"Accountability?"

 

“Accountability?”

By Jim Culp

September 7, 2023

 

I saw yesterday that the USA is sending another one billion dollars to Ukraine. Well, that’s nice. But I have a few comments as well as some suggestions.

When I was in Iraq in 2003-2004, I wore several hats besides the helmet that I wore daily, and let me tell you, that got really old really fast. But another hat I wore was the Field Ordering Officer…in short…that guy who orders all the stuff that the Army didn’t give us that we needed.

So, I would go to the office tent that was used as a pay section, and sign for $10,000 dollars in US currency. When I used that portion up, I could go back and get more. During this time, I ordered comfort items for my troops, and proper tools to build furniture, sandbags, etc.

My point here is not to bore the living hell out of you, it is to make a point. During that time, I had to account for every single penny of that money to the last penny. Why? I was the taxpayer’s money.

So, tell me…when we send some country a billion dollars, wouldn’t up expect the receiver to have to account for that much money? I think they damn sure should. When I was in Iraq, I can personally tell you that if I hadn’t kept account of one penny of that money, I would be sharing a cell with Bubba at Fort Leavenworth. My anal retention would be zero after that first month.

Why are we broke? I’ll have a few suggestions in my next blog.

Jim Culp

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A Vision of Tomorrow

 

 

"To Vote,,,and not Vote"

 

“Vote...and Vote Not”

By Jim Culp

August 24, 2023

 

A friend of mine (I’ll call him Bob) called me last night (one of us lost the other’s number). Having been soldiers of the same unit got us shuckin’ and jivin’ for the first time in at least a decade. After some soldier jokes and worthless B.S… we talked about the times while out on our tanks. This guy and I went all the way back to our time in Delta Company, First Tank. Then the phone was quiet, and I asked him if he was calling for something else. He said he was calling me because I was on the call list for the Republican Party that was calling people on their list for the support of Donald Trump.

“Well dude, I haven’t been listed on that since 2002, and I don’t know who put my name back on it…but you can scratch me off of it.”

“What? Are you kidding me brother?”

“Listen man…it’s been a long time. I have different views and beliefs that I didn’t back when we were riding the steel killers. Maybe we better talk on that side for a while before we decide who we are voting for.”

There was brief and uncomfortable pause, and then he spoke up.

“Jim, you know me bro…I wouldn’t just haphazardly support anyone, but I feel this one in my bones. Trump has saved us time and time again, and right now he is our only hope.”

“Let me stop you there, Bob. You couldn’t sell me that if you had a 5-ton truck full of pretty whores and hundred-dollar bills. You can say that of anyone in government that you have seen pull off some major political feats, but that doesn’t make the person infallible.”

“Ok, Jim. I just wanted to talk.”

“Really Bob? I think you were ready to shovel me fifty pounds of shit and tell me it was chocolate pudding. I was in Iraq in 2003, and way into 2004. I did two personal things during that tour, and here they are. A) I came to bear with my faith. I took faith and religion and tossed them out of my life.

B) I stopped taking any words from any politician at face value. There is simply way too much crap to wade through after the words are spoken. I don’t care if it’s Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny…I have made up my mind that I would let them impress me, not the other way around.

“Yeah,” said Bob, “that’s a big slice of pie to eat.”

“You mean as big as Christianity? When I was in Iraq, I read a ton of books at night when everything was half-ass quiet. At least twelve of them were about world religions. Man, were my eyes ever opened.”

His phone hung up. I know that he had because he’s a guy that never upgrades anything. So… he probably still has a phone that is as big as a lawn tractor.

He started and lost that argument, and there is a reason why. Don’t try your tricks with an intelligent human. They don’t line up like suckers.

Will I vote in the next Presidential Election? We’ll see. Someone has to convince me of his or her metal and serving the USA like a POTUS should, not try and make a side deal to fill up the coffers.

I don’t know where things are going, but I will make my own path. I guarantee that my actions will not be because of a god that tells me it’s right, or a politician that needs to be in an old folk’s home.

Like my main homie Bob Dylan said so many years ago… “the times they are a changin’.”

 

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History

 

“History”

By Jim Culp

April 30, 2023

 

Some history is fact (by a number of people who witnessed it happen), and then there is fanatical bullshit that allows Bob and Tony to throw a few lie grenades into the tale. This crap of taking down statues should have never happened. The American Civil War was only partially slave owners, and many of the Southerners did not own other people for work. Statues are history. I would not take part in taking down anyone’s statue even if it were Hitler, Stalin, or Hussein. No, I am not exhausting the bastards, I am just trying to tell people that yes, they were evil people…but they are still PART OF HISTORY. You learn from the negative AND the positive. In martial arts, this is achieved by striking a balance somewhere between Yin (dark) and Yang (light) and thus “balancing your life.” Children (in grammar school) are taught only the positive, and they will grow up thinking that every government is good, all people are good; until they wake up one morning and realize that they have been sheltered and were not allowed to learn things for themselves.

It is a truly astounding time in your life when you see things for yourself, and either form your own opinion, or go ask someone that is knowledgeable on the subject you are analyzing for your benefit. For me, one of the greatest days of my life was visiting the museum of British History. The Tower of London is literally a tower made of stone. Every floor is a century of time. It is astounding that this massive structure was made by masons, commoners, and hundreds of other walks of life.

So back to the main topic, who do you think helped this civilized kingdom built? Slaves. Thousands of them across hundreds of years. There are statues to British monarchs and their families. Do we get on a plane and go to London and destroy what doesn’t make the status quotient.

Wake up and understand that this Earth and its human inhabitants are never going to be perfect. Is a lion guilty of sin if he eats a gazelle? No, he’s making his way through history…just like you and me.

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"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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"Thugs will be Thugs"

 

“Thugs will be Thugs”

By Jim Culp

January 28, 2023

 

This morning, I poured my coffee and sat down at the table that holds my laptop and necessary items. I had not seen the Tyre Nichols videos yet, so I searched for a good link and watched all of them. They were disgusting to say the very least. There was a video of the stop, then the struggle between him and the cops, and several other ones from cameras with different angles or views. I watched them twice, trying to make heads or tails out of the savage beating that Mr. Nichols endured. The stop was first…you see one of the cops jerk his door open before he even started to question him about his driving. He’s tackled and pepper sprayed, then tries to run again. Why? I fully believe that the “police officers” (and I used the term simply to identify them) were going to beat him anyway, and he kept trying to get away because he could sense their anger or was afraid for his life. He runs a short distance again and is tackled again. He receives pepper spray, tasing, and punched three times. The officers hold him while one of them delivers directed punches to his face.

The second video, taken from the street, shows some of the more violent moments of the encounter after police have chased down Nichols. One officer takes Nichols to the ground while another knees him in the torso. As the first two officers bring him to the ground, they continue to punch and knee him, and a third officer walks up, pauses to swing his leg, and kicks Nichols in the head.

Finally, Mr. Nichols ins successfully handcuffed, and leaned up against a car. The ambulance arrives (late…but to be fair, Memphis is a big city) and the EMTs start evaluating him. However, the twenty-two minutes that passed while he was left alone to bleed and suffer was pure negligence in my opinion. During that time, the “police officers” were talking about everything that had occurred and did not check on Mr. Nichols at all.

The videos that I have seen do not show him being treated, placed in the stretcher, or anything of the type. Two of the officers claimed that Mr. Nichols had tried to reach for their guns during the stop. They also claimed that he had been driving recklessly…but there is no evidence to support that.

My final point. Cops called a “scorpion unit” place deep fear in citizens…much the same as Nazi storm troopers did to the citizens they were brutally engaging with. These five guys were thugs, and nothing more. They are now facing second degree murder, and I hope they are convicted. Was Mr. Nichols a saint? I don’t know…but her certainly did not need a sentence of death that ultimately ended his life.

JimC

 

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