USDA: Don't privatize inspectors
Twelve years in the poultry business, including many days slaughtering and processing the meat you eat, was a great incentive to claw my way up the educational ladder. It is also a great incentive for...
View ArticlePublic Union Viewpoint?
While we readers of DailyKos regularly decry the erosion of labor unions, I expect that the general populace does not. First, most statistically don't belong to one, nor are they of the family of a...
View ArticleI'm probably not alone here?
As the only atheist Democrat in my five-sibling very Catholic Republican family, I get a good portion of “faith-based” conservative bilge and birther items email forwarded to me. 'Not sure why, I don't...
View ArticleRush on Birth Control
Oct. 25 Today I tuned into Limbaugh, and am reassured that he is distraught with the way the campaigns are going. Rush opines today that it could be that women who favor fewer controls, and more...
View ArticleFox: Where's your Sandy Benefit Program??
I note that Fox News is bemoaning NBC's decision to stage and broadcast a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Springsteen, et al, are appearing. Fox seems to be rending garments and gnashing...
View ArticleThanksgiving on a small farm
Hopefully, it hadn't snowed overnight....because in a few hours, Dad would crank (literally, no starter on our old 1937 relic) up the Farmall tractor and inch it down to the annual site of our...
View Article"Have you tried our sausages?"
Staffing a sample station at a Big Box store is not for the faint-footed. You show up well ahead of store opening time. You get your station assignment from the boss---What you will prepare and...
View ArticleMaybe not my best idea
I awoke to an email from a Red state cousin, who entreated his complete email address book to vote in a purported USA Today poll. His headline: Eric Holder Says We Have No Right to Own Guns." The idea...
View ArticleWhy I Listen To Rush
This morning, Rush gleaned this kernel of “truth” from a caller's drivel: That, since women are not as clued in to physical attractiveness (in a mate, I think he means) as men are, then, ergo, ipso...
View ArticleThe Thanksgiving Barney Came Home
The adage that you don't know what you have until it is gone is learned the hard way. It seemed so to us kids, as we watched our big friend disappear into the forest.Our family home, in today's...
View ArticleThe Other Vets
These are the spouses who held families together while the vet was off who-knows-where. As a then-young guy with no kids, I watched and heard my older crew members try to keep in touch with their wives...
View ArticleThe Dogs of Christmas Past
There was Ben, Smoky, Oscar, Shadow, Sydney, Jayda, and now Bryce. It seems like a lot, especially since none lived to meet their successor. However, each of them was used or pre-owned, with unknown...
View ArticleMemorial Day Lesson, with Steel Guitars
In my early days of the Vietnam War, my crew and I slept on Guam, an island from which our B52s flew west day and night. Sometimes, our flying schedule left us some room to head to the airbase's beach,...
View ArticleGood News for California Bobcats
This just happened today, August 5, in Sacramento. The kudos go to Camilla Fox, of Project Coyote, and her thousands of volunteers and supporters, as well as many other environmental and humane...
View ArticleThese huddled masses
As a US combat veteran, I remind those governors and talking heads, today in favor of turning away refugees, of what we believe in, and fight for, as a free nation:"Give me your tired, your poor,Your...
View ArticleNot There Anymore
It's gone. Not slowly faded, but there every morning. And then never.Where I live, I can gaze north, all the way to the King Range on Mendocino's Lost Coast. Just over the nearby cove lies tiny Caspar;...
View ArticleNo Big Deal And Why That's A Good Thing
On a beautiful April morning in San Antonio, the US Army held its monthly retirement ceremony at historic Fort Sam Houston. My sister in law was retiring after 30 years of service. I prefer to skip...
View ArticleThose hard to send Holiday Cards
We have old friends, many far away. Some of these are ill and nearing the day, as our Brit friends say, when they may “fall off the perch.” After looking in vain at the preprinted offerings, we’ve...
View ArticleA Christmas Cat
Two years ago, life for an old tabby cat turned ominous. One day she was fat and happy, at home with her doting human. Then the old lady, a neighbor, succumbed to a mix of maladies. The heirs emptied...
View ArticleNobody replied, per usual.
I don’t think folks change their intrinsic bias much, as adults. Case in point are 35 folks, plus me, who were today sent a story about two female shoppers who found a dead cat in an mall parking lot....
View ArticleA resident toy doctor: Santa's best gift
Each year at this time, Mom and Dad's 15 mile trip to town the day or so after Christmas comes to mind. We probably didn't go along, content to remain home on the farm with our gifts. But what they...
View ArticleVFW Not Commenting On Trump's Kurd Abandonment
I’m a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, VFW for short. Generally it is a patriotic group of veterans. Predictably, rather conservative. But I had hopes they might make an exception. Today I got...
View ArticleTo the 128 Votes for Trump Yesterday: Welcome to Your Legacy
TO: You, one of the 128 legislators who voted against seating the legitimately elected Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, on January 7, 2021RE: Your failure to abide by your oath of officeFROM: A fellow...
View Article
