There is danger in generalizations...

I met three Moslem guys from Kuwait, today, and I liked them. They are polite, friendly, well spoken, and clean cut young men. These young men are members of the Kuwaiti military stationed in Florida. They came up from FL to purchase a car that I had listed on eBay. As far as I could tell these young men are a lot like me when I was in my twenties. They love cars and girls in that order. The little Datsun 280zx that I had for sale was just what they were looking for. It is sporty and the young ladies seem to like it. The guys seemed happy with their purchase and thanked me over and over. They didn't even quibble over the price. Now, I feel a little bad about the negative things I have said about Moslems. I guess I need to be more specific and talk ugly only about Radical Moslems.

This proves something I have known for a long time, but I have not practiced as much as I should. That is one cannot hold any group of people to a generalization. Generalizations are dangerous. For instance, all lawyers are not low lives and all Democrats are not America hating Liberals. Well maybe that's a bad analogy, but you get the idea.

I guess the bottom line here is, maybe just maybe, all persons of the Islamic faith aren't out to convert us, enslave us or kill us. I suppose, like any other religion or any large organization for that matter, there are good members and bad members. I think I met some of the good ones. God/Allah bless them. I hope they enjoy the little car.

Welfare Programs and Taxes Doom Our Country

Any economist worth the name will tell you that a democracy is doomed once the majority of the people figure out that they can live off the hard work and earnings of the minority. The democracy is doomed because the majority who live off the wealth of the minority will vote only for those things which will increase social programs and make the minority pay for them. This works the same for a republic like ours.

This is exactly what is happening to our country right now. Government spending has never been higher, even if you subtract out the billions spent on the war, it is still very high. I blame the Republicans for that. The Democrat majority in the House and Senate are looking to re-instate the taxes that were cut by President Bush. They want to use that money to spend on new social and entitlement programs that will, in turn, buy them votes and keep them in power. This is, also, the reason that the Democrats are so Hell bent on pulling out of the War Against Terrorism (W.A.T.). They hope to spend that money on more social programs which equal more votes for them. The fact that the country suffers from high taxation and will certainly suffer more terrorist attacks on our soil if we abandon the W.A.T seems to make no difference to them.

It has been proven time and time again that reducing taxes increases the tax base and brings more money into the government coffers. It seems like the Democrats would realize this and support any idea that enriches the population while also enriching the government. But, this is not what they are after. The Dems don't want a richer populace. A richer populace equals less people who are dependent upon the government for their livelihood. This equates to less people who need to vote for the party of government handouts, the Dems. The Democrats are very afraid of this possibility. Less votes for welfare programs like socialised health care means fewer Democrats in public office. To the Dems this would be a disaster.

You watch. The Democratic controlled Congress will do everything that is humanly possible in the next two years to 1. increase the tax load on the middle and upper classes, and 2. create more massive social programs that will sentence another generation of poor to believing that the only way they can survive is by depending on government handouts. Mark my words!

Remembering Mr. Rusty (1982 -2007)

We lost our friend Mr. Rusty, today. Mr. Rusty was a male orange tabby cat who moved in with us twenty-five years ago. Mr. Rusty had developed stomach cancer in his later years. He was a very reserved and gentlemanly cat who handled his illness with dignity. His cancer had advanced to the point that it had robbed him of his strength and his ability to eat solid food. Mr. Rusty had wasted away to nothing, and toward the end he was miserable. He and we knew the time had come for him to go to his rest. Still, it was a hard thing to do.

I found Mr. Rusty some twenty-five years ago living in a drainage ditch in front of our house. He had moved into the pipe that runs under our driveway after some despicable person had dropped him off in our yard. They probably knew that my wife, Kay, and I were "cat persons." Mr. Rusty was about eight weeks old at the time. He was a very brave little cat. When I called to him he came out of the pipe, walked right up to me and introduced himself. We got along fine after that. For awhile he lived under our boat shed in a box I made for him. After a few weeks he moved onto our porch and finally into the house where he stayed the rest of his life. Our other cat at the time, Miss Button, who passed on a few years ago, at first could not stand the little orange intruder, but she, too came to accept Mr. Rusty and finally to love him. They were inseparable companions until Miss Button's death.

Mr. Rusty got his name from two sources. First, was his rusty/orange color and second I took the name Rusty from a NASCAR hero at the time, Rusty Wallace. Throughout his life Mr. Rusty was a good friend. He would greet me at the door when I came home from work. He talked to me, and we came to understand each other's language. He wasn't the brightest cat in the world, but he made up for his lack of education by being loyal and loving.

Mr. Rusty died a very peaceful death, today. When Dr. Ruehle gave him the shot that ended his life, Mr. Rusty did not argue or struggle. As Kay held him, he just closed his eyes and was gone. I hope that he is with Miss Button now. I hope that they are happy. Maybe when our turn comes they will meet us at the gates to heaven along with our other friends: Flat-Ears, Gray, Blackie, all cats, and Major and Mr. Spade, dogs, and Sweet Pea my childhood pet Guinea Pig. I hope so. Kay and I will miss you, Mr. Rusty. So will Mr. Jack.

America, The Land of the Ugly Wheels

When I was young, we tried to do things to our cars that improved the looks, handling and power. A good set of Craiger mags, a Holley four barrel carb, rolled and pleated seats, things like that. You could make a '56 Chevy look very sharp with just a few dollars worth of accessories. Now, kids paint their cars colors never found in nature, or any where else for that matter, slap Conestoga wagon wheels on their cars and they think they are ready, even though the car's headliner is so ragged its hanging down so low that it drapes over the driver's head like a tent .

My first car was a black '53 Chevy 210 coupe. She was way sharp. I had chrome reverse rims with 8.75 x 15 Goodyear Tiger Paws, the tires with the narrow red walls, front and rear, Thunderbird bucket seats, a Foxcraft floor shifter and a Thunderbird center console sporting a giant Sun tach. She was powered a 327 ci Chevy engine bored out by my Daddy and me to 348 ci putting out about 350 HP with a Cheetah four barrel and electric fuel pump. She had dual Thrush mufflers with cut-outs, torsion bars and Chevy truck coil springs in the front end. This car looked good and would rip up the pavement on a summer Saturday night outside Kent's Drive-in. The guys were envious and the girls loved the car.

I remember a fellow in a hopped up '56 Ford challenged me to race him from Thomson to Dearing, about 10 miles one night. The winner would get ten dollars. That was a considerable sum in the early 1960's. His Ford was powered by a 292 V8 with an automatic transmission. It was painted flat black with flames just behind the wheel wells. His car looked bad and sounded badder. I won't mention his name since he still lives around here and has held a grudge ever since.

We took off with the wave of a handkerchief held by a pretty little thing named Cindie (that's how she spelled it). The Ford managed to keep up with me through first and second gears, but when I shifted into third at about 4500 RPM and the rear tires barked, the Ford started backing up. At the bridge about three miles out of town I was running well past what the speedometer would show. I had a good ten car lengths on the Ford. By Cap McGahee's store I could just see his headlights. At the Dearing city limits I stopped and had time to get out and open my hood to let the engine cool before he pulled up. I had beat the Ford by about two minutes in ten miles. Not bad for then or now. I got the ten bucks and bragging rights for the next week. Ah, the good old days were surely good enough!

Well, times sure have changed. Now rice burners are the hot cars and America has become the "Land of the Ugly Wheels." Today's kids think that putting 29 inch wheels and rubber band tires on a '79 Oldsmobile Cutlass makes this born butt-ugly car look any better? I have seen cars around my town that must have been pulled directly from a junkyard and put on the road. They puff out a trails of blue oil smoke, and sport thousands of dollars worth of enormous chrome wheels and spinners. The wheels are worth ten times what the cars cost. It is hard for me to believe that someone actually sat down and designed an accessory automobile wheel that will not fit under the fenders of any car made. Plus the wheels make the cars they are installed on look very much like old fashioned circus wagons.

I blame it on the educational system. Kids nowdays are not taught any economics. These kids have no taste or sense of proportion. It seems fine to a modern kid to spend three-thousand dollars on ugly wheels for a three-hundred dollar car. Today, it's all bigger is better. Now, I hear that stores are actually RENTING these ugly wheels and tires so that cash strapped mentally deficient people can put ugly wheels on their cars. Isn't that comparable to renting your underwear? This is indicative of the present decline and fall of American society. It has to be.

WHY AM I SKEPTICAL ABOUT MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING? (1)

A 21-page report from something called the "Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change" has been released today...in Paris, no less...and as expected, it's predictions are dire. According to the report: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Yeah right...we've heard all this before.But the biggest bombshell here is this one: no matter what we do, global warming will not be reversed. It will go on for centuries, according to this report. The sea levels will continue to rise as polar ice caps melt. So I guess if Al Gore wins his Nobel Peace Prize, we'll still experience global warming. So much for riding to work everyday in your hybrid car...it's not doing a thing. The situation is futile, according to this report.But really, it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this conclusion. After all, global warming is a religion. The anti-capitalist enviro-nazis don't ever want the problem to be solved. After all, if global warming were to be solved tomorrow, what would they blame the United States for? They'd have to find some other reason.

Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare:

1. The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.

2. Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.

3. Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.

4. The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?

5. It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.

6. It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age?

7. How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening.

8. Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether.

9. The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.

10. The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies.

11. Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.

12. Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.

13. What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?

14. Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?"

15. Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?

16. In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.

17. There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.

18. Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.

19. Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.

20. Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.

21. Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.

22.During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased.

23. Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?

24. Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?

25. On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

(1) From Neal Boortz's web site http://boortz.com Neal's News: February 2, 2007 by Neal Boortz