One year ago today: February 19, 2019, this blogs only real nudity.
Five years ago today: February 19,2015, another moronic MicroSoft format.
Nine years ago today: February 19, 2011, heated steering wheel standard . . .
Random years ago today: February 19, 2017, early renovation work.
Who warned you about this two years ago, c’mon, say it. Not that I support Trump. It’s hard not to these days, but the fact is, I support others less. Trump has changed the political landscape in two major ways (this is my opinion). First, he’s shown the normally fragmented taxpayer class what kind of power they have it they act in unison against liberals. Liberals who had so much invested in keeping them at odds for the purpose. Second, I don’t think the people that elected him and who are going to re-elect him will ever again accept another president that doesn’t keep promises. There will never be any more liars like Bush, or Clinton, or Obama in our time. The picture is a brass smoker’s lamp we are thinking of refurbishing.
And his plan does have that element. For example, he would put a 97% tax on the 400 wealthiest Americans. As he puts it, take them from super rich down to just ordinary rich. And I agree in one limited sense. I have no problem with the rich making tons of money from their own hard work and entrepreneurial genius. But they’ve crossed the line. They began to dabble in politics, influencing politicians to enact favorable tax laws and changed the business infrastructure of America to function on unskilled labor. They are using their wealth to prevent others from becoming wealthy, which has to be put to a stop. Even though it was the government that picked the fight it still makes them fair game.
The danger is the shifting definition of rich. Under extreme liberalism, I would be considered rich on a number of counts. There would be no provision for the fact that I worked for everything I have. Most Americans believe $250,000 income per year is the entry level to middle class, that fast disappearing segment of American society. And don’t hand me any of that good-for-you-you’re-lucky-you-could-work manure. No able-bodied person, including single mothers, should ever be on welfare. I don’t care if he ran off, she’s the one who screwed him. Collective guilt, my eye.
Sanders does have some genuinely needed views on corporations. One is eliminating stock buybacks, where a runaway successful business has the cash to buy back ownership from the shareholders. He wants 45% of a company’s board of directors to be employee-elected, a sobering notion. I’ll say it again, I have no problem with these concepts because they go after people who have abused power. But I question two things. First, such regulations would be handing a lot of power over to someone where such power has never in history been well-regulated. Next, once they’ve milked the corporations and the rich, who’s next? Never forget these people are dyed-in-the-wool left-leaning liberals and eventually will come for you. Yes, you.
Trent agrees with my contention the guy is blatantly buying votes. Our conclusion is that Sanders student loan forgiveness bid will sucker in millions of the entitlement generation. But they can’t elect him without plenty of older people who see the consequences of canceling debt. I’m flatly against anybody getting free money directly or indirectly, since I’m against borrowing money in the first place. Borrowed money is the reason university costs so much and produces so little. The same goes for medial costs and house prices. They’d never get away with that if people couldn’t pay with borrowed cash.
And as Trent says, if Bernie doesn’t get in, good. Because in another four years he’ll be too old to run. Ha! Bernie’s promised away something like $4.3 trillion in free gifts and still plotting.
Looks difficult.
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I created my first web page since 1996. Just some text but it displayed right the first time. Once again, the new book was totally in inadequate. It assumed you knew too much, which is not a suitable method for a true beginner. I only got through it because I knew what they meant. I can see somebody with zero knowledge trying to make sense of those instructions. Where is the “launch” button? Where did this index file come from? It’s coming back to me why I laughed when I first saw hypertext, saying this is such a bad system it will never take off. I had other criticisms as well, I wondered why I couldn’t “host” my site on my own computer, why did I have to pay for a server? Actually, I’m still a little unclear on how that system is set up. But I still have the same question, and it is not a dumb one.
Even now, I meet people who work on web sites for a living who could not even describe how the ISP/server/host system worked. My pages are created with a text editor that saves the file with the .txt extension. Some were stunned this could be done without an IDE. Many of them would contact me a week later for how to change the text document into a web document. They did not know it is a (simple) matter of renaming the file with an HTM extension. Oh, and stay by the phone. Because in around six minutes he’s going to call back asking why he can’t edit his document.
I got photos and video to post, but not gifs, which was my goal. I had made up some sample gifs for the Reb and she reported they did not play, or possibly they just did not autoplay. As far as the way HTML behaves, there has been no real improvement. It will still balk at perfectly good code, errors will propagate down the page, and the lack of standards ensures there will always be incompatible browsers. This photo with the red jar (pics and text are random) shows the page displaying on my tablet.
And of course you get a picture of the bathroom progress. Both sinks are now working and I’m fitting the last drawer into place. The décor is “early outhouse”; could this be the start of a nationwide trend? It’s a cozy little spot, though it will be a while before I get to that floor. Here’s a quick wrap up of the day. The new bike tube from Walmart, the one that was doubled, sprung a leak anyway. I’m no longer growing collard greens as they have sprung up everywhere I disturbed the soil. My garden is not in direct sunlight all day, so while the leaves show, I don’t have anything under the soil. At least not where the Almanac says there should be.
I watched a couple of feeds, Trump dominates the political scene, CNN scrambles to find things to rag about, and that last Democrat debate went over about as well as their impeachment hoax. And the whole bunch of them are accusing Trump of taking revenge over that. Nope, he’s draining the swamp and he was doing that before they cooked up the fake impeachment. Stone, one of Trump’s advisors, gets prison time for protecting his boss. I thought that was his job. I never like the lady judge on that case, she was anti-Trump from the word go. Amy Jackson is one creepy woman, an Obama-appointee, and seems incapable of dealing with criticism. She’s the same one who dismissed the wrongful death cases against Clinton for the Benghazi disaster.
Taking some time to listen to what Bernie actually does say, I can agree with him about the issues of inequality. But not with the measures he proposes. It’s a obvious power-grab. Should a person who proposes a tax law ultimately be the same person who subsequently has the power to enforce it? And that’s another thing I’ll never understand. Regardless of who won the last election, any bill that enfeebles the taxpayer breezes through, but the slightest improvement takes forever.
ADDENDUM
Taking what little time is left over to pursue the bass act, I think I may be on to something. I’ve really put some effort into singing harmonies along to some of the super-classics. I can finally most of the time sing harmony thirds to the more obvious passages. Weirdly, harmonies often go unnoticed, but not in this situation. I need tons more practice but the result is different that when I started around 15 years ago. How I play bass makes the harmonies stand out. If you ask if I’d pursue this—hell yes, it proves a point. While not all my list is adaptable to harmony thirds, I’m finding it way easier to use what I have. Just like my first stabs at singing, harmony is become more automatic.
I’m kinda tired but blog rules say I have to document this. Tennessee taught me the bass players that find work can sing harmony. Fine. But they tend to stop there, and I get it, that’s quite a task. I’ve learned what they do and see there is a subtle opening. Most of them fix into that role, where I found I can switch between melody and harmony. And easily, within the same song. Let me get back to you, for I would be challenged to work up enough songs compatible with this, this what, this experiment? Where my old act was just singing, doing harmonies to the same material is a new dimension. I’m stepping though my material to find what works. Hey, it mostly works because they are not expecting it.
I figure I will have to employ every trick I know, like whispering behind “Mama’s Broken Heart”. But so far most of it all seems to be fine with what I’m attempting here. I’m doing what many expect a bassist to do, which is sing harmonies in the background. I’m merely, shall we say, shifting the ballast a little. It is little more than another development in my half-century of musical evolution. It pains me to see a youngster bass player on stage who has been trained from the work go to be another clone-like flunky.
And don’t forget to remind on “Blurred Lines” to cut the song right after the lyrics, “Must wanna get blasted.”
I got a note from Ray-B. By his own admission, he’s got the same song list as 13 long years ago. There was a time I knew around a third of them, but my song list turns over fast. I have less than five songs from that long ago, and they are time-tested veterans.
