Month: February 2023

Inconsistency

A federal judge has suggested the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may confer a right to abortion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-questioned-by-judge.html

Fine, in that case let’s extend it to a much more clear cut case and that would be various State governments forcing businesses to collect and keep track of sales taxes on behalf of government. If that’s not involuntary servitude I don’t know what is.

Six years ago today

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2017

On my usual morning walk I have noticed a red fox in the area, sometimes trotting off the trail or meadow adjacent to the trail ahead of me into a wooded area adjacent to the trail. This morning as I walked along thinking about something I glanced up to see the fox trotting into the trees about 100 feet in front of me. When I reached the place about where it had disappeared the thought occurred to me, I bet it’s watching me right now from somewhere in that tangle of standing and fallen trees and brush. There is currently no snow cover but I stopped and studied the background anyway. I saw an orange patch maybe several hundred feet away in the forest, but as I shifted to gain a closer look I could see that it was just an orange autumn leaf suspended in the brush. I scanned the drab, brown winter forest landscape again and just as my eyes drifted back to my trail the fox suddenly materialized out of the background. It was no more than 30 feet from me, crouched down on brown grass staring straight at me and perfectly motionless. I started, and then exclaimed, Ha! I see you! I waved and said, Hi, then resumed my walk, looking back once or twice to see that it was still watching me intently. I do hope we can be friends.

Many questions

Let me get this straight. We can detect incoming missiles but we can’t detect a slow moving balloon drifting from Asia towards our homeland? We can predict the climate in 50 years but we can’t predict the most probable trajectories of the wind currents a few days into the future? Unless of course the ballon can be maneuvered by a foreign intelligence bent on our subjugation. In that case and in any case a Commander in Chief of the United States Department of Defense should have had the information that such a balloon was approaching our homeland long before it reached us and should have given the order that it either be destroyed or recalled by those to whom it belonged while it was still over international waters. That’s one of the primary responsibilities of the U.S. Federal Government and the people we elect to run it. They have failed or they are not being forthcoming with we the people of the United States.

February 3, 1959

Sixty four years ago this morning, on a wintery February morning, I descended the stairway of our modest Northern New York home to prepare to go to school. My older brother John, a junior in High School at the time, had preceded me downstairs a few minutes earlier. He was halted at the dining room table near the foot of the stairs, poring over a headline in the Syracuse Post Standard and muttering, “Oh jeez…”. As I brushed past him on my way to the bathroom I glanced at the front page he was looking at and saw the pictures of three Rock and Roll stars blazed across the page along with large headlines about a plane crash. I was thirteen at the time and a freshman in High School and it didn’t mean too much to me then. Little did I know how much that would change as I progressed further and further into my teenage years over the subsequent days, weeks, and months and that I would in fact ultimately become a Buddy Holly fan and imitator after his untimely and tragic death that long ago snowy morning in 1959.