The First Tour De What?

Posted on 18/08/2017 by Grumpa Joe

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How does someone write a book about a sporting event that finished one hundred and fourteen years ago, and make it exciting? Peter Cossins has done just that. His book, The First Tour De France is a history, and chronicle of the very first Tour held in 1903. He made the bike riders come alive for me. Although I hate to read any book with too many strange-sounding names in it. I managed to finish and still like it. There were far too many hard to pronounce, therefore hard to read, French names, but what does one expect in a story that takes place in France about a French bicycle race, French men, French towns, French everything except the language in which the work is written.

Being that I am a retired long distance bicycle rider I thoroughly enjoyed this history. The Tour was the idea of a French (of course) publisher trying to increase his circulation. He did indeed. How many inventions such as the Tour De France have stirred men into action as much as this one? How many bike riders have been born into the sport? I could go one endlessly praising the merits of this idea. One more that I will mention is that the Tour became a wonderful travelogue for France. Watching the race on TV gives one a birds-eye view of a country with some very pretty countryside.

From the bike rider’s viewpoint this history makes each of my own travel by bike experiences seem petty. I would never had mounted a bike with a single gear without a freewheel on any of my trips. Yet, these brave men rode very heavy steel frame bikes with a single gear, many without brakes. Without brakes, can you imagine that? Also, it is hard for me to imagine riding a single speed two-wheeler up a mountain. The absolute strength and stamina of these riders was phenomenal.

The entire tour was composed of six stages of approximately two hundred and sixty miles long.  Among the strangest of bike riding facts revealed was riding in the night. Most stages started in the evening around 5 or 6 p.m. giving it maximum crowd exposure, and scheduled to end in a big town at an hour when more people would be able to witness the finish. The roads were paved only in big towns, most miles were on rutted dirt lanes. The leading riders averaged sixteen miles per hour. At my best riding a lightweight bicycle with twenty-eight gears including a granny I was able to average eleven mph, and only for 75 to 100 miles per day on well paved roads during daylight with plenty of water and food. Of course I was not racing, I was touring.

I recommend this book to all of my cycling and non-cycling friends.

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Dead Serious, Not A Scam

Posted on 17/08/2017 by Grumpa Joe
HELP THOSE WHO ARE OFFENDED BY OUR SLAVE-OWNING FOUNDING FATHERS –

 

  •   I, in no way, agree with slavery or the fact that over a 150 years ago, it was what most people today think the Civil War was fought over. So, I have come up with a solution to help the offended out. While you are tearing down and/or removing the statues that offend you because someone else told you they do, do this for me… Check your money
    $1 bill has Washington – slave owner
  • 160_Sm_dollar1Front.jpg
    $2 bill has Jefferson – slave o    wner
  • 162_Sm_dollar2Front.jpg
    $5 bill has Lincoln – did not necessarily agree with slavery, but didn’t agree that blacks were equal
  • 158_Sm_dollar5Front.jpg
    $10 bill has Hamilton – slave owner
  • 146_Sm_dollar10Front.jpg
    $20 bill has Jackson – slave owner
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    $50 bill has Grant – who was too poor to own a slave
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  • $100 bill has Franklin – affiliation with slave trade.
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    I’m here to help, I really am. What I need you to do is send me all your currency so I can dispose of it for you. No need to carry these evil people in your pocket that cause your life so much trauma and tears. Don’t be a hypocrite, send me the money. It’s evil! Contact me for details on how to get it to me….

  • Stupid Is As Stupid Does

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Bill Of Non-Rights

Posted on 17/08/2017 by Grumpa Joe
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This should be read and understood by all, especially politicians, liberals, muslims, school teachers, college professors and children.
 The following has been attributed to Lewis Napper, a Jackson, Mississippi computer programmer. 
He didn’t expect his essay — a tart 11-point list of “rights” Americans don’t have — to become an Internet legend.
___________________________________________________________ __________
 NEW PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION
We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to  help everyone get along, restore some semblance of  justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great- grandchildren, hereby try one more  time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by
the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights.’
>
ARTICLE  I: 
You do not  have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.
ARTICLE II:
You do not have  the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone –not  just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of dummies, and probably always will be.
ARTICLE  III:
 You do not have the  right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.
ARTICLE IV:
You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most
charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we  are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes
who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.
ARTICLE  V:
You do not have the right to free health care That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in public health care.
ARTICLE  VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest of us want to see you get the blue juice.
ARTICLE VII:
You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and
 lock you away in a place where you still won’t have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of  leisure.
ARTICLE VIII:
You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.
 ARTICLE IX:
You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.
ARTICLE X:
This is an English speaking country. We don’t care where you came from, English is our language. Learn it!
Lastly
ARTICLE XI:
 You do not have the right to change our country’s history or heritage. This country was  founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution.
 The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, sorry if you are uncomfortable with it.
If you agree,
share this with a friend. No, you don’t have to, and nothing tragic will befall you if you don’t. I just think it’s about time common sense is allowed to flourish. Sensible people of the United States must speak out because if you do not, who will?

 God Bless America…

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He Fights

Posted on 17/08/2017 by Grumpa Joe

I really don’t like to publish other people’s work, but this piece is a straight forward logical explanation of why we like Trump.

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Evan Sayet is the host and star of “Evan Sayet’s ‘Right to Laugh — A Night of Conservative Comedy,” while his more serious talk on how Liberals ‘think’ was called by Andrew Breitbart “One of the five most important conservative speeches ever given.”  Information available at Evan’s website www.evansayet.com. He’s a contributor to Heritage Foundation, Human Events and the Washington Times.
By Evan Sayet:
My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum.  They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”  Here’s my answer:
We Right-thinking people have tried dignity.  There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.  We tried statesmanship.  Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?  We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?  And the results were always the same.
This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.  I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.  I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.  Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s.  To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.  It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.
The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war.  While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.
With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end.  Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.
During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors.  Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.  Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today.  Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man.  He fights.”
General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch.  In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank.  But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.
Trump is fighting.  And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!”  That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.
That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis.  It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.
First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN.  He made it personal.  Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”
Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.
Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position.  With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat.  They need to respond.  This leaves them with only two choices.
They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.
The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.  It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.
Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church.
Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.
This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN.  This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”
This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do.  The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious.  Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.
And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes.  Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.
Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme.  This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family — a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him.  If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.
Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated.
This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.
So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”?  Of course I do.  These aren’t those times.  This is war.  And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting  without opposition for the past 50 years.
So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times.  I don’t care.  I can’t spare this man.  He fights

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In Perfect Harmony

Posted on 16/08/2017 by Grumpa Joe

Maybe I am being too simple, but I believe there is a way to settle disputes over race, color, nationality, political beliefs, and what ever strikes one as necessary to live in this world. There is a TV program that I have been watching which is very amusing, exciting, and cathartic. The program is called BattleBots. Seemingly mild-mannered men and women of various ages, disciplines, and colors take extreme pleasure in designing robotic devices to pit against other robotic devices.  The teams line their bots up in a secure cage and when the light turns green they drive the bots remotely using radio control against one another. Axes spin, wheels turn, hammers pound, flippers upend opponents and make them fly, and pieces of bots scatter about the arena. It all ends when one of the bots is disabled and cannot operate.

Not a single bot is the same. just like a Nazi is different from a white supremacist, or a Ku Klux Klansman. The only similarities between bots is their desire to annihilate one another. The owners are two-faced. One face is the face of inventor, builder, and creative genius. The second face is that of warrior beat the hell out of your opponent battlebot driver.

What an amazing experience it would be to buy a ticket into the biggest stadium nearest home to watch gladiators from the Antifa movement fight to the death against someone from Black Lives Matter. Or even better yet, pit a White Supremacist against a Black Lives Matter agent. Only one would walk out of the caged arena to be named to the next rung of the competitive ladder. Eventually, we would see a clear winner emerge, bloodied, scarred, and limbs missing from the many bouts between enemies. At the end only one is declared a winner. The audience places a an olive wreath upon his head and sends him home to live another day. Because there is great depth in all of the various movements the arena will come to life again in a new war to declare the winner of stupid ideological beliefs.

We, on the other hand would be greatly entertained by watching these factions pulverize one another with a vengeance and meanness never before experienced in war.

Today, we read and watch various ideologues go at it in places like Charlottesville NC. They beat each other and even kill for the pure joy of defending their ideas hoping to win the rest of us over to their way. The most foolish of these are those who candidly destroy monuments of heroes who in the distant past fought for an ideology different from theirs. They mistakenly believe by doing so they will change the world to make it a better place. Erase history and all vestiges of slavery, and prejudice will disappear. Humanity will be saved, and we will all live in peace and sing the Coca Cola song I’d Like To Teach The World to Sing.

Instead we wile away hours on social media sites hoping to find the meaning of life. We wander aimlessly through life holding our phones before us with a finger on the video button, hoping to capture that glimpse of life that will go viral on YouTube and make us famous or rich. It is hard for me to imagine where our society is headed, and what good will evolve from our aimlessness. Instead, I try in my own way to serve the community in simple meaningful ways, one simple act of kindness at a time. Evolution took billions of years to get humanity to this point, and it may take another billion to get us through this current phase.

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