Send a card

If you have seen the email that asks you to
send mail to an injured soldier at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center, you should read
this first.

Any cards addressed to “A Recovering Soldier”
or “Any Wounded Soldier” at the Walter Reed
address will not be accepted. Remember, the
Walter Reed Army Medical Center closed for
good in 2011.

At that time the hospital merged with the
National Naval Medical Center and became the
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

There is still a way to send a card, and a
little time to do so. The Red Cross has
“Holiday Mail for Heroes” that delivers the
cards to hospitalized military, active duty,
and veterans and their families.

Address the cards to:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
PO Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD
20791-5456

Cards have to be postmarked no later than
Friday, December 7, 2012.

The American Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes
site has the most current information and
card guidelines.

If you can find it in your heart to send a
card, we’re sure there will be a very happy
service member on the receiving end.
Comments are always welcome.

Bored farmer

What do you do when mix old tractor with
a turbo-charged Volvo engine? One fun
loving farmer with an amazing video!

Watching the video took this country boy
living in the city back to the country.
This tractor does it all; burnouts, donuts,
and drifting. All without front brakes.

It looks to still have the individual rear
brakes, which is why only one tire is
smoking doing donuts. We have to go now
because I want to watch this video again.
Comments are always welcome.

Guns, burnouts, shows and more

We’re going to mix things up a little bit
and hope you enjoy it. We’re not sure where
this post is headed, but we welcome you to
cruise along with us. And thank you to the
friends who supplied some of the links.

November 30 through December 2 is the
Premier Firearms Auction at the Rock
Island Auction Company. Featured items
include, but are not limited to; part II
of the Gateway Collection, the Bobby Smith
Estate Collection of Colts, the Anthony
Urbanowski Collection of Smith & Wesson,
four Ulrich engraved Winchester rifles,
and eight Colt Patersons.

There is also a collection of Class III
arms including several Thompson machine
guns. For more information go to the link
above.

Here are a couple of posters about car events.
Torque Fest will be in May 2013, and the
Mooneyes poster is about their Christmas
event this year.

Most of us have seen a Willys wagon or
two, this picture just shows two versions
of the same vehicle.

The requisite burnout video-

A different kind of racing-

And a look at Craig Jackson’s multi-
million dollar garage-

And the end.

Comments are always welcome.

Favorite son birthday/reader rant post

Before we get to our rant, we want to wish
our favorite son a Happy 23rd Birthday! And
before someone comments about having a
favorite child, he is also our only son.
Remember this one Kenny?

Time for another reader rant, and we’ve got
one to get things started. Did you know that
Social Security is now called a Federal
Benefit Payment?

We have a problem with that because most
pay into the program all our working lives.
So what happened that it now has been called
an entitlement?

Our government, in all their pseudo wisdom,
spent the money elsewhere. If they had left
it alone, in an interest bearing account,
we could get three times the payment for
over 33 years and not use all that we paid
in. Thanks government.

So don’t say that older Americans are now
getting entitlements. Remember that since
the government broke the program they just
renamed it and are trying to shift blame.

Now, about your rant. Are you still hot
because Santa got a bad rap in a newspaper
article? Here is your chance.

Think the detours and unfinished roadwork
around town are aggravating? Let the city
know.

Worried about the UN Arms Treaty and think
it is a blatant move to get our guns? Take
a shot at it.

Losing sleep over our economy, taxes, or
our loss of rights? A comment here just
might help you sleep.

There are a few examples, the content of
your rant is up to you. All we ask is that
you don’t use profanity.
Comments are always welcome.

Are we going to glow in the dark?

We knew it was going to happen, it was only
a matter of time. And now the propaganda has
begun.

The state of Illinois is offering vouchers
to all citizens living within a 10-mile
radius of the Quad Cities Nuclear Generating
Station in Cordova.

These vouchers are for potassium iodine pills
in case of an ‘accident’ at the plant. This
gets as close as Rapid City in Illinois, and
LeClaire in Iowa.

We said propaganda for a reason. The plant
began operating in 1973! And the chances of
an earthquake big enough to cause core
damage was 1 in 37,037 when studied in 2010.

The 10-mile radius sounded fishy to us as
in the military we learned a little about
nuclear contamination, and it seemed to us
that the radius should be much bigger.

The Nuclear Regalatory Commission states
there are two emergency planning zones around
nuclear power plants.

The first zone is a plume exposure pathway
zone with a radius of 10 miles. This zone
is focused on exposure to, and inhalation of,
airborne radioactive contamination.

The second zone is an ingestion pathway zone
with a radius of 50 miles. The focus of this
zone is the ingestion of food and liquid
contaminated by radioactivity.

The population withing the 50-mile radius
was 665,207 in 2010, and Iowa is not issuing
vouchers for the two counties involved in
Iowa.

So either the NRC knows something they
won’t tell us, or this is a ploy to get
us thinking nuclear plants are bad. Or,
we may all glow in the dark.
Comments are always welcome.

Strolling

We’re going to take another stroll down
memory lane and would like you to join us
as we look at 1958.

Ike was president, Elvis was inducted
into the Army, NASA is formed, DJ Alan
Freed invents the term “Rock and Roll”,
and America suffered the worst recession
of the postwar era.

After King Faisal of Iraq was killed in
a coup, president Eisenhower announced
he is sending 5,000 troops to Lebanon.

The average worker made $4,600 yearly,
minimum wage was $1 an hour, the average
new house cost $12,750, and an older home
averaged $2,390. Average monthly rent was
$92.

A new Ford would set up back $1,967-
$3,929, and a Harvard education cost
$1,250 per year.

The DOW average was at 583, the American
Express card was introduced, a gallon of
gas was 24 cents, milk was $1.01 a gallon,
eggs were 86 cents a dozen, and a loaf of
bread cost 19 cents.

The Hula Hoop was introduced by Wham-O
Manufacturing and sold for $1.98.

The microchip got invented, and the U.S.
Nuclear submarine “Nautilus” passed under
the ice cap at the North Pole.

Popular songs were “At the Hop” by Danny
& the Juniors, “Bird Dog” by the Everly
Brothers, “Catch a Falling Star” by Perry
Como, and “Don’t” by Elvis Presley.

Popular movies were; “The Bridge on the
River Kwai”, “South Pacific”, “Gigi”,
“King creole”, and “Vertigo”.

On TV we watched shows like Candid Camera,
The Ed Sullivan Show, Come Dancing, The Jack
Benny Show, Panorama, and Alfred Hitchcock
Presents.

In the car world? The Automobile Information
Disclosure Act, or price label law, goes into
effect, and most makes and models now have
four headlights instead of two. The Thunderbird
gets bigger, and the last Packards go on sale.

Toyotas, Datsuns, Opels, Vauxhalls, and other
imports take an unprecedented 8.1% of total
new car sales.

Chrysler begins to abandon the Hemi, the 430
Lincoln V8 is the largest, Chevy introduces
the 348 V8, some Dodges get 361 cid fuel-
injected V8s, and Ford gets a big block V8.

And that is a taste of what 1958 was like.
It was a great time to be kid growing up in
America.
Comments are always welcome.

Chasing rumors

We received an email that had us convinced
that we could put Obama in a bad light. While
it is no secret we didn’t vote for him, or
care for his agenda, we will not knowingly lie
about him either.

The email claimed Obama served 14 Governors
with National Security Letters (NSLs) telling
them to stop forming State Defense Forces (SDF),
sometimes known as State Guards, or State
Militia.

The problem with NSLs is neither the sender
nor the recipient can acknowledge the letter.
So even if the president wouldn’t admit sending one,
a Governor couldn’t admit to receiving one.
You see our dilemma.

So then we looked into the SDF and found that
they cannot be ordered by the Federal government
to duty as their Commander-in-Chief is the Governor.
We also couldn’t find a state that was actually
starting a SDF.

The email made other moot points and then
mentioned the Community Living Assistance
Services and Support Act (CLASS Act) and
stated that soon another $150-$250 per month
would be taken out of our paychecks to
finance it.

On October 14, 2011, Kathleen Sebelius, HHS
Secretary, stated the Obama Administration
would not attempt to implement the CLASS Act.
So it was he said-she said.

The email then Mentioned that Alaska could
be reclaimed by the Russians since it was only
granted to the U.S. on lease. Well, we could
wake up to a green sky tomorrow but we don’t
know how to prove it.

Then it moved on to the fact the dollar is
not secured by anything, like gold. Said our
foreign debt has grown, and our economy has
to collapse. This too cannot be proven as
fact.

So while not much of the email was based
in fact, we did learn something.

“Those who hammer their guns into plows
will plow for those who do not.”
~Thomas Jefferson
Comments are always welcome.