Month: September 2022

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Hmm, I guess the FBI has gone green.

My pillow 720x405

I was, on one level amused, and another level shocked, to read that Mike Lindell, (The My Pillow Guy) was served a warrant by the FBI for his phone in a Hardees drive through.

On the one hand it’s ludicrous the the FBI is following Mr. Lindell around during a hunting trip waiting for a opportunity to serve a warrant. That they should choose to do so in a Hardees Drive through is laughable.

Mr. Lindell explained to the FBI that his phone runs five businesses and also controls his hearing aids. I know the latter to be a real thing, having known several folks whose hearing aids were controlled through their phones and one of which had the audio picked up and reprocessed through his phone’s microphone prior to the sound being sent to his particular hearing aids.

Mr Lindell notified the FBI that he did not own a computer and that all of his business was conducted through the phone and that effectively they would be stopping him from conducting business. It’s been reported that he was not able to make a backup of the phone prior to its seizure.

This whole thing strikes me as “Odd”.

Why does the FBI want his phone? If they can get a warrant for his phone, they could as easily get a warrant to present to the cellphone provider for his call logs. Why take the phone? If they were after his email or messaging do they honestly think that he’d have messages from 2 years ago when Trump was contesting the election?

I don’t know about Mr. Lindell but I never have messages older than a month or two on my phone. Similarly my call logs are purged regularly. Even my email is never more than a month or two old.  Why have old ephemeral data sitting on my phone forever? It’s pointless and a waste of space. 

This leads me to conclude the FBI did this in the hopes that Mr. Lindell’s phone might have some data that would be of interest to them. This warrant, like others the FBI has recently served seems to target a phone among other things. It seems like this tactic is nothing more than harassment and / or intimidation. 

Gee Sorry FBI… I’m not going to give you my password. I’m going to the first computer terminal I can lay hands on, log in, and command the phone to wipe itself remotely. Then I’ll go buy another phone.

I seriously doubt that you’ll return my phone to me in a reasonable timeframe, even then, it’s likely you’ll have infected it with spyware of various types so that you can effectively illegally wiretap me.

If however you were to specifically ask for a particular set of documents or documents regarding a specific subject, I’d turn them over to you. I see no need to allow you to invade all of my personal matters, photographs, or whatever at your whim during some kind of fishing expedition.

I see no need to make your job easy. I will exercise my 4th amendment right to be secure in my papers and possessions against illegal search & seizure. 

Mr. Lindell apparently spoke with his attorney who advised him to hand the FBI his phone.

Which then left Mr. Lindell in a potential safety hazard depending on how his hearing aids reacted to not having the control software of the phone nearby. The friend I mentioned earlier said his hearing aids shut down completely if he got too far from the phone. 

I’m not even sure what Mr. Lindell is supposed to have done. Other than continuing to believe that the 2020 election was “Stolen”. He’s chosen to bring law suits to prove the point and accused Dominion of contributing to falsifying the election. Hey he can spend his money any way he wants to. He has a First Amendment Right to free speech. 

Since when is it a crime to express your opinion, demand answers, and if it comes to it, prove yourself a fool. In a court of law?

Stacy Abrams has been saying the same exact thing for years about her LOSS in Georgia.

Could it be that Lindell perhaps was in contact with the Nefarious, Satanic, Hitleresq, bane on all human existence, the Pestilence, the Orange Horror, the Anti-Christ, known as Former President Donald Trump?

Duh! We all know there were probably calls. SO FUCKING WHAT? 

We all know this is about the bullshit Jan 6th “Insurrection” 

FYI no insurrection in the last 200 years has been carried out without the insurrectionists having a shit ton of guns, explosives, or weapons of some kind.

Even if the weapons were nothing more than torches and pitchforks the ensuing violence left 100s of people from both sides dead in the streets.

Funny, I didn’t see any pitchforks or torches on January 6th. The only person on record that died that day was Ashli Babbitt and she was shot by a capital police officer that has been reprimanded more than once for carless gun handling. (Really dude… Leaving your gun in the mens room?)

The officer that died the day after, died of a stroke. He didn’t have his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher as had been reported. 

For the last fucking time… January 6th was not an insurrection, it was a rowdy crowd that got out of hand and devolved into a riot. A riot that was mostly peaceful if one applies the standards of the previous “Summer of Love”

I am sick to fucking death hearing the over emotional reporting, and endlessly repetitive questioning by the January 6th committee. Especially since there is nothing remotely like a rebuttal. allowed. I don’t like my tax dollars wasted by a bunch of posturing junior high school theater wannabes.

Untitled design 10I’d give those congressional morons a piece of my mind. I’m absolutely certain that their contempt of Congress couldn’t hold a candle to the white hot rage and utter contempt I feel toward them…

ALL of Congress! That little (R) next to your name, Senator or House member, whatever your name is, ain’t gonna protect you. You’re all corrupt as hell. None of you speak for the people you’re supposed to represent.

In my view you’re all liars, grifters, thieves, and scum. The only one of you that has the slightest modicum of my respect is Rand Paul. At least he’s calling out that liar Fauci and trying to hold the little Troll’s feet to the fire. Where are the rest of you? Why aren’t you standing up and screaming “ENOUGH”? 

Bought and paid for, every stinking one of you!

All of this has lead me to think that perhaps the FBI really wants phones. Perhaps their budget has been cut and they can’t afford to supply their agents with these devices?

I have 3 or 4 old cellphones lying around here, I’m sure that most people have at least one or two lying around their homes. The American people would be more than willing to drop off their old cellphones at local FBI offices.

That way the FBI would have plenty of phones to use and we’d all be going “Green” allowing the FBI to recycle those old phones for us.

This also makes me think that everybody should have two phones. One that can be handed to the FBI, and the other to actually use. Think of it like a bribe.

I sincerely hope that since the FBI has been turned into a weapon, when the other party gets control… and they will at some point, I hope they turn the full force of the FBI loose on the Democrat party. The wailing and gnashing of teeth would be epic. Hell, I might get cable just to watch the raids on Democrats. I’d make popcorn, pour myself a drink and laugh my ass off.

The FBI is a scary joke. They have power, they’re drunk with it and have become dangerous. 

They were supposed to be about justice and now they’re about political gain. 

Sadly, I don’t think we can trust our government and certainly not the Department of Justice anymore.

My Dad was right. Every 50 or 100 years, we should turn off the Government, fire everyone, dump all the laws, and reboot the system starting with founding principles.

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I’ve been reading articles from American Thinker for a while…

Yes it’s a conservative publication.

Since I’m conservative leaning, I’ve been interested in what other conservative’s thoughts may be.

Because Twitter, Facebook, Google and others have made a habit of, as Mark Zuckerberg recently told Joe Rogan, Significantly reducing article views… The places where one can see what conservatives are thinking have become increasingly rare.

This is why freedom of speech is such an important thing. We should be able to see and read anything, then be adult enough to choose what is factual and what is hyperbole.

Twitter had become an echo chamber of vitriol and extreme leftist ideologies so I left. Facebook had become a Russian Nesting Doll of weekly privacy updates that required an inordinate amount of time on my part to manage. How many privacy updates or resetting of my privacy settings should I have to endure per week to see the latest cat photo or “Curated News” feed? For this reason, I left Facebook many years ago.

We all know Google had forsaken it founding motto, “Don’t be Evil” for a more progressive motto of sell everyone to everyone else, privacy or accuracy be damned.

So, I read a fair number of articles from their sources. I don’t pay for any subscriptions because what’s on one publication behind a pay wall is probably available on another site for free.

American Thinker had been known to me for interesting takes on events. Andrea Widburg is a writer whose articles on American Thinker I’ve found particularly engaging. Much of her writing is light, gets the point across, and often there’s a certain wryness that helps a bitter truth go down easier.

I’ve enjoyed most of the posts on American Thinker over the past 4-5 years. I don’t recall when I stumbled up them or when I became a regular reader.

Lately however, the tone of American Thinker has changed for the worse. A recent article Why are Children Coming down with Monkeypox? By Mark A. Hewitt is a prime, if extreme example of the tone I’m referring to.

I can understand the author’s outrage at attempts to have pedophiles normalized. I can understand the author’s fear, or annoyance, at the LGBT community at large for fueling the monkeypox spread. I totally get why the author is pissed off and annoyed at the endless messaging about LGB and specifically Trans people and their endless silly pronouns.

My personal thoughts on pedophiles are that they should be shot if found guilty, possibly after brutal disfiguring torture. I’m very pissed at the LGBT community for not stepping up to do what they can to curb the spread of monkeypox. 

In these very pages I’ve written my thoughts, here, here, here, here, and here, and elsewhere in this blog. The Hewitt article above, for me personally, is beyond the pale. He draws conclusions that demonstrate the kind of religious zealotry the Taliban is known for.

I’ll defend Mr. Hewitt’s right to speak, but I don’t have to read his material. Had he done 30 seconds of research by going to the CDC.gov website and looked up smallpox and monkeypox then read and comprehended the associated articles he’d have realized that both have pretty much the same transmission routes. As I’ve said elsewhere in this blog it looks like the Smallpox vaccine also covers Monkeypox.

Monkeypox What to Know About Vaccines Tests and Treatment 1024x536 1

Mr. Hewitt jumped to the conclusion, that has been, to some extent reinforced by the media, suggesting that monkeypox can only be spread via sex. In point of fact, smallpox and monkeypox can be spread by prolonged contact such as kissing or cuddling. Or coming into contact with bedsheets or other items contaminated with secretions from one of the pox pustules.

What child doesn’t heedlessly jump into their parent’s arms if they’re upset or have a boo boo? Would Mr. Hewitt suggest that a child getting smallpox from a parent had obviously been sexually molested? Would he say the same of a child who got a staph infection from a parent recently in the hospital? 

Anyone who has ever had a child in their house knows that keeping a child out of specific areas such as dirty laundry, or the parents bed or even the household pet’s bed can be challenging. Additionally whatever is on a child’s hands inevitably ends up all over them and other nearby items. 

I’m not discounting Mr. Hewitt’s entire theory about potential pedophiles having access to children. I do dispute his apparent assertion that all cases of children contracting monkeypox, are evidence of child molestation. 

The problem for me is that it’s not just Mr. Hewitt’s article. This tone, in a more subdued fashion seems to be permeating the entire publication. 

It is for that reason, American Thinker is off my personal reading list. Right next to Twitter, Facebook, and many services provided by Google. I choose to be selective in how I spend my time. I choose not to waste any of it on extremists of any persuasion. Left, Right, or Religious.

Perhaps the editorial staff of American Thinker should send out some style/content guides that inform their contributors to stick to facts in articles, and present opinion in their blog area. They probably won’t, in this regard American Thinker appears to have become like every other publication. Money and Advertising clicks versus measured, reasoned, dissemination, or discussion, of verifiable facts.

It’s too bad, I’ll miss Andrea Widburg’s articles.

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Here we are, another September 11th.

Twenty one years later I still remember the complete disbelief I felt watching the event unfold on TV.

Oddly, I knew somewhere deep in my heart that we’d never be the same.

Children born on this day in 2001 can now have a beer. I guess that means that we can also look at 9/11 with maturity.

I think I missed it last year. I just didn’t want to see The President blathering on, marking the 20th anniversary. This year perhaps he’ll be too busy preparing for his trip to Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral to damn the boogie man of MAGA extremists in what should be an otherwise solemn occasion.

God, I hope he doesn’t send Kamala. I don’t think anyone in the country would appreciate her cackling at an inappropriate moment or one of her infamous circular word salads.

I wouldn’t even be too surprised if Biden sent Ilhan Omar to be his representation. That seems to be the amount of respect he holds for the country.

I’m planning on spending the day quietly. I’ll be observing the day in thought and reflection. A lot went wrong that day, a lot went right too. There were brave first responders who risked it all to help others. The bravery of the people who fought the hijackers in flight and who died doing so. We can’t know how many people on the ground they saved by preventing flight 93 from hitting its target. All we can know is that they stood up and said, “NO!”

There were other prices we paid that day. The patriot act came into being in the months following, which led directly to abridgment of some of our freedoms in the name of illusory safety. The TSA came into being and has become the bane of most air travelers in our nation. We paid the price of 20 years of war in Afghanistan. 

To be sure there were other prices paid.

Some insurance companies and pensions refused to accept that the first responders illnesses were caused by their work on 9/11.  Firefighters and Police who responded that day developed sicknesses that were only acknowledged as being 9/11 related, many years after the event.

In some cases financial aid that came with that acknowledgement was far too little too late as they’d already lost everything fighting their illness. Their children have also paid the price, their parents illness caused disruption in their lives, the family’s financial strain in some cases caused their dreams of college to vanish.

The cost of that day reverberates through our society even now. 

Reflection seems appropriate today.

Hug your loved ones, be kind to each other.

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Thank goodness for a hurricane

Rainyscene

I probably won’t have to water for a week or so!

FYI, I does in fact rain in Southern California. We got a nice steady rain for about 4-6 hours yesterday and into last night.

The dog was not amused about it at all. He loves snow but water falling from the sky… He spent most of the day in his “room”. He also kept looking at me as though I had something to do with it.

I don’t know how much rain we actually got, but it wasn’t enough to cause a lot runoff as sometimes happens. This was a nice constant soaking where I live, the plants in the yard are already perking up after 90°F plus temps baking them for the past week or so.

The temp dropping to 70°F with a breeze through the house after the high temps caused some shivering at dinnertime.

I’m sure in the lower areas (Off the mountain) there may have been some street flooding etc.

The rain also helped out the fire crews working the fire in Riverside County so that is another plus.

This morning it’s cool and overcast. I’ve been watching some young squirrels playing in their home tree. I guess they were cooped up all day yesterday and their mom told them to get out of the house for a while.

The dog has been talking to me all morning as Husky breeds tend to do. He’s wanting to play but when we go outside to toss the ball around he gets distracted by smells, then forgets what we were doing. He comes up to me with this “where’s the ball,” look. Even though it’s right where he left it when he got distracted. I swear this dog has ADHD.

I think everyone in the neighborhood is taking it slow this morning. They’re probably just enjoying the coolness as I am. I’m also enjoying the silence, no cars, chainsaws, hammering, or screaming nut jobs yet today.

I’m guessing that once things dry out a little, all the noise will start up, but for the moment I’m enjoying the sound of nothing except birds chirping and squirrels barking at each other in the trees.

There’s the possibility of thunderstorms later in the day. The dog will no doubt be on the couch next to me for “Protection” if that happens.

Apple had its big annual announcement this week. I’ve been reading about the new products and am thinking I’ll wait until the iPhone 15 before thinking about a phone upgrade, my iPhone 12 Pro is still working. The new IOS is supposed to be available on Monday, I’ll be waiting for a week or more before installing that as well.

I’ve found in general that I’m not intrigued by the new products. The exception is the Apple Watch Ultra. That product got my attention. I’m not going to run out a pre-order it, instead I’ll wait to see it in person. It’s a big watch and it might simply be too big for me personally. A 36 hour battery life addresses one concern I’ve had with my aging series 5. Typically if I’m wearing the series 5, I’m running it in dark mode rather than having the display always on. It saves power and I don’t mind not seeing the display until I need it.

Apple fw22 watch ultra1

That the Apple Watch Ultra is going to have recreational dive computer software available later in the year is also a plus. For me it’s a twofer. I get an Apple Watch with longer life per charge, and a dive computer. It remains to be seen, but it’s possible that they may be able to provide wireless air integration with a bluetooth transmitter on the regulator.

My faithful Sunnto dive computer and transmitter are due for a battery change and pressure test. This service costs about $300 and requires that both units be sent away to God knows where, this time. It used to be San Diego, then it was Florida, and I haven’t checked where it’s going to go this time around.

While I like the Sunnto, (this is the second one I’ve owned. The first one was lost in a fire,) this particular unit’s backlight has never been as bright as the first one. The battery changes are expensive too. I’ve been looking for a new dive computer and have discovered a number of newer units that are rechargeable and provide wireless log transfer to computers or phones (my venerable D5 requires a hardline connection). Because of the service costs on the Suunto, I’ve been considering a new dive computer anyway.

Perhaps the Apple Ultra can provide all the functionality I’d like in one neat package. It’s also cheaper than many dive computers available now.

Could it be that Apple is going to be able to change the paradigm in SCUBA too?

The Apple Watch Ultra could also address some of the navigation issues I’ve noticed while hiking in the mountains & forest near my home. I’m interested to see how the dual band GPS works. My series 5 has on occasion been completely confused about my location and I’ve resorted to a compass and topographical map to sort out the issue.

(As an aside, that’s the reason you always carry a non digital backup if you’re hiking someplace unfamiliar. I also have a HAM radio because sometimes there’ no cell service but I can usually hit a repeater. Fortunately I’ve never had to call for help but fortune favors the prepared. I typically have some food, water, and a minimal first aid kit with me as well. I don’t want to be one of those hikers who needs a risky night evacuation putting rescue personnel in more danger. I’d rather be able to tell rescue folks, something like, “I’m hurt, my location is coordinates x West y North, I can’t walk out, but I’ve got food, water, and proper clothing to wait it out till dawn. I’ll check in with you guys throughout the night on Freq xyz”. That’s just being responsible.)

Yes, I know that the newest iPhone has satellite messaging, but my radio works just fine. Even if I were to get a new iPhone, I’d still carry the radio.

In short, I think the Apple Watch Ultra might be for me. This doesn’t mean that I’m not still looking at good old fashioned automatic watches like the Omega, Ball, or others. Sometimes it’s really nice to just know what time it is…

Aside from reading articles about The Queen, I’ve successfully ignored the news this week. Although I have indulged my Reddit AITA “Am I The Asshole” addiction a few times.

I get a kick out of those articles. Some people are real jackasses!

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The End of an Era

200838 queen elizabeth ii

Another constant in my life is gone.

Queen Elizabeth II has passed.

There has never been a time in my life when she wasn’t The Queen. She was a force of nature, a constant, like the Sun rising. In some strange way, even as an American, that was a comfort.

I’m not a Royalist. I haven’t paid too much attention to British politics or the monarchy, nonetheless The Queen was always there.

I hope Angels sing her to her rest. My heart goes out to the British People and The Royal Family.

I think the world is diminished by her loss. 

Goodby Your Majesty, this American will miss you.