Somebody’s Watching!

A few days ago, I was surfing the web, looking at electric riding mowers. They really, really want a lot for those things. When I first went into the Marines, I could have bought a nice car for what they want for those things.

Well, at least the mower would cut grass as well as providing a ride.

The point is, yesterday, I received a message in my email from a company selling mowers. Now I wonder. Just how did they know I was looking at mowers? More importantly, how did they know my email address?

Actually, I was only curious. I had no interest in buying one, at least for another year or two.

More importantly, if you was the one watching, I’d now not buy a tricycle from you. Don’t like folks who like spying on me. For all those others looking over my shoulder wishing to do business with me, you just might want to remember that.

Establishing the Lies

It never fails to amaze me as to how quickly can become embedded while it seems to take forever to establish the truth. Even now people speak of January first as a riot and insurrection. They neither nor say anything to establish it. It is now just assumed to be true. And, of course, they pin the whole thing on President Trump, though he did all he could to avoid it.

I’m not going to go back through all the facts. If people want to believe the lie, there is nothing anyone will be able to say or do that will alter it. However, let’s remember four indisputable facts. One, the only one shot was a women who was lying in a defenseless position by a high ranking policeman. It is the one most obvious case of police mistreatment, and no one wants to say a thing about it.

Two, the truth is that the police seemed to be welcoming everyone in, even to the point of providing a welcoming wave of the arm. I know. I saw the video. As the people entered, other than a few people, they remained orderly doing no more than looking around. No one had weapons, period. No one attacked any of the police.

Three, at his speech, President Trump encouraged the crowd to be peaceful. There were complaints that he did noting to stop it after he found out about it. What was he supposed to do. He had absolutely no communication with the crowd. He was denied access to all social media so he could not even send out a message via them.

Four, President Trump made two attempts to activate the national guard. Both times he was turned down. Pelosi had charge of security in the building. Trump could not override her authority. When she said “no” to the help from the national guard, it meant no. Had she permitted the national guard, she would not have had January 6 as a political club with which to hit the Republicans with.

To make matters worse, there are still folks they are holding in jail that never entered the building. So much for a quick fair trail. Even if they did go to trial, they would have been tried with juries that would be all democrat. DC is 95 percent dems. The defendants could try for a change of venue, but good luck on that.

I am a little curious when some of these cases make it up to The Supreme Court. I would suspect many will be overturned quickly. The problem is that some of these folks are going to lose years out of their life and that cannot be returned.

Even more angering, what really, really bothers me, there are many rinos that are quickly falling in line and are ready to concede to one of the greatest deceits in American history.

Simple & Practical

Daily writing prompt
What does your ideal home look like?

So many things in a house are there for looks. All sorts of things hung on walls and furniture all over the place. I don’t like clutter and I dislike the things that collect dust. Mostly I don’t like things that make it difficult for me to clean. I am in a 900 square foot house and it takes me hours to clean it because we have a lot of stuff we don’t need.

My drill instructor told us that we should never have anything more than we can carry on our backs. I didn’t agree with him then or now. However, I am beginning to see his point. If we decided to move it would take, maybe a couple of weeks. Moreover, most of what we have has not been touched in years. It is very likely we’ll never touch it. If we were to move, much of it would likely end up at the dump.

Rugs are nice to look at and they do feel nice on the bare feet. But they have three problems. They collect dirt. Anyone who has ever removed a carpet will attest to that. When we removed the carpets in this house, there was an eighth of an inch of dust left behind. Now we sweep and mop and it is clean.

Also, they are susceptible getting ruined when they get wet. In our case, it was the hot water heater. One day we came home and immediately knew something was wrong when the carpet was squishy. I have heard of others having problems with washers or bath tubs. I suppose fish bowls would be bad too. One day I came home from the grocery store and the bag holding a gallon of milk gave way. Fortunately, this was after we removed the carpet. It was bad enough as it was. I hate to think of what a gallon of milk would have done to shag carpet.

Maybe one complaint is that almost all electric outlets are close to the floor. That means moving a chair or maybe a couch to plug something in. If it were up to me, all outlets would be 3 to 4 feet from the floor. Okay. The plug and chord would show. To me, that’s alright. It’s practical. To me practical is far more important than looks. This is especially true as I get old and it gets more difficult to move the furniture out of the way and then move it back.

Come to think of it. All furniture should have lift jacks to get them out of the way during sweeping and mopping. They would only need to raise that chair a foot so I can get that broom and mop under it.

Do you think anyone will listen to me. Well maybe…if I had a million or so in the bank. No one ever listens to the likes of me, though there are a whole lot more like me than the millionaires.

Christian Music?

I had an idea I suggested to my wife. If I had a restaurant, I would not be able to be biased and hire only Christians. It wouldn’t be long before some atheist, Israeli or Arab would complain. Let me note at this time, I would have no problem hiring a Jew. I might even go out of my way to hire one or two. However, it does help me with explaining the concept.

You see, I would make sure that every third or forth piece of music played over the speakers would be Christian. It would have two effects. First, I would not get many atheist applicants. They would not enjoy the music. Second, most potential atheist customers would go somewhere else.

That is not so bad. My employees would mostly be Christian and my customers would be mostly Christian. Also, it would not be a bad thing to have a few customers saved in my place. I would not mind that.

Then my wife hit me with reality. I hate it when she does that. She suggested that I just might anger some atheist to the point that he would destroy the place and possibly hurt a few of the customers too. It is true, non-Christians can get violent, especially atheists who find themselves listening to Gospel music because they were dragged in there by their parents.

Well, none of that will happen anyway. I don’t have the money to start a place and I’m too old. Yet, another thought occurred to me, sort of the same but different. What if we had a constitutional amendment requiring Christian music be played in The House and Senate any time that no one is speaking, such as during votes. Just maybe it would encourage only Christians run for Congress.

Well a person can dream. Even if the amendment passed, the they’d just wear noise canceling ear phones. You just can’t force a person into Christianity. You can’t even make them listen to Christian music. What a shame. Just might improve things in this country… a lot more than anti gun laws, which the Godless will ignore.

Better for the nation to turn to Jesus. Also, better to put the criminals in prison. The guns don’t hurt people. The criminal will kill people if they have to make their own guns.

Learning From our Mistakes

Well, we’ve made the mistake. When are we going to start learning.

Oh. Maybe you are wondering to which mistake am I referring. Well, let’s look at it objectively. In the fifties and sixties, we had some of the best schools in the world. California had the best schools in the schools country.

Odd. Since then, we have increased spending on those schools, not just two fold but ten fold. One would think the quality of the teaching would have skyrocketed. It did… in the negative direction. The teaching has gotten so bad so fast that one would think it intentional. Well, maybe it was intentional. I have often wondered and I am sure I’m not alone.

Shall we take a short walk down memory lane, please. The current Department of Education was signed into law in 1979 by Jimmy Carter (You remember, he was the president who did very little other than give away the Panama Canal. Now that took some brains.) Since that time, the quality of our education has taken a nose dive. Do you suppose that forming the Department of Education just might have been the beginning of mistakes.

Let’s look at two very important objective considerations. The current budget of the department is 68 billion dollars. (seems as if we could build a lot of schools with that.) If distributed equally, that is over a billion dollars for each state. Also it has 4900 employees. I wonder just how many of them actually knows how to teach. I wonder how many ever did teach. It makes me wonder if they really know where to most effectively spend that 68 billion dollars.

When I started this post, I did feel I should Google the department. At that point, I only had a vague idea on what I would be writing. Right there on the computer screen was a photo of a big building. (I really mean it is big.) Do they have to have a big building? Does it serve any purpose. I am sure that building must require maintenance, utilities and upkeep. It makes me wonder if those going green folks realize the waste. Actually, when you come right down to it, the US government likely generates a lot of carbon dioxide in buildings like that. You ever take a tour of DC. There is a big building for this and a big building for that. There are many of them and I suspect there are more planned. Shut that city down for a month and we could run Southaven on the savings all year and then some. My electric car would likely go around the world… forget that. I don’t think I could make that calculation.

At any rate, my best guess, that big department likely takes it’s orders from the National Education Association, a union. I don’t think that the union has the interest of our kids at heart. Like most unions, their biggest interest is the union…gaining and maintaining money and power. If the kids get educated, it is totally by accident and the local education system.

The department controls local schools in three ways. They collect statistics. The distribute money, but only to those who meet the standards of the department. It makes little difference of those standards are good or bad. Finally, they make sure that there is no segregation in the schools. Surely, all this can be done locally. Why do we need a big brother in DC to tell the local schools and teachers what to do.

Well, how is the centralized system working out for us? Well, they collect the stats. They, themselves ought to be able to tell us. I don’t have to guess. You don’t have to guess. Since their formation… by their own stats, they have failed miserably. If we are ever going to learn from our mistake, I’d say the best thing to do is do away with the Department of Education and let the homeless move into that big building. It would solve 2 problems. The schools would start improving and homeless would have somewhere to stay. Actually, a lot of homeless people could stay there.

Okay. It won’t solve everything and I know it. It will help. The big mistake is this, more money does not always equal better teaching. If you want better teaching, you need better teachers, better curriculum, and less overhead. As I said, those folks in the department hierarchy don’t teach. They are what I call, “Hangers on.” At the state level, there are thousands who work for the school system who don’t teach or for that matter directly support the teachers.

By the way, the state of California has its own education quagmire. They have 2740 employees and a budget of over 89 billion dollars. I wonder just how many of them know how to teach. Just how many of them know where the money will do the most good. My guess is they get many of their orders from the N.E.A. too.

I think the big part of the mistake is centralizing the education system. Those folks up there in those really big buildings have no idea of what is going on in the classrooms. I think most experienced good teachers will agree with me. On the other hand, the mediocre teachers will prefer the protection provided by the union.

Spoiled Kids. Spoiled Adults

It is an old assumption by some. However, it is one of the most disproved one. I am not even going to try to disprove it. It has reached a point that it is a given. We have the spoiled rich kids of the millionaires repeated over and over. Even those who have less money will still try to buy the love of a child by giving him or her too much.

Then, one day they look around and wonder why their children don’t like them. Indeed, the parent frequently tells the child, haven’t I given you all you wanted?

The fact is, sometimes real love says no to the request, even when the child begs, pleads and threatens. I have seen that, with the outcome both ways.

Recently, however, I have come to the conclusion that kids are not the only ones who become spoiled. A full grown adult that should know better will beg plead and threaten. They will beg their government to take care of them. They will plead for the money, the healthcare, the homes, the phones and even housing. Then, when and if the government turns them down, they threaten to cast their vote for someone else.

It is of course, one of the greatest weaknesses of a government that must answer to the voters. It all started out well but over time, our nation has become continuously more socialist. You might find this strange, but at one time, the federal government did not provide aid for for disasters. It was handled totally by the state. I have no idea when that changed.

Eisenhower, when he wanted to build the great interstate system we have, had to figure a way to justify it. Up to that point, the federal government was not much into the highway building business. So, he justified it by saying it was for national defense. To do this, the interstates had to meet certain national defense standards that would allow them to be used for airfields should another war brake out. Also, something that made more sense, transportation for war supplies.

It was a horrible thing that happened to those trade towers, but some people really made out on it financially. Some people were given millions of dollars for their losses. I saw what was happening and I shook my head. If I got a million dollars, I’d be happy to let someone come and burn my house down. Well, to be sure, I would want to be well clear of it first.

However, some of those people in NY, NY became instant millionaires as a result of 9/11. Then, just a short time later, they had their hands out again because of hurricane. Me and people like me were working hard for our paychecks while those folks up there simply held their hands out and said gimme, gimme, gimme. And of course, if one dollar was withheld, the clamoring would start, “See if I vote for you next time!”

Nowadays, people build next to oceans, sometimes on cliffs. They spend millions on the property and millions on the house. Then, when a storm comes along, we hear, “Well, I couldn’t afford insurance you know. It was so expensive.” Do you suppose that the insurance is expensive for a reason. Maybe the lesson these folks need to learn is to build a little farther from the ocean or lake instead of counting on Uncle Sam to bail them out.

People are required to have insurance to drive cars. Maybe they should be required to have insurance to build houses on cliffs overlooking the ocean. The alternative is simple. You built there. You took the risk. You live with the results, no matter. We will come to the rescue for personal safety, but not to help you rebuild. I suspect there would be one big advantage to it. Many of the miles of coast that are now private would be turned back over to the public.

That which happened recently in Hawaii is a different matter entirely. They do need some help rebuilding, though we need to avoid overdoing it. The people there were hit by something that was completely unpredictable. One might even say that the government aggravated it. Certainly, if the government did have a part in the disaster, they should have a real part in the recovery.

However, people who live next to big bodies of water where flood damage can be reasonably expected, we should not pass out any more than what is needed to survive. There is no reason why the paycheck of some truck driver should have to be used to rebuild some millionaire’s beach home.

The particular bad part is that the federal government is very bad at dealing with disasters. Invariably, they pay 3 dollars to provide 1 dollar of relief. The rest. Some of it goes to the operation of the federal agencies. Mostly, a lot of it gets wasted. The trailers are brought in where tents would work. Tents aren’t that bad short term. I have lived in tents. It’s better than sleeping in the rain. Moreover, they can be moved in more quickly and they are reusable. The trailers will likely be scrapped. At the very least, reusable buildings should be used that can be quickly assembled and disassembled. I have no idea why this we don’t already do this. Just ask the builders of the steel buildings what it would take. Bet they would have good solutions. Oh! Wait a minute! I just figured it out why they keep doing it this way. We are the ones paying for it, not them.

And so it is, that we keep spoiling those hit by disasters. And so it is, that they are more and more dissatisfied. It is the one problem where governments answer to the voters.

As an aside, the interstate system was and is one of the best projects of the federal government. However, I still wonder how much money is never getting into the concrete and bridges. Nowadays, the engineers who plan the highways have a problem they didn’t even think about when the highways were started, the people going green. Getting rights of way are far more difficult today than in President Eisenhower’s day.

It’s Only Natural

Those that have read my posts will know that I like poking at advertisements, especially the ones on TV. I feel they mostly are directed at those who have difficulty resoning, Moreover, they are frequently very repetitious… to the point I have been known to change channels. Then of course, I find something better on the other channel and I don’t switch back. It’s only natural. Why should I have to put up with bad advertising if the need doesn’t exist.

I do have another aspect of advertising to which I object. (You notice how I avoided ending the sentence with a preposition for those grammar fanatics. I used, “to which I object” instead of as most would use the, “object to.”)

Regardless, it would seem the new craze is, “contains only natural ingredients,” “Contains no drugs,” and so forth. I see right through the ruse and I hope others do as well. I mean, where did drugs come from in the first place but things found in nature. Penicillin started when a doctor discovered bread mold killed bacteria. By the way, I think everyone knows that mold on bread is very natural. I don’t suggest a person with an infection should use it on that cut though.

Lead is natural. It is an element found in nature. Many years ago we outlawed it in gas and paint. Though natural, it can cause bad problems. Mercury is natural. We used to use it a lot in thermometers and mining for gold. They even put the stuff in children’s toys. Not so much anymore. If it is used in mining gold, it is only with extreme caution. Mostly we use the electronic thermometers, far from occurring natually.

Many modern things in today’s society allow us to avoid the old natural stuff and that is a good thing. In the past, it was quite common for kids to suffer lead poisoning. Nowadays, we are replacing the lights containing led with the not natural L.E.D.s (Smaller, safer and much lasts much longer) We have better paint, longer lasting paint that is lead free. Even the autos are having to run on lead-free diets. Better for all. Even the cars are lasting longer.

I understand the concept of natural meds. Really I do. Still we must be careful. Just because something is completely natural, it does not mean necessarily that it is better or even safer.

My advice is to face all ads with speculation. Just because something is advertised on TV, it does not naturally follow that it is good, better or best. At 73, I have learned that lesson more than once.

Just trying to save y’ll the pain of finding stuff out on your own. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to straighten out those advertisers a little. I really don’t like deceit anywhere I see it.

Horace Cooper Has My Favorite Line for the Week, Maybe Month

As usual, I can’t get the exact quote and it angers me. He said it so well and I will not do as well. A lot of it was the lead-in. He quoted someone else as saying that those who care about the people usually do well in politics. Mr. Cooper went on to say that even those who can fake it do well. Finally, he added that Biden has reached the point where he can’t even fake it.

Personally, I think he has, as they say, hit the proverbial nail dead on the head. If you prefer the version with fewer words, he nailed it.

Some Will Remain

Some, right now claim they are true pastors, teachers of the word of God. If the rapture occurs tomorrow, some will be taken up with the Lord. Those who were not saved before the rapture, will remain. This puts them in one of 3 categories. 1. They earnestly thought they were right. They might even have thought they were saved. 2. They were teaching a false religion and likely knew it. 3. Those that were playing pastor for financial gain or personal ego.

They will all be known as pastor, father, sister, or even brother. Some will have been called preacher. Hopefully, you will be one of those taken during the rapture, in which case it will not concern you. On the other hand, if you are one of those left behind, I would suggest you be very suspect of those who claim to be a teacher of the Word. To be sure, some will remain, but they won’t be Christian. If they are left behind, they never had a second birth. This is all true and they will have two things in common with you. First, unless you admit your sin, unless you repent, unless you accept Jesus as your savior, you will never go to heaven. Second, brace yourself. The most horrible 7 years will come upon this earth. It will be so bad that billions of people will die in those years.

They will die of disease and starvation. You don’t want to be one of those left behind. Better to admit your sin now. Repent, that is to say, turn from sin and toward Jesus. Finally, accept Jesus and have faith in Him and Him only as your savior.

Don’t take my word. Read it yourself in the Bible. The book of Revelation is not about a big picnic. The book of John will tell you about Jesus and what you must do to be saved. Pay particular attention to the 3rd chapter of John. When you get done with that, read the book of Romans.

Don’t be one of those who die without being saved. Don’t be one of those left behind after the rapture. Don’t be one of those who finds out which one of those TV pastors are fake. Don’t be around when it becomes obvious which religions are false. By then it will be a little late. Being just a little late will make all the difference in the world.

Please seek after Jesus and He will find you.