UPDATE:  The fence is whole once again. Now to figure out how to stop the dogs from tearing up more.

Well, I ran an errand this afternoon to come and find a note on my door that our dogs had escaped into the neighbor’s backyard. Yup, all three running around after shattering two six-inch wide redwood fence slats.

After wrangling them and getting them back in our yard, I headed down to the lumber yard to buy two new slats and a piece of pressboard to use as a temporary stop-gap measure to keep the dog on our property. After purchasing and loading it, I started for home only to have a third of the pressboard snap off and fly way.

Shit!

Turning around to retrieve it, I couldn’t find it as it was dark by the time I got out of the lumber yard. What piece of the wood I had left, I dragged out to the fence and nailed over the gap with the intent of completing the repairs in the morning by replacing the broken slats.

And then I wonder why my back never seems to get better.

It took us at least two-hours of standing in the rain to finally pick up our luggage in such a fashion that the Instructors were satisfied. It then that were we ordered inside the large building at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. That’s where the pace picked up as one Sergeant barked instructions and several others moved through the ragged line of young men.

They too were shouting instructions and cursing at us. It was all part of a larger plan, as I had been told by Dad, to keep everyone on the edge of confusion.

“They’re going to break you down into a basic unit and then build you up into a team unit,” he had said.

It was a struggling to keep pace with the different commands I was being given. They came at me so much faster than I could think.

Suddenly there was a break in the yelling and shouting as one Instructor stood with his hands firmly placed on his hips. He was standing over a kneeling and extremely confused enlistee.

“We got ourselves one of those California queers,” he barked.

The young man on his knees stopped moving. He had been pulled clothing from his bag as instructed.

Unfortunately, the clothing he had his hand appeared to be feminine. He had a terribly confused look on his face.

“Did you or did you not, double-check your bag at the airport as you were told?” the Instructor bellowed.

Another instructor shouted, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

They weren’t really questions as much as they were statements of intimidation. The young man’s lower jaw moved up and down, but no sound came from his mouth.

“What the hell is your name?” the first instructor asked in a deep voice.

“Dum-dum-dum-browski,” he finally stuttered.

The instructor reached down and yanked several pieces of clothing from the unzipped bag and held them up. Included in the handful was a couple of pair of women’s panties, a bra and a satin nightie.”

There were light snickers from the other Newbie’s as we would soon be called. We watched Dumbrowski as he nearly came to tears over the humiliation the piece of luggage had brought him.

Secretly, I knew that each man was glad that he had not made the same mistake and each man felt a sudden sense of guilt at the thought. I know, I was one of them.

“Well, Dumb-dumb-dumb-browski,” the instructor said, making fun of the man’s scared-stuttering, “Grab your gear and fall out to that table.”

Dumbrowski grabbed up everything he could in one large arm full and rushed to the far side of the room, where the Instructor had pointed. It was clear that he wasn’t the only one with the wrong luggage.

However, Dumbrowski was the only one to end up with a bag full of women’s clothing. He would go on to survive the night and eventually graduate from Basic Training a couple of months later.

My wife is such an honest soul. A couple of days ago she went to Walmart and bought a matching bath mat set.

Once she got them home, she realized that they wouldn’t work in our bathroom, so she made plans to return them. That’s when she discovered she had not paid for one of the rugs.

Initially, it concerned her that if upon returning these item that she might get arrested or something. I reassured her that she wouldn’t and more over she’d probably shock the person at customer service with her honesty.

And that’s exactly how it happened. The young woman behind the counter exclaimed, “Really?! Why?”

Mary answered, “Because it doesn’t belong to me.”

“Wow…thank you so much,” came the woman’s response.

I have a feeling Mary’s honesty came as more than a shock to that woman — I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a blessing to her — a reaffirmation that good people really do exist.

It was a long, dark corridor made of cinder-blocks. A single shaft of light from a cross-secting hallway was the only visible reference to this complex I was reconnoitering.

Quickly, but quietly I moved toward the stab of light knowing that slipping through it was a danger I had to face. Without warning, I was body slammed, carried by the momentum of my attacker into the lit hallway and smashed against the wall.

Whoever it was, they had my right arm wrenched so far up my back that I could feel the back of my hand against my left shoulder-blade. I struggle to get free but to no avail.

The searing pain in my right shoulder was so intense that I was certain it was about to tear from its socket. I found myself on my tip-toes and pushing against the wall with my free right hand trying to avoid the pain.

My attacker then proceeded to bash the right side of my head against the wall. Once finished with that they placed their left forearm against my neck at the base of my skull, pinning me against the rough surface of the blocks.

That’s when I saw him approaching. While I didn’t know him per se, I recognized the sadistic grin on his face and heard the guttural laughter as it echoed about the walls.

The pain was so white-hot throughout my body that I couldn’t fully understand what it was he was saying as his face drew closer and closer to mine. As he pressed his face forward, I literally seized the opportunity to fight back.

Since my left hand was still free, I reached up and grabbed him by the face, pressing my thumb and ring-finger deep into his temples. This brought more violence against me as he punched and thrashed against my grip.

Then I heard him scream my name, “TOM!”

This jolted me and after several more shouts of my name and as many more blows to my face and arm, I let go. That’s also when I woke up.

Another night terror and I had attacked my wife as she lay asleep next to me. There aren’t enough, “I’m so sorry,” to ease her fear or cover may shame.

As an actor, Jimmy Ferrara shared the screen with a number of Hollywood stars and owned the TWT (Tomorrow Will Tell) Ranch in central Nevada. Only 65-years-old at the time  of his murder on September 30, 1985 in Yuma Arizona, it would take more than 20-years to bring his killers to justice.

Born May 11, 1920, in New York City to Soloadose and Laura Ferrara, he’s described as a ‘bit-actor from the 1940’s,’ appearing opposite of Humphey Bogart, Roy Rogers, and Bill Elliot. And he also served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

It was while in the Coast Guard that Ferrara dated Rita Hayworth. According to Hollywood historians, Rita once snuck a bottle of bourbon to him after he got thrown in the brig for punching an officer.

He married actress Carole Gallagher on November 27, 1946, having been married once before, to Kathleen Cartmill, in 1942, whom he divorced in 1944 or 1945. On October 3, 1981, while visiting Reno, Nevada, Ferrara got hitched for a third-time to Delma Lee Troy.

Less than four-years later, this third marriage would prove his undoing.

Ferrara was last seen driving near his house with a friend Carly Axel, after he returned from a Nevada vacation. Half-an-hour later, Ferrara was found shot four times in the head and upper body.

Nearly 21-years later, Rick Kosterow, Donald White and Ferrara’s estranged wife, Delma found themselves charged with his murder. Her arrest was made as she shopped at the local Walmart in Fallon, Nevada, near her home.

Assistant Fallon Police Chief Ray Dolan said  Troy had lived in Fallon since 1987 based on records of contact with her over the years, which included a noise complaint filed by a neighbor and had lived at her current address since 2004 when she called to report a fire. He said he was contacted by Arizona detectives who had developed information that Troy was living in Fallon and that she was wanted for the decades-old murder.

Police had reopened the case after getting a series of phone calls from an ex-wife of one of the defendants, and another call from Kosterow’s uncle, whom Kosterow had swindled. The uncle told police Kosterow had admitted to the shooting years before.

Further investigation brought to light the fact that Troy, who was unhappy in her marriage, had been having an affair with Kosterow.  She told him she wanted Ferrara killed, and he enlisted White to help carry out the deed.

White pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received 20 years in prison. However, Kosterow decided to plead not guilty arguing that the case against him was “full of holes and there was no physical evidence” that linked him to the crime.

Both White and Troy testified against Kosterow.  The jury found Kosterow guilty of first-degree murder, felony first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and he was given life with the possibility of parole.

White pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given 20 years in prison. Troy eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and received 20-years in prison where she died in 2015.

Jimmie Ferrara rests in the Unionville Cemetery, in Unionville, Pershing County, Nevada, not far from his ranch that he loved.

UPDATE: Kristy Porter has been found safe. She apparently left of her own free will. Furthermore Sparks PD is now reporting that the family didn’t report her missing until Thanksgiving Day and that she has done this before.

Kristy Porter has been missing since November 11, 2016 and not a word had been mentioned in either the local press or law enforcement about her disappearance until a day ago. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old run-away named Cassie Kaufman has been highlighted several times.

The difference between the two cases and how they’ve been handles comes down to the difference between the agencies that are handling the cases. In the Kaufman case, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office immediately set about releasing information on the teen’s disappearance, calling her a possible-run away and providing updates.

In Porters’ case the Sparks Police Department has been woefully delinquent in providing the information about the woman’s disappearance and only seemed moved to make the case public after it was brought to light via social media and a national news organization working with the Missing Pieces Network. Unfortunately, it’s not unusual for the Sparks PD to withhold information from the public or the press as they have done in this situation – acting as if they are holding the combination to the main vault of Fort Knox.

28-year-old Kristy Porter, also known as Kristy Ipock, is white, 5’3″ tall, 120 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes and was last seen wearing a black and white print top and a lightweight black unbuttoned sweater with black dress pants. Anyone with information is asked to contact Sparks Police Detectives at 353-2225.

Kauffman is white, 5’8″ tall, 135 pounds with strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes. No one seems to have a description of McCarthy, (something that a real news outlet would want) other than to say he has dark, shoulder-length hair, brown-eyes and a goatee.

The one note the local media gleaned from the press release and seems to include in every update is that McCarthy is wanted by the Nevada Department of Parole and Probation on unrelated charges. Anyone with information about either of these two are asked to call (775) 328-3320.

As I stated back when she was running for Nevada Secretary of State, Barbara Cegavske is and always has been a Progressive – and yet the Republican Party embraced her whole-heartedly and without shame. And this week, she proved my assertion.

Cegavske opened a criminal probe, but not into the 9,200 returned letters from active voters listing vacant lots as home addresses or Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings or Edward Snowden being registered in Nevada Assembly District 15. And she didn’t open a probe into Democrats using illegal aliens and felons to register new voters, nor is she looking into all the Nevadans who reported showing up to the polls to vote only to be told they had already voted and were given a provisional ballot.

Nope. Nevada’s Progressive Republican Secretary of State opened a criminal investigation into the Republican State Party and whether workers failed to turn in voter registration forms for Democrats who Republicans registered. This is the third time she’s shown her true-colors.

Earlier this year, she investigated another GOP voter registration group, Strategic Allied Consulting, again focusing on Democratic registration forms not filed by the staff. Cegavske also investigated and then charged Republican political consultant Tony Dane.

The Dane case continues to this day.

So now, after failing to investigate allegations of voter fraud in Nevada, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice has stepped into investigate the 9,200 returned letters. And we all know how that probe is going to turn out.

So, what do Willie Nelson, Edward Snowden and Waylon Jennings have in common? They each voted in Clark County, Nevada’s Assembly District 15 this last Election Day.

Republican Stan Vaughan an Assembly District 15 candidate, who lost to Democrat Elliot Anderson, says the U.S. Postal Service returned 9,200 pieces of certified mail from voters in the district, including many listed as dead but still active on the voter rolls. Furthermore, Vaughan tested 200 pieces of that returned mail and found that 185 of the addressees had voted.

It was widely reported by witnesses that Nevada poll workers wore defeat-Trump t-shirts at the polls during the election which is against the law. There is even a videotape of a  Clinton supporter caught breaking the law as she registered people to vote.

A total number of 17,086 votes including the 9,200 fraudulent votes were cast in District 15 for both Republican and Democrat candidates. Add to this the fact that President-elect Trump lost by only 27,000 votes statewide in Nevada, making those 9,200 fraudulent votes more than third of the total margin.

Through November 2, the Secretary of State’s cumulative daily voter turnout rolls reports show that 10,000 people in District 15 had voted and two days later another 2,466 had voted. And as that happened, 1,900 votes by independents, third-party and non-partisan voters disappeared over that same time period.

As this occurred, another 3,200 Democrats cast ballots while only 1,000 Republicans voted. The total number of votes recorded during this two-day period was 2, 466 — a 180-percent voter turnout.

Vaughan reported the certified returned mail issue to Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who sent the issue back to Clark County. That means Clark County must investigate itself.

By 2012,  over 50 members from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) throughout the U.S. found themselves  convicted on various charges of election fraud. This includes 18 members of ACORN in Clark County, Nevada.

In fact, Las Vegas Judge Donald Mosley said the actions of ACORN made “a mockery of our election process,” calling ACORN’s crime “reprehensible” and saying it was “the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States.”

Eight-years later, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has asked for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states won by Trump. Her rationale behind the recount — voter fraud.

Stein hasn’t request a recount in Nevada and she never will.

Over the course of the last several months people have derided me for not supporting Donald Trump for President. Others lambasted me for failing to support Hillary Clinton as well.

Honestly, I haven’t publically supported a candidate for political office since 2005 when former Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons was running for office. I supported his candidacy openly because I know him personally.

My support garnered me one attack after another, until those who disliked my stance found a way to ‘publicly humiliate’ me by subjecting me to a full-blown ‘journalistic ethics review’ at the University of Nevada-Reno in which I was not invited to take part. The lesson was further engrained upon me, when Dean Heller, whom I supported because I know him too, turned out to be a Progressive Republican masquerading in Conservative duds.

(My apologies to Sharron Angle.)

And since I had people on both sides of this presidential election pissed at me for not saying who I would or would not vote for, I feel I did a good job at being needfully obscure. There is a reason for my obscurity: the truth.

While I said very little about who I would toss my ballot to, I did go in search of news and quotes (which I posted mostly to Facebook) that I believed best told the story from my Libertarian/Conservative/Constitutional slant. Oddly enough, I used the Progressive media to fulfill this quest.

And now that we are on the other side of the election, I can tell you that I was never going to support Clinton. Time and time again, I proved beyond a doubt that she is dishonest, power-hungry and generally dispossessed of good character to be anywhere near the Oval Office.

It was also a certainty that I wasn’t going to vote for an avowed Socialist (which is as good or bad as a Communist) like Bernie Sanders to hold sway over our federal life. Had the stars aligned properly — my choices would’ve been Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

Furthermore, I certainly was unwilling to throw my support to a third-party candidate not fully Constitutionally committed. Unfortunately, none of the third-party run-ups were ever in a position to garner enough votes, popular or electoral, to make much of a difference in the current structure of our nation’s private corporation’s political machinery.

That left one choice – Trump – which still gives me heartburn. I had to settle on one issue alone to help me push through what I still see as a very Progressive candidate, now President-elect. That issue came down to abortion and the fact that Trump made campaign promises to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

Yes, I know that campaign promises are jus’ that – promises, but I am a man of faith and I must have faith until proven otherwise. That brings me back to the subject of doing my best at obscuring my endorsement for Trump until the latter days of the campaign.

From where I am stand, I cannot see what his ‘game plan’ is moving forward as he builds his cabinet. After all, Trumps first move was to name a known Progressive Republican elitist as his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, whom I prefer to call ‘Rinse Pubis.’

I can smell the ‘payback’ from here — can’t you?

Yesterday, Trump nominated Elaine Chao – the wife of Progressive Republican elitist Senator Mitch McConnell – for Secretary of Transportation. All I can see from this nomination is more pork-barrel spending on wasteful projects that feed McConnell’s ego and does nothing for the betterment of the U.S.

Making matters worse, Trump selected Steven Mnuchin, a man known for his direct connection with Goldman-Sachs, as his future Treasury Secretary. This becomes disconcerting as our nation continues to face financial problems brought on by the bailing out of such monetary institutions.

Plus, Trump keeps wining and dining Mitt Romney, another known Progressive Republican elitist, who not only lead a ‘never-Trump’ campaign, but bragged in 2012 about how his personally designed healthcare system in Massachusetts, where he was governor, became the blueprint for Obamacare. Couple this to the fact he purposely lost the third and final debate with President Obama, leading to his second presidential election, and you know the man cannot be trusted.

It’s because I cannot see into the future that I no longer endorse candidates. So much can go wrong afterwards and there is no way of taking the endorsement back once given with out a massive amount of egg on your face.

(Ask Joe Heck about this.)

Finally, I’m worried that we’ve been taken for fools again as Trump’s administration begins to take shape. It is also because of such foolishness with appointments and nominations among other stupidities (like attacking free speech) that I will never run short of material to wordify on as this country attempts to pull itself back from the chaos of the last eight, miserable years.

And while I don’t get what it is Trump is up too yet, we can always hope that he is true to his word.

Cuba’s literacy rate has only increase by 20-pecent between the 50’s and today, according to UN figures. Compared to El Salvador’s’ increase from less than 40-percent to 88-percent or Peru’s increase from 50-percent to 95-pecent or Brazil’s 50-percent jump to 93-percent and the Dominican Republic’s rate which rose during the same time period rose from under 40-percent to 92-percent.

As for healthcare Cuba’s made even less progress. In fact, by 2012, the life expectancy for most Cubans had dropped with Chileans, Costa Ricans and Mexicans living slightly longer.

Back in 1960, Chileans had a life span seven years shorter than Cubans, and Costa Ricans lived more than two years less than Cubans on average. In 1960, Mexicans lived seven years shorter than Cubans.

Meanwhile, U.N. Director-General Irina Bokova, still drinking the ‘cool-aid,’ offered condolences for UNESCO on the passing of Fidel Castro‎ Ruz. In a letter addressed to Dictator Raul Castro, Bokova recalled Fidel’s “leadership in steering his I country through difficult times, fighting for the right to education, harnessing the power of achieving free and inclusive education for all through his initiative, ‘Yo si puedo,’” which translates to ‘I can.’

On the other hand, the Reverend Franklin Graham didn’t mince his words when he wrote, “Loved by few, hated by millions, his communist revolution deposed a dictator, but ushered in a socialist police state that drove the entire Cuban nation into complete poverty and oppression and to think that Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Keith Ellison and others wanted socialism as a model for our country today!”

Graham also warned: “The socialists are regrouping in great number right now, and they will come back strong, organized, and more determined than ever. This battle isn’t over.”

As for me, and as one who has fought Communism and other non-Constitutional forms of oppression in various places around the globe, I’d like to add that I hope your new life in Hell is more miserable than the life you created for others while you lived. And don’t expect me to pray for your soul anytime soon, you dirty, rotten bastard, as I’ve seen what you’ve done!