It’s been 18 years since I retired from the Air Force. They still let me on base, but being retired is an outsider position, with no real insight to what’s going on in the organization. This year’s Heritage Foundation report confirmed suspicions brewing in news reports for years.
“For decades, the perception of American strength and resolve has served as a deterrent to adventurous bad actors and tyrannical dictators,” the report reads. “Regrettably, both that perception and, as a consequence, its deterrent effect are eroding. The result is an increasingly dangerous world threatening a significantly weaker America.”
Old jets, new space, lotsa problems.
Being conservative hawks, of course they’re always lobbying for more defense spending. Playing catch-up will be a more expensive defense strategy, with less available to spend on it going forward. Chickens are roosting.
Most concerned with politics at some level understand this concept. Some understand it only as a means to their ends. The vote – any one vote, represents the bedrock upon which democracy is built. Confounding factors besetting the vote these days come from people who do not respect this principle.
Respect. What a concept. From time to time, people have described postings here filled with profanity, mocking and derision as “disrespectful.” Barbs and accusations leveled at the highest ranking government officials have at times, been perceived as hateful and violent, even threatening. Ya think?
Face has been lost. It’s gone – long gone. The lines are clearly drawn for all to see. Who and what will no longer be tolerated under any circumstances are those assailing women’s reproductive rights, promoting systemic racism, practicing personal bigotry, enabling public health politicization, monetizing misinformation, gerrymandering, treason, voter suppression – the list goes on.
When the vote didn’t go their way, people proposing insidiously abhorrent illegal positions on these matters became overtly public for political purposes. Circling the wagons under the Trump banner, they formed the new GOP on big bags of cash floating in a floundering economy paralyzed with misinformation. Thanks for putting all the target acquisition work in news and social media! I might not go to church on Sunday, nor do I leverage illegal means to help my vote. But you goddamn well better believe I defend it religiously. Respect that or not, at your peril.
Voting-related violations against democracy and the rule of law committed by the former POTUS and his criminal enterprise are prosecution matters now. But regardless of the topic at hand, Trumplicans will continue playing the politics of fear in any divisive direction they can, because that is all the greedy cocksuckers have left. It is but one facet of our rotten government needing dealt with today. Parrot the big lie and all it engenders, or perhaps consider a little respect.
Gotta keep breaking up the never-ending string of political crime topics! Francie got this shot of Jax last time she was home. Those are the medium-sized goldfish in their 60-gallon winter home above the the basement TV. The big ones are in the 120-gallon, and the little ones are in the 20-gallon, now totaling 37. We have a few too many goldfish.
Pundits are referring to it as a “bottle-neck” at the ports. Potential fallout from a plethora of interrelated factors driven by an uncontrolled pandemic, while significant portions of production were shipped overseas to save labor costs over the past 50 years seems unsurprising. Logistics can have alot of moving parts that don’t respond well to unexpected changes.
King Fuckwit held a rally at the Iowa fairgrounds last weekend. Between him and the Covid crises he is so intimately entwined with, it amounts to a social media nightmare. Idiots and criminals have an effective, ubiquitous tool with which to wreak havoc. Most people agree the government should not be allowed to define what is true. So the self-fulfilling prophecy of section 230 has come to pass. A judge by the name of Wilkinson unwittingly set this country on the path to destruction in 1997. There is no legal incentive for Facebook or any Internet company for that matter, to police themselves, and in fact, substantial profit incentive not to.
It’s starting to look like people will come to this epiphany the hard way. It’s a math problem now. The number of gullible morons in this country has exceeded common sense’ capacity to contain the damage. Shutting it down to clean up the mess and start over might be the only solution. How corporate breakups might be informed should be a part of that process. Mr. Kirschner’s analogy to how the situation now unfolds is entertaining, in a sobering sort of way.
I believe the atrocities committed against native Americans during the settlement and development of this continent were some of the most egregious examples of human evil in all history. Seems like many Christian and White People had some splainin’ to do when they got to the Pearly Gates in recent decades. Words will never do it justice, and the remnants of racism and hate haunt us in every corner of the country to this day.
Clearing out the deadwood from last year’s early hard freeze was a summer-long project. Most everything I do around here nowadays gets done in small chunks, but I’m usually good to go for up to an hour or so with the girdle on. I was able to accomplish the lumber-jacking by cutting smaller pieces off the tops first, working my way down to the main trunks in a dozen sessions over the past few months. That way there was only an hour’s worth of work each time I started back in on it again.
I took it off about 4′ up so Michelle can use the stump for a plant stand in the spring. This was probably one of the easiest tree fellings ever attempted by anyone, and I still eff’d it up. It was already leaning the right direction, but tried to barber-chair because I didn’t get the hinge lined up straight to finish it. Moving the big stuff once it was down without any lumbar-jacking took a bit of fussing about. That’s how we used to deliver the Oxy/Acetylene tanks without a cart. You could do one in each hand if you were really skilled at it. Mr. Wallington might be less crippled than me, but the stuff he does is 100 orders of magnitude greater. Just have to adapt and find ways to get things done.
Fun starts at about the 5-minute mark.Almost knocked the phone off the ladder.
If not outright gunning them down, maybe just the random Covid infection passed along should do. When are these fuckwits going to learn their rights end where public health begins?
LA Co’s Police Motto: “To Serve and Infect”
Play by the rules, if you want to share in this society. Otherwise GTFO.
Talking about trillions of dollars in Federal budgeting is a political game lacking perspective. Alot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around big numbers at all, much less what they mean. The $3.5t infrastructure package compared to the $8t DoD budget over the same period looks less large to the average Joe wondering why they can’t get an Internet connection at the hovel.
Somebody should ask Manchin if he knows how many West Virginians died in Afghanistan.
Continued the ongoing project clearing photos out of the Google cloud with that last pond post. This about wraps it up for summer photo fun. Jax nearly bit that black tomcat‘s head off at the age of ten weeks, but he remains defiant.
Jax is in stealth mode on that last shot.
Almost done clearing deadwood out of the front yard. Keeping fingers crossed we don’t have another hard freeze before the leaves are down again this year.
