Tuesday 10 July 2012

Guns, Cars, and Windmills

A contributor to be named Later sent this in.
Do you have a gun in the house?
THEN THIS WILL BE GOOD TO KNOW!
     When I had my gangrenous gall bladder taken out and had to  spend 10 days in thehospital for what should have been an overnight stay the insurance company kicked me out. I had home nurse visits for two weeks and was asked if I had guns in the house.  My response was that if I did I would not tell them. So the below has some merit.
    FYI, I am passing this along... there are comments from two other people I have also been asked if we keep guns in the house. The nurse just kinda slipped it in along with all the other regular questions. I told her I refused to answer because it was against the law to ask.
    Everyone, whether you have guns or not, should give a neutral answer so that no party has certain knowledge if the answer is yes, or no.   My doctor asked me if I had guns in my house and also if any were loaded. I, of course, answered yes to both questions. Then he asked why I kept a loaded gun close to my bed.
     I answered that my son, who is a certified gun instructor and also works for Homeland Security, advised me that an unloaded, locked up gun is no protection against criminal attack.  The Government now requires these questions be asked of people on Medicare,
and probably everyone else.
     Just passing this along for your information: I had to visit a doctor other
than my regular doctor when my doctor was on vacation.. One of the questions
on the form I had to fill out was: Do you have any guns in your house?? My
answer was,  "None of your 
business!!"
     So it is out there! It is either an insurance issue or government intervention. Either way, it is out there and the second the government gets into your medical records (as they want to under Obamacare) it will become a major issue and will ultimately result in lock and load!!
     Please pass this on to all the other retired guys and gun owners... Thanks, from a Vietnam Vet and retired Police Officer: I had a doctor's appointment at the local VA clinic yesterday and found out something very interesting that I would like to pass along. While going through triage before seeing the doctor, I was asked at the end of the exam, three questions:
        1. Did Ifeel stressed?
       2. Did I feel threatened?
       3. Did I feel like doing harm to someone?
     The nurse then informed me that if I had answered yes to any of the questions I would have lost my concealed carry permit as it would have gone into my medical records and the VA would have reported it to Homeland Security.
     To me, it seems like they are going after the vets first. Other gun people like retired law enforcement would probably be next. Then when they go after the civilians, what argument would John Q. Public have? Be forewarned and be aware. The Obama administration has gone on record as considering veterans and gun owners potential terrorists. Whether you are a gun owner, veteran or not.   If you know veterans and gun owners, please pass this on to them. Be very cautious about what you say and to whom.    They are coming for us, so unless you're an ostrich, do not stick your head in the sand.........

YOU and I HAVE BEEN WARNED !
Later

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El Gringo Viejo weighs in with the fact that these observations are anecdotal, and therefore he does not use a bunch of them, either for publication or as a basis of research information.   However, this particular entry comes from an indirect source....passed through a direct source of greatest confidence, so it is hearsay of the highest quality.   It is also backed up by the fact that the nurse we had in home health care for my father-in-law during his last days did in fact ask me about whether there were guns in the house.   She asked upon her first arrival, essentially in a pro-forma way, so it gave me the impression that it was something she asked as a routine requirement.
      Perhaps due to the obviously debilitated condition of my father-in-law, she asked only that one question, and not the whole series.    We have to remember that the ATF of that time could have detained Vernon Howell at the WalMart in Waco without any problem.   But, since they were trading guns at the flea markets, it was somehow necessary to invade their compound with several hundred agents in full battle dress and array.    Oddly, when all the children were finally dead, the ATF and FBI went through the compound and found only enough guns to not even come up to number that would normally be found per adult in the regular Texas household.   The only automatic weapons used from the beginning through to the end of the engagement were those of the ATF.   And of course, the ATF had the advantage of Gen. Wesley Clark, the hero of the Battle of Mt. Carmel, and his authorisation of heliocopter support from Fort Hood to aid in the assault of some dull normal dumboes who probably could not have conducted an armed robbery of  a man hole cover in a ghost town.
      But, the gun-control nuts are not to be detained.   It brings to mind a man who was a highly placed elected official of a significant city in Texas who owned a very, very successful and large hardware store....with a large firearms, fishing, and ammunition section....had to finally close down his firearms sales, service, repair, siting, and ammunition section.    He said it became as if he had an ATF sub-station in his building permanently.   He had to hire two people just to handle the paperwork, and he still spent ten hours a week on the same matter at home.
     This gentleman is gone now.  He joined his son, who had been killed in Viet Nam a couple of years before this incident.  Most of the family is gone now, but El Gringo Viejo will never forget the passive lecture this man gave a friend and me at the restaurant where he was a member of the curgudgeonly coffee clatch.   His eyes glazed...and then blazed with that vicious anger that comes to a man when he talks about when was cornered, and in the right, but had absolutely no choice but to surrender, due to exhaustion.
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     Next, we have to talk about the VOLT, the hope of years to come.   We have been assured that Obama saved the auto industry by destroying the bond holders' and preferred stock holders' assets in ownership and financing General Motors of old.  His transfer of a private company into the hands of the United Auto Workers was a deft piece of expropriation, to be sure.   It was far more massive than the expropriation of the foreign oil companies in Mexico in 1938 by Lazaro Cardenas.   The main difference is that Cardenas was only an anti-American, anti-capitalist socialist.   Obama is an anti-American, anti-capitalist marxist.    And....once again, tick - tock, tick - tock, as each day goes by.... the payout for any notion of recovery of Obama's "investment" in General Motors keeps edging over the horizon of reason.    The talking heads still use  53  -  57 dollars per share, common.   It is actually now more in the neighbourhood of 73 dollars. (It closed still lower to-day, between 19 and 20 dollars per share.)
      But, let El Gringo Viejo demonstrate how smart these people really are.   Obama, with a campaign fund running low on fuel, decides to start spending campaign money on attack ads in Texas.    Texas.   In July.  Does he or anyone in his campaign think that he can take Texas's electoral votes?   Ever?
      But he is aiming at people who are like the stupid woman who was used in an auto ad some years ago...the woman was positively hyperventalative, because the meter maid, also terminally stupid, had given her a "time expired" ticket, and written in the block that requests "make of auto",  the brand 'Mercedes Benz'.   The advertisement showed this woman, in full pre-faint, fanning herself, and howling...."Can you imagine!?  Can you imagine?"   Sales of that "look-alike" auto, I am sure, must have surged.....(?).
     We move now to the space-cadet who is telling me that she thinks that she has the greatest deal in the world and she never stops at a place that sells gasoline except to buy coffee.  Her VOLT is just the greatest ride she has ever had.   She seems to be just reaching the peak of the effects of some new upper or perhaps she has a solar-powered mariajuana-mister in her VOLT....she looks positively Woodstocked when she explains that she is going to take her savings from owning the VOLT, and, by golly, she's going to go to Hawai'i.    El Gringo Viejo sent her a note suggesting that she could have bought something more economical to operate at half the cost....perhaps a Kia, Mazda, Nissan, Ford, or similar....perhaps over 50 good choices....with better resale and insurability...that would not encumbered the "ecology" with an indisposable battery.   Shopping carefully, she could have pocketed or saved away two-thirds of the difference in cost, and had enough to take her two weeks off in Hawai'i along with the round trip airfare....or in her case....perhaps a train.
Sales increase, but Volt still fails to meet expectations
     General Motors is...oddly, selling poorly.... but their numbers are being held up into the mediocre level at least.....because of .....government fleet purchases.   Imagine that.   The VOLT continues to be the disaster that it is....but some of that is being fixed by literally shipping them over to the Red Chinese.   General Motors common stock price is sliding towards that magic 19 number.   One  calendar-quarter at that level, and it will have to begin bankruptcy proceedings....but not before the UAW has taken everything home at is or is not nailed down.
  
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     Now, and finally, please remember that the little old lady who kept Tweety Bird in the cage, and who also kept Sylvester the Cat...forever lurking around under that cage...SHE HAD AN ELECTRIC AUTO!!!   It worked fine.   It was like the Stanley Steamer, except that unlike the Stanley Steamer, it could not go over 120 miles per hour on the same beach that the Wright Brothers made the first heavier than air craft actually take off and fly under artificial power.   We tend to think that only Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can come up with real cool ideas.   Like machines that can help people buy cattle futures at one-one thousandth of their actual value.   Or canoes that Al Gore and his wife can order up several million gallons of water from a reservoir to use in order to show everyone how eco-outdoorsey they are....(canoe still did not float, it was only designed for four people....and Al was ....well...you know).
Detroit Electric, c. 1919
    Detroit Electric (1907 - 1939) was an automobile brand produced by the Anderson Electric Car Company in Detroit Michigan. Anderson had previously been known as the Anderson Carriage Company (until 1911), producing carriages and buggies since 1884. Production of the electric automobile, powered by a rechargeable lead acid battery, began in 1907. For an additional $600.00 an Edison nickel-iron battery was available from 1911 to 1916. The cars were advertised as reliably getting 80 miles (130 km) between battery recharging, although in one test a Detroit Electric ran 211.3 miles (340.1 km) on a single charge. Top speed was only about 20 miles per hour (32 km/h), but this was considered adequate for driving within city or town limits at the time.      The Detroit Electric was mainly sold to women drivers and physicians who desired the dependable and immediate start without the physically demanding hand cranking of the engine that was required with early internal combustion engine autos. A statement of the cars refinement was evidenced to the public through its design which included the first use of curved window glass in a production automobile, an expensive and complex feature to produce.
Sylvester, Tweety, and Granny listen to
Obama describe how all their medical
concerns have been solved, and that
it will all be free.
    The company production was at its peak in the 1910s selling around 1000 to 2000 cars a year. Towards the end of the decade the Electric was helped by the high price of gasoline during World War I. In 1920 the name of the Anderson company was changed to "The Detroit Electric Car Company" as the car maker separated from the body business (it became part of Murray Body) and the motor/controller business (Elwell-Parker).*
(*  blue print indicates Wikipedia information)

     It should also be pointed out that there were various choices concerning  brands and types of the electric vehicles.   They were associated with the "1% people".   The vehicles were seen as eccentric, but elegant, and were generally regarded as well made and well appointed.  The problem came with the obvious difference in filling the tank of your Stutz Bearcat and driving for 300 miles, and the alternative.   Electricity was also something that needed to be used judiciously, due to cost, as gasoline became steadily cheaper due to competition and larger scale refining operations made production more efficient and cheaper.
     And then, El Gringo Viejo's grandfather had a nice home in a place called Gwinner, North Dakota where he had tree-steaded in the late 1880s.  The home was electrified in the earliest part of the 1900s by means of a 32 volt, direct current windmill powered battery system.   He installed a similar system for his home in rural Hidalgo County of Texas in 1916.   Neither system, of course, could ever have handled the needs required of even a modest home situation in these days.
     And as we talk about Romney outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, it is pointed out that almost all the blades made for electricity producing wind turbines are made either in Finland or Mexico.   One electric auto company that received a considerable "investment" from Obama bag of free tax money....is also Scandinavian....and it has already served notice that plans for setting up in the United States might not be in the company's future after all.   Another cup of Solyndra, anyone?

Next up will be a pleasant supper episode with folks from the Phillipines, Singapore, and such places....all very, very ardent Americans who are concerned about America losing its soul.
El Gringo Viejo