I got this in an e-mail this morning. I figured that Ricky, Mumsee and some others might understand the logic. I haven’t verified the conclusion. I don’t know these people.
Here in west Texas , I have rattlesnakes on my place, living among us.
I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I have killed a
rattlesnake on the back porch.
I have killed rattlesnakes in the barn, in the shop and on the driveway.
In fact, I kill every rattlesnake I encounter. I kill rattlesnakes
because I know a rattlesnake will bite me and inject me with venom. I
don’t stop
to wonder WHY a rattlesnake will bite me; I know it WILL bite me
because it’s a rattlesnake and that’s what rattlesnakes do.
I don’t try to reason with a rattlesnake or have a “meaningful
dialogue” with it. I just kill it.
I don’t try to get to know the rattlesnake better so I can find a way
to live with the rattlesnakes and convince them not to bite me. I
just kill them.
I don’t quiz a rattlesnake to see if I can find out where the other
snakes are, because (a) it won’t tell me and (b) I already know they
live on my place. So, I just kill the rattlesnake and move on to the
next one.
I don’t look for ways I might be able to change the rattlesnake to a
non-poisonous rat snake. I just kill it. Oh, and on occasion, I
accidentally kill a rat snake because I thought it was a rattlesnake
at the time.
Also, I know for every rattlesnake I kill, two more are lurking out
there in the brush. In my lifetime I will never be able to rid my
place of rattlesnakes.
Do I fear them? Not really. Do I respect what they can do to me and
my family? Yes!
And because of that respect, I give them the fair justice they
deserve. I kill them. As a country, we should start giving more
thought to the fact that these jihadists’ are telling the world their
goal is to kill Americans and destroy our way of life.
They have posted graphic videos on the internet showing them beheading
Americans. They are serious. They are exactly like rattlesnakes. It
is high time for us to start acting accordingly!
I love this country. It’s the damn government I’m afraid of! Why?
Look who’s new in the White House!
Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security
Mohammed Elibiary, Homeland Security Adviser
Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC)
Salam al-Marayati, Obama adviser and founder of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council and is its current executive director
Imam Mohamed Magid,Obama’s Sharia Czar from the Islamic Society of North America
Eboo Patel, Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships
This is flat-out scary! The foxes are now officially living in the
hen house… Now ask me why I am very concerned! Do you feel OK with
this? How can this happen? – and when will we wake up? We are quiet
while our country is being drastically changed!
You forgot one…… Huma and her family have been running in those circles too. And still she was allowed access to the highest positions of power, and our State Dept. info. And if Hillary has her way, she will yet again.
“Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.
One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign Web site is her support for the UN women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.
However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-First Lady Clinton.”
“Huma continued to work for her mother’s journal through 2008. She is listed as “assistant editor” on the masthead of the 2002 issue in which her mother suggested the US was doomed to be attacked on 9/11 because of “sanctions” it leveled against Iraq and other “injustices” allegedly heaped on the Muslim world. Here is an excerpt:
“The spiral of violence having continued unabated worldwide, and widely seen to be allowed to continue, was building up intense anger and hostility within the pressure cooker that was kept on a vigorous flame while the lid was weighted down with various kinds of injustices and sanctions . . . It was a time bomb that had to explode and explode it did on September 11, changing in its wake the life and times of the very community and the people it aimed to serve.”
Huma Abedin is Clinton’s longest-serving and, by all accounts, most loyal aide. The devout, Saudi-raised Muslim started working for her in the White House, then followed her to the Senate and later the State Department. She’s now helping run Clinton’s presidential campaign as vice chair and may end up back in the White House.”
On the bright side, heterosexuality seems to be making a comeback. We went to the Chevy dealership after church and a large number of the new Camaros had manual transmissions.
Women can shift gears too.
Elvera never used automatic transmission until 1966, First new car we bought.
Chuck taught his girls to use standard transmission.
Y’all are missing the point. My wife can drive a standard. I’m not insulting women. I’m insulting “men” who would buy a sports car with an automatic transmission.
When real estate took at turn for the worst in 2008 I briefly worked in a car dealership. I was in the used car/internet department. I ran the internet, There was a Pontiac Firebird in the showroom next to my desk. All the young sales guys would come look at the car. They were really impressed. I watched this for a week or so until word came that the care needed to be backed out of the showroom and put on the lot so another car could come in. All those young men stood around wondering which one of them should try to move it. None of them knew how to drive a manual transmission. Finally I walked over, asked for the keys and drove it out of the showroom. They stood around in awe. 2008 was the worst year of my life so far and I really needed to do something to make myself feel good that day. That was it. I still laugh about it.
Guy who runs our indoor-outdoor military museum in town — which includes lots of WWII and other vintage military vehicles that still run — told me how none of the younger guys volunteering knew how to drive a stick shift anymore.
Some good points made here on conservatives turning against other conservatives in Trump vs. ‘never’ Trump factions and this (miserable) election (and quoting from a piece by Andrew Klavan of PJ Media):
… The main merit in Klaven’s column resides not in his speculation about the Trump generation gap, but in his plea for mutual respect, or at least civility, between the two points of view.
Klavan says of the choice conservatives face in November:
“[F]or me this is a hard decision. And the thing about hard decisions is: they’re hard.
“They do not allow for stridency. They are not conducive to smashing your fist into your palm and slinging names at people who disagree with you. They force you to respect the other good men and women who are wrestling with their consciences in a difficult moment.”
Exactly.
“Angry charges that our fellow conservatives ‘sold out,’ or ‘stabbed us in the back,’ are nearly always absurd. Most of us are just trying to figure out what’s right for the right. When the choices are impossible, reasonable people may disagree.” …
… We haven’t seen intra-party animus of comparable intensity in a very long time, arguably not for more than a century. We’re bound to see it now. But the less of it we see, the better.
_________________________
The Huma Abedin situation is very interesting. When you consider that she is Hillary’s top aide AND is married to the infamous New York communist and deviant Anthony Weiner, there are two plausible narratives:
1. Radical Islam has placed a mole in the heart of the US government; and
2. A traditional Saudi girl fell in with some very bad Yankees.
Is she Mata Hari or is she the Lillian Gish character from Broken Blossoms? My Southern chivalry and natural instincts make me want to choose the second option, but the wise counsel of Chas makes me think that both narratives may be true.
Kim H,
Somehow whenever I see your picture I want to see long, flowing curls around your face. I always like women with short hair, but somehow “Southern Belles” always have long hair with a be-flowered hat framing their smiling faces!
I never learned to drive a standard transmission–and I’m sure I’m the only one in my family who can say that, since I know my younger brother and sister both can, and my older brothers are all baby boomers.
When I was looking to get my first car, the neighbor who taught me to drive told me not to “rule out” buying a standard, but I didn’t want to. So she decided she would show me what a standard transmission was like to drive, and let me make up my own mind. (She delivered papers, and thus drove an automatic–or maybe it was irrelevant to the paper delivery, I don’t know, but the car I learned on was an automatic.) She replied to an ad for a standard transmission car, and when we test drove it, she drove it away from the couple’s house. First she was going to drive it and show me what I needed to know, and then once we were out away from traffic a little bit, she was going to let me get a feel for the car. So she stopped the car using just the brake, not the clutch, to show me what would happen.
And she stalled the car. And couldn’t get it started again.
She had to call the number from the ad (fortunately she had it with her) and tell them where to come get their car to jump it. They explained sheepishly that the car hadn’t been driven much recently. We didn’t look at any other standard transmission cars.
Fast forward a few years, and I was in Chicago, with a guy friend who drove a standard transmission. I asked him if he could teach me to drive it, and his response was “I’m not going to let you ruin my car by driving it when you don’t know how to drive a standard transmission.” Oh, OK. Whatever.
I also had a girl friend who drove standard. One day she parked illegally at a curb and told me she was going to run into the bank and would just be a minute, and if a policeman came along, please drive the car around the block a time or two. Not till she disappeared into the bank did I remember I couldn’t drive her car. Fortunately no policemen showed up!
I have a brother who drives for UPS in Dallas–well, sometimes he drives for them and sometimes he loads trucks. I think he’s back to loading trucks, since he wanted to go part-time and that was the only way they’d do it. Anyway, he had a co-worker who wanted a trucking job, but didn’t know how to drive stick, and he had to know even to get started. My brother offered to teach him, but he had to find a vehicle to learn on, and I don’t think he managed to track one down. It isn’t easy even to find standard-transmission vehicles anymore. Even U-Hauls are automatic, with the assumption no one drives standard anymore.
Cheryl, my hubby has a stick shift and I know quite well how to drive it. I rarely have need to use it but he swears he can tell by the feel of the clutch that I’ve driven it.
“Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.
The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”
Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.”
“Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.
The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified.
Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.
“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told the Washington Free Beacon.
“There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico,” she said.
The infiltrators from terrorist states and unstable regions exploit vulnerabilities in commercial transportation systems and immigration enforcement agencies in some of the countries used for transit, Garcia said.
“In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said.”
Oh look, the FBI has discovered 15,000 new Clinton emails. Must be the “previously deleted” bunch. But of course the Dept. of Injustice will delay release until after the election.
“The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.
Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton’s work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among “tens of thousands” of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.
The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.”
AJ, We’ll watch that Southern border, but please make sure that neither Anthony Weiner nor Hillary migrates down to Texas. I understand Weiner may now be unemployed, and I know you are working to make sure Hillary is also unemployed. It is bad enough for them to be a bad influence on Saudi girls. I would not want them to contribute to the delinquency of one of ours.
My mother could not drive a manual transmission and as we all know by now I have lived my life by asking “What Would Mother Do?” and doing the opposite. We did not have a manual transmission when I learned to drive, but it seems that almost all the guys I ever went out with did. At some point during most dates I got to drive the car–there is more than one way to learn something 😉
My most serious boyfriend (3+years) is really the one who taught me to drive a manual transmission. We went to an empty parking lot and I stopped, started, drove the car from parking space to parking space. He had a wry sense of humor. He told me he was going to go home and his mother would going to say “G there is a thousand more miles on the car” and he was going to reply, “It’s OK Mom, they were all in 1st and 2nd gear”
I miss driving a manual. I have admitted to having New Car Fever but still suffer from Car Payment Allergy. I looked online at the new Mazda Miata’s. OHHHH. They are so cute. I can really see me in one. I just can’t see me paying for one. 😦
I remember when automatic transmissions became standard on cars.
I had turn signals installed on my first car, a ’50 Chevy, so I wouldn’t have to roll down the window for a hand signal every time I made a turn.
Do any of you remember the hand signals?
I remember arm signals. And learned the standard a long time ago. And certainly understand somebody not wanting to use their own car to train a new driver. And enjoy the look of awe on the faces of young men learning to drive, after they have stalled a half dozen times, and an old lady hops into the drivers seat and takes off with gusto. Tee hee.
I predict a shakeup for Fox in the year following this election as the station comes under new management and the fallout of the 2016 presidential race continues to be felt
_____________________________
Kirsten Powers, a regular on Fox News for the past decade, is switching channels.
Powers is joining CNN as a political analyst, effective immediately, CNN announced Monday morning. She will continue to write columns for USA Today.
Her first appearance will be on “Anderson Cooper 360” Monday night.
Powers is the fourth Fox personality hired by CNN in the past 18 months, joining co-host Alisyn Camerota, liberal commentator Bob Beckel and conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham.
The timing of her move is newsworthy because it comes one month after the founding CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, resigned under pressure amid a sexual harassment scandal.
There has been press speculation about a potential “talent exodus” from Fox in the wake of Ailes’ resignation. Some of Fox’s biggest stars have clauses in their contracts that allow them to leave because Ailes left. …
__________________________________
I learned to drive a stick in a sink-or-swim way — with my used VW bug. Lots of lurching at first. 🙂
When I moved the last time, I thought I’d get a jump on the movers and take some stuff over on my own the weekend before they were coming. So I rented a u-haul but it was a stick. Didn’t think that would be a problem, but the clutch was pretty hard to push — and I realized belatedly that my house was accessed only by a very steep hill that had numerous stop signs.
Kirsten Powers is my favorite liberal. I will watch her some on CNN. I actually hope Trump starts The Trump Network after the election if he would take Hannity and O’Reilly. Fox needs leadership. It is interesting Roger Ailes seemed to have the support of good people like Brit Hume even though he was apparently a pretty bad actor.
Never learned to drive a stick much to the shock of my Eastern European wife and her friends. Like Ricky, they made judgements on masculinity based on how well you handled a stick. I simply stated I was quite comfortable with my masculinity and didn’t need to push a “stick” up and down, back and forth to prove otherwise.
I liked Weiner for his politics. However, I can never understand how grown men esp in the public eye can’t behave with decorum. I suppose when you have a last name like that the behaviour was inevitable. The behaviour and ideas of his wife are also interesting. The Muslim community doesn’t quite understand how to integrate modern feminism into their community, culture and religion. Modern feminism is a western concept that doesn’t work well outside of the “Enlightenment” cultures of western Europe and the Anglo-sphere. Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia and the Muslim world all have “processed” feminism differently and not always in easily recognizable forms.
There’s no doubt Clinton is corrupt and I don’t think anyone is arguing she isn’t. The argument can be; is it relevant? After all Trump is also corrupt. He even admits it — “No one knows the system better than me”. The real question is who is competent and will act in America’s interests. Trump is a failed businessman who was never in charge of an elected office. He’s also a narcissistic selfish brat who only acts in his own interest — check out the legions of people who he left with unpaid bills in his four bankruptcies.
The current Benghazi/email scandal making attempts play well to the Republican base but no one else is listening. For over 25 years, Republicans have criticized and accused Clinton and more often than not have been wrong or have exaggerated. They have become the boy who cried wolf. They can cry corruption, incompetence, etc but the rest of America just shrugs its shoulders.
And really do you want an incorruptible president — I like Jimmy Carter and he may have been the best behaved president but he was not the best.
Breitbart, Ailes and Hannity have gone all in with Trump. I wonder when the dust settles will we see a new stridently right wing media network with the above characters all playing a role. Like FOX but on steroids. Rachel Maddow did an interesting piece in which she connected some Trump’s most outrageous tweets to article posted previously on Breitbart. With the recent campaign shakeup, it appears the echo chamber will get even mor dense.
HRW, It’s no fun to drive a 455 horsepower Camaro with an automatic. The 2016-2017 SS model may be the best sports car ever made. Zero to sixty in four seconds flat. Excellent handling and braking. The key is that it is 300 pounds lighter than the 2015 model. That earlier model was Elizabeth Taylor in her late 30s – still beautiful, but a little heavy. That extra weight would not let the old SS keep up with the Mustang GT.
Kim, I trained my son to drive a standard exactly as you were taught. If you can park the car, the rest is easy. My son learned in a 150 horsepower Hyundai Elantra. I learned in a 348 horsepower 1964 Pontiac GTO. That car was a little scary.
Wandering Views 
I got this in an e-mail this morning. I figured that Ricky, Mumsee and some others might understand the logic. I haven’t verified the conclusion. I don’t know these people.
Here in west Texas , I have rattlesnakes on my place, living among us.
I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I have killed a
rattlesnake on the back porch.
I have killed rattlesnakes in the barn, in the shop and on the driveway.
In fact, I kill every rattlesnake I encounter. I kill rattlesnakes
because I know a rattlesnake will bite me and inject me with venom. I
don’t stop
to wonder WHY a rattlesnake will bite me; I know it WILL bite me
because it’s a rattlesnake and that’s what rattlesnakes do.
I don’t try to reason with a rattlesnake or have a “meaningful
dialogue” with it. I just kill it.
I don’t try to get to know the rattlesnake better so I can find a way
to live with the rattlesnakes and convince them not to bite me. I
just kill them.
I don’t quiz a rattlesnake to see if I can find out where the other
snakes are, because (a) it won’t tell me and (b) I already know they
live on my place. So, I just kill the rattlesnake and move on to the
next one.
I don’t look for ways I might be able to change the rattlesnake to a
non-poisonous rat snake. I just kill it. Oh, and on occasion, I
accidentally kill a rat snake because I thought it was a rattlesnake
at the time.
Also, I know for every rattlesnake I kill, two more are lurking out
there in the brush. In my lifetime I will never be able to rid my
place of rattlesnakes.
Do I fear them? Not really. Do I respect what they can do to me and
my family? Yes!
And because of that respect, I give them the fair justice they
deserve. I kill them. As a country, we should start giving more
thought to the fact that these jihadists’ are telling the world their
goal is to kill Americans and destroy our way of life.
They have posted graphic videos on the internet showing them beheading
Americans. They are serious. They are exactly like rattlesnakes. It
is high time for us to start acting accordingly!
I love this country. It’s the damn government I’m afraid of! Why?
Look who’s new in the White House!
Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security
Mohammed Elibiary, Homeland Security Adviser
Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC)
Salam al-Marayati, Obama adviser and founder of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council and is its current executive director
Imam Mohamed Magid,Obama’s Sharia Czar from the Islamic Society of North America
Eboo Patel, Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships
This is flat-out scary! The foxes are now officially living in the
hen house… Now ask me why I am very concerned! Do you feel OK with
this? How can this happen? – and when will we wake up? We are quiet
while our country is being drastically changed!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Chas,
You forgot one…… Huma and her family have been running in those circles too. And still she was allowed access to the highest positions of power, and our State Dept. info. And if Hillary has her way, she will yet again.
http://nypost.com/2016/08/21/huma-abedin-worked-at-a-radical-muslim-journal-for-10-years/
“Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.
One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign Web site is her support for the UN women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.
However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-First Lady Clinton.”
“Huma continued to work for her mother’s journal through 2008. She is listed as “assistant editor” on the masthead of the 2002 issue in which her mother suggested the US was doomed to be attacked on 9/11 because of “sanctions” it leveled against Iraq and other “injustices” allegedly heaped on the Muslim world. Here is an excerpt:
“The spiral of violence having continued unabated worldwide, and widely seen to be allowed to continue, was building up intense anger and hostility within the pressure cooker that was kept on a vigorous flame while the lid was weighted down with various kinds of injustices and sanctions . . . It was a time bomb that had to explode and explode it did on September 11, changing in its wake the life and times of the very community and the people it aimed to serve.”
Huma Abedin is Clinton’s longest-serving and, by all accounts, most loyal aide. The devout, Saudi-raised Muslim started working for her in the White House, then followed her to the Senate and later the State Department. She’s now helping run Clinton’s presidential campaign as vice chair and may end up back in the White House.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
On the bright side, heterosexuality seems to be making a comeback. We went to the Chevy dealership after church and a large number of the new Camaros had manual transmissions.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Women can shift gears too.
Elvera never used automatic transmission until 1966, First new car we bought.
Chuck taught his girls to use standard transmission.
LikeLiked by 3 people
All the females in my family can and do drive stick shifts. I didn’t have an automatic car until about 15 years ago.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Y’all are missing the point. My wife can drive a standard. I’m not insulting women. I’m insulting “men” who would buy a sports car with an automatic transmission.
LikeLiked by 2 people
When real estate took at turn for the worst in 2008 I briefly worked in a car dealership. I was in the used car/internet department. I ran the internet, There was a Pontiac Firebird in the showroom next to my desk. All the young sales guys would come look at the car. They were really impressed. I watched this for a week or so until word came that the care needed to be backed out of the showroom and put on the lot so another car could come in. All those young men stood around wondering which one of them should try to move it. None of them knew how to drive a manual transmission. Finally I walked over, asked for the keys and drove it out of the showroom. They stood around in awe. 2008 was the worst year of my life so far and I really needed to do something to make myself feel good that day. That was it. I still laugh about it.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Oh. Gotcha.
LikeLike
Guy who runs our indoor-outdoor military museum in town — which includes lots of WWII and other vintage military vehicles that still run — told me how none of the younger guys volunteering knew how to drive a stick shift anymore.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some good points made here on conservatives turning against other conservatives in Trump vs. ‘never’ Trump factions and this (miserable) election (and quoting from a piece by Andrew Klavan of PJ Media):
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/theres-too-much-conservative-on-conservative-disparagement.php
__________________________
… The main merit in Klaven’s column resides not in his speculation about the Trump generation gap, but in his plea for mutual respect, or at least civility, between the two points of view.
Klavan says of the choice conservatives face in November:
“[F]or me this is a hard decision. And the thing about hard decisions is: they’re hard.
“They do not allow for stridency. They are not conducive to smashing your fist into your palm and slinging names at people who disagree with you. They force you to respect the other good men and women who are wrestling with their consciences in a difficult moment.”
Exactly.
“Angry charges that our fellow conservatives ‘sold out,’ or ‘stabbed us in the back,’ are nearly always absurd. Most of us are just trying to figure out what’s right for the right. When the choices are impossible, reasonable people may disagree.” …
… We haven’t seen intra-party animus of comparable intensity in a very long time, arguably not for more than a century. We’re bound to see it now. But the less of it we see, the better.
_________________________
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Kim ran the internet! Wow.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The Huma Abedin situation is very interesting. When you consider that she is Hillary’s top aide AND is married to the infamous New York communist and deviant Anthony Weiner, there are two plausible narratives:
1. Radical Islam has placed a mole in the heart of the US government; and
2. A traditional Saudi girl fell in with some very bad Yankees.
Is she Mata Hari or is she the Lillian Gish character from Broken Blossoms? My Southern chivalry and natural instincts make me want to choose the second option, but the wise counsel of Chas makes me think that both narratives may be true.
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Department, internet department
LikeLiked by 2 people
Kim H,
Somehow whenever I see your picture I want to see long, flowing curls around your face. I always like women with short hair, but somehow “Southern Belles” always have long hair with a be-flowered hat framing their smiling faces!
Do I have it all wrong?
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I never learned to drive a standard transmission–and I’m sure I’m the only one in my family who can say that, since I know my younger brother and sister both can, and my older brothers are all baby boomers.
When I was looking to get my first car, the neighbor who taught me to drive told me not to “rule out” buying a standard, but I didn’t want to. So she decided she would show me what a standard transmission was like to drive, and let me make up my own mind. (She delivered papers, and thus drove an automatic–or maybe it was irrelevant to the paper delivery, I don’t know, but the car I learned on was an automatic.) She replied to an ad for a standard transmission car, and when we test drove it, she drove it away from the couple’s house. First she was going to drive it and show me what I needed to know, and then once we were out away from traffic a little bit, she was going to let me get a feel for the car. So she stopped the car using just the brake, not the clutch, to show me what would happen.
And she stalled the car. And couldn’t get it started again.
She had to call the number from the ad (fortunately she had it with her) and tell them where to come get their car to jump it. They explained sheepishly that the car hadn’t been driven much recently. We didn’t look at any other standard transmission cars.
Fast forward a few years, and I was in Chicago, with a guy friend who drove a standard transmission. I asked him if he could teach me to drive it, and his response was “I’m not going to let you ruin my car by driving it when you don’t know how to drive a standard transmission.” Oh, OK. Whatever.
I also had a girl friend who drove standard. One day she parked illegally at a curb and told me she was going to run into the bank and would just be a minute, and if a policeman came along, please drive the car around the block a time or two. Not till she disappeared into the bank did I remember I couldn’t drive her car. Fortunately no policemen showed up!
I have a brother who drives for UPS in Dallas–well, sometimes he drives for them and sometimes he loads trucks. I think he’s back to loading trucks, since he wanted to go part-time and that was the only way they’d do it. Anyway, he had a co-worker who wanted a trucking job, but didn’t know how to drive stick, and he had to know even to get started. My brother offered to teach him, but he had to find a vehicle to learn on, and I don’t think he managed to track one down. It isn’t easy even to find standard-transmission vehicles anymore. Even U-Hauls are automatic, with the assumption no one drives standard anymore.
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Cheryl, my hubby has a stick shift and I know quite well how to drive it. I rarely have need to use it but he swears he can tell by the feel of the clutch that I’ve driven it.
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More on Huma….
She and her boss are as dirty as they come. Pay to play is how they run things. What makes anyone think her presidency would be any different?
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/new-abedin-emails-reveal-hillary-clinton-state-department-gave-special-access-top-clinton-foundation-donors/
“Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.
The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”
Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.”
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I guess they’re just coming to do more of those jobs Americans don’t want to do, eh?
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/southern-command-warns-sunni-extremists-infiltrating-south/
“Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.
The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified.
Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.
“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told the Washington Free Beacon.
“There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico,” she said.
The infiltrators from terrorist states and unstable regions exploit vulnerabilities in commercial transportation systems and immigration enforcement agencies in some of the countries used for transit, Garcia said.
“In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said.”
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Oh look, the FBI has discovered 15,000 new Clinton emails. Must be the “previously deleted” bunch. But of course the Dept. of Injustice will delay release until after the election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fbi-uncovered-at-least-14900-more-documents-in-clinton-email-investigation/2016/08/22/36745578-6643-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?postshare=7261471876348830&tid=ss_tw
“The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.
Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton’s work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among “tens of thousands” of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.
The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.”
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AJ, We’ll watch that Southern border, but please make sure that neither Anthony Weiner nor Hillary migrates down to Texas. I understand Weiner may now be unemployed, and I know you are working to make sure Hillary is also unemployed. It is bad enough for them to be a bad influence on Saudi girls. I would not want them to contribute to the delinquency of one of ours.
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My mother could not drive a manual transmission and as we all know by now I have lived my life by asking “What Would Mother Do?” and doing the opposite. We did not have a manual transmission when I learned to drive, but it seems that almost all the guys I ever went out with did. At some point during most dates I got to drive the car–there is more than one way to learn something 😉
My most serious boyfriend (3+years) is really the one who taught me to drive a manual transmission. We went to an empty parking lot and I stopped, started, drove the car from parking space to parking space. He had a wry sense of humor. He told me he was going to go home and his mother would going to say “G there is a thousand more miles on the car” and he was going to reply, “It’s OK Mom, they were all in 1st and 2nd gear”
I miss driving a manual. I have admitted to having New Car Fever but still suffer from Car Payment Allergy. I looked online at the new Mazda Miata’s. OHHHH. They are so cute. I can really see me in one. I just can’t see me paying for one. 😦
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I learned to drive stick on a manual steering M35 Deuce and a Half. Good times. 🙂
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I remember when automatic transmissions became standard on cars.
I had turn signals installed on my first car, a ’50 Chevy, so I wouldn’t have to roll down the window for a hand signal every time I made a turn.
Do any of you remember the hand signals?
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Bob, I am more of a Reese Witherspoon southern belle than a Scarlett O’Hara. Although I do put off thinking about some things until tomorrow.
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I remember arm signals. And learned the standard a long time ago. And certainly understand somebody not wanting to use their own car to train a new driver. And enjoy the look of awe on the faces of young men learning to drive, after they have stalled a half dozen times, and an old lady hops into the drivers seat and takes off with gusto. Tee hee.
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A win for CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/22/media/kirsten-powers-fox-cnn/index.html
I predict a shakeup for Fox in the year following this election as the station comes under new management and the fallout of the 2016 presidential race continues to be felt
_____________________________
Kirsten Powers, a regular on Fox News for the past decade, is switching channels.
Powers is joining CNN as a political analyst, effective immediately, CNN announced Monday morning. She will continue to write columns for USA Today.
Her first appearance will be on “Anderson Cooper 360” Monday night.
Powers is the fourth Fox personality hired by CNN in the past 18 months, joining co-host Alisyn Camerota, liberal commentator Bob Beckel and conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham.
The timing of her move is newsworthy because it comes one month after the founding CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, resigned under pressure amid a sexual harassment scandal.
There has been press speculation about a potential “talent exodus” from Fox in the wake of Ailes’ resignation. Some of Fox’s biggest stars have clauses in their contracts that allow them to leave because Ailes left. …
__________________________________
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I learned to drive a stick in a sink-or-swim way — with my used VW bug. Lots of lurching at first. 🙂
When I moved the last time, I thought I’d get a jump on the movers and take some stuff over on my own the weekend before they were coming. So I rented a u-haul but it was a stick. Didn’t think that would be a problem, but the clutch was pretty hard to push — and I realized belatedly that my house was accessed only by a very steep hill that had numerous stop signs.
It really wasn’t a very good idea.
My first automatic was the Jeep. Live is easy.
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Kirsten Powers is my favorite liberal. I will watch her some on CNN. I actually hope Trump starts The Trump Network after the election if he would take Hannity and O’Reilly. Fox needs leadership. It is interesting Roger Ailes seemed to have the support of good people like Brit Hume even though he was apparently a pretty bad actor.
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Never learned to drive a stick much to the shock of my Eastern European wife and her friends. Like Ricky, they made judgements on masculinity based on how well you handled a stick. I simply stated I was quite comfortable with my masculinity and didn’t need to push a “stick” up and down, back and forth to prove otherwise.
I liked Weiner for his politics. However, I can never understand how grown men esp in the public eye can’t behave with decorum. I suppose when you have a last name like that the behaviour was inevitable. The behaviour and ideas of his wife are also interesting. The Muslim community doesn’t quite understand how to integrate modern feminism into their community, culture and religion. Modern feminism is a western concept that doesn’t work well outside of the “Enlightenment” cultures of western Europe and the Anglo-sphere. Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia and the Muslim world all have “processed” feminism differently and not always in easily recognizable forms.
There’s no doubt Clinton is corrupt and I don’t think anyone is arguing she isn’t. The argument can be; is it relevant? After all Trump is also corrupt. He even admits it — “No one knows the system better than me”. The real question is who is competent and will act in America’s interests. Trump is a failed businessman who was never in charge of an elected office. He’s also a narcissistic selfish brat who only acts in his own interest — check out the legions of people who he left with unpaid bills in his four bankruptcies.
The current Benghazi/email scandal making attempts play well to the Republican base but no one else is listening. For over 25 years, Republicans have criticized and accused Clinton and more often than not have been wrong or have exaggerated. They have become the boy who cried wolf. They can cry corruption, incompetence, etc but the rest of America just shrugs its shoulders.
And really do you want an incorruptible president — I like Jimmy Carter and he may have been the best behaved president but he was not the best.
Breitbart, Ailes and Hannity have gone all in with Trump. I wonder when the dust settles will we see a new stridently right wing media network with the above characters all playing a role. Like FOX but on steroids. Rachel Maddow did an interesting piece in which she connected some Trump’s most outrageous tweets to article posted previously on Breitbart. With the recent campaign shakeup, it appears the echo chamber will get even mor dense.
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Safe spaces and tear down those signs
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/signs-of-the-times-liberal-hypocrisy-in-2016.php
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HRW, It’s no fun to drive a 455 horsepower Camaro with an automatic. The 2016-2017 SS model may be the best sports car ever made. Zero to sixty in four seconds flat. Excellent handling and braking. The key is that it is 300 pounds lighter than the 2015 model. That earlier model was Elizabeth Taylor in her late 30s – still beautiful, but a little heavy. That extra weight would not let the old SS keep up with the Mustang GT.
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Kim, I trained my son to drive a standard exactly as you were taught. If you can park the car, the rest is easy. My son learned in a 150 horsepower Hyundai Elantra. I learned in a 348 horsepower 1964 Pontiac GTO. That car was a little scary.
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