Re-reading a Classic

Posted on 31/07/2016 by Grumpa Joe

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A couple of weeks ago Peg and I watched the movie South Pacific. I have seen it four times since it was made, and I love it more each time. I love it so much I decided to re-read the book it is based on “The Tales Of the South Pacific” by James Michener. I often tell this story about how I learned about Michener. A Polish engineer from work told me he had just read a great book about the history of his country. Since my wife was of Polish descent I borrowed the book. Most James Michener books are a thousand pages and Poland was a long thick thousand page book. I began the read on a holiday weekend and was mesmerized. I could not put it down, it had my interest. At the five hundred page mark I set the book down on the end table next to my chair, and there it sat for the next twelve months. By that time I was concerned that I had the book for a year and I should return it, so I picked it up again. The same thing, I read non-stop to the end. I enjoyed the book that much. I learned of other Michener narratives and set a goal to read all of them. After the third one, I asked myself where did this guy begin, what was his first book? I found a list of his published books and learned that Tales of the South Pacific was his first and he won a Pulitzer prize for that work.

I borrowed the book from the library and was surprised to see that is was of normal length. It was obvious to me why he won the prize. Published in l947, it was fresh off WWII, and it is a story about his personal experience in the Pacific. After reading it I non-stop I was moved emotionally. Many years later when I watched the movie of the broadway musical South Pacific it seemed very familiar to me. The play is based on the book.

I haven’t finished re-reading yet, but I am already emotionally involved. Hearing the stories of the hardships these men endured while protecting our country has evoked some memories I would rather forget. I was nine years old when this story published, and I lived the war from FDR’s declaration until the boys came home. I still remember hearing stories my Mom told about the sons of friends who returned and were all screwed up. They left for war as teenagers but returned as hardened men who were quite different.

Michener did an outstanding job of telling a series of totally independent short stories that were filled with characters in a a way as to tell a much bigger story.  I still give this book four stars, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

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Smart People

Posted on 30/07/2016 by Grumpa Joe

Question: Why wasn’t this on nationwide television?

Washington State Gun owners stage the largest felony civil disobedience rally in American history
State Representative Elizabeth Scott noted that Founding Father Alexander Hamilton said any law that violates the Constitution is not valid, and there is a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws.
-by Jeffrey Phillips
Around 1,000 gun owners rallied at the state capitol in Olympia, WA, openly armed, this past Saturday in defiance of the newly passed gun control law, I-594.
“This isn’t just a protest. We are here to openly violate the law” stated Gavin Seim, organizer of the event, named ˜I Will Not Comply.”
At the end of the rally, gun owners burned their concealed weapons permits and signed a petition vowing to refuse to follow the new gun control law. The petition ended with the text, “We pledge our blood. We will not comply.”
This certainly isn’t the first large scale act of civil disobedience by gun owners in defiance of gun laws. Earlier this year in Connecticut hundreds of thousands of gun owners refused to send in their gun registration forms, also becoming felons. Similar numbers of gun owners in New York have also refused to send in their registration paperwork and some even video taped themselves burning the forms.
Fed up with the passage of an 18½-page incoherent, rambling, unconstitutional gun control initiative that was bankrolled by billionaires (the Hungarian Jewish NAZI George Soros —– Michael Bloomberg just to name a couple), gun owners across Washington state held the largest felony civil disobedience rally in the nation’s history, brazenly titled “I Will Not Comply.”
No one was hurt and no stores were looted. Between 1,000 and 3,000 lawful gun owners showed up openly armed at the state capitol in Olympia, Wash., on Saturday to defy the newly passed gun control law, I-594.
Organizer Gavin Seim made the extraordinary nature of the rally very clear, “This isn’t just a protest. We are here to openly violate the law. Attendees publicly transferred their guns to each other in violation of I-591’s background check provisions, and some even bought and sold guns just a few feet away from law enforcement. A fire pit blazed throughout the rally, and at the conclusion, gun owners lined up to burn their concealed weapons permits. A petition was circulated affirming gun owner’s refusal to follow I-594, which ended with, “We pledge our blood. We will not comply.”
As the RSVPs in advance of the rally grew to over 6,000, the police, most who probably detest I-594, decided not to enforce the law.
The Washington State Patrol announced there would be no arrests for exchanging guns, not even for selling guns. Seim refused to obtain a permit to hold the rally, citing the right of people to peaceably assemble.
The rally could not be dismissed as fringe elements. Several lawmakers and lawmen spoke, including former Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack of Arizona, Washington State Rep. Elizabeth Scott (R-Monroe) and Rep. Graham Hunt (R-Orting), who sported an AR-15 during his speech. Mack advised gun owners engaging in civil disobedience to “put your sheriff next to you to keep it peaceful.” Scott defiantly explained in her speech, “I will not comply with I-594 because it is unconstitutional, unenforceable and unjust. It is impossible to enforce this law unless there is a police officer on every back porch and in every living room. So it will be enforced selectively.” She noted that Founding Father Alexander Hamilton said any law that violates the Constitution is not valid, and there is a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws.
Seim, a political activist and congressional candidate, wrote on his website, “Today I become an OUTLAW! Arrest me! I will NOT comply.”
He led the rally peacefully, and at one point asked everyone attending to kneel with him in prayer. As he led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, he stressed, “I am not pledging obedience to the government, it is to the Republic. We don’t ask for our rights, and we don’t negotiate for our rights. We will take America back.”
Another speaker explained what was happening this way, “We no longer consent nor comply.” Mike Vanderboegh, whose Three Percenter movement is modeled after the three percent of the colonists who fought in the American War of Independence, said that those at the rally are the resistance behind enemy lines. The resistance is also taking place in a handful of other states with strict gun control laws, where patriots are now smuggling in weapons illegally. Vanderboegh told attendees, “This is the tyranny the Founding Fathers warned us about. Tyranny can be voted into existence by a majority. We will not fire the first shot, but if need be, we will fire the last.”
Gun control zealots have finally gone too far. Gun owners are now discovering that the police in New York are using gun control laws to confiscate guns from family members within days after their owners pass away. Hundreds of thousands of gun owners in Connecticut and New York who failed to register their AR-15s earlier this year are now felons.
Requiring the registration of guns or requiring background checks, as I-594 does, allows the government to compile a list of gun owners, which can be used later for confiscation.
If guns cause crime, then why wasn’t there a single mishap, considering there were 1,000 or so guns present and hundreds of violations of felony law taking place? Tellingly, Washington State Trooper Guy Gill predicted beforehand, “Most of these folks are responsible gun owners. We probably will not have an issue.” The truth is, the state capitol was probably the safest place in the state last Saturday.
Patriots have had enough. The Second Amendment is gradually being eroded, state by state, and gun owners are not going to lie down and give up their arms.
A handful of billionaires and elitists in blue cities like Seattle do not respect the Constitution nor represent the vast majority of Americans. Another rally in Olympia is planned for January 15, and another one in Spokane on December 20.
The Second Amendment Foundation, headquartered in Bellevue, intends to sue the state over I-594, and will be lobbying the legislature to get the law changed or repealed. Washington state is now ground zero for patriotic gun owners resisting tyranny, which is at a tipping point since law enforcement does not intend to enforce I-594. What happens next?

Please share this with any legal gun owners you know to get them into the right mindset to help this happen nationwide.

[Editor’s Note. With no regard for the Constitution: Hillary Clinton, if elected, says she will ban guns and leave citizens defenseless. Barack Obama is working behind the scenes to ban guns.]
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DON’T REGRET WITH YOUR TEARS WHAT YOU DIDN’T DEFEND WITH YOUR WEAPONS!image0011.png

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. . . and Another Thing Or Two

Posted on 29/07/2016 by Grumpa Joe

 

Back to Hillary’s amazingly delivered speech. She bragged about how Obama had created fourteen point seven million new jobs, but ahem, she failed to mention the 94.7 million people who are out of work. Hillary and Obama seem very content with the fact the the phony unemployment rate is at  4.9%. They also are content knowing that 94.7 million people who could be working have given up looking for one of those sparkling fourteen million jobs she bragged about. I happen to believe a lot of the problems she is trying to solve with all her I believe ins would disappear if people had work. I am really curious as to why democrats are so content with so many people out of work. I think it is because they want equality for everyone and those 94.7 million people are all equally out of work. At the rate we are going it may become one hundred million by the time Hillary finishes her first term, and she will be sublimely happy that she has accomplished the Progressive goal of equal outcomes for everyone, i.e. except for her and her legion of government workers who live fat.

I’ll save another post by griping about something else she brought up as a positive, i.e. healthcare. She proudly boasted that sixteen million people who never had insurance now have it, but failed to mention the thirty-three million who are still uninsured because the cost is too high, and they don’t qualify for government assistance.

Half of the twenty-three ACA Exchanges went belly up this year because they weren’t able to make money. We are now faced with a country full of uninsured people who need healthcare but can’t get it because the ACA can’t handle them.

I hope by now you got the drift of my posts, i.e. a vote for Hillary is a vote to send the country into oblivion. What is the alternative, you ask? Donald Trump is your choice.

“But Hillary has eight years of experience in the Senate and he has none.”

Here is an excerpt from an article in the National Review:

“. . . In her eight years in the Senate, just one of Hillary’s bills got enacted into law. This bill designated the U.S. courthouse at 40 Centre Street in New York City as the “Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438430/hillarys-senate-record-bill-renaming-nyc-building-her-single-success

Trump doesn’t have a proven political record to defend, but he can show you his successes on several very large projects. He has enough sense to hire people to do things that he doesn’t know how to do, and he sure as hell doesn’t believe big government is better than good old American entrepreneurship. His ideas may seem wild in foreign policy, but what have we to lose? His policy to put the brakes on Syrian refugees allowed into the country cannot be worse than those of the Obama Administration who is fighting radical Islamic terrorism by sneaking thousands of potential terrorist refugees into the country in the dark of night.

There is only one way to go and that is up. Hiring Hillary to execute Obamas failed policies is the wrong way to go up.

 

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and Another Thing . . .

Posted on 29/07/2016 by Grumpa Joe

My earlier post was basically a rant about Hillary’s acceptance speech. I could have kept going but decided my readers had had enough in one bite.

If another presidential candidate announces he is going to fix the infra-structure I will puke on my keyboard rendering it useless forever. Last night, Hillary snuck in a phrase about creating jobs to rebuild infra-structure. So did Obama in two thousand eight, and again in two thousand twelve. (I’m sorry I had to spell out those numbers, but yesterday I fell asleep at my computer and knocked over a glass of flavored water drenching the desk and keyboard. Today the one, two, three, and the control key are not working.)

Back at the beginning of his first term Obama begged the all Democrat Congress for a trillion dollar stimulus package to keep the economy from collapsing. less than a year later he asked for another trillion, but only got $800,000,000. Remember shovel ready jobs? I am still looking for an accounting of where that money was spent. It is again my opinion that we could have replaced every bridge in America, built the wall across the border and a strung an EMI resistant modern electrical grid from shore to shore. Where did all that money go? It certainly didn’t build a wall, and it didn’t fix any bridges, and the grid is still declared vulnerable to EMI. One answer I get is that it went to bail out the banks. The Feds forced all the banks to take loans to keep the economy rolling. Later they leaked information the loans have all been paid back with interest. So where did the money go after it was repaid? Hillary is sure to ask for another trillion to fix things again while we drive on dangerous bridges and the unions get fatter, and fatter, and fatter.

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Just My Opinion

Posted on 29/07/2016 by Grumpa Joe

Months ago I promised myself that I would stay away from blogging about politics. It was affecting my health. Yesterday, however, I watched Mrs. Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. They made it obvious to the viewer that this was a theatrical production. In one scene I saw workers handing out American Flags to the crowd. Why didn’t the delegates have their own flags I wondered? Later I heard a commentator explain that the Democrats did that to overshadow the many negative signs the Bernie Sanders people were waving. Another comment mentioned there is a poll that shows American flags appeal to Republican voters. There was not a single flag on stage during the entire convention.

One of my pet peeves is when a politician criticizes another politician for not divulging specific plans for how they will accomplish their agenda. The same person will then turn around and give a rousing speech in which he/she promises to change the world without a single hint as to how they will accomplish their goals. Last night was no different, Hillary chastised Trump for not having given any specifics about how he would accomplish all the tasks at hand. Immediately after that she went into her “I believe in” sequence where she promised the world a list of ideas which were just that, ideas. She didn’t offer any suggestions for how she would accomplish the mission except that she wouldn’t do it alone, and she would make the one percent pay a large share. She must have failed arithmetic, because the one percent doesn’t have enough money to support the current Big Government budget. Duh, why do you think the IRS knocks at the doors of fifty percent of the working population to collect taxes?

I have a message for Hillary, your list of dreams is a carbon copy of Obama’s and he also has not been working alone.  I won’t say he didn’t realize any because he has, but in my eyes even one is too many. She talked about how terrible it was for 94 million people to be out of work and that she would bring back jobs and rebuild the middle class. Hmmm, I think I heard that last week at the RNC.

Hillary won’t build a wall because her Neanderthal belief that Progressives should live with open borders and the planet Earth should be ruled by a single entity called the United Nations. How do you define a nation if there are no territorial borders? Why even have a United Nations if the planet is one giant country?  What she hides from us is that there is no middle class in a system with Progressive Big Government. There are Big Government bureaucrats and then there is us.

My opinion is if you or anyone you know wants this type of system ruling us, and the rest of the world, as one big place with only the atmosphere as the border then  go for it. History has shown that in every place this idea has been implemented, and there have been many, it has failed. Hillary and her Progressives will always argue that the last guys got it wrong and we will get it right. In the meantime you and I will be constrained to live the same as everyone else, that is except for the bureaucrats who are in charge of herding us from one corral to another. The bureaucrats will live high because they are smarter and better than the rest of us.The Progressive way of life is the twenty-first century caste system.

I am at an age where it won’t affect me too much because the life ahead of me is a lot shorter than the life I’ve had. The Democrats know that and there wasn’t a single mention of anything the Big Government would do for seniors. Instead their actions tell us where we stand. Shifting billions of dollars from Medicare to fuel Obamacare is one of the clues. Making it impossible for seniors over age seventy-five to receive some treatments is another.

My vote will not go to Hillary. She isn’t a leader, she is a enabler. All her life she followed in her husband’s shadow and continues to condone his behavior. Okay, I get it, he owes her for the crappy way he treated her, but I’m sure if Hillary was woman enough to satisfy his needs he might have treated her with more respect.

 

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