Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Brian Schweitzer yet again needs to get a clue, a little thought before he speaks might help too. To help Montana college graduates stay in the state after college he proposes to make thier student loan payments tax deductible for five years. EXCUSE ME, don't they have to have a job to pay taxes. Most college students leave the state since there is a lack of jobs in Montana, not because thier loan payments aren't tax deductible. We need more buisness opportunity in the state, not hare-brained schemes to help Montana college students out.

Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name. Mason Cooley

Damn, do I hope thier wrong. It's enough to depress a person.

Even a wise person can be wrong one time in a thousand. Chinese proverb

I noticed the beautiful full moon this morning and I grabbed my camera to take a picture of it to share. I was not overly happy with the way it turned out so I wasn't planning on posting it until Kalamity challegened Monatana bloggers to share thier pictures so I decided to share it. Be warned I am not particularly happy with the way it turned out.




The moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

note: cross posted to bigskyblog

I was visiting with my well-seasoned mom last night and when she asked me about my back I realized I haven't mentioned my progress lately. The steroidal injection fixed me up real good, working away and happy about it. All the pain is gone but I am still have a little numbness in my foot but it's not slowing me down. I will probable go get another shot to finish getting rid of the numbness but I'm good to go now.

Around the ranch not much new and exciting going on. Just checking water and getting ready for shipping. I will be shipping calves on the 30th of Sept. so have been going over corrals and fences in preparation for doing this. I sometimes procrastinate doing things around the house but I don't like to do it on the ranch so got that stuff done early.

Grass is really dry around here and I noticed that the grass in my farthest pasture was getting a little short and the water was getting shorter so I opened it up today so the cattle in that pasture can start working towards home. They will be able to move down out of the high country and get with the rest of the cows if they want but if they want to stay that's okay too. Will start back in the high country in the middle of Sept. gathering for shipping and then really start kicking cattle towards home. We are getting antsy around here for that to happen but we will have to curb our enthusiasm for a couple of weeks yet.

Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before. David Hume

I used to not understand why the concern about stories like this. I mean its just the flu. That was all before I read a very scary book this summer. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History

This is the scariest book I have ever read in my life. It talks about and analyzes the flu pandemic of 1918 and its consequences. It starts a little slow talking about the state of medicine at the time this happened and then gets into the pandemic and its consequences. It is estimated that between 50 million and 100 million people died from this 1918 flu worldwide in the course of a year. With todays population numbers that works out to 150 million to 300 million if it were to happen today.

One of the real bad things about this flu was the age group of people it killed. Normally flu kills the young and/or the old but the 1918 Pandemic killed the majority of people in the prime of their lives from 18-35 years of age. This was because their immune system was healthy enough to mount such a strong defense against the disease that the person would literally drown in their own fluids in the lungs overnight. The slower response in young and old actually helped them to fight the disease more effectively.

I see here that more preparations are being taken all the time in expectation of another pandemic but most of these preparations are on how to take care of the large amount of flu cases not stopping it. It really appears to me there is no effective way to stop it once it starts, just try to cope with it while it happens. One of the ways officials say they can control a flu pandemic is with some of the new antiviral drugs that are being developed but that is beginning to look like that might not be the case. It's being reported now that one of these drugs instead of helping in all case might actually allow the flu to mutate even more and infect more people. The adaptability of the flu virus is staggering in its implications.

Like I say this book scared the living s__t out of me on how actually deadly the "simple flu" can be. I have been getting a flu shot for quite a few years now and after this book I definitely will continue to do this and hope the witch doctors get the strain right in the vaccine to protect us. Now if I can just convince my Darling Wife to get a shot and to get the kids shots I would feel a little better.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt

I really would like to know what gave the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks the right to invade private property and remove items without the landowners permission. In my opinion the landowners should have shot them as trespassers and left them for the buzzards instead of settling with them. I am getting just sick and tired of these government employes invaded private property and doing whatever the hell they want just because they have a God complex on what their powers are. Just because they work for the government doesn't make them God you know. They still have to follow the law even if they don't think so.

In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority. James Madison

I see a national news story this morning on how snow has closed some mountain roads in Colorado. Two days ago I mentioned in the bigskyblog that snow had closed the Beartooth highway but this was reported only in the local news items and failed to make the national news. I've mentioned it before and I am sure I will mention it again but it really seems like Montana is somtimes the forgotten state when it comes to stuff like this. A Montana College student has a voluminous "call of nature" and the national news media is all over it, but a weather related story like snow and it is completely ignored. Can anyone explain why this is? I'm beyond trying to figure it out anymore.

Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide to the future. Chinese proverb

Sometimes I come across something that is so unbelievably obvious I can't believe that it is being reported on as news.

Major Tokyo Quake Expected Within 50 Years

Now as seismically active as the Japan area is this prediction to me gets a "duh, no s--t" type response from me. Then I read the first paragraph.

Japan's capital has a 90 percent chance of being devastated by a major earthquake some time in the next 50 years, according to a study by a government panel.

This is no different than me predicting there is a 90% chance that in the next 10 years it will rain where I live. It is probable a real good bet, even though I would have to wonder at the moment. I sure hope I get rain in that time frame, if I don't I sure enough won't be ranching here. I wonder what the members of this "government panel" were paid to make this stupendous announcement? Had to have been a political payoff of some kind.

He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass. Edgar R. Fiedler

Normal game of politics here (bugmenot.com if needed for free registration). One candidate twists the words of another to try to make points. In a way the quote the second time around is kind of true, just twisted a either a whole lot or just a little. What is really funny, and what brought this article to my attention, is the bit at the end about the White House and the journalists themselves trying to kill the press corps. This would be a bad thing to happen?

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Mark Twain

First it's the Unabomber, then it's the Freemen, some of the wonderful whackos the state of Montana is known for. Maybe that's better though than to be known by our Huffman. What's a Huffman you might ask. He is the Montana college student so full of it that he is facing criminal mischief charges after a border agent accused him of intentionally clogging the toilet. This is really something I want Montana to be known for, that our college students are full of s--t.

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. William Shakespeare

A young girl asked her father if all fairy tales begin with â

I mentioned over at the bigskyblog how much of the state is getting wet but I'm sure not seeing much. The Gazette has a story about the weather that some people are complianing about it when I would like to see some of it.

The cool, wet weather - which continued this week in many areas - also has delayed harvesting of second-cutting alfalfa and other hay, both behind last year's pace, the report said.

I would really love to see some of this "cool, wet weather." It would just make my summer.

Never complain and never explain. BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The Man of Your Nightmares: When Good Husbands Go Bad

(bugmenot.com for registration if necessary.)

If this wasn't about such a serious thing it would be kind of funny. They're right though it sure seems like there are a lot of bad husbands in the news lately. At least my Darling wife doesn't have to worry about a bad husband, unless it's bad that I don't listen to her all the time.

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. Jim Horning

It's that time of the year again. The SOB's (hunters) are out roaming around the place hunting without permission. Sometime around 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm a vehicle roamed all over the place hunting for game. I discovered it this morning and wasted most of the morning following thier tracks around making sure they shut the gates and didn't steal anything.

Everything was okay but it is really irratating when you have to waste a good portion of your day because some worthless piece of garbage feels he has the right to roam all over your place hunting. I'm really getting tired of this. Last time it got as bad as it has been recently I called the Sheriff and informed him the next bastard I caught on my place I would shoot on sight and hung up. He got word out to his buddies and it stopped for quite a few years now but it is on the upswing again now. Might have to threaten the Sheriff again to get it to stop.

Go after a man's weakness, and never, ever, threaten unless you're going to follow through, because if you don't, the next time you won't be taken seriously. Roy M. Cohn

Exactly what was she going to teach the children or was it she needed the liquid courage to face them?

It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. Charles Baudelaire