Buffalo Gal

A new Washington Post/ABC poll taken between June 2-5 shows some amazing changes on the American political scene.
Here are some of them:

** Mitt Romney leads Pres. Obama 49-46% in presidential polling

**Only 2/3 of Americans would vote for Sarah Palin if she were running for president.

** 6 in 10 Americans say Palin is unqualified to be president.

There are poll results for this particular poll on “realclearpolitics” and also in the Washington Post today.

**Palin trails by 17 percentage points behind other Republican presidential hopefuls.
**By a margin of 2- to 1, those voters polled say America is on “wrong track” especially regarding economic failures (unemployment is at 9.1 % again) The debt and deficit is also a thorn in the side for this administration’s approval.

This new blog may enrage a commenter named “Larry” who wrote lengthily and “word-ily” a couple of days ago on the first blog “Sarah Palin won’t you please go home”.
I think of this commenter as “Larry-Boy” as in the VeggieTales character. But Larry Boy resorts to personal insults in his comment and I normally trash any comment that has to use tacky tactics like that…either for the writer or the subject. Some people love to be “clever” in their own eyes by trashing other people but it does not work for me. I will be trashing Larry Boy’s work after using it as an instructive tool for showing the folly of using personal insults.

The ABC/WPost poll is very revealing this week.

It is always fascinating to watch a Congressman cornered like a racoon in a tree that has been chased up there by hunting hounds.
A lot of people have spent a lot of time investigating Weiner’s claims that his Twitter account was 1. hacked 2. pranked 3. joked. The story changed with every media appearance Weiner made. He just dug a hole deeper and deeper as the days progressed. He maybe should have done as 18th-19th century politician Thomas Jefferson did when a journalist wrote about his common law relationship with one of his slaves (Sally Hemings). And the many children she had by Jefferson. Jefferson did not even comment on it. And he got elected in spite of the scandal in the newspapers of that time. So is silence golden??
Not if you are Anthony Weiner. He talked and talked and lied and denied until he finally became the tree-d racoon…especially when about 6 women came out and said that he had sent them lewd pictures of himself and lewd messages.
Now his statement today was the usual thing. He admitted that he lied, he admitted he had taken pictures of his own underwear (with him in it) he admitted sending the lewd photo on his Twitter account and he admitted to doing it a lot of times in the past. But he used the prescribed words like “sorry” and “apologize” and “terrible mistake” and then got tearful when he said his wife’s name. At least he did not force the poor woman to stand beside him as the vile Eliot Spitzer , another NY politician did when he was caught frequenting a prostitute. Spitzer DID resign from being Governor. Weiner insists he will not resign because he says he did not break any laws or violate House ethics. (Say what?)
The standards for liberal Democratic politicians are far different than those standards for Republicans who are caught up in a scandal. Republican Chris Lee also of a NY district was told by Speaker John Boehner to get out of his office by the end of the day when he was found to be twittering lewd messages just like Weiner. Senator John Ensign (R) of Nevada is on the way out (resigning) for his sex scandal. But on the other side Rep. Charles Rangel is still encsonced in his House office…in spite of being found to have committed great numbers of ethics violations . What else is new? Republicans resign; Democrats do not.
CBS News had a breaking story on its website and there were 440 comments the last time I checked. It is worth reading the comments to see the perspective of American people …those folks that are not locked into the Beltway Mentality.

Here are a few of them:

1. ” CREEP!”

2. ” Admits he’s a liar; admits he possesses very poor judgement, but insists he is qualified to serve as a Congressman. You must be joking.”

3. “Quit now. Rep. Chris Lee quit the 26th district of NY for far less. Republicans have a different standard. Quit now, you dishonest person!”

4. He is a typical politician except he is the most arrogant a-h—-e in the world. He is not good enough to clean sewers. I hope he goes through hell, loses his wife, his job, his money and lives a destitute life.”

5. Absolutley classical liberal response. First deny, deny, deny, deny. Then when the truth comes out deny deny deny deny that what was done was any deviation from normal acceptable behavior.”

Weiner may or may not survive this tempest. If the ethics committee decides he needs to be ousted he will be. It doesn’t appear that he will resign on his own…but the people who see what he really is are pretty united in thinking him to be a perverted twit that ought to be out of Congress faster than “a New York Minute”
Some of the commenters said that being on line all the time..it is pretty near normal for such “activity” to occur. I take it that sending lewd pictures and messages is considered normal and “every day” ordinary behavior. I suppose if you are doing this yourself you want to think it is normal and not perverted.
If this is true, we are in a bigger world of trouble than I thought. If this is considered normal by online addicts, then we are peopled by a whole huge bunch of sexual perverts.
There was a time when these “terrible mistakes” were called by their right name: sins, as in “thou shalt not bear false witness” et.al.
————————————

CBS News article: “Representative Anthony Weiner Admits Posting Lewd Pictures To Twitter; Making ‘Terrible Mistakes’.”
(read the comments: they are instructive and most interesting)

I just read an article in today’s FORUM about what Hastings MN is going to do about vandalism in one of their public parks.
According to the information, “rogue teens” have been committing acts of vandalism at that site and now the city of Hastings is going to install a “screech machine” to discourage these vandals. The machine will be activated at park closing time, and will be motion activated to emit a high pitched scream-screech sound that will repel teenagers who are the only ones who can hear it…because older people normally have hearing loss in the high range pitch sounds. Good and well…I hope the Rogues run out of the park holding their ears but I wonder about hearing loss in older people only. These rogue teens have also spend years (probably) listening to “music” at damaging decibel levels that may have given them early hearing loss.
It was amusing to read of this solution at any rate. I hope it works. Vandalism is a secretive crime done in the dark of night usually so maybe the scream machinen will be effective.
I remember some years back reading about a convenience store that solved their teenager-hangout problem in the parking lot. The store had played music on speakers that appealed to the teens and they filled the parking lot in the evening so in order to rid the parking lot of the teenagers who were discouraging other customers, the store began to play classical music! Voila! the teens fled like they were following the Pied Piper of Hamelin to yonder unknown locations for hanging out!
I thought that was clever and thoughtful.
Once in the nice weather when people drive with car windows open, I pulled up to an intersection beside a teen age driver who had his rock music on so loud it was assaulting all others in the intersection. I had MPR classical music station playing on my car radio and I retaliated by turning up the volume so the teen could hear it and he looked at me like I was a space alien and went screeching out of the intersection on the green light like the demons of hell were pursuing him.
It was momentary fun and I still remember the look on his face when he got a blast of classical music from my car!!!

There is an old song about Bill Bailey that says “Bill Bailey won’t you please come home! I am re-writing that song to say “Sarah Palin won’t you please GO HOME!”
I have been sick and tired of Sarah Palin for a long time. She is clearly not fit to be president and I doubt if she will even run but she cannot stay away from the political scene. She got a taste of being listened to and being adored by a number of admirers and supporters (who must be a bit off their rockers in my opinion) She obviously cannot let go of that attention. With her recent bus tour she has managed to get things screwed up again telling a fantasy tale of why Paul Revere took his famous ride. She said he rode out because he had to “warn the British that were already here that ‘Hey, you’re not gonna take American arms , you are not going to beat our own well-armed persons individual private militia that we have.”
Aside from the almost indeciperable grammar and syntax of that statement, the reason for Paul Revere’s ride has been completely re-invented by Palin who must have been asked the question about Revere’s ride when her bus tour stopped in Boston’s old part of the city.
Our well armed militia? That rag-tag band of farmers and tradesmen with their muskets and ball-shot that tried to face off against the trained British troops?
Palin is as good at making things up and lying as Barack Obama and she can do it without a teleprompter!!!
Apparently Palin is part of that generation of American citizens who were not taught history as it happened….so many of the younger generation do not even know who their Congressmen are or where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought or who is the Vice President right now. It is so scary to think that these people are allowed to vote but it is even scarier to see Sarah Palin make pronouncements that actually affect some people’s thinking.
Paul Revere rode out that April evening in 1775 to ride to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British soldiers were on their way out of Boston to arrest them. It was then that the American militia restorted to guerilla warfare to shoot at the Redcoats on the march to Lexington and Concord, Mass. It was the “shot heard round the world” that ignited the Revolutionary War but it was fought in slow motion for many years after Paul Revere’s famous ride. The American military nearly lost it all in 1776 and only the leadership of George Washington rescued the almost-lost cause of American independence from Great Britain.
I would shudder to think of Sarah Palin explaining the Stamp Act of the high tariff levied against English tea that were also precipitants in the beginning of the Revolution in America.
Somebody needs to tell Palin to go home and tend to her family in Alaska. Her youngest son could use some motherly attention as could the rest of her children…to say nothing of husband Todd who must be a true saint to put up with his wife’s foolishness since she got famous in 2008.
Besides all those factors, who can stand to listen to that high whiney voice leaving off the “ings” in all words with that ending in favor of her folksy sounding
“goin’” “talkin” “shootin” (off her mouth) ridin’ on that blasted bus tour…who is payin’ for that by the way??? I would like to know.
Sarah Palin has mistaken herself for a female Davy Crockett figure in American political life. Crockett actually served quite honorably in the U.S. Congress after his wilderness, huntin’ and shootin’ days were over. Palin resigned her governorship and has been runnin’ around ever since— runnin’ her mouth off where- ever her worshipful followers will listen to her. She took part in a stupid reality show about “her Alaska” where viewer were treated to her speed boating on Alaskan waters, huntin’ for moose and other big game (grizzlies?…. I cannot remember I got so bored I only watched part of one show)
I am afraid we will have Palin with us for longer periods of time since she cannot shut up and she cannot stop trying to impress everyone with her supposed political clout. She is a blight on the American political scene and I wish there was a cure for her dumbness that she displays on a daily basis when she is out and about.
When Oprah Winfrey (another American female that I cannot stand) quit her long running show the week of May 25 a lot of people were saying “good riddance”.
At least Oprah had a vague idea of when the American public had had enough of her and her early days “Queen of Trash” shows when she paraded all the freaks, miscreants, hapless victims of her old shows that were carbon copies of the likes of Sally Jessie Raphael, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera. Topics of the old Oprah Trash Shows were things like “familes that interbreed”, “satanic worship”, or “when the wife meets the other woman”. Oprah gave us a break; we deserve another break also—from Sarah Palin who badly needs to go home and stay there.

There are SO MANY sports blogs on areavoices.com already, I cannot believe I am writing this one!
We have just returned from about 5-6 hours of soccer games at the Shanley sports field in south Fargo. The Girls’ Class A soccer tournament was scheduled to be played in Minot but the flood conditions there caused it to be moved to the Sid Cichy Field at Shanley High School in Fargo.
I do not know a great deal about soccer but our grand daughter, 16 year old Kara, plays for the Shanley Deacons varsity soccer team this year as a sophomore and I am not bragging when I say she is one good soccer player. I am simply telling the truth! Kara has played soccer since she was 6 years old, on the city league teams that abound at the present time. She learned her skills well and now she is playing with the “big girls” in class A.
Since Thursday the Shanley girls’ soccer team has played in 3 hard- running, hard fought games…two of which resulted in double overtime periods of 10 minutes each beyond the 80 minutes of the regular game and two of them have led to “shoot outs” after the overtimes were tied also. Shanley won the first shoot-out over Fargo North but today…in the ND championship game the girls from Shanley got “out-shot” by Bismarck Century Patriots who won the state championship early this evening after a very long game….2 overtimes and the final “shootout” to decide the winner.
I know there are hair- raising tales about “soccer moms” and also about soccer dads, I am sure…I saw a few today and they go through agony with their daughters. But “soccer grandparents” are a special breed too, since most of them in that generation do not understand the fine points of soccer which was not even played as a team sport in their schooldays.
We played a facsimile game we called soccer on our playground but it was just running and kicking a red rubber playground ball around between two “teams” that had been roughly chosen at recess time. We even played our strange version of”soccer” all winter in the packed down snow. We got a lot of excercise and filled our lungs with fresh air each noontime recess session…but we did not know diddley-squat about the real game called soccer….a game that has taken precedence over most all sports in all other nations except the USA which was wedded for so long to mens’ sports like baseball, football and basketball.
Soccer was a game for sissies in my day!!!
No more! Grandparents like us have become avid soccer fans when one of our grandkids is playing. …even if we aren’t sure what is going on in the game. I understand running after and kicking the ball toward your goal but I do not know about fouls and all the other fine points of the game. I do know how to stand up and scream when my granddaughter or one of her teammates is bringing the ball down the field, skillfully passing it to one another til they take the shot for the goal…sometimes executing it perfectly , sometimes having it blocked by the opposing goalie.(I know what goalies are now too!) I also learned about “penalty shots” today when another player committed a foul on my grand daughter.
I am amazed that these young women ages 15-18 can run like they do. They ran for over 100 minutes today in two overtimes and one shootout. At the end they all appear to be running on “jello legs” so tired were they.
After the game ended, our granddaughter was wiping tears off her face (Shanley lost in the shootout) but she confessed that she had been running on adrenaline for the final period…she was so physically spent from so much running, playing defense and also playing offense when she got the ball and headed for the goal.
The tears were over by the time we met her at one of the Culver’s stores. We all needed some nourishment and all of us felt better after we ate a meal.
And we also said “Next year” a lot because the Shanley girls are a young team.
Next year at the ND girls’ state soccer tournament!

Myrtle R. has lived a long productive life at age 101 years. Her stories were told to me when I visited her in May.
She remembers much about her early life living first on a farm and later in a town neighborhood called “Stockholm” because it was mostly first generation Swedish immigrants who lived in that neighborhood.
Myrtle remembered neighbors who kept cows in the backyard in the town area…not an uncommon thing in early years of towns in our area. When I was a child I recall a barn at the edge of town to which Walter D. would walk to every morning and night to milk his cows. He was retired then but had a meat market in the early days after the town was first established. I did not know Walter but I knew his wife Gertie’s voice very well. They were on a party line with our family and often when I picked up our phone I would hear Gertie’s whispery voice visiting with one of her many older lady friends. She talked for long periods of time and it was frustrating not to get on the phone when you wanted to make a call.
Myrtle was married for many years to “John” whom she had met when she was a nursing student at a Twin Cities hospital in the first part of the 20th century. “John” worked as a painter and was working on a job at the hospital with his crew of painters. He must have noticed Myrtle early in his job at the hospital because he finally confronted her and asked her if she ever took a coffee break. She told him not very often because they had so much work to do . He persisted asking her every few days about her non-existent coffee breaks. Finally Myrtle said, she took a coffee break with John and that was the beginning of the romance that led to marriage and later to 3 children. They eventually left the big city and came to live in a small town near Myrtle’s origins in eastern Clay County near Dale Minnesota.
I told the sad story of the death of Myrtle’s sister Charlotte and the nephew of the girls…..a young son of the oldest sister in the family.
The family had two other tragedies in their lives when Myrtle was still at home. One summer day her two brothers who were next to her in the family were exicted because their dad had bought them each new shoes. Getting new shoes in those days was an occasion for excitement and happiness..not exactly like today’s young people who probably have many shoes at their disposal. Not so for the pioneer family of Myrtle. The two boys went out in their new shoes to work in the father’s field. It was harvest time and they were “shocking grain” for him. In the days before combines the ripe grain was mowed and then made into small bundles. The bundles had to be manually set up in groups to form a “shock” which was a protective set- up of the grain bundles so the grain would not get rained on. Shocks could be picked up later on big wagons pulled by horses and then hauled to the site where a threshing machine would thresh the grain at a later date. The only place one can see grain shocks now are at Threshing Reunions like the one held in Rollag MN every Labor Day weekend when grain is harvested like it was in the old days of the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Myrtle’s father had warned his sons to watch the weather as it was a hot, humid day that could result in bad thunderstorms. The boys worked in the field til August told Victor they better head for home; a thunderstorm was approaching. Victor wanted to finish the shocking and they stayed…too long it turned out. As they tried to leave the field a bolt of lightning hit the ground and Victor standing near a wire fence was killed instantly. August was knocked unconconscious but regained his senses…. finding Victor dead he had to go home and tell his parents the horrible news.
When World War 1 began August was a soldier and was sent to Europe to be a medic in some of the worst battlefields. He later recalled feeling bullets whiz past him while he tended wounded soldiers but he returned home without any battlefield injuries. In 1920 August told his parents he had a bad sore throat and they sent for a doctor to see him. August had joked to others in the family, “Well if the doctor is coming to see me I better go to bed.”
Great misfortune visited the family once again. The doctor gave August some sort of injection with a hypodermic device and a bubble formed in his vein, killling him instantly. Once again the family was plunged into deep sorrow over such a death…the young man who survived the trenches and killing fields of France came home to die from a doctor’s injection.
The early immigrants were not immune to such tragedy….deaths of young women in… or right after childbirth were common; deaths of infants before the age of one occurred regularly…death from whooping cough or diptheria or pneumonia..many young children did not live to grow up. Other tragic farming accidents took away family members. But in spite of many trials, the Immigrants held on to their farms and their lives, having to recover from their tragedies with the help of the God they trusted and the friends and family they had close by in rural communities. Each one helped their neighbors when the need arose and they got through many terrible times together.
Myrtle’s story is like many stories of pioneer famiies who immigrated in large numbers during the latter half of the 19th century.
In the Scandinavian countries the large familes simply ran out of land to pass on to children and this resulted in many of those children immigrating to America, the land of opportunity and of large tracts of free homestead lands.
I heard a history lecture today at one of the branch libraries of L.A.R.L. and the speaker told of young women at age 16 being sent alone to the United States to work as indentured servants for other families. For many it turned out well but he told of some who were badly treated, being fed only the scraps from the family’s meals. There were cruel and heartless people then, just as there are at the present time. The most horrible story he told was of a 6 year old child being sent alone to this country by its parents. That was more than traumatic and in later years the girl spent the rest of her life at the Fergus Falls Mental Hospital, a victim of mental illness probably brought on by the grief and trauma of leaving home at such a young age and being left to fend for oneself in a strange new land far away from family she would never see again.
Myrtle considered herself blessed to have lived a long life and in large and loving family who endured good times and bad times. The brothers and sisters enjoyed a closness that only comes from surviving so much together.

I have mentioned before that I have been writing a column for a local newspaper and the last one I wrote was one that took some very interesting research to complete it. I had written previously about a small neighborhood on the eastern edge of town that was called “Stockholm” when I was growing up. Nobody knows it by that name any longer…too many generations have passed.
But I got some lively responses to that Stockholm column so I purposed to write more about that community and the immigrants from Sweden who lived there early in the beginning of the local community’s existence.
I was directed to a delightful Centenarian (Myrtle) who resides at a Living Center in town. Myrtle was part of a Swedish family who had 18 children; there were 3 children born to the father (Johannes) and his first wife, who died after the birth of the third baby. As was so common in that era, Johannes remarried and had another 15 children with his second wife, (Johanna) who was Myrtle’s mother. Myrtle was the youngest child of the two families. She is now “going on 101 years of age and is still proud of the fact that “she has all her marbles” as she told me! I learned a lot of family history from Myrtle that day; later I talked with other generations of Myrtle’s family and saw one artifact that was both stunning and very sad as it commemorated one of the most difficult times in this pioneer family’s life.
On the last days of May in 1917, two girls and one young boy were walking home after school had closed at the rural school house about 2 1/2 miles from Myrtle’s farm home. Myrtle would have been in this band of home- goers from school but for some reason she was not with them…..she thought she had stayed at home that day for some reason. One of Myrtle’s sisters was walking with a very good friend and they had a young nephew of Charlotte’s (the sister) with them. The children had to cross the railroad intersection known as the Dale Crossing since it was located at the tiny settler’s town of Dale, MN….a small town that no longer exists. At that time Dale was a bustling little village; it had a big general store, a grain elevator, its own post office and several other businesses as well as homes where many Swedish pioneers lived. One of those homes was occupied by Tilda, another of Myrtle’s older sisters who was married and had 4 children at that time. It was Tilda’s son who was walking with Charlotte and her friend.
As they often did on the way home from school, the children walked on the rails ; Charlotte knew that the fast Express train would already have gone through Dale so she thought it was safe. Charlotte’s young nephew was only about 7 years old and he had a problem with walking; one of his legs was “lame”, perhaps since birth..but the boy had trouble walking. He was, nevertheless, walking on the rails with the two girls.
Suddenly they heard the whistle of an approaching train….an unexpected train…the fast Express was late that day and it was hurtling toward Dale and the crossing there. The little boy got his foot stuck between the rails and could not pull it out by himself. His aunt Charlotte tried desperately to get his foot unstuck but it was too late….the huge fast train came upon them and both children were killed instantly.
The little boy’s mother had heard the screech of the train’s brakes as it tried to stop but she had no idea her son was one of the reasons the train’s brakes were squealing …in vain…it could not stop in time and it hit both the children. Charlotte’s friend was unhurt. She had gotten off the tracks in time.
Many decades later she returned as an elderly lady and stopped at the home of one of the grandchildren of that Swedish family. She wanted to go to the crossing and see the place where the tragic deaths had occurred before her horrified eyes that May, 1917 day. She returned several more times before she died to see that place…..no doubt a place she could not forget nor the terrible tragedy that happened there.
After the deaths of the two children, the railroad company offered the families 1000 dollars; they could not accept it. To accept money for the deaths of two children was just not right to them. Later the rail road company sent a “hero’s medal” to the families with Andrew Carnegie’s likeness engraved on it. It was called the Carnegie Hero’s Medal. It had the names of the two who died on it and the date of their deaths.
The great- nephew of Myrtle who lives on the family homestead farm to this day showed me the medal when I visited him and his wife at their farm home near the old townsite of Dale MN. The medal has never left its original home and has been there since 1917.
He also told me of two other family tragedies and in the next blog,I will related them.

Some leading Liberals of the leftist slant are getting hammered badly these past few days.
Take Eric Wiener the New York Representative whose Twitter account sent a suggestive underwear picture to a young woman in Washington state….I saw it…it IS a crotch shot for sure. But Weiner (what an unfortunate name for this budding scandal..they are calling it “Weinergate” already) has said it was a hacker into his Twitter account…later Weiner and /or his close associates called it a “prank”. The most interesting thing is that instead of going to the police about the Hacker (?) Weiner hired a lawyer. Smells like rotten fish to a lot of folks.
Weiner also made a statement to the always curious people of the press who are hot on his trail: “I am not going to permit myself to be distracted by this issue any longer”. That sounds even more smelly!!!!!!

President Obama got hammered by Nile Gardiner, a British correspondent in America for a London newspaper. Gardiner thought Obama was tackier than tacky to go golfing on Memorial Day, the great American holiday of remembrance.
Gardiner wrote: “Can you imagine David Cameron {British P.M.} enjoying a round of golf on Remembrance Sunday? It would be inconceivable for the British Prime Minister to do so and not just because the usually dire weather at that time of year. Above all it would be viewed as an act of extremely bad taste on a day when the nation remembers and mourns her war dead. I can’t imagine the Prime Minister even considering it, and I ‘m sure his advisers would be horrified at the idea. And if the Prime Minister did play golf on such a sancrosanct day, he would be given a massive drubbing by the British press, and it would never be repeated.”

I am fairly certain there was NO media drubbing of Obama by our press since they are the third arm of all of Obama’s campaigns or schemes…his own team of liberal cheerleaders from the nation’s newspapers. This was JUST the 70th round of golf Obama has played in his 28 months of being president. I wonder if Obama had finished up his brief visit to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day by thumbing his nose at the momument… if the MSM would take any notice. They would probably report that the president had a bit of trouble with a fly on his nose which he found necessary to brush off!!!!! Right!
We are stuck (til 2012) with an immature, no-experience at governing, teenage -like narcissist for president.

Then if that is not enough hammering….. a Bloomberg report on June 1 (today) says that only 38,000 private jobs were created in May…a huge downturn from the predicted 175,000 jobs that Bloomberg had anticipated.
More rotten news: follow this headline “We are on the verge of a great, great depression” to a CNBC report about the economy and its quiveringly faiing status that is puzzling even the brightest of the Wall Street Traders.
A flak jacket won’t even help that much. I suffered sticker shock at a grocery store this morning when I saw $8.86 for a one pound package of bacon..anyone want to pay that price for about 75% fat???? The prices on food are going up and up with every trip to buy groceries.
And I am not even going to comment on energy prices……I would need a crying towel…not a flak jacket regarding those prices.