Named Isis (courtesy of an old Star Trek episode), but never
called that (she wouldn't have come anyways), if there's a cat
afterlife, she's probably expecting to be waited on hand and
foot there too.
The cat I didn't want has become the cat I didn't want to lose, but she came and went at her own whim at both ends. I got her when a neighbor abandoned her, declawed and defenseless, in the complex parking lot, and moved to Utah. But cats can spot a sucker a mile off, and I was adopted once I figured out her predicament. In return for both studied indifference and loads of undeserved affection, along with an endless stream of litter box nuggets, all she demanded since she adopted me was constant feeding, perpetual attention, and regular replenishment of fresh sand. Wherever I went, there she was, and her favorite was to sit at my feet rumble-purring for hours, with occasional trips to the lap for more attention, interrupted only for food and naps. After eight years of living high on the hog with the run of the mansion, she was feeling poorly the last couple of weeks (the vet suspected cancer, but couldn't confirm it), and so I was tending to her when home most of the month. After working the last three nights straight, when I got home she looked this morning like today would be her last, and so it was. True to form, she made a bit of a mess, but perked up when I got home, drank some water a few times, and regularly switched her tail when I talked to her, until the last couple of hours, and died as I held her a short while ago. Which at least solves the problem of her suffering. Mine, not so much, so she remains to the end a bit of a bother. She would have purred about that, and looked at me like butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth with her usual "What? Who, me?" look.
I have some things to take care of, so other than tomorrow's weekly post, I'll be offline for some while, and get back to this in a couple more days, when I'm feeling like it.
I was done with having a cat after the last one died, but that didn't stop this one from showing up uninvited, so who knows? In the short term, at least there'll be less cat hair on everything to contend with. I would also note this isn't a bleg for any sympathy (though any wishes are appreciated), but merely to explain my absence for a day or three, in advance.
Exactly as we've told you:
Antifa, one-on-one, is a bunch of fuck-ups and pussies venturing out of mommy's basement.
They're only dangerous in a mob, picking on women, kids, and old people.
(And for some values of "old people", the Antifa-tards should make out their will and carry health insurance before they try this, too. Some old folks will cut to the chase, simply shoot your ass, and laugh about it the entire way home.)
This is what it's going to take to make them re-think their stupid games. This attention whore got off lucky; he's still conscious, and has his teeth. He should've gotten curb-stomped too, and been eating through a tube for a month. It would have been educational.
In other news this weekend, SCOTUS Associate Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg was taken to the hospital, presumably where Death was arriving shortly to collect his due, but after Ginsburg flashed her Courtesy Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Card from Beelzebub, and her copy of her compact with His Infernal Majesty, signed by Satan himself, Death, yet again, had to return empty-handed, leaving Ginsburg to alight her broomstick and return to her castle with flying monkey escorts.
She's too high up for anyone to SWAT her, but perhaps someone might gin up credible tweets from her purporting to have the goods on Fat Bill and Shrillary, to induce another mysterious case of Arkancide.
What a country! A back-stabber wakes up Saturday as Secretary of the Navy, lips off to the president in the Fishwrap of Record, and by Monday, he's a PFC: Private F**king Civilian. Mirabile dictu!
(Dept. of BFYTW) Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was fired Sunday by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who ordered that a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder be allowed to remain in the elite commando corps, the Defense Department said.
In other Navy news, plans to name a garbage scow after the former SecNav, the proposed USS Douchebag, have been put on indefinite hold.
SecDef just fired SecNav Chickensh*t, less than 24 hours after we suggested that exact obvious COA. Word to your mother, kids: You don't get to run games and diss your CinC on the pages of the NYSlimes, and still walk away with your balls afterwards. That's Queens Rules, not Marquess of Queensbury Rules.
The rumbling afterwards was 400+ sphincters puckering in the 0-7 to 0-10 flag grades in the Navy Department, along with the cheers of the other 336,400 Navy personnel seeing a faithless backstabbing buddy-f**ker get his just desserts.
Q: When does a Navy Chief laugh at SecNav? A: When POTUS publicly cuts the SecNav off at the knees.
While we, too, laugh at the swift toppling of yet another second-rate @$$hole still screwing the pooch at the Navy Department, we can't help but wonder if RAdm Blockhead will still be in command of the SEALs by COB Friday, or if he'll suddenly recollect "urgent family business" requiring he announce his sudden retirement request.
The only problem we see is that the President, SecDef, or their designated representatives will only be making a good start.
They need to direct the CNO that another 200+ admirals need to go, and submit that list to the White House by the end of the week. (It should also include most of the Nay's JAG Corps above 0-3 grade.) Starting with anyone even remotely suspect, and first appointed to those grades at any time between 1/20/2009 and 1/19/2017. (If that guts them all, and we have to start from scratch, so be it. Think of the cost savings, and the improvement of morale, if we purge Big Blue of the slow-walking pink falcon douchebraids appointed by Obozo. And think of the sphincter-puckering and re-thinking that would occur at the other branches by Tuesday.) If anyone is a wobbler for retention/cashiering, ties will be decided by a secret ballot of all Navy chiefs assigned to actual ships of the line. Those serving in D.C. or any HQ will be summarily excluded from balloting.
We don't need the smallest Navy since the Depression to be commanded by nearly as many admirals as we had at the height of WWII, with nearly 1 admiral per commissioned ship, currently. Call the firings a "peace dividend".
This is doubly so when they think they command the lash-up in answer to no one, least of all to the president.
Happily, POTUS rapidly named a replacement as SecNav; sadly, we were not on the short list for the position. The nominee for Secretary of the Navy will be retired Rear Admiral and current ambassador to Norway Kenneth Braithwaite.
Anyone wishing a memento 8½x11 photograph of SecNav Chickensh*t will be able to find a copy in the trashcans of 5000 US Navy commands and activities worldwide, anytime after 6PM EST today.
Lesson For The Day: Mess with the bull, get the horns. Plan of the Week: Navy SEALs Announce A New CO. Any minute.
Christopher Cross, with a face absolutely made for radio, climbed from nowhere to Number 1 hit with this three Grammy-winning track on his 1980 debut, for both Cross and his producer, former Steely Dan session keyboardist Michael Omartian. One of the last artists able to rise so far so fast purely on his voice and talent in a way soon to be impossible for later artists, the song is timeless, and his work shows why and where the music industry started to lose their way, and their minds, based on the foolish and fickle whims of the MTV market, still a year away from its debut. As last week's cut demonstrated, it's always nice when an artist is easy on the eyes. But where musical talent is concerned, it's entirely superfluous.
SecNav Chickensh*t, and RAdm Blockhead, two pussies whose
further services POTUS should dispense with in haste.
Two Pentagon primadonnas threaten to leave after POTUS slaps them down:
(FIVE SIDED SH*TSHOW) The Secretary of the Navy and the admiral who leads the SEALs have threatened to resign or be fired if plans to expel a commando from the elite unit in a war crimes case are halted by President Trump, administration officials said Saturday.
The high-level pushback to Mr. Trump’s unambiguous assertion on Twitter this past week that the commando, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, should remain in the unit was an extraordinary development in what was already an extraordinary case, one with few precedents in the history of presidential relations with the American military.
The Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, later denied that he had threatened to resign but said disciplinary plans against Chief Gallagher would proceed because he did not consider Mr. Trump’s statement on Twitter to be a formal order. Mr. Spencer added that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to intervene and that it would stop “the process.”
Dear perfumed douchebags: pack your shit and leave, you miserable double-dealing sons of bitches. Your services are no longer required by the American people.You won't mealy-mouth your way into a back-door contravention of the clearly expressed wishes of the President of the Untied States, and if you can't recognize commander's intent from a flaming tweet stapled to your ass, you're clearly too stupid to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions stamped on the heel, but maybe getting called into the Oval Office and hearing the magic words "You're FIRED!" will focus your mind. Of all the presidents in the last 40 years, do you really figure this one is the one you want to try and go head-to-head with??
Trying to palm off retributive discipline after your show trial went awry isn't going to cut it either, and you won't get to dragoon a SEAL review board into doing your dirty work.
And for even trying, you no longer hold the "special trust and confidence" of the Commander-in-Chief for your totally lacking "fidelity and abilities", because clearly, you have neither.
You're cowards, and worse, gutless cheats for trying, AGAIN, to back-door this slapdown of a guy you wanted to railroad. Word to your mothers: Obozo ain't the CinC anymore, Nancies, and your services are well past their freshness date. This ain't the touchy-feely bastardized and half-assed Navy it was three years ago, no matter how long and hard you wish otherwise, and continue to try and make it so. Take your white feathers, and your final attempt to back-stab the president, and slink off to some other snakepit. Your Pentagon privileges should be revoked.
So box up your trash, clean out your desk, and GTFO. It's check-out time, and this president doesn't suffer fools or back-stabbers gladly (as three years of fired incompetent White House flunkies should have foretold for even people as spineless and stupid and you two @$$holes). Or hang around until he fires you, and if you thought the last tweet was harsh, the upcoming press conference, of which your manifest lack of character and self-serving betrayals will be the main topic, is going to be biblically epic. You really want to head that one off at the pass, jackholes. Trust me. Update your resumes, and start contacting recruiters for your next meal ticket.
Your career span with the DoD from here on out can be measured with a micrometer. Leave, before you get thrown out so hard your butts don't hit pavement until they've cleared the curb, which you both so richly deserve. And when the NYSlimes has picked up your snail trail, it's past time for you to start listening for footsteps. This president deals with unfaithful and incompetent subordinates with a machete and a wood chipper, and you're about to find that out first-hand.
This morning, ABC News was cock-a-doodle-doing that two other minions with no firsthand knowledge of anything, had corroborated Amb. Sondland's assertion that the president had violated some imaginary law (which the Democrats cannot name or describe, but they're somehow nevertheless sure it must have happened).
The clip above, wherein Rep Mike Turner sticks a knife through the heart of the Dumocrats' star witness, and then twists it, hard, lays bare that corroboration of someone's fever-swamp imaginings does not leap into being "evidence" in any court not presided over by marsupials.
It is merely proof of a shared delusion, and a conspiracy to commit a coup.
That IS against the law.
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both." - 18 U.S. Code §2384
Note that happily, there's no ambiguity about this; that the mere act of conspiracy by any two persons anywhere meets the specification of guilt; and that there's no magical "except for members of Congress" clause hidden in there anywhere.
No where, whatsoever.
That makes Adam Schiff-for-brains, everyone who voted to open these hearings on the House Intelligence Committee, and all the witnesses called thus far co-conspirators, and the president is fully within his legal right to direct AG Barr to have those members of Congress and their flunkies, and all the witnesses doing this Seinfeld sham impeachment inquiry ("an inquiry about nothing") wholly without any of the basic Constitutional protections guaranteed to all Americans, arrested, indicted, and prosecuted for sedition.
We wish he would cut to the chase, and simply do so.
We would pay good money to see that on the boob tube day in and day out for the next 9 months.
I'd have to check the math, but rounding up a sufficient chunk of Congress and putting them under lock and key would flip the House, too, leaving Nancy Alzheimer's as the overnight new Minority Leader, and Kevin McCarthy(R) the new Speaker of the House.
Tesla: Our cars are safe.
Anyone who disagrees with us will be whacked.
A @tesla whistleblower discovered a "thermal runaway" risk
Tesla fired him, harassed him, and phoned in a fake shooting threat under his name. @elonmusk personally berated him by email.
And then several @tesla drivers were killed in vehicle fires.
So, your guy tells you your product could burst into flames and kill customers. Instead of thanking him for looking out for your interests, and fixing it to save actual customers' lives, you fire him, malign him, SWAT him, and try to get the government's minions to whack him for you.
(Oh, and you still ignore your customers going up in flames like eggs cooking off in a microwave.)
Greedy corporate pothead lunatic. Corrupt head office. Lethally defective product. Official corporate shenanigans. Attempted murder. Serial manslaughter.
This is movie-of-the-week film fare that just writes itself. And in the spirit of the 37 (at last count) versions of Law and Order, I think it's time to phone the writers of Breaking Bad, and bring out the pilot of their new :Corporate Version. (Art Buchwald Coming To America Warning: if they do, and it's a hit, all I want is 0.1% of the gross, in perpetuity. Have your lawyers call my lawyers, and we'll do lunch.)
Still no word on when the engineers who made Uber's self-driving cars, which also kill people, but never thought of telling them what to do when a pedestrian walked in front of the car will be perp-walked to jail in handcuffs for reckless endangerment and conspiracy to commit manslaugter.
Somebody, please, get Ralph Nader his walker, and get him into court. Seriously. This nonsense makes the Corvair kerfluffle look like small potatoes by comparison.
So I guess "too big to fail" includes killing people and setting them on fire, for modern-day robber-barons.
Perhaps quietly whispering "If this car fails because of your negligence, I'll come back and kill you, your entire dealership, and their combined families, slowly, painfully, and if possible, in front of them all" into the sales manager's ear, before you drive any newly purchased car off the lot, might be in order. It's kind of like the guy who grabbed his dentist by the family jewels before he'd drill, and promised him that any pain suffered would inevitably be a mutual experience.
Write this on your hands, kids: When we're right about something, and we've pointed it out, in depth and detail, ten times over, arguing against it is a waste of electrons. Stop beating your dead horse; it's never going to rise and carry you to victory.
"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s marijuana industry is undergoing some severe growing pains -- and it’s much bigger than just licensing permits.
Nearly two years after recreational marijuana became legal in California, the black market is still much bigger than legal sales of marijuana.
At All About Wellness, a Sacramento pot shop, business is thriving. In fact, owner Phil Blurton is planning to expand into a bigger building next month. But, he’s also worried about his illegal competitor(s) who don’t pay taxes.
“Our city license now is $20,000 a year,” Blurton said. “The state license is $96,000. Then we pay 8.75% sales tax to the state."
Blurton said he also pays an additional 4% cannabis tax to the city, on top of an additional 15% tax to the state, “which is making the cost of our product so expensive the black market is booming now.”
It's booming to the tune of $8.7 billion in illegal sales this year. That’s more than double the legal market."
Waitwaitwait.
Legalizing it was supposed to "drive the cartels out of business" and lead to a Utopia where the government collects mountains of cash from pot farms fertilized by flying unicorns shitting strawberry-scented piles of cash.
And, Holy Obvious, Batman, who knew that criminals, by definition, don't obey the laws??? (Oh, besides every swinging Richard - by the thousands - that told you, going back decades, that legalization as a "solution", was a giant steaming mound of fresh hot horseshit?)
So how's it working out day to day, in Reality?:
(CHICO, CA) — The Special Enforcement Unit of the Butte County Sheriff’s Office made 12 arrests Monday after discovering $164,200 found stashed in a vehicle during a traffic stop on Nov. 6.
The traffic stop spurred a search warrant on properties along Bonnie Meadow Lane in Brush Creek, said a press release issued Thursday by the Sheriff’s Office.
According to the release, deputies believe the three arrested during the traffic stop were en route to buy a large amount of pot while armed.
When serving the warrant, multiple men ran into the woods but deputies detained 15 people and arrested 12, all from Mexico.
Detectives think the operation was being run by a Mexican drug trafficking organization. They destroyed 1,204 live marijuana plants, collected 278.91 pounds of processed marijuana bud, 457.32 pounds of marijuana bud on stem and 184.02 pounds of marijuana shake.
The Special Enforcement Unit also located and collected two illegal AR-15 rifles with high capacity magazines, one of which was a short barreled rifle, one AK-47 with a high capacity magazine, three pistols and ballistic rifle rated body armor. Detectives seized $14,380 in U.S. currency.
Roberto Estrada, 38, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a residence for drug sales, employing a minor under the age of 21 to sell marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Nestor Ortiz, 32, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a residence for drug sales, cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Cristobal Briseno, 19, was arrested on suspicion of cultivating marijuana and possessing marijuana for sale.
Legalization was going to make the stupid, futile, impossible, nasty, evil, mean, rotten, unwinnable War Mutually Beneficial Slap Fight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage go away forever and ever, and peace would guard the planets, in the dawning of the new Legalized Pot Age Of Aquarius.
We've been assured this would happen in 5000% percent of cases. Apparently neither the Mexican drug cartels, nor the Butte County Sheriff's Office, got that memo.
How...curious and surprising. Not.
WTF?
It's almost like bad ideas are always bad ideas, and criminals are going to criminal. This was just one raid, on one day, in just one county in Califrutopia.
And those were just ordinary, decent, hard-working illegal aliens, growing the pot that Americans won't grow, right?
And now, a word from the sponsor of this sort of fairytale happy horseshit:
Stop me if you've heard this one...
Cue the "If only we paid the government MOAR TAXES so they could raise or manufacture and give all drugs away free for anyone, free for the asking, forever, by the metric fuckton...!" Argument, in 3, 2, ...
So, tell me, how's that worked out with food? Have we somehow won the War On Poverty with that? Or do we just have nearly half the country addicted to being shiftless, fat, lazy, welfare-sucking piggies at government's trough?
Asking for the 50% of the country still pulling that wagon for Uncle. So far.
Spare me the touchy-feely let's-buy-the-world-a-Coke 1960s hippy Left-wing party-line bullshit. When your Utopia turns to a pile of shit after 15 seconds in the real world, your map is not the terrain. And never was.
And illegal drugs will ALWAYS outsell and underprice the government competition, even if drug cartels have to give them away and pay you to take them, just to capture market share and drive the competition out of business. (They can -and will - always jack the prices once they have a monopoly, and you're hooked. Google "rich heroin addicts", and get back to us.)
It's almost like they might have paid off some of the government @$$holes who enacted this nonsense in the first place (who now get money for and from both sides of the current farce), to simultaneously make it fail, and yet end any enforcement on their otherwise-contraband, as if they were running a criminal fucking business where the only rule is "Succeed."
("Drug cartels pay off government shitweasels? That's crazy talk, Aesop." said no one ever.)
Politics is the continuation of war by other means. The Enemy ALWAYS gets a vote.
I'm just wondering how long the Democrats can milk getting spanked at their own impeachment farce before their heads actually explode. It may rain here tomorrow, which in Califrutopia, given the average skillset of driving-challenged transplants and illegal aliens who used to drive taxis in Tijuana, means chaos on the highways once the first drop hits the pavement. The media are slow-building it into the mother of all globull warming catastrophes, but rain in SoCal in November is about as newsworthy as the tide rising twice a day at the beach.
Maybe I'll go find a quiet off-season campsite or something. There's something settling to being out in the wilds when Nature is taking a shower, or just after.
If nothing gets my goat in the meantime, I'm sure you'll all find something worthwhile to amuse yourselves.
Art is frequently a happy accident, and today's cut is proof. Self-taught musician Candy Dulfer turned 50 this year, which means she's only been playing the saxophone for 44 years, so far. She's got 12 albums released since 1990, but none of the tracks became as earconic as this monster single, which at the time she did it was "just a jam session" with former Eurythmic David Stewart as part of a movie soundtrack he was working on in 1989. When she was all of 20 years old. The cut was subsequently released as a single, the first thing Dulfer had ever done that was released, and climbed to #1 in her native Netherlands, #6 in the UK, and #11 in the U.S. The best part starts at 0:00 and goes until 4:22.
And looking at her in the video, I could watch her play for hours, even if I was deaf. She's on the short list of people I wouldn't mind being marooned with on a deserted island.
"At some point, the post I wanna see over at your place is Aesop’s Health Solution, bonus points for including Medicare."
I'll see your Double Dog Dare, and raise you to a Triple Dog Dare (such faux pas has precedent, you'll recall):
Aesop's Health Solution is a one-day problem.
It's the same as Aesop's Car Insurance Solution: Buy your own damned coverage!
Medicare is phased out, with a 5% coverage decrease for each year group over each of the next 20 years.
If you're 45 or under, start saving. When you hit 65, it'll be entirely gone, except for the few folks 65 or older now, who live beyond 85. In 30-40 years, even they won't be around to quibble over. The pittance they'll cost won't even be a hiccup in the federal budget.
You want Mercedes insurance, you'll pay Mercedes prices.
You want Yugo prices, you'll get Yugo coverage.
And government is free to offer their own plan(s), at whatever rate it costs, and whatever they chose to cover, provided it's not subsidized even $1 worth. It's sold at straight cost, the government is free to jack rates or trim back coverage until they make ends meet, but if they suck compared to private business, as they likely will, they'll have zero clients in short order, and that problem goes away forever.
People that bitch about old farts going bankrupt for medical treatment may then freely observe :
"Maybe Grandpa Dumbass should've tried doing table push-ups, stopped drinking like a fish, and quit smoking three packs a day, about 30 years earlier."
No one gets out of here alive.
Insurance should take care of unfortunate circumstances, at appropriate rates.
And any company making more than 10% profit pays the excess in taxes, so there's no incentive to gouge, or scrimp.
Individual taxpayers, OTOH, are allowed to put up to 10% of their annual pre-tax income into medical savings accounts, to cover small expenses and deductibles for catastrophic care. No maximum limit. Anything in the kitty more than 10 years may be withdrawn any time afterwards, tax-free, as a reward for being healthy.
Bonus: Do the same thing for retirement.
Social Security is phased out the same way, over 20 years, and deductions stop this minute for anyone 45 or under.
Up to 3X that amount may be set aside by anyone out of pre-tax income for retirement, provided it's untouched until then.
The only people that would be hurt by any of this are government workers, but if you phase 5% of those administering those programs out each year too, the whining and howls will decrease commensurately as well, and the unfunded deficit year over year shrinks to interest on principal, which would become manageable without the burgeoning tsunami of entitlement payments forever.
That's it.
Kill it all, via slow but inexorable strangulation.
Anyone proposing any renewal or reversal is shot on sight, and their goods and estates, in total, forfeit to the budgets of those dwindling programs.
That would be Day One of the short and happy reign of Emperor Aesop.
On Tuesday, we drop all college loans for anything but medical professions and STEM (which will be based 100% on academic merit, alone), and we completely defund public education over four years, starting with the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, advancing backwards one year every year. 5% of the savings is allocated to vocational training. 10% is allocated to poor but academically gifted student scholarships. The rest is a straight refund to those who pay taxes.
On Wednesday, we end all corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. Everybody plays, and everybody pays. We also obliterate and renounce the meddling in what kind of toilet you install, what light bulbs are okay, etc. ad infinitum. If you can make it, you can sell it, as long as robbery, fraud, deliberate endangerment, or coercion are not part of your business plan, but you also own all liability for it if it's used properly and lawfully. Liability for illegal behavior ends at the lawbreaker's feet. It does not travel across town, and include the item's seller, wholesaler, maker or raw materials creator.
Business is business, and the only function of government in that respect is keeping the playing field level, and calling the fouls, not inventing yards of bookshelves of new ones year after year.
On Thursday we repeal every law relating to firearms. All of them. The federal judiciary is limited to 10 years at the district level, 15 if they make it to the appellate circus courts, and 20, and not a minute longer, if they get to SCOTUS, after which they must live under the rulings they issue, just like everyone else. Sovereign immunity for any public office is revoked other than for the President, the cabinet, the congress, and the federal judiciary. That means every federal official and LEO is civilly liable for capricious jackassery, on the spot. And we restrict firearms and arrest powers to the FBI, the US Marshalls, the Secret Service, Customs and Immigration, and the Coast Guard. Prison and nuclear plant guards get to carry only on duty. No one else gets any guns, badges, or SWAT teams. Just citation books, and a pencil. Somebody wants to make an arrest, they have to ask one of the remaining agencies with that power to tag along.
By Friday, the federal government is projected to be so small, we plan the imminent return to a federal government funded entirely by excise taxes and tariffs, as originally intended, and make plans to repeal the XVIth Amendment, or at worst, amend it in perpetuity to no more than 1% of income, on everyone, starting with an income of $1. Everybody now has skin in the game, to exactly the same degree. (If we agree to exempt anyone with an annual income under $40, on the grounds the stamp is more expensive than the tax, I might relent, just that little bit. But they still have to file.)
Saturday, we explain the facts of life to Mexico: 1 bbl. of crude for every illegal found here, per year. We'll be generous, and start the levy at 40M in Year One. They also cede Baja California to our designated territorial governor's rule for the next 199 years. It's still part of Mexico, but it now runs under U.S. law. The U.S. agrees to assume military defense responsibility for it. It becomes bilingual. Any felons found therein are exiled from Baja for life either to Mexican prison, or for execution. The Western half of the peninsula is developed as the longest luxury Riviera on the planet, and puts Monaco and Vegas into permanent second-class status. The employment is 100% Mexican nationals, earning market wages. The eastern side of the peninsula, and the waters contiguous, becomes the longest nature preserve in the world, and a mecca for divers, whale watchers, and general tree huggers the world over. All profits from both accrue 50-50 to each country. The U.S. profits build a wall from Tijuana to Brownsville, and fund the Coast Guard and Border Patrol. We end birthright US citizenship, including retroactively, and anyone found in the U.S. illegally after 90 days from that date is banned from immigrating here for life. After working for five years on a chain gang, building the wall.
The line of cars headed south is 1000 miles long within a week, mainly to apply for jobs building and working at the resorts going up from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas.
Sunday being a day of rest, we simply abolish the female PT standards for all military services.
Women deserve equal treatment, so we want to give it to them, good and hard.
Everyone performs to the male standards in place, or they're kicked out that day.
That removes all but about 10 women, total, from the entire military by about 12 noon, Pacific Standard Time.
And after the physical standards for their MOS are applied, those 10 are pretty much back to being clerk/typists or stateside medical personnel in about an hour.
If the military comes up short because of that, we re-establish the draft. And with all those college dreams for mid-level D-students going up in flames, we have a healthy pool of candidates to choose from.
Let's make it easy: universal service for everyone for 18-24 months after high school. If you don't want to do it in the military, no problem: the Forest Service needs firefighters, the national parks need trash haulers and trail builders, and we put the rest into the FEMA Corps, to shovel snow after blizzards, shovel sandbags during floods, and clear roads, pick up debris, and generally help people out after hurricanes and tornadoes. You might even learn a skill, like being an EMT, driving trucks, or operating heavy equipment, that you can use to get a job after your 2 years service are completed.
Refuse? No problem: two years as a federal prisoner filling potholes in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter, filling the same sandbags in rain and flood, and picking up trash the rest of the time.
If you want anything to eat while you're in prison.
"Ask not what your country can do for you... "
That's it.
At that point, I can retire, or devolve to merely a wartime emperor, which would be mostly titular only, as anyone who gave us cause to declare war would be deselected from further planetary status in a Darwinian fashion, with a methodology last witnessed during the Third Punic War. Including salting their fields, throwing corpses into their wells, and either selling the unslaughtered survivors into slavery elsewhere (like making them build roads and drain swamps in Africa or South America, or something equally worthwhile and unpleasant) , or using them as agricultural supplements.
Look, kids, I understand this may be hard to grasp, especially for the 99.5% (the actual percentage) of Americans that have never and will never serve in the military (vs., e.g., the U.S. circa 1944, when 1 in 6 military-aged males was, in fact, in uniform). Don't get me wrong, military service isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong per se with being a civilian, but it's not exactly hard: you don't even have to take a physical.
But here's the thing that some of you keep fornicating up, over and over, year after year. The Fourth of July is pretty self explanatory, and people seem to grasp Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Most times.
But Memorial Day comes in May (yes, every year, Snowflake), and as the name might subtly imply, it's the day you celebrate those who died in the military service of their country, particularly this one.
Today, by contrast, is Veteran's Day, which those possessing more facility with vocabulary might have sussed out (without a good head-slapping with a frozen mackerel) is for people who served (or still are) in the military, and therefore still alive.
You could look this up, cupcakes, but Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day, when the tradition was to decorate the graves of the honored dead. Veteran's Day was originally Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of the War To End All Wars (before we started numbering humanity's massive clusterf**ks). It isn't that any more. And, let's face it, saying "Thank you for your service" which I'll generally tolerate today, isn't going to do a lot of good for guys dead and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They can't hear you.
So, just maybe, write this on your hand with a Sharpie: Memorial Day: dead guys. Veteran's Day: live guys.
Then you won't be caught on the internet posting Taps, Last Post, In Flanders Field, and any twenty other clips, photos, or memes of guys in flag-draped coffins, today, and the Gunny, above, won't have to smack you in both sides of your slimy civilian head to help you correct your malfunction.
Please?
We appreciate that as a general rule, the childishness and churlishness of the hippie scumbags during the Vietnam Era has given way to thanks (at levels from sincere to patronizing ignorance) to vets, as opposed to spitting on them all, calling them baby killers, and asking them how many people they killed. Walk tall. You're not the juvenile walking penises the pussified flower children of the Sixties were.
But if you really appreciate veteran's service today, don't force them to humor you for being too retarded to know the difference.
Get that part right, and maybe next year, we can work on disabusing low-information nitwits of the notion that everybody wearing an old army jacket and begging for cash is an actual homeless veteran rather than a chiseling valor thief, and of the liberal asshole meme via Hollyweird that most vets are out panhandling alcoholics and strung out on drugs, from all that PTSD, or one step from climbing a tower with a rifle. Maybe. If you work really hard, and pay close attention.
But for today, just remember, it's for the guys still alive. Not the ones lying under rows of crosses in 20 foreign countries.
Baby steps, campers.
If you've got this without being told, or you're here from 20 other countries celebrating Armistice Day for what it originally was and is elsewhere, carry on.
JOURNAL OF THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS (Philadelphia) Friday, November 10, 1775
"Resolved, That two Battalions of Marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required; that they be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.
Ordered, That a copy of the above be transmitted to the General."
To Uncle Sam's Misguided Children, the red-headed stepchild of the U.S. military, the misfits, the drop-outs, the cold-hearted bastards so sick of being penned up on a Navy gator freighter they'd happily storm a heavily defended beach just to kill something, I bid you a Happy 244th Birthday.
And tonight, on countless bases and in cities around the globe, there will be the obligatory and celebratory Marine Corps Birthday Ball, with appropriate pomp and ceremony, and the first slices of birthday cake served to the oldest and youngest Marines present. (For those unaware, the Marines are only served crayons on base, during duty hours, or in the field, and not at formal occasions.)
And as is well known in lore and legend, one such soiree was on a joint force base, and the other services and their wives were invited to celebrate with the Marines as a courtesy.
Inevitably, a small group included junior officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and one of the new service wives was so impressed by the Marine Corps celebration, she told her husband "This is great! I can't wait to go to the balls for all the other services!"
Before her husband could correct her, a Marine nearby who had heard that statement leaned in and delivered the coup de grace:
"I'm afraid that isn't possible, ma'am. The Army, Navy, and Air Force don't have any balls."
Aaron Copland is among a very small and select group of American composers who were (or are) certified geniuses and national treasures. If it sounded familiar, but you didn't know what this piece was called before today, pay heed: it was written in your honor. In case you always thought you deserved your own theme song, that's been taken care of herewith, since 1942.
And today, of all days, I couldn't imagine a better group to perform it in your honor.
So, today, we read this latest bit of scientism and Globull Warmist theology, excerpted over at Fran Porretto's place, and hailing from that bastion of scientific accuracy, TIME Magazine :
The problem with MDIs is not carbon dioxide (the most common greenhouse gas), but rather methane, which represents a far smaller share of greenhouse emissions, but a much more powerful one, with up to 84 times the heat-trapping power of CO2. Even the least polluting inhaler was found to emit methane at levels equal to up to 10 kg (22 lbs.) of carbon dioxide into the air over the course of its 200-puff lifetime.
Fran was more worried about what this means for the next target of the Warmist Cult (asthmatics), but I was more struck by the breathtaking scientific stupidity it takes to pen such thorough-going codswallop.
I realize that J-school grads spent about four minutes in science class back when they were 8 or 10 years old, and probably even less time adequately learning how to do math beyond the second grade level, but this level of ox-stunning professional jackassical stupidity is simply beyond the pale.
Listening to most all of the media attempt science and math is like giving a class of retarded kids the keys to a lot full of heavy construction equipment, only less responsible. When you can get better scientific understanding from MAD Magazine than TIME Magazine, the latter is charging too much per issue, and should be printed on Charmin to provide some bare utility.
Point of order, kids:
Humor me for but a moment.
An asthmatic's MDI weighs 4 to 6 ounces.
Including the metal container.
Now, I realize the Globull Warmist Cult Religion makes Scientology appear to be on a far firmer foundation with regard to both religion and science, by contrast, but physics being physics, and the First Law Of Thermodynamics being kind of a bitch when it comes to pulling matter (or more precisely, energy) out of your tailpipe, I put it to anyone with an IQ north of 75:
You can't get 22 pounds of methane out of a 6 ounce inhaler (nor the "functional equivalent" of 22 pounds of CO2, nor anything like), no matter how much handwaving you try, no matter how many goats' entrails you read, and no matter how many virgins you sacrifice to the Globull Warmist Volcano. Not even if you're Rumplestiltskin, and can spin straw into gold.
It's simply beyond ridiculous, skipping right to recockulous.
In fact, the recockulous meter is pegged all the way to the peg beyond Level 11 of Ludicrous on the dial, and cannot be measured with existing instrumentation. Even with the nitrous phlogiston boost and a flux capacitor operating the hyperdrive on pure dilithium crystals.
In short, 22 pounds of methane weighs, y'know, 22 effing pounds, you lying jackholes. This is why the English language cleverly uses different words for 22 pounds, versus for 6 ounces.
And even if we granted TIME's "84 times" stat, the entire MDI would have to be a solid BLOCK of methane, with no room left for plastic, metal, other gasses, and - not to put too fine a point on it - ASTHMA MEDICINE.So, you can believe TIME Magazine's recockulous claims. Or your lying eyes.
And FTR, you emit more methane than "the equivalent of 22 pounds of CO2" into the atmosphere every time you turn on a natural gas stove, between the time you dial up the gas, and when the pilot or electrical spark striker sets it on fire. You go figure out if it's more likely there are more gas burners than asthmatics on the planet.
(And if you guessed the next line of Warmist Climastrology is that "Cooking food is killing the planet!", go to the head of the class.)
In actual fact, every human being emits more methane than is contained in an MDI every time they fart, and the average human breaks winds 10-20 times a day (no matter what your wife or girlfriend tells you). Even more if you eat beans and herd cattle.
Which leads the Climastrology Cult to really be about global genocide, to save the planet. Just like you suspected.
If this obvious scientific and linguistic reality is news to anyone, they should beat their heads against a solid rock wall until the matter makes itself clear.
Which leads us to ask of TIME Magazine, in particular their so-called editorial staff (where Science is concerned, going back only to about Edison's invention of the light bulb, if such were possible):
No other explanation accords with reality so handily.
Thanks for your time.
(Thermodynamics, asthma, math, Blazing Saddles, and Charles Laughton all in one post: this job ain't for amateurs, kids.)
Nothing much substantial going on, other than the ongoing three-year coup attempt, which unwinds daily into irrelevancy, but lots of little bits here and there:
Well, of course they did; it would have tarnished the chances for lifelong criminal Shrillary to get elected if she was known to be married to the exact serial rapist and pedo-president she hitched her wagon to for purely political intent, and we can't be blowing the lid off the family crime syndicate. And just in case you thought differently, Epstein didn't kill himself, and it wasn't incompetence that allowed him to be murdered in custody, with no one checking on him, and all the cameras miraculously "out of order" that night.
Curiously silent are all those dumbasses who were shrieking and pearl-clutching when then-candidate Trump correctly called many Mexicans criminals and murderers. Where are those voices now, we wonder?
We've been telling people Mexico is a failed state and third-world shithole for twenty years, and their narco-enterprise makes Somalia look organized and civilized by contrast. Some people are aghast at Pres. Trump's offer to co-operate with Mexico in wiping out the cartel, but we see this as evidence of how far the U.S. has fallen. 50 years ago, we would have simply sent two divisions of Marines, the 1st Armored, the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Air Assault divisions south, with orders to stop at the border with Guatemala, and sorted their shit out right quick, permanently, and told the UN and OAS to kiss our shiny white asses in reply if they'd so much as burped about it. Martial law and brick-wall justice by firing squad would end this nonsense in about six months, as most of their citizenry knows exactly who the crooks are; most of them, they elected themselves.
That pussification of America you keep hearing about? This is it, writ large.
Build the goddam wall, post troops on it, declare a three mile death zone for anything seen moving on the other side to the limit of direct fire weaponry, and round-up the illegal collaborators on this side, and start repatriating them southwards with a trebuchet, or pushed out of C-130s from 5000' AGL. I don't care which. You're already fighting cartel skirmishes on this side of the border, and have been for decades. It's only going to get worse here. Get that conflict over with now, while you have a chance to prevail. And anybody that thinks legalizing drugs will end this can be placed in the second wave of trebuchet launches, to argue their case in Sinaloa and Michoacan, like the low-IQ fucktards they are.
If we're going to have a war on drugs, let's have a real one, where we use B-52s and napalm. I'd give us quite an edge if we went about it that way. Clearly, half-assing it for half a century hasn't worked whatsoever, but the quickest way to end it is to surrender. Exactly as the Mexicans have already done.
In sum, as noted over at Fran Porretto's site the other day: "You must fight." Not a sharply worded letter to the editor; not at a stupid rally; not at some jackassical street theater that accomplishes nothing but a set-piece ambush to get you killed, injured, arrested, or discredited; but by actually loading weapons and shooting back. (In fact, for the brighter lights, shooting first might be a wiser course of action. Your enemy can't react well with bullets in his liver. Just saying.)
Our neighbor to the south is a failed state, one step from open revolution and collapse, and has been for thirty years. The media has been lying to you since the 1960s, since they realized they could, and get away with it. The deep-state government wants to decapitate, metaphysically or actually, depending on the weather, the only leader that opposes them at every step, and has been owning them for three years, for the only time since the 1980s. And their minions - at every level - want to take from you the only means to resist.
Inevitably, if you let that happen, the boxcars start loading just afterwards. I can't paint the picture any clearer or bloodier. Shit is coming down, and it's going to land on you, no matter where you are, or think you can hide. You. Won't.
Like Glen Campbell, Lindsey Buckingham was a self-taught guitarist, and like several such, is frequently described as "the most under-rated musician" etc., etc.
I don't know if he's all that under-rated or overlooked, but his mastery as demonstrated on this Top Ten hit (with 3/5ths of Fleetwood Mac) from 1981 is flawlessly superb. When he departed Fleetwood Mac the first time, it took two guys to replace his parts. He's that good. And his solo at 2:07, and again at 3:09 that carries you to the fade is something that could have been twenty minutes long and still leave you wanting more.
McThag is ecstatic that OK has joined the ranks of Constitutional Carry.
Color us more like cautiously optimistic, but far from convinced this is any wave of things to come.
OK is low-hanging fruit, and it still took until just now to pluck it.
Notably, they have not (AFAIK) suffered FL's (or Califrutopia's, once upon a time) surplus of attention-whoring jackasses taking their long arms to Burger King and the community fishing pier, just to provoke a predictable response, which underlines that pissing on the bear's head is probably not the best nor brightest way to march for your constitutional rights, even giving such shenanigans the most charitable review. (OK residents, feel free to let me know if that sort of nonsense has been going on there in the lead-up to this day, which I doubt.)
And if that happens now after the fact, and you piss off enough lawmakers, despite it being fully legal at the moment, see if that law doesn't get shifted right back in about a minute.
Let me know how that works when it's done everyday at the strip malls or diners there, rather than a one-time political rally, and get back to that topic.
Bear well in mind that OK also is the only solid red state in the U.S. only one of two states in the U.S. (the other being WV) - that voted in every county - for Trump in 2016. 49 48 other states: not so much.
You could look it up.
It, quite literally, won't play that well in Peoria.
IOW, this is the political equivalent of cheering getting polygamy accepted, because you got it passed in Utah, or outright communism, because it passed in Massholia. It is not the same thing as getting roast beef on the menu at the National Vegan Conference.
I'm always open to evidence, but the experiment in Florida is still an open question, as the recent proposed SB 634 (which I hope fails to pass there) in response to any number of OC incidents there demonstrates, and a single data point in OK is not a trend.
Fair enough?
It's a fine thing to be ahead at the Indy 500 in the first lap, or even the 16th.
But the Victory lap, last time we looked, only comes when you're ahead on the last lap.
I want Constitutional Carry to be the law nationwide.
But even should I live to see that glorious day, I still don't want to see fucktards toting their rifles to the mall on a regular basis, just because it's legal, contrary to walking around with their zippers open and hanging their junk out on display, which is mainly what this has been about since Day One for most of those nimrods.
Like Nazis marching through Skokie, there's legal and even Constitutionally protected, and there's sensible and appropriate, and one does not automatically convey the other, which was the point all along.
I don't want anyone's rights restricted, but I'd like to see general intelligence and responsible behavior exercised at something above the lowest common denominator, as a rule of thumb.
I'm certainly not anti-gun, but I'm rabidly anti-idiot and anti-jackass.
That shouldn't require an essay to explain, but apparently common sense, isn't.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
