07:24 – Note that what I said about Obamacare yesterday was what I think the Democrats fear will happen, not what I think is going to happen.
Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff and the prepping book, but here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I finished books 2 and 3 in Steven Bird’s The New Homefront series. The later books actually were worse than the first. The good guys are all more upstanding than Dudley Do-Right (and just as dim-witted; they tend to do things like forget to take their rifles when they’re headed into a fight) and the bad guys are all worse than Snidely Whiplash. The prose is painfully hackneyed and twisted. This guy simply can’t write. Don’t waste your time. If I didn’t read so fast, I wouldn’t have wasted mine. I do this crap so you won’t have to.
- I ordered an Anker 14W dual-port portable solar panel, an Anker 10AH portable charger/external battery pack, and a SunJack USB Battery Charger. The latter is rather fragile, but it’s one of the few AA/AAA chargers that run from USB power. One alternative would have been a Goal Zero Guide 10, but that’s $50 and has some issues of its own, not least that it can’t charge batteries in pairs, let alone individually, so you need to charge four identical batteries with identical states of charge at a time. The Sunjack, despite its name and despite claims to the contrary on its website, is not recommended for charging with a solar panel as the source because varying output from the panel can cause problems. That’s not a big issue if you use an oversize panel, which the 14W Anker is. The Sunjack can charge one cell at a time and treats each one individually, so no worries about matching cell states for safe charging. The Sunjack has a 500ma charge rate for each cell, which means it will recharge a set of four typical AA/AAA cells in 5 hours or so of direct sunlight. In strong sunlight, the Anker panel produces enough power to drive two of the Sunjacks at a time. With two of them, I could recharge eight NiMH cells at a time, which should suffice for keeping our flashlights and lanterns, radios, and other emergency electronic gear powered. Rather than driving the USB charger directly, it’s also possible to use the Anker to charge a USB power pack or two, like the one I ordered, which can be charged during the day and then used to charge AA/AAA cells overnight. I’ll be trying the Anker solar panel with different things, like recharging some old, old NiMH cells to see what happens. I want to get a better idea of how this all works under real-world conditions.
- Barbara and I repackaged 50 pounds of flour. Embarrassingly, I had only 10 clean, dry 2-liter bottles on hand, so we stuck the remainder in gallon ziplock bags until I have more 2-liter bottles ready. I have hundreds of the things. I just need to clean and dry them. I’ll worry about that after we get moved, because we’re not buying any more bulk staples while we’re still living in Winston-Salem. After the move will be soon enough to bulk up. I’ve resigned myself to making lots and lots of trips up to our new house, hauling stuff up on each trip. We’ll get movers to move the furniture and other bulky/heavy items, but there’ll be plenty we can move ourselves.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
15:37 – I’d never heard of the Duggar family, but apparently it’s made up of two radical fundie parents who don’t believe in using birth control and their inevitable nearly two dozen offspring. I’m not sure how you turn that into a TV series, but apparently it is. Who the hell would watch it? So, it seems that one of those spawn is in trouble for admitting that when he was 14 or 15 a decade or more ago he felt up some of his younger sisters. Surprise, surprise. Boys that age are obsessed by sex. In a normal environment, he’d have felt up 14 or 15 year old girls whom he wasn’t related to, but I guess he did the best he could with what he had available. Two of the sisters have spoken out, saying it’s no big deal because he was, after all, just a teenage boy, but apparently the so-called media has turned this into a firestorm. Based on the family’s stated beliefs, it sounds like they should stone him to death. As well as the girls in question.
Y’all always quivering in your boots about our spiders and snakes. Well, here’s another one to worry about.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-05/new-tarantula-genus-discovered-in-australias-nt/6525552
I wouldn’t worry at all about a tarantula. They’re kind of cute. We have much more important things to worry about, like Baracki hussein var. obama. One bite from B. hussein obama spp. is known to be lethal to higher life forms.
Prepping – hey, the future storage room in the basement is (finally) getting towards finished. Still a lot of niggling little details that will take more time than they should, then paint, then shelves.
Moving forward on any front is always good. As many have said, preparing is process and a journey, not a destination.
I think it’s interesting that prepping is becoming mainstream, and indeed is now already arguably mainstream. I think it’s a general perception that things aren’t right and aren’t improving. We’ve all watched the catastrophic economic problems here and elsewhere, disappearing jobs, increasingly intrusive government, the country dividing into two factions who both hate the other’s guts, social unrest escalating into rioting, looting, and killings, and so on. Most people thing of this state of things is the new normal, and many of them are now taking steps to protect themselves and their families and friends.
To me, it’s always been the normal. We’ve always lived in a dangerous world. I grew up with the Soviet threat to vaporize us. Now I’m more worried about the underclass, but either way it’s a dangerous world and prudent people take whatever steps they can to minimize the danger to themselves and their loved ones.
I get emails constantly from people who’d never even thought about prepping until very recently, but are now doing what they can to get ready for bad times. Ferguson caused a big bump in those emails, as did Baltimore. I suspect that within the next year or two a literal majority of middle-class people will be involved in prepping to at least some degree.
I’ve been so busy with work that prepping activities have slowed down. Recent news stories (ISIS wannabe killed in Boston) have scared me enough to pick up the pace again. It seems like most are treating the shooting as justified so I don’t expect riots and looting, but it does prime the community to go nuts with the next event.
The ISIS guy and his pals are clearly the low hanging fruit of the terrorist crowd: vague planning, broadcasting their intentions on social media, and talking to people who are going to pass it on to law enforcement. This guy was a fool. The next bad guy might not be so foolish and will learn from the mistakes of those who preceded him. That is scary.
Plus it is now hurricane season.
WTF Obola? Do we really need to spend my tax $$ on the Rooskies?
Even as diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia remain decidedly chilly over the Ukrainian conflict, the State Department is reaching out to “up-and-coming” Russian journalists. A recent $150,000 grant offering from the U.S. embassy in Moscow seeks to establish a program to give Russian journalists an “intensive professional exchange experience in American newsrooms,” plus “cultural experiences that allow them to learn more about the United States in general.”
“I do this crap so you won’t have to.”
Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Plus it is now hurricane season.
Yup, this may be the year of the big one. I doubt that my home will survive a Cat 5 but I am fairly sure that it will survive a Cat 4 even though we do not have hurricane clips. In any case, we are going to ride out any hurricane due to the fact that you cannot leave the Houston metropolitan area in a mad rush. The last thing I want to do is ride out a hurricane in a truck or car.
I bought a potty chair with a bucket this week. The wife has sworn that she will never use it but I tried to explain it would be better than a hole in the backyard with a bench over it. Sigh.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BJEZ88
I bought a cheap gas grill from Walmart for general patio cooking:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Char-Broil-Convective-4-Burner-Grill-Stainless-Steel-Black/39073040
I bought a backup coleman gas grill for cooking:
http://www.amazon.com/Coleman-Triton-Series-2-Burner-Stove/dp/B00AU6GG2U/
I bought a Coleman gas stove oven:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Coleman-Portable-Camp-Oven/895626
I bought a dozen Coleman gas bottles for the backup coleman stove for $70. I previously bought one of those connectors that allows you to use the large propane bottles but these are just a backup:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMICFQ4
I am stocking up on these Coast single AA flashlights for handing out next Christmas:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IEMUOWU
Michelle Malkin’s latest article The College Board’s sabotage of American history only affirms what Mr. OFD has been saying all along.
Bob, I’m surprised you didn’t pick up one of these while you were buying stuff.
I already had one, not to mention better gear.
Lynn,
As a small business owner, you might take a look at http://www.zenefits.com/. I read about this company as a startup with great potential, and they already seem to be disrupting the HR and benefits practice in a good way – at least they are making a lot of money. The potential to simplify things for small business owners using technology seems attractive. I am not, and have never been, an employer, so I don’t know what else is out there, but this company seems to have the potential to be useful.
Here is a brief article that dwells more on the investment angle:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/06/zenefits-tagged-with-4-5-billion-valuation-after-just-two-years/
I thought you might also be interested in their software focus.
As a small business owner, you might take a look at http://www.zenefits.com/.
The way that these companies work is that all of your employees go to work for them. It really does not become advantageous until you have quite a few blue collar employees. My business is all white collar so the extra costs involved balance out the savings.
Weird. I have tried to post an article about global warming twice now and it just disappears.
I already had one, not to mention better gear.
Dr. Bob, could you post what you use?
My prepping was limited this week. I’ve been practicing some quad-rotor drone flying. You can buy or build a 6-8 rotor drone that can lift 1 kilo for 15 minutes. Imaging flying FPV over some goblin’s defenses and dropping a kilo of C-4 on his house, car, water storage, shed etc. Or home brew boom-boom stuff.
re the fundie boy and girls, no, don’t stone them. Make them get married. That will not only erase the girls’ sin, it’ll keep the fundie values in the family.
“Weird. I have tried to post an article about global warming twice now and it just disappears.”
Funny about that. Maybe it’s not real?
“…only affirms what Mr. OFD has been saying all along.”
Mr. OFD has been to the Belly of the Beast and knows whereof he speaketh. We’ve lost a couple of generations of kids to the publik skool indoctrination by, pretty much, communists. The Soviets and Maoists didn’t have to fire a shot; they read the quote from that old Jesuit who said “Give me your boy and I will produce the man.” Or something like that. Get the hahts and minds of the children and you just have to wait for the grandparents and parents to die off. They think in the long term; we Murkans have severe CRS and furthermore don’t care.
Now no one questions Diversity, Affirmative Action, homosexual “marriages,” a grandpa on a magazine cover tarted up like a Times Square hooker or Bangkok katoy, or that white male humans are the evil spawn of Satan and should be eradicated forthwith if they don’t have the decency to simply die out.
“Imaging flying FPV over some goblin’s defenses and dropping a kilo of C-4 on his house, car, water storage, shed etc. Or home brew boom-boom stuff.”
I’m just gonna go way out on a limb here and say that probably this has been thought of already by somebody. Somebody besides that disgruntled, bitter, rayciss veteran nutjob wingnut out in Lost Wages clinging to his religion and his guns.
What a great idea, though! I have a list of targets ready to go, and that’s just here in the ‘hood! What’s the flying range on these babies?
Most multi-rotor drones are now GPS capable and can follow waypoints and return home hands-free. If Amazon can drop packages, I can drop my own goodies, all hands free. Build your own and call it ghost-drone. Take out your neighbor for less than a grand. 🙂
I just finished with my CPA and 2014 1040. I wonder how much will go to welfare queens, miscreants, dirt bags and crimmigrants. It almost makes me want to live in box under a bridge somewhere. We pay a lot in taxes.
“The way that these companies work is that all of your employees go to work for them.”
Hmm, I didn’t notice that, but it would be a major loss of control. My point in passing this on was the idea of software that integrates the whole HR process, including health insurance. The business owner is supposed to be able to enter all the information just once, and the software handles all the rest, including dealing with the many agencies that must be fed data. When I took my last job, too many years ago to be relevant, I had to do a lot of that, and it wasn’t pleasant, especially on the heels of relocating across the country. I can only imagine how complicated it could be today.
The other thought, explained in this interview,
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201503/liz-welch/hr-technology-with-benefits.html
is that the founder saw an opportunity in the Affordable Care Act, something that is seldom mentioned in our circles. Whether this is true, I have to consider the source. I am unfamiliar with Inc Magazine, and a quick look to find out its slant came up a bit short.
Anyway, just something to thing about. I always hope that computers and software will actually simplify life, but most of the time they make it more complicated. One of my aphorisms is: I can’t afford the time for any more convenience.
“I wonder how much will go to welfare queens, miscreants, dirt bags and crimmigrants. It almost makes me want to live in box under a bridge somewhere.”
You and I don’t want to know. After all, there is little we can do about that. Even OFD says that voting doesn’t work any more, and he is probably right. An old colleague used to say: don’t vote, it just encourages them. I say: throw the bums out, get new bums. Either way the results are about the same. I really hope we continue sliding down the razor blade of life, and die before the SHTF. I am saddened by this.
” It almost makes me want to live in box under a bridge somewhere. We pay a lot in taxes.”
You sound a lot like my little brother, ten years younger than me. He often talks of living in a cardboard box soon, and gleaning weeds and leaves from the back yard to eat, while wife and daughters eat him out of house and home, not just with meals, but with two in college at the same time out at, naturally, expensive Kalifornia universities, and wife blowing zillons on trips to Florida, the Bahamas, and shopping online. That’s even BEFORE screwing around with taxes. While my middle brother works two jobs and sleeps via catnaps to support himself, pay back taxes on properties and support our sister and her kid, while she lies around the house all day watching tee-vee and posting chit on FaceCrack. Next-younger brother worked his ass off for thirty years as a UNIX guy, got fired by a nasty and vindictive and hateful Affirmative Action manager, and HIS wife spends every night ordering crap off the HGTV net and taking expensive trips to NYC with her sisters, etc., etc., while he works a crappy part-time gig nights and weekends.
By comparison here, I’m living the life of Reilly, except we are now paying the Feds back taxes ourselves, over $60k worth, over the next five years while also paying the current one-third of our income to them.
” I wonder how much will go to welfare queens, miscreants, dirt bags and crimmigrants.”
Way too much. Plus more to bail out the banksters too big to fail, DOD’s flustercluck adventures overseas, and the pay and bennies for zillions of worthless state and Fed bureaucrats and clerks.
“I really hope we continue sliding down the razor blade of life, and die before the SHTF. I am saddened by this.”
As am I. But also maddened. I won’t go down that razor blade quietly. Generations of my family bled for this country going back to King Philip’s War in Maffachufetts and I know that my brothers and I still have that DNA and cussed independent-minded resistance going. We’re getting old and decrepit but don’t count us out just yet.
Our political lords and masters have power in only two ways. The first is from the apparent legitimacy of elections. If enough proles vote, for any candidate, then the declared winner of the election is legitimate and may rule uncontested for the duration of his term. It doesn’t matter what rules are bent or how much funny business goes on with “found” ballots, he’s a legitimate ruler.
The second means of power is naked force. This is in large part how government operates in practice, but the proles think that if they just get the right guy in office, all of the problems will go away.
Boycott the ballot. I’d just as soon remove the veneer of electoral legitimacy. I’m pretty well convinced that only blood will overthrow the ruling class, and the more aggrieved proles on our side, the more quickly and efficiently enough blood will be spilled.
Augason Farms Emergency Food Whole Eggs Dried Egg Product, 33 oz
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Whole-Eggs-Dried-Egg-Product-33-oz/21777161
$40 ! Wow !
“Egg rationing in America has officially begun”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/05/the-largest-grocer-in-the-texas-is-now-rationing-eggs/
I’m pretty well convinced that only blood will overthrow the ruling class, and the more aggrieved proles on our side, the more quickly and efficiently enough blood will be spilled.
We’ve already tried this once in the USA. Did not go so well last time for either side. I’m not eager to see Abrams tanks battle it out in the heart of Texas. Lord forbid that it goes to battlefield nukes.
“Boycott the ballot. I’d just as soon remove the veneer of electoral legitimacy. I’m pretty well convinced that only blood will overthrow the ruling class, and the more aggrieved proles on our side, the more quickly and efficiently enough blood will be spilled.”
There it is.
The aggrieved proles are gonna include a shit-ton of veterans, ex-cops, and hunters, not to mention the growing hordes of “preppers.”
As for eggs, hell, we can get them around here locally and organic. Free-range, grass-fed chickens. Maybe we’ll set up our own coop, too.
Just got probably a good inch or two of steady rain all afternoon, monsoon level. Everything soaked and bugs out now. Sun tomorrow, we hope, ’cause we still got a lot to do out back.
“So, it seems that one of those spawn is in trouble for admitting that when he was 14 or 15 a decade or more ago he felt up some of his younger sisters. Surprise, surprise. Boys that age are obsessed by sex. In a normal environment, he’d have felt up 14 or 15 year old girls whom he wasn’t related to, but I guess he did the best he could with what he had available.”
The parents appear to belong to the Quiverfull movement. Nuts.
Feeling up unrelated girls of your own age is natural. Feeling up your sister/s is *not*. Ever heard the saying that this or that is exciting as kissing your sister? The guy should be, as you said, stoned. The girls should be if they didn’t cry out in protest.
Uh, C-4 *is* home brew boom-boom stuff.
All it is is RDX, which is trivially easy to make, along with some pretty straightforward plasticizers and binders. I rolled my own when I was 14 or 15 years old. Worked great.
I *told* you guys to order a bunch when it was $17/can, but would you listen?
On a related note, I’m thinking about ordering a couple #10 cans of freeze-dried chicken pieces. I figure I’m storing a fair amount of grain, so if push comes to shove I’ll just rehydrate the chicken pieces, reassemble them, and have myself a bunch of layers. Now, if only someone sold freeze-dried rooster pieces.
The walmart link was showing out of stock yesterday and day before.
WRT taxes, I remember the first year of steady work, I paid more in TAXES than I MADE in the previous year.
Did some prepping, but need to get the kids in bed.
busy backson
nick
“The guy should be, as you said, stoned. The girls should be if they didn’t cry out in protest.”
If they belong to the same radical fundie Prod sect as Dr. Gary North, who is otherwise a pretty smart guy, then yeah, the capital punishment they advocate is in fact stoning to death. I’d never heard of that family or the frigging tee-vee show, either, but it’s all over the net and the Maoist online rag Salon has half a dozen stories per day on it; they’re the preferred bathroom tabloid reading of the dead Koba the Dread and that mummified piece of shit they still have out on display over there.
“I rolled my own when I was 14 or 15 years old. Worked great.”
A danger to the community even back then. Imagine it now.
“…so if push comes to shove I’ll just rehydrate the chicken pieces, reassemble them, and have myself a bunch of layers. Now, if only someone sold freeze-dried rooster pieces.”
The genius chemist and witch-doctor has it all figured out. Read and learn, ladies and germs. See if you can rehydrate that fugly pig Rodham so our boy down in Oz has something to look forward to of a lonely evening amidst the rutting ‘roos and platypuses or is it platypi?
Tip for the Frankensteinian prepper: make sure to stock extras of all the parts and safety equipment needed to attract lightning and guide it to reanimate your abominations.
I would think that training and experience in bringing down corrupt tyrannies in other parts of the world would apply to bringing down a corrupt tyranny in North America. Hypothetically.
Good tip, Mr. SteveF!
Seriously, though, anyone with tools and firearms to worry about should have spare parts kits for them, and in some cases, duplicates.
Prepping this week here as such included a second duplicate lawnmower, organizing tools and outside gear, buying more Magpul .223 and S&W Shield magazines and three fast reloading devices, Maglula and Caldwell, and sending prep info down to my next-younger brother who wants to get outta Dodge but spouse is not on board yet.
We also made a huge dent in cleaning out the back porch and will be getting it ready as a three-season extra room, where we can also store some outside tools and gear.
And I got some four-foot fencing to string between the existing metal posts at the rear perimeter of the property and put up the first solar motion-detector floodlight. Plus, five raised beds done and planted so far with three varieties of tomatoes. Peppers to follow.
Well, hit a few sales today. Lot of ‘man’ stuff, which was a nice change.
Picked up another colman lantern, like new in box, and a mini-colman lantern that I’ve never seen before. . . NIB it looks like a 1/2 scale model, and has only one mantle. Got some oakley sunglasses for resale too. The guy was a big hunter and had a lot of toys. They had a rhino skin for sale. I thought it was neat, but was unsure of the legality so I passed. It was thinner, and supple-er than I expected.
At the last sale of the day I scored. 66 freeze dried meals, assorted entrees, for $53. Even considering that some are mostly pasta with sauce I count that as a major score. They list on amazon at $6-13 each. The same sale had some good books too. Audel’s Welding Manual, a big book on construction and building, the US Army Survival Manual, and an old Boy Scout Handbook. Some minor radio stuff, swr meter and cb antenna (might go back tomorrow after 1pm when everything is 50% off. There were some things I wanted but not at the current price.) I got some quality old wrenches, from a manf I collect, and some other bits and pieces, including some shotgun and rifle cleaning kits.
As further evidence that guns are a glut on the market, there were a couple of rifles and a shotty still there, late in the day. A year ago, they would all have sold to the first buyer in the door, no matter what the price. There was ammo left too. At half price I’m a buyer if it’s still there tomorrow.
Checked out a new gun store and range. I was looking for something to leave in the truck, but they didn’t have anything I wanted in my budget. Nice range, and some interesting classes, but typical gun store vibe. Not a comfortable place to hang out or for the uninitiated or female. That is really unfortunate as we need more gunnies, not fewer.
This week was slow going, but I added some shelf stable pouches, and some cans. I got canned bananas in syrup, Nido, and more canned “table cream.” I need to try the bananas before stocking them, but I’m hoping for something to add variety.
One of the canned taco meats I stock was on sale for less than half price so I got a bunch. They are stocking more imported canned meats and pouches at my big grocery store. I wish one of my local stores stocked freeze drieds. Our walmart definitely doesn’t.
I didn’t see the egg rationing sign when I was at HEB on Wednesday, but I buy my eggs at Costco anyway. Prices were up from $2.18/ 18 to 3.89/ 18 for plain white eggs. I buy liquid eggs for the freezer as backup at HEB. They are the whole egg, not just whites or eggbeaters(tm). They freeze just fine in the cardboard half quart cartons. I guess I’ll add a few more tomorrow, as well as hitting the wholesale food supplier to see what they have, if anything. My kids and wife eat a lot of eggs.
I got some more work done on my HF vertical antenna, and bought the mounting hardware. I hope to have it up this weekend.
I also bought the stuff I need to get my next 55gal of rainwater collection hooked up, so that’s on the list too.
My garden is growing very slowly. The stuff I started from seed is mostly eaten by pests, or still tiny. I did pick up some more zuccini to plant where the other stuff failed. I’m determined to find SOMETHING that will grow in “feed my kids” quantities. I’ll repeat myself again (hah) if you aren’t gardening, you need to start. The learning curve is much steeper than it looks.
Couple more sales tomorrow, and hopefully a yard sale or 2, then need to get some work done….
nick
Interesting to note:
One of the family owned pawn shops I stopped in today was almost empty. I asked the guy what was up. He said “with the price of gold so low right now, we’re concentrating on buying as much as we can, and have pretty well stopped doing anything else.”
Just another data point.
nick
“As further evidence that guns are a glut on the market, there were a couple of rifles and a shotty still there, late in the day. A year ago, they would all have sold to the first buyer in the door, no matter what the price. There was ammo left too. At half price I’m a buyer if it’s still there tomorrow.”
I was in two gun stores today myself; and even overheard one of the sales clerks mention they have more guns than they know what to do with now. Also just about all categories of ammo on hand again, including .22LR.
“Checked out a new gun store and range. I was looking for something to leave in the truck, but they didn’t have anything I wanted in my budget. Nice range, and some interesting classes, but typical gun store vibe. Not a comfortable place to hang out or for the uninitiated or female. That is really unfortunate as we need more gunnies, not fewer.”
“I’ve seen and heard this kind of comment before on a couple of gun blogs and also with some gun-related Toob vids. I’ve sensed a little bit of that in one or two places but in general when I walk in there and they see the big ol’ Visigoth lumbering in, they’re a bit nervous at first and then figure out I’m pretty much one of them. Some of this might be due to them knowing a lot of their customers are CCW and hopefully not gonna shoot up the place or rob it. Could make things a tad tense, I guess.
One store did have a couple of female customers but they were with their guys. I find once I start chatting with them or other customers, I’m good to go.
They are always very polite and civil to me, though, and call me “sir.” Hopefully they do that with all their male customers.
Another data point:
Was chatting with the girl on the cash register at the hunter’s estate sale. She volunteered during our conversation that her family was selling their current boat (they live in Kehmah) and will be buying a boat big enough to live aboard and sail away if SHTF. They are selling off their household stuff already, saving the money, accumulating supplies, and are on a six year plan. She says, “I’ve been watching the prepper shows, and we think it’s a good way to go.”
Widespread indeed.
nick
“except we are now paying the Feds back taxes ourselves, over $60k worth, over the next five years”
@OFD: Does that at least mean that you have a definite end to the arguments with the IRS? While $60k isn’t peanuts, it would be a lot better than the never-ending story.
I’ve not heard of the Duggar family, until someone mentioned it here. Doesn’t sound worth looking up, either. I mean, what 14-15 year old boy hasn’t felt up a girl, or at least tried? That’s what teenage boys do, and hardly a cause for any sort of uproar. The fact that it was his sister? Well, if you try to squash natural impulses, they ooze out of whatever cracks are available. Look at the Amish incest scandals for a horrific example.
For a more harmless example: I was raised in a pretty fundamentalist church (atheist now, what a surprise). The teenage boys were instructed that having any sexual thoughts at all was a sin; masturbation would pretty much doom you. What a surprise: the girls really hated it when we had a swimming event, because the boys spent most of the time dunking the girls, letting their hands wander in the process. Letting teens be teens, pair up voluntarily and make out in dark corners would have been a hell of a lot healthier.
One thing common to both progressives and fundies is that they apparently believe that it’s possible to legislate reality. Those of us with a more detached view understand that when 3 million years of evolution collides with a veneer of religious beliefs, whether progressive or fundie, evolution wins. People are going to be people, regardless.
The meaning of life is pretty simple; it’s to pass on our genes, period.
“@OFD: Does that at least mean that you have a definite end to the arguments with the IRS? While $60k isn’t peanuts, it would be a lot better than the never-ending story.”
Haha. You tell small joke, eh?
It’s never over and there is never an end with these bastards. We’re now waiting for “final” approval of our installment payment plan. But what if they make another mistake down the road and fail to record our payment or something? Their default setting seems to be to immediately seize someone’s bank accounts, paychecks and property, and then when the mistake is discovered, by the victim, of course, they take their sweet time rectifying it and there is zero apology and if all your checks that you sent out to pay bills bounced in the meantime, tough shit.
Their default setting seems to be to immediately seize someone’s bank accounts, paychecks and property, and then when the mistake is discovered, by the victim, of course, they take their sweet time rectifying it and there is zero apology and if all your checks that you sent out to pay bills bounced in the meantime, tough shit.
One would be tempted to store a large amount of cash in a very secret place that does not have your SSN attached to it.
They are supposed to send you a letter before grabbing your accounts.
They will tell you that they don’t monitor your account, but suspiciously, a day after there was enough money to cover what was owed, it got seized. Hmmmm, no coincidence at all, I suppose.
Good luck. You owe enough to get an ambulance chaser lawyer to help settle for less. There is a guy here that is a former IRS agent, who now has billboards up advertizing that he can reduce the amount you owe.
Might be worth a call….
nick
“One would be tempted to store a large amount of cash in a very secret place that does not have your SSN attached to it.”
Yes. Current fiat currency transferred (in)to silver bullion coins and ammo.
“They are supposed to send you a letter before grabbing your accounts.”
Ha. Another comedian here. We got that letter days after they seized the account and notified wife’s employer to stop her checks, thus jeopardizing her job and our sole livelihood at present, not to mention our ability to pay the mortgage and other bills and taxes.
“…you owe enough to get an ambulance chaser lawyer to help settle for less. There is a guy here that is a former IRS agent…”
Yes, we’re looking into that. Otherwise it’ll take us years to get out from under, if ever.
Obola wants to forgive college debt, but not yours, Mr. OFD. The IRS will single handedly crush the USA. Where will the politicians run to then? The well is drying up fast.
“The well is drying up fast.”
As I have been saying: they’re killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Really, really stupid. I guess they figure they’ll have all the wealth soon enough and the rest of us will be either massed slave minions and soldier-drones, or dead. Very few politicians will escape this, and the remaining vestiges of any sort of “representative” gummint will be allowed to fade away or be dismantled outright; why bother anymore?
Sharpton owes (“allegedly” owes) millions in back taxes, but he can get the prez on the phone if he wants. OFD, you’ve obviously taken a wrong turn in life.
“OFD, you’ve obviously taken a wrong turn in life.”
No chit, hombre.
I coulda gone into law, finance, software development, etc., but it woulda been pretty hard to get into race hustling. Only way into that for me would be the shaved head, SS tattoos, and secret squirrel AN meetings inside the prisons.