The Second Ammendment March

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 18th, 2009 in Shootist | Comments Off

You’ve heard of other million people marchs on Washington.  Now is the time for the Million Gun Owner March!!  Let’s get out there and show them how many of us there really are!!!

AuGres River mini-report

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 17th, 2009 in News and weather | Comments Off

A warmer week actually started the river to break up.   The river north of town is open water,  with jammed up ice refrozen all through the Port of Refuge.  Once past the docks,  it looks as solid as it ever did,  but,   there’s got to be a lot of current under that ice.  Most of the other rivers to the north and south,  are open and flowing.  My guess is,  we still have ice because there’s still ice on our part of the Bay.  There’s really no place for our ice to go.  Low this morning,  23 degree’s,  High today, 43 degree’s.  Yesterday it was 15 and 27 degree’s.

Healthcare Lies

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 16th, 2009 in News and weather | 3 comments

Sitting here over the past couple of days staring at $890 dollars of medical bills due for this month,  I decided to investigate a little, on what happened to my contractually negotiated health care benefits.  The first thing I learned was that most of the contact information has become a dead end.   You either get a dead end web page (via computer) or a machine (via telephone).  If you do get some “real” information,  it tends to be false.  Example:  I found a breakdown of the GM Retiree Health Benefits on the Fidelity website.  On that page I learned that my yearly out of pocket expenses would not exceed $548 for a married couple.  ( This is the type of info that the public and our Legislators get to see.)  The problem with this statement is,  my February monthly billing for healthcare totals to $890.   (Kinda boosts us over the $548 yearly out of pocket now doesn’t it). 

Now I sort of understand why certain news outlets were reporting that GM workers make $78 dollars an hour!  If we want to get down to true, hard realistic facts,  (something very seldom used in public announcements), the math goes something like this:   Monthly pension: $2300 minus medical care $890 equals $1410 minus $425 property tax and water equals $985 minus $220 for heat and electricity equals $765.  So with $765 a month left over after the upfront, stay alive stuff,  that $890 is a pretty big chunk of change.  This is my reward from my Government, and my gracious employers,  for 40 years of faithful service.

And Yes,  I AM clinging to my guns,  they are one thing you can’t arbitrarily take away from me,  (at least not without a cost).

Thar be blood on the decks, matie.

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 15th, 2009 in News and weather | Comments Off

And No,  I’m not referring to Friday the 13th’s regretable legislative vote.    See Breda for the CURSE!

Your somewhat clumsy “ships carpenter”,  pulled a bonehead move the other day.  While cutting the sprue’s off of the small pieces of the Cutty Sark he’s assembling,  he set the (round handled) trimming knife (exacto knife) down on his workbench.  With the wave motion, (or whatever),  the knife quickly rolled off the bench and dropped straight to the floor, with the sharp pointed edge perpendicular to the floor.  The path of the wayward blade,  intersected the rear quarter of his right heel,   inflicting a 1/4 inch deep,  3/4 inch long razor gash in said heel.  Little pain,  and not to much blood,  but it’s going to be slow healing.  A couple of butterfly stitches,  and a bandaid to cushion it should do the trick.

  (click to enlarge) As you can see from the photo,  she’s coming along quite well.  In fact the easy stuff is all done.  The next step is tying up yards and yards of rigging,  followed by sewing on the sails.  At least we can say,  “the good ship has been christened in blood”.

Kind of political

Posted by Greybeard on Feb 15th, 2009 in News and weather | Comments Off

I’ve just learned that Debbie Stabenow,

One of our “infamous” Michigan Senators,  is a leader in the push to censor the radio airwaves.  (kinda sounds unconstitutional doesn’t it).  The main push of her favorite new legislation,  is to censor Conservative talk radio.   Amazingly enough,  it turns out that she is married to a Radio station bigshot,  who just happens to run a Liberal radio talk show.  (can you say CONFLICT OF INTEREST?).