Liar, Liar

In September 2017, United States Air Force Academy Superintendant Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria made a fiery speech to USAF Academy students, berating them about their racial prejudice.

Just hours before that general lacing-out, an African-American student was targeted by racist thugs.  Lt. Gen. Silveria spoke about the “power of diversity,” and further expressed his outrage that people of different races couldn’t get along.  That’s the good news.

“If you can't treat someone from another race or different color skin with dignity and respect, then you need to get out,” he said.

The bad news is that it was all a hoax.  The punch line is that the only one not being able to get along was the African-American hoaxer.

But this is not an isolated incident.

Tawana Brawley, also an African-American, claimed sexual assault and berating by six white men.  This late 1980’s attack – also deemed a hoax – involved prominent figures to include Al Sharpton and C. Vernon Mason, also African-American.

She was eventually sued by a white man she falsely accused and lost the lawsuit.

The Duke Lacrosse Team was similarly charged with raping an African-American woman who was a student at North Carolina Central University, and who worked as a stripper, dancer and escort.

Alas, she too hoaxed America in this national interest case that ruined the lives of several team players.

Then in January 2016, three African-American University at Albany – SUNY students, accused a dozen white men and women.  Their claim was that racial slurs were used against the three women.

This time, this hoax triggered protests that resulted in several of the innocent accused leaving the school and distancing themselves from social media as a result of threats.

Not to be outdone, a Kansas State University student reported racist slurs on his car.  This African-American man defaced his own vehicle because he allegedly started this as a sick prank that “got out of hand.”

The student eventually apologized, but not before the damage was done.  Meetings were called to discuss the racist environment on KSU campus.

Let us not forget the Eastern Michigan University case where an African-American man spray painted racist graffiti targeting blacks.  This October 2017, case was also found to be a hoax.

Not limited to stupid students, a Petersburg, Virginia City Attorney made phony racist calls to himself, in 2016, threatening other city workers and leaders – to include himself – from a phone that was purchased at his request.  Yes, another hoax. 

And so it goes.  Mentally ill people are trying to become celebrated victims of seemingly non-violent crimes.  However, protests, riots, ill-feelings, distrust, and disruption of personal lives are the result of such malicious behavior.

The little boy who cried wolf is alive and well.  No one believed him when a real wolf approached the town.

I’m just saying…

We’ve Got This

Since the holidays are nigh I thought this would be an appropriate time to wade into good news territory.  I like to keep things upbeat by shunning bad news and focusing on positives in life.

 Unfortunately, there is so much negativity in today’s world, I am forced to point out what I feel is the obviously inane.

But getting back to the holidays, I am pleased to report that our local Tallmart is really on top of things; that is satisfying, to me.

Prepping for Thanksgiving Day dinner, Christmas gatherings, and New Year’s Eve parties, had me and my sainted wife shopping for necessities.

We traditionally make decorations, crafts, bake our own goods, and even grow some of our own produce and organic herbs.

This dictates packaging a la homemade wood working, painting, paper crafting, and canning, for the effective distribution of safe gifts for our closest friends and associates.

Tallmart seemed to be the one-stop-shopping place for most, if not all, our supply needs.

We handily located the spray paint, aerosol whipped cream, and some craft adhesive, along with an assortment of food stuffs and festive paper goods.

Not Craft Adhesive

 At the checkout, the apparent Tallmart mastermind suddenly reached a scanning roadblock.  The first item that scanned, but insisted on more intrusive information, was the red spray paint. 

A glance behind our cart at the nine other impatient gum-snapping, camouflage-clad fellow shoppers – all yakking on their unaffordable cellular phones – began giving us the ol’ stinkeye.

“I need to see your ID,” was the demand of the cashier to me.

This is where I need to point out that although I am a spitting image of Tom Selleck, I don't look anywhere near the age of a minor.  You see, in the People’s Republic of Maryland, consumers must be at least 21 years-old to purchase spray paint.

As a kid, I used literally gallons of spray paint to customize my well-used bicycles, in an effort to both confuse my pals into thinking I got a new bike, or amaze them with my impressive painting skills.  Neither happened.

Still, I passed my driver’s license to the Tallmart cashier who gave me the “OK” to purchase this legal product.

It seems as though too many nitwits in Maryland attempt to get a quick, cheap high by huffing spray paint.  Clearly, this carding effort was nipping this epidemic in the bud by making me fumble around for my state-issued ID.

Next on the conveyor belt was the aerosol whipped cream.  Once again, the cash register demanded the cashier check for age appropriateness.  Now it was my turn to exercise some civil disobedience.

“That’s not mine,” I asserted.  “It belongs to her,” I said, motioning to my sainted wife.

 Now she, too, was giving me the stinkeye, grumbling under her minty-fresh breath about killing me.

After opening her red wallet to prove to the cashier she was not my much-desired teenaged au pair, we moved on to the glue.  You know the rest of the story.

But the point of all this is that while creating an overburden on honest citizens buying legitimate, legal items, this same state doesn’t see much of an epidemic with marijuana.  In fact, the authorities are ardently attempting to legalize weed because feel they’re fighting a losing battle.

Evidently the whipped cream scourge I well under control in Maryland.

Sumpin’s wrong.  Elect new bodies with better ideas.  And Happy Thanksgiving!

SHHHHHHH!!!

It was 2:36 AM on the alarm clock.  Those red numerals indicated to me I should be sleeping.  Rather I was awake with my mind racing toward a non-existent finish line.

Often these times in mid-night I begin my conscious time with an earworm.  An earworm is that song that rattles around your cranium and can’t be shaken.

But last night was different.

Just as with pretty much else we’ve been programmed to believe, movie stars and starlets, athletes, and everyday talk show hosts, have felt compelled to give America their opinions.

So it was last night that I spent my waking time wondering what Chelsea Handler and George Clooney thought about the goings-on in our country.  Yeah, sure.

Not George Clooney

After all, Clooney is a television-turned-movie actor who can’t seem to grasp the concept of a free election.  He seems to think the Hollywood elite should vote – much as for vacuous awards already given to his fellow pretenders – for our politicians.  This way, Clooney and his ilk would be assured no one with clear vision and the truth would ever be representing people like me.

Handler is, well, a not-funny comedienne who recently quit her job with Netflix to become more socially active.  She’s another show biz kook who presumes to know more about America’s needs than America itself.  She wants to whine until President Trump resigns.

Of course, that is not the way our representative republic works.  All this verve now gives those unemployed stars and has-beens a cause.  Half-baked singers and comedy writers are canceling what regular work they have just to work for what they term “social matters.”  Yeah!

For your information, the claim to fame for most of those chomping-at-the-bit Hollywood narcissists is the fact they likely slept their way to their once-famous roles.  That fact does not give them the right to lecture or dictate anything to me.

Still, they feel the need to help me make my decisions about who should be elected to public office.

Clooney and his verbose buddies are meaningless to me, and hold no sway with me.  This makes it timely to tell those know-it-all media whores to cease and desist. 

Their opinions are theirs and theirs alone.  Unfortunately, too many weak-minded fellow Americans are easily influenced by these desperate wanna-bes.

Here’s the rub: the day Clooney and Handler, and Rosie and Whoopie and Joyce, and all those late night hosts call to ask me about my thoughts, I’ll begin to listen to them.

Otherwise, please sit your unimportant butts down and shut up.  Thanks.

Scary Stuff

Throughout my years I’ve been accused of many things unfortunately, being smart is not one of them.

Still, I try to maintain the charade by using that age-old saying, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$#!+.”

Nearly every politician uses that sentence as a motto because it is a proven effective tool.

And it is very often that I am able to see right through all that baloney.  Other people, it’s sad to say, cannot.

As an example, a handful of years ago a woman called a radio station to voice her complaint to a particular road sign.  It seems as though she was traveling on a road surrounded by woods containing a copious amount of deer that were causing traffic accidents.

At first I thought this call was bogus.  Then, more about this arose in the news which changed my mind altogether.

You can be the judge by following this link to that original radio show segment. Simply click on the video below:

The Iowa Department of Transportation used the ever-so-popular social media to attempt to spread the word about deer.

In Iowa alone, this year, over 3,300 crashes with deer have occurred.  There were 156 injuries and one fatality involved with these wrecks.

To help the public better understand the danger, and also help with those ‘deer crossing’ signs, the Iowa DOT issued this message:

“Deer can’t read signs. Drivers can. This sign isn’t intended to tell deer where to cross, it’s for drivers to be alert that deer have been in this area in the past.”

So, the next time you see one of those yellow signs displaying a jumping deer, think about your vote being nullified by fellow drivers who think those signs are for the deer to read.

This has been a public service announcement from EasternShoreFishAndGame.com.

My Goodness

Nearly daily I run across something that makes me correct my age-old statement, “I’ve seen everything.”

That is called a gratuitous assertion.  Of course, I haven’t seen everything inasmuch as I have never been to Thailand. 

The point is that I should say “Nothing surprises me.”  Then again, something always does.

While recently reading a Florida newspaper article, I came across a name – Daniell Rider.  Daniell is a female shopper at Hobby Lobby in Florida.

Hobby Lobby is a well known religious-oriented craft store that showcases crosses, God-related plaques, fake flowers, picture frames, and is always closed on the Sabbath.  The “Sabbath,” for all you atheists, is the Christian Sunday.

It seems as though Ms. Rider is additionally overly-sensitive to her surroundings.

You see, Ms. Rider, while visiting her local Hobby Lobby, noticed a fake cotton sprig hanging on the wall, as a display.  This tragic commentary on the state of slaves sent Ms. Rider into a tizzy.

She felt compelled to publicly shame and chastise Hobby Lobby for pandering to all the Confederate soldiers and plantation owners by using cotton, a symbol of racism, as a decoration.

I completely agree with her in her premise about cotton being “sensitive and unnecessary” to be utilized as a decoration.

This is where I stand corrected.  I never thought I would view my denim jeans and my cotton t-shirts as tools of the Confederacy that are holding blacks in bondage just to pick this racist commodity.  Yes, I was wrong.

Out went my tablecloth, kitchen curtains, flannel sheets, and everything else I could imagine was fabricated from that prejudiced plant.

Ms. Rider has a good point.  Hobby Lobby’s offensive display of bigoted tokens, such as plastic cotton plant branches, clearly demonstrates their thick-skinned approach to the Civil War.

So it is with Ms. Rider that I stand proudly to try to get in my fifteen-minutes of fame by poking my crooked little finger in the chest of a proverbial Goliath so that my fellow travelers – also easily offended types – can cheer our hollow victory, together.

Thank you, Ms. Rider.  You have achieved a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment of nearly curing cancer, or finding world peace, in the form of a shallow internet posting about a plastic plant.

You go, girl!

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

Hummingbirds have left The Shore for the season, Canada Geese are heading south, and Christmas decorations are being removed from shelves in the stores to make room for St. Valentine’s Day gifts.  All this can mean only one thing – it’s two weeks before Halloween.

My sainted wife and I were picking up provisions from the big city Tallmart and thought we would buy some theme salt and pepper shakers.

Sure, we have regular, everyday shakers, but I thought this year we would be jazzier and get some special shakers for Thanksgiving.  We wanted some that were both germane and generic so that they can be used for both Halloween and Thanksgiving; they would need to be in an autumn subject.

Just last week we found some that were in the shape of and over-sized acorn, for pepper; the salt shaker was in the image of a turkey.  Of course we didn’t buy them.

Here’s a freebie from EasternShoreFishAndGame.com: to tell the difference between a salt and pepper shaker, count the number of holes.  Salt has two holes, while the pepper has three.  You’re welcome.

We wanted a new set because we are planning for our Thanksgiving Day dinner at which we will host several hungry friends.  The good news is that we don’t need to find space to store these niche shakers; they were sold out.

So we wandered through the candy aisle in hopes they weren’t sold out of the Halloween candy, too.

Of course, only the good stuff was gone.  Peanut butter-filled chocolate cups, twin chocolate and caramel wafer sticks, and filled lollipops, were all but gone.  Plenty of Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls and candy corn remained on the shelf.  Our only hope rested with non-cavity health food.

We were in luck.  The produce department was chock-full of baby carrots, celery, and bok choy. 

After a brief spat that my sainted wife handily won, fearing a toilet papering, we headed toward the snack area.  There, we found small bags of both pretzels and mini containers of golden fish crackers.  They were packaged for distribution to neighborhood ghouls.

In our little Eastern Shore town, whose population totals just over 140 people, seven of which may already be deceased, parents actually drive their lazy kids from street-to-street to beg for loot.

The way this scenario is supposed to work is they knock on the door.  Upon us opening, the Halloweenies shout “Trick or treat!”  That is the cue for the frightened homeowners to gladly hand out goodies to preclude any Night of the Dead Eve’s shenanigans.

Unfortunately, many of these costumed beggars can’t speak English unless they need to contact a lawyer or demand food stamps.  But, I digress.

And so it goes for a few hours.  Likenesses of Superman, fairy princesses, pirates, and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – people shop at second-hand stores – filter through the October 31^st process.

Every once in a while, you look up to find one of these trick-or-treaters with a five-day beard and a Marlboro hanging out of his yap, holding a pillow case containing candy, four blunts, and two car stereos.

But kids delight in getting free stuff from the neighborhood, while dressing up for this pagan holiday.

I hope I can still find a Santa and Rudolph salt and pepper shaker.

Time to Leave

Ever since President Donald Trump took office we’ve been bombarded with half-baked garbage from The Left. 

Marches, riots, mindless chanting, false accusations, political snubs, chest beating, and in-your-face illegal activities from self-admitted law-breakers, have surfaced to the front page news like a turd in the punchbowl.

Everyone seems to have a gripe, no matter if those gripes are legitimate or not.  They demand to have their voices heard.  To do so, they need some trauma on America’s streets.

Simply disrupting traffic is not enough.  They feel they need to toss cinder blocks, paint, and bodily fluids, at everyone who disagrees with their elitist viewpoints.

And over the past few months, we have been hearing, from these malcontents, that America is not the great nation people like me thought it was.

I grew up working and self-subsidizing my education.  I never took a grant or scholarship, but I took up a lawn mower and garden tools to earn a living for myself.

My grades suffered because I spread myself too thin.  Yet, I emerged with a sense of worth and a solid work ethic that remains in me today.

In today’s times when nearly half the country’s population is not working, but subsiding on guvment programs for housing, food, phones, cars, and education; it’s no wonder foreigners want to come to America.

Free education, three free meals in school, free clothing, free transportation, free room and board, and free health insurance, all lend themselves as enticements for individuals to visit the United States, and never leave.

Former president Barack Hussein Obama, the great Constitutional scholar, manipulated that stellar document by passing Executive Orders until his pen ran out of ink.  Today, those illegal fiats are being walked back in an effort to comply with the law.

But self-centered politicians and law-breakers are now creating something they call sanctuary cities.  California is actually attempting to make the entire state a haven for criminals.  Brilliant!

Keep in mind that those aforementioned exuberant marchers and protesters invariably carry signs indicating their disgust with all the racism, hate, bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Nazis in the White House.  America is so repulsive; they want a thorough house-cleaning from the top-down.  DACA representatives, call your office.

They further want to coddle those illegal aliens – called so because they illegally trespassed into our country – to stay and be given immunity from deportation.

This is where I get confused.  If America is so awful a place with the prejudice and chauvinism running rampant, why do these protesters want their illegal buddies to stay?

You’d think they would all help one another to pack their stuff and leave this dreadful place, post haste.

Then again, I’m looking at this scenario from a patriotic working man’s point-of-view.