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OK Let's Go Over This One More Time . . .

so•cial•ism/ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/

Noun:
1. A political and economic theory of that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated . . .

2. (in Marxist theory) A transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.


• SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. The government requires they be cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government only gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations allow, then requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows. The government gives the people who don’t work as much milk as they need.

• COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You give them to the Government, and the Government then gives you some milk.

• ANARCHY: You have two cows. Your neighbors kill you and take the cows.

• ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

• FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

• POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership"is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

• EUROPEAN SOCIALISM: You have two cows. Soon you have to kill one of them because in the Netherlands there is an overproduction of milk and the European Union rules say so. When you do so, you realize that it was not necessary, only the system was too slow in getting you the up-to-date news. From the stress, you get an ulcer in your stomach so you go to a doctor. The doctor realizes that this ulcer is a serious one, so you need an urgent treatment. Therefore, you soon get a call to the local hospital. The call's date is for 3 months later, because there is a queue with more urgent cases. Then your ulcer becomes even more serious because you remember that 40 percent of your income is taken for social tax.

• OBAMUNISM: You have two cows. The administration appoints a radical accordion teacher as Cow Czar; he rules that you can keep the cows but you can’t feed them or milk them. You go broke and the government bails you out by nationalizing the cows and calling them chickens. It then reports that chicken prices are at an all-time high and chicken ranchers are flourishing despite the Bush-era tax cuts.

• HOLDERISM: You have two cows. You trade them for guns and take the guns south of the border and give them to druglords. You then return north to file paperwork to get reimbursed for the cows, your time, your accrued pension rights and your kids’ braces (along with new tiling for your swimming pool). Later, you sit down at a restaurant, order a steak (possibly from one of the cows) and read about how the guns were used to murder ranchers just north of the border. You hope that won’t affect the future price of steak.

• Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

HUNTERS

This actually happened with some guys from Maine:

They put the guy spread eagle on the roof. The driver and passengers put on moose heads.

Then they went down the Maine toll road Interstate, causing 16 accidents.

Yes, they were stopped. Yes, alcohol was involved . . .

This proves that men cannot be left alone.

Good Bye - Carl Prine: Line of Departure Blog

A possible glimpse into the future which awaits far too many Iraq/Afghanistan vets . . . a damn shame . . . -Lunar Spook

For the past 17 days, I’ve been incarcerated inside a headache.

From the moment my lids flutter open until the last languished nod of my eyes into slumber all I know is the strum of pain.

I’m dizzy. I lurch. I’ve learned that the seventh step down from the bedroom is something of an enemy of mine.

My up and down eye movements are all wrong. The initial round of testing more than a week after the two accidents found that eight men pulled off the street have a firmer grasp on verbal and symbolic recollection and reasoning than I have. Obviously, for a soul who makes his adult living with words and analysis I’ve reached an existential moment.

For much of my days, I’m holed up in a cool, dark room surrounded, ironically enough, by many thousands of my books, all of them glaring at me much as I do the Carl I vaguely remember, a hazy figure in the distance of weeks who always was quick with a phrase he turned as if on a lathe.

I’m no longer that man. I’m a diminished, pathetic and stupid creature who now looks forward only to the reassuring clucks of doctors in an antiseptic room overlooking a river, a man who pointlessly rubs at his skull to get to the headache that might never leave.

This is what happens when a brain that got bludgeoned by overblast in Iraq suffers two quite different, really maudlin, spills in Pennsylvania. It’s also why at 1139 on Saturday I begged Ward Carroll to do the right thing for my readers and fire me.

This morning he did. This week shall be my last at Line of Departure, a swell site I inherited from Jamie McIntyre and grew into a curmudgeonly – and very successful — oasis of sanity in the milblogosphere.


Read more HERE

This is a hard read . . . a harder suck for the guy going through this personal Hell of course . . . War is Hell, and only the Dead have seen the End of War . . . -S.L.

"When It Comes Your Time to Die . . ."

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

~ Chief Tecumseh (Poem from Act of Valor)

INDEPENDENCE DAY SALUTATIONS

Happy 4th of July everyone . . . God Bless the United States of America!


"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of Government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, Roman consul and constitutionalist.

BARACK THE MAGNIFICENT

Thanks Theo - S.L.