Missive #163

Jim Waring is a gunman who is tired of chasing fugitives and wants to settle down. Unfortunately, he has agreed to one final hunt to help avenge a friend. There are two separate story lines here, and the second involves Jim’s estranged son Lorry Adams. Eventually, the two stories connect and the mysteries do unravel. — Book promo @ goodreads.com

This is not a very well written book but if you like Zane Gray you will like this one also. I liked it because it places the story mostly in Arizona particularly in the White Mountains. The author uses some fictional town names in Arizona but also refers to Phoenix, Prescott & St. Johns plus Grant, NM. He included the following poem as an introduction; a poem that I do not find listed as his any pace on the Internet.

Waring of Sonora-Town

The heat acrost the desert was a-swimmin' in the sun,

  When Waring of Sonora-Town,

  Jim Waring of Sonora-Town,

From Salvador come ridin' down, a-rollin' of his gun.


 He was singin' low and easy to his pony's steady feet,

  But his eye was live and driftin'

  Round the scenery and siftin'

All the crawlin' shadows shiftin' in the tremblin

gray mesquite.


 Eyes was watchin' from a hollow where a outlaw Chola lay;

  Two black, snaky eyes a-yearnin'

  For Jim's hoss to make the turnin',

Then to send a bullet burnin' through his back—the Chola way.


 And Jim Waring's gaze, a-rovin' round the desert as he rode,

  Settled quick—without him seemin'

  To get wise and quit his dreamin'—

On a shiny ring a-gleamin' where no ring had ever growed.


 The lightnin' don't give warnin'; just a lick and she is through;

  Waring set his gun to smokin'

  Playful like, like he was jokin',


And—a Chola lay a-chokin' … and a buzzard cut the blue.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday [14 November 2023] that average hourly earnings for all employees was $11.05 in October — a 3.32% decline from the $11.43 figure in January 2021, when Biden took office. However, all the mainstream media headlines are trumpeting what a great job president Biden is doing and how great the United States economy is the strongest in the world. There seems to be a disconnect.

[I]f we set minimum standards for qualifying as middle class by what was within reach of typical American households two generations ago, relatively few households qualify as middle class. Middle class means more than being able to charge a lavish cruise or foreign vacation on a credit card or buying a new truck with a huge loan. It once meant owning assets, not owing debt on assets. — What’s It Take To Be Middle Class Now? by Charles Hugh Smith

Things have now become so bad that even CNN is putting some distance between the Biden narrative and reality. This is very bad news for Biden and those people behind the curtain operating his strings.

On Thursday’s [16 November 2023] broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” CNN Senior Political Data Reporter Harry Enten said that inflation and population-adjusted disposable personal income has declined over the past quarter and since the first year of the Biden administration and “there is this disconnect. But I don’t think there’s this disconnect between Americans and what’s actually going on. I think there might be this disconnect between what President Biden thinks is going on and what is actually going on.” — CNN’s Enten: Disposable Income Is Down, Biden Is Disconnected from Economic Reality, Not the Voters

Take heart in these darkening days. The light will not be extinguished. It will return, as everything does in this universe of endless cycles. A nation turned upside down will find its feet again. The wicked will answer. The counter-revolution has begun. You are not alone. — Light In The Darkness by James Howard Kunstler

Larry tells it like it is in these last two paragraphs in his posting. Well worth reading it all.

The United States political class is locked into a self-defeating delusion that Russia is still a communist state bent on World Domination. Any politician who suggests the alternative, i.e. that we need to deal with Russia as an equal and that we should stop treating Putin and his government as an enemy, will be tarred immediately as a Putin apologist and ostracized. Here is the hard truth — the political elite in both parties are using Russia as an excuse to engage in the same practices that were the cornerstone of Soviet policies during the Cold War. It is the United States that is locking up political dissidents. It is the United States Government that is collaborating with social media companies to quash dissent against the ruling class.

It is not the fault of Russia that black kids in inner city schools are “graduating” from high school without being able to read or do algebra. It is not Russia’s fault that America’s southern border is wide open and being swarmed by millions of illegal migrants. It is not Russia’s fault that many of America’s largest cities are ravaged with narcotics addiction, violence and criminal activity. Look in the mirror America. Clean up your act. Then, maybe, you will have the moral authority to lecture other nations on human rights and freedom. But America, as it stands now, is a fractured country and shows no sign of righting itself. — Some Neo-cons Slowly Coming to Grips With Reality in Ukraine by Larry Johnson