Merry Christmas?

I usually post some funny videos for Christmas, but (and I know I've already said this several times) I'm just not feeling it this year. Part of it is that the damn doctors have been cutting on me again, most likely for no good reason whatsoever. The surgery was relatively minor, but because of where the incisions are located, I can't sleep in bed. The recliner isn't bad for sleeping per se, but I tend to wake up every hour or so, then call it quits after about four or five hours of "sleep". 

I know. First World problems.

And just to rant a bit (yea, yea; I know) what the hell is up with that little twerp Zelenskyy waltzing into the Congress of the United States dressed in a sweatshirt and demanding more money? And as if that were not bizarre enough, the couple of Congress critters who did not stand and applaud the little shit endlessly were called Putin-supporting fascists. This wrongthink shit is right out of Orwell's 1984. Look. Is it so hard to think that the Russian invasion is wrong and that Zelenskyy is a corrupt little dirtbag who is using aid to his country to buy mansions all over Europe? The bastard has shut down Orthodox churches, seized their money and put priests in jail. How does that make him a defender of freedom and democracy?

And all of it so Pelosi's husband's Raytheon stock goes up in price.

Enough. Try to forget about Western Civilization circling the drain for a day or so and have a... 

Merry Christmas.

This Is Terrifying

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Matthew 7:15-20

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Never fear, I haven't suddenly seen the error of my evil ways and switched this into an Evangelical blog. 

No, we are going to talk about the Democratic Party. Specifically how they just threw the working class under the bus. Again. A Democratically controlled House and Senate along with the Democratic corpsicle-in-chief voted to "outlaw" the railroad workers strike without forcing the rail companies to address any of the demands the workers were making. Workers wanted paid sick time (without some ridiculous requirement that they give a months notice of when they were going to be sick) and an end to being on-call 24/7, being required to work multiple back-to-back shifts, etc. "Joe Biden" slapped them down without a second thought. Nice. Sounds like the perfect time to hew that particular corrupt tree down and cast it into the fire....

Speaking of knowing someone by their fruits, Russia continues to demonstrate its bona fides as a conservative nation by shutting down all promotion of LGBTQ+, especially among children. This will play well with the Iranians of course, but it will also draw the interest of other conservative nations in the Middle East and Southeast Asia like Vietnam and Indonesia. I'm sure it will also go over well with Russia's new bestie, China. Of course all the usual suspects here in the States will raise holy hell, but does anyone with a pulse really think Putin cares? In fact, I suspect he takes great pleasure in kicking the impotent hornets' nest called the United States of America.

I don't have much else. This has been the Month from Hell so far with endless doctor visits to figure out what is going on with my right eye. My dysfunctional medical "team" currently has two theories. Both can lead to blindness, one can also cause strokes. The medication I'm on to treat it can also cause blindness and strokes, just somewhat more slowly. Meanwhile, I have a biopsy scheduled for the week of Christmas to confirm, at which point I may continue with the medication that can lead to blindness or stroke, or I may be switched to another medication which can also lead to blindness or stroke, but via a completely different process. Go, modern medicine,,,,

Because of all of that, Christmas plans will likely be low-key; dinner with my parents followed by a rousing game of dominoes. We do have plans to attend the annual Christmas Ball at our Moose Lodge to support Toys for Tots and a small party with some friends, but otherwise not a lot. What can I say; just not feeling it this year. I wonder if I could find a Krampus costume?

Gobble Gobble!!!

Well, it's the day after the day after Thanksgiving. I realized that it has been awhile since I put anything up here, so while I have a bit of downtime... well... ya know.

Our holiday was relatively quiet. We had dinner on Thursday with my parents at their church, then played dominoes until it was time for me to start up my daily medical crap (dialysis, if you care). I've never been a big holiday person. It was always the same routine: too many people in too small of a space eating too much food. I have never understood what any of that has to do with giving thanks or the birth of Jesus or whatever. My distaste for all that likely stems from my Aspergers more than anything else.

The Red Tsunami was reduced to a trickle with the GOP barely gaining control of the House and the senate looking to end in another 50/50 tie. (And yes, we are going into the third week since the election and in the country that calls itself the Beacon of Democracy, we still don't know all the results.) Everyone has a theory why so I'll throw out my own. It's really quite simple. What exactly did the Republicans run on? They tried to make the case that we should vote for them because "Joe Biden" has done so many horrible things. OK, so let's say for the sake of argument that I agree with that sentiment. What I would then be looking for is what Republicans are going to do to fix it. Don't just point out the other guy's faults, tell me in plain English how you intend to go about correcting the problem. High inflation, job losses, high gas prices, homelessness, the mess at the southern border. Even if I buy your argument that all those things are solely the fault of the current corpse-in-chief (and I don't), what is your plan to fix it? That was never articulated to the public, so like me, many that may have been leaning towards the GOP stayed home.

And yes, there was voter fraud. So what? There has been voter fraud in every election since the Greeks invented the thing 3,000 year ago. I've heard a lot of bitching about ballot harvesting carried out by Democrats. Bitching is fine and dandy, but how 'bout Republicans do some ballot harvesting themselves? Start in California among the non-English-speaking people from Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia. These people are very conservative. And they are easy to find. Just start hitting the churches they attend. That one step could very possibly turn solid blue California into a red state. Now wouldn't that be a hoot and a half? Hillary Clinton would drop dead.

Well, that's it for me. We have another Thanksgiving-ish thing today with the Evil Corner Club. Not sure what's on the menu, but I'm sure leftover turkey will play a starring role. In honor of getting the ECC back together, we will be bringing Death by Chocolate. My blood suger is spiking just thinking about it....

Push Back

At long last the antibodies seem to be kicking in here in America at least. The rest of Western Civ still appears to have their collective heads shoved up their asses.

Item one:

The Great Satan himself, Elon Musk has purchased Twitter and promptly fired most of the top executives and half the staff. Given what I've heard about the working conditions at Twitter, Brother Elon was being rather kind. The place sounded more like an adult day care center rather than a place where serious adults came together to get real work done. I don't use Twitter, have never seen the need for such a thing. (If whatever "thought" you have can be expressed in 120 characters or less, it is probably better you keep it to yourself. But I'm just some no-nothing old fart....) Bottom line, what Elon does with Twitter will have exactly zero impact on my day-to-day life. If he actually does as promised I may reconsider, but so far, other than some long-overdue house cleaning, I am not much impressed. When all the people that have been banned from the platform have been reinstated, then maybe.

Meanwhile, all you ex-employees of Twitter, repeat after me: "Would you like to super-size that?"

In other news that should have been obvious decades ago, Greenpeace has finally admitted that recycling as currently practiced is a complete sham. Depending on who you believe, anywhere from 75% to 90% of the stuff you put in those blue bins is either tossed into a landfill or, even worse, burned. Factor in all the wasted fuel for separate collection, trucking it across the continent, loading it onto a container ship and sending it to China or Indonesia, and you have a world-class ecological disaster.

 I know I've explained this before, but that cutsie little triangle stamped on every plastic bottle actually means more that just "recycle". The three sides of the triangle represent the three "R"'s of ecology: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The order is important; job one is to cut back on all the crap you buy. Right to Repair figures in here as well. Instead of throwing it out and buying new, fix the old. Which brings us to Reuse: don't just toss it. Think about what other use you (or your neighbor or church, etc.) can put it to. Then as a last resort, recycle. Which was supposed to be done locally, but why do that when we can ship it all to the other side of the world.

The whole world is holding its collective breath waiting to see who will win control of Congress. Heh. Us Yanks really are a self-important bunch of twits, eh? Does anyone really believe that replacing our current crop of corporate jack-holes with a different set of corporate jack-holes will really make any difference? I like to think I follow politics rather closely, but I would be hard-pressed to think of a single thing that the Congress of these united States has done since the 1970's that was first and foremost a benefit to the 60% of the population that is not part of the PMC's (professional managerial class), the elites or the corporations. Given that, why would I give even a half-shit about who "wins" yesterday's election?

Speaking of who wins, why don't we know who has won? Why is it that the more technology we apply to a problem, the slower the process becomes?  A half-century ago, hand-marked ballots, counted by hand in public (still considered the gold standard by international election observers) were tallied up in less than twenty-four hours. Now some places are talking weeks. What gives? Tom Luongo says the delay is supposed to give them time to keep recounting the votes until they get the correct answer. I think he means that as a joke, but given the events of 2020....

On a personal note, we are back home in Florida for the winter. I know people do this snowbird thing for decades, but it is truly a giant pain in my ass. Just as a start, I have too many medical issues to be traveling the length of the continental US every six months. Twice a year, it's like I'm a new patient at every doctor. Then add in all the patient assistance for this med, that med, the other med that get all screwed up every time we do this. I just can't see us doing it for much longer. (Family, you have been warned....)

One aggravation is that not being here in the summer means that the plant life takes over:

It took us pretty much a full day to find our house.

We didn't even get settled in yet and we are already hunkering down for Tropical Storm Nicole. By the time it gets here, the worst will be over. Some wind (30-40mph) lots of rain, maybe a little thunder and lightening. But overall, no biggie. A cousin of mine is pretty much right in the bullseye where this thing is making landfall. This is her first named storm, so she called us to ask what we were doing to prepare for the hurricane. I said, "What hurricane?" She replied, "Oh you are such a Floridian!" I wasn't trying to be glib or make a joke. We just weren't paying attention with all the unpacking and setting stuff up.

Debbie might be getting a very part-time job at the Moose Lodge. We could certainly use a little extra cash. We've been spending money like drunken sailors trying to set up and maintain two households. We could really use a bit extra. It will also give us an excuse to be at the Lodge more often. Since I quit, we really haven't been there much. That's mostly because of me; the Lodge was where I worked. I didn't want to be one of "those people" who come skulking around where they used to work, so it has been easy to stay away. It didn't help that I left on... well... less than good terms. We'll just leave it at that.

Once again, I waited too long to do this and have way more that should be in a blog post. If you've made it this far, go get yourself a cookie.

The End Is Near!

For some time I've had the feeling that we were living through some sort of transition. Our country seems to be collectively losing it's mind, we have a major war... er... sorry; "Special Military Operation" going on right in the middle of Europe, famine is stalking Africa (again), Russia and China are setting up deals left, right and center that bypass the US dollar and the US-controlled SWIFT payments system. Last but not least: our non-stop economic war against Russia not only is benefiting Russia but looks to leave major chunks of Europe freezing in the dark this winter.

Today I watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Not my normal use of time during the daytime, and as an American I'm supposed to not care about Britain's monarchy. I guess colonialism imprinted some sort of loyalty to Queen Elizabeth into my DNA or something. Regardless, the Queen was the only monarch I've ever known. Queen Elizabeth simply was the UK and today I watched as her casket was lowered into the Royal Crypt in Windsor Castle. Now I'm supposed to replace her with some jerk-off named Charles that most likely features prominently in Ghislaine Maxwell's little black book (his brother admitted as much). I can't picture ol' Chuck ever commanding the kind of unquestioned respect and loyalty that his mother did. Today while watching her funeral, I couldn't help but see the entire ceremony as nothing less that a giant exclamation point signalling the end to the arrangements that I have assumed were somehow permanently etched into the Universe.

Now please understand that when I talk about the end of our current way of life, that does not mean that humans are going extinct or any bullshit like that. We will do what we always do when a certain arrangement ends: we make new arrangements. And no, I have no idea what those might be or just how ugly the transition will get. Based on the breaking news, I don't think it will be a pleasant time. But that's just a wild-assed guess.

Speaking of transitions, here's a handy little table that shows that we are not going run modern industrial civilization on windmills and solar panels:

Fossil fuels have allowed human population to far exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. Historically, whenever a population outstrips resources things turn ugly fast. Expect that and prioritize accordingly.

Just Some Random Stuff

I don't really have a point to make today; just a bunch of random things that I've been collecting for the last month or so.

First up, in what I am sure will be a shock for everyone, some dude who likes to wear women's clothes and makeup, gives himself a stripper name and hangs around with little kids gets busted for...

....wait for it...

pedophilia.

Wow. Sure didn't see that coming </sarcasm>.

Since my last post, I've lost two girlfriends. Men of a certain age all remember being dragged through puberty by Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, perched on her chair hiking up her skirt as far as the censors would allow. She passed on July 30 at the age of 89 probably from the after-effects of the stroke she had about 7 years ago.

The other girlfriend I lost was Olivia Newton-John, otherwise known as Sandy Olsson from the movie Grease. She had been fighting cancer for some time and in fact created the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre. She passed on August 8 at the age of 73.

Next up, a couple comics regarding the moral panic in Europe over cow farts:

 

This has been my beef with so-called environmentalists who are willing to literally starve a large percentage of the world population over cow farts, but refuse to stop flying all over the continent. If any country is serious about cutting CO2 emissions in half, make commercial air illegal. Done. Won't happen, of course, because western civilization is run by the most unserious people we can find.

And we will finish up with pure eye candy:

 

 

Happy Anniversary

Our first meeting.

Our first dance.

Our first kiss.

A night I will cherish for all eternity.

The Wide World of "Sports"

So it wasn't enough for a bunch of old fucks to beat up on a 15-year-old Russian Olympic skater and make her cry on international TV; now we have a 29-year-old, dude-in-a-dress sexual deviant beating up on 10-17 year old girls at a skateboarding "competition". Jay Leno once was reported as saying that if God doesn't destroy Hollywood Boulevard, He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology. I'm going to expand that: If God doesn't destroy all of Western Civilization, He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology and full pardon.

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming

In my last post, I was whinging about gas prices. I stated that the latest 20 cent increase hadn't found its way to northern Michigan. Yep, you guessed it. It's here. Less than 24 hours after I posted, gas here in the great white north jumped to $4.79/gallon. Based on past experience, I'm expecting $5/gallon once the fudgie season gets into full swing. 

Speaking of interruptions, Biden was on the boob tube last night yapping about bringing back the Clinton "assault weapons" ban and the ban on "high capacity" magazines. The problem I had with that law in the first place is that there is no such thing as an "assault weapon". There is absolutely no functional difference between an AR-15 and my dads .30-06 hunting rifle. Sure, cosmetically they are very different looking. The civilian AR-15 looks like the military version, but it does not function like one. The law was nick-named the "Ugly Gun Ban" by us NRA types who actually have some knowledge about how guns function. The list of banned weapons ended up being just that; an arbitrary list of ugly guns that looked frightening to pig ignorant congress-critters. 

Another "talking point" you will hear is how an AR-15 is sooooo powerful. When the original ban was being kicked around in congress, some Democrat dumb ass was going on about how an AR-15 couldn't be used for deer hunting because there wouldn't be anything left of the animal. Again, using my father's .30-06 as an example: with a 180 grain bullet, typical muzzle velocity is 2900 ft/sec and 3360 ft/lbs of energy, while an AR-15 (typically chambered for the .223) fires a 77 grain bullet at 3100 ft/sec, but only 1642 ft/lbs. In other words, yes, you are not allowed to hunt deer with an AR-15 not because it's "too powerful", but because it's too weak and would injure without killing the animal.

Then we get to "high capacity" magazines. What exactly is the magic number here? Two? Ten? Why is a 16-round magazine "high capacity" but a 15-round is not? Again, the law is completely arbitrary and not based on any definable principal.

But as usual, facts don't matter. It's all about the little Democrat snowflakes' feelings.

And the Beat Goes On

 

There are many things that are broken in modern "healthcare". This is a good summary of one of them. I have to admit, funny as that is, that I'm rather torn when it comes to healthcare. On the one hand, the pathetic response to the Covid pandemic was a classic case of the profit-above-all-else thinking that comes with a for-profit healthcare system. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this joke was created by someone living under a nationalized healthcare system like you would find in England. From my experience in working for a couple large-ish hospital systems, all I can come up with as a solution is going back to the old system of smaller, localized hospitals run by doctors and nurses who had spent time on the floor, caring for patients. When I was growing up, there were at least a half dozen hospitals; some were supported by the Catholic church, some were supported by local tax dollars, some ran off endowments. None could really be said to be providing healthcare at a profit and all were run by people who had put in many long hours on the floor dealing with patients, instead of some know-nothing MBA who wouldn't know a stethoscope from a rectal thermometer.

We spent a few days down-state visiting family, which was nice. What wasn't nice was the price of gas. When we left, it was running between $4.57 and $4.59 per gallon all the way down. When we left for home, the price of gas had jumped 20 cents down-state. We were able to make it about two-thirds the way back on what we still had in the tank. It seems the price jump had not migrated this far north. I'm sure it will eventually. I gotta say, this sucks living on a fixed income. We were barely making it a year ago; now rent went up 7.5% and gas looks to be heading for $5/gallon or more. I might have to figure out how to ride a bicycle again. Or maybe we'll get one of these. 

The war in the Ukraine is playing out more-or-less how Putin wanted it to. It's taking longer than I think he originally thought it would due to some snafus on the Russian side, and more and better weapons (thanks to the American taxpayer) on the Ukrainian side. But the Russians are now in control of the majority of the Donbas and the southern seacoast, which is all of the Ukraine they want. The rest is just grifters and welfare queens. The US keeps trying to drag this thing out as long as possible in an attempt to create a Vietnam-style quagmire. I don't think it will work, but we'll just have to wait it out and see. Meanwhile, Ukrainian civilians are dying by the thousands. Kinda puts that whole bitchin'-about-gas-prices thing into perspective.

"President" Joe Biden continues to embarrass the nation as he wanders around in a dementia fog. I laugh every time I see speculation about him running for a second term. Not likely. Any halfway intelligent candidate could grind him into fine powder at the first debate. It wouldn't even be all that hard; just let him talk without interruption. He will quickly lose track of where he is and what he is doing. Maybe his handlers will bring back the Easter Bunny to keep him from wandering off the stage.

Speaking of living in a third-world country, one of the big nuke plants here in Michigan just went off-line due to cracks or corrosion or some such. Doesn't really matter why. What does matter is the rolling blackouts we've been promised on hot, windless days. I've been shopping Amazon for a large-ish key-start generator we can use here on the property.

Well, I should really try to get something done today. Debbie is off spending our life savings on a loaf of bread and a pound of bacon. Every time we see some rice or beans on the shelf, we grab some. Ya know; just in case. Later.

Fred Ain't Dead!

Several months ago, Fred Reed went radio silent. Given his age and health problems, I feared the worst. But instead of being dead, he had switched to a different platform. Woohoo! Fred is Back!

We're Here, We're Here, We're Here!!!

...and very little chance our little dust speck will get boiled. We are in Michigan and right now and it's a balmy 49 degrees. As I type this, I'm sitting in the cabin wrapped in blankets: my dust specks could certainly use a little boiling. The recent radio silence here was due to all the closing up of our Florida place and getting settled into my parents' cabin for the summer. It's amazing what you can forget in six months. The first couple days were just the two of us wandering around the cabin trying to find things we knew we had left here, but had no idea exactly where we had stashed them for the winter. 

Our sticker shock over food prices continues. Just when we think they cannot get any more absurd, they do. On our last foray into Sam's Club, we just cracked up laughing when we saw the packages of precooked bacon for nearly $18. And it wasn't even a full pound. It was some odd amount like 10.7 ounces. Like the stuff was some sort of rare and exotic meat harvested from the livers of new-born baby seals or some such. Incredible. Of course we stopped laughing a couple days later when gas jump 40 cents over night. It sure is a good thing this inflation is just transitory.

A while back I commented how the Federal Reserve had painted itself into a corner with near-zero interest rates (which means negative real rates when inflation gets factored in). If they left them where they were, inflation would keep screaming higher, but if they raised rates to tap the brakes on inflation, they would destroy all the various bubbles as well as crush anyone with large amounts of debt (which is pretty much everyone). Well, it looks like they chose door number 2 with a quick rate hike of .25 percent followed by another one for .5 percent just a few days ago. But that is just the opening act for another five or six more rate hikes by the end of the year. Anyone with a variable rate mortgage may want to start packing now and avoid the rush. 

It will be interesting to see just how much damage this will do to the economy. It will certainly bring an end to the huge bubble that's been blown in real estate. House starts have already taken a nose dive, and a similar crash in housing prices is sure to follow. We may also see more wild gyrations in auto sales. Higher rates may finally end the silly bidding wars that saw dealers getting thousands over sticker price, but may exacerbate the ridiculous prices in used cars, at least in the short term. That will likely end later in the year if the Fed follows through on its threat of even more rate hikes.

Not that any of this was unexpected or that getting interest rates back the something closer to sanity is a bad thing. Free money from the Fed is like pounding down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Sure it feels good for a short period of time, but then the puking starts and the fun is all over. Inflation clearing 8% with no end in site was our economy's response the to the alcohol poisoning of free money from the Fed. Next comes the long painful hangover of crashing prices in everything from stocks to houses, followed by a general contraction in economic activity as everyone resets to a lower standard of living.

One thing I love to watch is how gas prices going up over $4 dollars/gallon shoved Greta Thunberg and the rest of the merry band of climate change misfits right in the gutter. We're back to "Drill baby, drill!!" The Russia-Ukrainian war has caused huge price increases not just in oil, but natural gas and all the unpronounceable metals used in solar panels and windmills resulting in countries from Germany to Australia dusting off those old CO2-belching coal plants. It seems that when faced with the choices of freezing to death in the dark today vs. screwing up the climate 50 or 100 years from now, the world has decided to roll the dice on the second option. Not that solar panels and windmills were ever anything other than a technological gimmick to make a few high-income liberals feel a little less guilty about their own massive carbon footprint. I know I've said this before, but anytime you hear some rich dick helmet talking about reducing CO2, you need to chant the phrase, "CO2 is people!" over and over. And I mean that quite literally. Prior to humanity tapping into the earth's long-term carbon stores, there were maybe a billion people on the planet. Since we've started burning first coal, then oil and natural gas, that number has shot past 8 billion and looks to top 9 billion sometime in the next few decades, assuming the four horsemen stay in their stables. 

That currently looks to be a rather optimistic assumption. The red horse of war has, of course, been a regular feature of human history, but everyone is paying attention now that it involves white Europeans. Nobody gave a shit about refugees and dead children when they were just niggers, ragheads and coin slots (thank you Racial Slur Database; you really can find anything on the internets). But oh Good Lord have Mercy when it's white European refugees and dead children! The white horse paid us a recent visit with covid and the black horse looks to be stopping by this summer as world-wide food shortages start kicking in. Which means the pale horse won't be far behind and carbon emissions will fall. Isn't climate science fun? What was that faux-Chinese thing about living in interesting times?

Speaking of the red horse, can we stop already with the deification of Zelensky? He is absolutely not some Hero of Democracy. Even before the Russian invasion, he had placed the head of the opposition party under house arrest and had shut down and disappeared the heads of any media organization that dared to express even mild dissatisfaction with the Zelensky government. Imagine if Joe Biden put Trump under house arrest, shut down Fox News and had Suzanne Scott hauled off to some CIA black site. Not impossible, of course and the move would be wildly popular with our current crop of illiberal liberals. I mean, shit-damn-hell, Homeland Security just opened up a Ministry of Truth at the mere suggestion that Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, may actually allow free speech. But regardless of likelihood, such a move could certainly not be seen as "defending democracy". Since the invasion, Zelensky has only gotten worse; outlawing all political parties other than his own and the Nazi parties, and nationalizing all the media. Why do Americans always have to paint every conflict as white hat vs. black hat? I mean, other than our general lack of intelligence and a collective memory that would embarrass a rather dull goldfish? There are no white hats here. Not us, not the Russians, not the Ukrainians, not NATO. And if we are so concerned for Ukrainian civilians, why are we doing everything we can to prolong the war? We are sending tens of billion of dollars in weapons and cash into a black hole. The Ukraine was a cesspool of corruption and grift before the war; why would everyone suddenly turn into angels? It's a safe assumption most of the weapons that manage to avoid being vaporized by Russian artillery or aircraft are going on the black market, not to front-line soldiers. And we already know from pallets of $100 bills disappearing in Afghanistan what happens to money in a war zone. All we are doing is giving false hope and guaranteeing even more (white) Ukrainians will get killed or be driven out of their homes. Stop the madness already.

Well, the sun's coming up which means I need to stop playing around here and get to work, work, work!

Will Smith (Briefly) Grows a Pair

So the world is all up in a tizzy because Will Smith bitch-slapped Chris Rock for making a tasteless joke about his wife. Liberal men (balls removed by feminists and stored in a jar on a shelf) jumped all over Will Smith for committing such a heinous act (Jon Katz will serve as a good example). I say, "Bravo, Will!" Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, Will's publicist immediately pulled him aside for a quick talking-to, and Will, crying like a woman, apologized to the world for his indiscretion. But for a brief moment, one man acted like a man should act when his wife is attacked by some moron comedian.

Yes, I am aware that Will's wife talks about her medical condition. So what? That somehow makes her fair game? Who made that rule? Several members of my wife's family have the same condition. They talk about it frequently and even laugh about it. Does that mean I can make tasteless jokes at their expense? If I did, I would hope their husbands have the balls to punch me dead in the face, not just slap me.

I don't know that this post has any real point other that to say, "Well done, Will Smith. Well done!" Even if he did try to walk it all back a few minutes later.

Russia, Russia, Russia!!

 

So anyone with friends or family that insist that our news media and government couldn't possibly be lying to us about Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc., etc., just show them this video and ask them to explain how what should have been the biggest story of the 2020 election was written off as "Russian propaganda". Now that it's too late to do anything about it, the New York Times admits that everything was true all along. No apologies, no one who was smeared as a "Putin Stooge" has been re-hired with back pay. Nothing. Not only is the MSM, our government, FBI, etc. a bunch of liars, they're don't even have enough sense to be embarrassed when caught at it.

Speaking of the Ukraine: Don't believe anything you see or hear from anyone. Russia, the US, Ukraine and everyone else is pumping out the propaganda hard and fast. As always, we have the fog of war to contend with, but that doesn't explain why footage from decades-old disaster movies is being put out there as factual coverage of the war. From my sources (some inside Russia), the war in Ukraine is going more-or-less as Russia had planned. The Ukrainian military is no longer a viable entity. There are still pockets of resistance, but they have been encircled and all supplies cut off. As far as the casualty figures being bandied about by both sides, again, I wouldn't believe any of it. And keep in mind that all the US is doing with it's propaganda and weapons is prolonging the agony for the Ukrainian people.

And speaking of Hunter's laptop, it is now more or less accepted fact that the US military was funding research into bio weapons in the Ukraine. Just like we were funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan. This is just another example of the US government being unaccountable to the American people. We (through our elected officials) made this very kind of research illegal. So the military or some branch of HHS that no one even knew existed prior to 2020 offshores the research. Perfect. Those of you who think voting actually matters, take note.

Now that Russia is the latest Great Satan, the Russia-bashing is in full bloom. Russian kids are getting the shit beat out of them at school, restaurants serving Russian food are being vandalized, Tchaikovsky (who lived and died before the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union and the Bolsheviks) has been canceled. Even my parent's church is getting into the act. I recently attended a men's prayer breakfast where the entire time of actual prayer (as opposed to stuffing our faces) was devoted to asking God to smite Putin (the latest incarnation of the antichrist if not Satan himself), smite his soldiers, smite the Russian people, etc. The longer I'm outside of Evangelicalism, the more confusing it gets. First, we had the Adoration of Trump, the most openly vile, amoral, profane human being to defile the office of President. Did he do some good things? Sure. Was he the least-bad alternative in 2016? Absolutely. But why are Evangelicals, with all their rules about proper behavior, ignoring it all in order to worship at the feet of Donald Trump? Now here we go again with pastors and other leaders in the church submitting prayers to God that fall so far outside of basic Biblical theology, they're in a different universe. But then, why would Evangelical churches be any different than every other failing institution in this country?

OK; enough for now.

Jump!!

It likely means I'm a horrible person, but I can't stop laughing.... (rated NSFW by the MPA)

Catching Up

I haven't done a real post in a while, so strap in boys and girls, 'cause here we go!

Trucker protests: I love the fact that the MSM thinks they can ignore 10's of thousands of semi's converging on Alberta and no one will notice. Whether you support the truckers or not, the protests have certainly uncovered a lot of sleazy behavior by the Canadian national government, the police, the MSM, and even crowd-funding site GoFundMe. I love how BLM protesters can set multiple cities on fire, loot, injure and even murder people, and GoFundMe never blinks an eye. But let some (mostly) white working-class truckers finally say "Enough!" to government over-regulation and GoFundMe wants to give the donations to... well... to BLM. When that gambit failed utterly, Trudeau invoked the War Powers Act (renamed to something less sinister-sounding in the 70's or 80's) to allow the Canadian government to seize the bank accounts of anyone receiving donated funds as well as anyone donating. Nice. If anyone would like to know how to turn a peaceful protest into an actual insurrection, just take careful notes of what Trudeau has done and will do. Dumb ass....

Meanwhile, the Olympic Committee has gone full mental by beating up on a 15-year-old girl who had the misfortune of being born in the United State's enemy du jour, Russia. Good job guys; real mature. You managed to throw her off her game enough that she finished in fourth and left the ice in tears. You old fucks must feel real tough and self-important now. Congratulations. I'm becoming less and less interested in sport of any kind. The Olympics were pretty much my last hope and that too has now been flushed down the toilet thanks both to this current nonsense as well as the whole turn-my-back-on-the-US-flag bullshit at the summer games. (And if you think I'm alone in this, check the ratings of professional sports, college sports, Olympics, what have you.)

I haven't talked about climate in a while. Given that everyone seems to have been convinced that replacing coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants with windmills and solar panels is a good idea, I thought I'd revisit the topic. First: Yes, despite what you may hear, fossil fuels are limited. Yes, despite what you may hear, we've used up roughly half of all the coal, oil and natural gas in the world. No, despite what you may hear most of the other half will never be "recovered" due to both technical and economic reasons. Second: Yes, despite what you may hear, weather is getting crazy. Maybe it's natural, maybe it's due to all the CO2 dumped into the atmosphere; probably, it's some of both. No matter, it's here. Now. Not in 100 years. Third: No despite what you may hear we are not replacing the automobile fleet with electric vehicles, if for no other reason than there is simply not enough lithium on the planet to built all those fire-trap EV's. 

So given all that what next? One idea being floated around is replacing electrical generation with nukes. Leaving aside all the questions of what we are going to do with the tons of high-level radioactive waste produced by enough nuclear reactors to replace the existing electrical grid (while ignoring the fantasy that we will "electrify the fleet"), we don't even know what to do with the comparably tiny amount of high-level waste we already produce. The big strike against nukes is that, at least here in the US, it took 40+ years to build and bring one reactor on line. One. We need to build something like 325 nuclear power plants (that's with multiple reactors per plant) every month for the next 100 years just to replace the current coal-fired electrical generation. Anyone who thinks that will happen is just mental. Where would we get all the materials? Where would we get all the uranium? China? I'm picking on nukes, but that's only because they are the easiest to imagine as an alternative to fossil fuels. Replacing even a tiny fraction of electrical generation with wind and solar is already bumping up against hard resource limits. Replacing it all or even a significant fraction (like 1/2 or just 1/3) is not even technically feasible before getting to the economics, politics, etc.

The greenie-weenies talk about cutting carbon emissions in half by some near-future date. So given the previous paragraph, how do we do that? Well, look around where you're sitting and imagine half of everything gone. Half the square-footage of your house. Half the vehicles. Half the food. Half the people in your family, neighborhood, city, state, nation. That's what cutting carbon emissions in half really means. Forget the technobabble bullshit from upper-middle-class "greens" who won't even stop flying to climate conferences or turn down the thermostat or quit stuffing their faces until they are morbidly obese. And no, the rich won't "go first"; remember that the entire US is filthy rich compared to the rest of the planet, so you really don't want to go there unless you want to be put in the same category as Al Gore telling me I need to ride a bike to work while flying on a private jet. (If you're wondering, that category would be "hypocrite".)

Well, it's going on midnight, so I should stop and go to bed. 'Nite all!!

I'd Probably Buy This....

Only in Florida

If you've spent any time reading any of the dozens of News-of-the-Weird-type web sites I'm sure you've noticed the over-representation of articles about Florida residents. And here is another:

NFL star Malik McDowell has been arrested in Florida after allegedly attacking a police officer and exposing himself in public.

But wait; there's more!

Yet this isn't [McDowell]'s first brush with the law. In 2017, McDowell was hit with a DUI charge in Michigan and booked for disorderly conduct for a fracas at an Atlanta nightclub.

In November 2019, McDowell was sentenced to 11 months in jail for a string of crimes such as assault, resisting arrest, and operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

So here we have someone given every chance in the world to succeed (including a free ride at Michigan State on the taxpayers' dime), and yet. Here we are. I've been offending people (and not giving a damn) by saying this for the last 40 years: You can take the boy out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the boy.

What Have I Been Sayin'?

This was posted on the NYT website a few days ago. Throughout two years of this stupid "masks work"/"masks don't work" screaming fit, some of us have been saying the same thing: It depends on what you mean by "masks" and what you mean by "work". No mask of any kind will absolutely, 100%, in all circumstances, prevent Covid transmission. Masks slow down transmission; crappy cloth masks barely slow it down at all while N95s increase time to infection from minutes to basically a full 24-hour day.

So while a cloth mask will probably keep you from getting Covid at the grocery store (as long as you wash the things frequently), a surgical mask would be better. (And for the love of God, throw the thing away after you use it a couple times instead of carrying it around for weeks in your pocket. Looking in your general direction, Dad!) Assuming you even worry about such things. We don't.

For kids sitting in a classroom in close proximity with 30-40 other kids for long periods of time, anything less than an N95 is Covid theater. So are the plexiglass partitions and the one-person plastic tents and all the rest of it. It does serve one important function; kids learn early to unquestioningly obey authority even when the authority figure is talking complete nonsense.

Happy 2022: The Year of Omicron

So everyone was hoping 2021 would be the end of all this Covid nonsense, but"Dr." Fauci and his merry bunch of misfits who reside in the news media, the tech companies and various 3-letter agencies of the Federal government have other ideas. From the FDA banning the use of antivirals for people infected with Covid to Twitter banning the inventor of the mRNA "vaccines", the display of sheer stupidity and naked greed by all parties was disgusting.

As if all that were not enough, the massive money printing by the Fed to the tune of $120 billion a month finally began to show up in other places than stock and real estate prices; namely in the price of food. We were already balanced on a knife's edge financially and would be in complete free fall if not for a bit of reserves we still had from when we were working. But those are gone and somehow we're supposed to pay a 7.5% increase in our rent, 50% increase in the price of gas, and a 25% increase in our grocery budget with a disability check that had a 5.5% COLA. And we are more fortunate than about half the country.

But no need to worry; Uncle Joe wishes 40% of the nation a Christmas full of pain and death.

So what do we have to look forward to in 2022? Nothing good, I'm afraid.

First, no matter what the Fed does, inflation is baked into the cake. There is so much money sloshing around in the banks and stock markets that it will continue to affect prices for some time to come. Second, the Fed can't really do anything right: stop printing money and raise interest rates to some reasonable level (say around 10%) and stock markets will crash faster and farther than anyone can imagine, and most debt, including a lot of government debt, goes into immediate default. The alternative is to continue to print $120 billion a month and hold interest rates nominally near zero (meaning negative real rates) and inflation continues to climb into the stratosphere.

In other words, we can be dirt poor and not able to afford anything, or we can have mountains of dollar bills that are not worth a loaf of bread. Either way, there will be a lot of hungry and angry people with nothing to do but roam the streets seeing how much damage they can do. Imagine the 2020 BLM protests times 100.

It looks like Omicron (which I swear was the name of one of the Transformers) will be the excuse for a new round of lockdowns and restrictions on churches (but not titty bars). The economy, already weakened by inflation and supply chain breakdowns, will simply fall over. The only ray of hope is the CDC's recent guidance that quarantine is only 5 days. No real science behind this; merely The Science and a sop to businesses trying to staff operations.

Another bright spot is the passing of peak Wokesterism. The witch trials are finally over and the hysteria seems to be dying down. Not that our college campuses are in any way safe for white straight males, but things are improving a bit out in the real world.

My advice for weathering all this is the same as it has been for the last couple decades: 1) get out of debt and stay out of debt. Do whatever you have to; sell everything that isn't nailed down, drive the oldest, cheapest thing you can find, downscale what you live in. Whatever it takes. 2) Keep the pantry stocked. I'm not saying buy 100-pound sacks of beans or anything; just the normal things you eat. Make sure you have a way to heat up food if the power is out. 3) Think about investing in a generator, especially if you depend on a well for water. Nothing sucks worse than being stuck in a house with no electricity for a week and no way to flush the toilet. 4) Keep some drinking water on hand. Again, nothing fancy; just a few days worth that you routinely use and replace.

Most importantly, keep your head on straight. Don't waste mental energy getting into pissing matches with "friends" on social media about vaccination status or Donald Trump. You have far more pressing concerns that are facing your immediate circle that you can actually do something about. I hate to say it, but the die are already cast as far as what happens to America. It's time to think small; your immediate family, neighbors, your church, etc. National events will play out regardless of what you do (and yes that includes voting). Go local.

And kids, always remember: don't do school; stay in drugs.

Happy 2022 everyone!