Well, lost another friendly acquaintance today…

No they didn’t die.

We were riding in my car and happened to pass by a F*&K BIDEN sign.

My passenger muttered, “fucking Trumper.”

I chuckled then asked, “What makes you think that household is a Trump household?”

My Passenger replied, “That Fuck Biden sign.”

I pointed out that simply not liking Biden doesn’t mean someone is automatically pro-Trump. It could just as easily be a commentary on the job Biden has done in the past 18 months.

“Nah, Biden is so much better than Trump”, my passenger said.

I posited this, “If you remove emotion about Trump from the equation entirely and evaluate only Biden’s performance. Are you better off now, 18 months after Biden took office than you were prior to Biden taking office?”

That got my passenger thinking, but they didn’t reply.

I continued, “For example, The day Biden took office, one of my small 401Ks was worth 17K, almost double what the original investment was. Today that 401K is worth 12K. So in 18 months The Biden Administration policies have disrupted the economy sufficiently that I’ve lost almost all the gains. Even during COVID at the tail end of 2019 and through 2020 that 401K investment continued to gain in value.”

My passenger retorted, ” Well COVID hurt the entire country.”

I replied, “To be sure, COVID did have an effect. But why has that effect catalyzed in the first 18 months of The Biden Administration? Further why has the economy faltered so dramatically? Why are we looking at a recession? Why has the supply chain not recovered? Why have base fuel prices, not just gasoline, but diesel and other petroleum goods risen so dramatically? The previous Administration had one full year of COVID as has the Current Administration.”

My passenger said, “Well Trump made a mess of the government and Biden is fixing it. That is going to take time.”

I said, “Okay, then by your logic Trump somehow screwed up the government and the economy, effectively creating a house of cards waiting to fall, that Biden needed to fix?”

“Well yeah,” my passenger said.

I offered, “There are two ways to deal with a house of cards. One is to tear it down and start over, the other way is to leave it the hell alone.”

“So you’re a Trumper?” My passenger asked.

“Nope. I’m a fucking realist! If you don’t understand something, don’t fuck with it! That’s one of the more simple rules of life. If the Biden Administration didn’t understand whatever machinations Trump may or may not have put in the government, they shouldn’t have started hacking away at them. Beyond that, I’m very concerned that our country has gotten to the point that simply being critical of Biden elicits the assumption that whoever is speaking critically of The President, must automatically be a Trumper. That kind of polarized thinking is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to civil wars, or violence in the streets.”

My passenger said, “There can’t be a civil war here.”

“Oh? Why not?” I asked making a right turn.

“The military is controlled by The President. He wouldn’t allow a civil war to happen,” came my passenger’s reply.

I replied, “That, by definition, would be a civil war. Just FYI… The US military, and I don’t have exact numbers, is probably outnumbered 30 to 1, or more by able bodied, and armed, people of the United States. Some units may stand down in the face of an illegal order to fire on the very people they exist to protect. The Biden Administration giving such an order would likely cause chaos in the ranks, resulting in more units standing down as they questioned whether they were serving The Constitution, and The Republic, or a dictatorship. The practical upshot would be that their effectiveness would be further reduced. Also consider our military is very effective in a wide variety of engagements. But our military and in fact, most militaries fall short in urban / guerrilla warfare. Vietnam and Afghanistan underscore that point nicely. Generally speaking, the people of the United States would have the home turf advantage, since it is unlikely US Military units would be locals to the areas they’d be called in to quell.”

“They’d have to follow orders,” my passenger said.

“Or what? They’d be shot by their own comrades? Imprisoned? Either way their effectiveness would be reduced, and the rage of cold, hungry, broke, homeless citizens would be further inflamed at the atrocity being committed in their name. It’s a no win scenario for The Biden Administration to call out the military.”

We passed another 4 F*&K BIDEN signs in people’s yards.

“Why are there so many Trumpers in this town,” My passenger asked again.

“Because they’re not Trumpers. They’re exercising their First Amendment Right to express themselves. There are more of those signs everyday because more people disagree with the policies of President Biden. Two of the last four signs weren’t there last Thursday.”

“They should be taken down by the police. They’re disrespectful!” My passenger asserted.

“So you’re a communist?” I asked.

“NO! How could you say that?” My passenger demanded.

“Well, you just said criticisms of The Leader were disrespectful and should be confiscated. Isn’t that one of the hallmarks of Communism or Dictatorships?” I asked.

Continuing, I said, “I’ve been thinking, I may have to get one of those signs. I’m extremely displeased with President Biden’s performance too.”

We rode on in silence.

My passenger did have the courtesy to thank me for the ride as they disembarked. I don’t think they’ll be riding with me, or speaking to me, in the future. Of course, since I’m a decent human being, if they were to ask and offered to pay for gas, I’d get them where they wanted to go.

Possibly with a F*&K Biden bumper sticker affixed to my car…

Hard Choices

I remind you, that it is not immoral to secure your oxygen mask, before helping others with theirs.

In a disaster or industrial accident, It is not immoral to save those who have a good chance of survival by providing medical resources to them, while providing pain killers, but not wasting medical resources, to those who are suffering but who will not survive.

These are admittedly stark choices. Yet we’re all familiar with them. During the COVID pandemic doctors and nurses essentially made these decisions in hospitals nationwide.

We accepted this without question.

The talking heads on our screens went so far as to say, those who did not comply with masking, vaccines, and isolation… Should be left to die.

That these “Journalists” weren’t called out on such statements and their disappointment that millions of (R) voters didn’t die is a sign of how far “Journalism” has fallen in this country.


Why, given these harsh but acceptable realities do we refuse to accept that we cannot help every single less fortunate country?

Our farming community is warning that there will likely be more food shortages in the coming months.

Yet we continue to send grain to other countries. We continue to allow people to swarm the southern border, are we condemning these poor souls to starvation?

Inflation and high fuel prices are predicted to be with us until at least 2023. It will cost more to heat our homes in the winter. It will cost more for electricity and water, year round.

Getting to, and from work, will cost more. Bus fares, taxis, or train fares, will all go up regardless of how they’re powered.

As we’ve seen, gasoline for automobiles has skyrocketed, making commuting to work more expensive, and working from home more desirable.

Median housing prices have topped $400,000 according to Consumer Affairs. This will drag rental prices up, further pricing low middle, and low income people out of decent housing.

These folks will not be able to buy a home, and as their rent increases they’ll be pushed further under water, making it hard for them to simply hold on to what they have.

Can you really work from home if you’re sharing a one bedroom apartment with 5 other people? How’s that important teleconference going to work with people coming and going in the background?

Adding millions of immigrants with varying skills, literacy, and language abilities, to the population will only increase strain on state and federal resources. Additionally, doesn’t this fuel rental scarcity and rent increases?

Would a landlord prefer to evict people already in apartments who may occasionally have trouble paying their rent on time, for a guaranteed income paid for by Government aid to house immigrants?

There is a growing scarcity of medical professionals. More skilled doctors are retiring all the time. Some cite burnout from COVID, others cite stresses imposed on them by insurance bureaucracies and lack of qualified staff.

Will newcomers to this country soon be adding to the hoards of people already waiting for care in emergency rooms? What effect does that have on already stressed medical professionals? If the burnout among medical professionals increases won’t the quality of healthcare be diminished as a result?

Will hospitals and Emergency Rooms have to add full time translators to their staff just to communicate? What will these realities, and those I can’t imagine, do to cost of medical care?

Our government’s solution to the problem is to keep taking people in, and spread them around the country. That works in the short term. But longer term, unless the inflow is stopped, all the current solution does is create desperation, ghettos, and hopelessness.

The tragedy is that many of these people have traveled thousands of miles at great personal risk, some of them taking on incredible debt to criminal organizations, only to be put right back in conditions similar to those they left.

How disheartening must it be to go through all that hardship and suffering only to end up in a place that looks exactly like where they left, their job prospects are the same or worse, everything is more expensive, and they don’t understand the culture or the language to boot.

This is why, until recently, most first world nations had very strict immigration quotas and enforced them. It wasn’t about cruelty or malice. It was the practical realization that groups of immigrants (illegal or otherwise) need time to assimilate into a new culture. Time to find productive employment, and time to move out of assisted housing to stand on their own.

That these same first world nations so vehemently criticized our nation’s attempts at curbing illegal immigration is another matter.

Now that they are being overrun themselves it would be easy to smile and tell them, “See, we told you so…” That would be counterproductive, fair, but counterproductive.

It will be interesting to see what these countries say to our nation when they start their deportation flights. At least one, maybe two EU countries are doing exactly that. They’ve seen they can’t help, and are trying to send people back to their points of origin.

A better solution would be for the United States, and these EU nations to make it known;

“DON’T COME! Your situation will be no better here. Don’t risk your lives or the lives of your family. You’ll only be deported, and what money you spent will be wasted.”

For the US, we need to complete the border wall. There are those who’ll say people find their way around and over the wall. Yep, they do. But not hundreds or thousands in a month.

The wall won’t stop the flow entirely, but it may reduce it to a manageable level. A level that allows proper hearings, proper evaluation of asylum requests, and a way for the system to work as it’s intended. This would allow those who legitimately request asylum to be housed, fed, integrated into communities, and welcomed.

The time is coming when we’ll have to accept it’s time to put our own oxygen masks on, and leave the fate of others… In their own hands.

It’s not fair.

The antelope on the African savanna doesn’t think it’s fair the lion is eating him. That doesn’t stop the lion. The lion doesn’t think it’s fair that he’s been hungry for 5 days either.

Life rarely deals out equitable outcomes. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we’ll be able to make changes that will allow us to help those we can help.

This is why I’m in favor of immigration control. I think it’s cruel to allow people to believe in a dream of The United States, strive to get here and then destroy them with the reality that they’re no better off.


Afghanistan had a major earthquake. Sorry!

The Taliban…

The Fucking Taliban! Is asking for aid, a.k.a. CASH to help with their recovery efforts.

I wish I was in a position to tell them two words via diplomatic channels.

FUCK OFF!

Clean up your own mess. That’s what a functioning government does. If you can’t take care of an earthquake, you don’t deserve to be in power.

For me, it’s that cut & dried. I’m sorry a thousand innocent people lost their lives, that’s where my largess ends.

We fought you terrorist assholes for 20 years. Biden left you 80 Billion in arms and equipment, (which is now showing up in black markets around the globe).

You assholes have more than enough assets to clean up the mess. That is, if you can take 10 minutes to write a check, or a month of black market profit and put it into your country, instead of your pockets.

Why should America or any other civilized nation prop up your failed government? It’s far simpler and cheaper to allow your people to see what kind of failures, and how corrupt you are.

Maybe someone will loan your people a bulldozer to shove all your body parts into a mass grave full of pig offal. Because when they figure out you’re stealing bread from their tables, they’re gonna rip you apart with their bare hands.

We have problems of our own. Our politicians, who may not be much better than the Taliban when it comes to corruption, will be looking to cover their own asses if shortages continue, or increase in the civilized world.

Tell you what Taliban… Call Venezuela see what they can do for you.

Until then, you Taliban jackasses better sleep alone. It will probably be the women you take to rape, that slit your throats.

Calendar Cleaning! That’s better!

Where did all these observances come from?

A while ago, I subscribed to an online Calendar that neatly stuck all the US holidays into my digital Calendar.

It was nice at first. Everything that I wanted to know was there. I could plan long weekends and knew when it was likely to be a bad day to go to the bank or post office.

As is usual for me with these things, I simply forgot about it and was content that I wouldn’t have to enter holidays that moved around from year to year depending on Fridays or Mondays closest to the actual date if the holiday fell on a Saturday or Sunday.

Years go by. There was small additions to the observances, but they were pretty mundane. One here, one there, in a month. No big deal.

A few more years go by.

Today I opened my calendar to full month view for the first time in I don’t know when.

WTF?!?!

My once simple calendar was now loaded with all kinds of observances and holidays that mean nothing to me. There were literally hundreds of Civil Servants days. Obama Day? Librarians Day? 4 different wordings of Juneteenth? Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day?

In some cases there were so many observances on a single day that the “All Day” section of the calendar was saying +9 more because it couldn’t display them all in the space provided.

There were also duplicates… So Many duplicates! (I hate duplicate data.)

Come on…

Unless it’s a national holiday and therefore a day off from work, or the banks are closed. I don’t care.

There was a time when it was nice to see “National Secretaries Day” but now, it’s become easier to find a day without some observance or another than to pay attention to all the observances.

It’s all become noise, a distraction. Is my calendar free for that day? Who can tell at a glance anymore?

After spending a few minutes trying to figure out the best way to flush all the random crap that had become meaningless. I decided instead to simply unsubscribe from what had once been a very useful service.

My calendar took 2 minutes to reconcile itself.

When it was done…

AHHHHH! Once again at a glance, I can see my schedule without having to open the day to specifically check.

My appointments, and mine alone show up. Their little green tags clearly show how much of my day they occupy. They’re not being overwritten by events and observances that don’t matter.

My historical calendar is visible again. This is a calendar that I created years ago with neat facts about the day in history. Amelia Earharts take off, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the date of the Norman invasion, that kind of thing. In each of these entries notes section I’d put detailed information about the event.

Suddenly Anniversaries, Birthdays, and my stuff is all there, with the original color coding I’d selected, instead of a muddy mess.

You know, it’s not so hard to enter “Real” Holidays into my calendar. There are some that require special treatment, but it’s a small price to pay for a clean readable schedule.

This is what happens when you pander to everyone.

Maybe we should pick just a few biggies and leave the rest to be observed by those who care?

Conservatives, It’s not enough…

It’s not enough to whinge and complain.

The question is, how will we address the issues we’re complaining about?

It’s not enough to sit behind keyboards making nasty comments about liberals or Democrats.

In doing this we’re no better than the liberals or Democrats that do the same on Twitter.

It’s not enough to boycott this company, or that.

Are we brave enough, to not only boycott the company who’s offended, but to boycott their parent company? Are we strong enough to boycott the other companies who share board members with the company we’re boycotting?

It’s not enough to say the election was stolen, or Trump 2024 or DeSantis 2024.

Have we actually done the research to validate the assertion or political choice, or simply repeating what we’ve been told, casting votes for the person the Republican Party says to?

It’s not enough to watch conservative curated snippets of the Jan 6th hearing.

Watching curated snippets that cast the hearing in a negative light, is no different than those watching the hearing and swallowing the snippets the committee has curated and says is true.

I think for myself. I’ve looked at the available information and made choices. They weren’t always the correct choices, or even the best choices. But I own them. For better or worse, they’re mine.

I look at the time and effort spent endlessly commenting on Twitter, Gab, Truth Social, Facebook, News articles, American Thinker, Breitbart, and the myriad other conservative outlets, and I have to ask.

Is this all we’ve got?

An upvote?
A snarky comment?
A meme?
An online argument?
A ‘share’ with followers?

Really?

Obviously we all have computers. How about spending all that energy, time and resource to figure a way out of this mess?

If, as so many of you say, the ship is sinking, it’s no matter who’s right and who’s wrong. The water is rising, we’ll all drown. Whatever differences we had will be settled in silence.

Will we go the route of Melville:

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

Or will we put aside our differences, bridge the gap, and demonstrate what we’ve said we stand for.

Work!

Doing what needs to be done, because it needs doing.

Not for fame, not for riches, or clicks, or accolades. But because the survival of our country is in our best interest. Implicitly demonstrating that Capitalism is what ultimately drives societies forward to better futures.

So what if there will be those whose asses undeservedly get pulled from the water?

They, will stand as witnesses to the abject failure of marxism, socialism, or communism. Their survival and shame will haunt them all the days of their wretched lives. Because they will know they live by our largess, not by the sweat of their brow or the work of their own hand.

So Conservatives, and our more middle of the road friends…

Let’s get to work.

Put the phone down, push back from your keyboards, stop feeding the beast of the media, and self indulgent click bait.

Assess your skills and knowledge then direct it at the problems at hand.

How do we get this country’s supply chain moving?

Retired Truckers, Longshoremen, material handlers, shippers, planners? It’s time for you to take the stage.

How do we stop more and more people climbing onto a sinking lifeboat?

Retired diplomats, ambassadors, immigration professionals, Any thoughts?

What do we have to do to be energy independent?

Retired oil producers, roughnecks, drilling crews, coal miners, power plant workers, Nuclear engineers, This is your bailiwick.

How do we peacefully, yet undeniably make our voices heard in the halls of power?

Children of the ’50s, ’60s, 70’s 80’s. We were really good at making Washington listen. It’s time for us to decorate our walkers, dust off our signs, create easily remembered slogans, songs, and present clear and unified messages. It’s time to march once again.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

I know us old farts wanted to leave the issues to the young. We wanted to go fishing, put our feet up, watch the sunset, and pass peacefully from this mortal coil.

Unfortunately, our Nation, our Home isn’t done with us yet. “Once more into the breach dear friends…”

It sucks! But it is what it is.

Perhaps we can enjoy fishing and the sunset for a while after we help set things right.

Huzzah!

After 24 hours without power. We have electricity again.

The scheduled outage was only supposed to be for 12 hours.

We’re going through the Fridge and the Freezer to see just how much this cost us.

It’s funny, the worst day of the fire, we only lost power for 4 hours. The repairs left us without power for 24 hours. Obviously there was some way they were getting power to us.

Couldn’t they have replaced the poles, and lines that burned, while keeping the power on, then turned everything off for a few hours to make the final connections?

Just one of those questions that flits through my mind…

I’d already pulled the emergency solar panels out of the basement this morning. They’ve been charging my battery pack all morning. The battery pack got us through, keeping the phones and other essentials charged, but they were nearing empty this morning. I figured I’d grab all the solar energy I could, as soon as the sun came up.

The packs made it to about 50% charge using the panels. Pretty good now that I think about it. I’ll top them off using their adapters.

Still holding off restarting the server. The electric company has teased us before. I’m also leaving the solar panels handy for the same reason.

Ahhh, that first cup of coffee in the morning…


Now off to continue the battle with Federal Express. Big surprise, their website still shows the tracking number with “Delivery Estimate Pending”

But I’m going to finish a second cup of coffee before I pick up the phone!


The fire is over 80% contained, the last I checked. So perhaps we dodged a bullet this time around. Reports say no injuries, (to people, animals, or livestock,) no loss of buildings.

Those fire crews can come by my place anytime. I’ll pour them a glass of my best bourbon. If I can find some at the store I’ll cook ‘em steaks.

That’s the report from the mountain.

One plus to all of this…

I’ve been blissfully unaware of much of the news. I’d rather conserve power than doom scroll.

Did one of the networks really switch to golf while the Jan 6th hearings were being televised? WOW!

I wonder what the ratings are.