Category: BullShit

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Governor Newsom – I don’t think you’ve realized this, but Lockdown is over!

Screen Shot 2020 05 11 at 4 05 01 PMI know, I know, you think your orders are still being obeyed. But have you been outside lately?

Have you been on the road? 

See those little red lines? Those are traffic jams. Looks like the prisoners are making a break for it. 

Maybe you need to bring in the national guard to maintain your orders… 

I was just at Lowes. Guess what? The parking lot is full. So are a lot of other parking lots, and oh, by the way there’s a lot of traffic on the roads even out in the boondocks where I live. 

Your control is slipping. You’re going to have to make sure cops in riot gear are standing by and make sure they have real bullets. After all you want people to die right? You want people fearfully cowering in their homes don’t ya?

You can chalk bullet ridden corpses up to Covid-19 can’t you? After all, if you’re outside your home, “The Covid gonna get ya,” one way or another isn’t it? 

Governor, it’s time you opened the state. We’ve all done our time. The curve is flattened, how about something new? Maybe we need to get on with living and maybe if we’re smart about it we’ll all be just fine.

You want to do something actually constructive? How about mandating paid time off if someone has the flu or Covid-19. How about simply making it easy and the responsible thing for an employer to tell their employees “If you’re sick… STAY Home. You’ll get paid.”

Open the damn beaches and parks again. Bored, frustrated, scared, people is a recipe for disaster. Based on the driving I just saw. Folks are well past their boiling point.

Just a thought you’ll ignore, from someone who doesn’t matter at all.

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In theory I should be writing a blog today

IMG 1325Trouble is that I’ve become so disgusted by the news I can’t even look at it without going all rage monster.

So I’m not looking at it.

As far as what’s going on around here just a little yard work. 

I pruned the heck out of my apple tree. It responded by doing this.

I’m hoping that I’ll have normal sized apples this fall. Last year I have a ton of mini apples that turned into great apple butter & apple sauce. They weren’t all that good to eat due to the size.

The yard work has been good for my sense of wellbeing. 

I haven’t been able to plant anything though. Usually by this time of year the hardware store has nice plants that I incorporate into the landscape for the season.

This year due to the lockdown those plants aren’t available. So the yard may look a little more like the surface of the moon.

I’m also hesitant to plant anything because last year the County decided that a plant that had been in my yard since 1992 absolutely had to be removed. Suddenly this plant was the worst thing on the planet and they were threatening fines if I kept it.

I had to pay to have it removed.

But I noticed that other neighbors didn’t remove their versions of this plant, and they weren’t fined or asked to remove them.

The funny part of this is that the plant in my yard was no larger the 3ft by 3 feet and was at the outer edge of the yard bounded by the driveway and the street. It was also maintained to be no larger than 3”x3”. Ironically for that plant being such a fire hazard, when the house burned in 2008, all the plants survived!

I find that I’m losing interest in maintaining my yard and have considered just killing everything out front.

Every year, some bozo from the county comes around and bitches about something and start imposing fines. They claim it’s for fire control.

What pisses me off about it is that I’ve got more than the recommended defensive space around the house.

I moved here 70 miles outside LA, because I didn’t want anyone telling me what I could and couldn’t do on my own property. While I don’t have an HOA, I do have county busybodies telling me what I can do.

I’m considering putting a sign up in the yard this year. Something that says;

“Hey County, you’ve fucked up our street, your flood control project made things worse, you’re spending yet more money to build a higher bridge, (Which we told you to do 10 years ago, instead of your plan to build a sluice,) So fuck off! Leave me alone, don’t set foot on my property, and fuck your fines if you don’t like the plants in my yard!“

What burns me about this so much is that I worked and continue to work really hard to plant native plants in the yard. With just a few exceptions everything is drought resistant and native to this area.  I try to have something blooming year round. Natives can be very pretty and easy to care for.

But having to deal with annoying letters and threats of fines year after year and explaining what each plant in the yard is year after year is getting tiresome.

Which is why I’m considering a lunar surface model, at least in the front.

If I go that route, the sign in the front will read; “Dear neighbors, This Lunar surface representation courtesy of the County. I got tired of the threats.“

I could move a lot of the plants to the back, then install a wooden fence to prevent the county from seeing anything from the street. God forbid some bozo would actually have to get out of their car and look.

Maybe I’m just reacting to the lockdown, Nope! I’m reacting the constant erosion of my rights by power mad jackasses who decide arbitrarily what is for my own good.

I’m really thinking it’s time for me to leave kommifornia. The way the news and politics are going here in the USA, maybe it’s time to ask about becoming a citizen of another country entirely.

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Why is everything a battle?

bangheadhere.jpegLately, it feels like I’m spending all my time either fighting or preparing to fight.

I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past 12 months attempting to find a new job. Then just as unemployment insurance ran out we’re in lockdown.

Care to guess what that does to your job search?

Then Congress and the President say they’re extending unemployment benefits and sending a stimulus check. 

Great I think. I’ll be able to go on for a little while longer. Well, you’d think that, but I’ve not gotten a stimulus check and the Unemployment people haven’t gotten their shit together yet either.

In practical terms, this means that I’ve gotten two more battles added to my plate. One is getting the IRS website to accept my banking information which they had on file and have had for years, but their site said they didn’t have any information. 

Uhhh, wrong! You fuckers know exactly where to send the bill and exactly how to harass me at a whim. Now when it comes to you having to pay… Suddenly you can’t find my information? I call Bullshit!

On the plus side, I got them sorted out this morning.

One battle won.

Next, on to the unemployment folks. Their website is even worse than the IRS. It looks like something out of the ‘70s. In truth it probably is. Although the site says that it’s implemented the changes to allow for the extension and application for the Coronavirus relief funding when you go through their merry-go-round of links you end up at the same place that tells you you’re not eligible.

“Oh you have to use Chrome, to access the site.” 

Great so you’re telling me that I have to download a browser from the evil empire that Google has become, to allow being tracked, and hacked, and having 2 instances of googlesoftwareupdateagent running on my computer even when Chrome ISN’T running.

It’s also quite interesting that while these bits of software are running I see an uptick in network communication that is continuous.

Just what are these “Agents” doing? Why are there two instances sucking up my computer resources? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the question. I haven’t opened the code to analyze what this agent actually does, but I don’t think its what the name implies.

ReallyI have to have Chrome? Why? Could it be that your H1B1 programmers don’t know that adherence to HTML standards actually allows compatibility with multiple browsers? Or was it that they just had to use some little snippet of code that they could only get from Google? Instead of one of the myriad open source distributors

I download the wonder that is Google Chrome go back through the merry-go-round and guess what? I still can’t access the page that allows me to fill in the information to get the FEDERALLY FUNDED package. 

Gee thanks you California EDD dunderheads.

Battle number two – Lost for the moment!

Next Battle is the case of the missing check from the insurance company over the car. The check was issued and sent to the BMW Dealer. That check triggered a number of attempts on the part of the BMW dealer to reopen the insurance claim and ask for more money. WRONG! Sorry but that isn’t happening, I’ve seen to it.

Add to it that the BMW dealership underlings weren’t returning phone calls.  A strongly worded letter was sent to the one man at the dealership that runs by old world standards. I shouldn’t have had to involve him, but when all normal channels fail, you reach out to folks you know.

He responded this morning letting me know that he’d forwarded the letter to the right person over at the body shop. I’m expecting a call later in the week. It’s going to take the manager of the body shop some time to un-peel this onion. His underlings made a hell of a mess in their accounting and documentation.

Battle number three, indeterminate win/loss but it’s worth fighting because it’s over a grand that I’m owed.

Then on to battle number four.

The job search, and I’m back to banging my head against the wall.

At least it’s warm and pretty and I’m sitting on the back deck with a nice view.

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Okay, So with all the Chloroquine hubub…

800px-Medical_quinolines_pathway.pngI got curious. 

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about this drug.

Yes, it’s a drug and guess what, it’s listed as an essential drug by the World Health Organization.

OMG! You mean Trump didn’t just pull it out of his ass?

Nope! He didn’t. Before you go off on the other now debunked report that Trump has stock in manufacturers of this drug, Just STOP!

I knew it’s primarily used as an anti malarial drug. But Malaria is caused by a parasite, not a virus. Hmmm, so what the hell?

Well it turns out that it’s also used for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus. Why? because Chloroquine has a depressing effect on the immune system. 

Wait a minute… If it depresses the immune response it makes no sense to use it with a viral infection. If someone is sick, it’s counterintuitive to actively depress their immune system. 

Chloroquine has been known since 1934. Its analog organic origin was originally obtained from tree bark by the indigenous people of Peru, before 1633. They used it as an extract to fight fever and chills. It was introduced to Europe after 1633 as a treatment against Malaria. It was called Quinine.

While I was in the shower, My head locked on quinine. That was familiar to me and I knew it was in my household I just couldn’t place it. Another minute researching with Wikipedia and BOOM! 

Same bark, same tree, same indigenous people and known to the Spanish as early as 1571 to have medicinal properties. 

Cinchona bark was exported by the Spanish to Europe, Remijia bark produces lower quantities of Quinine but has a stronger taste. It’s used to flavor Tonic Water.

Don’t you Gin & Tonic drinkers get too excited, the levels are a bit too low to be medicinal. However, essentially you’ve got 400 years of research on Quinine. 

Chloroquine is a synthetic with a different chemical signature, that came into wide use around 1947.

Naturally occurring quinine is C20H24N2O2. Chloroquine is C18H26ClN3 They’re different but similar chemistry. Chloroquine is a synthetic analog of Quinine.

You have to read much further into the article to find out how all this relates to Coronavirus.

2560px-Chloroquine.svg.pngBy the way, the Wikipedia article is here.

Fairly late in the article there’s an explanation of the antiviral effects of Chloroquine.

Because of the way Chloroquine affects the PH of organelles within a cell it tends to prevent a virus from releasing its genetic material.

Since the virus can’t release its RNA, it can’t infect a cell to convert the cell to replicate more viruses. Chloroquine also does something to Zinc uptake in the cell which inhibits RNA functions too.1920px Chloroquine 3D structure

I’m not a biologist, but I know that the basic way a virus reproduces is by hijacking the DNA of a cell, essentially reprogramming the cell to stop doing normal cell stuff and start using all the cellular resources to make viruses. It does this by putting its RNA into the cell. That’s how it reprograms cellular function.

When the cell runs out of resources it dies, then the cell membrane ruptures releasing all the viruses its built into surrounding cells. That’s how the infection continues.

So if you’re able to prevent the virus from hijacking healthy cells to begin with, you end the infection. The body then has time to identify and destroy the inert virus material floating around.

Remember DNA and RNA are related and if memory serves, interact during cellular reproduction. 

Since Chloroquine is absorbed quickly by the body and is distributed rapidly in the bloodstream it’s like a big off switch to the virus invasion. That’s possibly why so many people have reported that they or their loved ones were on death’s door and had such amazing recoveries after being given Chloroquine.

The news isn’t all rosy. Chloroquine can have nasty side effects and it can become toxic easily. That’s why careful monitoring is required and only doctors prescribe it. It also can interact with other drugs and cause other problems.

The side effects of the drug are many, and include problems with vision, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, headache, diarrhea, shortness of breath, muscle weakness and the list goes on. 

Make no mistake Chloroquine is a powerful drug and as with any powerful medication there is a possibility that it could cause more harm than good.

That being said. If I’m on my deathbed, what the hell do I have to lose?

So in conclusion, this is a drug that’s been around for many years. Its effects are fairly predictable and its side-effects and countermeasures are well known and researched. 

All the information about the drug is readily available on the internet in less than five minutes (even if you misspell the name).

There are two versions of it. One is Chloroquine and the other is Hydroxychloroquine I don’t know, and am not qualified, to evaluate the differences or provide explanation as to why there are variations. However both appear to have been derived from a 400 year old, or older natural organic remedy called Quinine.

It may be something as simple as one is more effective or easier on the system.

Apparently, Chloroquine was investigated during the SARS outbreak and there was a report published that is appeared to have efficacy against SARS in vitro. 

SARS is also caused by a Coronavirus.

It’s entirely logical that the medical people would have gone back to the publications and research done on any Coronavirus, looking for something that would be effective at least in slowing Coronaviruses to buy time during treatment. Remember slowing the progress of a disease gives the body time to construct an immune defense.

This information would have been presented to the President and his advisors when coronavirus first hit the world stage. The President probably shouldn’t have been as excited about the possibility of an untested treatment. But he at least was able to tell the American people that all was not lost, coronavirus infection was not a death sentence and to have hope.

Yes, there haven’t been any clinical trials yet. Clinical trials take time. Half the group you give the drug, and half the group you give a placebo then you tally the results to determine effectiveness.

Tell me, how many of you would want to participate in a clinical trial during a pandemic? How many of you would want to be sick and be getting sugar pills instead of something that at least anecdotally was working?

Uh huh, I didn’t think so…

Now can we please stop all the bitching and complaining about the President saying anything about Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine?

The other question I have is this… If a dumbshit like me can look up this information and understand in at least a rudimentary way how the drugs work;

WHY THE HELL CAN’T PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS?

Just saying…

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Well, that wasn’t unexpected.

Bernie Sanders via Fox NewsBernie Sanders has dropped out of the Presidential race.

All I can say is, Duh!

After his relatively poor showings in key states it was something that should have happened weeks ago.

Surprising that it took him so long to decide. 

I’ve never understood how someone like him who is rich, could condemn wealth. I’d trade places with him. Give him a taste of what being on the other side of the walled garden is like. I guarantee that after a week he’d be wanting to trade back. Of course by that time I’d have done a little redistribution of my own.

Honestly, I’m amazed that he did as well as he did.

Come on, you’ve got to admit in your heart of hearts that it’s going to be a tough sell. A rich guy telling a country of not rich people that being rich is bad?

My thought was always, “If being rich is so heinous Bernie, then give your money to those less fortunate in your home state.”  I know that wouldn’t happen in a million years.

Just so you know, I’m not above taking a 500K handout from him. I’d pay off my house, bills, and car, then I’d see if I could get a job at a fast food place until I could legitimately retire.

If you think about the fact the 500K would do it for me personally, you might start to understand my frustration with rich politicians.

With that relatively small amount, I could wipe my debt, and be in a situation where minimum wage would pay my utility bills, provide insurance, fund a retirement account, and allow me to have some monthly savings. Perhaps It would even allow me to take a vacation once every 5 years instead of once every 12 years.

Look at the amount of money folks like Bernie and other politicians waste & you’ll start to get why I’m opposed to bloated Government and high taxes.

If we could reduce the tax burden by the cost of countless pointless hearings and Pelosi follies, overall the average taxpayer would be better off.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. The Government will always find a way to keep what they’re taking and find new ways to take more.

Under Bernie, I wholeheartedly believe that it would have been business as usual and those of us in the middle class would have been worse off.

So it’s with a certain sense of relief that Bernie is out of the race.

Joe biden 2012 7 13Sadly, that leaves Biden. 

Biden was at one time a statesman that I respected.

But those days are past. He’s well past his prime and honestly I’m concerned over what appears to be his degraded mental state.

The last thing we need in a president is someone that’s not all there. With Trump we got lucky, he may not be all there, but he’s contentious enough that he’s not going to be manipulated without a fight.

Dourif lotrWith Biden I’m not so sure.

In his case, I start asking, “Who would be the power behind Biden?”

Would it be his VP? Or would it be some other shadowy character whispering into Joe’s ear?

If it was his VP then we could still come out ahead, so long as that VP was someone that had a brain and was minimally  interested in serving the people.

But we all know it doesn’t work that way. A corrupt VP could do much more damage to the country than a bad president. I know if I were nefarious, a VP slot with an “out of it” President would be perfect…

You do pretty much whatever you want, work it out so that you have two terms, arrange your power, take as much cash as you can, and let the outgoing President take the blame…

You bail to Malta with untold millions and live out your days quietly, opulently, and laugh every time your investments double.

I never said it would be right, moral, or ethical. 

It’s because I think of shit like this, that I’m mistrusting of government. The potential for abuse is just too damn high and no-one is above temptation.

Hell, I’m a straight shooting, ethically bound, guy. I can tell you without hesitation, If I were a VP with Biden as President, I’d have a tough time not taking advantage of the situation I described.

I don’t believe that the majority of politicians are equal to me in ethics, or morality.  

That being said, I think Biden in his current state, isn’t the man for the job. I think he’s not there enough to realize he’s being manipulated. Which leads me to believe if he’s elected we’ll have 8 years of super bad stuff happening in this nation.

Just my 2 cents.

This election year I again find myself in a position where I either vote for the Devil I know, or don’t vote at all.

Another thing I have to thank the Democratic party for… Really? You couldn’t come up with better candidates?

OH and for the record… I’m registering Independent. Because both parties have so utterly and completely failed our nation.

Later that day…

Well, that was easy. I just changed my voter registration to “Independent” online. Gee it’s nice when governmental online stuff actually works.

Now, if only the same could be said for CoveredCalifornia’s website or the Employment Development website. Both sites are terrible, buggy, and clearly untested across multiple web-browsers and operating systems.

Later Still… 

I realized that the American Independent Party doesn’t really align with my world view. In fact they seem to be a little to the right of the more radical parts of the Republican party. Clearly I’d confused The American Independent with someone else. 

So I began more research. I know that it’s not ever going to be a perfect fit between a party and me so it’s a matter of who fits best.

So the American Independent party is out.

The Democratic party is a complete no-go

The Republicans have drifted away from the principals they had back in my Dad’s time (When I first registered to vote)

The Green party is the Democratic party on steroids and a no go.

Obviously the Communist party is right out.

The Libertarian Party… Hey, their platform / mission statement resonates. Minimal Government, Freedom of the individual, personal responsibility, individualism.

Hmmmm.

Wow! There are a lot of political parties in the US. This is going to take some time to analyze.

But analyze I will. I want to be a member of a party that actually represents my beliefs and I want to be joined by other like minded people because in numbers there is strength.

I’m tired of tone deaf political parties that are only interested in their agendas and actively ignore the will or rights of the people they’re supposed to be representing.