Buffalo Gal

I am doing all I can to keep from “coming down” with what feels like a nasty bronchial thing….I stayed wrapped up in a warm conforter all day yesterday while taking my arsenal of natural immune boosters with a LOT of water all day long. It seems to be working well and sleeping a lot is also a good thing to ward off worse things than a feeling in one’s throat and an occasional sneeze.
Thursday before I got the suspicious warning symptoms I spent the afternoon with “Teddie” and “Rocky” at our son’s home in Fargo. My wonderful daughter in law is a foster care “mom” for adopt-a-pet dogs and the latest guest was Teddie.. a little cuddly guy of mixed breeds….Pug, Chihuahua, and other breeds as well because he is bigger than both Pug and Chihuahua. He has the cutest little under bite with his bottom teeth showing at all times. He sat and slept on my lap the whole time I was there and I had to say goodby because that night he was going to live with his new loving lady who is adopting him. If I did not have Princess Kitty already I would have wanted to take Teddie in a heartbeat. We just connected so well…..in spite of saying that Mac was our last dog. The heartbreak of having them die in old age was the determinant in that decision. We had been through that too many times already.
Rocky is the 4 year old black lab who is the new main guy in our kids’ and grandkids’ house. Rocky was a foster dog for awhile too but they decided that Rocky needed to stay with them and he has. He is so gentle and welcoming to all the other foster dogs who spend time with him and his “family”. Rocky is into carrying big objects around in his mouth…a toy or a tennis ball or a special bone from the pet store…not a real bone but he loves the fake bones! He did not mind my attention to Teddie that day; he is such a nice gentleman. He seems to know that he is the main resident dog.

I read something this morning on my daily journey through the online newspapers. It brought up a haunting remembrance from the early 1960s when we lived on the campus of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. There was a bacteriology professor at the time—a real “character”…who went around campus in a huge western style hat..more the kind that early western explorers and mountain men wore. But he warned then that bubonic plague was not a “dead disease” and could rise again like it did in the Dark Ages in Europe. This morning I read of the sudden death of a researcher in cell biology….from bubonic plague which took his life in less than 3 days. The supposedly “safe” bacteria he was working with was NOT safe at all and he contracted bubonic plague in his laboratory.

Another thing I am thinking about is the kinship of two very odd, mentally ill individuals. Colonel Ghaddafi of Libya and Charlie Sheen of Hollywood could make a recording together of their rants and it would be hard to tell one from the other especially if you did not hear the Libyan language first from the Killer Dictator Ghaddafi. They are both so mentally ill it is pathetic the damage they are wreaking on others. Sheen is just threatening to be a fighter jet fully armed and attacking people…. but Ghaddafi is killing his own people by setting his supporters and hired mercenaries loose with guns and rockets…..and threatening to “open up the arsenals”…..which those in the know means chemical weapons like mustard gas..the horror of WW1 . Ghaddafi is totally out of personal or national control. He has already killed hundreds… if not thousands… of his countrymen.
This also reminds me of what I have read about the pitifully inadequate commercial ferryboat that American citizens were trapped on for two days in Tripoli’s harbor, fearing for their lives with the thugs of Ghaddafi hovering nearby the whole time. What kind of fiasco has our nation wrought, with the very real threat of a ferry load of Americans exposed to murder for 2 days while the inadequate ferry had to sit out the bad weather and high waves. The U.S. had no naval vessels in the Mediterranean while a British warship was able to steam into Tripoli harbor and rescue all its people. Other nations were able to muster flights and other ways of getring their citizens out of Libya while the American government did not provide for their own. It was a disgraceful display of a hopelessly mired- down Administration that is constantly caught “with its pants around it ankles” in too many foreign crises recently. Having press conferences and declaring that a situation is “unacceptable” does not help those caught in conflagrations in uprisings in Libya or elsewhere.
To make things even worse POTUS and FLOTUS danced the night away at a White House Bash for MoTown music. It was like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The timidity and incompetence or the present administration is more than painful. The time will come if things go as they are going, that American lives will be lost in some middle east dictatorship when the common people revolt and we will continue to be humiliated by tin horn dictators like Ghaddafi and others who sense the weakness and take- action- after- it- is- nearly- over type leadership we are witnessing.

One of my favorite commenters, John Hayward, has plenty to say about the lack of leadership from this Administration:

“The President has done nothing about the crisis in Libya, except give a press conference in which he called the situation ‘unacceptable’ and then proceed to accept it. He’s holding consultations about having meetings to design a committee that could help the world ‘speak with one voice to the government and people of Libya’ a move that doubtlessly will be appareciated by anyone who survives Quaddafi’s Last Stand. Americans trying to escape the Libyan civil war were left stranded on a chartered ferryboat that was too small to handle the Mediterranean Sea. Not a word has been uttered from the White House to condemn the fugitive Democrats who acted to shut down democracy in Wisconsin and Indiana. Widespread violence and hatred from union soldiers has gone unremarked. Pirates of Somalia sail through the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden with confidence after slaughtering four innocent Americans. Middle Eastern turmoil is poised to blow the price of oil into the stratosphere, a death blow to the economy that Obama has already crippled since he moved forcefully to make us wholly dependent on foreign oil, while Obama cronies—–George Soros included—-stand to make billions from useless ‘green energy’ boondoggles.”

It’s enough to make a Preacher swear and enough to make most Americans throw up their collective hands in despair.