"How is it happening?"

 

“How is it happening?”

By Jim Culp

February 20, 2023

I spent years modeling railroads and trains. I loved the hobby, but it was expensive. Anyway, modeling in any scale, any vehicle/car/tank/truck can teach you a massive amount of information that you may not have learned otherwise. My step-father was a railroad man for 34 years on the Santa Fe Railroad, and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about the job. So when I started modeling trains at age 11, I had a subject matter expert at my disposal. Eventually, Pop got interested in it and we did it together for a few years.

Fast forward Forty-Three years, and here we are at the impending break of war. My daughter and I have been “conspiracy theorists” (peoples name for it, not what we are) for a long time. We love to check things out and see if they make sense, or they look like fraud/lies/crooked government/etc. Last week she asked me about the train crashes. I offered two options that I could easily believe to be the cause.

One: Lack of adherence to preventive maintenance. I can’t say what the railroads’ maintenance schedule is, or how they go about it. What I can say is that it is probably a failure of the truck(s). Other than the couplers and droplines, the trucks are the only thing that constantly move with the rail’s curvature. Look at slide A. There are at least 12 points that even my old eyes see where a failure can take place. I would like these companies (Norfolk Southern and others) to provide service records for at least the last two years. Now look at slide B. This is the anatomy of a Bettendorf truck (used by many railroads operating in the USA). There are many manufacturers to choose from, but Bettendorf trucks are made right here in the USA in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Now I turn to potential cause 2: The CIA (some weeks ago) told the President and his cabinet that they have identified over thirty Russian “sleeper cells” within the continental USA. These are cells of 4-5 people that raise babies to become “sleeper agents.” That term means that the agent (all trained up) can wait up to twenty years before taking on a mission of whatever type. Could this be the cause of these derailment disasters? I think so. It wouldn’t be all that hard for a person to take a minimum of devices and place them here and there. Remember the parts of the truck? It would be nothing to weaken 3-4 of these, and even one bad truck could toss the train, Remember that these tanker cars are carrying 34,500 gallons of fluid…then multiply the number of cars carrying the same, and you get a staggering figure.

That’s my reasoning. Stay tuned for more.

-JimC

 

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“Things pass…Things carry on.”

 

“Things pass…Things carry on.”

By Jim Culp

February 16, 2023

 

Well, I had a dinner date today, but that was cancelled by myself and the other party due to about a ½” of ice that is still holding her ground against salt and brine trucks as I type (ha-ha…that’s funny, I never learned to type; so I use a method called “pecking,” and I am up to 23-36 WPM, so I am ok for my methodologies.

At the library a few days ago, I was printing out some certificates for the people downtown who are handling my pension process. There was a group of six boys and four girls…all about 15-16 years of age. It was only 1:00 pm, so I wondered why they weren’t in school. Anyway, they were talking about jobs, life, and parties. Pretty common stuff. But what perked my ears up were two of the boys saying “if they want me to work, I’m $20 per hour, or you ain’t getting shit out of me.”

“Wow,” I thought to myself. That kid must have some serious skills. It wasn’t a few minutes later that another boy said “Man, they wouldn’t even let you sweep the parking lot at Target.” The conversation was still going when I left the library, but the final diagnosis was this. I don’t think that kids (not all of them) want to work anymore. The art of cellphone and the crap music that they like are the way of the Dodo to me. I imagine a time (and soon) when all of those phones are going to get shut off, and half of a population won’t be able to perform simple tasks.

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death. He died in 1969 of a massive myocardial infarction (a severe heart attack) at the age of 42. I was 2 years old at the time, so I never really knew him. Rufus Thomas Culp was a good man, a loving father, and a hard worker. He and Mom had two daughters and five sons: myself being the youngest. Going back to the first subject above, I always wondered what my Dad would think of kids these days and dare to say that he might just think a little like me.

 I will quote one short epitaph that my mother always like to say (her mother died when she was 43) and it is written in the King James bible. “Honour thy father and thy mother; and…though shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

JimC

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"Assault Weapons"

 

“Assault Weapons”

By Jim Culp

February 10, 2023

 

Here we go again. The gun grabbers have decided that they are going to “end all gun violence” by shutting down stores and other similar modes of absolute bullshit. Take a look at the photo attached to this post. That gun is an assault weapon. Back in my day, I could sit in my cupola aboard my M-1 Abrams and wipe out troop targets at 900 meters with it. I could shatter bricks and concrete with its powerful ammunition. When you fire a blast from the big gun, you immediately follow up with two machines guns to kill all the enemy troops that scattered after the big blast. Can you find this killer gun on the street? Possibly…and in Montana, probably likely. But unless you have a Class III license, and that is not easy to acquire these days. Machine guns are made for war, as Assault Rifles are as well. When you go to war as a soldier, you use any and all means at your disposal to defeat the enemy. Rest assured; he will do that same.

People in our government (and those in support of the ignorance it is perpetrating) are calling weapons “Assault Rifles” that nothing of the kind. I have an AR-15, and it is a fun weapon to shoot at ranges and competitions. It is unable to fire cartridges at more than one shot with each depression of the trigger. Can it be modified? Sure, it can. A person with enough knowledge, the right tools, and the patience can modify the weapon to fire automatically. But that is illegal, and once you do it, you’re a criminal and the ATF can wreck your life for good. When caught, you’re never going to own a gun again legally, and you are going to face fines, imprisonment, or both.

Moving forward, let me explain ignorance to you. Ignorance is defined as the “lack of knowledge and understanding.” If your ignorance causes me to lose my Amazon delivery for a day, there will be a little cursing on my part…but no real damage to me or my daily routine. Yes, I am inconvenienced, but no real harm comes to me. But if my firearms are taken from me because my captors are acting out of ignorance, they’ve done two major things. The first would be ignoring that my Second Amendment rights have been violated, and that I have they have illegally taken actions against me because they and their masters are ignorant. It’s as simple as that. The Gun Control Act of 1968 accomplished many things, but I am going to spell out only two for you. The first being that it made out a policy (then Law) that you could not have an automatic firearm of any type unless very special requirements for that. Along with that was explosives, grenades, and all kind of stuff in that category that soldiers were bringing back from the war in Vietnam. The second being that there would be a federal form you had to fill out, and that had to be checked and approved by the ATF before you took the weapon out of the seller’s store. In 1993, the instant background checks were added by the Clinton Administration, and very soon all of that paperwork would become digital.

Law abiding citizens living in the USA have come to grips with that, and the laws keep a large number of firearms from being illegally obtained. But what is happening now is that large numbers of people in our government want to take mine and your guns away…again; based on ignorance.

-Jim Culp

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