Back from Laredo

It's been some grueling days out there.  Okay.  Today is the 26th of October, 2011.  The past few days have been kind of a blur trying to make up for problems on the road.  Had a major problem with a trailer axle pin in Maryland.  Had to leave that trailer in the shop and go pick up a different trailer at another location.  Go to some town south of Pittsburg and get a load headed to Laredo, TX.

I would write more, but I'm exhausted. I picked up a load of canned food coming back to Atlanta, and I have a few hours to sleep before I have to wake up and go deliver that load and head back out. 

Over the road trucking is a hard, hard life.

I've driven a couple of thousand miles in just a few days.  I've had one shower in four days.  You people have no clue how cheap your food and supplies are considering how far they have to travel.  If you like what you are paying for the most basic necessities of life, thank trucking. If you hate what you are paying for the most basic necessities of life, curse the government.

This Trip

At first I was told I was going to North Carolina.

Plans changed.  Now I am going to Tennessee and from there I will stop in Virginia and then from there I will be going all the way to New Hampshire.

Everything North of Pennsylvania will be completely new territory for me.

I'm going to actually drive through some states where the majority of the people are so incredibly stupid they voted for Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney, Chuck Shumer, Hillary Clinton and some other power grabbing, elitist scum. 

Wish me luck.

I Took A Walk

And I wished it would make it all go away, that I would just calm down and it would all seem less important somehow.

But it isn't.

Even though I've been so careful to try and avoid anything about politics and what goes on in the world, you just can't.  You can pretend that the world is not there, but there it is.  The waves crash against the shore of your consciousness in that relentless fashion.

I say the world, but what I mean is people.  I got into an argument with an 86 year old man this evening who actually believed that rich people in the United States pay no income tax and that poor people, the bottom 50% actually pay most of the taxes.

I'm surprised that my head is not in millions of pieces scattered across a few square miles.

I guess I was supposed to have this encounter to convince me that we are definately on a sinking ship and that it's all going to fall apart and that only the prepared are going to survive.

There is far more to the whole conversation.  I can't begin to go into it all.  My antagonist has been thoroughly brainwashed to believe that "conservative" is equal to "evil."

I went for a walk. 

I'm currently in a neighborhood in South Atlanta.  It didn't take long before some slovenly black male with pants hanging down below his thighs was asking me for a handout.  I gave him some cash.  But I was in a mood that I can only describe as:  "I don't care who I piss off right now, because if God takes my life right now, I have to be better off."  So, I asked him about the pants below the butt cheeks thing.

He didn't know.

"So, why do you do it?"

"It's just the thing. Depends on who you hang with."

"No reason?"


"Whatevah."

So, what I thought was supposed to be some symbol of black rebellion against white conventional dress is nothing.  The idiots who do it just do it.  Or this guy wasn't going to tell me the truth because I was a white guy.

Truth be told, I was hoping this guy would take offense and tell me the truth.

If he told me the truth, then how freaking stupid are such black people in the United States?  I know lot's of black people who must be absolutely horrified by such stuff.  Just as I am horrified that people associate me with someone like Chris Christie or Mitt Romney when I use the term conservative to describe myself.

Really?  You wear your damned pants below your buttcheeks to do what?  What's the point of this?  To show your ass?  To show that you are asses?

Do You Think You Are Part of the 99%?

Really?

Do you consider yourself to somebody like the people you see in this video?

I'll Cut To The Chase

I truly love the blog written and administrated by Francis W. Porretto.  You have to be an intellectual to go there and enjoy it.  I don't give a royal rat's ass if you think I'm a snob or some elitist for saying so.  Go there now and read this rather genteel piece.

Quite frankly, the reason the country is falling into the sorry state it's in is because the vast majority of people think there is some kind of honor to be had in being non-intellectual.  In short, you are proud to be a stupid moron.  You are proud that you think you are somehow cool because you never cared about politics.  Politics is now causing your life to be a freaking nightmare and you wonder how in the hell you are going to survive.   You blame Wall Street and anybody smarter than you who knows how to make money in the intellectual marketplace of the real world.

You didn't want to spend any time figuring out how the system works and you didn't want to work to understand that politics is the very thing that enables greedy people to game the system.

So now what do you think is the smart thing to do?  Occupy Wall Street?  Bring the whole thing crashing down?  Great.  Then what?  How much time have you invested in understanding how to set traps in the forest?  Do you know how to start a fire with nothing more than some sticks and leaves.  Because that, my imbecilic friend is what you are working for.  Yep.  Demand that all the people who've ever made any money trading on Wall Street or NASDAQ or done anything to make money by typical investment tools have to give up everything they've ever made and hand it to you and all the people who wouldn't know a profit from a profit margin.

Destroy it all.  Tear the whole system down to YOUR intellectual level and then see what you get.

Gasoline will still magically be available at the corner store.  Your cell phone will still work, somehow.
McDonald's will still be serving up fries and quarter pounders.  You don't know how, but you trust it will happen.  You are like the guy who treated me with contempt the other day when I came into your store and you were too involved with whoever you were texting on your phone.  You forgot that the reason your business exists is to provide something for the customer.

I'm the guy who knows how to hunt and fish and make shelters.  I don't want to see society collapse, but there is a part of me that understands that it is inevitable.  That you deserve to be punished for your contempt of the free market system that created your cell phone and all the stuff you take for granted every damned moment of every day.

I'm the guy that you better hope you never run into after you get your wish of the Wall Street collapse.  I'm the guy who is going to rub your sorry nose into all the damned stupid ideas that you had about being so proud of not knowing who your congressman was.

Pay No Attention to The Corruption

Eric Holder has been given a gift. 

How many people are going to have their brains overwhelmed by the news about a foiled assassination plot against the Saudis by Iranian agents and completely forget about operation "Fast and Furious?"

Eric Holder is the same guy who is more than happy to let Black Panthers intimidate people trying to vote.

The Obama administration is more than satisfied with having a man who blatantly cheated on his taxes (Timothy Geitner) to be the Secretary of the Treasury.

And to think there are mind-numbed idiots out there who think that Wall Street is our biggest problem.

Aren't We All Atwitter

Oh my goodness, gracious, sakes-alive!  We have no more reason to look any further for a candidate.  Chris Christie has come out and endorsed Mitt Romney.

Pardon me while I gag.

As if I already didn't have enough reason to despise every single establishment republican hack.

I think Chris Christie's words were something to the effect of "This country can't survive another four years of Barak Obama."  And that would be different under Romney because of what, exactly?

Seriously, if you are a Romney supporter, or if you would vote for him just because he's not Barak, what do you expect to happen?  What has Romney said or done that makes you think that we will not plunge over the damned cliff at only a slightly slower speed than Obama is taking us there now?

He Said It Well

There is not much I can add to this post regarding the Republican field.

I would only have a few differences of opinion with the author of this fine blog.  I would not give Perry a chance.  I've heard from people in the State of Texas.  Callers to the Mark Levin show have made it clear that he is just George W. Bush redux.  Not a true conservative at all and if given the reins, would govern like a stealth liberal.

Chris Christie would be even worse. He won't run, and rightly so, because there are plenty of people waiting in the wings to expose him for the "moderate" liberal that he really is.  Sure you can seem to be or actually be very conservative on a few issues and yet be fatally liberal on too many other issues.

Herman Cain's resume is stunning for someone seeking high office. It is the antithesis of the typical polititian's credentials.  I was fortunate enough to be in the Atlanta area and listen to Herman when he had his own radio show and sat in as guest host for Neal Boortz on WSB. 

It would be so fitting, so deliciously apropos for this country to elect Herman Cain, especially amidst the idiotic, but so expected charges that voting against Obama is based purely on race.

More importantly, there is a very simple principle for determining who conservatives should vote for.  Just like the overwhelming drumbeat to drive Sarah Palin out of the running, just look and listen to the polemics being directed at Herman Cain now.  The Left is telling us exactly who they are afraid of. 

If I had to come up with a list of who the Democrats and Leftists would love for us to run against Obama they would be; and in this order:

1. Newt Gingrich
2. Michelle Bachmann
3. Rick Santorum
4. Jon Thune
5. Mitt Romney
6. Rick Perry
7. Jon Huntsman

Who have the Left shown us that they are terrified of? 

1. Sarah Palin
2. Herman Cain
3. Ron Paul

Seriously,  go to the link above and scroll down and read Herman Cain's resume.  Ask yourself if you really want another person who's only experience involves running for office, or someone who has succeeded in business.

What to do?

Maybe I'm crazy for asking this question in this venue, but what the heck.

There's a woman I know and we go back a long ways.  She's in a relationship that I know very little about.  She lives with a guy, but I don't know if it's purely platonic or what.

I have thought about trying to make something more of the relationship, but why should I even try?  Then comes the fact that she won't tell me where she is.  I know the general area, but other than having email and a phone number, I don't know where she is.  It seems painfully obvious that she doesn't want me to know where she is.

But she wants access to the other blog that I've started.

I would open myself up to her on an even deeper level than I intend to write on that blog, if I thought that the relationship might develop into something deeper, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make it easy for her to read what I write on more personal topics when she doesn't trust me to know where she's at.

I've made mistakes in the past in dealing with her.  I'm sorry about that and I'd be willing to do a lot to atone for those mistakes.  But I am not going to bow and scrape for nothing.  I've made my apologies for what happened in the past.  I have a lot to offer for the future.  If that doesn't seem possible to her, I can't help that.

Maybe I just need to say goodbye and get over it all.  Maybe I'm not supposed to rectify anything with this woman and move on with my life.  Maybe God has another woman out there for me and I just need to be patient and wait for her to come along.

I screwed up big time with Twyla. I jumped in because it seemed so right.  I had talked myself into it.  Funny how that works.  I can still go over the list of reasons why it made so much sense that I should be with Twyla.  But in the end, it was wrong.  I could go into all the things I know now, but that would be a sin to speak evil of someone when there is no good reason to do so.

Now, I can list all the reasons why it doesn't make sense for me to chase after this other woman.  Logically, I should just forget about it and just quit communicating with her at all and get her out of my system.  But it seems like that could never happen in a million years.  But like I did when I was married to my first wife, I could force myself to shove her to the farthest corners of my mind.  I am nothing if not intensely loyal and faithful.  I would never, ever cheat on my wife.

Maybe I need some disinterested third party to give me some advice here.  How much information should I share? 

A Day of Reckoning

On her fine blog, Ann Barnhardt has a two part posting on a day of reckoning.  She talks about the necessity for justice.  She makes the point that we must have this justice and that, collectively, as a society, we must be punished when we don't carry out justice.

I agree with her.

But I'm convinced, and I think she knows this as well, that it is well beyond too late.  We've had our chances, over and over and over again.  We failed to act. 

I knew it was the beginning of the end when the country elected Bill Clinton and the things I heard people saying back then.

I was driving a truck at night from Tampa to Orlando and listening to late night talk radio before Rush Limbaugh became a hot item.  I was listening to guys like Barry Farber, and Tom Snyder, and Alan Colmes.  Moderates or flaming liberals.  I could tell we were in for a reckoning.

The prevailing thought was that it didn't matter what the man did in his private life.  It had no bearing on how he would do his job as president.

Really?  I knew that was crap when I first heard it, but now I've had years to think about the ramifications of such crap.

First, let's deal with the idea that other presidents before him did bad stuff in their private lives.  Oh yes, Kennedy was a serious womanizing rascal.  Nixon positively makes me ill for all the hubris that he indulged in.  The point is that none of it was considered good, or inconsequential.  The country at large would not tolerate flagrant misdemeanor behavior from a president.  But by the time Bill Clinton came along, the country had changed.  George H.W. Bush had done enough damage to the Reagan Revolution to make most of the dumb masses of voters think that voting conservative had been for nothing.  The media spin machine had people believing that government could and should do something to make an already good economy do better. 

Essentially, I heard many people saying that they didn't care one whit what the president did in "his private life."  As if you can compartmentalize such things.  Sorry, you can't.

I've worked in many jobs over the years.  The same guy who will take home reams of paper from the office copy room or boxes of staples or whatever is going to be the same guy who eventually figures out how to embezzle a million or two if he's in the position to do so. I've seen it enough times.  I've talked to enough people to learn who you can trust and what their ultimate goals are.  The guy who brags to me about how he cheated on his wife is almost always the same guy who brags about how he scammed somebody on some other deal.  He is proud about how damned clever he is.

When Bill Clinton appeared on national TV with Hillary at his side to explain Jennifer Flowers, I knew we were in trouble.  It became obvious that theirs was a marraige akin to Herod and Herodias.  She was there for the power trip and was just as corrupt and evil as he was.  Probably more. Their's was a business partnership marraige.  Theirs was a marriage such as had been done for centuries between kingdoms.  Anybody want to laughably challenge me on this today?  When's the last time those two have been in the same zip code, let alone the same room?

I would wish that enough people were willing to fight.  First, you would have to believe that there is a fight and there is something worth fighting for.

I don't believe this country is going to survive as we know it.  We are going down.  And the only people who are going to be around to rebuild whatever is left are the people who see it coming.

The vast majority of people are too busy working to survive and in their precious spare time are allowing themselves to be distracted by everything from sports to "dancing with the stars." 

Over The Road - One Long Day

I left the Atlanta area on Sunday afternoon, October 2, 2011. Driving with a partner to evaluate my skills for the owner of the company, we headed to El Paso with a full 53' trailer in a Freightliner sleeper cab. This was the first time for both of us in this particular tractor. He had come back to work for this company after having been gone for a while.

I had gone to the shop to pick up the tractor and trailer. We discovered that the air conditioning wasn't working by the time we reached Louisiana. Oh crap! We have to cross the desert of Texas without any cool air. Man, did we sweat.

Along Interstate 20 is lots of evidence of a hurting economy. There was an entire town that is now a ghost town. Ironically the official interstate highway sign, the kelly green with white reflective lettering, looks like it is only a few years old at most. But the remains of the town, all the shops, restaurants, business and homes crowded slam up against I-20, are so obviously abandoned and broken down. In other spots, there are some surviving places with some scant activity, but I've never seen so many abandoned places.

When I was 19, in 1979 I made the trek across the U.S. in a Ryder truck with a roommate who had a connection for a job in California. We left Lakeland, FL and took I-75 up to I-10 and took it all the way to Santa Monica, CA. I don't recall seeing any abandoned buildings during that trip. We only drove ten hours a day, during the day. We were not under any time restraints, so we took advantage of it, eating fairly nice meals each night, showering and watching TV in air conditioned comfort of motel rooms.

The over-the-road trucker's life is hard. I can see why there is a demand for it, even in this economy. I think that team driving is even harder. When you are by yourself, the truck comes to a stop and you can sleep on a bed that isn't shaking and jerking. You can walk around at the truck stop and maybe watch a little TV or exercise. When you are team driving, you do your exhausting ten hours of driving and then switch off with the other driver. Then you just hope that there isn't too much damage or bad road construction while your partner is driving, so that you can get to sleep. You also have to be very confident in the skill and judgment of your partner. Kinda hard to sleep if your constantly worried about whether or not your partner is going to get you killed.

When we got to El Paso, it was later than the typical receiving hours, so we had to bribe the dock manager with $20 to unload us anyway. We had another "hot" load to pick up that was bound for Harrisburg, PA that we wanted to go pick up as soon as possible. Time is money.

But it turns out that our dispatcher/owner-of-the-company didn't give us the right location. We went to the location that we were given, only to be told that they couldn't possibly load us until after 8:am the next morning. So we went to the PETRO station to get a tire changed out on the trailer and an oil change and service, as well as getting the A/C working again. The condenser had a pinhole leak at the top. They wanted an enormous amount of money for a new one, plus all the work to change it out. I can't really blame the owner for not wanting to spend that kind of money, especially since he had plenty of experience with a better and cheaper servicer back east. We went and got a can of leak-stop/leak detector and put that in and ran it a while. It seemed to make a difference immediately. Then we got a large can of the R-134 refrigerant and put that in the next morning before leaving. Thank you, G-d! We had nice, cold, blessed air for the return trip.

We got back to the warehouse that refused us the night before and we talked to the dock master. He didn't have authorization for us yet. He would come out and get us when it came through. Our dispatcher couldn't understand why this was, considering this was a "hot" load, meaning that someone wanted this load at the other end, yesterday. My partner called to get the name and number of the other broker to find out the scoop. We were at the wrong warehouse. The place waiting to load us was six miles away at the El Paso International Airport. We boogied on over there to find them anxiously waiting for us and that they would have been happy to have immediately loaded us the previous night before we headed to the PETRO for service. We could have been on the road twelve hours earlier. We were not very happy at all. Misinformation had just cost us a bunch of money. I learned a valuable lesson. I should have asked questions until the answers made sense. If it was a "hot" load, why wasn't somebody breathing down the neck of the dock master to get the truck loaded? They were. At the right location. We should have called our dispatcher back that afternoon and asked him to call the other broker and either find out the right info and call us back, or better yet, we should have just asked for their name and number and talked to them directly. That's what I will do in the future.

One of the most amazing sights along I-20 through Texas is the area from around Midland to where I-20 merges into I-10. Windmills. Yep. They are enormous. At least I think so. You can go check out the specifications at this site. These suckers stand over 100 meters in height. That's more than a football field on end. A single blade is about 55 meters long. The generators are in the nacelles behind the hub of the blades and they produce about 2,300 killowatts at 690 volts.

It isn't just that these things are so big, it's how many of them there are. For over forty miles, we saw hundreds and hundreds of these things. Hundreds of square miles of them. Many stood atop mesas in the distance. Some of them came right up close to I-20. I just know I couldn't come close to counting them all. I suppose it would be interesting to go to Google Earth and try to count them all.

Yom Kippur

This will be a most private Yom Kippur, or day of atonement.  I feel like I've been beaten enough.  I will wait for Adonai to speak to me.

It's Coming Back

I don't know if The ComPost Files is going to stay or not.  Part of me wants it to.  There are many reasons for this.  There is something good about a lack of anonymity.  I might continue to blog here.

But there are valuable things I could share under cover.  Therefore, I will have a new blog.  It will be  a place for me to share things that I have held back for a long time.

For a long time I have held back because I didn't want to offend too many people.  Yes, some of you are laughing because you think I'm way too outspoken and offensive as it is.  I'll refrain from listing the ways I have to endure gross offensiveness every damned day simply for being who I am.  Life is inherently offensive.  Get the hell over it.

I am out and about.  I've been across 16 states since Sunday.  I will be gone again soon.  I will have to figure out the details about how I'm going to do all this.

I'll be back.  Unless God decides to punch my ticket sometime soon, I will be blogging.  If I get enough response to keep ComPost Files running, I will.  If not, the loyal fans who want me know how to find me. I will keep on blogging. I believe everything happens for a reason and there are no, NO coincidences.  I jot down things in a paper journal and I'm looking for the right time and venue to share them.

Right now, I am so dead tired I could just about fall over on this keyboard.

Shalom

Live Free Or Die

I would go into a long dissertation on why I chose to say this tonight.

I just watched a most impressive video of Bill Whittle, talking about the airshow in which a P51 Mustang crashed and eleven people died.

Death is an enemy, but only to be feared by those who don't know the Creator.  Of course we will miss the ones we love, no matter which side of eternity either party goes at any given time.

But to fail to make the right or righteous choices based on our fear of death is a terrible sin.

I would rather be assured of death for a righteous cause than to live as a coward for the sake of breathing.