If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time, you’ve gotten one of those emails from some person who has a relative that skimmed millions from some (other) corrupt small country dictator and now have no way (except with your help) to get their illicit millions out of their country. Those people send out emails on a fairly routine basis and, up until now, I’ve always figured they were scammers trying to steal my money. Some of their emails must work, though, because they keep trying.

However, just today I got not one but two emails from Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI! And he is so helpful and considerate!

Through our Fraud Monitory Unit we have also noticed that over the past you have been transacting with some impostors and fraudsters who have been impersonating the likes of Prof. Soludo of the Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Anderson, Wallace Fred, none officials of Oceanic Bank, Zenith Banks, Kelvin Young of HSBC, Smith Williams, Daniel Wilson, Ibrahim Sule, Dr. Philip Morgan, Dr. Usman Shamsuddeen and some imposters claiming to be The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Cyber Crime Division of the FBI gathered information from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (ICCC) formerly known as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) of how some people have lost outrageous sums of money to these imposters. As a result of this we hereby advise you to stop communication with any one not referred to you by us.

See? They’ve verified that the guy they’re recommending I use is okie-dokie! And, they’re using acronyms. Nigerian scammers couldn’t know how dependent we are on acronyms. It can’t get any better than this, can it? Yes, it can!

We guarantee 100% receipt of your payment, because we have perfected everything in regards to the release of your Two million and three hundred thousand us dollars to be 100% risk free and free from any hitches as its our duty to protect citizens of the United States of America.

Risk free and free of any hitches! Wow! True, it’s only $2.3 million now instead of $26 million, but I’m not greedy. I’ll do ok on that. Not as lavish a lifestyle, but then I’m not some Kardashian-wanna-be or anything, just a regular guy.

And, if that wasn’t enough, they gave me the FedEx tracking numbers for two other people who have gotten their money. I’m so pumped about this.

N. O. T. And what am I talking about? It’s the latest Republican attempt at understanding what the people really want,  www.americaspeakingout.com. First, it’s good that they’re actually asking. That’s a positive stance. However, it is becoming a “Oh, look. This is the internet, isn’t it?”

So, what kinds of input are we getting? Well, we the people are recommending changes to the educational system, border security, and all sorts of hot button issues. I’m certain it will transform the Republican Party.

• A ‘teacher’ told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish! And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story.
• Legalize Marijuana, cause, like, alcohol is legal. Man. Also.
• Build a castle-style wall along the border, there is plenty of stone laying around about there.
• We coddle children too much. They need to spend their youth in the factories. End child labor laws.
• Tax anyone who gets an abortion $1,000,000.
• What is real and what is just an illusion? Does all truth evaporate like a cloud of fog in the sun? If I email someone, how do I know it is really them responding to me, and not just some boilerplate automatic response, or their publicist? What about the private postal services? Where to they stand on the issue of reality vs. illusion?
• Politicians should be held accountable for promises they make. “Official campaign promises” should be recorded somewhere official, and public. If they break one of them, they should be fired. This is just basic American values of Integrity and Honesty. Politicians getting elected on a vaporware platform of lies and empty promises, should be made a thing of the past.
• I think we need to send a clear signal to all aliens who do not support are trupes to Get Out! Seriously what they’re doing is something very awful
• Don’t let the illegals run out of Arizona and hide. . . . I think that we should do something to identify them in case they try to come back over. Like maybe tattoo a big scarlet ‘I’ on their chests — for ‘illegal’!!!
• BP is creating a new race of faster dolphins. These fish are unable to compete against the fish of other countries, but now their increased lubrication will allow them to fly through the water. Faster fish = good.

Somehow, like an unstoppable force of nature, armadillos have made it across the Mississippi River to the Southern part of Tennessee. Over the weekend a cousin and I met in a little community in southern Maury County. We saw three dead armadillos along side of the road.

So did they just walk across on the I-40 bridge or have they been busy making little rafts and floating across?

I met an honorable man last night. I went out (which is uncommon in itself – I’m a homebody for the most part) and attended a Robertson County Democratic Party meeting. I think there were a dozen people there, period, and it wasn’t an impressive or exciting meeting. Except for a candidate who had come to speak, it was duller than old sun-bleached paint. No, actually it was worse than that. They’re all nice people and they believe in what they are doing, but I have serious doubts they could get Cesar Millan elected as a dogcatcher.

The candidate was the honorable man. His name is Ben Leming. He’s from the Tullahoma area. He enlisted in the Marines right out of high school and was nominated to the Naval Academy. He spent a tour in Iraq piloting medevac choppers and a second tour overseas as an intelligence officer. He’s moved back to Tennessee and running for Bart Gordon’s seat. He wants to put people first and politics last. The marines teach men like Ben how to lead and they do a good job of it. They teach them how to make smart decisions and make them quickly.

Even more than that, the marines also value common sense and this man seems to have it. After he spoke about himself, he opened the floor up to questions and the people there hit him with questions about how he feels about every hot button subject from the second amendment to abortion, education and immigration. He’s honest enough to say he doesn’t have all the answers and wants input from the people of middle Tennessee. He’s worth a look. From the Examiner:

“I plan to bring common sense values, civility and engagement to solving the challenge facing our nation today,” Leming said in his video conference today. “It makes good common sense to close our budget gap. We’re borrowing from China and other nations, with no plan for future sustainability.

“Let’s be clear about this. The Clinton administration created a budget surplus, and the last administration took no time in cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and waging two unfunded wars.”

“We need more leaders in Washington that understand what it means to go to war,” he said. “We need leaders who know how to take care of those currently serving and the veterans coming home.”

“I understand. My wife had breast cancer. We have to live with a pre-existing condition for the rest of our lives. We have a home in Camp Lejeune, N.C., where I was stationed, and we can’t sell it due to the lagging economy.”

Dear legislators,

The past two years have been one of the worst recessions in my memory and I’ve been around more than six decades. Unemployment is too high and the state doesn’t have enough revenue coming in to pay for things we citizens have come to expect as services the government provides. Most of middle Tennessee was subjected to the worst flood since 1937 with damage in the billions.

A responsive government would respond by trying to do what it could to mitigate these issues as best it could. It is long past time when you as a government — and we as a people – draw lines in the sand of our state (and national) budgets. We need to determine as a people just what it is that we want our government to do – not just in the grand scheme of things, but in detail. Once we figure that out, then we need to see what it will cost and figure out how to pay for it. If it costs more than we’re willing to spend as a people, then we need to make the hard decisions – what do we stop doing?

It’s no longer good enough to say we need to educate our children, for example. That’s a “No shit, Sherlock” situation. But it is time to stop just talking about it and time to do something concrete, detailed, and specific to remedy the situation. Even if that means turning schools into test areas all across the state where school systems try different things to see what works and what doesn’t, that’s fine – at least they would be doing something and trying to achieve better results. That might mean year-round school – it might not. When I was in grade school and high school we learned – we had to. What’s the difference between then and now?

Tennessee no longer needs to exist as one of the bottom five states in every metric (except corruption). It is no longer sufficient to say “Thank God for Mississippi.” Our legislature ought to be doing all they can to encourage industries to move here and small businesses (and large ones) to expand. I’ve always thought pushing state purchasing to buy local would be a good start – if it’s made here it gets preference in state buying, for example. That would build jobs here.

Instead of doing things like this to help the state, the latest email from my local legislator emphasized the legislature’s significant work on revamping legislation to allow persons with concealed carry permits for handguns to bring them into both bars and restaurants, a bill that would have made English our official language, and a bill designed to reduce vote fraud by requiring voters to say they are here legally before they vote.

Discouraging people who speak Japanese or German from moving here to run auto plants does not build more jobs – it  runs them off. Passing a law like this and then ruefully amending it to exclude Spanish, German and all the other languages our citizens speak makes you look like morons — and that reflects on me.  Letting someone carry a pistol into Olive Garden does not improve our children’s education. Men and women who have come into the country illegally are not trying to vote, they’re too busy working their butts off to make a life for their families.

These are not responsive actions that work for the betterment of Tennessee. These bills are pandering. It’s the economy, stupid. If this was the first time you’d done this, that would be one thing, but it isn’t. you haven’t justified your salaries for years and years. There’s only one thing to do. I’m a manager of people in the real world and in every manager’s life there comes a time when it is time to say “Enough!” and this is it.

You’re fired. Every damn one of you, for incompetence. You can’t do the work and someone needs to.

It would be nice if it was that straight-forward, but it isn’t. It may take a while but I will work against each and every one of you from here on out. I may not always be successful, but I will not stop trying.

I hate cancer. It’s a vicious bastard of a disease and it comes in as many forms as there are body parts. Some cancers have gotten more research and prospects for survival have improved for several types of cancer, especially breast cancer. We have several friends (too many) who have gotten that diagnosis – it’s malignant, it’s cancer. Fortunately, most have survived their bout with cancer and gone on past that ten year window where they can escape the immediate fear.

Even colon cancer has gotten press coverage and research funding since Katie Couric got a colonoscopy during the Today show to promote awareness. Awareness and testing are good things and they help discover lots of cancers at a stage when they can be conquered.

Cancer is divided up into stages – how far it has advanced in terms of impact and spread – one through four. The higher the number, the lower the survivability for most cancer. Stage one cancer is generally treatable in many cases, but not all. The survivability at five years is 10-14 percent for lung cancer. What does 10% survivability mean? That means ninety percent of the people who are diagnosed with stage one lung cancer are going to die within five years. Ninety. Percent. Stage two and three are worse – single digits.

When you tell someone you know that you have a friend who has been diagnosed with lung cancer, the first thing they say is “How long have they smoked?” It’s considered as a self-inflicted wound type of cancer since it’s so tied to smoking. But it’s not just from smoking. The second largest cause of lung cancer is radon emissions. Radon is emitted into houses when they’re built on limestone rock, like the rock that underlays all of Tennessee.

My friend Ann has never smoked – nor has her husband , her parents, her sister, or her son. Except for me, I don’t think she’s known all that many smokers and they moved away to Memphis decades ago. But she has lung cancer. She didn’t say what stage it’s in, but it was discovered due to lumps in her neck – lymph nodes that were swollen. It’s probably not stage one. She’s a teacher and if she approached her teaching the same way she did everything else she’s ever done, she’s a good one.

Cancer doesn’t just kill people though. It also rips apart the lives of everyone close to someone with cancer – husbands and wives and children. Children get hit hard – when our godsons’ mother was diagnosed, you could see the changes in them – they became more depressed and sullen at times. Spouses try to put on the “we’ll beat this together” mask of strength and fear but deep inside they know that it’s an act and there’s damn little we involved, just support and strength, even when it’s just pretend strength. Because, in the end, they don’t have cancer, they’re just living and loving someone in a sea of unknowns who does.

If you have some spare time, say a prayer for Ann, Dennis and Wesley and all the other families out there going through this hell. I’m the spouse of a cancer survivor. I quit smoking after too many years of doing it. If you smoke, stop before it kills you.

There are always lots of car insurance ads on television. Geico (I do love the gecko), Progressive (she’s ditzy but somehow that’s OK), Allstate (Dennis Haysburt is completely believable), Liberty Mutual (OK, I do watch Antiques Roadshow), and the newer entries (or newer to me) like 21Century & esurance.

But somehow they all advertise how much less their rates are than everyone else – hundreds less. And some are. Our car insurance expires later this month so I started looking to see what differences I could find. Mind you, both Geico & Progressive have been pretty low for us for years. Sometimes one is a bit lower than another, but they’ve always been comparable. So I googled insurance ratings and ended up at JD Power. Those peoplerate everything. And you can sort their ratings. So I sorted them to see who had the best ratings (Amica Mutual) and went to find out what their car insurance rates were. Ginormous! It’s like they want six more months of premiums from me for one year. And they had 5 gold balls (which is an odd rating scale, but never mind) for pricing. Maybe that’s because you have to give them actual gold … or actual balls.

Anyway, I moved on. State Farm was #2 but I always heard they would drop you in a heartbeat if you ever had an accident or a ticket, so I skipped by them and went on to the usual suspects. It’s strange – there seem to be clusters of insurance costs. One cluster is composed of the traditional insurers like Allstate, State Farm, Amica, etc. They’re traditional insurers with local agents and adjusters and their rates are higher – not hugely higher (except for Amica) and they tend to want to look back for 5 years when it comes to tickets and accidents, but they also want a couple of hundred or more a year from me. Then there’s the Geico & Progressive cluster – you usually only see a difference if you switch from one to the other because they’ll give you a one-time $50 break if you switch.

But esurance was the odd one out. They were significantly lower than Progressive or Geico – like $300 less. That’s enough to be a temptation – but then you wonder what are they doing without to cut costs? Inquiring minds want to know. So, shout out if you have or know anyone with esurance. Got an opinion?

I had postedabout an opportunity for a certain cell phone provider to improve it’s service and customer appeal recently, and it seems that the gub’mint feels the vendors could do better as well. An FCC official recently stated:

We’re issuing a Public Notice to see if there’s any reason that American carriers can’t use similar automatic alerts to inform consumers when they are at risk of running up a high bill. This is an avoidable problem. Avoiding bill shock is good for consumers and ultimately good business for wireless carriers as well.

It really makes no sense. If I go out and incur a large charge on my credit card, they’re on the phone with me almost instantly making sure it’s a valid charge and no one’s stolen my card, charging away. I run up a cell phone bill that’s ten times larger than normal and I don’t even get a text message. Stupid.

Before we moved up on the ridge, we lived out near the Narrows of the Harpeth state historical area in southern Cheatham County. Before we bought out there, we got a friend at TEMA (TN Emergency Management Agency) to provide us a flood map to check the roads out. They were all above the 500 year flood plain except in a spot or two, so we figured things would probably be fine. However, we crossed the Harpeth three different times on the way to our house once we left Highway 70. The first bridge was right at the bottom of a pretty steep hill and it was an old steel bridge that had been there for a while. It was also one lane. You had to wait for someone to finish crossing before it was your turn. It was kinda neat and there wasn’t a lot of rust, so it became a symbol of leaving the hectic demands of work behind and becoming mellow. (However, when that hill was covered in ice and snow it was a nightmare!)

The first time it flooded out there, we went down our road and were faced with an intersection that was 5′ or so under water. You couldn’t even see the roads running off towards White Bluff or towards the game reserve – they were covered. So we took the back way out the unpaved country lane and headed out to see how things were. We made it to that old bridge and it was amazing. The river, which was normally around 25 feet below that bridge, had come up so high that there wasn’t enough room under it for a canoe to make it. The amount of water was incredible. The road was flooded a little farther on, so we were stuck. It took 3 or 4 days to decline.

Some time this century they replaced that old one-lane bridge with a brand new concrete one, all modern industrial-looking without any character to it at all. When they finished it, the new bridge was another ten or twelve feet higher. That concrete bridge is the one in this video taken by someone who lives out there now.