Donald Trump news, another mass murder, and other fun stuff

I saw that President Obama was criticized for talking about gun control too soon after the last mass shooting incident, the two news people killed while on the air. That's a tough one, because if you don't speak right away, the next one will already have occurred and you won't be able to speak about that one either. As we process yet another series of senseless acts of violence in the last week, including a Texas deputy, remember that guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people: kids with guns, young black gang bangers with guns, white racists with guns, mentally ill people with guns, drifters with guns, domestic abusers with guns, criminals, black and white, with guns, disaffected radicalized white racist teens with guns, disaffected radicalized religious extremists with guns, sociopaths with guns, Aryan nation militia separatists with guns, careless neighbors with guns, disgruntled former employees with guns, drunken morons with guns, ammosexual gun fetishists with lots and lots of guns, compensatory chickenhawk-over-eager-wanna-be soldiers with guns, paranoid secessionists with guns, racist cops with guns, poorly trained cops with guns, drug dealers with guns....... if only there were a common factor we could identify and address...... * * * * * * * * Donald Trump, though, is living the American Dream: inherit $100 million, have a bunch of wives, buy lots and lots of shiny crap, borrow billions of $$$ and not pay it back, and then maybe run for President.* * * * * * For all you "gotcha" journalists out there don't get so excited; when Donald Trump said the Bible was his favorite book, he didn't actually claim to have read it........* * * * * * * I saw that PolitiFact rated something Ted Cruz said as "half-true"; for Ted Cruz, that's actually an improvement. It could very well be the first time ever.* * * * * * * * In the latest one-upmanship going on between Donald Trump and Scott Walker, Trump today said that not only would he build a Canadian wall, but that he would also ship all black people back to Africa. "They came here illegally and took our jobs picking cotton and other entry level positions that should have been American jobs," he said to a loud cheering crowd. "But I would do it humanely," he said, "by airplanes."* * * * *Ben Carson, on the other hand, said slavery was the best thing that could have happened to Africans because they found Jesus in America. I guess that's one way to look at it, but some of those Africans met Jesus way sooner than others. * * * * * * * Republicans on Republicans - Senator Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump "shallow," "ill-prepared," and a "complete idiot." John Boehner called Ted Cruz a "jackass." * * * * * * * At our family gathering this weekend for Mom's 90th birthday and reminiscing about the good old days of dial telephones, one of my siblings mused about the fact that a whole generation of our youth will never experience the satisfaction of hanging up on someone and slamming the phone down........and that's a very sad thing.

Sturgis, SD - Hey, where'd everybody go?

On Day 1 of my "bucket list" motorcycle ride to Sturgis, SD and Devil's Tower in Wyo, I rode to Chadron, Ne, about 430 miles west of Omaha. In preparation for the ride, I had taken a 100 mile ride a few days before just to see what it was like. I thought if I could do 100 miles, I could do 400. It turns out I was right. And then I figured if I could one full day of riding, I could do four. It turns out I was also right. But that's a long ride. * * * * * * * * I have a 2007 Kawasaki Vulcan 500. Not a big motorcycle, in fact, on the small size for touring, but large enough to travel on the highway for a single rider. It performed well averaging about 50 mpg. I found 70 mph to be a comfortable cruising speed when the road opened up. The temperature was 104f by the time I got to Chadron and it was 49f when I left Sheridan.* * * * * * Sturgis, SD, has had a motorcycle rally since 1938. They skipped a couple of years during WWII due to gasoline rationing so this year was the big 75th Annual Sturgis Rally and over a million people attended according to one report. There were 14 fatalities and 152 injury accidents. A good portion of visitors travel in RV's bringing their motorcycles on trailers. Local residents rent space in their backyards for campers for $100 a night. And RV parks and campgrounds for miles around have booming business for the few days around the rally. Bathroom facilities are at a premium everywhere. Concerts and races and hill climbing and parties and lots and lots of drinking are the basic activities. Hundreds of vendors sell T-shirts and other souvenirs and about anything else you can think of. I bought a T-shirt. I got there about a week after the big rally, but there were still hundreds of bikers around town and I saw many on the road going in both directions from Sturgis. The town has only about 7,000 residents and the rally is a huge money maker for the town, to the tune of about $280 million. * * * * * * * Here are some notes and thoughts from my trip: Rode to Sturgis SD today (day 2)a d took pics of the empty streets and a few of the notable taverns and bought a T-shirt...... then rode to Devil's Tower, Wyo and did the hike around the perimeter of the Tower. What a remarkable geographic feature.......Devil's Tower has many Native American names: Bear House, Bear Lair, Aloft on a Rock, and some others. Native American leaders have petitioned the US government to name the rock Bear Lodge. I think the 'bear' appellation is because the vertical surfaces look a giant bear's claw marks. Geologists believe it to be a magma extrusion or a volcanic plug and hundreds of feet of surrounding soil above it has eroded away over the eons mostly by the Belle Fourche River to leave that unique formation. The facets are due to the crystalline structure of the rock and stress fractures caused by freezing and thawing and huge temperature differences over time. If you think of the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon, you get the idea. Then I rode another 130 miles to Sheridan, Wyo, where my nephew and his family live now. Somebody said you can't go home again.......but I went. Saw my old house where I lived from 1955 to 1961. It's now a beauty parlor! And the tree lined divided boulevard is a four lane street. And the house seemed so small. * * * * * * So on my ride today (day 3) I noticed many interesting names of creeks, and gulches, and roads: Crazy Woman Gulch, Dead Horse Creek, Dry Bones Road, etc. They all tell stories about the settling of the West I presume and about the hardships and travails of the early pioneers. And then there was Kingsbury Road - surely a local and successful fellow I presume. English I suspect. Possibly a local cattle baron. It provided an interesting contrast to the other names. I started in Sheridan, Wyo this morning at 49f. Brrrr. Glad I took the full leathers. I don't wear those chaps much, but they sure helped today. Rained for about 90 mins. around Moorcroft and south, and the rain jacket worked great. Rode through the southern Black Hills and Hot Springs and am now back in Chadron. It didn't warm up much till about 30 miles north of Chadron...... Last leg of trip tomorrow back home to Omaha........ There is an association of riders called Iron Butt Riders of America or something like that. They ride enormous distances in a day -- a thousand or more to get in. (later, I looked it up and they have to ride 1,000 in a 24 hour period) I apparently max out under 500 miles and am in a different association, the Association of Wimpy Numb Butt Crybabies group. * * * * * * * A thing about riding a mc is you are in an intense relationship with the pavement and the wind and the feel of the bike and are always making corrections to compensate for all those factors. A car gives you much more leeway and lenience in dealing with those same factors. But the wind has much more effect on a mc. A slight increase in wind from one side of the other will move your bike in the lane. It's a moving zen moment with the ever current present. I am not "blue tooth" equipped with SiriusXM. I did try to occupy myself with mental exercises like figuring gas mileage from the last fill-up. Ever try dividing 84 by 1.7 in your head? I brought up rock and roll music my band plays from our playlist and listened in my head to as many tunes as I could remember. The Who's "I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles" was a favorite. I thought of Ted Kooser poems I remembered and made a mental list of all the novels I've read and visualized my favorite abstract artists' paintings. I tried mentally working on Ch. 5 of Has Anybody Seen My Picasso" without much luck. It's much easier in front of a keyboard than behind a mc windshield. Other times I'd be in a stream of consciousness of memories of childhood in Sheridan, or other trips, or who knows where the mind wanders, that would make James Joyce proud. But much of the time, I'd have no thoughts, a clear mind, and exist only in the physical sensory moment. * * * * * * * * * After studying weather radar maps and forecasts from several different sources last night and this morning and seeing no rain in the western half of NE, I decided it would be okay to ride on back to Omaha (day 4). As soon as I headed south out of Chadron I immediately ran into cold, heavy, drizzly fog for about 40 miles with visibility of 100 yards or so at its worst just south of Chadron but gradually better to Alliance. Temps were in the high 50s. Then another 2 1/2 hours of off and on light to medium rain.....So much for my weather analysis. But all the rain gear worked well and the rain stopped around Thedford and I continued my way through the Sandhills on Hiway 2. Very pretty country. Rolling hills, lakes, meadows, sunflowers and daisies, the occasional trees, a few cows and horses, for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles........I am now safely home and I am starting to get the feeling back in my backside......... It was a great trip! Glad I don't have another 450 mile ride tomorrow.

Bucket List...............and other items

By this time next week I hope to have two items checked off my bucket list: ride my motorcycle to Sturgis, SD and then go see Devil's Tower in Wyoming..........I've always wanted to base jump from the Sears Tower in Chicago, too......just kidding. I head out tomorrow morning. But before I go, I thought I'd note a few interesting political items from this last week: turns out Ben Carson did fetal tissue research and wrote an article about it, Rick Perry ran out of $$$ to pay his staff and faces criminal charges, Donald Trump body slammed Fox's Megyn Kelly in an ultimate fighting contest in the octagon and then held her in a rear naked choke before she tapped out to go on a two week vacation, Scott Walker gave $450 million of tax payers' money to the Milwaukee Bucks' billionaire owners for a new sports arena while cutting public education by about the same, Ted Cruz proposed a constitutional amendment to ban contraception, and Jeb Bush would bring back torture and thought the Iraq War was a good deal.* * * * * * As bad as it has been for Republican Evangelicals that Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim, they are now beginning to realize that their leading Republican Presidential contender, Donald Trump, is a, gasp,.....................non-practicing Presbyterian. * * * * * * * Honest to God, I just saw an article about certain right wing Christian conservatives who believe Donald Trump is a new prophet heralding the End of Days about to come....... Crazy stuff. I don't think it was satire....... I gotta admit, though, if he were elected President, the End of Days just might be nearer than we think..........* * * * * * * New Republican talking point: Sure, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied their way into a disastrous and wrong headed war changing the balance of power in the Middle East in Iran's favor, leading to the killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in a devastating civil war creating thousands of new terrorists, set up an entire agency to spy on Americans without warrants, generated a trillion dollar deficit, and nearly destroyed the US economy, but Hillary Clinton may have used the wrong e-mail account.......* * * * * * As we process yet another series of senseless acts of violence, please remember that guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people: kids with guns, young black gang bangers with guns, white racists with guns, mentally ill people with guns, drifters with guns, domestic abusers with guns, criminals, black and white, with guns, disaffected radicalized white racist teens with guns, disaffected radicalized religious extremists with guns, sociopaths with guns, Aryan nation militia separatists with guns, careless neighbors with guns, drunken morons with guns, ammosexual gun fetishists with lots and lots of guns, compensatory chickenhawk-over-eager-wanna-be soldiers with guns, paranoid secessionists with guns, racist cops with guns, poorly trained cops with guns, drug dealers with guns...............

I've Still Got All My Marbles and other thoughts

When I was a kid I had a bunch of marbles, almost all cat's eyes, that I got from who knows where. Some were the larger size, some the smaller. The larger ones were about the diameter of a quarter and the smaller ones maybe a little larger than a dime. There are many different types of marbles: usually glass or clay, and they come in many different colors and color patterns, blues, and Chinas, German swirls, and aggies, bumblebees, sparklers, and crystals. On Ebay, antique (old) marbles can sell for several dollars apiece. Some older ones are hand made. They fetch the higher prices. A marble sold for $40,000 a few years ago. Marbles have been excavated from ancient Pakistani, Chaldean, and Mesopotamian sites and were mentioned in Ovid's poetry. Now, most are machine made. I've got a bunch around here somewhere, but I'm not sure just exactly where. One could say I have lost my marbles; but I've still got all my marbles, I just don't know where they are. One time back in fifth grade in Salt Lake City I played "keepsies" with a neighborhood kid I sort of knew, Mark Martin. He was from a Mormon family a couple of blocks away. There were lots of Mormons in Salt Lake City. We drew a circle in the dirt maybe 3 or 4 feet around and took turns shooting at each other's marbles in the ring. If you knocked the other's marbles out of the ring, you got to keep them. I was a better shooter than he was. You'd hold the marble against your thumb which is lodged between the ring finger and the middle finger and then flick the marble aiming at a cat's eye or aggie. The aggies were the cool marbles. I won all his marbles. Maybe 30 of them. He cried and walked home. I felt so bad that I went over later and gave him back his marbles. My family lived in Salt Lake City less than a year and I never kept in touch with that kid. I wonder if he remembers this.........* * * * * * * * * President Obama turned 54 this week. Last year he said he was 53. Notice how his story keeps changing..........* * * * * * * Used to be politicians tried to sound smarter than the other candidates..............* * * * * * * Donald Trump now promises to replace Obamacare with "something terrific." Well, now, there you go. Finally, a detailed plan. * * * * * * * * Finally, I read that a blanket ban on gay boy scout leaders was lifted. Personally, I've always thought gay boy scout leaders should be able to have blankets just like everyone else.