Category: Uncategorized

 

The unholy alliance between the Lame Stream Media and politicians will eventually be destroyed if we continue to laugh at them.

Their younger target audience ignores clickbait as well as the pontificating beautiful people.

The liberal infiltration of apps like Farcebook and other social media are also being ignored.

Historically, we’re about to come full circle as memes have become the shorthand for political humor.

I recommend that the younger generation research Mark Twain and Will Rogers. They were the antidote for the political poison of their day. The PC crowd has neutered political humor, but we can repeat these salient observations that work just as well for today.

Mark Twain
Nov 30, 1835 – Apr 21, 1910

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.
If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
Apparently, our journalist friends have a time honored tradition of fake news.

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
One of Ronald Reagan’s favorite quotations and an observation as true today as it was over a hundred years ago.

“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”
California politicians seriously considered a tax on texting…and backed away when the laughter obviated the need for any discussion of this brilliance.

“To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.”
Twain didn’t know Bill Clinton or the other sex obsessed politicians, but…OK, you get my drift.

“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”
Twain was obviously prescient?

Pelosi 2.0?

There are people whose ego is so large that they honestly believe that they should be the rulers of the world. New World Order, Deep State Bureaucracy or whatever you want to label them, they frequently pat themselves on the back for their perceived brilliance.

Teddy Roosevelt was one of them. He ran a third party against the Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the Republican nominee, Charles Evans Hughes. Check out Hughes and ponder what would have happened if he had won instead of Wilson.

Ross Perot did the same thing and we got Bill Clinton…and Hillary!

These same ego driven people charter (or own) private jets they ride to global warming seminars. The last seminar racked up 151 private jets for these snowflakes for whom ride sharing is obviously an unfamiliar concept.

Members of the elite crowd bond together with fraternal affiliations like Skull and Bones…numbskulls is more like it. After graduation from academic institutions like Harvard that honor a SAT score of 1270 (that Hogg kid), they work together to make sure their country clubs and multiple vacation homes have armed guards to keep the riff raff out while condemning the second amendment and creating anti-gun laws.

We’ve got memes for that:

“The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet”.
Ouch…that one will leave a mark…excuse the pun!

And now on to Will Rogers…

Will Rogers
November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935

Will Rogers is more contemporary although Mark Twain’s humor is just as pertinent.
Both are based on common sense and the ability to shine a bright light on idiots.

“The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that’s out always looks the best”.
Which explains how we keep switching control in Washington?

“About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation”.

Will Rogers witnessed the repeal of prohibition which probably prompted this observation:

“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for”.

Rogers also shared Twain’s assessment of our journalism friends…

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance”.

The Drudge Report has become a joke with page refresh more often than I blink and a preponderance of clickbait. The page refresh gives him a bloated view count so he can charge more for advertising…which AdBlock software defeats.

Here’s a sampling of the stories Drudge thought important:

GALLUP: Michelle O Ends Hillary Run as Most Admired…

Celeb shark hunter under police investigation after cruelly attacking seabird…

Archaeologist haunted by ‘cursed dreams’ after opening sarcophagus…

STUDY: Surgeons Make Significantly More Mistakes When Under Stress…

Women’s College to Admit Some Trans Students…

There is relief in sight…

This news aggregate is what Drudge was hoping to be. You can spend hours (literally) keeping up to date on both sides of the arguments for any subject. It’s also packed with social media overview, the latest memes and human interest stories that will make you laugh and cry.

For you older folks…think of whatfinger.com as The Reader’s Digest running 400 pages and published every day. Mark Twain and Will Rogers would be proud.

Laughter and common sense will always be an effective bleach for any cesspool the dregs of society may try to create.

 

 

 

 

Journalism purists will argue any news story isn’t complete until you answer six questions:
Who, What, Why, When, Where and How.

Given the state of journalism I have witnessed, the Lame Stream Media is using crayons and toilet paper with a suspicious brown stain when they get to the WHY.

The New York Times has always claimed the highest journalistic standards when creating a “story” that the rest of the media use as a focal point for that day’s news interest.

One of their reporters, Thomas Fuller, sounded the alarm on January 19, 2018 that should have been heeded prior to the November 8, 2018 California fires. Here’s a screen shot:

Thomas Fuller is the San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times. He has spent the past two decades in postings abroad for The Times and The International Herald Tribune in Europe and recently in Southeast Asia.

Apparently, nobody read Fuller’s January article. However, the resulting November fire captured the attention of another New York Times reporter, Kendra Pierre-Louis on November 12, 2018. Here’s a screen shot:

Kendra Pierre-Louis is a reporter on the New York Times climate team. Before joining The Times in December 2017, she was a staff reporter with Popular Science, where she covered science and the environment.

Just three days previous to her article dismissing Trump’s tweet, she blamed climate change as the primary reason for the fires and suggested it would get worse. I don’t know where Ms. Pierre-Louis and the “climate team” are located, but surely Thomas Fuller is in her corporate telephone book. Maybe she’s too busy keeping up with the latest group think to bother reading her own newspaper. In her defense, Mr. Fuller is, after all, one of those dreaded white guys and she has the race card she can always play to draw attention away from her box of crayons and toilet paper.

I have personal experience with fires as devastating as the one Ms. Pierre-Louis viewed from afar. I lived a mile from the edge of the Apache Reservation in the White Mountains of Arizona. The Apache tribal leaders were not hampered by federal “guidelines” and cleared their lands while watching the crazy white man battle fires in the rest of the forest…”protected” by regulations drafted by some bureaucrat surrounded by miles of cement and asphalt. I was told to prepare to evacuate as the fire came close enough to endanger my home. My evacuation plan was to grab the cats and my insurance file and book a room at the Apache casino just two miles down the road.

The business of journalism is in transition. The share of Americans who often get news from TV – whether from local TV news, nightly network TV news or cable news – is down from 57% in early 2016. At the same time, the portion of Americans often getting news online, either from news websites/apps or social media, grew from 38% in early 2016 to 43% today. (PEW Research)

The mechanics of journalism is also in transition. Roughly 29,000 employees worked as reporters, editors, photographers or film and video editors in broadcast TV newsrooms in 2017 with a projected annual loss of 9% in the coming years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics. In 2015, there were 32,900 newspaper journalists employed full-time, which marks a loss of 3,800 employees from 2014.

Perhaps the Lame Stream Media should put down their crayons and consider this chart from the Pew Research Center:

…near to their interest…key words in the study.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are 247,813,910 adults living in the United States. The total population was estimated at 321,418,820 people, with 77.1 percent of those people being over 18.

Compare those numbers with the roughly 60,000 members of the Lame Stream Media, the majority of whom have adopted the crayon and toilet paper method of reporting the news.

The only reason I did read the Fuller and Pierre-Louis “stories” was because of my experience with forest fires. However, most of the time I can spot the crayon addicts by using a news aggregate like Whatfinger.com news. It’s all there and easy to find the stories near to my interest. Whatfinger News does a great job presenting all points of view allowing you to come to your own conclusion.

In the meantime, I am tempted to send a crayon with a few sheets of toilet paper to the more egregious biased journalist examples.

It would confuse them but make me feel a lot better.

 

Before I get to those yoga pants…

…why do I need the government’s permission to buy a gun?

They already loaned me a free gun…spent over a million dollars to train me how to use it…sent me to a war zone for two years and threatened me with a court martial if I ever lost my gun.

Here’s what happened in Minnesota when I wanted to buy a gun:

I started with research on the internet to find the best price for the best gun. I could not order it on any website since gun laws prohibit gun sales in MN except through a dealer. Fleet Farm is one of those dealers. However, I was told they could not carry more than a certain number of guns at the Lakeville location because a city ordinance limited how many they could have in stock…and the gun I wanted to check out was not one of the limited stock.

I contacted several other dealers and found one that had the gun I wanted to buy. The dealer in Burnsville who had the gun in stock gave me the best price. But (you knew this was coming) I had to fill out a gun purchase permit with the Farmington police department (FPD)…wait 5-7 days while the FPD does a background check…and then FPD issues the permit before I can buy the gun in Burnsville. The FPD background check asked for the last five years of residency.

I moved here from Arizona. In Arizona, you can buy a gun at Walmart, strap it on your hip in plain sight and walk around unchallenged. Perhaps officials in Arizona were confused when they received a permit to just buy a gun since Arizona has not replied after eleven days. FPD promised to check with Arizona and call me when the permit was approved.

The lady at FPD was polite and helpful. She mentioned the large number of permits they are now processing. No doubt the politics in Minnesota…including a new attorney general…has had a huge effect. I’d like to ask whatever MN politician who came up with the permit to buy idea just how helpful is that to the FPD? Funny how a politician’s great idea is always mandatory…and somebody else is responsible for the paperwork.

About those yoga pants…

Gun control advocates will ask why I want to buy a gun.

My answer: for the same reason women buy flesh colored, see through yoga pants.

Because we can.

Using gun control logic for yoga pants, there should be a permit required showing actual enrollment in yoga classes. The yoga pants permit would be issued based on volume containment and an annual inspection involving a tax based on volume containment. That would eliminate many of the painful incidents involving yoga pants at Walmart that require eye bleach.

My first gun was a Winchester model 101 shotgun. It was purchased in Hong Kong (1965) during an R&R (rest and relaxation) period between combat operations. The actual R&R happened a couple of years later in the Minnesota woods; grouse hunting with our first Golden Retriever.

Son #1 used my shotgun to bag his first pheasant (1982) on our farm.

We also adopted several more Golden Retrievers.

 The second gun I purchased happened because I lost a bet with son #2 during a family reunion in Wisconsin. I wagered that I would buy that gun for him if he hit the double clay when competing against his uncles and cousins. Granted, you can’t eat clay pigeons but the grin on his face was worth the money. He still has the gun…and the grin whenever I mention it.

My first shotgun cost $150.00 in Hong Kong…worth about $2,000.00 today. I bought my first handgun in the early 90’s for $179.00. Had it appraised last week by the dealer in Burnsville…$750.00. That’s a better return on the money than my IRA. Bet the IRS would like to know. Politicians have already confused the issue by using tax money to buy back guns. If they return $100.00 of my tax dollars to buy my gun, can I claim $650.00 depreciation?

Daughter #3 (five foot nothing) outshot me on the range several years ago…with my gun!

She has since gone into law enforcement and married a policeman. The new gun I am trying to buy may give me an advantage when I challenge them at the gun range. It’s a Kimber Micro Raptor .380ACP.

Daughter #1 is also a good marksman but now lives in the Boston area where my grandson was born and raised. During a visit with me, I took him to a gun range to help zero in a new scope for one of my rifles. He had never handled nor fired a weapon before. Son #1 helped his nephew and the result was a fairly good grouping at 25 yards even though we never got the scope sighted perfectly. We’ll see how he does with a handgun during his next visit.

     

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned daughter #2…or as she claims…my favorite daughter.

I have picture proof that she is more than familiar with guns.

My website research included ammunition…all gluten free. I ordered 95gr .380 ACP ammunition over the internet and 250 rounds were delivered to my door in just three days without filling out a permit…duh?

Once I buy the gun, there is a mandatory gun safety course ($89.90) in Burnsville for another permit from the Dakota County sheriff after another background check so I can carry the gun. There is no charge for the permit to purchase by the FPD. However, the sheriff’s permit to carry can cost up to $100.00 at the sheriff’s discretion. Sheriffs are elected. Maybe ask them for a yard sign along with the permit?

State reciprocity laws for concealed carry permits are weird. My MN permit will be good in WI but a WI permit is not good in MN. There is a push for national reciprocity but has failed because a national permit is too far from common sense. Or, maybe a national law would eliminate some of the revenue at state level?

You may want to visit my article https://franksiegler.com/why-politicians-love-gun-laws as the gun control argument continues to grow. That argument includes the term gun violence. As a responsible gun owner, I tested my guns by placing one on the deck and checked frequently. It had not moved…no dead bodies anywhere near.

Admiral Yamamoto said Japan would never invade America because there is a gun behind every blade of grass. The debate on gun control has been going on for decades.

Isn’t it about time the argument focused on people control as a solution?

The lame stream media always provides an extensive, empathetic, weeks long report on the stupid people who kill innocent people in a gun free zone…but forget about the people with guns who stop them.

There are literally over 20,000 gun control laws.

Here’s a website for information about your state’s laws:

https://www.gunstocarry.com/gun-laws-state

Some of those laws make as much sense as my yoga pants law.

I’m not advocating carry permits for everyone. I’d suggest that local law enforcement handle that as they are in the best position to keep stupid people from carrying guns in public. If not “stop and frisk” …maybe “pause and eyeball”? If some punk has a record of carrying a gun without a permit, wouldn’t it be prudent to stop and frisk to make sure they’re not doing it again?

Every state has control over drivers they allow on the road. A visit to any DMV office will scare hell out of you. Stupid people will be able to buy guns just as they can buy a car. However, a license to drive…or carry…puts the burden on the stupid person to be really stupid and face jail time if they do so without a permit.

When I finally get my new gun and the carry permit, the government will never know how many guns I already own…just that I am responsible and knowledgeable about gun safety when I carry one.

I can live with that…literally.

In the meantime, I promise to never buy and wear yoga pants.

 

Civility maintained a foothold in the late 1970’s despite a toxic political environment.

Jimmy Carter reigned over 12% inflation and interest rates of 21% with banks piling on additional costs almost double the prime rate. There was the hostage crisis and gas prices breaking the dollar barrier for the first time…if you could find it.

Gas saving tactics from the government mandated odd and even days at gas stations and a widely ignored 55mph national speed limit.

Truckers weren’t about to lose money nor time. Their road culture gave us C.W. McCall’s song Convoy…and woke the public to the benefits of the CB Radio. The fad quickly caught Hollyweird’s (sic) notice and Burt Reynolds starred in Smokey and The Bandit and Kris Kristofferson’s movie Convoy.

A typical CB broadcast among truckers went something like this:

“Breaker one-9, this is Cannonball Slim out on route I-10 headed Northbound to H-town. Just Stopped at this Choke-and-puke for some hundred-mile coffee and spotted two full-grown bears. Two Evel Knievels. Y’all Bear baits keep a look out passing mile maker 144. I’ll be 10-10 on the side.”

Translated to:

“Hi this is Greg, I’m on my way to Houston traveling north. I stopped at this truck stop for some strong coffee and saw two state troopers. Two state trooper motorcycle cops. All you speeders watch out if you’re near mile 144!”

(thanks to Jesus Garcia for the translation at jesusbehindthewheel.com)

The original CB (citizens band) Radio offered 23 channels and expanded to 40 channels as the popularity flourished. The government noticed and, of course, figured they should control it with CB Permits from the FCC if you wanted to install one in your car. When the permit requests hit over one million per month…they finally gave up trying to keep up.

The dictionary defines civility as consideration and politeness. My FCC CB Radio permit was KXD5196. My handle was hilltopper and my closest buddy was crows nest. An hour commute included bear warnings and road reports while exchanging greetings with others in the 7-10 mile radius neighborhood of the early radios. It was a community with codes for “please” and “thank you”.

In the example above ”breaker one 9” is asking permission to talk on channel 19. “Thanks good buddy” was always heard at sign off. The Bandit’s sense of humor was always an integral part of the conversations.

What the hell happened?

Instead of a small radius of reach, we can now connect with people at every corner of the earth using a gadget we carry in our pocket. Please and thank you have become pejoratives. Smile at someone on the street and they’ll call 911. Texting replaces talking. Dumb people have smartphones. Celebrities I never heard of give political advice while politicians give religious advice. Reporters offer opinions without facts and facts are ignored in favor of gossip. Next thing you know they’ll be mailing poison and bombs.

“Breaker one 9…hey crows nest…you still out there good buddy?”

 

 

Division of the human family into two distinct political groups began some 12,000 years ago. Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains in the summer and would go to the beach and live on fish and lobster in winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That is how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as “The Conservative Movement”.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q’s and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the “Liberal Movement”. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as ‘girley men’.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the trade union, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided. Liberals also taught their cats how to vote and knock things off horizontal surfaces.

Over the years, conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting revolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men.

Most social workers, college professors, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t “fair” to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, soldiers, athletes, and generally anyone who works productively outside government. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to “govern” the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans are. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tame and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends today’s lesson in human history.

No attribution.
If you send or receive similar words of wisdom, please include the author’s name and include it when you repost or send in an email.

Both sides of the political spectrum are bombarding me with messages about their opponents. Meanwhile, Whatfinger News is presenting both sides equally so I can sort through their verbiage.

If the politicians are all being honest, and the claims they are making about their opponents are true, how in hell did we stoop so low when these wretched examples of humanity even dared to run for public office? Why are they not all in jail?

We hear about Team Red and Team Blue fighting it out with rallies and voter registration drives including the Team Blue four just indicted in Texas for voter fraud. So visceral is the fight that members of Team Blue face years in prison in their attempt to defeat the other team in Texas. A member of the Blue Team has even fired a gun (which the Blue Team wants abolished) at members of the Red Team (Scalise).

Apparently, the main battle is to control the vote in congress even though each has an equal vote. Since we’re using the team analogy, maybe they should adopt my solution to the struggles you see on the football field. What would happen if you gave each player their own football…would the tackling end?

If politicians were playing my brand of football, they would increase the ferocity of the fight so they could get control of all of the footballs on the field. Fights during a baseball game also includes tackling which is strange because baseball teams are armed with bats. Maybe they just confuse tackling with hugs? Those darn men!

When physical confrontation is awkward, both teams resort to the playground tactic of calling names. I recognize those names because the post office delivers their political flyers daily albeit I haven’t noticed any use of “poopyhead”.

Team Red has a problem with over 90% of the media cheering for the Blue Team. The Red Team solution is to raise lots of money. They buy email address lists of known supporters of the Red Team they have purchased (about 10¢ each) to pay the media so the Red Team can run ads to tell us how terrible the media is for not being objective…say what?

Here’s an unorthodox idea…Red Team should buy the Blue Team email address lists and send emails to get Blue Team votes. If logic and facts convert just one out of thousand Blue email addresses…that would cost less than the Blue Team is spending to hire “spontaneous” demonstrators.

While I’m on the subject of email addresses purchased by politicians to solicit money:
The Arizona Red Team should be aware that I moved three years ago…I suggest you find a better email address broker…they are (literally) a dime a dozen. I can give you the list…but I’d have to charge you.

The National Organization For Women (NOW) claims to be “devoted to achieving full equality for women through education and litigation”. They further claim focus on:

…a broad (sic…pun?) range of women’s rights issues, including economic justice, pay equity, racial discrimination, women’s health and body image, women with disabilities, reproductive rights and justice, family law, marriage and family formation rights of same-sex couples, representation of women in the media, and global feminist issues.

Women’s rights? You telling me women have rights that men do not have? Are you referring to the right to be believed just because you accuse…without proof? No wonder VP Pence won’t meet with you without his wife present.

OK…you’re for economic justice and pay equity For Women. If companies really can get away with paying women less than men for the same job…why would a company hire any men?

Another focus you claim is racial discrimination. Please see my article (Frogs, Racism and the N Word) and identify the race to which you refer. I believe there’s the human race but can’t recall any others. Perhaps you’re confusing ethnicity with race? If you believe that skin color is a “group” you want to protect, doesn’t that just reinforce the concept that we are different because of skin color? Wouldn’t that be considered racist by your definition?

And since you’re a “national” organization…ever consider protecting other nation’s women…say like Iran or Iraq? Maybe you could lobby for affordable burqas? Free driver education courses?

Women’s health and body image is another of your “focus” targets…brings to mind the news story about the woman who poured bleach on men who were “manspreading”…sitting there minding their own business but had the audacity to not have their knees tightly together. In the name of justice and equality, would you mind if a man poured bleach on a woman whose cleavage was exposed down to her navel? They’d run out of bleach in Hollyweird.

About those women with disabilities…your very existence is based on the belief that every woman is disabled in every facet of life as you see it. You obviously have never met my wife nor my three daughters.

Next, we look at reproductive rights and justice, family law…I have no opinion on abortion since I cannot identify strongly enough as a woman to have need of one. Your position is that it’s the woman’s body and she should have total and complete control over it if she wants an abortion…without the consent nor approval of the other half of the event that requires the abortion. OK…say I give you that. Here’s what I would expect in return:

If a woman decides NOT to have an abortion and keeps the baby…why would you require the other half of that event to pay for her unilateral decision for the next 21 years in child support payments?

Family formation rights of same-sex couples…what about triples…or quadruples? Transgenders? What if a same sex couple decides one of them will change their sex? Will that require reaffirmation of the rights? Aren’t you really looking for acceptance? Shouldn’t that come from the family unit that created you in the first place? Why ask me? I’m a member of the majority that believes in a traditional family whether sanctioned with a license or not…that license is just another form of taxation some politician (or clergy) came up with to collect money. I’ve seen your signs and advise you to think harder if your beliefs fit on a sign…mine are more nuanced and based on logic and fact…not emotion.

Representation of women in the media…you’re really confusing me…(I almost said “now” but that would be redundant). In a nutshell…I’ll go with this one but you have to give me an Ann Coulter for every April Ryan. I’ll even throw in Jim Acosta. Personally, I think women are detail oriented and much better journalists because men tend to go for the “big picture”. That’s my opinion…if you don’t agree…I don’t care. It’s an opinion formed after working with both for over 50 years in the business world.

Women are the very definition of nuance. Men are either horny or hungry. If they don’t have an erection, give them a sandwich and you’ll shut them up.

I’m old…I can get away with expressing my opinion.
Now…double entendre intended…tell those women to get off my lawn!

If that bothers you…try this :
If liberals oppose gender identification, why do they have marches for women?
Where do they get those professionally printed signs for “spontaneous” demonstrations?

        Don’t look now but I think some guy designed your logo.

Kid goes to the library and asks for a book about frogs. Librarian takes him to medical section and hands him a book about frog dissection. Kid opens it and throws up saying…”that’s more than I ever wanted to know about frogs”.

Read on for more than you ever wanted to know about racism and the N word.

Social, biological and scientific definitions of race are confusing. If you are a member of the species homo sapiens, you belong to the human race. Until the Martians land, that’s your only choice (LGBTWXYZ not withstanding).

It’s the social definition of race that’s been the basis for much debate and conflict. Racial profiling used “white” to designate the predominant European social group with scientific sounding terms like “negroid” to differentiate among other groups within society using skin color as the criteria regardless of national origin.

Below is a picture from my kindergarten days …a magnet school honoring Golda Meir…prime minister of Israel and former resident…on the south side of Milwaukee, a predominately Polish neighborhood.

That’s me top row second from left. My best buddy was Mickey, middle row fourth from left. Then there was Maria (my first girlfriend), far right bottom row. I’m sure some of you could start assigning ethnicity to some of these kids. I just remember their personalities like the little gangster to my right who was always in trouble.

Ethnicity, then is a label based on cultural factors such as nationality no matter how long you’ve lived outside that nation and have been in America. Race has become a label primarily for skin color.

It really gets confusing when race is confused with ethnicity. What if a “negroid” race person was born and raised in a “Nordic” country like Sweden? If I seem confused about the terminology, remember that I was exposed to a major war where “yellow peril” was one of our major national enemies. How Japan became a yellow ethnicity still confuses me.

Let’s get back to that race definition. “Negroid” refers to dark skin color but that term was apparently too difficult for some (primarily Democrats) to pronounce so it was shortened to “nigger” which, I believe, is what they mean by the N word. Further deterioration of the ability to enunciate properly is evident in today’s Rap “music artists” who pronounce it “niggah”.

Democrats continue to add confusion to the issue of race and ethnicity.

They compound the problem by initiating preferences in school admissions and job hiring based on skin color…which, technically, makes them racists? Or ethnicists? Or just stupid?

My favorite pilot and roommate (my second tour in Vietnam) claimed to be Irish, further confusing me about the difference between race and ethnicity.

I trusted him with my life to get us off and back on an aircraft carrier (sometimes in the middle of the night) while I ran the electronics in the back (think Goose in the movie Top Gun). I couldn’t say that for some of the non-Irish pilots and managed to avoid flying with them.

If I confuse race with ethnicity, it may go back to my grandfather sending me to the local bar two blocks from our house for his tobacco and beer.

Yes, that is a product from the American Tobacco Company distributed by a Jewish company in a Polish Neighborhood who celebrated Golda Meir as one of them. Confusing, ain’t it?

Funny story about the beer…Grandpa would smear lard on the inside lip of the beer bucket so there would be more beer and less foam. Evidence that he wasn’t dumb…maybe racist? Who knows…I wasn’t as cognizant of brand names as I am today and just remember I got a taste of the beer.

I guess, given what I now know about how politicians use the race card, my school picture at that young age would have been entirely different…

…forfeiting my seat (excuse the pun) on the Supreme Court!

 

fns

3.18.2021

 

I was there…at 3,000 feet and twenty miles away in a Navy E1B aircraft equipped with a powerful radar. I directed strike aircraft to protect our ships as I saw raw video on the radar scope of at least 12 small boats darting in and around the USS Maddox. I also established relay communications with the USS Ticonderoga and heard the combat information officer aboard the USS Maddox report multiple torpedoes running under the ship.

The only reason they did not sink her was the fact that the Maddox was at the end of her time on station in the Gulf of Tonkin and was low on fuel so was running high in the water. The torpedoes were set to run at a depth too low to hit her.

The USS Maddox combat information officer was the coolest dude I ever met in the Navy...torpedoes running literally under his feet and he’s reporting “there goes another one”... 

Two nights later I was in the same position to protect the USS Turner Joy. I fed vectors to CDR (later Adm) James Bond Stockdale in search of this attack. However, that action was probably over reaction of an exhausted CIC officer to lightening flashes. No enemy forces were found.

The New York Times said it didn’t happen. 

History is determined by press reports of the day. Someone once noted that freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. Reporter writes his version of what an eyewitness describes. The eye witness dies. The reporter’s version survives. 

I'm still here.

I served two tours in Vietnam and was awarded a chest full of medals. Two of those medals were from President Johnson who, as you might recall, caved in to public polls and the main stream media pressure and gave up.

Another example of a Democratic politician praising heroism without showing any. 
And another example of how press reports will distort and even ignore actual events.
Many years later, Robert McNamara wrote a book and said..."oooops...sorry"!

Didn't hear that from Walter Cronkite about his lies "reporting" the Tet offensive.

I have a letter of commendation for my actions that night from Admiral Roy L. Johnson to prove the above. You’ll find it in Navy records as Ser: 002-1406 dated 12 October 1964.

Does the statement, “We’ve always done it like that” ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
Pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story: 

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the Mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you thought being a HORSE’S ASS wasn’t important!

 

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