Saturday, August 11, 2007

So What's Your Problem, Friend?

Let's face it . . . we all have problems from time to time, many of which are relatively simple for us to resolve. The tough ones are the ones over which we have the least control. Like medical problems. Such problems are usually best handled by consulting with your doctor . . . I say usually, because there is one very serious problem that is killing off thousands of us every year, and the best our doctors will do for us is offer us a delaying program, but not a cure.
Lets get this straight, right from the start: I am not a doctor and it is not my intent to interpose myself between you and your doctor, but someone has to take a stand on this problem, and it does appear that I am elected for the job.
First off, the problem I am talking about is cardiovascular disease, sometimes called hardening of the arteries. This problem results from the deposition of plaque on the arterial walls, robbing them of their normal flexibility, and limiting the flow of blood through those arteries, and, finally, blocking them and causing death.
There is a treatment modality that works to keep your arteries clear and functioning as they should. It is called EDTA IV chelation. It should be the first choice of treatment methods when your doctor first becomes aware that you have a problem with cardiovascular disease. It is safe, it works to disolve the plaque on your arterial walls, and to carry it off to your kidneys where it is discarded with your urine.
More than fifty years ago, EDTA chelation was developed to clear heavy metals from the bodies of persons who were suffering from heavy metal poisoning, primarily lead poisoning, and it was sorely needed by thousands of such persons who worked in industries that used lead in the production of storage batteries, lead based paints, and so on. It did the job very well, and many thousands of persons were helped in this manner. Then, one day, some doctor noticed that the persons so treated were also enjoying improved blood flow through their arteries, often accompanied by a reduction in blood pressure, and a general improvement in health. He must have discussed his discovery with other doctors, and some of them decided to use the treatment on patients who were simply suffering from cardiovascular disease, with good results.
When the American Medical Association found that it was not an approved treatment for cardiovascular disease . . . approved by the AMA or the Federal Drug Administration . . . they did their homework, and found that surgical cleaning of arteries was big business for both the cardiovascular surgeons and the hospitals, whose operating rooms and staffs were being kept quite busy. EDTA chelation, which is much less expensive, now posed a threat to the surgeons and the hospitals, because, except in the most serious of cases, it could make surgery completely unecessary, thus depriving the surgeons and hospitals of millions of dollars a year in income!
A program was immediately put into effect to discredit EDTA chelation. The claim was that it had not been thoroughly tested by double blind testing, and was, therefore risky to the patients lives.
Now get this: There has never been a death associated with the use of EDTA chelation that was properly administered using the approved protocols. To date, more than one hundred thousand patients have been treated here and in other parts of the world for cardiovascular disease, and the records indicate that more than 80% of the patients enjoyed improved health as a result!
Well, why don't we run some double blind tests anyway to prove the effecacy of this treatment, and resolve the problem? Such a test, in the magnitude that would force the AMA and the FDA to approve the treatment would cost well over a million dollars to run, and since the patents have run out on the EDTA solution used in the treatment, no pharmacuetical manufacturer wants to spend the money running the tests.
The interesting thing about all this controversy is that, by far, most of the treatments being used by doctors today to treat all kinds of diseases have never been forced to have a double blind test run to obtain the approval of the treatment by the AMA or the FDA!
In a previous blog, I told you about my own experience, and the wonderful results that I got using EDTA chelation. If you have not yet read it, I urge you to do so!
It is a matter of record that thousands of persons have been successfully treated with EDTA IV chelation, yet most doctors will either deny that it works, or will refuse to discuss it at all!
The human body is composed of countless millions of tiny cells, each of which is important to the proper functioning of the body as a whole. Each of these tiny cells gets its nourishment from a flow of blood through its own tiny arteriole. Each of these small arterioles are subject to being blocked by plaque buildup, and the death of the cell is thus assured when that occurs.
Surgery is only possible on the major arteries in the body. It has been estimated that there are more than 60,000 miles of arteries in the human body, most of which are too small to be cleaned out using surgery. EDTA IV chelation, which is in solution in the blood travels to ALL of the arteries and arterioles throughout the body, working it's magic to keep the flow of nourishing blood going to all parts of the body . . . every cell in the body . . . every cell in all the important organs in the body . . . the heart, the brain, the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, if it is a part of the human body, it is nourished by blood!
Now I don't believe that anyone reading this is unaware that healthy cells in the body are primary to good overall body health. Every disease known to man starts somewhere in the body in one or more cells. Keep the cells healthy and you keep the whole body healthy!
Ergo! Everyone should seriously consider taking a course of EDTA IV chelation! Simple enough! Today, the exposure of humans to various heavy metal poisoning has increased in quantum jumps from what it was prior to the industrial revolution. Many of us, as youngsters in our cribs did our teething on the edge of the crib panels. Many of those cribs were painted with lead based paints in the old days, and many of those cribs are still in use, having been handed down from generation to generation. For most of our lives, we have been breathing in the exhaust fumes of our automibiles, fumes that were full of the products of combustion of gasolines that used tetraethyle lead. Iron, mercury, and aluminum are a few of the other metals that we are exposed to everyday! They get in your body and they stay there, finally residing in and interfering with the health of the body's cells. If the truth were known, most of humanity is suffering from heavy metal deposits that cause problems.
Many years ago, the FDA approved EDTA IV chelation as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning. Now the chances are that everyone has that problem, including those of us who have cardiovascular disease problems. So it just seems to make sense for each of us to have our doctor test us for heavy metal buildup, and when they find out that we are full of heavy metals, start us on a treatment program to remove them. The most effective treatment, and, by far, the safest, is EDTA IV chelation, and it will take a number of treatments to get the job done. Don't be surprised if some of your other problems seem to get better, while you are at it! Just remember, good cellular health throughout the body means good health in general.
'Nuff said!

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Cardiovascular Disease, the cure that works!

I am 84 years old, and I had cardiovascular disease so bad that I had to have a triple bypass, and then I still had a 60% occlusion of the left carotid.

When I got out of the hospital following the bypass operation, I made up my mind never to go through that again! Since the typical bypass operation very often has to be done over again after 3 to 5 years, I knew that I had to find a way to clean my arteries without surgery, which, at best, is only able to clean parts of the most available arteries, and does nothing for all the thousands of miles of the smaller arteries that feed all the cells of one's body.

I found it! So have thousands of other persons who suffered from cardiovascular disease!

Now my carotid occlusion puzzles my cardiovascular consultant because they can no longer find it!

Now I no longer have to take medications to control my high blood pressure, because I no longer have high blood pressure . . . my blood pressure is now normally in the 120/60 category!

Now my vision has sharpened up again, and I can read print much smaller than before without glasses!

Now the circulation in my extremeties is back to normal, or very nearly so! No more P.A.D.!

Why is it that the millions of others who are suffering from cardiovascular disease do not do as I have done?

Simple enough! The traditional medical community denies that the approach that I used will do the job! Since the American Medical Association has taken this stand, the Federal Drug Administration will not approve EDTA chelation for use as a cure for cardiovascular disease.

Why does the AMA insist that it does not work when the records show that it has been used on numersous occasions with an estimated 80% success, and with no risk of serious side effects to the patient. Could it be that the several billions of dollars now being spent each year on cardiovascular surgery, hospital operating rooms, and specially trained staffs would no longer be necessary, and that the pharmacuetical manufacturers would lose much of their sales of the dangerous statin drugs that are currently the only hope of the suffering millions?

How do we know that it works so well?

Fifty years or so ago, the FDA approved EDTA Chelation as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning . . . lead, in particular. Thousands of people who were employed in industries that used large quantities of lead to produce, among other things, lead based paints, storage batteries, etc., and who had contracted lead poisoning were treated using EDTA chelation intravenously given. These treatments typically take several weeks, and, curiously enough, those patient's doctors noted that their arteries seemed to be getting cleared up of much of the plaque deposits on the arterial walls, and that their circulation was much improved. Better yet. there is no record of any fatalities involved in the use of EDTA chelation, which cannot be said of the surgical approach. How many times have you heard the expression, "The operation was a success, but the patient died!"

Once I had found it, I took over 40 such treatments with no ill effects. The cost to me was a relatively paltry $110.00 per treatment, plus some laboratory work that was necessary so that the agency rendering the treatment could keep track of my blood chemistry. Each treatment required me to relax in a recliner chair with an IV needle in my arm for about 4 hours, meanwhile reading a book, watching TV, or engaging in conversation with one or more of the others in the group doing the same thing . . . usually about ten persons! I took 2 treatments each week for about 22 weeks, and the results were little short of miraculous!

As I mentioned above, I am an old man with a retinue of doctors for my sundry ailments, and I have asked each of them to tell me what they knew about EDTA. To a man, they either said it would not work, or they refused to even discuss it with me! What a brainwashing job the powers that be must have done to try to kill this wonderful and very effective treatment modality!

Ah, but it was not a total success! It is a matter of record that whenever a regular doctor finds that he has angina or some other indication that he could have a stroke or heart attack, his attitude about EDTA frequently undergoes a radical change, and he begins to think about using it himself!

More recently, the FDA has modified its stance on the use of EDTA in the treatment of this deadly disease. They have not given their approval for its use, but they have taken the stand that any qualified doctor may use any approved medical treatment to treat any disease if he is convinced that he can do so without danger to his patient, and with a strong possibility of success! Even so, the medical community is very slow in accepting EDTA chelation, which should be used as the first approach to treating paitients who are experiencing angina or whose arteries show evidence of serious plaque deposits.

So, if any of you readers of this article have or anticipate having a problem with cardiovascular disease, you might be well advised to look into EDTA IV chelation as a possible treatment modality. If you have computers and like to surf the WEB, there is plenty of information to be found thereon . . . start out by simply typing the expression EDTA in the search line at the top of the WEB page, and press GO! Read everything you can find. Some of it will be negative and some will be positive, but bear in mind that the positive will mostly be from those who have tried it and found that it worked! The negatives will be from those who have their own ax to grind! And remember, while you are doing your research, keep on following a low cholesterol diet, and follow your doctor's advice on other cholesterol control medications. Remember, it took me the better part of a year to satisfy myself that it was worth a try, and then to find a place where I could have it done. This last is easier than you might imagine: There is an organization listed on the WEB called ACAM (American College of Alternative Medicine). On their website, they have a program where you can search for doctors that provide EDTA IV treatments in your area. They have listings for countries all over the world. Each doctor has a listing of coding letters that tell you what his treatment specialities are. The procedure is safe, and, remember, if you fail to take action when it is needed, you have only yourself to blame!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The show must go on!

The democratic candidates for President put on a good show for us yesterday! Or did they?

Actually, it was the network that put on the good show . . . the candidates only played the part of actors in a program!

How can I say this? Simple . . . all the questions from the citizens of our fair country were submitted to the network. Some employee of the network reviewed them all and, following such directions as he(she) may have been given, made the selection of the questions that would be used in the actual broadcast. Obviously, the number of questions selected for the program was quite small when compared to the number that had been submitted!

So what?

So if the network or the person selecting the questions favored a given candidate, questions that gave him(her) the best chance to make a good showing would be included on the list for the show. If the network or its employee was in favor of a specific problem or against it, such as abortion, immigration reform, the war in Iraq, you name it, the questions submitted on that subject would be selected so that a bias could be created in the direction of the network's wishes.

Now we all know that the general media bias is liberal, so it is not unreasonable for us to assume that any candidate of a conservative persuasion is going to be somewhat handicapped by this question selection modality.

So who came out looking best on the show? Well, which was the candidate most loved by the liberals?

Manipulation . . . by the same media that typically manipulates the news presentations to assure that publicity through this avenue promotes the media's favorite candidate or position on key issues! And by the same media that conducts all the polls that are so couched in wording that choices that are negative to what the media wants may be difficult or impossible to select.

Ah, dear reader, gather all the information you can on both sides of the choices you make, then make your own decision, unless you are willing to be led around like a bull with a ring in his nose!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Our Public Servants in Congress . . .

We all have representatives and senators looking out for us in Congress, right?

WRONG!

Those representatives and senators now hold the cushiest jobs in the world . . . the pay is the highest, and if they want more, they simply vote themselves a raise. The retirement is the best in the world . . . once elected to Congress, they qualify to receive full pay and allowances for the rest of their lives, whether they spend all that time in the Congress or not. They do not have to work for their pay . . . if you don't believe that, watch the TV carefully the next time it shows one of our representatives or senators making a speech before the Congress of our country. You will quickly note that all the seats that should be filled with our public servants are empty! Where is everyone? Why, they are meeting in private meetings with others of their ilk, and trading votes back and forth to assure that each one's favorite PORK bills are approved!

NOW, WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?

Simple! They are working to assure that their constituents are happy with the job they are doing . . . doing? Happy constituents will see that they are re-elected for another term! And when the send out their solicitation letters for donations to their re-election campaign, the drive will be very successful and bring in lots of money! Sometimes they don't spend all the money that have raised . . . so what happens to the rest? They get to stick that into their own pockets!

NOW GET THIS!

These senators and representatives do not give a damn about our country! Their primary objective is to win elections . . . the pay is the best, the retirement is the best, they get to travel all over the world at government expense, they have the best health care that taxpayer money can buy, so who wouldn't sell his soul for package like that?

IS THERE ANYTHING WE VOTERS CAN DO ABOUT IT?

The answer is a resounding "YES!"

Resolve never to vote for the incumbent!

Resolve to become an INDEPENDENT, AND NEVER VOTE FOR THE SAME PARTY!

Obviously, there might be some advantages to not hewing to that line one hundred percent!

If, by chance, one of the senators or representatives can satisfy us that he is honest, does not sponsor pork bills, and works for the best interests of our country, and, if by chance we, the voters, care more about our country than satisfying our greed for federal money, then we might seriously consider sending the incumbent back to Congress for another term!

Just think . . . if we had a Congress full of honest, upright senators and representatives, and if our president was also honest and upright, we would not be listening to them argue about the benefit of allowing 12 million Mexican illegal aliens to remain in our country . . . we would long ago have gathered them all up and trucked them back to Mexico, and we would have explained things the president of Mexico in terms that even he could understand!

If our Congress was filled with honest and upright men and women, they would clean up the welfare act in this country, and make all the deadbeats on welfare go to work, hard work, for their government checks. Soon those deadbeats would find other jobs where they got more pay, and didn't have to work so hard!

But wait! Aren't some of those on welfare physically handicapped and unable to work? Quite possibly, and steps should be taken to assure that they really are that handicapped! The cheaters should be dropped from the rolls, and those truly handicapped should be helped to recover, wherever possible, and to live normal lives, if not.

And what about single parent families? The single parent family needs to be redefined. When a woman beds every stud she meets and becomes pregnant, she should not be rewarded by paying her to have more children and thus get more government support. If she cannot support those children herself, they should be taken away from her and put into an orphanage where they can receive good food, and a warm home, and especially a good education so that when they grow up, they will be able to take their places in society and become good, taxpaying citizens!

Now, I will just bet that there are millions of you out there that will agree and even have some other ideas about how we could make our country a better place to live and to make our own lives better. Now don't wast our time telling me how wrong I am . . . the world is full of people who can do that! Tell me what YOU would do to improve our government, and to eliminate all this graft and corruption in our elected officials! We, the electorate, need to get more involved in running our country! We need to reward the honest politician with our vote . . . yes . . .but we need especially to demand that they work for a living, protecting our borders, and cleaning up the graft and corruption in our government! If they do not do their jobs, they should be fired just like the rest of us when we do not do our jobs!

Yes, and when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar, they need to be prosecuted, deprived of all retirement benefits, and sent to jail!

Henry

Friday, June 15, 2007

Where did all the statesmen go?

More than two and a quarter centuries ago the people of the 13 states founded a new country, the United States of America. The country was founded on a belief in the Christian God, and in the visions of all the great leaders of the day, including Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Hancock, and others who wanted our country to grow into a major world power and a place where peoples of other countries could come to live and enjoy all the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

During most of the itervening years, good leaders came forth to help our nation to grow, but during the period subsequent to World War II the leadership in this country has grown to be strictly self-serving, money hungry politicians who are in it because it is the easiest way for a fast talking, clever individual to assure himself and his family of riches and the best retirement program in the world.

During that period our leadership has succeeded in renouncing our God, it has attempted and, in some cases, succeeded in rewriting the Constitution via the Supreme Court, and it has discovered the cupidity of the electorate who look to the government for a free handout, and will sell their souls to get it, no matter the cost.

Today we have millions of citizens on the dole who, in the old days, would have taken whatever jobs they could find rather than accept help from the government or anyone else.

When I grew up during the Great Depression, most of the people still believed that a man was the head of his family, that children should not be borne out of wedlock, and that it was the responsibility of the head of the family to care for the family, including his own parents and his wife's parents when they became too old to care for themselves. During that period of time, many families lost their homes . . . farms, in many cases . . . when the lending agency that held the mortgage foreclosed when the family could no longer make the payments on the mortgage. Even so, those people would do almost any kind of work, from dawn to dark, to make enough to feed and house their families, rather than to go to the county poor farm and accept help from the county! Often, the going rate was $1.00 a day and found . . . if you could find someone who would hire you. If your were one of the lucky ones like my father, who had a good job working for the railroad, (he made less than $200.00 per month) you could rent a home with a big house and room for a large family for $30.00 oer month. If you weren't lucky, the man would do day work when he could find it, the woman would take in laundry, do ironing or other chores for a pittance, and, if they had any free time, they had a garden where they raised much of the food that the family ate. They were ashamed to take handouts, and always insisted on paying for what they got, either in cash, or in work. The children were made to attend school, and they wanted to do so, as it was their only hope of being able to support their own family when they grew up. After school, each day, they were out in the garden, picking worms off the tomato plants, potato beetles off the potato plants, hoeing, weeding, and watering the garden so that it would be productive. As the garden produced its crops, the mother would do water bath canning of the excess produce, so that they would have it for the winter's meals. The husband took care of all the maintenance needs around the home, with the son's pitching in for yard work when they grew old enough. If they had free time, they would cut the neighbors lawns for a quarter, which the contributed to family income, or they sold newspapers on one of the busy corners in town, or had a paper route, or a magazine route.

In 1940, I graduated from high school, the extent of my education. The Great Depression was not yet over, although the war had just started in Europe, and our manufactureing facilities were beginning to recover from the effects of the times. I managed to find a job with Western Union Telegraph Company, delivering telegrams all over the city of Omaha, Nebraska, riding my bicycle if necessary, or riding the elevators to the top floor of the taller buildings delivering telegrams, monthly statements, etc., walking down and covering each floor on the way. I wore a messenger boy's uniform, and I was available to do whatever someone wanted that was moral, and was hired out by Western Union to do some interesting jobs. Once, all I had to do was to stand outside one of the local taverns with a photograph in my hands, watching to see if this woman's husband came out with some other woman! He never did! For that kind of work, I received 30 cents an hour, was permitted to work only 8 hours a day, and could expect some serious discipline if I worked overtime without permission. That netted me $12.00 a week, out of which, each day for lunch I would buy two nickel hamburgers and an eleven cent quart of milk for lunch, the balance of which was used as needed to buy my clothing, and other necessities.

Everyone believed strongly in taking care of himself. The concept of social security had just been invented by the Franklin Roosevelt administration, and so an appropriate deduction was made from that amount to cover the program.

Now, what have we got?

For one, we have a huge population of citizens, black and white, who have never worked a day in their lives, who live on a monthly check from the government, and who often moonlight at another job to provide even more money, most of which seems to be spent on drugs and booze!

It is no longer considered wrong to have children out of wedlock, and the government pays many women for doing just that! The women takes the pay, lets the kids run the streets, does not require them to go to school, and she spends much of her time at the local singles bar, looking for some man to buy her something to eat and pay for her drinks, after which she repays him by taking him home to her bed. She has no husband, and the children she has can have a wide variety of fathers, no matter, and the government gives her a raise for each calf that she drops!

Meanwhile, the government gathers statistics that purport to prove that we have lots of jobs, and no workers to fill them! So now, we must allow Mexico to export their citizens in the millions to fill those jobs!

Hogwash! Why not simply make the people on the dole take those jobs or starve? Believe me, survival is the strongest of all instincts, and they would not starve!

We should gather up all thes illegal aliens, load them into trucks, haul them back to Mexico, put their government on notice that if they continue to allow . . . no even encourage . . . this invasion of our country, we will invade their in no uncertain terms, and we will establish a government in that country that realizes just what the responsibilities of a government are!

We first need to correct the idea our politicians have that an ignorant electorate is desirable. Yes, it is from the politician's point of view, because an ignorant electorate is easier to lead around like the ox with a ring in his nose.

How do we do this? We still have the vote. At the coming election, we should refuse to return the present members of Congress to office. Let's hire a new bunch of politicians who may not be the died in the wool crooks that the last two bunches of politicians have proven to be! They will take office full in the knowledge of what happened to their predecessors, and just might decide that their future as a politician might be best served by doing the jobs that they are hired to do! If there are those among them who aspire to the old way, the party leaders should take them aside and explain things to them in terms that they can understand . . . no more party support unless they mend their ways and toe the line!

How about the President and Vice President? Same idea! Put someone in office, I care not which party, who seems to be honest, and if he doesn't behave himself, the Congress will be smart enough to impeach him and throw him out of office!

What if we allow things to continue as they are?

Simple enough! First off, allowing 12 million Mexicans to remain in this country will drive wages down for all citizens! The taxpayers will no longer make enough money to pay their mortgages, and to live in the grand style to which they have become accustomed. They will no longer be able to pay the high taxes that it takes to support all the people on the dole, so they will have to be turned out to work for themselves, adding to the millions of low pay citizens, and the country will be driven into another depression that will make the Great Depression look like child's play!

Since our politicans can not be trusted to do what the laws of the land require, WE, THE PEOPLE, must do it for ourselves and for the children and grandchildren of the coming generations!

The higher standard of living that the citizens of this country enjoy is attributable to primarily one simple fact: We have a lower density of population than most of the countries of the old world, and the value of our real estate, and natural resources averages out to a much higher figure when divided by the population than in those old countries. Now, lets not let the population get so high in this country that it drives that figure too low, and lets especially be selective and allow only those persons to come to this country who can prove that they have enough education that they can take care of themselves. They don't all have to be Albert Einsteins, but they should have a good basic education, a good job skill that is needed in this country, and enough money to help themselves get settled.

How did I get to be so smart? I grew up during the Great Depression, I have a basic education, I believe in our Christian God, and I know from personal experience that those qualifications coupled with ambition and a willingness to work long hours if necessary will insure that one will be able to accumulate an estate of reasonable value, and save money for his old age! I learned electronics without ever going to a school where it was taught, I used that learning to get my first jobs after I was demobbed after WWII when the market for pilots was still small, and when there were more applicants for those jobs who had 4 engine experience. I still worked my way up in business to become a Vice President of a company that was subsequently sold out from under me, and then did it again in a new company, from which I eventually retired. I have always maintained that my success was not due so much to my intelligence or education as it was to the fact that there were so many people out there who wanted jobs where they worked the least amount possible, and made as much money as possible, so they could leave the work place promptly at 5:00 p.m., and go straight to the local singles bar to find their bed companion for the night! With much of the competition out of the way, and with my willingness to work long hours I was always able to rebound when things temporarily turned against me.

I would say that that is a pretty basic education in life, and if I can do it, so can anyone else who has the drive to do so. Now, let's all of you pro's and con's out there have your say! And, let's try to meet logic with logic, not self-serving bias . . .

As the french say, aw reservoir . . .

Henry

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Virginia Tech Massacre . . .

The Virginia Tech shootings are all the rage, now . . . everyone of note has an opinion . . . everyone of no note is being interviewed by the media . . . it now appears to the writer that the media's mindless meddling is producing more useless information that simply adds to the work of the authorities who then have to try to see if there is any factual evidence or if it is simply media grandstanding, trying to assure that the public sees what a great job they, the media, are doing of ferreting out the facts!

Now, the media has decided to focus in on the school authorities in an effort to manufacture a sensation that proves that the school authorities failed to properly protect the students!

The school authorities should refuse to be interviewed, and should simply tell those nosy reporters who are only adding to the confusion that they must get their facts from the constituted authorities who are conducting the investigation.

But, no, everyone wants to be seen on national television, so that they can make a tape of the on-air interview to put in their memoirs, or to show to their friends to prove that they are an important part of the investigation, when they know nothing but what the media has already told them! The trouble is that much of what the media has been putting out is NOT FACT, but is simply hype to build their own image in the public's mnd!

Hearken back, you readers of a more advanced age, to the days of World War two, during which time the media was required to clear all releases with the government, and got no information that they could release without doing so! That is what is needed in the case of these investigations! There needs to be a central clearing agency who tells the media what they can say and what they cannot say! As it is, the media is causing confusion with their release of facts that should be kept confidential and of non-facts that should not be discussed openly, as well! Freedom of the Press has gotten out of hand, and is doing more to hamper the investigation than to convey truthful information to thepublic! How many times in similar situations have we found that the media was releasing information that could prove helpfull to the perpetrators, and that, therefore, should be kept in confidence and not published for all to see and hear?

It strikes me as patently evident that some control over the media must be exercised in order to keep important facts from being broadcast all over, to the advantage of the conspirators, and to the disadvantage of the investigative authorities! As it is, it seems that as soon as the investigative authorities interview someone in the hopes of getting a lead to the perpetrators, the media immediately collars that person and tries to get them to say something that the media can use to demonstate that the investigative authority missed something or failed to get an important fact! The media may then find out something that the authorities do not want made public, and mess of the entire investigation! The numbers of media persons working on this case far outnumbers those of the investigating authority that are available to solve the crime, and so, the media can then race ahead of the investigation, and inadvertantly tip off the guilty person(s) without even being aware that this is what they are doing!

What we have is mass confusion fostered by the media whose only interest is to get the jump on competition, a "scoop", to use the old expression!

It seems that the human animal rarely resists the urge to connive to foster his own self-interests at the expense of all other interested parties! Man is his own worst enemy! We will be lucky if we ever find the truth!

There needs to be a law passed to make it a crime for anyone to take any action that could be interpreted as interfering with the investigation of a crime while investigation is in process! Once the investigation has been completed, then the media can be allowed to report such information as will not adversely affect the prosecution of the parties guilty of the crime. After all, the successful prosecution of the perpetrators is the most important part of the investigation of any crime, and nothing should take precedence over that fact!

These investigations take time. None take so much time as the investigation of a crime after which the perpetrator then kills himself! He is no longer able to answer questions for the authorities, and so now they must make a list of all of his friends, relatives, and associates, and interview each of them to try togather facts as to whether more than a single person was involved in planning and executing the crime, an, if so, who were the others! Such investigations are usually conducted by a relatively small number of investigators, whereas the entire media community may have many more than a hundred persons out there, trying to ferret out the facts for themselves, and, inadvertently, tipping off the co-conspirators that such an investigation is going on!

Well, I've had my say . . . does anyone out there wish to challenge these remarks?

Friday, April 13, 2007

No child held back . . .

This was our president's recognition that something was seriously wrong with our educational system!

This was also our president's failure to understand just what it was that was wrong!

Fundamentally, the system as presently designed does not work in a manner that develops the child to his maximum potential. In fact, the system holds back the brighter students and restricts the speed at which they learn to that of the slowest students in the class! At the end of each study year, all students are passed on to the next higher level without regard to whether they had actually learned all the subjects that had been a part of the curriculum of the class from which they were graduating! Worse yet, the brighter students who could have learned a great deal more were restricted to learning only as much as was taught at a speed at which the slower students, hopefully, could become proficient.

Now all that we hear is that our school system is not working! Each year, the statistical evidence from all the countries in the world indicates that the students in our schools are graduating to each next higher class without having learned each subject to the same or higher level as did the students of many of the other countries throughout the world!

No one has the guts to publically identify the reasons why this is true!

I have the guts!

All children are not born with the ability to learn at the same speed!

All parents are not capable of teaching their pre-school children the fundamentals that they need to know in order to maximize their ability to learn!

Many parents do not even try to teach their pre-school children those fundamentals!

Any educational system that does not work in a manner that allows the faster learners to progress at their most challenging speed will invariably hold them back to the speed at which the slower learners seem best able to learn.

This is ridiculous! Such a system fails to bring out the best in each student!

Such a system fails to recognize that each child has a different learning speed, and that this different learning speed is different for each subject being taught!

Such a system fails to recognize that each student will tend to like and excel in those subjects that he finds most interesting!

We need to go back and re-examine the educational system that was in effect during and prior to the 1930's . . . prior to the Great Depression!

At age six, when the child first began his formal education, they were lumped together in the same class, commonly referred to as "Kindergarten." In that class they were exposed to various subjects that allowed the teacher to observe both their mental and mechanical dexterities. Usually, the teacher was a woman, and she kept records on each student, and she used an honest grading system that became a part of that record. Periodic tests were given to assess the degree to which each student was learning each of the subjects. At the end of the school year, some of the students were recognized as being "A" students, who were consistenly at the head of the class. Some were recognized as being "C", or average students. Some students were found to be at the bottom of the class, and received failing grades.

This system performed the job of sorting the students into performance groups, allowing those who did very well to carry additional subjects, or to be given additional assignments, keeping them busy and not bored, and allowing them to be recognized for what they were capable of doing.

Initially, the subjects being taught were primarily related to the three "R's" . . . reading, writing, and arithmetic. These subjects were considered to be the most important for the child to learn because they would be needed in the daily activities that all of us engage in for the rest of our lives, but, also, were very important in preparing the child to continue his education in his choice of our higher educational facilities after he had completed the requisite 12 years in the public school system. By this time, the students had been segregated into groups relating to their ability to learn, so that the faster learners were able to progress faster, and carry more subjects, while the slower learners were still given the necessary attention to see that they learned the essential three "R's."

Then the "do-gooders" got into the act!

They ignored the fact that the students in the slower learning groups would actually be competing amongst themselves . . . that, because the faster learners were in a different group, they were not considered by the students to be a part of the competition. In each group, the students were able to learn at about the same speed, and so the group, as a whole did much better than is the case in the system used today, where the brighter students languish in the doldrums of the teaching pace that is slow enough that the slower learners are mostly able to keep up.

In today's system, the under-challenged brighter students find themselves with time on their hands, and, very often wind up as problem students who are always getting into trouble, or are causing distractions in the class that makes it difficult for the teacher to give the other students the necsssary attention.

In a nutshell, this whole educational mess in our schools is directly related to the fact that some students learn faster than others and need to be taught at a correspondingly faster pace. Such students are the ones most likely to go on to higher education after public school. Some students will display an inclination toward the physical skills, and those students will do their best if they are directed to a school where they can learn various trades . . . where they can learn to become electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and all the various skills that will prepare them to become solid citizens who earn their own living raise their families, and without having gone to a more formal institution of higher learning.

People are not the same, cast from the same mold! Each of us has his own special interests, and tends to develop along a track that is most suitable to his particular talents and interests.

Our educational system needs to be designed to teach each student in a manner that holds his interest and lets him progress at a pace that maximises his educational opportunity!

This is not accomplished by lumping all students into the same class system where they spend 12 years of their lives, each year being passed on to the next higher level whether they learned the subjects they were being taught or not!

It is time that we pulled our heads out of the sand and developed an educational system that competes with those of the countries that are rated highest in the annual performance studies. Until we do, we will continue to go downhill, and eventually wind up at the bottom of the list!

Thursday, April 5, 2007

The Protestant Work Ethic . . .

Many years ago, our illustrious government recognized the plight of the school dropouts who were forced by their illiteracy to work at the lowest paying jobs in the country . . . typically, fast-food purveyors!

"Those wages are too low!", they said. "Let's have a law that allows us to tell the employer what he must pay as a minimum hourly wage. That way, those who must work at the lowest paying jobs will be able to earn enough to be able to support themselves and their families."

So they repealed the law of supply and demand (tongue in cheek)! At the same time they destroyed the principle incentive for kids to stay in school. By artificially raising the wages of those whose educational and/or capability level limited their opportunities to enjoy a better than lowest standard of living, they proved that one does not even have to have a high school diploma in order to be able to hold a job that will pay enough to keep them in drugs, booze, and ladies of the evening. And by scrupulously avoiding the marriage vows, the females of the species can get additional help from the government to provide for their offspring born out of wedlock.

Sound like socialism? How about Hitler's children? Of course! Is it any wonder that our high school age kids opt to take one of these low paying jobs instead of attending high school, thus making it impossible for them to be able to hold an even higher paying job?

But wait! There's more! Almost always, when the scales are tipped in one direction, something also comes into play to tip them back again.

Since fewer kids are graduating from high school and looking forward to a college education, we are now depriving many of our institutions of higher learning of the opportunity to teach those no longer prospective students the really finer points of socialism.

Ever notice that most of these institutions of higher learning seem to pander to a staff of deans, professors, and other instructors who teach so far to the left that the student can actually graduate from that institution without being able to spell capitalism, let alone to define it? And, of course, socialism has now been redefined as democracy because socialism's relationship to communism has made the use of that term as unpopular as a number of other unsavory words like pimp and whore. And now the drive is underway to place such terms as conservative and Republican in that same category!

Does this signal the demise of the Republican party? Quite possibly, unless, of course, they are wise enough to change its name to something more acceptable to the product that our educational system has been spewing forth for at least the last fifty years! It is now quite apparent that mainstream thinking is oriented toward a government that taxes the rich and gives to the rest of them. A sort of modern day Robin Hood! No one wants to pay taxes anymore, and many of them do not! Those of you who are addicted to the boob tube will be able to attest to the number of assorted accounting firms that specialize in helping those behind on their income taxes to work out a settlement with the IRS for a small fraction of what they should pay. Gosh, I wonder what Al Capone would think of this . . . Born fifty years too soon! Those of you who do not recognize the name will appreciate the fact that Al was a very clever member of the lawbreaker group of the 1930's who was able to avoid the electric chair that he so richly deserved, but was too stupid to pay his fair income taxes, and so he wound up in Alcatraz for having cheated the government out of its due! Never happen in today's society!

Of course, there are a good many of our citizens who do pay taxes, and each of those who read this that think that what I have described above is acceptable behavior, should get down on their knees and thank whichever diety suits them, because it is the taxpayers of this country that make it possible for the government to be able to afford to send out all those relief checks!

But, all you high school drop-outs should save your money, because it can't go on forever. One of these days, those who do not work for a living will outnumber those who pay their taxes, and the screams from the taxpayers will be heard all the way to Washington!

So hearken unto me, brethren! Even in these days, a person who is willing to work can get along with no more than a high school education, and is probably better off without having attended an institution of higher learning. But if you aspire to a higher standard of living, you are in for a big surprise: Most employers pay lip service to the socialistic measures forced on them by the Federal Government, but all of them have found that they must still run their business with an eye peeled for profit, or they are going to go out of business!

As for taxing the rich to pay all those special benefits to the drop-out generations, you might want to give some thought to this: All of the large employers in this country are owned by their stockholders. When the tax load becomes so high that those companies can make only marginal profits, or even post losses, their stock goes down on the market, the companies are then down-rated in their credit ratings and if they do not turn things around, the stockholders demand a change in management and/or force a sellout to a competitor. You see, it is the profits that a company makes that make it possible for that company to grow, creating more jobs. No profits, no jobs! Maybe even no more company! So, as you can see, this gives the lie to all the socialistic educational institutions, because ours is a capitalistic society, depending on capitalism, not socialism to provide all the jobs that our citizens need.

And, finally, the concept of the free ride can only take you so far . . . after that, you still have to work to go further . . . if you have the education to allow you to do so!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Pelosi, defacto secretary of state!

Our Speaker of the House has now hied herself off to Syria to demonstrate to those of us of a more conservative persuasion that one can negotiate with terrorist nations, and, being more clever than the heads of those states, emerge with rock solid promises on their part to no longer pursue their nefarious ways! What a shame that she was not on board one of the planes that struck the towers on 9-11! I have every confidence (tongue in cheek) that she would have been able to talk them into changing their minds!

Ah, but we must be patient with Speaker Pelosi . . . here she is, thrust by an unthinking fate into the very important job as head of the House of Representatives, and of having responsibilities not even dreamed of by most of us, forcing her to learn almost overnight all the duties of that important position, but now, to complicate things, she must also engage in the duties that, heretofore, have been the responsibilities of the more competent, more experienced person who had been carefully selected to handle that job!

What a magnificent ego she must have! But that is understandable . . . after all, is she not now the third in line to take over the job of running the country, should the president and the vice president both become sufficiently disabled that they could not continue in the jobs to which they were elected by the citizens of this country?

Is she not brave to risk her personal well-being on behalf of the citizens of this great nation by sallying forth into the habitat of those ferocious beasts who only plan to use her visit to prove that they have frightened the leaders of the most powerful nation in the world into begging to be permitted to have an audience with their greatness? Surely she must know that daring to expose her face in such a country could place her at risk of being added to the list of hostages that currently are being held in yet another such country?

Ms. Pelosi, please come back and busy yourself with the duties for which you were hired, instead of complicating international relations by assuming duties for which you were not hired! Title notwithstanding, you are simply an employee of the citizens of this great country, and may not assume the responsibility for performing the tasks of other offices which are not within the domain of the position for which you were hired!

Do you not realize that you might be tricked into opening your mouth and putting your foot in it? Admittedly, the accomplishment of that task is not out of the question . . .

More good politicians have shot themselves in the foot by allowing their egos to convince them that they have more on the ball than is, in fact, the case. By this blatant disregard of the advice of the President of thes United States, you have further eroded the prestige of that office, and of this nation! If you think that, by this action, the world will know that you are the person who is now running the country, you are sadly mistaken! You now appear to all the world to be precisely what you are . . . a misguided egotist who should not even be allowed to cross the threshold of the office to which you were elected!

Are the citizens of this great nation upset with you? How can one be upset and laugh at the same time? Now we simply await your opening your mouth to bray, like the symbol of your party that you are!

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Which way to damnation?

Have you ever watched a country and a civilization go to hell before?

Stick around . . . we are well on the way, and you've got a front row seat!

What is your particular preference . . . creation or evolution?

Well, I happen to think that if our God wanted us to start out as a bunch of single-cell beings floating around in a vat of warm salt water, from which we evolved to our present greatness(?), I have no quarrel with that course of events! In fact, it might very well be that He liked the idea so much that He preserved it and uses it today, after having first accelerated the warm water bath in its change to amniotic fluid, and the period of evolution to, initially, nine months, of gestation, after which we are permitted our first glance of the wide open spaces, and our final phases of evolution into the magnificent animals that we are today!

Except that, now, we seem to be moving in a sort of reverse evolution, where all of the magnificent bulls of our species vie with the less magnificent bulls to see who can impregnate the most cows of our species, and where the product of the gestation period is soon left to fend for itself in those great barnyards we choose to call cities, while the cows resume wandering around, flashing their tails to attract the next bull!

So much for giving the human animal the intelligence to fly to the moon, and to explore space!

So much for giving him the stupidity to reject education and learning in favor of the purely animal instincts of the flesh!

Can anyone explain to me why any person of reasonable intelligence would choose the route by which we now choose to travel to our destinies? I can find no argument with the theory that the dominant urge in all of the species is to reproduce and thus keep the species alive and growing in numbers. But should not this higher level of the species, the human being who is so blessed with the highest level of brainpower, have, by this time learned from experience that competing to bed all the broads eventually leads to such delights as AIDS and all the numerous sexually transmitted diseases that are so well known to man? Should he not be able to see that such behavior simply leads to the destruction of the family unit that is so essential to the continued growth of the species? Should he not be able to see that continually copulating can only result in the degradation of the species to the same level as the other animals of lower intellect?

Can anyone tell me why we are so determined to pursue this course to our own destruction such that we elect jackasses to our highest leadership positions . . . the presidency and the Congress of our beloved country because they make it easy for us to enjoy the pleasures of today instead of building toward the greatness that tomorrow could bring?

Yes, they pass laws that encourage fornication . . . that encourage pregnancy with no one being responsible for the product of that pregnancy except a government that really doesn't give a hoot? It is a government, in fact, that seems to wish to encourage the citizens to grow to maturity with the mental capabilities that have never grown beyond that of a seven year old child . . . correct me if I am wrong, but did I not read somewhere that Madison Avenue points all advertising programs at a seven year old's level of intelligence, because that is where the great masses of our citizens seem to stop seeking knowledge and just vegetate! Can it be that our politicians want our citizens to remain barely post embryonic in intelligence, because it makes it easier for the politicians to lead us around by the rings in our noses? Do you suppose that this is the reason why neither the president nor the Congress is doing anything about the invasion of the illiterate from Mexico . . . because they need the dumb votes to keep them in office while they trade back and forth to channel our tax monies into their own pockets, thus growing fat on pork? Do you suppose that this is the primary driving force that caused the Democratic Congress that we voted into office to save us from those dishonest Republicans, to pass legislation that unrealistically sets a time schedule to end a war, when any damn fool knows that no war can be so realistically programmed except through complete surrender? Do you suppose that, in their zeal to get the legislation passed, they agreed to all those pork deals because they had to do so, or they could not have got the votes to pass that stupid bill?

Does not anyone realize that, sooner or later, the numbers of 'citizens' who produce nothing of value, including offspring, will so far out-number those who pay the taxes, that those who have been paying the taxes will ask themselves if they are not on the wrong side of the equation?

Yes, they will all give up, and quit working, and, therefore, quit paying taxes, and will get in line for a share of the goodies from the government!

So then the government will have to take over all businesses, make it illegal for anyone to remain unemployed, and our present socialistic state will have evolved into the very kind of state that Representative McCarthy used to hold his meetings to criticize!

Communism, here we come!

Monday, March 26, 2007

What about the Mexican invasion?

Yes, what about it?

Our president has made it known that he is disposed in the direction of amnesty for the Mexicans who have already entered this country illegally. Since the Congress has shown little or no inclination to stop it, it can reasonably be assumed that there is no objection to amnesty from that quarter.

So what comes next?

After amnesty, it can also be reasonably assumed that these people will be treated much the same as legal immigrants, and that taxpayer monies will be used to help them get settled!

So what comes next?

Legally, they will have no voting status, yet each party would like to claim them as its own. To effectively do this, the Democrats, who now control both houses of Congress, will want to next revise the laws of the land such that they can have the right to citizenship and the vote much sooner than the current law allows, and will begin moving in that direction. It is also probable that the president will not want to go on record as having used his power of veto to keep this from happening. The Republicans in Congress will be divided, adding to the very favorable movement in the direction of changing the law, but the Democrats will go down in history as having first advocated the change. Whenever that change occurs, the Democrats will make political hay, assuring these new citizens that they were responsible for their new voting status,
the Republicans will claim that it was their idea in the first place, and a great many votes will be placed on the block for whichever party is most convincing.

It is well, now, for the reader to remember that an important part of the rather lengthy time period that new immigrants must wait prior to being allowed to vote, was placed there in order to give the prospective new citizens time to learn our language, something of our history, and the fundamentals of the way our government works. If they are made citizens too soon, and especially true in the case of the huge numbers of immigrants involved, the effect will be that this particular bloc of new citizens, many of whom will not speak our language, and will know little about our history, will be more easily manipulated by clever talking politicians, thus assuring that we will have a Congress of even more inept membership and cupidity than is presently the case.

Dear reader, that is a thumbnail sketch of what can be expected in the next few years. Our leaders, our employees that we will have voted into office, will be devoting more of their time to jockeying for favorable times to introduce new legislation to secure the vote for these uninvited immigrants that to the business of running our country, which should be their primary interest!

So what comes next?

You, dear reader, come next! You will need to be ever alert to what is really going on in Congress, rather than what appears to be going on! If this all develops into the power play that I have just described, you will need to use your vote wisely to maintain a balance of sanity in our government!

Think about it!

Henry http://henry-letsgetreal.blogspot.com

Saturday, March 24, 2007

What is going on in Washington, DC?

This past November, the citizens of this great country voted to take control away from the Republican party, and give it to the Democrats. No one was greatly surprised at the outcome, for there was good reason to look for a change.

Actually things weren't all that bad . . . the economy was in good shape, the bottom had not yet dropped out of the housing market, unemployment as a percentage of the total populace was not all that bad . . . we had several million unemployed, most of whom were unemployed by choice, but that could have been handled easily by a few simple laws that would set limits on how many relief checks an individual could collect over a reasonable period of time, and by prosecuting those who were receiving more than one check at a time. The war in Iraq was being badly mismanaged, we were allowing Iran to spit in our faces in the Mid-east, and the Columbians were shipping drugs by the plane load into our markets. The biggest problem that most of us were concerned about, aside from the war, was the influx of millions of Mexicans across our borders, which our president said he found no fault with, because we had no labor force to do the kind of stoop labor that the Mexicans were willing to do. Of course, we did have millions of citizens drawing relief checks who were not even looking for jobs, and could not have found them anyway, because they hadn't learned the three R's in school . . . that is, they couldn't have found jobs that paid what they would have liked, but they could have done the same work that the Mexicans were coming over here to do!

Be that as it may. We just kicked out the Republicans and hired the Democrats to clean up the mess in Washington and now, here we are, going into the second quarter of the first year the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress, and what have they accomplished? Why, instead of working on the problems mentioned above and others not mentioned, they are sitting up there drawing big salaries to argue among themselves, and to conduct a big political investigation into why 8 prosecutors were fired a short time ago!

Let me ask each of you a question: Do you believe that an employer does not have the right to discharge any employee for good reason? When air traffic controllers refused to go to work, tying up the nations primary transportation system, and all over a wage dispute, President Reagan fired the whole lot of them! Do you believe that the man who invests his money in a business has no right to run that business in the way that he feels he needs to, if he wants to stay in business? Did we hire 400 plus Congressmen and 100 senators to sit up there on their posteriors and haggle over the jobs of 8 prosecutors who were fired by their boss for what he thought was good reason. If any of the 8 felt that he had been wrongfully or illegally fired, why hasn't he sought protection under the laws of the land?
I seem to recall that, during the election campaign last year, that everytime we asked the Democrats to define their plans for running the country if they were elected, none stepped forward to offer a plan!
Please understand that I am not saying that we should have kept the Republicans in office. I am simply pointing out that, having thrown them out, how have things improved?
As a matter of fact, once any politician gets into office, he seems to forget everything that he was supposed to do to improve things when he got elected, and so he sits up there, each of them shooting at the members of the other party, and leaves the country to run itself! And we, poor fools that voted them into office, cannot do a thing about it!

Well, now wait a minute . . . I have allowed myself to get slightly carried away! Here I sit at my computer, blogging away, hoping to arouse some enthusiasm on the part of fellow bloggers to stir things up, and get these misguided politicians back to work! Now, it is an accepted fact that bloggers have become a major influence on events and such in just a few years. If you think, as I do, that when a person is hired to do a job, and he doesn't do it, he should at least be strongly reprimanded by his employer, and aren't we the employers of those politicians? And if we speak as a unified voice loudly enough, does it not seem reasonable that we can get them worried about the next election? After all, that is only a year or so away for many of them, and so why don't we just speak loudly and say that if they do not get their act together, we will fire every incumbent who runs for election in the next four years, and in every election thereafter? And, beleive me, if we get them to really understand that this is not just idle talk, but exactly what we will do, they will get their act together, and they will handle any miscreants amoung them who do not toe the line!

What do we want them to do? Well, how about closing the borders of our country, and if the president of Mexico doesn't like it, then we can revoke NAFTA, as well. And what about doing something real about the Social Security mess, instead of just talking about it? And how about firing all the incompetent federal judges scattered around the country? And how about either putting a large enough force of troops in Iraq to do the job, or pulling all of them out? And how about throwing the United Nations out of our country . . . they are trying to get us to agree to a sort of one nation rule in the world, with the UN running everything. They want to have the right to raise taxes on the citizens of this country, when we are already paying most of the costs of operating that den of two-bit nations who always vote against us, no matter what! And what about giving the President the line-item veto, which would bring a halt to a lot of the taxpayer money that is being used to get these politicians re-elected?

So have I rattled your cages long enough? Is there anyone out there with the courage to stand up for his rights, besides this 85 (almost) year old man? And do we need to run our own candidate for president and congressman and senator in future elections? Hey, if you want to do big things, you have to think big!

O.K., now it is your turn . . . let's see what you are made of!

The Mountain Lion Attack

In checking the blogsite this morning to see if anyone had taken umbrage at any of my remarks, I found a couple of supportive comments, both very welcome, and the last one even intriguing! I knew from the reference to a mountain lion attack that it had to be from a friend or relative with whom I had shared a story of a cougar attack some years ago. However, the comment was signed "Anonymous", so I have since been speculating on which friend or relative might have sent the comment!

About the time the attack was reported to have taken place, there had been a number of sightings of cougar in our small town during the winter and spring months just passed, most likely due to the heavy snow in the mountains. This usually makes it difficult for the deer to find adequate forage, and so they come down out of the mountains to our valley areas where the snow rarely falls, and where there can always be found the farmer's and rancher's haystacks and other suitable forage. Since the cougar depend primarily on the deer for their sustenance, they tend to follow them down to the valleys. This does not necessarily solve the cougar's problem, as the more open valleys make it difficult for the cougar to successfully stalk the always alert deer. It is not the nature of a hungry cougar to put of eating any longer than absolutely necessary, so they sometimes venture into town in search of the unwary dog or cat . . . or . . .?

Those were younger days whe I fancied myself to be something of a story teller, and so I came up with an idea for an April Fools day story about my being attacked by a cougar. All this by way of putting the reader's mind at rest . . .

Of course, if I ever figure out for sure who the author of that comment was, I will not reveal his or her name, thus respecting his or her wish to remain anonymous.

Henry

http://henry-letsgetreal.blogspot.com

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Getting to know me . . .

Yes, as you can see from the small photo, I am an old man . . . soon to be 85 years old, if the Lord is willing!

I am content to believe that senile dementia has not yet seriously eroded my mental capabilities.

I have a high school education, spent slightly more than four years in the military during WWII, became proficient in electronics by reading everything I could find on the subject, and, when I was discharged from the Air Force at the end of the war, I was able to find work as an electronic technician, repairing radios, phonographs, and television receivers when television became locally available. I took and passed the tests for an FCC Radiotelephone Operators license, and for an Amateur Radio Operators license, as well. I later was able to get a better job as a Field Service Manager for Magnavox, calling on its dealers in all or parts of seven states, and helping them to solve any service problems that they might be having with Magnavox products.

Later, I applied for a job as a Regional Sales manager for Magnavox, and was accepted for that job.

The balance of my business career was spent at factory level with various national producers of consumer electronics products. When the off-shore manufacturers began to dominate the business, I was able to continue in my chosen field, even after most of the national companies had closed their doors or sold out to the offshore companies. I was out of work for the main part of two years after age fifty, finally getting my last job prior to retirement because I was the only applicant for the position that could meet all the requirements. After about nine years with that company, I retired from a position as the Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Communications and Test Equipment for The Kenwood USA Corporation.

During the war, I trained to become an aircraft pilot, and was subsequently qualified to fly nineteen different types of military aircraft. I logged over 1000 hours of flight time, with about half of it being in the old DC-3 type aircraft. Periodically, since my retirement, I have purchased a flying lesson, just to see if I could still handle an aircraft, and I always do the flying, including takeoff and landing, even though I may never have flown the type before.

Don't you think that this sounds much like a Horatio Alger, Jr. story? I bet most of my readers have never even heard of that once popular author. He wrote countless stories about young men, who rose from the lowest paying jobs in the company to become the president of the company, or, at least, the manager of one of its main offices. He did all his writing around the start of the twentieth century, just about 100 years ago! I think I have read them all, as a young boy.

That is my life's story, in a nutshell, and it has been fun! I hope that all who read this enjoy their lives as much!

Henry

Photo of old Grumpy!

You will note that I have added a photo of myself on this page, so that, now the reader will have something to put on his dartboard!
Did you ever notice how, in our post-WWII generations, no one seems to want to take responsibility for his(her) actions? In my own family, yes, my own offspring, if something goes wrong, they always seem to contrive some logic that proves that it is not their fault! I feel sorry for such persons . . . they will never know the feeling of pride and satisfaction that comes from standing before a judge and saying, "It was my fault!" as I did at a hearing on an automobile accident that I caused in a moment of carelessness at a lonely crossroads one time, years ago. Not pride that I had caused the accident to happen, but pride that I had the guts to stand up and take the consequences, whatever the judgement might be. Fortunately, no one was injured, so the damage to the other car, which struck my car over the left rear wheel as I ran a stop sign that I just didn't see, was limited to rather light front end damage. I had rather an exciting ride down off the side of the road and into the ditch after the collision, but I was able to drive my car out of the ditch. The other fellow's car had radiator damage and had to be towed. The judge gave me a rather stern lecture on the dangers of not watching more carefully, adding that I could be killed in such cases. I was appropriately contrite, and he made a judgement in favor of the other fellow, which was as it should have been. I have often wondered if my being taught the three answers in the Air Corps . . . yes, sir, no, sir, and no excuse, sir . . . when I was a flying cadet during WWII had anything to do with my unhesitating acceptance of responsibility for my actions. I am not sure how my insurance company felt about my response, but they paid to fix the other man's automobile, and my own, as well! Since then, I have often enjoyed the look on some of the younger generation's faces when I confess to being responsible for some incident or policy that they found to be less than pleasurable . . .Comments? Henry http://henry-letsgetreal.blogspot.com

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

So what is real?

Well might you ask! It seems patently evident that our politicans and the educational community could use a little coaching on exactly what is real! To paraphrase a comment once made by Douglas MacArthur, to wage war is foolish and is always a losing proposition, even if you absolutely win! What are we doing in Iraq these days? There is very little evidence that our political leadership is trying to win the war, and don't ask what war. I know that our president declared that the war was over some years ago, but our troops in Iraq are daily fighting for their lives, trying with limited manpower to ferret out the insurgents who are trying to win back Iraq for themselves. On top of those disquieting facts, Iran keeps supplying arms and manpower to the so-called insurgents and we sit here doing nothing about it! It is incredible to me that we choose not to build up our armed forces and move into Iran and subdue them in no uncertain terms. They are as much our enemy as are the insurgents in Iraq! I am sorry that we went into Iraq, but now that we are in there, there can be no satisfactory end to it other than to completely crush all opposition! If our leaders are concerned about our image as it appears to the rest of the world, they certainly do not give evidence of true concern.

And how do our educators come into this picture? Simple enough! They refuse to acknowledge that all men are not equal! How do they expect to teach children who are assigned to classes where substantial numbers of the students do not even speak or understand the English language? If the teaching curriculum is programmed to concentrate on teaching the students who cannot even communicate in our language, what are they doing meanwhile to teach the students who CAN read and write in the language of our land? Is it so hard to understand that those classes have to be split into groups (classes) so that those who are able to learn more rapidly are challenged to do so, and that failure to do this leaves the best student material languishing in the background, listening to the teacher trying to get through to those who have no idea what he(she) is talking about!

Now I may not have done a proper job of making my point, but surely there are those of you out there who know what I am talking about. We have got to learn to stop kidding ourselves and face facts. We are rapidly losing "face" in the rest of the world because we do not insist that our educational system be run efficiently to get the job done of educating our children, and until we do, that system will continue to put out an inferior product.

O.K., I have opened the can of worms . . . now let's hear what some of the rest of you think!

Henry

http://henry-letsgetreal.blogspot.com

Welcome to me!

Voila! I seem to have figured out how to get my material posted on my new blogsite! "Nuff said!

I have also received some good advice from a friend to the effect that I should sign all comments with my name and blog address.

Part of the problem I have been experiencing has to do with the need for me to learn an entirely new language . . . Bear with me, dear readers (if any?) maturity comes with the passing of time!

Now I will sign off, and try to concoct something to post that is worthy of the reader's time!

Henry

http://henry-letsgetreal.blogspot.com

There ain't no justice!

I don't know why I keep trying to put something on my blog site . . . somehow or other, what I type seems to sort of evaporate and float off into the deep dark recesses of the site operator's manufacture, never to be seen or heard of again! A word of caution to other new bloggers . . . Be especially carful when you choose to edit your material . . . I lost a half hours typing, and several days of mental composition that way! And don't give up! I did, and found a place where I could contact the blog operators . . . I asked them to just cancel my application and clear their records of anything I had written . . . they advised me that there was no provision for new bloggers to cancel, but if I would just go to the page where I had entered all the data for my profile and erase everything I had put in there, that would do the trick! I never found out if it worked or not . . . I could never find the "My Profile" page!

Does anyone care?