Life @ 60, Dean Thomas Parisian

 

It’s been a good run.  A mere 60 trips around the sun and only 782 full moons.  I’ve watched snow clouds whip across the summit of Mt. McKinley in mid-summer.  I gave the eulogy at my Mothers funeral.  I viewed the magnificent Ware Collection of Glass Flowers at Harvard University.  I watched 2 healthy sons come into the world.  I saw the pristine beauty of New Zealand.  I waded into the “crowd” on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  I hunted elk in the Big Horn Mountains above Yellow Tail Dam with Robert Yellow Tail, the first conservative Native American.  I hunted dinosaur fossils in the Badlands. I met my wife in Cancun, Mexico.   I stood at Michael Milkens X-shaped trading desk in the Beverly Hills office of Drexel Burnham Lambert.  I have shot 10-point bucks in their beds. I was accepted into 5 law schools. I went to 4 Super Bowls. I ate in the lobster houses of Baja, Mexico. I know the thrill of Space Mountain.  I looked down from the Eiffel Tower.  I caught fish in Canada till my arms ached.  I walked the Salomon Brothers trading floor in 7 World Trade before 9/11.  I have seen the treasures of King Tut.  I know the biggest components of net worth are great health and the ability to function. I asked my wife to marry me at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I made long ocean swims in the cold.  I looked down from a helicopter over Yankee Stadium. I learned that if it is a problem about money it is not really a problem.  I felt the heat and humidity in Tahiti. I still want to be the winning jockey on the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby.  I was in the Swiss Banks in Geneva.  I have seen the Crown Jewels. I watched schools of tuna in a feeding frenzy.  I watched 3 space missions blast off.  I sipped scotch at the Ritz in Paris. I looked the Mona Lisa in the eye.  I floated in the Dead Sea. I walked the most beautiful beaches in the world. I have eaten shrimp the size of lobsters and octopus the size of shrimp in Australia.  I rode bucking horses in rodeo’s.  I know the best hugs come from your own children. I am still pained by the massacre at Wounded Knee.  I saw aurora borealis so bright I thought I was seeing heaven from earth.  I have heard the primordial howling of coyotes across many sunsets. I partied in the original Hotel California.  I have seen death in many forms.  I sailed from Catalina Island to San Diego.  I earned a college degree. I partied at the Roxy.  I learned I chose excellent parents. I admired Mt. Blanc from Café di Midi”.  I trapped hundreds of fox.   I shot antelope at 600 yards and missed coyotes at 8 steps. I have been in planes that have landed on ice, on water, on snow and in cow pastures. I have ridden a motorcycle across much of the American West.  I identified hundreds of different birds.  I saw the artistry and beauty of World Cup soccer.   I have been lost in the Louvre. I prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  I watched the Challenger explode live on TV.  I have had more fun than any man should have. I have broken bones. I have been to the diamond cutters in Amsterdam.  I grew up in the poorest county in America and lived in LaJolla.  I marched as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  I know leverage works both ways in the stock market. I lost my best friend to a lightning strike. I have trapped coal black coyotes.  I danced in European discos and Native American pow-wows.  I miss my grandparents more every year. I took my Mom to Mazatlan.  I saw the Mid-night sun in Alaska! I saw two million birds in one flock.  I learned that success has nothing to do with money and everything to do with how you feel about yourself. I never smoked a nicotine cigarette. I had the privilege to coach youth football.  I have felt the roar of rushing Minnesota rivers in the spring while hunting beaver. I danced in Studio 54 and at Danceteria. I know the beauty of Diamond Head. I know the laughter of friends and the spite of enemies. I know the power of big surf.  I trapped coyotes in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. I changed at least 5,000 diapers for my sons.  I looked into the crater of Mt. Saint Helen’s.  I have been to two Olympic Games. I still dream big dreams. I know the gurgle of the Mississippi River headwaters. I know Native American racism. I ran 5k’s, 10k’s, 10 mile races and, half-marathons.  I have owned my share of winning stocks.  I always questioned my dentist. I know the beauty of white-capped waves on the Sea of Gallillee.  I fined a large brokerage firm $1,000,000.  I remember the Minnesota Blizzard of 1975.  My sailboat was nearly capsized by migrating whales.  I have watched my sons eat sushi with chopsticks and shoot their first deer and elk.  I love eating breakfast at Harry’s in LaJolla.  I lunched often at Harry’s on Wall Street.  I was on the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk during F-14 flight operations. I looked down on Chamonix from the French Alps.  I have become a better trader every year. I know that a house is not a home without family. I know the best music came out of the 80’s.  I felt the warmth and life ebb from my father’s body as he went into the next world and it was good.  I have seen the brilliance of the Taj Mahal and tried to fathom the ghastly mass of humanity and pollution percolating in India.  I have felt the power of young lions in my hands and looked a tiger straight in the eye. And, I know the real party is in Heaven!

Lastly I married the most beautiful woman in America.  What an amazing woman I met that night in Cancun and she agreed to partner on this life adventure.  Wife, partner, friend, mother of the two finest sons any man could ask for; the love of my life, here’s to many more!

Merry Christmas TAXPAYERS from your Government

12/16/2013.....thank you Mr. Snowden

A federal judge ruled today that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely to be unconstitutional. As Politico reports, Judge Richard Leon blasted, "I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval."

This is the first significant legal setback for the NSA’s surveillance program since Edward Snowden exposed it.

What the hell is wrong with America?

The cross atop Mount Soledad in LaJolla, California is an unconstitutional religious display on government land and must come down, a federal judge in San Diego ruled late Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns ordered the cross, which honors veterans, must be removed within 90 days -- a decision that could result in the case being sent back to the U.S. Supreme Court. Burns immediately stayed his order pending an expected appeal.
The original lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Jewish Veterans of the United States of American and several other Southern California residents.

“We support the government paying tribute to those who served bravely in our country’s armed forces,” the ACLU’s Daniel Mach, said in a statement to the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper. “But we should honor all of our heroes under one flag, not just one particular religious symbol.”

Bruce Bailey, president of the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, expressed disappointment in the ruling.
"It is unfortunate that the Ninth Circuit left the judge no choice but to order the tearing down of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross," Bailey told Fox News.

 "However, we are grateful for the judge's stay that gives us an opportunity to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court."

Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute, said in a statement to Fox News that they will continue to “fight for this memorial and the selfless sacrifice and service of all the millions of veterans it represents; it is the least we can do for those who gave so much to us all."

Covert corruption..........

Five years ago the frantic phone calls between Hank Paulson and Lloyd Blankfein had to be in hushed tones and with some wild emotion.

Imagine.    The United States taxpayer having to rescue these clowns at these major investment banks!

When the sheeple wake up it will be too late.

Too big to fail is too big.  It's coming.  The derivatives exposure assures it.

The bubbles are forming.  Look around.  The lies.  The greed.

The clueless politicians.
 

Hunter Parisian

Delivery by DRONE.........

Imagine your local pizza joint dropping off an extra-large pepperoni pie via drone.

Think the homeless won't be hiding in the bushes?

What happens when the drone slams into some electric wires and the goods you wanted delivered that you paid for from Amazon are put on E-Bay in the next half-hour?  

Lots of security issues for sure.  No doubt Bezoz can figure them out as long as he doesn't have to pay sales tax on what he ships!

Jordan Parisian

It's December 2013..............

If fundamentals are so awesome, stop QE and see what happens.  It's all BS, and these people actually get paid to sit around and discuss how wonderful the Fed is for coming up with the magical idea of printing money.  See this central planning is really easy afterall.  Just kneel before the geniuses at the Fed and pray the money falls your way. No need to actually produce anything somebody needs with sweat and tears.  This is the new age of free money.

Why on earth didn't we come up with this sooner?

ObamaCare Update..............

More than one-third of the enrollment period has passed. They're at 2.8% of their enrollment goal of 7 million.

"Officials said the site is dramatically better than when it was launched on Oct. 1." The day 6 people signed up.

Although the GAO has made clear the limitations of its data, its $394 million tally for work through March 31 has been widely cited as the price tag for the entire launch of the "Affordable" Care Act. However, as Bloomberg's Peter Gosselin finds, looking at the full range of ACA-related contracts for just 10 firms, more than $1 billion worth of contract awards. Perhaps even more mind-blowing is that more than one third of the funds going to the top contractors working on the federal exchanges were awarded in the last six months - even as it was clear the project was failing.

Obamacare is a catastrophe that cannot be fixed, because it doesn't fix what's broken in American healthcare. It is a phony reform that extends everything that makes the U.S. healthcare unsustainable sickcare.

In America the sheeple vote........

It is often said there only two kinds of people in this world: those who know, and those who don’t. I think there are actually three kinds of people: those who know, those who don’t know, and those who don’t care to know. Members of the last group are the kind of people I would characterize as “sheeple.” Sheeple are members of a culture or society who are not necessarily oblivious to the reality of their surroundings; they may have been exposed to valuable truths on numerous occasions. However, when confronted with facts contrary to their conditioned viewpoint, they become aggressive and antagonistic in their behavior, seeking to dismiss and attack the truth by attacking the messenger and denying reason.  Sheeple exist on both sides of America's false political paradigm, and they exist in all social "classes".

I cannot imagine an existence more deserving of pity and remorse than that of the American sheeple.

Martin Bashir, World Class POS

MSNBC producers and management please drop by.

I have something for you.

Lynn @ AMEX 336-283-9667

If you ever decide to answer the phone I have some more questions.

What a bunch of morons in the credit department.

Beyond shame................

Whoever bet money that Obama would finally blame the epic debacle that is Obamacare on the Republicans can now retire.

OBAMA SAYS ONE REASON FOR ROCKY HEALTH CARE ROLLOUT WAS THAT REPUBLICANS ON "ONE SIDE OF THE HILL" WERE INVESTED IN ITS FAILURE

Because it was obviously the Republicans who sabotaged the 3+ year rollout of Obamacare, and handpicked the "outside" contractors who made healthcare.gov such a smashing success. At least Bush walked away unscathed.

JPM

To the DOJ, a $13 billion receipt is the "largest ever settlement with a single entity." To #AskJPM, a $13 billion outlay is a 100%+ IRR. And perhaps more relevant, let's recall that JPM holds $550 billion in Fed excess reserves, on which it is paid 0.25% interest, or $1.4 billion annually. In other words, out of the Fed's pocket, through JPM, and back into the government. Luckily, this is not considered outright government financing.

Credibility

If anyone happens to bump into any "credibility" regarding the financial markets, exchange structure, HFT, CNBC, etc.  please give a shout out.

It's been years since anything credible has come from government.  I take that back.  Air traffic control does a good job.   The BIG LIES continue unashamedly. Governments around the world , wouldn't recognize the truth any more if it poked them in the eye.

Maybe the Smithsonian has some credibility tucked away.  It's dam sure in short supply.

Jordan Parisian

 

A ticking time bomb..................

The NY Fed has disclosed that federal student loans officially crossed the $1 trillion level for the first time ever. Notably: the quarterly student loan balance has increased every quarter without fail for the past 10 years!

Janet Yellen

If this "front" for the 1% is the answer, America should ask a better question.

A pathetic course we are headed down.   Yellen is a career academic with absolutely zero banking experience or business experience. This puts her in the same boat as Greenspan and Bernanke.  Look where that has gotten us.

New Mexico Muley Hunt, 2013

In the northwest corner of New Mexico, is the area known as the “Four Corners” where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado all come together in a common point. These are legendary mule deer states and this corner of New Mexico plays a big part in that legend. Wherever trophy mule deer hunters gather, talk eventually turns to the storied canyons of Rio Arriba and San Juan Counties. You will find the record books well represented, if not dominated, by bucks taken there over the years.

This is New Mexico Game Management Unit 2. It’s where I was going to hunt.

Unit 2 is a uniquely placed environ with several factors which contribute to it's excellence as mule deer habitat. Situated at the base of the Rocky Mountains, which soar to 14,000 feet to the north, this area is defined by three large river systems which flow from the snow capped peaks of the Rockies and eventually drain into the Colorado River and on through the Grand Canyon to the sea. The terrain was created by these rivers and their associated drainages as eons of erosion cut through the soft sandstone and left deep, multi- stepped canyons with broad sage flats in the bottoms and on the benches. Vegetation is predominately pinon / juniper ("PJ") treed areas interspersed with open brushy flats of sage, grasses and varied browse. The elevation is considerably lower than the mountains to the north. Average elevations in the unit are 5000-6000 ft. Snowfall is minimal compared to habitat even a few miles north. Mule deer love it. The rugged PJ bench country provides the cover they need with an abundant, nutritious food source at their feet. The main river systems flow year round and add great bottomland habitat and water sources to the mix. Winters are relatively mild and deer are not subjected to deep snows and winter kill. This is, and has been, their home for centuries.

Mule deer in Unit 2 have a semi-nomadic lifestyle as many of them will drift north into Colorado in late spring. As snow melts off the high peaks deer will seek out the cooler alpine areas on the mountain even as high as the crags above timberline. Many stay in the area and browse the thick, rich river bottoms and tuck away into the shady high cliffs of the canyon country. As soon as snows fly in the high country the deer come home. They come home to Unit 2 to rut, to feed, and to grow another little muley.

Mature mule deer bucks are a very reclusive nocturnal creature. Reclusive being the key word. For most of the year they are lounging away in the thickest darkest cover available and come out only after dark to feed and water. You'll not likely see them. Hunting success on a big muley in Unit 2 is deeply tied to the rut and the return of the migratory deer. Normally early snows in Colorado occur around the end of October and trigger southward deer movement to their wintering areas in the sage country. The rut begins in early / mid November. As deer populations rise with the returning herds, the rut starts to engage as well.
I was standing in the Costco Tire Department last summer when my cell phone rang. It was a call from The Huntin Fool, ( The Huntin Fool ) team telling me I had been successful in drawing a 3rd season rifle deer tag in Unit 2B, west of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. This was going to be my year! I had been applying for a tag in that unit since 2006 and finally got lucky! Luck seems to happen when you never give up, funny how that works!

I had some business in Texas prior to flying into Albuquerque and unfortunately had too much gear so I had to tell the Southwest Airlines how unhappy I was with the $75 they charged for being overweight. Getting robbed at the gate is par and those airlines love the game. They get better at it every day.
Getting a rental pickup from National was not easy either. I figured a 4x4 was a necessity because I didn’t have a clue what the weather might do.

I loaded up and headed out, hoping to make it to Sante Fe for Halloween night and then on to camp on Friday, get sighted in and be ready to go on Saturday morning for the 5-day hunt, the third rifle season in NM.
I got to Sante Fe late, found a cheap hotel, unloaded all my gear lest I have it stolen out of my pickup and headed out to find some grub. Walked a couple of blocks and ran into a bar called, “Cowgirls”, my waitress/ bartender on Halloween night was in costume and she brought a great burger loaded with a full avocado! For sure the trip was off to a great start!

 

Driving North to Chama from Sante Fe I had to cross the Rio Grande River and stopped to snap a picture of a very colorful cottonwood in its mighty fall splendor.

Friday morning early found me on the road headed north and I had to stop into Chama, NM and see an old friend, Ray Milligan, who, like me, started our professional journeys on the trapline. Here’s a picture of Ray Milligan and I after a hearty lunch.

Ray runs a very successful hunting operation in New Mexico, ( http://www.milliganbrand.com/ ) and found time last week to break away and kill this fine bull at 460 yards. Ray has a world slam on sheep and still loves to get it done!

 

Ray shoots a very unique rifle and it can be found here. The balance and weight are really cool.
( http://greybullprecision.com/
Ray and his wife have a small ranch south of Chama and have some food plots and water which will hold deer and elk in the area. Here is a buck that was shot this year on his small acreage with a muzzleloader. I call that sweet!!!

 

Heading west out of Chama I had to cross the Continental Divide.

This part of New Mexico is winter range for large herds of deer and elk that bail out of Colorado and head south. For sure the State of New Mexico understands the economic value of the resource.

Heading farther west I crossed the Jicarilla Apache reservation. Home to some of the finest mule deer genetics in America it was a place that as a kid I read about in OUTDOOR LIFE magazine. They get a good penny and then some these days for hunting big game on the Jicarilla. At one time they had a good lion/cat control program in place and seem to be managing their herds well. I know they allow some off-reservation trappers to come in and knock back coyotes and someday that would be a treat to run with Ray and trap the Jicarilla in our old age.

I had made the decision to try and kill a great buck on this trip. I wanted a bomber and hoped that with the help of my outfitter we could get it done in 5 days time. Here is a pair of sheds being held by my guide that were found very close to the trailer I stayed in. I like this buck. Who wouldn’t?

Hunting this part of New Mexico involves doing a tremendous amount of glassing. Here is the Swaro 15x56’s that were not mine and wish they were! If I ever have some luck again in the stock market after it undergoes a much-needed correction and reset back to reality I hope to own some of these. They may be a pretty penny but when hunting from above they are in one word, priceless.

Lions get big in this part of America. Real big. Most people have no clue how powerful bobcats are and how efficient they are in bringing down big bucks. Well, lions have no problem with deer or elk. Once they get the jugular it’s usually game over. Lions can drag hundreds of pounds of dead weight into cover to feed. They don’t have much for being long-winded but that burst of speed to overtake prey would be tough to beat with a good quarter horse. Here are some remains from a lion kill.

Across much of America and in many hunting camps and around many campfires there is always talk of the elusive black panther. Of course there has never been a photograph of a black mountain lion or cougar in North America but that has never stopped tall tales from being spread. Here’s a picture of a mountain lion track. Not a big one but it is a lion.

And speaking of tall tales, it’s like Obama telling us a recovery has taken place when every asset on the Fed balance sheet is simply debt owed by the public! Those bonds are IOU’S from taxpayers! Bottom line folks, the notion of someone having any backbone in Washington, DC is quaint. Vision and courage are in short supply. I only wish that gun safes, range practice and ammo would bring me a tax credit! Since when did our leaders give a dam about what their citizens think? If they did, there would be no war in Iraq, no bailout of the banks, no Patriot Act, no NDAA, no comprehensive surveillance, and certainly not 30,000 drones to monitor us. Keep on singing “land of the free” because that’s the closest you will get to freedom. Sorry about getting off topic here. It’s Veterans Day as I sit and write this and this picture looks just like my dad who served in the Army Air Force during WWII. He was a good hunter, a good man and a good Dad. I miss him more every year. And speaking of veterans, this move by the AT&T Corporation to hire 10,000 veterans is one of the classiest moves by any corporation on the face of the planet!

One of the tougher aspects of hunting out west is getting good oxygen. I rest my head every night at about 978 feet above sea level. I was hunting between 6,600 and 7,400 feet above sea level. I don’t smoke, never have. It just takes a couple days to acclimate. My guide was 46, lived in that country his whole life. He was a 6’3” bundle of killer. Wearing a size 8 boot, waking up with a bottle of Coke in one hand and a can of smokeless in the other he was a hard charger. We wore it out looking for a bomber muley buck. I glassed more nooks and holes and crannies than I ever have. We never found a single great buck to stalk. Here is some of the country we glassed. And glassed, and glassed!

 

The first morning out we were watching a waterhole at day break and had a 2-pt, a 3-pt and a 4-pt feed out in front of us and head for the timber for a day of rest. Other than that it was slow. We probably averaged between 20 and 40 sightings a day with very few bucks. The second to last day we headed north to look over the migratory deer that had been flooding into the unit from Colorado that had some weather the week before and we counted 141 deer, 3 of which were bucks and only one of them was a legal fork-horn, the other two were spikes.
On the morning of the second day we walked down onto the top of a large drainage and below us we heard some deer “blowing”. We had been busted and a doe and small 2-pt and then a larger deer busted out and stopped for a “look-back”. Remember what I said I wanted out of this trip? I wanted to kill a bruiser. I wanted to put a real bomber on the wall. I wanted the opportunity to shoot a real pig and tipping over the buck that was in front of me on the morning of the second day out wasn’t going to achieve what I wanted. My guide looked at me rather odd for not killing that deer but hey, it didn’t fit what I thought I could kill and what I thought we would turn up over 5 days of hard core hunting.
The buck I was looking at was killed by another hunter in camp on the last day and I couldn’t have been happier for him. He hadn’t killed but a half dozen deer in his life and this deer was a great deer for him. I was so happy that he got the opportunity to head back into that canyon, find him and kill him. He was a good buck. Here he is.

 

Here’s Dean later on Day 2:

The rest of the week was spent behind the glass. We couldn’t look enough. Hard to believe that we couldn’t spot a single bomber. We never quit looking though and I was proud of our effort. It’s what it takes.

 

 

We put some mileage on over the week getting into good vantage points to glass and here is a shot that well represents some of the more precarious footing! Be careful out there, always!

Somewhere along the midpoint of the hunt it snowed a skiff and got a bit cooler. Nights in New Mexico can by crystal clear and if you think there are a lot of stars in the night sky east of the Mississippi try being west of the Rio Grande!! On the final day of the season I pulled out my lucky jacket and hoped it would help turn up a big ‘un! My favorite color is blaze orange!

The time flew by for sure. We only turned up one shed we could retrieve, here it is. It is sitting atop my killing machine, a Browning BAR .243 with a big Swaro up top. And yes, the glass cost more than the gun. Way more. ‘Nuf said, my wife will probably read this!!!

One of the things I like to do every year, and you probably do too, is to tweak my gear. Here is a wrist compass that I was impressed with that really came in handy, especially in new country and on cloudy days when the sun was hidden. Just an easy way to keep directions in front of you without pulling out a compass. I wear a watch that has a light to check time 24/7 and now I will be wearing this wrist compass. It is a good piece of gear for sure. I will let you find the name of it on the internet!

In the waning hours of day when my guide said we were heading into the best place on the last day to glass my spirits were high. I was happy with our sweat, our effort, our time management. Tag soup to me means nothing. If I were not to see a deer to shoot I would have been impressed with the unit and the deer there. Don’t get me wrong. There ARE big deer in that unit. There is a trillion places for them to hide. There are bombers there. The rut was still weeks off and they were heavy and laying up in the all the places that allowed them to become bombers in the first place. There are deer everywhere in that unit. If New Mexico allowed rut hunting they could charge big money!!!

As the afternoon wore on and we were getting to the last ridge of the hunt guess what? I spotted a couple of white butts on “girls” up on the ridge and upon further review, low and behold what was coming over the ridge but a set of horns. Dang, just my luck to have a little wide 3-point in the cross-hairs up on that far ridge. At the sound of the shot he took off running faster than Bill Clinton headed after an intern but I knew he wasn’t going far. It was the last wide-open sprint of his life.

 

I will apologize for the messy picture in advance. I harp on others to clean up their animals at the kill site for picture taking because I hate nothing more than seeing great bucks on garage floors or laying in pickup beds but this wasn’t to be. The meat I donated to a good charity, the horns will go on the wall.

New Mexico was a special place. Hanging this muley on the wall will help me remember it.

In a unique way, this buck was a bomber. Last day, last canyon, last hour.

I know Dad was smiling from above!

EBT for ALL !!!!

Fairness and Justice in Vietnam, why not in the US?

The lack of prosecution of bankers responsible for the great financial collapse has been a hotly debated topic over the years, leading to the coinage of such terms as "Too Big To Prosecute", the termination of at least one corrupt DOJ official, the revelation that Eric Holder is the most useless Attorney General in history, and even members of the judicial bashing other members of the judicial such as in last night's essay by district judge Jed Rakoff. And naturally, the lack of incentives that punish cheating and fraud, is one of the main reasons why such fraud will not only continue but get bigger and bigger, until once again, the entire system crashes under the weight of all the corruption and all the Fed-driven malinvestment. But what can be done? In this case, Vietnam may have just shown America the way - use the death penalty on convicted embezzling bankers. Because if one wants to promptly stop an end to financial crime, there is nothing quite like the fear of death to halt it.

Presented without comment!

Click here: You Are Here | Zero Hedge

The quote of the DECADE!

"The printing of fiat will continue until morale improves."

On Veterans Day, One tough SOB..........

If I could find this guy I would hire him in about a nanosecond...............

US Marine TOUGH

ObamaCare in a nutshell.............

When one steps back from all the frustration, all the confusion,  all the failures both in the rollout and the mass behavioral experimentation, and the fact that the math just doesn't work, the primary stated purpose behind Obamacare was simple: to provide uniform, affordable (the A in ACA) healthcare for all Americans. But especially to those who are currently uninsured. At least such was the utopian, egalitarian vision behind its conception. Which is also why, stripping away the political posturing, the html coding errors, the funding issues, the biggest failing of Obamacare would be if it opened, and none of America's uninsured came.

Sadly, this last nail in Obamacare's coffin, has just been confirmed with a just released Gallup poll which found that a tiny 18% of uninsured Americans - the primary target population for the exchanges - have so far attempted to even visit an exchange website.

Jordan Parisian, Milton HS free safety

Some of you have asked if I could forward you the link to Jordan's big pick on Friday night.  Well, here it is in color, brought to you by Georgia Public Broadcasting, who filmed the game for television on Friday night.   Jordan is the only Milton player, (Milton wearing blue jerseys and red helmets) who is wearing RED CLEATS  (our contract is with Under Armour).  Watch the replay and see our Defensive Coordinator do a leaping "chest-bump" when Jordan got to the sidelines.   Turn up the sound and watch #23 turn the momentum with about 6 minutes left in the final quarter.   Go JP and go Milton!

 

Click here: ? Walton vs Milton (GPB HS Foootball) (10/25/13) - YouTube#t=8865

Jordan Parisian, Milton HS Football, #23

Finally!   The monkey was lifted on Friday night.   After 19 long years the Milton High School Eagles football team got it done and defeated Walton HS at home in a great game. 

Congratulations to the Milton players, coaches, parents and die-hard fans who endured a rather chilly evening!   There was no shortage of  hard hitting and big plays and #23 came up with a huge interception in the 4th quarter that stopped a Walton drive and turned the momentum in a big way.  Great hands Jordan!

Thank you all for your kind words to Jordan in your emails and text messages.

I think Pam may need a trip to an orthoepidic this week after tearing up her elbow from ringing the cow bells so hard!   Ramp it up Eagles!!!    Good luck boys in your final two regular season games.

All you need to know about ObamaCare

The Free Shit Army is staying hydrated and looking for some more draftees!

The Shit Show called ObamaCare

Finally, every American can have access to affordable healthcare! 

No longer will we be forced take a physical, or be limited by pre-existing conditions. 

We will all share in each other's risk!  Welcome to the nationwide risk pool!

It is only fair.

As Milton Freidman once said; "If the government were in charge of the Sahara, within 5 years there'd be no sand."

"The Map and the Territory"

Alan Greenspan's new book, a guide to economic forecasting will likely prove as successful as Lance Armstrong's guide to drug-free cycling.

Montana. 2013 Sheep

I had a great teacher in my high school geometry class. We all know that that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. There are no straight lines in sheep hunting. None. All I knew for sure is that hunting sheep is hard. Come to think of it I have never noticed a fat sheep hunter in any magazine and sure hadn't done any sheep hunting to know enough to bring great hiking poles along on the hunt. My experience with sheep hunting was zilch. I have watched sheep in Colorado, Montana and Canada but never went on a sheep hunt. I have watched some great rams and had a friend kill a huge ram in Colorado some years ago after putting in for a tag for many years. He had scouted the ram for months on end and hiked up and killed the ram at daylight on Day 1. Sounded simple enough. The unit we were hunting in is the best sheep unit in Montana for good reason.

This year, the Montana bighorn sheep Governors tag was a winning bid by Con Wadsworth of Draper, Utah, for $480,000 which shattered the state’s record of $300,000 set in 2012. The “Governor’s tag” holder has an edge with special privileges to hunt prized trophy areas with more favorable seasons than roughly 160 hunters who will draw ram permits in the state lottery. That sheep was killed not far from where my pal was going to be hunting!

When my friend called some weeks ago and told me he had drawn a tag in one of the greatest sheep hunting units in America, (after applying for about a dozen years or so) Unit 680 in Montana I knew he was calling for a reason we both didn't realize at the time. I told him I would do two things for him; I'd work my butt off to help him get a ram and I would not whine. That's what friends do. I have good hunting eyes, am in fairly good shape for turning 60 in 60 days and am a good solo camper. I told him that's all I could do! Now, I am glad he called and I know he is elated I answered. Sheep hunting is a team sport. I told him I would work out my schedule and if he hadn't tagged out on a ram after a few weeks of the season being open I'd meet him in the rough stuff north of the Missouri River on a certain day and give him a hand in getting his once-in-a-lifetime tag put on a great ram. I had decided to drive to Montana with a 1997 Ford Expedition, 4x4, with 175,000 miles on it. It's always a good feeling to drive into Montana!

 

It took well over 2 days and when I arrived at camp I had logged 2,033 miles to get there. Those miles were a beautiful jaunt across America in the fall and I'm constantly impressed with America, truckers, our ability to feed the world and our infrastructure. I am not impressed with our narcissistic politicians and their incompetency. I stayed with a client in Pella, Iowa the first night out and enjoyed some wonderful hospitality in a great little town, home of Pella Windows. Going through South Dakota was amazing. Eastern and Central South Dakota were ablaze in fall color and when I got further west, the great snow-storm of 2013 was clearly visible. This is at a gas station in Rapid City. The number of dead livestock was simply staggering. Between 50,000 and 60,000 head of cattle died. It was sad to see so many dead animals in such good health simply die in the wet snow because of suffocation and not having their winter coats on yet. 

This is how far it was from home as the crow flies. 1604 miles! Roads don't always run straight!

  The last yards of my trip involved taking a ferry across the Missouri River. Jack Carr was the ferry master and was not only a great chef but a great guy, well-versed in sports and cards.

 

 

 

I had packed the rig to be ready to step out and make camp. Fall was in the air and I snapped a picture of trees near my tent.

My pal wanted a great ram on the wall and we had to find one. There seemed to be plenty of sheep around. This is the first sheep we found, about a mile away.

Big rams leave big tracks. My boot is a size 12.

The nights were cool, actually freezing and had the coyotes on the move. We had a family pack swing by every night hunting rabbits in the high sage and they were loud. Sheep are probably in the best shape of the year in October and they looked ready for winter. I like having the range finder and Swaro's at the ready. I carried the big spotting scope and tripod in my big Eberlestock pack.

 

 

We saw plenty of ewes and rams and were working hard to find a good ram. Every sage flat or ridge seemed to have these guys buzzing and I will never be caught again without good snake gear. I had two pair of snake boots sitting at home and snake chaps in a hunting closet. My pal had snake gaiters and I followed him in the sage. The little ones sounded as nasty as the big ones.

 

We found a great ram that we nicknamed "Flare". He had a great curl and his tips were picture perfect, nothing was broomed. He was only a bit "light" in his mass and my buddy liked him but not enough. We needed to keep working. Flare had a pal that was broomed but older and heavier. We had put Flare and his big pal "to bed" one afternoon and we made the decision to climb up into the high country without the heavy spotting scope and tripod to get a better, up-close and personal look. I was doing my best not to sway my friend in shooting any ram. I wanted it to be his decision because it was a once-in-a-lifetime decision, at least in Montana for him. We awoke early and headed up. Little did we know we were sadly lacking in two important items. We didn't bring enough water and we didn't bring ample flashlights and head lamps. We worked up to a ridge to peer into the ridge where we had put the two great rams "to bed" the night before. Slowing moving up and looking over the ridge this is what we saw. No, we didn't see the two rams. There, at 245 yards lay 6 full-curl rams. Now what? Making a decision as to which one to shoot was going to take some time. You need to look at them from the front, the back and the side and all 6 were chewing their cud and not moving a muscle in the beautiful morning sun. The wind was in our favor as was the sun. This is what they looked like. Look in the middle of the picture through the trees and you will see sheep asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

So, there we laid. All of sudden, Flare, farthest to the right, (east), in this picture we were looking due north, comes to his feet and we hear the sound of a sheep. In a nanosecond, we now have 6 rams in a tight group all looking east. When you have that many sheep in a tight group you can't judge horns. They bolted over the ridge and were moving out fast. Suddenly we see a huge bodied ram chasing after them. I range him at 364 and my pal is thinking about taking a shot if he were to stop. He never stopped. He was running after the other rams and the quiet day in the hills continued. We just laid there dumbfounded. What just happened? We think this big ram just showed up in some kind of pre-rut display of dominance to let the little guys know who is boss and the chase was on.

We moved out quick up the ridge and headed north at a good clip to try and cut them off. We got up a few canyons to the north, came out on a bench and sat down, hoping we would see sheep on the move. Nothing moved. We had some water and a protein bar and made the decision to hunt out each little canyon as best we could back toward the south where they were laying. We didn't think they had gone far and that we would sooner or later bump them. We were going awful slow just picking along trying to peer into every nook and cranny and all of a sudden my buddy steps back and is quickly taking his pack off. I move up to range the ram. He is asleep on a near vertical ledge and we take our time to glass him. To me, he is a great ram. To somebody else maybe he is just a good ram. I told my pal that he was at 105 yards and he started to take a picture or two before he was going to start shooting. By now, I was running iPhone video camera to film the entire ordeal. This picture has the ram across the canyon under the black soil laying down.

 

The ram must have looked up across the canyon and got up and my pal had his shooting sticks up and at the ready in no time. When the echo of the muffled gunshot that anchored him subsided he was already kicking his way down the cliff on his nose and chin and he slid out of sight at a high rate of speed. My buddy isn't the kind of guy who whoops and hollers and high fives when an animal goes down, in fact he is a professional fishing and hunting guide, who doesn't like to hear the crap you hear on most TV hunting shows. At that moment, I swear, I was as pumped up as I ever have been after a kill shot without even firing a gun! I was so darn happy for my buddy and we both hoped the ram was dead and hadn't broke off half of his bone headed down that mountain!       

It took us far longer than we thought to get down to the sheep. We had to find a way down without killing ourselves and it wasn't easy. Leather gloves are mandatory!

My pal guides fly fisherman all summer and he rows constantly every day he is fishing. In the fall he guides deer hunters across Montana for whitetails and muleys and is a great guide. I am proud to call him a friend. His name is Lindsey Channel and this is his company. http://www.channeloutfitters.com His upper body is extremely strong and thank the Lord for his strength! As we worked down closer to the sheep I let my friend go ahead to give him some time with the animal. It's the right thing to do.

 

 

 

I don't think this picture gives an accurate view of how darn steep it was in the bottom of this canyon. The ram had lodged in a narrow gully and because of his size we had a hard time to get him up and out of there. We caped him and deboned him as quick as we could, not having much space to move about. I put as much meat into game bags that I could carry in my pack and took meat in game bags to carry by hand. We did NOT leave a single piece of meat to waste. Our intention was to get the hand carried meat to the bottom of the canyon where there was a bit of water running in a rock filled creek and leave it overnight and come back for it the next day. When I first put my pack on I almost buckled! It took us longer than we expected to work our way down to the creek and here are pictures we took long before it got dark and long before we were out of water and exhausted. My pal who is simply a beast, carried not only his rifle but a heavy pack, the head, cape and a whole lot more sheep meat than I did. Here we are with about 3 hours to go before we got to a road. We felt good then, but little did we know we were in for the most grueling experience ever coming up quick.

 

The effort we put in was what this hunt was all about. We both knew we wanted to never set foot in that canyon again to fetch meat and we manned up and kept going, carrying the hand-held meat bags! Sweat had soaked my pack and there was nothing straight or flat for more than 3 steps. As day turned to night we were maybe a mile from the road as the crow flies and maybe 3 by walking. I had to keep up with my pal as he only had a head lamp to see where he was stepping. I have never been so dry in my life. I don't ever remember running track in high school and having such cotton-mouth! We were about delirious when we finally stepped up on the road about 9 p.m. and we both knew we couldn't have gone much further. Here is the meat the next morning. Sheep meat is darn tasty!

 

It was a great trip. Great weather, priceless memories.   To me, it’s hard work to have fun.  The effort is as enjoyable as the results.  It’s good to drink deeply of life.  There will be no mention of any "score" of this ram's horns.  To me, that is not what this animal represented.  I take the same approach to deer.   I like to hunt for big deer, not scores.

 

 

To live this long, to fend off winters, cats, coyotes, hunters, lions, eagles when young, this magnificent sheep deserved only tremendous respect. It will make a great trophy on the wall for my friend and his family for sure but the memories of that day and the work we put in to bring him out will last as long as well.  Maybe someday I will have the opportunity to kill a sheep.  I know I will be ready, God-willing.  Maybe I will have to go to work and figure out how to get a sheep tag in my life because I have always believed that if you really want to do something you will find a way.  If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.   Life isn't a straight line. I still think the best is yet to come. I hope you do too!

Thanks for coming along!