One year ago today: April 24, 2023, the frozen battery trick.
Five years ago today: April 24, 2019, a step closer.
Nine years ago today: April 24, 2015, Denny’s by the U.
Random years ago today: April 24, 2012, we already have eleven.
My gear all checks out, but I sure do regret not buying an 8-channel powered mixer when they were half the price of today. The used units on-line are mostly junk or 6-channel. For non-owners, allow me to describe why 6 won’t do. The Prez & I have two instruments and two mics. Suppose somebody, say, Taylor Swift, showed up and managed to beg me to let her join in. That’s 6 plugs.gone. Some of the mixers have extra jacks but they are usually a different type. Also, some, such as my Fishman, are designed so only one jack works per channel. If we know for certain the Prez will play mandolin, we’ll leave that plugged in, and on occasion, I can be talked into playing guitar.
Ah, but where did she get ice cubes? From work, the fridges were expensive at first, but many factories with war workers had them for employees to keep lunch drinks cold in the non-air-conditioned factories of the day.
Trump’s kangaroo trial continues, but America is on to the scam. Trump is not allowed to speak in his own defense, he’s under a gag order, and only left-wing reporters are allowed in the courtroom. Thus, the only news outside the courtroom comes from these fanatics who will lie about anything to keep their jobs. This could be the Democrats best possible hope of stopping him since they’ve already lost millions of voters over their despicable behavior. The accusations will continue but nothing has even touched Trump yet and the left is running out of time, money, and now rapidly losing their support.
ws the corruption, I remind them that over here at least these things are still crimes. Scientific American goes woke and loses, some say, half its readership. I have read but not bought a thing from them in twenty years.
Not again, I fell back asleep, so no marathons or miracles again today. We have another tiny visitor, a birdie with bright blue highlights on the wings. No ID yet, I can never find my field guide, instead I blunder into it once in a while. Let’s look at the news. Silver is bashed bad to $27.50, another Jew in Paris stabbed herself and reported a hate crime. A ‘renowned’ university professor says Noah’s Ark proves the flat Earth theory.
Here are some nice Chinese men installing remote controlled pylons that will create 15-minute cities whether you want them or not. The puppet Judge Merchan has allowed a juror who was convicted of defacing Trump. Makes you wonder what they could possibly have on him that’s got him dancing like a monkey. Any conviction of Trump could be the start of serious unrest that may not be contained by the existing authorities. If the Left pulls anything harsher, I dunno. There are many who consider New York City the headquarters of evil and some who hate anybody from that part of the country. I have never personally liked anybody from there. They behave as if it is your job to know when they are lying.
The Biden camp has launched an ad campaign that their “billionaire tax” (25%) is aimed at helping the poor. The truth is, the tax will hit those worth more than $100 million. It is aimed at wealth, not income, so they will just move it overseas and stop investing here. They only thing they’d then worry about is Trump putting in tariffs. And if history tells us anything, once the tax is in place, it becomes a simple matter of lowering the bar so that anyone who has more then $10,000 is then considered rich. See today’s addendum.
Grass roots.
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I got the silo window installed with two wire screens that would take crooks a half hour to get past. But I worked, as per my own rule, until I made the first stupid mistake. I had one board the right size to make a small awning for the window. I cut one piece exact, planning to use the strap end to make supports. Yep, I cut the good piece. But it is not going to rain before I fix it and I got some ancient videos out, finding a scene of the Hippie & I playing “Sunshine Of Your Love” at some party in Hillsboro in August, 2006. I was barely recovered and my weight was alternately climbing and falling rapidly. I recognize the baggy clothes I had to wear for years over that. And I had real trouble lifting my bass, so he must have paid well to get me out there.
I walked over to the neighbors to check on him, I’ve missed two Festus Tuesdays in a row without notification. He’s okay but I still like to let people know if I’m not going to show. I was able to triple confirm Jason, the guitarist, was not available even to jam. I also changed the blade on the table saw to a high quality all-purpose model.glued up a 1-hr box that I’m testing for glue strength only. If it holds, I need it for holding tubes, as before the trick is not so much inventory, but knowing where to find the tube if it sells.
Ah, back at my comfy desk chair with the newly repaired armrests. Let me check GAB, now that they wised up and enabled graphics again. Right away, it’s plain they lost the lead they once had. Gone are the core few hundred anonymous contributors who really make that site. To make it worse, they have lost that intangible lead they had on breaking news. If I did not say, there was up to a six hour lag time because Big Media needs time to put a spin on their reports. Example, when Biden said his relatives got eaten by cannibals, I heard it on GAB within minutes while the mainstream agencies have ignored it for a full day.
The owner [of GAB] lamely said he did it to save money. Ha, he’s lost a lot of that as well. At full speed, GAB was beginning to worry the bad guys by proxy. How that works is GABs up-to-date stories were exposing dirty deeds that used to rely on fait accompli. The one they must hate is how everybody so quickly learns when they lose a court case. They used to bury the notices on page 37. A example of a trend is how they required quick convictions, but now public opinion reacts too quickly. As the trials lengthen the corrupt judges can’t be sure Trump won’t win and the acquittals are picking up.
Exposure, that’s the game now. The Pentagon had to outright block National Guardsmen who were prepared to issue statements they were ordered to hold back on J6. That would make the Democrats guilty of a palace revolt. Dirty Bill Barr sees the writing on the wall and is trying to suck up to Trump. Aw, shucks, Don, it was all in good fun. We’re in this boat together. Let bygones be bygones, partner.
ADDENDUM
One facet they dwell on is how the rich have “bagged” w/3 of the wealth increases since 2020. It does not mention that they likely created it. Rich people create jobs, folks. Nobody else has the resources to run business efficiently. The poor and the best of governments have failed every time they have a go. A few countries like Switzerland and Spain have wealth taxes, but there are so many loopholes the perception is they are playing favorites. I personally don’t care about wealth increases in the form of artwork and sports teams.
There are around 2,800 known billionaires, as they don’t count outright criminals, which would handily double the number. The big lie is that the motives are to spend this newfound tax revenue on social programs. Such nonsense. Pouring money into poor people only creates more poor people. Surprisingly, the DAVOS bunch morally support a wealth tax. It’s around 2% on fortunes over $10 million. That tells me their hidden agenda is to forestall any worse redistribution schemes. My best solution remains a flat tax on goods and services, which you can avoid by doing things for yourself. This kills two birds, as few things make a good person smile more than watching some lazy fat cat have to perform actual work for the first time in their useless lives. Just ask Adolf.
There are documentaries on the rich but they tend to concentrate on the methods and lifestyle. Things like how business law, but not business work, affects them, And like celebrities, they get to thinking folks value their political opinions But at street level we know most rich people inherited their means and have never really worked for generations. I got a laugh out of “Born Rich”, the movie by that guy who inherited the Johnson & Johnson empire. He utterly fails to capture the internal meaning of rich because everybody he is in contact with is as shallow as anybody poor your could meet. We are talking about people who, along with their parents and grandparents, have never worked in their lives. None of them even work at or understand the businesses from which their fortunes derive.
They seem to lack spiritual or intellectual inertia, none were driven to become anything or do anything with their lives except be rich. What gets me is none of them saw this wealth as an opportunity to make something of themselves. I don’t just mean the lack of motive that might be present if they were poor, I mean the natural inclination to do something no matter what your starting point. For example, not one of them said to themselves, hey, I was born rich so I will dedicate my life to discovering a cure for cancer. That spark of purpose is just as missing as if they were born poor destitute and had to give up.
One thing is certain, their concept of accomplishment is superficial as hell. Sailing your yacht or winning a fencing competition does not rate as accomplishment, no matter how you shine it up. Here was a movie made by somebody with limitless resources and it boringly bland most of the time. I drew from it a few comparisons, for example, like the author at the time, I also have not worked a job in some 25 years. But for me, that was a major accomplishment, for him it was, literally, nothing. I knew I was poor and my default plan was to not have to plug my life away at a dead-end job to make ends meet. In other words, I had the twenty years after I started work to re-create the situation his ancestors at some point handed to him at birth—namely not having to worry about money.
There ends the similarity. We both own bonds, but I doubt he could calculate the discount on a treasury note. He has the boat, but I would be very impressed if he knew how to navigate. That is, his ton of money seems to have stopped him from doing things just as surely as my lack of it. Glancing at my calendar, in less than a month it will be 28 years since I last had no choice but to work for a paycheck I hated it—but on the other hand I found at least some later work enjoyable because I felt like it. Plainly, these people never felt like it.
There’s the unanswered question, why has not one of these people ever gone much further than their starting points? It does not have to be money, I mean with any group numbering in the millions, you’d think at least one rich kid would, once in a while, do something outstanding. By that, I mean who got at least as far past where he began by the same yardstick that measures me. Most of them don’t even display an ordinary curiosity over what’s out there. The three filthy rich kids I’ve known more than twenty years are as body and soul addicted to television as any poverty cases I’ve seen, they just have bigger screens and more of them.
