RowdyRebel

I was thinking about something I had posted earlier....might have been this thread, could have been another....don't really feel like scrolling back to try to find it. It had to do with term limits, though, and I think I've come up with a better plan. It seems they (the politicians) have no problem taxing the working man...and most of them have written loopholes and exemptions for themselves into the law. Hell, how many of our law makers haven't paid their own taxes? Even our TREASURY SECRETARY is a tax cheat. Anyway, I was listening to a discussion on the radio today about how the congress hasn't passed a budget in over 1000-something days....and that this fiscal cliff deal adds 4.something trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years....and it got me thinking. I know my other post, I had expressed my support for a Constitutional Amendment for term limits on Senators and Representatives, citing that if it is fair to limit the President to 2 terms, it ought to be just as fair to limit our other elected public servants. However, after doing some thinking, I've devised a much better plan. Rather than term limits, we should amend the Constitution so that: 1) Any fiscal year in which a budget is not passed which limits expenses to no more than the revenues collected in the prior fiscal year, there shall be NO pay for Senators, Representatives, or the President. 2) If for two consecutive years a Representative, Senator, or President receives no compensation for lack of a balanced budget, the tax rate for ALL income generated from ALL sources within the household of each Representative, Senator, or President shall be no less than 100%. 3) If a Representative, Senator, or President receives no compensation for lack of a balanced budget during ANY 3 years in which he/she serves in either the House of Representatives, Senate, or as President, then the elected public servant shall forfeit any government paid pensions, health insurance, or any other "benefit" he/she would otherwise be entitled to after leaving office. In other words, they'd have to form 2013's budget based upon the revenues collected in 2012. If they want to spend more money in 2014, they had better take steps to grow the economy in 2013...because if they kill the economy, they will have less money to spend. Any years the economy grows, there would be a surplus....and the only deficit years would be if we are in a recession. If they don't pass a balanced budget and stick to it, they don't get paid. If they make a habit of it, any income they have from any other source would be taxed at 100% to try to reduce the deficit. Fail to balance the budget 3 times during your time in DC and you lose your pension...and yes, that would be cumulative. Fail once as a Rep, again as a Senator, and one more time as a President.....NO PENSION FOR YOU! I would also like to see some sort of Amendment limiting the percentage of your income that can be confiscated by the federal government....10% is good enough for God, it ought to be the maximum effective tax rate too. The government can tax people less if it wants....but not more.

Dad's rule was always "No talk of Christmas 'til after Thanksgiving"....he liked to take 'em one holiday at a time.

That's the way it SHOULD work....30 minute drive to town....5 minutes later, I had the new alternator and was heading home. 10 minutes after I got home, the new alternator is in and the truck is ready to roll again. Now I just have to get my paperwork caught up and go deliver this load... I STILL hate holidays. If I want a day off, I'll schedule it around things I want to do....and your "official" holidays make that damn hear impossible. I mean the fiance can't really go anywhere for Christmas/New Years because she works retail....Christmas is BIG....and since she's in customer service, returns AFTER Christmas are even BIGGER! So why shouldn't I work through them? I'd rather take my time off when the weather is a little nicer and I can do something I enjoy....like maybe get on the motorcycle and go somewhere. I'd rather look at the weather report and say "It looks like this is going to be a nice weekend...I think I'll take an extra day or two off"....but there are others still working to cover what needs to be done. We don't close up shop. Seriously, what IS New Years? January 1 ain't any different than December 31...the sun came up, it was cold, the sun went down, and it got even colder.

I just wish I didn't have anything to write about.....

Yup...2013 picked up right where 2012 left off. December saw a rebuilt power divider, and some stripped out holes in the banjo housing repaired...new batteries (replaced the 14 month old dead ones)....new drive tires...a wheel seal....new drive brakes (shoes & drums...still need to do 2 S-cam bushings)....new tie rod ends....new steer tires....alignment....and JUST WHEN I THOUGHT everything was good to go and I was hoping to get a few months out of the truck to pay some bills before my next break-down, this happened. ANY OTHER DAY and I wouldn't have lost any work at all....but it HAD to happen on the 1 day when everybody is closed. ....and I've still got the ABS light which has been on since I screwed up torquing the axle hub nut. Called a mechanic for the torque specs when I was doing the wheel seal & 2 things happened....1) I wrote 'em down wrong & 2) he left out an important part. He said to torque the inner nut to 250...back it off....tighten to 50....then slip the lock washer into place...then the outer nut to 250. I wrote it down 250-50-50. I KNEW it didn't feel right when I was putting it back together....coming apart, the inner nut was able to be removed with my bare fingers and the outer nut was a hell of a lot snugger than 50 ft. lbs.....but that's what I had written down, so that's what I did. Double checked the numbers with a different mechanic the next day while I was getting the tie rod ends replaced....250 - 50 - BACK IT OFF 1 FULL TURN - then put the outer nut to 250. So, when I got home I pulled it all apart again and retorqued it that way....'cept now the ABS light is on. I don't know if running it for 190 miles with the bearings a little snug might have damaged something...but the light didn't come on until after I had retorqued it and backed it off like I should have the first time....so maybe torquing the inner nut multiple times like that to 250 might have squeezed everything too close to the sensor? I don't know....ABS is one of those systems I don't really need anyway, so I don't worry about it....but if I get stopped, DOT can write you up if the light is on signaling a problem....so I should probably try to figure out what's wrong before too long, but that can wait for warmer weather. Anyway....enough rambling for one night. I have an alternator to replace first thing in the morning (that I'm not particularly looking forward to doing...supposed to be 15-20 degrees colder tomorrow morning than it was this morning when I was pulling it apart. It sure would be nice to catch a break every once in a while.....

As bad as this guy is, do you really want a president Biden? Other than the fact that they could no longer play the race card each and every time somebody disagreed with the president, it wouldn't be any better in regards to policies...

I usually do try to use the service brakes....unfortunately they apply on the steer & trailer axles, too...seems like it would be counterproductive adding stopping force to 6 non-driving wheels in the effort to get those 2 non-spinning drive wheels to start spinning, but sometimes all you've got to do is get the non-spinning drive wheels to start turning and they'll keep turning...

They are just an excuse for LAZY PEOPLE to take a day off work, thereby making it DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE for the rest of us to get anything done! There, I said it. Heading up today to get loaded, I noticed my volt meter was a little low. 3AM, cold as hell outside....truck started just fine, so I'm watching & waiting for the needle on the gauge to come up...but it doesn't. Usually when I load, I'll shut the truck off while I sit under the silo....sometimes it can get kinda dusty and my truck doesn't need to be inhaling all that lime dust. Today, though, with the needle on the bottom side of 12V, I decided to fast-idle it....lights off....heater off...everything shut off....trying....HOPING....that the needle would start climbing to its usual resting place around 14V....but it never did. As I was pulling out of the silo, my power inverter's low voltage alarm started going off...it's just a little 400W inverter plugged into a 12V outlet....I was TRYING to charge my phone "just in case". I decided to pull out my multi-meter and check the voltage at the alternator while I was closing my lids....11.45V. I made the decision NOT to try to deliver the load, but rather to take it home and try to figure out what was wrong. (I had a pretty good idea already....) Anyway, most of the way home, I'm listening to that damn low-voltage alarm onthe inverter screaming at me...can't shut it off because I need to make sure the phone has enough juice if I need it. About 45 miles from home, I start getting the 7-5 code....battery/alternator voltage. I got home & checked the voltage again....down to 11.1V. I shut the truck off and plugged in my battery charger, and it was showing the batteries were down to 10%. I doubt I would have made it much farther. I pulled the alternator off and was on my way to town for a new one by a quarter to 8. Mack was closed...figured they would be. So was Cape Tractor Trailer Supply. And Cape Starter & Alternator. And NAPA. Auto Zone opened at 9....it was only 8:30....so I waited. They didn't have the alternator I needed, but they DID have an externally regulated 100A one for an older full size Ford truck that I might be able to get to work....but instead of throwing away $100 for a temporary fix, I wanted to check some more places. The International dealer was closed. Advanced Auto didn't have anything. O'Reilly's didn't have anything either. I tried calling a guy I know who went into business for himself as a service truck to see where he'd get an alternator today if he got a call for somebody needing one...no answer. Tried calling a wrecker driver for another Mack dealer to see if he'd have any suggestions...no answer. I started driving down to Sikeston, then remembered the truck stop as I was coming to that exit....so I got off. There is a CAT service shop...closed. Midwest Diesel (Detroit)....looked closed, but the gate was open and the door unlocked. Stood at the counter hollering for somebody (I could hear activity in the back) for about 10 minutes before somebody came to the front. They had a few alternators....none of them would work unless I wanted a 28V alternator or a 65A alternator. I stopped in at the truck stop and one of the people who works there looked up the numbers for TAG Truck Centers (closed) and Peterbilt (also closed) down in Sikeston....glad I didn't drive down there. I went back to Auto Zone for another look at that alternator...figured I could drill out the mounting holes a little and tap the one that was threaded to make 'em big enough to use....but I'd have to trim the mount on the bottom side of the alternator (the one that the bolt passes all of the way through and is held in place with a nut)...and I'd rather not modify the truck like that for a "temporary" fix. Besides, I'd have to remove the pulleys from BOTH alternators, cut the center out of the one that was on the truck so I could weld it around the pully that was on the new alternator because the shaft was too short for the wider pulley to bolt on to. When I looked at the clock, it was already approaching noon, and I figured the time it would take me to do all of that redneck engineering would make it too late in the day for me to run the load, get it delivered, and make it back to be ready to go again tomorrow....so if I'm not running the load out to deliver today anyway, I may as well just wait until tomorrow when all the lazy people get their asses back to work and I can get the right part. So, I grabbed lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and headed for the house. Remind me NEVER to get a burger at BWW again.....don't get me wrong, it was a GREAT tasting burger.....but for the price? They charged a full-meal price for an appetizer-sized burger...and the side (potato wedges) were EXTRA! Anyway, I had a Sam Adams winter lager with my burger....then ordered up an 8-piece wing meal off the lunch menu since the burger was smaller than I had anticipated. Total bill was damn near $30! Spent about 2 hours there watching football...trying to figure out how they can call it the "Heart of Dallas" Bowl when NEITHER TEAM was from Texas!?!?!?!? The GA/NE game was probably the most interesting....guy at the next table had a Cornhuskers shirt on. When NE was doing well, he was wearing the shirt....when GA was on the march, he'd have his sweater on over it. I did make an interesting observation....the South was definitely whooping up on them yankee teams. MS State was the only Southern school that wasn't beating it's northern opponent.... Anyway, I'm glad I decided to head for home....at least I wasn't shut down on the side of the road trying to get a new alternator. Would have needed a jump start, too, by then. This year is off to such a WONDERFUL start!.

For me, its the state cops that are the pricks. The county cops are generally easy going...

My parking brakes apply on all 4 drives....and they flat-out hold. Even loaded to 80,000 pounds and parked on a hill, my truck won't roll. If I tried moving the truck with the parking brakes applied, I'd either stall the engine or break some part of the drive line. ...now if the spring brakes didn't hold all that well, it would be a possibility...but if that were the case, I'd be looking into WHY they don't hold all that well. When I set the brakes & walk away, I don't want to worry about whether or not the truck is going to stay put.

Pffft! Throw a small shovel in the truck with you for next time. At the very least, you could've cleaned off enough of the road to get yourself moving again. I once spent 3 hours backing up an icy hill....loaded to 80,000 pounds....which is why I now carry tire chains on the truck in the winter. Would've taken 10 minutes to chain up, back up, and remove the chains IF I'd had them at the time. Instead, I backed up as far as I could...set the brakes....chopped & shoveled 10-15 feet behind the drives, between the drives, and 3' in front of the drives...roll forward onto the clean spot...chop & shovel where the drives had been sitting....then back up as far as it'd go again before setting the brakes and repeating the process. A cop even showed up as I was nearing the top and asked me if I needed him to call a wrecker....told him "I've got it this far up the hill myself...I think I can manage to get it the rest of the way." Wasn't like I was in anybody's way....road was closed at the bottom of the hill for construction. I was only there because I had seen the "road closed .9 miles ahead" sign from the other direction and thought I had to go around the closure to get to where I was delivering because it was about a mile up the road. About half way down the hill I got to thinking "This shit ain't been cleared....I bet the road doesn't go through" and got on the brakes in time to slide to a stop 2' before crashing through the road closed sign and the 1' dropoff where the pavement had been dug up. If you're driving a truck, you're bound to find yourself in a situation or two. It helps if you've got a few things to help get you out of 'em....and in the winter time, a shovel is a minimum. Kitty litter/gravel/sand can also help. Tire chains aren't as necessary, but like I said above, having them can save you some time & effort.

Just go all Tim Taylor on the thing..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6jId8PtJUFo

The electoral college isn't the problem. The 17th Amendment is. Senators USED to be appointed by the state legislature, to be the state's voice in the federal government. The people HAD their voice in the House of Reps. Repeal the 17th Amendment and give the states their voice back. The electoral college merely assigns the number of electors each state receives based upon their representation in DC....and the state legislatures determine how those electors are chosen. Some states assign electors based upon the percentage of the vote each candidate receives in the state. Most, however, are all-or-nothing. IF EVERY state assigned their electors based upon the percentage of the vote each candidate received, the electoral college outcome would closely resemble the popular vote. In all-or-nothing states, however, a candidate can win all of the electors by securing 1 more vote than his nearest opponent. The funny thing is, after the 2000 election a lot of states rushed to pass ridiculous laws to change the way their electors are assigned. Illinois was one of them. As soon as enough states pass similar legislation (so that the number of electoral votes held by states with similar laws is enough to guarantee victory), the winner of the national popular vote will receive all of Illinois electors. Illinois electoral votes won't even be based upon the votes of Illinois residents....and THAT is bullshit. Then again, there is no right to vote for the office of the president. Electors are chosen in whatever manner the state legislature decides....and if they want to select the electors themselves, the office of the president wouldn't even be on the ballot come election day and there wouldn't be a damn thing anyone could do under the Constitution. However, if the people of the state are going to vote, their vote ought to be taken into consideration when deciding who gets the electors. Term limits I can agree with, though. We amended the Constitution once before in order to limit the president to 2 terms...a similar amendment for senators and representatives would only be "fair". The only problem with term limits is that the more people who are elected to office BECAUSE of those term limits, the more pensions we'll have to pay. ...so the other amendment I'd like to see is one which PROHIBITS pensions from being paid to elected or appointed government officials. In other words, I'd like to see 3 amendments passed: 1) repeals the 17th Amendment. 2) sets term limits for Senators and Representatives. 3) prohibits elected and appointed public servants (aka government officials) from receiving pensions.

I learned to drive in a Ford Ranger....4-banger 5-speed....2 wheel drive...in Chicago. With bald tires & no weight in the bed, I can do just fine in 8+" of fresh unplowed snow. My 4x4 F250 will keep pushing through snow up to its hood. I don't know how much deeper it'll run through, because that's all the deeper I've found with it. It doesn't matter if it's a dry snow drifted up with the ridgeline of the drift running along the middle of the road, or a wet snow piled up by the plow, the F250 pushes on. ...so why shovel? Sounds too much like work.

A little snow never stopped me. Just welded up another u-bolt onto each of my tire chain racks so that I can carry 4 chains on the truck instead of only 2....so I'm all set for the nasty weather to come. The plan is to never need 'em, but I had an incident 3 years ago where it would've saved me 3 hours chopping & shoveling & backing up & repeating trying to get up a hill I shouldn't have gone down. I didn't have the chains then....got a great deal on 'em the next summer. $100 for 8 chains. 4 new in the bag, 4 used. I carry the used ones...2 of 'em aren't in the best of condition, but it isn't like I'm going to drive 30 miles with 'em on.....just to get me up a hill or out of a slick spot...then they come back off. Anyway, I had to run up to the yard sometime over the weekend to drop off the dump trailer and hook back up to my tank for Monday & I wasn't too sure what condition the yard would be in, so I wanted to get the chains hung & didn't want to do that until I had added the 2nd u-bolt to each mounting bracket. When I got up to the yard, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle....didn't even need the chains, probably because I had 'em. I was DEFINITELY glad I had brought my mapp gas torch with me, though. I've got to slide my 5th wheel all of the way to the rear to pull the blocking pin out, and the locking pins that prevent it from sliding were iced up and wouldn't pull out of the holes...so I had to heat 'em up a little to melt the ice before I could slide the 5th wheel plate back. Only trouble I had was when I got back home and tried turning around...rather than run through the mud hole, I tried making a 3-point turn keeping the truck mostly on the paved (chip & seal) part of the road...but had to get a shovel or two of rock to make the turn-around. If I had full locking rears I would've been OK....well, maybe not. They probably would've just pushed me straight forward, but I could have left 'em unlocked until forward progress stopped and then locked in to back up...but anyway, I ain't got 'em so it really isn't worth spending much time thinking about. Damn county plowed the road after the Christmas snow and where the plow had packed the snow a little deeper was the only place I really had any issues. If they hadn't come and fucked up the road with that stupid plow, I would've been fine. I haven't shoveled snow since I moved out of my parents house. Don't need to. If I need to shovel in order to get in or out, all that means is that it is time to buy a bigger truck.

Exactly. Used to be the US Dept. of Homeland Security consisted of an armed citizenry ready, willing, and able to step up to defend their own home, neighborhood, state, and even the country if and when the need arose. Even today, if you read the state constitution in a lot of states there is a section which will describe precisely who makes up the state militia. In Illinois, that would be found in Article 12:

I decided to take a trip for Christmas....brought the snow with me. Christmas is supposed to be white. I couldn't believe how many cars & pickup trucks there were in the ditches along the way, though. Roads weren't all THAT bad! Anyway, I saw this sign on the way home....

The company I've got my truck leased to is putting those stupid things under their dump trailers. The other day when it was so windy, some of the guys that had them on the trailers were having extra difficulties because those stupid skirts effectively doubled the surface area of the side of the trailers and improving their wind-catching characteristics. If they couldn't face directly into or directly away from that wind, they couldn't dump. The guys that didn't have those skirts still had to be facing in the same general direction, but didn't have to be NEARLY as precise about it. Funny thing is, the company trucks are governed down so low that I don't see how aerodynamics really plays THAT much of a role. A streamlined design is going to provide far greater cost savings at 70+ mph than it will at 60 or below. It is one more thing to get tore up at a job site, though. Oh yeah...and they are putting those super singles on the trailers, too...so no more getting off site and back to the shop or to a tire shop to get a tire fixed...going to have to wait for a service truck to come change the tire wherever you happened to be when it blew. The other day, I had a tire blow out a mile before the exit where our new terminal is....so I limped it on in there for a new tire (I've still got duals on my trailer)....if I had those super singles, I would have been parked in the breakdown lane on the highway...coming into a construction zone....not exactly the safest place to be sitting. Somebody is going to get killed, and I hope their family sues and collects 100x the "fuel savings" the company has seen by running those stupid tires. The electric cars of today wouldn't even get me to town and back...so the miles I'd drive around town while running errands and going to all of the places I need to go while there is out of the question, too. I'd rather drive my 10 mpg F250 than have to sit there in town waiting for 8 hours while my car recharged so I could get back home. I stocked up on incandescent bulbs last year....got a whole cupboard full of 'em out in the garage. When I first bought this house, I thought I'd try those compact florescent bulbs. They were expensive, and my electric bills were lower....but then one CMS'd in the ceiling fan and I thought it was going to start a fire. 2 days later, another one did it. I went back through the hosue and replaced every last one of those stupid bulbs with an incondescent. Sure, my electric bills have gone up a hair....but the bulbs are cheaper, last just as long, and won't burn my friggin' house down when they quit working. The local farm & ranch store sells old-school spouts & vents that aren't supposed to be used on the new cans (sold as replacement spouts and replacement vents for older cans)....but they fit. They even have instructions included for doing the retrofit. The spout & vent kit at the local farm & ranch store is the same price as a new gas can....so if you buy a new can with the spout & vent retrofit kit, you are essentially paying double. It is well worth it, though.

No, it isn't blurred out. Remember that this is a public forum...ANYBODY can see it. Please remove those images.

Now I know I'm cool....got my very own stalker. Nobody stalks a loser. It's OK, though...I have a habit of killing uninvited guests...or at least chasing 'em away at gunpoint. Even people I know aren't immune from seeing the business end of a .45 when they come-a-knockin' without giving me a heads up to expect them. I would appreciate it, though, if you did not disclose the actual location....no GPS coordinates....no street or town names....etc....

I have about 10 tons of rock left from the last time I hauled rock here to the house for the driveway....but unless I either rent a bobcat or get my old 8N running (it has a front end loader), I've got to shovel it into the back of a pickup by hand...then shovel it out again to fill in the holes. MUCH easier to just drive through it.

Yeah, they got the tie rod ends fixed and supposedly tightened up one of the kingpins. I haven't jacked the truck up yet to check the kingpin to see if it is any tighter than it was, so at this point I'm just taking their word for it. While they were working on that, they pulled the front wheels off and let me borrow a pickup to run a few towns over to a tire shop that had the right size/load rating tires in stock...got 'em mounted and got back to the Mack dealer for them to balance the tires and 3-axle align the truck. Turns out the only thing out of spec was the toe...which was to be expected considering they had just replaced the tie rod ends. Truck drives like a brand new truck....nice & smooth....no bouncing, wobbling, shaking, vibrating, grinding, popping, or any of the other issues I've been having with it. It's actually FUN to drive again.

Just because he might be local doesn't mean he's not on e-logs or governed....or even that he's well paid for that matter. Maybe it was a case of just not paying attention...but how far up your ass does your head need to be before you fail to realize that you are traveling considerably faster than the traffic around you which has seemingly slowed down for whatever reason?

...but they hold kids so well!