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Your Un-Checked Government

I alluded to the smart/dumb people analogy in terms of government stupidity a few days ago.  The related learning from history or not analogy, as the case may be, applies here.  This is what you get with un-checked authoritarian religious bigots calling the shots:

“It has never been my practice to choose the popular course,” she said. “When others lie as naturally as they breathe, I become frustrated and angry.” She concluded “with one request—and that is that your committee protect those Americans who have honestly, wholesomely, and unselfishly tried to perfect this country and make the guarantees in our Constitution live. The actors, musicians, artists, composers, and all of the men and women of the arts are eager and anxious to help, to serve. Our country needs us more today than ever before. We should not be written off by the vicious slanders of little and petty men.”

Full story here.  69 years ago this gang of charlatans called a government ruined the career of a great artist for nothing.  Hazel Scott wasn’t the first, and certainly wasn’t the last.  These mutherfuckers running the government today have been laying low waiting for the Trump opportunity.  They are now in the process of a full-scale assault on women’s reproductive rights.

Fuck Trump.  Fuck the Government, and Fuck every single clergy, councilman, state rep or Federally-elected seat holder who thinks their conservative views on race, religion and sex are worth the slime they skate around on.

 

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1st Job of the Year

It wasn’t much, and turned out to be too much from a convalescent viewpoint, but we did manage to haul a few pieces of PVC back from Home Depot yesterday – first time using the new  headache rack:

Good thing I remembered to stop before pulling in the garage!

Looks like at least another week or two before achieving higher activity levels.

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Panama 2020

Everybody in the Panama family appears to be doing well.  Michelle has been visiting with them for the past couple weeks.  Looking forward to seeing alot more pictures.

Michelle and Alda

My update:

4 MAR 20: Off painkiller 4 days, everything feels good. Nerve pain disappeared a few days ago. Will start cutting the Gabapentin now. Using brace less.  Sleeping almost normally.  Still feeling tiny, sharp jabs on movement at the job site, normal, expected. Radiculopathy has evened out bi-laterally, focused in the erectors and obliques now with minor cramping in both thighs.  Glute strain diminishing. Feels like I am finally on the road to recovery.

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Difference Between Smart and Dumb People

… isn’t that smart people don’t make mistakes – they certainly do.  They just don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again:  “Former CFPB Director Cordray cautions against that approach. He points out that even The Mortgage Bankers Association filed a brief in this case “saying whatever you do don’t strike down the agency as a whole because it would cause chaos in the mortgage market. “

It’s a new era of authoritarian U.S. government.
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Got a Few Inches

I like the late season snows for the first few inches, at least.  Makes a good excuse to stay inside and be lazy, but it will be gone tomorrow with another warming trend.

Half melted by noon
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Truck Proximity

“Normal” was never an issue, so yeah.

Does truck number and density correlate to rate of normalcy decline?
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Good Mail

I just had to make a note of this.  Even the one piece of junk mail was for health food, so not categorically bad.  A card from Mom, two refund checks and a health food flyer – all good – never happened before!

No bills!

Yesterday’s symtoms log, for the morbidly curious:

26 FEB 20: Post-Op pain is >50% resolved at this point – almost off the oxycodone. It makes a good sleeping pill. Sleep loss has been an issue all along. IME, spinal fusion hurts more than a hip replacement, but resolves quicker. Started a little stretching today. It’s like a year’s worth of that crippling problem suddenly disappeared.  Morning pain from the injury site immediately upon getting out of bed is gone, and the need to constantly sit and stay off my feet is diminishing.   Right leg and knee remain unusually tender and sore. A year of waiting for a hip replacement, followed by another year of stumbling around on a broken back took their toll.  BP normal at 114/67.

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Bloomberg is a Twit

Watched most of the SC debate last night.  Very little stood out.  Buttigieg is clearly the most rational, smartest and best looking.  Biden appears to be a tired, old crank, repeating stock talking points regardless of their relevance to the question posed.  The women are strong and believable, but could never stand against Trump’s pre-approved misogynistic stance.

Bernie is the man.  Attacking him on the Russian topic right out of the gate at this juncture is telling.  Nobody really knows anything definitive about that just yet.  So the suggestion that people are doing cyber-work with the Russians presents an exploitable vulnerability attributable to anyone.  Everybody is working with the Russians in cyberspace.  It’s just a question of for-or-against in the wild Internet West.  They are monitoring this blog.  Does that make me a Russian asset?  Keywords are what they are #mutherfuckers. 

Bloom’s weak and disingenuous attack only proves his misunderstanding of technology and a willingness to exploit politically-charged buzzwords.  He needs to just get behind the front runner and start pumping money in the right direction.  Set one of your people up with the DNC and start writing checks before any chance of beating Trump slips away. 

Two sides of the wealth coin in American politics.
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Pandemic!

OMG!  People will get sick and die.  What is the most obvious societal response?  Wall Street drops.  Keeping those bottom lines in the black with all these sickness and human issues to deal with is getting tougher – bad for business, dont’cha know.

Markets are shrinking!

We better hope it’s not mutating faster than ever seen before.

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Broken

That’s me now – completely and utterly, sitting in a jail of my own design, imposed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  Physically – midsection shot, metal clear across, living in constant pain for the past 14 months.  Mentally – gaslighted by the VA for 10 months, doubting my own sanity in a world of cognitive dissonance.  Emotionally – family relationships ruined, perhaps irreparably.  I only hope the lumbar fusion surgery last week puts the physical part back on track, because that is the root cause  for all of it.  Thanks VA, don’t know what I’d do without you.  Prognosis is good for Dr. Donner’s work, with no un-expected ill-effects noted from the back surgery I didn’t need until after Dr. Park got ahold of me, January 8th, 2019.

Just a quick update to put the site back in service after a few days of infrastructure tuning and offline analysis.  Hey fuckface – no, the other fuckface, Putin:  tell your FSB buddies my onion is ready to peel.

Even Putin cannot believe it.
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The World's Human Garbage

You can trace the origin of every similar image across the globe to some leading dictator, clergy, oligarch, politician, whoever.  Their policies and industries are killing the planet and draining humanity’s soul.  Proof:

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-plymouth-rock-vandalism-20200217-sh5fxlhbynarvhi6qvzpdalfre-story.html

https://thehill.com/policy/international/china/483370-newly-revealed-data-shows-chinese-imam-family-were-detained-due-to

https://variety.com/2020/tv/entertainment-industry/why-love-island-must-consider-mental-health-column-1203505953/

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/483398-judges-association-calls-emergency-meeting-in-wake-of-roger-stone

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/806721827/boy-scouts-of-america-files-for-bankruptcy-as-it-faces-hundreds-of-sex-abuse-cla

Sorry, but there appears to be a dearth of anything good to write about.  Bye-bye.  Not that anybody was listening anyway.  We’ll be offline for some time while I finish integrating a new NIDS after some preliminary testing over the past few months.

 

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L4-5 Fusion Complete

The topic should be left hip replacement complete, but it’s been so long (13 months) since Dr. Park broke my back, that’s a distant memory.  Here’s what my lumbar looks like now.  New rods and screws in the vertebrae compliment titanium hip prostheses on both sides.

It wasn’t too bad of a procedure – seems less traumatic than a hip replacement.  But the accompanying nerve pain is a new twist.  Not much in the way of rehab needed, just alot of hurting until it sticks and grows in.  They gave me a stout brace that works way better than the riding belt I was using all last year.  All the staff at RMR were great, and of course Dr. Donner has my undying gratitude.  I was not going to make it much further.

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Heirloom?

Can’t be sure exactly when I acquired this knife – probably around 10 years of age?  I remember Floyd Traud teaching me how to sharpen it on a whetstone.  I believe my grandfather gave it to me, but not sure.  Most boys growing up in my neighborhood had something similar.  Traipsing around in the woods pretending to be Daniel Boone with a big hunting knife was one of my things to do back in those days.

It spent 20-some years riding around under the seat of ‘ol Betsy after I joined the Air Force.  I bought that car right here in Denver for $900 in perfect condition with low mileage in 1984.  The knife surfaced sometime around 2005 when the car was scrapped.  The engine and trans still adorn one corner of the garage, with everything else not seen on that stripped hulk stashed around various hiding places.  I think I got my money’s worth out of that one. 

Then the knife sat in a toolbox until last week after I finally got some plasti-dip and properly repaired the handle.  It’s been a long time since I went by “Dave.”  Maybe I’ll start a collection.

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A Good Firing

Getting fired can be a very good thing.  I know this from personal experience.  It happened to me three times during my working life, and all three resulted in very positive outcomes.  The first time I was a 19yo caught stealing beer from the Pittsburgh Airport where I worked as a night janitor for  the food service company.  It had been going on for months.  Hosting free-beer parties every weekend wasn’t doing anybody any good, and I was going nowhere academically or in the job market.  That first one was unintentional.

The second time came many years later in 2002, as the unintended consequence of my own intentions.  OSI informed the CSS Commander at Peterson AFB of some so-called “network hacking” activity attributed to me.  The funny part about that was, I reported it myself after discovering system vulnerabilities in the course of my assigned tasks and duties!  It turned into a time-wasting, embarrassing conundrum for a Commander unwilling to admit his mistake before the erroneous Article-15 action was refuted.  Then I got a new, better job:  A trip to Bosnia.  That was punishment for beating the Article 15.  You should have seen the look on his face when we went in to sign the paperwork.  He was steamed.  Then I went off and did some really cool stuff at Butmir.  Within a week of my arrival it was apparent nobody with a clue had been around for quite awhile.  It wasn’t very difficult making a lasting, positive impact on MIB secure comms.  Lotsa people thank you for that, Col Wright!

My 3rd time around the firing ring, 2nd on the  insubordination track, was a few years later working as a Lockheed contractor at Schriever AFB.  That was fully intentional by me, all the way through.  Sometimes you just gotta stop tolerating the bullshyt.  I got a 2-month paid vacation and fully-funded retirement out of that one.  Good luck LtCol Vindman – but I don’t think you’ll need it.

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There's a Fine Line

Evil and malevolence are disturbing and unfortunately active forces in our society.  They are dark and dangerous, with few wiling or even able to effectively deal with them.  And yet motives and outcomes they engender can be beneficial to the greater good under the right circumstances.  It’s not hard to get past the wrong side of it once you realize everything you do falls on one side or the other of that good/bad line and stays there, the moment you push the “go” button.

Think about it next time you do something.

Every waking moment, every human being goes down their chosen path on one side of that line or the other, close, far away, or somewhere in-between.  Everything they say or do influences to some extent, everything and everyone they come in contact with, somewhere on the spectrum of negative-to-positive outcomes.  Bet there’s a lot of people sitting around in Washington D.C. right now with either no clue on which side of the line they stand, or a delusional cognition problem.  JMHO, but in terms of potential consequences, that last little faux pas in the Senate was about as far across the wrong side of the line people have gone since WWII, in a coordinated, group-think fashion.

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The Honorable Lyin' Piece 'o Shyt

Trump is an obvious con man, but this vapid mutherfucker is just deceitful:

How’s McConnell’s cock feel stuffed to the hilt up your ass?

Here’s what the son-of-a-bitch had to say afterwards:  “The question before us is whether or not a policy question can be grounds for impeachment. The policy question is, can the president be impeached for looking at how taxpayer dollars are being spent? I simply don’t think that’s true.”

You know this is NOT a “policy question.”  And if you insist on characterizing it in that manner, then the “policy” is no foreign election interference.  FYI, that concept is law.  What we do know for a fact now though is, you only care about one thing:  staying in office.  Good luck with that.  The local news interviews were downright embarrassing.  

Thanks for letting us know what you think.  Now that we know your thought process is fatally flawed, with your character irreparably damaged from hubris and greed, your career in politics is over.  We’ll see what you have to say in November.  Good riddance.

“Honorable” is certainly a misnomer for this example.  Don’t let the rogue Trump administration fool you.  The U.S. Flag flies upside down at my house as long as Trump remains in office.

The GOP is dead. Long live the GOP.

The sad part is they know they can’t win on the tired, doomed conservative platform they by definition, cannot effectively amend.  So they cheat.  A vote is not a resource to be exploited.  It is a resource to be supported.  Amoral cocksuckers.