10:19 – Not much to talk about. We’ll be working all day on kit stuff. We need to get another dozen or two of each of the science kits built.
I’ve about given up on reading MSM news sites. I still check the FoxNews site periodically to get the leftie/prog slant on things, but other than that it’s pretty much just the alternative news sites like InstaPundit, Lew Rockwell, and Taki. I guess that makes me a bitter clinger.
I just got the email that I am now a member of our nation’s oldest civil rights organization. I still watch FoxNews, but generally avoid the other networks bovine excrement that they try to pass off as national news. I miss people like Tim Russert who would ask hard questions of everyone, and not just throw softballs to the people on the side they favor.
It starts with paying farmers not to farm, and ends with paying bangers not to bang…
“Gang members in Richmond are being paid $1,300 a month to stop shooting each other and even get to go on all expenses paid trips to New York (if they travel with a rival)
Part-taxpayer-funded scheme has been introduced in the Californian area
Gang members receive a maximum $1,300 if they refrain from gun crime”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3527855/Gang-members-Richmond-paid-1-300-month-stop-shooting-expenses-paid-trips-New-York-travel-rival.html
If I was a savvy programmer, I’d write a plug in for news sites that automatically changed “gun violence” to “gang violence” and “gun crime” to “gang crime”. That would improve the veracity of the reporting 100-fold.
nick
Yes! Let’s pay criminal thugs to stop shooting each other. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? A thug gets up to $1,300 for each “pelt” he brings in according to gang rank.
I watched Megyn Kelly on Fox last night. What a grating voice and empty intellect. I don’t know why she is so highly rated. Trump is right about her. Just a pretty face. Now she hints at leaving Fox at the end of her contract. Going for more money I guess.
Our founding fathers were very smart guys. The Bill of Rights and the presumption of innocence are absolutely critical to our lives, yet rarely do people appreciate what they have.
“Under paragraph 103 of the German Criminal Code insulting a foreign head of state carries a maximum jail term of three years but it can be up to five years if the court considers it is an intended slander.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3527071/German-prosecutors-probe-comics-poem-Turkey-president.html
n
“A thug gets up to $1,300 for each “pelt” he brings in according to gang rank.”
Bonuses for long-range street melon head shots!
“I guess that makes me a bitter clinger.”
Indeed, but not as much of a threat w/o the religion thing. They REALLY hate and loathe and despise traditional Christians. Also, more fun news to be had at WRS site, dethguild, etc. And I usually find at least one or two interesting articles at Lew Rockwell’s site and have for many years now.
Hey kids! What could possibly go wrong???
“”Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.”
We lift our golden moneybags beside our always-open door!
“As the President said back in 2014, we must remember “the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.””
I must have missed that lesson during my two years of AP Murkan History back in high skool; probably dozing off or leering at cheerleader legs.
“”The 10,000 (figure) is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number,” Kassem told reporters.””
You bet; sky’s the limit, eh?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/first-syrians-arrive-in-us-under-surge-resettlement-program/ar-BBrqZmM?li=BBnb7Kz
Let’s profile a poor suffering dad and his poor suffering family and naturally this means that people like Princess, for example, automatically extrapolate from that that ALL of them are JUST LIKE THAT GUY. And to cavil at their entry here is the epitome of rayciss hate and bigotry.
Because paying Danegeld always works out well in the long run.
She’s really attractive.* Even I, a misanthrope who’s about one screeching fishwife from becoming a full-blown misogynist, can see that.
No idea about her voice. I don’t have a TV and my browser doesn’t have Flash (or any other security holes that I know how to patch). I guess I could find and watch a video of her on my Kindle Fire, but it hardly seems worth the effort.
* At least, with professional makeup and lighting, favorable camera angles, etc.
Angela Merkel does ass-to-mouth. It’s how she raises funds to run for office.
“Because paying Danegeld always works out well in the long run.”
It was a stalling tactic until good King Alfred the Great could muster up the necessary mil-spec forces and throw them the fuck out. But meanwhile some of them stayed and settled in as farmers and married Anglo-Saxon grrls. Same deal over in Ireland and Iceland. Splitting skulls and robbing stuff gets tiresome after a while and that bucolic pasture with the gamboling milkmaids and warm skies looks mighty fine.
Ya think our own rulers here and in “old Europe” have even one small iota of the skillz Alfred used repeatedly and would even think of paying Danegeld as a temporary work-around until they could get rid of the pesky unwelcome interlopers? Nope, they have every intention of giving away the store, at our expense, and fomenting violent conflict.
Angela Merkel does ass-to-mouth.
Video or it isn’t true. If only Megyn…I’d buy that for a dollar!
I’m thinking about re-reading the Skylark series by Doc Smith. I read it as a youth and really enjoyed it.
Anybody else have thoughts on the series?
“Angela Merkel does ass-to-mouth. It’s how she raises funds to run for office.”
I’d pay money NOT to see that. In fact I’d pay money not to have that thought in my head….
Been reading chapters of the Maxim book I linked yesterday, between other work on the pc, and it is FUNNY. Well, also tragic and sad, because almost every anecdote involves maiming or death, but, well, really funny stuff too. Definitely recommended.
“and seeing the fragments of an exploded mule rocketing through
the air, were frightened nearly out of their
wits, and fled precipitately.” — just one great phrase…
Making explosives around the turn of the century was not really a good choice of work for the drunk, stupid, careless, foolhardy, or unlucky. And not one mention of insurance or investigation or fines with dozens of accidents….
nick
And mostly black humor:
“The importer laughed, and reminded him
of their previous conversation. But, as the
dynamite factory had been demolished and
several men killed, the purchaser did not
respond very readily to the humor of the
situation.”
He does know how to turn a phrase!
“one day while
attending a county fair, where he
had imbibed a considerable measure of bottled-up unsteadiness”
That’s awesome right there…
Early Doc Smith books are fun romps. The later Skylark and Lensman books are better by most technical metrics, but lost a lot of the fun romp aspect. Regardless, they’re all recommended.
What can I tell ya? I just plain suck.
… which is probably not the best idiom to use, considering the subject matter at hand.
“That’s awesome right there…”
I’ve found that writer peeps back then and earlier, much earlier, had more skill and wit with our language than pretty nearly anyone writing in it since. My personal howlers and appreciation for it have mostly been the 18th-C Brits, like Johnson, Swift, Pope, et. al. For 20th-C wit and boffo laffs try the late Kingsley Amis.
Well, we got us an inch or two of snow starting yesterday afternoon, but it was mostly just a lotta sturm und drang and blowing wind than accumulation. Seems to be fading away already, but still windy here.
Skipping the vets group thing today as I have too much stuff to do up here at the house and with various errands.
Remember “take your daughter to work day”? No mention of sons? Well, that’s apparently been rectified:
https://smallbusiness.fedex.com/bring-your-kids-to-work.html?cmp=EMC-1002722-13-6-201-1111000-US-US-EN-FDXMAR272200000&ET_CID=21426&ET_RID=3180377&LINK=0416-UPDT-Intro-Title-V5
Looks like a tailor-made giant project for any corporate or gummint matriarchy to dive into and spend most of each work day implementing.
Bring your kid to your job (if you have one) and let them see your wunnerful dingy office or prolecube farm or the noisy-ass and freezing-cold server room, and the one or two years, max, they’ll have to look forward to in such a depressing soulless hole working for PHBs and a vicious and powerful matriarchy where everyone walks on PC eggshells all day and is forced to attend socialization events constantly. Yeah, the one or two years they’ll be there, before being offshored, downsized, reorganized, etc., and have to start the whole crummy and humiliating job search process over again from scratch. Be sure to mention the lack of raises we’ve all had since the 1970s and the disappearance of most bennies. Introduce them to the H1B visa people you’re training to replace you, and stop by the office kitchenette to inhale the heady and exotic aromas of stinking Asian and Afrikan microwave splatter.
Tell them also about the grinding daily commutes and the expenses of gas and tolls and wear and tear on the family car, and the fact that a third of your pay check, and theirs, will go to fund more crimmigrants, stop inner-city gangstas from shooting each other, and gin up more useless clusterfuck wars all over the planet. Show them the new co-ed bathrooms, too, where big fat hairy guys who think they’re women can wash their ballz in the sink and weird and creepy creatures hide out in the former men’s room stalls.
O what a brave new world!
Why just last night at dinner I suggested to my 6yo that we think of something she could make to sell to make money. NOT work for the (wo)man!
nick
(and before someone calls CPS for my alleged child slavery operation, it was in the context of a larger discussion about money, where it comes from what to do with it, and where it goes.)
Let me fix that for you:
Making explosives around the turn of the century was not really a good choice of work.
As I recall Alfred Nobel had a lab attached to his house that had glass windows on three sides. So that if the ingredients for a batch of nitroglycerin he was making were too warm, the windows would shatter and the roof wouldn’t collapse on him.
When I was in college I worked with a chemical engineer who had previously worked in a dynamite plant. He said the luckiest day in his life was the day he stayed home with the flu.
Call me an evil capitalist, but I wholeheartedly approve. I’m looking forward to the same conversation with my daughter, which is being delayed by the fact I’m spending my lunch hour trying to figure out what I can make and sell…
Bring your kid to your job (if you have one) and let them see your wunnerful dingy office
The IT guys at my sooper secret job in SA would network our workstations for Quake and flight sim games during family day. The kids and half the staff (plus me) would play all afternoon. It was always a pain “sanitizing” before the civvies showed up.
The book is FULL to the brim with explosions and misfortunes. Some are a bit melancholy, some are laugh out loud funny, and none are PC…
The author himself (inventor of smokeless powder,brother to the inventor of the Maxim gun) blew off a hand in an accident and makes a funny story out of it. I’m not sure how the book was received in it’s time, but I bet he knocked ’em dead when telling anecdotes to the men at his club.
nick
One of my Twins almost called CPS on me in SA. They were 8 at the time. One of them wanted a kitten. I’m allergic to cat dander and didn’t want a cat around. I told her the government was going to send all the cats to Australia because they were a hazard. She started crying and her Twin started in with a sympathy cry. MrsAtoz got mad and made me tell the truth. Talk about a couple of mad kids. It took a couple of weeks to get back in their good graces.
@MrAtoZ,
“Uncleared, uncleared. Uncleared….”
In my head I was hearing Python, “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead.” One decidedly low tech facility even had the escort ringing a giant hand bell, like Paul Revere, as he moved thru the facility.
nick
Paul Revere didn’t ring no dam bells. He rode horseback all over the northern and western “suburbs” of Boston warning of the coming enemy incursions, and when the Brits took his horse, he friggin’ WALKED it the rest of the night.
See David Hackett Fischer’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.”
“…network our workstations for Quake and flight sim games during family day.”
LOL. “family day.” One of our programmers at EDS Wireless Division fixed our prolecube farm machines so they’d all run Doom II, and he had the wads set up to look like our corporate offices, with pics of the various PHB manglers and other IT drones in Nazi uniforms. We played the hell out of it during late afternoons, when all the PHBs had left for the day. He’s now doing some other programming gig down there in MA and his dad is some kinda big wheel in Venezuela, although I dunno how that’s gone for the last eighteen years offhand.
“Five Books I Will Always Reread”
http://www.tor.com/2016/03/31/five-books-i-will-always-reread/
Wow, not a single one on my list. In fact, I have only read one of those books.
My current top five reread list is:
1. _Mutineer’s Moon_ and _The Armageddon Inheritance_ by David Weber
2. _The Tar-Aiym Krang_ by Alan Dean Foster
3. _The Star Beast_ by Robert Heinlein
4. _Citizen of the Galaxy_ by Robert Heinlein
5. _A Matter for Men_ by David Gerrold
From Sovereign Man’s email today:
“When the palaces are full of excessive splendor,
The fields are full of weeds and the granaries are empty.
To dress in elegant clothing, carrying fine weapons,
Gorging in food with wealth and possessions in abundance—
this is called boasting of thievery.”
quote from Lao Tzu, approximately 600 BC, that’s BEFORE CHRIST. OFD is sick and tired, as is Mrs. OFD, of seeing “BCE.” Kiss our Anglo-Saxon-Celtic asses, you academic and media PC rumpswabs!
I’m re-reading the Star Beast right now. I always go for one of the classics after a tough slog through a more modern book.
My 8yo. makes $5 every weekend I have a race I can take her to. She’s learning every job I have, and the $5 is $4.99 more than the work is worth. But she’s learning the value. Her brother & sister (5 & 4 yo.) are pitching in some weekends as well, and cost me more in aggravation than the $5 they get. The payoff for me is that it’s their money. The younger ones put it in the pig, while the eldest spends it as fast as she can. She just realized she didn’t have any money for a Lego set that her brother DID have the money for. He got one. She didn’t. She’s re-thinking her priorities.
The wife is getting 3 or 4 of those fake IRS phone calls a day now on her cellphone. Is there any way to stop these?
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/28/guess-what-thats-not-the-irs-calling.html
@lynn,
android has a feature to ignore the call if it is from the same number. IIRC, in the call log, click and hold until the popup, then select ignore.
nick
android has a feature to ignore the call if it is from the same number
You can also block numbers on iOS.
I’ve been getting these, too. Launch exploding drones!
BTW, I loved the “Pip and Flinx” series.
Sadly, I had paper copies of all of Mr. Lynn’s top 5, but donated them. Must find epubs, sniff.
android has a feature to ignore the call if it is from the same number. IIRC, in the call log, click and hold until the popup, then select ignore.
She is getting called from different numbers. I note that the IRS has a lot of webpages about this nonsense. I hope that their fraud division is actually doing something.
https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Phone-Scams-Continue-to-be-a-Serious-Threat,-Remain-on-IRS-Dirty-Dozen-List-of-Tax-Scams-for-the-2016-Filing-Season
Sadly, I had paper copies of all of Mr. Lynn’s top 5, but donated them.
Sacrilege ! That goes beyond being RUTHLESS in order to move into a teeny, tiny condo.
BTW, I loved the “Pip and Flinx” series.
Me too. I stuck with it all the way through the thirteen books in the series. Juvenile XXXXXXXX Young Adult SF books rule!
“Bill Clinton: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protesters Are Defending Murders And Drug Dealers”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/bill-clinton-black-lives-matter-protesters-are-defending-murders-and-drug-dealers/article/2001877
“On Thursday, while Bill Clinton was giving a speech to a crowd of Hillary Clinton supporters, he was repeatedly interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters.”
“He responded to them, saying, “you are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.””
Preach on, brother!
Eh? Bill Clinton told the truth? What a faux pas!
Well, to be honest about it, Larry Klinton is probably pretty senile by now, and there’s been a lotta damage from all the drugs he’s smoked and hoovered up his big red schnozz over DECADES. No telling what STD’s he’s got. So he’s probably forgetting his lines now. Pretty funny, the “First Black President” taking shit from the brothers and sistahs.
But recall that when he was campaigning and then in office, he was dealing with a completely different crowd of Afrikan-Murkan activists and celebs; now it’s the younger gen and they’re militant, violent and twice as willfully ignorant. Their whitebread counterparts are the new SJW creeps emulating Mao’s Cultural Revolution and if they knew any genuine Murkan history, my own Puritan and Calvinist forefathers and foremothers.
I have Skylark of Space free audio book on my MP3 player. Haven’t gotten it into the playlist yet. Loved all those E.E. Doc Smith books in my misspent youth all the “RAVENING POWER” of those rays. I think most are available as free audio books now.
“Sadly, I had paper copies of all of Mr. Lynn’s top 5, but donated them. Must find epubs, sniff.”
Been buying ePubs since I wore out my second and third copies of Heinlein. Unfortunately Chtorr series is not in ePub (and Book 5 is still not done)
Well now I see how the entitled wallyhog slobbette stepdaughter next door manages it all; she waddles by here pushing the toddler carriage with her right hand while chattering away (never shuts up) and a ciggie going in her left hand with the iPad balanced on her left forearm. That’s how she moves around, all the time, in that exact config, except when she’s on her back porch at 01:00 coughing, hacking and choking on yet another ciggie while chattering on the phone. That’s pretty much her day and night, and I don’t even know or care what she does inside the house. Her sister is a clone in all this and lives with her mom and stepdad and mom’s dad (90+ WWII vet) and five dogs in the house on the other side of us. Poor stepdad Leo gets outta the house every friggin’ chance he gets. I bet he rues the day he retired from IBM as their plant security chief.
All errands completed today and now for house scut and grunge chores, and then tomorrow I gotta go get Princess in Moh-ree-ahl so she can bring her jumbo harp down for whatever.
Snow that we got is mostly melted away and now we have intermittent rain drizzle with temps in the fotties. Dark and not as windy; gotta remembah that April showahz bring May flowahz.
I have “Call Control” on my Android phone. It has a built-in blacklist of the worst offenders, and I add any telemarketers that do call as well. I don’t seem to get _too_ many such calls. I also block unlisted and spoofed caller IDs.
That’s pretty much her day and night, and I don’t even know or care what she does inside the house. Her sister is a clone in all this and lives with her mom and stepdad and mom’s dad (90+ WWII vet) and five dogs in the house on the other side of us. Poor stepdad Leo gets outta the house every friggin’ chance he gets.
Good night, that place must be a madhouse. Seven people and five dogs. And it is only a one story and not much bigger than your house footprint. Wait, is it your north or south neighbor? Regardless, I would get me an old RV, throw it in the backyard and live there.
I have “Call Control” on my Android phone. It has a built-in blacklist of the worst offenders, and I add any telemarketers that do call as well. I don’t seem to get _too_ many such calls. I also block unlisted and spoofed caller IDs.
Thanks, I will tell her about this! She has just upgraded from a flip phone to an android phone two months ago and has already bypassed me.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flexaspect.android.everycallcontrol&hl=en
Bernie, you are so cool! “Sanders ticks off ways Clinton not ‘qualified’ to be president”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-sanders-engaging-in-growing-grudge-match-in-countdown-to-ny-primary/2016/04/06/ae50bfb6-fc1f-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html
Gonna be a hot and crazy summer at both of the D and R conventions. Glad I am going to miss both as I do not like the smell of tear gas. Number one son got dosed with the military level stuff in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and never had to put his gas mask on as he is apparently immune.
“She has just upgraded from a flip phone to an android phone two months ago and has already bypassed me.”
I can beat that scenario. Wife HAD an iPhone 5. I HAD an iPhone 4. When it was time for me to upgrade, I went to the larger iPhone 6. She wanted it, and bitched about how much the upgrade cost. Said she would give me her iPhone 5 in trade. Time passed. Many trips around the country. Nothing much said about this deal other than occasionally in passing.
Then: She dropped her iPhone 5 on cement and cracked the faceplate all to hell. On her next trip she borrowed MY iPhone 6 and………LOST it. Supposedly had it on the back of the car and drove away and went back to find it and it was gone.
So she had to call Apple and brick it.
Upshot: the cracked faceplate iPhone 5 sits down in our kitchen charging as a backup phone and we will get the faceplate replaced whenever. She upgraded to the larger iPhone 6 that she’d lusted for. And got me an iPhone 5, so now our phone positions are effectively reversed.
See what she did there?
Whatever, the larger one was getting to be a PITA to tote around and now she uses it constantly for all the usual bullshit, like email, web, FaceCrack, videos, etc. I use mine almost totally for PHONE CALLS, occasionally the email, EverNote, and I have a few prepper aps on it, like a scanner, QST, RF-Finder, and I’ve got the Douay-Rheims Bible, Latin Mass Finder, Chronicles Magazine, AAA, and Linux User.
Anybody else have thoughts on the series?
The original version of Skylark is pretty awful by modern standards and full of period slang. It’s available free for Kindle. The fixed up versions from the 60s are better, but are not free. (Same goes for the Lensman books.) They are light reading, very plot driven with cardboard thin characters. The racial attitudes are problematic by current standards, but somewhat enlightened for the time.
The Skylark of Space was the first major sf story in English to venture outside the solar system and meet aliens. Pretty much everyone else wrote stories on Mars, Venus, etc. So, for history if nothing else, it’s worth reading. The Lensman books are also pretty much in the same vein. I wonder if Lucas had read them before he wrote Star Wars. Be aware that Triplanetary was originally a separate book and was retconned into the Lensman series. And Masters of the Vortex is 3 short stories turned into a novel set in the Lensman universe, but not really connected to the other books.
Of the 5 books list linked to above, I’ve read Neuromancer, one of the books that launched the cyberpunk genre. Well worth reading.
Dude, you better hope that she does not need a kidney or a liver.
“Glad I am going to miss both as I do not like the smell of tear gas.”
No chit, hermano; fun to watch on the tee-vee and innernet, though; maybe the cities will also explode this summa. More fun than a barrel of monkeys on crack floating on a lake of crystal meth and lysergic acid dipthalimide.
I got both the tear gas and Mace training dumped in my face in both Uncle Sam’s Air Farce, Army MPs and back in the World on a couple of cop departments. OFD is NOT immune; that stuff will put most folks on the ground lickety-split. I’d rather be clocked with a PR-24 than go through that chit again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI4IbxtV0z8
Ima gon show Petra and Nicole a few little tricks….
I just got the email that I am now a member of our nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
OK, I’ll byte. NAACP, NRA or NAD?
https://nad.org/blogs/01/30/2014/nad-oldest-civil-rights-organization-usa
The wife claims that I am well on the way to joining NAD (I’m not). However, several of my friends are now wearing hearing aids. I do have fairly severe tinnitus which is driving me slowly crazy.
Looking at the Wiki page on E.e. Doc Smith I discover that his last novels “Tedric” contain an arc villain “a mysterious character described as a dark knight, skilled in whip-sword combat, and evil genius behind the creation of a planetoid-sized “iron sphere” armed with a weapon capable of destroying planets.” Perhaps Lucas was channeling this when he wrote “A New Hope” ?
“Good night, that place must be a madhouse. Seven people and five dogs. And it is only a one story and not much bigger than your house footprint. Wait, is it your north or south neighbor? Regardless, I would get me an old RV, throw it in the backyard and live there.”
The big yaller house (ugly monstrosity in our view), and if we ever win Powerball, we’re buying out everyone in a non-brick house and demolishing them all forthwith and then landscaping the ‘hood; that is, I guess, south of us, between us and the shore. In it are Leo the stepdad but with grown kids of his own long gone and married with kids themselves, the wife, the wife’s dad, and one of the wife’s two daughters, and the toddler grandkids are back and forth all day and in and out all day. So four adults, any number of toddlers, and five dogs in that house. The smaller double-wide on our other side houses the other daughter and her toddler daughter, no daddy, no visible means of support and lives there free of charge, with us taxpayers on the hook for her child care, groceries, ciggies, iPad, tee-vee, and innernet. Mom and Stepdad are over there constantly mowing the lawn, painting, hauling shit in and out, etc., and lovely daughter never lifts a finger. The other thing they do which drives my wife nuts is holler back and forth to each other across our back yard, plus they don’t keep a good eye on the toddlers in the street out front and wife has almost backed over them a couple of times, no adults in sight. I always park nose out so I can see that kinda chit, and now wife does it, too; see what a rotten influence I am?
We put up with it all ’cause neighbors is neighbors and Leo’s a good guy, and probably armed and doing a bit of prepping on the sly. And maybe they don’t dig our three cats patrolling the ‘hood and killing rodents and birds all the time, or they think I’m a nutty PTSD vet gun nut or whatever.
“I do have fairly severe tinnitus which is driving me slowly crazy.”
Yo, go with the flow, hermano; comes in handy when you can’t hear pesky employees, customers, or peeps back there on the home front. “What’s that, honey?” as typically they’re walking away and mumbling something, while the radios are going. “You bet, hon.”
Wow, they live on both sides of you! Sounds like you need some backup cameras in your vehicles. I hope that they are storing some food to feed all of these people in case of the barropocalypse. Otherwise, you may have some tough decisions to make.
I like double-wides. One of the wife’s maternal aunts lived in one outside of Whitney, Texas on a couple of acres of land. Just keep the tornadoes away but central Texas is kinda bad about that.
The other thing they do which drives my wife nuts is holler back and forth to each other across our back yard
How about getting them some walkie-talkies?
WRT tear gas, in Boot Camp we got exposed to the real thing, TWICE. The first time we went through the “trainer” we donned our gas masks first, then went into the “trainer” and sat on a bench for what seemed like an eternity, that stuff really irritates the skin. The final thing was we had to take off the gas masks and find our way out of the “trainer”. There were a couple of guys who collapsed and we had to help them out. The only saving grace was right afterward we were sent to the pool to do laps, good to get that stuff off the skin but hard to swim when your choking from the gas.
The second time we entered the “trainer” carrying our gas masks and sat on the benches. After several minutes a couple of tear gas canisters were shot into the room. We were to get our gas masks on as fast as possible. Again there were a couple of guys that couldn’t get their masks on or couldn’t get a seal so some of us had to help them. Only after everyone had a mask on and was breathing did they let us out. To the pool again.
I doubt that they do that anymore in Boot Camp.
I’ll save my flooding and fire stories for later.
Yeah, tinnitus. Getting worse all the time with the kids screeching bloody murder.
Was bad enough between the steel mill, carpentry, rock and roll, and general hard living, now it’s getting worse.
Used to be I could ignore it during the day, and just have a white noise generator on at night so I can sleep. Lately though, I NOTICE it all day long. It’s bad enough that I actually had the homeopathic snake oil in my hand, and almost spent the money, just cause if it worked (by some miracle) it would be worth it.
Along with the tinnitus comes hearing deficits. I’ve got some very sharp and distinct losses, different in each ear, that interfere with my ability to comprehend speech, especially from a higher pitch voice, say–like a female’s. I’m already training the kids to look at me when they talk. Wife is a bit harder to train. 🙂
nick
“Sounds like you need some backup cameras in your vehicles. I hope that they are storing some food to feed all of these people in case of the barropocalypse. Otherwise, you may have some tough decisions to make.”
We’ll feed Leo and his wife and the old WWII vet and the little kids; the able-bodied, or I should say, fat-bodied entitled wallyhogs will have to fend for themselves. But we ain’t there on storage yet by a LONG shot. Got about two months for just the two of us. I’m working on that as best I can, as is my next-younger brother down in MA, with zero support on that from either spouse. So we sneak it in and store it in the cellars. Plus we may have to feed Princess and Great-Grandma, too.
“How about getting them some walkie-talkies?”
Do those come with pixels? Nah, they’re too lazy to bother with stuff like that. Easier to just holler and thus draw attention, which some people seem to absolutely crave, like the idiot male counterparts racing their loud-ass trucks back and forth all year and scrubbing out. Motorhead douchebag retards, most of them.
“I doubt that they do that anymore in Boot Camp.”
That stuff would cut into the tee-vee time, PC indoctrination classes and dressing up with high heels to feel the oppression of womyn and suchlike.
“Was bad enough between the steel mill, carpentry, rock and roll, and general hard living, now it’s getting worse.”
Rock concerts, gunfire and explosives, several factories, a few more rock concerts, and then more gunfire.
“…interfere with my ability to comprehend speech, especially from a higher pitch voice, say–like a female’s.”
You say this as though it was a problem.
“Wife is a bit harder to train.”
Ditto, lol. But things may be changing; got her trained to park the cars nose-out finally, and also to realize that the old hubster is very often right about chit. Seems to take YEARS, though. By the time she’s squared-away, I’ll be gone.
“Takata airbags to blame for George Ranch High School student’s death; 10th in U.S.”
http://www.click2houston.com/news/driver-in-fort-bend-county-is-10th-us-death-from-takata-air-bags
“”There is no doubt that the Takata air bag inside her 2002 Honda Civic failed and fired a sharp piece of jagged metal into her throat at point-blank range, from less than two feet away,” Sheriff Troy Nehls said. “Our investigation revealed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the right neck area, which severed her jugular vein and carotid artery.””
This happened about three miles away from my house. I’ve never been a big fan of airbags since I wear my seat belt and force others in the car / truck to do so.
We got the wife’s 2005 Honda Civic airbag replaced last fall due to the recall. Sure am glad she did that now.
Swell. Deploy an airbag and either get the life squeezed out of you, ribs cracked, or actually murderized by a defect which cuts yer throat. Egads.
We ALWAYS use seat belts here, don’t even think about it. And I am a very careful and experienced driver with chit-loads of training that most peeps never get, yet STILL, there are other peeps out there trying to KILL me. Suddenly being cut off, peeps blowing stop signs and red lights, tailgaters, imbeciles swerving in front of me to take a sudden exit, and the speed demons doing a buck on the interstate during a driving rainstorm or just after freezing rain coats the road surface. And the countless morons poking at their fucking cell phones and tablets, still, despite a state law against it and big tickets/fines. A bloody pox on them all.
Yep, to all of that. I don’t have car accidents. Despite the best efforts of a whole lotta fuckheads on the road. And, not to put too fine a point on it, well over half (about 70%; I’ve been keeping track for about five years, but there’s some fuzziness regarding what constitutes a near accident) of the near accidents were caused by women, many of whom were too busy with cell phones to pay attention to staying in lane, avoiding other cars, and things like that. (I don’t have a good number for cell phone users, as I’m usually too busy not being hit, and many of the worst drivers are in SUVs and the big ones are too high for me to see into.)
Near accidents caused by men are usually the result of aggressive driving, in my experience. This observation may be skewed by most of these events having been during the morning and afternoon commute. Some of the cell phone shitheads are men, but I’m confident in saying it’s well under a third.
Oh, and let’s not forget personal grooming while driving. I’ve spotted a few men shaving, but don’t recall any particular bad driving associated with it. Lipstick and mascara, on the other hand, seem to cause bad driving. There’s also nose picking. I’m not sure if that counts as personal grooming.
re airbags, our one car has had a recall notice from Mazda about defective bags which can deploy unexpectedly and dangerously. The notice came out over a year ago, I think. We’ve been waiting for what seems like an inordinate amount of time for the dealership to get the correct part in so they can replace it. I guess it’s time to call them again, just to make sure they haven’t forgotten.
Agreed; my own informal statistical measures of the past forty years indicate to me rather conclusively that at least 2/3 of accidents and near-accidents, including fatalities where I had to retrieve body parts off the road, were women operators, usually in Condition White and not paying attention to jackshit. Of the male-caused accidents, most by careless, reckless and aggressive operation, and at night, DUI.
A guy could shave w/electric razor and still keep control of the wheel, IMHO, but I’ve certainly never done that and would not recommend it to anyone. The makeup and hair thing is very common and they’re checking the mirror, of course, and not the friggin’ road ahead or on either side of them. Nose picking? Unfortunately many years ago I was riding in with my middle brother to help out with his Xmas store deliveries for the Crate & Barrel Empire in Boston/Cambridge. We were on the Masspike and coming up to the Newton or whatever tolls, I forget, and both of us were hungover and had queasy guts that morning. We happened to look over to our right and saw a real hottie in the next car and that sorta brightened up our crummy day so early. Until she picked her nose, examined the product and then ate it. Both of us gagged.
One of those things ya never forget, though you dam sure would like to.
I used to sometimes shave behind the wheel … when stopped at any of the 1000 traffic lights in the five miles I drove to work.
re nose picking, a while ago I came up with several stupid and embarrassing ways to die. “Picking your nose while driving and the airbag goes off and jams your finger into your brain” was one of them.
Traffic lights are for cities. This was a great country once, before the cities..and the lawyers….(a line from some long-ago action thriller, spoken by a biker/dope dealer character, wish I knew what flick it was from…)
“…a while ago I came up with several stupid and embarrassing ways to die.”
No shortage of those in the nooz; couple of my faves came from the Darwin Awards quite a while back: drunk sitting in a tree with a twelve-pack of shitty Murkan lager pees on the high-tension line. Then there were the two drunk guys down South somewhere tossing a rattlesnake back and forth. In SEA, a couple of incidents where guys threw grenades and they bounced back off trees and buh-bye!
The next SCOTUS. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-if-the-supreme-court-were-liberal/477018/
Just kidding. Fuck ’em. Out here is a lot different than down there in Mordor. Gonna put an APC on every block? Gonna be able to shut down twenty or forty or eighty Malheur events? Or Ferguson/Ball-mores? Simultaneously? While also dealing with a resurgent Russia, the usual nightmares in the Sandbox shit-holes, and mass invasions from south of the Rio Grande? Or China and the NORKs testing NORAD and Alaska and Hawaii?
What’s creepy is the way the lefty cocksuckers drool and foam and wet their panties over how they’re gonna take over everything. Sick fucking bastards, evil, in fact.
Thanks to all on book input. I’m backing a book scanner on Kickstarter (I just got a small one by Fujitsu to goof with also). I have a couple of classics from my childhood I want to scan. If I ever get it done, I’ll post a link to them in my Dropbox.
The Godwhale (available on Kindle)
Escape Across the Cosmos (available crappy scan)
Something to keep me busy. I have some other books I can’t find pdf’s or epubs I can work on as a hobby.
Anyone know what the test scores that the school districts down here in TX use for gifted and talented evaluation mean? We got a letter that just had the scores listed, no information about what they meant, where the scores placed her in a continuum, what the cutoffs or even standards for G&T are, etc.
Wife is gonna pick at this all night, but if it’s like anything else to do with the schools, any hard data is going to be hard to find.
Anyone been thru it and got facts or references?
nick
BTW, the letter, presumably a form letter, has a really basic grammar mistake in the middle of some tortured prose. I hate that someone who can’t even communicate well in their primary language is involved in any evaluation of kids.
Anyone know what the test scores that the school districts down here in TX use for gifted and talented evaluation mean?
What test? There are a lot of them. My daughter was tagged G&T based on the Stanford Achievement tests. She then got invited to take the SAT as a 6th grader. Scored well enough for admission to an Ivy or a top tech school. Her verbal score was in the top 0.001% in the US for her age. Got her admitted into the Talent Identification Program from Duke. She went to some summer camps at Duke and Kansas.
SCOTUS:
“Dreaming. The possibility of five or six Democratic justices allows one to imagine what might be done in other areas. Might the Court find a constitutional right to education and conclude that disparities in school funding violate the Constitution?” …
I am disturbed by the idea of “FINDING” rights in a 235 year old document. I’d have thought that we’d have found everything there was to find by now.
“I’d have thought that we’d have found everything there was to find by now.”
And you’d be wrong. Good one! Thanks for the early-AM laugh.
The Constitution was birdcage liner/stillborn anyway. And the Bill of Rights didn’t go far enough. Guys back then knew what was gonna happen, too. We’re not worthy of a federal republic anymore and the Empire is way too big to govern successfully, but the Left cohorts plan to Bolshevize what remains anyway. One of their main tools for doing that has been the SCOTUS and armies of commie lawyers.
I hate to admit you’re right, but it sure does seem that way.
“If you can keep it!” Indeed.
@ech,
they do a formal evaluation and testing in SBISD. No indication of what the scores mean, no info on the tests, nada. Just the raw score and a denial. Is 112 good? Bad? Borderline for the program? Ten points over but the program is already filled this year? Who knows.
She shows all the classic signs, yet doesn’t qualify by whatever metric the ISD is using.
I guess i’m gonna have to try talking to the counselor. Not my idea of fun.
nick
“BTW, the letter, presumably a form letter, has a really basic grammar mistake in the middle of some tortured prose. I hate that someone who can’t even communicate well in their primary language is involved in any evaluation of kids.”
Use a pink highlighter to bring attention to the errors and return it with a letter asking for an explanation of why this person is involved in the evaluation of children.
/s
But I would be REALLY tempted.
If I decide to pull her out, then I could consider that. Otherwise, the F’ers have too much power over my family.
The principal at the school thinks the parents are subordinate to her. We’re stuck with it for the moment.
nick
I suspect the vast majority of public school principals think the parents are subordinate to them.
Road rage, younger guys. Distracted driving for younger women, be it texting, or putting on makeup, or whatever.
I only have to drive in a city a couple of times a year, so it always seems crazy to me. People in such a hurry, to get to the next traffic light and wait. Interestingly, there are actually statistics that the craziest intersections are among the safest. Those are the ones with trams, buses, bicycles and pedestrians in a wild mix (that’s a pic of the Aeschenplatz in Basel).
On a related note, the police here are cracking down on having your navigation device glued to the middle of the windshield. Fuzzy dice are also illegal, along with anything else that would block part of your view of the road, beginning 12 meters from the driver’s position.
Anyhow, we got pulled over yesterday for something unrelated (driving in a pedestrian zone, but we had a permit to make a delivery), and the police gave us a warning for the navi. The problem is: the police themselves don’t understand the actual regulation. Our navi was and is placed legally. So today I put a copy of the official regulation in the car, to hand to the next officer who doesn’t know the rules. Which will undoubtedly just piss him off, and I’ll get a ticket for something else, like having a dirty car…
Skin color, nation of origin, citizenship, language spoken at home, religion…
That’s the main reason my daughter is in private school. We can’t really afford it* but at least the school’s employees know who pays them.
* Though if certain people in the household could cut down on their spending, we’d be in fat city.
Yah, I’ve gotten tickets for things that weren’t violations. In traffic court, the prosecutor (not district attorney, but similar) and judge really didn’t want to let me out without paying — I got multiple offers to negotiate the charges down, and they furiously scrabbled through the traffic code book to see if it could possibly be true that I wasn’t in violation, and then finally grudgingly dropped charges when I wouldn’t budge. And then the judges got really bent out of shape when I asked for everyone’s names so I could file lawsuits for violation of due process, abuse of authority, reimbursement for my time, etc.
I suspect the vast majority of public school principals think the parents are subordinate to them.
Of course they do. They are government employees. They all think that way.
Barbara got a speeding ticket a couple weeks ago for allegedly doing 60 in an alleged 45 zone. (Our attorney got it written down to “improper equipment”, so no points on her driver’s license or insurance.) Barbara swore she thought it was a 55 zone, so we went out and checked it. Going in one direction, there actually is a 45 MPH sign, but going in the direction she was driving the last speed limit sign is 55 MPH, although admittedly it’s a couple miles down the road from where she was stopped. But there are *no* 45 MPH signs going in that direction, so my argument is that the last speed limit sign was the one in effect where she was stopped.
And, as a revenue-raising measure, North Carolina as of a couple weeks ago stopped giving drivers any slack whatsoever. If you’re 1 MPH over the limit, they now ticket you.
For the last 20 years or so, I’ve had a North Carolina Sheriff’s Association license plate in my Trooper. Preston Oldham, the Forsyth County Sheriff at the time, gave it to me as thanks for going above and beyond on some computer work I did for the Sheriff’s department. I thought it was a nice gesture, but I didn’t realize how nice until Tony Young, the assistant sheriff, took me aside and asked me if I had any idea what Preston had just given me. It turns out that they only produce 100 of those plates, one for each county, and Preston had given me his. Tony said it wouldn’t get me out of a felony charge, but for just about anything short of that any cop in North Carolina and a lot of them outside NC would just give me a warning and wave me on. I never had need to show it to a cop, but I still have it.
I should probably give Barbara that plate to keep in her car.
That would be a reasonable way to look at it. I’m sure you see why a reasonable interpretation is not the correct one.
In NY at least, the speed limit can be set to whatever, by the state, municipalities, and whatever. They’re “supposed to” indicate the speed limit, but don’t actually have to put signs up where the speed limit changes. Yes, it’s bullshit.
In PA, the law is 25 in Urban areas and 45 (I believe, but could be wrong) in rural areas where there is no sign. Thruways are 55 unless posted otherwise. NY is (again, I believe) 30 in urban, unknown rural.
So then I checked because I can.
http://law.justia.com/codes/pennsylvania/2010/title-75/chapter-33/3362
fta:
(1) 35 miles per hour in any urban district.
(1.1) 65 miles per hour for all vehicles on freeways
where the department has posted a 65-miles-per-hour speed
limit.
(1.2) 25 miles per hour in a residence district if the
highway:
(i) is not a numbered traffic route; and
(ii) is functionally classified by the department as
a local highway.
(2) 55 miles per hour in other locations.
(3) Any other maximum speed limit established under this
subchapter.
Now I want to shoot the idiot that wrote that section. Urban areas are 35 (1) unless it’s a highway that’s not numbered (1.2-i and 1.2-ii), which makes it 25. !!!???
“Which will undoubtedly just piss him off, and I’ll get a ticket for something else, like having a dirty car…”
After the cavity search.
WA State, the counties, and cities routinely have “emphasis patrols” to “emphasize” some law or the other (I am sure you have them in your state too). Can range from staying in the right lane to seat belts to “distracted” driving. The poor cops have quotas for every day of the “emphasis”. The last day or two of the “emphasis” is a real pain as there seems to be a cop behind every light pole. My son and daughter have been caught in these, only got lectures/warnings, but did get a big talk from Dad about situational awareness.
WRT conflicting speed signs, just another gotcha to bring in the cash.
WRT schools, this could be a long story, but I’ll just hit the highlights. I was active in the schools all the years my kids’ were in them. In the early years I was welcomed. As time went on parents were encourage to not be involved and actively discouraged. Looking out for my kids’ became almost impossible and the relationship between the administration and the caring parents became extremely adversarial. If my kids’ were of school age today they would not be in the pubic (miss-spelling intentional) school system at all.
This whole school thing adds stress to my life. I have actual dread when I have to interact with the mgmt there. The teachers, no. The mgmt, oh hell yes. And this is the school we went to extra effort to get the kids into. The school we’re zoned to is so bad, no one would go there by choice.
nick
WRT speeding tickets,
it’s usually worth fighting them, because the impact on your insurance rates will be there for 3 or more years, and that adds up. One speeding ticket cost me $900 extra in insurance fees over 3 years.
When I was in the cop class, we did a segment on motorcycle cops, and during that we learned to use the radar gun, or in this case, the laser. Turns out that they are only accurate within a very small angular window, and get progressively less accurate as that angle increases. The officer told us “I always give 5-8 so I don’t have to justify the accuracy of the reading.” In other words, any speed difference less than that is easy to challenge. I can see asking for relative distances, angles, etc and being able to raise the doubt. In TX, you can get a jury trial for speeding, and that would be enough doubt in most cases, I think. (I’m guessing the 1 over cops aren’t diagramming each stop in their notebooks.)
nick
Radars and older lasers were also calibrated for a specific speed, too. I don’t know if that applies to newer lasers.
That would be a reasonable way to look at it.
“What would a reasonable Man do?” Ha ha! My lawyer friend in SA said that concept died with libturd, judicial activist judges. Now it’s whatever the judge thinks. That’s why you see so many verdicts overruled by higher courts where there are multiple judges. A conservative always sneaks in to ruin the libturd judgements.
Anyhow, we got pulled over yesterday for something unrelated (driving in a pedestrian zone,
Mr. Brad, do the cops carry over there. Don’t piss them off. They may have attended a cop conference in the US and learned “I feared for my life…” blam, blam blam!
Now it’s whatever the judge thinks
Indeed. A friend of mine got photographed by a red light camera. He did not know why because he came to a complete stop before turning right. Two weeks letter the letter arrives in the mail demanding $50 or go to to court. He chose court.
He got to watch the video of the incident. It clearly showed he came to a complete stop but only for a fraction of a second. He told the judge he came to a complete stop as required by the law. The judge said no, in his opinion he did not stop long enough. My friend pointed out the statute does not specify a length of time. The judge responded that in his opinion it was not long enough therefore he was guilty. My friend was awarded with a $250 dollar fine plus court costs of almost $100.00 and the threat of contempt of court.
I told my friend he should contest the judges ruling as the judge was legislating from the bench which is illegal. My friend said he would not because the next judge may put him in prison for knowing more than the original judge just to teach my friend a lesson. It is telling that I could not disagree with my friend.
The cops do (mostly) carry, but they are generally pretty reasonable. More or less what I remember from the US from 30 or 40 years ago. There are some problems, of course, but not like the mess that y’all have. Ours don’t get tanks and grenade launchers donated from the military.
On a related note, a semi-serious question: what is it with the baclava masks? Here, for example, guards in Brussels. They look like terrorists themselves, and certainly not like anyone you’d go to if you needed help. Why do police do this?
The masks are possible protection, but kevlar face plates would be better.
@brad
In the US they only do it if they work undercover most of the time. I’d bet that some others have started doing it ‘cuz the kool kidz did it….
In europe? None of the jackbooted thugs want to be identified and targeted would be my guess, and ‘cuz the kool kidz do it…
there’s a mocking phrase in the US gun community “operators being all operator-y” that applies when the less than elite ape the gear and techniques of the elite, without a need or reason, or even understanding of what they are aping. Some of that could be happening.
My guess is that none of them want to be seen in the news and identified because they would be targeted, or because they aren’t too proud of what they do most of the time.
nick
(it’s the reason I cringe whenever I see cops in camo. They are COPS not soldiers, they are not supposed to be sneaking around. I can see a few, very specific times when it might be appropriate, for ex if they have to hike in to bust a grow operation, but that’s about it. Certainly anyone in a black and white doesn’t need camo.)
nick
added – and they sure as FUK don’t need it on a school campus.
“…when I asked for everyone’s names so I could file lawsuits for violation of due process, abuse of authority, reimbursement for my time, etc.”
Wow. What a dick. The NERVE of you! But I APPROVE!
“… so my argument is that the last speed limit sign was the one in effect where she was stopped.”
Your argument is null and void, sir. Please keep your hands in plain sight and exit the vehicle…
Gee whiz, so much hate for our heroic warrior police officers here, and our poor overworked judges. I wish I’d seen a trigger warning so I could get to my safe space in time. Now I’m all fucked up and weepy and scared. Damn you all!
Female Quebecois border agent hit me with several questions on my way up to Moh-ree-arl this morning, like where do I live (plainly visible to her on my enhanced VT driver’s license she was looking at, what, trying to trick me into giving away that I stole that license off a guy I’d just killed and coincidentally look just like him?), and do I have any weapons with me, haha. I said no and away I went, with my RPG and riot shotgun and brace of nines. Naw, this time I didn’t CC across the International Border but sometimes I do, nary a problem. I have an ENHANCED license, haha. I can cross the Mexican border likewise or pay a visit to the Marshall Islands and Pacific Trust Territories.
Coming back I noticed they have the cams set up now to take our pics as we approach the agents’ booths; hadn’t noticed that before until we got the flash in our faces.
And lotsa Border Patrol vehicles in the parking lot during the lunch hour; one VT State trooper on the median but facing the other way.
Re: publik skools; they’re 1.) babysitting warehouses for kids whose parents have to both work just to keep their heads above wotta, a condition brought about deliberately and with malice aforethought back in the wunnerful Sixties. 2.) perfect commie indoctrination hothouses, which the commies realized early and took full advantage of, so now we have a couple more generations of kidz who blindly accept what was once considered Leninist/Stalinist doctrine across most fields of inquiry and socialization.
Look at Gavin’s piece today at Taki’s site and how he tries to question lefty protesters at a Trump rally on Long Island; they just blindly support whatever Sanders wants to do but can’t ID any of it, and at the same time, blindly condemn Trump’s ideas and platform, such as it is, with likewise not knowing jack about any if it. There’s simply no talking to people whose brains operate like that, and it’s pretty clear they feel the same way about the rest of us.
Can you say “civil war?”
I want one of them thar enhanced drivers’ licenses. I thought I’d never go to Canadia again because I refuse to get a passport. Maybe I’ll get to go again.
“I want one of them thar enhanced drivers’ licenses.”
Move on up here to the great Green Mountain State and get yer operator’s license, specifying you want the Enhanced version. There’s a chip in it, of course. I don’t care, ’cause they done already got my number anyway, with fingerprints on file with the Feebies, the DOD and the local PD. BFD.
I’ll tell ya, though, the drive up from here to Moh-ree-arl is friggin’ bleak; horizon to horizon of flat brown farmland (eventually green with corn or whatever) and silos every quarter-mile or so, criss-crossed occasionally by massive power line structures, I assume they’re Hydro-Quebec’s. Dingy little towns that look like they’re still back in the 1930s and dominated by some gorgeous Catholic churches/steeples. Flat straight highways that could accommodate B52’s, too. But north of Montreal is beautiful; it’s a huge province.
Now let’s see if THIS post shows up…
I dunno. Maybe. Don’t you have a lot of libruls up there? Can’t stand ’em.
PA is bad enough – but we’re giving the guvnuh fits. He’s a dem that got elected because the incumbent had as much personality as a sack of turds. He thinks it gives him a mandate. But the opposition in the state house & senate keep it sporty.
Lots of popcorn.
“Don’t you have a lot of libruls up there? Can’t stand ’em.”
The libruls tend to be concentrated, as elsewhere, in the “cities” or what passes for them in Vermont (largest is Burlap, with roughly 50k) and the college towns. We live in a lakeside village three miles down the road from the “city” of Saint Albans, a former railroad hub and still a manufacturing town, pop. about 7k. Not many libruls up this way, or out in the rural countryside and small towns and villages. They also gravitate toward the media and academia and arts fields, not in factories, cop shops, or the military. We avoid Burlap and the state capital as much as possible and I can’t stand the fuckers, either, had my fill of them LONG AGO.
I get/got the impression that PA might be the same way; sure, you may have a Dem gov and libturds in Philly, Pitts, etc., but it’s BIG state; what’re the folks like in the western regions, home of the former Whiskey Rebellion, put down by Washington’s little toady Hamilton? Mrs. OFD was fairly recently doing a gig out in some rural area where there’s a big Army training HQ, but I forget the name of it…maybe Fort Indiantown Gap?
Our Dem gov isn’t gonna run again, so we’ll have another series of fake bullshit capers around various possible candidates to keep the rubes and bumpkins stoked, and then some other soulless bureaucrat from the Approved Party will get in and do the usual shit, i.e., implement more socialist stuff and stay in bed with his or her corporate pals while they grease each other.
There are some days when I really can’t wait for the whole mess to blow up so we can start grabbing these people and putting them up against a wall.