Going to the Dogs

I have never been anti-
American as so many Canadians are. We have travelled in the USA very often and have rubbed shoulders with and become friends with many Americans over the years. There are many things I admire about the people and their country. They have been, arguably, the greatest nation on earth during most of my lifetime. But, here is a list, composed by an American, who bemoans the fact that his beloved country is going to the dogs. Judge for yourself.

 America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.

If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the United States leads the world in....

#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.

#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.

#4 The United States is tied with the UK for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.

#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.

#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.

#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.

#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.

#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the USA and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the US has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, US military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.

#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.

#20 The US has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, US government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

The reasons for this decline are for another post.

Signs of Stupidity

It is obvious that these signs were made by stupid people. But they were only doing their jobs and were taking instructions from those in authority above them.

It is an axiom that the bigger government gets, on all levels, the more rules and regulations are imposed on those in their care. I say"in their care" because that is what the purpose of government is, according to the socialist dictates of today's version of democracy.

It would be oh so tragic to let the common citizen, who is stupid, make his or her own decisions. 

Yesterday I read of a homeowner in Michigan who is facing a jury trial and up to 93 days in jail for .... you will never guess. She is doing something on her property that has been natural to mankind throughout our history. It has been done for survival and for pleasure, or both at the same time. It is environmentally friendly, and uses few resources. There are a multitude of benefits, and really, everyone should be doing it, especially in these economic hard times. Apparently some neighbours complained because they were not doing it and that made it out of the ordinary, and did not comply with the cookie cutter image of the city block. Yes, dear reader, she was growing a garden. Not in a ploughed up yard, edge to edge, but in five raised boxes. 

She should actually get a 'citizen of the year' award for setting a good example. Why? She is not using up valuable gasoline by mowing grass like her neighbours do. This lowers the all important carbon footprint. The largest irrigated crop in the USA is grass. And now this lady is not using the precious water for grass, but for growing food. What a novel and noteworthy idea! But no, Big Brother will come down on her, even though it is the "land of the free and home of the brave". 

 Tomorrow I will show you why I have little hope for that once great nation south of our border.  

"Always Be Prepared" (Boy Scout Motto)

When I was a young boy growing up in a small Saskatchewan town, it was the cool thing to do. Joining the Cub/Scout movement was encouraged and seen as an integral step in developing into a responsible young man. Our leaders were respected men in the community and were also the dad's of my schoolmates. It was a learning platform for many different types of skills. I no longer have the string of badges that I earned, but distinctly remember the pride of striving and achieving and being awarded the badges, and then having my mother sew them onto the sleeve of my uniform. The orienteering and fire making badges were the most fun for me, but the knot tying badge eluded me for a few years. Today, I am really good at lighting and maintaining a camp fire, but I still can tie only one kind of knot, but at least I know the name of it.

At the Canada Day parade, there was a small contingency of Boy Scouts. There were only a few that looked clean cut and normal. The rest were reason enough to stay out of the movement. Lord Baden Powell would not approve of these two fellows. I say that because appearance was always of utmost importance, indeed we were awarded badges for it.    

Gratitude

About a year ago, I was suffering from a particularly bad cold. As I lay in my bed, trying to sleep, all I could think about was my aching pressurized sinuses, my sore throat, the congestion in my bronchial tubes, and my dry mouth from not being able to breathe through my nose. You have all been there as this a common affliction to mankind. One's mind becomes focused on these problems and I found myself wondering why I did not appreciate good health when I had it. I determined then and there that when I was better, I would be more appreciative of a healthy body and the joy that it can bring.

On those nights when I am not dead tired, and I lay on my bed with the last thoughts of the day on my mind, I start at my head and go right down to my feet and do a mental assessment of all limbs and systems. I have found this to be of great value. I marvel at how well I can breathe, how comfortable I am, how pain free I am, and how relaxed and at peace I am. That, in turn, gives me an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude. 

There will again be a day when I will have those awful cold symptoms, or there will be the pains and discomfort of old age, or disease, but right now I am blessed with health and consider it one of the greatest gifts of God to his creation, man. This feeling of well being and gratitude relaxes me and I fall asleep more easily. It beats falling asleep with the worries of my life on my mind. And I know that next time I am in pain and discomfort, and sleep eludes me, that at least I can say that I appreciated my health when I had it. No regrets.    

Faces of Multi-Culturalism

Our economy has an agricultural base. The first to farm our valley were Japanese and Mennonite immigrants. Today, there is a healthy mix with Dutch and East Indians adding to the soup pot.

 The Scots do not have a corner on bagpipes, but you could say that they are primarily responsible. They seem appropriate in a parade.

This fellow seemed a bit eccentric but was having fun and was entertaining the crowd as he rode his bicycle with hands only for juggling the hackey sacks.

Medieval games seem to be attractive enough to start a club.

Three miles of sword play and jousting is a thirsty business.

Minus the flag, this is a very typical sight in our town.

I don't think this is the typical 'Wendy' that Dave Thomas had in mind when he first started this hamburger franchise.

What is a parade without First Nations representation? I would give recognition to this particular band but my keyboard does not have the right characters to spell it the correct way. It was nice to see the elder riding on the 'float' and the young men and women doing all the dancing.

Bollywood comes to the Canada Day Parade.

Canada Day Parade 2011 Part 4

Grandpa got to babysit his grand kids today.

This gal was pretty excited that there was Caribbean Carnival float in the parade.

Are we in Rio?  Or New Orleans?

So very colourful!

There were so many cultures represented that it was difficult to keep track as they went by. I was glued to my viewfinder seeking out colour and missed who this was.

But I know that these gals are hockey players.

And this young lady was on a horse so I think she belonged to an equine club.

Oh yes, there is one of her fellow riders. There was a pooper scooper squad behind this group and they got a nice round of applause as they came by with shovels and wheel barrows. However, after trotting the three mile route, doing a routine every few hundred yards, I think these horses were pooped out by the time they came past us.

Cancer Research

Who does not want a cure for Cancer? A decade ago, the Canadian Cancer Society would hold an annual fund raiser and canvassers would go door to door asking for donations. Today there is hardly a week goes by where there is not some cancer run, walk, race, or some other activity geared around raising funds for cancer research. When we donate, we are funding research for a cure, or that is what we think we are funding. 

CBC ran a disturbing report tonight about where those funds are really going and it is not toward research. In fact, researchers are spending more and more of their day trying to get funding from a shrinking budget, even though the Canadian Cancer Society is taking in unprecedented amounts of money. Only 20% of your donation is going to research and the percentage of money available is continuing to decrease. So where is all this money going, you ask? Why, to raise more money. It has become an industry that is feeding on itself. Go to CBC.com and search out this story and you will be discouraged from donating, like I am. I have suspected this for years, but now it is confirmed. There should be a huge public outcry, and a dramatic decrease in donations so this society wakes up to realise what its mandate really is.   

This Is Not The Punjab

One bored Granny.

Two bored Grannies.

Four bored Grannies.

Misery loves company in any culture.

Not My Favourite Book

I know now why this was a book that appealed to my friend Erv. I finally got up the courage to read it and found almost from the start that it was steeped in philosophy and theology. It is supposed to be a masterpiece of modern day literature, but it was not my 'cup of tea'. What I found most annoying, was not the content, that is the ideas and arguments put forth, but the style.

 Let me attempt to give you a small sampling of the style while telling you a bit about the story, in my own words.

Fyodor Karamazov, a self admitted sensualist and clown, who, by the way, was a sponger who was tight with his money and refused to give his sons their inheritance when they came of age, had three sons by two wives, Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha, each quite different in appearance, temperament, and philosophy, though by no means stupid, although Ivan, who, like his father, was a sensualist, which lead him into trouble when he and his father fought over the same woman, and who also believed that if a man was an atheist, that is denied the existence of a deity, and therefore also denied an eternal existence, should not have to be under the churches moral law or the states laws regarding anything at present illegal, even including murder, because there were no eternal consequences, and should be only responsible to oneself and ones own self interests, but at the same time respecting those citizens and clergy who thought otherwise, for the sake of some semblance of social order.

Yes, run on sentences and rabbit trips are abundant and it is most difficult to concentrate and hold to an idea that you thought the sentence or chapter was going to be about. It is one of those books where you read and re-read a sentence, or a page, and you still don't 'get it'.  There are small nuggets here and there, but overall the task of finding them was too daunting for this simple minded reader.    

Canada Day Parade 2011 Part 3

I had an incident in the washroom the other day due to a bit of food poisoning. I wonder if I should have called these guys?

With about a thousand more of these, we will be ready for Japanese style earthquake.

This little guy just walked the three mile parade route. It shows.

Ah, yes. A multicultural umbrella. Only in Canada.

Our elected Member of Parliament, Ed Fast.

Finally a familiar face. It's Nathan, our oldest grandson, in the parade with a delegation from Abbotsford Children's Theater.

Then came a few custom cars.

Most of these custom cars were rides for dignitaries. How embarrassing when you are waving in a parade and nobody has a clue who you are but you are still pumped up with importance. Some labels would help, but then we might boo and that would be even more embarrassing. I was watching for the Queen but I heard later she declined the invitation. It is just as well as I wanted to have words with her about losing my invitation to her grandson's wedding a few weeks ago.  

Canada Day Parade 2011 Part 2

Her Majesty's Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Without their mounts, weapons, or cars. The bagpipe seemed to be the weapon of choice on this day)   

A very young recruit.

Where did this dragon lady come from?

A good outfit when you need it.

Specializing in Teddy Bears?

Vintage equipment.

State of the art equipment. This is what you want to see when you call 911.

This lucky firefighter drew parade duty today.

These wheels are 'flagged'.