Stupid Quote of the Week

There is no shortage of material, to be sure. I'm going to try to do this once a week, and I'll try to be fair and lampoon the stupidity of both sides. If Trump says something grossly stupid during the preceding week that beats everybody else out, I'll put it up. Ditto for Congresspeople, Senators, celebrities, or just about anybody with some sort of notoriety. They're all fair game. If I can't decide between 2 quotes, I'll declare a tie and post them both.

This weeks winner is:

Rosanna Arquette (Famous Hollywood actress)

The "Pulp Fiction" actress, 59, took to Twitter Wednesday to talk about her race and upbringing, tweeting, "I’m sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me."    "And I feel so much shame."

Wow. Jesus H. Chrysler, how stupid is that combination of words? WTF, over? She wishes she was born poor and another color? Is this some sort of new racial twist where you slam yourself for something beyond your own control? You're disgusted with yourself for your skin color, something you had no say in whatsoever?

Rosanna dear, there are lotteries in life and winning is generally accepted as a good thing. You've already won more than your share of them. First, being born at all makes you a lottery winner. Being born in America was the second lottery you won. And you capped it by winning the trifecta of lotteries with fame and fortune in Sodom and Gomor, er, Hollywood. All in all, not bad work. Most folks would love to have your success in life and would even take the shame of having white skin if that's what comes with the deal.

Thanks for telling us just how raw stupid you are. I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask you if there is anything else you're ashamed of, like your good looks, large bank account, nice house ... maybe your Jewish mother (if AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida can get away with anti-semitic language, so can you). Come clean, Rosanna. As long as you're in the confessional, let's hear it all.

You can do something about it. First, sell everything you own. Next, let yourself go. Become slovenly. Eat 2 cheese pizzas a day and top it off with a gallon of ice cream; that ought to take care of that svelte body in no time. Give away the rest of your money to underprivileged people. Then start walking the streets. In no time, that shame will leave you. You'll be cured quickly.

Good luck, Rosanna. That tweet won this weeks competition, and with Bernie, Kamala, Beto, Joe (and others) nipping at your heels this week, let me be the first to congratulate you on winning.

Please don't say you're ashamed of that too. It would hurt my feelings, and we both know how sensitive I am. Okay, be ashamed, but not disgusted. I can live with that.

Don't Tell Me You're Shocked

2 more mass shootings. And of course, in a pre-Presidential election year, we're hearing the regular bullshit: It's ______ fault. Fill in the blank with gun nuts, Trump, Congress, the NRA, lax gun laws, or whatever/whomever you feel like blaming if it makes you feel good.

You're so wrong. The perpetrators already got what they wanted: Your anger and shock.

Ah, but ...

Don't tell me you're shocked. This country is deeply diseased as well as deeply divided, and there is a correlation. In a country of programmed violence found EVERYWHERE, don't tell me you're shocked. Don't ignore it. It's on TV. It's on social media. It's in the game arcade at your mall. It's in the bullying at your high school. It's in video games you bought your kids such as Grand Theft Auto, Doom, Wolfenstein, etc, etc. It's prevalent. And it has desensitized a whole generation to the real effects of killing.

Don't tell me you're shocked. Don't tell me you haven't been paying attention to the violence in the streets. Don't tell me you haven't been paying attention to ANTIFA violence, college campus violence, Ferguson violence, shooting Congressmen playing baseball violence, the burning and looting in DC during the Inauguration violence, and so on. Unless you're deaf and blind, I'm not buying it. You stood by and saw it happen.

Don't tell me you're shocked. The degradation of morals and values in this country started quite a while ago. The breakdown of family units has been going on for decades now. You let some liberal organizations take God and religion out of your life. Unsurprisingly, the number of single-parent families has been on the rise for a long time, and in one culture, almost 3 out of 4 babies born are to single mothers. This is a recipe for disaster, as we have witnessed.

Don't tell me you're shocked. The emptying of mental wards and casting sick people out into society because it was a cheaper alternative is now paying dividends. Was the price worth it?

Don't tell me you're shocked. Watching tents spring up in large cities and walking around piles of shit on the sidewalks should have shocked you long ago. But it didn't, and when these cities announced they were sanctuaries, you should have been shocked even worse. But you weren't.

Don't tell me you're shocked. Don't tell me a whole slew of new guns laws is going to stop this. It isn't. When a society has degraded into this level of sickness, it's not the tool used to commit these crimes that is at fault. It's the sick people that are responsible, and until we bring back sentences equal to the crime committed in an expedient manner, justice in this country is never going to deter these nutcases from killing as many people as possible just for the notoriety.

And finally, don't tell me you're going to take away my right to defend myself against these maniacs. Gun-free zones are prime territory for these whack-jobs and that's often where they strike. Disarming the people is specifically barred in our Constitution, and for good reason. Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. When the chips are down, a defensive gun in the hand is worth the entire police department 5 minutes away.

Until our culture recognizes it is sick and works to turn that around by addressing mental health problems, turning the general population into sheep is not the answer. Attacking politicians is not the answer. New guns laws stacked on top of a gazillion old gun laws is not the answer. Telling us that the second amendment should be repealed is not the answer.

Looking in the mirror and deciding to repair basic societal values is the answer. I'm not sure what the answer is to how, but I do know removing guns from the general population won't accomplish that. The only thing that can come of that is the creation of a whole new class of victims, and that simply isn't a solution. In the meanwhile, may I suggest taking a firearms course if you are not familiar with them and then filing paperwork to carry. You may not like that, you may not want to do that, and if so, that's fine too.

But don't tell me you're shocked. Sorry, I'm just not buying it.

Hello Seasoned Citizen ... AARP or AMAC ?

Once you turn 50, your life changes. AARP will start stoning you with mailers and ads to join them. AARP, for those truly in the dark, is an organization that supposedly unites aging Americans into a power bloc able to flex muscle as needed in the political (and sometimes business) arena. It is an acronym that is short for American Association of Retired People. They solicit members that cross the magic age of 50 regardless if you are retired or not, and it is pretty clear that most are still working at age 50. They don't care; when they swing their political muscle in government they claim to represent many millions of Americans. They need numbers and other than the age restriction don't seem to care how they get them, as long as the number is large enough for political clout.

Many join for the benefits they offer; discounts on travel, lodging, car rentals and such. They sponsor their own brand of supplemental health insurance aimed mostly at those already on Medicare. When I turned 50, I thought about it and joined. I was stupid enough to think I was getting a better deal by selecting the 5-year member plan that when broken into year-by-year cost, was cheaper.

It was a decision that I came to regret when President #44 came into office.

When Obamacare was presented, AARP initially tried to take a middle-of-the-road position on it, but they couldn't quite pull it off. They bit hook, line and sinker and supported it. I and others were appalled. Older people tend to be more conservative and there is nothing conservative about Obamacare. We were lied to (keep your insurance, keep your doctor, etc), we were told it was not a tax (The Supreme Court tuned that one up real fast) and for the first time in American history, you paid a fine to the government if you did not buy insurance.The biggest lie was, of course that your cost would go down. In fact, the cost went up - significantly. The estimates easily found with a google search indicate costs went up more than 12% almost immediately, and 2017-2018 saw silver-tier plans go up 32% .... and gold-tier plans went up over 19%.

So the question begs: Why would any organization that purports to represent seniors support this craziness?

When my membership lapsed, like many others, I didn't renew. Oh, they let me know they wanted me and my money repeatedly. My trash can saw heavy use during this solicitation stage.

What surprised me the most was how AARP  hid its actions from the people they represent. Read this:

During the first Presidential debate, President Obama touted the support of AARP for ObamaCare several times. While AARP immediately responded by saying, "AARP is a nonpartisan organization and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party", recently released emails between the White House and AARP operatives seem to indicate that AARP threw their tremendous lobbying power behind the legislation despite the fact they were getting calls overwhelmingly against it.
In fact, on September 20, 2012, Kimberley A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote:

"Thanks to just-released emails from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, we now know that AARP worked through 2009-2010 as an extension of a Democratic White House, toiling daily to pass a health bill that slashes $716 billion from Medicare, strips seniors of choice, and sets the stage for rationing. We know that despite AARP's awareness that its seniors overwhelmingly opposed the bill, the 'nonpartisan organization' chose to serve the president's agenda.

The 71 pages of emails show an AARP management taking orders from the White House, scripting the president's talking points, working to keep its board 'in line' and pledging a fealty to 'the cause.' Seniors deserve to know all this, as AARP seeks to present itself as neutral in this presidential election."

Ye shall know the truth, and it shall set ye free. And it did. AARP hijacked my membership (and the memberships) of millions to do exactly what their members did not want them to do.

Sayonara, AARP.

Enter the relatively-new kid on the black: AMAC. AMAC stands for Association of Mature American Citizens and is the conservative answer to AARP.

Offering programs similar to AARP, business discounts and such, AMAC is for me the better choice. Their numbers are growing and with them, their political clout in DC.

Like AARP, they stay in touch with their members. Unlike AARP, they actually listen to the views and feelings of their members. And the real good news is, they offer a free 1-year membership. I took advantage of it and I hope you will consider joining them too. When my 1-year is up (in a few months), I fully intend to keep my membership up and pay dues. I'm not sure how long they are going to offer this deal, so don't think about it too long.

I wonder if AARP ever fully understood what a huge mistake they made when they threw their weight behind Obamacare. It cost them dearly.

The New Revised American Un-PC Dictionary

In this divided country new political words and terms are emerging almost daily and many of them are confusing to the uninformed reader.  As a descendant of the famous Webster family (yes, really) I hereby seize this unique lineage qualification and appoint myself chief cook and bottlewasher of the new Un-PC dictionary until further notice. Complaints about this appointment can be made on the 3rd Tuesday of every month, except in months with a vowel in their name.

Affirmative Action: The placement of lesser-qualified people over higher-qualified people into a job or position based simply on having non-white skin. In specialized fields such as medicine or air traffic control, this results in a higher mortality rate.

Anchor Baby: A legal citizen of the United States with parents that aren't.

Antifa: A group of violent fascists dedicated to anti-fascism and the cessation of violence by using violence. While violently protesting, they cover their faces with hoodies and do-rags because they are proud of themselves. Like cockroaches, they slither away into the cracks and crevasses until their next planned riot.

Bisexual: A person that engages in sexual intercourse once every 6 months, or 2 years if they misunderstood what "bi" means.

Boomerang Generation: Young to middle-aged adults who have had every resource given to them while growing up and yet somehow end up moving back into their parents house, often in the basement. See also Failed Fledglings and Parasite Singles.

Colin Cancer: A disease resulting from wearing or purchasing anything with the Nike logo on it.

Doxx: Collect and/or display private information about somebody on social media, or what Antifa likes to do to others but does not want done to themselves.

Food Stamps: Formerly, expensive small pieces of paper meant to purchase food that often ended up being exchanged at a discounted rate for beer or cigarettes. Now, a plastic card loaded with money from taxpayers that allows non-working people to have their cake and eat it too.

Free Health Care for Illegals: The new idea Socialist-Liberal Democrats want after forcing citizens to pay for health insurance under penalty of a fine if they don't. Americans will not only continue to pay for health insurance for themselves but also pay increased insurance premiums as a result of those illegals who don't have to pay.

Gaslighting: Psychological manipulation that encourages a person to ignite their own flatulence.

Helicopter Parents: Parents (usually liberal) who hover over their children so much that they cut their heads off with the rotors of the helicopter without intending to do so ... rendering their children ineffective for the rest of their lives.

Illegal Alien: An extraterrestrial being with an unregistered ray-gun.

Metrosexual: A musical time-keeping device used to regulate the rhythm of sexual intercourse.

Millenial: A young adult in the 21st century who thinks the world owes them a million dollars.

Late-Term Abortion: The entire NY State Legislature and Governor ... and many blues states also.

Liberal: A copious quantity. Ex: Please butter my popcorn liberally. Or, a person who wants you to pay for the butter on their popcorn and ... their popcorn too. Somehow, they never manage to pay for yours. See also Socialism.

Libtard: A colloquialism derived from Liberal and Retard;  Liberal, meaning free with other peoples money and Retard, meaning slow, as in mental capacity.

Obama Happy-Meal: The free meal the person in line ahead of you gets when they order whatever they want and then tell the counter person to hand you the bill.

Obama-Phone: An electronic device that involuntarily takes money out of taxpayers pockets.

Racist: See white supremacist below.

Reverse Racism: Hating people of any color while backing a car up.

Sanctuary City: A high-tax and high-crime area with prosperous camping-equipment merchants and fecal-laden sidewalks. See also Tent Cities.

Snowflake: A delicate symmetrical 6-sided ice crystal that falls from the sky and melts unpredictably, not unlike some easily-offended liberals.

Socialism: A system whereby able-bodied people who refuse to work legally steal from those who do. Also know as Communism lite.

TDS: Trump Deranged Syndrome. See also https://donbackman.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-new-mental-disease-in-america.html

TMI: Too much information, a term that describes the false notion that others need to be informed about your personal lives, including your sexual preferences and what you had for dinner last night.

Tribal: A derogatory label usually used on social media to describe a conservative who made better arguments in an on-line debate.

Undocumented Worker: A person ignoring the immigration laws of the United States who promises to follow the laws of the United States if we just ignore the law.

Welfare: A system of economic redistribution that is neither well or fair for those who pay for it but receive nothing in return.

White Privilege: A term describing an imaginary state of racial superiority that OJ Simpson, Jussie Smollett, Michael Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Kim Foxx, Ilhan, Rashida, Alexandra and other famous POC use (or have used) but don't quite understand the irony of.

White Supremacist: Every white person that was ever born.

White Supremacy: A term used by lazy or noncompetitive people who failed in life to shift blame from themselves to others that actually worked for what they have.

Elections and Money

I'm not thinking this is what our Founding Fathers had in mind. The current condition of our governments (Federal and State) fool us into thinking we, the people actually cast ballots for candidates and somehow the idea of a representative government has lasted for well over 200 years.

In reality, money has taken over the electoral process and yes, Virginia: Money can and does buy elections. How, you ask?

Political campaigns are based on getting information out about their candidate. One Congressman told me decades ago that name recognition in election was priority number one, and further, you had to present your name at least 7 times to the electorate before they were really familiar with your name. This could include TV and press coverage (news and purchased ads), lawn signs, door-to-door campaigning, billboards, bumper stickers and so on. The idea was to have your name visible to as many people as much as possible.

This, of course, takes money, and we all know  ... money is the root of all evil.

Or is it? Google Ayn Rand's idea of what money is (Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's speech about money) and you may come away with a different view. To me. it's a survival tool and just like any other tool, it can be used for both good and evil.

Back to the topic: Political money. In the last Congressional election in my district, well over $20 million dollars was spent. The vast majority of that money came from outside the district. The Republican incumbent was outspent by at least 2 to 1 and lost by less than 4,000 votes out of a quarter-million or so votes. Money made the difference. The job pays $174,000/year and to see $20 million spent tells anybody with an IQ over room temperature it's not about the pay, it's about the power. Specifically, it's about the block of power. If you can't tell, there's one hell of a power struggle going on in this country right now. While it may seem removed from you at the moment, if it continues look for it to come to a city or town near you real soon now.

When that kind of money is spent, something is expected in return: An assured vote. There is no way that kind of money is spent without an expectation of a return. That means that what the district may really want and need are very often bypassed in a vote to repay political debt, not advance the district. To influence the perception, the bought and paid-for spin doctors go to work transforming shit into shinola. Very often, these spin doctors publish newspapers or air TV "news" shows.

And so the winners are a bloc of people who don't live here and really don't give a damn about you or me, our daily lives, our daily struggles and most of all, our daily needs.

I have a solution, and it's not to completely remove money from elections.

It's to remove outside the district money from elections.

Business and political PACs would be the first to fall under this idea. Raise the money from the people and businesses that actually are in the district. NY Congressional district 22 is quite large and has a good mix of both inside its borders. For a business to donate, I think it should have an actual brick and mortar presence in the district. Post Office box and internet presence businesses would be excluded in my thinking.

This, of course, would lessen the amount of money spent on these races, and I'm not thinking this is a bad thing.

It's quite clear money raised from outside my Congressional district won the race last November. Much of this money came from New York City and believe me, NYC is not interested in what is good for Upstate; it is interested in what is good for them. To return the ability of the district to control its Representative, outside money should be removed from the equation.

And, as I predicted in an earlier blog, our freshman Democrat mendicant wasted no time in holding out the tin cup, as in this begging for alms plea found on a DC street recently:

Until the practice listed above is ended, we will always be in line behind the large financial interests that really don't give a shit about you or me.

Don't hold your breath on this one. I don't think I'll live to ever see it changed, and that's ok. When the power struggle is over in this country and one side definitively wins, then it might be time to talk about political financial reform. Until then, I can only hope.

Everything Old is New Again

Some of my friends say I'm cheap. In reality, I don't mind spending money but I do demand one thing in return: Value. If I don't see value in something, I generally pass. When it comes to household bills, like others, I don't like to overspend in comparison with others. There are, to be certain, some household bills that are not easily managed. Property taxes, car payments, food and utilities are some of them.

Or are they manageable? The house you live in is taxed on its value. Lesson here is, live in what you can afford. Don't buy more house than what you need and can reasonably afford. Car payments? Ditto. Don't buy an S Class Mercedes if you're tight on money. The Chevy will get you to the same places just as fast. Food? This is a rough one. We all like to eat and we all have favorite foods. But again, with care you can manage your grocery bill. Grocery stores have sales every week and it's up to you to figure out where you're shopping that week.

Ah, utilities. Electric, phone, natural gas or oil for heat, and cable/internet.

You can lower your electric bill somewhat. I replaced all the bulbs in my house with LEDs. The bill went down. I turn off lights and the TV when I leave a room. For heat, I use a setback thermostat with a program to turn down the heat when we're sleeping and in the days we're not here. I also replaced all my windows and bettered the insulation; this will pay for itself in savings in just a few short years.

Up until last year, I bundled my phone with my internet and cable TV supplier in a combo plan. My anniversary with them was every March, and I could count on Time-Warner (the predecessor to Spectrum, the current company) to send me a letter telling me how much money they were saving me while raising the rate.

So every March, I would call up T-W and complain. The representative would always try to find me another "promotional" package; this approach was wildly successful. Somehow, they managed to roll me back to where I was and often, they would throw additional product to me at the same time. I got my bandwith increased from 30mbs to over 100mbs and I got a free DVR.. A few times, they got me to a lower-cost package for the 3 things they provided me. And I confess, the DVR was a nice touch. It allowed us to record some daytime TV shows we would otherwise miss. We grew fond of it quickly.

When Spectrum took over T-W a few years ago, things changed. The March phone call was a waste of time; it became a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. I didn't care for this. But I lived with it for a year while researching my options. And there were options, as there usually are.

I've had the same landline phone number since 1978 and didn't want to lose it, so I took it back from Spectrum and put it into a Trac-phone. The phone cost me $20 and the prepurchased 1-year time card was less than $100. FWIW, my other cell phone (a smart phone) is also a Trac-phone, ditto on the cost. 

I boned up on antenna TV. I bought a small plastic antenna (Clear-TV) at a garage sale and tried it. Surprisingly, I got 28 channels on the living room TV and 32 on the TV in the den. Shortly after, I took the cable box back to Spectrum and told them ... well, I kept it polite. I told them goodbye. I bought a high-speed gigabit cable modem and took theirs back also. My cost dropped from almost $200/month to $65/month. Doing the math, I think I'm saving almost $1500/year now.

When I built my house, there was no cable TV on the rural road I live on. First I had an old Radio-Shack antenna shoved up in a crawl space and when satellite dishes became popular, I installed one. For years this was how I watched TV. When cable arrived (and how it arrived is another story for another time, one in which I played a definitive role in), I signed up. I canned my dial-up internet provider and went to high-speed cable. And I bundled my phone into the triple-combo platter they offered. And for almost 20 years, I paid the bill they sent me every month.

I've been tethered to the small plastic antenna for over a  year. But I did climb up in the attic and take down that old Radio-Shack antenna. It sat there for a while until the next light bulb went off in my head: What if I put that antenna up and tried it? I'm quite used to living with 28 or 32 channels, even with the handful of shopping channels that my TV stumbled across when I scanned.

So I tried it. I put the antenna up on the chimney via a mast that holds my weather station (you can find it on Weather Underground). I pointed it Northwest at about a heading of 300 degrees and rescanned the TV.

I got more channels; quite a few from Syracuse (~60 miles away). Remember, I'm up on a hill at about 1100' above sea level. But I lost one set of local channels I was used to getting: WKTV, channels 2.1 through 2.4. But I liked the increase in Syracuse channels and didn't really want to lose them, so I climbed back up on the roof with a good military compass and tried again. With my wife watching TV, I moved the antenna to the south until I lost Syracuse, and then brought it back. The antenna now faces about 260 degrees.

I rescanned ... and to my surprise, I got 43 channels. A handful of them are home shopping channels, and maybe 3 or so are straight religion. But I never got 43 channels over the air before.

Sadly, I still lost the NBC/CBS local Utica feed (WKTV) ...but I have them from Syracuse. I have all the major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox) along with plenty others. In quite a few cases, I have channels I could not subscribe to on cable TV, namely:  Grit, Comet, Charge, AntennaTV, Cozi, and Heartland.

Yeah, it's not great looking. But it's functional, and it's free. Johnny Carson reruns are on Antenna-TV every night at 10pm, and he's way better than the hateful malcontents who rag on Trump every night at 11:30. Nostalgia is great, isn't it?

I plan on constructing a small add-on to this antenna to see if I can recover the local NBC-affiliate (WKTV) by aiming it to the north where their towers are. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't.

But still, with 43 free over-the-air HD digital channels ... color me happy.

Here's a picture. That contraption above the antenna with the anemometer is my Wx station.

Yeah, I know, the chimney needs some work. Thanks for reminding me.

-Don

I Changed my Mind. I Want Reparations

Sanity is history; the inmates are running the asylum now. Ideas that wouldn't have seen the light of day only a  few years ago are now in mainstream discussion, and sadly many of them are now etched into law where I live (a blue state and yes, I'm pretty blue about living here).

As the Presidential election season starts, we are seeing some really radical ideas coming from the left. One of them is the idea of paying reparations to those we wronged long ago. Mostly, it's about paying off descendants of slavery. Judging from my Ancestry DNA test, I don't qualify. So if reparations are going to be paid, it looks like I and other Wonder-Bread skin colored people are going to be cut out of the deal.

Harrumph, say I. If there's gonna be free dough, I want some. And after considerable thought, I've figured out a convincing way to get some: If we're going to pay off millions of slave descendants, then we ought to pay off those that fought and died to free the slaves also. It's estimated 2% of the US population died fighting in the Civil War. In real numbers, that's said to be about 620,000 human beings. NY State had the highest number lost, and of the 51,000 lost at Gettysburg, my maternal grandfathers uncle was lost in the early hours of fighting on 1 July 1863.

Private William Cameron Fox enlisted in October, 1861 at Cortland, NY in Company A of the 76th NYS Volunteers. He was all of 19 years old at the time and Abraham Lincoln needed him, or so he was told. From his muster and payroll papers I've obtained from the National Archives, he spent time in NY City and moved down through Maryland. He was in the DC area for a while, but fate called him along with many others to the northwest corner of Gettysburg in June of 1863. Unfortunately for him, Robert E Lee descended upon Gettysburg in the early morning hours of July 1, 1863. Lee sent a massive force in from the west with a pincer movement from the north and by 10'o clock (or so) in the morning, Private Fox took a rebel bullet in the throat and died shortly after.

He was one of 51,000 casualties in the 3 days of fighting at Gettysburg. He was one of those 620,000 lost in the Civil War. The north won, the slaves were freed and generations did their thing which brings us to the present day.

Ah, reparations. I've already written about these in a previous blog. Yes, I don't take a liking to the idea of them. But if there's 1 cent doled out in the name of reparations, damn sure I want some.

Private William Cameron Fox was all of 21 years old when he was KIA. He never married, never had children and his future was robbed from him. In all reality, he probably forfeited 3/4 of his life.

What's worse? Being a slave or dying to end slavery? I don't know.

But I do know one thing: If the kooky and utterly insane idea of reparations ever really sees the light of day (and not as an election bait issue), it would be unfair to pay one group without paying the other. And in that light, where do I and all my sibling descendants of the Fox family sign up?

Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. In reality, I am still 100% against reparations. But again, if 1 cent is ever doled out for them, color me deserving of them also.

I scanned in all of William Foxes paperwork I got back from the National Archives. They make for good reading. Here's a few pages of them: