April 2021 Archives

Splat - thanks China

| No Comments

Look up - from Space News:

Huge rocket looks set for uncontrolled reentry following Chinese space station launch
China launched the first module for its space station into orbit late Wednesday, but the mission launcher also reached orbit and is slowly and unpredictably heading back to Earth.

The Long March 5B, a variant of China’s largest rocket, successfully launched the 22.5-metric-ton Tianhe module from Wenchang Thursday local time. Tianhe separated from the core stage of the launcher after 492 seconds of flight, directly entering its planned initial orbit.

Designed specifically to launch space station modules into low Earth orbit, the Long March 5B uniquely uses a core stage and four side boosters to place its payload directly into low Earth orbit.

However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth. If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area.

Emphasis mine - yeah - about that.  Usually, the agency launching the rocket makes sure that the stuff left over either falls in the ocean somewhere way out of shipping lanes or it comes back to Earth in a trajectory guaranteed to burn it up on re-entry. I guess the Chinese Communists haven't stolen that technology from Elon or NASA or the Ruskies. Yet. Class act there guys.

The last time the USA had something large deorbit uncontrolled, it was SkyLab back in July 11, 1979. 41+ years ago.

No surprises - against fossil fuels

| No Comments

When it comes to the anthropogenic global warming scam, John Kerry is all against fossil fuels.
When it comes to making money? That is a different story - from the Daily Caller:

John Kerry Invested In Oil And Gas Stocks Before Joining White House, Filings Show
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry owned shares of multiple oil and gas corporations prior to joining the White House, ethics filings show.

John Kerry previously invested in Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation, Duke Energy, Cimarex, Dominion Energy, Xcel Energy, Exelon Corporation, Valero Energy Corporation and WEC Energy Group, according to Office of Government Ethics filings obtained by Axios. Kerry sold off his entire stock portfolio, which was worth between $4.2 and $15 million, prior to joining President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Texas-based Valero Energy Corporation was recently ranked the fifth-worst emitter of greenhouse gasses despite having just 14 facilities, the San Antonio Current reported in December. The company was ordered to pay $2.85 million in a civil penalty in October for Clean Air Act violations, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nothing like walking the walk after you talk the talk. What with all the rising ocean levels, it is good to know that he owns an $11 Million beachfront home in Martha's Vineyard. I will believe that there is a climate crisis when the people who are telling me that there is a climate crisis start acting like there is a climate crisis.  Simple as that.

Nothing out there

| No Comments

A slow Friday afternoon. Had lunch, surfed for a little bit, worked for a little bit (garage - more wiring) and came back and still nothing. Slow news day.

Temps have warmed up a bit - 67°F outside and high overcast.

Heading out to the grocery store and check the mailbox. Storage unit too.

Could not have happened to a more deserving elitist fool. When he walks into a room, the collective IQ diminishes by 40%.
From The Washington Free Beacon:

Zarif Had No Knowledge of Israeli Strikes Until Kerry Told Him, Translation Reveals
Leaked audiotape of Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif indicates he had no knowledge of covert Israeli military strikes before former secretary of state John Kerry provided him with the information, new details that contradict the State Department's recent defense of Kerry.

Kerry is protected because his stepson (Christopher Heinz) is one of the two other people who were doing deals with Hunter Biden and the Ukraine and China. Kerry has the goods on Joe and cannot be touched. The whole multi-billion Rosemont Capitol deal.

Will this be enough to bring him down?  I love this video - a perfect encapsulation of Kerry's awareness:

Kerry is the personification of all that is wrong with our cultural elite.

And off to work

| No Comments

Been raining steady all evening. High clouds and temps in the high 50's (currently 57°F). Glad I did the time-lapse shoot yesterday as it is crappy weather today.

Heading out for a quick dog run-around, some coffee and off to my volunteer work. Really good people and really good cause.

Modern wealth - building

| No Comments

Prices are still insane:

20210430-plywood.jpg

Guns and Crime

| No Comments

R.A. Heinlein said it best: "An armed society is a polite society"
Here are two news articles that show the truth of this.
First, from Reuters - January 15, 2019:

Bolsonaro loosens gun laws in murder-ridden Brazil
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday signed a temporary decree making it easier for Brazilians to buy guns, delivering on a campaign promise to overturn strict regulations in a country suffering from a record wave of murders.

And two bits of information - first:

The country suffered a record 64,000 murders in 2017, the most in the world. Nearly 45,000 of those homicides involved firearms.

Well gee whillikers Binkey - why don't they try Gun Control?
Problem is, they did - second:

Gun laws toughened considerably under former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who in 2003 signed sweeping measures that prevented ordinary citizens from carrying guns. The law mandated background checks for gun purchases and gave federal police the right to reject applications for gun ownership for any reason.

And now, let's segue to a bit more than one year later - from ABC News - February 14, 2020:

Brazil homicides fall to lowest level in at least 12 years
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro celebrated Friday after a crime index showed homicides fell to their lowest level in more than a decade during the first year of his term.

Any questions? Now why is our own government so hot to grab our guns? Think about this for a minute.  There are over 370,000,000 legally owned firearms in the hands of American citizens. If these were a problem, we would know about it.

Journalism in America

| No Comments

A perfect example - first, a news item from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

20210429-mjs01.jpgAnd second? Here is the original photograph of Mr. Howard that they used for their news item:

20210429-mjs02.jpg

That revolver was a tad "inconvenient" now wasn't it.  Let's just fire up Photoshop and be done with it.

Mr. Howard was previously convicted in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana for the felony crime of possessing stolen firearms. Tip of the hat to Andy Ngo for uncovering the truth to this piece of fake news.

And done with the photography

| No Comments

The tide hits its maximum in about an hour but it is getting dark and where I am set up, there really is not anything to see.  There is a large county bulkhead that covers the entire neighborhood - all I am watching now is seawater climbing up that wall.  About as exciting as paint drying.

Take the camera and equipment in for the night and get the files copied over to the machine I will be using for processing. The really big king tide is next month (about three weeks away) so this is a trial run. Might even do several cameras and edit into an actual video for that one.  In my copious spare time of course.

There are other tides that are just as spectacular but they are happening at night - got to wait for one that has some daylight.

Hmmm - a bit of activity

| No Comments

Earth movement - right at the Cascadian Subduction Zone. We get a big one (Mag 9) there every 250 to 500 years.
Last one was January 26, 1700 or 321 years, 3 months, 3 days ago. A bit overdue...
(the link I referenced above is fascinating reading - well written and a great piece of detective work)

Been seeing a lot of quakes in the last two days - this is either good in that built-up stresses are being relieved or this is bad in that these are the precursor to "The Big One".  These are all in the 4 to 5 Magnitude range and all about 10 km deep - the depth is critical and 10 km is not good from a damage perspective.  Deep enough to couple to the surrounding crust and cause damage. Not so deep that the force is dissipated.

20210429-quake.jpg

I am lucky (and would not have purchased the house otherwise) in that the FEMA maps show minimal tsunami damage.  This part of Camano Island is well shielded behind Whidbey Island.  There will be about a five foot surge but that is the worst-case scenario. I love the Oregon Coast - Seaside and Astoria (Cannon Beach has become too gentrified for me).  They are toast if when this happens.

Showing their hand

| No Comments

This might not have the reaction that the children in Portland are hoping for.
GOOD!  Let them enjoy the consequences of their stupid behavior.  Good and Hard.
From Bryan Preston writing at PJ Media:

In Chilling Video, Antifa Doxes, Threatens to KILL Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler
Late last week Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler took to video to plea for the community’s help to “unmask” antifa. The violence-prone anarchist-fascist group has terrorized Portland with months of violent and destructive insurrectionist riots despite Joe Biden merely calling antifa an “idea.”

Someone purporting to represent antifa has responded to Wheeler with a new video. In this video, the masked individual pushes anti-American themes and publishes Wheeler’s home address. The individual finishes the disturbing presentation with a veiled threat to kill Mayor Wheeler.

“Ted, we are asking for the last time that you resign,” the video’s narrator says. “If you ignore this message outright, the destruction to your precious way of life is going to escalate. Blood is already on your hands, Ted. The next time, it may just be your own.”

Those last words have Wheeler’s clearly legible address superimposed over them.

The article has both this video and some others (setting the stage).  They are showing their hand.  If we had a Federal Government with a backbone, the US Marshalls would have been in Portland months ago putting a stop to all this.  The rioting could be shut down in two weeks if officials wanted to do it.

Now, they are making actionable threats against elected officials - see what happens next.

And done

| No Comments

Productive day. Did not get to the grass - the batteries for the mower were flat but getting them charged and will take care of that tomorrow after work.

Time-lapse is going swimmingly - taking a photo every three seconds. Collapse eight hours down to about five minutes. I will be generating almost ten thousand images so it will be a few days of crunching before this is up on YouTube.

Do a dump run tomorrow - got some bags stacked outside the van and ready.

Need to store my new storage bins at my storage unit first - sensing a theme here...

Dealing with some politics with a local group - fun.  My inner libertarian is coming out to play.

Heating up some of last night's beef stew for dinner tonight - came out good.  Got that recipe dialed in perfectly (for my taste anyway). Big secret is that I use V8 juice for the stock - makes a big difference in flavor. Emphasizes the vegetables so it is not just meat and tomatoes and a few other things.

And off

| No Comments

Dog walk, coffee, storage unit (drop off most of the storage bins) and then back home to set up the time lapse. Turning into a nice day - high overcast but sunny.  Good lighting.

Getting ready for a dump run and maybe work outside for a bit - the grass needs mowing.

Not surprised - from Judicial Watch:

Documents Show CA State Officials Coordinated with Big Tech to Censor Americans’ Election Posts
Judicial Watch announced today that it received 540 pages and a supplemental four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election. Included in these documents were “misinformation briefings” emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, that lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020. The documents show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning the vote by mail and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up.

Much more at the site including source docments.  Not surprised at all - the Democrats have nothing to offer us so they have to cheat to gain power. They do not represent us. They are only out for their own personal gain.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

| No Comments

Old proverb - dates back to 4th Century B.C. A true proverb - this is why it is still said.  China is our enemy.
The Mexican cartels are power-grabbing and want to extend their influence into America's core cities.
Here is how they work together - from The United States Department of Justice - Northern District of Illinois:

Chinese National Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Laundering Drug Proceeds on Behalf of Traffickers in Mexico
A federal judge in Chicago today sentenced a Chinese national to 14 years in prison for laundering illegal narcotics proceeds on behalf of drug traffickers in Mexico.

XIANBING GAN schemed in 2018 to have approximately $534,206 in narcotics proceeds picked up in Chicago and transferred to various bank accounts in China, with the money ultimately intended for drug traffickers in Mexico. Unbeknownst to Gan, a purported money courier who picked up the drug proceeds in Chicago was an undercover law enforcement agent.

Gan, 51, is a Chinese national who facilitated the money transfers while residing in Guadalajara, Mexico. U.S. authorities arrested him in November 2018 at Los Angeles International Airport during a layover on a flight from Hong Kong to Mexico. He has remained in U.S. custody since then.

Good - get them rolled up and out of our country. At least, off our streets and into our prisons.

That speech last night

| No Comments

The Giuliani raid

| No Comments

A. F. Branco has it:

20210429-branco.jpg

From last evening - Rudolph Giuliani's website:

Statement by Robert J. Costello on April 28, 2021
Rudolph Giuliani has authorized Robert J. Costello to release the following statement regarding the events on April 28, 2021:

The Biden department of justice has completely ignored clear evidence (which the FBI has had for over a year) in texts and emails on Hunter Biden’s hard drive of failing to register numerous times as a foreign agent, child pornography, money laundering, and 30 years of the Biden Crime family taking millions and millions in bribes to sell his public offices.

Instead, the Justice Department decided it was a higher priority to serve (at dawn) search warrants for electronics at the home and law office of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The search warrants involve only one indication of an alleged incident of failure to register as a foreign agent. Mayor Giuliani has not only denied this allegation, but offered twice in the past two years through his attorney Bob Costello to demonstrate that it is entirely untrue. Twice the offer was rejected by the SDNY by stating that while they were willing to listen to anything Mr. Costello had to say, they would not tell Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Costello, the subject matter they wanted him to address.

And a bit more (I am only excerpting from a long statement)

The electronics taken are, also, replete with the material covered by the attorney-client privilege and other constitutional privileges. The warrant served on Mr. Giuliani’s law office is another disturbing example of complete disregard for the attorney-client privilege protected by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.

Remember the newspaper reports that explained that twice before, the SDNY went to Main Justice to seek permission to obtain a search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices and twice before the request was rejected. What changed? A new Administration – a new Attorney General. Were they ever informed of Mr. Costello’s offer? Was the Judge who signed the search warrant ever informed of Mr. Costello’s offer? We think not.

Costello hits the nail on the head.  New administration and a new Attorney General. We are seeing the content of Merrick Garland's character. Thank God he was not appointed to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Ginsberg.

I love that they left all the Hunter Biden material - this will come out and blow up in their faces.  They could have so easilly taken it and put it into that Government Vault right next to the Ark of the Covenant.20210429-ark.jpg

Sweet Morpheus is calling

| No Comments

A few videos and then to sleep, perchance to dream.

Got the camera ready for tomorrow's time lapse - a larger than usual tidal range. Spring King tide and all that good stuff...

Iran - two stories

| No Comments

Two headlines - go and read these. The level of corruption we are dealing with is staggering.
Almost as bad as the utter lack of competence and leadership:

First story - we are dealing with enemies and they are outright showing us that they do not respect us. In the Middle-Eastern culture, families are sacred. For such a "friend" of Kerry (Zarif's son was the best man at Kerry's daughter's wedding; remember?) to say such a thing about the daughter of a sitting President shows what they think of us.

Second story - Kerry's step-son was involved with Hunter Biden in the shady deals.  If Kerry gets busted, he will release all the dirt on Hunter and show how the "big guy" (Joe somebody) is also deeply involved in the corruption.

Both writers did some really good research - the stories are hard to excerpt.  Just go and read them both.

Speech? UPDATE

| No Comments

Aparently someone gave a speech tonight. I'll see tomorrow if anything of importance was talked about.

UPDATE:
Initial reports indicate much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left.
It seems that they are getting just what they asked for.  Good and hard.

Good point - training

| No Comments

From 90 Miles:

20210428-training.jpg

Don't like the numbers? Obfuscate. From Yahoo News/Business Insider:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office hid New York's COVID-19 nursing home death toll for at least 5 months, report says

    • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office hid the state's nursing home death toll for at least five months.
    • Cuomo's senior aides prevented state health officials from releasing the actual numbers, per NYT.
    • Cuomo has been embroiled in a series of scandals related to his handling of the pandemic.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office hid the number of deaths in nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic for at least five months, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Cuomo's senior advisors repeatedly prevented state health officials from releasing the actual death toll to the public, according to interviews and new documents reviewed by the NYT. Documents that included the data didn't go public until months later, the Times reported.

Yeah - the people are too stupid to know anything different.

Guess what? From Jason Rantz at Seattle station KTTH:

Seattle’s socialist councilmembers collectively worth over $3.5 million
Socialists on the Seattle City Council have taken advantage of our capitalist system, getting wealthy off the low-income voters they claim to fight for.

In fact, Socialists Kshama Sawant and Tammy Morales are collectively worth over $3.5 million. In Washington state, they’re both one-percenters: the very people they regularly demonize.

Councilmembers must submit financial disclosure forms every year. It allows the public to see any potential conflicts of interest. But it has the added bonus of highlighting how many get wealthy off their socialist grift. It turns out, the only way socialism works, apparently, is selling your brand to kids who live at their parent’s homes, while convincing them to give you more power.

Kshama Sawant gets rich off hating the wealthy
Councilmember Sawant has built a brand over demonizing the rich. But while she drums up anger amongst her cult-like followers of 20-something Antifa radicals and local college professors, Sawant and her husband get rich.

Not only did Sawant list her net worth as $550,000 this year, but it’s more than doubled since 2016 when it was listed as $270,000. And that completely grassroots campaign of supporters to defend Sawant against the recall campaign she’s pretending is fueled by the right? Her husband Calvin Priest serves as its political director.

At one point, Sawant vowed to only accept an “ordinary worker’s salary” for her work of about $40,000. She would donate the remainder to the Kshama Sawant Solidarity Fund. The majority of the donations made its way back to Sawant via Socialist Alternative.

SCC Insight called this scheme “laundering” in 2017, though noted it’s legal. She stopped updating the page noting the donations in 2019.

It’s worth noting that Sawant doesn’t list her home address on her disclosure file. Presumably, she doesn’t want people showing up to harass her. Sawant faces recall, in part, for leading radicals to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home. The mayor’s home was to be private over security concerns stemming from her job as a U.S. Attorney.

More at the site.  Hypocrites. All of them. I feel sad for the idiots who believe these craven mobsters.

And back home again - full load

| No Comments

Been driving the Highlander the last week or so - change of pace.

I had a good idea of the volume of what I had won as well as the internal volume of the Highlander.
I am pretty good at spatial realization. I think I nailed it:

20210428-bins01.jpg

20210428-bins02.jpg

20210428-bins03.jpg

Bear and Truffle are like - Unh Dad?  We are so NOT going to be riding on the roof are we?  They had enough room for both of them to lie down but the rest of the Highlander was packed solid. Got some Beef Stew going in the InstaPot for dinner (and dinner, and dinner, and di...) and will be unloading the car after a quick surf.

This morning's appointment was fun - a productive and good day.

Meeting at 11:00 AM and then driving down to pick up my sweet sweet auction booty. A couple hundred storage bins for hardware.

More posting much later this afternoon...

The Deep State at work

| No Comments

President Trump may have been replaced by our flacid *Resident but the deep state are still running their agenda.
From The New York Times:

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices.

Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president, and it marks a major turning point in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani.

Wasn't the whole Trump Ukraine telephone call thing debunked? And, as we get to paragraph nine:

The investigation of Mr. Giuliani grew out of a case against two Soviet-born men who aided his mission in Ukraine to unearth damaging information about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The prosecutors charged the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with unrelated crimes in late 2019 and a trial is scheduled for October.

It's not about justice.  It's about protecting Hunter - keeping him out of the news.
Can't embarrass a sitting *Resident now can we...

20210428-old.jpg

From True Pundit (December 29th, 2016):

John Kerry’s Daughter Married Iranian National; Best Man Was Son Of Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs
If he weren’t a corrupt bureaucrat, John Kerry would have recused himself from all negotiations with Iran and for that matter, Israel. Instead, his leadership has proven an epic disaster of foreign policy for the United States, especially in the Middle East.

But why?

Family and personal wealth before country. That mantra has served Sec. of State John Kerry well during his decades of public service.

Kerry’s daughter Vanessa is married to an Iranian national and physician. His best man at the ceremony was the son of Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Zarif was also and Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations. Cozy crew.

Look no further why Kerry hates Israel and has green lighted billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Iran to build its nuclear arsenal. And don’t forget about the millions of dollars paid to Iran in ransoms to get our American hostages back.

Zarif is the guy who recently dropped the fact that Kerry told him US State Secrets.

A real shame as I liked them and referred to their website often.  From their site:

The Planet on the Plate: Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind
For any person—or publication—wanting to envision a more sustainable way to cook, cutting out beef is a worthwhile first step. Almost 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally come from livestock (and everything involved in raising it); 61 percent of those emissions can be traced back to beef. Cows are 20 times less efficient to raise than beans and roughly three times less efficient than poultry and pork. It might not feel like much, but cutting out just a single ingredient—beef—can have an outsize impact on making a person’s cooking more environmentally friendly.

Today Epicurious announces that we’ve done just that: We’ve cut out beef. Beef won’t appear in new Epicurious recipes, articles, or newsletters. It will not show up on our homepage. It will be absent from our Instagram feed.

We know that some people might assume that this decision signals some sort of vendetta against cows—or the people who eat them. But this decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!). Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet.

Their YouTube channel was a lot of fun as well - very clever and informative. I just unsubscribed.

The anti-beef movement is based on rhetoric and junk science.  Not real numbers. The Earth is doing just fine.  We have a recorded history of over 100 years of predictions of doom and gloom.  Mass starvations, running out of crucial materials, global ice ages, global heat waves, rising sea level, falling sea level.

None of these predictions have come true.

Not one of them.

I challenge you to prove me wrong.

What Epicurious is doing is pandering to the narrative.  They are engaged in virtue signaling. They need to stop it as it is a stupid behavior, not based in science and they are damaging their brand. This may sell in Hollywood but as we just saw with the Oscar's ratings, Hollywood only represents a very small fraction of this Nation.

Defund the police

| No Comments

This is the camel's nose under the tent.  The liberals are looking to replace the local police with Federal police.
Has this been done before in history? Yup. Has it been good for We The People? Nope.
From The History Place:

The Gestapo is Born
Although the Gestapo is generally associated with SS Leader Heinrich Himmler, it was actually founded by Hermann Göring in April 1933.

Upon becoming Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler had appointed Göring as Minister of the Interior for the State of Prussia, Germany's biggest and most important state, which controlled two thirds of the country, including the capital, Berlin, and the big industrial centers. As Minister of the Interior, Göring thereby had control of the police.

The first thing he did was to prohibit regular uniformed police from interfering with Nazi Brownshirts out in the streets. This meant that innocent German citizens had no one to turn to as they were being beaten up by rowdy young storm troopers drunk with their newfound power and quite often drunk on beer. These young Nazi toughs took full advantage of police leniency to loot shops at will and terrorize Jews or anyone else unfortunate enough to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sound familiar? Hmmmm? Portland? Seattle? Michigan?

Much more at the site.  The timeline is being followed with sickening accuracy and the end result will be the same if nothing is done. If people remain complacent. This is evil walking the land and it needs to be stopped.

Heh - so true

| No Comments

Been there, done that, got the tee-shirts and some funny stories...

20210427-idiot.jpg

Yaaaayyyy - auction win

| No Comments

There was some sniping at the end but I was ready for it and got the storage bins for 20¢ each - much less than the 50¢ each that was my top limit. These will be perfect for screws and asstd. hardware both for here in my garage and also for the shop when it is built.  I have some of these bins already and love them over any other kind of storage I have tried before.  Heading down to pick them up tomorrow afternoon - busy day.

Working at home today - late lunch break.

California - Brad's story

| No Comments

20210426-brad.jpg

California - just leave it alone

| No Comments

The problem will fix itself.  It is just going to get really bad for a while.
The activists and politicans are the problem - not the cure.  From City Journal:

San Francisco’s Substance-Abuse Crisis
The most important walk you can take in San Francisco is not to the grand Golden Gate bridge, down crooked Lombard Street, or to the brightly painted Victorians in Alamo Square. It’s to the city’s large and gritty sixth district, which contains the Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods. What you’ll find there will shatter any preconceived notions about homelessness you might have heard from activists, city departments, and elected officials. You’ll realize that San Francisco doesn’t have a homeless problem—it has a substance-abuse crisis. And Project Roomkey, California governor Gavin Newsom’s hotels-for-homeless plan that he’s touting as a model for the rest of the country, won’t help any more than a band-aid will cure a cancer patient.

Block after block, you’ll see thousands of people who are barely alive. Some are alone; others are piled on top of one another, running into traffic, or standing slumped over, unconscious. They’ll be injecting or smoking heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in front of you, unaware or unfazed by your presence. Scabs cover their faces and bodies, limbs are swollen red and blue, often bloody and oozing pus. You’ll notice the garbage, rotting food, discarded drug detritus, and feces surrounding them. A shocking number are mere teenagers, but many are old or have aged well before their time.

Your immediate reaction will probably be grief and horror. How can we treat our fellow human beings so cruelly, and how did we, as a society, allow things to get this bad? If we can’t admit these individuals into hospitals today, we should at least erect mobile hospitals to deliver critical medical, psychiatric, and addiction treatment before it’s too late.

Yet Newsom has declared that with programs like Project Roomkey, the United States can solve homelessness. To see the results of the program is to know what a bizarre claim this is. While a small portion of the unhoused are healthy enough to shift into and benefit from such housing, the vast majority are not—and their troubles won’t be alleviated by a hotel room.

We used to have state run mental institutions but the activists got them all shut down because they were not "respecting the rights" of the mentally ill residents.  Excuse me but someone who is mentally ill does not have the capacity to make decisions about their own care or wellbeing. We need to bring back the county work farms.

Get them out of the pressures of urban life, away from the intoxicants and make them do physical labor for a few hours/day. Farming, light manufacturing, etc... Night and day - guarantee it.

Black Lives Matter is a big grift by some die-hard marxists.  They are in it for them and for nobody else.
Witness their founders real-estate dealings. Now this - from Daily Caller:

BLM Co-Founder’s Jail Reform Group Dropped $26,000 At Luxury Malibu Beach Resort

    • A Los Angeles-based jail reform group led by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors dropped nearly $26,000 for “meetings” at a luxury Malibu beach resort in 2019, campaign finance records show.
    • The payments were made on behalf of Reform LA Jails by a consulting firm owned by the co-author of Cullors’ 2018 biography, Asha Bandele, campaign finance records show.
    • Cullors, a self-proclaimed “trained Marxist,” raked in upwards of $20,000 a month serving as chairwoman of Reform LA Jails in 2019, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.

A Los Angeles-based jail reform group led by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors spent nearly $26,000 for “meetings” at a luxury Malibu beach resort in 2019, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Reform LA Jails dropped $10,179 for “meetings and appearances” at the Calamigos Guest Ranch and Beach Club in Malibu, California, and another $15,593 at the Malibu Conference Center, a corporate conference facility owned by the resort, according to the records, which covered the time period between July and September 2019. Guests at the 200-acre resort, where rooms start at $600 a night, have exclusive access to a private five-acre strip of the Malibu coast.

The records show that the payments were made on behalf of the jail reform group by a consulting firm owned by Asha Bandele, a longtime mentor of Cullors and co-author of her 2018 biography, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”

Must be nice to be rollin' so high.  Wonder how much money they are saving?  What will happen to them when their little scam crashes and burns like these always do? What is their exit strategy? Do they have one? Have they thought that far ahead?

The stupid.  It burns.

Tides - take two

| No Comments

Last fall, there were some King High and Low Tides and I wanted to do some time-lapse photography.  Missed it.

Next really good sequence that happens during daylight is May 27th, 2021 - low at -4' and high at 12'

There is a nice sequence happening this Thursday with -2.99' to 12.52' - about the same range but not quite as low.

Spending this evening getting the camera out, got the AC power adapter ready and working up the exposure data.

My last attempt was ruined when the camera tripod shifted.  This time, I am hanging cement blocks on it.

35 Years ago today - Chernobyl

| No Comments

I remember when that happened.  Was living in Seattle and was going for coffee at a place frequented by University of Washington students and faculty.  I knew a bunch of people from their Physics department.  News trickled in and the people in the Physics department were noting a marked increase in background radiation.

The worst nuclear disaster in the world. 30-40 people died from direct exposure to radiation.  Surprisingly (if you read the partisan media), minimal other deaths. Sure, some plant worker may have died three years ago from Lung Cancer but was that Chernobyl or was that their two-pack/day cigarette habit? Your call...

Firm believer in Hormesis. Lots of solid evidence for it.

A deafening silence - the Oscars

| No Comments

I figured it would bomb but I did not realize how big the crater would be. From Variety:

TV Ratings: Oscars Plummet to Record Low, Down 58% Compared to Last Year
The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony, broadcast live from both Union Station and the Dolby Theatre in L.A. on ABC, hit a staggering low.

Per Nielsen Live+Same Day preliminary national numbers, an average of 9.85 million viewers tuned in on Sunday evening to watch a more intimate and stripped-down version of the Oscars in the midst of a pandemic. That’s a 58.3%, 13.75 million viewer drop-off from last year. The Academy’s third host-less show in a row scored a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 in the fast national ratings, a 64.2% dip from 2020.

For comparison, last year’s ceremony garnered a 5.3 rating in the key demographic and 23.6 million viewers per the night’s time-zone adjusted fast national charts. The Oscars in 2019 delivered a 7.7 rating in adults 18-49 and 29.6 million viewers. While up 12% from 2018, that viewership figure represented the second-smallest audience ever for an Academy Awards telecast at the time. 2018 delivered the previous smallest viewership tally with 26.5 million viewers.

Don Surber had an excellent post on this and offered these viewership numbers:

2014: 43.7M
2015: 37.2M
2016: 34.4M
2017: 33M
2018: 26.6M
2019: 29.6M
2020: 23.6M
2021: 9.8M

Ouch!  For an event like the Oscars, eyeballs are everything. Good.  Maybe they will wake up.

Excellent news - from the Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Gavin Newsom to face recall election as Republican-led effort hits signature goal
Propelled by growing voter frustration over California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Republican-led drive to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office collected enough voter signatures to qualify for the ballot, state officials reported Monday, triggering for only the second time in state history a rapid-fire campaign to decide whether to oust a sitting governor.

Recall backers submitted more than 1,495,709 verified voter signatures — equal to 12% of all ballots cast in the last gubernatorial election — meeting the minimum threshold to force a special recall election, according to a tally released by Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Barring intervention by the courts, Newsom will face a statewide vote of confidence by year’s end.

And this will be a closely watched election.  The guy pushes all of the right buttons for the lefties but he is incompetent as an administrator and leader.

And back home for the day

| No Comments

Productive couple of hours - the storage bins are a go.  I bid on a couple of lots - see what happens.  The auction closes at 11:00 AM tomorrow -  I put in a fairly large maximum bid on two of the lots (two different sizes) so I should be getting these.  If I am outbid, oh well - I have no desire to compete against stupidity.

The bins are available new for about $3 each.  I am bidding up to 50¢ each - we will see what happens.

Other errands went well too. Quick surf and see what has happened during my absence.

Quiet morning on the island

| No Comments

Heading South in two hours - leisurely dog walk and coffee first.

Nothing catches my eye - the Election Audit will be fun to watch.  The Democrats are scrambling to stop it.
Wonder why? Hmmmm???

Down to the north end of Lake Washington for the auction preview, stopping at the Business Costco (quite a different store than the usual Costcos), TAP Plastics and a few other go-tos.

No posting until later this afternoon.

Not much today - quiet out there

| No Comments

Not watching the Oscars - no interest. I will be interested in their ratings - bet they are slipping.
Get WOKE, go broke yet again.  These people never learn. The actual movie-going population is a lot larger than the contents of their inbred self-referential little bubble.

Rain let up - nice puffy clouds with blue sky showing through. Cool though - temps heading to the 40's later tonight.

Sleeping in again tomorrow - driving down to near Seattle for the auction preview.  My destination is far enough from the city but I will still maintain situational awareness.

Had a nice walk with the pups this morning - spent about an hour. Looking at getting another German Shepard pup - get this one trained while Bear is still nice and active.  Truffle is a sweetheart but she is not a working breed by any stretch of the imagination.

Feeling a little bit sleepy so see what the YouTube faeries brought for me and call it an evening.

Crap - Indonesian submarine

| No Comments

It had been overdue for a few days and has now been discovered.  From gCaptain:

Submarine Hull Cracked, 53 Crew Found Dead
A missing Indonesian submarine has been found, broken into at least three parts, deep in the Bali Sea, army and navy officials said on Sunday, as the president sent condolences to relatives of the 53 crew.

Rescuers found new objects, including a life vest, that they believe belong to those aboard the 44-year old KRI Nanggala-402, which lost contact on Wednesday as it prepared to conduct a torpedo drill.

“Based on the evidence, it can be stated that the KRI Nanggala has sunk and all of its crew have died,” military chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto told reporters.

Navy chief of staff Yudo Margono said the crew were not to blame for the accident.

“The KRI Nanggala is divided into three parts, the hull of the ship, the stern of the ship, and the main parts are all separated, with the main part found cracked,” he said.

President Joko Widodo earlier confirmed the discovery in the Bali Sea and sent the families of the victims his condolences.

“All of us Indonesians express our deep sorrow over this tragedy, especially to the families of the submarine crew.”

At least their deaths would have been very quick. A moment for a What The to cross their minds and then silence.

Some relative numbers

| No Comments

A good sense of what we are dealing with:

20210425-bad_good.jpg

Done with lunch

| No Comments

Time for more research at the Camano Island Institute for Advanced Puttering and Goof-offery

Knuckledraggin - a three-fer

| No Comments

Knuckledraggin My Life Away is one of my daily reads.  Here are three memes from today:

20210425-knuckle01.jpg

20210425-knuckle02.jpg

20210425-knuckle03.jpg

Seventeen more at the site.  Like I said, a daily read.

Old news I know but fresh information is coming to light. From Newsmax:

Lawyer: FBI's Seth Rich Docs Show Robbery Narrative 'Failing Apart'
The FBI released documents sought related to the death of former Democrat National Committee voter expansion data director Seth Rich, and a lawyer says it shows no signs of what has been considered a robbery murder.

Among the findings in the 68 pages released of the 576 the FBI has denoted as related to Rich, a lawyer found it concerning it is unknown whether anything was deleted on Rich's personal laptop, The Epoch Times reported.

One page read, "given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death," according to the report.

"That doesn't sound like a random street robbery," lawyer Ty Clevenger told the Times.

Also, the documents show nothing was stolen in what law enforcement has publicly considered a robbery attempt and suggest it is "conceivable" someone might have paid for Rich's death, according to the report.

Hillary? Arkancide - Seth Rich was the person suspected of leaking the Clinton emails to WikiLeaks.

Just the thing:

20210425-fauci.jpg

This should be blindingly apparent to anyone who actually goes outside and checks the temperature.
From the New York Post:

Obama administration scientist says climate ‘emergency’ is based on fallacy
‘The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it? 

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed. 

Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie “The Princess Bride” — “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.” 

Much more at the site.  A lot of the "science" - including the (in)famous Michael Mann Hockey Stick graph - is based on computer models and "reconstruction". The numbers are cherry-picked to advance the narrative. All the while, everything points to a cooling trend lasting for maybe several hundred years. Our sun is a variable star and is entering a quiet cycle.

A quiet lazy morning

| No Comments

Got a couple people rowing offshore - just paddling around on the water.  Was raining earlier but stopped - high overcast. Slept in and just hanging out.

Dogs are rumbling around - take them out for a nice long walk before coffee this morning.  They are restless.

Surfed a bit but nothing turned up - the usual stupidity but no stories catch my eye.

Zero plans for today - gathering some stuff I bought for the water well. Group it by vendor and return it tomorrow.  Heading down South to an auction preview tomorrow: air compressor and some storage stuff.

See how the day goes...

Joe Biden - mental impairment

| No Comments

His mental state is not a new thing:

From Thomas Sowell's YouTube Account

Open borders - a good thing?

| No Comments

Looks like it is not just impoverished refugees coming into the United States.
From Project Veritas:

Department of Homeland Security Insider Leaks ‘Significant Event Report’ Showing Known Associate of Yemeni Men on Terrorism Watchlist Apprehended Near Border

    • Insider working within Department of Homeland Security leaked internal documents before and after Al-Bokari’s arrest.
    • Al-Bokari and his associates traveled through Panama and were detained by Mexican authorities at the Mexicali airport on Monday, April 12.
    • The Yemeni national was soon after released by the Mexican government and was expected to make his way towards the Southern Border, according to a U.S. government “Significant Event Report” labelled as “unclassified // law enforcement sensitive.”
    • Just recently, two other Yemeni nationals on the terrorism watchlist were stopped at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to the Associated Press.
    • Al-Bokari was apprehended by U.S. authorities in Calexico, California on Tuesday, April 13.

Project Veritas released a new video today featuring leaked Department of Homeland Security [DHS] documents showing how the U.S. government tracked Yemeni national Anwar Abdulrahman Mukred Saeed Al-Bokari, a known associate of men on the terrorism watchlist.

Starting his route in South America, Al-Bokari was able to make his way to the Mexicali airport in Northwest Mexico before being detained by Mexican authorities on Monday, April 12. He was soon after released back into the general public by the country’s government.

A leaked DHS document titled “Significant Event Report” and labelled as “unclassified // law enforcement sensitive” shows that the U.S. government was expecting Al-Bokari to make his way to the United States upon his release, given the precarious situation at the Southern border.

According to the Associated Press, two other Yemeni nationals on the terrorism watchlist tried to enter the U.S. illegally a few weeks ago. The current border crisis has emboldened dangerous individuals to attempt entry into the United States in that manner.

Sleeper cells are already in place. Interesting times ahead.  Stay away from the cities.

Now this would be fun to watch

| No Comments

Stopped watching Saturday Night Live when Lorne Michaels took over and it stopped being funny.
This would be worth watching just for the opening monologue - from USA Today:

'SNL': Elon Musk tapped as next host with Miley Cyrus as musical guest
"Saturday Night Live" is switching things up with its next host: Elon Musk.

The coveted slot, usually occupied by British actors like Carey Mulligan or former boy band members like Nick Jonas, is now reserved on May 8 for Tesla CEO and SpaceX chief engineer, Musk.

I'll have to see if it's available streaming.

A little reminder - polar bears

| No Comments

20210424-bear.jpg

Polar Bears are doing just fine.  What caused their downfall was hunting, not climate "change".  Now that hunting has been restricted to subsistence hunting by natives, they are doing fine.

a careful management of appearances.  The Homeless Department. From FOX News:

City of Los Angeles accused of moving the homeless in order to prepare for the Oscars
For the first time in its history, the 93rd Academy Awards is being held at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles.

It’s an area that is plagued by homelessness. But come Oscar Sunday, the homeless will not be seen anywhere near Union Station.

"They came to us about a week ago saying that we had to move by Friday 6 p.m. because they were trying to clean up for the Oscars and they told us if we didn’t move, they were gonna just demolish our stuff," says DJ, a man living in a tent in downtown Los Angeles.

DJ says the city did offer an option.

"They forced us to go to the Grand Hotel on 3rd and Figueroa and they kicked everybody out of Union Station so it looks better for the image," says DJ.

Life in a Democrat-run shithole city.  Nothing surprises me.

But of course - follow the money

| No Comments

No surprises there - from Big League Politics:

FactCheck.org’s COVID-19 Project is Funded by Foundation That Has 15 Percent of Its Assets in Johnson and Johnson Stock
A FactCheck.org project addressing common COVID-19 “misconceptions” owes its existence to a philanthropic organization that has around 15 percent of its assets tied up in Johnson & Johnson stock.

The top of the project homepage reads as follows: “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”

Interestingly enough, Rep. Thomas Massie (KY-04) has discovered that 15.9 percent of the foundation’s assets consist of Johnson & Johnson common stock. Out of $11.9 million in assets, nearly $1.9 million has been invested in J&J. The figures come from a 2019 financial statement:

Call me when 'ya got something surprising.  This information is not surprising.

Wise words - Dr. Thomas Sowell

| No Comments

The truth in two tweets:

20210424-sowell.jpg

And out again - points North

| No Comments

Maybe have dinner on the road. Maybe not.

Back in a few hours.  Not doing anything here - maybe sleep in tomorrow - or not.

Feeling very decisive these days.

Wonderful news - Chestnut trees

| No Comments

From the New York Post:

Scientists hope genetic engineering can revive the American chestnut tree
A day before Earth Day, retired forester Rex Mann watched as scientists signed an agreement with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina to allow for the eventual planting of genetically engineered American chestnut trees on tribal land.

Mann, who has heard countless stories about the American chestnut tree that once dominated the Appalachia region, was emotional as he witnessed the signing.

“My dad loved the tree… and he understood what it meant to the way of life of these people in the mountains,” the 76-year-old from Kentucky said. “That way of life died with the tree.”

In the early 20th century, a blight is believed to have wiped out some four billion chestnut trees that once grew across the eastern United States, from Maine to Georgia. Now, American chestnut advocates, like Mann, and a small network of scientists are hoping to restore the trees by genetically engineering a blight-resistant tree.

Several experiments have been tried over the years, but so far scientists believe the greatest promise comes from a transgenic tree – engineered with a gene from wheat – known as Darling 58. They also hope that this initiative will encourage similar projects for other species

Awesome news if it works out.  A very beautiful tree and excellent wood. A true American classic. Genetic Engineering is not anything to be afraid of - those people that are are just ignorant. Yes, the potential is there for evil (or stupidity - often indistinguishable (ie: Congress)) but there are checks and balances in place.

From Bizpac Review:

Wheeler’s epiphany: Portland mayor declares it’s time to ‘take city back’ from Antifa
After nearly a year’s worth of rioting and violence that has led to at least one high-profile murder, Portland’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler, is appealing to residents of his city to help stop the endless protests that have been largely led by the anarchist group Antifa.

How many millions of dollars have been wasted by this fekless idiot's pandering to the left. He could have shut the riots down in the first weekend.  Arrest the rioters and prosecute them.  Make sure that they get the message that rioting is not fun in Portland.  Send them to jail for 90+ days. $,1,000,000,000 bail.  Play hardball. They would have gotten the message in a few days.

The loss of business is tragic - good people's lives have been ruined by the little six-year old kiddies acting out.

And back home for now

| No Comments

Lunch and then heading North to Mt. Vernon - Costco, food coop, Home Depot, etc...

Bowl of soup for lunch - see what has happened out in the real-world

And out the door - work

| No Comments

Started raining in all seriousness last night.  Not a huge volume but persistent. Tired last night so overslept this morning. Coffee to go, dogs will get walked this afternoon.

Outta here...

They know me too well - garage

| No Comments

This meme really hits close to home:

20210423-garage.jpg

Coming to a TV in 3... 2...

| No Comments

20210423-facts.jpg

UPDATE below
From Dan Bongino:

Caitlyn Jenner To Enter California Governor’s Race as a Republican
Could another celebrity governor be in California’s future?

Earlier today, after weeks of speculation, the artist formally known as Bruce announced their intent to enter California’s governor’s race as Governor Gavin Newsom faces a likely recall.

“California has been my home for nearly 50 years. I came here because I knew that anyone, regardless of their background or station in life, could turn their dreams into reality. But for the past decade, we have seen the glimmer of the Golden State reduced by one-party rule that places politics over progress and special interests over people. Sacramento needs an honest leader with a clear vision,” Caitlyn Jenner wrote in a statement announcing the filing of the paperwork to run.

“I have been a compassionate disrupter throughout my life, from representing the United States and winning a gold medal at the Olympics to helping advance the movement for equality,” she continues.

She then cites a handful of issues the state is facing, before getting a dig in on Newsom: “This isn’t the California we know. This is Gavin Newsom’s California, where he orders us to stay home but goes out to dinner with his lobbyist friends.”

I remember when Pigasus was a viable Presidential Cantidate. Jenner could not be a worse governor than Newsom.

UPDATE - of course, the professional trannies weigh in.  From The Daily Wire:

LGBTQ Activists Denounce Caitlyn Jenner After Announcing Run For California Governor
Despite Caitlyn Jenner’s transgender identity, LGBTQ activists are not happy with the former Olympian’s bid to oust Gavin Newsom as governor of California.

Shortly after Jenner made the big announcement that they would run for governor, LGBTQ activists were upset that Jenner would be running as a Republican.

'Scuuuse me but...  If you want to have someone you approve of as Governor, find someone to run.
It is really that simple.

Caitlyn is running for the entire population of California and not just a percent or two. The entire homosexual spectrum encompasses about 5% of the US population. They are not the majority in any sense of the word.  There should not be any discrimination and they must have the same rights as any non-homosexual person but that is where this ends. Period. You do not get to ram this down the rest of our throats.  You do not get to set the agenda for everyone.

Now, shall I call a whaaambulance or are you just going to let the butthurt flow through you.

God but I detest activists. Self-centered little onanists. Willfully ignorant of the consequences of their actions.

Working at home today

| No Comments

Nothing catches my eye on the internet. Puttering around the garage and the living room. Unpacked the van (I had brought up tools & stuff for the water pump). Rain moving in tonight with 83% chance of light precip tomorrow.  Need to mow the lawn and move the cuttings to the compost bin but we will see what the weather has in store.

The first of the lettuce was in at a local farmstand so making a nice big salad for dinner tonight.  Maybe have some soup as well but had a big and late lunch so not that hungry.

Having another instance of "hitting a wall" at around 5:00 PM - slept well last night but really tired now. Not napping so as to not mess up my sleep schedule.  Any more of this and I might go in for a checkup... Unusual...

Of course, there is a good chance for Northern Lights - now that the skies are socked in.  Planetary K-Index is high.

Time for dinner and surf for a bit.

Earth day - the state of the climate

| No Comments

A wonderful compilation of 50 years of climate scares.  From the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

What is wonderful about this article is that they post pictures of the articles along with links to source materials.  Here are three of them:

20210423-eco01.jpg

20210423-eco02.jpg

20210423-eco03.jpg

Much much more at the site.  People need to remember that these people have always been wrong.

To state this simply, any prediction of catastrophe has always failed.
Don't believe me? Show me.  Point me to a prediction of catastrophe that was correct.

Simple as that.  Disagree? Show me.

I am not surprised - lumber prices

| No Comments

20210423-lumber.jpg

Out the door

| No Comments

Working this morning and tomorrow.  This "retirement" crap is for the birds...  Busier now than ever.

Quick dog walk, coffee to go.

From My Pensieve:

20210423-antifa.jpg

Bet they never try to loot a Harley dealership.

This will be fun - epic battle

| No Comments

More like shooting fish in a barrel - from Breitbart:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: AOC Agreed to Debate Me on Green New Deal
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted on Wednesday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) agreed to debate her over the Green New Deal.

Democrats regularly frame the Green New Deal as a legislative attempt to combat “climate change” and “global warming.”

Greene attached a photo of her and Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor to a tweet mentioning her New York colleague, “I’m glad I ran into you today … to plan our debate about the Green New Deal. After I finish reading all 14 pages, like we agreed, I’ll schedule time for our debate.

AOC is funny when you get her off-message.  Not that bright.  She is another meat-puppet.
Should be a lot of fun if the media allow it to see the light of day.

There is hope - a parallel

| No Comments

From Chris Lynch:

In the Dark Ages questioning any dogma of the Church got you labeled as a heretic. Today questioning any leftist dogma can get you labeled as a racists/homophobe/ name the slur and cancelled. This process eventually got old in the Dark Ages and helped lead to the Enlightenment. Hopefully some light will shine through in our age as well...

A very good thought. We do go through cultural cycles.

Happy something?

| No Comments

Arf day or something like that? Stalin's birthday too.  If it wasn't so late, I would go around and turn on all the lights, run the heat up to 85°F, open all the windows and do some welding.

The Earth is doing just fine - it is just that population on its skin that is causing the problems. Most of them are fine and well worth getting to know.  My complaint is with the shrill few who think they know everything.  Big hint - you don't.  Not by a long shot.  Start here: Dunning-Kruger

Besides, you are anoying to those of us who DO know everything.

And back to the island

| No Comments

Back home. Tired and stiff - been threatening to take up Yoga off and on.  I really think I need to do this. Used to be in a lot better shape when I lived on the farm - got pretty sedentary and now paying the price for it.  Time to get back into shape.

Watching the colors of the sunset and sitting down to surf.

From Jason Rantz at My Northwest:

Rantz: WA Dept of Health lets providers deny vaccines to white people for equity
The Washington State Department of Health lets providers deny vaccines to white people in a race-exclusionary system they claim creates equity and removes barriers. It does neither.

The African American Reach and Teach Health Ministry (AARTH) is a vaccine provider in Washington state. Eligible recipients can sign up for vaccines using their online scheduler. But if you’re white, you’re not able to access any open vaccine appointments.

By default, white people are put on a standby list — one of two lists segregated by race — for vaccine access. They will only provide their online appointments to people of color.

Now isn't that...  what is the word I am looking for...  racist?

And out the door in a little bit

| No Comments

Swinging by my coffee place first.  Meeting with the water guy at 10:00 AM to repoace the old well pump. Want to get over there a bit earlier to get everything together.

Surf and breakfast first - sleep on the island tonight. 

And that is it

| No Comments

Blogging from an undisclosed location in the foothills to the headlands of Mt. Baker

Another very long day tomorrow but heading back to the island that evening.  Working Friday and Saturday morning. Productive trip.

Early day tomorrow - pulling the old well pump (120 feet deep) and replacing it with a new one.

A couple of videos and bed...

Our own duly elected *Resident - from The Western Journal:

Black Lives Matter Says Communities Are Being 'Terrorized' More Under Biden Than They Were Under Trump
President Joe Biden is allowing police to become more of a threat to black Americans than former President Donald Trump ever did, at least in one aspect, Black Lives Matter now claims.

What? Didn't get that chunk of Federal lagniappe so you are lashing out like a petulant six-year-old?  Need to buy another mansion or two?

Grifters - pure marxist grifters.  Looking for $$$ and political power.

Back for the night

| No Comments

Got the pump house plumbed.  Pump wired up with new controller and pressure switch. Let 'er rip and...

Nothing...

Bad pump. Ran into town to get a new one. This is not unexpected as the old one was over ten years old but still... Everything seems to last about ten years.  The HVAC people are telling me that I really really really should replace my heat pump. The plumbing people said that my water heater was on its last legs. Household appliences seem to last only 8-10 years before needing expensive repairs.  Automobiles the same.

Are we in the throws some some secret cabal? Another Phoebus Cartel.
Check out that link and see why I am thinking this is the case.

And outta here - coffee & farm

| No Comments

Heading out for coffee and then to the farm.  Wiring up the pump house and getting it ready for the water guy to come at 11:00 AM to plumb everything. Up here tomorrow as well and then back to the island for a week or so.

More posting later - nothing much happening out there besides Obama's legacy.  Going to be a long summer.

From FOX News:

Pelosi faces intense backlash after thanking George Floyd for 'sacrificing your life for justice'
Speaker accused of viewing Black people as pawns in her political cause
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is facing intense backlash after she thanked George Floyd for "sacrificing your life for justice" Tuesday following the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on murder and manslaughter charges.

No shit.  Good.  Stupidity like this should hurt.  She needs to retire from public office - she has enough money and has done enough damage. Her legacy is the homelessness and drug camps in San Francisco.

The Chauvin Jurors

| No Comments

Understand their verdict now - their names are public.  Who wants a mob on their front door.

Yes, this is tampering writ large but impossible to police.  If someone doesn't show up tomorrow, they will be there in six months.  I can not imagine having to live my life with one eye always looking over my shoulder.

And that is it for the night

| No Comments

Videos and an early bed - putting in quite a few hours tomorrow between getting the pump house wired up in the morning and working with the water guy getting it re-plumbed.

The house is an eight-foot square little building over the water well and it houses the accumulator as well as the control circuitry and some lights and a heater (gets pretty cold in Winter). The structure was 30+ years old and it was easier to just tear it down and rebuild from scratch than try to repair it. It is now good for the next 30+ years.

The plumbers are going to finish replumbing the house Thursday so we will be ready for them. Larry (the guy I bought the place from) had two of his "buddies" help when he built this house.  The construction is awesome - the place is rock solid.  The wiring was done by one buddy and I spent the first two years chasing the idiosyncracies.  The plumbing was the second buddy and it feels good to just rip everything out and do it right from the start. Using PEX pipe.

Back down to the island on Thursday - working Friday and Saturday. Taking a week off and then back up here to start moving shit around. Getting a big dumpster and clearing out the barn.

From New York City's station PIX-11:

Nancy Pelosi thanks George Floyd ‘for sacrificing your life for justice’
After former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thanked Floyd “for sacrificing your life for justice.”

She thanked him for “being there to call out” to his mom, and noted how heartbreaking it was.

“Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world, who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice and now we have to make sure justice prevails in the sentencing,” Pelosi said.

Floyd once held a gun to the belly of a pregnant woman during a home invasion robbery.  He had a three-times lethal dose of Fentanyl in his bloodstream when he died. This is the person people are elevating to martyrdom? This is the example being set for children?

Nancy is just using this moment to grandstand and to consolidate power. She needs to go back to San Francisco and take care of her constituency. They need it.

Nice of him to weigh in - from The Hill:

Obamas praise Floyd jury, urge more action: 'We cannot rest'
Former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama said the jury in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin did the “right thing” in finding the former Minneapolis police officer guilty on all charges brought against him in the death of George Floyd, but added that true justice “requires much more.” 

What is this moke trying to do? Burn down the nation? A bit more:

“We cannot rest. We will need to follow through with the concrete reforms that will reduce and ultimately eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system. We will need to redouble efforts to expand economic opportunity for those communities that have been too long marginalized,” they said.

Actually Barry - we were doing really well for the last 30 years until you and your fellow travelers came along and decided that now would be the time to institute communism. Dr. Martin Luther King's whole idea of color of skin and content of character - we had that going really well. Your comments like:"If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" and the liberal's anointment of murdered thugs as cultural martyrs really served to create the divide that we are now dealing with.

You are really good at tearing down the hard work of other people.  What are you planning to build.  Give us your five year plan.  Your manifesto. Whatch'a got?

Got the electrical stuff and proceeded to find that plumbing stuff was needed as well. Another run into town.  Gorgeous drive so not complaining (much).  Done for the day.  Start in the pump house tomorrow morning and the water guy is coming over at 11 AM to get the pump running.

Had a big lunch so a frozen dinner courtesy of Chef Mike and a candy bar for dessert (Milky Way Midnight)

See what happened today...

Chauvin guilty on all charges

| No Comments

Sacrificial lamb.  Will there be rioting anyway?

The appeals process will be interesting to say the least.

This is not what I was expecting.

Getting on with my day

| No Comments

Fixed a network problem here at the store - heading out for coffee and then working at the farm.  Another gorgeous day.

An interesting metric - fundraising

| No Comments

Looks like people are truly fed up.  From FOX News:

RNC sets fundraising record in March in drive to retake control of Congress
The Republican National Committee (RNC) raked in $17.8 million in fundraising last month, which it highlights is its best ever off-cycle March haul.

And the RNC says it brought in a total of $44.4 million during the January-March first quarter (Q1) of fundraising this year, its best post-presidential election first quarter in the national party committee’s history.

Good.  The RNC is almost as bad as the Democrat party - people need to give their contributions to local conservative candidates, not the national committee but still, this is a start and a very good one.

A good preemptive move - Minnesota

| No Comments

From FOX News:

Minnesota’s Walz declares state of emergency prior to Derek Chauvin verdict
Gov. Tim Walz, the Minnesota Democrat, declared a state of emergency Monday night in the counties around Minneapolis as the city prepares for the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial.

Fox 9 reported that Walz held a news conference to lay out his plans to maintain security. He said the state is bringing in police backup from Nebraska and Ohio. The report pointed out that the Minnesota Senate approved $9 million in emergency funding to deal with potential unrest.

Good move - this is going to make the long hot summer look like a tea party. I lived through that time - was 16. Cities were erupting in violence. Now, the gloves are off.  People are coordinating through social media.  This is all Obama's legacy. He wanted to institute division so we could be Balkanized and controlled.  He got it.

Very glad I no longer live in a city. Toxic places.

Your morning Maxine

| No Comments

Another long and productive day

| No Comments

Good meeting - only lasted 45 minutes which is awesome. I like tight meetings - have an agenda, stick to it.
Bam, bam, bam, adjourned, bye...

Starting back to work on the farm house tomorrow morning - some drywall and electrical wiring. Planning to be up here through Wednesday.

Nothing much catches my eye except for the Chauvin judge's comments (here and here) regarding Maxine Water's grandstanding.  She has gotten away with this for ever - nobody has called her on her bullshit. Nice to see some pushback for a change.

Busy day - a lot done

| No Comments

Letting Chef Mike handle the cooking for tonight's dinner (been doing that a lot recently) Quick surf while that happens and then meeting in 90 minutes.

Getting on with my day

| No Comments

Heading out for an early coffee and to work.  More much later today.

A successful flight

| No Comments

Kudos to the little guy - from CNBC:

NASA flies and lands helicopter on Mars, the first flight on another planet
NASA on Monday successfully conducted the first controlled flight on another planet — its Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew a short flight in what the agency described as “a Wright Brothers moment” in space.

“Ingenuity is reporting having performed spin up, takeoff, climb, hover, descent, landing and spin down,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight control said on a webcast.

And the payload was really sweet:

The helicopter carried a tiny piece of fabric from the wing of Flyer 1, the Wright brothers’ aircraft that in 1903 made the first powered flights on Earth.

“Like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, we know that our time to make a difference at Jezero Crater, Mars is not yet over – this is just the first great flight,” JPL’s MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity’s project manager, said on the webcast.

And that is it for now

| No Comments

Watch a few viddies.

Busy couple of days ahed.  I get to teach someone how to drive a tractor - should be a lot of fun. There is no such thing as "having a bad day" when you are driving a tractor. Kinda like a Harley but 50 times more massive and a lot slower.

Best and brightest

| No Comments

We are dealing with some real winners here - from ABC News:

Vandals target Barry Brodd's former home after testimony in Derek Chauvin's defense
The former Northern California home of an expert police use-of-force witness who testified last week for the defense in the Derek Chauvin murder trial was targeted over the weekend by vandals, police said.

And you read the past-tense correctly:

Police in Santa Rosa, California, said the vandalism occurred early Saturday morning at the former home of Barry Brodd, a former Santa Rosa Police Department training officer, who moved out of the residence several years ago and no longer lives in the state.

Nice job checking to see if your information was correct.  Several months ago might be just a slip-up but several years?  Tax records are online - how simple is it to check those. These liberals are simply not that bright.  That is why marxism sounds good to them - they do not comprehend its innate flaws. They lack the mental horsepower.

Gone to ground

| No Comments

At Mt. Baker for the next couple of nights.  Uneventful drive up. Gorgeous sunset starting to develop. Lots of colors.

Up here enough that I am just going to bag it and bring a desktop machine up here for my use.  I like having my system configured the way I like it and I don't want to go in and re-jigger the office machines. Got some wonderful people working here and I want to keep them happy. Brought a laptop for tomorrow's meeting but it's a laptop.  A machine of last resort.

Surf for a bit - see what happened today...

And out the door

| No Comments

Heading North for a few days - back Wednesday evening sometime.  Or Thursday. Or Tuesday. Whenever.

I'll be posting some up there but mostly working.

The devil is in the details

| No Comments

News Flash: Biden is polling at 59 Percent Approval Rating - from Pew Research Center:

Biden Nears 100-Day Mark With Strong Approval, Positive Rating for Vaccine Rollout
Joe Biden approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency with a relatively strong job approval rating and the public continuing to express positive views of the coronavirus aid package passed by Congress last month.

Stuff - and then the money shot:

Currently, 59% approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, while 39% disapprove.

Them's the numbers - like it or not. But wait...  This is a long document.  Seven pages. Scroll down to page seven:

20210418-pew.jpg

So, your sample was 5,109 of which 33.39% were Republican or leaning and 63.67% were Democrat or leaning.

Bias much?

I would call that busted.  Totally and unequivocally busted. Busted with a side of fries and extra tarter sauce. 

Walkies

| No Comments

Heading out to run the pups and then linger over some coffee and a book.

All packed for the farm trip - doing a meeting tomorrow evening so getting the agenda ready for that before I leave here.  Do it when I get back after lunch.

Another gorgeous day in paradise but there are thin whispy clouds high up and some precip in the forecast for later this coming week. Something is moving in. Phooey.

There has to be a statute for that.  Oh. Wait. Nevermind. From FOX News:

Maxine Waters urges Minnesota protesters to 'stay on the street' if Chauvin acquitted in Floyd case
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., showed up at an anti-police brutality protest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on Saturday evening, saying demonstrators needed to "stay on the street," demanding justice until police reform becomes a reality.

Specifically:

Asked about the Derek Chauvin murder trial in Minneapolis, Waters told reporters if the former police officer isn't found guilty of murdering George Floyd, "We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business."

She is not out-and-out inciting violence but my ears are ringing from her dog whistle. She needs to go back home and take care of her own constituency (here, here and here for starters) - not go grandstanding. Also to note, she is a multi-millionaire. She and her family have gotten rich off the system. Our tax dollars at work.

Interesting times in Chicago

| No Comments

No corroboration but still - from the International Business Times:

Lori Lightfoot: Chicago Mayor to Resign After Being Caught Cheating on Wife?
There are rumors circulating on social media that Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot will be tendering her resignation after being caught cheating on her wife, First Lady Amy Eshleman.

More:

The post claimed the woman Lightfoot was having an affair with had a boyfriend who was caught for possession of a weapon and asked Lightfoot to "take care" of it. The extortion calls allegedly led to Eshleman finding out and "beating" Lightfoot.

According to the tweet, police responded to the domestic dispute at the Lightfoot-Eshleman residence, where they ran into their daughter who told them "my moms are fighting."

Lots more at the site.  Lightfoot said the right things and was credentialed.  She got elected to the job. Problem is, she can't lead. Can't manage the city.  Being mayor is a big job that takes a lot of work. It is not just a matter of pushing the narrative - you need to put in the hours to learn what is happening out there, set policy, administrate and lead.

Wonder if they will elect a conservative this time around?  Hmmmm? Couldn't hurt to try.

Government in one simple meme

| No Comments

From My Pensieve:

20210418-federalism.jpg

This recent resurgence of radicalism. Burn, baby burn!  Nobody is saying anything about build, baby build.

In the '60's, there was rioting but there was also building. Day-care centers, food banks and co-ops, schools, "free" medical clinics. There were all sorts of social institutions created, some still running today.  Some of them were wonderful (food banks and co-ops), some of them were kleptocratic and corrupt (marxist of course) but they purported to do good for the local communities.

We see nothing of that today. Assistant Village Idiot explains this much better than I can: 

Lack Of Art
Critical Race Theory, and Critical Theory in general doesn't have any art I can think of. Not poetry, not music, theater, film, painting, sculpture, nor literature. It may just be that I am not up on such things. I don't think it is mere recency, as both have been around for years, nor is it a bias from unfair comparisons from centuries ago. I am not asking that it produce an equivalent to the high Renaissance. Existentialism is also recent but does not suffer from the same lack. there is plenty of interesting theater, poetry, and literature from them, and I think only a little stretch of the concept brings in the visual arts including film.

I suppose you might make a case that successive philosophies since the enlightenment have each produced less art of a durable nature, and Theory is just that much farther down the line, but you would have to go some to convince me that was more than a merely convenient explanation.

This is a major red flag for the intellectual foundation of a philosophy, that artists in no medium can bring forth anything of interest. The heart of artistic expression is transposition, of reframing or new understanding of one concept and making it manifest in another. If you can find nothing to transpose, it means there is nothing there.

This is unsurprising, as Theory never pretended to be making anything, only analyzing it. It's right there in the name, Critical Theory. It critiques. It is described as a tool for interrogating everything else. "Interrogate" is supposed to have a more refined meaning than the picture that pops into our head from movies, of guys sitting in a chair under bright light, getting beat up after any bad answer. It's supposed to mean "asking questions." In reality, it's pretty much the sadistic guys with the brass knuckles. You either aren't interrogated at all because you're on their side, or you get the crap beat out of you.

So we interrogate history with Critical Theory. We look at American education through the prism of Critical Race Theory. We examine music or literature via Theory. But we never make anything with it. Making something requires talent, courage, and effort. A critical theorist might have any or all of these things. But they aren't required for the job.

Some excellent comments too - go and read.

And that is it - video and bed

| No Comments

Yesterday's intense sleepiness seems to have been a one-shot deal - got eleven hours of sleep yesterday and have been feeling fine all day today.  No 5:00 PM wall. Sleeping in tomorrow - taking the morning and afternoon off.  Driving up to the farm in the evening.

Time for a video or three and some shut-eye.

Next project down here is bringing new wiring to the music room and to the loft upstairs. Did a little bit of work in the garage this evening figuring out how to do that and what was needed. 

Fun article from MITs Technology Review:

Big Tech’s guide to talking about AI ethics
50-ish words you can use to show that you care without incriminating yourself.
AI researchers often say good machine learning is really more art than science. The same could be said for effective public relations. Selecting the right words to strike a positive tone or reframe the conversation about AI is a delicate task: done well, it can strengthen one’s brand image, but done poorly, it can trigger an even greater backlash.

The tech giants would know. Over the last few years, they’ve had to learn this art quickly as they’ve faced increasing public distrust of their actions and intensifying criticism about their AI research and technologies.

Now they’ve developed a new vocabulary to use when they want to assure the public that they care deeply about developing AI responsibly—but want to make sure they don’t invite too much scrutiny. Here’s an insider’s guide to decoding their language and challenging the assumptions and values baked in.

accountability (n) - The act of holding someone else responsible for the consequences when your AI system fails.

accuracy (n) - Technical correctness. The most important measure of success in evaluating an AI model’s performance. See validation.

adversary (n) - A lone engineer capable of disrupting your powerful revenue-generating AI system. See robustness, security.

Absolutely spot on. The author demonstrates that she has had to deal with bureaucracies and knows how to work around them. Sort of a Devil's Dictionary but for computer science instead of general culture.

A bit of history - geek stuff

| No Comments

Been going through things at the farm and ran into a little deposit of geeky treasure:

20210417-treasures01.jpg

Development kit for Windows 2.03.  When Windows 1.01 was released, there was stiff competition with other windowing graphical environments (primarily GEM from Digital Research) They persisted and hit it out of the park with Windows 3.x.

20210417-treasures02.jpg

My Times/Sinclair 1000 Personal Computer - I also had the memory expansion and a couple other plugins for it. Very basic but a lot of fun.

20210417-treasures03.jpg

Texas Instruments SR 10 - I was living in Boston, going to B.U. studying Marine Biology and had set a limit for myself.  I would get a pocket calculator but it had to cost under $100 and be able to do square roots.  The SR 10 came in.  I got it.

20210417-treasures04.jpg

And then, I dropped out of college, started working for a public aquarium and doing consulting on the side.  Started making some decent money so treated myself to one of these.  The Hewlett-Packard HP-45.  Gold standard in pocket calculators. It was light-years ahead of anything else out there on the market (and priced accordingly). That puppy got a lot of use.  Later upgraded to a 41C (have that too) with card reader and the ability to take plug-in modules for programming.

Fun times - I'll post more of these as I uncover them. We are talking a large archeological dig here.

Eighteen reasons - with links

| 3 Comments

A solid canonical list - compiled by Christian Elliot at Deconstructing Conventional:

18 Reasons I Won't Be Getting a Covid Vaccine
A few friends have asked my thoughts on the covid jab(s) so I thought it was time to write an article on the topic.

All my friends had not heard most of the details I shared, so I figured you might appreciate hearing some of what I told them.

Knowing how contentious this issue is, part of me would rather just write about something else, but I feel like the discussion/news is so one-sided that I should speak up.

As I always strive to do, I promise to do my best to be level-headed and non-hysterical.

I'm not here to pick a fight with anyone, just to walk you through some of what I've read, my lingering questions, and explain why I can't make sense of these covid vaccines.

Here are just a few of the reasons - each reason is fully explained with links to corborating data:

#1: VACCINE MAKERS ARE IMMUNE FROM LIABILITY
#2: THE CHECKERED PAST OF THE VACCINE COMPANIES
#3: THE UGLY HISTORY OF ATTEMPTS TO MAKE CORONAVIRUS VACCINES
#4: THE "DATA GAPS" SUBMITTED TO THE FDA BY THE VACCINE MAKERS

Fourteen more at the site.  #2 is interesting.  Moderna has never brought any product to market and Fauci owns patents for Moderna products. Nice little moneymaker there... A good solid list and there are over 2,600 comments worth perusing as well. Self-education is key here.  I am choosing to not get the vaccination.  Not until it has been out for a year or more.

Back to work - at home

| No Comments

Garage and outside a bit.  Got a couple more days for gorgeous weather so want to make the most of it.

Up to the farm tomorrow evening for a few days

'Ya got a point - Zombie Movies

| No Comments

20210417-zombie.jpg

The Japanese Prime Minister's visit

| No Comments

Turns out it was even worse than I had thought. Posted about Harris meeting with him yesterday.
Now this - from The Conservative Treehouse:

Biden Administration Conduct Hot Mess of Diplomatic Blunders During Japanese Prime Minister Visit
President Obama was well known for his diplomatic blunders, stumbles and curt demeanor with many foreign dignitaries including Queen Elizabeth II. Unsurprisingly it appears the JoeBama administration is picking up right where Obama left off.

Japanese Prime Minister Joshihide Suga was the first world leader to visit the White House since Biden’s installation, and the poor form began with no-one greeting the head of the Japanese government upon arrival. When you consider the leftist narrative about stopping Asian hate, there is a rather ironic aspect to this visit and snub.

More at the site.  They could not be more insulting if they were actually trying.  The fact that they are just being totally clueless makes it even worse.  We need adults in the room STAT.

And nothing out there this morning

| No Comments

Surfed the entire internet but zip zilch nada.
There are slow news days and then, there are mornings like this.

Done with breakfast - out the door. Posting will (maybe) resume in a couple of hours.

That's about it:

| No Comments

20210417-sick.jpg

Guess I just needed the extra sleep.  See how the day goes - working at the store later this morning.

Quick surf, breakfast for everyone, dog walk, coffee and head out.  Farm tomorrow evening.

And that is it

| No Comments

Downright sleepy - watch a video or three but lights out pretty soon. Do not know what brought this on - energy level this morning/afternoon was fine.  Hit the wall around 5:00 PM. Feeling chilly too - got the room up to 75°F and still feeling cold.

Got the heating pad on my mattress cranked up.  Nice and warm when I crash.

Politically incorrect but...

| No Comments

still, a good point:

20210416-silence.jpg

Telling the truth - CNN - some more

| No Comments

A third tranche was released today from Project Veritas:

PART 3: CNN Director Charlie Chester Says Network Is ‘Trying To Help’ The Black Lives Matter Movement By Protecting The Group’s Narrative On Race … ‘I Haven't Seen Anything About Focusing On The Color Of People's Skin That Aren't White’

And I am sure that a lot more will follow these three... We always knew.  Now, we know that they are fully conscious of their bias.  It is a decision with them to try to improve their ratings and they do not care who or what they hurt with their reporting. They do not care about the truth.

Diplomatic visit - Japan

| No Comments

Looks like Joe is not meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister.
Major diss on our part - their top leader is greeted by our second fiddle.
From The Western Journal:

Why Is Kamala Harris, Instead of Joe Biden, Meeting with Japanese PM?
On Friday, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was welcomed to the White House as part of the first diplomatic summit of Joe Biden’s presidency — but Biden was not the one to welcome him to the United States.

Instead, Suga was greeted by Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The president and I are very excited about the conversations we will have with the prime minister today,” Harris said.

Japan is very much about "face" and this is not the way to treat the top leader of a major ally. Joe could have been in the room and shook his hand. Then Harris could have taken over the dialog. To have her be the first person to meet and greet is a slap in the face. P.M. Suga only "rates" our second best??? Seriously???

Of course, it is obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than 80 (sorry liberals) what is happening with Joe's condition but still...  They could have done this a lot better.  A lot more gracious. More at the site - this is not the first time KH has stepped in.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in Kalorama. Obama is getting his "third term" in office but the sock puppets he installed are turning out to be absolute buffoons.

Soperific

| No Comments

This warm weather is making me drowsy - feel like taking a nap.

Still nothin'

| No Comments

Quiet news day. Fun but busy day at the store.

Puttering around the house - heading out for a few errands.

Nice and warm - over 70°F - got up to almost 80° yesterday.

That will be fun to see

| No Comments

Got nothin' this morning

| No Comments

Quiet news day out there.  Heading off to work soon - the manager of the thrift store is doing a 50% off sale so me and another person are going through and re-pricing some items.  We make a point to have some decent bargains out there - 50% off would be a little bit too much of a good deal (currently, we have a video projector for $40, complete stereo systems for $20, an older gaming system for $20). The sale is more meant for clothing and tchotchkes - stuff like that.

Dog walk first - coffee to go.

Now 'ya got me worried

| No Comments

Me to a tee:

20210415-mind.jpg

A nice lazy day drawing to a close

| No Comments

Did a lot of minor stuff around the house today - more laundry, cleaned the kitchen, etc... Working Friday and Saturday mornings and heading back to the farm Sunday evening.

Had a roast chicken breast from the store with some pasta and some green peas.  Salad and that was dinner.

The next couple of months will be interesting - looks like the people "handling" our *Resident are angling for war with Russia and/or China. Looks like China might invade Taiwan and Russia the Ukraine. The weakness is palpable in Washington - they are wrapped up in minutia and dithering. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. People like Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, etc... are so wrapped up in their little bubbles that they have zero clue what is happening out there.

It would be a blessed relief if the military stepped in to take the reins from their pudgy little ice-cream-stained hands.
Whatever... We really need some adults in the room.

Of course they are going to try - does not make it right. From National File:

Pfizer CEO Claims Vaccine ‘Booster’ Shots, Annual Vaccination May Be Necessary
“I think there will be a need based on this data for revaccinations,” said Bourla, who’s been the CEO of Pfizer since January 2019. Bourla claimed that a “likely scenario” will show a need for a third so-called “booster” dose of the vaccine, somewhere between 6 and 12 months after the initial shot, “and then from there, an annual revaccination.” Bourla said that variants of the coronavirus will “play a key role” in the upcoming decisions.

I have been happy being smart, maintaining proper nutrition and the occasional dose of Ivermectin when called for. Had two sore throats this winter but nothing else. Neither lasted more than two days.

Wait long enough and...

| No Comments

I probably have about 30 Hawaiian Shirts - some modern, some vintage.  Started buying them with no intention of forming a collection but that is what I have now.  Love to wear them when it's warm. Found this blurb:

20210415-hshirts.jpg

Wait long enough and everything comes back into fashion again.
Pro Tip: Best place to get modern Hawaiian Shirts? Costco in Hawaii - they have a wonderful assortment for a lot cheaper than any of the tourist shops - much better made too.

From The Post Millennial:

Twitter permanently bans Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe
After a scathing series of exposés dropped by Project Veritas about CNN's anti-conservative bias this week, Twitter has permanently suspended the outlet's founder, James O'Keefe.

O'Keefe, the publisher and founder of Project Veritas, has consistently been releasing exclusive video footage that exposes the political bias of CNN, Facebook, and Google, among others, in a series of bombshells reports.

This is especially onerous as they did not suspend him for a tweet. They suspended him for his non-twitter activity.
Bias? No bias here. We are just following the narrative like all good proles.

Not evil.  The core constituant of all life on this planet.  From William Briggs:

The Looming Decarbocalypse — Guest Post by Uncle Mike
It goes without saying, but must be said anyway, that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the fundamental building block of all life. Every atom of carbon in your body (we are all carbon-based lifeforms) was once atmospheric CO2. Every molecule of Oxygen (O2) that you breathe (without which we would rapidly expire) was once atmospheric CO2.

The way life works is this: green plants (and algae) take in atmospheric CO2 and via photosynthesis turn it into plant sugars and free O2. Sunlight and water are also required for photosynthesis. Complex proteins including RuBisCO (see here) catalyze the reactions that capture CO2 and fix it into plant food. Green plants are the foundational base, the first link in the Food Chain. All animals ultimately rely on green plants for food. That includes fish and people. Even carnivores that never eat plants must consume animals that do eat plants.

Thus CO2 is the fundamental, essential, indispensable, crucial, all important substance for Life. Without CO2 there would be no life. Planet Earth would be a dead planet. Everybody with just a minuscule education knows this. Every scientist, whom we must assume has more than a minuscule education, knows this. It’s a fact if ever a fact there was.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared CO2 a “pollutant”. Ditto the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). Scads of politicians, lobbyists, Big Media morons, and general idiots are bugged out of their minds about CO2. They want to eliminate it, despite the FACT that life depends utterly on CO2. How’s that for crazy? It’s worse than crazy, however. It’s deadly stupid. These ignorant savages want to eliminate Life Itself. That’s ABSOLUTE EVIL with all caps.

Much more at the site - lots of data and links.  Uncle Mike is speaking the truth. Our political elites are gearing up for a big push about "climate emergency" over the next couple of months. Be prepared. Be armed with the facts. Do not yield to these idiots. They are tryely clueless and are only jockying for political gain and using the crisis de jour as their lever. This will blow over and some new crisis will come over the horizon.

The single fact to take away from all this?  Carbon Dioxide is Plant Food. Essential for all life.
Without it, you and I would not be alive.

A look at Gun Laws

| No Comments

And how effective they are.  Found this at Woodsterman:

20210415-gunlaws.jpg

No idea who the cartoonist is but they really nailed it perfectly.
Odie's website is a daily read for me - fun stuff.

Looting has a new term of art

| No Comments

From Bayou Renaissance Man:

Really???
From Black House News, described on Twitter as "a Liberation News resource hub":

20210415-looting.jpg


So looting, arson and general mayhem are now "acts of material liberation", are they? Well, if they try that in my area, the perpetrators are likely to be liberated from their material bodies by irate citizens - which is almost certainly why they haven't tried it around here. Apparently some "material" is too precious to risk "liberation" . . .

Many of the people I know on the island are armed. This is a very quiet peaceful community and we like to keep it that way.  Material liberation is frowned on and would be discouraged if it started to happen.

Also on that front, it seems that Amazon has stepped up to the plate.
From America's Newspaper of Record - The Babylon Bee:

Amazon Creates Online Looting App To Allow The Timid To Loot From Home
Amazon is taking a giant leap towards greater equity with the addition of a brand new "Loot" function. Customers will have the option of proceeding to the checkout to pay normally, or clicking the "LOOT IT!" button for social justice.

"If a looter is too timid to smash a window in person, or just too lazy to go outside, we should not be suppressing their important voice by preventing them from looting," said outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos. "We are proud to announce our new app: Amazon Loot."

Customers who select the "LOOT IT" option will be given a list of injustices and microaggressions they can select from that would justify their looting. Items will be promptly shipped in 1 day, just like Amazon Prime items.

The Bee is right on target.

The "activists" never ever want to fix anything.  If they did, they would be out of a job.

They make mouth-noises about the problems but their direct actions do nothing but intensify and exacerbate those problems.  They seek chaos, not relief.

Do not read the media stories that are published about these activists. Look. Watch. Listen. See what they actually do.  You will see that the media is lying to you and that what I just said is true.

Want to see something really sad:

20210414-riot.jpg

Imagine all the healing that could be happening right now. All the building.  What these activists are doing is counter to the interests of the people.  It is counter to the interests of civilization. Counter to the interests of life.

They are beclowning themselves and not realizing it. From Robert Stacy McCain:

Nothing Can Placate the BLM Riot Mob, and ‘Journalists’ Are Part of the Mob
No matter what the facts are, the Narrative must always triumph — this is what “journalism” means in the 21st century:

Reporters loudly objected to the use of the word “riot” by a Minnesota police chief after his officers were assaulted and injured by bricks, rocks, and frozen soda cans, he explained. The chief defended the term by describing the incidents encountered by officers at the station Sunday night.
“Just so everybody is clear, I was front and center at the protest, at the riot,” Brooklyn, Minnesota, Police Chief Tim Gannon told reporters during a press conference Monday. His response came to a question from reporters about why he authorized the use of gas canisters following the issuance of a dispersal order.
In the video tweeted by the Washington Examiner Monday, one reporter exclaims, “There was no riot.” Another shouts “Don’t do that!” Multiple other reporters joined in with those objecting to the word “riot.”

Robert also brings up the inconvenient truth that this latest martyr to the Black Cause was by no means a choirboy and had an outstanding warrent for his arrest. But...  It's good for ratings - gotta sell that advertising space. How can you sell any advertising space if you don't have good ratings.

Oh yeah - Newspeak. It's a thing. Google it. Learn it if you don't want to get sent to the joycamps.

Telling the truth - CNN

| No Comments

Overheard on the net...

| No Comments

Need to come up with some new conspiracy theories.
All of the old ones are coming true...

A bit of a breather - IRS

| No Comments

Usually get my taxes done on time but do not like paperwork of any kind - taxes least of all so...

Nice that FedGov is giving us all a month extra.  Got everything together, just have to do it. But the weather is so nice outside.  Sunny and warm. The birds are singing. The warm ocean breezes are wafting through the sky.

Living room and garage. Laundry too. Heading back to the farm tomorrow early afternoon.

Follow the money - the border

| No Comments

Not surprising - from the Washington Examiner:

Ron Johnson launches investigation into $600M worth of no-bid contracts given to group with Biden ties
A Senate Republican has launched an investigation into the Biden administration's awards of two no-bid contracts for handling migrants, worth more than $600 million, to an organization whose senior director has ties to top Biden officials.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services to turn over all emails related to the contracts, as well as “any communications” between and among ICE and HHS employees or representatives of Family Endeavors, the group that was given the two massive contracts.

Someday, I would like to know who is making all the money off this.  Who is paying for the migrants to come here, who is profiting.  There is a huge scandal happening right under our noses and nobody is reporting on it.

And off to work

| No Comments

Dog walk, an abbreviated sit-down at coffee and then to the thrift store sorting and testing various electronica. Do that until around 1:00 PM when the groceries are ready and deliver those.  Last day for that program - it has been a year.

Back home to work on some stuff here - starting on getting the outside whacked back. Pruning and mowing. Getting rid of some horsetails - very vigorous and invasive but they do not like Muriatic Acid diluted 50% with a bit of dish soap.  Keels them right over. The whole island is built on limestone rock so any acid that does drain down will get buffered. Gorgeous day - got down to 38°F last night but only 8:00 AM and already up to 46.

Ran into this cartoon last night. At the store, there is an ongoing accumulation of various wall-warts.  Trying to think of a way to re-home them - these would be perfect for kids experimenting with electronics but that demographic is not inclined to come into a thrift store. Really hate to just throw them into the dumpster.

20210413-wallwart.jpg

Good news - House margin

| No Comments

The Dems hold on power just slipped a notch or two - from FOX News:

House Democratic margin shrinks to 2 votes with swearing-in of Republican Julia Letlow
House Democrats are barely holding onto their majority, with Rep.-elect Julia Letlow, R-La., set to be sworn in Wednesday morning.

Letlow will be joining the House in the seat originally won by her husband, Luke Letlow, who died in September from COVID-19 before he was supposed to be sworn in. Julia Letlow won a special election in March.

This gives Republicans 212 seats in the House, catching up to Democrats' 218. Since tie votes fail in the House, that means Democrats cannot lose more than two votes from their party to pass legislation if the GOP fully opposes them.

That slim margin of error could prevent Democrats from passing more progressive bills that moderates in their party may not support.

Good - let's hope that the Biden/Obama legacy is ashes and dust. They tried. They are failing.
Time to make sure that the communists never try again. Zu Asche zu Staub

Gun control?

| No Comments

Change my mind.   From My Pensieve:

20210414-guns.jpg

From Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Filmore:

Interesting to note that Tinsley's strip has been canceled by a few media outlets. They do not like conservative voices.

20210413-biden.jpgLike the old saying goes, "If you're taking flak, you're over the target"

To be played often and LOUD

It'll be a memory you're trying to remember to forget

Mick's YouTube channel

They have nothing that people want - no leadership, no love, no liberty. Once they are in power, they rule as a despot.
Bring forth an opposing voice and watch out.  The Epoch Times is based in Hong Kong - an excellent English Language news source for all things China. Recently, the Chinese government has been taking a dim view of their work.
From The Epoch Times:

Hong Kong Epoch Times Forced to Suspend Printing After Violent Attack
The Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times is temporarily suspending distribution to repair damaged equipment after an attack on April 12 — the fifth attack on the printing plant since it was established in 2006.

In the early hours of April 12 local time, four masked intruders barged their way into the warehouse, wielding two sledgehammers and a knife hidden inside a plastic bag.

The four men smashed printing press equipment and tossed construction debris on the equipment before fleeing in a white van. Among the items damaged were multiple computers and the printing press’s central control panel. The men warned a print shop employee to “go away,” with one saying, “Don’t force me to do anything.” They also stole a computer as they left.

Police officers arrived shortly afterward and told Epoch Times employees that the department’s crime unit would investigate.

The Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times has decried the attack as a crime against Hong Kong’s liberties and the rule of law.

“These thugs are not just targeting The Epoch Times Hong Kong, but also the independent media outlets in Hong Kong,” the outlet said in a statement. “It’s a malicious attack on basic societal norms such as … press freedom.”

Supression in the US is kinder and gentler. They do not smash the presses (yet) but try to get a word in at Twi**er or Faceb**k that does not toe the party line and you will be cut off so fast it will make your head spin. An interesting time in our history.  I have hopes for 2022 and 2024. We The People have had enough of the corruption and games playing. These idiots need to be smacked down so hard they forget about trying this bullshit for the rest of their lives.

Some fun computer oddities

| No Comments

Great collection - go here and start clicking.

The meal with a-peel - dinner

| No Comments

Doing a baked potato with some canned baked beans on top for dinner tonight. Simple, cheap and nutritious if a bit carb-heavy. Might break down and build a salad if I feel like it.  A bit tired from my labors in the Augean Garage (where they parked the chariots)

Last grocery delivery tomorrow as well as working at the thrift store. Back to the farm on Thursday.

Gorgeous weather this week and supposed to stay nice through the weekend.  Temps in the 70°'s are possible.

Good to know - plan for the future

| No Comments

Looks like the 'rona is going to be with us for a long long time.
From America's Newspaper of Record - the Babylon Bee:

'It Is Still Not Safe To Go Outside,' Says Fauci's Head In A Jar In Year 2739
An intercepted transmission that appears to be from the year 2739 shows footage of Dr. Anthony Fauci -- or rather, just his head, which has been preserved in a jar. In the video from the future, Fauci says it's still not safe to go outside, go to movie theaters, or eat indoors.

"Honestly, even if you've been immunized and are quadruple-masking, per current recommendations, I don't think I would risk it," he said. "Although we eradicated the virus some seven centuries ago, we can't be too careful. We must remain vigilant."

"If we let up even a little bit, we could end up right back where we were in 2020."

More at the site and the last sentence nails it:

Despite the grim outlook for the pandemic 700 years in the future, Fauci says he is optimistic that he will remain in the public spotlight at least until the heat death of the universe.

He is another grifter.  No real substance to his career.  Graduated Med School and went right into administration.

Looks like even the color of your skin will not be enough to avoid the purge.
Content of character went by the wayside decades ago.
From The London Daily Mail:

Twitter BANS black reporter for criticizing BLM founder for buying $1.4m home in '88% white LA neighborhood' - as he slams big tech for making the movement a 'sacred cow despite its financial GRIFT'

    • Patrisse Cullors, 37, has bought an expansive property in Topanga Canyon
    • The district in which the BLM founder will now live is 88% white and 1.8% black
    • Critics accused her of abandoning her social justice and activist roots
    • Sports journalist Jason Whitlock was among those remarking on her purchase
    • Twitter on Friday locked him out of his account in response to his tweet
    • Whitlock told DailyMail.com he remains blocked by the social media network
    • Twitter is demanding he delete his tweet linking to a celebrity real estate blog
    • Whitlock says he remains 'in Twitter jail, because I won't post bail'
    • The action is the latest draconian step in censorship by the Silicon Valley firm

A prominent black sports journalist barred from Twitter for the 'crime' of discussing the $1.4 million house bought by a Black Lives Matter co-founder slammed the company for trying to silence legitimate debate.

Jason Whitlock, 53, told DailyMail.com on Monday that Twitter was 'going too far' by blocking him from posting to his account, which has nearly 450,000 followers.

The censorship by Twitter comes as social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, have increasingly 'de-platformed' figures who stray too far from opinions they consider acceptable.

'BLM is one of Big Tech's sacred cows,' Whitlock told DailyMail.com 'I’ve been harping on the fraudulence and the financial grift of BLM for years.'

'I think Twitter has been looking for an excuse to de-platform me,' he said.

Pure marxism - grift and power.  Everything for the people until you cement your position at the top. Then?
Screw the people. Time and time again. Russia? Cuba? China? Venezuela? All the same.

The advantage with marxism is that it sounds reasonable to dumb people. They buy into it and enable the tyrant their power.

From Knucklegraggin'

20210413-congress.jpg

Those little fuckers need to remember that they work for us.  They campaigned, we elected them and they need to get back to their jobs.  They are not there for personal enrichment or power grabbing.

A good day made even better

| No Comments

Picked up my stuff from the library and cruised the new books section.  Saw that Simon Winchester had a new one out.

Looking forward to the next couple of mornings:  Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World 
I have yet to read anything bad from him.

Website here: Simon Winchester

Agree 110% - the good stuff

| No Comments

From Woodsterman:

20210413-goodstuff.jpg

And back again - dump run next

| No Comments

Got the van full of valuable possessions abject crap - got a couple of bags of same here so taking a quick lunch break, loading them up and heading over to the dump.

Got some music CDs waiting for me at the library so pick those up on the way back home.

Got a lot done - the plumbers are doing excellent work and the local contractor has torn down my old pump house and is doing an excellent job replacing it - build back better as it were...

Whew - worked my butt off...

| No Comments

And got the tireds to show for it. Quick surf, a video or two and that will be it.

Dug up some very fun stuff - taking photos and will post soon.

And to work

| No Comments

Coffee first - to the farm and work.  Up here tomorrow too. Big push.

Great catch from Chris Lynch at A Large Regular:

The White House Correspondents Dinner was supposed to be April 24th but guessing from the zero discussion about it that there will be no event this year and no explanation as to why it was canceled.

The dinner is kind of a big thing - been held since 1920. For a President to miss this is very much out of the ordinary. I could not imagine our current *Resident not going off the rails during the four hours. No wonder they are trying to ignore the event - hoping it will just go away.

Short but excellent video - the big multi-national corporations are not capitalist. They hate capitalism. They want a monopoly so they do not have to work as hard.  Amazon. Google. Microsoft. Capitalism benefits the consumer.

Tip of the hat to Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse who has a lot more on the subject.

Sometimes, blogging takes curious turns. Some of these include litigation.
An interesting case is about to happen - go here and read:

Lawfare: Do We Need to Have ‘Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day’?

Ms. Jones is about to find out what going full-retard feels like. You never ever go full retard.
Ms. Jones is also about to find out that The Internet Is Forever.
Whether she likes it or not.

Beautiful Maple Falls

| No Comments

It is a gorgeous small community - nestled in the Cascade foothills at the base of Mt. Baker. Went out for pot roast at a local restaurant and settled in for the night.  Surf, some videos and that is it.  Bright and early tomorrow morning - both HVAC and Plumbing contractors are scheduled to start. No need for a dog walk - they have 30 acres to rumble around in but I will need my coffee...

Surf for a bit - see what has happened while I was on the road.

And out the door

| No Comments

Up at the farm for a few days. Posting much later.

Turns out she has been spending a lot more money on other real estate - from The New York Post:

Inside BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ million-dollar real-estate buying binge
As protests broke out across the country in the name of Black Lives Matter, the group’s co-founder went on a real estate-buying binge, snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37, also eyed property in the Bahamas at an ultra-exclusive resort where Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods both have homes, The Post has learned. Luxury apartments and townhouses at the beachfront Albany resort outside Nassau are priced between $5 million and $20 million, according to a local agent.

The self-described Marxist last month purchased a $1.4 million home on a secluded road a short drive from Malibu in Los Angeles, according to a report. The 2,370 square-foot property features “soaring ceilings, skylights and plenty of windows” with canyon views. The Topanga Canyon homestead, which includes two houses on a quarter acre, is just one of three homes Khan-Cullors owns in the Los Angeles area, public records show.

It's all about political power and self-enrichment. She is telling "her people" what they want to hear - that she is leading them.  That she cares for them.  They are sending her money for "the cause". As soon as she cements her power, screw them and take over.  Communism - it sounds good to dummies.

And outta here for a little while

| No Comments

Heading out for dog walk and coffee and read for a little bit. Gorgeous day - temps are officially supposed to get to 61°F tomorrow (but it's been to 63 here a couple times before). A week of perfect springtime.

Back here for lunch and then up North to Mt. Baker later - spending a few days there this week. Contractors.

It's all in the name

| No Comments

Cages despite what you call it - from Gary Varvel

20210411-cages.jpg

Aaaand here we go - power grabbing

| No Comments

Grab the guns and force them to take vaccinations. Population control. Classic communist tactics.
22 seconds of video from CBS News - the last few seconds is the kicker: "only those vaccinated against Covid"

And this excerpt from ABC News - Gonsalves is Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves:

Many worried that evacuation efforts would be hampered by the pandemic, with Gonsalves noting that the cruise ships and other islands would require evacuees to be vaccinated.

Must follow the narrative.  Narrative takes precedence over actual physical safety.  If you fall into a pool of lava, you will die.  If you catch COVID, you have a 99.99% survival rate.  The survival rate for vaccination is a lot worse. Must follow the narrative. Narrative Uber Alles.

This era - two memes

| No Comments

Caught my eye:

20210410-motive.jpg

20210410-addict.jpg

That second one does make a lot of sense - you act on what you know.

Fun time to be alive - meet Pager

| No Comments

From Neuralink:

Waxing philosophical - this era

| No Comments

So true on so many levels:

20210410-truth.jpg

From The New York Times:

Michigan’s Virus Cases Are Out of Control, Putting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a Bind
Nowhere in America is the coronavirus pandemic more out of control than in Michigan.

Outbreaks are ripping through workplaces, restaurants, churches and family weddings. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. Officials are reporting more than 7,000 new infections each day, a sevenfold increase from late February. And Michigan is home to nine of the 10 metro areas with the country’s highest recent case rates.

During previous surges in Michigan, a resolute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shut down businesses and schools as she saw fit — over the din of both praise and protests. But this time, Ms. Whitmer has stopped far short of the sweeping shutdowns that made her a lightning rod.

“Policy change alone won’t change the tide,” Ms. Whitmer said on Friday, as she asked — but did not order — that the public take a two-week break from indoor dining, in-person high school and youth sports. “We need everyone to step up and to take personal responsibility here.”

Heh - lockdowns do not work.  They make matters worse - look at Michigan, New York. California as opposed to Texas or Florida or the Dakotas - much fewer cases per 100,000 people. So now, in a great burst of brilliance, she is calling for "lockdown light"? She says all the right things to get elected but she can not administrate or lead her way out of a wet paper bag.

A good Texas v.s. Michigan post can be found here:

Texas Has Fewer COVID Cases Than Michigan—Despite Nearly 20M More People and No Restrictions

This is an example of factual reporting, not narrative, no computer models.  Truth, data, hard numbers.

About that vaccine - two headlines

| No Comments

Veeeery interesting:

Marines aren't stupid - you go not gain entrance to an elite force by being stupid.

Dog walk, coffee, work.

Word...

| 1 Comment

20210409-conspiracy.jpg

100% true - as simple as that

| No Comments

From Vanderleun:

20210409-fear.jpg

A fun commercial from Japan

| No Comments

Latest from Pocari Sweat:

Wow! Looks like a lot of CGI doesn't it. Nope - all practical:

Nice work if you can get it - BLM

| No Comments

Starting a brand like Black Lives Matter is highly lucrative.  It was never about adjusting past wrongs, it has always been about grabbing power and money. Cullors is using race to grift the American population.

From real-estate website dirt.com:

Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors Lands Topanga Canyon Compound
A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.

Kahn-Cullors, a UCLA and USC graduate married about five years ago to social activist (and amateur boxer) Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin. Since then, the largely decentralized movement has been at the influential forefront on issues of police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people, particularly in the wake of George Floyd’s killing last summer that sparked massive protests across the United States and around the globe. Kahn-Cullors’ published “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” in 2018.

Some photos at the site.  Nice digs. I'd live there. Great comments - lots of WOKE and BASED people weighing in.

A nice cheery quote

| No Comments

Quote of the month - from Larry Correia:

I used to think America was heading for a Bosnia style civil war. But that was me being too optimistic. Now I suspect we will wake up one day and it’ll be Rwanda.

Tip of the hat to Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man who adds a lot more.  Stuff to think about and plan for. Now!

And here we go - the Supreme Court

| No Comments

Back this afternoon

| No Comments

Gotta run - back home later this afternoon...

Well crap - RIP Prince Philip

| No Comments

I am sure there will be good obituaries - no time to look for them right now.

He was quite the character - a man's man. Spoke his mind. The snowflakes today would go into spontaneous combustion if they heard a small fraction of what he said. The world has lost a true leader.

Gun grabbing - two memes

| No Comments

From My Penseive:

*Resident Biden is looking at using Executive Orders to get around Congress and institute restrictive gun control.

20210409-gun01.jpg

20210409-gun02.jpg

And that is it for now

| No Comments

Working tomorrow - two display racks are being tossed and they are made from standard sizes of steel tube and angle iron.  Bringing a cutter tomorrow - break it down and take it home.  A good $50 worth of steel there for the taking.

Weather is turning wet - supposed to be crappy for the next week or so.  Working at the farm starting Monday.

Nothing much catches my eye - time for some videos and then to sleep.

You know - the *resident's son.  That Hunter. Great article from the London Daily Mail:

EXCLUSIVE: What WASN'T in Hunter Biden's book: How he got unauthorized Secret Service protection, begged Joe to run for WH to salvage his own reputation and made porn films with prostitutes. Forensic experts prove laptop IS President's son's

    • Hunter Biden released his 'tell-all' memoir Beautiful Things on Tuesday, but left out shocking details
    • DailyMail.com can reveal those secrets after contents of his abandoned laptop - including a cache of 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, more than 2,000 photos - were verified by top forensics experts
    • Hunter left his MacBook Pro laptop at a Wilmington, Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019 and never returned for it
    • In texts from 2019, Hunter begged his father to run for president to salvage Hunter's own reputation
    • Hunter repeatedly dodged police action against him, despite constantly dealing with drug dealers and prostitutes and having multiple run-ins with the law
    • The president's son was guarded by a Secret Service agent while on a 2018 drug and prostitute binge in Hollywood, despite not being entitled to protection at the time
    • Hunter appeared to be obsessed with making porn films with prostitutes, videos and photos on his laptop show
    • Texts also show Joe Biden was afraid his conversations with Hunter were being hacked even as they discussed his White House bid

Hunter Biden's 'tell-all' autobiography promised the unvarnished story of his struggles with drugs, family turmoil and his controversial love life.

But there were many shocking details of his debauched life that the president's son chose not to share with readers, including details of his fragile relationship with his father.

Now DailyMail.com can reveal the secrets Hunter chose not to divulge, exposed in the contents of his abandoned laptop and verified by top forensics experts.

The bombshell cache of 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, more than 2,000 photos and dozens of videos are packed with revelations conveniently missing from the memoir

Why is this being released right now?  Is Joe fading faster than expected and they want to offer a plethora of reasons for Congress to 25th him and install Harris as queen?  I am sticking to what I wrote a little over a month ago:

It is obvious that they want to get Kamala Harris in as POTUS but she could never be elected. Too much baggage. They put up Sleepy Joe and will use the 25th Amendment to retire him when his dementia is too obvious.

What the conservatives should do is stick to their guns. The 25th requires a 2/3rds vote of both houses - they could easily keep Joe in office. The Democrats did this. This was their grand strategy. Let them enjoy the consequences - good and hard. Without flowers, dinner or even a bit of lube first.

Yeah - hold off and let America see who they elected and who is running him. A good Blue Pill moment.

Caffeine level? Low.

| No Comments

Heading out to remedy that right now. Cloudy day - intermittent sprinkles. Working at home today but dog walk, coffee and make some phone calls first.

Immigration - news from France

| No Comments

I wonder if they will follow Frank Rizzo's maxim:

A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.

From 90 Miles:

Pro-immigration French tycoon and his wife assaulted by four migrant home-jackers
French tycoon and former Adidas owner Bernard Tapie and his wife were attacked by four immigrants in a violent burglary at their home in Combs-la-Ville (Seine-et-Marne) near Paris. According to a police source, of the four suspects, three were of an “African type” and one of a “North African type”.

The four attackers reportedly gained access to the couple’s estate before entering through the window of one of the bedrooms on the first floor. An item belonging to them was found there. They allegedly knew the lay-out of the home.

The couple were tied up with electrical cords, physically assaulted and robbed. Bernard Tapie, 78, who was briefly a government minister, has always been a vocal advocate for immigration. And Tapie tried to reason with his torturers to make them aware of this fact. But when Tapie told the attackers that he had always stood up for migrants, one of the torturers replied: “Fuck you, that time is over!”

That last line is chilling.  The criminals know that they have the upper hand.  They came into France, refused to assimilate, went on the government dole and are now trying to take over. What's not to love. At least the criminal element coming over our border are not burdened with islam and sharia law.  They are just thugs.

Everything is going as planned - from Breitbart:

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Jump to 744,000, Much Worse Than Expected
New weekly jobless claims rose to 744,000 for the week that ended April 3rd, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

Economists had forecast a decline to 680,000 from the previous week’s 719,000. This is the second consecutive week in which initial jobless claims moved up in contradiction to expectations. The upper end of the range of forecasts in the Econoday survey was 705,000.

I miss our President.  Say what you like about the man, he knew how to lead.

Sobering news this morning - Taiwan

| No Comments

China sees a flacid weakling at the head of this administration and they may be moving.
From CBN News:

Crisis in the Taiwan Strait: Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Imminent?
Taiwan's foreign minister warned China on Wednesday that the island nation will defend itself "to the very last day" if attacked.

China has ramped up military operations in the Taiwan Strait significantly and there are fresh fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Beijing views the island nation as a renegade province and could be tempted to make a move because according to some experts, Beijing sees the Biden Administration as weak.

This period in our history is going to go down as "crazy time" - definite lead-in with Carter and then the ineffectual Bush dynasty. Downright oppression with Obama, a last bright hope with Trump and circling the drain with Biden.  I have hopes for the mid-terms and for 2024 but a lot can happen between now and then.

Part of me wants to avoid using Google products.  A major part. For very good reason.  But...
They keep coming up with such cool stuff - from Google:

Organize your documents effortlessly with Stack
Have you ever lost a receipt you needed for a refund? Or misplaced an important tax document? Or forgot a bill and incurred a fine? I’ve done all three. (More than once!) 

As we go through life, we come across many documents that we might need in the future. Organizing these documents takes time and effort. So, if you’re anything like me, you might end up with piles of papers lying around your house (or PDFs scattered across your computer desktop). And good luck finding them when you actually need them. 

I joined Google a couple of years ago when my education startup, Socratic, was acquired. At Socratic, we used Google’s computer vision and language understanding to make learning easier for high school students. I wondered if we could apply the same technologies to make organizing documents easier.

To experiment with this idea, my colleague Mathew Cowan and I joined Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator. We worked with DocAI, a team in Google Cloud whose artificial intelligence has helped companies analyze billions of documents. We found that by applying DocAI’s enterprise technology to personal documents, we could help people get organized.

Take a photo of the receipt with your cell phone.  Stack automatically crops it, saves it as a PDF, "reads" it and allows you to extract the data. Sounds great for businesses and for people who want to keep track of their finances.

Can be found here: Stack: PDF Scanner + Document Organizer

Good work - big bust in Seattle

| No Comments

From Seattle's KOMO News:

21 arrested, dozens of guns seized in connection to drug dealing investigation
Twenty-one people across the Puget Sound region were arrested Wednesday in connection to a cocaine and crack cocaine drug dealing conspiracy, the U.S. Department of Justice says.

The FBI, DEA, the Seattle Police Department, and several other law enforcement agencies issued a total of 90 search warrants across the region. Those arrested will make their initial appearances at the U.S. District Court in Seattle and Tacoma sometime this week.

Quite the haul too:

Over the course of the investigation, the DOJ says law enforcement agencies have seized 73 firearms, over ten kilos of cocaine, more than two pounds of methamphetamine, more than $610,000 in cash, fentanyl pills and a fentanyl pill manufacturing lab.

Got to love those open borders.  Fentanyl precursors are probably from China - the stuff is stupid easy to make.

Dinner and meeting

| No Comments

Soup is done and smells wonderful. Getting ready for the meeting tonight - full agenda but it should move pretty quick.

Pretty sleepy so not staying up too late - nothing planned for tomorrow.

From Newsmax:

Biden Plans to Unveil Executive Action on Guns on Thursday
President Joe Biden is expected on Thursday to start rolling out executive actions regulating guns after a slew of mass shootings early in his White House tenure put pressure on the longtime advocate for gun restrictions to act.

The announcement is expected to include a presidential declaration that could ultimately require people who buy untraceable, self-assembled "ghost guns" to undergo a background check, said one person familiar with the situation.

The measure is one of several the administration has been working on for months to try to limit gun violence without starting a legal battle that could lead to courts quickly dismantling the policies.

Rotsa ruck...  Like I said, this will be interesting to say the least.

Long day today. Meeting at 6:30 PM. Making some red-bean and kale soup. The kale was growing in the ground yesterday morning - fresh.  I love spring.

Quick surf while I wait for the beans to cook...

And out for the morning

| No Comments

Working and then grocery deliveries.  Today is the penultimate delivery day - the program sunsets on the 14th.  Been doing it for a year, great way to meet people and to get to know the island. If the blacksmithing business goes tits-up, I could be a good Uber driver now.

There is an early meeting this morning so short dog walk, coffee to go and get on with my day.

Back sometime around 2:00 PM

Online meeting at 6:30 - the fun never stops...

From National Today (fun website):

National Beer Day – April 7, 2021
Every April 7 is National Beer Day, a time where we can raise a toast to the oldest and most venerable of all beverages. People have been making beer for over 5,000 years; in fact, the oldest recorded recipe we know of is for beer.

A bit more:

National Beer Day celebrates the day in 1933 that the Cullen-Harrison act was signed into law, reversing the prohibition on selling beer in the United States. In 2009, a Virginian man named Justin Smith decided to commemorate this historic day, and created his own unofficial National Beer Day. Since then, it has been recognized by the state of Virginia, and unofficially by millions of brew aficionados nationwide.

Beer - let us not forget the words of that philosopher and sage Dr. H. Simpson:

“Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

What a wonderful way to start the morning - reading this story from The Washington Times:

Biden's DHS chief vows to defend ICE, battle sanctuary cities
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says he’s preparing to take on sanctuary cities that refuse to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he wants to see more illegal immigrants face criminal prosecution for jumping the border.

He also rejected abolishing or splitting up ICE, rejecting calls from some in President Biden’s political base to eliminate the government’s deportation agents altogether.

Mr. Mayorkas revealed the hard-line stances last week during a virtual town hall forum with ICE employees. The Washington Times has reviewed notes of the conversation, in which Mr. Mayorkas said he’s working on a new set of deportation guidelines to govern how and when officers can arrest and attempt to deport illegal immigrants.

Pressed by ICE employees worried about public resistance to the agency’s work, Mr. Mayorkas said ICE has a “noble mission.”

“I’m 100% opposed to the abolition of ICE,” he told the employees. “It is the opposite of what I think needs to occur. I think we need to strengthen our policies and practices and communicate more effectively what we do and why we do it.”

Wonderful - standing up to the swamp. Giving some push-back to the liberal fever dream.

From Robert Stacey McCain - talking about journalism and channeling his inner Hunter S. Thompson:

Journalism and Mental Health

20210407-mccain.jpg

Dear Ms. Aviles:

What you need here, ma’am, is an expert analysis, and you’ve found the right guy for the job because — ask around — I’ve always been crazy.

One spring afternoon in 1986, I put on my three-piece suit and walked into the offices of the Cobb News-Chronicle. I walked out with a $4.50-an-hour job as a staff writer and an assignment to cover that evening’s Austell City Council meeting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was better than driving a forklift, which was what I’d been doing for the past year-and-a-half, saving up money to buy P.A. gear for my rock band.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still at it and, some would say, I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I am by God doing it, aren’t I?

My point here is that journalists have mental health problems because no genuinely sane person would ever get into this miserable racket. Some people pine for the Golden Age of Journalism, but this “profession” (if you can call it that) has always attracted more than its fair share of kooks and cranks who, if they actually became successful at journalism, were politely called “eccentric,” which is just a word for crazy people who make good money. But these were rare exceptions, and the bulk of the people in America’s newsrooms were always a mix of neurotics and drunks, supervised by sadistic sociopaths known as “editors.”

A truly wonderful rant - small taste:

Nowadays, every 23-year-old J-school grad thinks he’s qualified to be a pundit, telling us How to Save Our Democracy. They don’t want to do any actual work, so they haven’t paid their dues covering the police beat or city-council meetings or whatever, but you can find them on Twitter 24/7 snarking away about national politics and how utterly oppressed they are, because they’ve got $60,000 in student-loan debt. And then when they get axed in the latest round of layoffs, we’re expected to take seriously the wailing about the Death of American Journalism because some 26-year-old lost his/her (they/them?) job writing clickbait for HuffPo.

Spot on and he had a lot of fun writing this.

Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski has seen better days.  She certainly has the credentials - her dad was a US Senator and Alaska Governor (Frank Murkowski) but she has been too long in Washington D.C. and is a bona fide swamp thang.
She voted to convict President Trump in his 2nd impeachment trial. The voters are remembering this. From Disrn:

Alaska GOP senator trailing Republican challenger by double digits after voting to convict Trump
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) is experiencing a decline in support after voting to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, trailing Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka by 15 points in a Monday poll.

A bit more:

Murkowski has served in the Senate since 2002 when her father first appointed her to his seat. She currently only has a 10% approval rating among Republicans, but has fended off primary challengers before.

She is up for reelection in 2022.

She could have kept her seat.  All she had to do was do her job and represent her constituency. But noooo.  She had to join the swamp. Now, she gets to enjoy the consequences. Good. Stupidity should hurt.

I guess if the fraud is so egregious and so public, they have to arrest the perp.
From Cincinnati, Ohio station WCPO:

Three local women, including ex-mayoral hopeful Kelli Prather, charged with PPP fraud
Three Cincinnati women, including former mayoral hopeful Kelli Prather, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from federal pandemic relief funds after lying in their applications, according to federal prosecutors.

Prather, 48; Toni Wright, 34; and Melissa McGhee, 37, each stand charged with bank fraud in connection to their loan applications and could be sentenced to over 30 years in prison.

Prather applied for six Paycheck Protection Program loans — one for each of the six businesses she claimed to own: Enhanced Healthcare Solutions, Life Skills Enhancement, Prather Property Management, Reliable Ambulette Services, Rich Glo Management Services and Tots R Us.

She asked for $600,000 but only received $19,800, according to prosecutors.

According to court documents, Prather spent more than $8,000 on non-business expenses, at places like Kroger, Staples, Krispy Kreme, AAA Car Wash, and Park Place restaurant in Forest Park.

An ex-boyfriend told special agents Prather gave him a check for $8,000 for payment on a Madisonville house she bought previously then put in his name. It needed serious work and was not conducive to housing a business, he told investigators. The Kenwood Road address was used on the loan application for some of Prather's businesses.

Prather stands charged with bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, making false statements, making false statements in connection to credit or loan applications and false representation of a social security number.

And of course, that old reliable standby:

WCPO reached out to Prather for comment on Tuesday but did not hear back.

I am surprised that they are talking about 30 years.  Of course, being a member of the old boy's club, she will get a slap on the wrist and drop out of public view for a few months but still...

The full complaint (16 pages) can be found here: United States of America v. Kelli Prather

So true - information

| No Comments

Prefer my dogs over many people I meet:

20210406-information.jpg

From Law Enforcement Today:

California receives 261 transgender prisoners transfer requests under new law – including 255 to women’s prison
261 California inmates have requested transfers to prisons aligning with their claimed gender identity since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed S.B. 132 into law in September allowing prisoners to choose their gender for prison placement.

S.B. 132 requires California correctional facilities to house prisoners in a “correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual’s preference.”

255 of the 261 inmates requested to transfer from a male to a female correctional facility. Some officials and women’s rights groups are concerned that such transfers are being made “under false pretenses,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Nice try guys but...

Remember the failure that was the Obama American Reinvestment and Recovery Act?
That worked so well that the Democrats are looking to do it all over again.
A trip down memory lane with Don Surber:

Remember all those shovel-ready jobs that weren't?
Democrats plan to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure. Before we do that, let's look back on the $787 billion Democrats blew the last time they controlled Congress and the presidency.

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was supposed to save jobs and improve our roads, bridges, and airports.

Obama sold it as a preventative to further job losses. He told ABC, "Here's what we know though, that the sooner a recovery and reinvestment package is in place, the sooner we can start turning the economy around. We can't afford three, four, five, six more months where we're losing half a million jobs per month.

"And the estimates are that if we don't do anything, we could see 4 million jobs lost this year."

Instead we blew nearly a trillion bucks and lost 3,443,000 jobs anyway. The numbers are here.

He said if we did nothing unemployment would hit 9%!

It hit 10%.

In fact, the recovery act slowed down the recovery. The unemployment rate was 7.8% when he took office, and 7.8% when he was re-elected.

In between times was a lot of pain and misery for the people, and pockets lined with cash for Democrats.

Much more at the site - the parallels with the bill that the current administration is trying to ram through are sobering.  Don also reminds us that it was VP Biden who "ran" the first stimulus.  A 12 years younger and less-senile Joe Biden.

Had fun over coffee - met up with a couple friends and spent an hour shooting the bull.  Solving world problems, etc...

Drove past a local farmstand and they had the first Kale of the season - picked up some and will be soaking some red beans today.  Soup tomorrow.

Unloaded the van and did a really nice re-org of the storage unit - segregating it out into stuff for deep storage, crap to get rid of, crap to sort through, things for the new shop when it is built. The stiffness went away once I started moving stuff around - feels good to be physical.

The arts group has a General Membership Meeting tomorrow so getting the agenda ready for that - busy day tomorrow.  Volunteering, grocery deliveries, running the meeting.  Fortunately, the deliveries sunset next week (14th is the last) and my tenure as President expires in June.

Quick surf and then work on the agenda.  Good group and good people.

And out the door for a few hours

| No Comments

Taking a day of rest with the exception of unloading the van - that will be fun.

Gorgeous day - supposed to get close to 60°F - spring is coming. Great morning for a dog walk followed by sitting down and having some coffee and reading for a while. Need to make some telephone calls as well as develop an agenda for tomorrow's general meeting of the arts group.  Tomorrow is gonna be a busy day.

Don't be Evil

| No Comments

Used to be Google's motto but...  From Forbes:

Why You Shouldn’t Use Google Chrome After New Privacy Disclosure
If you’re among the billions of people using Chrome, then Google’s stark new data harvesting disclosures should come as a nasty surprise. Worse, a new Chrome revelation, one that hasn’t yet made headlines but which is detailed below, should serve as an even more serious warning. Here’s what you need to do now.

Google is under fire this week, after the surprising amount of your data harvested by Chrome has been disclosed. This is a genuine threat to your privacy. Worse, a more serious issue for Google, detailed below, hasn’t even made headlines yet. Chrome is totally out of step with Safari, Edge and Firefox, shattering Google’s “privacy first web” claims. All of which should give you a serious reason to quit Chrome today.

Story is about two weeks old and this has been covered before in the tech media.  Nice to see Forbes wising up. Best solution out there? Switch to Brave Browser - based on Chrome and all the plug-ins work but built around security and preserving your data. It just works.  Been using it for a while.

Nice good sleep - stiff as a board

| No Comments

Feeling better than I was expecting but still stiff and achy.  A good day for aspirin and plenty of fluids. Pick up some Brawndo (The Thirst Mutilator) at the store when I am out today.  Good stuff - It's got Electrolytes (more here, watch the movie here).

Bite to eat, quick surf, take the dogs out for a run, the Blessed Sacrament of Coffee, return something to Amazon and unload the van and that is my day.

Zzzzzzzz... Off to dreamland

| No Comments

Woke up early this morning and put in a solid day's work.  The phone and internet are up and running and while I was there, I loaded up the van and did a bunch more sorting.  Getting a dumpster for the property - loads of crap to get rid of.  Also doing several yard sales this fall.

When I get something at an auction, a lot of times it is in a "lot" with other stuff.  The auctioneers - smart cookies that they are - will lard this "lot" with a bunch of stuff that they would otherwise have to pay to have hauled away in their dumpster on their dime. Stupid moke that I am, I held onto this crap for many years so now the dumpage fee is a lot higher.  Should have done triage when it first came home. Saved a lot of money buying that turbo encabulator (cool device - more here) at auction.  Yeah... Riiiiight...

Watching a couple of videos - early bedtime.  I will be sore tomorrow - worked hard for nine hours. Need to keep this up - used to be in really good shape. Time to get back.

Would not want to be a scofflaw now would I. From the horses' mouth to your ears (well, eyes):

If You Make or Buy a Fake COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, You Endanger Yourself and Those Around You, and You Are Breaking the Law
The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) and the FBI are advising the public to be aware of individuals selling fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards and encouraging others to print fake cards at home. Fake vaccination record cards have been advertised on social media websites, as well as e-commerce platforms and blogs.

yadda, yadda, yadda...

Van is full - sleeping in tomorrow and then taking it to the storage locker.  Dropping off a camera there so if it gets robbed again, I'll have some photos (unless they spot it and steal it too)...

Picked up some chix at the grocery store - making some pasta to go with.  Easy dinner.

And nuttin'

| No Comments

Out for coffee and then to the farm to wait for the phone people.

Posting later this evening.

As dawn breaks

| No Comments

Waiting for my coffee place to open at 7:30 - phone people said that they will be there from 8:00 to 1:00 PM. Probably closer to 1:00 PM but got to be there in case...

Clear skies - light frost on the ground. Surf for a bit and see what is out there.

And that is it for me

| No Comments

Watch some videos - need to get an early start tomorrow.  Phone company's start time may be as early as 8:00 and gotta getta coffee first...

Chauvin will be acquitted - the evidence for overdose is overwhelming.  The usual suspects will riot. This little data point will make for an interesting summer. From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Handgun permits surge in St. Cloud area, state
A record number of Minnesotans received permits to carry a handgun last year, a surge that came in a year that brought anxiety over the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic slowdown and rioting in the Twin Cities after the police killing of George Floyd.

That anxiety was mirrored in the St. Cloud area, where the number of permits issued jumped 44% in the tri-county area over 2019. While the number of permit renewals was relatively stable, the number of people applying for new permits more than doubled in Benton and Sherburne counties and came close to that mark in Stearns County.

As Robert Anson Heinlein once said: An Armed Society is a Polite Society.
Very true words...

Gone to ground for the night

| No Comments

Keyboard makes a big big difference in typing. This one is a spare so it will live up here for when I visit.

Went out for a burger and fries - surf for a little bit and see if anything new is happening.  Ran into a couple of friends over dinner - good people. I do love the island but this is an awesome place too.

And out the door for reals this time

| No Comments

Heading North soon - pack up and on the road. Need to do a few things around here first.

More posting later this evening.

Three quotes and a comment

| No Comments

From No Moss Here:

BIDEN SAYS HIS MASSIVE TAX INCREASE WILL MAKE THE ECONOMY ‘BETTER’
“I do not believe that Washington should do for the people what they can do for themselves through local and private effort.” – John F. Kennedy, 1960

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.” – President John F. Kennedy, 1962

“The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.” – President John F. Kennedy

I can see why a socialist shot President Kennedy.

Pandemic - a two-fer

| No Comments

Two really good points from My Pensieve:

20210404-pandemic01.jpg:

20210404-pandemic02.jpg

So true - especially the second one.  I tell people the data from the CDC and it just goes out their other ear.  It doesn't fit the narrative so they do not bother to even try to comprehend it. Sad really - critical thinking is a lost art these days.

Whoops - coffee place was closed

| No Comments

Oh Noes!

Nice dog run this morning and got one to go at the drive-through. Was coming home anyway to pack and take care of a few things. No sitting and reading and people watching but oh well...

And points North

| No Comments

Heading up to the farm today - back tomorrow. Meeting with someone to do some construction as well as bring another load down from the garage.

Dog walk and coffee first - got my priorities.

Kicking the debt can down the road

| No Comments

All this government spending is not going to go away.  They can not print more money to pay for it. The debt is something our children will be thanking us for as they will have to deal with it (and the accumulated interest).

Michael Ramirez brings this home:

20210404-debt.jpg

From the Los Angeles Times comes this story of a small business in Beverly Hills, CA:

Beverly Hills store let criminals stash guns, drugs and cash in vault at strip mall, prosecutors say
When federal agents descended on a Beverly Hills strip mall last month, it took them five days to seize the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes inside a store called U.S. Private Vaults.

On Friday, the government revealed why it was so interested in the seemingly mundane business wedged between a nail salon and a spa: It was laundering money for drug dealers and letting them stash guns, fentanyl and stacks of $100 bills in security boxes that were rented anonymously, prosecutors alleged.

In an indictment against U.S. Private Vaults, Inc., the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles accused the company of marketing itself deliberately to attract criminals, saying it brazenly promoted itself as a place customers could store valuables with confidence that tax authorities would be hard-pressed to learn their identities or what was stored in their locked boxes. To access the facility, customers needed no identification; it took just an eye and hand scan to unlock the door.

“We don’t even want to know your name,” it advertised, according to prosecutors.

I do hope that the federales had the foresight to stake the place out and shoot photos as people came and went.
Could build up quite the database from that. Must be some politicians or elites involved as they report:

None of the people who are allegedly behind the operation were named in the court records. It is was not immediately clear whether any individuals will face criminal charges as well.

Hunter?  Is that you?

Quiet Saturday

| No Comments

Nothing much happening out there. Hanging out here puttering around.

Heading up to the farm tomorrow and Monday - clearing out crap.  Feels wonderful. D. is doing an amazing job there - this worked out well.

More surfing later tonight. Maybe.

Just wonderful - glad I dumped them

| No Comments

Deleted my facebook account 5-6 months ago - no loss whatsoever. Interesting news today - from Business Insider:

533 million Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Verified.  This is true. The vulnerability was first reported on January 2021 - Motherboard:

Bot Lets Hackers Easily Look Up Facebook Users' Phone Numbers
A user of a low-level cybercriminal forum is selling access to a database of phone numbers belonging to Facebook users, and conveniently letting customers look up those numbers by using an automated Telegram bot.

Although the data is several years old, it still presents a cybersecurity and privacy risk to those whose phone numbers may be exposed—one person advertising the service says it contains data on 500 million users. Facebook told Motherboard the data relates to a vulnerability the company fixed in August 2019.

Social media - it's like a herpes infection. The gift that keeps on giving...

In related news:

20210403-truth.jpg

Not surprising at all - from the New York Post:

Study declares AOC one of the least effective members of Congress
She’s the queen of Twitter — but less successful at lawmaking.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the least effective members of the last Congress according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking — a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

AOC introduced a total of 21 bills which the center defined as “substantive” — but that is where the story ends. Her legislation received no action in committees, no floor votes, and none ever became law, according to the center, which takes its data from Congress.gov.

“She introduced a lot of bills, but she was not successful at having them receive any sort of action in committee or beyond committee and if they can’t get through committee they cannot pass the House,” Alan Wiseman, a Vanderbilt political scientist and co-director of the center, told The Post.

“It’s clear that she was trying to get her legislative agenda moving and engage with the lawmaking process,” Wiseman added “But she wasn’t as successful as some other members were — even among [other] freshmen — at getting people to pay attention to her legislation.”

As they say in Texas - All Hat and no Cattle. She certainly advances the narrative but that is not to be confused with governance.  Big difference between the two. A difference she is not aware of.

Quiet morning

| No Comments

Slept wonderfully - heading out soon for dog walk, coffee and work.  Work is getting very expensive. 

This is a thrift store that operates under the aegis of the local center and helps to raise funds for community services.  Someone dropped off an incredible telescope setup - Meade 7" with all sorts of accessories, digital camera, computer controlled mount, etc... I already have a nice older 12" scope but it is too large to casually set up on nights when the seeing is good.  This will be perfect. My bank account is now a couple hundred bucks poorer.

Heading out soon to see what comes in today. Back this afternoon...

Black Lives Matter was founded by Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza. They are both ardent Marxists and communists.
From Breitbart:

Black Lives Matter Founder Mentored by Ex-Domestic Terrorist Who Worked with Bill Ayers
The co-founder of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Patrisse Cullors, was the protégé of a communist-supporting domestic terrorist for over a decade, spending years training in political organizing and absorbing the radical Marxist-Leninist ideology which shaped her worldview.

Remember, Obama started his campaign in Ayers' living room and when pressed on this, claimed that Bill was just some guy "who lives in my neighborhood".  Anyway, there is a video from 2015 in which Cullors says (from the New York Post):

“The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza.

“We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,”

Turns out that Alicia has a side-gig.  She is the Principal at Black Futures Lab:

WHO WE ARE
The Black Futures Lab transforms Black communities into constituencies that change the way power operates—locally, statewide and nationally. The problems facing our communities are complex—the solutions require experimentation, innovation and political power. We deserve a government  that represents us, policies that improve our lives, and politics that reflect our lives.

Fun website - professionally designed. Lots of words but very little meaning.  Lots of feel-good handwaving but zero hard data.  "We strive to empower" instead of "From August of 2019 through September of 2021, we did this, this and this".
All promises and no deliverables.

Money - here it gets interesting to say the least. In the upper right of the home page there is a DONATE button:

20210402-BFL01.jpg

Click on that and you go to this page:

20210402-BFL02.jpg

And the third paragraph makes for some very interesting reading:

20210402-BFL03.jpg

The text states:

Black Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association. CPA is a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization. Our tax identification number is 23-7404756. This contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

Seriously?     What. The. Fsck.

How many other organizations seeking to "fundamentally transform" America are also funded by the Chinese?

Tip of the hat to Firehand for the link.

A thought - Biden's Dog

| No Comments

*Resident Biden's dog is having some problems while living in the White House.  He is biting people.  I was talking with a few people this morning and had a thought.  Most dogs are pretty perceptive. I have had German Shepherds for most of my adult life and they can be downright spooky when it comes to reading people.

My thought this morning is that Major is in an incredibly confusing situation. Nearly 100% of the people he comes into contact with are outright lying. First of all, his "person" has dementia and is no longer there.  This is something that a dog can understand and process and they will try to help.

For everyone else around Slow Joe? Everyone there has some sort of agenda - if not pushing the narrative and moving towards communism, they are out for what they can get for themselves - money or power - and are playing fast and loose with the truth to get it.

No wonder poor Major is feeling very confused - he is surrounded by cyphers. Surrounded by criminals. Surrounded by ideologues. I would be snapping at people too.

Sad but true - kids these days

| No Comments

20210402-grandpa.jpg

The Capitol Hill whackjob who murdered the Policeman? Muslim. Facebook is scrubbing that fact. Can't go against the narrative. From The Daily Wire:

Facebook Quickly Scrubs Capitol Assailant’s Facebook Page Praising Farrakhan As Jesus
Facebook quickly removed self-described “follower of Farrakhan” Noah Green’s profile page shortly after media identified him Friday as the assailant who was shot dead after driving into U.S. Capitol Police officers and lunging at them with a knife.

Describing himself on the since-deleted page as a follower of the Nation of Islam, the 25-year-old Green effusively praised the radical Farrakhan and his predecessor, Elijah Muhammad, as incarnations of Jesus Christ whose teachings changed his life.

Of course.  The social media sites are in league with the progressives.  Maintain the control over the proles.  Get them on the government dole, living on the Democrat plantation. Thinking what we want them to think.  Saying what we want them to say. Doing what we want them to do.

Must be nice not having to think. Or having to give a shit about what is happening to our Nation.

Object of desire

| No Comments

Found a similar product on 'zon but not the style of mug I like:

20210402-science.jpg

This has me chuckling - so true

| No Comments

Good to know where the money is being spent - from America's Newspaper of Record, The Babylon Bee:

Biden Proposes $2 Trillion Infrastructure Project To Build A Tower That Reaches To The Heavens
President Joe Biden is determined to pass a large infrastructure bill, though no one had been certain what infrastructure is so direly needed that trillions must be spent until Biden finally revealed his plans: a giant tower that reaches the heavens.

“Yea, we are of one people,” Biden said, “with fifty votes in the Senate. And nothing will be restrained from us... as long as we get rid of the filibuster. And we have trillions for buying brick for stone -- or at least can have the Fed grant it to us. So let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad at the mid-term elections.”

And so Biden proposed the Tower of Biden, a $2 trillion dollar structure to be taller than any other and prove the government’s superiority at providing jobs by having people build things no one needs. Republicans are opposed to the plan, though, as they call it “wasteful spending” and an “affront to God.”

And there has been some concern that God will take offense. At one point, it even seemed that God had confused people’s language, as many of the people planning the tower started babbling incoherently. It turns out, though, that they were just directly quoting President Biden.

And of course, it will be completed before the deadline and under budget as this new administration is running at Warp Speed.

Out for a little bit - errands

| No Comments

Bank and post office.  Back shortly. Quiet news day today.

There was a guy who murdered a Capitol Hill police officer - rammed him with his car.  The media are quiet as he was a follower of Screwy Louis Farrakhan. Now if he were a conservative Trump voter, that would be a different story indeed.

I am sure his Manifesto will be found and printed. There is always a Manifesto with the mentally ill.

This keeps me up at night

| No Comments

Seriously:

20210402-smell.jpg

Coming? Hell - some of them are here.

This is my shocked face - from The Federalist:

Pete Buttigieg ‘Bikes’ To Work After SUVs Drive Him Part Of The Way
If you ever wondered what would happen if that white, upper-class student body president, you know the one who used your student activity fees to pay for bike lanes on campus, were actually in charge of a federal bureaucracy, look no further than our Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

CNN reporter DJ Judd shared a video that appears to show a team of Secret Service agents unloading Buttigieg’s bike from the back of an SUV, then at least two SUVs following him as he mounts the bike and rides to the White House.

More at the site including videos (of course) and this comment about the swamp in general:

While “biking to work” in a way that is neither a shorter nor a more environmentally-conscious commute is extremely on-brand for a millennial college-town mayor-turned-McKinsey consultant, it also perfectly encapsulates the role of D.C. bureaucrats: Devise the more expensive, more complicated path to accomplish a simple task, all for the sake of optics.

These morons are not doing their jobs and working for us. Pete is just one example of the level of moral and intellectual corruption. Time to drain the whole thing and start over.

I would look at this story another way - from Seattle station KOMO:

Zero flu deaths reported in Washington for first time
It appears the extensive precautions Washington residents have taken to fight the COVID-19 pandemic have worked to prevent other illnesses from spreading as well, including the flu.

As the typical winter flu season begins to wane, the state has made it through the entire fall and winter without a single flu-related death, according to Washington Department of Health. It's the first time that's ever happened since the Department of Health has began reporting flu illness statistics in 2009, when the H1N1 pandemic struck.

In fact, state health officials say they haven't even seen a positive flu test since the last week in December, when they had one confirmed case -- though they say that other labs in the state may have recorded cases that were not ultimately reported to the DOH.

In the past four weeks, the state has received reports of over 1,400 tests for flu with zero positive results.

How about this scenario:
We had a normal flu season.  We also had the Wuhan variant to deal with.  Unfortunatly, the testing protocols were so bad (some reports of a 90% false positive rate) that everything got lumped into the COVID-19 column. Besides, the State got Federal money for every COVID-19 patient and death so we sorta fudged our numbers.  More money is nice.

Stunningly bad science.

Waking up from WOKE - Seattle

| No Comments

Nice to see some common sense prevail.  The kiddies have had the chance to run their little experiment.  It failed as marxism/socialism/communism always does and now, it is time for the adults to pick up the toys off the floor and get on with life. From The Seattle Times:

Recall effort against Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant can move forward, state’s highest court rules
The Washington state Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the recall campaign against Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant to move forward, paving the way for signature-gathering and, potentially, an election this year that could oust Sawant from office.

Recall petitioners now have 180 days to collect more than 10,000 signatures from residents of Sawant’s Council District 3. If they collect the signatures, a recall election — an up-or-down vote on Sawant — would be held, either with the general election in November or by early next year.

It could be the first effort to recall a Seattle City Council member to reach voters. A search of municipal archives by the City Clerk’s office couldn’t find any recall elections for a council member.

Good.  I am seriously inclined to consider socialism as a form of mental illness.  On the face, it seems nice and fuzzy - equality for everyone but the slightest examination will show a profound ignorance of basic economics, governance and human nature.  They fall prey to Marx's big screw-up - they do not realize that capital is fungible. They want to believe that they have the solution and that we are just to dim to see what they see. Actually, they are laboring under a severe delusion and refuse to educate themselves.

300+ comments - here is just one of them:

As a liberal Democrat and lifelong Seattleite I am 100% in support of the recall.  Although I don't disagree with everything Sawant stands for I do disagree 200% with the way she goes about her job.  Time to make Seattle a great city again and the best thing we can do is get this person out of City government!!

Exactly. She is not good for Seattle or its people. She just likes being on the public stage.

A little bit of history

| No Comments

Seems to be repeating itself...

20210402-88years.jpg

And nothing much out there

| No Comments

Quiet news day so far.  Puttering around the house and waiting for the sun to rise (the downside to daylight savings time). Take the dogs for a nice long walk.  Start work at 10:00 AM.

Another one bites the dust

| No Comments

The bloom is off the rose for french philosopher Michel Foucault.
Why do intellectuals always choose stupid people to look up to?
From the London Daily Times:

French philosopher Michel Foucault ‘abused boys in Tunisia’
The philosopher Michel Foucault, a beacon of today’s “woke” ideology, has become the latest prominent French figure to face a retrospective reckoning for sexually abusing children.

A fellow intellectual, Guy Sorman, has unleashed a storm among Parisian “intellos” with his claim that Foucault, who died in 1984 aged 57, was a paedophile rapist who had sex with Arab children while living in Tunisia in the late 1960s.

Sorman, 77, said he had visited Foucault with a group of friends on an Easter holiday trip to the village of Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis, where the philosopher was living in 1969. “Young children were running after Foucault saying ‘what about me? take me, take me’,” he recalled last week in an interview with The Sunday Times.

“They were eight, nine, ten years old, he was throwing money at them and would say ‘let’s meet at 10pm at the usual place’.” This, it turned out, was the local cemetery: “He would make love there on the gravestones with young boys. The question of consent wasn’t even raised.”

Sorman claimed that “Foucault would not have dared to do it in France”, comparing him to Paul Gauguin, the impressionist said to have had sex with young girls he painted in Tahiti, and Andre Gide, the novelist who preyed on boys in Africa. “There is a colonial dimension to this. A white imperialism.”

Disgusting. Here is one wonderful put-down:

Foucault is the most cited scholar in the world, often associated with the rise of identity politics in America, where MC Hammer, the rapper, is one of his fans. “It is almost invariably Foucault to whom contemporary activist studies departments trace their intellectual foundations,” wrote Daniel Miller in The Critic magazine. “At the most basic level, Foucault the famous French professor supplies a signature of seriousness for disciplines without clear academic standards or traditions.”

Got to love that line: "a signature of seriousness for disciplines without clear academic standards or traditions"

And then, there is this from Sorman:

For Sorman, Foucault’s behaviour was symptomatic of a distinctly French malaise dating back to Voltaire. “He believed there were two morals, one for the elite, which was immoral, and one for the people, which should be restrictive.”

Which we see to this day.  The elite. The entitled. These are not people to look up to. These are people to be reviled. The foundation for much of what is wrong today. And don't get me started on The Frankfurt School...
I long for the day when humanity and common sense returns to academia.

Good morning world!

| No Comments

Could not keep my eyes open - went to sleep at 8:00 PM. A nice solid eight hours of sleep and here we are.

Surf for a little bit and then get on with my day...

Well crap - Mills College closing

| No Comments

Mills College closing?
Say that to anyone interested in experimental music and watch the tears flow down their face.
From the New York Times:

Is the Music Over at Mills College?
Even the concert hall at Mills College is different.

Looming at the back of the stage is a huge, bright mural of a forest opening onto a deep blue lake. The ceiling is painted in geometric patterns and vivid colors. Frescos of Gregorian chant scores flank the stage.

We are not in sedate, monochromatic Carnegie Hall. No, Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills, in Oakland, Calif., is a vibrant, even eccentric place, where it is clear from the surroundings that music outside the mainstream is not simply tolerated, but celebrated.

“There was a real atmosphere of comfort and support for whatever it is that you wanted to do,” the composer David Rosenboom, who led the music program at Mills in the 1980s, said in an interview.

Now that program and the electronics-focused Center for Contemporary Music, together among the most distinguished havens for experimental work in America over the past century, are facing possible closure. On March 17 the college, founded in 1852, announced that ongoing financial problems, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, would mean the end of its history as a degree-granting institution made up of an undergraduate women’s college and several coeducational graduate programs.

Pending approval by its board of trustees, the school’s final degrees are likely to be conferred in 2023. The statement announcing the proposed closure alluded to plans for a “Mills Institute” on the 135-acre campus, but the focus of such an institute — and whether it would include the arts — is unclear.

You might not recognize the names of the graduates but you certainly have heard their music:

It has been an astonishing run. The school’s faculty over the years has been practically an index of maverick artists, including Darius Milhaud, at Mills for three decades beginning during World War II; Luciano Berio, who came at Milhaud’s invitation; Lou Harrison, who built an American version of the Indonesian gamelan percussion orchestra; the “deep listening” pioneer Pauline Oliveros; Robert Ashley, an innovator in opera; Terry Riley, a progenitor of Minimalism; the influential composer and improviser Anthony Braxton; James Fei, a saxophonist and clarinetist who works with electronic sounds; and Maggi Payne, a longtime director of the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills’s laboratory for electronic work since the 1960s, when Oliveros was its first leader.

Among the alumni are Dave Brubeck, Steve Reich, John Bischoff, William Winant and Laetitia Sonami; several former students ended up returning to teach after graduating.

“What Mills College had was unique,” said Riley, who taught there from 1971 to 1981. “I have never in my travels encountered another institution like it.”

Crap - I hope that they are able to preserve their archives.  They have an incredible collection of musical instruments and recordings. They were the source. The fount. Mills had always been on my horizon. A place for a pilgrimage.  Never got there though.

Headline says it all - Philadelphia

| No Comments

Gun violence - this would be funny if it did not involve the murder of a human being.
From the Philadelphia ABC Affiliate:

Man shot and killed while working on video about Philly gun violence
Philadelphia police are trying to figure out who shot and killed a man while he was working on a video about the city's gun violence.

It happened around 8 p.m. Monday on the 1900 block of West Page Street in Strawberry Mansion.

"This 55-year-old male was working for a production company. They were inside of a private residence. They were interviewing and filming some family members whose children were victims of gun violence in the last two to three years," Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said.

The victim has been identified as Anthony Merriett from the 2100 block of N. Marston St.

Action News is told the anti-violence video was being made to stream on Netflix.

Merriett had exited the home to get more equipment from his van when he was shot multiple times, authorities said.

He was taken to the hospital by police where he was pronounced dead.

We have a criminal problem, not a gun problem.  Forks do not "make" people fat.

Missing out on some interesting programming:

20210401-history.jpg

April Fools

| No Comments

About sums it up:

20210401-afools.jpg

Dump run

| No Comments

Got a van full of old crap from the farm - heading to the dump this afternoon.

Feeling really sleepy for some reason.  Did not sleep well again last night. Tempted to take a nap but forcing myself to stay awake - need to stay on my normal sleep schedule. Back in a couple of hours.

And back on the island again

| No Comments

Just Wow - my friend is doing an amazing job at the farm - night and day.

Back home and taking care of some stuff here - working tomorrow and Saturday mornings. Late lunch break and surf. Need to dig out another keyboard to bring up for there.

March 2023

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from April 2021 listed from newest to oldest.

March 2021 is the previous archive.

May 2021 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9