Let Us Learn From the Past

Posted on 19/05/2016 by Grumpa Joe

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Global Warning November 1922

Something screwy going around here…………………………….

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change n climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before
ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

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I must apologize.

Did I neglect to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post – 94 years ago.

This must have been caused by the Model T Ford’s emissions!!

Filed under: Education, family, Government, Memories, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

Governor Rauner Speaks Out

Posted on 18/05/2016 by Grumpa Joe

TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016

RAUNER: DEAR STATE EMPLOYEES, THE TRUTH IS ILLINOIS IS BROKE

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SPRINGFIELD – Governor Bruce Rauner penned the following public letter to the state’s employees, explaining his reasoning for vetoing HB 580 Monday:

OPEN LETTER TO STATE EMPLOYEES:

For too many years, Illinoisans have been misled. Each of you in state government has been misled. Taxpayers who fund government have been misled. Recipients of public services, including our most vulnerable residents, have also been misled. The consequences are before us, and they are dire.

I ran for office to right these wrongs. I believe that solving our state’s crisis requires a simple first step – for someone to tell the truth. So here it is.

The truth is that Illinois is broke. Our taxpayers, who pay the highest property taxes in the nation, are maxed out and local governments continue to raise property taxes.

Expanding the size of government faster than middle-class paychecks are growing is a failing strategy. That is why I have no choice but to veto AFSCME’s arbitration bill, HB580.

It’s not because I don’t want to see you earn a better living today. I do. I veto HB580 because I want to protect the pension system that you are counting on for your retirement.

If I signed this bill, I would be subjecting all taxpayers to another $3 billion in higher taxes. That makes no sense when too many jobs have been leaving Illinois, and those hardworking Illinoisans that remain see their incomes falling.

We can make Illinois a state where our employees receive the pension benefits they were promised, where our budget is truly balanced through strong economic growth rather than destructive tax hikes, and where our state workers are not forced to work in decaying buildings with technology that is older than my children and furniture that is older than me.

I pledged on my first day in office to build a partnership with state employees, and that is exactly what we have done. Our 1970s computers are being replaced with next generation technology. With the General Assembly’s help, I pledged to put the Thompson Center up for sale and move employees to more modern space. We pushed for more flexible scheduling and ended Rod Blagojevich’s corrupt hiring system.

When Attorney General Madigan sought to shut off pay, Comptroller Munger and I defeated that misguided attack on state employees. And I have called on the General Assembly to honor Governor Quinn’s failed promise of wage increases from 2011. We must respect our commitments and not make new commitments that we cannot afford.

We also sought employees’ ideas for improvements and savings, prompting us to send out the first-ever state employee survey. The results were eye-opening.

You told me that promotions and compensation are not based on merit. You told me that agencies don’t reward creativity and innovation. I want to reward hard work and ingenuity. Unfortunately, union leadership is blocking many of these common sense ideas – ideas that you want. Rest assured, I heard your desire for these reforms loud and clear.

So my administration took action. We launched a truly meaningful merit pay program. We started a gainsharing program that will reward state employees for helping save taxpayers’ money. We implemented a “rapid results” system that removes obstacles to employee innovation and allows employees to personally change processes that impede good customer service.

But as I have noted, with a truly historic budget deficit and skyrocketing debt, our taxpayers cannot afford the added spending pressure of huge wage and health insurance increases. That is why I must veto HB580, ensuring that the legal process agreed to with AFSCME leaders and currently underway before the Labor Board, is allowed to proceed and fairly resolve any outstanding issues.

But I make this pledge: The State will honor its promises to you. We will continue to listen and build a workplace that values and rewards hard work, innovation, and creativity, all in a welcoming work environment. We will keep fighting to get you paid in full and on time. And we will continue to stand for fiscal discipline so that you and your families can again know you are, finally, being told the truth.

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Illinois is broke because it has the most corrupt Democrat government, and has had it for the longest time. State politicians work diligently to get re-elected. Most consider their offices as a profession that belongs to them. Many pass their posts to their children to keep the family business running. They cleverly manipulate State workers with perks and money to insure they help to get them re-elected year after year. Illinois is as close to being a socialist state as one can get. We are an example to the rest of the country. Look at us and ask, do I want to be a tax-slave working to line the pockets of the faithful dominions of elites who are running our state?

GJP

Filed under: Conservative, economy, Election, Government, politics | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

PSA-160518-World Diets

Posted on 18/05/2016 by Grumpa Joe

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For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.
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> 1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans…
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> 5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.
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Filed under: Cooking, family, Food, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Last Ones

Posted on 18/05/2016 by Grumpa Joe

This essay struck home because I was born in the time period it is about. I agree with everything the author claims, except for one thing, that is the ducking down under our desks for a bomb drills. Maybe the nuns that taught us did not read the news or or hear news reports. Perhaps they just trusted that God would protect us in the event, but I never heard of anyone in my school ever hiding under his desk to protect himself against an A-bomb. Now, that I think about it the nuns probably knew that the desk would provide little protection against any bomb, and let it be, it is called common sense.

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Children of the 1930s & 1940
“The Last Ones”
A Short Memoir

Born in the 1930s and early
1940s, we exist as a very special age cohort.
We are the “last ones.” We are the last,
climbing out of the depression, who can remember the
winds of war and the war itself with fathers and
uncles going off. We are the last to remember
ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to
stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin
cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires
weren’t available. My mother delivered milk in
a horse drawn cart. We are the last to hear
Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars
in the front windows of our grieving neighbors.
We can also remember the parades on
August 15, 1945; VJ Day.
We saw the ‘boys’ home from the war build their
Cape Cod style houses, pouring the cellar,
tar papering it over and living there until they
could afford the time and money to build it out.
We are the last who spent childhood without television;
instead imagining what we heard on the radio.
As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood
“playing outside until the street lights came on.”
We did play outside and we did play on our own.
There was no little league.
The lack of television in our early years meant,
for most of us, that we had little real understanding
of what the world was like. Our Saturday afternoons,
if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the
holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and
cartoons. Newspapers and magazines were written for
adults. We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.
As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.
The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an
education and spurred colleges to grow. VA loans
fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled
with new installment payment plans put factories to
work. New highways would bring jobs and mobility.
The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in
politics. In the late 40s and early 50’s the country
seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order
as it gave birth to its new middle class. Our parents
understandably became absorbed with their own new lives.
They were free from the confines of the depression and
the war. They threw themselves into exploring
opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren’t neglected but we weren’t today’s
all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played
by ourselves ‘until the street lights came on.’
They were busy discovering the post war world.
Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected
virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide
we simply stepped into the world and went to find out.
We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity;
a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief
that there was more where this came from, we shaped
life as we went.
We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future.
Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared
in this experience. Depression poverty was deep
rooted. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War
was a dark presage in the early 1950s and by
mid-decade school children were ducking under
desks. China became Red China. Eisenhower
sent the first “advisors” to Vietnam. Castro set-up
camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
We are the last to experience an interlude when
there were no existential threats to our homeland.
We came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate
change, technological upheaval and perpetual
economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with
insistent unease. Only we can remember both a
time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world
was secure and full of bright promise and
plenty. We experienced both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time the world was getting
better not worse .

We did not have it easy. Our wages were low, we
did without, we lived within our means, we worked
hard to get a job, and harder still to keep
it. Things that today are considered
necessities, we considered unreachable
luxuries. We made things last. We fixed,
rather than replaced. We had values and did
not take for granted that “Somebody will take care
of us”. We cared for ourselves and we also
cared for
others.

We are the ‘last ones.’

Author
unknown

Nowhere Else to Go

Wait Until Those Born Before 1945 are Dead

Filed under: Biography, family, Memories, Seniors, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Some Of You Are More Equal Than Me

Posted on 15/05/2016 by Grumpa Joe

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I thought this was a hoax until I clicked on the Fox News link. IT IS FOR REAL.

Hopefully, down the road there will be a follow up where this is taken to court and the ruling is overturned.

I did not have to check this one. Just click on the site about half way down. Sad, but nevertheless true.

It is time to vote the lawbreakers out of office… Vote them All Out.

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After Muslim Truckers Refuse to Deliver Beer… Obama Does the Unbelievable – by Bill Callen | Top Right News October 2015

Barack Obama just sided with Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia Law on an American business, leaving many outraged and two Fox News anchors absolutely stunned.

Two Muslim truck drivers former Somali “refugees” refused to make deliveries of beer to stores for their employer. So they were understandably fired.
They claimed it was a violation of their religious beliefs even though Islam bars only the consumption of alcohol. And, as the employer pointed out, the workers knew they would have to deliver alcohol before they took the job.

So guess what Barack Obama did.

He SUED the employers on behalf of the pair, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, claiming religious discrimination.

Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) represented them in the case, providing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal support, judicial filings and court appearances against the employer who was hopelessly outgunned by the Federal government.

And this week the Muslims were awarded a stunning $240,000 by a jury, presided over by an Obama appointee who stunned analysts by allowing the case to go forward at all.

Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Andrew Napolitano were flabbergasted:

“The Obama administration actually represented the two Muslims in this case. But has sometimes taken a very different position in the case of Christians trying to assert their religious beliefs.”

Megyn Kelly then said to Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano: “So in the case of the Muslim truck drivers, the Obama administration through the EEOC is all in. This is what they said:
‘We are proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices; it’s fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.’
But when it comes to the Christian bakers, it’s not as fundamental.”

Napolitano was equally perplexed:
“That’s correct. It’s unfortunate when the government interferes in a private dispute over religious views, and takes sides, and chooses one religion over another.” To their point, the Christian owners of “Melissa’s Sweet Cakes” were fined $135,000 by the state of Oregon for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. And Kentucky clerk Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Napolitano offered an explanation for the administration’s interest in the Muslim truck driver case: “The way the feds intervened … they wanted this case because they wanted to make the point that they’ve now made.”

The U.S. Government and the courts can’t legally have one set of laws for Christians and another set of laws for Muslims and other religious groups. But now they do. Obama’s actions and this court’s ruling throws into relief that not all Americans are legally recognized as possessing religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
As George Orwell might put it, Obama has now established that Muslims are more equal than Christians in America.

Filed under: Conservative, family, Government | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

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