13:26 – Barbara has some friends up from Winston on a day trip. They plan to have a late lunch in Sparta and then walk around downtown.
It appears that one of our neighbors must have bought a new vehicle. We were sitting in the den after dinner yesterday when I happened to look out the front window as a horse-drawn buckboard drove up the road. That’s the first time I’ve seen that. It makes a change from the usual pickups, SUVs, and heavy trucks that roll up and down our road pretty much all day long.
Which reminded me of how dependent even rural Sparta is on shipments from outside the area. On an average day, I might see dozens of loaded tractor-trailers heading up US21 toward Sparta. Everything from UPS and FedEx trailers to beer and softdrink trailers to Lowe’s supermarket and Walgreens drugstore trailers. Because of the nature of rural living, people up here tend to maintain much deeper pantries than people in urban areas. Rather than keeping an average of three days’ food on hand, I’d guess people up here probably average ten times that much or more. Even so, the fragility of the transportation network and just-in-time inventory systems concerns me greatly. If those tractor trailers ever stopped arriving–and there are numerous interrelated dependencies in that system that might cause that to happen–this area wouldn’t starve, but the consequences would nevertheless be very unpleasant.
Speaking of deep pantries, the FedEx guy just showed up with the 26-pound pail of Augason Farms brown rice. When he opened the door of his van, he announced that he had a whole lot of rice for us, which he knew because he could read the label on the pail through the finger slots in the box.
I have been converting my stored water supply from those 35 and 40 bottle cases to the 24 bottle Ozarka 0.5L cases. I now have 100 of them even with the recent Ozarka shortages. The unforeseen advantage of the 24 bottle cases is that I can get two of them in the space for a single 40 bottle case on my garage racks. The workmen at my house last year called them hurricane water and grinned. And yes, that is an OPSEC violation.
I am going to order some of those Augason Farms brown rice and white rice pails and keep them at the office. I have gobs of storage there. I just worry about rats and mice chewing into those plastic pails.
BRExit: If nothing else, surf there to see the political cartoon:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2016/06/24/brexit-how-why-and-what-next-francis-turner/
That cartoon illustrates the situation perfectly.
If you’re worried about that, get a mouser. If you don’t like cats, there are some dog breeds that will kill the mice and rats.
Or just keep them in a reasonably rodent-proof room and keep some rodent poison out. They’ll go for that in preference to gnawing on plastic pails.
Incidentally, don’t buy white rice from Augason at Wal-Mart if you have an LDS Home Storage Center in easy driving distance, which I believe you do. White rice is much cheaper at an LDS HSC, as is everything they carry, and comes in #10 steel cans. But they don’t carry brown rice.
Incidentally, don’t buy white rice from Augason at Wal-Mart if you have an LDS Home Storage Center in easy driving distance, which I believe you do.
60 miles away on the northeast side of Houston. We live on the southwest side. Traffic on a good day is 90 minutes each way. A bad day, 3 to 4 hours. Each freaking way.
Houston has got to be the biggest anthill on the planet now. 8,000,000 people. 60 miles north to south and 100 miles east to west. That is 6,000 square miles!
And they are still coming here. Fort bend County (my county) is growing at 50,000 people per year right now (750,000 people now). People do not believe me at the growth, especially in these “down” times. The son and I went to the movies yesterday and noticed a new subdivision of 5,000 homes being started on the way there.
“…numerous interrelated dependencies in that system that might cause that to happen–this area wouldn’t starve, but the consequences would nevertheless be very unpleasant.”
Ditto up here. Deep pantries and lotsa gardens and LOTSA farmland, but nevertheless, still significant dependence on the three-days-just-in-time distribution/inventory/transportation systems and the Grid.
The two major threats, it seemeth to me, are the Grid-down thing, which would bollix up pretty much everything and knock us back to at least 1900 or so, and the pending financial house of cards apocalypse. Either scenario, without some kind of fix within a week or two, would be a global catastrophe.
The mooslem mayor of Londonstan is ranting about the BREXIT and saying that any mooslem that wants in can come to Londonstan.
My Daughter is still planing her 2 weeks in Londonstan in October. She is totally ignoring the state of Europe and that Americans in particular are in greater peril each day.
I know it’s a staple of PA novels, but I’m hopeful that a cyber attack or EMP scenario would leave parts of the grid up. Around here, for example, we have a fair number of generating plants, including nuke, coal, gas, solar, and even some hydro.
A cyber attack would have to be unbelievably good to bring down everything, considering the disparate systems used in different parts of the system. Oh, I suppose a brief overload, like the one that took down most of the Northeast grid in a cascade after a single breaker failed, is possible, but things should start coming back up in an hour or so. That’s even setting aside that the mainland US grid is three separate grids.
EMP? Hell if I know. There have been so many learned dissertations, accusations, and refutations that I doubt James Clerk Maxwell himself could untangle them. I think the only way we’ll ever know is to pop off a handful of nukes and other EMP devices of various sizes and see what happens. I suggest letting off the first right over Shanghai for, um, no particular reason.
It makes a change from the usual pickups, SUVs, and heavy trucks that roll up and down our road pretty much all day long.
The road in front of your house? Or the highway road paralleling the road in front of your house? The road in front of your house looks a little weak for handling major truck traffic.
EMP? Hell if I know. There have been so many learned dissertations, accusations, and refutations that I doubt James Clerk Maxwell himself could untangle them. I think the only way we’ll ever know is to pop off a handful of nukes and other EMP devices of various sizes and see what happens. I suggest letting off the first right over Shanghai for, um, no particular reason.
I would prefer DC.
I just found out that the aquifer underneath our office complex has E. Coli in the well water due to water wells being flooded by the river for over a week. Lovely. People should have their wells well capped so this does not happen.
Both roads, although most of the tractor-trailer traffic is out on US21. On our road, we typically see 10-ton dumps from Jack’s Excavating 50 or 100 times a day.
“My Daughter is still planing her 2 weeks in Londonstan in October. She is totally ignoring the state of Europe and that Americans in particular are in greater peril each day.”
Ours is dead-set on traveling and studying in Ireland, the UK and Brittany for the rest of this summer into September. If she is cognizant of the goings-on in Europe and the U.K. it would be from a prog perspective via the SJW and prog media she pays attention to, of course. And thinks everybody is groovy, except her nasty and mean old fascist stepdad, natch. Who’s not so bad when he’s driving her back and forth to Moh-ree-all, lets her use his car, puts $ in her account every month, etc., etc.
“I suggest letting off the first right over Shanghai for, um, no particular reason.”
That’s cool; I’d suggest Mecca, Medina, Riyadh, Islamabad, Pyongyang, Beijing and Mordor-on-the-Potomac, in no particular order.”
I hope youse guys are right about only parts of the Grid being affected, and that only temporarily.
“On our road, we typically see 10-ton dumps from Jack’s Excavating 50 or 100 times a day.”
Yikes. Did y’all know that was going on before ya bought the house? We see maybe half a dozen to a dozen milk trucks or “honey” wagons, plus some very odd-looking farm machinery each day on the state road that curves around the back of our house up here but that’s it; I hadn’t anticipated even that much.
We didn’t know, but it’s no big deal. They’re hauling dirt from a project in town that involves removing a hill and taking it to a site down the road from us that needs fill dirt.
That does seem like a lot of heavy truck traffic, though. But the upside might be that they keep that road plowed (oh wait, do y’all get snow down there?) and in good repair.
In other nooz, a terrorist male took 50 hostages in a German movie theater, speaking “broken German,” but was stopped by police. He had firearms and a possible explosive device, but the German cops and gummint are, of course, at extreme pains to deny that they know anything yet about any musloid motivation or connection.
Brexit: pretty decent for any number of reasons, including that it might make people think about some stuff a lot more, both in Europe and over here; why do we need Mordor, for example? But if English derps think that throwing off Brussels will make things better once they’re run by London, they need to read their own history books. Esp. now with a musloid asshole mayor who is enthusiastically exhorting more musloid scum to move there.
Somewhere I saw a headline like Brexit won! Obama and Clinton biggest losers.
<< ""That does seem like a lot of heavy truck traffic, though. But the upside might be that they keep that road plowed (oh wait, do y’all get snow down there?) and in good repair.""
My guess is that it will be like where I live…
Endless dump truck traffic, pavement "plowed" year-around into rubble,
terror at the mailbox, horrors to get out of the driveway… Lotsa luck!
Once they start mining fill dirt somewhere, it won't end short of major
economic collapse.
Oh… and the commuters in SUVs, on the phone of course…
Snowplow activity and inactivity down in MA and NJ back in the day: a heavy snowstorm would roll in, piling up in drifts across the roads, no plows anywhere in sight for a while, and then you’d see a dozen parked at the Dunkins, outnumbering the cop cars for once, engines running, lights on, but not plowing. Then, at the ass-crack of dawn, they’d start, so you’d lose that last hour or half-hour of sleep before having to get up for work or whatever.
OFD has seen them drop their plows on dry pavement and scrape it at that hour, just to be on the clock.
“…and the commuters in SUVs, on the phone of course…”
Illegal up here now but we see it a dozen times a day anyway. And seatbelts are mandatory (“click it or ticket”) but whenever there’s a fatal motor vehicle accident, dollars to doughnuts the derp/s didn’t have the belts belted. So they get thrown from the vehicle, often right through the windshield.
Continuing with derp stupidity…the firecrackers have already started up, been going on for two weeks now; sooner or later at least a couple of loser cretins will blow their hands off screwing around.
Mrs. OFD off to central MA tomorrow and won’t be back until Thursday; Princess off to Maine and then Ireland, UK and Brittany. Great-grandma off to northern NB the first week in July. OFD here holding the fort throughout…LOTS of stuff to do.
Somebody has got to take care of the cats and dogs, homeboy.
http://www.alicegrove.com/
Hopefully your neighbors new buggy is faster than Alice Grove’s. 50 yards per day pulled by two megapigeons.
I was in a fatality accident 45 years ago in Navasota, Texas. We had our seat belts on and survived with various injuries. My glasses flew off and hit the inside of the windshield so hard that they cracked. And the front seat collapsed on my right leg, breaking it in two places.
The mom in the other car did not have her seat belt on. She was ejected and between the two cars when we hit for second time.
“”Illegal up here now but we see it a dozen times a day anyway. And seatbelts are mandatory (“click it or ticket”) but whenever there’s a fatal motor vehicle accident, dollars to doughnuts the derp/s didn’t have the belts belted. So they get thrown from the vehicle, often right through the windshield. “”
I have worn a seatbelt 100% (to the closest approximation) of the miles I have
driven, and by my estimation I have been driving a bit longer (you guys share
too much) than OFD has been driving, and, uh, that also seems to coincide with
no serious wrecks (and the worst getting hit from behind, sitting still).
My worst seatbelt story is about a police sargeant testifying that I had to be
under the influence of some kind of dope since I was wearing a three-point
seatbelt. Judge ran with it too, since this was back in the days when “funny
looking eyes” (even without basis) was “legally valid” intoxication testing.
By the way, cold sober and so on, like it matters now.
I do so hate seatbelt laws and helmet laws. I can see it for children, as they are not competent to make these decisions. But if I choose to take the risk (I don’t, BTW), then so be it. Not the government’s place to protect people from themselves. Advertise the facts, absolutely. Call them idiots when they die, for sure. Give them, or their beneficiaries, Darwin Awards. But force people to do something that does not directly affect the safety of others? No.
So long as they don’t then claim insurance or benefits supplied by taxpayers, sure.
SteveF wrote:
“I suggest letting off the first right over Mecca for, um, no particular reason.”
There, FTFY.
But force people to do something that does not directly affect the safety of others? No.
Every law, rule, etc. the gooberment makes takes away a little bit of our freedom.
I guess we can add this guy to the Klinton Krime Family assassination list:
The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.
Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.
Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.
yeah, like the banker last week who committed suicide by ‘cutting his own throat.’
n
And of course all those banksters who voluntarily “jumped” from high buildings and otherwise “committed suicide” over the last year or so, around 60-70 of them, IIRC. One wonders how many were substantial contributors to the various Klinton slush funds and “foundations.”
“Every law, rule, etc. the gooberment makes takes away a little bit of our freedom.”
And it’s long been at the point where if they are out to get you, they can FIND something to charge you with; every one of us is a potential criminal now. Just like when a cop pulls you over; I guarantee that he or she can FIND something to hold you and write a citation for or worse.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen talk of defenestration. It has also been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to type “defenestrator”.
Every law should be required to be read allowed (not “entered as read”) and voice-voted back in to effect. This should happen every 10 years.
If it’s not important enough to be reviewed and voted on, it’s not good enough to be law of the land.
That sounds like a good idea, JimL, and it’s one I’ve supported before. I don’t support it for the moment. I suspect it would lead to even more power for the bureaucrats.
If you can figure a way to break the power of the agencies and force Congress to do its job rather than delegate it, then it’s a great idea.
“Every law should be required to be read allowed (not “entered as read”) and voice-voted back in to effect. This should happen every 10 years.”
I have no problem with this, though I might say that it doesn’t apply to laws that got 75% of both houses and the Presidents signature. We can quibble over the time and percentages, though. But we should have something like this.
Also, I think that no Federal budget should be more than the receipts of the previous year, unless said budget is passed by 75% of both houses and signed by the President.
Agencies & regulations are quite simple. They were not reviewed by congress and were not signed into law. They should be null & void.
Yes, we might quibble over terms and details, but doggone, something needs to be done. Or un-done as the case may be.
As for regulations, the constitution is QUITE clear on the matter of laws. THEY ARE NOT LAW.
What y’all are really after: the total of all rules and regulations should be small enough to be understandable by a single individual person. Example: a small business owner must be able to keep up with the laws both for a person and for a business, and still have time left over to live a life and run that business.
I propose making this explicit: The government should issue an annual publication containing all rules and regulations that apply to an individual person, written at the 10th grade level. This book may not exceed X words; I suggest X = 250,000. Anything not in this book is not applicable, because you cannot expect people to comply with laws they are unaware of. Do something similar for business rules and regulations, and also at the state and local level.
This also takes care of the need to “sunset” laws and regulations. With space so tight, anything unnecessary will inevitably get thrown out. Congress would have to prioritize. There would be no place at all left for additional regulations from the bureaucracy; the various agencies would only be able to enforce whatever is in the book.
you cannot expect people to comply with laws they are unaware
Happens all the time. Basically ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
So what are the judges excuses when they make a ruling and get that ruling overturned in a higher court? Does that not mean the lower court judge was ignorant of the law and thus is incompetent?
they can FIND something to charge you with
Yep, that loud, long, and deeply satisfying fart that I expelled on the walk to work could probably have the EPA swat teams taze me, toss me to the ground, a couple of gut kicks for good measure, and a bump ride in a van to the local police station. Not mention the department of the interior for that pigeon that collapsed.
I guarantee that he or she can FIND something to hold you and write a citation for or worse
Yep. That little packet of white powder they keep in their pocket for just such an occasion. Found under the floor mat of your vehicle while it was searched without anyone looking.
I would really like to keep half a dozen small packets of white flour in the vehicle, then allow them to search if I got stopped. But I suspect it would piss them off so much one of those packets would magically turn from flower to heroin. So probably not a good idea.
When I was in the USAF living in the dorm and dating my now wife I acquired a cold. Her mother gave me some cod liver oil pills in a small sandwich bag to take back to the barracks room. I had 12 pills. Next morning while at work the 1st SGT decided to inspect the rooms. He found the pills in the bag and took one to the hospital to have it analyzed. My spook that worked in his office informed me of the transaction and I confirmed because there were now 11 pills. I silently grinned. The spook also told me that 1st SGT had already had charges written up on me for drug possession and was just waiting for the results to fill in the type of drug.
Next day, according to my spook, the results came back. The 1st SGT was livid. He had been had and was now a laughing stock at the hospital lab. Rather than destroy the drug charge papers he ordered me to my barracks room and proceeded to tear the place apart. Everything tossed from the drawers, mattress cut open (AF mattress, they had to replace), everything out of the closet, covers taken off my stereo. Full inspection took a couple of hours while he made me stand at attention. He found nothing but dust bunnies which he wrote me up for as having an unclean room.
Couple of months later he pulled another stunt with me and I got my supervisor involved. It did not go well with me or my boss. My boss got his boss involved. My boss’ boss outranked the 1st SGT and knew a lot of powerful people. Within 8 hours of that incident the 1st SGT was fired and transferred to another base.
I find nothing to disagree with in Brad’s proposal.
I propose the 28th amendment ought to contain some variation of one of our proposals.
While serving in Berlin, my 1SG suspected I was a one of those special troops that liked to experiment. I had a Peace sign on my door and everything. I didn’t care – my reckoning had us with Peace through Strength. I never filled him in on that part of it.
So every month when one platoon had the surprise pee-test, one of the extra bottles had my name, rank, & serial number on it. I was never surprised by this. In fact, I kind of liked it – I didn’t have to do PT that day and I got to breakfast early. My favorite meal.
Never did come back hot, though. I didn’t like weed the one time I tried it, and never had any desire to try anything else.
Good guy, Top. In fact, every one I served under was admirable. I think I was lucky that way. Maybe he was just trying to scare me.
So every month when one platoon had the surprise pee-test, one of the extra bottles had my name, rank, & serial number on it.
In my entire time in the USAF (10.5 years) I only got the pee notice twice. I think you have about 1 hour to show up at the clinic, pee into a bottle while a technician watched to make certain it was your instrument peeing into the bottle (what a job, ugh), then you were done. I do remember them immediately checking the temperature of the sample. I guess back in the early 70’s cheating was quite rampant and clever.
It did sort of surprise me when I found out a pill was missing the 1st SGT did not make me go for a drug test. I think he was looking for a more dramatic scenario to further enhance his career. I also think that is why he was really pissed off by probably bragging to some friends before the results were back. It must have quite comical to have been known as the 1st SGT that scooped cod live oil pills.
“I guess back in the early 70’s cheating was quite rampant and clever.”
Roger that. It also helped if you had buddies among the medics/techs. They were Security Police augmentees, and under our purview during various exercises or The Real Thing, along with cooks, so we took care of them and they took care of us. I always passed my multiple pee tests. It also helped to have pals among the K9 troops; the commander and first shirt at the radar site thought they’d be slick one night and bring a dog through the security police barracks; he didn’t alert on anything for some odd reason, despite the clouds of pot smoke pouring out of various rooms, though doobies and other stuff had gone out the windows when the CO & Co. showed up.
KISS
The base of the first God based religion was simply the 10 Commandments. Worked great until the folks who thought that they knew better started to add to them. Religion has been a mess ever since. Beware false prophets.
Too bad that the Constitution and Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) were not locked down. Again everything that has followed has only added to our problems. Beware politicians.
Today’s chaos is our own fault and getting worse. Boil it down to a lack of values and lack of personal responsibility.
Your rights end at mine and I have no right to impose my values on you and vice versa.
KISS
Your rights end at mine and I have no right to impose my values on you and vice versa.
Beware false prophets = Beware politicians
When I reported to Fort Hood (TEXCOM) for my last assignment I was already an O-5. I got four piss tests in a row for the first four weeks there. At number three, I was “pissed” to say the least. No problem doing it other than O Dark Thirty report time. On number four, I was slated to teach a Mod/Sim course 9-12. I decided to not show up for the piss test. That means the whole piss crew has to wait, with finished bottles (chain of custody) until the last guy shows up. First they sent enlisted to get me. “Ya, I’ll be right there.” Then sent a Major. “Ya, I’ll be right there.” Finally a crusty old O-6 showed up around noon (the piss crew had been waiting since 6am). I then peed for them. I didn’t get another piss test for two years until I retired.
I like the way you think. RHIP.