City of Enid Commission session delights us with brief moment of bad lip reading

In the last episode of the Enid Follies soap opera where a gang of 3 Commissioners conspired to do in local talent Jerald Gilbert as City Manager knowing that one Commissioner and the Mayor were going to be out of state.  This month is when the proper performance review of the City Manger's performance is supposed to happen, so let's take a look at the quality of judgment of the judges.  Yes, the result is an instance of bad lip reading.  Take a look:

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Writing this as I just get back from KNID's Agrifest, which I'm sure would amaze the City's Assistant Manager who thinks spacious parking lots nowhere near enough businesses to warrant so much unproductive space is a good thing.  That's because the spacious parking lot at the Chisholm Expo Center was freakin' PACKED all the way from the facilities' front door to the roadways.  The only time there are packed spacious parking lots downtown is when there are special events, not for retail business, and Agrifest is both a special event AND retail business.  The Agrifest booklet mapped out vendor booths and which vendor was in what booth, but it didn't show where the vendors came in from...and so I started collecting business cards (and in the absence of business cards, collected promotional items that showed that information).

I got a free tote back from Mystik Lubricants to put all the stuff into, too...and Mystik was represented by Jim Johnson Oil Co. of El Reno, Oklahoma.  So naturally I said to the vendor, "Welcome to Enid!"

What I will do at a later date is update this blog entry with an analysis of all the business cards & info I picked up and post who was from out of town, from out of state, and where applicable, the size of the large machinery on sale for this event.  Somebody is just going to have to take this  info to the City Commission to show that whatever the hell they think they're doing with the downtown area for city folk, the entire county that it's the seat of has that retail business beat to a whisper several times over.

Stay tuned.
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I've got quite a stack of business cards to scan, and here's where I kick off the scan-fest over here. What's interesting is that the stack of out-of-town cards is immensely taller than the stack of in-town cards, which should tell the Economic Development crew all it needs to know about what businesses there should be in Enid but aren't.  Here's the first batch, all in Oklahoma, but there are quite a few out of state businesses showing up here, from Minnesota to Texas, and yeah--Benson MO was represented by 2 different vendors--but--actual ag businesses from Illinois were present.

What the Enid City Commission repeatedly fails to realize is that other cities solicit Enid hunters and fishermen to spend their sports money in their communities instead of Enid's. Enid just hasn't got anything that will attract such people outside of the annual quail hunt. Enid Economic Development my ass. If you're offended by "salty language" like this, then you haven't talked to a farmer, rancher, or military person.

Showdown at Oregon's OK Corral: NRA

It's not the National Pistol Association, is it.  It's the National RIFLE Association.  When it comes to Right to Life, conservatives clam up when kids lose their lives by school massacres and at-home oopses.  Sure, charge the parent of the toddler who was playing with that deadly shiny thing he found in her purse, but good luck with that--she already got the Death Penalty.  NO biggie--the parent was an adult, so who cares.  That the toddler cares about the dead parent doesn't count.

It's also true that despite howls about how bad guys with guns get taken out by good guys with guns, ALL guys with guns haven't helped law enforcement identifying who is who, and in the case of road rage between two bad guys with guns, they both get Darwin Awards for taking each other out--but often not without taking bystanders along with them.  They're adults and kids, but who cares?

The locals here know that I've spoken up for wild game sports including the use of guns although I'm primarily a fisherman (so to speak) myself.  I've handled guns, I've shot guns (in Arizona, though), guns don't bother me as a rule, but the protection that the NRA has been providing for bad guys getting guns does.  The fact that Daesh/IS gets American guns thanks to the lack of gun law sanity does.  The anti-government clan that the NRA attracts puts the NRA on the same side as Daesh, and that bothers me, too.  Patriots that are patriotically allegianced to Daesh aren't patriots to the U.S. in MY book.  You can't swear allegiance to America and to the Republic for which it stands when you give aid and comfort to the enemy by letting it buy our arms while denying this nation its own right to self defense.

It's that simple.

The people who are against the U.S. government share common cause with the enemy.  The people who interfere with the government's ability to be able to tell good guys with guns from the bad guys getting our guns give aid, comfort, and supplies to the enemy.  You're not patriots--you're traitors.

The NRA has been great at getting riled about what they think the government shouldn't do, but denies our own government its own right to self defense by failing to propose what the government CAN do.  Just like ISIS, they're only interested in just wrecking our government.  They comfort, aid, and arm the enemy while making claims that the Constitution needs to be adhered to, when the first paragraph of that time-honored document of what they claim is American exceptionalism handed down from God says the following:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, 

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 

promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There are howls now about the overreach achieved by presidential executive order because the howlers are ignoring another part of the Constitution they claim is so sacrosanct--Section 7 which gives Congress power to regulate commerce, and gun manufacturers and dealers are commerce even if the 2nd Amendment says what it does about individual ownership. Individual ownership isn't commerce, and it's the responsibility of the suppliers of commerce to the individual that is fairly and constitutionally regulated by the government.  The individual has a right to bear the armament he can make himself.  A manufacturer of armaments do not have unabridged rights to sell.

It's that simple.

Now before you start sending me death threats, permit me to say that I know that Article I does NOT apply to the Executive branch; that would be Article II.  But that's where our nation of laws, via precedent, comes into play.  Over the years between the time the Constitution was ratified and amended, we've developed precedence in case law, and if you have a problem with Executive Branch over-reach, you can start by repealing the War Powers Act, because by legislation the Congress attempted to get away with abdicating its Constitution-prescribed powers to the Executive Branch without Amending the Constitution as is called for.  Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities with the first War Powers Act and has continued to do so by its own collective consent ever since.

Train your kids to handle guns, sure, that'll give the nation more gun lovers...until your kids' friends die by gunfire either by accident, by drive-by, or by a toddler attracted to that shiny loaded thing, or by a kindergartener who got mad at a playmate over something stupid.  Your highly trained kids will turn against you, too.  Count on it.

All the parents you throw in jail for each kid that gets a hold of a fire arm in the household isn't going to bring back any of the executed kids. None of them.  They stay dead.

Another new year, another year older, and a surprise on Facebook

It's that time of year again, folks--and the clock keeps right on ticking. Besides just a gauge of aging, that means deadlines too, of course.  Time tables. Schedules. And for me, looking back on somebody else's birthday that happened closer to Christmas, and that leads us to the surprise on Facebook, just a few minutes earlier than this posting.

The man who first published the very first Clara Listensprechen Report hasn't been in touch in the last year or so, and I just learned from his wife that as his own years advance, he is declining, as he's in his eighties. But he was very happy for his birthday this year, and she posted a picture.  I couldn't be more delighted that he's doing this well, that his wife has kept me posted, although he himself must remain out of touch.

It's a new year, and New Years Day is my birthday, but I'm not celebrating that.  I'm celebrating the life of an awesome man, Stewart MacKenzie of the American Shortwave Listeners Association (ASWLC).  Cheers, old man.

Heard bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols play...

...all that junk about peace on earth good will to men who are the least equipped to appreciate good will, let alone peace. Thousands are separated from their families if they haven't lost them altogether by war or some form of atrocity of man against man and for all the centuries that man has stomped his way around the earth, man was always atrocious to his fellow man.  And now the Pope is on board with calling the ritual peace farce for what it is.

On a less global scale, in this season where families rediscover petty grievances even without a Festivus Pole, the ritual extends from Thanksgiving until New Years when we all resolve to do better, knowing full well that by this time next year, we haven't.  Families get fragmented and it doesn't take a war to do that, does it. It takes a war to show families that there's nobody else more important, though.  Those that are fragmented without war as the cause still manage to find people they can consider to be family even if it takes several years to find people who can be elevated to that position--and hey: you can pick your nose but you can't pick your relatives.

There is actually a bright side to all this, though, and it's where the worst things make permanent changes for the better for the purpose of making sure this awful crap never happens again if we can help it. The worst among us are inventing tall tales to demonize other people while the reasonable rational people among us just aren't buying it and we're actually talking to other reasonable rational people to deal with the differences for the purpose of pulling the teeth of the insanely radical.

The insane are a minority and they've grabbed power; the sane, who have thusfar kicked back without talking to each other, are getting together for a change and coming to realize that they're the majority, and this is especially true in the Islamic world at the moment.  The Paris bombings didn't create the us-them divide that the hawks on both sides of that anticipated divide were hoping for--what it did was unite sane people against the hawks.

So this Christmastide, whether you're talking about the lunacy of those who seek power to wage war or the big spending lunatics running city government proclaiming that a pork barrel bond issue is worth going deeper into debt for so that their pockets may get lined, we have the emergence of the following public policy that is applicable in all these cases:

The presentation by Kyle Dillingham at the Enid First Assembly of God church this year incorporated a statement along these lines, about showing how what's broken can still produce something worthwhile.  His latest album incorporates that theme.  Here's his musical statement as presented at his annual concert at the church:

It's very important to note that when people who never talked to each other before begin discussions about the best way forward, people who are good listeners are required for the process.  Listening is just as important as talking, for the people who take despicable action also want to be heard out.  A hostage negotiator's most effective weapons are word usage, and listening.  You'll never catch a negotiator of any sort declaring "I don't want to hear it" because that will invariably result in "sending a message" via actions taken rather than in words.  You hear war hawks in Washington talk about bombing as a way of "sending a message".  As far as a means of communications, violence is the worst form and it can send wrong messages. Just hearing the other party out often produces the best outcomes.
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A lot of traffic to my political pages over the holidays. Yes, I know that Judy's been pulled from the schedule, and yes, I know certain people are wondering why I'm not bitching about it.  Well hey, folks--2016 is just around the corner and y'all just better stay tuned!  There's more where THAT came from!