Are you too important to start at the bottom and work your way up?

There was an article in the New York Post about how 85% of recent college graduates are moving back home, because they can't find the kind of employment that they feel they deserve. I'm sorry, but if you get a college degree in something equivalent to revolutionary underwater basket weaving studies, you are going to have a very difficult time finding a job that doesn't require you to say, "Would you like fries with that?"

What we are witnessing here is the culmination of a entitlement society, nurtured by hippie parents, with no willingness to earn their place through sacrifice and hard work. That by the way, means taking jobs that you don't like, but you do anyway, because you need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. The $600 IPhone comes later...AFTER you've earned it.

The article mentions a student who, armed with a BS in human and organizational development, was looking for a high salary tech job in a big city. Well, I may be ignorant, but if you want a high paying job in the tech industry, shouldn't you get a degree in computer engineering, software engineering, or in addition to your BS degree, get yourself certified in network administration or something of the sort? Being the stupid lower middle class Republican scum that I am, I would think that having a BS in human organizational development would get you an entry level gopher position in some corporation's HR department. From there, you could work your way up. I guess that's not an option. Do I hear instant gratification?

Another "victim" was a young lady armed with a Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston. Berklee is a great school, but it's one of the most expensive music schools in the country. She's having a hard time finding a job, even though she completed business courses from Harvard and Columbia too. Let's see...Berklee, Harvard, Columbia...all expensive schools. My gut feeling is she doesn't come from the same side of the tracks as I do. She's looking for a job in the music publishing industry, and she's being told that there are no jobs. Well lady, maybe you'll just have to find a different line of work. That's what I've been told to do when my lifestyle choice has gone against the Leftists mantra.

I've been told that my choice of occupation is not my choice, but theirs, from Liberals who don't like the fact that I drive a big gas guzzler van in order to haul my drum equipment around. I had one Leftist tell me a few years ago, that he couldn't wait until the government ordered me to give up my van and forced me into a roller skate with a lawn mower engine. His exact words were, "Since when do you think that you have a right to destroy the environment by driving that truck. You'll need to find another line of work. You are an asshole Conservative, and you have no right, because of your political beliefs, to work in the music industry. Music is for Liberals and Liberals only. You Conservatives need to be destroyed." Nice guy. So lady, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you need to be forced into another line of work at gunpoint, like a good Liberal would do. I'm just going to say that since market forces are not going your way, you are going to have to face reality and work in another industry, regardless of what your education and training are in. People do it all the time, and many of them have found that the new career is rewarding. Of course if you sing or play a musical instrument, you can always seek out an opening in one of the military bands. That was my choice, and it worked for me. After 26 years, I retired and became what I wanted to be in the first place. I became a free lance musician. Yes, I have another source of income. It's a pension from the United States of America. It is a pension that I earned through hard work. I'm not living in Mom's basement rent free while I hit the reset button ad nauseum, because I don't want to go out and take a job where I might have to get my hands dirty. I had many a hands dirty job in my life too. I worked on a tobacco farm in Connecticut when I was a teenager. I washed dishes in a nursing home. When I was first in the military, being at the bottom of the pecking order, I did a lot of details like picking up trash, painting buildings, KP, polishing floors, cleaning toilets, filling sandbags and such, in addition to doing my regular job as a bandsman, practicing, 150 days per year travelling, etc.

You can't always get what you want. Ask any musician who has spent years practicing and honing his or her skills about audition failures and successes. Many aspire to win a position in a major orchestra like the Boston Symphony or the New York Philharmonic. Most never make it. It's the same in the commercial music industry too. Only the cream of the crop will end up making a decent living as a free lance musician, without some sort of financial backing. For those of us that were good enough to gain employment with a military band, our pensions earned after 20 or 30 years become that financial backing. For those that choose not to go the military route, having a day job becomes the financial backing for there passion. It's like that in any of the arts.

The basic premise of this article is to state this: First of all, you have to be willing to do things you don't want to do, because you need to survive. That's just the way life is. Not everyone will get to pursue their dream to the end, or if they do, there will be more than likely compromises and detours. Success must be earned one step at a time. Secondly, stop whining. You spent good money earning a degree in a subject where there is limited employment, or extreme competition for what little jobs there are. If you are not good enough to win a position, suck it up, and do something else. Third, no one owes you anything. That includes your parents, your friends, the government, and especially the tax payers. Don't expect us to fund your quest for self-gratification. If you are a musician and you are not quite good enough to get a major league gig, consider a military band, teaching position, or working in a completely different industry as your primary source of income, while you pursue your art for enjoyment, or as a part-time income supliment in order to have what ends up being a paid hobby. In another words, face reality and shut up.

Asshole Party

The Democrats have been taken over by Socialists and Communists. The Republicans have been taken over by spineless wimps. We need a third party if we are to fix this country. Based on the ideology and performance of the other two parties, what we need is an asshole party to knock both of them around.

We need a party that will, first of all, have the backbone to lead, and not worry about ruffling a few feathers. In fact, the more feathers that are ruffled, the better. Foremost, the asshole party needs to stand on principles and offer no compromises. They need to call out the Republican leadership that are spineless squishes and show them with the yellow streak down their backs. They need to call out the upper middle class Liberals who consider themselves to be America's ruling class. The asshole party needs to take figuratively the educated classes attitude, complete with their Volvos, organic food, and phony belief in the religion of Environmentalism, and shove it up their collective asses. Hey Liberals, you talk about class warfare. Well I've got news for you. We are in a class war already, and we are going to escalate it until we win it. It's time for "no more mister nice guy."

That's a start. From there, what the asshole party needs to do is hold the dear little Lefties feet to the fire, and make them conform to their rules, to the letter of the law. This is one of the "Rules For Radicals" from their "god" Alinsky. If they fall down on one little item, use that to discredit their entire movement. Hold them up to unattainable standards and then destroy them when they fall short. Use the same tactics against them that they use against the right.

Of course, people will say, "Aren't you just promoting class warfare?" We are already in the middle of a class war. What you have is an alliance of educated upper middle class liberals, who embrace Socialism because it's fashionable and it is their means to power. It's fashionable, because it gives them a unified vision where they look down collectively on the working class, especially the white working class. They despise the black and Hispanic working classes too, but they don't dare show their contempt. That would be racist, and they have evolved beyond those racists that make up the white working class. However, their policies are designed to keep the lower classes down, so that they can be forced into a voting block that will continue to vote itself monies out of the public trough...monies provided by the tax revenue from the efforts of the ambitious, transferred to the "managers" with a small percentage given to the poor. This way you have a perpetual funding mechanism and "client" base for the social services industry steeped in Marxist ideology, grievance, and victim hood. I will comment more about this in a future post.

Gas Prices

The president goes on television and claims that we are producing more oil today than we ever have in history. Then why are we producing about 5 million barrels per day today, and back in the 1970s we were producing over 10 million barrels per day?

The bottom line is this. Barack Obama, and his Socialist upper middle class minions want high energy prices in order to socially engineer the lower middle class and working class in this country. Why? There are several reasons, but it ties in with an elitist mindset that permeates those that received higher education in technology, arts, and humanities, and now run this country.

First and foremost, it's about control. The little people are stupid and need to be controlled by those that have evolved into a higher level of man. There are to be two classes in society, a ruling class and a ruled class, and they are to be the ruling class. We are to be put in our place, and exist to serve our masters. In addition, more of what we little people, not the so-called rich make, is to be channeled either directly or indirectly into their pockets. This brings me to the reason: It's about funding. Social service projects, no matter what they are, and federal research in alternative energy programs are nothing but social service projects when you take a good look at them, are nothing but being about funding. Follow the money trail.

Secondly, this is about revenge. Compare what the Liberal Elite establishment and the president are doing to Reconstruction following the Civil War, and you'll get the picture. It's payback time for the institutional racism that permeated the lower classes in the past. It doesn't matter that racism and bigotry are at an all time low in this country. The Left has been waiting for this moment for years, and they are going to punish the white working class for sins of the past. They are going to reduced the standard of living of the white working class to the standard of living of the blacks living in the ghetto. However, I'm not sure that the middle middle, and lower middle class are going to put up with this shit. More to follow...

A Different Era

I grew up in a different time. It was a time of prosperity, but it was a prosperity of having much less than we do now. We have so much more today, and yet we whine and complain about how unfair life is, and how we are so oppressed. It's time for a look back and a look forward while we look at today and realize how lucky we really are. Let's take a look at three different areas that are important to quality of life. Let's look where we were 50 years ago, let's look at where we are today, and let's look at where I see us 20 years from now.

Housing

My first recollection of a place to live, was when my family lived in teacher housing on the grounds of Farmington High School in Farmington, Connecticut. The teacher housing was where the tennis courts are currently located. Provided housing was part of the benefit package that was offered to Farmington public school teachers. We lived in that housing when my father taught at the junior high school, which was located in the new wing of the campus of Farmington High School. He had to walk a total of about 300 feet from where we lived to where he worked. I believe that there was provided housing on the grounds of the Noah Wallace school, where he taught when he first moved to Connecticut, and that he and my mother moved to the housing on the grounds at the high school when they moved the junior high from Noah Wallace to Farmington High.

From what I remember, there were about 30 housing units located on the high school grounds. They were row style housing that had been officer housing at some military base in Rhode Island, that had been shipped to Farmington and re-assembled on the high school grounds. Our unit was an end unit, and had two bedrooms, one bath room, a kitchen with a kerosene space heater for the entire unit, a living room, and a dining room enclave. We lived there until I was four years old, and my parents bought their first and only house in 1959. They lived in that house until my father passed away in 2008. My mother and I were recollecting the other day about the barracks. I can remember the layout very well. I remember the stove that had a deep fryer that didn't work. I remember the shower stall in the bathroom. There was no tub. I remember my father lighting the kerosene heater in the winter, and I remember the smell. I remember the old washing machine that had a ringer attachment that you cranked by hand to get the water out of the clothing. There was a floor drain in the middle of the kitchen floor, and my mother would roll the washing machine out of the corner, hook it up to the sink, and put the hose from bottom of the washer into the floor drain. Everything was done manually. Then, there was the refrigerator that had to be defrosted once a week too...and don't forget the TV set that was black and white, used vacuum tubes, and received three channels. Did I mention the party line telephone service?...

Food

I don't remember eating in a restaurant until I was at least in elementary school and my dad took the family out to dinner once a year. It was quite uncommon for middle class people to frequent restaurants. Even people working in offices used to brown bag their lunches unless they had company expense accounts. Today, a lot of people eat out frequently, and they are not rich people. I know I do. That's because there are many ethnic restaurants out there that are fairly reasonable in price. You don't just have high end places like most restaurants were in the 50s and 60s. Personally, I think what started the lower price restaurant trend was McDonald's. Soon, you had all sorts of other fast food chains, and then you started to see Indian, Mexican, Salvadorian, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, etc. You can get a nice sit down meal in an ethnic restaurant for the same price that you will get at a fast food place. Then you have the chain medium scale places like Bennigans, Applebys, and Chili's to name a few. They offer good food at a reasonable price along with excellent service. Places like that didn't exist when I was growing up. Chinese food came out of a can that said "Chung King."

When you went to the grocery store, you bought groceries. If you wanted meats, you went to the butcher. Meatown was the local butcher shop. I used to go in there with my father, and he would buy what was on special for the week. Most of the time it was chicken, hot dogs, cube steaks, pork chops hamburger, and occasionally roast beef if it was on sale. Steak happened about twice a year, and was a real treat. Chicken, of course, was bone in. I had my first boneless chicken breast when I was in my 20s. Fresh produce was pretty much only available in the summer, and most of the time, you got it from a local farmer. The Eaton family farm over on Meadow Road had the best corn in the world. People would come from miles around to buy Mr. Eaton's corn and tomatoes. Smith's orchard and Wadsworth's orchard had great apples, peaches and pears. We ate well, but we didn't eat anything fancy. There were a lot of casseroles, and on Fridays it was fish sticks and tater tots. Add canned vegetables to any meal, and you get the typical Clemmer supper. Brown bagging it to school was usually peanut butter and jelly, along with a thermos of milk and a Hostess cup cake or Twinkie. Yes Michelle Obama, I ate Twinkies and I'm still alive.

Recreation

Most of the time, my sister and I would spend a lot of time playing outdoors with our friends. That's how we stayed in shape. We would ride our bicycles everywhere. As we got older, we would ride our bikes a couple of miles to downtown Unionville, and occasionally to downtown Farmington.

Once I became junior high school age, I took up skiing. I lived for the winter. I can remember going to Mt. Snow once per season. Most of my skiing was at Sundown and Butternut Basin. For four years in high school, I remember the Canadian ski trip up to the Lorentian Mountains , with Mt. Tremblant being the great place to ski that it was.

In the summer, my family would go to Cape Cod or Maine as I got older. When I was younger, we used to take vacations visiting other family members. I have a feeling that was done to save money. As I got older, I would return to Maine with my parents for a week of relaxation and sightseeing. We used to go all the way up the coast to the town of Calais, which is right on the Canadian border. From there, we would head to St. Andrews By The Sea, Eastport, Lubec and other places up there in Washington County, Maine, and New Brunswick, Canada. I have not been up there since I retired from the Air Force. I'm working way too many hours in retirement to take a vacation. I need to change that. If I don't, I'm going to die from stress. My current form of recreation is more work.

Today, it gets harder every day to have a lifestyle similar to the one I had growing up. While I have currently more material things, I'm not sure the quality of life is the same as it was when I was a kid growing up in small town America. I miss the age of store brand string beans that came out of a can.

bin Laden is dead.

Congratulations to Seal Team 6 for a job well done. Let's make this the beginning of removing the scourge of Islamic terrorism from the world. It's time now to get down to serious work.

I can remember when I was in the military there were discussions about Islamic terrorism long before any of the previous incidents that occurred before 9-11. We were wondering why nothing was being done. I'll tell you why. Because, we have become too sensitive to feelings and political correctness.

While there should have been action taken following Beruit and the Kobar Towers, the real wake up call for the American people was 9-11. Rather than going into Afghanistan and Iraq in a half-ass fashion, like we have done with all of our military actions since Korea, we should have gone in to the Middle East with all the conventional firepower that the finest military in the world is capable of. Yes, there would have been whining from the spoiled cowardly Left. So what? Rather than having a president who refused to defend himself from his attackers, we should have had a president that would have told the Left to shove it where the sun never shines, and then had his folks go on the attack against the hippies using the Alinsky tactic of ridicule and humiliation. I would have loved to have seen all the Takoma Park Communists running en masse to their therapists.

Anyway, congratulations again to Seal Team 6, and giving credit where credit is due, congratulations to President Obama for making the decision to take out Osama bin Laden. Now that there is a possible retaliatory strike from the Islamic terrorist network, it's time to get down to business and do everything in our power to prevent that. Let's start by finally putting political correctness aside and turn over every rock to root out the terrorist cells in this country. The louder groups like CAIR scream, the harder we push. When we catch them, send them to GITMO, try them in front of a military tribunal, and then execute them. Once the Arab world knows we mean business, they will rout the terrorist cells in their country too.

Also, in order to let them know that we really mean business, start issuing drilling permits, and start drilling our own oil. That will plunge the price of oil, which means less money to fund terrorists. It's time to get to work.