Ain't it the Truth?

Ain't it the Truth.

I have noticed a cloud of dumbfog rolling in around our country. It seems to be around the media flowing from the cities to the country like a morning dew. " Good Morning" has been replaced by "Duh" in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article ain't going where you think it is.

A few years ago a guy named James Fry wrote a book about his experience with drug addiction. He got on Oprah. She made it a book of the month club selection and he sold a million volumes. I read the book. It is really good. Then some pointy headed intellectuals started digging around and found that Mr. Fry's prison experience was actually a couple days in the county jail. William Bastone with "The Smoking Gun" wrote an expose' that eventually got Fry back on Oprah to "Apologize" for misleading the public. 2000 people asked for and got their money back from publisher Random House because Oprah told them what to think.

What is missing from all this hoopla is the book is the best account of the devastation of alcohol and drug abuse that I have ever read. Literalismist (e.g. people who study literature as science) say that the lack of quotation marks in Fry's remarks indicate an artistic license to move freely from his internal and external discourse. This is Acadam'e talk for what we used to call fiction. If it don't have quotes it is not literal. Not intended to be.

However, when the mind is involved. Particularly a troubled drug and disease ravaged mind, the internal prose can be a more accurate window into the suffering of a person than "The Truth".

When I saw all this I thought of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, and Bill Wilson and the Big Book. Neither were under oath when they penned their work. Neither were filled with facts. But both were filled with immense truth.

One wonders if writers like Thomas Pynchon, Robert Bly, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, or even Kahlil Gibran could have survived the Oprah expose'

I personally doubt it. But I wasn't covered by the cloud of dumbfog. I read, enjoyed, and forgot Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Da Vinci Code and, Catcher in the Rye without once considering if the fact was more important than the truth the volumes contained.

Can you Imagine a Sixty Minutes team outside Kurt Vonnegut's house demanding the "truth". I think they might have met a double barreled shotgun. " I got your truth right here buddy".

NPR recently ran an article on Carlos Castaneda. It seems that currently there are many young doctoral students working on a thesis to disprove and discredit Castaneda's work. These young academics are setting out to prove that Castaneda was not entirely honest when he said that he could shapeshift into other animals, fly like the crow or teleport to any place in the universe with the power of his mind. On his Time cover he was listed as "An Enigma wrapped in a Mystery" Which is also acadam'e talk for the byproducts of male bovine digestion.

I read the books, saw the movie, and never once shapeshifted. I immediately brought to mind a toothless old gentleman from Phil Campbell who once told me "I ain't say'n it happened, I'm just saying I seen it."

Never mind the facts - this gentleman knew the truth. Be on the lookout for it.

The 300 at Thermopylae

All my readers are aware of the battle of Thermopylae. The younger set know of the place from the powerful semi-animated film of 2007 titled The 300. The older set, sat in awe in the 1962 version of Richard Egan facing Xerxes at The pass called Thermopylae.

Two or three might even have paid attention in ninth grade history class. But the quick and dirty synopsis is that 300 Spartans held the pass for 48 hours against an omnipotent army of Persians set upon destroying government by the people, for the people. For all time.

Had the Persians succeeded we would likely not be having this discussion about free elections today.

In the movie versions they all died of course.

I really hope a better outcome for the three hundred volunteers that I solicit today.

I stand hat in hand asking for your help. Not just support. Not just money. Not only your vote. Although I do need all that.

I have to figure out a way to organize a campaign that can put the will of the people back into the Senate Six seat and set corruption and mismanagement of your tax dollars on the back row.

No, I am in a political contest against the most powerful and best funded political opponent since the sixties. An opponent who raised over a million dollars in the last election- with no opposition.

The State of Alabama is a ten billion dollar business and it has been controlled by my opponent and his cohort for 25 years. A cohort which can raise another million any time of the day or night with a single phone call. They can probably do it every day for a year.

After all ten billion dollars of your money is at stake - Every year for the next four years.

Yes friends I have stuck my neck out. Way out. Like the turtle, the only way to make progress. Unfortunately that is also the way to start turtle soup. Also unfortunately- divisions within our State Republican Party have, for the time being, left my reinforcements behind in Greece.

So let’s review a couple of things. First and foremost, the thing on my mind is how I can bring about some prosperity brought by jobs and careers with paychecks which will support a hard-working family. That’s my first priority. To put paychecks in the hands of the people instead of government handouts. Then to lower your taxes and put groceries on your table.

And so I’m about to do the hardest thing I’ve had to do in this campaign: ask you to consider joining the club of 300 volunteers who can steer the direction of Alabama.

I need 300 people who will put their name on a paper and publicly state that they are ready to retire the 25 year term of our sitting senator in district 6.

300 people, brave enough, who will stand and agree that 136 years of a Democratic party controlled legislature in Alabama is long enough.

And from each of you I need skin in the game.

A Check. Not cash - A check.

A contribution so I can bring you the representation you deserve.

I am not asking the moon.

Just one check for $25.

Now if you are that man in the back of the room who can write a check for $25,000, don't go away, I need to talk to you later. But for now I am talking about the people who can afford to give Sunday dinner money.

Give so that I can take a box of checks to the party headquarters and dump them on the desk and say to them "These are the people who want and deserve a real change in the way we do business in Alabama."

These checks have intrinsic and extrinsic value. These checks were not just money pressed into a palm. These checks have an address and a signature and most of all they come with a face. A person. A family to whom I have made a commitment to better their lives. A concrete symbol to convince the "Authoriti" that we want and deserve a different outcome.


Please understand that this is not about the money. At least not entirely. The campaign takes money for sure, but it is about showing the party that I have people who want this to happen. If enough people will take this message to heart. Truly take it to heart. we can move our message to a lot of people and alter the outcome in November.

My most recent FCPA showed a cash balance of $159. My most recent poll showed me at 48% district wide. But yesterday Google said that 533 people read my blog. Now assuming that half are supporters that is 267 of the 300. I think I have a dozen already in my shoebox. We can win. with your help we can win.

Like the 300 at Thermopylae we stand against some long odds.

But this time we have an even chance.

Paid Political advertisement

Please make your check to
Jim Bonner Campaign account
15865 Mt Hester Road
Cherokee Alabama. 35616

Textbooks and bad pork.

I am told the Buddha died from a bit of bad pork. I suppose I lack enlightenment to understand why Buddha didn't know in advance the pork was bad. Maybe he did and ate it anyway.

But I direct the gentle reader to a couple of published news tidbits today. One article, from the Marion County Journal Record by Tracy Estes titled: State textbook funding falls by 90% over last 3 years and the other from a set of twits and tweets from my twenty five year democratic incumbent in the Senate Six race, that's if you give a toot.

In the first story, Tracy recounts the history of the Marion County School Board budget of $750,000 in fiscal 2008 and a current budget of $57,889 for textbooks for the upcoming school year.

The other story from the hand of the 'hard' working Senator himself titled: Roger Bedford Great Day in District and Handed out 14 different grants in Franklin tonight ! Headed to Kennedy and Fayette to give out more Grants in AM ! Gotta fight for your people !

Now gentle reader, therein lies the problem. Why are we allowing the blatant shorting schools money to buy textbooks and handing it out like water to people to buy votes? Do other States allow this?

One might suspect the books from last year would be fine. One might guess that second, third and fourth grade math books are the same and have been for a hundred years. One would guess wrong.

In the computer age kids are expected to learn how to to the three R's plus one. Radix. The little dot between the dollars and cents on your bank statement is no longer the decimal point. It is now the Radix Point. And among a lot of other things the State Board of Education expects your kid to know that. No child left behind expects your child to know that. And most importantly the people who design the test by which you school will be ranked for funding and possible takeover by the State expect your kids to know that.

Children as early as second grade are expected to know binary, hex and octal numbers. No Alice, this is not your fathers math book these kids don't have.

One of my campaign staffers has a dream.

A vision if you will, of a youtube video of the Russellville stadium Jumbotron and a bewildered candidate for State Senate looking at the expensive monitor, the expansive stands, pan to the underground bunkers for the massive baseball stadium, then to our twenty five year incumbent handing out grant checks to the un-needy and un-entitled. Cut to a group of tattered grammar school students in Marion County working around a table with one borrowed book.

And the Caption... Roger, you should be Ashamed!

This my friends and readers, is bad pork.

And now you can't say you weren't enlightened.

Prognostications

Prognostication

The United States has three likely possibilities before us today given the level of the Debt, Deficit and Balance of Trade.

One - Become the old Soviet Union. Remove all freedoms and require everyone to work in state jobs and live in state housing and join the state party.

Two - Allow the Union of the Americas to collapse under the weight of its own debt and make every State a sovereign nation.

Three - Allow runaway inflation to lower the value of the dollar on the international market and thus pay back these trillion dollar debts with new billion dollar bills.

This is why I entered the senate race, because I think we need some people in Montgomery who understand the situation if the worst case happens.

All of these are terrifying scenarios to me.

All of these reduce the standing of America in the world market and limit the one thing that is important to me. The future of my children and grandchildren.

There might be a fourth option. An option where we bite the bullet and begin to concentrate on the issues at hand. Jobs that create wealth instead of just passing money between Jack's and McDonald's, Set right the balance of trade, lower the debt and eliminate the deficit. This will require a work ethic that does not include one in five of our population drawing a government check and Drug laws that stop the personal and economic waste of our young people.

That will only happen if we elect people who are at least sensitive to the problem instead of people of wealth and privilege who have their golden parachutes and really feel above it all.

(A little knee mail to God on the matter wouldn't hurt either.)

Nonsense

Pallie was born in the last score of years before the turn of the century, in a world of milkcows, wood cookstoves and the daily work of a child that would make Cinderella tired.

Her father Atwood was a stern man who believed that one should take very seriously the passage of the bible about rods and children. His sister Aretha had married a Thompson man who ran a dry goods store in Tuscumbia.. A Hard days wagon ride from their home in Waco Alabama..

But the Mid South State Fair had come to Lauderdale County. A short spell from Tuscumbia if the Tennessee was down. Atwood, Pallie, Mary, Mattie and Celie rode to Tuscumbia to see the lights and rides and hucksters of the MidSouth Fair and stay with sister Aretha in the two story house on Water street.

The Fair had electric lights.. A Merry Go Round with a steam whistle and a Ferris wheel run by electric motors. A tiny train that took children around the fairgrounds and everybody got a roll of double tickets as big as a baseball with the price of admission. Tickets that could be torn off in pairs to ride and purchase sweets and drinks that foamed and tickled.

At the gate was a simple stage and wind up RCA record player, Deep Mahogany wood with gold gilded handles that stood a full four feet tall .. It was open and the Golden Speaker Horn was playing music of a band from a thousand miles away.

It was the most impressive thing Pallie Bishop had ever seen. The Huckster was crying "ten cents - for ten cents purchase a chance to win this beautiful RCA Victor Talking Machine"..Lesser prizes were to be given away with your ticket stub for admission but the grand prize raffle was purchased separately. Pallie looked at the coins in her purse.- She slid a dime into the man's hand.

The fair was the same as the fair today. Designed to splash color and move cotton picking money from your pocket into the pockets of itinerants who would be long gone in a week. Itinerants who knew and cared little of the sweat by which that money was earned. Pallie and the girls had what was known in the day as “a time “. They watched the displays of farm goods and prizes and local musicians and an artist who would paint your portrait while you waited if you had the money.

Pallie did not.

As night fell the drawing for the Victrola loomed near. Pallie made her way back to to the grandstand with Celie to watch the face of the lucky winner of the talking machine. The lesser prizes were drawn and Celie and the girls became more dejected as each prize was held up and lucky winner came forth to claim his or her prize. Then as the grand prize was being drawn the girls turned to walk away, Palie hesitated, and then heard her name.

At first she though it was Atwood, but realized it was coming from the other direction. it was coming from the grandstand. The man was calling Pallie Bishop. She screamed "Cellie, Get Pap!" and ran toward the stage and ran her hand over the polished wood.. Atwood came in a minute as the excited announcer tried to keep some interest in the crowd who had begun to mill away. "Here she is, all yours he said to Atwood, no cost to you at all but 15 cents each for a handful of recordings to play in your home!".. “15 Cents Bellowed Atwood! “ I wouldn't give fifteen cents for this thing for firewood.."

Pallie's world fell apart.. She began to cry. Then she got angry.. She screamed at her father "its mine”.. “I won it " take it home " .. "No! was the reply", his face redder by the minute at the insolent child embarrassing him on the grandstand stage. He did the only thing a man of his breeding could do. He took the pointer rod from the hands of he barker and began to bring blood from the legs of the almost woman child .. For a time she stood her ground. For the first, and last, time in her life she challenged her father.

They didn't take the Victrola home,

And things would never be right between them again.

Pallie saw eleven children. Buried four. Won and lost so many things so many times, and never in her life had a piece of furniture in her home so nice as a 1902 Victrola.. ..

And there in that hospital bed. 75 years later..on the last day of her life.

She sighed..

and smiled a weak smile.

And in that brief microsecond I knew her mind.

I knew that right now, she and Celie and Atwood and Mary and Mattie were loading up the Victrola.

Tonite, she would take the Victrola home.

Death is a mystery, the obvious and observable end of life that forces us to wish, or hope, or believe that there is something more.

Elementary logic says that there is not, yet a more complex evaluation makes us ask “ if there is no more then why are we here?”..

To ask “ if there is no God then we must be the most intelligent beings in the universe.?”

Now that is a scary thought.

More so than death itself.

There is a trigger within us that makes us fear death in our youth more so than in old age.

Perhaps an anticipation of things to come but more likely just an internal lethargy that comes with bewilderment that all the things we worked so hard to accomplish, struggled so hard to keep, will pass away like the dust in our bones, if it hasn't already.

My father, mother, grandfathers on both sides, my maternal grandmother, my best friend, a first girlfriend. All haunt my dreams from the other side. My aunts and uncles, most dear, some not so much, fade in and out of my conscious and unconscious thought. It is a frightening thing the day you realize that you have more friends below ground that above it.

So what is the point? Uncle Bartow, who left town to escape a murderous jilted lover. Said that life was about realizing that today might be your last day and living it thus.

Not always easy to do.. many people may not share your laze-fare attitude and require funds that require work which requires... Well you know.

Doctors are mostly religious but I often wonder how funeral home workers view the human condition. They say the right things but if you work on cars all day is it normal or abnormal to suspect the automotive souls go to a better place after the engine throws a rod.

I spend most nights studying the moons of Jupiter.. Any amateur astronomer knows where they will be and there are much better telescopes out there than what I might find on my shelf. But I feel a need to check and make sure they are where they are supposed to be. Somehow it is reassuring to know that something is more permanent than my physical self.

That they might appear to shift a little to the left or right is in some way proof that Palie is out there. Peeping around one of those celestial orbs.

Haley Barbour reads my blog

Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor reads my blog. Alabama legislators - not so much. The regular reader will remember that one of my off-the-wall ideas was a wood chip processing facility for District 6 to put some people to work. Work in a district where we have better (worse?) than 17 % unemployment in many areas.

Today Haley Barbour called a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to ask for $45 million in bond money, plus tax breaks, for a biofuels company; $4 million for related work force training; and $1 million for research to be conducted at Mississippi State University

The biofuels company, he said in a news release that the project would generate $85 million in wages and purchasing inside Mississippi and would create 1,000 jobs through the company and suppliers. The company would use waste wood and wood products as raw materials and convert the energy to fuel or electricity. The exact location of the facility is not yet known but I am told that It might be near Columbus just across the Alabama line. Less than 100 miles from one of those high unemployment areas I mentioned above.

Why Mississippi and not in Alabama?

Read more: NEMS360.com - News, Business, Classifieds, and Events in Northeast Mississippi

Alabama Candidate Questionnaire

1. Are you in favor of the Federal Government's program to encourage illegal immigration and guest workers?

I personally have no problem with immigration of hard working Christian people. Alabama can use all the help we can get. However,There are legal channels and it is the responsibility of the federal government to enforce the existing laws. Arizona is in the uncomfortable position of having to enforce federal laws. Alabama is not far behind.

2. Explain how you would solve the illegal immigration problem, especially by local or state governments in Alabama?

One has to consider the reach of the Alabama legislature on the issue. Currently it is not against any law to be "legal". So although we can detain suspected Illegals our local law enforcement is subject to the usual 48 hour rules and it my presently take more time than that for the NIS to respond. We can and we should make it a felony to obtain an illegal identification for a non citizen for the purpose of obtaining employment. And we can make it illegal to hire undocumented workers. This would make the activity we find most offensive, taking Alabamian's jobs, illegal. This is well within the reach of the Alabama legislature.

3. Should the government limit a woman's right to have an abortion and if so, what limits should the government impose?

Yes. Insofar as my authority permits me to say.

Comments? My response is threefold.

1. To the people who would allow abortion for rape an incest I say "What did those children do to deserve to die?"

2. We impose government limits on theft and murder, so why not abortion.

3. The economic burden of having a child is born at least partially by the public trust but there is still a significant cost in raising a child. To have an abortion to avoid paying that cost is offensive to me. To make me as a taxpayer pay for retroactive birth control is offensive to my pocketbook.

4. Are Abortions morally wrong?

Yes Insofar as I understand it murder is wrong.

Please explain your position on Abortion.

My position is biblical - Romans 12:19 -- Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,says the Lord. Deuteronomy 32:35 It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."..

So I am opposed to killing babies.

Particularly if they send me the bill.

5. Should Homosexuals be permitted to join the Alabama National Guard?

   
   No, if only because historically there has been conflict within the ranks that distracts from the duties of the Guard. But remember public servants have to be concerned for the welfare of all the people they serve not the ones most like them. On the other hand one has to consider that the National Guard might be deployed to an area of the world where the lifestyle is a capital crime. A commander would have to take that into account on missions which would complicate an already complex situation.

6. Who are the other candidates in the race, Democrat and Republican?
Explain why you are the better candidate?

The Senate District Six race has a 25 year incumbent Democrat as my opponent. It's time for a change.

I am running against no one. I am running for the people of district six. I stand on using our TVA in lieu of Tax money, our ADECA money, and our Severance Tax money, to be used to attract industry or to provide tax incentives for small business. Instead of "discretionary money" to buy votes.

7. What are the 3 most important issues in your campaign, and your position on them?

a. The first issue is Jobs. Currently parts of our district have official unemployment rates at twice the state level. Close inspection reveals that many of the manufacturing facilities located in the adjacent states first considered Alabama but were scared off by the lack of support and interest at our legislative level.

b. We all have family and friends who are dead, disabled, or disfigured by the use of Methamphetamine and Crack Cocaine. Pills follow a close second in the death and destruction. Crime and pestilence follow. As your State Senator I would first introduce legislation that would make pseudoephedrine a prescription drug as has Mississippi. I would introduce a mandatory drug registry for the doctors and pharmacists for prescription narcotics.

The computer technology exists and reputable doctors already subscribe to it but it must be mandatory to take out the legal pill pushers.

c. Taxes.

Alabama is the only of the southeastern states that have

a Real Property tax,

a Personal property tax,

an income tax

and a sales tax.

People tout the "low property tax" while taxes on food for the poor are at a regional high.

I propose a tax abatement on all farm and food items produced in Alabama for resale in Alabama.

Taxes in general are regressive in a downturn economy. I support no increase in taxes.

8. Should public schools have public prayer and Bible reading?

Yes, I believe. and have publicly published that i believe that we can establish that a time of prayer and meditation in the schools every morning is socially beneficial. Even the counselor groups admit that daily prayer and meditation are more effective at lowering depression and suicide rates than professional counseling. I propose a law to provide such a time. In past decades the US supreme court was packed 5-4 and upholding such a law would be impossible. Now the court is 4-5 and i believe that a state's rights law providing meditation time in the public schools would be upheld.

9. Are you born again?Yes.

Please state your personal testimony?

Like many nine year old boys in the sixties I attended the annual revival services and upon the revelation that i was going to go home, die in my sleep and be dammed to eternal hell fire I, along with my two school friends sought out the quenching water of the baptismal pool.

I believed and i still believe that if i had died in my sleep my soul would have been in the hands of the lord. But something wasn't complete about the whole thing. In 1974 i worked at Federal Mogul in Hamilton Alabama on the night shift as a semiskilled machinist. Amid the oil and grime of manufacturing bearings I began to cry. I went out back behind that plant and fell in the mud and oil and prayed until peace fell upon me.

Following the message in my heart I sought our a place to be baptized. I found a local preacher with a line at Turkey Creek in Franklin county and I absolutely broke line to get into the water. As i came up from that cold water the world was anew. A place filled with colors and smells and feelings that were a gray blur before. A voice inside me said “ I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

“ I lost my father when i was 6 and from October 1960 till October 1974 my insides were hollow and I was alone. I have been baptized every time I changed churches since, to appease my preacher or the deacons or the congregation , but all those times it was just a bath.

Since that day in 74 I have never been alone.

10. What are your beliefs concerning the separation of church and state? As Mike Huckabee said Separation of church and State was never intended to include separation of state from church. We are a nation, under God, Undivided and we need to acknowledge our religious roots.

11. Did you support the Tax increase that was voted on September 2003, called Amendment 1 of 2003? Are there any circumstances that you would support a tax increase? Comments? I do not support tax increases in recessionary times. I oppose the creation of “fees” and mandatory services that are just taxes by another name.

12. Should we have annual reappraisals of property values as recently been imposed by the State of Alabama? The previous system of reappraisals based upon spot checks, an appraisal of the system as a whole which would trigger an appraisal only if the values were plus or minus 15% of the true market value was adequate. In fact one ponders with the number of foreclosures and the prevalent buyers market if perhaps a valuation 15% downward is in order.

13. What is the best way to improve public schools? Public Schools work best if they are small and local. Many consolidations have taken place and in many rural areas of my district students may spend as much time on the bus as they do in the classroom. (Maybe we should put a teacher on the bus?) Local schools have local support. Bake sales, and parental involvement. Distinct and county schools are isolated, run rampant with gangs and drugs and turn out mediocre graduates.

14. Are you willing to sign a "No Tax Pledge"? YES

15. What is your position of the rewrite of the Alabama Constitution? A rewrite of the constitution by trial lawyers would only result in a Constitution that made it profitable to sue your neighbor. We need some revision to the arcane and sometimes embarrassing Constitution but we need to make sure it is rewritten by ordinary folk not trial lawyers.
    Why do we need (or don't need) a new constitution? The constitution requires an amendment for all but the most trivial of local issues. This has resulted in the worlds longest Constitution.

16. Do you support the idea of a Constitutional Convention or favor rewrite by other means? If there is to be a new constitution it must come from grass roots constitutional conventions and it must be with agreement before hand that the legislators will be bound by the result before they give authority to do so.

17 Is Gambling morally wrong?If you had the authority to impact gambling activities, what would you do? Would you legalize and tax it, or would you suppress gambling activities?
Comments?

Robbing from Peter to pay Paul has no effect on the total economy. Taxing gambling, That is allowing the State to profit from gambling is the part that is morally wrong.