One of the things I have noticed about liberals is

they have unrealistic expectations. They fail to take human traits into consideration.

They seem to think that by disarming honest citizens that the crime rate will drop. It won't. Criminals are criminals because they don't obey the law and will still rob and shoot people, law or no law.

They seem to think that the solution to problems is government help. It isn't. Government is too big and clumsy to administer a whole lot to people. We're better off taking care of ourselves. On top of that, people don't respect government programs and abuse them every chance they get. Don't believe it? Ask any emergency room employee. They'll tell you countless stories about people showing up to an emergency room for a simple cold or even because they were bored. 

Liberals fail to understand this type of thing. They seem to think that a magic government program will solve all of the ills of the world when all they do is add to it.

They also don't seem to understand money very well. They seem to think that money is just something that the government prints up and can be handed out to solve problems. 

They don't seem to realize that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay for it somewhere along the line. This is done in the form of taxes and even now taxes don't do a very good job of keeping up. Instead the government has to borrow money from other places.

A lot of what I have seen actually goes back to the hippies who had no sense of reality to begin with. The hippies could tear anything down in an instant. The problem is that they seldom had anything to replace what they destroyed. If they did, it was not a real nuts and bolts solution that would work. They saw a problem but had no viable solution for it.

Actually back in 1970 I saw a group of hippies actually do something that worked with a free kitchen at the Powder Ridge rock festival. The Cosmic Labs people (whoever they were) set up a typical chow line similar to the basic GI chow line. An establishment thing if ever there was one!

There is a saying that shared work means less work and to some extent that holds true but only if everyone pulls their fair share. In theory that's probably true. In practicality it isn't. A lot of people tend to shirk out. When that happens the rest have to pull more weight. 

When people have to carry more weight than their fair share they tend to drop out of the program and with understandable reason. "Why should I carry the shirkers?" is generally the given reason. It holds water. Why SHOULD they carry the weight of those that do not carry their own weight?

Of course when that happens the whole thing collapses. 

In short most liberals look at a world that they want to have, free of hassles and easy to deal with. Unfortunately life doesn't work that way.

Socialism actually was brought to the country by the Pilgrims in 1620. They agreed to donate a portion of their crop to a common storage area to be given to those in need. For the first couple of years they starved.

Finally in desperation they simply gave each family a piece of land and told them they could use it as they saw fit and could keep everything they grew and manufactured.

They flourished.

The Pilgrims in some respect were no different that the liberals of today. They wanted protection so they tried instilling socialism and it didn't work.

Yet after all of the failed attempts at socialism they have not been able to figure out that it doesn't work.

Winston Churchill once said something to the effect that capitalism is the worst form of government with the exception of all of the other forms that have been tried.











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As I age it looks like I am starting to have less and less use for a pickup

or so it seems.
I do believe I could get by just as well with some kind of station wagon that would allow me to fold down the rear seats.

Then again, maybe I ought to keep the pickup. 

As I near retirement it seems like a pretty good idea to get things squared away and take a running start at things. I sure don't want to retire and then get hit with a car payment out of the retirement fund!

A new car would be ideal but as I sit now that's an awful lot of money to be coughing up. I really wonder if it would be a good idea to buy one even though I could pay cash.

I am still spry enough so that I can camp and get around so I guess maybe I'll keep the pickup even though it isn't nearly as comfortable as a decent car would be. 

Then again it rides OK with a few hundred pounds in the bed so I guess I am still good to go.

As one nears retirement a lot goes through a man's head....



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Part Six.

Hey, I had to name this post something.

I sit here aging and getting closer to the day when someone has to figure out a way to dispose of my earthly remains and I have said before and will say again that I want to be buried at sea.

I've scouted around and learned a lot and while as a veteran I am eligible to have the US Navy bury me there is somewhat of a hassle. I have to be boxed up and that's not really a traditional at sea burial. Traditional is wrapped in sail cloth shroud. Of course, during WW2 the Navy would occasionally use the good old fashioned USGI mattress cover.

I bought a mattress cover on eBay a couple of months ago and it had too much polyester in it. It won't decompose. Back to the drawing board and back to the surplus stores etc. I'm going to try and find a Vietnam era mattress cover. They're 100% cotton and will decompose over time.

I have found a company that will haul my decomposing carcass out past the 600 foot shelf and commit me to the deep but the price is pretty hefty and I figure that I can try and find a fishing boat skipper that will do the deed. 

It's all legal and any boat owner can do this so long as they get outside of state waters which means three miles out. The hard part is that the burial has to take place in deep water.

Afterwards a simple EPA report gets filled out and that is that.

Anyway, that's what I am thinking now.  




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Another '62 Dodge half ton pickup story

It was a pretty decent spring day and I was headed someplace or maybe it was no place but either way I wasn't in much of a hurry.

I do remember I was a bit scungy and the pickup needed a good cleaning. The outside wasn't all that too awful bad, but the inside of the cab needed something. It was getting kind of funky.

I was passing by a fire station and it looked like the firemen were doing some kind of cleaning and they were fire hosing the pavement.

Now I am a person that does well when a target opportunity shows it's face and this seemed to be a pretty good one. I pulled into the fire station and asked the fireman if I could use the fire hose. He said I could.

I quickly went through the cab and put everything in the tool box. The tool box in the cab was water tight and was large enough to hold practically all of my worldly belongings. I also pulled out the army blankets I was using as a seat cover I had installed a couple of days earlier. The rest of the stuff I crammed into a duffel bag and parked it inside the fire house. I also ducked inside and took off my clothes and donned a pair of cutoffs.

I took the fire hose from the fireman and gave the outside and bottom of the dilapidated old rig a pretty good hosing down and got all of the caked mud off of it. 

I can't say it looked good because the sky blue paint was pretty faded but is sure looked a lot better.

Then to the fireman's surprise, I opened both doors and let fly with the hose and swamped the entire inside of the old work horse out.

Dirt, grit, grime and loose items came out the passenger door. After a couple of minutes I trades sides and more crap came out the driver's door.

The seats were vinyl and actually cleaned up pretty good, considering. The hose had enough pressure to knock a lot of the grease and grime off of them. Not that it really mattered because I covered them with a couple of surplus GI blankets.

The fireman looked somewhat worried. He said he was afraid it wouldn't start and it would be stuck there.

Not to worry, the rig fired right up and I moved it well out of the way and watched as water drained through the rotten floor boards. They had been patched with pieces of a thick industrial conveyor belt.

Then I hosed off the pavement and cleaned up after myself.

When I went back to the firehouse to pick up my duffel bag the fireman generously offered to let me use the washing machine. I took him up on his offer and left the doors open on the pickup to let things dry out while I took care of my laundry.

The laundry room had a shower, too so I got myself cleaned up.

When I was done I went to the pickup and fished a six pack out of the cooler and put it in the fire house refrigerator and told the fireman the beer was his. He was pretty grateful.

The inside was still pretty wet but the vinyl seats were dry enough so I could replace the army blankets so I did. The blankets were porous enough so that they wouldn't keep the seat from drying out.

It was getting near lunch time and the fireman offered to buy if I would fly. It was off to the nearby burger place on foot and I was treated to a surprisingly good burger and some great fries. We ate and washed it down with a couple of cold beers. It was pretty much a volunteer fire department and nobody back then gave a damn if a volunteer  fireman had a cold one on a hot day. 

When I got back from the burger stand I saw the fireman had propped up one of those enormous evacuation fans and it was blowing the cab dry.

I helped out a bit at the fire house and learned a little and a couple of hours the truck was pretty much dried out and I left and headed off to some girl's house.

All in all it had been a pretty good day and proved to be a pretty good evening to top it off. The following day I returned to my job of hanging siding on a condo project and spun the wheels of industry for a few days.

There was a lot to be said about how they built pickups back in the day. They could be hosed out with a fire hose and still fire right up and drive off into the sunset. If you kept the distributor and plug wires reasonably dry they would run. They were simple machines. Today I would not even consider doing such a thing because of all the electronics involved in today's machinery.

Then again, that old work horse did need repairs a lot more often that one of today's pickups. However because they were fairly simple repairs could be done with simple tools.

Sometimes I wish they could combine the two and make simple vehicles that ran as well as they do today but were as easy to take care of. After all, most of the fancy stuff they put in today's trucks I never really use, anyway. 










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I read where some police officer said the person he stopped claimed

"his wallet was in his other pants."

Some time in the 80s I was traveling and had sacked out in the bed of my pickup. When I woke up I had a monumental case of the icky-stickies. It was time for a creek bath and a change of clothes.

Twenty minutes down the road there was a likely looking creed so I washed up and changed my clothes. I wadded the dirty clothes up and put them next to me on the seat in the cab of the pickup and went back on the road. I was now looking for a laundromat as the duffel bag in the bed of the pickup was pretty much full of dirty laundry.

I don't recall what I was stopped for other than the fact that I wasn't a homicide suspect. My guess is it was actually a fishing expedition on the part of the county LEOs. 

Anyway, when he asked for my license I simply fished my wallet out of the dirty britches next to me on the seat and handed the cop my license. As I was fishing my wallet out I explained that I had left my wallet in the pants next to me on the seat.

The cop looked at me, took my license and ran the usual wants and warrants thing on me and returned and handed it back to me.

When he was handing it back to me he commented that I was the first person he had ever stopped that had told him "I left my wallet in my other pants" that really  HAD left his wallet in his other pair of pants.

I laughed and commented that the "I left my wallet in my other pants" line made it sound like the person in question only owned two pairs of pants, the one he had on and the one the wallet was in.

The cop chuckled and agreed that it sounded that way. Then he added that there were probably a lot of people he ran into that probably owned only the pants they were wearing.

Anyway, this is yet ONE MORE time in my life that Life imitated art for me.




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Well, the SAT scores don't mean anything anymore.

now that they have decided to give points for adversity and so on.

Until recently SATs were absolutes. You were given your scores based entirely on how you did on the math and language tests. 

These days they are trying to do some social engineering and as usual we are going to lose. 

We always lose when we lower the standards.






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Planned Parenthood just announced they are giving $50,000,000 to Democratic candidates.

President Trump pointed out that if they have that kind of money they certainly don't need a government subsidy.

One thing we are doing wrong is giving government money to people to play the political game with.

I have said that when a preacher uses the pulpit for political purposes he ought to lose his tax free status.

I'll also say that any profit or non profit outfit that gets a government subsidy ought to lose it if they enter the political fray.

We'd all be better off that way.







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Another day, another dollar.

Back in the day a dime had more spending power than a dollar does today.

I have heard it said that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River.

I'd live to see Donald Trump try it. I'll bet he can't

That's because a dollar doesn't go anywhere near as far as it used to.




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I suppose your kids may go barefoot in the summer but you ought to be able to afford to buy them shoes before school starts. Still, you get a pension.

My dad said that to me once about a career choice I considered as a young man.

He was telling me that it was not a very high paying job but it had a pretty good benefits package which counted for something. If I remember I was thinking of taking a job with the town but decided against it for various reasons.



Back in the day a lot of people opted to take a lesser paying job that had a better benefit package than other jobs had that paid more. The most common benefit that drew people was a retirement pension. 

The three that come to mind first to me are the Old School military, first responders and teachers.

Back in the day a service person could pull a half pay pension after 20 years and top the pension out at 3/4s after 30 years service. There were other benefits, also. They got health care, use of the PX and a few other things.


Teachers could retire at about 65 with a pension of some sort.

I think the police and firemen could retire at about 65, also and drew a pension and other benefits.

First responders and teachers did the best financially but the military generally retired first. I knew of a number of families that persevered the small paychecks and climbed the enlisted ranks and hung in there and retired. As time passed things got better but until recently it was perseverance until retirement. Generally the second career made them better money but the pension along with the retiree benefits made a halfway decent life for them.

It was a little better for first responders and teachers but they didn't usually get a crack at a second career. They plugged away.

All of these people had fairly secure employment that was not too reliant on the outside economy.

These days these people have things an awful lot better. Military pay is pretty decent once a person makes a little rank and the various teacher/police/fire unions have made the jobs a lot better than most people have in the private sector.

Still, many of them, mostly teachers, bellyache about not making enough money.

Cops and firemen get basic vacations but teachers only really work about six months each year. Leave it to them to be the biggest complainers.

It used to be that one could opt for lower wages and a pension or higher wages and no pension, you can't have both.

Nowadays they get both.

Personally if I were to recommend a career for a young person I would suggest the fire department.

Their kids may go barefoot in the summer but they'll be able to afford shoes for them come the beginning of school.










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Recently I ran into a guy that was born in overseas but raised here.

I told him that if he were about 25 or 30 years older he would have been one of those kids I had to eat my vegetables for.

Sharp guy.

He picked right on up To that one instantly.


"Eat your vegetables! Think of all of those starving kids overseas!"

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

As I got older I made it a point finish my beers.

I think of all of those poor sober kids in China.








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Ever watch the cook at a diner?

It's a real art and science being a fry cook or whatever they are called.

A good one can keep things moving and synchronize all of the stuff on a grille so everything gets done at the proper time and all of the orders come out right. It's really quite impressive if you are paying attention to the cook and watching how they do things.

It is astonishing to see him make maybe ten or fifteen meals at once on a grill and get them all plated and out in the order they came in.

Sometimes several orders are going to the same table and a good fry cook can have them all done and ready to be tabled at once. It's amazing to watch.

It is yet another one of those things that all of the formal education in the world isn't going to help you do that particular job. It is an art and a science unto itself and I take my hat off to a good fry cook.

I rather doubt I could do that successfully for a living.



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One of the things that makes me think twice about retirement

is that it means I will no longer have a job.

That means a lot to me.



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Cars have gotten totally ridiculous

with so much junk that a lot of us never use.

Most of my friends report they don't bother with using the heated seat feature because it only takes a short time before the seat gets warm from body heat.

Power windows are somewhat of a joke to me unless you want to be able to control all the windows from the driver's seat. I don't.

I see no reason to be able to open a backseat window while motoring along. I consider things like power windows to be actually a setback in efficiency because when the break they are costly to fix. On the other hand, roll up windows never seem to stop working.

How lazy can you get! Are you really too lazy to turn a simple crank a couple of turns to open a window?

I was once accused of being anti technology. I am not. I like things like electronic ignition, good metallurgy and things that make vehicles easier to take care of and longer lasting. Lord knows I don't want to have to start one with a hand crank but I suppose they could be an emergency use option like I had in a '62 Triumph.

My big beef is that you get stuck with having to buy a package containing a lot of stuff I really don't want.

I don't live in Arizona and see little use for A/C. I consider it another expensive thing to go wrong. Then again, if I did live in Arizona or Texas I'd probably have it.

I think what I want is what I'll refer to as practical technology.

To me, a vehicle is transportation, plain and simple. 



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One of my favorite accusations is that Melania Trump is a gold digger

That's a joke.

Her personal net worth is about $50 million bucks.

She doesn't need Donald's money. She has her own.

***************************************************

Someone I deal with from time to time made a rude comment about Mrs. Trump being seen wearing skimpy outfits.

"She's a model and has made herself a fortune of fifty million bucks on her own with no help from her husband," I shot back. "Your wife rings a register at a 7-Eleven and is a poster model for burkas!"

I think I broke him of that habit.






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Time to get more fuel/oil/water/food/whatever.

I was traveling with a partner a while ago and commented that we needed to get gas.

He asked me how much we had left and I replied that we didn't have very much. He didn't argue, he simply went to his phone and found us a station. We gassed up and were back on the road in a few minutes.

Then there's the other kind of person.

"We need gas."

"How much do you have left?"

"Not much."

"How much is not much?
"Under 1/8th of a tank."

"How much is that?"

By this time I'm pretty aggravated. I want to end this kind of stupidity here and now. I an very likely to answer that "We have 1.2387485729474957345734035053 gallons left. Close enough for you?" It will likely not be in a kind voice, either.

The term 'not much' in certain circumstances is a bona fide unit of measurement. 

It's the same with everything else, too, depending on who you are dealing with.

It really doesn't matter exactly how much of a commodity you have when you are running out of it because if you don't get some soon you WILL be out. Yet there is always some chairborne ranger type bean counter that wants some kind of exact figure for some dumb reason.

Often in certain instances I will say I need somewhat less than the tank/storage room/locker/whatever can hold simply because I want to be able to take all I am sent. In other circumstances it really does not matter.

In fuel and lube tanks you want to leave room for expansion anyway and 10% is a reasonable figure. Of course the tanks on board a tanker vessel are a lot bigger than the tank on the family Honda Accord.

Several years ago while I was doing oil spill cleanup work in the Gulf of Mexico we had to have fuel, water and grub delivered. None of these were a real problem. You would just stuff the water tank until it overflowed. We'd fill the fuel tank and when it got near the 90% mark we would have the supplying vessel slow down the pump and shut down when it hit the 90% mark. After the hose was disconnected we would compare before soundings with after soundings and calculate the difference to figure out how much fuel we took.

Seldom would the figures between us and the supplier be the same. We'd add them both up, divide it by two and call it good because that was the best we could come up with. 

Grub was basically what we could eat for the rest of the tour plus some left over for the other crew so they would have something to come back to. We'd be fairly careful on how much we ordered that needed refrigeration. I remember once we had to shovel down a half-gallon of ice cream but we always seemed to find room for the stuff that needed refrigeration,

Non perishables we seldom gave a second thought as we could simply leave the stuff we didn't immediately need in a box until we found room in the grub locker.

Yet there was always someone in the chain that wanted exact figures. They were given estimates and told that it was as close as we could figure it. After a while they realized that we were unable to come up with an exact figure.

Still, in my daily life I sometimes run into someone that doesn't get it. 

The next time I say that I need gas and someone asks how much we have left I am simply going to say, "Hopefully enough to get us to the next gas station."







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A friend of mine that spent time in Russia says that practically every arrest there results in a fight.

He explained to me that almost every arrest there results in a conviction and hard time in Russia means in a real prison instead of the air conditioned cells we have here.

The person being arrested has nothing left to lose and everything to gain so they fight like hell.

I wonder if people in political office know how people with nothing left to lose act? I'm fairly sure that if they thought about it a little bit that some of them would change their attitudes toward us little people.







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I said something to someone today that make him think

I said that we ought to either go back to a racist sexist society like we used to have or go to a straight meritocracy, either/or and no exceptions.

There is so much stupidity out there forcing issues to prove a point that it isn't funny. We all lose because of it.

I say we open everything out there to anyone BUT you have to pass the same test everyone else does and NO lowering of the standards to enable the weak or slow. You gotta pass the same test everyone else does to join the club.

I constantly see where, for example there are two different physical standards for men and women to join the fire department in one or more of our cities. I call BS on that. Everyone should be able to pass the standard set for men no matter if they are male, female, transgender or a rhinoceros. One high standard.

Colleges have different standards for admissions based on race. An Asian has to have better grades than a black or white, a white has to have better grades than a black.

What a crock!

There should be one standard for everyone.

Of course there are those that will say it's not fair, but what's unfair about it? What IS unfair is when someone gets a pass at the expense of a more qualified candidate. The more qualified of the candidates gets screwed out of a position over some arbitrary feel good decision on the part of someone with an agenda.

The services have seen this happen for some time with a lowering of standards in many cases even though they deny it.

Who loses? Sometimes someone loses his life because of that. The country also loses by having a weaker military service than they could have.

Often the very candidates that get the position based on other than merit qualifications lose, too. People know how the system works and know that some people got their positions simply because of race or sex. 

Another loser is a person of a chosen race or sex that goes out and earns something on their own. It gets cheapened because people tend to think they only earned it based on race or sex when in fact he/she earned it the hard way.

While I suppose that someone that got ahead playing the minority card might be irked if someone pointed it out, the poor bastard that got ahead on his own and truly made it honestly would probably be livid if he was accused of playing the minority card. He'd have every right to be angry after such a false accusation.

It's time to go back to judging candidates for positions based entirely on merit. We'll ALL win if we do,  



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Inspected

by No. 17




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Clap like Mike Pence is speaking!

The Duffel Blog, a blog that claims to be the American Military's Most Trusted News Source said that recently that a Command Master Chief told his crew to "clap like Mike Pence is speaking" as the  crew was entering a strip club.

Of course, the Duffel Blog is a spoof site. The whole thing is a spoof on what happened recently. The DB often puts one right smack dab into the X-ring.

Recently Vice President Pence was slated to visit the carrier Harry S. Truman and the Command Master Chief, the senior enlisted man, told the crew to 'clap like they were in a strip club".  CNN and a few others picked up on it and turned it into a real ballyhoo and the Command Master Chief was pretty much forced into retirement.

For Pete's sake, we are talking about the NAVY here! The United States Navy isn't some damned fool convent or kindergarten class somewhere, it's a Navy and it is what it is. You're damned straight there's going to be at least some off color humor used to get a  point across.

Everyone of those sailors knew what they were getting into when they enlisted. Every one of them has heard the old saw 'cuss like a sailor'.

Now I suppose that every time some muckety muck congress critter  comes aboard the officers and NCOs make it crystal clear to the crew that they WILL be in attendance and they WILL cheer no matter who it is. If it's a congress critter, a Veep, or a POTUS they WILL be there and they WILL cheer.

It doesn't matter if it's a congress critter that voted cut their pay and benefits in half, they WILL be in attendance, they WILL behave themselves and they WILL cheer.

Even if they really want to hang said politician by the yard arm.

I don't know how sailors feel about Mike Pence and it really doesn't matter. The officers and NCOs were issuing the word to the rank and file. The Command Master Chief tried to make it a little more palatable to the men by making a salty comment.

Actually it wasn't even a salty comment, it was mildly brackish.

Yet CNN and company raised a bit to-do and a damned good senior NCO had to fall on his sword over absolutely nothing.

It's time the services stop throwing good leaders to the wolves over nothing and start supporting them. They used to. It's also time to go back to treating our service people like the real men and women they are.

Hell, during WW2 almost every airplane that was assigned duty overseas had some kind of nose art on it, generally a busty bathing beauty of some sort. Nobody cared.

As for the sailors cheering for Mike Pence?

He was bringing them good news. Harry S. Truman is getting a mid life refurbish and refueling and is not going to the mothball fleet.

The swab jockies would likely cheer themselves hoarse over that news. 




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New car expectations.

Sometimes people expect too much out of a new car.

A while ago I listened to someone gripe about having to have a brake job at about 45000 miles. I said that sounds about right to me, depending on someone's driving habits. I know a guy that gets about 15,000 miles out of a set of pads but he uses the brakes too much and I believe he rides the brake pedal. Still, one has to remember that brake pads and shoes are wearing parts. The friction involved in slowing and stopping wears on pads and shoes. 

He looked at me and protested, "But I bought it NEW!"

I kept my tongue in my mouth. I wanted to say, "It's not new anymore." I didn't say it but I should have.

I reminded him that he had plan on a new timing belt down the road and he gave me the look of a man that had been cheated out of a million dollars. Timing belts should be changed at intervals between 60 and 100,000 miles, depending on the model. If the engine has a timing chain then it will generally last the life of the engine.

This guy didn't understand maintenance which surprised me. I sure don't want to buy a used car from him!

I knew a man that maintained a fleet of vehicles and SOP was that at 100,000 miles every rig got a alternator, water pump, and clutch assembly. That sounds about right. Alternators and water pumps are reliable for about 100,000 miles and depending on if the vehicle is driven in city or highway miles, a clutch replacement is probably in order.

I sold a pickup with 170,000 miles on it and it still had the original clutch in it and it was still in pretty good shape but I drive a lot of highway miles which means clutches don't wear out nearly as fast as they do being used in the city.

Depending on what the state does with salt, that's probably pretty close to time to replace a muffler and maybe some exhaust pipes.

Things on cars wear out over time and when something decides to go you have to look at it and see if it's a fair expectation.

New cars today should be reliable for at least 150,000 miles with basic maintenance. This means oil changes and lubrication of various things. Over the years I have seen people practically destroy a new car in under 20,000 miles. I also inspected a badly torn up clutch in a car with 10,000 miles on it and it was obviously abused. I found out the parents had bought their kid a new car and he had promptly torn it up. The parents carried on about how the car was under warranty but the warranty doesn't cover obvious abuse.

When  the father asked what to do I suggested he make his son get a job and earn the money for the repairs. For this I got a dirty look from the mother.

Tires generally last anywhere between 15,000 to 60,000 depending on a lot of variables. On my present rig I generally see about 50,000 miles on a set of Grand Treks.

The internals of the engine and running gear should last for at least 150,000 trouble free miles in even the most inexpensive of vehicles. This doesn't cover generators and water pumps, brakes and other wearing parts and assumes that the owner does his job in the maintenance department.

You still have to maintain the vehicle. Oil changes at manufacturers stated intervals are a must and you have to understand normal wear and tear or you're going to be angry and disappointed.
















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I read where CNN was asking what color Prince Harry's kid is.

I am one of William and Harry's admirers to be honest.

CNN has a lot of gall asking what color somebody's kid is. It doesn't matter.

If Prince Harry is happy with his kid then that just tickles the shit out of me.






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What's with all of these ecologists and climate change people

going out and buying personal jets?

I just saw where some rapper/climate change advocate just bought himself a Boeing 767.

Seems that the big shots want us to walk while they ride in comfort.

Too much of that going around these days.




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Some of the best economists come from the street.

The fleet was in and there was an awful lot of herring money in town. I was sitting in Tony's Bar and the empty two seats were filled with a pair of hookers which was par for the course in Kodiak back in those days.

As the guys from the fleet wandered in in various stages of cleanliness the hooker newest to town said that a couple of the fishermen smelled bad.

The veteran hooker looked at her and said, "In this town, that's what money smells like."

I quietly snickered, and instantly realized she was right. I also knew that the hookers in that town charged through the nose for their services. Then I quietly ordered another $2.75 beer. This was in about 1985. That was a lot of money for a beer at the time, at least stateside. Stateside it was probably about a buck a beer and drafts were well under a buck. Some stateside joints had two bit drown nights at the time for draft beer, meaning a draft beer cost a quarter.

I always knew there was money in Kodiak because of what the hookers, bartenders and drug dealers were charging. Good pot ran about $200/ounce and cocaine ran $200/gram.

I was pretty content with a couple of beers at the time. I wasn't a druggie or had little interest in the commercial sex market but I was always aware of the prices of these thing. They told me that there was an awful lot of money around if the prices were high.

It also said that there was money to be made for someone like me that was willing to take casual labor jobs as a carpenter. It was true. I did rather well taking any number of odd jobs. I could well afford coughing up $2.75 for a bottle of beer and going home to an evening meal of venison, halibut or king crab. This latter three cost me nothing but putting a line or a pot in the water or a well placed rifle shot.

Sometimes I fished for a living. One day as I pulled in a nice 250 pound halibut I looked at the guy next to me and commented, "That's NEW MONEY. That's money nobody has ever seen before!"

He looked confused.

The skipper was looking down on us from the wheelhouse and grinned. "He's right," he said. "That IS new money and you're guys are the first ones to see it. That's what your paycheck looks like."

Later I left Kodiak and wound up moving oil. I still move oil.

One day we were hauling crude oil from a ship to a refinery. I opened a tank and told a newbie to look at what new money looked like.

He looked confused so I explained to him that he was looking at money that was going to be turned into cash. The crude would be turned into gasoline, diesel or heating oil and people would pay good, hard earned cash for it. we were among the first to see this new money.

Back to street economics.

Later when I was cruising my sailboat and arrived in a new town the first place I would go is the nearest bar and check out prices. 

If beer, hookers, cocaine and pot were inexpensive I knew there was not a whole lot of loose cash floating around town. I'd simply sail off for the next town.

If the price of vice was expensive then I knew that there was money to be made for me doing odd jobs. Busy, successful people often sub out day to day things. If they can be making more money with their time it makes sense to hire out some of the day to day things. I would sometimes make money doing things like mowing lawns or cleaning leaves out of rain gutters and that sort of thing.

When you are living on a sailboat that has been paid for you don't need a whole lot.

One time I was chatting with a cop and told him about how I figured the street economy. He looked at me with curiosity which was to be expected. Then it dawned on him that I was simply looking for work. He told me what the going prices were for drugs. I told him they were too low and I would probably sail on the morning tide for greener pastures.

What was interesting is that he knew a woman that needed a little help but it didn't pay a whole lot. It panned out and I did make a little money and actually did rather well because she threw in a few things on top of the cash. She fed me and gave me a couple of bottles of scotch she had no use for. I also got a pie and some other chow to take with me. I painted a porch which took me about a day.

I didn't get rich but I certainly came out ahead. I wound up with some booze, some chow and a few bucks which was a pretty good deal.

As I sit here decades after this I have no idea what vices cost in my own neighborhood. It doesn't matter as I have a decent job and don't need to support myself by doing odd jobs. 

Still, there is a lot to be said for looking at economics from a grass roots level. I am no longer on the streets and as a seaman the national economy is what effects me now.
















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There are six major religions in this world.

Christianity
Islam
Hinduism
Buddhism 
Sikhism
Judaism

Christians seem to get along with Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jews. They don't coexist well with Muslims.

Hindus seem to get along with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jews. They also do not coexist well with Muslims.

Buddhists seem to get along with Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews.

Sikhs seem to get along with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews.

Jews seem to get along with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews.

In fact, Muslims do not appear to get along with anyone, even themselves.

I have been very, very loath to enter the religious war in this blog but I can't help but wonder why Muslims seem unable to get along with the rest of us.

I know that there are any number of Imans that preach coexistence but it seems that not enough Muslims listen to them. It also seems that Sunni Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims seem not to get along very well, either. It is also worth noting that I read that since 2000 that over 90% of the world's terrorism can be traced back to Muslims.

Christianity is split up into several different denominations and they seem to get along well together. (I attribute 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland to be more political than actually religious.)

There are three divisions of Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform and Jews don't bicker among the divisions.

I do not know why this is but it's the way it looks.

Personally I have had no religious based conflicts over the years simply because I tend to avoid religious issues but I have noticed a lot of Muslims trying to force their beliefs on others.

Recently I read where a number of Subway sandwich shops have stopped serving ham because of pressure from Muslims.

Jews don't eat pork, either yet I have never heard of them trying to stop anyone else from eating it.

It's a damned shame that many Muslims are troublemakers but I guess it is what it is and we are probably not going to see a solution without some sort of a war taking place.








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One of the things that irks college grads is

there are good paying jobs out there that require little or no real formal education. It just takes a willingness to work and be inconvenienced.

I am a sailor and do OK. It is a somewhat physical job and I go away from home for periods of time. I did advance my career by hitting the books on my own and getting various ratings and endorsements from the Coast Guard. They administer the rules and regulations involving the marine trades.

Still, I am paid what I am paid because I am inconvenienced. I go away from home for periods of time. Family men that do this for a living miss a lot of birthdays, holidays and other things. They sell these things to a shipping company for a larger paycheck than they would get being a 9-5er.

Over the years I have run into a number of people that gripe that they went to college and have a degree or degrees and don't make much money.

That's because they chose a career that was flooded. I know someone that recently griped that they had to get a Master's degree to make a living wage. It's because they chose a flooded career path and they get to go home every night after work.

Teachers gripe about this all the time.

Yet they never seem to do anything about it.

I once offered to get a teacher a job at sea and pointed out that it would be more money than they are making as a teacher.

Their answer was that they were not going to go away from home and be inconvenienced.

I just shrugged and said, "Then you ain't got nothin' to gripe about."

Of course he wasn't placated. He grumbled about how it was unfair that he had a degree and was making what he was. The truth is he probably knew what he was in for when he took the job.

I once had someone ask me what a tugboat skipper made and I told him. It can be a pretty hefty paycheck.

He commented that it seemed like an awful lot of money for someone with no education.

I laughed. "Can you dock a 400 foot oil barge in a 30 knot wind without cracking an egg between the barge and the dock?"

"Well, uhh...uhh..." he replied.

In the real world you are paid for what you can do. I can't do that and as a result I make less than a skilled tug skipper. I didn't point out that the person I was talking to has to wear a tie to work and the Tug skipper as often as not is wearing a ratty pair of sweat pants and flip-flops and maybe hasn't shaved in a week.

There actually are a lot of people out there running tugs with good educations. I routinely sail with guys that got their degrees from state Merchant Marine academies and a number of King's Pointers.

I've seen King's Pointers replaced by high school dropouts and vice versa. What matters is that you can do the job.

Actually to a certain extent this runs into the business world. The late Dave Thomas that started the Wendy's hamburger chain never finished high school. Still, it is generally considered that entering into the corporate business world a bachelor's degree is an entry level requirement, although Bill Gates is a college dropout.

I will certainly admit that an education does open doors but once you get in you have to  produce. On the other hand, having a particularly useful skill means you are very marketable.

One group of people that academicians sometimes sneer at are vocational school grads. What they fail to realize is that most of them are craftsmen. The next step is that they become entrepreneurs and hire craftsmen.

I always get a hoot out of the Harley Davidson set, the successful doctors and lawyer motorcycle aficionados  hold someone that is self taught and can build a custom bike in high esteem. A motorcycle aficionado will pay for the nose for the services of a person that can mold steel into a custom motorcycle fender or build a custom fuel tank. They don't teach those skills in any college I know of.






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One of the things that makes college students into conservatives is

their Grade Point Average.

Students have to keep it up to a certain level just to be able to stay in school or keep a scholarship. They have to get acceptable grades.

It is something they earn by studying, cramming, whatever it takes and a student with a high GPA is pretty proud of it. It is the proof that they have worked hard at college.

Enter Suzie Creamcheese that attended every party and social event on campus. She's on academic probation she's maybe half a point below the flunk out cut off. It looks like Suzie is going to have to leave school for insufficient grades.

Brainy Brenda has a perfect GPA, a clean 4.0. She has no worries. She's missed out on a lot of the partying and has a somewhat stifled social life because she has opted to study. She's really quite proud of her 4.0 GPA.

Brenda also considers herself to be a liberal. She supports all the do-good courses and is a member of the campus Socialist party. She wears a Che Guevara T-shirt to class often. She also has ties to ANTIFA.

She has a GPA that means she has no worries about staying in school. She has points to spare, far more than she needs to stay in school. 

So let's ask Brenda if she is willing to give Suzie a half point out of her GPA to Suzie so Suzie doesn't get thrown out of school and see what happens. Brenda will still have a 3.5 GPA and will still have no danger of being thrown out. She'll go from an A average down to somewhere between an A- to a B+ average. She'll still be considered a good student.

Suggest to Brenda that she give Suzie a half point out of her GPA to Suzie so Suzie can stay in school and see what happens.

Invest wisely in a set of earplugs before you do this and expect to hear a diatribe that will make the infamous McUzi rant seem it came from the mouth of St. Francis. Brenda is sure going to go off on you! (If you don't know what the McUzi rant is, go to my post on 22 September, 2018. It's there.) The uproar you will get from Brenda will make the Mount Vesuvius eruption sound like a fart from a 93 year old woman in comparison.

Brenda is sure to say that it isn't fair that she busted her ass to get a perfect GPA and that there is no way in hell she's going to give ANY of it away to some lazy party girl! She should have missed a couple of parties and studied!

Brenda ain't giving squat away and the very fact that she was asked angers her to no end.

It's pretty funny when you think of it. Brenda wants the government to take everyone else's money away and give it to someone else, yet she isn't giving a single bit of her perfect GPA away. Not one single bit. After all, she EARNED that GPA!

It's funny how it works. A lot of people don't seem to mind having something taken from someone else, yet want to be allowed to keep what they have earned.






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One of the things I am proud of is

that during my wandering and homeless years I never took and free stuff form the government. I always managed to take care of myself.

After I got out of the service I did go on unemployment for a few weeks until I found work but that's actually an insurance policy of sorts that I collected on.

It really wasn't hard to do this. I had simple needs and simple tastes. I was also always willing to work. Needless to say, I did do a lot of hard, dirty jobs but it paid the bills.   

One of the things I occasionally did was to wander into a diner and offer to wash dishes and clean the place up in exchange for something to eat. I was rarely refused and almost always the diner owner would hand me a couple of meals worth of go-go food to eat on the way to my next stop. I was also often offered a job if I wanted it. Sometimes I would work for a couple of days and make a little traveling cash.

Once in a diner one of the diners there overheard me and offered me a week's work as a cowboy. I took him up on it and was taken back to the ranch and handed an old dilapidated Jeep, a fencing took, some barbed wire and a revolver and spent a week mending fence. 

There was and likely is always something to do if you want to do something and pay your way.

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One of the things people don't think about

are all of the details that go into any major operation, military or otherwise.

I remember my dad one time was talking about how someone griped to him about finding typewriters going ashore on the first wave at Omaha beach. Dad thought it was pretty stupid, too.

Actually it really wasn't stupid. You would think the first wave only needed ammunition, food and water but there's more to it than that.

A lot of radio operators back them were still using code and it was a lot easier and more accurate if they took the messages on a typewriter. It actually made sense to send a number of them in with the first wave. While a radio operator certainly could use a pencil and paper, it was faster and more accurate to use a typewriter.

Of course, there is always someone out there that will point out that typewriters are likely to get clogged with sand. So what? You simply throw it away and grab another. Besides, hopefully the radio operator is not going to be on the beach for long.

While not really a job of such Herculean effort as Operation Overlord, moving is a job that prior planning and organization can make things a whole lot easier. 

Recently I watched a neighbor move out. I also watched someone move in but not to the same house the neighbor moved out of. 

When the neighbor was moving out I noticed that they boxed everything up in an organized manner and labeled all of the boxes by which room they were going to go in and what was in the boxes. When I saw that I knew that it was going to be pretty easy for them to move in. When the van got unloaded the boxes would be put in the appropriate room, opened and their contents put where they went. 

Assuming they had the van unloaded by, say, noon they would probably be able to own bed and wake up and be able to cook breakfast.

The guy that I watched move in had boxes and boxes full of surprise. Every time he opened a box he's have to take something out and go through the entire apartment to put it where he wanted it. The process took forever and a day. Mind you, this was for one guy moving into an apartment. Moving an entire house probably would have taken him straight to the booby hatch.

After a short time of watching him I had to leave. I couldn't help him because I didn't know where he wanted what.

It would not have taken this guy the ability to plan an operation like Overlord to move. In fact it probably would have been easier to organize than to just grab stuff and cram it into boxes but some people never seem to get it.







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Wyatt Earp and company

In the background there is an old rerun playing on the tube. 

It's 'The life and legend of Wyatt Earp'.

He is said to be brave, courageous and bold, and one of the good guys. Yeah, some good guy.

Truth is he was pretty much of a criminal himself. He was a wanderer, wandering from boom town to boom town in a quest to make a fast and easy buck. 

Back in the days of the Wild West it was common practice in growing towns to simply hire a thumper to keep the peace. Earp fit this picture to a T.

I'm sure that as a lawman he took advantage of his position to shake down a few businesses and or overlook some shady dealings. If one of the locals cheated some transient cowboy, then nobody really cared. If Earp took a cut of a gambling operation that was cheating transients, then nobody cared.

Earp was probably smart enough not to permit the locals to be cheated or robbed and that's probably why he'd get hired.

Why the Hollywood people made him look so upstanding and wholesome is beyond me. 

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One of the things I see the Muslim population doing is demanding

that the rest of the country conform to their standards.

How about 'NO?'

If you want to live under Sharia law then go back to where you came from. 

If you don't like ham simply don't eat it. Nobody is forcing you to. On the other hand, leave me alone if I decide to have a BLT.

You came here to enjoy our freedoms. If you want to take our freedoms from us, don't bother. Simply find some other place that makes you happy.

Incidentally this goes for my fellow Americans that move to another state and start trying to turn it into the sewer they just left.





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I pissed off a social worker at the auto shop yesterday afternoon.

I was picking up my vehicle and another woman was there picking up her car. It was plastered with the usual do-gooder bumper  stickers. I decided to let it ride until she said something to me about my two discreet stickers. One is a Universal Life Church minister sticker and the other one says, "Legion Etrangere" She asked me if I was a minister and I said I was. 

Then she asked me what the Legion sticker was and smart ass that I am, I answered her in French. I only speak a couple of phrases that I remember from elementary school but it must have been good enough. She looked at the sticker and asked me if I was a Foreign Legion chaplain. I just gave her a look and let her take the bait.

"With all that time in France you must hate Donald Trump," she said. Ray Charles could have seen that one coming. He collection of stickers had told me that.

I replied by asking her what she did for a living. She said she was a social worker.

I looked at her. "I know why YOU hate Donald Trump," I returned.

"OH? Why is that?" she asked.

"Because you are a social worker and without failure you would be out of a job. You need people to fail in order to keep your job. If everyone found a job and went to work you would have nothing to do an would have to go to work in the private sector and actually produce instead of encouraging failure."

She stormed of and the owner of the shop grinned. He was smart enough to stay out of it, though. 



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One of the things that really OUGHT to be a felony is

issuing a false report to the police.

False accusations of rape are fairly commonplace and have been for decades. This makes it a living hell for woman that have actually been sexually assaulted to the point where an awful lot of legitimate victims refuse to report the crime.

Many women scream that any woman making such an accusation should automatically be believed but that's a crock when you look at how many false claims are made. It's a very serious offense and when you are looking at imprisoning someone for a long period of time 

Real women with any sense of justice should be speaking out loudly against other women that make false accusations.

The other case of false accusations that comes to mind it the vile practice of swatting people. It is something seems to be aimed at gun owners. 

Someone sees someone with a firearm and instantly calls the police and accuses the person of brandishing ot threatening people with said firearm. 

The police arrive and things can get pretty touch and go when the police arrive and expect to find a possible active shooter. I can't say as I blame a policeman for being leery of arriving on such a call and it speaks highly of the police that they generally arrive and nobody gets hurt.

Someone said the Walmart near him has a policy where a gun buyer is escorted to his car by an employee. They do this for a couple of reasons. It protects the store from having the police arrive and create a disturbance, it protects the customer and discourages the potential swatter.

The practice of using the police to do one's dirty work is a vile practice and tends to make cops pretty skeptical when they arrive on a scene.

This doesn't mean that honest calls made in good faith should be discounted. An honest rape victim SHOULD come forth and seek justice. On the other hand, women should crucify other women that use false accusations to cover for sexual shenanigans or to get even with some poor innocent slob that did nothing wrong.

It also puts some responsibility on honest gun owners to try and avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing.

An example of this is a couple of years ago when I wanted to focus a new scope. I wanted to use the shingles on the roof of a house a few doors down. Instead of taking the rifle outside I opened a window and sat inside where I would not be seen. I removed the bolt from the rifle, rested it on the table, focused it. I then reassembled the rifle and put it back in the safe.

I also always keep my firearms either concealed or cased when I take them hunting or to the range. If a swatter tries to make a false accusation he's going to look pretty stupid if the police see a locked, cased rifle in the back seat of a car.

If the police would start issuing summonses for issuing a false report the practice of swatting would decrease. If it became a felony and a few people went to jail for it the  practice would disappear altogether. 

It would also serve to give women that report legitimate sexual assaults some credibility.





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