Wuse De Fuke

2007-07-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

Black beans cooking in a big old pot
Black beans cooking is what we got
All the time
We are only waiting
For some groceries to arrive....

Howdy And Here She Is

2007-06-16T10:41:00.000-04:00

I've been pretty tired after the marathon twelve-day foal watch, so haven't been blogging much. Now that I'm back to my normal workload, I've been recovering. Here are some photos of the filly who made it all worthwhile, however tiring. She's going to be a very fine and sweet horse. Her official name is Dedicated One (her dam is Dedicated Sue, her sire Formula One). Her stable name is Oona. In these snapshots, she's four days old.

Dedicated One Arrives In This World!

2007-06-06T09:58:00.000-04:00

Suzy had her foal -- a great big, strapping, beautiful, chestnut filly, at 10:35 last (Tuesday) night. She has a white blaze and socks to top of her rear pasterns, nice brown eyes. Great big legs. Dr Rick says "huge." Suzy was perfect, strong and brave. She really stamps her babies! The filly's going to have Suzy's coloring and sorrel tail. I was there for the whole thing this time, from just before her water broke, while I was doing night check and getting ready to bed down in the tack room, again.

Our first foal, Rep, two years ago, pretty much foaled himself, and got right up on his own as soon as he was out. This one -- Dedicated One -- stable name "Una" -- I had to get my hands and arms bloody, to give her a tug to help out. Took a good while to get her toweled off and up on her feet, but did, and then a few minutes for her to get her sea legs, me holding her up. Our friend Kim arrived and helped me get her nursing for the first time. Dr Rick arrived after she was up to make sure all was well and it was, everything perfect. We got her nursing again while he was there, a good long drink.

We have four horses again! Yay, Suzy! Yay, Una!

I hope to get the official baby photos today. We didn't have a camera available last night.

What a foal watch! Twelve days. Suzy's term was 348 days. I hadn't had any real sleep to talk about for twelve days but I got some last night.

!Adelante!

Jeffrey's Everyclear Party

2007-06-05T10:40:00.001-04:00

In Nevada in those days, you could get a cocktail to go, in a "go cup." Try that most places today and see how far it flies... Maybe still can in NV. I don't know. In fact, you could get a cocktail everywhere I remember going. Go to the diner for some eggs in the morning, have a cocktail if you wanna. 7-11s sold liquor. Supermarkets, too. In Silver City, the only retail establishment in town was the bar.

Sometimes we'd go into Carson so we could pretend to gamble and so drink for free at one of the casinos. Dave would get one thin dollar worth of dimes. When a waitress would approach, he'd put one dime in a slot and take a cocktail off the tray, then walk around with it. And so forth. Get kneewobblin' drunk for one dollar or less.

I got so whisky drunk drinking for free while pretending to gamble one night, at a blackjack table, I couldn't do the math with the cards when they were dealt. Dealer was getting irritated because he was trying to work for a living. The pit boss finally told me I was welcome to stay and drink if I wanted to but I couldn't gamble anymore. Truth!

Place was lawless in those days as anywhere I've ever known, any time. I don't recall too many real bloodlettings for it.... Chaos, often. Madness, always. Occasional fisticuffs. Sure. 'S why we liked the place. On top of that, it was also, with Vermont (still), and Nicaragua and El Salvador, the most armed place I've ever lived. For all the chaos and madness, booze and drugs and general lawlessness and fun, I don't recall many firefights, for all that. Most people were downright polite,actually, if'n you obeyed the code of the mountains.

One time Jeffrey had an everclear punch party at his trailer in Silver Springs. Made a big ole punch. (Everclear for those who don't know was raw grain alcohol -- a punch would be about 190 proof.) Invited all of his pals over for the afternoon. Everyone, needless to say, was good and slammed by the time the punch was drunk up. My '63 Fury had no exhaust pipes at all, just noise right off the manifold, and a completely broken spring in the back on one side, so it listed heavily to one side.

(The manifold exhaust pipe had rotted through and broke in two on the way to NV from VT that year, and I'd driven across country with it like that, getting out every so often, crawling under the rig, and stuffing either broken end into a beer can, which muffled it some, until the can burned through, repeat process, and so on, for a couple of thousand miles. One night when we were leaving the End Of The Trail I was so drunk -- clearly -- that I told Jeffrey to drive. Anyone who's been in a vehicle when Jeffrey was driving knows that's fuckin' drunk, right there. No further description required. Jeff, instead of just driving around a corner and on to the highway to Silver Springs, decided to take a "shortcut" instead -- up and over this rock ledge -- boom bang -- ripped off the entire remaining exhaust system from manifold to tail pipe's how I got into that fix.)

So, a whole bunch of us left Jeffrey's for the End Of The Trail in my Fury. I can remember for sure that in the car with me were Morgan, Lonesome Wayne, and Custom Kenny, but there were more than that. The front seat was crowded and the back stuffed full. All of us way more than drunk.I got about a block toward Dayton on the highway when the cop light went on behind and the siren. So, I pull over, thinking the jig is finally up, this time, for sure. Redhanded. Judge'll never let me out. If they'd have pointed one of them breathalizers at me like they have today, thing would probably have exploded, killing us all.

Cop comes up to the window. Takes a slow gander at the whole bunch of us. Likely caught a good buzz just from the fumes. Doesn't bat an eye. He looks at me and says, You need to get that muffler fixed. I says, Sure, will do, right away. He gave me a warning citation. Never said another word. Turned around, got back in his car, and drove off.

They ain't shittin' you, either, pilgrim. You could buy this lot, for example:

Like the ad says, "plenty of room and close to town."

This is a shot of my last daylight view of Nevada before heading back east for what I didn't know would be a quarter century (fueled by a black beauty Jeffrey slipped in my shirt pocket, kept me going nearly to Cheyenne....):

I stopped here to drink a beer and gather what was left of my wits before the long drive to Jeffersonville, Varmint, where I arrived with one last thing ten-dollar bill in my pocket, which promptly disappeared at the roadhouse bar that was then called the Library and is known today as Robbie's Wildlife Refuge.

That was also the last transcontinental voyage of the '63 Fury. Later, I sold it to my brother, The Other Sisco, for one hundred dollars. He drove it, with more than 200,000 miles on it, when it was using more oil than gas, per old rig. He used to buy used motor oil in large lots from gas stations and just pour it in one end so it could run right out the other. We called it the SS Acid Rain in its final years, because the once-blue paint job was peeling off in huge sections, like sunburn, right down to the bare metal. It was a good old rig. Maybe my favorite of all I've run.

Dave Reisch and John "The Other Sisco" circa 2006, Sensitivo party at my VT joint

Dayton

2007-06-05T08:09:00.000-04:00

The End Of The Trail, as it was late '90s. Sorry to say I have no photos of it in the glory days. The saloon is more than 150 years old.

The End Of The Trail was the headquarters of life, late 70s and 80s. Dave Reisch taped the whole jukebox selection, "the soundtrack of life," on to cassettes one afternoon. It's a literal recording of one afternoon at the Trail, jukebox, pool table noise, conversations at the bar. A real time recording of a day in the life. I'm transferring the recordings to CDr. So far there are two completed.

Dayton

2007-06-04T19:07:00.001-04:00

Closer still:

On Saturday night we's all drunk and fightin'....

Dayton

2007-06-04T19:05:00.003-04:00

This is more like it:

2007-06-04T19:05:00.001-04:00

Dayton, NV

2007-06-04T18:55:00.001-04:00

Well, no one can go home again. As it today. Nowhere is allowed to be as it was then. It doesn't look much different in this scene, though.

Silver City, NV

2007-06-04T18:29:00.001-04:00

The Golden Gate Hotel

("Heartbreak Hotel")

Across the road in a little parking spot stands this plaque, about the ill-fated Comstock Brothers, who met a questionable end.

My '63 was often parked in front of it in '79, when, living upstairs were our old pals LeRoy, JR, Lonesome Wayne Thomas, and Michael Hurley, Samuella The Fortune Teller, and myself, yers trooley, the one and only Crispo.

One night Michael and I had an argument over some drunken nonsense, and I decided I was clearing out in the morning. When I stumbled to the old Fury, thinking, hungover, once again about how many a good man meets a questionable end, the damned rig would not fire, it just would not. Well, I wasn't a happy man right then. And then along ambled Lonesome Wayne, laid back as only he could be, with a rotor for a '63 Plymouth slant-six distributor. "I found this on the shelf in the bathroom, Sisco. Looks to me like a rotor for a '63 Plymouth."

I found Elwood at the End Of The Trail a few minutes later. "Dammit, Elwood, don't ever be messing with my car again, man."

Snock says, "I didn't want you to leave."

Hell, I didn't want to go anywhere, either, not without my boyz.

Burlapograd, Varmint

2007-06-04T18:26:00.001-04:00

Put a call up to Portland on the public telephone....

2007-06-04T18:21:00.000-04:00

One Of The Cats

2007-06-03T08:42:00.001-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ860P4iTaM

Designated Driver

2007-06-01T11:17:00.001-04:00

My boxer, Lily Wiggles

2007-06-01T11:14:00.000-04:00

My Jack Russell Terrier Pal, Trooper

2007-06-01T11:08:00.000-04:00

My pal, Trooper, Exterminator of All Things Rodent

Yeah, still waitin .... But a dream to report....

2007-06-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

Cordelia, Carla, Tex

So I normally don't remember dreams at all but for a week now, not having had any deep, dreamless sleep, I've been waking up remembering all of them. Some I've ended up thinking about for days.

Back in them latter '70s when still just a lad, out in that part of Nevada we loved, around Dayton, Silver City, like that, there was a woman Carla, Queen Of The Comstock, who was a real woman, yessir, believe it. She could hang with the best of 'em and best most of 'em. I wanted her desperately. When I told Dave Reisch that last year one night when we was drinking and yacking, he said, "Man, she would have eaten you alive!" Doubtless, but still ......

Anyways, one night at the bar at the Golden Gate Hotel in Silver City, I was drinking with Carla and trying, lad that I was, to chat her up. She toyed with me for a time the way a cat might a mouse, for entertainment's sake, before delivering the coup de grace. Carla looks up at me over a glass of whisky and says, "Sisco, you're so hip it makes me want to puke." True love! hey.

So last night I found myself dreaming I was back in Nevada and Nevada days, though somehow my dog Trooper was there with me, decades before he was even born. Me and Dave Reisch were drinking at the End Of The Trail Saloon and a couple of other old-time watering holes out there in them days. Dave and me was bellied up to the bar and I saw our old pal Tex come in, in the mirror behind the bar. Then I felt a woman's touch on my shoulder and turned around. There was Carla standing there, looking at me. She asked, "Do you remember me?"

Remember! Oh, my god!

Says here

2007-05-31T10:36:00.000-04:00

Says here in the paper today that Alfred E. Bush wants to borrow another $30 billion the government doesn't have "to fight AIDS." Shit. I'd have thought that telling people to keep their dicks in their pants until married would be a lot cheaper than that, but what do I know?

I know I'm still waiting on this mare to have her foal.

Waiting and Waiting Still But

2007-05-30T09:24:00.000-04:00

Elwood says over on his myspace blog he had a dream in which our old buddy Bob Jordan appeared and Elwood credits him with being a roots noise musician from back in 80s daze, and I got to thinking Damned if that's not right. An unheralded roots man, right there. In fact, last time I saw him, he'd come to Burlappograd for a convening of people who play homemade instruments and crashed at a long ago girlfriend's pad while there, the convention being held, weirdly, at what was then Burlap's quality hotel. Bob don't swing that way.

Still Waitin', Partner

2007-05-29T09:47:00.000-04:00

But in the meantime, there are new photos of our last foal and good boy, Sue's Reputation. You can see them here, on our farm's website.

Still Waitin'

2007-05-28T09:16:00.000-04:00

Waiting
Waiting
Waiting
Wai-aiting....

Three days now with no sleep worth talking about.

Leaves me plenty of time for thinking about this, however:

Can't vouch for the source because I'm unfamiliar with it. But it's clearly *not* a pinko-commie-liberla-peacenik site by any stretch of the wildest imagination.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=55824

Bush makes power grab--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted: May 23, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern

President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator.

That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency. The directive loosely defines "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

When the president determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the president can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an "enduring constitutional government."

Translated into layman's terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over. Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency.

The directive specifies that the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism will be designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. Further established is a Continuity Policy Coordination Committee, chaired by a senior director from the Homeland Security Council staff, designated by the National Continuity Coordinator, to be "the main day-to-day forum for such policy coordination."

Currently, the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism is Frances Fragos Townsend. Townsend spent 13 years at the Justice Department before moving to the U.S. Coast Guard where she served as assistant commandant for intelligence. She is a White House staff member in the executive office of the president who also chairs the Homeland Security Council, which as a counterpart to the National Security Council reports directly to the president.

The directive issued May 9 makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created there for the National Continuity Coordinator with the National Emergency Act. As specified by U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 34, Subchapter II, Section 1621, the National Emergency Act allows that the president may declare a national emergency but requires that such proclamation "shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register."

A Congressional Research Service study notes that under the National Emergency Act, the president "may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens."

The CRS study notes that the National Emergency Act sets up congress as a balance empowered to "modify, rescind, or render dormant such delegated emergency authority," if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately. [Yeah, right. I like that part, especially. The president went to war in Iraq *against* the unanimous will of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for christ sake. And he's made no attempt whatsoever to bring his own behavior into line with anything Congress has to day.]

NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position. NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 also makes no reference whatsoever to Congress. The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any a requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.

Homeland Security spokesperson Russ Knocke affirmed that the Homeland Security Department will be implementing the requirements of NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 under Townsend's direction.

The White House had no comment.

*****************
I bet.

If I were the writer, though, I'd be asking the alleged opposition for *its* comment. I wonder if they have a couple between the lot of 'em. Now's their chance to prove me wrong.

Still Waitin'

2007-05-26T11:47:00.000-04:00

I am waiting (ting)

oh, yeah

Man, Crispo's getting old for this waking every two hours business.

Well, they come when they come.

Foal Watch Update

2007-05-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

Suzy showed the initial sign of labor this morning, so full-on, around the clock foal watch has commenced. Here we go again. No sleep!

See youse on the other side....

Paul Slaps Giuliani

2007-05-24T12:18:00.000-04:00

"You'll get slapped and you'll like it." (Humphrey Bogart)

U.S. candidate Paul assigns reading to Giuliani
Thu May 24, 2007 12:10PM EDT
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Longshot Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Thursday gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

"I'm giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment," the nine-term Texas congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Giuliani was mayor of New York when Islamic militants slammed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, a role that has vaulted him to the front of the Republican presidential pack despite his liberal social positions.

"I don't think he's qualified to be president," Paul said of Giuliani. "If he was to read the book and report back to me and say, 'I've changed my mind,' I would reconsider."

Paul advocates a limited U.S. foreign policy, including an end to the war in Iraq and a reduction in troop levels abroad.

Paul said he was unfairly attacked during last week's debate by 10 Republican presidential hopefuls, when Giuliani dismissed his contention that U.S. policies in the Middle East had contributed to the attacks in New York and Washington.

"I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th," Giuliani said to wild applause.

Paul barely registers in opinion polls of Republicans hoping to win their party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential election. An obstetrician-gynecologist from the Houston area, Paul frequently strays far outside the Republican mainstream. He voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and has proposed abolishing the Homeland Security Department and diminishing the Federal Reserve. His 1998 bid for president as the Libertarian candidate drew just slightly more than 400,000 votes nationwide.

Paul said it was irresponsible of Giuliani and other leaders to not examine the motivations of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.

A Giuliani spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

Among the books on Paul's reading list were: "Dying to Win," which argues that suicide bombers only mobilize against an occupying force; "Blowback," which examines the unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policy; and the 9/11 Commission Report, which says that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was angered by the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Another book on the list was "Imperial Hubris," whose author appeared at the press conference to offer support for Paul.

"Foreign policy is about protecting America," said author Michael Scheuer, who used to head the CIA's bin Laden unit. "Our foreign policy is doing the opposite."

© Reuters

And of course Paul is right. It is necessary to understand one's opponents and why they think or act like they do. If you don't believe it, try playing a game of chess without bothering to take your opponent's reasoning, tactics, and strategy into account *at all.* Just pretend it doesn't matter. All that matters is your own way of thinking, your own tactics, and your own strategy, nothing else. Good luck.

It remains to add only that the US has no strategy. It has only tactics, and not many of them. The one normally used, especially when least appropriate, is the use of maximum possible firepower in every single situation. As if firepower is brainpower. It's not.

Ask the Vietnamese.

Again, McNamara et al didn't think it necessary to understand the Vietnamese. To them, victory was assured through firepower and body counts alone.

But who won?

yuk yuk

2007-05-23T10:47:00.001-04:00

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1f4_1179038976