Makes Sense If You Don’t Think About It
MAGA tradecraft and Project 2025 – makes perfect sense.
Needed a Smooth Talker
ABC This Week just revealed why the Repugs chose Vance. The way he expertly evaded and deceitfully manipulated every response was impressive to me, in and of itself. Felonius Fuckwit seems to be trailing into dementia, able to muster little more than cult meeting messages and offhand insults, even at press conferences. JD’s obviously the antidote for that malady. Maybe too late for the patient.
The funny part to me is how he almost immediately segues to repeat the talking points after every question, totally disregarding the question itself, often interjecting the interviewer’s first name in false empathy. He does it so fluidly and smoothly, it almost sounds sincere. Recognize what amounts to a plain old lyin’ POS. Good luck – he’s good at it. 😉
Autism + ADHD
Boots Went Down Fighting
He was such a playful, sweet boy – always challenging everyone to play with him. But Jax is a jerk and things got out of hand Monday morning. It took too long for me to get upstairs and break it up. now Boots is gone and Jax lost his cojones at the vet yesterday. Dr. Knudsen warned me about not having him neutered when he was a puppy. I thought I had him trained pretty well. Some things you just can’t change.
Ask Tanner and Phoebe what happens when two dogs, both neutered, living together for years suddenly decide they want the same toy. Diesel only lost a tooth. Boots lost his life. Dogs can be dangerous, and instincts are strong.
Told Ya Barr Was a MAGA Cockpig
More money followed. Barr is clearly one of the biggest dicksuckers of the Trump administration. Finally backed off at the bitter end, apparently after becoming unable to look at himself in the mirror. Obvious to me, at the outset.
Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probe of Trump.
Disruptive Technology
Originally posted 20 DEC 2018. Something made me think it was time for a re-post. Maybe it’s the fires. Floods coming today. I see the power company is finally moving in the right direction. Bet a couple fuckwits finally saw the conflict of interest smoldering directly under their sorry asses.
So I got tired of being browbeaten in the Utility Company newsletter with this new “demand rate” electricity pricing scheme, and commented on their website. Didn’t expect a response, but apparently it caught someone’s attention. So I replied to the reply, and after thinking about it a bit more decided to go full retard with a full retort.
Open letter to United Power of Colorado:
At what point did something to this effect go down: Suit at the head of a big conference table ends the meeting saying “We’ve got to come up with a way to make substantially more money off the same or even less amount of electricity!” And the minions were off to hatch their plans. Now we have “demand rate electricity pricing,” which basically means you just charge more for the largest block of electric. Those nighttime electrons are so much brighter, surely they command a premium price.
Carefully reading the Business Director’s (BD) response exposes no justification or arithmetically-based description. There’s lots of talk about solar, and the logic of the textual so-called explanation seems a bit specious: “Without this adjustment, the quality of the grid would be jeopardized or all the costs would be shifted to an ever smaller group of non-solar members.” Please define “quality of the grid.” It must be brimming with solar power during the day at least, and I can’t recall hearing anything about generating issues lately. Maintenance? What? Explain why my share of the grid should cost more than my neighbor’s when I am contributing to it and they are not. You wanna talk fair? If anything the maintenance burden should fall more on the people with greater use of your generation equipment.
So apparently this rate hike is primarily to offset revenue loss to PV generation. After all, Mr. BD is the one who brought it up. Reading between BD’s lines, the utility co-op is losing money to solar. Whodathunkit? It took years, but you were finally blindsided? So rather than adjust to a changing market, you’ll simply take steps to cover up a money grab with a big bullshit campaign trying to compensate. That’s your market adjustment: just shift the burden to the customers in the most insidious way possible: a reverse subsidy on Solar. Because let’s face it – bottom line, all you are saying is daytime energy is less valuable than night time energy. Do you see the inanity of your situation yet?
If you need to raise rates, do it. But don’t get cute with schemes that unfairly penalize people in arbitrarily defined ways. You punish everyone with higher nighttime rates and additionally punish the PV generators with lower rates during the day. People don’t like being punished for other’s mistakes. It’s a concept called “fairness” with which United Power appears to have some serious comprehension issues. It is fair to nobody and especially egregious to PV generators. Brilliant! United Power rakes it in while all customers get screwed to the maximum possible extent you can rationalize based on deceptive arguments about some contrived notion of the value and cost of electricity changing throughout the day.
One last thing: “As a solar customer you were helping to offset our energy charges but didn’t fully contribute to offsetting some of our fixed, grid charges.” Really? Would you mind explaining that one? Exactly what did I not contribute, besides dumping most of my actual generation into the neighbors or your batteries? Oh wait – now I get it: My contribution was reducing demand. You know – that thing you seem to have a problem with. Funny how that works, huh? Here’s a newsflash for you, just in case you weren’t paying attention: Reducing demand for carbon-based energy is probably one of the best things anyone in the whole goddamned world can do these days. Why do you believe penalizing people for that is a good idea? Get with the program.
I don’t like the idea of pissing off the people who manage my electricity. (However comma) I can afford to buy a bunch of batteries. Imagine that! At some point after enough private PV generators go off grid, your traditional business model is out the window and it won’t be a “grid quality” issue by then. Hopefully United Power of Colorado gets their battery situation sorted before we get going in that direction.
Nice job on the Tesla stuff over by I-25, BTW. 😉
LATE UPDATE 20240808: Maybe one or 2 of those big things you can bolt to the wall they’re selling nowadays?
Reddit POY 2024
Haven’t been paying as much attention to this as in previous years, but the Redditors continue to impress.
Fuck You, Elon. POS.
Must be hiring Tump’s old lawyers. Stay tuned – catastrophic failures are looming elsewhere.
Legal experts are laughing at Musk. It’s a desperate move with no chance of success. Musk’s lawsuit alleges a conspiracy among advertisers to boycott X because, obviously, the only reason companies wouldn’t want to advertise on a platform rapidly descending into irrelevance is a cabal of mean advertisers out to get Elon. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Musk’s chaotic management.
Autopilot? Seriously?
Tesla’s been doing it for years. Is this what all the vague, evasive NASA PR is all about? If so, it’s time to break up Boeing. There’s obviously something seriously wrong in the software development process, overall.
“Starliner was designed as a spacecraft to have the crew in the cockpit,” NASA Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich told reporters on July 25. “The crew is integral to the spacecraft.”
I think my spaceship knows which way to go. -David Bowie, 1969. Probably took this long just to figure out how to get Dragon Suits ready for them.
Gaslight and Grifting
Think he actually has anything like a speechwriter?
Trump doesn’t give speeches. He tells long fake stories that provide an alternate reality in which he’s the hero, allowing his audience to conflate themselves with him as he pretends to vanquish imaginary enemies like “Sleepy Joe” “Crooked Hillary” “the Deep State” & “Fake News”
Health Status Update
3 AUG 24: Doing pretty good with the Tastebudz® gummies. Getting a little sleep, from time-to-time. Not much, but better. Seems a continuous dosage of CBD throughout the day is the main precursor therapeutic controlling inflammation. THC on the other side remains an enigma of sorts. I can literally feel the radiculopathy let go in my glutes sitting here toking the vape. It’s what lets me stay on my feet with less discomfort more than a few minutes at a time. But it only lasts an hour or so. Tempted to start eating the THC again, trying to find equilibrium there somewhere.
Tell Me About It
On April 30, Finch finally heard from the VA saying the investigation is about to begin. Just two weeks later on May 15 she received a letter saying her claim was being denied.
They never planned on doing anything except protecting the staff and denying the claim – exact same thing they did to me. But there’s one problem this time around: I’m not Vivien Finch, and they failed to complete the job, in my case.
The Veterans Administration is dug into such a deep financial hole, any high-level resolution seems unlikely. Benefit cuts are coming. Have you seen Project 2025’s proposals on that topic? That’s not even the main healthcare portion. Let’s just hope damage control safety nets don’t continue failing right along with the rest of it. What a category combo – crime and health – whodathunkit?!
Canary In The Coal Mine
As if the fires weren’t enough.
This is the first large region of the planet where we have strong evidence that glaciers have crossed this important benchmark—it is a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for glaciers everywhere.
Cowardly Lion?
OK, but I’m thinking more in terms of a treason weasel, for a good Girth Vader animal metaphor. But there’s many possibilities….
5712 Midsummer
A look at the back yard this time around. Probably last year for the pond. Michelle doesn’t have time to learn how to help take care of it, and I don’t have the wherewithal to stay tied to it here 24×7 any longer.
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