Western N.Y. A Workers Paradise

This article on American Thinker had me laughing my $%& off. Ten years ago driving through Oswego I noticed how depressed the area was. It was full of abandoned houses; the downtown was dead; it looked like it was frozen in time. It's probably like the frog in the boiling water: people don't realize how much things have decayed over the last twenty years. MP and CP are both contributors to American Thinker so you know it is a quality site.

Anytime you see a hospital being the number one employer for a region you can bet you don't want to live there. Tommy should quit that grad school and just become a 100K school janitor in N.Y. The goal of this is to make us all drones of the state. 100K janitor and 100K retired policeman sounds great until you realize 70% of your income is taxed away. It all reminds me of the movie Roger and Me where Michael Moore chronicled the death of Flint, Michigan. Bass Pro Shops is coming to Buffalo? The bass fishing on the Niagara River is the best in the country, especially drift fishing! These people aren't recreational fisherman. If things continue to decline New Yorker's may become subsistence fishermen. I'm sure it takes an environmental impact statement and five permits to bore a hole in the ice and place a shanty on Lake Ontario. Recreational fishing takes leisure time and money, two things not found in abundance in Western N.Y. The plan to ferry the thousands of people to Rochester is emblematic of misguided planning. Why would Canadians leave their own socialist hell on Earth to come to Rochester? They already have cheap beer and cheap smokes. Besides if these Canadians take a little tour around the bay they will lose their place in line for socialized health care; "Hey you with the ruptured brain aneurysm, get back in line!"

I can't see any cure for the malignant socialism that has captured the rust belt. Once a generation has been reduced to serfdom what can be done to reverse the eroding initiative? I escaped N.Y. in 1974. I went to Nevada where there was no speed limit, no mandatory car insurance, no income tax, and I could buy a handgun in the same gas station where I filled my tank. My favorite Mini-Mart! I left the malaise of the Carter administration in my review mirror and discovered there was no gasoline shortage once I crossed the Mississippi. I don't consider Fla. or N.C. a great choice for those seeking freedom and prosperity. N.C. is quickly becoming the Massachusetts of the south. The Scots-Irish fierce Independence is being diluted by whining Yankees. First I would only consider moving to a state that doesn't accept federal stimulus money. It's like the mafia, "I'll lend you the money, sure, now your $%& is mine. I might also consider moving to the states that are passing laws to reaffirm their 10th Amendment rights. They are trying to ward off the hyper-federalism that Obama is peddling under the guise of economic collapse. So until a William Wallace arises to lead us out of this tyranny you should vote with your wallets and your feet. Don't feed the Beast, stock up with ammo before Obama bans it, and stay out of debt. You too can have a Western New York in your future. You too can live in a country more like the eastern Soviet Union, where the only hope resides in a bottle of vodka.

Is it just me? Or is the water getting warm.

Boycott L.L. Bean

"Change We Can Believe In" is about to become "misery from which we will never escape". Two female RINO Republicans from Maine along with a senile senator from the socialist utopia of Pennsylvania are about to bury us under a mountain of debt. The phone lines to Maine babes are turned off and their mail boxes are full. Don't bother with Senator Specter, he's so old and sick he won't live to see the results of this debacle. Anyway, Pa. voters are like abused spouses, the more you beat them and insult them, the more loyal they become.

That it why Babba is asking for your support to boycott Maine's exports. I'll give up eating lobster and blueberries and Maine potatoes. The only other product that Maine produces is L.L. Bean. I'm willing to sacrifice, I spend about $500 a year at L.L. Bean. It is the one upscale merchant I buy from. I have a $10 coupon for L.L. on my fridge that's going to go to waste. I was going to get a few shirts and maybe a sport coat this Spring; Screw You Maine. Too bad we don't have a Republican leader with enough testosterone to lay an LBJ type handshake on these two dumb broads. The fate of the country now resides in two bubble heads and a sick old man; God Help Us!

I'm Cracking Up!

I was standing in Out Patient Surgery interviewing a patient when a nurse came up to me and pointed out that my scrub pants had fallen down. I had an extra pair of large pants over my medium pants because I had to go out in the freezing rain to the MRI truck. Well I was embarrassed but then I realized the it was the second pair of scrubs that prevented me from noticing the sudden temperature change.

Today I walked out of work and called CP to tell her I was on my way home. While walking across the parking lot I did my inventory "wallet, glasses, cell phone, pants". I felt the empty cell phone holster and told CP "%&#@, I forgot my cell phone!" I thought now I have to walk back to the O.R. Then I realized I was talking on it.

I would crack up if I didn't go to work. Between the patients and my co-workers I just can't find this level of entertainment anywhere else. Just today a patient woke up and told me I looked like a movie actor. It took her a minute to remember who the famous actor was, then she blurted out "Al Cappucino". At that momentI knew I wasn't cracking up, I was at work.

The Obama Depression

"So much depression, I can't keep track of it no more" from the song "Change My Way of Thinking" from Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming album. Yesterday I looked at the Drudge Report and it read like the table of contents from some apocryphal novel by Tim LaHaye. The main difference being the news on Drudge was based in reality.

North Carolina hasn't suffered as much from the Obama Depression as much as the other parts of the country. Our housing values have only fell 3%, compared to Las Vegas whose values dropped 27%. The Obama Depression (O.D.) began after Thanksgiving. I think that's when the country woke up like a slut after prom night and looked in the mirror after unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Usually at Christmas the mood at the hospital improves a bit, but not this year. I just signed another one year contract; same pay, but more weekend call. There is no negotiation in the O.D. : "be happy you have a job" is the mantra of the day. The journals that used to contain twenty pages of job listings now have half a page. There are still jobs at Indian Health Service, the V.A. and Martin Luther King Hospital in Washington D.C. Speaking of the V.A., a friend of mine had a small heart attack and went to the V.A. hospital in Asheville. He had a heart cath and a stent put in. A week later he's still whacked out. A sixty two year old lucid college professor walks into the V.A. hospital after feeling sick for a couple days has a heart cath and is now reduced to a blithering idiot. This is what we have to look forward to if Tom (I meant to pay my taxes) Daschle gets his way.

I just finished a book "The Forgotten Man". It explains how F.D.R.'s New Deal actually turned a two year recession into a 10 year depression. It seems that the brain trusts in this administration failed to look at history while they where worshipping at the throne of F.D.R. Why do people feel the government can spend its way out of a recession? It hasn't gotten as bad as the Carter days yet, but with a few more trillion dollar pork-laden stimulus packages we might get to see 19% inflation again.

In the south most people usually have a cheerful, pleasant demeanor. I'm beginning to see a slight change. There is a bit more of that hang-dog look one usually finds in the northern rust belt. Hannah stated it this way "in Rochester people are so busy trying not to get shot they don't think about getting a new hairdo". I have seen the hang-dog look before, in socialists countries. Especially in the eastern-bloc where there isn't enough vodka in the world to block out the hopelessness and despair. It is funny that our latest crisis is high levels of Prozac in our drinking water.

But take heart my friends! This June we all are going to take a road trip to Hooterville. There we are going to kick out the jams and have a two day party and forget about the O.D.

The Four Yorkshire Men at a Wedding

I think Dick, Rick, Jeff and I should should rehearse this for the wedding; it's us!

A shout-out to my peeps in New York

It's about time you New Yorkers got fed up!

Princess Caroline Redux

Are you wondering why Lady Caroline didn't get the New York Senate seat? Let me tell you: it wasn't because of an illegal (sorry, undocumented) nanny, it wasn't that pesky unpaid income tax, it wasn't that she has a sham marriage or the fact that the hardest day's work she ever did was sweeping the sand off her front porch in the Hamptons. The real problem was she couldn't relate to the common clay that is rural upstate New York. Outside the area between 34th and 79th streets (also known as midtown Manhattan) is a whole other world as foreign to her as the lunar landscape. Don't expect to see her at the "4 cylinder 400" in Bovina, N.Y.