Tag: General

Posted on

Okay, that’s better, the evacuation warnings have been lifted.

Cloud clouds blue sky.Thanks to a lot of firemen who’ve worked their asses off to get the Bridge fire under control, the evacuation warning has ben cancelled for Wrightwood.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the west end of town took a hit. I’m not sure yet how many homes were damaged or destroyed.

It’s easy to say it could have been worse. That’s a true statement, but for those folks who lost their homes, it is worse. Much Worse.

I know, I’ve been through it. You feel disconnected. Your place in the world is gone, and you’re faced with a million tiny decisions all of which feel like you’re making the wrong choice. Loved ones look to you for strength and guidance. It’s easy to forget that this is one of those burdens that is best shared and that together you’ll all get through it.

There are some things that you’ll never fully get over. To this day, a roaring smoky fire in a fireplace can freak me out. That’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get past. But a lot of the other stuff is eventually left by the side of the road you travel.

There was brief rain yesterday that helped was some of the smoky smell out of the air. We could have done with a lot more gentle rain, but I’m not going to complain. For me it’s the sound of rain the roof thats soothing.

Yesterday, I felt pretty crappy most of the day so I appreciated the sound for as long as it lasted. I’m feeling better this morning, which is a good thing because I’ve got chores to do.

The sky is clear and blue this morning. It’s going to be a good day & now I’m off to walk the dog.

Posted on

A couple of days ago Governor Newsom signed some free speech bills

These two bills are not the end of the First Amendment. But if they’re allowed to stand, they could begin the erosion of the First Amendment.

I believe these two bills will have a chilling effect on political memes within California and I’m not sure how these will play out in situations where the host servers are not located in California.

The problem I see is that if California is allowed to prosecute memes regardless of where the creator lives, then defacto censorship is likely to extend across the entire nation. I honestly wonder about the longevity of this blog.

I’ve expressed some pretty strong opinions about our political candidates and even created one or two memes that are very unflattering to several presidents, vice presidents, and governors.

Will I be arrested? Will I have my First Amendment rights stripped from me? I’m a little guy, I can’t afford to mount a legal defense against the deep pockets of the State of California.

So until I understand the ramifications of the new laws, I think I’ll not be posting anything of a political nature.

Let’s think about this for a moment.

Due to uncertainty, and fear of unfair prosecution, I’m self censoring. This is exactly what these laws seek to do.

I’ll be reading these laws very carefully and looking at the details of what precisely they’ll prohibit. After I understand the law I’ll return to making political comments. I’m willing to bet there will be other people that just stop talking.

I happen to believe that if people aren’t allowed to speak… okay, bitch, and complain. Then like the boiler with a broken pressure relief valve, the pressure will just build until until what would have been unflattering speech will become something far worse.

The first read of these bills looks like they’re targeting memes, and videos that appear to have the subject political figure saying something they didn’t say. A.K.A. disinformation.

The “Very Fine People Hoax” for example is the one that pops to mind instantly. Biden and Harris have both kept that hoax alive even though it’s been throughly debunked, and disproven. The news media cut the video of Trump in such a way that it appears he said Nazis were very fine people. He didn’t. A shit ton of people still believe he said it.

Mark Twain said, “No amount of evidence will ever convince an Idiot.”

Turns out if the TV says it, It’s gotta be true.

Under these new laws, would California seek to prosecute Joe Biden or Kamala Harris?

Who decides what is dis-information anyway? The Nazi Party had quite a division to make this determination and sent authorities to arrest those believed guilty of creating or spreading dis-information.

Is this the America we want to live in? Do we want to have a Nazi-esq group of jack booted enforcers kicking down doors because some of us forwarded a picture of a dog looking up at the camera with a concerned face., and a caption, “I know we’re visiting family in Springfield, don’t let me out of your sight,” because it was funny.

It doesn’t matter if Haitians are literally eating cats & dogs or if it’s meant as a slur. The humor is visual, and conveyed by the dog’s expression. We as a people, used to be able to see humor without being so sensitive that it traumatized us.

I loved the Washington Post fact check on Trump when he said, “we had hamburgers piled a mile high.” They said, “at 2 inches high, 700 hamburgers wouldn’t be a mile high”

Duh! Really? You don’t say. It was an exaggeration. A figure of speech, no-one in their right mind actually thought Trump had stacked hamburgers 1 mile high.

We used to not have a problem with these sorts of exaggerations either. We as a people used to recognize that our leaders were human. We used to give them a pass on some silliness. We became concerned if the leader repeated the error. Then we’d ask, “Excuse me? What did you say, and what did you actually mean by what you said?” When we asked that question, we expected an answer, plain & simple. We didn’t want or expect a bunch of BS language that said nothing and never provided an answer.

This was back in the day when Americans had a sense of humor.

When was the last time you saw a good comedy routine?

I loved Netflix for their standup comedy. When there were fewer and fewer actually funny programs, I stopped watching Netflix, then I cancelled the subscription.

I digress, well, maybe not. As cancel culture became prevalent, comedians began self censoring. That might have been why the stand-up routines seemed so flat, or stale. If you can’t say what you want without someone being offended and harming your career then you start censoring yourself too.

I’m not sure I like this dark road we’re apparently on.

I don’t appreciate political parties supporting censorship because I look to the history of not only the Nazi party, but other dictators, kings, and potentates.

This is something I believe should concern us all.

Posted on

it’s a super nice day in Orange County.

I’m enjoying the cool overcast from an on-shore flow. Sitting out on the porch with Jesse napping is very pleasant. Knowing the most anything I might want to go get, is literally a few minutes away could really spoil me.

I’ll admit it, I like being in civilization. 

Don’t get me wrong, I liked living in the mountains. I liked my life and my other half and there was joy in our home. There were rough times to be sure, but any issues were offset by having silence, room, and a safe home. Those perks outweighed the inconvenience of having to drive a minimum of 30 minutes or more to get to a shopping center for stuff like clothes or a Costco. There were times when It felt like I needed a sherpa and we were planning an expedition to deepest Africa.

When I was working off the hill, stopping by one of those places, or as Jerry & I often did, meeting at a mall or whatever to take care of necessary shopping on our way home from our respective jobs, wasn’t a problem. We’d have a date night, have dinner, do our shopping and head home after most of the traffic was past.

Now that I’m alone and not working off the hill, being on the mountain is a bit more of a problem. I have little reason to leave and less reason to want to deal with nightmarish traffic getting to and from the various shopping centers.

Staying here in Orange County, with friends. I’m reminded of the advantage of being closer to a real city. In this case, an interconnected web of sprawling cities where the shelves are full and not every item is locked up behind plexiglass.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been struck by the difference in rite aid here versus home. Grocery stores, four within blocks of each other versus home where there’s only 1 or 2 within 20 miles.

Yesterday for example, was interesting. I dropped the dog off for a grooming appointment, drove 1/2 mile to a car wash, drove back to the plaza where I’d left the dog. Noticed there was a SportClips, got my hair cut, walked through a Trader Joes (hadn’t done that for years), compared prices at a Smart & Final, then got a message that the dog was ready.

Out where I live, that would have been an all day affair, possibly 2 days. The local SportClips closed during COVID. The groomer is 45 minutes away. The grocery stores and pharmacy are 20 to 30 minutes. There are 3 grocery stores within 35 miles, 4 if you include the Super Target and Walmart.

It’s funny. Before I settled down with Jerry, I was an Orange County boy. I knew my way around and  literally could lay my hands on just about anything I needed, anytime of the day and night.

Living in Escondido for the time I did, I was still out of the main urban areas of San Diego and honestly, I was glad of it.

This fire may have given me some direction. (Provided it doesn’t just burn everything down.)

I begin to remember what I liked about living here in OC and can directly contrast that with mountain life.

I know that I have too much stuff.

Being evacuated, I’m traveling uncomfortably light. The house on the other hand is uncomfortably heavy. There should be some nice balance in the middle.

Likewise much as I appreciate the convenience of OC, I don’t want to deal with the dense urban environment, the excessive noise and not enough open spaces.

This isn’t a criticism, it’s simply observing that moving back into a dense urban environment probably wouldn’t be the best thing for me personally. 

I think I need to search for a happy medium between the absolute rural out in the sticks places, and easy access to the niceties of modern life.

Posted on

I never would’ve thought…

The resin bed in the water softener could break down. But it can and then god only knows what you’re drinking if you drink the tap water.

The reverse osmosis unit had been off-line for about four or five days. I didn’t think about it too much because I thought the water softener itself was still working properly. Uh huh… Sometimes if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all.

As it turns out I was wrong. The resin bed in the water softening system had deteriorated which actually explains why I felt like absolute shit for two or three days.

I was drinking the tapwater, thinking it might just have a little more salt than usual. It turns out it may have had something else too.

This probably explains why Jesse was a little loose in the rear end. I suspect both of us were trying real hard to throw off whatever else was included in the tapwater that we were drinking.

Saturday or Sunday I switched over to bottled water, not because I had any great insight, but because the tapwater came out looking murky at one point, then it was brown, later it was just cloudy. Let’s put it this way it looked like Detroit.

I thought the problem was the water company itself, and was all prepared to give them a piece of my mind on Tuesday after the Labor Day Holiday. Because the only time things seem to break anymore is over a holiday weekend!

Then I noticed that the hose water was clear. Meaning the problem had to be inside the house. I tried to bypass the water softener and found that the bypass valves were seized. So bottled water it was, I just hope Jesse didn’t acquire a taste for arrowhead.

The repair guy showed up as promised, when promised. He was prepared and went right to work.

He got the RO unit working again, then went down to the Water Softener itself. The bad news was the resin bed was shot to hell and was polluting the water more than helping. The good news was the system has a lifetime warranty so there was no additional charge to clean out the old resin and replace it.

An hour or two later and the system is once again operating.

Posted on

You know, you just can’t win.

MayaWiley 1200x1200.Yesterday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” civil rights attorney Maya Wiley said there was a direct line from some folks referring to Kamala Harris as a DEI hire to Project 2025.

I have to point out that Biden said I’m going to choose a black female for my Vice President.

He didn’t say, I’m going to choose the best person to be my Vice President. He made it about race and gender right from the start. In my book that’s pretty much the definition of a DEI hire.

Project 2025 (I have not read it entirely) appears to be a plan for the next president, (granted it’s skewed conservative and more likely than not, toward Trump and his base,) however it’s a plan for any President to use in their first 180 days in office.

The plan was put together by conservatives in an attempt to help chart a course correction for the country. Any President is welcome to use it. Just because the plan was written by conservatives doesn’t mean that it’s been delivered from the 7th circle of hell direct from Satans hand.

Notice I said a plan. Not a manifesto, not tablets from a mountain, not etched in stone, not the edicts of an emperor enforced under penalty of death. It’s a plan. Plans change, adapt, and are abandoned often once the plan meets reality. (Joe Biden’s 2nd term & Reelection campaign ring a bell?)

Ms Wiley claims that Project 2025 is going to dismantle all the civil rights laws.

I find that claim to be dubious. Although someone like her would say the same thing about my belief that special protection laws should be stricken from the books.

I believe if we lived under the premise that all Citizens are created equal, then by extension all laws apply equally to all Citizens, negating any necessity for special protections.

The law gets a whole lot simpler to obey and enforce if it’s consistent and has none or very few exceptions.

A thief is a thief subject to a penalty for theft regardless of skin color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. For example: If you steal, and are caught you get 4 years in prison for each $1000 in value.

Simple, enforceable, and easily understood.

When I talk about exceptions I mean to penalties. I believe a Judge should have the ability to sentence a 14 year old first time offender to community service rather than prison or other  incarceration.

In other words I believe there should be the possibility for humanity and mercy not a totally mechanistic justice system. Which is why I believe Judges must be wise, know the law, and incorruptible. At the same time, laws should be few in number and easy to understand.

I digress.

I don’t know what Ms Wiley is talking about, as I said, I haven’t gotten that far into the document.

It’s available, you can download it. The writers of Project 2025 aren’t trying to hide it or be sneaky.

What I find interesting is this.

If there wasn’t a plan of some kind the left would be beating the right over the head about not having a plan. 

Because there is a plan, the left is pulling out all the stops to label the plan as something evil and some of the left is equating Project 2025 to Mein Kampf.

Thus far I haven’t seen evidence to corroborate this equivalence but I’ll keep looking.

Here is a link to The Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025

Here is a link to the Project 2025 document entitled Mandate for Leadership The Conservative Promise

Read it for yourself.

Here are links to Democracy Forward’s rebuttal to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership

Democracy Forward’s document is called The People’s Guide to Project 2025

Read that for yourself too.

Don’t believe the hyperbole from the talking heads… Or ME! I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack either. 

I beg you to read & research for yourself. Because these days it’s getting really hard to figure out what is true and who is telling the truth.