One year ago today: February 22, 2016, winning makes you guilty.
Five years ago today: February 22, 2012, screw Molina.
Nine years ago today: February 22, 2008, Quickbooks sucks.
Random years ago today: February 22, 2007, H. B. Minkofski.
In your classic case of the military’s inability to leave well enough alone, the Ma Duece gets a review this AM. This is the big machine gun you see propped on most American tanks since WWII. It is a .50 caliber belt-fed brute of a unit and it gets top story not for its performance, but because it was one of the few times I’ve seen the press report on what the thing costs. Not counting the ammo, the gun itself is $14,000. I know nothing of its field performance but the size of the bullet means if it can’t see the target, it can probably knock down whatever is in the way.
The article said the army wants to combine the function with that of a grenade thrower. I’ll watch for it but it seems to me they are tinkering with a known and working technology. If it hasn’t changed in 80 years, doing so now will almost certainly result in a compromise. I was also surprised, in that I thought a mass-produced old-school machine gun like this would cost maybe $5,000. Tops. But as P.J. O’Rouke says, the military is your textbook incident of other people spending other people’s money on other people.
And, in an error I can easily make, a few days ago I ragged on that Zorro dude who argues with Ann Coulter, calling him Geraldo. Wrong, it was that Jorge Ramos. The two worst cases of white envy I’ve ever seen. Sorry, but people who act and think like those two always look alike to me. They get off the boat and start bitching about their special rights, calling everybody who quotes the facts a liar and worse. I still wish Ann would reach over at deck the bastard. Trust me Ann, the guy is a wimp.
By coincidence, I’m also reading a chapter on weapons in my latest paperback from the library sale, “Detachment Delta”. It’s a Clancy wannabe, so far the top clichés being the military family, the wild sex, some in-fighting over whom is the most patriotic, and never leave out the recurring nightmares from the combat zones. Three hundred years, that’s how long the family has had the estate and they’ve all been six-foot-four throughout. And everybody knows that all soldiers have a constant supply of the best women chasing them around for unrestricted sex, every book you read about the armed forces can tell you this. And early in chapter three and let’s get this clear: our hero is not, repeat not getting a any special treatment just because his dad is the most respected General in living memory. Always a General, never an Admiral, get that clear, too. I know too many of us must be missing this point, because these author’s need to keep repeating it.
Former glacier.
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Welcome to my emerging back yard, now that you can see it from the house. I took a while to just look at the scenery and you bet, it sure does look like those New York photos. I don’t want anything that takes too much maintenance, but am I on to something here? It does not look bad by itself with all the trees, but again, I have that flat stretch in the partial shade where nothing is growing. Patio? Potted plants? Hey, I haven’t finished my window yet and I’m planning an arboretum.
The report said a rain shower, they lied. It was a slow drizzle all day. I stayed put listening to the radio a bit. I couldn’t find out Wall Street Whiner, instead I landed on a couple of business stations, sorry, I didn’t pay enough attention to quote them. But it is an eye-opener that they are just now beginning to warn baby boomers about items covered in this little old blog long years ago. The biggest threat to most people’s future is they think a collapse cannot happen here, boy are they wrong.
[Author's note: I can't find today's photos so here is a shot of Jupiter taken from the poles.]
What I’m having a little trouble grasping is how they’ve put off the collapse for so long already. Another record day on the market, yet there is no way the economy is booming. It is surviving at best. Not that I saw it much, but for quite some years now I’ve had second thoughts about the attitude that your retirement should be entirely entrusted to pension income. That’s been kind of a dumb idea since the mid-1990s. Mind you, segments of society with private pensions, like teachers and civil servants will get away with it, but not forever.
The problem for me is that nobody is defining what forever means. I can’t tell you how many times in this life I’ve felt collapse was imminent, yet all we get is a market correction and things carry on like before. That’s despite the fact that it was that same “before” that causes the problems. If I live even another five years, I’ll have kind of “gotten away” with getting a ton more back out of the system than I ever put into it. Where is that money supposed to come from? Mars?
Yet the American system seems to weather crisis after crisis without having to make any fundamental changes. Certainly, the doomsday predictions have never happened. I know the tripling of the national debt has staved off the February 2011 baby boomer catastrophe I predicted. Prices have doubled but people’s memories are still as short as ever. Millennials go on record stating they were taught that credit cards were free money, which is plain stupid, but remember, in a few years these are the people who can vote in laws that cancel debt outright. I suspect they may do it.
And I would not be opposed to that. The best thing that could happen to America is all the people with mortgages simply band together and don’t pay them. It will never happen because those who have already paid a lot into the system don’t want the newcomers getting a free ride, but they are not accounting for the voting power. Yet, if they all stopped paying, the banks would be stuck. Look what happened in 2006. You got people who lived in their repossessed houses for years because the bank had to go after them individually.
I find it remarkable that I’ve never heard another peep out of the media on what happened to all those people who never made their mortgage payments. Nobody was thrown out on the streets. The airwaves just went silent on the topic since, oh, what would you say, 2012? Don’t look at me, in 2010 I thought no way I was going to live another five years.
“Throwing acid is wrong, in some people’s eyes .”
Ready for more commentary and editorial? Good, the rain kept me indoors and I’m enjoying the interlude. There’s a big pot of veggies roasting in the oven and some chicken in a pan. I watched a downloaded documentary on Gadaffi in Libya. It’s official from my point of view, if you are planning on any kind of currency adventures, you’d best keep your mouth shut. If you plan to accept any payment for oil in non-American dollars, your country is headed for invasion by the US and Britain at the least. And you will be assassinated. Most discerning people can guess who is behind all that—they always get the rest of the world to do their real fighting for them.
What’s this some ex-inmate of Guantanamo sued the British government for mental anguish? He got a million and then did a suicide bombing. This is the biggest problem with liberal policies. They apply to everyone including those who were not supposed to be here. I missed the details but I’ll keep an ear out for news. A prisoner suing the jail, but that’s not a fair comparison, since the prisoner’s in most jails have a valid reason for being here. So, should the law apply to people here extra-legally? I’ll have to think about that, but my gut feeling is, “Of course not.”
Then again, if you go to another country and break the law, you are subject to their system. However, I would draw the line at international laws dealing with items like terrorism. The terrorist should not be able to sue unless the country he’s from allows the family of victims here to sue. That causes problems of comparison. Bhopal showed that white lives are worth more cash.
The best thing to do is not entertain certain nuisance lawsuits on American soil. The major criteria being whether or not that person is an American citizen. If not, no, they do not have the same rights. They basically have what rights you tell them they have. We already have this tiered legal caste system in place. There’s not one of us who isn’t aware that only poor men and ugly women really ever go to jail.
ADDENDUM
I stuck near the coffee pot all evening, that’s part of the long term plan. A place just big enough and nice enough to spend the whole day in comfort. Outside was worse than a Seattle weekend so I worked a bit on getting the window frames level from the inside. As for the exterior, I’ll just make it look right, level or not. But I know a lot more about level than I did a month ago.
Last Laugh
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