Merry Christmas (Eve)!!!

I haven't done this in a couple years, so I thought I'd give everyone something to laugh about instead of my usual drivel.

 

[Updated] Found one just for 2020 The Year of Suck:

Bee, Bee, Bee, Bee

 

Same Ol', Same Ol'

 

Things That Make Me Giggle

 So there is this group of blacks that call themselves NFAC, which stands for "Nigers Fucking Around with Guns Coalition" or some such shit. Anyway, back in July, one of these dipshits managed to shoot himself and two other people while waving his loaded gun around. Now I see that the leader of this modern-day Mod Squad was arrested for pointing his gun at federal agents during one of those "mostly peaceful" protests. Turns out John Fitzgerald Johnson, aka "Grandmaster Jay" is one of those assholes that think that if only blacks had there own country, everything would be peace and harmony blah blah blah. This is, of course, just the first step that will ultimately lead to all blacks migrating back to Africa, where, as anyone who has a pulse knows, is a land flowing with milk and honey and prancing unicorns that shit Skittles and piss rainbows. And no one has to do any of that White shit like read, do math, or show up on time.

A little advise, Mr. Johnson: ya might want to google "Liberia" and see how that worked out the last time. That will give you something to read while you do your 20-year stretch in the federal pen. That's assuming you can do something as White as read.

Who needs cable TV when you have these assholes for entertainment?

Free and Fair Elections?

 

Living in the Third World

I've been waiting for some official announcement as to just who our next president will be. We are now 10 days past Election Day, and we still don't know for sure. The news media is hailing Sleepy Joe as our next president, but unless I missed a constitutional convention, the news media doesn't declare who the next president is. But why would I expect the end result of the most tainted election in my lifetime to be any different? Here are some random thoughts in no particular order:

1. The media always has its thumb on the scale for its favored candidate, but this year, it was completely ridiculous. No matter what Trump did or said, he was always the villain: if he had run out into traffic to save a family of baby ducks, the media would have ripped his ass for not finding a family of baby geese to save as well. (He's goose-a-phobic!!)

2. Black Lives Matter may have started out with good intentions, but it has turned into something else entirely. The leadership are not interested in sitting down and having any sort of dialogue, just screaming endless (and increasingly stupid) demands, just like the spoiled little brats they were taught to be at college. And when every demand isn't instantly met, they throw a temper tantrum and burn, loot and murder.

3. Every election has a certain level of vote fraud. I'm pretty sure the first recorded instance occurred about five minutes after the ancient Greeks invented voting. The question is, in a race as tight as this one, did the fraudulent votes account for a large enough share of the over-all vote to effect the outcome? The fact that the media and DNC seem to want to squash any attempt to answer that question, pretty much answers the question for me.

4. Twitter, Google  and Facebook censorship of anyone who raises even the most modest of questions regarding the election outcome (or climate change or the Holocaust or about 100 other verboten topics), or even makes a completely accurate statement of fact ("dead people voted in the 2020 election" or "blacks commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes") can get you banned for life. As far as I'm concerned, all three companies should be put to death: stock price set to zero, assets sold to the highest bidder with the funds used to pay as much corporate debt as possible. Any left-over debt is written off.

5. Americans have been gradually losing faith in various institutions for decades. I don't think there is a single person in the working class who believes the healthcare system gives a shit about either their health or their care. Nor does anyone I know still believe that there is anything higher or educational going on in our universities. But the one institution that most still had some faith in was voting. Nice to know that's now over with.

6. The post office was another institution people generally had good feelings about. Sure we all made jokes at mail carriers' expense ("Fragile" means you throw it underhand!) or bitched about long lines at Christmas, but people mostly were happy with the USPS. Then 2020 happened. While we were up in Michigan, it was taking up to two months from the cancellation date for mail to get forwarded to us. Not, as we are now finding out, that the cancellation date means anything as several post offices were ordering their employees to back date the cancellation mark on ballots. I know that the BLM assholes are trying to convince us normals that expecting blacks to meet deadlines and show up for work and school on time is racist, but give me a break. If you are so clueless you don't know when Election Day is, your vote shouldn't be counted. In any case, if I need to mail something important, I'll be using Fed-Ex.

7. At least the idea of the Deep State or the Permanent Bureaucracy has gone from tin-foil-hat crazy to accepted fact. And speaking of the deep state, I'm still waiting for an answer to a question I've been asking for a couple years, ever since the early days of Ukraine-gate: why is the fucking CIA wire-taping the president's phone? It says a great deal about just how far gone we are as a country that no one batted so much as an eyelash at that one.

8. Polling as a "science" is dead. Not only was Biden supposed to win in a landslide rather than the nail-bitter is has turned out to be, there was supposed to be a "blue wave" that gave control of the Senate to the Democrats as well as giving them a super-majority in the House. What actually happened is Republicans gained seats in the House and held (so far) a majority in the Senate. After calling not one, but two elections completely wrong, most thinking people will ignore pollsters and begin to listen to Vegas odds-makers instead.

9. Regardless of who gets sworn in on January 20, both major parties are pretty much toast. The RNC is fracturing between the Never-Trumpers and the Trump Foreverers, while the DNC is being torn asunder by the young-uns who want Medicare for All and zero tuition at state universities and colleges, and the leadership like Pelosi who are older than the pyramids and cannot be distinguished from the Never Trump Republicans.

10. Regardless of who gets sworn in on January 20, we're all screwed. All this fighting is over who gets to preside over the worst decade in American history. Oil production is crashing, heading down to as little as 5 million barrels per day. Our banks serve no purpose other than funneling Fed money printing to the top .1%. Main street family businesses are dropping like flies. Landlords are ignoring the eviction moratorium and throwing families out into the street. Once the moratorium expires at the end of the year, the current trickle of evictions will become a tsunami. (Same with mortgage foreclosures.) 

OK; this is getting way too long and it is way past my bedtime. Just one more thing and I'll shut up:

The latest in Trump Derangement Syndrome is the media meltdown because Trump finally fired all the Pentagon honchos who believed they could ignore the Commander-in-Chief without consequences. The media believes Trump is going to take over in a military coup. The less John le Carre-esque theory is that Trump is sick and tired of being ignored by the Pentagon when he orders our soldiers home from Afghanistan. There is nothing there worth one more American life. End it already. Have the boys home by Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Spread the Debt Around

 

Democratic Integrity

 I know, I know; a contradiction of terms....

Our Efficient Government at Work

It's nice to see our government is capable of being streamlined and efficient in the face of a world-wide pandemic.

 

 Warp Speed indeed....

More BLM Stupidity

So the latest stupid thing from the BLM assholes is that they want to have their own cities and national anthem. I'm completely on board with that as long as:

The blacks-only cities are not tied into our national power grid. Make your own damn electricity. You might want to try solar panels. I hear they work really well at night....

The blacks-only cities are not tied into water or sewer systems located outside of the city borders. We literally don't want to deal with your shit. Incidentally, this was one of the many "oversights" of the stupid CHOP thing. "We are autonomous! Wait; what do you mean your not going to clean out our shit houses?"

Negotiate your own trade deals for all the stuff you can't make yourself (which is pretty much everything other than misspelled protest signs). 

While you're at it, set up your own internet and get the hell off of ours.

We'll let you keep all the millionaire crybabies that used to be professional athletes. As has been made obvious by all the booing at games and the tanking of the TV ratings, we are completely over paying $100 to watch a bunch of pampered assholes play a game. And no, we don't give a shit what someone who gets paid to play a game (and in the case of football players, has brain damage to boot) thinks about politics.

And you can take all your white, liberal handlers with you into your all-black autonomous zones because as we all know, race is just a social construct. So if someone says they are black, they must be black. (As opposed to Native American, where you have to show, ya know actual genetic proof. I'm looking in your direction, Elizabeth Warren....)

I know I sound like a broken record, but how stupid do you have to be to think this could end in anything but disaster for blacks in the US? What is basically being proposed here is a return to Jim Crow. All the blacks (and whites) who risked, and in many cases lost, everything to get rid of blacks-only bathrooms and all the rest of the "separate but equal" bullshit are spinning in their graves.

Biden 2020

 

Community Guidlines

2020 Election

 

Mostly...

 

Conspiracy Theory

 

Riots, Racism and Reparations

This is probably a post I shouldn't write, but when has that ever stopped me?

First, the obvious: the murder of George Floyd was a despicable and cowardly act by a clearly deranged individual who happened to have a badge. Unfortunately we are living in a time when such things are commonplace. Between the military giving both hardware and personnel to the local cops (around one fifth of all cops were former military), then jack around a quarter of them up on steroids and use military terminology meant to dehumanize the enemy when referring to citizens, and such acts are inevitable.

However.

To start at the end of the title of this rant, I, who has never owned a slave, will pay reparations to blacks, who have never been slaves, just as soon as I get my reparations check from the blacks who enslaved my white ancestors. Contrary to the bullshit spewed by BLM assholes, slavery is not and has never been some sort of uniquely white thing. Every race, ethnicity, nation, religion, etc. has both enslaved and been enslaved at some point in history. If we're going to start demanding reparations for every centuries-old wrong, there is going to be a lot of money changing hands.

As far as the riots, looting and arson goes, what is there to say? Blacks are doing what blacks have always done when they get pissed off: burn and loot their own neighborhoods. Six months from now, those very same blacks will bitch and moan about how shitty their neighborhoods are and how unfair and racist it is that they have to drive all the way out into the suburbs to find nice stores to shoplift in. I really don't care what they do as long as they keep it in their own neighborhoods. Bring that shit anywhere near my family and they will find out what a .22-250 does to a human skull.

And now on to racism. Are there whites that think blacks are inferior due to their skin color? Absolutely. Just like there are Asians who think they are innately superior to other races, Christians who think they are superior to all other religious belief systems, etc. etc. etc. Ranking humanity (with my race, creed, religion etc. being at or near the top) is as human as breathing. Whites do it, blacks do it (just listen to any of the BLM assholes or their apologists in the media), everyone does it. At some point, both white and black working class people will understand they have a common enemy (the investment class) and stop allowing themselves to be baited into hating each other by rich white liberals who live safe behind their gated and fenced neighborhoods patrolled by private security.

Which brings us to the whole defund the police bullshit. What an incredibly S. T. U. P. I. D. idea. To show just how stupid this idea is, we need look no further than CHAZ or CHOP or whatever the Seattle hipster ass clowns are calling the part of the city they claim is an autonomous zone. At least until the shooting starts, then they come whining back begging the residents of a foreign nation (the USA) to please, please, please come get our gunshot victims and arrest the bad guys and, while you are up, collect our garbage and empty our shit houses. Whata complete joke.

Meanwhile, cops nationwide are quitting and retiring in record numbers for completely obvious reasons. The ones that remain are giving BLM their wish and steering clear of black neighborhoods with lawlessness being the expected result. There is no way this ends well. The only advise I have for whites living in urban areas is to keep your powder dry.

I would get into the whole tearing down statues thing, but I'm pretty sure anyone reading this can figure out what I feel about that.

R.I.P. Western Civ.

Covid Baptism

Via Automatic Earth.

Hello Michigan!

[This was written over a period of several days while we tried to find internet]

Saturday May 9th

Well, we are now living in Michigan for the summer. We had planned to be up here for a couple weeks, not for six months. But we couldn't figure out a way for my snowbird parents to live up here now that we've taken my dad's car keys away from him. So the only solution we could come up with was for us to become reverse snowbirds and spend the summer living in the cabin on my parents' property. We got here on the first of May and have been scrubbing and sorting 30 years of accumulated debris. What's really weird about the whole thing is that my parents furnished the cabin with stuff from the house I grew up in. It's beyond strange to be using the same dishes, pots, pans, utensils, etc. from when I was a little kid.

As this is now our new normal, we went through all our clothes and decided what would come to Michigan and stay, what we would carry back and forth, and what will stay in Florida. There was no way we could have ever fit even 10% of what we had packed up into my parents' mini-van. We thought we were going to have to UPS the stuff up here, but we found out that one of Debbie's cousins runs a business that hauls snowbird crap between Michigan and Florida, and for a fraction of what it would have cost us to ship it any other way. woot.

In pandemic news, moving to Michigan means we are now under the rule of some wanabe Mussolini. The governor of Michigan has the place locked down tighter than nearly any other state and for longer than most. Everyone knows about the protest in Lansing, but the news media has it all wrong. The protestors are not "white supremacists" or Tea Partiers". They are ordinary people that are being forced into homelessness and even starvation by a lock-down that is mostly unnecessary anywhere in Michigan other than Detroit. The county we are in has had exactly 2 covid-19 deaths. The county that is less than a mile to our north has had zero deaths. So once again, the entire state is being punished because Detroit can't get it's shit together. Everyone likes to blame it all on poverty and GM closing the factories, and that certainly didn't help matters. But Detroit was a wreck long before GM sent all the jobs to China. For my entire life, the rest of the state pays for Detroit's incompetence. I can't count the number of times that the state legislature has taken money away from the local schools here in order to have more for the Detroit schools. Detroit goes bankrupt through corruption and gross stupidity, and the rest of the state gets to foot the bill. So now counties that have less than a dozen cases and no deaths have their economies (still reeling from the Volcker recession) stomped in to the mud yet again. But on the other hand, they didn't vote for her, so why would the Governor give a shit about them?

Weather-wise, we thought we had lucked out. The first day we were here, it got up into the 70's. But that proved to be a teaser. The last two days have been barely making it to 40 with 20-30 mph winds. And SNOW! Not just a few flakes, but actual SNOW on the GROUND! I could have died happy if I had never seen snow again. I'm staying inside wrapped up in blankets as much as possible, but we are still having supper with my parents every day. I "run" across the yard as fast as I can go screaming like a little girl the entire time. At least I'm getting some exercise....

One good thing that has come out of the whole pandemic thing is that people are getting a taste of what a low-carbon lifestyle is really like. No windmills or solar panels or electric cars; just a lot less of everything. Michael Moore is pushing a video on his YouTube channel that more or less puts paid to the whole Green New Deal type thinking. The mainline environmental groups have always pushed the fantasy of everyone in the world living an American, middle-class lifestyle fueled by solar panels and windmills, but as anyone who has lived off-grid knows, it's just that; fantasy. The simple truth is that you cannot run the national electric grid on power that disappears whenever the wind dies down or the sun sets. The intermittency problem can be partially solved for an individual household by using batteries, but how do you build a battery that can store the terawatts of juice to last North America for several days? Add in the electric vehicles that we are all supposed to be driving any day now, and the problem increases exponentially. It. Can. Not. Be. Done. That should be tattooed on the forehead of every politician who has signed onto AoC's Green New Deal. The irony is that the attempt will likely create more environmental destruction than if we just keep on the way we are until the fossil fuels become too expensive for general use.

The elephant in the room is population. Prior to humans breaking into the planet's carbon stores, human population never exceeded 1 billion. We are well on our way to 8 billion. What does that say about our low carbon future? Exactly. Look around you; only one out of every eight people gets to live. There are several ways that can happen, one of which, ironically, is pandemics. We could try something like China's now-abandoned one-child policy, but doing so would create a demographic disaster even worse than what we see in countries like Japan. We are in a trap; we've painted ourselves into a corner that has no way out that doesn't look like the scariest parts of the Bible.

Thursday May 14

We've more or less settled into the cabin. The weather has improved somewhat. We used the couple of nice days to tackle my dad's shed, which has become filled with tools and random junk over the last 30 years. It was so bad that even getting in the door was a challenge. A dozen or so garbage bags later, we are starting to make some progress, but we still have a long way to go. Once we are done there, we will start on my mom's shed which is almost as bad as my dad's was. I can't figure out how two people who lectured me for my entire life about how having things takes away from what is important in life could have accumulated so much useless crap.

I'd also like to get a small garden going. There is a large fenced area on the property that my dad planted for years. Then it just got to be more than he could handle, so the garden has sat fallow for several years. There is no way I can do anything like he used to in my condition, but I can do something on a smaller scale. Now that we are allowed to buy seeds and plants (and temperatures have stopped dropping into the teens at night) I need to get my butt into gear.

We are going to go searching for a wifi connection, so this may actually get posted before November...

Friday May 15

We have internet!!! We ran into the Verizon and picked up a Jetpack. I was playing with it all the way home. Works great even in the cabin! I doubt we can stream video, but for most of what we do, it works just fine. There is no data caps, but there is throttling after a certain point, but unless we start trying to binge-watch X-Files episodes, I don't think we will ever get anywhere near our cap.

Woo Hoo!

Shareholder Value

Keeping in mind what is really important...

(The S&P 500 is up over 20% over the last month. Buy! Buy! Buy! You don't want to be left out!)

Easter 2020

Happy Easter to everyone!!

Life in Lock-Down

Florida joined up with most of the other states and declared a formal lock-down. We can still do take-out and drive thru for food; grocery stores are open, but good luck scoring toilet paper; most churches are shut down, although a few are defying the 10-or-fewer people rule and having regular services. We were already pretty much shut in and had even told my parents that they could not go to church, so not much changed for us.

One problem we had is that my parents eat out frequently, so instead, we started preparing meals and taking them over to their place. It's still eating out - as in eating out on the porch; for now, we are keeping them happy. Dad still has to have a Burger King every week or so, but we're working on weaning him off of that.

We've also been canceling "unnecessary" doctor visits, which raises the question: If they were unnecessary, why were they ever made in the first place? I had my first video doctor visit the other day; it seemed... well... unnecessary. Nothing was said or done that could not have been handled with a simple phone call or even an e-mail. The video quality was so poor on either end, I could never had shown him anything. But I'm sure some tech consulting firm made a mint setting it all up and that is all that really matters, right? After all, those legions of burger flippers put out of their jobs by automation are going to become tech experts after watching a dozen or so TED Talks, and they need jobs!

We are still trying to figure out when exactly we are leaving for Michigan. Medical stuff keeps jumping into our path, so by the time we get everything set, something else pops up. As of right now, there is nothing stopping us from leaving when we originally planned as long as the states don't try to close their borders. We keep hearing rumors of cops pulling people over at random and demanding ID's and proof that it's "necessary" for them to be on the road. If true, then we are taking a bigger hit to our constitutional rights (freedom of travel, freedom of association, freedom of assembly) than we took after 9/11.

And speaking of politicians over-stepping their authority, we have this little gem:

“If you’re not buying food, medicine, or other essential items, you should not be going to the store,” [Governor Gretchen Whitmer] said. Big-box retailers such as Walmart were ordered to shutter entire sections of their stores – such as furniture, carpeting, plant nurseries, paint, and garden centers – beginning on April 10.

The state’s strict lockdown measures mean residents will be stuck at home for the start of spring, but those who were hoping to plant a vegetable garden to help pass the time – or get some fresh air – are fresh out of luck.

...

Amanda Carpenter, a CNN contributor with more than 140,000 Twitter followers, wrote that her friends in Michigan are “irate” over the fact that they “can’t get farm supplies but booze and lottery tickets are available.”

Good to see my home state has their priorities straight, even in a pandemic: neoliberal exploitation in the form of liquor and lottery ticket sales are "essential", but seeds and plants that allow citizens some infinitesimal  bit of freedom from Corporate Food (tm)? NOT ALLOWED!

Whata bunch of bozos. I hope Michigan residents remember this at the next election.

If we have elections....

COVID-19, Dogs, Tortoises, and Other Miscellaneous

Given that the State of Florida is closed for business until further notice, I haven't had much to share lately. Debbie finally got a picture of our latest rent-a-dog:

Her name is Sophie. She's very old and makes almost as much noise standing up and lying down as I do. She can also hold her own when we all got into a snoring contest. I think we set off the neighbor's car alarm....

We also have a gopher tortoise living behind our lot. We haven't named him/her yet, but I'm leaning towards "Fred". Except it might be a "Fredericka". We haven't bothered peeking at it's naughty bits. Yet. Anyway, he/she/it came out of his/her/its burrow to say, "Hi!"

I can't remember if I've already posted a photo of our rent-a-cat; a very vocal "free living" cat that seems to like hanging out with us:

For some reason, that is her favorite chair to take naps on, even though it's kinda slippery and she's slid off and landed on her head at least once.

The flowers are blooming. The amaryllis are up:

and the hibiscus are going crazy this year:

As I mentioned, everything is pretty much shut down at this point. A lot of the seasonal people are pulling out because if all you can do is sit inside and stare at the TV, you may as well be closer to family up in snow country. We are still planning on taking the 'rents up north around the end of April. I'm hoping by then that the worst of the insanity has worn off and things will be, if not normal, at least minimally functional. Rumors are flying that the states are going to close their borders, even though such a move would be constitutionally problematic, not to mention not all that practical. Shutting down the freeways? OK, that's barely plausible. But what about secondary roads? As we liked to say when we were kids, "You and whose army?"

Personally, not much has changed for us other than not going to the Moose Lodge for spaghetti and music on Mondays with my parents, and staying closer to home. Like everywhere else in the "civilized" world, the store shelves are stripped bare of toilet paper and bread, but we've always kept a fairly deep pantry, so we're good and have enough to keep my parents going for quite a while as well.

The big question is if we will be able to head north when we plan to. Will the hotels be open that we've already booked rooms in? Will the dialysis center in Michigan agree to take me on as a seasonal patient, or will they tell me to take a hike? Will things get bad enough  that some sort of national state of emergency will make any travel impossible? It's kinda scary that we even have to think about questions like that, but such is the "post-coronavirus world."

Well, given that everyone is hording the bread, it looks like I'm going to have to make some for us and my parents. Forcing me to make and eat fresh-baked bread: it's a cruel, cruel world out there....

Oh, the Humanity!

What the....?!?!?

When I Was a Kid

This was me as a kid, only instead of cool Bon Iver music, what you would have heard was:

You can't go out in just that sweater in this weather! You'll catch cold and DIE!

Don't walk so close to the water! You'll fall in and DIE!

Don't touch that! It could be poisonous and you'll DIE!

Quit looking up in the sky! You'll trip, break your neck and DIE!

Don't wade in the water! You'll get your pants wet, catch cold and DIE!

Don't touch that bird! You'll catch bird flu and DIE!

Don't climb on those rocks! You'll slip, fall and DIE!


Love ya Mom!

2020 Is Off to a Good Start

Can't wait for February.....

The Real Cause of Australia's Fires

If You Are Easily Offended, Don't Read This

So I'm skimming through articles on RT and come across this little jem:

The United Methodist schism is all about RACIST white pro-LGBTQ progressives muscling out ethnic minorities faithful to Bible

The title of the article gives away the plot, but there were some interesting details. For example, the little insignificant detail that the UMC actually held a vote as to whether the church should abandon the 2,000-year-old doctrine that homosexuality is a sin and the majority voted "No" and that indeed it was still a sin. Like liberals everywhere, the ones pushing the church to change its doctine took the loss magnanimously and agreed to abide by existing doctrine.

Oh. Wait.

The expectation was that it was the progressives who would decide they had to leave.

It turns out Mohler was completely wrong. The opposite has happened. Somehow in the following year, the LGBTQ faction turned the tide and got the conservatives to call it quits.

All the MSM outlets are reporting the fallout the same way: the newly minted ‘traditionalist Methodist’ denomination will be allowed to continue to be bigots in their own splinter group.

And there is certainly bigotry at play here, but it’s not coming from the traditionalists. They are simply affirming the same truths Christians have always affirmed in a world that wants them to change.

Not having a personal dog in this fight, I've stayed quiet on this issue while watching denomination after denomination fall prey to the queers. The Bible is explicit in its condemnation of homosexuality, right along with fornication and adultery. If you are going to call yourself a "Methodist" and "Christian", then you cannot support the whole rainbow flag crowd. It's just that simple. Go start your own religion (or join any of the thousands out there that have no problem with homosexuals, adulterers, etc.), but stop hijacking Christian churches along with their real estate and other bankable assets. Cuz it's always about the benjamins...

Take my personal experience as an example. I was raised as a GARBC Baptist, active member, lay pastor, board member, etc. Paid out tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree in ministry. Devoted over 40 years to service in my chosen denomination. And then, gradually over a period of several years discovered that I did not agree with the church on several major doctrinal points.

So naturally, I used my position as a lay pastor and board member to hold the church's assets hostage. I demanded that the GARBC immediately change its doctrinal position even though the majority of the congregation did not agree with me.

I, of course, did none of that. I simply left the church, stopped identifying myself as "GARBC Baptist" and have pretty much dropped the "Christian" label as well. I am currently exploring other options, most of which incidentally are accepting of homosexuals (and adulterers and fornicators, etc.). Personally, I could care less who shags whom, how they do it or how many are involved as long as everyone is consenting and of age. But to claim that after 2,000 years, there has been some sort of new revelation and that everyone has been misinterpreting scripture (including those who spoke the languages the Bible was originally written in) has to qualify as the most arrogant and self-serving drivel that I've ever heard.

To say that I am disappointed that the Methodist leadership caved in to the fags is a massive understatement. Shame on those who orchestrated this hostile take-over and shame on those who stood by and let it happen.

And now that I've pissed off my last three readers, I will sign off.

US Politics in One Photo

New Year, New Decade

Here we are in the year 2020, the far-off future we all dreamed about when we were kids (when we weren't doing duck-and-cover drills). I'm with Calvin on this one:

Last New Years Day I was in the hospital, so I didn't do a proper post, but I probably would have said pretty much the same thing I said two years ago:

Speaking of the future, it's that time of year to look back at what I expected for last year and what I expect for this year. I have to say that I'm really surprised that we made it all the way through 2017 without some sort of crash, bust, implosion, etc. I have to give credit to the Masters of the Universe at the Fed, ECB, BOJ, PBOC, etc. for keeping all the plates spinning for another twelve months. Not that the real economy is in any better shape now than a year ago. The opposite, in fact. But all the modern-day tulip bulb bubbles keep going up...

Just change the years, and that's my opinion for 2020. About the only thing I can think to add is that the insanity of the Fed hoovering up crappy stocks and bonds to the tune of a half a trillion dollars in the last weeks of 2019 does not seem like a positive thing. But given that this is an election year, we can assume the hoovering will continue in whatever volume necessary to prevent any serious downturns in either the stock or bond markets.

Speaking of the election, it looks like the DNC is doing everything they can to re-elect Trump. At this point, the Democrats have so shot themselves repeatedly in both feet, I don't see any way for them to recover short of putting a radical like Sanders up for the nomination. Unfortunately for the party, that will never happen. Instead, the party hacks will once again rig the primary for Biden which will guarantee a Trump win in a landslide. In the meantime, our famously free press will continue to be the 24-7 Re-elect Trump ad that they've become since 2016.

On a personal level, I'm not sure how 2020 can be any worse than 2019, but I'm sure Loki or Pan or God or whoever (if anyone) is in charge of things will figure out a way. Over the last year, my kidneys crapped out entirely, so now I get to do dialysis every day for the rest of my life. Yaaaa! Then my immune system ate all the nerves from the knees down, so now I'm basically a complete cripple unable to do anything for myself. Yaaaaaa! Then my thyroid bit the dust so now I'm on hormone pills for the rest of my life. Yaaaaaaa! And no explanation for any of it. Personally, I think it's all some autoimmune disorder, but none of my 17 doctors seem to give a shit other than racking up huge bills for Medicare and Medicaid. The question I keep asking (and not getting an answer to) is what happens when it kills an organ than can't be replaced with a pill or a shot or a machine?

What all this means is that any goals we had as far as getting work done around here just got flushed down the toilet. My day is basically wake up, hobble (barely) out to my recliner, sit all day reading, messing around on the internet, or watching movies, then hobble (barely) back to bed. The only excitement to break up the day is all the medical procedures we have to do to keep me alive and being driven around to all of my doctors appointments, lab tests, etc. There is a mile-long list of things that need to be done and I cannot do a single one of them. We tried to hire someone to do one of the easiest things on that list, but it turned into a giant, two-month-long clusterfuck, that we are still catching drama about. Life is too short for all that and so is money, meaning I expect 2020 to be nothing but a lot of sitting around watching the yard go to hell and nothing getting done on the house interspersed with doctor crap. Yaaaaaa!

Happy New Year!