Category: Government

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Election Day!

Happy Election Day!

It’s a cold rainy day here on the mountain. On the plus side, at least I’m not having to walk through snow to the polling place and back. Yes, I’ve done that in past elections. It’s been raining enough here that if it was only a few degrees colder we’d have a foot or more of snow.

If it’s raining where you are, don’t let that stop you from casting your vote!

I don’t buy the hyperbole about voting for the soul of the nation. 

In fact I don’t care what your politics are, or your party preference. 

What I do care about is that you vote. Vote your conscience, vote for candidates that represent your beliefs, vote because it’s your civic duty.

If you can’t be bothered to do this one thing, then you have no voice and I’m not going to listen to you whining about the results after the election.

IVoted

Personally, I’m hoping to see Gavin Newsom tossed out, unfortunately here in California that won’t make much of a difference because there are a lot of bad ideas that have ossified into the dreaded, “We’ve always done it this way,” mindset in this state.

I would enjoy seeing Gavin standing there with his hair blown back in surprise. I know it’s kind of a cheap shot but I’d love to see his smug arrogance take a nice uppercut. For clarity’s sake, I’m not advocating physical violence to Gavin, I’m speaking metaphorically about his attitude and arrogance taking a hit.

There was a time when such disclaimers weren’t necessary, these days though, people seem to be searching for anything they can spin into something it’s not.

I pray that Newsom takes such a drubbing that any presidential aspirations he may have, get flushed down the toilet. The whole country knows what Newsom has done to California. I’m hoping that they remember it in 2024 and decide they don’t want the rest of the country to follow California’s lead. Let the wonder that is Kamala Harris be a warning to everyone.

I’ve been fascinated by the Democrat messaging over the past week or so. (Spending hours on end in a car means you listen to a lot of radio.) The message seems almost like they’re expecting to take a major hit. Some candidates sounded like they just expected to win without really putting in the work.

These candidates seem quite surprised that they’re being challenged strongly by their opponents. When asked why their opponent is doing so well in polls they’re unable to answer. To me that speaks to a profound disconnect between the incumbents and their constituents. In a nutshell, that’s the answer.  Many of them appear to be blindsided that their voters are interested in much more basic issues than special interest stuff. Most of us are really focused on basic necessities.

How can so many candidates have missed or ignored that?

The Republican Party appears to have capitalized on the concerns most Americans have. What remains to be seen is if they were lying to get into office or if the candidates really meant what they said on the campaign trail. 

Time and vote counts will tell.

There was a piece in Politico that says in part, “The 2020 presidential election was rife with allegations of voting machine hacks that were later debunked. Yet there are real risks that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday’s vote.” 

That one was a head snapper. I thought there was no possibility that the election could be tampered with. Isn’t that what we were told after the 2020 election? So what’s changed?

More from Politico

Wireless modems enabling hacks of voting machines or vote tallies

At least seven states and Washington, D.C., use wireless modems to transmit unofficial election-night results to their central offices. These modems use telecommunications networks that are vulnerable to hackers, and malicious actors could exploit them to tamper with unofficial vote data, corrupt voting machines or compromise the computers used to tally official results.

Really? So are we to assume that since the 2020 election which was “perfect and secure”, that some states have taken steps to make the voting process more vulnerable? If these states haven’t made the process less secure, then can we assume that these states were as vulnerable in 2020 as they are today?

Does that mean that law suits filed by Trump which were dismissed as having no standing should be re-evaluated? 

I’m sorry, but I’m kind of a binary guy. Either something is a problem or it’s not, Politico seems to be playing both sides depending on which party wins. How about we just settle for reporting the actual facts, and let the chips fall where they may? That would seem to be a simpler way to deal with politics and life in general. 

President Biden’s speech may have muddied the voting waters as well. Listening to his speech I couldn’t help but think he was setting us all up for endless challenges about ballot counts and election integrity. As if we haven’t had quite enough of all of that over the past two years. What happens when the Democrats become “Election Deniers”? How does that play out?

If both parties become election deniers, does that mean both groups are domestic terrorists?

I’m looking for a change in this election.

I’d like to see someone tap the brakes on the excessive spending in Washington.

Instead of hiking the interest rates to curb inflation, how about we fix the supply chain issues? More products on the shelves and in the pipeline would also curb inflation.

I hope that our politicians pay more attention to the immediate issues that we’re all facing.

Go Vote, and have a good day!

 

The rain has picked up quite a bit. The normally dry creek bed behind the house is roaring, rocks the size of small cars are tumbling down the mountain. It’s causing the ground to shake almost as if there’s an earthquake.

When I think of all the water rushing down to the desert floor, I’m hoping that it makes it into the ground and replenishes the aquifers a bit.

Before all the streets and rain culverts, water ran down and soaked right in. On old aerial maps a perfect example of an alluvial plain was clearly visible. Today, with all the streets, parking lots, and pavement, localized flooding is becoming more common at the base of the mountain. Builders and City officials literally paved over the alluvial plain and now spend tons of taxpayer’s money combating the flooding. It would have been simpler to take the hint from nature and not allow building there in the first place.

For all our knowledge, humans miss the obvious more often than not.

I’ve often thought there should be wilderness buffer zones between communities. I picture areas that provide habitat for wildlife and access for runoff to soak into the ground. Zones as I envision them, would provide places for walking, hiking and communing with nature. I’m not talking about miles wide buffers, I’m talking about 1/4 of a mile or so green belts.

I guess the problem is that some people would see wilderness areas as places to dump their trash and do bad things.

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What a surprise… As if anyone expected anything different.

Color me surprised

There is no doubt Democrats, are quite orgasmic over the January 6th committee issuing a subpoena to former President Donald Trump.

As if there was ever any doubt that’s exactly what they would do.

Was anyone surprised? Did we need the theater? Did we need to waste  untold millions of dollars? Did we need to see the further debasement of the the rule of law? Does anyone believe that the timing of this is anything more than a “Hail Mary” play just before the midterms?

Liz Cheney is toast, this is her last grandstand play and I hope that we never see her in the political arena again. The rest of these “lawmakers” and I’m bastardizing the term by applying it to them, are probably toast as well.  Not over the Jan 6th committee bullshit but over terrible policies and lack of service for their constituents.

Surely all, but the most rabid supporters of the Democrat party realize at some level, the January 6th Committee was a Soviet style, kangaroo trial. Hopefully everyone finds it as distasteful as I do.

Nothing I’ve heard or read of the “testimony” in this hearing appears to be anything more than hearsay, and as such, is inadmissible in actual court proceedings.

This whole Jan 6th hearing has been beneficial in one way. It has provided ample demonstration to America of the absolute rot in our government.

I don’t mean to say that the government is rotten because the hearing is about Trump,

It was the manner in which the hearing was carried out. Closed door sessions, allegations made with no opportunity to rebut or cross examine, witnesses whose testimony was second hand, various people referenced in testimony who were not called as direct witnesses.

This is not justice, nor is this hearing indicative of the American Justice System we portray to the world. This is exactly the kind of Stalin-esq hearing that American denounced during the era of the U.S.S.R.

The Jan 6th hearing and all the protestors being held in what amounts to a gulag speaks to me of a system that is corrupt beyond imagining.

If there is a “Red Wave” in November I will tune in to C-SPAN every day to watch the hearings investigating the Jan 6th committee and every single member of Congress responsible for it.

My problem is this;

I don’t think that Congress should be investigating Congress. That’s having the fox guard the henhouse.

I’d be a lot happier if the Supreme Court of the United States oversaw the State Supreme courts, and State Attorneys General investigation into Congress.

I think looking at their actions over the past 8-10 years would be a great start. Every state has an interest in the integrity of Congress, and 50 states looking at Congress at the same time, pulling on threads, digging into facts, might have a chance of burning out all the corruption and saving our Constitutional Republic.

No doubt this would take a lot of resources. However, I think the American People need to see that justice is served to all regardless of their station in life. It would go a long way toward restoring the people’s faith in government, if corrupt members of Congress were marched off to prison, just like everyone else.

Just to make it fair, I’d like to see Congress members accused of corruption, tired by jury outside their home states.

Hell, I’d volunteer to sit on a jury of a Congress member. I’d hear the evidence and vote based on the evidence presented. I’d be in favor of any guilty Congress member serving out their time in general population federal prisons.

I know, that probably makes me a radical, and 15 minutes after I post this, the FBI will be kicking my door down.

Our Republic is worth it.

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I received my Voter information guide

Yea…

127 pages long. I guess I’ve got some reading and research to do.

I’m so angry at both political parties, I’m tempted to just vote Libertarian or Independent down the line so long as it is against all incumbents. Not that it would matter.

I don’t necessarily believe that the 2020 election as stolen. I believe that there were simply that many people who hated Trump and would have voted for road kill consisting of a rancid opossum instead of Trump. In Biden, what they got isn’t far off.

I do believe that there were enough voting irregularities to justify asking questions and really investigating. I’m still super pissed off that so many courts dismissed out of hand allegations of voter fraud and now guess what?

Turns out that there was voter fraud, though not on the scale that Trump alleged. As we’ve now heard in a limited way (thanks to our incompetent news organizations), there were irregularities in MN, AZ, and WI. We’re not talking minor gaffes, we’re talking really illegal stuff that has no business being allowed in the voting process. Oh, and to be clear, these irregularities happened on both sides of the political divide.

Turnip

I can only conclude, the American people apparently wanted a turnip as President. Well, now we’ve got a Turnip in Chief and how’s that going?

I ashamed that my Mother voted for Biden. In her case, he was familiar and he was old, and she believes 100% anything that CNN says. She’s too tired to actually fact check herself.

Prior to the election, I was chatting with someone that I know more or less well. He was happy to vote for Biden, but knew nothing about Harris. I told him that she was an idiot. He’s new to California and didn’t know anything about her. He was surprised when I called Harris a tramp that apparently had a golden hole and slept her way to power.

“Dude, that’s pretty strong!”
“Well, I’m entitled to my opinion,” I replied.

We haven’t talked politics for a while. In fact we haven’t seen each other in over 2 years. I’d be interested in pouring him a stiff drink and asking if he still thought I was wrong.

The shittiest part of the midterms in California is that I have zero faith in voting.

I notice that in this election, I will not be able to cast my vote against Adam Schiff, maybe I’ll be in California long enough to write in “broken dildo” as a candidate against him. Hey if we can elect a turnip from president, why not something equally useless as a senator?

I suppose that I’m like a lot of other people in the country. It’s not that, “My Candidate” isn’t elected, it’s that the elected candidates aren’t listening. They spend decades doing the same thing over and over again and call it important work even when the victims of that important work are telling them, “This shit isn’t working!”

Their answer is always the same, “Let’s spend more money on this plan that isn’t working,” then hamstring everyone to more rules and regulations that insure the plan can never work.

This is why I’m in favor of smaller government, when something is too big its course can’t easily be changed. The nasty truth of big systems and lot of rules and regulations is that they inevitably lead to graft and corruption.

Mr. Scott from StarTrek famously quipped, “The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works.”

We all know when the works get stopped up, things flow into places they were never supposed to. This is true of money flowing through a government.

The difference is that corrupt politicians are more than happy to scoop clogged money into their pockets. While they will immediately run from a clogged toilet. In Nancy’s house, the screeching probably sounds like, “Where a Mexican to clean this mess up?”

That doesn’t sound too different from my Grandfather telling me as a 5 or 6 year old to, “Go get the ’N’ word to clean that up.”

Nothing has changed.

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Funny, I don’t feel any better!

President Joe Biden gave a speech last night.

Normally, I dutifully ignore his speeches because they are often full of inaccuracies and hyperbole. This is true of most speeches any President, Premier, Prime Minister, Potentate, Dictator, or whatever may make.

I would have ignored the Biden Speech as well. Except that all the sudden my phone started buzzing with News Alerts. Those too I would have ignored, except for this image.

GettyImages 1242872745

Upon seeing this image, I pulled up the entire speech and sat through all 29 grueling minutes.

I was very annoyed at the fact that I had to keep adjusting the volume on the TV to hear him. One second, he’s whispering and the next he’s bellowing. (I feel really sorry for the sound crew. They must have been losing their minds too.)

On the one hand The President was saying some things I actually agree with. We should all be working together, political violence is wrong.

Okay, I thought, “I agree with you.”

Then The President veered into his MAGA, Semi-Fascist, rhetoric and he totally lost me.

The President wanted us to know that he doesn’t hate all Republicans. He came close to sounding like the racist who proudly tells someone he has Black Friends. The President wanted us to know he knows America’s heart. That didn’t quite ring true because he is clearly not listening to an increasing number of Americans of all stripes who say they think the country is heading in the wrong direction, (If polls are to be believed.)

I’m a visual kind of guy.

As The President and The First Lady walked out to the podium the lighting was a basic white reflecting off Independence Hall. Then as The President started talking the lighting changes to a somber angry red. This isn’t a color scheme that’s uplifting, it’s dark, brooding, and forbidding.

I found the whole image profoundly disturbing. Perhaps this is because in my visual memory are images of Adolf Hitler giving fiery speeches decrying the evil of the Juden against a background of Nazi flags.

Adolf Hitler speaking at the Lustgarten Berlin 1938

There was something really off about The President’s speech painting Independence Hall in that somber red flanked by Marines.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m old enough that we studied Hitler and Nazism in depth, in Social Studies. Let me say, Hitler was a fantastic orator. The cadence of the words in his speeches was mesmerizing even if you didn’t understand German.

Apologies for this image of Hitler’s back, there are very few surviving color images from that time. This one came to mind but the first one I thought of was him at a podium with the Nazi flag behind him. I can’t locate that image online right now.

The more The President spoke about the threats to Democracy and the danger of MAGA Republicans. The more I felt like I’d heard speeches like this before. Thankfully President Biden isn’t the orator that Hitler or other despots were.

But by the end of his speech I was profoundly uncomfortable. I didn’t sleep well last night at all.

I’m not a MAGA Republican. That being said, Hillary versus Trump was the first time I’d never cast a vote for President.

Two questionable choices isn’t a choice. Voting for bad or worse isn’t a viable option for the future of our nation.

In 2020, presented with Trump versus Biden. I voted for Trump. It was a simple choice because Biden was such a poor candidate, and Trump was the “Devil” we knew.

By that time, Trump had survived an impeachment, the Steele Dossier had been disproven, and claims of Russian Collusion were falling apart too. Trump is definitely not a saint, but by 2020 it had become fairly obvious that something more was afoot. The man called it as he saw it, sometimes he called it wrong but at least he spoke plainly. He didn’t take any bullshit.

By 2020 we’d seen the hypocrisy of many in Congress and the double standards were being exposed. The economy was running well, at least until COVID, yet even in the face of COVID, I think people were still pretty positive given the circumstances.

Does that make me a MAGA?

I don’t think so.

I am in favor of an America first agenda. I don’t think rabid nationalism is the solution, but I have no problem thinking of my nation first. I don’t see that as a crime, or particularly selfish. We shouldn’t be feeding our enemies when people in our own country are homeless and hungry.

I’ve always appreciated the wisdom of the airline flight safety briefing.

“In the event of cabin depressurization, secure your oxygen mask before helping others.”

That concept of securing my own well being so that I have the strength and capacity to help others is just plain common sense.

The more President Biden spoke, the more my mind played tricks on me. In my mind’s eye I saw the background of speech altering. By the time The President finished speaking…

Biden Speech Altered 1

This is what was in my mind’s eye. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t shake the image.

The Marines standing in the background was completely un-necessary and I took it as an implied threat. Recently President Biden has said essentially, if you’re worried about giving up your AR-15s or other guns you shouldn’t because we have F-15s and your guns aren’t going to be much use against them.

He couched that in more florid terms but that’s what his statements have boiled down to in my head.

Marines standing behind The President comes across as a threat. Those Marines didn’t appear to be armed, they were too far from The President to afford much in the way of protection. The construction of the stage, walkway, and position of the podium itself precluded either of those Marines from taking action if The President was threatened.

They were Window Dressing.

The choice of location for this speech was also disturbing. Independence Hall, the place where our Founding Fathers debated and approved both, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution is a place that has very special meaning.

President Biden has said publicly that The Constitution is not absolute. During his speech, he singled out a group of Americans that simply disagree with he and his party. Mind you this is a group of people exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and that includes their right to disagree.

Somehow, The President’s speech and his earlier comments about The Constitution made it seem like he was intentionally defiling Independence Hall.

I want to believe that wasn’t his intention. I want to believe that his handlers and “Show Runners” just didn’t think about it in that light.

Nonetheless, it still feels like somehow The President diminished the revered status of the site last night.

As a conservative leaning Libertarian this President concerns me greatly.

This speech left a very bad taste in my mouth and I suspect that it had the same effect on millions of other people who generally speaking, are middle of the road politically.

The President may have created more MAGA Semi-Fascists last night than he intimidated.

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The so called Student Debt Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness.

On the one hand I have to say that some of the lending practices are predatory.

How can they not have been? You’ve got kids graduating from High School, without much in the way of financial knowledge. I’ve known kids who couldn’t balance their checkbook. In some cases they don’t understand how credit cards can suck you down the tube if you’re not paying attentions to interest rates.

For a High School graduate to show up on a college campus, someplace they’ve been told all their lives they have to attend, and seeing how much it’s going to cost, then being offered a loan that pays for it all. This is perhaps predatory by its nature.

Maybe the 101 classes for a new college student should be basic money management and understanding how compound interest works. Those classes should be attended before they’ve committed to anything.

Then with the student armed with real world useful information they can make an informed decision about taking out the loan and perhaps this would inform the student’s choice of major.

All that being said, this Federal Loan Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness.

Loan forgiveness would be the lender says “We’re reducing your existing loan by 10,000” and the lender would take the loss.

This situation our Government is going to pay 10,000 to the lenders. Where does that money come from, from the American Taxpayers.

What this means is that folks who’ve paid their loans off, and folks that went to trade schools, and folks who just went to work out of High School will in fact, be paying for college. Not for themselves, but for other people that made poor or uninformed decisions.

At its core, this is indentured servitude.

Taxpayers are being forced to work for someone else.

I was reminded of the quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

– Ayn Rand

This one also sprung to mind;

“The moral justification of capitalism is man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.”

– Ayn Rand

This is not to imply that I’m heartless. Although, I can be.

The question that springs to my mind is; “Would people respond well to a stranger walking into their home and simply taking one of their possessions?”

I’d suggest that most people would react poorly. I believe that most people would get angry even if the person “Needed” the item.

Yet we’re expected to accept precisely this proposition via our taxation process. As if the taxation process somehow changes the basic wrongness of theft. Taxation like this is just theft with extra steps.

I’ve always been skeptical of those who’ve expressed the concept that Taxation is theft. But in light of this loan forgiveness plan coming out of the Biden Administration, I’m rethinking my former skepticism.