October | 2021 | Grumpa Joe's Place

The Beginning of the End?

Posted on 29/10/2021 by Grumpa Joe

For the fourth time this year I left the house without my wallet. On previous occasions I left my car keys home too. As luck would have it, my wife was with me and the extra key is in her purse. Since the Death Star is a push button start it was her key that the car read.

This time, I was on my way to the post office to buy stamps and to mail some letters. I grabbed my ass pocket as I left the car for the PO door and felt ass, no wallet. I turned around and red-facedly admitted my error.

Is this the way Alzheimer’s begins? with little things like forgetting car keys? I recall some of the early incidents with Peggy and they were similar in nature. She began to forget little things. Once I found her staring at the controls of the washing machine, she was afraid to touch the buttons for fear of breaking the machine. This came from a woman who washed clothes every day for over fifty years. When we stopped at a rest stop while traveling, she always asked me to wait for her right outside the ladies room door, or a few feet away. She was afraid she would lose her way back to the car. Little things. On the face of my forgetfulness, I laugh at myself, but internally I fear for my life. I can’t imagine what I will do if I ever learn I have Alzheimer’s disease. My mother went through that process as well, and at first we thought it was somewhat comical, but later came to realize that forgetting the little things can mean a lot. There isn’t much I can do about it if it does happen. I learned from Peggy’s experience that taking the miracle drugs recommended will only make me another kind of vegetable. In her case I chose to take her off the medicine and take my chances with the predicted outcomes. Her doctors kept preaching to me that if she has another seizure she may fall and injure her head and have a stroke. After living with her on the drugs for a month I decided for her best interest she will be happier without the stupid drug. By the time I made that decision she was not able to walk anymore and was living in a wheelchair. How does one fall out of a wheelchair? I learned it is possible but probably unlikely to happen. One day I found her leaning over the armrest of her chair, her head nearly touching the floor. I quickly got her a chair with devices that would restrain her from leaning out of the chair.

Miracle drugs are great when they work. They are not unlike computers that are great when they work, but when they fail all hell breaks loose. Currently, the world is speaking out against miracle drug makers because they rape us with charges for the drugs. All we see and understand is the money leaving our pockets and we don’t really care about the drug makers profit and loss statement. This, I believe is very communist thinking.

I sound like a broken record when I keep telling my story about polio, also a virus. It was over twenty years before a vaccine was available. and we all relaxed when it became available. We didn’t argue that we didn’t want our kids to get it because it was against their first amendment rights. I remember getting vaccinated for measles, mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox and other terrible killing diseases. My parents were happy that we were vaccinated. Another thing, I don’t recall anyone asking if we wanted to be vaccinated, we were lined up at school and the health department nurse did the job. I thank them for taking the initiative to do what was best for me.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, family | Tagged: Alzheimers, health care, MIracle Drugs, Star Wars | Leave a comment »

Am I Alone On This?

Posted on 28/10/2021 by Grumpa Joe

What in the world is going on? Why is the economy tanking? Why are oil prices rising? Why are there seventy cargo container-ships backlogged at the port in L.A.? Why do so many news flashes pertain to spending trillions of dollars for non-sensical programs? Why is the Attorney General declaring parents who visit a school board meeting as terrorists? Where does it all end and what does it mean to us?

In my opinion there is a large faction of our population that truly believes we will be better off under the thumb of a Chinese dictator. All the signs point toward government dictating everything we do. What ever happened to liberty. Has liberty become an out-dated idea? Does liberty mean we will be faithful to someone who spells out everything that we must do, or think, or write? In my mind liberty means I am free to do as I please within the law. I can work or not work. I can own property, or not. I can travel freely within the country. I can marry who I want when I want. I can speak my mind without fear of retribution. I can own a gun, or guns and use them as I see fit. I can raise a cow in my back yard. I can vote for who I want or not. I am free to choose how I treat my body. In other words, I am not required by government to get permission for anything. Government is needed only to protect my liberties.

Yet, what I see trending is a faction that loves to be under someone else’s control. I see a faction that loves to control people without losing their own rights. I see a faction that believes it is government’s responsibility to feed them, care for them, and entertain them, I don’t. I reject the notion that I need government for anything except fighting off anyone who decides they want to control me.

Communism has found many new words to hide it from the public, like: Democrat, Liberal, Socialist, Progressive, Social Democracy. All of these terms are merely subterfuge for advancing the evil of a select group of self proclaimed elites controlling the common man.

Communists all point at Capitalism becoming rich off the sweat and labor of the common man. What communists fail to tell us is that they live off the common man by taking everything from him. He owns nothing, he has nothing, he is to be subservient to the upper class people who rule. He is not allowed to believe in God, and in places like China, he is not allowed more than one child.

What the communist will never admit is that their policies have never worked. Stalin tried it by killing seventy million people who refused and those he left living finally submitted, but they never really accepted their plight. Eventually, communism goes broke and when they can’t squeeze anymore out of the people they say are loving the system they only make life harder for those they control.

People will argue that Communist China is an example of a socialist system that is a success. What they don’t reveal is that China enjoys some success because they have decided to embrace capitalism within their communist system. Behind the scenes they still control religion, the number of kids you can have, what you can search for on the internet, where you can live, where you can travel, what you can say about government, and how you can live your life.

I am proud to be able to say that I have lived through the most wonderful period of history since 1776. I have witnessed the U.S.A. win wars, become prosperous, change attitudes about race, prohibit alcohol and then reverse the decision when they learned how stupid it was. I’ve seen tremendous growth throughout the country after the government invested in a federal road system in the name of defense. I’ve seen amazing progress throughout the rural areas after the government invested in rural electrification. Ive seen progress in science that put a man on the moon, and is curing cancer, and most recently is protecting us from the Chinese curse of COVID-19. What I have never witnessed was amazing developments from socialist countries. What I have witnessed is poverty, starvation, and subjugation at its best.

So how can I fix it before I leave this earth. I have one vote, but there are 538 elites within our system that control us. I wish I could vote for all 538, but our Constitution doesn’t allow it. I could become a democrat and vote more than once by corrupting the system in my favor, but my conscience won’t allow it, and that is the difference between me and a communist, I have a conscience

Filed under: Conservative, Education, family | Tagged: Communism, Evil, Progressivism, socialism | Leave a comment »

Never Before Now

Posted on 27/10/2021 by Grumpa Joe

This morning after taking my wife to her doctor appointment I stopped to fill up the Death Star with fuel. I remember when gas was 18 cents per gallon, and I could drive, and drive, and drive on a buck’s worth of gas. That won’t happen again, my bill for a fill-up came to $51.64. Even when I drove a motorhome across country I never spent fifty dollars for a tank of gas not even in California where they are noted for high gasoline prices. Match that to my current grocery bills and the old pocket book is getting pretty thin. I don’t spend much money on anything except food and gas. Fuel for the car and fuel for the body. All of this is because the government wants to dictate what we do and how we do it. Instead of allowing natural capitalistic market forces drive prices according to supply and demand they insist we need electric cars and we need to become vegetarians like in Neanderthal days.

I almost see the electric car thing becoming a reality, but I don’t believe it would get very far if it weren’t for Uncle pressing his Green New Deal on us. I watched a lecture by Jeff Brown, a financial guru, who is predicting that two very significant technologies are about to explode in what he termed TechShock. His claim is that artificial intelligence by itself is a very strong tech sector, and the electric car is the second. Putting the two together will produce a synergetic new technology of the self driving car. This concept will make so many new things happen it will make our heads spin. So, his advice was to invest in companies that will produce things for the self driving cars. Lithium batteries will be key in this new industry, and all things lithium will become hot.

Honda commits to electrified technology for every new model launched in Europe

I have written about the electric car before citing that history repeats itself. In the very early days of automobiles electrics were being made to compete with Henry Ford’s Model T. It failed because of the problems with batteries. At the time I wrote it was my opinion that battery technology was not advanced enough to provide reliable power for cars. Granted it is getting better, but the infrastructure needed to support a world of electric cars will be the stopping block. Jeff Brown cited that Volkswagen is broadcasting that their electric car will have a range of 310 miles and promises to have ten minute recharge. It sounds great until one realizes that these super charging stations will have to replace gas pumps or at least work along side of them. Three hundred and ten miles is a decent range on a fill up, but finding a charge may be near impossible, and will be for many years to come. Remember when cell phones first came out and all was well as long as one stood within the range of the local cell tower? It has taken over twenty years for the phone services to provide the towers needed to cover the population and then only if you stay along interstate highways and cities. Try finding a signal in the boonies away from the highways.

Let’s say that the fuel companies overcome the charging station shortage, will we have enough power coming through the lines to give us what we need when we need it? My prediction is that the need for power will reveal the Herbie that dictates the progress of electric vehicles. Finally when all of these impediments have been addressed and overcome, then I believe we can safely junk our gas hogs for an electric.

In the mean time, I am driving my sixteen year old Death Star with 172,000 miles until I can order up a self driver to take me where I want to go.

Filed under: Cars, Conservative, family | Tagged: Electric Cars, Jeff Brown, Lithium, Tech-Shock, Tesla | Leave a comment »