{"id":16884,"date":"2010-07-15T20:42:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T00:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/?p=16884"},"modified":"2010-07-15T20:42:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T00:42:30","slug":"what-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/what-76\/","title":{"rendered":"What do I think?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src='http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/gallery\/09jan\/thinker.jpg' alt='thinker.jpg' class='ngg-singlepic ngg-left' \/>The primaries, LeBron, and Arms suppliers<!--more--><br \/>\nby Barry Bauer<br \/>\nWhen we don&#8217;t hear anything about the success or failure of the newest cap on the runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico . . . can that be good news?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">* * *<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know anything about a Democratic or Republican nominee for office this November, watch the primaries. The Democrats chew up fellow Democrats and Republicans chew up fellow Republicans during their party&#8217;s primaries. According to them every other candidate involved (except them) is an idiot.<br \/>\nAfter the primaries the losers back the winners and it&#8217;s on to November. When this is all said and done, each candidate has left so much mud on our door steps that it&#8217;s hard to believe we want to elect either one of them.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">* * *<\/p>\n<p>LeBron, LeBron, LeBron &#8211; that&#8217;s all I heard last week. We had a leaky kitchen faucet and I usually have good luck finding repair parts on the internet but not this time. It was going into the weekend so we decided we&#8217;d better call a plumber who of coarse has their own parts suppliers.<br \/>\nJust as the young plumber started working he asked if I was a basketball fan because of my Final Four hat and I told him I only wear it because it was a gift. The only time I watch basketball is during &#8220;March Madness.&#8221; That&#8217;s because I have a bet (don&#8217;t tell the Feds) on the outcome. He started talking about LeBron James going to Miami and I just told him. &#8220;LeBron James never put food on my table so I don&#8217;t worry about it.&#8221;<br \/>\nI remember years ago trying to play basketball in a gym for the first time. From far away it doesn&#8217;t look so hard but when you stand under the basket, look practically straight up in the air before you can see the hoop, you&#8217;re left wondering, who in the hell in their right mind put that damned thing way up there!<br \/>\nAnyway, we played makeup games during lunch hour. It was obvious there were no skilled personnel on the floor at that time but we had fun.<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t get excited about sports like I once did. When the Detroit Tigers traded Harvey Kuenn to the Cleveland Indians for Rocky Colavito, I walked around in a daze for three days. I couldn&#8217;t believe they&#8217;d do that to me . . . well they did.<br \/>\nThat happening was my cure-all and I quit worrying about losing my sports stars to another team. Even when the Detroit Lions running back, Billy Sims, was heading for Houston (he ended up not going) I was ready to help him pack his bags and wish him the best.<br \/>\nNo sense hating the guy.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">* * *<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a &#8220;family secret&#8221; in this country that&#8217;s only talked about behind closed doors. People run into closets and whisper in the dark, &#8220;Have you heard what Uncle Sam does?&#8221;<br \/>\nThe secret is . . . we are the number one arms supplier in the World.<br \/>\nCall it &#8220;foreign aid,&#8221; call it &#8220;influence peddling,&#8221; call it what you want. We are sending arms to a lot of countries around the World and we have no idea how much of it trickles down into the wrong hands.<br \/>\nThe truth is many of the Worlds&#8217;s advanced countries exports arms. Russia does it, England does it, China does it, and Germany does it. The list goes on.<br \/>\nHow can we sit back and wonder why there&#8217;s so many people killed daily in the World for political reasons when we supply the arms?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">* * *<\/p>\n<p>I finished the book, &#8220;The Honk and Holler Opening Soon,&#8221; by Billie Letts. Did I like it? Yup.<br \/>\nI found the book easy reading which means it didn&#8217;t wander off the beaten path, and she didn&#8217;t use big words that constantly send me to the dictionary to understand what she&#8217;s saying.<br \/>\nI think it&#8217;s safe to say that my first female author passed the test.<br \/>\nThanks Punky.<br \/>\nUntil the next time . . .<br \/>\nNow follow Barry on Facebook.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=1140235673\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=1140235673<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The primaries, LeBron, and Arms suppliers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}