The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp by Steve Washam based on a telling by George Gordon

Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions--especially his traps--and drove south.

Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the
Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town's local citizens. The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?" Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy.

"You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.

"I am. I'm from North Dakota," said the stranger.

"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained. "A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!" He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp."

Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!" "Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They're wild and they're dangerous. You can't trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself."

Every man nodded his head in agreement.

The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"

They said, "Well, yeah, its due south--straight down the road."
But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he'd meet a terrible fate.

He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon."[This is where I figured out where this story was going... Uncle Romulus].  And they did.

Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road.
The townsfolk thought they'd never see him again.

Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.

Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn.
This went on for a month. And then two months, and three.

Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp.

The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the
subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.

One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn. He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove.  He took off his gloves.  "Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they're all hungry. I've got to get them to market right away."

"You've WHAT in the swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously. "I have six thousand hogs penned up.  They haven't eaten for two or three days, and they'll starve if I don't get back there to feed and take care of them."

One of the old timers said, "You mean you've captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"

"That's right."

"How did you do that?  What did you do?" the men urged, breathlessly.

One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"

"I lost my brother!" cried another.

"I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third.

The trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were
wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn't come out.
I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the
wagon. Every day I'd spread a sack of corn.

"The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first.

"I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that
it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they
were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time.

"The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn
in the clearing.

"At first they wouldn't come to the clearing. It was too far. It was
too open. It was a nuisance to them.

"But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in
the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own
snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it
was easier to come to the clearing every day.

"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get
their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots
and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all
free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no
bounds upon them.

"The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence
posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush
so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after all, they were
just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the
brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.

"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.

"The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left
a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through
the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one
rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence--they could always jump over the rail and flee in
any direction at any time.

"Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn't feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them--but I only fed them every other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.

"Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every other day."

"So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the fence.

"But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will.

"Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well."

"Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me take these pigs to market."

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The price of free corn

The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is
about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.

Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only
individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments
are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions
being subverted by the command and control structures of federal
"revenue sharing" programs.

Please copy this parable and send it to all of your state and
local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them:
"Just say NO to federal corn."

THE BACON YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN..

Obama Wants Republicans to Compromise--Now?

Fat chance!
Now that the GOP has gained the power in both houses, I hear the dems talking about "compromise".  
Funny, but I don't remember hearing that word from them when they held the Senate.

So I assume from that the dems want us to compromise so they can have their way on bills important to them.  Uh-huh!  I hear you, dems!  
Ain't gonna' happen.

Now is not the time for compromise.  While we hold the power it's time to cancel the junk the dems put in place by Executive Order(EO), which was done regularly by Obama--overstepping his boundaries a president.
An EO is intended to help the Executive branch of the government, to organize, or focus upon.  It's never been intended to create law, or add regulations to the citizenry.  Doing so make the EO illegal.
But, of course, Obama does it anyway, in the hopes that he will somehow flummox and bamboozle the rest of the populace who still don't believe the crap he's peddling.

The president does not have the power to go around congress, no matter how often they claim they do.  That's the truth of it.
Saying so every day does not make it true.

If necessary, I think he will find out after the pubs drag his bony butt into a court of law who will, despite wishing they could find for Obama, will be forced to find for the Constitution.

And if Obama trys to push through those bills he believes he needs BEFORE the new congress, he will pay dearly next year when he finds congress will not only refuse to cooperate, or compromise, but will take over the running of the government despite his protestations.

Watch for freedom, people.  It's not far off.

So What Did We Accomplish?

A couple of good things---we grabbed enough seats to get a majority in the Senate.  (The House republicans probably went back to sleep!)

Biggest accomplishment, we got rid of Speaker Reid.  (Although it remains to be seen whether or not Mitch is better.  He HAS promised to first, return the Senate to "normal"--whatever that means.  Difficult to do with a liberal!)

Then there was the speech by Obama claiming he intends to "cooperate" with the pubs, which I really doubt.  I just can't see a guy who wants to be a commie dictator, "cooperating" with anybody.
After all, he's already threatened to use an EO on immigration--which doesn't really sound much like cooperation, does it?

I predict the pubs will sort through the stack of bills on EX-speaker Reid's desk to see what they can present to the president for signature.  At which point the muzzie will start screaming about racism and veto the lot!

There will then be a few feeble attempts to control the budget, but the muzzie will use "discretionary" funds to do as he danged pleases, thereby running  the N/debt to 25gazillion before the end of his term.

At that point, we should all have moved to New Zealand, or Aussie land or, (God forbid,) Canada, (brrrr) just to get away from the madness here.
Anybody see any other possibilities?  Outside, of course, all out, total annihilating rebellion?

--Please??

What Happens if You Vote for Democrats?

Based on the past 6 years, it's a sure thing for the rest of Obama's term, you'll get more actions in defiance of the Constitution.  As a matter of fact, we now have stories of how Obama will handle illegal immigration problem--by giving them work permits--as soon as midterm elections are over.
And he'll do it despite the fact he may be faced with a Republican controlled Congress.
It will be just one more in a long line of dictatorial actions by this president.

Don't hold your breath if you think the republicans will oppose him.  They, instead, are thinking ahead to the day they have a republican POTUS.  They are looking forward to using those Executive Orders exactly the same way Obama has.  They may even thank Obama for opening this door.  They won't, any of them, consider the average citizen's desires--although they'll certainly tell you they have.

Of course, the average Joe Blow hasn't a clue as to what he wants.  After all, approximately 49% of them voted for Obama--twice!  They don't care if he becomes a dictator, because they believe they'll still get all the freebies currently being given to them.
What they forget is, somebody has to pay the piper for all those freebies; for all those give-aways.  The other half of the country has to have well paying jobs so they can be taxed for the money to pay for all of those freebies.
But 49% of the country believe the freebies are owed to them.

The country is in a death spiral and anyone who wants to reverse the spiral is called a "far right-wing fanatic", simply because he wants the country to live under the laws of the Constitution.
He wants free speech--back.
He wants the freedom to choose his own health care.
He wants the government to honor his right to bear arms; to worship his own religion and and not be forced to accept one he does not believe in.
He wants a fair tax for himself and for the companies he works for, because he knows jobs are created when companies are not taxed to death, or forced to move to foreign countries in order to survive.  For every company that leaves the country, countless numbers of jobs go with them and this condition can be attributed directly to the democrats tightening regulations and corporate taxes.

We are not Europe.
But Obama wants us to look like them.
We are not the middle East.
But Obama wants us to believe we are a Muslim nation, even though the numbers give the lie to his words, as usual.
But we are not a Muslim nation, either.  We have been in the majority Christian, since the signing of the Bill of rights and that majority still exists.

The only answer to all of these problems is to vote for local people who will actually heed the will of the people.  I sincerely hope all of you will do that.  If not, you will bear responsibility for the destruction of what was once the shining beacon of freedom for all nations.

We Are Not a Democracy, but a Republic and Voting Should Reflect That Fact

Too many people mistake our country to be a democracy.

 

We have reached the stage where the "have nots" rule the "haves", voting themselves all kinds of largess from the taxpayer cupboard--which is becoming pretty bare about now.  (Check the national debt as a measure of just how bare are our cupboards!)

Since we have a republic, the government already has the power to change, or establish voting requirements.  A good example is the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.  (What’s to prevent them from lowering it to 16—or less?)

We are NOT a “democracy”.  We are a democratic republic.  The rules and laws of a republic are different than those of a democracy.

In a true democracy, the majority rules in all cases, regardless of any consequences for individuals or for those who are not in the majority on an issue.

The main difference between a republic and a democracy is the charter or constitution that limits power in a republic, often to protect the individual's rights against the desires of the majority.

Using this guideline, we allow our congress the power to vote new laws, etc.  The president is given the power to veto, or sign the legislation.

(We’ve abandoned those requirements.)

The constitution specifies who, in government, has the power to legislate, or vote.  Since the power is given specifically to congress, etc., it does not specifically give those powers to other government workers.

Could there be a good reason for that?  Could it be that government workers do NOT have the right to vote by omission from the Constitution?

It’s obvious we need restrictions on who votes.  Do the mentally ill have the right, in all cases, to vote?  Do the violent, mentally ill have that right?

Somewhere, common sense and a smattering of intelligence should be returned to our voting, simply by eliminating the votes of those who now get a free ride, those who live entirely on charities, or government welfare.

It's time to stop the greedy from voting and put them back to work.