Author: wwducat

About: Writer, Technology guy, Photographer, Possibly EX-Software QA Engineer, Worker Bee. Interests: SCUBA, Working out, Friends, New Views, New Vistas, Photography
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Wow, I’m kind of Offended!

Where’s my safe space? Where’s my bottle? Where’s my reparations? Okay, a bit sarcastic…

I am offended though. After the horror of Elementary School kids being shot in their own classroom, Elementary School Kids? The politicians, the media, and everyone else jumped in with both feet to start pushing gun control again.

Our moronic halfwit in chief had to shoot his mouth off again with his “Deer in Kevlar,” and “People couldn’t buy cannons,” bullshit. So Joe, you’re saying that back at the founding of this country we could go and buy Human Beings, but not a Cannon?

You do realize Joe, that early cannons could be produced by a decent blacksmith with a large enough quantity of iron and a knowledge of casting large metal objects. Those cannons, had no moving parts! If you get down to it, an early cannon is nothing more than a large pipe with one end blocked and a small hole for a fuse. I swear, the moron in chief would do so much better if he just kept his mouth shut.

I digress…

I’m offended that these people couldn’t let the nation take a breath. They couldn’t allow us a freakin moment to process the enormity of what happened.

Instead, these animals had to try to capitalize politically on the tragedy.

Shame on them! Shame on them all!

It’s since come out that the killer wasn’t a deranged white supremacist. (Apparently an LA Times reporter was disappointed about that.) Although the shooter was certainly deranged!

He’d purchased the weapons legally, submitting to the required background checks. He had a number of red flags that were completely ignored. He shot his grandmother after saying he was going to do it on FaceBook, then he went back to Facebook to say he’d shot his grandmother.

He posted on Facebook his intention to shoot a school. He sent via a social media platform, unsolicited photos of guns to a female who was a complete stranger.

He had, according to two different acquaintances from his High School, cut his own face, (for the fun of it…) Others who attended High School with him said that he’d always been a bit off, scary, overly aggressive, or easily enraged.

He is reported to have been shooting at the school, after crashing his vehicle and making his way over a fence onto school grounds.

It took police 10 minutes to respond to the reports of shots fired. There was no School Resource Officer at the school, (in other words, there was no-one present to mount any kind of defensive action.) Some reports are saying that this killer had time to barricade himself in the classroom, and that he may have entered through an unlocked exterior door.

There are many questions to be answered where it comes to the police response.

One for example is that an off duty Border control agent received a message from his wife about an active shooter incident, while he was in a barber’s chair. This Agent has a child in that particular school and armed himself with a shotgun he borrowed from his barber. Then he went to the school and entered the wing where his child’s classroom was located. He helped get students from that wing, including his child out of the school and to safety.

The question here is, how does an unarmed off duty boarder agent have the time to arm up, get to the school, make entry, and start getting children out of the school with help from a few deputies, while the main force of police is still standing around in front of the school?

I think the hearings and testimony will be most interesting to read through.

To be sure, this is a tragedy. It is not however the fault of the gun, the gun manufacturers, the NRA, or gun lobbyists (as Chief Moron in charge would have us believe).

This tragedy is 100% the fault of a single deranged individual. It was his hand that loaded the gun, his hand that pulled the trigger, and his insanity that drove his actions.

The failure here is not that he could legally pass a background check and purchase a weapon.

The failure is that no-one paid any attention to the insanity the person before them presented. Even if they did pay attention, there was nobody to call, and no method to get this person the help they needed or the hospitalization they deserved.

Some of his coworkers have spoken about how easily he became agitated or angry while at work. It’s not like nobody noticed, “This child ain’t right.”

If someone reported him to the police, the police had no actionable violations, even if they had arrested him he’d be out in 8 hours or less. If someone reported him to social services, they had nothing more than a 72 hour hold they could put him in and probably no hospital with an open bed.

That’s the situation I live with in my neighborhood. There’s a female human, (I use that term loosely,) up on the next block who routinely screams she’s going to shoot, stab, castrate, bludgeon, or otherwise kill the man she lives with. Her behavior is no longer limited to just her house or property. Now her physical violence is being inflicted on the neighborhood. Her verbal violence has become commonplace over the past 20 years and no-one pays much attention to her ranting and raving.

The police can’t touch her, social services can’t touch her, and it’s my belief that she’s a ticking time bomb. Her saga will only end when she’s harmed someone and shattered and unknown number of lives.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

It sounds a lot like the Texas shooter, or the Brooklyn grocery store guy, or, or, or…

The problem to address is not the guns. The problem that needs to be addressed is a fundamental one.

Where does my right to be safe and secure in my person and property begin, and where do a deranged person’s rights end?

If lawmakers want to make laws and spend money, why don’t they start by working on mental health legislation?

There are a shit ton of Americans who have one or more guns in their homes who have never gone on a shooting spree. On the other hand, there are a lot of Americans who are, (or were,) in real need of mental health services and can’t access them. Those folks are the folks that have a propensity to go on shooting sprees and kill innocents.

Just for clarity’s sake. AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle 15. It stands for Armalite Rifle model 15.

Many gun manufacturers make AR-15 rifles, each with their own flourish and manufacturer label. At its heart, an AR-15 is an AR-15, and all of them work the same way. The legal ones are semi-automatic, (one round per trigger pull,) all are based on the original modular design of the Armalite Rifle company.

One can be purchased legally in most states for anywhere from $800 to $3000, depending on options.

Our politicians are quick to seize on the AR-15 as something that must be controlled. Okay, so they want to ban assault rifles. What exactly is an assault rifle? If politicians succeed in banning AR-15s. They’ll only remove a portion of available guns. What about the other guns? The rifles and handguns that aren’t banned? A lever action rifle, or a pump action shotgun, a revolver, or a semi-automatic pistol, all fling a wad (or wads) of lead at high velocities. All can inflict injury and all can cause death.

When lawmakers are talking about gun legislation what are they trying to legislate? The number of rounds that can be fired before reloading? The speed at which rounds can be fired? The caliber of the rounds being fired? What exactly are they trying to control?

Because the lawmakers are so imprecise about what they’re legislating, it leads me to believe that they’re trying to take away all guns. Regardless of the constitutional violation of doing so, if lawmakers were to succeed in removing all guns. (An impossible task) I’m sure that people would simply migrate to Compound or Recurve Bows. Or as in the case of the UK, knives.

The point is, some people will always seek to kill other people. In the case of deranged individuals, the weapon is far less important than the motivation. I think it was in Japan, one knife wielding crazy person wounded 20 people on a subway platform. I don’t recall how many died. This guy was walking through the crowd stabbing people and a lot of the people on the platform didn’t realize there was a threat at first.

Which leads back to addressing the real source of the problem. Mental health. Lawmakers need to enact legislation that provides the services to address mental health issues and where necessary remove individuals from society at large that are obviously a threat.

People who, for instance fantasize about killing, people who consistently state they’re going to kill someone specific or people at large, people who post threats on social media, etc.

When a neighborhood calls the police repeatedly about a disturbance where someone is screaming, “I’ll shoot you, I’ll stab you, I’ll kill you,” perhaps the police should send the person somewhere that they can get help. What should not happen is that the neighborhood stops reporting the issue because nothing is ever done.

School teachers are taught to look for signs of abuse in children. Perhaps they should also be taught to look for signs of mental health issues, and report them. Early intervention is much better than having to stop an active shooter.

So many of our politicians, pundits, and wags, jump up on their soapboxes after a tragedy like the Texas shooting. They demand, “Commonsense gun control”. I say they’re screaming to fix a symptom, not the disease.

New York and California have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. I think both state have “Red Flag” laws where the guns of an individual can be seized and held in police custody until the owner is proven fit and competent.

I ask how is it possible that you can have a grocery store in New York become a killing ground? How is it that you can have a San Bernardino Shooting at a county office? If gun laws worked, these shooters wouldn’t have had the guns in the first place.

How about we take the elephant in the room outside? Let’s rise to the challenge of addressing that mental illness isn’t being treated, but it should be.

To our politicians, pundits, and wags. At least have the decency to let the bodies cool before making your political grandstand moment.

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I never saw that coming…

As a child growing up in Florida, I remember going to Walt Disney World before they actually had a park.

We drove and drove and then there was a sign that said something like, “Welcome to the Future Disneyworld” There was a place to eat, and a gift shop of course. They also had mockups of the park as the designers envisioned it, and a nice little tour that explained what they were going to do to the area of what was essentially a kind of marshy chunk of land.

For a kid it was pretty neat, even though there weren’t any rides or much of anything else. After all I’d already been to Disney World well before it opened. Several years later, I went to Disney World and mostly remember the monorail.

Even then, large portions of what would become the entire park were still under construction. We were fairly regular visitors then. Each time we went it was a revelation because newer sections of the park opened. I recall ticket books and the like. That’s where the phrase, “E-Ticket Ride” came from.

After we moved out of Florida our visits to Disney World became less frequent and when I got to visit Disneyland in California, I was honestly disappointed. It was so small, noisy, cramped, and I guess due to the scale, it just seemed cheap. Yeah, Disney World spoiled me.

I think in the 35 or so years I’ve been in California, I’ve been to Disneyland maybe 3 times. At least one of those visits was back in the day when corporations could buy the park for an afternoon or evening and have private events. I honestly don’t know if corporations can still do that or if they would these days.

The last time I looked into going to Disneyland or Disney World I quickly dismissed the idea because it had become prohibitively expensive even with discount coupons offered by the company I worked for.

Occasionally, over the years I’ve been invited to join friends at Disneyland and after looking at the prices, politely declined. For that kind of money, I’d rather go to Las Vegas and enjoy more adult shows or entertainment. And so, Disneyland and Disney World dropped off my radar decades ago.

What I’ve been surprised to learn is that Disney World has enjoyed freedom from full taxation, and autonomy in their operations in Florida for 50 years. That kind of benefit had never crossed my mind. Like most folks, I assumed that Disney World had in fact been providing tax revenue to the state of Florida.

I applaud the Florida Legislators for stripping Disney of their tax exempt status. It sends a very clear message. Stay out of politics you’re a business, BE a business!

I suppose in truth they have indirectly paying taxes via sales tax and various tourism taxes from hotels, restaurants, airfares, and car rentals for tourists visiting the state. But no matter how you slice it, Disney had a dang good sweetheart deal. Even if they were paying reduced taxes, over 50 years that has to have added up.

You also have to wonder what the environmental impact of Disney World has on the vast tract of land they occupy. The trash alone must be monumental. Food waste, paper, plastic, human waste, you name it. Typically, Disney parks are immaculately clean. But in the case of Disney World… Where does it all go? What happened to the natural environment in that swath of Florida? Was any of it preserved?

To be fair, in the 60’s undeveloped Florida land was seen as opportunity and in need of development. Then, very little concern was paid to environmental issues. I strongly suspect that had it been practical the Florida Everglades would have been paved over for housing projects.

Disney could have kept its mouth shut about the Florida Parental Rights Bill. Certainly some of the Disney lawyers must have read the bill and informed Disney executives that much of the media hyperbole was not factual.

The Parental Rights Bill wasn’t an open assault on LGBT… lmnop people everywhere.

I do have a concern now that because of the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and over the top dramatics, that there may be an open assault on all LGBT people’s rights.

My concern is not due to the Parental Rights Bill. It’s due to the reaction and conflation of what I think of as the vocal lunatic fringe, the LGBT… lmnop, with the LGB community at large.

That conflation coupled with the “Normal” LGB community’s parroting of whatever the HRC or as OutSpoken puts it, “Gay Inc.” tells them to believe or think, may set gay rights back by decades.

The LGB community fought very hard for a very long time to win the rights that they were guaranteed by The Constitution of the United States. In many cases, those rights could arbitrarily be abridged for no other reason than they were homosexual.

LGB folks have the right to marry, to not face discrimination in housing, their workplace, or any other aspect of their lives. That was what we were fighting for, and we’ve achieved it for the most part.

Will we stand by while a lunatic fringe seizes our voice and uses it to polarize parts of the nation who tolerate us, into our enemies?

The gender fluid, crossdresser activists, should not, and do not speak for all the LGBT community. Nor do virtue signaling corporations.

Let the LGB community speak for ourselves. Generally, we just want to live our lives, love who we love, live quietly, and be left the hell alone.

It’s time for the LGB community, the real LGB community to stand up and roar.

The first and best place to start is roaring at Disney and the “lmnop” fringe by siding with the Florida legislature. Yes, I said side with Florida lawmakers.

Children should not be sexualized in the schools, Full DAMN Stop!
Parents have the responsibility for their children’s behaviors until they’re 18, Parents should also have the right to generally determine what their children are taught in public schools.
Public schools prohibit teaching a religious belief system, it could be argued gender fluidity is simply another belief system.
Disney World should be paying fair taxes and should not enjoy a sweetheart deal if they’re going to enter into politics.
Disney World is an entertainment venue, not a Political Action Committee. If they choose to be a PAC, they shouldn’t be, in effect subsidized by Florida tax payer dollars.

Most LGB people knew there was something different about them from an early age. But at that early age, the difference was irrelevant to them. Something that was an occasionally passing thought, quickly and easily superseded by a sparkly butterfly, or the next baseball game.

The time to address the difference is when the difference becomes an irrefutable issue that occupies a lot of a child’s brainpower. For most, it started at puberty, 3rd graders typically aren’t there yet.

After children have entered puberty, and are questioning all the weird changes in their bodies and minds, I’m all for providing useful education and the knowledge that they’re not alone or abnormal. Until then, let children be children and don’t trouble them with sexuality or pronouns.

I call upon my brothers and sisters in the LGB community to stand up to the insanity. Say “No” to the fringe, remind them that we are inclusive but that a larger majority of us are quite content being the gender we are, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Remind them that it is our work, our voice, and our lived lives they are usurping. Perhaps remind them of the old adage: They’re nothing scarier than a full grown adult queen.

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If the GOP takes the House and Senate will it make any difference?

Unfortunately, I think it won’t.

I had hoped that it would put controls on the Biden Administration but now…

We’ve already seen what “accidentally releasing” a draft opinion on Roe v. Wade has done. I’ll grant you, the protests in the streets aren’t up to the par of our most recent “Summer of love,” but if the Democratic majority is tossed out on their collective asses as they well deserve, I expect the burning and looting to start all over again.

Republicans have been painted as sitting at the right hand of Satan. Conservatives are seen as racist minions of the Devil. Collectively, the two groups have been demonized as White supremacist domestic terrorists.

While to my knowledge, few if any of these assertions are true. There is a remarkably large group of people who believe it to be so.

Perception often becomes reality. Even when gravity doesn’t suddenly switch off on demand.

Those who believe Republicans and conservatives are terrorists, will require little to go back to rioting in the streets. I’ll not be surprised if we see people falling to their knees, rending their clothing, and crying as the election result are made known.

This poor individual. They’ve become the face of over dramatic stupidity.

I’ll be waiting for the tearful pronouncements, “Democracy is dead,” “NAZIS control Congress.”

I suspect that there will be a large number of saintly Democratic Candidates demanding recounts claiming that the demonic Republicans cheated at the ballot boxes or suppressed voters. Even in areas where the elections followed the same rules as the 2020 election.

They’ll trundle out the usual examples. People of Color, the poor, the sick, and you can bet there will be a trans person who won’t be able to vote “authentically as themselves” because their ID doesn’t match the name they give at the polling place.

I’m betting that first day with new members in Congress will be a circus. I haven’t figured out what kind of distraction the far left people within the Democratic Party will come up with, but I’m sure it will be amusingly transparent to everyone except the protestors.

There’s another problem though. Once all the protestors have gone home because it’s too cold to bother, the Republicans may choose not to take strong immediate action to curb the Biden Administration’s obvious screw-ups.

Why?

If I were running the Republican Party, I’d be inclined to let the current administration continue stepping on all the rakes they’ve left on the White House lawn.

They’ve pretty much looked like a bad combination of The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot & Costello, and the Keystone Cops.

Were I thinking about maintaining Republican control for decades I’d let the administration continue to show just how incompetent they are. Let them destroy themselves, allow their policies and decisions to paint them as buffoons. Hey, I can be as much of a bastard as everyone else!

That would effectively gut any Democratic Party candidates for at least the next decade, possibly longer. Mothers who couldn’t feed their babies will have a very long memory. Truckers and commuters who lost their jobs due to gas prices will be unforgiving for a very long time.

Then at the last moment, preferably when Biden or Harris is on their knees before Congress begging for help. Only then does a Republican Congress roll out conservative, fiscally responsible, solutions to the Biden /Harris Administration’s self inflicted wounds.

The Biden / Harris Administration must be destroyed totally and shamed so throughly that none of the participants ever attempt to hold a political office again. The last thing I’d want (were I directing the Republican Party) is to allow the Biden / Harris Administration any room to say anything they did was a success.

Make sure that when the gas prices drop, The Country knows it’s the Conservative Republican Congress’s doing.

When the illegal border crossings stop, and the criminals who have used the open border to bring their crime, trafficking, drugs, and misery, are brought to justice. Make sure the Country knows who it was that took appropriate action.

When the shelves are stocked again, shipments are on time and under budget, driving cost of consumer goods down. Make sure there’s a (C) for Conservative visible on the shelf tags, to remind folks who actually does the job.

Then go after every single one of the former members of Congress who wrought this disaster. For those who lined their pockets from the misery of the American People regardless of their party affiliation… If the evidence supports incarceration, put them in the cells formerly occupied by the prisoners illegally held without due process or speedy trial in the Jan 6th riot.

To be clear, I don’t think the Republican Party or conservatives are saints. But I think they’d do a damn sight better than the current crop of morons running our country.

Sadly, it hinges on the newly elected officials in Congress putting the People first.

As I stated, I’m concerned that instead of taking action, they’ll choose vengeance. In their vengeance, the American People will still be pawns and suffer at the hands of power mad politicians.

I think, the only hope to rein in power mad politicians is the prospect of a very long prison sentence at hard labor, or hangman’s noose, if they’re caught.

When the presidential campaigns start up. I sincerely hope that Donald Trump has the good sense not to run. I don’t think he was a bad President. By comparison to Biden… He was awesome. Then again as Biden stands today, a psychotic monkey with a gun would be preferable.

Yeah I really don’t like Biden and haven’t liked him for as long as I can remember. I think maybe in the early days, he might have at least had his heart in the right place, but that faded very quickly.

I’d like to see pragmatic independent candidates who were unafraid to speak the truth. I’d like them to have a plan, and be willing to share their thoughts with the public during the campaign. Personally I eliminate candidates that appear to be pandering to specific groups.

I pay attention to candidates that have a consistent story, and those that say something like; “Oh, that’s an interesting point. I hadn’t considered that, you may have changed my approach,” to one of their competitors will have my full and undivided attention.

The last election, every candidate said something like, “We have to go totally green in energy production.” But few of them spoke about their vision for getting from where we are, to a green future.

I’d have asked, “Are you proposing using the advances we’ve made in nuclear reactors? Do you propose every roof of every home in America have solar panels? Is your proposal to create wind farms? Create more Hydroelectric power generation? What is your plan to achieve this goal?”

You don’t have to believe in climate change, to implicitly understand the less pollution we generate, the less we have to clean up. The less oil or coal we use, the longer those resources last. Everyone gets that. Even the most adamant Climate Change Denier won’t argue.

What they will argue with, is being told they’re going to have to use technology that isn’t adequate to their needs. For example, having to buy 2 pricey electric tractors to keep up their farm production where they only needed one 20 year old diesel tractor to do the job before.

Folks will balk at being told that fuel prices are going to be taxed into the stratosphere as an incentive to switch to inadequate technologies, by people who don’t have the sense to step around cow shit in a field. (No, Senator… That’s not a mud puddle! Those shoes weren’t expensive were they?)

Trust me, working folks will leap to demonstrably superior tools. Check out any construction site and you’ll find all the workers using battery powered tools all over the place. No cords, same capability, it’s a no brainer. Even nail guns are going battery. It’s nice to not have a compressor and a long assed pneumatic hose when you’re doing finish work.

A local handyman here, deploys solar panels across the hood of his truck to power battery chargers for his tools. He’s not high tech, he’s not a greenie, he’s just pragmatic. He works on vacation or rental homes that often have the power turned off.

The point is, instead of screwing with gas taxes and mandates, a politician should have a broad plan.

They should be able to say, “Yes, I want solar panels on every roof. During the day we should be able to direct excess power from the housing panels to power our schools or offices where we learn and work. Hopefully it would be enough that we could direct oil and coal generated power to industry during the day, increasing our GDP but overall reducing the fossil generated kilowatts those plants have to produce. At night, I’d like to have the ability to redirect oil and coal generated power to light and heat or cool our homes. We’ll use this system until we can bring new safer nuclear plants online. My plan is to transition in a logical, planned way. Along the way, I’m confident we will make new discoveries and those may make the transition faster, and more efficient. To that end, I propose that we fund as much energy research as possible. Not just power generation, but also power storage. I propose that we mine, refine, and produce the raw materials and finished products here in America. This provides jobs and potentially can increase our exports to other nations.“

Every politician should be able to lay out various plans to address the issues of the day.

You don’t have to agree with the plan. But someone who lays out the broad strokes at least has thought about it. They’re not just pandering to activists for votes. The harder step is holding them accountable and calling them out if they haven’t delivered on their plan(s).

I use the same approach when reviewing all candidates.

It’s a given that no one candidate is going to embody every cause of the day. What I’m looking for is a candidate or candidates that at least are bold enough to speak their minds, honest enough to admit they don’t know everything, and smart enough to have thought about the issues.

Sadly, we’ve created a world where one misstep or poorly chosen word can destroy a candidate who would otherwise be the best person for the job. This allows only the pretty, the pandering, the disingenuous, and those driven by greed for money or power to hold office.

I don’t think that’s likely to change anytime soon.

This is why I think the Republican “Red Wave” in the midterms is going to be a big nothing burger.

The new boss will be exactly the same as the old boss.

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For those of you who may be new to this blog…

First, by most accounts I’m nuts!

I don’t see it that way, but then if I was nuts, by definition I wouldn’t see it. So my self assessment is pointless. I’ll leave the reader to decide for themselves.

I’ve been writing for a long time, one way or another. It might have been technical manuals or instructional materials, but I’ve been putting thoughts into words on paper for a long time.

I’ve been blogging for a long time too. This blog had its original incarnation on Blogspot. I moved the blog here when Blogspot started making noise about censoring content.

Hey they’re a free site, and they can run that site anyway they want to. Since I was a free user, I had a choice. I could abide by their new rules, or I could go my own way where I made the rules.

I chose the latter.

I’m a major advocate of free speech and I wanted to be able to post pictures, comments, and thoughts where no-one could come along and tell me to shutup.

People can of course tell me to shutup in comments, they can tell me they think I’m a freak or a monster there as well. But mostly, if I’ve offended someone they usually just don’t come back to this blog. That’s their right and I’m fine with it. I’ll even allow some comments to show up even if they disagree with my opinion.

I am the sole authority and moderator for those comments, and to be clear, If I decide not to publish a comment… There is no appeal.

Re-Reading Opening Volley written in 2011, when I moved to this hosting site and set up this incarnation of the blog, I find that I’m not a whole lot different as a person. Some of my opinions have changed a bit. My approach is a little more moderated (not much,) and I still write what I’m thinking about life, politics, the world, and things that strike me as odd. I am not terribly filtered about what I say or how I say it.

I moved a bunch of older posts and images from the old blog that dated back to 2008 to this new site.

I noticed today that some of the photos from those older blog posts appear to have been unlinked. I remember moving the images and correcting the links at the time, but well a lot has happened since then. I’ll see if I can’t relink them when I have the time or inclination.

I also noticed while scanning the older posts that I was worried about censorship and what would become “Cancel Culture”, 10 years ago.

I could see the pattern of precursor events adding up even then.

People were starting to realize that “Flame Wars” which had previously only happened on sites with limited reach and a defined membership were beginning to explode across the infant social media sites and attracting global attention.

(Flame War – Best described as an escalating battle of words between two individuals over email or chat systems. These battles only ended when both participants were exhausted and devolved into name calling. Neither participant proved their point and usually other observers concluded that both participants were jackasses. See also schoolyard bullies.)

Social Media allowed Flame Wars to have global scope and like minded individuals were able to pile on in support of their preferred combatant. The global scope, finding supporters, combined with smaller secondary flame wars fed even the tiniest of narcissistic egos, turning them into full blown neurosis.

This blog is an exercise in narcissism. Really, who would, or should care about my opinions or thoughts? I could have the same satisfaction and writing practice with a simple journal. But there is a bit of pleasure to be had from seeing readership statistics. There’s a sense of satisfaction reading comments about a particular blog post.

So this blog is me paying my dues to limited narcissism. My hope is that by indulging in a little, I can avoid becoming a Kardashian.

In the 1500 or so posts contained herein are snapshots of life. You’ll find sex, thoughts on the day or year, good things and bad things, commentary from my perspective on what it is to be male and a man in this world.

You might find thoughts that touch you, anger you, please you, or that simply cause you to consider a subject from a different angle.

All of this is objectively good. Writing, like all art should engender a reaction. Mozart or Snoop Dog, Picasso or Rubens, Orwell or Shakespeare, Mapplethorpe  or Adams, they all have their place and affect the observer.

Uh no… I’m not comparing my writing to those folks. I’m not sure that my writing could be printed on their toilet paper.

What I’m saying is that some of what you read here, you may like, some you will not, reading what I write isn’t meant to make anyone into me. It’s offered as a thought put out into the world or the universe and it’s up to the reader to make of it what they will.

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Color me Surprised!

I caught a report from Twitter that Nina Jankowicz resigned as the director of The Ministry Of Truth. A.K.A. The Disinformation Governance Board.

Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that the Disinformation Governance Board is really dead. Perhaps someone should drive a stake through its heart?

Works for me!

Another report quoted The Biden Administration as painting Jankowicz the victim of vicious attacks and mean people, once Ms. Jankowicz’s Tik-Tok videos started making the rounds.

How do they figure that? She made the videos, no-one held a gun to her head, she created and published those videos of her own free will.

That those videos became the subject of derision and bad jokes is just the way the ball bounces.

Apparently, the DHS is also pausing the Disinformation Governance Board in its entirety. I’m not sure I believe that. Then again, I’m not sure exactly what I believe coming out of our government anymore. I’ve read more articles in the past few months that I thought were satire and had a good laugh, only to find out that they were true.

It’s gotten pretty bad when “Truth” coming from government spokespersons reads like a Saturday Night Live skit. (Back when they were actually funny, that is.)

If they did pause the Disinformation Governance Board or better yet are going to kill it altogether I can only say praise God and pass the ammunition!

Now if we can only get the Department of Homeland Security to disband. While we start cleaning up the various messes at the DOJ, FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies.

I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory but I can’t help it. In the past 5 or 6 years the DOJ and FBI have made some very questionable decisions and those decisions haven’t reinforced my belief in their objectivity or pursuit of actual justice.

I think something is very wrong in those agencies and wonder if they shouldn’t be revamped and brought back to their original mission. The real question is what part of the government is the right one to do that?

Who would the people trust?

[Somewhere deep in the bowels of Washington DC government… There’s someone contemplating that question. Any minute they’ll decide to create a Department of Public Trust..]

I’m going back to watching porn.