Americans who be-friend Russia.......read on

I always get a kick out of the blog posts on the internet. Oh, the Americans who post their snide comments on American "imperialism " or some such snarky observations. I Notice around Chicago, there seems to be so many hangers on of the left wing that love to use patriotism for a punching bag, I wonder how they feel about mother Russia today, in light of yet another invasion - Crimea.
     It was October of 1956 when Dean Rusk was addressing the Senate, interrupted by an aide, that he rose to leave, he turned and blurted out to the Senators, " there are tanks in the streets of Hungary, I have to go to the White House!!!" From then on, the hidden Communists in our country were tougher to find. Columnist Pete Hammell from Esquire magazine confessed he lost his left wing passion for any liberal cause he had left, he said in a story in later years. It's why I hate the TV series "The Americans." 
     So now, it's a dozen airborne helicopters from mother Russia, filled with combat clad Russian combat marines, fires raging everywhere. The smart-ass ambassador flips off reporters' questions about force up politics Russian style. Sorry, Comrade.
     So.....where are the bedfellows of Russian sympathies now?
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The American Civil War - Why the North Won - ( .......just barely)

In my opinion, the North won this war, by a matter of luck, happenstance, a roll of the dice, and a series of factors that. like a card game, a lucky roll of the dice, or cards, Fate, plated into their hands, and won the day.

      Let me explain, in no particular order: Lincoln had lost nearly every election he had participated in, and stumbled into the presidency. Luck, or providence. I prefer divine guidance.
      Generals for the Union Army ranged from the brilliant to the stupid depending on how much money, power and/or political connections you had. The worst, or one of them, General Dan Sickles who could have thrown Gettysburg fray to the Confederates with a coin toss. Look it up. This morally corrupt Tammany Hall connected cowboy danced his way through bedrooms and bars dropping his DNA everywhere yet, shot the son of Francis Scott Key in the head for "defaming his marriage bed" while away at war, with his Mrs. Sickles. Shot him dead at high noon down the street from the White House. His lawyer was the first to successfully use the insanity defense.
      Robert E Lee blew a successful career as brilliant General by NOT listening to his staff at Gettysburg. He failed to grasp he did NOT walk on water, as did Picket who blew his whole division into the dirt. All of them dead, while he primped, yelled, and waved his sword from behind the lines.
      Arrogance on both sides, demanding their troops fight battles using tactics from the Crimean wars instead of tactics formed around winning strategies and saving lives, rather than needlessly killing their own troops and the enemy. Pyrrhic victories often were the order of the day: The Peach Orchard, Cold Harbour where my family lost cavalry officers from the North, and the massacre at Shiloh.
     After Gettysburg, it seemed as if Lee had lost his mind, all hope of victory had been lost in the collective Southern mind, yet Lee persisted with a 10 month Resistance in Richmond, winning nothing in the end. Union soldiers surrendered their food and water to Southern women and children who were starving and begging from Northern soldiers for aide.
     President Lincoln had waited far too long in replacing General Meade who should have been fired long before Gettysburg and replaced with Grant. General Sherman could have been placed in command who would have torn through the Southern ranks like a hot knife through butter and ended the war in half the time, but the recalcitrant Lincoln moved too slowly.
     Southern writers of note were quoted the North could have won that war "with one hand tied behind their backs." Maybe so.
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" Older & Sicker"..........I OBJECT!!

.....with respect to this "ObamaCare" I hear so much about, everyone wrestles with the term "older and sicker Americans who need the medical care, so the younger enrol lees have to sign up to help pay for us poor, ole, sicker citizens.
       Sounds like we're charity cases - again.
       Knock it off!...older, yup, sicker, sure are, WORN OUT, is more like it. You spend fifty years prying yourself out of bed at 6 in the morning, shuffling off to work in every kind of weather, throwing up with the flu, gulping coffee (something in your stomach), catching trains or fighting free-way bumper-car traffic to work, putting up with job threats to hold your job - just to feed your kids and "roof" your family!! 
      Oops, your oldest daughter fell off a chair and broken her arm, ambulancing her way to a hospital, damn, youngest daughter in trouble sitting in Principal's domain, caught with a knife, take time off from work, look$ like that will co$t you.
      Enuf money for vacay? No. The Family bitches, YOU are the bad guy.
      National war debt for fixing picket-fence teeth, shoes, and clothes. Youngest daughter brings home the worst in boys, loves to piss off dad. Winds up in Mens' AF barracks at 3 in the morning at nearby AF Base. " Come get your daughter," they call me. She was 14. Never mind the alcohol problems that plague half of American families, ours, too. Al-anon, tedium ad naseum, oh God, have I forgotten anything. Oh, two heart attacks, surgeries, oldest surgeries, run-a-ways,
      Funny, (not ha,ha,--- strange) I get tired, thinking about this, just typing....of course, at my age, we of the " tired" generation earned every bit of grey hair. Like Sgt Bilko, every stripe on the sleeve came with an ounce of blood, a pound of worry, a wrench of the neck at night at the sound of a gunshot.
      " Oh Dad, you worry too much!! Oh, pops, I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend Lorenzo!!"
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Connecticut Gun Laws - BROKEN - Felons, Civil Disobedience!!

Martin Luther King's spirit of Civil Disobedience has had a re-birth in Connecticut, if our news sources are to be believed. I read in the newsprint and on very limited netwire that the highly restrictive gun laws passed last year after the disasterous school shooting in that state by the mentally tortured Adam Lanza, practically denuded law abiding gun owners of even dreaming of owning a gun, something extroadinary happened in the last 72 hours.
     As I understand this event, the Connecticut legislature went so far as to command gun owners to turn them in almost immediately.
     This is the red-line for American gun-owners, the fear that lurks in the hearts of every free American and his fire-arms. That someday, someone, some body of lawmakers will do this, and send troops down the street, door to door, checking registration records, and pull a citizens/' only form of self defense. Aesnd then, Thomas Jefferson WILL be right, the government will have NO fear of it's people. (especially these days!)
     What happened was, in some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Connecticut citizens refused. Outright defiance of their state government outrageous demands, these gun owners, refused to comply, and it is estimated a hundred thousand or so, simply replied, " Come get us." Just imagine jailing 100,000 of your finest citizens on felony firearms charges?? Who is going to run the state?
     They are, as of this writing, Felons. Further estimates by some news outlets say they figures are three times that based on unregistered gun owners who defied the state's original mandate to register their weapons. I hasten to point out, that is their ORIGINAL FEAR: REGISTRATION LEADS TO CONFISCATION. 
     A war cry gun-owners have hollered for decades, and now the anti-gun nuts of Connecticut have stoked those fires to PROVE IT.
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Gen Y - Secrets of the young.......( what they DON'T say )

• Companies that don't hire them will rue the day: maybe they don't have as much money as older folks, but they have higher expectations of service. and complain the loudest - read RUDEST. Look for social platforms to carry your company's critique.
• They live with mom and dad?.....so what? Wanna make sompin' of it? If they're under 26, they don't seem to give a damn about moving back in AND, they're tough to get rid of. Don't think so? Ever watch Dr. Phil? 1/3 of his show devoted to 21 - 26 year old moochers and Moms trying to untie the knot. 
• Buying them a car as a bribe doesn't seem to work. Their age group drives less miles per capital than previous measured. Why? Probably wedded to gadgets, sitting in the corner. Man caves.
• Graduate students, professional students, forever in school, studying their lives away, away from what? Away from life, challenges, paying taxes, reality, marriage, kids, military service, what an existence in America is all about, it is supposed. 
• Hiring Millennial, as they are called, not such a good idea. They work for a few years and quit. Show up at interviews ill-dressed, office etiquette inappropriate (jus' saying'), bad time management - like, ah, social media on the computers, ya know?
• Drug problems; their age group, according to the CDC reports say it is most likely depression meds. Screen them. Other stuff in there, too, but this group, more possible than most.
• Attitude problems: --- don't think so? " if you think we're screwed up, we were raised by our Hippie, drug-addled parents." And, many of us who lived through that era who never took drugs would agree. PS, the narcissistic factor index measured by University studies for these kids reads nearly off the charts.
• They tend to vote Democratic and shun Republicans. Who knew?

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for the inspiration to write this piece, gleaned from an inspiration out of their pages over a year ago. 

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Interviews............Bill O'Reilly Fox News and Others

I have two basic problems with interviews other than the interviewers:

1. The questions thrown at person being interviewed and get a shifty NON- answer. Case in point, " Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?" And after an appropriate amount of wrestling around in his seat, " ah...what time did you say the interview was over? I have to catch a train," ...polite smile and inquisitive look ensues.
2. Next area of deep concern is the biased interviewer, usually from a news source that no one from the other side of the political spectrum can ever trust: - " ah...Senator...ah, can on the question of spousal abuse you've stated many times, your views on standing strong against spousal abuse, BUT...it has come to our under,standing that local police reports in your neighborhood say frequent police calls to your very house indicate you, yourself have been beating up your wife. 

Therefore, when Bill O'Reilly interviews Preaident Obama, asks a question, and the room gets filled with a lot of smoke, I wonder which planet we are on.
   Americans, where are your senses? I went to school where my teacher asked me a question, I gave him/her a DIRECT answer. No BS, no tap dance, Black is black, white is white, 4 o'clock is 4 o'clock, etcetera. 
   I dunno, I wasn't there, could have fooled me, I'll check with the department head, Lemme make a not - DOES NOT CUT IT. It does not matter one twit whether it's Mr. Obama, Mr Biden, Jack the Giant Killer, Sean Hannity or your local baseball coach. 
   The guy sitting in that chair has GOT TO HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS WHEN SOMEONE ASKS THE QUESTIONS, AND he answers to us, not the other way around. 
   And, as of the Senate Hearing, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is disqualified to sit in that seat for reasons stated above.
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