Wow

• My clutch went out in Joplin. Had to get towed. Thanks to E-Trade having restricted my account due to rubber checks TO it in amounts less than my cash balance, I couldn't pay the towtruck and got it rolled into the repair bill for an extra fifteen percent.
• Got called about eleven times by dispatch and drivers asking me about loads I never heard of and info I didn't have.
• Asked repair place for a DOT inspection since it was there. They found bad brakes, leaking seals, and a bunch of other stuff. They just kept finding it and calling me at the hotel, so between them, dispatch, and drivers, I got experience as a switchboard operator.
• When the truck was finally done, the bill was over five Gs, and I didn't even have it. I was 400 short and had to get Ben the dispatcher to advance me that much. He's not supposed to since I'm an owner-op, but it was either that or make me sit with my truck held hostage.
• Despite this, I had to get my credit limit increased by a whole 300 bucks to get the 2800 left in my account out of it. E-Trade tortured me about as much as they could, making it a gruelling, painful ordeal.
• OK finally I get out and a load back. I deliver that load 5 hours early and make a desperate break for Canton in an effort to get my damned APU from hell fixed. I'd been trying for three weeks.
• I took a load picking up at 2100 and got to the APU repair place ten hours before that.
• Naturally, that wasn't enough time. Fate arranged to make sure that my deadline was passed and so was my secret safety margin before the A/C was getting recharged in the APU. Then it was done. And there was ANOTHER DAMN LEAK.
• I had to pull it out. I have to go back. That's right--ten hours, and I have to go back. I'll probably take the Albuquerque load that picks up at one a.m., be there for my APU at 0800, 19 hours early, and somehow, some way, get to the pickup at 1:15--stressed out and sleepless.
• SO, now I'm broke, owe money, must be working on an ulcer or heart attack or something, and got this damn piece of crap APU and it's co-conspirators perpetually torturing me. (I could have predicted that OTHER, additional damn leak after it all the other assorted repeat problems were allegedly fixed.)
• On the plus side, those seal leaks could have cost me my rear end, and my clutch should last over 600,000 miles. Now let's see if I can find a silver lining for the Cleveland Browns....
• Shoot me.

A Special Week

Part 1: Got a load from Albuquerque to southern California. Had a bad tire on my trailer which I had to replaceright away, thanks to the shithead who had got lucky and was able to leave it for me with tire unpopped. A rude, thinkshe'sabully almost got his ass kicked dude, by the way...

Anyway, that took three hours, so I had to bust it. Delivered ontime, of course. Then I was going for a truckstop. Made a wrong turn in Van Nuys and had to turn around. I saw another truck turning off of US1 onto Oregon street, and followed him--making a right turn.

Ever see the signs on the back of truck trailers: "This vehicle makes wide right turns", with a little picture of a dumbass stupid car getting crunched between a curb and trailer? Well, guess what happened. The driver of a city vehicle ignored my turn signal and tried to SQUEEZE past me.

Now dammit, you guys are like spastic little kids in go-carts, racing around slamming into people's legs. You need to take a damn pill. Why can't I blink? Why must you fill every available space as soon as possible? Why do I need eyes in the back of my head to look out for you? CALM DOWN dammit!!!

Sorry. Anyway that will no doubt go down as MY fault because...well I'm not sure why but that's just how it works.

At least the trailer was okay and I was able to go get my next load.

Got another flat tire immediately. Then my fuel filter got clogged in the mountains of Colorado, and I spent most of 120 miles creeping along at 15 mph. Oh yeah--and with another flat tire. Yeah--the third one.

Got to Denver and got my fuel and (overdue) oil filters replaced, plus my leaking airbag...and the trailer tire replaced. Meanwhile, E-trade had restricted my account due to a couple rubber checks TO me FOR DEPOSIT, despite the fact that I had plenty of cash in there without those checks.

I'd thought I had this fixed, so that I could pay for these repairs to my truck. WRONG. I had to sort of force the night dispatcher to stick his neck out and give me a biggger cash advance than he's supposed to. I appreciate that, and doubt that he'd get in trouble, since if I can't pay that bill I stay in Denver and can't deliver.

Oh--and E-trade that night promised me that as soon as these other guys got around to reading the email they'd sent that only a few hours after that then next day there was a pretty good chance that I would be able to use my debit card and checkbook to get at MY MONEY. Gee thanks.

Anyway, I can't go into detail, but my creativity and endurance is factoring in here.....

OK so the next morning I bust it, and pop another tire. Yeah that's right. So I limp 45 miles and get that and another one replaced...finding that the rest of them all got stuff wrong with them too....

Anyway this is the special part:

While they were working on it, I was wandering around killing time. Mostly I was on the other side of the building. I happened to be wandering through an empty bay when I looked up and saw the nose of my truck appear. It was moving.

Before I knew it I was running as fast as I ever had, hearing excited shouts and seeing a little guy in front of my truck actually trying to impede it's progress downhill towards a line of other trucks parked facing the garage.

Thank God I wear a retractable keychain so that my key was already in my hand as I came alongside the door--the bastard was just about to outrun me, but I got it unlocked and was able to get on the rail and hit the brake.

During this, I was seeing my carreer flash before my eyes. My truck and at least one other would have been totalled, and if the truck it hit was occupied the person(s) in it could have been badly injured or killed.

But today I am joyful. I mean, can you believe the LUCK? I mean, that I was right there when it happened, in time to stop it? 90% of the time I was anywhere but there, and the first clue I would have had would have been the noise of the crash (and oh yeah...I would have heard it.)

I am grateful. My company won't torture or terminate me over the Van Nuys accident. In a damn near miracle, I dodged a truck/carreer-ending smashup...life doesn't suck, ya know?

Small Pleasures

To get my Haz-Mat endorsement back, I had to apply online to get registered, then go to a designated location where my prints were taken, then wait for mail notification that I was eligable for the test.

To study for the test, I disregarded the websites that wanted to charge me money, and found some FREE sample tests I could take, and took them over and over and over again until I aced them all.

Then I had to go to one of a few BMV HazMat test sites and take it. I still blew some answers, but passed. As soon as I told dispatch, they put me on this one from Norwalk Oh. to here (I refuse to spell this name again). This time, I was flammable and dangerous.

I was exhausted when I got here. Let's just say I had insomnia...yeah that's the ticket...anyway I checked into this hotel after dropping my trailer. (By the way, the appointment time and oversleeping on the dock had me really running hard. When I got here, nobody was home, and they won't be until monday. I could have taken all weekend. Dammit.)

Anyway, then I notice that my left mudflap and it's frame are missing. They'd just snapped right off. I went across the street to the T/A to get that fixed. The new one doesn't match--I don't care. Guys who care about that stuff on their commercial trucks...never mind.

Well (to back-track): My truck's cassette player started screwing up, so my audio books and Sirius Radio wouldn't play right. I got a new one at Wal-Mart, and the wires didn't match my truck's plug. So I'd been driving around with little headphones and my new radio in a box, hoping to get a CB guy to fix it when I had time.

But the service writer at the T/A just so happened to have done stuff like this for a living! he came over after work and put the thing in for me. Did a fine job too, using professional connectors that sort of shrink-wrap around the wires. Didn't set a price so I paid him 40 bucks and he was very happy. Worth every penny.

While he was at it, I hit the T/A and got a Sirius antenna bypass and had him put that in, so I could have the radio perma-wired and would have to keep switching the plug back and forth between my laptop (from which I listen to audiobooks) and Sirius Radio. Except that sonofabitch SIRIUS plug was the wrong one for my damn radio. (No wonder it had been re-packaged and was being re-sold.)

But it had cost ten bucks and was already in. I'd have to take stuff apart. So I'll leave it and know I can find an adapter some where to adapt my SIRIUS antenna bypass to my SIRIUS radio.........DAMMIT!

Anyway this radio has an input so I can just plug in. It's also a CD player. No more PIA cassettes.

I also found out how to take the panels off and get the radio out and stuff.

Ok now: Ted Kennedy was a marxist who did severe and irrepairable damage to this country. Every government intervention on the private sector made things worse for everybody, and every program has failed. He didn't care.

While Reagan was pushing the Soviet Union to bankruptcy, Ted Kennedy was Andropov's pen-pal, coordinating with the Soviet Premier in order to undermine the US President and his agenda. He did this because he was a fellow marxist who hates captialism.

Whene you are poisoned, the cure is more poison. You just tell the patient that it's a cure instead.

These people are evil, and their core supporters are stupid. The truth is not whatever you want to believe (as Obama once said, and every dictator before him). The truth is what you can't stand to hear or read, and why you're even crazier now that you were before you read that last part.

Ted Kennedy is dead, and the world is better off. Think with your damned brain.

Dammit

I found a great deal on drive tires and tried to replace two of them. They couldn't knock the inner rim off the axle or change the tire on it. It's like it's welded on. I had to make him put the old ones back on and will need to get somebody with special tools.

My damned APU isn't charging my batteries and is DISCHARGING them instead running A/C so I got a get THAT SON OF A BITCH fixed yet AGAIN for crissakes and my warrantee is up. God help me. What a piece of CRAP.

And of course I can't get it fixed while waiting to deliver this really really slow load since it's the weekend. No I'll have to get it done after unloading and reloading.

The end. Dammit.

Blame-Spreading

1: The housing crisis was caused by banks making home loans to people who couldn't afford them, and defaulted.

They were forced to do this. Federal mandates forced them to make loans on a quota basis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, which are unconstitutional government agencies, were formed to absorb these risky loans and make the taxpayers note-holders.

Banks don't like to make dumb loans, and would never have done this had the Federal government not violated the US Constitution and forced them to.

Officially, they did this to help everybody afford a home, even if they couldn't. I'm with the government. I'm here to help.

The banks had trouble meeting their bad/stupid/high-risk loan quotas, and tried a bunch of gimmicks to get more democratic voters to buy homes which they couldn't afford.

President Bush and Republicans called for additional regulation and other reforms on seventeen occasions, and Dodd/Frank laughed it off, saying there was no problem. Then the balloon popped...and Barney Frank...is here to...fix it...

Bill O'Reilly, whose definition of fair and balanced is making sure to get squarely in the middle and point fingers at both sides, says there's enough blame to go around. The FACT is that the entire cause of this collapse was government interference in the private sector. The TRUTH is fair and balanced, and does not care about appearing moderate or reasonable.

2: In Cambridge a cop was called to a residence to investigate what sounded like a break-in. He was called a racist and harangued viciously for having the audacity to call the person who had just broken into the house out to find out who he was.
This person was unstable and irate. When he wheeled around and went into the house, the officer followed to make sure he wasn't going for a GUN so he could shoot this racist Nazi cop.

The cop was calm and was doing his job, which was to protect that residence, and the very person who was now acting very much like a dangerous maniac on drugs.

NOW, I'm hearing about "two grown men who lost their tempers and just couldn't back down".

BULLSHIT. Cop: Right. Professor: Wrong. The officer never raised his voice, and followed procedure to the letter. This garbage is being spewed despite the officer having been chosen by his black police chief to teach non-profiling; who was defended by same as one of his best, and who was backed by a black and a hispanic cop who were on the scene.

Stop doing this. The truth is reality, and reality is what is, period. Regardless of what you believe or what you want, you can't be mushy about it.

The housing crisis would never have happened without the government's interference and mandates. The Professor was wrong, period. We don't need any "teaching moments"...that's Obama being the adult and the rest of us children, and should tell you something. What's to learn here, other than yet more distortions and emotional fog?

TRUTH TRUTH TRUTH.

DEAR COMRADES:

We have hit the wall.

We have done well to feign urgency in order to pass the first bail-out and Cap-and Trade before anyone including the legislature could read them. By this means, we have achieved more than we have managed for the past century--in a few months.

The media and academic sections have done an admirable job of quietly supporting our movement and of fomenting confusion and apathy. They have been an immense help. (Side-note: Comrade Cronkite's death is a sad thing. It is very possible that we owe him our people's victory in Viet Nam. Rest in peace, comrade!)

However, we have not been as successful in silencing conservative radio, FoxNews, or the internet. These have exposed the contents of the previous bills, and of the pending Health Care bill. Too many among the masses have awakened to what we are doing, and it's too late to put them back to sleep.

Our core supporters are true believers, and will never desert us. They may turn on Comrade Obama on the rare occasions that politics force him to temporarily deviate from the real agenda, but they are ruled by emotion and cannot be persuaded intellectually away from our ethos.

But too many among the masses, while still oblivious to our violations of the US Constitution and the fact that we indeed exist as a coordinated worldwide force, retain a critical thinking ability which remains troublesome.

The bills have now been read, and details exposed. The fact that we have lied a great deal is having the most negative impact. Of course, we knew that this would happen, but had hoped that we could delay it until we had a fete accompli, and had permanently, if not utterly, destroyed the remaining vestiges of free market capitalism.

Unfortuantely, the truth is out now, and Comrades Obama and Pulosi, among others, are exposed as manipulative liars.

This is no censure. They have accomplished a great deal in a short time, and the ends justify the means. Comrade Obama will rank with FDR as a great reformer. While the creation of Social Security and Medicare, along with the premise of Public Works and Kanesian economics is diffucult to match or surpass, Comrade Obama has taken over large corporations and instituted central planning. He has secured 24 trillion taxpayer dollars for our use and political entrenchment.

He is quietly overseeing the erosion of the military and destruction of the CIA.

We cannot find fault with the President. This was inevittable, and he accomplished as much as was possible on the tide of emotion we have created.

We always knew that it would take a long time. We've been undermining and expanding for nearly a century now, and only a shadow of the Founders capitalist dream remains intact. The sleeping giant has awakened now, and we can expect the tide to turn against us.

Time to let the tide take us back to sea, and feign conservatism in order to retain power. Thanks to what Comrade Obama has accomplished in a short six months, the next wave to wash upon this shore could well be the last.

In the meanwhile, continue to label FoxNews as biased so that the masses will remain under our sway. The Fairness Doctrine probably can't work yet, but see if we can find some way of silencing conservatives on the radio. Without these outlets, the Great Society would have long since become a reality.

We still have an opportunity to ratify Cap-and-Trade. The bill in it's current form cannot survive, but some token concessions can be made, and we can probably sieze control over the entire economy, and finish off capitalism permanently.

Yes, Comrades...we just might still manage to pull this rabbit out.

The catastrophe this would cause would give Comrade Obama emergency powers, and whether or not the masses actually believe that it was caused by capitalism rather than our actions wouldn't really matter. The actions taken to "fix" the problems would kill the old form of government permanently.

Remember that global warming is a proven fact. The facts don't matter--we control the media. It is important that we maintain this illusion for Cap-and-Trade to ratify without significant reduction. If the masses do not believe this illusion, they will rebel, and boot our lesser comrades out of office.

The ends justify the means. The greatest good for the greatest number. From each according to his means, to each according to his needs. Power is everything. Patriotism is shallow and ignorant. Communism rocks. Capitalism sucks...

Shhhhhh!

Treason

1: The reason the CIA doesn't tell congress everything is that (most) democratic members serve their party and it's agenda first, and theit country last. Whenever it's useful, they will leak and expose top secret operations. REPUBLICANS NEVER DO THIS. NOT EVEN LINDSAY GRAHAM!!!

2: Pinetta found out about, and immediately informed congress about, the secret operation to assassinate Al Quaeda leaders about two weeks prior to exposing it. It was exposed because Nancy Pulosi was in trouble because she knew all about waterboarding all along. They needed a distraction, and always wanted to destroy tha CIA..

3: Why was this program shut down? Now we're NOT going to target Al Quaeda leaders any more?

4: With the exception of my audience of one and younger sibling, it should be dawning on others that this country is being destroyed from within. But it's not happening fast enough. Obama's approval rating is still 59% JUST HOW STUPID CAN YOU PEOPLE GET?

Understand that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights clearly and unambiguously LIMIT the powers of the federal government, with Article Ten for emphasis: Any powers not specificly mentioned elsewhere fall to the states.

It is ILLEGAL for the Federal government to tell businesses what to pay their people, or anything else. It is ILLEGAL to set up "safety nets" or interfere with doctors. To impose or enforce hiring quotas. Helmet/seat belt laws--all unconstitutional.

This is why "constitutional scholars" such as Comrade Obama don't teach the Constitution, but rather case law. The Supreme Court is as vulnerable to ideological corruption as any other institution, and left-leaning administrations stack it with Judges who feel ideals are more important than adherance to these documents; that they know better.

When elected bodies failed to break the law, they got activist courts to negate those laws.

The Founders were a whole lot smarter than any of these clowns, and took pains to prevent what is happening today. They spelled it out: "SHALL NOT". They went way overboard going into detail, because even then (especially in France) the forerunners of socialism were talking about People's Governments (suggested reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens).

But those forces have now all but killed our constitution and the underlying system it was meant to protect.

Free enterprise is what made this country the shining city on the hill. Marxists call that capitalism, and are killing it before your eyes. They're doing it in a big hurry, lest members have the time to read what's in those bills and disseminate it to their constituants. They're hammering multiple bills through at once for the same reasons: they don't want YOU to have an opportunity to find out what's in them.

It's for your own good. don't you see?

And you will NOT be informed about any of this unless you watch FoxNews or listen to Radio Free America (which they also intend to silence.)

And LISTEN TO ME: Fox News IS Fair and balanced! If you think it's biased, you are in need of deprogramming. The left wing HAS--per it's KNOWN plans- come to dominate media and acedemia.

The reason Fox dominates the ratings is the fact that they tell the truth objectively, and allow honest debates. The rest of the news you get is slanted left. Prior to FoxNews, you became accustomed to it. It became your "normal".

Now, a network which presents conservatism as well as socialism is called "biased" and you fall for it because you have been conditoned to. Baaah! Baah! (that's a sheep).

No I'm not insulting you. You're busy and you don't pay much attention to this stuff okay okay. Nor am I claiming to be a genius. I merely understand how this stuff works because I was trained to--not just as an intelligence guy but from marketing classes I took.

I'm telling you that an american car is now better than the import. But you've been buying imports and don't want to change. You don't want the best car. You just want the same car.

Wake up. Fox News.

If anything, they're getting corrupted themselves. Socialism spreads like cancer. Bill O'Reilly is another Jesse Ventura/Ross Perot. He carefully bashes both sides equally. The truth is not his target. Staying in the middle is. And yet, many call HIM a right-winger!

Because of all this, capitalism is being destroyed right before your eyes. You just won't feel it till it lands right smack on top of you.

Well SO FAR, Cap/Trade is gonna cost YOU at least 1500 bucks (and maybe your job). He said he wouldn't raise your taxes. This is why. Sucker! When the Bush tax cuts expire, your taxes WILL shoot up. Wait til you can't get medical care due to rationing, and pay higher premiums than you do now because you've got to cover twenty million illegal aliens.

Right wing bombs? WAKE UP DAMMIT--I just told you the TRUTH.

WaitTilNextYear I know you're the choir, but maybe I gave you some ammo or something.