Barf Bags and Biscuits

Copyright, 2009, Terry Turner

As an old Texan and a cowboy who has often had to fend for himself, I can rustle up a pan of biscuits and bacon in a jiffy, as we say. Believe me, if I can get my hands on a steak, a tomato, a jalapeno, I can whoop up a steaming bowl of chili. If I have the vittles I can put together some fine grease and quickly.... a little survival trick I learned at my Mom's knee. I ain't much but I do have some common sense; at least enough to tell the difference between comeuppance and commendation.

If you want to cook, or do any similar thing, you must have the makings and you have know the general rules which may vary somewhat in detail but in general are unchanging.

Makings include at the most fundamental level, an idea of what to use, how much to use, and how to put it together. If you cannot have control of those things, which are the reference points, then you will not have your breakfast. In the same light, you need measurements, standards, and some known basics to plan, to budget, to figure out how to plant a garden, or when to change an air filter... it all comes from some rudimentary "knowns."

If you cannot use your experience to tell the difference between a three gallon cedar water bucket and an eight ounce tin cup, your measurements won't work out. The measurements must be meaningful to you and to the world in which you live. When the knowns ain't knowns, then you aren't likely to get your breakfast or your retirement plan or anything else in order at any time, and maybe not at all.

Even when you can measure, you have to understand the variables... like what is the difference between a cup and half-a-cup. You must know if you can get by with water if you don't have milk. As long as it is practical, as long as it makes sense, who cares... git'er done and git'cher breakfast.

A person should not be bothered by things that just do not make sense. In other words, your frame work must make sense or all is lost. Why, for example, should your property, your well water, your garden, or your economic well being be in the hands of people who not only don't care about you but are known crooks too boot? It makes cooking hard if you can't trust folks... in fact it takes all the fun out of it.

I only make note of this because I fear that by mid to late summer 2009, all frames of reference are going to become so foggy, that no one can tell the difference between a biscuit and a barf bag.

Shoot, nothing seems right any more; even my old dog, Diogee, can't keep his gravy down when I turn on the TV. Generally, if I do turn the TV on, I have to turn it off because I get a funny feeling in my head when people are making a big deal about some movie star divorcee while the world economy is about to crash and our constitution is being trashed.

For example, I used to like Bill O'Reilly now and then, but you can't tell the difference between him and the $64,000 Question any more. I can't tell if he is trying to editorialize, speechify, or entertain.... I am the kinda guy that likes to tune in to the news, get the news, and turn off the tube; but all you can do about that anymore is just turn the durn thing off and check the Internet, wade through the nutcases, and try to dredge up a fact here and there.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you don't get it; you do get it! You would just prefer to be wrong, the problem is YOU ARE RIGHT.

Things are wobbly, things are sort of spinning out of control; things are beginning to make less and less sense. Believe me, when you can't trust what "they" say; when a dollar is not a useful measure of value; when you can't control anything in your life without a permit, a license, or an inspection, then my friends the bad apples are about to own the barrel ... what is going on ? Don't ask me! I already can't understand the frame of reference.

Before the current current events I used to think that we got together and carried water to put out fires but, these days, it seems like every one in charge is still chopping kindling for the fire when we should have been filling water buckets. That's what I mean about a frame of reference, it needs to measure up and make sense. What can investors think when the government overturns all traditional contracts without a discussion; when bonds are owed one minute and the next minute they are owed but minus 65% of their value; or what can you think when you get a title to property only to known that the government can take it for the "greater good." I wonder whose greater good that would really be and whose hand is in whose pocket; and who has the right to cancel private property rights? Surely, surely we can all see it is hard to measure things when everything is in flux.

I am not the fellow who can grasp how we can afford to save a $40,000 dollar a year job for someone if it is going to cost the taxpayers $250,000 a year to do it. That seems to be the kind of non-think going on in Washington. A fool like me thinks that we will lose $210,000 per job per year that way and tax existing job holders to the bone. Of course, I was never much on math or science that sounds way too much like an Aggie joke to me. Maybe buying $40,000 cars for $250,000 will work out on some planet but I don't think it will be this planet.

I believe those DC fellows would produce a lot less laws and taxes and spend a whole lot less money if they had to get a shovel and clean out barns, or mow yards, swamp out a Motel 6, roughneck, or roof houses for a year or two. I do know there's a lot of biscuit making folks out here tired of sending biscuits to Washington. I say let'em eat biscuits if they can make biscuits out of their durned legislation.

Remember this, the people who are supposedly "fixing" things are the people who helped break the things they are fixing! Do you have a sense that this is not going to work out?

If you think this will work out, just remember these folks gave us bankrupt social security, broken medicare, a ruined voting system that none can trust, border in-security, immigration un-control, and, who can believe, un-education (hello this is how to make change for a dollar), energy dependence, federal oversight and estimates, an some say a 470,000 page tax code---I guess it is too big to count; these are the folks giving your money away to known criminals, foreign dictators, and special interest groups dedicated to ruination of your life at your expense.

These are the people who want to tell you how and if you can plant a garden, tax you on the view from your house, and they want to own the water under your feet; these are the folks that don't think a voter should show ID, and they don't think they ought to protect your private property rights; in fact I guess they oppose private property if you can judge --- some how I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I think about these amateur goat ropers trying to fix anything.

I can tell you one thing, it is sure hard to make biscuits when all the frames of reference keep changing... and keep changing for the worse.

All this reminds me of what old Winston Churchill said once upon a time, "I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Not only was he right, but a nation with any kind of decent representation for its people would have the lowest tax structure on earth for businesses and none for its citizens.

Foto Credit:

Unknown. The folks who helped build America by the sweat of the brow and with no thought for politics or political agendas; folks like these cotton pickers and bole pullers: Annie and Joe Turner with children, Dorothy, Ollie, William (Buddy) 1937 near Squaw Mountain (which was near Oakland which was not far from Shannon), Texas were about to wash up in a stock tank.

Joe was the son of stepmother Ada and Lige Turner. Annie was the daughter Emma and Charlie Whitsitt. The words dole, subsidy, and entitlement had hardly been heard in a lifetime and had little or no meaning for folks who finished their biscuits and gravy before sunrise and had their cornbread and beans at sundown. These folks could never get the concept of TARP and, frankly, neither do I.

TARP sounds like a New York Ciddy or Frisco type idea to me sort like advertising---lots of hype and little substance; the old where is the beef problem. Or maybe it is more like trying to get tacos al pastor in Russia; you might git some but they won't be worth a hoot.