The circus is back

Sometimes you have just have to shake your head and wonder what’s happening in our country. I actually listened to some of the drive-by medias’ take on things this morning and had to laugh. I listened long enough to hear about the woman who jumped into a panther enclosure at a zoo to get a selfie, a guy who was in a whales mouth, and the meeting of the Democrat candidates for president in Texas.

The woman was an idiot, the guy was lucky, and the candidates are all crazier than an outhouse rat. It seemed they were all in agreement that we need to change our healthcare system and that said healthcare is a right. Excuse me, but aren’t you people the very ones who pushed the Affordable Care Act down our throats?

It was your bill, passed by Democrats and endorsed by Obama. Now you say we need Medicare for all? Those campaigning are saying that it wouldn’t cost us a dime, except a small deductible. You should just tell the truth and admit you’re going to tax us until we bleed. But hey, at least we’ll have insurance.

If creepy Biden joins the fray it will be a great circus to watch during the upcoming debates. The sad thing is people are backing these candidates knowing all their pipe dreams can only mean much higher taxes. At the rate they’re going it won’t take long to run out of other peoples money.

That being said, if you don’t agree with my opinion your feelings don’t trump my right to say it. We have no safe rooms or coloring books at Casa Cruiser. Enjoy our Monday as it’s looking to be another good one here on the east coast of Iowa.
Comments are always welcome.

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Going off course

I find it ironic that members of Congress take an oath then many just forget or ignore what they swore to do while in office. This goes as follows:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

After taking this oath some quickly attack others along party lines, try to change said Constitution, and spend money with no regards of how to budget for it. For those who don’t know or care to forget, the right to own guns is in the second amendment of our Constitution. Many laws they pass are not.

Although it’s hard to tell in our current society, they work for us. For some odd reason many of them seem to think they are royalty or something. It’s a crying shame. The current bunch in office have spent more time and money trying to find something to use to get our president impeached.

One could go on but I have gone off course and will try again at a later date. Enjoy our Thursday as we will on the east coast of Iowa.
Now I’m going to fry up some bacon and have more coffee.
Comments are always welcome.

Stick around

As the saying goes here in Iowa, if you don’t like the weather
just stick around and it’ll change. Yesterday we had thunder and
lightning with our freezing rain and today we’ll get rain. Then
for Thursday the high is supposed to be 40 degrees and come
Friday 14.

Can’t wait to see what they predict for the rest of the week.
And while the thunder roared and the ice fell I thought it good
time to turn on the TV and see what our president had to say. It
almost worked out that way.

Oh the TV came on alright, but no sound came out of it. Not a
problem, I switched on the closed caption feature and was good
to go. Or so I thought. It drove me nuts trying to follow the
speech that way so I rebooted the cable box and waited. When
the box finished the reboot I turned things back on and had
sound again.

With the closed caption feature still on. So I reset the TV
to turn the closed caption off and grabbed a cup of coffee to
hear the speech. An hour after it started. The small portion of
said speech that I did hear sounded good to me. I even watched
a lady give the Democrat response and blame Trump for the shut
down.

I didn’t yell at the TV or unplug it and throw it out the
window, just listened. Yet I was always told it takes two to
tango. The Democrats in the House didn’t even try to reach an
agreement on the wall, but then neither did the Republicans when
they had the majority.

Enjoy our Wednesday before it slips away. Now I need more
coffee before I go out and see how slick it got overnight.
Comments are always welcome.

Inmates running the asylum

Turn out the lights, the party is over. Perhaps you’ve heard
there is a bill before the 101st General Assembly in the state
of Illinois creating the offense of parental bullying? Here is
a little about that bill:

101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2019 and 2020
HB0181

Introduced , by Rep. La Shawn K. Ford

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

720 ILCS 5/12C-75 new
Amends the Criminal Code of 2012. Creates the offense of parental bullying. Provides that a parent or legal guardian of a minor commits parental bullying when he or she knowingly and with the intent to discipline, embarrass, or alter the behavior of the minor, transmits any verbal or visual message that the parent or legal guardian reasonably believes would coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to the minor. Provides that parental bullying is a petty offense. Provides that if a person is convicted of parental bullying, the court shall order that person to pay for the costs of prosecution and that a portion of any fine imposed, as determined by the court, be placed in escrow for the purchase of a certificate of deposit for use by the victim when he or she attains 18 years of age.

LRB101 04802 SLF 49811 b
——————————-

So if this passes, parents in Illinois will be fined if they
disipline their children? And what could possibly go wrong with
the government running he show? I didn’t read all of proposal
but what I read seemed to indicate that offenders would not have
the children removed from their home but be fined by the court
with a portion of said fine going into an escrow account for the
‘victim’ when they turn 18 years old.

IL HB 1769 doesn’t sound like anything I could get behind.

We don’t have a car in this race as we don’t live in Illinois
but have to say STOP! We don’t need government micro-managing
our lives and we certainly don’t need them running our families.

Enjoy our Monday as we get ready for a cold front bringing
freezing rain here on the east coast of Iowa.
Comments are always welcome.

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.

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.