Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Being stuck in this house and this bed is driving me crazier than usual. Now that the Cov-19 has come and gone I still have a twenty-pound cast on my leg. I’m still limited by some door sizes which are too small for this freaking wheelchair to get through. Let me apologize, I immediately start to whine and feel sorry for myself when things aren’t going my way. It’s just human nature I suppose. I decided I would find a few items of trivia to help breakup your day. These are a mish-mosh of items collected totally at random. I hope you enjoy them.
- An Egyptian papyrus, dated at approximately 1850 B.C., gives us the earliest record of a method to prevent pregnancies. It required putting into the vagina a concoction of honey, soda, crocodile excrement, and some sort of gummy substance.
- Between the mid-1860’s and 1883, the bison population in North America was reduced from an estimated 13 million to a few hundred.
- Not a single bank existed anywhere in the thirteen colonies before the American Revolution. Anyone needing money had to borrow from an individual.
- After twenty years as a faithful unpaid servant of the Duke of Windsor, Walter Monckton was rewarded with a cigarette case on which his name was engraved – and misspelled.
- In the seventeenth century, and principally during the period of the Thirty Years War, approximately sixty million people in Europe died from smallpox.
- A conventional sign of virginity in Tudor England was a high exposed bosom and a sleeve full to the wrists.
- If all of the water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere were condensed at the same time, there would be enough water to cover the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) with twenty-five feet of water.
- The British erected in London’s Trafalgar Square a statue of U.S President George Washington, whose armies overthrew British rule in the colonies.
- When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it was not a federal felony to kill a President of the United States.
- For fear he might conceal a joke in it was one reason why Benjamin Franklin was not entrusted by his peers with the assignment of writing the Declaration of Independence.
WERE THEY TRIVIAL ENOUGH FOR YOU?
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I’m a former vet who proudly served. Since then, I’ve maintained an interest in all things military. As much as all of the new high-tech equipment is interesting, I still lean towards the past history of wars and warfare. It’s always good to know all of the small details of warfare to give you an accurate picture of why wars occurred and what steps had to be taken to end them.
- The Spartans used a staff and a coil of paper to keep military messages from being decoded if they fell into the hands of the enemy. Rolled around the staff, the words fit together and made sense. Unrolled, the paper was covered with gibberish. Each general had a carefully guarded staff of precisely the same diameter around which to roll the paper and read the message.
- During World War II, the Federal Bureau of investigation secretly established a house of male prostitution in New York’s Greenwich Village. The house staffed multilingual agents for the purpose of extracting import shipping information from foreign sailors. The FBI later claimed it had been a very successful operation.
- By the end of World War II, there wasn’t a German spy in Great Britain who was not under British control. All either were cooperating with the British while maintaining their German “alliance” or had been caught and “turned around”.
- During World War II, the United States Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate on the basis of positional probability where enemy submarines might surface. Dr. Fine said, it worked out all right.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation captured eight German saboteurs shortly after they came ashore from a U-boat off eastern Long Island in 1942. Six were executed and two imprisoned. It turns out that one of those imprisoned, the expedition’s leader, was an anti-Nazi and had tipped off the FBI. He was promised that he be jailed for only six months, but he got instead, a 90-year prison term.
- Bismarck tricked the French into the Franco-Prussian War by altering a telegram from the King of Prussia. He struck out the king’s consolatory words, so that the telegram sounded belligerent. The result was what the Iron Chancellor had intended, a French declaration of war, followed by a German victory.
- Mata Hari, the Dutch-Javanese dancer who became the most famous spy of World War I, ordered that a suit be especially tailored for her for the occasion of her execution by a French firing squad. She also wore a new pair of white gloves.
WAR IS HELL, BUT PEACETIME IS A MOTHER F**KER
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
*****
Welcome to installment number seven. These questions appear a little harder to answer simply. Only a frank discussion will bring the answers, both good and bad. Have fun . . .
- Would you rather play a game with someone more or less talented as you? Would it matter who’s watching?
- Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
- While in the government, you discover the President is committing extortion and other serious crimes. By exposing the situation, you might bring about the President’s downfall, but your career would be destroyed because you would be framed, fired, and suffer public humiliation on other matters. Knowing you would be vindicated five years later; would you blow the whistle? What if you knew you would never be vindicated?
- On a busy street you are approached apologetically by a well-dressed stranger who asks for a dollar to catch a bus and make a phone call. He says he has lost his wallet. What would you do? If approached in the same way by a haggard looking stranger claiming to be hungry and unable to find a job, what would you do?
- If by sacrificing your life you could contribute so much to the world that you would be honored in all nations, would you be willing to do so? If so, would you make the same sacrifice knowing that someone you thoroughly disliked would receive the honor while you went unrecognized?
*****
- Knowing you had a 50% chance of winning and would be paid 10 times the amount of your bet if you won, what fraction of what you now own would you be willing to wager?
- What are your most compulsive habits? Do you regularly struggled to break these habits?
- You know you will die of an incurable disease within three months. Would you allow yourself to be frozen within the week if you knew it would give you a modest chance of being revived in 1000 years and living a greatly extended life?
- You are driving late at night in a safe but deserted neighborhood when a dog suddenly darts in front of your car. Though you slam on the brakes, you hit the animal. Would you stop to see how injured the animal was? If you did so and found that the dog was dead but had a name tag, would you contact the owner?
- What do you most strive for in your life: accomplishment, security, love, power, excitement, knowledge, or something else?
*****
- An eccentric millionaire offers to donate a large sum to charity if you will step completely naked from a car onto a busy downtown street, walk four blocks, and climb back into the car. Knowing that there would be no danger of physical abuse, would you do it?
- How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people?
- Is the fact that you have never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
- Would you be willing to give up sex for five years if you could have wonderfully sensual and erotic dreams any night you wished?
- At a meal, your friends start belittling a common acquaintance. If you felt their criticisms were unjustified, would you defend the person?
*****
THE QUESTIONS KEEP GETTING MORE INTERESTING
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To quote an expert, Gary Rimmer, “Number freaking is the art of putting numbers where none existed before. It is an off-the-wall peek at how numbers rule our lives. Number freaking reveals the low drama, unexpected realities, unforeseen truths and even comic connections that emerge when numbers are tested to destruction . . . ” So let’s get started with a few examples.
- If you would spend 80 minutes a night staying with your child, watching them fall asleep, for 7 1/2 years, your total number of hours would total approximately 3652.50.
- It would take Bill Gates earning $55.05 a second – approximately 26 seconds to earn an average Americans weekly wage.
- If your girlfriend weighed 152 pounds, in New York prices she would be worth $896,200 in gold.
- On Tuesday, August 31, 2004, at 1 a.m. EDT, the United States was exactly 2,000,000 hours old.
- Globally, life expectancy at birth, for men is 65 years. If we assume they start thinking about sex at puberty, that means they’ll think about sex approximately every 6 seconds for 52 years. If this is true, a man in his lifetime will think about sex 2.73 million times.
- A pious Muslim is supposed to sport a beard at least the width of the fist. Assuming a man’s fist is at least 3 1/2 inches wide, it would take 233 days to grow a Sharia-compliant beard.
- If a man spends an average of 5 minutes a day shaving, it computes to 1735 hours or 72.3 days in his lifetime.
- According to Oxfam, 1000 people die each hour from hunger-most of them before their fifth birthday. 1200 children under the age of five die each year from preventable disease. In addition, a child dies every 15 seconds from lack of water and sanitation. The total number of deaths worldwide therefore every hour, from preventable disease, hunger and poor sanitation is 2,440. If 2,440 people were to die every hour, in a year there would be 21,389,000 dead from preventable disease, hunger and poor sanitation.
- The average smoker in America smokes 13 cigarettes a day. One of the maxims of the antismoking lobby is that every cigarette smoked knocks 11 minutes. off their life. So, the average American smoker will lose 36 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes, and 45 seconds for every year of smoking.
How’s that for some off-the-wall statistics. As with most statistics, the numbers are approximations, but it doesn’t change the fact that the basic underlying rule is true. How sad is that? Maybe next time I’ll rant on the unscrupulous way in which our politicians use statistics to convince us of whatever they want.
ENJOY YOUR DAY OF REST
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I continue to be fascinated by history. American history is my favorite especially reading stories of the Founding Fathers. I’ve gathered together a few interesting historical facts that are not commonly known about them.
- Not until 1826 were fireworks used to celebrate the Fourth of July. Coincidentally, it was the very day that two of the founding fathers died, but their demise did not interfere with the national celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It took four days for the news of John Adams death to reach Washington and two days for the capital to learn of Thomas Jefferson’s death.
- British ships in the English Channel fired a salute of 21 guns when word reached them that the countries erstwhile great adversary, President George Washington, had died in the States.
- Thomas Jefferson chose not to attend ceremonies marking the death of George Washington in 1799, nor did he write a note of condolence to Washington’s widow. This enmity stemmed from the last year of Washington’s second term as the United States President, when he suspected Jefferson of being responsible for scurrilous attacks in the press on him. Jefferson denied responsibility and Washington accepted his word, but there was a chill between them thereafter.
- Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the United States national symbol. He considered the eagle “a bird of bad moral character” because it lives “by sharping and robbing”.
- Thomas Jefferson was a smuggler of sorts. He went into northern Italy, in 1787, to see the machines used there for cleaning rice seed and was able to filch and bring back to the United States samples of rice that he gave to planters in Georgia and South Carolina. He also picked up information about the olive tree.
- A former US vice president, Aaron Burr, was charged with treason for trying, it was said, to separate the western lands from the United States and establish his own rule in the early 1800s. He was acquitted, but his image remained tarnished.
- George Washington seldom slept more than three or four consecutive hours in any day during the Revolutionary War.
- Signing a memorial to Congress for the abolition of slavery was the last public act of Benjamin Franklin.
I have to admit that after reading the many and varied facts about the founding fathers I appreciate them even more. A group of colonists, some with education but many without, had the will and fortitude to fight for what they believed and to create this country. I wish I had the power of time travel so I can go back to the 1700’s and bring all of those gentlemen to the present day. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t be at all happy.
WHERE ARE THE MEN OF GREAT QUALITY
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With tax time approaching I decided to harken back to maybe not a better time, but a time when our citizenry lived within their means. There was a national debt, but it was a mere drop in the bucket compared with our current situation. It motivated me to take a look back and see how our economics have changed in the intervening years.
- In 1900, the United States treasury showed a surplus of nearly $47 million in income over expenditures. The last time the federal budget was balanced was in 1969.
- President Carter’s “lean and tight” budget of $500 billion for the fiscal year 1979 equals the spending of $690,000 a day since the birth of Christ. To dispose of this amount of money in a year, the government has to spend $951,000 a minute, $57 million an hour, or $1.37 billion a day, including holidays and Sundays.
- Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest Americans ever, practically became allergic to money as he grew richer and older. He was offended, he said, just by the sight and touch of it, and never carried any. Because he had no money with him with which to pay the fare, Carnegie was once put off of a London Tram.
- According to the 1970 US Census, only 5000 Americans had a net worth of $10 million or more.
- The longest jury trial ever in the United States federal courts began on June 20, 1977 and ended on July 10, 1978. It took the judge almost an hour to read the verdicts on 49 separate questions. During this antitrust action, by SCM Corporation against Xerox, it is estimated that both sides spent well in excess of $60 million in attorney’s fees.
- The federal government keeps billions of dollars – much of it taxes collected by the Internal Revenue Service – in bank accounts that draw no interest. Banks turnaround and invest much of these deposits in U.S. Treasury bills, on which the government frequently pays more than 9% interest. Incredibly, the government is paying the banks to borrow back its own money.
- It costs $4000 per inch to build an interstate highway project on the fringe of New York City in the late 1970s – over 215 million per mile. Just imagine what the current costs must be.
- Until there was a pay raise in 1814, US Congressmen were paid six dollars per diem when Congress was in session. I think it might be just a little higher these days.
- To finance the Civil War, a 3% income tax on all incomes over $800 was enacted by the federal government in 1864. It was the first time in income tax was enacted in the United States. The law was discontinued in 1872. The United States Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 1894. Not until 1913, with the adoption of the 16th amendment, the income tax become law.
- In the 1800s, big industry began to set up trusts to monopolize production and distribution. The first big trust was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Corporation, in 1882. The first international trust was Nobels Dynamite Trust, in 1886.
LOOKS LIKE DINNER AT JOE’S HOUSE
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Yesterday I posted a long list of annoyances and if you noticed I never once mentioned politicians or politics. Political annoyances should not be grouped with the regular life annoyances because annoying politics and politicians is serious business. Not only does it impact our life in a number of ways it’s just another excuse for the powers that be to dip their hands into our pockets and take more of our money.
Are you as sick of this nonsense as I am? Sick of all these less than truthful politicians beating our brains out every day with more BS than any human being should be forced to listen to. It’s not just the current batch but everyone for the last 30 years who have permitted overspending without much of a thought. They’ve allowed huge government programs costing trillions of dollars to fund the numerous wars like the alleged War on Poverty (which we lost), the alleged War on Drugs (which we lost), and dozens of other alleged wars that were totally or partially unsuccessful. As an aside, hundreds and thousands of our young service men and women have been killed, wounded, or permanently damaged by PTSB. Remember this as you listen to our brave politicos sitting in their safe offices making life and death decisions for everyone else. Am I bitter? You bet your ass I am.
WE THE PEOPLE must take our share of the blame. We elected these fools over and over again because they brought home the “pork” for us locally. Know your history and read these few thoughts from our founding fathers.
“Rather go to bed supperless than rise in Debt” Benjamin Franklin, 7 July 1757
” I sincerely believe. . . and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Thomas Jefferson, 28 May 1816
IS THIS SYSTEM FIXABLE? I HAVE MY DOUBTS
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I’ve been around the planet just long enough to have allowed at least 10,000 politicians to tell me things that I knew were untrue and I was sure they knew it too. Not just Democrats and Republicans but Independents, Greenies, and Nut-bags. I’ve watched more than my share of debates, listen to the all-knowing Mainstream Media television pundits, and was assured that the polls they all quoted were legitimate. Am I stupid or what?
The following list was put together some time ago by a disgruntled voter who actually had the gall to ask politicians for their thoughts on these topics. The list hasn’t changed in 15 years and yet we still never get answers.
- You can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally.
- Your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money.
- Children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of “underprivileged” drug addicts are left to rot in filthy surroundings.
- Hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, and subsidized housing.
- The government’s plan for getting people back to work is to provide endless weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).
*****
- Some politicians think that stripping away the amendments to the Constitution is really protecting the rights of the people.
- The rights of the government come before the rights of the individual.
- Being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you “safe” (gun ownership).
- You have to have your parent signature to go on a school field trip but not to get an abortion.
- And 80-year-old woman can be strip-searched by the TSA but a Muslim woman wearing a burka is only subject to having her neck and head searched.
*****
Elections are coming. Question the government inequities and closely examine every word that comes out of the mouth of every candidate. Double speak is the tool of the untrustworthy.
INFLATION IS NOT OUR FRIEND MR. BIDEN
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I thought I would supply all of my female readers with a few interesting historical facts from the early days of women’s rights. These women were the steppingstones that your gender walked on to get where it’s at today. Enjoy the history lesson.
- To prove that girls could master such subjects as mathematics and philosophy without detracting from their health or charm, Emma Hart Willard founded the Troy (NY) Female Seminary, in 1821.
- Not until 1932 was a woman elected to the Senate. She was Hatty Caraway, Arkansas Democrat. The first appointed woman senator was Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, in 1922.
- No woman held a Presidential cabinet position until 1933, when Francis Perkins became Secretary of Labor and she served a dozen years. Before her appointment in Washington, Ms. Perkins was an industrial commissioner for New York State.
- Mercy Otis Warren ( 1728 – 1814), at a time when women rarely played any part in public life, she became a propagandist for the US revolutionary cause, a confidant of John Adams, and an admired ally of most of the Massachusetts rebel leaders. She was a pioneer feminist who argued that women’s alleged weaknesses were due simply to inferior education.
- At a time when the education of girls in most prominent families which concentrated on needlework, music, dancing, and languages, Aaron Burr insisted that his daughter, Theodosia, learn serious subjects rather than ornamental ones “to convince the world what neither sex appears to believe – that women have souls!”
- For founding a birth-control clinic, in 1917, Margaret Sanger was jailed for a month in a workhouse.
ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND
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I thought today might be a good time to address the “gouging” that’s been going on with food prices. I thought the oil industry was the champion gouger of all times but once again I was mistaken. I should have known that once it started with gas prices it would eventually spread to damn near everything else. Blame it on inflation or President Biden or on the many business men who seized on an opportunity to put it to the American public once again.
Yesterday I had the misfortune of doing the food shopping for the week. It will be a cold day in hell when I pay $5.50 for a dozen medium sized chicken eggs. I won’t list all of the things that pissed me off but trust me, there were dozens. With that thought in mind I’d like to time travel back to the “good old days” to do some comparison shopping. Welcome to the late 1940’s.
The average salary for a full time employee was $2900.00 and the minimum wage was a whopping $.40 an hour. I’m sure we’d all like to see prices like this again.
Bread (lb) $.14
Bacon (lb) $.77
Butter (lb) $.87
Eggs (1 dozen) $.72
Milk (gal) $.44
Potatoes (10 lb) $.57
Coffee (1 lb) $.51
Sugar (5 lbs) $.47
Gasoline (gal) $.26
Movie Tickets $.36
Postage Stamps $.03
Car $1250.00
Single Family Home $7700.00
Who is to blame? It’s a long list heavily populated by hundreds of politicians and thousands of loyal American businesses and corporations. As always, the regular guy gets stuck paying for their errors in judgement and sheer stupidity. Hooray for love of country and patriotism (sarcasm off).
U.S.A. ! – U.S.A. ! – U.S.A.!
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