next storm. The snowblower is fixed for the season, however, I really ought to finish repairing the front augur transfer assembly. The gears are stripped. That way, the next time the current gears strip out, I will an available spare. The first gears lasted five years or more. So I have about five years to get around to it. Snow shovels, about five or more on hand in the current inventory. One hangs on the shed. another is positioned in the garage. The remaining spares are in the shed.

I am shovel ready. Hear me buzz.

This one specific un-numbered volume was started eight years ago with a last entry from four years ago. The first entry addressed the practice of common placing as decribed in Anne Fadiman’s book Ex Libris. Real briefly, this is when the reader adds margin notes or copies quotes into other writing. Lifting the original quote out of context and writing into a new personalized context. This idea appealed to me. This practice is quite common and shows the value, strength and wisdom of reading and writing to think & learn.

Within the quotes copied, for later contextualization was this one that speaks to an email thread theme that I have with an unpublished author friend.

“The first thing we have to say respecting what are called new views here in New England, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mold of these new times” Ralph Waldo Emerson in The Transcendalist

Another quote written The Federalist Papers, #10, by Publius speaks to and recognizes the evils of partisan politics.

“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally being the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules ofjustice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Reading through old journals allows me to rediscover dormant and incomplete thoughts, ideas and philosophies. Perhaps some of these rediscoveries will be revealed here.

WC313