We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.  The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. 

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the"green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smart ass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

Obama's Stunning Snub

GETTYSBURG – He almost was not asked to speak.

In October 1863, President Abraham Lincoln received the same plain envelope that was sent to hundreds of people, requesting attendance at a dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery here.

 

Col. Clark E. Carr, a confidante of several U.S. presidents and a member of the commission that organized the event, later admitted that commissioners scrambled to send a more personal invitation after Lincoln indicated he would attend.

Asking Lincoln to deliver a “few appropriate thoughts,” Carr said, was “an afterthought.”

You see, the dedication’s real headliner was Edward Everett. A former secretary of state, U.S. senator, Massachusetts governor and Harvard president whose nationwide tour helped to save Mount Vernon as a national shrine, Everett was considered the great orator of his time.

When Lincoln arrived, Gettysburg remained raw from the horrific battle that raged here for three days just five months earlier. More than 70,000 Confederate troops engaged 83,000 Federal troops around this crossroads town; the battle claimed more than 50,000 souls and 3,000 horses, and it changed the course of the war in the Union’s favor.

The bones of dead horses still were strewn over surrounding farmlands; vultures hovered over the landscape, and unburied coffins stood stacked in town.

Lincoln had plenty of justifiable, honorable reasons to beg off from the ceremony: His ten-year-old son, Tad, lay sick with a fever in the White House; the war was going poorly out West; he was locked in a budget showdown with Congress, and his re-election bid looked grim against a general he fired for incompetence a year earlier.

Yet he came to a place underscored with death, tasked with making sense of it all with “a few appropriate thoughts” that gave meaning to the losses and the unbearable sacrifices.

On a brisk, cloudless November day, he stood on the temporary wooden stage after a two-hour speech by Everett who, by all accounts, enthralled the crowd with his pontificating skills.

“Four score and seven years ago,” he began in a squeaky, hard-to-hear voice before a crowd that had gathered from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Three minutes and 270 words later, he sat down, convinced that he missed his mark.

He was wrong.

In nine days, this town will commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s speech with a ceremony at the same Soldiers' National Cemetery featuring the U.S. Marine Band, Governor Tom Corbett, and a reading of the Gettysburg Address.

One person who will not be among those honoring Lincoln is President Barack Obama.

The White House gave no reason why the president would not attend.

According to the National Park Service, Obama has never visited the battlefield as president.

In 2008, Barack Obama rolled out his presidential campaign in Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln announced his own presidential candidacy. Throughout that year’s campaign, Obama’s staff embraced similarities between the two men as part of his persona; he allowed them to encourage lofty comparisons – and, after he won the election, he recreated Lincoln’s 1861 train trip to Washington as part of his own inaugural spectacle.

He even took the oath of office on Lincoln’s Bible – twice.

Lincoln brought the country to a revival at an unlikely time with his address. He gave new meaning to the definition of sacrifice in service to the country, for the purpose of the preserving the country.

Lincoln was asked to speak here only as an afterthought. The request for Obama to speak has been sought for more than a year.

It would be an occasion for him to honor a crucial time in our past, to create a historical bridge to today.

His dismissal of the request shows a man so detached from the duty of history, from the men who served in the White House before him, that it is unspeakable in its audacity.

Ask almost any person in this historic town; even his most ardent supporters here are stunned.

Obama long ago veered away from any affinity he may have believed he had with Lincoln, which gives credibility to the criticism that his connection to Lincoln was always a political calculation rather than a true bond.

IRS’s Lerner Refuses to Resign? She was put on administrative leave instead?

First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator.

I could she the headlines now.  If Donald Trump were in charge he might say, "Your fired and You're going to jail."  But to be politically correct our Government is telling her and us, were placing Lois Lerner, the IRS staffer, even though you are under fire for your role in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, we are placing you on administrative leave.  Yes that's right!  You get a payed vacation starting Thursday!

Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.

But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.

He said the commissioner was in his right to demand her resignation, and said taxpayers should not continue to pay her salary indefinitely.

“My understanding is the new acting IRS commissioner asked for Ms. Lerner’s resignation, and she refused to resign. She was then put on administrative leave instead,” Grassley said in a statement. “The IRS owes it to taxpayers to resolve her situation quickly. The agency needs to move on to fix the conditions that led to the targeting debacle.”

Capitol Hill sources said Lerner, the director of exempt organizations, was placed on paid leave Thursday, amid calls from some lawmakers for her to be suspended or fired. In her absence, Ken Corbin, the current deputy director of the submission processing, wage and investment division, will take over her duties, according to an internal IRS memo obtained by Fox News.

Lerner, the official who first acknowledged the controversial IRS practice earlier this month, asserted her innocence at a House hearing on Wednesday. She then refused to testify, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. The move angered many who say she should have been forced to answer why the tax agency targeted conservative groups applying for tax exempt status.

Republican leaders of that committee, though, now say she waived that right by giving a statement and want to haul her back to testify.

Pressure has been mounting on the administration to take tough action against Lerner, after two other IRS officials were pushed out in the wake of the scandal.

In a letter earlier Thursday to IRS Acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., asked the agency to remove Lerner from office and said they had “lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties.”

It’s unclear whether Republicans will succeed in trying to recall her before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the panel, said through an aide Thursday that her Fifth Amendment assertion is “no longer valid,” since she delivered remarks at the start of Wednesday’s hearing.

That hearing was never technically adjourned, and Republicans hope to bring her back.

Others, though, say she was in her right to defend herself and subsequently invoke the right to remain silent.

The IRS has had a series of missteps that have not only publicly marred the reputation of the IRS, but also called into question what the White House knew about the scandal and when they knew it.

Separately, Tea Party-related groups who claim they were targeted by the tax agency have started filing lawsuits this week against the IRS. In some cases they are asking for the IRS to admit wrongdoing. In others, they are seeking monetary claims.

“It’s extremely troubling that it has taken this long for Lois Lerner to removed from the top exempt position at the IRS,” Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, the group suing on behalf of some Tea Party groups, said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

Sekulow said instead of putting Lerner on administrative leave, his group is calling for her to be fired.