Confusing times

As the sun was setting yesterday I got to thinking about things
going on in our country. News programs don’t get the truth out,
politicians don’t legislate, and it feels like most are easily
offended if you don’t agree with them.

It seems odd to this oldfart, who can remember when opposing
political parties could be civil to each other and reach an
agreement that was a compromise of what they really wanted yet
still good for our country.

Now politics appears more like a war than the meeting of great
minds. And while is getting done all are getting paid while
not doing their job and tell us hard they’re working for us.
We don’t know where this is heading but it has to stop.

One has to wonder how different things would be if our silly
politicians didn’t get paid during these shutdowns and were not
paid after it’s over for time spent doing nothing but slinging
insults at those who disagree with their version of the truth.

If one looks at some polls on building the wall a majority of
us say they are actually for the wall, but not at the cost of a
government shutdown. Yet polls of border enforcement agency
employees overwhelmingly believe it is necessary, and now. We
may do a post on just these polls later.

It may be time to change the laws so we can elect monkeys to
run our country as some of us feel the monkeys couldn’t make
things any worse.

Enjoy our Wednesday as we’re 10 days into our new year. Now I
need some coffee.
Comments are always welcome.

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Of steam engines and cell phones

Yesterday was one of those days I about had to beat myself up
to get moving. Everything hurt, my brain was disconnected, and
my body said ‘oh hell no!’ to anything that involved movement.
Not sure what the problem was but hopefully it’s just part of
getting older.

This morning I was thinking of Sprint Corporation for no
apparent reason and discovered something I did not know. You may
know that Sprint is a telecommunications company that provides
internet and cell phone services. But did you know its roots
can be traced back to a railroad?

The Brown Telephone Company and the Southern Pacific Railroad
are both said to be origins of Sprint. Brown Telephone began in
1899 to give phone service to rural areas in Abilene, Kansas
and was started by Cleyson Brown.

The Southern Pacific Railroad was founded in the 1860s as a
subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Company. The company operated
thousands of miles of track and the telegraph wire which ran
alongside the track. In the 1970s the company was looking for
ways to use these lines for long distance calling.

This spawned several lawsuits between the company, AT&T, and
the FCC. Prior attempts to offer long distance calling wasn’t
approved by the FCC so the railroad used a loophole that would
allow a fax service called SpeedFAX.

Southern Pacific Communications came up with a new name to
tell the difference between the switched voice service from
SpeedFAX and came up with SPRINT. This stood for Southern
Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications.

In 1982 GTE Corporation bought the telephone operation from
Southern Pacific. In 1992 Uninet (United Telecom Data) bought
enough of the Company to acquire the original company and in
1992 United Telecom officially changed its name to Sprint
Corporation. And that’s my story.

Enjoy our Friday as the weekend has begun. As soon as I have
another cup of coffee before getting busy doing what should have
been done yesterday.
Comments are always welcome.

A few thoughts

During lunch with the wife yesterday we caught part of the
meeting between our president and two Democrats that didn’t go
well. It’s always amusing to us when the media catches up to
these politicians after such an event.

Old phrases keep popping back up and this time was no
exception. The incoming speaker of the House stated that we
would have transparency once she was seated. Seems like the last
time we heard that phrase we also heard they had to pass the
bill so we could know what was in it.

There were more but us mere mortals can only take so much so
we watched Christmas carols on another TV set in the Bar and
Grille we were enjoying pizza and coffee at. As I looked around
the place it seemed everyone else was watching the Christmas
videos and not glued to the set carrying the politicians press
conference.

We think things will get interesting when the new/old bunch of
politicians take over. And since a lot of these politicians are
legends in their own minds are sure they’ll tell us about it
whether we want to hear it our not.

One thing that would be nice is if any statement that came out
their mouths were at least based on the truth. Can’t ask them
to follow the Constitution as that went out a long time ago.

Enjoy the rest of our Wednesday as we will as soon I get some
more coffee.
Comments are always welcome.

Interesting times

Have you noticed people get upset about the darndest things
that someone else said, or wrote, years ago and demand an
apology? It makes one wonder if artificial intelligence has
surpassed the intelligence level of us mere mortals. Whatever
happened to freedom of speech?

I’m told most people have a means of filtering what comes out
of their mouths before they speak. If so mine was broken a long
time ago. My super power is that I can offend people without
even trying.

I once told someone I didn’t believe in same-sex marriages and
got the riot act. Thing is I’m not against it if others want to
marry a member of the same-sex, just that it wouldn’t happen to
me. I fail to see the attraction is all.

If you stop and think about it; riots have now become protests,
illegal aliens now have rights, and most of what our parents
taught my generation is considered wrong. I even read that the
Supreme Court said churches and other religious organizations
could display nativity scenes on their own property as long as
they included non-secular items in the display.

So what happened? When did the feelings of those who think
different from us trump our rights? Yet now we are told that we
have to tip toe around people we’ve never met, who don’t know us,
and change our ways because of what we think? Lord love a duck!

Enjoy our Monday. Now I need to calm down with more coffee.
Comments are always welcome.

Truth is stranger than fiction

If you have not yet heard of ‘Medicare for all’ we believe you
will, and often, leading up to the 2020 election. Bernie Sanders
mentions the subject on his website and is considered the man
behind the plan. He states on the site that “health care must
be recognized as a right, not a privilege.”
In 2017

Senator Sanders introduced S.1804-Medicare for All Act of
2017 to the Senate on September 13th. It has been read twice
and sent to the Committee on Finance Action by the Senate.

Medicare spending totaled $710 billion in 2017. Mr. Sanders
version, if passed, would cost an estimated $2.4 trillion a year
and is estimated to add $32.6 trillion to our debt over the
first 10 years of its start.

This bill would also end employer funded insurance which would
affect over 156 million people who get their insurance this way
and they will be forced on a single-payer system with government
panels deciding which treatments will be covered.

This would also affect private practices, clinics, and hospitals
as they could be co-opted into a government run system. All of
this would cost money, but we needn’t worry about that. Since
there are only two ways to pay for such a program: reduce the
spending or increase taxes, you can guess which way that will
go.

Don’t worry, Bernie has that figured out too. He’s just going
to call for a ton of new taxes to pay for it. Like higher taxes
for the rich and middle-income families, and new taxes on
businesses.

We hope this bill never sees the House floor. Health care is
not a right, complicating the process doesn’t help anyone, and
new and higher taxes would be a blight on our economy.

Enjoy our Thursday. Here on the east coast of Iowa the sun is
out so we’ll enjoy it. Now for some coffee and perhaps a pizza
for brunch.
Comments are always welcome.

It’s over?

Now that the election is over we breathe a sigh of relief. No
more junk mail to fill our recycle bin, no more robo-calls to
distract us, and we can get back to business as usual. Or can
we?

Watching the returns on TV last night on a liberal leaning
station was enough to last us until the next election but as we
were interested in a few local races we took more Advil and
soldiered on. We can now say that there were no surprises for
us locally or nationally

What did surprise us is how often the commentators mentioned
the 2020 campaign would kick off today. Noooooo! Give us mere
mortals a break. I almost got a brain bleed just listening to
the panel of “experts” for a few hours and I didn’t need to know
that.

Sanders, Warren, and Biden were mentioned as possible
contenders and we noticed something. There was no mention of
Hillary Clinton among said contenders. They even mentioned a few
Republicans who may run against Trump.

Again, nooooo! It’s easy to see why it cost so much money to
run for office when the campaign rhetoric goes on for years. As
for me, I don’t care who’s running in 2020. I can wait until
2020 to find out.

Enjoy our Wednesday as we may snow on the ground tomorrow and
I hope we do. Now I need more coffee and Advil in preparation
for the announcements of who’s going to run for President in
2020.
Comments are always welcome.

Late edition

There was no dew on the grass this morning but it made for a
cool picture a few days ago. I woke up on the run and haven’t
had much of a chance to take a breather, until now.

Went over and had a good chat with Dad, voted, and got all the
chores I could remember done so can now take a break. Dad voted
absentee ballot earlier so he was all set and after my visit I
even straightened his flag pole.

He commented earlier how it reminded him of Iwa Jima. Now it’s
straighter and shouldn’t blow over if the wind keeps up. I will
make a permanent repair once the wind dies down.

And we voted at a different place as the old one closed up. It
must be a sign that we voted in a church. Someone is trying to
tell me I need more time in a pew. We’ll see how that works out
for everyone concerned.

We even had time for a bacon and egg breakfast so I’ll save
the leftover pizza for lunch. Later tonight, instead of
regularly scheduled programming, our local channels will cover
the election. We’re just glad we won’t have to watch any more
political ads for a while.

Finally, it has been gray skies here on the east coast of Iowa
and we hope that doesn’t turn into a trend. Veteran’s Day is
Sunday this year, 100 years since the end of WW 1. Our city has
proclaimed the 12th as the Veteran’s Day holiday but we’ll stick
with the 11th.

Enjoy our Tuesday, vote if you have a mind to, and enjoy the
rest of our day. Now for some coffee and some leftover pizza.
Comments are always welcome.