Thinking

Sometimes we wonder about how the average citizen thinks.
Congress has a lower approval rating the president, the
president has the lowest approval of any recent president,
and our dollar is losing value faster than GM stock.

And we re-elect these people we’re not happy with, to
keep doing a substardard job, while praising them for
doing it.

Prices are up, employers are laying off, and Congress
treats us like mushrooms. Yes, they keep us in the dark
and fill us full of crap. After giving themselves a nice
cost-of-living pay increase, they announce a pared-down
summer agenda.

They also are not going to do anything about our rising
costs with the time left. That’s not entirely true, they
are going to push pet projects that will ensure the current
economic problem doesn’t go away any time soon.

They have passed a $225 billion farm bill, most of which
will go into food stamps and not the farm. They are working
on a $300 billion global health initiative, that will give
$50 billion to Africa and other countries to fight aids,
malaria and other diseases.

They want to ban lead in toys. Lead wouldn’t be in our
toys if they banned importing them from China. And they are
again pushing the bill on Medicare payments to doctors. As
it was passed last time our president could veto it. Then of
course we have the mortage bail-out. This is another program,
if passed, the will cost a couple of hundred billion dollars,
and help around 6 percent of homeowners, or less.

Next month Congress will be recessed all month. After that,
being an election year, not much will get done either. As is
always the case with this group, they have a bunch of ideas to
spend a bunch of money; but no concept of where the money’s
going to come from.

Some members are talking another economic relief package. We
feel it our patriotic duty to tell congress the answer. A good
economic relief package should include; making our dollar worth
a dollar again. Lowering the price of our gasoline, food, taxes,
health insurance, and building materials. And start drilling
for oil, everywhere and anywhere. Use coal and shale to make
oil, and quit restricting the automakers. That would be a good
start. Beam us up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life on this
planet.

Comments are welcome.

A little bit of everything

This post is going to have a little bit of everything in it.
First I’d like to to say happy birhtday to my lovely wife. In
a few short months she will have put up with me for 21 years.
We’ve cruised on sunny days, we’ve cruised on bad days; but
we’ve always cruised together. Enjoy your day.

At this year’s Back to the 50’s, sponsored by the MSRA, there
were 11,712 cars registered. We’ll bet that was quite a
sight at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. We’ll see if we can
get some pictures up. To learn more about the event, go to
MSRA.

Saturday the race at Daytona was something to watch. With the
crashes on the last lap it ended with a bang. It did prove that
even though the ‘car of tomorrow’ is ugly, it does appear safer
than the car it replaced.

The fires in California are raging again. At first we thought;
why would somebody choose to live in an area that has fires
just about every year? Then we thought, we live here because of
a river that floods.

Since we touched on the flood we figured we’d mention the Blues
Fest. It was moved last minute to 2nd Street, which had to give
headaches to the volunteer organizers. Thursday we were moved
three times due to breaches in the perimeter fencing. Having
worked the Bix Fest for 8 years, we knew some people like to get
in without paying. It seems to be a game with them. Most people
were civil when we told them they had to go around with very few
arguments at our post. A nod to all the volunteers, and
organizers. Everyone did a great job.

Gasoline is on a lot of minds.
We’ve heard it could hit $7 a gallon in 4 years.
Why is it that everyone seems to know what won’t work, but nobody
knows what will? It seems to us that those in power think paying
more is a good thing. Remember the cigarette tax? If something
we use is deemed unpleasant by these people, their answer always
seems to be raise the price. After all, if they raise the price,
we’ll use less. They can always blame, big oil, speculators, car
companies, or George Bush.

We have a novel idea for our lawmakers; do your job! Our taxes
keep going up, new taxes get added, and the average citizen sees
less getting done. Our deficit is at an all-time high, and more
money is getting spent. Kinda reminds us of the old country
western song “She got the goldmine, I got the shaft”.

That’s our take on a few things, comments on just about anything
are welcome.

Bend over and grab your ankles rant

America is a country that was built on transportation.
Nobody can expect to change that overnight. But we have a
problem and people better seriously pay attention. If you
are on a fixed income, and aren’t we all, get ready for
heating bills this winter over $800 a month, if you paid
$200 last year.

Experts say there are numerous reasons for this. One is
the devaluation of our dollar. Another is that Congress
blatently refuses to admit there is a problem, and clings
to the belief that ethanol is the cure-all to our gas
problems. It is neither a solution to, nor stopgap for
our rising gas prices.

We believe these experts are dead-on when they say the
most important issue of this election will be who has the
answer for our energy problem among the Presidential
candidates.

Also if members of Congress, or the House are running
for re-election, please research how they voted on these
issues before voting. America doesn’t need another great
depression.

You can blame whatever branch of government you want, but
everybody needs to be aware that this whole energy shortage
could have averted as far back as the late 1970’s. Congress
has not allowed a single refinery to be built. It didn’t
sanction exploration into other sources of energy. While
the windmills are fine for electricity, the problem lies
more with transportation and heating. Both are petroleum
problems.

We don’t need universal health care. We don’t need the
government taking over the airlines. We need less govenment
and more choices. We say, we’d rather have gas at $2 a
gallon, and be able to heat our home for $200 a month; than
government run health care and airlines with gas at $10 a
gallon and $800 to heat our homes.

If heating costs go up a much as some project, unemployment
will be at a high we haven’t seen in decades. And when the
unemployment rate gets that high, the crime rate goes through
the roof. But will that make any real difference if you’re
paying $800 a month to heat a four room house, and just as
much to keep gas in your car to go to work? That is if you
still have a job.

Open Alaska for drilling, allow us to drill in the Gulf of
Mexico; start producing coal oil, and shale oil now. Unless
the next House, Congress, and President want to be known
throughout history as the administration that drove this
Country into a depression, somebody had better get moving.

Let’s hear a candidate who has a clearcut plan on how to
get out of this mess. We should also put Congress on notice
that if they don’t quit bickering along party lines, and do
the job they were elected for, we will replace them with
people who can. Think about it.

Comments on this or any other subject are welcome.

All over rant

It’s Thursday, which means the time has come to rant, whine,
complain, or be against everything. Once again we’ll say that
this post is our opinion. Our opinion and a buck and a half will
get you a cup of coffee. We state these opinions to see if
some agree with us, or for those who disagree to open a
discussion of the subject. There are no warranties expressed
or implied.

Several things have had us scratching our heads lately, so in
no particular order we’ll address some. The Supreme Court ruling
that the guy who raped his 8 year old daughter
didn’t deserve the death penalty is bull. If anyone deserves the
death penalty, it is animals like the this. We need to stop the
revolving door policy of the criminal justice system and get
tougher.

We assume that by the end of the week, LeClaire park will be
out of the water enough to assess the damage. It’s said if the
park has to be resodded, it can’t be used for about 40 days. With
that in mind, the riverfront will lose not only the Sturgis on
the River, but the Blues Fest and the Bix Fest. We regular folks
just love these musical chair events where we don’t know where
things are going to be held until a day or two before the event.
If we are truely prepared for floods, shouldn’t an alternative
site be part of the flood plans?

Senator Clinton has finally returned to her job. How nice that
she took eighteen months off, with pay, to run her campaign. We
Americans are so generous.

Word has come out that ethanol refiners recieved $3 billion in
subsidies last year. That’s a big chunk of change for a product
that isn’t doing what it was supposed to do. It doesn’t pollute
less, it doesn’t give us even equal fuel economy, and it cost
more and uses more energy than the gas it is supposed to
replace.

Ms. Pelosi and others are blocking legislation that would allow
oil companies to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. So by not
letting our companies drill they are allowing other countires,
including Russia, China, and even Viet Nam to drill. This also
doesn’t make sense to us. The anti-oil, green-at-any-cost crowd
is once again costing us average Americans more money.

They have known of solutions since the 70s, and have set on
their butts doing nothing about our gas problems, while always
finding the time to get themselves a yearly pay increase. They
have to have the only job in the nation where bad performance,
or no performance is rewarded every year.

Something else in the news is Congress wanting to bail out the
people who have trouble paying their mortage. Why? We have the
largest number of homeowners ever, and a very small percentage
of people who can’t pay their mortage. Let them move out, move
on, and learn from their mistake. The country doesn’t have the
money in the first place, and there are much more important
issues that should be addressed.

And the Supreme Court just struck down Washington, D.C.s ban
on handguns. We’re not ranting about this one, just figured when
a group uses common sense, it should also be noted. Now, if only
we get a concealed carry law passed.

That’s our take on some issues that have been in the news. You
can agree, disagree, call us crazy, or comment on something else.

Where are we heading?

Ethanol has been exposed as a non-solution to anything. It uses
more energy to make than it produces, it doesn’t pollute any
less than regular fuel, it lowers gas mileage, and it isn’t a
replacement for regular fuel. How convient that now, when corn
futures are rising daily, refiners can’t make money making
gas out of our food.

If you think ethanol is expensive, did you add the fifty-four
cent a gallon subsidy refiners get to produce it? We find it
ironic that new ethanol refineries being built will never make
a drop of ethanol. Also ironic is the fact this is due to rising
corn prices when ethanol production wasn’t supposed to have any
adverse effect on these prices.

Lawmakers have been playing us for fools, and we don’t like it.
The latest caper that stuck in our craw was the economic stymulus
package. We don’t know who came up with that one, but they stayed
up nights thinking that one out. We could see going to your boss
and saying, we have a plan.

Let’s borrow billions of dollars from overseas, dole out a
small amount to everybody, and let them spend it on overseas made
products, and imported fuel. Oh, why we’re at it, let’s spend
millions of dollars to notify the people that we’re going to do
it. Whoever sold our learned lawmakers on this should do seminars
on ‘How to get rich in real estate with little or no money’.

We were brought up on a simple premise when it came to money.
“You never get out of debt by borrowing money”. It has served us
well. Due to several decades of bad decisions by our lawmakers,
the dollar is worth a lot less than it was. This makes the cost
of anything we import higher. Just remember, when then those
running for office talk about giveaways, it will be our grand-
children who will shoulder the burden.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It’s time for
this bunch of spineless legislators to grow up, stop fighting
like children, and do their jobs. They should come up with
solutions to our gas problems, our money problems, and the
problem of our deficit, which they created. Tighten your
belts, prove you stand for something, and just git r done.

Comments on just about anything are welcome.

Flood and more rant

We’ve heard the police have written 68 citations to people who chose
to drive around the barricades in flooded areas. Being rational people
and knowing some of the stuff that’s in floodwater, we have to wonder
what these people were thinking. You can definitely get something
soap and water won’t wash off if you choose to go into the floodwater.

Floodwater can also wash away whole sections of roads, and pop
manhole covers. If you fell into one of these you might not make
it out. Possessions are just things, they’re not worth dying over.
Things can be replaced.

The flood is going to cause food prices to rise due to wet or
flooded farm fields. It’s getting too late in the year for the
farmers to wait for planting. We’re hoping for a decent crop.
Time will tell.

Not a rant, but on the flood subject, public works has done one
hell of a job keeping flood damage to a minimum. It’s not going to
be cheap, but it will still be less than if the water ran wild.

Last night while watching a national news channel, the commentator
went balistic on a guest. She started yelling that we should be
forced to buy only hybrid or electric cars. Her claim was it would
help keep us green. Once again the propaganda machine is working.
Hybrid cars still pollute. When an electric car runs low on charge,
it gets plugged in. What powers our electrical power plants?

The point most of these bunny-hugging, think-green, people forget
is that ALL transportation accounts for only around 25% of the
pollution. If we want it green here; why not go after the other 75%
of the polluters? Maybe Congress has forgotten that if we can’t
afford to go to work, they can’t get our taxes. If they found the
time to give themselves pay raises, they have the time to do
something about this problem. We should fire a warning shot
accross their bow around election time. This is unacceptable.

And even if we could go to zero emission transportation, India, China,
and other countries are polluting faster than it can be cleaned up.
So we’ll say it again; open up Alaska and our southern coastline to
drill for oil. Look into the process of making gas out of coal. Since
it said to be profitable if oil is over $34 a barrel, we think it
could help ease this imagined gas shortage. With everything else the
government subsidizes, look into switchgrass for ethanol. Look into
butanol, and other available, doable replacements for gas.

Our advice to Congress is to get your hand out of special interests
pockets, quit listening to the green enviromentalist nazis, and
start listening to the people. Refusal to do so will result in
a civilian job after the next election. If you are truely ‘public
sevants’, start serving the public.

It’s time to get off the pot or go. The facts are out there that
prove the resources are there, and so is the technology. The
lawmakers know this and have done nothing. They should stop the
‘us against them’ mentality, work together, and solve this problem.
When that happens, we might see someone we could call a leader.
Until then, we’ll have to put up with the lesser of two evils.

DISCLAIMER—————————————————

Everything in these posts is believed to be true, unless otherwise
stated, implied, or thought. You may find mistakes in grammer usage,
spelling, or punctuation. These are intentionally placed for the
convenience of those who look for them. If you don’t look for the
mistakes, please disregard this disclaimer. It’s hard to please
everyone, but we do try.

———————————————————–

Comments are welcome.

A little help

It would appear FEMA isn’t playing around when it comes to the local
floods and storms. They are supporting state and local efforts in
Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas.

In Iowa, FEMA and partners are providing for more than 4,000 evacuees
in the Cedar Rapids area. The American Red Cross (ARC) opened 10
shelters which served 461 residents last night. More than 6,000 meals
have been served, with more than 115,000 meals on-hand. FEMA has
provided six truckloads of water, has 20 truckloads on-hand and an
additional 10 en route to affected areas. Altogether, more than
738,000 liters will be delivered. Three trucks of meals (MREs) are
also on the way to supplement current supplies. Through contracts
with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE), FEMA can provide additional water and meals as
necessary. FEMA has 20 teams standing by to conduct Preliminary
Damage Assessments (PDAs). FEMA is coordinating the efforts of a
housing assistance task force to review emergency housing needs and
available housing alternatives.

In Illinois, planning is being conducted in anticipation of flooding
that may occur along the Mississippi River as waters from states
already impacted flow through the state.

They are also busy in the other states mentioned.

Go here
to read more about what’s being done.

That’s what going on while most of us wait for the water to go down,
comments on just about anything are welcome.

Conflict of interest

Some don’t believe our statement that the Senate is behind the gas price problem. We did a little
checking and found out that 154 members of the House and Congress own oil stock. Our own Tom Harkin owns between five hundred thousand and one million dollars worth of big oil stock.

The best investors on the planet are U.S. Senators, an Ezine
article by Graham sSummers gives some background. You can go to the

article and read it yourself.

Here’s a site listing the most popular investments in the house and
senate. this is the same group of people who claim they are looking out
for our best interests.
Go here to view.
For those who think we’re kidding, click on BP and you’ll see the top
investor in the House and Congress is our own Tom Harkin. In both the House and Senate, 61 members own stock in ExxonMobil, 33 in Chevron, 33 in ConocoPhillips, and 27 in BP.

Now, if Congress and the House own big oil stock, can you take them seriously when they
bring big oil before them for questioning? Somewhere sanity has to get a foothold. Once again
the foxes are running the chicken coop, and nobody cares. Read into it what you want, we
know what we think. Comments on this or just about anything else are welcome.

Tired of it rant

Before we get into into trouble we would like to say that this post
is not meant to be racist, sexist, or politically correct. It is an
opinion and only that. If someone has a problem with this post, remember,
it is MY opinion. It is not meant to be the view of any political party,
religious entity, club, group, gang, or any other orginization. So if
you don’t like MY opinion, don’t blame George Bush. He doesn’t know we
wrote it.

Why should we keep changing the laws instead of enforcing them? Why
do we tiptoe around certain subjects so as not to offend militant
fringe groups? And while we’re at it; why do our prisons have to be
over-priced day care centers with all the amenities, instead of what
they were designed for, punishment? Prisons should be made so nobody
wants to go back.

We watch our police do an excellent job, only to have the offenders
end up with probation because they had it rough as kids. And we keep
re-electing the judges. We watch the criminals that do get sentenced serve
about a third of their sentence, and then watch them be released early.

We also believe guns don’t kill people, people kill people. More
restrictive gun laws aren’t going to do anything but hassle the
legitimate gun owners. We are not the ones committing crimes with
handguns. Enact concealed carry laws, and stiffen the penalties for
felons in possession of firearm crimes.

We seem to have lost our bearing in our country. we let politicians
continue to give themselves hefty raises while they push our companies
overseas, and throw our money around like drunken sailors on leave.
And after all that, we have the audacity to re-elect them.
At events we have people disrespect our National Anthem; and burn our
flag because it’s their right. We’ve let the foxes run the henhouse.

Then we have racism. We think the black people are more racist than
us caucasians. They want to be called African Americans, even
though most were NOT born in Africa, NOR could they find it on a map.
We are ALL Americans. My ancestors didn’t ensalve your ancenstors. We’re
sure somebody did, we read about it in school. So before you point a
finger, please make for sure you aim it at someone who is guilty of the
crime.

And we think Affirmative Action should be eighty-sixed. Job opportunities
should be based on merit, not the your ethnicity. If we truely are
a non-biased, non-sectarian, non-racist, politically correct country,
shouldn’t everyone be equal? And if we are all truely equal, wouldn’t
that mean that the best quallified person ends up with the job? And if
the best qualified person for the job gets the job, isn’t that a good
thing? They are more productive, and save the company time and money
that would have went for training.

It doesn’t take a village to raise a child. It takes at least one
parent doing their job. Yes, it’s hard to raise a kid alone, hold down
a job, keep up the housework, and make it to school functions. People
have been doing it for a while now, so it can be done. Somebody has to
be the adult. It’s not easy or fair, but things worth having rarely are.

We guess we can’t leave out the gay, lesbian, transexual, alternative
lifestyle group. See above. If you want to get married, we have no
beef with that. We don’t feel this group should be treated any
different than any other group.

We believe our first language is English. It should be our only
language. If you want to live here, you should at least learn it.
We don’t think it’s too much to ask.

And lastly, we think Cher should actually, finally, really retire.

That’s our rant, comments on these subjects, or whatever’s on your
mind are welcome.

This and that

Our government keeps saying we have to have an Iraqi Constitution. We
have the answer for them. It’s simple really, let’s just give them our
Constitution. It was written by some really smart people, worked for
quite a while, and isn’t being used now.

A few candidates for the top job, POTUS, have said they would tax the
profits of big oil. Don’t we get taxed enough? Since oil stock is part
of our IRA portfolios, do we really need this? What should be done is
to start Congress on a new path. A sliding pay scale based on performance.
They save taxpayers money, they get a raise. They get heavy into pork
and subsidies, we take money away. Just think, in no time at all some
politicians would have to pay to play!

While we’re on the big oil subject; how much easier would it be for
all of us if our dollar was worth more the 29 cents?

As we get older we notice most things are youth oriented. We don’t
need a fountain of youth, we need a fountain of common sense. It won’t
make you younger, but it will lower our cost of living. Just think, if
politicians and lawyers drank from it, McDonald’s wouldn’t have to
spend all that money on warning signs about their hot coffee. Big Mac’s
could end up 99 cents again.

We’re born naked, wet, and hungry, and then it gets worse. We don’t
know who first said it, but how true. We spend the first years of our
children’s lifes trying to get them to talk, and the next 16 telling
them to shut up. We send them to school for twelve or so years learning
things that are considered non-bias, non-sectarian, non-violent, and
polically correct, only to toss them into the real world after
graduation with no debriefing.

On the technical front we’ve heard of a merger that could develop some
interesting products. Xerox and Wurlitzer will merge to produce
reproductive organs.

Lastly, on a sadder note, Jim Skriver passed away Sunday. We considered
him a family friend. The way he kept himself in shape we figured he’d
live forever. Our condolences to the family.

Comments are welcome.