burning up in Bozeangeles

the Valley is very Smoke Filled today . Makes seeing hard on the roads  and breathing hard for those with health problems.

 

We sure could use some of that rain from Hurricane Issac.

Darwin Award Winner in Montana

KALISPELL, Mont. – A man dressed in a military-style "ghillie" suit and apparently trying to provoke reports of a Bigfoot sighting in northwest Montana was struck by two cars and killed, authorities said.
The man was standing in the right-hand lane of U.S. Highway 93 south of Kalispell on Sunday night when he was hit by the first car, according to the Montana Highway Patrol. A second car hit the man as he lay in the roadway, authorities said.

'He was trying to make people think he was Sasquatch so people would call in a Sasquatch sighting.'

- Trooper Jim Schneider

Flathead County officials identified the man as Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell. Trooper Jim Schneider said motives were ascertained during interviews with friends, and alcohol may have been a factor but investigators were awaiting tests.
"He was trying to make people think he was Sasquatch so people would call in a Sasquatch sighting," Schneider told the Daily Inter Lake on Monday. "You can't make it up. I haven't seen or heard of anything like this before. Obviously, his suit made it difficult for people to see him."
Ghillie suits are a type of full-body clothing made to resemble heavy foliage and used to camouflage military snipers.
"He probably would not have been very easy to see at all," Schneider told KECI-TV.
Tenley was struck by vehicles driven by two girls, ages 15 and 17, who were unable to stop in time, authorities said.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/27/man-trying-to-create-bigfoot-sighting-killed-in-montana/#ixzz24qdwDGwm

RNC Muzzles Ron Paul

  Not the biggest fan of extreme Conservativism but hyave little fiath in the moderate GOP to actually do what they say they will do. Like him or fear him you got to respect Ron Paul  he was always true to his beliefs. And now the RNC has cast him into the wilderness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/us/politics/ron-paul-passing-torch-to-a-libertarian-legion.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

TAMPA, Fla. — The future of what Ron Paul started rests with supporters like Ashley Ryan, who will attend Mr. Paul’s final presidential campaign rally here with decidedly mixed feelings.

Narayan Mahon for The New York Times

Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who will not speak at the Republican convention, will instead lead a valedictory rally for supporters on Sunday at the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome.

Ms. Ryan, a 21-year-old college student, will take over as Maine’s national committeewoman after sitting as a Paul delegate at this week’s Republican National Convention. But in a credentials dispute, hard-bargaining party leaders left Paul forces with only half the Maine delegates they thought they had won this year — a blunt reminder of Mitt Romney’s grip on the proceedings.

“It was a huge slap in the face,” Ms. Ryan said. Though her unseated Maine colleagues can attend with guest passes furnished by the Iowa delegation, she said, “I was very disappointed.”

Yet Mr. Paul’s supporters can celebrate achievements that an earlier generation of libertarians never tasted. Despite Tropical Storm Isaac, Mr. Paul is still scheduled to stage a valedictory rally on Sunday before an estimated 10,000 supporters at the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome. Its speakers, including Ms. Ryan, were planning to send the Republican Party a message about their commitment to grow in influence as the 77-year-old Mr. Paul moves on.

The libertarian movement has always boasted intellectual champions. But it has gotten something new from Mr. Paul, the iconoclastic veteran House member from Texas, whose small-government, low-tax, noninterventionist views found new attention in the Tea Party era and served as the focus of a determined grass-roots effort to shake up the Republican establishment.

Over three separate presidential bids, Mr. Paul has given libertarians a leader from the world of electoral politics, a beachhead within the party and a passionate if disparate army of activists. The onetime obstetrician has even bequeathed the movement a successor: his son, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

We live in Interesting times

  The Chaos that faces us  has to make us appreciate the past and I guess that's the attraction of the Conservative movement. We want  what we remember  from our youth, the sad thing is a lot of people both on the right and the left want it with out working for it .  I am waiting to see what the talking heads will actually promise to do in the conventions. Then we will have to decide who to believe .

Ending the Deadlock in Washington

 Been obsessed with the Up Coming Republican Convention. NO I am a tree Hugging independent  and    not enamored  with Mitt Romney  but I have come to the conclusion that we need to end the deadlock one way or the other in Washington.  The question is can we trust either party to follow through on the changes needed ?

We Need a ‘Conservative’ Party



THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There has been lots of talk that Paul Ryan’s nomination ensures that we’ll now have a "real" debate about the role of government. That’s actually funny. The bar for this campaign is so low that we celebrate the fact that it might include a serious debate about one of the four great issues of the day, though even that is not clear yet. And even if Ryan’s entry does spark a meaningful debate about one of the great issues facing America — the nexus of debt, taxes and entitlements — there is little sign that we’ll seriously debate our other three major challenges: how to generate growth and upgrade the skills of every American in an age when the merger of globalization and the information technology revolution means every good job requires more education; how to meet our energy and climate challenges; and how to create an immigration policy that will treat those who are here illegally humanely, while opening America to the world’s most talented immigrants, whom we need to remain the world’s most innovative economy.

But what’s even more troubling is that we need more than debates. That’s all we’ve been having. We need deals on all four issues as soon as this election is over, and I just don’t see that happening unless "conservatives" retake the Republican Party from the "radicals" — that is, the Tea Party base. America today desperately needs a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century "conservative" opposition to President Obama, and we don’t have that, even though the voices are out there.

Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on debt was set by Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has challenged the no-tax lunacy of Grover Norquist and served on the Simpson-Bowles commission and voted for its final plan (unlike Ryan). That plan included both increased tax revenues and spending cuts as the only way to fix our long-term fiscal imbalances. Give me a Republican Party that says we have to put real tax revenues and spending cuts on the table to solve this problem, and you’ll get a deal with Obama, who has already offered both, although not at the scale we need. True conservatives know that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used both tax revenue and spending cuts to fix budget shortfalls. Ryan-led G.O.P. radicals say "no new taxes," find all the savings through spending cuts. That’s never going to happen — and shouldn’t.

Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on immigration followed the lead of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of the News Corporation. Bloomberg and Murdoch recently took to the road to make the economic case for immigration reform. "I think we are in a crisis in this country," The Times quoted the Australian-born Murdoch, who’s now a naturalized American, as saying last week. "Right now, if we get qualified people in, there shouldn’t be any nonsense about it." Regarding the "so-called illegal Mexicans," Murdoch added, "give them a path to citizenship. They pay taxes; they are hard-working people. Why Mitt Romney doesn’t do it, I have no idea, because they are natural Republicans."

Imagine if the G.O.P. position on energy and climate was set by Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina Republican congressman (who was defeated by the Tea Party in 2010). He now runs George Mason University’s Energy and Enterprise Initiative, which is based on the notion that climate change is real, and that the best way to deal with it and our broader energy challenge is with conservative "market-based solutions" that say to the fossil fuel and wind, solar and nuclear industries: "Be accountable for all of your costs," including the carbon and pollution you put in the air, and then we’ll "let the markets work" and see who wins.

Imagine if G.O.P. education policy was set by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, without having to cater to radicals, who call for eliminating the Department of Education and view common core standards as some kind of communist conspiracy. Mr. Bush has argued that a conservative approach to education for 21st-century jobs would embrace more effective teacher evaluation and common core standards, but add a bigger element of choice in the form of charter schools and vouchers, the removal of union rules that limit new technology — and combine it all with greater autonomy and accountability for individual principals. When parents can choose and school leaders can innovate, good things happen.

We are not going to make any progress on our biggest problems without a compromise between the center-right and center-left. But, for that, we need the center-right conservatives, not the radicals, to be running the G.O.P., as well as the center-left in the Democratic Party. Over the course of his presidency, Obama has proposed center-left solutions to all four of these challenges. I wish he had pushed some in a bigger, consistent, more daring and more forceful manner — and made them the centerpiece of his campaign. Nevertheless, if the G.O.P. were in a different place, either a second-term Obama or a first-term Romney would have a real chance at making progress on all four. As things stand now, though, there is little hope this campaign will give the winner any basis for governing. Too bad — a presidential campaign is a terrible thing to waste.

Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan

Ayn Rand is the high priestess of undiluted capitalism and a champion of looking after number one. With an estimated 25m copies of her books in print, including Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, her ideas about small government and unfettered markets still resonate in conservative circles, with a young Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, being a big fan.
"I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we're engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand," Ryan told an audience in 2005. "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are."
The Russian-born American author, a refugee from Soviet communism in the 1920s, wrote at a time when collectivism was widely seen as a blueprint for the future. However, her vision was for a free society where the strong flourished and egoism ruled over altruism. In Rand's world, material achievement had spiritual value and unproductive citizens were "parasites," "looters" and "moochers". There are no state benefits, no national healthcare.
She believed that humans are rational and self-interested, thriving if left to their own devices. Rand said, : "Making more money means we are making more use of our brains." Admiration of the rich only stopped with those who inherited their wealth, whom she viewed as living well from cronyism and nepotism.
Rand argued her theories with almost messianic passion, winning a coterie of acolytes , including eminent members of the Reagan administration (notably Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, who became a lifelong fan.) Another devotee is the influential conservative talk radioshock jock Rush Limbaugh.


Read more: http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/bfb762b2cdab2447befd789c78f424c4/paul-ryan-grew-up-on-ayn-rand#ixzz23up5ZbvM

Paul Ryan and the GOP right

  I guess you have to wonder if the Republican Party actually has the  grit and willpower to do what they say needs to be done.  The big risk for Romney is Ryan seems more presidential . Heres a good view of the issue by the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/19271041

bridger Ridge Run

Would love to have the health and discipline to run this 20 mile run along the spine of the Jim Bridger Mountains. I have hiked part of the route. It is beautiful but you have to have the stamina and courage to run some of the path

Wow where did 15 days go

  Lost two weeks there some how. Crud in the goat family, burst water line and flood in kitchen and Smoke all over only excuse.

   Lots of fires burning in the area 4 in Yellowstone . A couple big property fires just in the Harvest Creek area. Insurance claims or bad Mortgage ?

 Now here's a lap dog

Hows the economy where you live ? I see a heck of a lot of people shopping the Smiths bargain bin and buying discounted past due food. Yet its hard to find a rental if you are looking to move into town. The anger level is up too.

GOP convention coming up. Looking forward to seeing if the Republicans are serious about getting elected and are serious about takling our deficit problems.