San Francisco

Blogging while traveling is not so easy. Only having access to an iPad, incompatibility between my camera and computer and not much time to think about what i want to write leaves me at somewhat of a loss.

Since this blog is not really about me i don't want to write about how much i'm enjoying this wonderful city by the bay, or feeding myself on treats unavailable at home, or my sore calf muscles from walking up and down hills, or freezing my butt off when the fog rolls in.

In my quest to try and avoid making false statements  i looked up a quote by Mark Twain that claimed he had spent the coldest winter he had ever had during a summer in San Francisco. Well it turns out he has been associated with a lot of quotes he never made and that is one of them. Apparently checking through his letters and published works  the closest anyone could come to crediting him with the quote was when he answered a question in a letter but quoted someone else.

Well regardless of who said it the quip is absolutely true San Francisco is freezing in the summer. But it is as charming as ever and i'm heading back out to enjoy it.
See ya next week.

Public

On the road again so the blogging this week and next will be light.
No pics.
Been thinking alot about education, corporations, money, power and the public and what it means to all of us as a nation. At some point some kind of discussion has to occur that relates to what the word public actually means and how it gets funded.
We seem to have lost sight of public responsibility for the nation, not just militarily but as a community of mixed individuals.
Historically we have funded the public endevors through taxes but now there is a concerted effort to reduce all things public and make them private.
The problem with making everything private is that the public gets lost in the quest for profit and supremacy.

Are you better now?

Here in the islands, not so good, we lost one of our major employers, electricity costs have gone out the roof and gasoline just keeps getting more and more expensive every week. Business's are closing for lack of demand and we have a 15% unemployment rate that is killing us. Did President Obama cause this...no...the international oil market caused our problem and nothing President Obama could have done would have changed our reality.

Four years ago the sky was falling, banks were on the brink of shutting down, money markets were telling us our dollars weren't worth a dollar any more, financial institutions were under threat of total collapse, the stock market was in free fall, houses were being foreclosed, real estate values were tumbling, people were losing their jobs and all of us rich and poor alike were on edge.

Is the nation better off than four years ago...HELL YES. 

You know that old saying that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it well i don't want to and i haven't forgotten where the Bush administration left this country after eight years in 2008.

Most of the rest of the world thinks we are better off too. They have their money tied up in our Treasury bonds and they wouldn't invest here if they didn't think we were not a good bet. We aren't bleeding jobs the way we were in 09 and the unemployment rate has been slowly going down. Taxes are lower than they were four years ago and international polls show the US is VASTLY more respected than it was during the Bush administration.

But the real question should be is the nation better off than it was three years ago because that's when things really started to turn around. Today Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive. The market is higher than its been in four years, real estate values have stopped going down, jobs are coming back and the bleeding has been stanched.

On another note:

Romney really put his foot in it this morning and yesterday...phony outrage, no facts, then creating lies to cover up, his statement about the embassy crisis was incoherent and inappropriate. Let a real President handle this please we need grownups running the country not political grand-standers playing games with a nation of real people.

If you want to know how our president makes decisions that affect millions of people every day read the latest article in Vanity Fair by Michael Lewis http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama

And for any Republicans reading this that live here or have a second home on island and are thinking about their investments, think long and hard about who will have our backs.

See ya next week.

Picture Day

Getting the traps ready

The Democratic Party has barely begun their convention but already the differences are glaring.

Last week Republicans were invited into living rooms all across the nation. Those that turned on the TV sat back in their recliners and their sofas gazing at speech after speech that was trying to firmly plant a crushing need to get you off your duff and vote for their man in November.

Last week every time i turned on the Republican convention i saw a sea of white faces. Last night at the Democratic convention i saw the United States in all its glory. If any of you had ever pondered which party represented all of us just looking at the makeup of the two conventions should have clinched it.

i'm going to post pictures today. It is a beautiful day. Tell me which sunset you like the best. See ya Next week.

Loading the traps

August 29th, 2012    

 

 

 

September 4, 2012

September 3, 2012

September 2, 2012

August 30, 2012

Yellow Eyed Snapper Yummy Dinner

Blue Moon Aug. 31, 2012