I’m sitting here listening to the salutes of fireworks my neighbors are firing off in righteous opposition to the law.  I couldn’t be prouder.

After eating my fill of hot dogs, chocolate cake, and vanilla ice cream, washed down with good old American Coca-Cola, I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of why this day is significant:

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
 
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Remember, we’re all in this together.  Our experiment began 234 years ago today, and will continue as long as we are willing to exercise and defend the rights that are important to cause the men who signed this document to risk everything they had, including their necks.

Irish Woman’s pond fish have been fruitful and multiply.

Here’s one of the schools of minnows:

There are at least two other schools like this in the smaller pond.  There are orange goldfish, black goldfish, and mixed black and gold goldfish.

Great, 60 more mouths to feed.

We went berry picking this weekend.  It’s towards the end of the season for blueberries, but we were able to get 4 to 5 pounds in about an hour of picking.

We made sure to pay a few dollars extra when we checked out.  BooBoo had been foraging while Irish Woman and I picked.  Hopefully he doesn’t blow up and turn blue before all is said and done.

We had homemade blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning, and the rest will either be made into pie filling or put through the food dryer.  Nothing better than fresh blueberries with breakfast.

While meandering through my day today, I saw a few things that I’d like to point out:

To the people who planted pot in a farmer’s cornfield in Southern Indiana:  If you’re going to plant weed in a cornfield, do it more than a couple of rows back, and try to plant it after the corn is tall enough to hide it.  Two rows from a road and a foot taller than the corn is not very covert.

To the motorcycle dude who cut me off:  Yes, I know you’re a bad mamajama.  You’ve got a straight pipe hog that makes more noise than a Huey helicopter.  You’ve got a “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” bumper sticker on said hog.  But wearing a confederate flag bandana, black leather jacket, and blue jeans with your CAMOUFLAGE CROCS shoes does not say “biker rebel” to me.  And if I hadn’t stood on my brakes and missed your rear tire by less than a foot when you wove across two lanes of traffic to get to your exit, I would have had a flat tire and a bent fender.  You, on the other hand, would have had to be scraped off of the pavement.  Learn to drive your bike and put on a helmet.

To the group of vintage VW Beetle owners who drove en-masse down the freeway today, you guys are my heroes for keeping so many of those things going for all these years.  Also, thank you for not doing your VeeWee parade on a day that Girlie Bear was in the truck with me.  She would have pounded on my arm for each and every one of you, and I can’t take bruising like that at my age.

I know I don’t fit the pigeon-holed model of what you define as “normal”.  I am tall, broad in the shoulders, long in the leg, and I have big feet. Not big as in “average in men is a 10, so a 12 is big”.  Big as in “how many cows will it take to make these boots?” big.

I wear a 15.  It’s bigger than average, but not so big that I have to get shoes custom made because Nike, Adidas, and Rockport don’t make my size.  I have successfully found shoes in my size at retail stores in the past, but have fallen into a habit of buying them on-line because the brick and mortar crew normally only stock one or two pairs of size 15 anything.  It always seems to be oxfords when I need sneakers, sneakers when I need boots, and sandals when I need dress shoes.

Today, I noticed that my canvas tennis shoes were starting to look pretty ratty, and decided to start the process of finding a pair of shoes to run around in.  I’m not looking to hike the Pyrenees, run the Derby Festival Marathon, or dress for dinner with the president.  I wanted a pair of cloth sneakers that I could wear daily throughout the summer while doing such things as walking the zoo, going to the store, and playing in the yard.

In the first store I went to, exactly one pair of shoes was found that was size 15, and these were black patent leather Nike basketball shoes with shiny chrome accents.  Pass.  I asked a salesman if they had any larger pairs of shoes in the back, but the music was so obnoxiously loud he thought I was looking for the Converse tennis shoes and pointed me at the stack of size 8 to 12 shoes I’d already gone through.

The second store was much quieter, but after combing the  store and finding precisely zero pairs of shoes in my size, I again asked a saleslady for assistance.  The look of disdain for even bothering her for my mutant sized shoes told me I was out of luck.  Surprise, surprise, they didn’t have anything either.

I then went to a sporting goods store to look at Vibram Five Fingers shoes.  I’ve seen a few people wear them, and I’ve been told they’re great, comfortable kick around shoes.  Yes, they’re a little more than I was budgeting for at $80-$85 a pair, but I figured I’d try them this summer.  If I didn’t like them, I could continue “Quest for Shoes”.   I picked up the example shoe on the sales floor, and asked the nice man in the salmon pink button down shirt and khaki green cargo shorts if they carried my size.  He snorted through his nose ring when he sized me on the special Vibram sizing guide.  Apparently I’m a 48-49 size, which is at the very edge of human as far as that company is concerned.  He checked the back but reported that he had “nothing even close to that huge” in stock.  He offered to check to see if a larger pair could be ordered for me.

I returned home wearing my ratty old Chuck Taylor Converse tennis shoes.  After two hours of searching for a pair of shoes with no luck and having my human-ness questioned by three separate sales people, I’m a little dis-enchanted with the whole “support local businesses” thing.  

Guys, I’m a consumer. I have money I want to give you for your products.  I’m even willing to pay quite a bit of money for a pair of quality shoes that I like.  By not stocking my size in anything a grown-up would want to wear, or not at all, you take away your opportunity to take my money from me.  By giving me attitude when I ask for your help in your store,  you discourage me from bringing my money and the rest of my family to your establishments when they need shoes.

I’m going back to the on-line stores exclusively.  Yes, it’s preferable to hold a pair of shoes in your hands and try them on before buying them, but I know what kinds of shoes fit my feet well, and I’ll just keep buying those kinds.  If the local small business people don’t want to stock for my needs and give me grief when I try to get their help in giving them my money, then they can go piss up a rope.

DaddyBear, trying to dress an uncooperative BooBoo:  Boy are you grumpy in the morning!  You got that from your mama.  Your daddy is a happy guy in the morning.  If you didn’t look just like me I’d think you hadn’t sprung from my loins.
Irish Woman, half jokingly:  Nothing has sprung from your loins.

Put the following into a crock pot:

1 12 ounce bottle of beer
1 finely chopped white onion
2 chopped stocks of celery
1 can low-salt beef broth
1 pound beef stew meat
2 cans crushed tomatoes
1 handful dried mushrooms
6 potatoes, cut into bite sized chunks
Worcestershire sauce
Canadian Steak Seasoning to taste (dried garlic, course ground black pepper, course salt)
1 bag baby carrots
1 chopped bell pepper, deseeded
1 chopped serrano pepper, deseeded

Mix all ingredients together and set the crockpot to high and let sit through a work day. 

Serve with a crusty whole wheat bread.

This was one of the first things I learned to cook.  I’ve adjusted the recipe a bit as I’ve gotten older.  It’s easy, tastes good, and it’s really cheap to make a lot of it.  The perfect thing for when you know you’re on a budget and won’t have a lot of time in the evening.

For the past several years, we’ve watched a low-level civil war hit northern Mexico.   The Mexican army and police have been shooting at the drug gangs, the drug gangs shoot at each other, and sometimes the army and police shoot drug gangs at the behest of other drug gangs.  For the most part, we’ve been spectators.

That changed on Tuesday. Seven shots from the Mexican side of the border hit city hall in El Paso Texas.  Odds are they were stray rounds, but they were just as deadly as aimed fire.  Luckily only the building was hit, but the rounds penetrated to the interior, and it was only good fortune that kept someone from getting hit.  It could just as easily have gone into a neighborhood, or a shopping center, or a playground.

Mexican and Central American gangs are terrorizing our cities and rural areas.  Meth, cocaine, and marijuana are easier to get than beer in our schools.  The crime and social issues that come from the drugs and influx of illegal aliens are bringing our social safety net to its knees.

It’s time for a new approach with our troubled neighbor to the south.

First, we need to let the Mexican government know that we are tired of their internal problems causing issues along our border and throughout our country.  They have to step on the neck of the narco-gangsters and keep pushing until they stop wiggling.  Failure to get control of this situation risks reaction by our country to lock down the border not just in the hinterlands, but also at ports of entry to restrict the trade of the traffickers.  Shutting off the tap of Mexican goods coming into our country and American dollars flowing into Mexico would probably go a long way to focus the attention of the Mexican government. 

Next, we need to militarize the border, both in the back country and in urban areas such as El Paso, San Diego, and Nogales.  We survey 200 feet back from the actual border, put up triple strand of concertina wire, and then put in a mix of pressure detonated CS gas mines and command detonated anti-personnel mines between the border and the fence.  We put guard towers at least every half mile along the border, and garrison them with both Border Patrol agents and Army MP’s.  The Border Patrol agents are there to arrest anyone who makes it to the concertina and tries to enter the country but surrenders peacefully when challenged.  The MP is there to assist the Border Patrol agent in subduing or neutralizing anyone who resists.  To make this legal, we make the land along the border to a depth of 1/2 mile a military reservation, including in Indian reservations that butt up to the border.  One of the problems we have currently is that those who want to cross the border are sometimes more heavily armed than the law enforcement officers who encounter them.  We can fix that by arming the MP’s with patrol rifles, their vehicles with M-2 .50 machine guns, and putting M240 7.62mm machine guns in the towers.  Somewhere in that mix is enough firepower to give them at least parity with the criminals who want to enter our country.

The local commander of these posts would have the authority to order his troops to return fire across the border if rounds come over into American territory.

In addition to these guard posts, there should be manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft watching the border 24 hours a day.  Stationary blimps should be used to provide round-the-clock monitoring of the borderlands.  

Those who put their hands in the air when they’re caught crossing the border get to spend 5 years in prison, then are deported.  If you’re caught again, you get 15 years then deportation.

Next, we need to shut off the supply of jobs for the people who are coming here to work.  We have to make employing illegal aliens expensive enough that US companies will start paying attention to our immigration laws.  If a company is caught employing illegal aliens in any way, they lose the ability to do business with the federal government.  If they are growing, processing, or shipping food, their product is not allowed to be purchased for military rations or commissaries, school lunch programs, or food stamp programs.  If the company is in the manufacturing business, the government won’t buy those products or products from companies who do business with companies that hire illegal aliens.  If a construction company gets busted, then it cannot work on any project that is financed using any federal dollars.

Then we come to narcotics.    

We need to change our approach to illegal drugs.  We need to either legalize their use by adults, same as we do with tobacco and alcohol, or we need to get serious with discouraging their use and helping those who need help quitting.

If we legalize, we can regulate their manufacture, processing, and sale.  We take away the profit motive for smuggling narcotics when are legally available at the local liquor store.  It’s cheaper to declare importation of a legal substance through a port of entry at Nogales than it is to pay someone to smuggle it in on the back of a mule through the Chiricahuas.

If we want to shut down use of illegal drugs through enforcement and treatment, we have to crack down on the parts of our society that import, process, transport, and sell this poison to our citizens.  If you’re caught smuggling drugs into our country, you get to spend the rest of your life behind bars.  If you’re caught processing or transporting drugs, then you get to spend 10 to 15 years at hard labor.  For a second offense, you get to join the smugglers getting old in prison.  If you’re caught dealing, you get to spend whatever remains of your life turning large rocks into little rocks. 

If you’re caught using drugs, then you get two chances at treatment to help you stop using.  After that, you go to jail for 5 years.  4th offense gets you 10 years.  5th offense gets you life.  By that time, we have to realize that you’ve had too many chances to get your act together and you’re too stupid to be allowed to walk the streets.

These penalties are for citizens.  If you’re an illegal and you get caught smuggling, processing, transporting, dealing, or using you get 25 years at hard labor, followed by deportation. Don’t come into our home, do business in poison, and then expect a slap on the wrist.

And this isn’t just for those who come across the Mexican border.  If you come in via Canada and break our laws, you pay the same penalty.  If necessary, we can militarize the Canadian border too.

As for those who are in the country illegally already, they get two months to get out.  If they have children who were born here and are citizens, the parents can either leave with them and the children can return when they reach 18 if they wish, or the children can be put in our foster care system and the parents can leave.  Either way, illegal aliens have to get out of our country. 

Illegal aliens who are identified in the country after the deadline get to spend 5 years in jail the first time they are caught and 15 years the second time.  Either way, they lose the ability to apply to return legally.  If you break into my house, you don’t get to ask nicely to come in through the front door.

As for the so-called “sanctuary cities”, any state, county, or municipality that refuses to turn over illegals caught in their area loses all support from the federal government.   If there’s a base near the city or in the state, then the personnel on that base will be restricted from spending money off base.  All federal funding for schools, research, roads, or whatever gets cut off until the removal of illegal aliens becomes a part of day-to-day business in a “sanctuary” city. 

Will this ever happen?  Probably not.  A lot of this flies in the face of several parts of our constitution, and gives federalism a kick to the crotch.  Additionally, we’d have to abrogate the NAFTA treaty and probably several other treaties, including treaties with Native American nations who have reservations along the border.  We’d also have to provide a clear path for legal immigration to not only show that we do not reject citizens of other country who want to come here and be a productive member of our society, but also to allow for the healthy benefits that legal immigration brings to our country. 

This is an extreme solution, but I believe it would fix the problem of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.  What problems it would either exascerbate or cause remains to be seen.

DaddyBear:  Boss?
Boss:  Yes?
DaddyBear:  I missed the meeting you wanted me to attend because I was working on something at my desk and completely forgot.  Are you in the meeting?
Boss:  It’s already over.
DaddyBear:  Well, I guess I’m the idiot for this here village today.
Boss:  Not just today.

It’s good to be loved.