I thought this was a joke

I thought this was a parody of the "hate the sin/love the sinner" meme that goes around conservative Christian circles periodically.

It is as serious as a heart attack. Speaking of the cowardly lion. He got a new heart. Got one from planned parenthood.  It was free, the one spare part they don't get much call for.

Banjo player lives matter!

I walked into the house tonight to see a frightening sight on TV. A banjo player was holding the Vancouver SWAT team at bay. The police dog was even afraid to take him on. I swear the dog was howling instead of barking and salivating in their usual Former Soviet Union/Nazi/Fluffy puppy dog type of behavior.
Eventually one of the cops got up the nerve to shoot him with a rubber bullet and he dropped the banjo. Then of course, they all piled on him.
He was naturally charged with assault.
A banjo in the wrong hands is indeed a deadly weapon.
I was kind of hoping instead of a crisis negotiator they would have sent out a fiddle player or perhaps another banjo player and had a contest or a long hair dude in a flannel shirt would have started singing about death and sorrow.
Then they could have taken him down at after the bridge. Kind of like when the gun nut changes magazines.
Here is the link. (Click Here)
At least they didn't shoot or tazer him...

Update: I just saw the video again. One of the cops actually picked up the banjo and leaned it against the house so that it wouldn't be damaged in the ensuing struggle. One does need to be careful with a lethal weapon such as a barely in tune banjo...

Baling Alfalfa and life on the farm in General...

It is supposed to be 97 degrees today. Later in the week we expect showers.
My daughter has been helping me.
We have been trading off between running the rake and the baler.
I thought it would be a good idea to bale 2000 bales of annual ryegrass straw in 2-tie bales. This was based on the interest of a buyer. I called a friend who also bales straw for erosion control. He said to get 40% down.
I didn't.
I stopped at 1650 bales. I suspect this is not going to work out so well.

My daughter baled most of them.
Baling is mind numbingly boring. I keep going to sleep.

This is the small baler (BC5070)

This is the three-tie baler, (Hesston 4690)

I'd rather run the rake although the rake tractor is the M670 super with no cab or A/C.

We then switched to three-tie bales for the rest. The choice is the potential for $80 per ton in two-tie or the assurance of $45 per ton in three-tie.

Lulu has been getting lectures on baling alfalfa. The alfalfa has been a problem. 

The mower with the crimper died so we used the swather to cut it and then used our very old Cunningham hay conditioner to crimp it.

The infamous Cunningham Hay Conditioner

It was still in a tight windrow and drawing moisture from the ground so I tedded part of it. This mixes up the bleached material with the green underneath.

I let it set a day and then rake individual windrows to get airflow under the windrow.

My new to me, but rather ancient dual windrow raker-New Holland doesn't make this setup any more!

It is quite hot during the day but at night there is such a heavy dew that it bleaches the alfalfa white.

Alfalfa is ready when you can't peel the stem back with your thumbnail.

We baled it at 1 a.m. Lulu wanted to work at night anyway.
We started baling with 14% moisture one side of the field and 8% on the other. The 8% side was pretty weedy and thin.

I had Lulu running the double rake right ahead of the baler.

This is what was left the next morning

By 1:30 a.m. the moisture was just about right. A good 18% and no leaf shatter on the good side of the field and 14% on the bad side. At 1:45 a.m. the moisture went to 18% on the bad side and 22% on the good side. So we quit.
Saturday Lulu had chores to do at home and I finished up.

I leave you with the universal symbol of racism...

I'm starting to lose interest

I just want to be left alone. I'm really tired of people enjoying their victimhood. In my life, I'm really tired of being broke, having old farm equipment and the constant fear of failure. While I both hate the new big  successful farmers and do not want to be like them I do not constantly dwell on the times people have screwed me or how "the man" is keeping me down.

Or at least I try not to. I have thought about becoming an anti-farm activist out of spite.

The main reason to fight for the flag is because a pressure group will never stop. It is not about offending black people it is about the NAACP (and their apparent white leadership) flexing their muscles. 

I expect to see a "one step forward two steps back" approach where we win one battle but then they incrementaly screw you later.

It is a test to see if our activist lame duck president and the conspiracy  of like minde "Marxist-lite" cronies can give us a "cultural revolution" on the way out the door.

The idea of the Confedracy as a beacon of freedom would have succeeded if Cleborne's proposal to free slaves would have been followed.

However, what we non-southerners refuse to understand is that they really just want to be left alone, fly their flag, have their monuments, work out race relations at home where everyone knows their place.

That Harvard Yankee who comments here pointed out that the end of the war 

Was unique in that the rebels were just allowed to go home. I say it was notable that they did just go home and go back to work and accept that they were part of the Union.

Now here's something I found on eBay that should pucker your bottom.

Why the South went racist after the Civil war, why we hate White Liberals, and why there is an affection for Innes Randolph

I did not mention how we feel about the biggest obstruction to personal freedom in the 21st century...
Robert E. Lee freed his slaves before the war, Mr. Grant kept his and may have started the famous quote, "Good Help is Hard to Find..." (a link to the debate)

Now I do tie a number of non-related topics together but it is food for thought...

Read this article about how people from a no longer valued social-economic group faced jail time even though they followed proper regulations.
Understand that the real reason the faced jail time was trespassing on the kings land.
Understand why we hate those rubber sandal wearing, privileged white liberals that tell us what to do.  This is the same attitude from the same bureaucracy that sent the Cherokee's on their long walk, gave small pox to the Indians, and did Syphillis experiments on black people.
Political affiliations may change for the same organization prevails.
Which brings me to another interesting little tidbit in the re-education of America. Perhaps we should call it our Cultural Revolution.

Now read this: Click Here
Tom Petty has disavowed the Battle Flag of Lee's Army. After making a lot of money off of it.
Now this is interesting, but he is of course, not from the South Anymore...

I quote from the lyrics to Rebel's, of his Southern Accents Album.
You know, the tour where he wore the flag like a cape?

"Even before my father's fathers
They called us all rebels
Burned our cornfields
And left our cities level
I can still see the eyes
Of those blue bellied devils
When I'm walking round tonight
Through the concrete and metal."

Tom Petty was from Southern Florida. He knew the flag, and he heard the stories of Reconstruction.
This song expresses the sentiments of a large group of Southerners better than anything I've ever heard. I have a certain affection for these people. I hate to see them disappear as a culture, just because they have become a Symbol of resistance to the clever white folk who run the country.
Tom says he doesn't want to hurt the feelings of Black People and with that I sympathize. There are a lot of problems with that flag as a symbol of the resistance.
However, I am amazed that the pressure that would cause him to give an interview disavowing his Southern Heritage.
It is called "Re-Education," we are all going to have to go through it.
Remember, it is your progressive friends and relatives that turn you in to the thought Police.

(no rebel flag in this video, YouTube has been scrubbed, down the memory hole..."

edit-If you were wondering my feelings on why the South went racist... Before Lincoln's war a free black man actually had certain rights as a citizen in the South, this did not always apply in the North. I say it is after reconstruction the hate began to build. My above commentary is meant to infer why and also help you understand why there is the slogan, "Yankee Go Home!" and why I now have sympathy for writers of the slogan...

Downstream and back

What we did last Sunday.

It has been close to 100 degrees. I've been neglecting my blogging.
You really come here to read the intimate details of my life, not to read about my obscure political positions or me affection for mythological lost causes, like Picket's Charge or The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Or wonder how I can live in Oregon but be a loyal Southern Sympathizer. Or find links to archaic treasonous songs...

My daughter and I took to the river.

We have one good kayak and one horrible kayak. Do not buy the Pelican Sunstream Dolphin. It is so unstable as to be dangerous. We forgot the rule river life. Paddle upstream and then float back down, or have a ride waiting for you. Instead we just took it one bend at a time. I was really hoping to find dinosaur bones as I'd heard some have been found recently.
We just found broken pottery and remains of an old toilet and a gigantic catfish.

We explored a stream.

The trip took us six hours. If you look at the map you can see there are a few curves. I also have no idea why I was getting the directions to Gibson City, Illinois.

The blue dot is our farmhouse. The pink pins are our starting and turnaround points.

You have to look closely to see all the bends in the river.

Why the rebel flag had to go

This the 21st century.
There were those of us who viewed the book "1984" as a cautionary tale. There were others who see it as a text book.
The battle flag of Lee's Army has been an inspiration to oppressed people around the world. I was looking up Innes Randolph who wrote  Unreconstructed Rebel and other obscure Southern Poetry.
I was amazed to find people from other countries who looked to the Confederacy as a freedom movement and who were not racist.
The Confederacy and the Rebel Flag is the inspiration for many lost causes. Freedom for Wales, Ireland, Croatia, Freedom From the EU, and just "stickin' it to the man" in general.
There is no place for this in the New World Order.
The flag had to go because it represents the resistance. Bikers where assented in Texas because the mythical "Biker Culture" stands up for "real Americans." Bikers came to the aid of Clive Bundy in his stand off against the US government. Bikers attend "Freedom Rallies," and Bikers were organizing for political action. The "Biker" myth is of a free independent spirit which supports the "Real America."
(Of course the cause is always flawed. Biker gangs are involved in crime and are generally horrible people but that issue only comes up when it is convenient to make them evil. As in when you execute nine of them.)
The flag had to go for the same reason Christians will be forced to support gay love.
It is all about pressure and control. No one in authority gives a rip about gay rights or oppressed black folks. What they care about is your submission and owning your soul.
And now I have other things to do...
I leave you with

Edit: I wrote this in a hurry as I was about to leave for a family reunion. I see that there have been a lot of people viewing this page. I suppose it is too late to come back and clarify anything but I do have one final point to make.
I mentioned the effort to make the five remaining traditional Christians in the USA participate in Gay Love Weddings, I didn't complete my point.
I find it ironic that the flag has to go at the same time the Supreme Court ruled on Gay Love. The decision to extend state marriage licenses to Gay Couples has nothing to do with the 14th Amendment. Marriage Licenses are issued by the States. Most states are issuing the licenses and all states would have sooner or later. The Supreme Court may make strange and random rulings but they rarely miss an opportunity to limit the rights of individual people or individual States.
The Battle Flag of Lee's Army represents the death of the American Revolution and the birth of American Federalism. The birth of all that is wrong with the United States of America. And so, the decision made by justices on the Supreme Court to go with what they see as a popular ideological opinion over a simple decision of throwing it back to the States to decide is another political manipulation much like the ones that gave us the War of Northern Aggression, or Mr. Lincoln's war if you will.
And that is my personal opinion and why I bought me a flag decal and a bumper sticker that say's "Yankee Go Home."

US Civil war ends after 154 years

Yesterday I did a search for businesses which incorporated the battle flag of Lee's Army into their logo. All I really found was Dixie Outfitters which seems to think that Lee's Army did a lot of duck hunting.
There has been a concerted effort of finally conquer the South. A continued propaganda campaign which portrays anyone with a Southern accent as stupid, lazy, and possibly a criminal. Crimes committed in the South are always viewed with suspicion as a "hate crime," and the Flag of Lee's Army is branded as a symbol of racism.
So when I saw the lady lawmaker crying on TV and heard the news that South Carolina was taking down their flag the realization hit me that the 150 years of Southern resistance against the Yankee devil had finally ended. Southern heritage has been reduced to drinking beer, hunting animals, and driving big 4wd trucks. Much like conservative Christian heritage is now short pants, Amway sales, and not baking cakes for gay weddings.
I suppose we should all have a moment of silence for the fall of Western Civilization...
The United States was once a pretty amazing country.
"Live and Let Live," was once the motto and not, "If you see something say something."

I wanted to make T-shirts which had the Battle Flag with the words, "I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn," but the only person who got it was my brother.

I am still looking for a t-shirt or hat that has a flag and a business. Like the old Winn-Dixie logo. I'd like to wear it to offend as many pucker-butts as possible. I may have to make my own...

If anyone has to get rid of $25000 to avoid taxes you can gift me this

Or the $25000...

It has been hot. Not that I want rain. Just not so hot.

The hay won't dry. Has wet spots. Bales that set on the field for two days are damp on the bottom.

The 4 acres sorghum-Sudan I planted down the road is growing a 1/4" per day. Would be an inch if I could water it!

Today I plan to finish first cutting grass hay. Have already started on second cutting.

The planets are in line.

I got a flat tyre. Nothing much changes.