Who?

Who in the White House? Does that idiot Brandon have his finger on the Big Red Button?

I can’t think of one person in this administration that I’d trust to formulate plans to have a US proxie attack a nuclear power on our behalf. Mark my words, this will not end well.

Knocking Out the To-Do List

Two more items have been checked off of the dwindling list of mods/repairs/upgrades for my Jeep.

This photo shows the vanity plate I ordered a couple of weeks ago. Picked it up this morning in Pulaski, TN.

Other recent adds are the tire cover, taillight cover, and an upgraded gas cap housing unit.

The other upgrade was swapping out the stock air filter assembly for one designed to provide cool air to the throttle body. Old and new configuration:

Why Jeep allowed a maniac near the CAD equipment is one of those secrets that will never be disclosed, but one thing for certain is singularly responsible for adding tons of plastic waste to our world. Here are two views of removed air cleaner .

One upgrade task still remains: 3/4 inch leveling blocks for the front springs to regain the ‘stance’ I lost when adding a steel bumper and heavy winch.

I have one repair to do; replace a faulty wheel sensor. I’m pretty sure that it’s the one on the passenger side rear, but I’ve ordered a complete set and will change them all out (saving those replaced) when I get the Jeep up on a rack. Jeff (over at Amazon) will send a set to my door step for 27 bucks.

Auto Zone will sell me a single one for 38 bucks providing I travel to their place to pick it up.

Along Comes Francine

We’ve been well into a dry spell for the last 3 months or so: it’s rained twice. About two months ago it rained daily for 4 days. A week ago we had one of those powerful afternoon summer thunderstorms that bring both beauty and fright into our lives. BTW, it’s not really frightening unless there is some probability that you’ll lose your house or life as the storm plows through.

We’ve had so little rain that almost the entire state of Tennessee is thirsty. Here is a drought map for the state. I’m located in the extreme south-central portion of the state.

Here (on the left ) is what NOAA is forecasting for rainfall accompanying Francine. These guys are pretty much as trustworthy as a Biden biographer. I guess that once things become a certainty they’ll weigh in.

NOAA is sposta be the go-to guys for all things weather/climate related, but with the exception of being able to tell you that it’s raining when it’s raining, they suck. Here are their experts assessments from a little more than three months ago:

Well, maybe you shouldn’t., but the purpose of this post (other than my sad lament over the drought and despair in Southern-Middle Tennessee) is to point out how slimy and deceitful the organs of our government have become.

We were told that Climate Change was producing a world where hurricanes would become more frequent and much stronger. That was what they forecast for this year (see the blue text above). When that not only didn’t happen, but is shaping up to be it the quietest in three generations (65-79: Gen X, 80-00: Gen Y, 01-this morning: Gen Z), the cause must have been Climate Change as well.

It’s the first time in nearly 60 years that no new named storms formed for almost the entire month leading to the peak period of Atlantic hurricanes: from Ernesto to Francine. What you are expected to believe (required to believe if you’re progressive) is that Climate Change is causing sandstorm on the African continent to pull low pressure systems north.

If nothing else these guys are inventive ’cause it’s got to be damn hard to keep the climate scam going in the face of what has always been notoriously unpredictable: the weather.

Clown World

Last month, on the 23rd, I highlighted an article that touted the great strides the folk out west were making in the never ending war on our common enemy; the hot/cold wet/dry nemesis.

I called bullshit, and posted this.

Along comes the month of September and we find that there was a small flaw in the timing of their news release. They should have waited for reality to catch up with their fantasies. But, they wouldn’t be called progressive if they had, would they?

From Breitbart: “California residents are once again struggling to keep the lights on after as many as 50,000 people lost electricity in a heat wave this past weekend that caused the famed Hollywood Bowl to cancel a concert due to the power outage.

I Regret To Inform. . .

Folks, it is with some great reluctance that I report that I’ve been yanked into the slipstream of political humor. I am riding on those winds that shift between nonsense and no sense.

The storm will pass, but until it does and the madness abates, I’ll be shit-posting the more titillating memes and commentary the wild-west world of the intertubes has thrown my way.

Your prayers and best wishes for some semblance of sanity to reenter my troubled days are most appreciated. Until then, enjoy.

Light ‘Yard’ Work

We were fortunate to get a little rain on Thursday evening, about an hours worth. It hadn’t rained in about a month so the cows and landscape were pleased. I would have been also, but when the rain moved in it came with a storm that chose to remind us of just how powerful maw nature can be.

I had three trees adjacent to the gated entry to the farm. Now I have two trees and a big mess. The photo above is entry (detail below). The tree still sanding on the right and the one that was snapped off are/were deciduous. A tall pine still stands just out of frame on the left.

The gate is in the background and the trunk of the tree that blew over is at the tip of the red arrow. Here (below) is is another view. Again, the red arrow points at where tree trunk broke off.

This final picture provides a reference (the Jeep) that hints at the size of the tree: both trees were identical in size.

The good/bad news story is:
–Good: had the tree fallen the other way it would have taken out the (electric) gate and a good stretch of barbed wire fencing.
–Bad: when it snapped parts of it fell into the adjacent tree (didn’t come completely down) and has embedded its limbs into the adjacent canopy. If you interlock your fingers (like the cops sometimes respectfully request you do) you can see what a challenge it is to clean out the dead-fall.

They say that ‘chance favors the prepared mind’ and as fortune would have it I had just received the two new chainsaw blades I’d ordered from Amazon (thanks Jeff!) . I have (had) a gallon of 50:1 fuel mixed and a gallon of bar/chain oil. All of these essentials support a Husqvarna 460 Rancher with a 20″ bar.

As it turns out the hard part is not making little sticks out of big sticks, it’s placing all of the little sticks onto the 12 foot trailer and hauling them off one of the eight burn piles I’ve been assembling. 5 hour of work in 100 degree temps yesterday have reduced the problem by half. Today’s weather promise to be much more accommodating.

I’ll get after it again this morning and hopefully have it wiped out by the time Alabama shows us how It’s new head coach is working out.

By What Measure?

Is there some standard where-by a person can judge himself, quasi-officially judge, to be a cynic? What can I hold myself up against to determine if I’ve fallen from that high station of impartial observer to critical crackpot?

I’ve taken a quick look at the headlines this morning and can’t help but think that there is a vast conspiracy afoot to further subjugate populations world wide. All part of that new Global Community, One World Government thingy.

Now, everyone knows things suck in Venezuela. Folks have been under the thumb of a tyrant there for a good long while. Ever wonder why no other government has done anything of consequence about it? I have and the conclusion I’ve arrived at is that they like Venezuela just the way it is. As long as they are in the news and setting new standard lows for the mistreatment of their citizens no one looks at any of the other many acts of repression going on around the globe.

An example of this is from Germany. They’ve had a manhunt going on for a 15 year old not for the attack, but for failing to report the crime! Damn, there was a shitload of folk stabbed with three of them succumbing to their injuries and the focus is on a kid that didn’t report it? Seems to me that the authorities knew it happened and the voice of this child would have been redundant. But that is not the case, because the end goal of government is control of the population and not necessarily the safety of the population.

In other news, the news folk are getting their shits and giggles by ridiculing/embarrassing the Tyrant of The East. Folks, I’m telling you that no good will come from continually poking sticks in this guys eyes. The best way to ensure stockpile reliability and simultaneously reduce that stockpile is to expend a few nuclear weapons to rid yourself of the newest burr under the saddle.

In France ‘they’ arrested the CEO of social media app Telegram and have charged him with all manner of dastardly deeds.

Durov—a 39-year-old billionaire of Russian origin—founded the social media platform Vkontakte in 2006 and it became known as Russia’s version of Facebook.  

In 2013 Durov founded Telegram, a messaging platform similar to WhatsApp, later saying he decided to create Telegram because “it doesn’t matter how many messaging apps are out there if all of them suck,” noting that for him WhatsApp “suck(ed) most.

Durov told CNN in 2016 after the app was used to plan a terrorist attack in Paris that “you cannot make it safe against criminals and open for governments … It’s either secure or not secure.”   Telegram’s headquarters are in Dubai where Durov says:  “it’s the best place for a neutral platform like ours to be in if we want to make sure we can defend our users’ privacy and freedom of speech.”

All of this doesn’t sit well with the dictatorial in high places which promptly placed his ass beneath the prison while they figure out the best way to either crack open the apps security features or crush him into submission.

So I’m back to my original rhetorical, how does one measure cynicism? For that matter how can one tell whether he’s being a cynic or if his disdain is a rational response to tyranny?

Am I to be taken to the couch for further assessment or carried on the shoulders of men and lauded for foreseeing the tyrannical overreach?

Einstein on God

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist [one who believes that God’s divinity is manifested in all of Creation]. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.

May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe.

We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God.

We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations

Success at Twice the Price

Sounds impressive doesn’t it! Lets take a look beyond the headline:

“In a major milestone, July 28 marked the 100th day of a 144-day stretch in which California supplied 100% of its electricity for at least some minutes with renewables. “

“This was not 100 days powered entirely by renewables. However, as one commenter pointed out, the achievement is still “impressive, especially when you consider that California is the world’s fifth largest economy.”

Well shit, I guess that there are a few oh dark thirty minutes between 02 and 03 that this could have happened, but (and this is an important but) there is no way to reduce the production of ‘non-renewables’ because the green electron are just two damn iffy. This means that Californians are paying for energy twice: premium dollars for renewable energy and regular dollars for the energy they have to produce because of uncertainty in demand. Only in California could this be touted as a success.

Theo and The Man

I had heard that Trump was a personable person. All that I’ve seen of him made those assertions seem improbable. Then I saw this sit down with Theo and was amazed at how hard Trump worked to understand Theo and his problems. He came across as a genuinely compassionate person. It’s a shame that most of what we see of him holds no resemblance to the man in this interview.

Aimee and Jed

I don’t know where Aimee Picchi, the author of the article below on insurance rates, is from, but I’ll bet is wasn’t someplace where an abacus is commonly used.

Why wouldn’t we trust an article printed in such an infallible institution such as CBS News? After all, this is the mainstream media that we are all being conditioned to trust. Surely we can all believe without question that Climate Change is driving rates up by greater than 50%, right?

By my math (I’ll grant you that it’s been a long, long time since I sharpened a pencil) 41% of $3, 400 is $1,394 and would result in a rate of $4,794 not the $3,748 quoted in the article. Like wise, 38% of $3,336 is $1,268 and results in a rate of $4,604, not $3,687.

The new average rates for Maryland and South Carolina are both a little more than 10% higher than the old rates. Pretty much an anemic figure when the cost of fuel (along with pretty much everything else) has doubled.

Aimee Picchi: Uncle Jed, get a hold a yourself. I got some bad news for ya.
Jed Clampett: What is it, boy?
Aimee Picchi: I hope this ain’t gonna break your heart, but I just gotta say it.
Jed Clampett: Well come on, get it over with.
Aimee Picchi: Uncle Jed, I decided I ain’t gonna be a brain surgeon.
Jed Clampett: Well I recon I can bear up under that.

DNC Releases it’s Official Platform

Pandering is still a viable utility, who knew?

The full 91 pages of drivel:

Shocked | Taken Aback

As the day broke and the sun crept over the trees to the east, I prepared myself for an onslaught of falsehoods that the fourth estate has prepared for our consumption. It’s day one of the Democratic National Convention and those boys of blue (D’s) are in desperate need of a smoked mirror. For this entire week we can the press to do all they can to aid them in that cause:

The authors did a bang-up job when they released this puppy, they worked up a ‘twofer’: 1) R’s are trying to deprive 40K registered ‘Arizonans’ of he right to vote and 2) are using those bastards on the Supreme Court to do it.

It really doesn’t matter that the 40K Arizonans in question may not be US Citizens (which is what the issue is here) as long as those just and upright members of the press can get a clean shot at those un-American R’s. The name of the game in any election is to get out the vote and there is no surer way to do that than to infuriate an uninformed population.

The shit is really going to get deep over the next several days and the only real upside to engaging with the news is that every now and again someone errs and the truth slips out:

Top Twenty

20 Rules for Public Discourse: 2024
Or
What Speech is Permissible

  1.  All laws, rules, codes of ethics, or standards of conduct only exist to the degree that they can be weaponized against the political right.
  2. The left is always right, and the right is always wrong.
  3. The left is good, and the right is evil.
  4. Everyone on the right is a hypocrite – every last one of them.
  5. The only moral virtue is the acceptance of immoral behavior.
  6. None of these rules apply to the political left.
  7. Nobody on the left can ever be criticized by the right.
  8. Anyone who can be called oppressed and who denies their oppression is a traitor
  9. The only people whose opinions matter are single white women.
  10. Anything that discourages white women from getting married and having children is the most important thing our government can do.
  11. Any lie against Republicans becomes true as soon as it hits Facebook.
  12. All of the lies told about Republicans must be bad.  All of the lies told about Democrats must be good. For example, Trump is Hitler, whereas Kamala Harris is a ‘transformative, messianic figure.
  13. All media must be on board with every lie and with every one of these rules
  14. Nothing can ever be allowed to make sense or to be consistent. The public must be kept in a perpetual state of confusion
  15. The left eats its own. Unless you are at the very top, you are 100% expendable.
  16. The twentieth and final rule is that no matter how many people are harmed by the left, the left takes no accountability for anything. When in doubt, blame Trump.

That’s it – the Twenty Rules for Chaos. And if you are wondering where sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen went, re-read rule fourteen.

An addendum as ‘proof of principle’.:

Hell on Earth | One of Many

The BBC is reporting that:
— 21+ Ugandans have died from a landslide in a garbage dump near the capital city of Kampala.
—-Kampala has a population of 4 million people
—-The dump covers 36 acres and is the only one servicing Kampala

—-More than 1,000 people live in homes in or directly adjacent to the dump. That has to be one ripe smelling neighborhood.

This one little 36 acre slice of paradise is one of thousands, if not tens-of-thousands, of places where good people in bad circumstances are condemned to live out miserable lives.

I am genuinely surprised that our southern border is not more busy than it is.

Overly Engaged: Exhibit One (1)

This is exactly what happens when you take this shit to seriously. It’s a predicable outcome that flows from over saturating weak minds with political bullshit. Those ‘end days’ pronouncements (if the other side wins) results in this when/if they do.

The political bastards have gone scorched earth and should they fail to win their genteel constituents will morph to Mansons.

Abusive? Who’s That Knocking at the Door?

Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, warned that there are “dedicated police officers” tasked with “scouring social media” to “follow up with identification [and] arrests” when people “publish or distribute material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred.” 

This censorious effort is coming from the top levels of government. In an interview with Sky News, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media is “not a law-free zone” and that he wanted to issue “a reminder to everyone that whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the courts if you’ve broken the law.”

From the Left Shore

Things weren’t quite bat-shit crazy enough in Paris for the last couple of weeks and those ‘one world, one people’ kinda folk are tripping over each other to show stupidity at its grandest.

LA Mayor Karen Bass and the organizers for 2028 Olympics in LA are planning to force spectators to take public transportation to Olympic events. Just in case that doesn’t fuck up enough peoples lives, the plan is to twist the arms of area business to ‘encourage’ remote working in order to clear the streets a mite.

Here is how ignorant these folk are: In order to have enough busses for all of these folk to get from A to B they will have to borrow 3000 busses from other cities in the country. That means that instead of stupid folk in LA paying for their stupidity they will, of course, have others pay for their stupidity. Talk about ‘Net Zero’, this effectively results in net zero carbon savings as what you save in LA you spend in St. Paul.

If I could offer Ms Bass some helpful advice: better get someone working on that homeless problem y’all been toying with for the last 40 years or so. Thing could get real ugly real quick otherwise.

This from Yahoo News: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said 2028 chiefs want the LA Olympics to be “The No Car Games” by investing in public transportation and encouraging Angelenos to adopt pandemic-style remote-working for the duration of the event.

“The No Car Games’ means that you will have to take public transportation to get to all of the venues,” Bass told a press conference ahead of Sunday’s Paris Olympics closing ceremony.  “In order to do that we have been building out our transportation system.”

The plan would require borrowing more than 3,000 buses from other parts of the United States, she added.

Bass was adamant however that Los Angeles’s traffic, where rush hour congestion can lead to car journeys of just a few miles taking an hour or more, would not be a problem, citing the history of the 1984 Olympics in the city.

My Mothers First Dog

On Thursday I was floating around on that endless stream of information that the wonders technology now bring to our fingertips. Electrons, on either side of thousands of miles of photon pushing fiber, happily dance around in anonymity until called upon to render up a solution to the requests of untold millions slapping at their keyboards.

By happenstance I landed at (tripped over) the National Personnel Records Center of the National Archives. I thought: ‘I’m a vet, wonder what they’ve managed to store on me’?

I followed along through several menu’s and ended up on the actual page that promised to provide me a copy of my service record, providing I could answer a few simple questions: (DOB; last name first, first name last, MI; country and state of birth, date/time of first orgasm; name of my mothers first dog). This, again, was on Thursday. By mid morning Friday I had an email stating the search was complete and I could download the PDF file. Not everything I thought should be in the records was in them, but there were some things there that I had completely forgotten about; like the Amphibious Warfare Training Course in the dead of winter, 40 years ago, three weeks after returning from a two year tour in Panama. I’ve never been so cold in my friggin life.

Anyway, I seem to have made a simple subject unduly complicated. If you’re a vet and are up for a few laughs, check out the archives and remember somethings that you may have forgotten.

NEA: Two Things

Numero A: How in the world did we arrive at a place where absolute radicals are charged with educating the children of this nation?

    Number secondly: sure seems to me that for the sake of diversity they should have placed a couple of white folk on that stage.

    We’ll pay the price for letting this madness persist.

    Around Here

    I’ve finished all I set out to do on my Jeep and am pleased with how it turned out. Here’s what was done:
    -replaced front bumper
    -rerouted fog lamps
    -mounted winch
    -added flood/spot lights
    -retreated fenders and rear bumper
    -spare tire cover

    Over the last few days I’ve added a cover for the winch, mounted my ‘fish bones logo’, and sanded and repainted the ‘hitch-rack’.

    I’ve found there is a real sense of accomplishment from doing the work myself.  So much so that I’ll change the oil myself even though it costs less to take it into an Oil Express or Jiffy Lube. The day will come when I’m no long able to climb under the jeep or read the fill mark on an oil dipstick but that’s a few years off. Note to self: change oil in the jeep

    I purchased a 24mm socket and ordered/receive a new oil filter housing cap from Jeff.  I may not need a new cap, but I may (not certain, may) have damaged the one that is currently mounted by trying to loosen it with a pair of channel locks.  I didn’t want to risk cracking the bastard (rendering the jeep inoperable) without a replacement in hand.

    Jerky is cranked up and the first load is in the dehydrator now. My daughter and SIL’s house sits right next to mine on these 100+ acres and they only use the place once every 3 or 4 months. I’m drying it out over there because the dogs go crazy over here when all of that meat magically appears.

    I’ve gone with 4 varieties done in medium and in hot. They’ve been marinating for about 18 hours so they are prime.

    Each load takes 4 hours to dehydrate and I have 4 loads. Ill get three completed today and have one left to do tomorrow morning.

    Phishing, Joe, and FEMA

    One of the more challenging realities of growing old is the loss of reasoning skills, another is impatience. Coupled together, in world that is more and more digital, it’s easy to see how folk fall prey to online scams. Here (2 screenshots of the same email) is something that popped up in my garry@thomaswispered.com mailbox.

    My first thought was, of course: well shit, what a way to begin a Sunday. I pay good money to protect my site from hijackers and one got through that firewall. Then my rational mind returned and I saw the several clues indicative of a phishing attack:
    –‘Dear User’ instead of my name
    –[Your Company Name] in the signature block
    –The ‘Support Team’ in the signature block.
    –The header says Bluehost.com (which is correct) followed by @rewalkjapan.com. Here is an enlarged screenshot of the message header

    Here is what the search engine returns when I look up www.rewalkjapan.com:

    Finally, I remembered to remember that all of the correspondence I have with service providers is through a different email account (other than Thomas account). So I was being phished. Not a big deal when you catch it; a real friggin pain if you don’t.

    It occurred to me that I, at 70, am facing the same demons that Old Slow Joe is battling; cognitive decline. The difference between his demons and those that will (providing God extends my years) appear on my doorstep is that I’m now aware there are actually 2 problems. Which is to say that I may not always be aware of that there are 2 problems.

    The first problem is a decline in cognitive skills and the second is recognition of the decline in cognitive skills. Old Joe has pushed through the ‘sweet spot’ of cognitive decline (where there is a problem and is aware of it) and arrived in a mental wilderness where he has cognitive problems he is unaware of.

    Not to push a point but the last person in this country that should be making decisions on Joe ‘staying in the race’ is Joe. We are quite literally in 25th Amendment territory and at an inflection point in the future of mankind.

    Given that there are 197 days until Inauguration Day 2025 and our enemies are nipping at our heels, a pressing question comes to the fore: Are there no patriots left in the marbled halls of our nations capital capable of doing what the constitution demands?

    OBTW, here is a little something that the thoughtful folk over at FEMA have contributed to the conversation.

    Keep your heads down and powder dry.

    The Comfort of Fiber

    We’ve got storms moving in on our place here is southern middle Tennessee. We desperately need the rain and, along with the wind and thunder, it’s great to experience the power of nature from the comfort of an armchair.

    Two years ago I would not have appreciated these storms as much as I do now. When you’re only source of TV, phone, and internet was thru overpriced satellite service (actually two separate satellite dishes ) heavy rain meant absolute incommunicado. Getting rid of the Dish Network and Hughes Net parasites is a great feel.

    We now have fiber that we trenched it in some 2500 feet from the road. When coupled with a ghee-whiz fast whole house modem we managed to create enough bandwidth to meet all of our needs.

    We have a couple of high def TV’s running, cell phones locked in (cause wifey burns up the Facebook pages) a house phone (tied through a converter to the modem), and you can see in the upper graphic I’ve got 9 tabs opened in my Firefox browser.

    Unseen is MS Office’s Outlook email application downloading all of the spam the world pushes my way. Not one iota of delay with all of this running during this storm.

    Life be good when electrons flow along with the rain.

    That’s Going to Leave a Mark

    The Don had harsh words for the Emperor’s minions:

    Make no mistake that Democrats, the mainstream media, and the swamp colluded to hide the truth from the American public—Joe Biden is weak, failed, dishonest, and not fit for the White House,” the statement continued.

    Every one of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years, especially Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris,” it added.

    So Don is out and about, hacking at the ball and bashing at the bitch while Joe meets with a pack of D governors and complains about not getting enough sleep.

    The latest approach by the D’s is to claim that competence doesn’t matter. Sorta makes you wonder if the fix is already in. Perhaps elections no longer matter, they’ve become nothing more than a useful distraction, another ring in the circus that entertains the masses while the largess is raided.

    Everything was going just fine until that ass named Donald showed up and began chasing the money changers from the temple.