Filling a Blank Space with Invisible Ink, June 29 2018

Really, I thought I had seen almost everything until I happened upon photos last week of young gun protestor David Hogg, walking the streets of New York during his book tour (oh god yes, his book tour) with apparently armed guards.  He joins several tons in weight of celebrities and politicians who crab about firearms, yet can't seem to muster the firmness of their beliefs to shun human protectors with guns.

I wish somebody had been armed and ready when a pathetic little nothing named Ramos emptied bullets, blind rage and the darkest of evil intent into unsuspecting members of a newspaper staff in Maryland Thursday.   With estimates of, what, some 400 million or more guns in America,  it seems a lot of them should be posted in a myriad of places where the best of intentions can be carried out quickly when necessary.  Not that the political left will go for that, of course.

When I was at least semi-respectable and wrote for some national magazines a few years ago, there were those rare occasions when correspondence from the crazies would arrive in the mailbox.  They weren't threatening, just pretty much void of sense or logic.  The kind of mail you don't care to answer because there's nothing to say.  Yet, some letters, though on the edge, were also accomplished by people of apparently immense intelligence -- but the word, "disturbed" could not be excluded.

Whether the conversation involves schools, newspaper offices or movie theaters, we hasten to suggest that the solution to gun violence is indeed guns.  We cannot pretty-please our way out of human irrationality, seasoned grudges or situations where society's dangerously squirming brains go on the attack.  Some events can only be confronted in like ways.  Period.

The Supreme Court:  Whew!  If you lean conservative, look at it this way -- if you tire of your vote counting as virtually meaningless in "blue states" where radical leftists hold the reigns, Trump's determined appointment of traditional judges to the Court will be the vote you couldn't make, and this one's gonna count in bigger ways than many will suspect.

Meanwhile, it didn't require consultations with a psychic to know that NY's governor Andrew Cuomo and other state officials accustomed to being fed election funds to the point of gluttony by the public unions would go absolutely bonkers by the Court's decision stating that workers can't be forced to join unions or pay union dues.  A third party is no party at all, it turns out.

No, I'm not all in on the right's wins, but as July 4 approaches I feel a lot better about the country than I did under eight years of the refreshingly now (mostly) silent Obama.

The Mother-Child Battering Ram Invasion

We've come a long way from the mother-child reunion to the mother-child border invasion, and we most definitely can't put a tune to this song.  Furious words, maybe, but no music.

Remember the Republicans.  And, oh most certainly, remember the Democrats.  The border issues should have been solved decades ago, but instead of keeping us safe the political crowd fails and/or calculates like clockwork.

This week, monetary figures have been tumbled about, reiterated and resurfaced, totaling up national health, education, prison and welfare costs annually for illegal (that means criminal, for the uninformed) immigrants in the United States, and the shocking, grand sum of more than 38 billion dollars shines like neon lights in a forest.

The mainstream media and politicians anxious for a little face time on camera seem unable to focus upon anything but the carefully screened video portraits showing mothers and children invading America via teardrop tickets.  It's rather like a run of foreign exchange students who exchange nothing in return except demands for a new life paid for by U.S. taxpayers.  It's like, it's like, it's. . .like. . .a mouse infestation, overwhelming every stick of wood and foundation materials in the house, chewing up your stuff until the whole house collapses.  Until the whole country collapses.

Compassion can kill you.  I'll happily be the bad guy for writing that.  There truly is a limit to services available and services able to be rendered to the world's masses, as they come here uninvited, carrying diseases unknown and possessing absolutely no education or skills upon which our society depends. We're certain, though, that they know who pays the bill. 

Men, mothers, children, the specifics don't matter,  All that matters in the end is numbers, and the numbers both observable and yet to come -- yes, and still coming -- are worse than a horror story featuring zombies.  Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and all the other places from which people escape various evils have turned their populations into zombie nomads, and their journey north is assisted and encouraged by Mexico, a country with which we should be on friendlier terms, but these days whose government acts no less outrageously than the wicked drug lords already giving the country a bad identity.  And through Mexico also journey the terrorists.

We've all read of bird species which lay eggs in the nests of other species on the sly, thus letting other parent birds do all the work, exactly the same scenario occurring at the Southern border with invaders weaponized with their own babies, children and, doubtless, pregnant mothers who arrive -- just in time.  Sorry, but the kids aren't adorable, the babies aren't adorable, the pregnancies aren't adorable, the men and women making this tale of terror possible are not adorable.  Americans are tired to death of solving walk-in problems with welfare paid by us all.

How many times have I written in so many words over the years, your babies aren't cute anymore?  Maybe now you realize the meaning in those words, pounded into emphasis at the border, the damned border.  It's people, it's numbers which automatically drive consequences, nothing else.  We must simplify laws enough to give new arrivals a quick hearing and, we're hopeful, a quick goodbye as most are refused.  Compassion, yes, it's wonderful, but we can't afford it anymore, especially because it now seems pretty obvious that the rest of the world will just keep coming, without end.  What rational nation on this planet wants to watch itself being eaten alive by an invasion prettied up with moms, babies and demands beyond reason or comprehension?

Brigitte Gabriel, an actual LEGAL immigrant who heads up and speaks for Act for America is making the rounds this week, noting that her Facebook page was taken down when she started criticizing illegal immigration.  Must be that mean ol' hate speech thing.  The best thing to happen to Facebook would be its demise, because it surely appears unable or unwilling -- unwilling -- to serve the free speech expectations of its subscribers.

Gotta run now.  Maybe I'll wander on down to that famous Red Hen restaurant for a quick bite -- and after they bite me, I'm sure I'll be told to leave.  And just why is that hen red?  Hmm.

Killing a Country - The Suicidal Left

Isn't it interesting how the press and public organizers currently focus upon celebrity suicides, but few apparently care a scintilla about the slow and predetermined intellectual suicide of a country happening right before our eyes?  Anybody truly caught up in the spider web of leftist compassion for "the children," believing this agenda is pure, plays a fool's game.

Compassion, either legitimate or phony, blindly driven by the thirst for political power is a very dangerous thing.  Yes, we're referencing the border which separates and protects the United States from a majority of the world's human misery, evils, detritus and invading numbers that won't stop coming unless we enforce our laws.

Unfortunately, speaking of national suicide, religious organizations of several faiths believe it their duty to overwhelm national borders with the world's masses -- and converting all of this into obscene amounts of money for their own coffers along the way.  Who pays?  We pay.

Donald Trump, on the way to possibly becoming one of our greatest Presidents (sorry, but I'm not alone in that opinion), is our last and best chance to protect the border and kick out a hell of a lot of people who have no business being here AND CERTAINLY DESERVE NO COMPASSION FOR SUBJECTING THEIR CHILDREN TO THE HAZARDOUS JOURNEY NORTH.

Trump's "America first" policy may not bode well for the "blame America first" cult on the left, and we would hope his administration will hold firm on the immigration issue -- though we harbor fears about Speaker Ryan and his colleagues who are pushing an absolutely dreadful bill pretty much mirroring the "Gang of Eight" attempts from last time.

We condemn the Pope, Pelosi, moron celebs and others crying their eyes out and blaming the government for the inescapable fact that the "poor children" are here because their families brought or sent them here.  We don't care about the reasons, we care about the laws.  That AG Jeff Sessions has announced that domestic violence will no longer be an option for entry into the U.S. is logical:  That is to say, if a woman from some Central American crap hole arrives at our border with four children in tow and demands admission because a pit bull ripped her arm off, why would this be any less of a reason than if her husband beat her?  We cannot and never should have embraced the world's domestic problems.

And speaking of Central America, isn't it generally accepted that "refugees" must be taken in by the first country they reach -- which would be Mexico?  So how is it that Mexico helps their journey along to the USA?  Refugees, illegal aliens, undocumented border crossers -- I say tomAto, you say toMAto, let's call the whole thing off.  Oh, if life were indeed song lyrics.

We now have all sorts of information hidden during the disgusting Obama years demonstrating how statistics were fudged and actions kept out of public view when it came to depositing illegal "children" (criminals, too) all over the country, and the particular shame of it all is that the Obama bunch are not in prison for a litany of illegalities and enshrouded maneuvers.  Sadly, too many young people poised to vote do not understand that the left is the crazed beast and its basic makeup is not up for change, no matter what its inner circle says.

AT THE VERY LEAST, Congress could solve in one day the pathetic issue of "anchor babies," whose mothers strive to give birth in the USA so their children can become instant citizens and thereby open the door for the whole mother-freaking trash family to enter the country and help suck the welfare cow dry, courtesy of stupid American taxpayers and members of Congress who allow this travesty to continue and grow out of control.  By the way, how's that Social Security account doing these days, abused as it is by a cascade of folks who should have no access to it?  Get rid of anchor babies now!

So where is my sympathy for the global masses?  I guess at the same place where it might have been even before various societies became aware of the existence of other peoples -- blissfully absent.  Frankly, I expressed my ultimate compassion during four Air Force years working in a medical capacity as the Vietnam years rolled forth, helping care for thousands of patients, so I don't mind saying that I'm darned nearly fresh out of tears for the border-invading rest of the world.  Hey President Trump, hey House, hey Senate -- just roll through these unresolved thousands of "claims" for permanent residency in the U.S. and kick what appears overwhelmingly to be either the dregs of the planet or baby machines with little in their heads except the will to reproduce an excess of more unfortunate poverty-stricken beings out of our country.

Incidentally -- anybody remember those folks waiting at the gates for years who applied for citizenship via the legal process in the first place?  The "Invasion First" policy demonstrated by criminals accompanied by safety valves called children is hardly a good way to make America great again.

Which means, if you don't want your babies and older kids subjected to U.S. laws, don't bring or send them here in the first place.  The families, not our laws, are the absolutely dirt bag perpetrators here, helped along in no small way by the Mexican government which looks the other way as the transit of unending hundreds of thousands continued over the decades.

The U.S. political left wants no part of any of this because they need new voters, new dues-paying union employees whose campaign contributions fill their coffers and people eternally grateful to the Democrats for making the mean old conservatives with national values go away.  To that end, the left will jeopardize all of us and always has.

Unfortunately, new polls suggest millennials have no problems embracing socialism, even though most have no idea what socialism is.  We'll make it simple:  Socialism is what leftist conduct leads to, and the Democrat elite are leftists -- their ranks infested as never before with radical players who would like nothing better than to mold a country whose finest parts will, as always happens, degenerate into a country like Venezuela.  The misplaced yet hard-sought image of Utopia will forever remain in the fiction books.

The Fabulous Four:  Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, according to an investigation conducted by The Daily Caller (June 6), are assisted by the Southern Poverty Law Center in determining what entities are "hate groups."  Amazon is particularly singled out for pretending to be unbiased while simultaneously giving the SPLC "the most direct authority" to identify hate groups.  The SPLC, affirms the investigation, has a history of inaccuracies, so this appears a marriage made in hell for sure, in our opinion.  Because the Center has a strange and questionable habit of listing conservative organizations as hate groups, the issue here is hardly minimal in scope.

Get out the Crayons!  Reuters (June 12) reports that the Freedom Party of veteran Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders will hold a cartoon competition depicting Mohammad later this year.  Because violence always seems to be invoked when these contests occur, we can only hope that cartoon images of Mohammad really take the cake!  We're not sure about this, of course, but once we've seen cartoons of Mohammad depicted with a bomb in his turban (as in years past), that pretty much says it all.  Wilders himself desires to ban the Koran, stating that Islam is a totalitarian faith with tolerance for no other religion and no desire for freedom of speech.  Hmm -- a religion which believes in throwing gay people to their death from roofs and stoning women to death has no tolerance?

Welcome to the United States Space Force:  This is an idea whose time had come years ago, and we applaud Trump for publicly endorsing the concept and forging ahead, as he explained that we must have "dominance in space."  While many insist, correctly by the way, that future skirmishes and wars will significantly involve access to clean water, it's no secret that China, Russia and lesser up-and-coming space race players harboring less than friendly intent toward competitors constitute a growing threat to neighboring satellites and other devices sharing deep space.  A USSF, unquestionably, is another ultra-expensive asset we can't afford, but nor can we sign a national death warrant by ignoring the deadly obvious possibilities which lurk increasingly in space (such as satellite killers and lasers equipped to devastate entire cities)  -- and this time we aren't talking about alien invaders from Tau this or Zeta that.  As a side note, we're curious to see if a whole new standard regarding military rank, uniforms and uniform insignias emerge from this forward-looking plan, once it takes off into the wild no-longer-necessarily-blue yonder.

Just Drinking in the News

What a great time to be a Democrat if you're mentally disturbed.  You can join with a progressively evolving party, act out in the most outrageous ways and make no sense at all except to those who are just like you -- and, be highly revered by the scattered similarly-minded throngs.  Is it any wonder the party attracts both the strangest and most dangerous disciples as radical folk continue to stake their claim, displacing both "blue dog" Democrats and the nominally normal?  From colleges whose leftist students demand classes free of white students to members of Congress who condemn everything Trump does simply because he isn't one of them, we see those on the left displaying "true colors" which have nothing to do with race.  An epidemic of crazy lurks among us.

As news of big lib celebrity suicides drenched news sources last week, we were also captivated by an article in The Hill (May 31) noting a disturbing increase in suicides by health care workers.  By this week, NY's Sen. Charles Schumer called for additional funding to somehow prevent suicides.  To the senator we might suggest that both Democrats and Republicans, but particularly Democrats, have spent decades regulating, excessively taxing and in general complicating people's lives.  Add personal stress and/or hopeless political philosophy to this impossible mix of lives controlled excessively, and what do you get?

As for health care workers, we understand about the sacrifice, compassion, frequent helplessness and thankless efforts involved -- and if anybody thinks the remnants of Obamacare (new laborious regs, paperwork, extra computer chores, etc.) aren't a component of workers taking their lives, I think they are wrong.

Are those on the left going so nuts under Trump's leadership that a contagious self-internal explosion of the mind is the result?  To listen to script word repeater/mouther and director-directed performer and apparent authority on Donald Trump, Robert De Niro, who takes off on Trump at every opportunity, we would suggest it's a good bet.  What will these folks do when Trump's re-elected?  Will smoke blast out of their ears?

Good news?  Austria is taking the upper hand to kick out radical imams and close down mosques, though perhaps some actions are a tad extreme.  Still, it's more than we're doing in the United States, thanks to various restrictions.  We doubt the founders of the country ever envisioned tolerating a religion concerned with killing fellow citizens who won't submit to its gibberish, and we're kinda certain that a bastardized version of the Catholic religion requiring animal sacrifice might be looked down upon as well.

Blogger surprise:  We who blog with Blogger received a peculiarly cryptic little pop-up from Google regarding -- what?  I think it refers mostly to censorship via the European Union, now that everybody's worried about the flavor of the day called hate speech.  The text wasn't all that helpful, but I think it comes down to a warning of sorts about what will be allowed to be seen in other countries.  I guess.  So what font am I supposed to use for my "F" word declarations now?

Twitter's CEO says he is sorry for eating at and enjoying Chick-Fil-A:  Seems fellow libs were upset because the business traditionally does not accept gay marriage due to its owners' religious beliefs, and they struck out at the Twitter guy who, like most libs, seems to have shaken like jelly instead of holding his ground.  Believe me, you gay married people, when you start getting divorced expensively and you each have to share half the family cat, you'll thank Chick-Fil-A for having tried to warn you off.

Thanks Eric Holder -- for telling the DOJ basically to defy the President, apparently even if doing so is unconstitutional.  Ah yes, that's the Holder we all remember.  Just like those old fast and furious times.

Meantime, Wynton Marsalis, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter
let loose with some unkind things about the "black community" he inhabits.  The best:  That rap and hip-hop music are "more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee."  We couldn't have said it better -- and being white, we probably couldn't have said it safely in public at all :):)

A Cicada Sonata

(I apologize to my readers in other countries who, unless familiar with cicadas, may have no idea what I'm writing about today, and perhaps could not care less.  Incredibly, there are no politics involved with cicadas - probably because they only live a few days, not nearly enough time on Earth for them to run for office.)



A Cicada Sonata

by Robert Barrow

PHOTO UPDATE - JUNE 8 2018:   I finally pulled the camera out and started taking photos of these fascinating critters.  By today, the song of the males' mating call drenches the air in all directions as cicadas invade and occupy the trees, the grass, the fences and anything else they can claim for short-term housing.  I'll include a picture below, and should mention that cicadas measure about two inches or so in length.  In a few more days they'll disappear as quickly as they arrived -- like any good momentary phenomenon worth its weight in the universe. - rb

At first, days leading to the end of May seemed uneventful, so mundane in their rural and semi-rural silence in the Northeastern U.S.  But then, as if members of some extraterrestrial orchestra had just landed and exited a spaceship, each playing some strange musical instrument in unison, peculiar sounds reached a heightened crescendo by the hour, then by the day.  Mere mortals might have detected two distinct wavering tones as the unyielding alien song filled the air, bathing areas just south of my location with a special sonic  presentation.

Indeed, no children alive and native to the area today, exposed to this widespread din appearing to come from some forgotten science fiction movie, would know they were hearing a virtual symphony -- a symphony of insects.  A mating call bolstered by numbers and volume.

Starting the lawn tractor for the fourth time in May, I proceeded along a familiar path, poised to mow down grass and weeds whose roots harbored no intentions of slowing growth so early in the season.  Yet, something was different visually, and as I looked back at the house and then returned my attention to the grass I saw them, red eyes betraying the critters' mysterious identity as 17-year cicadas, clinging to grass, weeds, trees and the house itself.  Both the cicadas and individual opaque shells from which they emerged covered the same areas, attached indiscriminately to anything capable of hosting their ostensible stick-on qualities.

As if somehow mandatory in a personal sense, I turned off the tractor and sat pensively in the yard, attempting to recall something of which I had promised to remind myself last time the 17-year crew conducted a brief takeover of the land.

Oh, yes.  Seventeen years ago I made a mental note to remind myself that the next time I encounter these strange little bugs I'll be turning 70.  So here I am.  Hmm.  Maybe the digit known as seven really is lucky, for both cicadas and people.

But there's that other little mental note I filed away 17 years ago.  The summer of 2018 would also mark 50 years since I left for Air Force basic training, having already been subjected to the Vietnam military draft's pre-induction physical exam and wanting no part of it.  Like thousands of other young men and parents throughout the country, we feared everything and understood little of those times, and if enduring a four-year enlistment over two years of extremely wild uncertainty was the best option short of running off to Canada, that's what I would choose. 

Enlistment quotas, obviously, were pretty much filled up with other young "draft evaders" whose destiny was clear, but after being rejected by various branches of the armed services, quenched by a surge of enlistees, I squeaked by and entered the Air Force.

Good thing, too, because my parents opened the mailbox not one week after I departed for basic training and were greeted with orders for the draft to spirit me away at once.

So yes, there were self-important reasons why I made a mental note to myself 17 years ago, just on the verge of summer's official return as the cicadas' song overwhelmed life's complacency.  So much we commit to memory, and so much we try to forget as time endows us with gifts of events both pleasant and harsh.

And now I must decide, I thought.  Shall I make another mental note to stake out past remembrances, once the offspring of this particular variety of cicada emerge in the year 2035 and remind me to remember again?  Beyond that, will I even be alive then, when the outrageously unthinkable age of 87 confronts me? 

If still living in 2035, will I still be as "sharp" as that insidious tack I've heard so much about all my life, whenever one's age enters the conversation, or will I be drooling on my bed sheets in a nursing facility, blissfully unaware that out there, somewhere near or far, the inevitable cicada sonata has returned to perform once again among an audience intrigued with song and red-eyed costumes designed like no other?

Make the mental notation, I subsequently urged myself, lest the very universal space which abhors a vacuum might deny my thoughts a future altogether.  But for now?  Back to springtime mowing, when nothing resists the urge to grow.


(Permission to quote or reproduce in total is granted, including the visual, provided you credit me at least by name, though I would also appreciate a brief note regarding the when, where and who if possible.)