Boobs!!!

I am not even a teeny bit ashamed to let the world know that my wife has the best boobs in the entire world.

Now you too can enjoy them!

More Socialism

When it comes to insurance our Congress applies two standards, separate and unequal, one for property and a lesser one for people.

Unlike people without health insurance, homeowners have access to public option flood insurance.

Even those who fail to take personal responsibility to buy insurance to protect their property can get benefits, thanks in good part to politicians who are leading opponents of public option healthcare.

Consider the example of Trent Lott of Mississippi, who was that state’s senior senator when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, flooding his home looking out on the Gulf. Lott had not exercised personal responsibility by taking out flood insurance even though it was available from the federal government at low cost. He did have private insurance, but his insurer refused to pay much of the claim, saying it was not wind damage (which was covered by the policy), but water damage (which was excluded).

Weeks later Lott introduced Senate Bill 1936, which would have authorized retroactive flood insurance. The idea came from Representative Gene Taylor, a Democrat who represented the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which should remind us that when there is voter demand for reform, and campaign contributions are not the driving force, the parties have worked together.

Lott’s bill would have let flood victims pay 10 years of flood insurance premiums after-the-fact plus a 5 percent late payment penalty. Since this storm was rated a once in 500 years occurrence, even 10 years of premiums would not come close to covering the real costs, meaning a taxpayer subsidy was built into the Lott bill.

Instead of being laughed at by his fellow Republicans for promoting socialism, the concept of retroactive relief was warmly embraced, although not the idea for retroactive insurance. Instead the government went with handouts.

Senator Thad Cochran, also a Mississippi Republican and at the time chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was key to getting taxpayer benefits for flooded property, according to Taylor’s staff. The benefits were issued and expanded twice, a total of about $18 billion in all, Taylor’s staff estimated.

Contrast the two Mississippi Republican senators determined action to get welfare for flooded buildings with their votes against expanding SCHIP health insurance for poor children.

Cochran opposes a public option in health care; Lott, now a lobbyist, says Obama should just declare victory after some minor tweaks, a way to oppose without quite saying so.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican Party, has spoken cautiously, but also appears to oppose a public option,. But he, too, was an enthusiastic supporter of retroactive benefits for flooded property. Barbour even got the relief expanded and urged everyone to get their government property benefits.

There is also an interesting twist in this public option for another aspect of the health care debate – what to do about those who decline to buy insurance.

In Mississippi the relief for flooded buildings came with a requirement that owners buy flood insurance. It went further, requiring a covenant be added to their property deeds requiring the current and all future owners of that property to maintain public option flood insurance.

There is another word for that: government mandated insurance. . . .

Why should those who lost their jobs and thus their healthcare insurance be held to a different standard than irresponsible homeowners like former Senator Lott?

I call federal flood insurance a public option because it is provided by the federal government., It is sold, however, through individual insurance agents who collect commissions on the policies.

Private, for-profit insurers could sell this insurance if they wanted. The problem is that rating the risk of a once-in-a-century or even once in-a-millennium event is difficult and requires a huge pool of capital held in reserve to cover benefits that may be due tomorrow on in the year 2805.

Socializing these risks makes sense, and so does trying to minimize them with building codes that discourage building in some areas and require mitigating designs (like putting the first floor 15 feet above sea level). . . .

Congress is so generous in its subsidies for property that the public option for flood insurance even [covers] property built in flood prone areas. And you can literally buy insurance on the day of a flood in some cases, and 1 day before in others.

Along the Gulf Coast, on the barrier islands on the Atlantic, in below-water expanses behind river levees and in desert communities plagued by flash floods, our federal government is there using tax dollars to help take care of damaged property.

But people? Providing a public option so people can buy health insurance through the federal government is “socialism,” according to Senator John Kyl, the Republican senator from Arizona, a desert state where flash floods are as permanent a feature of reality as sickness and injury. Will someone ask Kyl why he favors what he calls socialist policies for property, but not people?

And what about the denial of coverage you paid for, which so enraged Lott that he filed a lawsuit against his insurer, State Farm? Lott, like others, was told that their policies would cover the modest damage like broken windows and torn roofs caused by the hurricane’s winds, but not the [surge] of storm waters, even though the [wind] drove those waters into Lott’s living room. . . .

We have elevated property above human lives.

Beauty Shop

My Baby is going to get her hair cut tomorrow..........

I need everyone to get on their knees and pray for her contentment!

Serious Begging!

I would be duty bound to hand over some money to this chap!

Life Is SO Heavy!

My beautiful wife and I go out frequently.......we're just social like that! And one of the things that we have noticed is that today, there sure are lots of heavier people.

Now I'm not talking about us old folks who know what our problems are. Nope, we are noticing that it's the youngsters that are heavier.

I seem to remember that when I was a kid, we had fat kids, but not a lot. Most folks were what I would call "regular". Some were fat, some were skinny - but most people were just plain ole regular!

Now-a-days, it seems that chubby is the way we go.

I'm sure that a sociologist would point to video games and fast food and probably a thousand other reasons for this but the point is that folks are just bigger here in the good old US of A these days.

Maybe we should start a governement program to fix this too!!!

Anyway, I see pictures of me today and I don't even recognize me. It makes me very unhappy.

I'm so sorry for my wife who doesn't deserve a big boy. She deserves a movie star - but since I'll never be that, maybe I'll just see if I can't do the best I can with what I have to work with.

So who's with me?

Let's all lose some weight together.

We can race.

I think I'll start tomorrow!!!

Peace

Sick As A Dog.......what's your story?

Woke up yesterday at 4am a tad nauseated.......

Got worse as the day went on.

Made it to work to stay for a few hours before I gave up and went home.

Where I found a very high fever and prayed over and over to the porcelin gods......

Slept for 18 hours.

Woke up today feeling fine.

So the 24 hour bug is alive and well.

Pray you don't find it in your body!

Peace.

Hunka-Hunka Burnin' Love......

Had a most marvelous time in Las Vegas!

The Beatles trip was very cool.

We had tickets on the stage for Cheap Trick performing Sgt. Pepper. That was simply amazing all by itself. There was an orchestra in the balcony that played with them and I must say that it was chill-bump exciting. And yes, I did say ON THE STAGE!

Then the Beatles Love thing was simply out of this world. Those Cirque-du-Soliel folks did all kinds of amazing acrobatics to the Beatles tunes.

They were two very different experiences but both very rewarding for us old guys!

But with all that walking up and down the strip, this boys feet are a bit sore!

Mostly though, I'm just glad to be home. All that boys trip stuff if fun, but I missed my beautiful wife!!

Peace

No, You Lie!

"What we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government,"

"Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge.

And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.

"Well, the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed."


Well spoken, Mr. President, well spoken......

Frank Worthy b. 8-14-1932 d. 9-13-2007

My Uncle Frank wasn't my uncle at all. He was my mother's first cousin. They were raised in the same house and were very close in age and very, very close in all other things. So I called him Uncle and that was close enough - plus it sounds a lot better than Cousin Frank!

He's been gone almost two years now.

It seems like yesterday that I went up to eulogize him. I had no notes, I had nothing prepared because quite honestly, I didn't even know if I was going to be able to utter a word - such was the devistation in my heart.

I loved my father dearly, but this man was, in all aspects, more than a father to me.

And I loved him so very much.

I miss him even more than that........

I was going through some of my stuff today and found this letter that he had written to my son when he was 16 years old and a junior in high school.

As I read this today, I remember all the reasons why my life is so blessed and I wanted to share this letter as a testament to all that is good in the world that seems to be more and more fractured.



Dear Cody;

One day in June 1985, I received a telephone call in Baton Rouge advising me that a baby was on the way. I left my office immediately. I had a new Buick and I sailed down the highway rapidly (keeping the speed limit, you understand) to Hattiesburg.

My western boots announced my arrival as I walked down the hallway and your dad was standing up with a hospital gown held just right for me to walk right into and directly over to pick you up. I sat in a rocker with you in my arms for as long as they let me.

That was almost 17 years ago and a time that I was most privileged to be a part of. I was there then. I am here now. I will always be as near as you want me to be.

You have embarked on a journey that will be filled with every emotion that is known to mankind. John Locke, an English philosopher of the 1600's, compared a baby's mind to a blank sheet of paper. How comes it to be filled he ask? It is filled by your experience. You will accumulate experiences whose sum total will equal the kind of person you will become. The kind of experiences you have will be dictated by the choices you make.

YOU are responsible for the choices. No one else!

I am so pleased to know how your father is encouraging you. Keith Kennedy has every reason to be proud of both of his offspring's. You have been allowed, if not required, to think for yourselves. To make decisions on your own. That creates a strong foundation for a stable mind. It shows you are trusted to make the best decision you can based on the facts as you know them. You will make mistakes as you travel this road of life. At least I hope you do. If you don't make mistakes, you just aren't doing anything. [There are enough people already doing enough of that]

I have made some lulu's. Some of which I hope you NEVER find out about but, all
of them made me the person I am today.

Now, some people will say that certainly is nothing to brag about. Well, I want to go on record as saying that the bottom line, the closing chapters of this life, is that I am happy. I have people to love and people who love me. And my young friend, no matter how rich, how famous, how much political power you have, with out love you have nothing. Zilch, nada.

The Bible tells you that. I do not believe that you can have true love without knowing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I know it for a fact! Passion, sex, hate, anger, yes, all of those things and more. But, without knowing the saving grace of God and his Son will never know true love. And without love, your life will be empty and useless to you and everyone else, except Satan and his followers.

If others were to read this letter they would be sure that I have a ghost writer. I am not proud of my earlier spiritual life and I had all of the advantages. My father and mother were both church oriented people. If the doors of the church were opened we were there.

I learned my scripture, read my bible and attended Sunday School until the day I left home for my boot camp. I can only hope your DI was not of the same cut as mine was. It was many years before I accepted, really, truly, without reservation, accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

AND that was MY loss!

I was flown back to Tokyo General Military Hospital from Korea in 1952. It was there that I received a letter from my father who did not know I was in the hospital at the time he wrote it. He had enclosed a poem which he had torn from the back of a "PowerLines" Magazine. I memorized it and for more than 50 years now it has been my credo. I offer it to you with the belief that if you remember it and live by it the experiences I wrote about earlier in this letter will generate one fine man.


THE MAN IN THE GLASS

When you get what you want in our struggle for gain,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself:
And see what that man has to say!

It isn't you father or mother or wife,
Who judgment upon you must pass,
The one whose verdict counts most in your life:
Is the one staring back in the Glass.

He's the one you must satisfy beyond all the rest,
For he's with you right up to the end...
And you have passed your most difficult test:
If the man in the Glass is your friend.

You may be one who got a good break,
They think you're a wonderful guy:
But the man in the Glass says you're only a fake:
If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass:
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears:
If you cheated the man in the Glass.

There is a country song that says if you don't believe in something, you will fall for anything. I think that is very true. I was a hard nosed business man for many years and I believed in ME. I truly believe that I was honest in all business dealing. I never betrayed a friend, broke my word, or failed to pay a debt. Many will say that makes me a good man and it may, however, if I had allowed God into my life much earlier I would have been a much better man.

Cody, it appears to me that you already have the "Man in the Glass" taken care of. I see too from what I have observed that also know God. From those experiences of mine I also know there are many pit falls along the way. Some are difficult to see and you may already be falling when you realize what is happening to you.

Remember ALWAYS in any circumstance, if you know God and you reach out for his help, HE WILL BE THERE, forever, for always, amen.

Life is a journey not a destination and it is one heckofa experience to enjoy. To enjoy it you must put others above self, take time to smell the roses and walk hand in hand with your God. I pray that he will open your heart and you will receive all of his blessings. It is up to you my friend for he has already stood at the door an knocked.

All you have to do is open the door.

I love you Cody Kennedy, as if you were my own.

Frank Worthy
February 7, 2002



So today, cherish someone. Love them for all the right reasons. And if you can't find it in your heart - TRY HARDER!

Peace.

9/9/09

What a cool date we have today. Won't happen again for a while........

But more importantly, today is the long awaited release of the digitally remastered Beatles catalog.

Today, if you were smart enought to pre-order 6 months ago (I wasn't) you will receive the blessed package in today's mail.

So get you some LSD and picture yourself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies..........

With A Little Help From My Friends.......

All the furor over the president's speech yesterday was making me sick. I heard it from all corners about how that "commie" was going to brain wash our children.....

But, this is from the same part of the country that celebrated when John F. Kennedy was assasinated.

Hattiesburg public schools let the kids out in celebration of that event.

Oh yea, all the enlightenment we have evolved in the past 40 years has really taken root in our lives.

Or maybe not.

There may be a lesson plan for grown-ups in the contrived controversy about Barack Obama's back-to-school pep talk to students. It would be to do your homework, just as the president told the pupils.

That way, the people who protested the Obama speech before they knew what was in it would have realized there is nothing unusual about a president appearing at a public school as the classroom year begins. The previous three Republicans have and there wasn't any stir, aside from some Democratic nitpicking about White House expenses, proving that neither party has a monopoly on pettiness. It was routine. As, in the end, Obama's Tuesday talk was.

Then again, many people doing the complaining, and certainly the broadcast talkers and anti-Obama bloggers who fomented the whole business, were not looking for information or for reasons not to make a fuss. They wanted one, and got it.
At least some of the complainants presumably took advantage of the White House's early release of Obama's text, 24 hours in advance, so they could read what he was going to say and make sure it wasn't offensive.

And one formerly outraged Republican, Florida state GOP chairman Jim Greer, who had said the president was trying to promote socialist ideology, relented after reading the text and said it was appropriate. Although he also was quoted as wondering whether Obama would really give the same speech.

Of course he did, urging students in his televised talk at an Arlington, Va., high school to study, work hard and stick to it, all the things a president would be expected to say in such a setting.

"I expect you to get serious this year," the president said. "I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.
"So don't let us down — don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it."

There was no count of his student audience; millions, presumably, despite the schools and school districts that blacked out the president because of parent protests, which were most vehement in Republican areas.

It was an invented and inflated controversy in which the administration provided its foes an easy target by issuing a proposed lesson plan in which students would have been asked to help the president meet his goals. That was revised to ask pupils to write letters about their own goals and how they would try to achieve them.

There were no Republican complaints in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush spoke at a Washington, D.C., school and told the students, "Write me a letter — I'm serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals."
Nor did Republicans claim that Ronald Reagan was trying to create a cult of personality, as some did this time, when he spoke to students at the White House in 1988, near the end of his second term. Answering questions, Reagan boasted of economic progress and a patriotic revival under his administration. He also said he opposed rigid gun controls or handgun bans.

More politics there than in Obama's school session. At a meeting with students before his speech, the president did tell a questioning youth that he favors universal health insurance and thinks it can be done. But he never mentioned his policy agenda in his speech.

President George W. Bush was at a Sarasota, Fla., school reading to pupils on Sept. 11, 2001. He was to have delivered a back-to-school talk there, but never did. The terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington intervened.

Until now presidential school speeches hadn't been treated as anything out of the ordinary. Obama's wasn't either, but right-wing activists saw an opportunity to hassle him and to stir up people who don't like the president by inventing an issue.

This wasn't really about the propriety of a president speaking at a school or about what he might say that parents claimed they had to guard their kids against. It was about opposing Obama. There's nothing wrong with opposition. That's the way politics works.

But the underlying tone of the most vehement critics goes past the traditions of politics to the idea that schoolchildren shouldn't be listening to this guy because he shouldn't be president.

The office, whoever the man in the White House, always has commanded respect. That is eroding in the era of nonstop talk shows and angry blogs.

It has been an American tradition for losing candidates in presidential elections to urge their followers to respect the outcome, to say that the winner is their president, too. Episodes like the school speech flap say something different.

So please, let's stop all this.........

Give Peace A Chance

At least, for Christ's sake, let's try something different and not be scared. If it all goes to hell then we can change it later.

Peace

For Paige

Most folks know that my wife loves rats and mice and other creatures in that vein.

See here:

http://kk61.blogspot.com/2006/10/rats.html


This picture accompanied this BBC story..........


The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm [over 32 inches] long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano.

It is one of a number of exotic animals found by the expedition team.

Like the other exotic species, the rat is believed to live within the Mount Bosavi crater, and "This is one of the world's largest rats. It is a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers," says Dr Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist based at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who accompanied the BBC expedition team.

Initially, the giant rat was first captured on film by an infrared camera trap, which BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan set up in the forest on the slopes of the volcano.

The expedition team from the BBC Natural History Unit recorded the rat rummaging around on the forest floor, and were awed by its size.

Immediately, they suspected it could be a species never before recorded by science, but they needed to see a live animal to be sure.

Then trackers accompanying the team managed to trap a live specimen.

"I had a cat and it was about the same size as this rat," says Buchanan.

The trapped rat measured 82cm [over 32 inches] in length from its nose to its tail, and weighed approximately 1.5kg [about 3.3 pounds].

It had a silver-brown coat of thick long fur, which the scientists who examined it believe may help it survive the wet and cold conditions that can occur within the high volcano crater. The location where the rat was discovered lies at an elevation of over 1,000m [over 3,250 feet].

Initial investigations suggest the rat belongs to the genus Mallomys, which contains a handful of other out-sized species.

It has provisionally been called the Bosavi woolly rat, while its scientific name has yet to be agreed.


Whose yo daddy now!!

Peace

Laborious Labor Day

I love those three day federal holiday weekends.

But they never seem to last long enough!

Cooked Sunday afternoon for my family and a big chunk of my wife's family. I think we ended up counting 25......but some ate so much we'll just round it off to me cooking for 30!

I fried catfish, french fries, tater tots, hush puppies and okra. Along with a big tray of beans and cole slaw with a pecan pie and banana cream pie for desert......well, let's just say it was a food encounter of the fried kind.

Plus they drank two gallons of tea and two cases of beer!

So a good time was had by all.

Then, for Labor Day itself, I did three racks of ribs, some chicken legs and some good Cascio's sausage and some boudin.

But that was truly all for me.

And it was very good.

I hope all of you had a great weekend - but I'll bet that you were also like me in thinking that the weekend ended way too soon.

Peace.

meat-mare

meat·mare (noun): A terrifying dream afflicting vegetarians in which the dreamer experiences extreme feelings of anxiety about meat.

I am somehow mysteriously feeling sorry for Robert St. John.

Can't say that this is a normal thing. I've known Robert for a long, long time and he's a great guy!

Never once can I remember one thing about him that made me say "Poor Robert".

Back in the day (read 1979) when were getting our sea legs under us and were moving along with the post high school rituals of actually having to get a job, Robert and I worked for his older brother Drew in his Landscaping Empire known as "St. Johns Landscaping Empire".......or something like that.

We sweated and planted and tractored and such, but mostly I remember us drinking lots of gatorade and eating Big Ones from Wards for our sustenance.

Plus the sweating. Did I mention the sweating? Oh God, it was hot!

Best thing to make boys study in college??? HARD WORK!

Anyway, back to Robert.....Robert had an easy going style and I honestly have never known one single person that didn't like him. But girls, oh my goodness, girls just ADORED Robert.

So the rest of us had the enviable position of absolutely, positively having to be his wing man - because the girls always talked to him first!

Then, as time moves on, we all go to college and get "real" jobs (although the summer job on the landscaping crew were the "hardest" job I ever had!)

Next thing I know, Robert moves to Destin to hang on the beach and waits tables and learns to cook, etc, etc.

So now - not only do you have a great man's man that is friends with EVERYBODY and who the ladies not only love but actually adore - now he lives at the freakin' beach and can cook too!!!

OK, so I hope I've made my point because I could go on and on about Robert, but it wouldn't do any good because everyone that knows him already knows all these things.

So back to the why I feel sorry for him.......this month......he......is......living.......as..........a.......VEGETARIAN!

He wrote in one of his recent columns that he is a confirmed carnivore - and yet here he is, in search of some misguided Holy Grail of health, abstaining from meat for an entire month!

So yes good people, for the first time in almost 50 years, I feel sorry for Robert St. John.

So if you see Robert in the coming weeks and he appears to be shaky or sweating profusely, don't worry about him - he probably just had a meat-mare!

Peace

Evolution Revolution

So the Duggars are having their 19th kid..........

These people scare me for some reason. They're so calm in all that stuff. Those kids are so, so, um......nice acting!

Which leads me to reasonably believe that they are either a cult and are hypntoized or they are laying in wait to become the serial killers they are being trained to be right now.

I try to watch the show every once in a while but ever since they went to the "Evolution" Museum, I've been cracking up each time I see them. I can't get those agruments against science out of my head.

Plus, they all dress alike......

And since it has been all over facebook for a few days I'll go ahead and ponder the question, "so what DOES her uterous really look like"??

Peace