Saturday, June 29, 2019

From my friend Douglas Taffinder

Mostly North Charleston SC

We grew up in a time when most everyone treated each other with respect. We didn't eat out much just once in awhile when mom & dad took us out for a treat. We drank homemade Kool-Aid, ate peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, hot dogs, but mostly home made meals consisting of a lot of grilled cheese, hamburgers and spaghetti. Our treat was homemade chocolate chip cookies.

We grew up during a time when it was simple. We went outside to play. We couldn't wait to get home from school and "change" into our play clothes, because you didn't play in school clothes, because they were so full of dirt and who knows what else. We were not afraid to play outside and get dirty, if you were so clean you didn't NEED to take a bath, yup a bath, showers were something people had in hotels attached to the tube there..

We played ball, rode bikes, Big wheels,climbed trees, built forts, jumped rope, kick ball, Jax, played football at the neighborhood playground, kick the can, always played outside till dark. You never feared going to school, never had to prepare for a shooting. You never played inside the house, or even had snacks between meals. A time when there was no bottled water and we turned on the hose to get a drink. No cable t.v., just 3 or so channels with an antenna on the roof, no remote controls, no cell phones, no internet, or YouTube. A landline phone we had to dial with a 5 foot cord is all we knew. And we shared it with everybody in the house. And if you had a friend more than 5 miles away well that's long distance. So forget it. Start writing a letter.

Friends were kids who lived near you and you could walk to each other's house, and did multiple times a day.. If you wanted to play with one of your friends you would go to the house stand on the sidewalk and yell there name until either they came running out, or their parent came out and said "No not today", at which time you dropped your head and hashed our PLAN B, because going back home and sitting in the house was the LAST thing you wanted to do, that was what you did ONLY when you got into trouble or you where sick!! Both were torture because you could sit in your window and see your friends outside having fun "without you"!!We watched some cartoons on Saturday morning. But they were taken away if on restriction. If you were bad in school, you got in trouble in school and when you got home you got in trouble again, because your parents already knew. We would ride bikes for hours and talk until the street lights came on, because that was your "curfew". You could trust your neighbors. You felt safe.

You LEARNED from your parents instead of disrespecting them and treating them as if they knew nothing. Parents took pride in being honest and having a strong work ethic. We were taught to respect guns, authority, elders, and America. We never thought about taking a life, or being inhumane to animals. We all ate around the dinner table and talked to each other as a family when possible.

We asked each other how their day was and talked about what we learned in school. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and listened to our teachers, and respected them. We watched what we said around our elders because we knew If we DISRESPECTED any grown up we would get our behinds busted, it wasn't called abuse, IT WAS CALLED DISCIPLINE! We held doors, carried groceries and gave up our seat without being asked, to someone who needed it.

You didn't hear curse words on the radio in songs or TV. "Please" and "Thank you" were part of our daily vocabulary! And "Bless you" if someone sneezed, even strangers and NO ONE was offended by the term..

Re-post if you're thankful for your childhood and will never forget where you came from! Wouldn't it be nice if it were possible to get back to this way of life? It was so primitive, yet we all miss it??

Copy and paste... change to the Town where you lived. Lots of good time and memories...the good ol' days.

Learn to RESPECT not EXPECT!

Saturday, June 15, 2019

The Green New Deal, explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIDJWCbk6I

It fails to mention that we have only gone up one degree since 1880. The change in the CO2 level has on average been less than 1 part per million per year, and the temperature change on average has been less than 1/100th of a degree per year.
It fails to mention that predictions used to be in the 6 to 12-degree range, and that it was predicted that the polar ice caps would melt when we got to 5 degrees. Now they are saying that an extra 1 to 1.5 degrees over what we have now are a problem. It fails to mention that we will be out of most fossil fuels by the year 2100. It fails to mention that over the long history of the earth the CO2 level in the atmosphere declined so drastically that we were running out of atmospheric CO2. During the last period of glaciation, the level dropped to 180 PPM, which is dangerously close to the level where all the terrestrial plants die. It fails to mention the benefits we have gotten from CO2, such as increased crop yields. It fails to mention that there are methods for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, such as Iron Fertilization. However, I don't think that we need to. We are predicted to reach 800 PPM CO2 level by the year 2100 which is roughly when our fossil fuels will run out.  
It fails to mention that we will have practical nuclear fusion by 2050, if not much sooner.

Monday, June 10, 2019

Andrew Johnson - Wikipedia

This is interesting. Johnson's name comes up while people talk about impeachment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson

His record makes him look politically incompetent. In that regard he reminds me of Jimmy Carter. He had many opportunities to secure civil rights, but opposed them at every turn.

It seems to me that his blanket pardon of Confederates was a good thing, although if we were facing similar circumstances today, how many people would be so forgiving?

One has to wonder why Abraham Lincoln would choose a southern Democrat as his running mate. It was no doubt to better unite the country, but the consequences were very messy.

Basic income and other ways to fix capitalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2aBKnr3Ep4

Snake Oil.


I had a different idea.  Instead of paying people not to work, let's give everybody (in the US) a refundable tax credit for every hour they work.  Start with $.50 as a trial, and raise it to $1 later if it works out.  In other words, incentivize people to work.

I only favor this idea because I see some people having great difficulty on low wages.  Raising the minimum wage will cost jobs and hurt competitiveness.