One year ago today: April 4, 2018, fake cake.
Five years ago today: April 4, 2014, WIP, bad link
Nine years ago today: April 4, 2010, “emtionally comfortable”.
Random years ago today: April 4, 2016, politics.
Okay, okay. Enough people wanted a picture of the stuffed turkey at the tourist center. Here’s your picture, you babies. See, I told you it doesn’t even look like that Elizabeth Warren person. If you take away that ugly thing under the chin, I mean. In another distinction, turkeys are native American. There was also a stuffed coyote. How come nobody wants to see a picture of the poor old coyote. What? You’ve already seen enough pictures of who? Alexandria who?
You see, Pharma Bro is still running his company from behind bars. And the feds can’t stand it. Shkreli was demonized for increasing the price of an “AIDS drug”. The media adds that he was convicted in 2017, but forgets to add he was never convicted of any charges related to the price increase, and that it was not an AIDS drug. Shkreli was convicted of “securities fraud”, which is the same disgusting tactic used to put away Al Capone. People forget Capone was cheered by crowds for doing a better job of feeding the unemployed than the authorities. And the authorities have never forgotten this.
What’s unusual punishment? Preventing Shkreli from running his business while in prison. Because there is no law that says he can’t. The premise of prison is that it removes people from society, and in the case of most prisoners, that is punishment enough. But if a prisoner has a legal business, he would be punished more than the others if prevented from running it. And that is unusual punishment. The embarrassment is over how the prisons leave drug dealers alone to conduct crime businesses right on prison property.
TMOR, Shkreli’s real crime was that he raised the drug price only to insurance companies, the largest criminal element in American civilization. Where the Mafia leaves off, the insurance companies begin. Insurance is viewed as “mostly Zionist” racketeering in that auto insurance is the only consumer item in America that most people are required by law to purchase because it is impossible for most people to make a livelihood without a vehicle. It took monumental shystering to get a law like that one pushed through.
Bottle cap floor.
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Okay, who’s the skirt? This is Shawn Larson and she is looking for a bass player. I’d heard her sing one song some time ago and she was a solo act. Quite the guitar player and her voice is normal country female, but with an underlying deep tone, which I remembered. Then I see this ad for a bassist, preferably a female with backing vocals. Ah, where have we seen this before? Quick, who do we know that has tons of experience in all-girl bands that plays the type of bass that propels female singers into a league of their own? Somebody who knows duo music to a tee and has thousands of hours of stage time? I sent her a note saying to contact me, or more to the point, not to decide until she’s heard us play together.
This week’s planning meeting was, in hardly my favorite format, over the phone. The top was production vs. distribution. Once the facts came out, nobody is any more anxious to do the distribution part than I am. Invention and innovation are a wide open field in America, but the distribution system is firmly in the hands of the big corporations. My contention is that some of the best music and brightest ideas never make it because due to this ipso facto monopoly. I leave you to conduct any independent study, but this situation has spawned a sub-industry of people searching the land for undistributed material of good quality. A tertiary effect from this is the convoluted patent and copyright laws.
Between us, nobody wants the headache of the distribution. Robynette did not mean she could do it, only that she knows people who can. As usual, they cost a fortune. The Internet was supposed to semi-solve the distribution problem, but it only created another fiasco where the product often cost less than the “shipping & handling”. It’s too much for now, but I am almost convinced the US railroad system could halve the cost, if it were run correctly.
Today was overcast again, but not gloomy. Other than taking the dogs out, my only activity was a bagel over on Old Hickory. When I moved to Florida on Xmas Eve 1999, a coffee, bagel, and newspaper cost me $2.08. Today it was $7.18. In that same year, gold was $270 per oz and it cost $5 to go to the movies. Coffee is permanent in my life, that’s the relationship here. One reason it endured is there was many a time in my teens and twenties I was so broke, that was my only luxury. At the same time, that coffee became deeply associated with reading, study, and crosswords. I did most of my university and then college study at Denny’s. Back when it was Denny’s.
So it is no surprise I can make a full day of very little and still have something to write about. This day, I chose to read about the fight with the German gunboats on Lake Tanganyika back in World War One. It’s a forgotten battle. The English used steam farm tractors to haul dismantled mahogany boats up from Cape Town. This is the time of Lettow-Vorbeck, and coupled with the Boer war, forms my opinion that these are the sort of battles that finally bankrupted the British Empire. To me, the English won by vastly out-spending the enemy. And, they borrowed the money, using Palestine as collateral. Nifty, since it did not belong to them.
In fact, the operation was so frighteningly expensive, the Germans could not figure out what was going on and made a series of bad decisions. They send a weak patrol and lose one of their three gunboats to the enemy. The German vessels are heavier, but also slower. The light mahogany speedboats attack in pairs from the flanks and sink a second German gunboat. Events change when London sends in airplanes to complete the attack. The Germans scuttled their big ship and the battle was over same afternoon.
ADDENDUM
When crooked outfits like Google and Facebook start banning “hate speech”, it’s time to look at what they are really up to. Seems to me they are cheek by jowl in the same deep trouble and looking to score some brownie points. Fewer things could reveal better that their success was based on luck and not tech innovation or acumen. The trouble is, the liberals who award those points are still screaming in disbelief that they lost in 2016 and the new administration has canceled the rewards program. Under the old regime, hate speech was anything the leftists wanted to stifle. Last time I looked, any hint of white pride was branded racial elitism and supremacy. Liberals commonly confuse these as being the same thing.
So, let’s take a peek while we still can. First place to look is the Southern Poverty Law Center. I’ve read many books on their agenda, so their mindset is familiar. They have appointed themselves to track hate groups but not to define what hate is. They say there are 36 hate groups in Tennessee, about half of the number they count in Florida. Insert snarky comment here about similar statistics for items like number of illegals. Their newest category of hate group is “anti-Muslim”, noting that such groups are counted separately, while all chapters of Muslim extremists are counted as one.
The total count of these groups is over a thousand. Around half are the same category despite all kinds of labels such as neo-Nazi, KKK, supremacists, and the usual. Numbers are difficult to find, but membership is growing along with the numbers of new groups at a claimed 7% per year. But the only thing you find on-line is leftist hate groups against rightist hate groups. The impression I get is a great liberal worry that somebody might somehow unite these groups into one force. What I wanted was a head count of membership. The number is so large, there is a on-purpose doctrine of not publishing it.
Last, here is another example of what is wrong in America today. There is a [Tennessee] state administered program that gives low-income families up to $7,300 in vouchers to be used in connection with their children’s education. It is above and beyond any federal requirements, which are funded separately. It is intended only for legal state residents. It is state money and it should rightfully be the state that says who gets it. Who could possibly find anything wrong with that?
The teacher’s union, that’s who. They have a greedy and vested interest in the matter, citing a 1982 law that forbids the states to deny any student free public education on the basis of immigration status. Why would that law even concern a school teacher? Because they are paid by the student, that’s why. That law is so wrong in itself because compliance makes people break other laws which forbid abetting crime. The sad part is the teacher’s avarice will be entertained at great public expense, and even if they lose, it won’t cost them a red cent. I’m with the state, because the vouchers are an extra that has nothing to do with the “public” part of education.
Oh, now I know which Alexandria you mean. She was actually a little on the pretty side ten or eleven years ago. It’s her politics that makes her ugly. If you think the teacher’s union have a hidden agenda, there’s nothing like a Latina politica from California who is soft on crime, illegal immigration, and welfare. Sorry, I deleted the coyote photo, so now I can’t show you that it was actually the prettier of the two. Smaller fangs, too.
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