No More Jesus
A radio show, The Bitter End,
About how people want to die.
PG does not want preaching.
Too much misery from Jesus during life.
PG wants to die without verbal abuse.
G-d will take care of his soul.
Pictures from The Library of Congress.
The Second Term
The Wall Street Journal has a feature today, Unlucky (Lame) Ducks? It is about the tendency of re-elected Presidents to have horrible problems in the second term. The POTUS known by PG, from LBJ to GWB, certainly testify to this. BTW, LBJ is Lyndon Baines Johnson, not LeBron James.
The WSJ sets out to show that the second term curse is a myth. They do not quite succeed. Rhe fourth paragraph contains a gem. Put your coffee down before you read this. “Two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley, were assassinated in the first year of their second term. But both were arguably successful in the short time they served.”
There have been thirteen Presidents to serve two full terms in office. This includes Grover Cleveland, who served a term, was defeated, and won a second term four years later. Five of the first seven Presidents were eight year men. Three of the four Presidents before BHO served two full terms. By coincidence, we are now in the second longest period of not having a President die in office. If the cigarettes don’t kill BHO, this record will be broken in 2015.
On Tuesday, November 13, 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to William S. Smith. He wrote “God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.” Twenty years later was the middle of Mr. Jefferson’s second term as President. There was no rebellion.
Looking back on the last hundred years, the second term is not pretty. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to seek reelection. Let’s break it down.
Woodrow Wilson got America in World War I. He campaigned for reelection in 1916 by saying he kept us out of this conflict. He suffered a stroke in 1919, and was incapacitated the last year of his administration. The Republicans won the next election easily.
Calvin Coolidge became POTUS when Warren G. Harding died, and won a full term in 1924. He was very popular, and could have won a another term in 1928. This would have put him in office at the start of the Depression, which his policies helped to create. Scandal wise, did not get caught.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had battles over trying to enlarge the Supreme Court. Many of the New Deal programs were ruled unconstitutional. Europe and Asia were a mess.
Harry S Truman became POTUS when Franklin D. Rooseveltdied. He won a full term in 1948. The Korean War turned ugly, there were scandals, and Joe McCarthy had a good time.
Dwight D. Eisenhower had numerous scandals in his second term. His golf game suffered.
Lyndon B. Johnson became POTUS when John F. Kennedy died. He won a full term in 1964. He is the last VPOTUS to have the boss die in office. The War in Vietnam got ugly in his full term.
Richard M. Nixon won a landslide over hopeless Democratic opposition. Ethical issues caused him to resign in 1974. He spoke in a monotone.
Ronald W. Reagan had the Iran-Contra-Cocaine affair in his second term. The problems caused by the government financing terrorist armies, by importing cocaine, are still with us.
William J. Clinton could not keep his pants on. This was before, during, and after his second term.
George W. Bush saw his wars go sour in the second term. Tax cuts were used to pay for these wars, causing economic problems.
The Narco State Rag
This feature was written July 13, 2010. The situation in Afghanistan is little better. If we leave, the country falls into chaos. If we stay, we spend money we don’t have. It is a bitch.
Some people euphemize bitch by saying that something is a bear. Across the frontier from Afghanistan, the Russian bear is dealing with a heroin epidemic. Some say the United States suckered the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan in 1979. The disastrous war that followed led to the fall of the Soviet Union. We are still dealing with the karma.
Tom Dispatch has an audio feature about Afghanistan, and the many unanswered questions about our war there. We invaded Afghanistan to get revenge for 911, and looked for a reason later.
At the 3:06 mark on the tape, when Tom makes a comment Afghanistan being a narco state. PG had a flash of understanding about the reason behind this war. This may even have been powerful enough for the powers that be to ignore the reports about a terror strike in September 2001, and let 911 happen.
The rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking are wide spread and long term. When planes went to Central America in the eighties to bring arms to the contras, they came back to the United States loaded with cocaine. There are stories of collusion with the government in Cuba. There are many, many more stories about connections between the US government and the drug trade.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they cracked down on the poppy farmers. Much of the raw opium for heroin/morphine/opium is grown in Afghanistan. This was not a pleasing for the CIA.
Could it be that the real reason for our involvement in Afghanistan is to ensure the flow of narcotics into the hungry world? This would be a big cash cow for the CIA, although not enough to justify the amounts of money being spent on the conflict.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Forty Four Word Archive
Here is the product of Forty Four words.
Euthanize the separate blog
And it is all over
The pictures do not need to be wasted.
The beltline and L5P is reality.
This is a new blog, forty four words.
Produced by PG, just like chamblee54.
The posts will be 44 words, or less.
Include photo credit, but not title
Numbers are one word.
Complete sentences are optional.
Correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling is preferred.
There was a check.
He looked in his bag,
the car,
the coat pocket.
The paper check was nowhere.
Panic was about to set in.
There was an envelope behind the pill bottles,
On the desk.
Where the check was.
Breathe easy now.
PG was going to use 750 words to count the 44 words.
The password was forgotten.
The email account was set up on internet explorer.
IE has been taken over by virus.
It was supposed to be easier this way.
Best picture at Trifecta contest,
Village boy on Tractor
Crop, color balance, allow for wide screen,
Put picture on desktop to grok.
Too much light in the background.
Try to say something positive.
Inaugurations
The happy historians at backstory have a timely feature, Four More Years: Presidential Inaugurations in America. There are a few stories.
George Washington was afraid of acting like a king. No one knew just how the office of President would turn out. Honest George stood on a New York balcony, took the oath, and gave a tasteful speech.
Probably the most exciting inaugural was in 1876. The country had endured eight years of Ulysses Grant, and was ready to elect a Democrat. The Republicans were good at dirty tricks, and got Rutherford Hayes elected, despite losing the popular vote. The Democrat, Samuel Tilden, had a power base in New York, and was rumored to have an army. The possibility of an armed fight over the election was real. Cooler heads prevailed. Mr. Hayes was allowed to take his ZZ Top beard into the oval office.
In 1865, the country had endured four brutal years of internal war. Abraham Lincoln wanted to start the recovery process. His speech is regarded as the best inaugural speech ever.
Backstory makes a point that few have thought about. They said that Mr. Lincoln was a lousy public speaker. The reason his inaugural speech is famous today is because copies of the text were printed in newspapers. This makes sense, as less than an hundred people probably heard his unamplified, or recorded, address. This would also account for the popularity of the Gettysburg Address.
Today, it is the medium, rather than the message. We are inundated with clever words, designed to uplift, improve, educate, and motivate. With everyone screaming, no one is heard. It is tough to imagine an inaugural today having the impact of the ones in history.
This feature was written like H. P. Lovecraft. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. The images are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States.
Return To One Blog
Having a second blog is not a good idea.
Forty Four word posts can continue on Chamblee54.
Forty Four words will be a dogatory.
Traffic can flow better to one destination.
It is better to fix this now.
Sometimes you make a mistake.
She Said He Said
1. THINGY
Female……Any part under a car’s hood.
Male……..The strap fastener on a woman’s bra.
2. VULNERABLE
Female…..Fully opening up one’s self emotionally to another.
Male…….Playing football without a cup.
3. COMMUNICATION
Female..The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one’s partner.
Male….Leaving a note before taking off on a fishing trip with the boys.
4. COMMITMENT
Female…….A desire to get married and raise a family.
Male………Trying not to hit on other women while out with this one.
5. ENTERTAINMENT
Female……A good movie, concert, play or book.
Male……..Anything that can be done while drinking beer.
6. FLATULENCE
Female……An Embarrassing byproduct of indigestion.
Male……..A source of entertainment, self-expression, male bonding.
7. MAKING LOVE
Female……The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve.
Male……..Call it whatever you want just as long as we do it.
8. REMOTE CONTROL
Female…..A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
Male…….A device for scanning through all 375 channels every 5 minutes.
9. THIS IS A repost. Text is from Funny Jokes.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Faith
People say religion is bad.
They say faith instead.
Now faith is a dirty word.
Faith is loud, vulgar boasting.
Faith is verbal abuse, humiliation.
Faith is fighting because of Jesus.
Faith is obsession with life after death.
Pictures from The Library of Congress.
Math Jokes
Q:Why do they never serve beer at a math party?
A: Because you can’t drink and derive.
Q: Why won’t Goldilocks drink a glass of water with 8 pieces of ice in it?
A: It’s too cubed.
Q: What did Al Gore play on his guitar?
A: An Algorithm
Q: Why was the Calculus teacher bad at baseball?
A: He was better at fitting curves than hitting them.
Q: Why do you rarely find mathematicians spending time at the beach?
A: Because they have sine and cosine to get a tan and don’t need the sun.
Jokes are from facebook. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Lance Who
Of course you know who he is. He is the most famous bicycle racer in America. Who is number two? Of course you don’t know. Bicycles are a participant sport. Racing might be a big deal in Europe, but this is America. The next question is, why should people in America care whether bike racers in Europe use “performance enhancing drugs”.
A player using these substances is hurting himself. (apologies are extended to female users) Yes, steroids will turn your grapes into raisins. Just like knee injuries will make you walk funny. Repeated head injuries make you want to kill yourself. When you choose to participate in an activity, there are going to be side effects. It is just that some side effects create more hullabaloo than others.
This internet commentary was interrupted to listen to Mike Gallagher and Chris Wallace on the radio. It seems as though Gallagher is a mother’s maiden name, used as a stage name. Mr. Gallagher’s birth name was Smelster.
Getting back to the hysteria over drug use, in a boutique sport. This is step with the overall societal reaction to drugs, except alcohol. FBI agents recently interviewed Sheryl Crow, the former gf of Lance Who. (Black Sports Online says Sheryl Crow Snitched To The Feds About Lance Armstrong’s Doping.) The overkill of the War on Drugs has been extended into the mania about pedal pushers on steroids.
Lance Who has been accused of being an overall terrible human being in this affair. There are reports of throwing teammates under the bus, in an effort to keep his own star shining. This is the same competitive spirit that is acclaimed when someone wins, but denounced when the star is no longer in fashion. It is all about me winning.
This scandal will fade away. Oprah will find another spotlight to shine on her rotund face. Athletes will continue to be tested for a wide range of substances, so they can go on television and sell beer commercials. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
Open Letter About The New Stadium Project
This is a message for Scott Holcomb. He represents the 81st district in the Georgia House of Representatives. This body is going to be asked to allow The Georgia World Congress Center Authority to raise the limit on money they can borrow. If the Legislature does not pass this, the stadium will not be built under the present plan. In my opinion, it would be best for the citizens of Georgia to not pass this enabling legislation.
I have looked over the Memorandum of Understanding between the GWCCA and the Atlanta Falcons. I am a slack blogger, and not a lawyer, and my comprehension of this document is limited. There is language enabling both the Falcons, and the GWCCA, to back out of the deal if either party does not live up to their obligations.
What I could not find is whether the GWCCA is responsible to finish building the New Stadium Project (NSP), if the Falcons fall short on their end of the financing. I have not seen a plan for the Falcons to finance their part of the deal. This is an estimated $700 million. If the State is going to participate in this scheme, then we need to know how the Falcons plan to come up with $700 million.
The GWCCA portion of the NSP budget is estimated to be $300 million. It is assured that there will be much more money needed for infrastructure improvements. Some say the government part of the tab will be half a billion dollars. This is at a time when State, City, and County governments are having financial problems.
This brings us to another reason to not use tax revenue to finance the NSP. It is about our basic values as a society. At this time schools, roads, MARTA, water and sewer systems are out of money, and need basic maintenance. If we cannot provide people with a basic standard of living, then we have no business using public money to build a football stadium.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
New Blog
There is a new blog, It will start out on WordPress, but may go somewhere else later. It is called Forty Four Words. The posts will have a limit of forty four words.
The word counting began with 22 words. 22W is still in delightful business, but they long ago gave up on the 22 word limit. PG thinks this is a shame. The 22 word limit forced you to think, to concentrate your thoughts into a tight format. The owner of 22W chose to run his blog differently.
The owner of 22W is Abraham Piper, the son of famous preacher John Piper. Many of the comment threads at the old 22W were about religion. One day PG tried to express his beliefs in 22 words.
PG decided that this label thing was not going to work. Labels belong on jars, and PG’s hair is a half inch over jarhead level. The best solution was to write a list of beliefs. The good news here is that numbers do not count against the total of 22 words. 1. My beliefs are my business. 2. Practice outweighs belief. 3. G-d probably exists. 4. G-d does not write books. 5. Jesus has nothing to do with Life after death.
This is 25 words. Three words need to go. Line 4 states that G-d does not write books. This implies that G-d does, indeed, exist. Line 3 can be eliminated, and the answer reduced to 22 words.
As you may have guessed, this post is not regulated by a forty four word limit. Chamblee 54 is not going anywhere, except maybe to a privately hosted domain. There are lots of issues that do not lend themselves to short posts.
PG has been entering the Trifecta writing challenge. Many of the posts here specify 33 words. PG wrote a few, and was impressed at how quickly such a post could be knocked out. You can express yourself very well in 33 words. There is a sense of poetry in short posts.
Forty Two years ago, a few hippies at Cross Keys High School decided that forty four was a magic number. It was the uniform number of Hank Aaron. Forty four is two times two times eleven. The second lowest even number, squared, multiplied by the lowest two digit prime number. Eleven is two ones, that add up to two. You can go on and on about this, probably for more than forty four words.
So the blog has joined the blogosphere, along with a few thousand more today. Very few of those will make more than ten posts. The hope is that Forty Four Words will hold up, and be a good compliment to Chamblee 54. The new template is going to take a bit of getting used to, and will only handle pictures 700 pixels wide. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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