Copeland Spode Jasperware

The above photo shows a part of our collection of 100-year-old mint condition Copeland Spode Jasperware. Since none of our family is interested in this stuff other than to peddle it when we kick off, we figured we might as well sell the stuff ourselves.

The Internet shows a Canadian dealer selling just one of those glasses for $220.00. That's his asking price of course, but it still surprised me.

I was going to use E-Bay and PayPal to unload all this, but I've heard some real nightmare stories about how the creeps that do the buying claim the stuff was not as advertised or whatever, and then Pay Pal refuses to send you your money, the stuff never gets returned, and the whole issue vanishes into a black hole.

To hell with that.

Anybody got any idea on how to find reputable buyers for things like this?

Wife says she'd rather toss it into the garbage than give it away at garage sale prices.

Me? Hell, how much do you to want to offer?
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This Just Keeps Getting Better And Better...

CHEYENNE — State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85 would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.

The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

What Wyoming would need an aircraft carrier for is beyond my understanding, but I suspect the aircraft carrier clause was added into the bill by the minority opposition to make the bill look frivolous.

Frivolous or not, it is quite sobering that a State - any State - is initiating this sort of action. To me, it raises the level of alarm we should all feel over the direction this federal government is taking us.
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Kelly's Heroes

Kelly's Heroes was on TV again tonight and the movie's signature song, "Burning bridges" struck a chord in me not struck before.

Maybe it's because I truly listened to the lyrics for the first time, or perhaps what the lyrics were saying finally struck home.

My story of our life and home in Santa Fe http://howibuiltit.blogspot.com/ shows some of what we lost when I burned that bridge. But it's the lost friends that hurt the most.

The above photo shows my much younger(then) wife helping unload pumice blocks for our storage units. She also worked hard and long for what we had.

I sometimes wonder what more I could have accomplished these last forty years had I stayed and continued to build on what I had started.

Burning Bridges:

Friends all tried to warn me
But I held my head up high
All the time they warned me
But I only passed them by
They all tried to tell me
But I guess I didn't care
I turned my back and
Left them standing there

All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore

Years have passed and I keep thinking
What a fool I've been
I look back into the past and
Think of way back then
I know that I lost everything I thought that I could win
I guess I should have listened to my friends

All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore

Kelly´s Heroes-Soundtrack(Burning Bridges) - YouTube

It's not good to dwell on such things, but oftentimes it can't be helped.

But it is true: In our twilight years we do not regret the things we did, we regret the things we didn't do.
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Time To Leave

Two Nato officers have been killed in the interior ministry in the Afghan capital Kabul, coalition officials say.

Nato said an "individual" had turned his gun on the officers but denied earlier reports he was a Westerner.

Afghan security officials said those killed were an American colonel and major. Local media reports suggest the incident followed a "verbal clash".

Nato commander Gen John Allen said all Nato personnel were being recalled from Afghan ministries on security grounds.

The Koran burning riot is turning into a general uprising against any and all not native to the area.

Not reading the writing on the wall is one thing. Just standing there with your thumb up your butt as the wall gets blown to pieces is quite another.

Get out. Leave. Abandon ship. Ride off into the sunset. Pick up our ball and go home. Pack up our bags and head out. However you want to phrase it, it's time to go.

Osama is dead. Our sole reason for being in Afghanistan is gone. The very minute Obama announced that Osama was killed he should have announced we were commencing a total pull-out. it was time to get out.

Osama most probably died in Tora Bora but the fact was kept secret in order to continue the war. Bush and his band of lying cretins - Chaney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, Powell, Ashcroft, Chertoff and others - All were part and parcel of the big lie about Iraq's WMD's, so lying about Osama would have been par for the course.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - in Afghanistan worth one more American life. There is no weapons manufacturer, no defence contractor, no greedy banker, no compromised politician worth one more American life.

Unfortunately for us all, the only man that will actually get us out - completely out, including those thousands and thousands of wildly expensive mercenaries still in Iraq - is Ron Paul. And everybody - just everybody, says he's unelectable, radical, anti-Semitic and un-American!

Wait a minute... Obama ia a radical. He's anti-Semitic and un-American. so why is he so electable?

So, enjoy all these nation-building, democracy-creating undeclared wars our federal government has been and is currently spending trillions of your dollars on. There's going to be more of them.... Until we go completely, totally and unequivocally broke, penniless and bankrupt.

The day that happens is your problem. I'll be pushing up daisies by then.

Read my header at the top of the page, the Ayn Rand quote. America is about to prove the hard truth in that.
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Five Years

Obama is obviously basking in all the glory of the adulation and adoration of his braindead obots:

US President Barack Obama made no bones about his chances of reelection in an interview with America's largest Hispanic radio service, saying: "I've got another five years coming up."
Quizzed by Univision's Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo about his failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform, Obama replied: "Well, first of all, Piolin, my presidency is not over.

"I've got another five years coming up. We're going to get this done," he continued, according to a transcript of the interview, which was conducted on Tuesday and broadcast on Univision Radio on Wednesday.

Typical. He was being interviewed by a "Viva Mexico!" radio station anti-
American interviewer(Univision is totally anti-American), so he once again promised to deliver his version of "comprehensive immigration reform" which is nothing less than a 100% open door policy for every poor, uneducated and untrained wetback that can't qualify for even a menial job in his own collapsing country.

While doing so, he let his enthusiasm for all things anti-American get the best of him and he spewed out this bit about five more years.

Mebbe so... If he is ever rightly convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors and failing to uphold his oath of office, those five years just might be in a place like Alcatraz.

But the White House? He's whistling past the graveyard. But then again, look at the above photo of Alcatraz... It had sort of a White House.
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I'm So Sick Of This Crap

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today offered “severe apologies” to Afghans for the burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers, suggesting kowtowing by the U.S. government to Afghanistan over the incident was necessary to avoid attacks on U.S. soldiers.

Severe apologies. You gotta be kidding. That's severe stupidity.

Want to avoid attacks on U.S. soldiers? Make certain anybody that does attack our troops is swiftly made very dead and then buried in a pit of pig lard.

Who is going to offer "Severe apologies" to us for the killing of our troops?

What the president needs to do is tell those 12th century cave-dwellers that if they shoot one more soldier, we'll raze all their mud shack cities to the ground, destroy their fields and flocks, poison their wells, reduce all their "holy" places to rubble and burn every damned Koran we can find, sort of like the early Jews did to all the original inhabitants of the holy land. Well, maybe not that nasty... but close.

Mao was right... He predicted that near the end times of our nation and society America would have the power to destroy the earth but would not have the will use use any of that power.
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Not For Me

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has stated:

"Satan has his sights on the United States of America!

Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."

Now I don't know about you - but I'm not interested in having a president who believes that Satan is attacking America. That's nothing more than religious fear-mongering, pious babble and a good indication he may be susceptible to believing that God may - one day - order him open up the old nuclear football and launch all the missiles at those evil devil-ridden nations.

Having a basically religious man as president is one thing. It demonstrates at the very least, some sort of moral and ethical foundation. Having a religious fanatic in charge who has visions of devils and demons everywhere is quite another.

Santorum is not what he appears to be. He is a big-spending Progressive. Look at his voting record. The Democrats in Congress like him much more than the Republicians do.

That ought to tell you something.
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Completing The Picture

Yellowdog Granny posted this little jewel recently:


It's not quite complete. It should have included the below:


Fair is fair... Show us the whole man, not just the parts you like.
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Still Think We're Not Finished?

CAMP ZAMA, Japan – The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

I don't care who you are: If you think this makes for a better combat fighting force you've lost sight of what an army is for... It's there to overcome the enemy, killing as many as necessary in the process, and destroying enough of their infrastructure to force submission.

Forcing your combat veterans to wear foam boobies (maybe the officers get higher-priced silicon ones) while training is a good indication that our military leadership no longer understands its mission. Obviously we have way too many generals that think a Tampax is a vital piece of combat equipment.

An M1 Abrams tank is not designed to make a pregnant woman feel better while she's driving it, it's designed to obliterate the enemy.

Using the military as a place for social experimentation is not a sane strategy for any nation. The totally Socialist Israelis - Well known as great experimenters in social engineering - tried putting woman into combat situations awhile back - proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that women make terrible solders - but it seems our military hasn't learned a thing from that disaster.

Way too many of us have read fantasy/sci-fi stories where woman were the great heroes and the tough fighters of the day... and forgot that they were indeed stories of fantasy and fiction.


Oh hell yeah... she'll save the day...

Take today's video games. 90 pound child/women with 18" waists, giant eyes and very adult bodies are victorious over massively larger enemies with incredible weapons, speed, strength and endurance. Fine and dandy if you're living in a make-believe world. Games like that should come with a disclaimer:

WARNING: Don't try this is real life. You will die.

Keep that nonsense where it belongs: It will not - and does not - work in the real world. And above all: Keep it out of our military.
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Provocation At Its Best

The American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has passed through the Strait of Hormuz, shadowed by Iranian patrol boats.

The United States did the same thing back in the day when China and Tiawan were shooting at each other over a couple of little islands called Quemoy and Matsu.

I know, because I was a crew member of one of the ships that ran the gauntlet, the aircraft carrier USS midway. The task force was ordered through a narrow strait between the Chinese coast and one of the islands where they were exchanging artillery fire.

Wisely, the Chinese stopped shooting as our vessels passed through since they realized that we had several hundred aircraft from the Midway and other carriers a bit further out to sea flying around, fully armed, and just waiting for a shell to hit one of our ships.

We all knew beyond a doubt that the American government was trying to create an incident that would justify our attacking the Chinese mainland.

No shell hit our vessels, no attack occurred, no new war began.

Well... If it didn't work with the Chinese, maybe it will work with the Iranians.

There is no justifiable reason whatever to send one of our aircraft carriers where the USS Abraham Lincoln was just sent. It places a multi-billion dollar asset - the carrier - in harms way when no need exists to do so.

None.

Unless the United States Federal Government wants to start another war, hoping a hothead on one of those little patrol vessels does something - anything - stupid.

Another thing: It's no longer beyond the realm of possibility for this federal government to stage an attack. After all, the Bush administration flat out lied about Iraq's non-existent WMD's to start a war.

If Bush could, why not Obama?
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Iranians Carbomb Israelis

NEW DELHI –The wife of an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi and her driver were injured on Monday when the car they were traveling in was bombed, officials said. A second attempted bombing was defused outside the Israeli embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, at about the same time.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately blamed Iran, which has vowed revenge for the recent assassinations of several scientists involved in Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Hezbollah, which receives funding and strong support from Iran, also had promised to avenge the assassination of one of its leaders, Imad Moughniyeh, who was killed in a car bombing in Damascus on Feb. 12, 2008.

Now that's just not fair, the Iranians using Israeli tactics. After all, the Israelis invented car bombing way back in the 1940's and may have actually patented the technique.

We must petition for a United Nations sanction on Iran for stealing what amounts to intellectual property from Israel, and ask the United States Congress to authorize at least one billion additional American taxpayer dollars for Israel in compensation for this injustice.

Iranians must be forced to understand that committing war crimes and murdering noncombatants in the name of their god is totally unacceptable to our modern western civilization.
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No Kidding?

Barack Obama's politics meant nothing to Samuel L. Jackson because the "Pulp Fiction" star only voted for the president for one reason and one reason only ... because he's black.

Well well... color me surprised. Imagine a brutha voting for Obama strictly for racial reasons.

Of course, thats not racist, blacks cannot be racists - or so I'm told.

Actually, I'm not surprised Jackson voted for Obama. I'm surprised he voted at all. He's much too important for such plebian chores.
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Communist Van Jones On The rise Again

Van Jones impressing typical braindead college students(in rear)

San Diego – Van Jones, the former Obama Administration green czar who resigned in controversy, appears on the fast track to a political comeback merging as a star at this weekend’s California Democratic convention and lauded by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a “leader of the future.”

Jones lost his job as Obama's "Green Czar" when it was revealed he was a active Communist.

What a shame.

We should have let him stay all cuddled up next to his Good Buddy Bro Obama to constantly remind us all who and what is in the White House today.

This photo reveals more than just Jones being himself. That 300 pound triple-chinned typical American female with the sack of chips and the soda pop bottle nestled in front of her? Smiling as if she had good sense.

And that pitiful four-eyed geek eyeballing her for potential sweaty-body activity later on? Perhaps thinking she might actually be worth it? Sad.
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Mars Exploration - Or Lack Thereof

Remember the movie "Mars Attacks" where those little green men attacked earth and were ultimately defeated by us playing some yodeling country-western singer in their ears? The music blew their heads apart.

Well, looks like we won't be the ones to see if Mars has any little green men for real. NASA has just canceled our next Mars mission - a place we could eventually go to and colonize - in favor of pretty pictures of places long gone and totally unreachable by us humans... ever.

I occasionally comment on this generation of NASA decision makers, who have almost without exception, made poor choices and favored prohibitively expensive pie-in-the-sky projects - effectively shooting themselves in the foot over and over - unwise projects which have had the distressing habit of coming back to bite them in the butt.

Now, NASA has sacrificed several near-earth exploration missions in favor of a multi-billion dollar telescope so they can take more pretty pictures of galaxies, nebulae, black holes, quasars, etc. etc. billions of light years away, pictures that will show those objects as they existed billions of years ago.

The desire to discover the origins of the universe is of great interest to some of NASA's decision makers, and almost all of us went all wowzers over the Hubble photographs. Here's one below:


Very pretty. But do we need to spend billions for more like it? Studying pretty photographs of how the universe was billions of years ago is not really too helpful to us when we are trying to find out what our own little solar system is like, and how we can take advantage of the potentially reachable resources available out there to improve the lot of all us denizens of planet Earth.

What we certainly don't need to do right now - us being over 15 trillion dollars in debt - is to spend scarce taxpayer dollars on a new multi-billion dollar space telescope... so a tiny number of very privileged scientists can look at more pretty pictures showing the universe as it was back in the incredibly distant past.

NASA doesn't need a CW singer yodeling in their ears to blow their heads to bits. All NASA needs is another strategy session to do that.

At a time when millions of citizens are trying to keep their homes, wondering how they will be able to pay the monthly bills, and worrying about a government spending us into bankruptcy, NASA pirouettes down the yellow brick road searching for OZ.

As the government tries to decide who gets how big a slice of our vanishing money pie, NASA makes the decision that results from justifiable near-earth exploration is not important... pretty picture are. Someone needs to tell them that Congress is just not interested in spending billions for some new photographs of yet another supernova somewhere in the distant past.

Maybe, someday when we are not going bankrupt, we will be able to spend this kind of money on another deep space photo album.

But not now.

Granny Scores Again

Lifted from Yellowdog Grannys(thanks Granny) blog:




What happened?

I'll tell you.

Rap happened.
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Truth Through Art

From CBS Las Vegas, of all places:



In front of the White House a man is sitting on a park bench in the throes of depression. He is surrounded by all 43 presidents. In the forefront, purposefully ignoring the depressed man is President Obama, whose right foot is stepping on the Constitution. James Madison is next to Obama, pleading with him to stop.

This tableau is called “The Forgotten Man”, a painting by Jon McNaughton, an artist who is known for his politically-charged work.

Three cheers for artist Jon McNaughton. Congratulations to CBS Las Vegas.

REALITY

A dose of unvarnished reality*:

housing starts:

GDP:

Retail sales:

So... when Obama or the media starts huffing and puffing about some sort of recovery, remember these charts.

We have hit a small plateau, but hang on... The next slide downward is about to hit.

James Cameron's decision to leave America is just the latest of the super rich to get the hell out. They know what's about to happen.

The rest of us who can't leave have only two choices: Prepare or get hammered.

I hope you are one of those doing the prepping.

*Thanks to bluebeerriver.

Frightening, But Not Unexpected

Surprise, surprise:

An assessment by U.S. spy agencies concludes that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States, highlighting new risks as the Obama administration escalates pressure on Tehran to halt its alleged pursuit of an atomic bomb.

What else could we possibly expect?

Our dangerously naive government - along with those dangerously unbalanced Israelites - have been endlessly threatening, threatening, threatening to attack Iran, inside Iran, at Iranian national assets, their infrastructure, their nuclear facilities.

So when Iran's leaders start talking about attacking us with their most effective weapons available - bombers and suicide bombers - don't be surprised... just understand it's a realistic response to our never-ending threats to them.

Start worrying about that nice, big and totally unprotected target you live or work nearby. You know the one I'm talking about, it's the one you've thought of before.

Think that the desk-bound government computer jockeys with their satellite photos, or all those black-clad SWAT teams that seem to be everywhere nowadays will be able to stop the terrorists already in this country, who are here and ready to act, thanks to our wide open borders?

Not likely. Those SWAT dudes are seriously over-confident about their abilities, depend far too much on their military training and firepower, and have been totally brainwashed into believing nobody on the planet is smarter, better trained, or more dedicated than they are. Let's all hope they don't learn the truth the hard way.

They are however, quite effective at taking down untrained, often unarmed and unprepared civilians that may have robbed a 7-11 or are peddling pot. They - and their tactics - are so predictable you can set a watch by them.

Terrorists, the ones already here, are not stupid. They are not low IQ 7-11 robbing morons or pot smoking druggies. They are - without doubt - some of the best the Muslims have to offer. Quit thinking about them as rag headed 12th century cave dwellers. If they can turn that Army Major and convince him to kill dozens of totally unprepared American soldiers on one of our stateside bases, imagine what they can accomplish with their own agents, well-trained and as dedicated as anyone else.

We have been threatening Iran for years, so do you still believe they haven't been preparing for a 911 style - or worse - response all this time?

The only thing that keeps those "terrorists" here from acting is that we have not yet attacked Iran. But if and when we do - without any declaration of war - and destroy much or Iran's infrastructure? Well, stand by.

We will be seeing some truly devastating results... not over there... but here.

Just like you, I like to think all this is total silliness, none of it can possibly happen here, that I'm just babbling, spouting unwarranted nonsense.

But more and more lately, I wonder.