Planning a tripto visit my sisters is a chore.

The ONLY nonstop flights from my place to Sarasota is with Allegiant which seems to be a real fly by night airline or with Southwest on certain dates.

It'll all work out, I suppose. Hopefully I can get flights on Southwest because I really don't think I want to fly Allegiant because of the reports I've heard. Besides they nickel-dime you which irks the snot out of me. I'd rather pay more for reasonable service. An extra $35 for a carry-on is ridiculous. That's what they charge for full-sized checked bags on most other airlines. 

Couple that with the fact that a stop along the way is generally a long layover or in a crummy airport or both and it's a day of misery.

I'll figure something out.

Maybe I'll just fly into Tampa and rent a car. Who knows?

Actually my first choice would be to take two or three days to get there in the Miata but I really can't trust the weather.

I should probably be ashamed when you think about it. This is really a First World problem.

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One of the reasons deportation is not going along fast is there is no reason for people to self-deport.

Why bother? if/when you get caught you just get sent back to where you came from. You really don't lose a lot. I wouldn't self-deport either.

So here's what you do. You send them somewhere else.  An illegal Venezuelan gets sent to, say, Svalbard, a Guatamalan gets sent to Somalia and so on. That's something to lose!

The best way to publicize this is on TV and make it a game show. You get a big wheel like the one on Wheel of fortune and the being deported illegal alien gets to spin it to see where they are being extradited to. You make it a game.

Get a good, snappy emcee,

Ladies and gentleman our first contestant is a drug dealing MS 13 member from Nicaragua oicked up in none other than Los Angeles, California! Give the wheel a spin, Jose and find your now home.........here it goes...Well, Jose, if looks like yu're headed to Djibouti! Warm weather for you! They say that only three things survive there, snakes, scorpions and Foreign Legionnaires but here's an opportunity to prove that saying wrong. Good luck Jose!

Here's Juan Sanchez from Mexico. Give the wheel a spin, Juan....New Guinea!  Well, Juan. You win another spin. Lucky you! The headhunters in New Guinea will only take five illegals a week as that's all they can eat. They got their weekly 5th last night. Spin again, Juan....Wow, Juan! You just won a free trip to Niger!

Here's an Irishman that overstayed his student visa by fifteen years. Give the wheel a spin, Mickey! Lucky you, Mickey! You're going to Sudan!

Hey, a family of five gets to stay together in none other than Sudan! Nice spin!

Fact is that something like this would make it clear that there are consequences to being picked up illegally. Such a way of dealing with things would make some aliens self-deport because they have something to lose. Couple that with a free ticket and a small stipend to leave and you'd see the number of semi self deportations climb and with fewer illegals in the country the odds of being picked up would increase. 

Throw in the opportunity to re-enter legally to those that self-deport on their own and I bet much of the problem would solve itself.

I would imagine that at first few major companies would want to advertise because of the fallout from the left but as the show grew in popularity companies would fighting for commercial spots and be willing to pay through the nose for advertising slots.

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Tax time just sort of started.

I just got a message from Social Security with what benefits had been paid, sort of a 1099 but not quite.

I'm still fairly new to this but I ran the numbers alongside basic estimated numbers from my retirement account and I'm amazed to see what my real income is. I guess I did rather well for myself and am very pleasantly surprised at how well I lived just off of Social Security since retirement. I have not had a mortgage in over 20 years. 

I do live rather frugally and really don't want for much of anything because I bought all of my toys when I was working. In a way it's kind of sad.

I've had people say, "Hey! Now you can travel! Go on a cruise." 

Why? All of the cool places like Niger, Somalia, Nigeria and Uganda have stopped permitting people to go there. I had my heart set on going to spend a few months in Somalia learing the fine art of piracy and now that rotten  mean old Donald Trump fixed it so I can't.

I suppose maybe I can go to Disneyland and take a few lessons from Captiaon Hook.

I've traveled my entire life as a seaman. It's like asking a retired long haul truck driver if he wants to buy an RV and see America.

Fact is I don't really want to go anywhere other than to visit my sisters, niece and nephew. That's chump change. 

Here I am, all dressed up with nowhere to go and enjoying it.

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This time it was the gas guys working nearby.

As I do most of the time I wandered out and offered them a cup of coffee, a Christmas leftover ham sandwich and stunned them when I told them to knock on my door if they needed a bathroom.

Over the years doing things like this has paid incredible dividends.

A handful of cokes properly iced got me put in touch with a guy that saved me well over $5K when I needed the gas line replaced. The man handed me a list of things to buy which ran about $100 and two days later got me up and running again for only another $100. He even had the gas inspector show up to certify things and turn the gas back on!

Cokes and  coffee in season to the trash guys meant that I could get rid of practically anything. Twice they used the cable on the truck to uproot shrubs and small trees, stuffed them into the truck and carried them off. I believe I gave them cash for the shrubs and trees but it was still an incredible deal.

Occasionally I would have a small repair job and someone did one and we had agreed on $125. Before i reached into my wallet I handed him a quarter pint of Jim Beam and he smiled and said, "Just give me $100.

I always try and cast my bread on the water and often times I get back poached eggs on toast.

It's Old School but it still makes a difference.

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The post I made about taking a date to a hospital cafeteria.

          Early on I discovered that women get tired of the same old same old, at least if they have something remotely resembling an imagination.         

That's when I started to think outside of the box. I started coming up with all sorts of different things to do. 

When I lived in Kodiak tourist women wanted to see eagles and bears. If they interested me I'd offer to to take them eagle spotting in my old Dodge pickup. A number of them took me up on the offer. 

I'd take them straight to the Kodiak dump, get out and find something like a nasty old fish or something and put it on the hood. As often as not of times an eagle would land on the hood, scoop up the fish and leave, not five feet from us sitting in the cab. We always spotted an eagle or three pretty close up if they didn't scoop up the treat I put on the hood.

I took a couple woman to a rifle range and showed her how to shoot. It cost me 4 or 5 boxes of .22LR. Big deal. Neither of these woman had never done that before. One of them really enjoyed herself, the other was mildly interested but not really into it.

They didn't all go smoothly but that's OK. One of my favorite impromptu dates was a budget cruise I took a woman on. Actually it was a picnic on a ferry. It turned into a hilarious fiasco because it was in late spring when a maintenance crew was on board chipping and repainting the ferry. My table was a board and a wooden fruit box and the seats were 2 five gallon pails containing the picnic lunch and we had to move a couple of times because the racket of needle guns (paint scalers) was annoying.  

I think the third time we moved when we reseated I casually and suavely said, "Ahh, yes. Where were we?" like nothing had happened. 

She replied that this was the most whacked out date she had ever been on. I replied, "Yeah, but you're not bored." which sent her into total laughter.

"That I'm not," she replied. "What's going to happen next?"

"I don't have a clue but I'm sure we'll find out," I replied. Just then some drunk wandered by and we both laughed like hell.

Later she told me it was the most entertaining time she had ever had.

Of course, I didn't bat 1.000, generally about 75% which ain't bad. One woman in Kodiak was totally appalled at being taken to the dump to watch eagles. I suppose she had some vision of being taken to some mountaintop and watching 287 eagles flying 10 feet above us.

Still, you have to remember that a date works both ways. You are not only scoping her out but she is doing the same thing. The woman that was upset over being taken to the dump to see eagles I was probably glad to get rid of early on. Partly because she had no sense of humor and mainly because she wanted to see wildlife on her terms. She likely didn't understand the concept that you go to where the wildlife was, not the other way around. What she wanted was unrealistic.

One trick I used was when I sailed my sailboat from Kodiak to Friday Harbor. Nah. Let's skip that one. Let's just say that cruising a sailboat was interesting.

Still, the advice that I give to a young man dating is not to follow the same old dopey dating ritual (whatever that is these days) and try something different and make yourself interesting.

Take the road less traveled.

In this day and age I do believe if I was, say, under 40 I would ask a woman out to go with me to an 0145 breakfast at a Waffle House next to a strip joint. Hell, if I was single now at 74 I would be tempted.

At least it would be interesting.

 

               

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I can put a mildly blurred face on her but not a name.

It was a half-assed date of sorts I had in Washington. Most of it is a blur but...

 This goes back far away and long ago but I remember this very attractive woman I found myself talking to. She was a few years older than me. She had her own business of some sort and was divorced and bored with everything but her business which kept her fairly busy.

She mentioned boring middle aged guys and boring dinner dates and my mouth ran away with me. "I can beat anyone of those dinner dates hands down! I'll be by early if I can use your shower. I'm on the road now and living a bit rough."

Her jaw fell but she decided to accept the challenge. She told me where to pick her up. I showed up early, got cleaned up leaving her bathroom cleaner than it was when I entered it.

Then I took her to dinner at a hospital cafeteria!

We drove in my falling apart trusty '62 Dodge half-ton with a camper on the back. While she was not impressed with it because it wasn't a Ferrari or something she she was impressed that I had the skill to keep the thing running.

We got to the hospital and she was curious. "You'll see," I said.

She figured it out when we got into the elevator and I pushed the ground floor button. She laughed herself silly and said, "I don't believe you are taking e to dinner in a hospital cafeteria!" and laughed some more. "I probably should demand you take me home but I won't. Nobody's ever taken me to a hospital cafeteria before."

"I told you I'd take you somewhere nobody ever has before," I said.

She shook her head and laughed.

Much to her credit she had a pretty good sense of humor and we had a pretty damned good time together.

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It's Christmas day

And there's a spiral cut ham, a green bean casserole, some beans and a panful of fried taters out. There's a fresh jug and a shrimp ring in the reefer.

I've sent word out to a few orphans and we shall see what we shall see.

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Yesterday evening the local convenience store was mobbed. My guess is people were grabbing beer and smokes for Christmas Day. My unindicted co-conspirator was at the register. Seeing it was Christmas Eve I thought about keeping my mouth shut but this was too juicy of a target of opportunity.

"Hey, Bob! I just saw a GoFundMe to put Trump on Mt. Rushmore!"

He replied, "Someone mentioned that and said it's raised an awful lot of money. I heard it about 20 minutes ago."

"It was at 17 million bucks," I said. "I watched it go up $250K in about 15 minutes!"

"Wow!" he answered.

We both had a hard time keeping straight faces as the usual suspects scrolled through their phones.

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But he's an ASTRONAUT!!!

So what. 

I forgot which general (possible Schwarzkopf) said it but during his promotion indoctrination the first thing he was told was that if the airplane taking him had crashed they would have simply picked through the list of capable colonels and replaced him with someone that was just as or maybe even more competent than him.

Same holds true for astronauts and just anybody else.

Kelly flew 4 space shuttle missions which in itself is commendable but the fact remains that if he didn't fly them then someone else would have. There's always a pretty good sized pool to choose from and the powers that be could have easily chosen someone else. It's probable that the pool actually had someone more capable than him waiting to go.

Once someone gets to that level there are factors other than outright competence that play into things. Space flight is a sought after duty and God only knows the politics that go on in the program. It's no different than a lot of other things that go on in both government and business. In fact there's a kernel of truth to the saying "He married the bosses daughter."

Still, if one looks at astronauts they were pretty much people with aircraft experience and good records that were pulled out for additional astronaut training. Most decent aviators could have been pulled off the fleet and been trained in the astronaut program and served competently. 

In fact during the Mercury program human pilots were added to the program because the White House insisted and the Mercury 7 became instant American Heroes. The first couple of Mercury flights were supposed to be piloted by monkeys.

When I see a person running for office 

I'm not trying to slight generals and astronauts here. I'm just trying to point out that they are human beings that learned a skill of some sort and that the skill is entirely unrelated to being able to hold political office.

When I see someone running for office leading his list of qualifications with a military record I simply say, "Yeah? So? What does he have to offer our future besides his past military record?"

Maynard Smith was awarded the Medal of Honor but I sure would not want to see someone like that in political office!

If you have not figured it out by now, Mark Kelly should be court-martialed. While I'm sure the paperwork overruling a court martial conviction is sitting in some activist judge's desk drawer just needing the dates filled in, it would serve as an embarrassment to him and serve as an example to others.

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The price of eggs dropped in about six months.

It went up because of a disease of some sort that went through chicken flocks. As a result, supply dropped and the price rose. 

It takes about 6 months to raise a chicken from chick to egg layer so about six or eight months later the supply went up and the price dropped. A couple of months ago I paid a buck for a dozen but it seems to run about 2 bucks these days.

The American rancher has taken a pretty good hit with drought, high operating costs and God only know what else.

It takes a couple of years to raise a cow to slaughter so don't expect to see beef prices drop until about 2027 or 2028.

This is going to be a source of complaints by Americans because we're impatient as hell. When we want something we want it NOW.

Ain't gonna happen. Get used to it and just wait. 

In the meantime as usual we can run around looking for someone to blame.

The other day I carefully explained that the reason the cattle herds were so low is because it's a part of the Great Right Wing Judeo-Christian conspiracy to make pork the number one selling meat in the country so as to alienate Muslims and make them leave.

"Really?" he asked. He took the bait.

I figured he would believe the truth so why bother.

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Shoveling snow.

So far I've had to sweep snow once. 

When I wake up with an inch or so on the ground I just check the weather for the next few days. If it's above freezing and sunny I don't bother as it will be gone by the end of the day. If it's warm enough I don't even have to see if it's sunny.

Sometimes I sweep out a few patches on the stone patio to let the sun heat it up and melt it faster. It's fun to watch the swept patch slowly expand.

Of course winter is far from over so we shall see what we shall see.

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More on energy and logistics.

Like it or not, this country runs on energy. 

A while ago someone told me that he wouldn't mind paying a little more for gas if it got rid of Trump. I replied "That's because you're stupid."

What the individual pays for petroleum energy at the pump is just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, well, gas went up another $20/tankful. No biggie.

And that in itself I suppose isn't any big thing in the big picture.

What IS part of the big picture is the price of everything else. Those sneakers don't deliver themselves from China. Neither does the lettuce from California. Getting things to where they belong requires people and machines. Machines require energy to run. 

Currently, in spite of the never ending efforts being made by Top Men we still run on petroleum generated energy. Get over it. 

Until such time as Top Men and/or magicians find a cost effective way of enabling things to move without petroleum energy we are still going to have to use it. The price on goods is still going to have to reflect the cost of the fuel used to get it to the store. 

It adds up fast. For example it costs the farmer about a buck a head to grow lettuce. Currently near me it runs about $3/head. Two or three years ago it was running close to $5 in no small part because petroleum was expensive.

I would imaging some day after I am long gone a rocket scientist of some sort will come up with a transporter of some sort like they have in Star Trek and we can beam stuff around but not in this life time.

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Here's something for the left to piss and moan about.

Never mind that the Air Force has been doing this since 1955 and nobody cared, but here's one thing for you to ruin and make the country a little more of a drab place to live.

The Air Force has been tracking Santa on Christmas since 1955 and now the left can piss and moan that Trump's wasting taxpayer money on tracking the course of Santa Claus. The people involved for the most part are off duty volunteers and it cost the Air Force little if anything to keep track of Santa. 

In some parts of the world they send up an imaginary fighter escort which is rather cute.

Still, I would not be surprised to hear the left find an angle to try and shut it down just to be miserable.

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Interesting read I found somewhere

I keep hearing the same line over and over:

“You’re supposed to be held to a higher standard.”

Funny how that only gets said to one side.

When the news hit about Rob Reiner’s family, I watched something ugly happen in real time.

You had people praying, saying “that’s horrible, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Then you had the usual crowd clutching their pearls…

but not over the tragedy.

Over Trump’s words about a man who’s spent years calling him every name in the book.

And suddenly the lectures started:

“Trump should be better than that.”

“Take the higher road ”

“Leaders are held to a higher standard.”

Same script they use on any of us who speak up.

It’s never about what was done to us.

It’s never about the lies, the smears, the things said about our fallen, our country, our faith.

It’s always about how we responded.

You notice that?

I was scrolling through the comments on my page,

and one stuck with me.

A guy basically said what I’d been thinking:

We, as Trump supporters, are always being held to this so-called higher standard.

The left uses it to keep the field uneven.

They say we have to be kind while they spit in our face.

We have to be calm while they wish the worst on anybody in a red hat.

We have to stay “respectful” while they drag God, the flag, cops, the military, and half this country through the mud.

And if we dare swing back even once?

Suddenly we’re monsters.

They get to burn the house down.

We’re not allowed to raise our voice about the smoke.

I think about all the things that have been said about us over the last few years.

“Deplorables.”

“Domestic t••rorists.”

“R•cists.”

“Cult members.”

I’ve seen them celebrate when Trump supporters pass.

I’ve seen them make jokes when cops are ambushed.

I’ve watched them cheer when people lose their jobs over a hat or a post.

Nobody on their side talks about “higher standards” then.

No long think pieces.

No moral outrage.

No lectures about “words matter.”

It’s only when we answer back.

Only when Trump doesn’t pretend to love people who h•te him.

Only when regular folks decide they’re not going to sit there and take the beating in silence anymore.

Then the rulebook comes flying out.

Here’s what I’ve realized:

“Holding you to a higher standard”

has become a fancy way of saying,

“Shut up and take it.”

They want us calm

while they go for the throat.

They want us polite

while they call for our silence.

They want us to turn the other cheek

so they can keep swinging.

They’ll dredge up every rule in the world

about tone,

decency,

and respect

the moment we fight like they do.

But they never hold themselves there.

That’s not a standard.

That’s a cage.

Trump saw that game early.

They told him,

“Act presidential. Be nicer. Take the high road.”

Meanwhile they were calling him a N•zi,

trying to throw him in prison,

and dragging his supporters like we’re not even human.

He figured out what a lot of us finally learned:

You can’t win a street f•ght

by f•ghting like you’re at a Sunday school picnic.

Either you want a man who hits back,

or you want another weak Republican

who says all the right “respectful” words

while the country burns.

You don’t get both.

And that’s the real split happening in our own camp.

Some people want Trump to swing.

To call out the media, Hollywood, crooked politicians, all of it.

Others want him to sing kumbaya,

smile for the cameras,

and “rise above it”

while the left never changes a thing about how they attack us.

I’ve picked my side.

I’m tired of playing their fake moral game.

You don’t get to spit on us for years,

laugh at our d•ad,

cheer when our people get silenced or jailed,

and then suddenly cry about “decency”

when the punch finally comes back your direction.

That’s not morality.

That’s control.

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For the record, I am not happy to see Rob Reiner dead.

I AM glad that I don't have to listen to him anymore.

The man sent himself to rehab with TDS. What attention grabbing drama! Something was clearly wrong with him.

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So what. You're STILL a single father with three kids.

I had a doctor's appointment and was sitting next to a guy a little older than me in the waiting room. He mentioned his wife had died a few years ago.

"Any kids?" I asked him.

"Three, two sons and a daughter," he replied.

"So that makes you a single father of three," I said.

"The youngest one just turned forty," he protested.

"So what? You are still a single father of three children," I said.

"But my youngest is forty years old!" he shot back.

"Okay, I said back. "It doesn't matter how old they are you are still their father and you are a widow. That makes you a single parent of three children. Why not hop on the single parent's bandwagon and see if you can cash in? You can't nor should you cheat the government but I'm sure there are any number of privately funded single parent bennies you can latch onto."

I could see the mental gears turning in his head as he sat there silently thinking. My name was called and I got up. As I was getting ready to follow the tech he looked at me and spoke and with a snicker he said, "I like the way you think."

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When someone does you a solid keep mum about it.

Unless you are helping a business of some sort by giving them a good recommendation shut up. If a small businessman tosses you a freebie keep clammed up about it. Don't tell people that Jimmy's computer service hooked up your printer for free. Simply say that he he gave you great service for a good price and he's the only one you'll hire ad leave it at that.

When you say that he hooked up your printer for free you have done Jimmy no service whatsoever because what is probably going to happen to poor Jimmy is he is going to immediately going to be besieged by the entire Free $hit Army and everyone and their cousin will be descending upon him looking for free stuff.

Of course when Jimmy brings it to a halt he will become the jerk and in the long run very may well lose business because Jimmy will get sick and tired of giving the store away. eventually some Karen will say, "You set up Sheila's printer for free. Why do I have to pay?"

If Jimmy is like me he'll probably lose his temper and answer will be short and sharp. Sometimes crude.

A favor is a personal thing done between two people...period.

That nice teenager down the street that helped you with your groceries when it was snowy helped you and you only. Don't go on social media naming his name and thanking him. It's possible that his friends will tease him at school when they see it posted. It's also likely others will try to play him for a sucker and have him do things for nothing for them. He did the favor for YOU and not the rest of the world.

If someone does you a favor treat it like a high level drug deal. Shut up about it.

 

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Like it or not, the kids pretty much shot themselves.

A couple of porch pirates got shot recently in Atlanta. A quick Google check said that both survived. The shooter has been charged.

(I suggested that the appropriate charge would be disorderly conduct and the shooter be fined $20 causing epic screeching among the karens.)

I'm not going to get into the blame game here. I'm going straight to the bottom line.

Had those two teenagers left someone else's property alone they would not be suffering from gunshot wounds.

In my 74 years man and boy I have found out that people that simply behave themselves suffer an awful lot fewer problems.

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When you think about it a while Darwin does a pretty good job of sorting things out over time.

It makes me think that maybe Trump should not be sinking drug boats. 

Maybe he should legalize all of it and sell it wholesale and untaxed everywhere. Sell it in preschools and school lunchrooms, sell it in supermarkets at very affordable prices. Make narcotics available everywhere at cut rate prices. Let little kids sell heroin, coke and fentanyl as a side hustle for their lemonade stands. Set up vending machines carrying coke, heroin and fentanyl in Grandma's bingo parlor. Flood the entire country with dope. Leave it untaxed so as to eliminate the black market and reduce crime.

It won't take long after that before Darwin sorts it all out and the drug problem will be behind us. Fentanyl and heroin are generally self-solving problems.

Yeah, I know but still...

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People that use military service as a badge of character.

Benedict Arnold had an outstanding service record and was a Revolutionary War hero... until he wasn't. He threw it all away. Some say he was a better general than Washington. There's actually a plaque (nameless) dedicated to him at West Point.

Dwight Johnson was a Medal of Honor awardee and a true hero until he got shot trying to rob a convenience store. He embarrassed himself and the medal shortly afterward. To Johnson's defense PTSD and depression had a lot to do with it. I have no problem with him resting in Arlington.

Another MOH awardee was Maynard 'Snuffy' Smith. He was a famous screwup that was the only person I know of that was busted in rank after receiving the medal. 

These medals are given for a specific deed or accomplishment above and beyond the call of duty. A specific act or deed. 

SEAL school is a bitch. It's a physical and psychological nightmare. It has a washout rate of 90%. It's savage and when you think about it those are just the people that pass the selection board and actually enter the school. Graduating that school makes one the elite of the elite!

None of this in itself is any qualification for political office. 

Let's look at Mark Kelly. 

Hotshot Navy pilot, worthy of respect as a member of the military. Astronaut which is too cool. 

Yet he threw the whole thing in the crapper ala Benedict Arnold when he threw in with what became know as the Seditious Six.

 

  

  

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There is now a list of 30+ countries that we won't permit entry from

Which actually makes sense. Their governments don't have the infrastructure to vet their own people much less give our immigration any honest information about the person trying to immigrate. All immigrants should be vetted for at least basic security and health reasons. 

The other thing we ought to take into consideration is if an immigrant is going to be an asset or a liability and a burden. During their 5 year wait before applying for citizenship they should not be eligible for any government benefits and should prove that they can take care of themselves and be a benefit to our society rather than a drain. 

Personal observation tells me that Vietnamese and Filipinos enter the country with an excellent work ethic. Many Filipinas arrive as trained nurses and a friend's wife went to work making damned good money the day she got her green card. She had been pre hired pending her green card arrival and when it arrived in the mail box she took it from the mailbox and went straight to work. The ink hadn't even dried and she was working. At damned good money to boot!

These are the kind of people we want in here. People that have something to contribute. It's doesn't really have to be a college educated person, either. we've got things to do here that don't require an excellent education that someone can feed themself on.

We need people that have motivation to better themselves honestly and not scam the system. 

Lately the Somalis have taken center stage in Minnesota and another scam was unearthed in Ohio. While I generally take people as individuals I have to look at what's going on carefully to make sure I don't lump all of them into a single category.

I have noticed that Ilham Omar is now on her way to the Minnesota Somali $hit list because of the ICE raids. They probably think she was the one that drew heat to them and they may very well be right. It will be interesting to see if she gets reelected.

Still, I don't care who/what/when/where of why you are. If you are here illegally I want you out.  

The fact that you sneaked into the country shows me you are outright dishonest and you should he returned to wherever you came from or reasonable facsimile there of. 

 

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No, I don't have children. At least not anymore.

I did have a beautiful daughter but I lost her in a crap game when she was six. It was horrible. My wife wouldn't talk to me for almost a whole week after that happened.

So I explained to someone that assumed I was a grandfather in the conversation.

Much to her credit she picked up on it immediately and grinned and said I had a dry sense of humor and apologized for assuming.

I hope I run into her again as she's OK in my book because at least she has a brain.

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They're pretty much all gone...

For some reason I thought of an old man I met several years ago that had been in the 442nd RCT. I'd run into him at odd times and he never failed to make me laugh. He's been gone now for quite some time. When we met I asked him if he was a Buddhahead or a Katonk.

His daughter turned purple like I had called him a racial slur but the old man said, "I was born in California. I was a Katonk. I'm surprised you knew about that." Buddhaheads were Hawaiian born.

I grinned and said, "You bums were my heroes. You're badasses and Honorary Texans by proclamation of the Governor."

His daughter stared at him wide-eyed. I guess he never told his kids much about his service in Europe.

They're almost all gone now and even the youngest of them are nearly a full century old. Time flies.

I miss those guys. They were my mentors and they all had interesting stories to tell. Their tales ranged from being scared still in combat to being bored to tears in a rear echelon job.

I remember one humorous story about one of them that was in Europe in 1944-45 that said he never slacked off for a minute and pitched in and volunteered for practically everything in the supply unit he was a part of. He said he did that because every so often someone would be reassigned to a combat unit headed up to the front and he wanted no part of that.

He said his plan worked and he got to stay in the rear with the gear.

Can't say I blame him. He did his part.

Another one of my mentors spent well over a year as a weather observer in the Aleutians. He told a couple stories about some of the things they did out of sheer boredom. Once he was handed a long pole to put holes in the snow before new guys arrived so they could warn newbies about 'snow snakes'. Still, the weather in the Aleutians gave evidence of upcoming weather in Japan which by 1944 was very useful to aviators. All in all it was a miserable, boring tour.

A waist gunner that had been shot down over Europe and spent alost two years in a PW camp taught me to build a simple radio out of a safety pin, wire and a pencil lead. It worked.

All of them contributed one way or the other. 

My scoutmaster hit Europe in mid 1944 as a 2LT and was a company commander and a captain when they entered Germany. Later retreaded for Korea.

A very interesting WW2 vet I met was Mr. Schwartz. He was an immigrant that had fought in the Wehrmacht. When I mentioned him to Dad he blew up and told me to be good to Schwartz because he was just some poor sad bastard that got drafted and had no say in the matter. I got a talking-to about how wars are started by governments and fought by ordinary citizens.

Later I found out that Mr. Schwartz had been a POW that had been shipped to the States and immigrated after the war. His kids were younger than I was so I had little reason to run into him very often. 

They all had different stories to tell.

These people were my mentors and I miss them.

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Anyone ever look at a jar of 250,000,000 year old pink Himalayan sea salt?

I looked at a jar of it yesterday and saw a 2007 expiration date on it.

It's 250,000,000 years old and now it's going to go bad in two years?

Who are they trying to fool?

Then again, one can say that it was mined and processed in the nick of time before it went bad.

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Remember those little tags you'd find in a new shirt pocket?

The little slips that said "Inspected by #6".

I haven't seen one of those in quite some time. It seems now that every so often I see a shirt on the rack with a major blemish. I just saw one last week with a complete unsewn seam.

Maybe they ought to put old #6 back to work.

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One of the things that irks me is the 'pass the buck' mentality.

Where does it end?

Someone gets drunk and has an accident and people want to blame the bartender when the truth is the bartender didn't drink too much, the patron did.

I can see that we are not too far off from 

So you admit you grew the rye and sold it to the grain supplier that sold it to the distillery who made whisky from it and sold it to the distributor who sold it to the supplier that sold it to the bar where the man who purchased it drank too much of it and caused the accident.

Fact is the guy that drank too much caused the accident.

Let's stop shifting the blame.

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One of my favorite stories I have been told was about a county sheriff.

as told to me by a sailor I worked with from one of the Carolinas. It's also why I occasionally refer to lemonade stands. This was probably over 30 years ago. 

I guess the subject of the Philly PD came up and we discussed the time they mistook the guy that was going through the trash someone dumped near where out headquarters was. He was actually scrapping metals from the pile and the cop thought he was illegally dumping. He managed to point out that his truck bed only contained the metal he had pulled out of the trash pile and escaped a big fine.

That's when Red chuckled and told me that his county sheriff down home was pretty observant and the deputies probably would have helped him load any heavy metal stuff he found. 

"The sheriff's actually one of us," he said. "He's pretty good. He's really hard on serious crime and pretty good on the small stuff. He's got a good head on his shoulders and common sense which is rare."

"One time he caught a couple of my friends drag racing which is pretty serious down our way since a couple of kids got killed a few years back. Anyway, a deputy caught a couple of kids drag racing and they didn't try to fight their way out of it. The sheriff had had a quiet word with them and told them he'd make it go away if they painted the front of the office. It was a pretty good deal," he continued.

I told him it sounded like a pretty good sheriff. He replied that once every so often the sheriff gets pretty worked up and does some pretty funny $hit.

"Like what?" I asked.

He chuckled and said, "One time this nasty old woman started calling the Sheriff's office reporting little kids were running lemonade stands without Board of Health certificates. Of course they didn't do anything about it. Hell, the deputies always carry change around to buy lemonade with."

He explained that the sheriff didn't do anything about it and after a while the old bag called the State Police instead. Of course they didn't do anything, either but they did call the sheriff and tease him about it.

"That did it!" he said. "The sheriff cooked up a plot and called in just about every favor he could and called for volunteers. Almost every off duty that day cop responded and almost 75 police cars with riot gear clad uniformed officers showed up at his nephew's lemonade stand at about 11 in the morning and they raided it! Well over 100 cops of all sorts showed up for the raid, all volunteers. No overtime and it didn't cost the taxpayers a dime."

"Anyway, he had tipped off the editor of our county newspaper and when the paper came out a couple of days later there big headlines, 'Lemonade stand raided' and a big picture of the kid being led off in handcuffs by three deputies carrying shotguns and wearing helmets. The kid had a mean scowl on if face, it was funny as hell."

"Then," he continued, "The entire center sheet had pictures including one of the kid sitting in a cell with an angry look on his face and they quoted him as saying "They ain't made a jail that can hold me!" 

"The sheriff was quoted as saying "Unlike the Blues Brothers, no cars were damaged in the making of this raid'"

"How did the county people look at that stunt?" I asked.

He laughed. "A couple people resented it as to be expected. The rest of us thought it was funny as hell but funny part came the next week in the local paper."

"The photographer grabbed a picture of the old hag when she was grocery shopping and the editor posted it on Page One with a headline "Citizen of the Year" and the story of how she reported the illegal lemonade stand to the Sheriff. It also mentioned that the DA was declining prosecution in the interest of justice."

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the tale but I would not be surprised it for the most part it was true. It was one of the best sea stories I heard.

  

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One of the things I have learned is that there are very few true innocent victims in life.

I spent a decade of my life living in a world of loose cash running around, guns, drugs, whores and God knows what else.

It seemed to me that every time I was turning around someone was getting beaten up, robbed or fell up a flight of stairs. Drugs were the worst, whores and guns were minimal. I think I saw two guys fighting over a whore once. 

The rare shootings were generally between druggies.

I was ripped off twice which was meh. I call it collateral damage.

The reason I so seldom suffered was that I steered clear of drugs.

Same holds true for ICE victims. The liberals claim that hundreds and hundreds of people have been victimized by ICE and so on and so forth and hundreds have been run over by ICE and I'd bet that they did something to warrant it. 

One thing that comes to mind is blocking an ICE vehicle and getting hurt in the process. (Generally it's the purple haired passionate fat chick. The in shape hired male activists stay alongside the vehicle in question because they know better)

The old "I was walking down the street on the sidewalk minding my own business when six ICE agents grabbed me, beat me  up and carted me off to jail!" story is a crock. There's no shortage of actual criminals running around for them to waste time on some innocent citizen. People that try and feed someone that story generally omit a few small details like they assaulted the agent or something along those lines.

The truth is that one of the best ways to keep from becoming a non-victim victim is to keep your nose clean. Protesters that try block traffic and stay on the sidewalk while doing so very seldom (if ever) get hit.

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