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BILLY RAY CHITWOOD - Amazon Book Reviews

2014 - A Critical Year For 'We The People'

1/8/2014

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Joe Public’s Political PerspectivePosted on January 8, 2014 by billyraychitwood1


2014 – A Critical Year – BUY THIS BOOK!

JUST PUBLISHED! Buy it at http://www.goo.gl/WPweKh Amazon US andhttp://www.goo.gl/CGp7bm Amazon UK

Simple message from a simple man! I want no government that chips away at my freedom and liberty, that denies me free access to my aspirations and dreams, that would dare make personal decisions for me, that deceives me with its rhetoric! It is, indeed, a critical 2014 that ‘We The People’ must face. My plea, my prayer, is that we do not let our democracy slip away.

You can follow me at Twitter (@brchitwood)

Other links:

http://www.billyraychitwood.weebly.com (My main website and blog)

http://www.about.me/brchitwood

http://www.goo.gl/fuxUA (My books)

http://thefinalcurtain1.wordpress.com (My blog)

http://facebook.com/billyray.chitwood

http://linkedin.com/billyraychitwood)

(Blog awards not shown in this post!)


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Complaining Comes Easy

10/13/2013

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  • Complaining Comes EasyPosted on October 13, 2013 by billyraychitwood1

  •                                            Complaining Comes Easy

    Seems it’s always a good time to complain about the government, one side or another, whether it be the war in Afghanistan, the year-ago Benghazi raid, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and weapons of mass destruction…leaving aside the more mundane complaints on the economy and everyday domestic living. Politics, a rather historically ugly business, just might be at an all time high in the area of complaints. Choose your side and go for it.

    If you’re a democrat, you are complaining about the republicans throwing obstructive stones into the government machinery…delaying yet again a debt ceiling hike that will keep all systems afloat and the credit-rating bogeyman away…being divisive and ornery about Obama Care by asking for a delay in funding…using uncivil and deceptive tactics for political gains in the 2014 elections…uncaring about the needy and the poor folks among us who need help…only interested in the corporations and wealthy Americans…so on and so on.

    If you’re a republican, you are complaining about the democrats building constituency points…catering to certain groups to build their base under false promises…bankrupting the nation with irresponsible redistribution of wealth…taking away incentive of business investments and entrepreneurs to forge ahead and create new jobs in a private enterprise system…creating a mammoth healthcare bill that is uniformly unmanageable and easily the most unintelligible mass of obscure legislation ever created…defying or otherwise skirting constitutional safeguards with executive orders…closing down national parks and stopping payments to widowed families of our fallen military…about a president who is always campaigning and has no time for negotiations and governing… so on and so on.

    I should mention, too, the millions of people who go to work each day and have not the time to keep up with these affairs of government, yet are affected by the decisions that are made by our leaders. They are busy with their jobs and only hear the sound bites of the media and others who claim knowledge on the issues. In their way, they complain as well, to the extent of their understanding.

    As for me, politics and religion are subjects better avoided because they are subjects that draw too much ire and bellicosity. But, what the heck! I’ll show some bias here in my more or less conservative leaning – ‘more or less’ because it was my hope that President Obama was perhaps going to make a difference when he was first elected five years ago with his voice of ‘change’. It is my feeling now, based on this divisiveness in our government, that Mr. Obama seems to be an extraordinary campaigner and orator but does very little in governing. In my opinion, he has reneged on his ‘change’ promises. After all, in almost five years, one would expect so much more from a leader than his landmark legacy ‘Obama Care’ with all of its massive bureaucratic details and expense. In fact, it amazes me that this president still enchants so many people, citizens and media alike… Surely, an NBA or NFL coach would be looking for work at this point in time.

    Perhaps it’s the ‘entitlement’ personality of this man which in many ways is noble. We all want to help from government revenues those among us who really need assistance, the disabled, the aged, and the homeless. If that were not the case, uncaring ogres would be members of both parties. What seems to be missing is an oversight metric for all the entitlement spending by our government, some way to determine fraud and easy manipulation. Maybe it’s too expensive to administer and/or maybe we’ve just made it too simple a process to steal from our treasury.

    Perhaps it’s the perceived charm and wit of the man. The President is most glib, effortless in his oratory and rhetoric, easily liked, and convinced he is right in his mindset for our country and the world. He has no apparent desire to negotiate with his adversaries on the right and seems always to be in a ‘campaign mode’, seemingly out of earshot of what the majority of Americans are saying about some of his near socialist views.

    What I do know is that in all my years through our wars, victories, and inherent problems I have never seen the country so volatile, so angry, and so seemingly divided. What I do know is that our United States is still the most charitable and the most noble country on earth and it concerns me greatly that our world standing appears severely diminished. We are fighting a war against terror, a war that brings a monstrous and ugly new face to our enemy.

    Of what I’m not aware are the top secret avenues our President and politicians must go down, the many security factors that must be considered, without the general public knowing the specifics. Of what I’m not aware would fill volumes of books, so all I have to share are my general thoughts on the politics of our day, my perceptions of how our government is tending to business. At this moment in time I’m not terribly impressed. I admit that I lean toward less government in my face, a strong military, a state of the art security system for the protection of our people, new and stronger educational goals that fit better the needs of the twenty-first century, and an economic engine driven by our private sector where experience, incentive, and vitality live.

    Hey, I’m an old man! I just learned recently that millions of asteroids are out there in space, huge ones and little ones, and one could come screaming into our atmosphere tomorrow or next millennium and make all of my amateurish observations above much less than meaningful.

    On that doomful note I take my leave… It’s time for lunch…

    Please follow me on Twitter: @brchitwood and on http://facebook.com/billyray.chitwood 

    My books can be previewed at: http://www.goo.gl/fuxUA

    Short Bio on: http://www.about.me/brchitwood

             


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The World Is Stretching And Yawning 

6/14/2013

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The World Is Stretching And Yawning - Posted on June 14, 2013 by billyraychitwood1


The picture is a younger me! Okay, it’s a much younger me! During the days when this picture was taken, the world for me was a rare giant oyster with many lovely pearls. Oh, sure, there were some moments of regrets and despair but, generally, life was piano bars, pretty women, and usually too much of the amber fluid. Drugs were around my life but never really in my life. It was a busy time for making fun the order of every day, impressing the girls with my wisdom and wit, and, of course, my ‘etchings.’

For the most part my friends were attorneys, textbook salesmen, and mostly anyone who answered one question correctly. That question: “Are you a turtle?” If the answer was not, “You bet your sweet ass I am!” it would take a little more time but, really, anyone could be my friend. The turtle question? Just something silly my generation thought up to keep everyone amused – as you can see, it didn’t take a whole lot to amuse us! Sort of like some of the weird words and phrases of today… There was, however, a most definite difference ‘then’ as opposed to ‘now.’

‘Then,’ there was not the subterranean build-up of world issues. There was not the economic and job worries of today. And, certainly, there was not Terrorism – oh, there was some mayhem and murder, that kind of terror, but not the kind that gets into your subconscious mind and bubbles up too consistently in the current ‘now.’ I’m not writing about ‘the good old days’ – yet, there were good days mixed with the ‘down’ days when I allowed myself to think about the mistakes I was making or the sadness that was of my own making. In the ‘then’ days there were bad governments and there were good governments, depending, of course, on political leanings. Perhaps what I remember most about the ‘then’ days was the feeling of Freedom, that sense that, even with my periodic goofs, our world was reasonably within some tolerance level of diplomatic solution.

‘Now,’ it is more a feeling, a sense, that the world is ‘stretching’ and ‘yawning’ in some peculiar and scary ways. Some say we are seeing ‘Revelations’ come to pass (for those who might not know, ‘Revelations’ is a book in the New Testament of the Bible). Some say we are on the downward slope of our Democracy, that when Freedom and Liberty are eroded by too much government control and entitlements, we are heading down the proverbial slippery slope. Some say we are just going through a generational phase where the digital world is making our lives more accessible and bringing the world together too fast. There are new ‘words’ in the ‘now’ lexicon. There are new faces appearing in the crowds, their lips speaking in different tongues and their gestures not always friendly.

I guess we have always had our calamitous moments, mass murders, our children kidnapped and killed. It just seems tougher today to know who to believe, who to trust, when and where to visit, what to do and how to act when we get there.

Of course, when I think about it, I’m in ‘Twilight,’ and perhaps my senses are losing (or,  have lost) some of their acuity. Maybe those ‘then’ days are happening for someone else as I write these words. Maybe the ‘now’ is not so bad after all. Yeah, sure, and maybe 9/11 did not happen at all!

The world is stretching and yawning! A lot is happening, perhaps too much for the old brain to process, too many social networks to monitor, too many machines. If not stretching and yawning, is the world getting too tightly bound? It just seems to me we’ve lost some stability, lost some of the old standards that were so important to us once upon a time, lost some of the texture that made our part of the world so great. We write about our world and what is happening in it, but who can truly say where we stand on the timeline of history? Who has the compendium that can accurately foretell our future. Is it our government? Is it the Bible? Is it God?

Please follow me on twitter (@brchitwood)

Please preview my books at http://www.goo.gl/fuxUA (IAN1)

Please see a bio sketch at http://www.about.me/brchitwood

Please visit my main website/blog at: http://billyraychitwood.weebly.com

      


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The Sea And Me

4/19/2013

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This old guy - that would be, me - is feeling some familiar aching but also some semblance of hope and well-being. That big old Sea out my window has a lot to do with that last part. All in all, life has treated me fairly and squarely and I'm a pretty lucky fella.

We can all be devastated at times, when those ugly events hit us, like a simple marathon turning into a terrorist plot, panic and pain, like a tradition turning into another date to remember a tragedy caused by people who find it easy to hate and to kill. A tragedy can chip away at our hearts and our hopes, and it's terribly difficult to write about. All life is precious to most of us, and we can't quite process the minds that come up with the acts of terror. Like so many of you, I'll grieve for the eight-year old boy who died. I'll grieve for the boy's sister who lost her legs. I'll grieve for the mother of the two who suffered brain trauma. I'll grieve for all those maimed and seriously damaged by this act of terror. I'll think of it as another surreal event to add to our sad days of remembrance. I'll spend some time wondering why it had to happen. I'll do what most of us will do, care and grieve. I'll be reminded as I so often am of an 'Anon' saying: "Life is really simple... People insist on making it complicated." Now, I guess I could throw out some Mark Twain gems as well - he surely knew how to simply define some of our worst moments and some of our critters (politicians and otherwise!).

Guess I'm going to the Sea outside my window and that wide pale blue sky. It gives me some peace and deliverance. It makes me think about a lot of things, like, maybe, all this good and evil is going to be with us through life. It makes me think that just maybe there's something good coming down the road on a day we least expect it, maybe something really good that some of us can't really wrap our minds around too well, maybe something that will make all the hurt and the pain go away. Guess that's what this big old Sea is trying to tell me. At least, it seems the only place I can go to lessen by a few degrees this latest human evil.

Wish there was some way to share some of this beauty and perhaps diminish some of those bad feelings you're having now. But, then, maybe you, too, have a Sea, an Ocean, a mountain, a meadow, or a desert that can give you some peace.

For me, it's this big blue-green Sea, this wide pale blue sky, the constant Sun, and this abiding faith that all we do, all we witness, good and bad, will make some sense at some incredible moment in the total arc of our time on this planet.

Follow me on twitter: @brchitwood

Preview my books: http://www.goo.gl/fuxUA


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    Hill boy from Tennessee still chasing his dreams and running from his demons. Have written nine books, tenth in the oven. Currently beach bumming under soft blue sunny skies on the Sea of Cortez with wife, Julie Anne, and a darn lovable and feisty Bengal cat named George.

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  • Billy Ray Chitwood
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