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!

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month, so I figured I'd write something here. I know I said I was going to do this more than once a month, but right now, my life is so boring, I have nothing to say. The one thing we did manage to do was drag my parents to the Sweet Blossom Alpaca Farm Open House. We figured we would be out there with maybe a dozen other people, but when we got there, we were greeted by about 50 cars and at least 100 people with a steady line coming in behind us. Debbie Pettis, one of the owners, had talked to so many people by the time we got there she was losing her voice. I had no chance at getting close to the animals with my walker, but Debbie managed to fight her way up to the fence and met Envy:

We are trying to arrange something with a smaller group in January or February. We'll see.

Part of the problem trying to plan anything is my health. Without going into a great amount of detail, it ain't good, and seems to be getting worse. I face-planted in a parking lot yesterday and would probably still be laying there if a young dude hadn't run over and picked me up and set me back on my feet. Oh to be 20 again.... Right now, I'm camped on the recliner with a bottle of ibuprofen and my warm bankie with no plans of moving for the next 24 hours. After that, we'll have to do a thorough damage assessment and see what I need to do next.

I'd like to write something about the insanity in DC, but all I can think of to say is GAHHHHHH! It's bad enough that the Hillary cabal destroyed the Democratic party, but now they seem determined to destroy the basic institutions of democracy. I wonder if any of these dopes have read a history book and have any clue as to what they are stirring up?

As the late Jerry Pournelle frequently said, "Ye flipping gods."

A Memory

And just so everyone doesn't think this is one of those all-politics-all-the-time blogs, we have something a little different today.

I'm not sure if it's because of Jon Katz recently losing his companion Red, or just early-onset senility, but I keep finding myself thinking about my two former four-legged friends.

The first one was a bit of a fluke. We could never have a dog in the house when I was young because of my allergies. As I got older, I seemed to "outgrow" them and didn't have a problem being around dogs, but my mother was adamant that there was not going to be any dogs in her house. Then my sister came dragging home a puppy and out of a sense of fairness, I got one out of the same litter. And so I finally had a dog like most of my friends.

Heidi and some scrawny dork. Taken at my mom's family homestead.

Heidi was with me all through school, my early college years and was still around to see me marry Debbie. People didn't really keep track of dog birthdays back then; near as we can figure she made it through 13 or 14 years before her little body gave out. Not bad for the runt of the litter.

We didn't have a dog for quite some time after that because we were both working, going to college and not real sure where we were going to end up living; not ideal conditions for getting a pet. Then we got a dog by another fluke. A friend of ours had two dogs that decided one day, after living together for several years, that they needed to kill each other. So we came home from vacation with a dog squeezed in the back seat with all our luggage.

Shilo in her "Is it time to wrestle?" pose.

Shilo was with us during the crazy early years of marriage when we were still trying to figure out who we were and what we were going to do and where we were going to do it. She was always there to remind us what was really important; a good romp in the back yard, 9pm milk bones, and Dairy Queen Blizzards! She wasn't with us for very long, done in by a weak heart and her eternal nemesis, Squirrel.

I've never been real clear on what happens to a dog's spirit when they die, but I know they will live forever in our hearts. God speed to both of my beautiful girls.

Back in the USSR

When I was in the second grade (back in the Dark Ages when cars still had tail fins instead of seat belts), my parents decided that the public schools in Flint had gone completely off the rails to the extent that they managed on my dad's working-class pay, to scrape up the cash to send me to a Christian school. One of the regular features of that school was Friday Morning Chapel, a break from the drudgery that passes for education in America for the drudgery that passes for religion in America.

But on occasion, we would get a Special Speaker who would hold us rapt with the harrowing tale of their daring escape from the clutches of those Evil Pinko Commie Bastards over in Russia. ("Bastards" was implied, not spoken aloud; these were good, God-fearin' Christian folk, after all.) The basic outline of the story was always the same: Christian person gets "the call" to serve God in a way that involves knowingly violating the laws of the Soviet Union (for example, entering the country under false pretenses). Christian person persists in his or her chosen illegal activity, often after being caught and politely asked to go away and don't come back, until one day, the gloves come off and they find themselves in a Soviet prison, with no access to legal council, frequently deprived of food and medical care, and subject to various forms of physical and mental mistreatment. Then, because of the prayers of Christians back home and not a little pressure from the US State Department, the person would be freed, placed on a jet bound for JFK, and warned never to return to the USSR.

Anyone who thinks I'm making this up, meet God's Smuggler.

This, we were repeatedly assured, could never happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave! We should remember to thank God every day that we were so lucky to be born in the USA and not the USSR.

Fast forward to 2019.

So now the story is a Russian, here legally in the United States as a student, working the NRA lecture circuit talking about her efforts to bring 2nd-Amendment-type rights to Russia. She is picked up by the Stasi, er, the FBI on some made-up charges that even if true would involve a simple fine, held incommunicado with no access to legal council, deprived of food and medical care, and subject to various forms of mistreatment. After being tortured for 18 months, she is released, put on a plane bound for Moscow, and warned never to return to the USA.

Anyone who thinks I'm making this up, meet Maria Butina.

At least we can all celebrate the fact that two faggots can run a Christian-owned bakery out of business for refusing to make them a wedding cake.... 

Mental Illness on Parade

Hillary Clinton is giving America a ring-side seat to watch her descent into madness. Like the movie Joker, the audience isn't sure if we are supposed to feel pity or loathing. Her repeated attacks on Tulsi Gabbard accusing her of treason and being a Russian asset would be hilarious if not for the fact that the media seems to be following Hillary into dementia, reporting every one of her "your a Russian asset!" accusations as absolute fact.

Then we have Nancy Pelosi going full Jack Nicholson on Trump in the middle of a cabinet meeting, complete with flying spit and shaking her finger is his face. I half expected her to launch herself across the table and try to punch him. "All roads lead to Putin!" Trump loves this shit, by the way. Goading the opposition into a complete fury, causing them to sever all ties with reason, has been Trump's go-to move for decades.

Speaking of losing all touch with reality, we have Uncle Joe, groper of children, smell-tester of women's hair, out on the campaign trail spinning yarn after yarn while the media continue to refer to him as the only serious candidate for the Democratic ticket. Trump would love nothing better than to run against a gaff machine like Biden. When will the establishment Democrats and the media cut their losses and quietly nudge Biden off-stage? Are they so terrified of a candidate that makes even a modest attempt at being truly liberal, as in liberating the working class, that they are willing to guarantee a second Trump term?

And lest anyone conclude that I only think the Democratic half of the ruling oligarchy is mad, let's talk about the Ass Clown in Chief and his loyal sidekick, Mike Pence, the most radical fundamentalist in politics since John Ashcroft. It says something about how much the average American hates/distrusts Hillary that someone running for president as a joke (and you know it started as a joke, right?) gets himself elected. He has no relevant experience and proves every day that he is unfit for office. He has violated so many laws that impeachment would be a cakewalk if the Democrats were actually interested in removing him from office. Instead, they whinge about make-believe stories that come from the fevered imagination of Mad Dog Maddow. Maybe something deep in their sub-conscious minds is telling them that President Pence would be even less to their liking than President Trump. Meanwhile, Trump stomps around like some half-blind Godzilla putting paid to the US economy and embarrassing the entire nation every time he meets with another head of state. I'd ask God to help us, but He's likely too busy trying not to piss Himself while laughing at us. American Exceptionalism my ass....

For a different form of mental illness, we can take a peak at the churning madhouse called Facebook. Debbie had shared some lady's thoughts on self-checkouts and how they cost jobs. There was one person who insisted repeatedly that it didn't matter that every one of her counter-arguments had been shot down, "Progress is unstoppable!" First, as every general in all of human history who has declared that his forces are "unstoppable" has discovered, nothing is unstoppable. Second, how do you define "progress"? If you mean the replacement of all meaningful work by machines, how is that progress? When two-thirds of the population are permanently unemployed, do you really believe we will all be sitting on a sunny beach sipping mai-tai's? Are you aware that automation and offshoring has already resulted in 17% of the male working-age population not even bothering to look for work? Read a history book and find out what happens when a society fails to find something meaningful for its young men to do. Then think about all the hate being directed at white males in particular and ask yourself why would they not decide that bricks and Molotov cocktails are the only available option left?

I know; I promised my three readers that I would start keeping these short(er), so I'll shut up now.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

So for the last month or so, it's been hot and dry. All of our plants were starting to look pretty sad and I was wishing for some rain. Know how they say be careful what you wish for? Well...

 

That's a photo Debbie took of the overflowing retention pond right across the road from our trailer. We're high enough that we don't have any water damage, but some of our neighbors were not so lucky. Thanks Nestor. Glad to have met you.

I know, I know. I'd bitch if I was hung with a new rope....

Speaking of bitchin', I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks precious little Greta needs to shut up and go back to school. There are no simple solutions to complex problems, only simple-minded ones based on a lack of knowledge. Maybe Greta should quit skipping school and spend a little more time in the library. Zero carbon means going back to the lifestyles of around 1800 or so. That means little Greta would be getting schooled in a one-room school house (if she was being schooled at all) and would be spending most of her non-school time doing hard physical labor on the family's subsistence farm. Not sailing around in million dollar sailboats and staying in posh hotels while lecturing us poor dumb rubes on how we are personally responsible for every bad thing that will ever happen to her.

One of the reasons the climate change movement has crashed and burned so badly is that every single person yapping about how I should be riding a bicycle or taking the bus insists that because they are a Very Important Person, they get to fly on private jets and ride around in chauffeured limousines. ( I'm looking hard in your direction, AOC.) A little practicing what you preach would go a long way.

Well, that's probably enough whinging for one day. I think I'll try to keep these things a little shorter, then maybe I'll post more often than once every three or four months.

Decision Time

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

Well, after a great deal of thinking (mostly about sex and food), I've decided to move back to my old Blogger blog. I hate doing that for a whole variety of reasons, but there just isn't a platform that does what I want to do that doesn't cost money, or, like Livejournal, costs money and still doesn't do what I want. I guess you know you have truly descended from the working class to the welfare class when $4 a month is too steep of a price to pay for a blogging platform. I'm not deleting this, but it won't likely (see how I'm covering my ass there?) be posting anything to this site from now on. I've already changed our rdfrost.com domain to point to the Blogger page and did a little site clean-up. The dust does tend to build up when you've been gone for a year. I'll probably change my mind at least five more times, but for now, this is where we will be hanging out.

Sigh....

Yea, I'm crawling back here after my brief stint over at Livejornal. Everything over there is... well I wouldn't say it's difficult; rather everything is not intuitive. At least for me. Maybe because I've been using Blogger since it was invented, that is what I expect the look-and-feel of everything else to conform to. And yes, I know that means being borged by the Evil Demon Google and having my post removed from search results because I use naughty words like "nigger" in my posts. I'll just have to get used to it, I guess. I will likely be moving my domain name back to this blog later today after I have a chance to update the link list, title quote, etc. and then maybe I'll get my lazy butt back to routine blogging. I've been binge reading all of John Michael Greer's peak oil books, so maybe that will give me something to write about.

So Now What?

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

So I haven't posted in forever, mostly because I've done nothing but go to doctor's appointments while bouncing in and out of the hospital. The problem with all that is it makes very boring blog post material. Other than a quick trip up to Michigan for a family reunion, we have done nothing but deal with my medical shit, and no one wants to read endless blog post spewing medical jargon like Anxonal Peripheral Polyneuropothy (one of several diagnoses I've been hit with since my last post).

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I used to post about all the interesting places we went to, but we won't ever be able to do that again. Or I'd post long political rants, but everything there is to say has been said, and nothing is getting one damn bit better. In fact, the whole damn thing is going to hell faster than even I thought possible. Endless posts where I take victory laps for things being even worse than I predicted seems a little egomaniacal.

I'm hoping that I can get some mobility back so I can get back out into the yard, maybe try to do a little gardening. That will at least give me pretty flower pictures to post.

More Medical Mayhem

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

There was one... uh... interesting part of my last hospital visit that I didn't talk about in my previous diatribe: the dialysis fiasco. See, I was supposed to be what they refer to as an "urgent start", so while I was in the hospital, my kidney doc arranged to have my PD done in my room. Some guy who we had never seen before came in with all the equipment and supplies, introduced himself and asked if we minded if he used me to train the new guy. We told him that was fine as long as we could listen in because we needed to know about this thing as well. He explained that the equipment we would have at home would be different, but they all work more-or-less the same way and any differences would be mostly cosmetic.

So we got a quick rundown of terminology, how the system worked, what problems can come up, how to fix some of the more common alarms, etc. Then they left. Things went OK that first night; we had a couple alarms, but we knew what to do. Which turned out to be most fortunate, because as we learned from our night nurse, once the two gentlemen left, there was no one in the entire hospital who had any knowledge of PD, and it wouldn't have mattered even if they did: the equipment belonged to an outside company and hospital personnel were strictly forbidden to even touch it.

I thought that was an odd way for a major hospital to do things, but what do I know? We muddled through the next few nights without major incident. The occasional alarms were annoying, but we were able to deal with them. And then my last night in the hospital everything went all to hell.

First, the guy who came in was not any of the ones who had come in before. He was obviously in a big hurry, which means he had problems getting the machine set up. No surprise there; all equipment has a built-in detector that increases the likelihood of a malfunction in direct proportion to how much of a hurry you are in. He finally gets the thing working, then goes running out the door before the first step had completed. The other guys always hung around for most of the first full cycle just to make sure everything was good. I thought maybe he had someone in another room to get hooked up or something.

Anyway, we started getting alarms almost immediately, and not the ones that we knew what to do anything about. We double-checked everything we could think of to check, but no joy. Alarm after alarm after alarm after alarm. The nurse called the guy to have him come check it out.

The son-of-a-bitch had left the building! By the time our nurse made contact with him, he was already an hour from the hospital on his way home and refused to come back. He said the only thing he could suggest was to mute the alarm and wait until someone came in the morning to unhook everything and see if they could get things working.

No. Fucking. Way!!!

I was supposed to be discharged the next morning. The total time on the machine was close to eight hours, which would have meant another day and night in the hospital. I was done! I wanted to get home!

We kept poking at the thing and nearly 10 hours and 30+ alarms later, we finally got through the entire process. I felt bad for anyone in the rooms near mine. The damn alarms were loud as hell and they were going off every couple minutes at one point. I was so pissed I had decided that if I ever saw that ass-clown again, I would tear his head off and shit down his throat. Fortunately, someone else showed up the next morning to unhook me.

Now that I've had some sleep and knowing what I know about the medical-industrial complex, I'm willing to give the SoB a bit of a break. I still don't appreciate the whole attitude that my health and well-being are unimportant, that I'm just a "consumer" of healthcare "services" and deserve no more consideration or respect that someone "consuming" a box of Goobers.

However, if SoB's company operates the way most others around here do, he isn't considered an employee, but an independent contractor. Which means that he is probably paid some flat amount for each dialysis patient he hooks up while having to use his own vehicle and gas to drive all over Pasco County. The flat amount probably sounds like a lot of money until he subtracts out vehicle depreciation, maintenance, gas, paying the full amount of his Social Security (double what is withheld from your paycheck), health insurance, additional car insurance (it's now considered a vehicle for hire), and a long list of incidentals. All of which means he's likely making less that he would flipping burgers for minimum wage, and explains to some extent the bitchy attitude.

But what I'm most interested in is how all this works from the hospital side of things. Here I am, an inpatient of Advent Healthcare of Zephyrhills, squirming around on my plastic bed because of the giant sore on my ass (which two months later still has not healed...) hooked up to a machine that no one in the building has any knowledge of, and will be fired on the spot if they so much as touch any part of it. Now what happens if I code? Not impossible. After all, the primary reason I was in the hospital was sharp stabbing chest pains. Would everyone just stand around the bed and watch me die while the night nurse argues with SoB about getting his ass back to the hospital? Would they try to revive me while working around the machine and the hundreds of feet of plastic tubing sprouting from it and connected to me like some giant plastic squid, knowing that touching any of it meant instant job loss? What if the machine were to malfunction and catch fire? Just let it burn? Or would the night nurse risk her career to unplug it and hose it down with a fire extinguisher?

(Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but only sort of. I'd really like to see whatever written agreement that exists between the hospital and the dialysis company. I can tell you that every hospital employee that came into my room while I was on dialysis treated the equipment like it was infected with ebola. I'll bet there are stories....)

Is there anyone reading this that doesn't think this is a stupid way to run a hospital? It's so stupid, in fact, that it has to be deliberate. The only reason this could exist in a rational universe is that someone, somewhere is fattening up their off-shore bank account. Maybe News Channel 8's crack investigative team can take a break from chasing cockroaches around mom&pop restaurants and go hunting the giant cockroaches infesting our health care system.

And I'm sure all those paid advertisements from the major hospitals that run every 5 minutes day and night on their network will not have any influence on future news stories, cuz you are all so full of integrity and stuff. Full of something anyway....

More Medical Malpractice

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

So it's been close to forever since I've posted anything. That's mostly because I can't seem to stay out of hospitals and doctor offices. It appears that my kidneys decided that 54 years of steady work was more than enough and retired from service. It was decided (not by me) that I would go on something called peritoneal dialysis. (That article talks mostly about the old manual method of doing PD. I have a machine that does all the work while I sit in front of the TV or sleep in bed.) Getting the catheter implanted, dealing with all the related kidney failure crap, training, home visits, equipment and supply deliveries, etc. have pretty much taken over our life.

Of course the worst has been dealing with asshat hospital bureaucrats, clueless doctors, and general dumbfucks who seemed determined to waste our time and piss me off.

Now, I need to make a disclaimer right up front; nothing that follows is in any way directed at the front-line people out there that get paid shit to deal with long hours, broken equipment, craptastic software systems, and shitty bosses. Nurses, techs, clerks are the unsung heroes of the Republic, navigating through a minefield of rules, regulations, silos and managers who, if they think of patients/clients at all, place them far down the list of priorities.

We'll start where I started: AdventHealth in Zephyrhills. Utter chaos is probably the best description I can come up with. Of the eighteen doctors coming in and out of my room all hours of the day and night, none of them seem to have the first clue why I'm there, who is running what tests and why, what the results of any of those test are, whether or not I'm allowed to eat and/or drink anything at that particular moment (and if not, why?), and most importantly, why, when every single one of my eighteen doctors says I can go home, am I still laying here in this gods-awful bed with IV's stuck in my arms!

Every time I end up in that place, It takes me a week to recover. The main problem is that it is impossible to get any sleep. Hourly vitals checks, daily blood draw at 4am, the malfunctioning bed alarm on the poor old woman across the hall that goes off every 5 minutes, doctors right outside my door loudly discussing patient details on their cell phone at 2am (I guess Florida was exempted from HIPAA...), and that health care classic, waking up a sleeping patient to ask them if they would like a sleeping pill. And then they wonder why my blood pressure is through the roof.

Another problem is what these idiots do to my blood sugar. Random doses of long- and short-acting insulin administered at random times that have no relation to the equally-random meal times, assuming I even get a meal; in a week-long stay I probably averaged around 1.5 meals a day. By the time I get home, my sugar is so jacked up it takes me weeks to get things back under control.

But the one thing that intrigues me more than anything is watching everyone struggling with the crappy software. Something as simple as asking for my latest lab results turns into a 20-minute click-fest as the person navigates down one blind alley after another, trying to find my latest creatine level. And I have to have those numbers written down somewhere because random medical staff won't be able to see them no matter how much clicking they do. I could never get close enough to a screen to see anything in detail, but what I could see looked pretty bad. Current information buried under a metric shit-ton of old data from days earlier, or even from previous hospital visits, notes from Doctor X not being accessible by Doctor Y and just a crappy use of screen real estate in general. (But then again, look at what Uncle Zuck's crew has done to Facebook). It has to be a nightmare for everyone. I'm guessing that the entire IT operation has been farmed out to some consulting group in Pakistan given that in all the time that I've spent in that hospital with my parents and my own health crap, I've never once seen a geek out on the floor. When I worked hospital IT, the last place you ever found any of us was sitting at our desks. The majority of our time was spent out on the floor with our users seeing what they needed, what problems they were having, etc. I wonder if anyone has ever looked at how many "negative patient outcomes" and "near misses" are due to crappy software?

So I get sprung. Now I have to schedule follow-ups with all eighteen doctors who walked by my room while I was an inpatient. Problem is I have some funky Medicaid thing for insurance now that we have zero income. Which not a single specialist in Pasco County accepts. Worse, I can't just go in and pay cash; that's not allowed either, even when the doctor in question is someone like my hematologist who I've been paying cash to see every three months for the last seven years. Now he can no longer see me as a patient. Or maybe he can. Nope he can't. Oh, but if I sign this form and pay an extra $50, he can. Maybe. For now.

Not that it matters as none of the eighteen doctors will make any sort of diagnosis or prescribe medication because I'm on dialysis and the dialysis center has to do everything. Now, I love my DaVita Dialysis Center peeps. If I could I would nominate every last one of them for sainthood. They are the only people we've dealt with who can manage to communicate actual information to us in plain English and get actual work done. But they are not my primary or my hematologist or my nephrologist. They cannot be expected to know all about my leukemia or diabetes, but no matter what questions or problems I have, the answer is, "Ask your dialysis center. There is nothing I can do for you." Uh, I paid 150 bucks for this load of bullshit? Thank the gods for WebMD.

And because that couldn't possibly be enough to drive us nuts, we are also doing battle with Social Security and Medicare. The last thing that happened is probably the most iconic. We finally get sick of being ignored on the phone and show up at the Social Security office in Dade City. The status on my disability was pretty much what we knew it was going to be; in process. Check back in a year or two. Even though we keep being told that it's "automatic" and "instantaneous" for dialysis patients, I know better than that. The SSA takes at least two years to approve a disability claim no matter what. But we were getting a lot of conflicting information about when/if I can get on Medicare. As we suspected, all these hospital social workers that have been claiming to do all these wonderful things on our behalf haven't done a damn thing and the process hadn't even been started. So we asked what step one was. Make an appointment for a phone interview. So we tell the clerk to do that. Sorry, I can't. There are no appointments available as far out as the calendar lets me go. Sooooooo, now what? Our only option is to call every day and see if someone cancels. We just sat there, staring at her. She finally went to someone else's cube and found out there is a second, secret calendar (more shit-tastic software) that did have a couple openings. So on top of the four weeks we already wasted, now we wait for three more weeks just to take the first step in a process that is only supposed to take 30 days. As I told a fellow Moose Lodge member we bumped into later in the day; we have a trillion dollars a year to blow up countries most Americans couldn't find on a map, but we're too poor to fund an adequate number of employees in the SSA or VA or any agency other than the military.

So here we sit waiting and wondering as we watch our savings account slowly approach zero. When you see me on the news for choking someone with my bare hands, now you'll know why.

Can't. Stop. Laughing!

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

So one of the things I love most about Takimag is that I never know what to expect. The other day, I was running through my usual morning routine and bumped into one of the most hysterical articles I've ever read:

These days, [San Francisco] is in deep shit—much of it human....

According to a group called Open the Books—whose partial mission statement seems to include counting turds on city sidewalks—the following are statistical facts regarding the Shitty Streets of San Francisco....

6,676 unexpected human turds have been reported this year already....

There were 13 reports of human waste in front of City Hall; 17 at the U.S. Marshals office; and 67 at the Tenderloin police station on Eddy Street. These public defecators do not lack for moxie....

Open the Books also maintains an interactive Turd Map that plots the tens of thousands of reported open-air human poopings with little brown pin points....

If you’re wondering why city officials simply don’t tuck the homeless away where they can’t be seen, it’s likely because San Francisco’s incredibly cloistered and soft elites adhere to an ideology that forces them to make a public display of “tolerance,” which is why it’s considered bad cricket to complain about seeing homeless people jabbing needles into their own necks and using tree trunks as toilet paper....

Last year, the city formed a “Poop Patrol” to tackle the crisis. Comprised of five workers who each earn $184,000 yearly in salary and benefits, they enjoy the dubious honor of being the city’s first-response squad whenever anyone reports seeing human feces on the streets....

Developers have also produced a phone app called SnapCrap that allows users to point, click, and officially report all instances of sidewalk shittery....

Holy Shit! Did an article for the Onion get posted on the wrong web site? A SnapCrap app? Poop Patrol? At nearly $1 million a year? "Unexpected human turds"? As opposed to expected human turds?

And the best part by far is that the idiot liberals who live there are actually proud of the fact that they live in a city buried in human shit because it makes them woke. I'd think one of the wealthiest (if not the wealthiest) cities in the wealthiest nation in human history could do better. I guess not.

Sorry guys; I'd rather be a racist/sexist/fascist/misogynist deplorable with clean streets.

Mulling Mueller

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

Due to family medical issues, I'm a little behind the curve with this, but hey, if you want breaking news, you probably ain't reading this anyway.

My first thought when the essence of the Mueller Report came out was Trump gets his second term no matter what. It now doesn't matter who the Democrats run, Trump wins in a landslide. At this point, I doubt it would even matter if the economy fell off a cliff; the Democratic Party is dead.

My next thought was, "There goes several American institutions down the toilet." I can't believe anyone will believe anything the mainstream media says for at least a couple decades. I lost all faith in the MSM a long time ago, but even I would have never believed CNN, the New York Times, etc. would have flat out lied, repeatedly, for years, about something as completely stupid as Russiagate. Not selective reporting of facts, not slanting the story, not using weasel words to say one thing while giving the impression of saying something else. That's what I've expected from the MSM since delivering copies of the Flint Urinal... er... Journal when I was twelve. But just flat out lying? And not just once or twice, or one journalist going off the rails, but rather 24/7, cover-to-cover lies? Not in my darkest moments would I have ever believed such a thing would be possible.

Then we have the FBI/CIA/NSA/State Department's efforts to hand the presidential election to Hillary. Granted, the grandiose veneer has been chipping off these agencies for decades, but their attempt to stage a soft coup here in the US, as opposed to the more-typical overseas activities, will wreck any credibility these agencies had both here at home and abroad for a very long time, if not permanently.

And finally, we have the DNC. How hard is it for these assclowns to figure out that Hillary lost because the majority of Americans simply do not like her as a person? Sure, both of the major political parties have gone tone-deaf to the voters and live in a self-referential bubble. But just how colossally stupid do you have to be to a) come up with such a cockamamie story to begin with, b) keep harping on it non-stop for more than two years, then c) when it all falls apart, double down and keep yapping about it. I think Mr. Sanders may soon regret lashing himself to the boat anchor the DNC has become.

The big question is, "Why?" The press, I actually understand. The media has made a killing off of Trump. I read yesterday over at Naked Capitalism (or maybe Automatic Earth) that CNN has increased the fee for a 30-second ad from less than $3,000 to more than $13,000 since Trump took his infamous escalator ride. That is a lot of Benjamins, and bottom line, the press is and always has been about the Benjamins above all else. In the case of the various government agencies, maybe they felt that their budgets would be under pressure if the US and Russia normalized relations, but there are plenty of valid reasons to be cautious, even suspicious, of Russia without inventing something as dumb, and easily disproven, as Russiagate. And the DNC? Maybe the people running the show really are just that stupid? Granted, I've seen plenty of institutions get stuck in a narrative and have difficulty breaking out of it, but at some point the antibodies kick in and the ship rights itself. (Excuse me while I madly mix my metaphors.) Were people working for the party that terrified of the Hillary cabal that they would rather see their party implode than speak up? That is some serious dysfunction you got going there.

Anyway, enough of my blah, blah, blah. Here is a selection of what others have to say:

Matt Taibbi: It's Official: Russiagate Is this Generations WMD

The [New York Times] was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like themselves made a galactic error by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

...

Imagine how tone-deaf you’d have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

The Automatic Earth: Can We Lock Up Rachel Maddow Now?

Message to Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kemala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard and the rest of the crew: you can stop asking for campaign donations, because you no longer stand a chance in the 2020 elections. Your own party, and the media who support you, made sure of that. Or rather, the only chance you would have is if you guys start another smear campaign against your president, and I wouldn’t recommend that.

Jim Kunstler: Buyer's Remorse

The Narrative is dead! Long live The Narrative!

That’s what played on CNN, NBC, and The New York Times yesterday as they struggled to digest the parting meal Robert Mueller served to the RussiaGate lynch mob: a nothingburger with a side of crow-flavored fries. Mr. Mueller was careful, though, to leave a nice red poison cherry on top with his statement that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Mr. Mueller, who ought to know better, could not be more in error on that too-fine-a-point. The official finding that no crime was committed is, ipso facto, an exoneration, and to impute otherwise is a serious breach of his role in this legal melodrama. Prosecutors are expressly forbidden to traffic in defamation, aspersion, and innuendo in the absence of formal charges. So, it will be interesting to hear what Mr. Mueller has to say when Jerrold Nadler reels him into the House Judiciary Committee, as inevitably he will, to do to some ‘splainin.’

The Russia Times: "One of the greatest hoaxes in US history": Russiagate Narrative's Peddlers to be Held Accountable?

The American establishment and mass media not only wasted millions of taxpayers’ dollars “fomenting and stoking tensions” between world nuclear superpowers, but also undermining any remaining trust in them, political analyst Charles Ortel told RT. Americans will have to be looking elsewhere for alternative news sources to avoid being duped any further by the chorus of disinformation from the mainstream media, he added.

Taki Magazine: Russiagate - A Bright Shining Lie

After two years of hearing from haters in politics and the media that President Donald Trump was “Putin’s poodle,” an agent of the Kremlin, guilty of treason, an illegitimate president who would leave the White House in handcuffs and end his days in prison, we learn the truth.

It was all a bright, shining lie.

...and pass the beer nuts.

Bob Seger!!

[Originally posted at LiveJournal]

Bob Seger was in Tampa as part of his farewell tour. He may be pushing 80, but he still knows how to put on a show. One of Debbie's brothers was there with his wife and son, and one of my cousins came with us as well. We were laughing that it was a good thing Debbie's nephew came along so we wouldn't be the youngest people in the crowd. We had a great time and it was good to see some family we don't get to see very often. One thing with a crowd made up of old people is that everyone was pretty mellow. Not a lot of pushing and shoving, nobody puking, no fights, etc. The layout of the Amalie Arena makes it easy to get around in and find your seats. We were a little surprised by the lax security: we never had to show anyone that we had tickets. I put my ticket in my pocket when we got out of the car and never took it out until we got home. I used to work for the company that provides security; we checked tickets at the screening area, again when you went into the door, then again when you got to your section. It kinda pissed me off a little; I paid $125 for a ticket that never saw the light of day. But bottom line; awesome show. As always.

Tax season is in full swing and boy is it swingin'. I've already done more returns that I did last year and just with the returns I know are coming my way, I will be doing at least that many more. The phone is ringing off the hook and there is a steady line of people walking up on our porch. We always laugh about how nobody ever comes back to our out-of-the-way corner of the park, but we sure are getting company this year.

In medical news, I've gone from having no insurance to having two different insurances. I need to go through the foot-thick file of bills that have been sitting in the file cabinet since January and try to get some of these people off our backs. My pitch to them will be simple: No job, no money, whatever Florida Medicaid is willing to give you is all that you are ever going to get, so take it and be happy. Anyone want to take bets that will work? Heh.

In our continuing series documenting TEOTWAWKI:

The whole Russiagate thing started with Russian hackers supposedly breaking into the DNC's e-mail server, revealing that the entire Democratic Party apparatus conspired to ensure Hillary Clinton was the Democrat's 2016 presidential candidate. At the time I and many others said that it was complete BS; the e-mails had been copied onto a flash drive by someone working at the DNC who was probably sickened by their chosen party. Well, we were right:

We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story, we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

The article goes on at length showing how that conclusion was arrived at. It is written by geeks, but in non-geek plain English. Long but worth the time if you care at all about that little thing called "truth".

David Holmgren is a permaculture guy from Australia. He recently published an apology from the Baby Boomers to the Millennials and whatever we end up calling GenZ. The entire thing is loaded with good stuff, but this bit caught my eye:

While our parents’ generation experienced the risks of youth through adversity and war we used our privilege to tackle challenges of our own choosing. Although some of us had to struggle to free ourselves from the cloying cocoon of middle class upbringing, we were the generation that flew like the birds and hitchhiked around the country and the world. How strange that on becoming parents (many of us in middle age) we believed the propaganda that the world was too dangerous for our children to do the same around the local neighbourhood. Instead we coddled them, got into the chauffeuring business, and in doing so encouraged their disconnection from both nature and community. As we see our grandchildren’s generation raised in a way that makes them an even more handicapped generation, we must be truly sorry for the path we took and the disease we created.

Gen Handicapped. I like it; has a certain ring to it.

One of the indications of a nation in decline is loss of faith in its institutions. For example, every nation in the world has always accepted that any plane deemed airworthy by the FAA did not need to go through whatever equivalent system that country has in place. Now, thanks to the 737 MAX debacle, that will surely change:

With the 737 Max 8 grounded worldwide, the MCAS system is now under scrutiny. A Boeing spokesman said on Sunday that the system met all of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification requirements, but a group of anonymous Boeing and FAA engineers told the Seattle Times that the FAA delegated much of the safety analysis to the company itself, which cut corners to deliver the plane on time.

Typical corporate short-term thinking; rather than risk being "late to market" and lose sales, rush the process, kill customers, and lose even more sales than you ever would have had you just taken the time to do it right. It's the Flaming Pinto all over again, only this time, both a major corporation and a federal regulatory agency will be gettin' an ass whoopin'.

Last but certainly not least, we have a Matt Taibbi two-fer. I knew he had something big brewing when he went into radio silence for nearly three weeks. It was worth the wait. By now, everyone has heard that the Pentagon failed its first-ever audit. The problem is that they really didn't fail so much as make such a hash of their books, teams of accountants were unable to even offer an opinion:

At the tail end of last year, the Department of Defense finally completed an audit. At a cost of $400 million, some 1,200 auditors charged into the jungle of military finance, but returned in defeat. They were unable to pass the Pentagon or flunk it. They could only offer no opinion, explaining the military’s empire of hundreds of acronymic accounting silos was too illogical to penetrate.

When I was a kid, Senator Everett Dirksen allegedly said, "A million here, a million there; pretty soon, you're talking real money" in reference to federal spending. This was later inflated to "A billion here, a billion there...". What Taibbi dug up goes far beyond that:

...the Defense Department a few years ago found about $125 billion in administrative waste, a wart that by itself was just under twice the size of that $74 billion Enron bankruptcy. Inspectors found “at least” $6 billion to $8 billion in waste in the Iraq campaign, and said $15 billion of waste found in the Afghan theater was probably “only a portion” of the total lost.

My favorite bit of the entire article:

Meanwhile, the Air Force, which has a $156 billion annual budget, still doesn’t always use serial numbers. It has no idea how much of almost anything it has at any given time. Nuclear weapons are the exception, and it started electronically tagging those only after two extraordinary mistakes, in 2006 and 2007. In the first, the Air Force accidentally loaded six nuclear weapons in a B-52 and flew them across the country, unbeknownst to the crew. In the other, the services sent nuclear nose cones by mistake to Taiwan, which had asked for helicopter batteries.

When I read that, the first thing that popped into my head was an episode of M*A*S*H with some high-ranking dude explaining that, no the unit could not have some badly needed piece of medical equipment, but they could have a popcorn machine. Just use form blah-blah-blah-stroke-J, cross out "Machine Gun" and write in "Popcorn Machine". I guess whoever wrote that bit was closer to the mark than they knew, only it was form blah-blah-blah-stoke-H, and you cross out "Helicopter Batteries" and write in "Nuclear Missile".

And we trust these people with essentially unlimited firepower. And a trillion dollars a year.

Speaking of a trillion dollars, some people are trying to say Sanders is full of it when he talks about the big banks getting a trillion dollars in bail-outs after nearly wreaking the entire world economy. And it's true that the number is probably no where near a trillion dollars. Taibbi shows that more likely, it's somewhere between $7.7 trillion and $29 trillion. As he points out in the article, the bail-out went far beyond just TARP. There was TAF, TALF, TSLF, TOP, PDCF, Maiden Lanes, interest on Fed Reserve balances, and much more.

Meanwhile, we got the shaft. And the bill.

I think that I posted this before, but I figure that if you made it this far, you could use some suicide prevention. I thought of this video because Debbie is training for her new job, which comes with the possibility of getting a phone call from someone famous. The trainer was talking about treating them like anyone else and not squee-ing in their ear. Sort of the opposite of this:




I think what makes me laugh about that clip more than anything is that in a poll of the 7.7 billion people on planet earth, more would likely recognize Mayim Bialik than Mark Hamill.

And I will close with Dr. Jerry Pournelle's admonition: Remember that despair is a sin.