Wed. May 30, 2018 – how did we get to this point?

By on May 30th, 2018 in Random Stuff

78F and rising…… summer in Houston.

As I do a quick survey of the headlines, looking for a topic to toss into the ring, I’m struck by how far things have gone in just a year or two.

A journalist in Britain is jailed for reporting on official malfeasance and dereliction of duty, under the flimsiest of excuses, and despite it being a certainty that his treatment in prison will be MUCH worse than his ‘crime’ warrants.

A comedienne who has made a career out of her abrasiveness and insulting people has her livelihood destroyed (and hundreds of others too) because she insulted a public figure, and in the ‘wrong’ way.

Everywhere you look states and countries are being destroyed by years of bad economic decisions (often driven purely by ideology) that ignore reality and are based on mostly wishful thinking.

We see the results of really poor policy choices, that no one seems to support, yet they continue… “Muslim Mob Storms Maine Park – Beats Park Goers with Sticks and Fists While Laughing”

These are Somali immigrants in MAINE. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/05/shock-video-muslim-mob-storms-maine-park-beats-park-goers-with-sticks-and-fists-while-laughing/

I can’t think of anywhere in CONUS that is LESS like Somalia than Maine (or the MSP area which is also home to a huge Somali population.)

MS-13 gang members have murdered over 50 people in LONG ISLAND, NY and places like Maryland. This isn’t an issue confined to Cali or the border states, they are EVERYWHERE.

Regarding the Maine attack, the mayor had this to say ” “When you have large, diverse groups of people in the same place you are bound to have incidents. Lewiston is no different in that respect than any other medium to large city,”

So what is the benefit of diversity again? And what does accepting a lie, and living as if it was true, do to one’s mental state? The residents of the former Soviet states spent decades acting as if they believed the lies, under threat of force. How is our current PC (which used to be a joke, used with a sneer) culture any different from living under soviet propaganda? We are making a generation of psychotics.

I know I tend toward doom and gloom. But just cast your mind back, two, five, and 10 years. Think about the really vast changes that have occurred during that time. In your opinion, do things seem to be getting better or worse? Are we moving toward freedom and prosperity, or away?
.
.
.
.

Got preps?

n

60 Comments and discussion on "Wed. May 30, 2018 – how did we get to this point?"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    A comedienne who has made a career out of her abrasiveness and insulting people has her livelihood destroyed (and hundreds of others too) because she insulted a public figure, and in the ‘wrong’ way.

    Disney was looking for an excuse, and Valerie Jarrett has been strictly off limits for a decade, immune to any and all criticism.

    I think what happened was inevitable, and everyone knew it. The Mouse was in negotiations with Tim Allen for a new “Home Improvement” series up until a few weeks ago, when Fox picked up “Last Man Standing”.

    Thanks to this mess, Jarrett may yet ride Moochelle into the White House again. “The woman scorned” is a huge meme right now.

  2. MrAtoz says:

    Watching Moochelle in the Dumbocrat primaries would be a “pretzels and Moxie” moment. Then the follow up debate against tRump would be fantastic.

    The Progturds are trying to spin the Roseanne debaucle into “IT’S TRUMP’S FAULT!” I wonder if Joe Snuffy citizen will ever get it: the government isn’t there to help you. It’s there to control you and drain every cent you have.

    The Commies took over without firing a shot.

  3. Nick Flandrey says:

    Author Sarah Hoyt has some comments on the Roseanne kerfuffle

    https://accordingtohoyt.com/author/accordingtohoyt/

    that summarize a lot of the ‘surface’ aspects, for sane people. Because she doesn’t know who Rosy is, she completely misses or ignores the political and culture war aspects though.

    It’s my personal opinion, that anyone who claims they’ve never looked a some human being and seen the simian in them, or looked at monkeys/gorillas/chimps/etc in the zoo and NOT seen any likeness at all to various humans is FULL OF SH!T, a liar, and delusional. If you’ve somehow missed it, just google george bush chimp pictures for some lefty examples…..

    n

  4. Nick Flandrey says:

    switching gears for a moment, today I have some other surveillance op on the scanner. This one is much less chatty, and doesn’t have an eye in the sky, but does have at least 4 or more people on radio. And they can go into a gas station and ask for a copy of a receipt to see who’s paying for gas for suspect vehicles, apparently.

    (note that they said to each other that they didn’t know if this truck and this gas stop was even related to “their guy.”) Still went fishing for a name though.

    n

  5. Greg Norton says:

    It’s my personal opinion, that anyone who claims they’ve never looked a some human being and seen the simian in them, or looked at monkeys/gorillas/chimps/etc in the zoo and NOT seen any likeness at all to various humans is FULL OF SH!T, a liar, and delusional. If you’ve somehow missed it, just google george bush chimp pictures for some lefty examples…..

    George Bush is not Valerie Jarrett. The woman has been declared off limits for some reason I don’t understand, and even Limbaugh and Hannity go along with it.

    The last time I caught Jarrett on one of the morning news shows, it was hugging and kissing all around from the hosts, including (uber creepy) Charlie Rose. I didn’t hit the clicker fast enough.

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    She hit the trifecta?

    female, black, and arab?

    Given her behavior, I’ll bet she’s got a drawer full of file folders on a whole lot of folks.

    I was a little mystified by the media responses from some of the more right leaning hosts…

    n

  7. ech says:

    Look, Roseanne Barr was a powderkeg waiting to explode. She’s made anti-Catholic remarks, anti-Semitic posts to social media, and more. What she said about Valerie Jarrett was also over the line. (I wouldn’t have hired her based on the Hitler cosplay photo. Sorry, that’s over the line for anyone wanting to be on a TV show.) Anyone that defends the tweet is willfully ignoring the long history of racist talk and images comparing blacks to apes. It was racist. It was over the line.

    I do feel sorry for all the other cast and crew who are now out of jobs – and for the crew, it’s too late to get new ones unless someone spins up a pilot or rejected series right away.

    (And Valerie Jarrett isn’t “arab”. She was born in Iran to American parents while her dad was working at a hospital there in the 50s.)

  8. JimL says:

    87º and sunny. Headed out for some miles during lunch time. Better, by far, than sitting on my duff for an hour.

    The whole Roseanne thing sits poorly with me. I don’t like her comedy or her acting. Never have. But silencing her because she was offensive? Next thing you know you won’t be able to talk about the president in a derogatory manner without risking life & limb.

  9. Paul H says:

    While I do not consider myself to be a prepper, many of the things I do as a matter of course to make sure food, water, power, and so forth are available in an emergency or shortage are a form of prepping. Consequently I have followed Robert’s and your discussions here with interest. My mother grew up in the depression and was in the habit of keeping a modest amount of food stuff on hand. I followed that example, and as a student with a family and numerous years of low and later inconsistent income I expanded on the concept of having food on hand for when money wasn’t immediately available. I’ve also practiced buying on sale items in sufficient quantity so as not to need replacement until the next sale cycle. We’ve always lived in earthquake country although we’ve never been directly affected by it, so my wife has taken to keeping 40 gallons or more of filtered water on hand. Which brings me to why this comes to mind and I am posting now. We’ve just had an alert that our municipal water supply here in Salem, OR has been contaminated with some sort of algae growth and it is causing problems for some people (my wife included it turns out), and we have been alerted to avoid using tap water for consumption, particularly children, the elderly, and those with sensitivities and allergies; boiling or filtering apparently does not help in this case. Not a problem for us now that we know, and the wife has already taken a couple of gallons of water each to several close neighbors. As Robert pretty much said, it doesn’t take an apocalypse or major natural disaster to create a need, be prepared, or prepped as the case may be.

  10. dkreck says:

    Lets face it. One comment about apes and the perpetually offended go bananas. (ooops)

  11. barbara says:

    SOS from Barbara – Rick is on the road. I am having e-mail issues that I thought were resolved yesterday evening with a tech on the phone from Dreamshost. This morning my thunderbird nor webmail are working and neither is Bob’s.

    I am at work right now. I have tried to send an e-mail via DreamHost internet from here to get a message to them for a call back this afternoon but can’t get it to go through. Rick had to put in the call back request for me last night as I could not get it to work on Bob’s PC.
    I need someone that can get to Dreamhost in some way to put in a call request for me to help with barbara@researchsolutions.net and thompson@ttgnet.com as both are down. I do not have any account numbers with me at work.

    I desperately need someone from Dreamhost to call me at 4:30 this afternoon.

    Will someone post here that can do this for me and to let everyone else know someone is doing it for me.

    I sent an e-mail to Dreamhost support from Bob’s PC this morning asking for a call back at 10am but never heard from them so I guess they did not get it.

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    I used ‘arab’ as a stand in for muslim, shouldn’t have. She has plenty of ties to muslim political actors so I can’t see an fault with that part of the tweet.

    Roseanne’s whole CAREER is about being offensive. To suddenly go “oh wow, that’s offensive” especially if you’ve HIRED HER, is far beyond disingenuous.

    Further there is MASSIVE overreaction. NO ONE likes Jarrett. She’s not ‘beloved of the community’ or an icon of people’s faith in humanity. You’d think she was the Pope the way everyone in the media is reacting. She’s a political hack, possible felon, and manipulative political survivor of the highest order, not Mother Theresa, ffs.

    Bill Maher can do it to trump, but no one can do it to O or Jarrett?

    http://hollywoodlife.com/2018/05/29/roseanne-supporters-want-bill-maher-fired-trump-ape-comments-orangutan-hbo/

    Right, it’s ok because of their ANCESTRY or SKIN COLOR! Silly me, I thought special treatment because of your ancestry or skin color was RACIST.

    I don’t deny or denigrate the history of blacks being parodied as simians. (ha, see what I did there?) but LOTS of people get compared to simians. FFS, the whole history of mankind is supposedly OUT OF AFRICA which makes us ALL black if you go far enough back. We are all supposedly descended from simians, nothing but “Hairless Apes” after all.

    To grant special privileges to people who are black or part black is WRONG. The same goes for white, yellow, red, or purple. To say that no one can say that THIS PERSON is descended from apes, while insisting that THAT PERSON can have that said about them is the exact sort of cultural madness that I was talking about in the opening post.

    You can either allow mockery of all people or none. And there is no way in the US to ban mockery. Even thinking you could would be another symptom of mental illness.

    nick

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    Hi Barbara, according to Dreamhost’s support page, they are having a wide outage of Email and webmail.

    It may not be you…

    n

  14. barbara says:

    Thanks Nick! I will try everything when I get home at 4pm. If still not working I will post on my journal an update if all is working or if I still need a tech phone call.

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    I can’t find a phone number or get live chat to work with them, everything I see says to log into my dreamhost account control panel….. or doesn’t respond at all.

    I’ll poke some more.

    n

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    yeah, still can’t find a way to talk to them. It’d probably be frustration anyway if they have a wide outage.

    https://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

    is the link to their status page.

    I have to leave the office for a few hours. I’ll check back here on my phone while I’m away, but you will probably get home before I do.

    nick

  17. Nick Flandrey says:

    @dkreck, and THAT is the correct response to the whole thing.

    Everyone who is offended on behalf of a grown human, who is a long time public figure, and a proven successful political operative, needs to get a freaking life. If that lizard souled un-indicted co-conspirator doesn’t have skin as thick as motorcycle leathers by now, no amount of virtue signalling by twitter and hashtag activists is gonna change that or assuage the butthurt.

    Meanwhile, policies she supported continue to eat out the heart and soul of our nation.

    n

    added- my biggest objection with the whole thing is the witchthunt aspect. No one had the balls to kill her show (most popular on tv by some accounts, and a shocking surprise to the Hillary crowd) on it’s own merits. No, controversy is good for ratings. Until it’s not. Then the coward gets her excuse to do what she always wanted, and the others all pile on. No way this many outlets genuinely care what anyone tweets about an ex-bureaucrat, and certainly not to the extent of the over the top language being used.

  18. mediumwave says:

    … do things seem to be getting better or worse?

    STEM’s impending doom.

  19. Mark W says:

    switching gears for a moment, today I have some other surveillance op on the scanner.

    That was a lot of fun in Northern Ireland in the 80s. Lots of code words and a lot of diversion also.

  20. JLP says:

    There is no way in the US to ban mockery

    There are social scientists in universities all around the country diligently working on this problem. I hear they are close to a breakthrough using quantum political correctness theories. Only a matter of time……

  21. lynn says:

    “xkcd Phone 2000”
    https://xkcd.com/2000/

    Ah, xkcd #2000. And it needs a spit valve ? Gross.

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    @paul h,

    That all just sounds sensible to me! And you are now validated by circumstances.

    No one wants to use their life insurance. No one wants to use the fire extinguisher in the cabinet. No one wants to even use their medical insurance, preferring instead to be healthy. But almost everyone would agree that people should have these things. In fact the law insists on it for many people and places.

    Yet there is the persistent idea that anything like prepping is somehow a betrayal of an almost religious fervor that ‘nothing bad will ever happen.’

    I blame the ’60s and 70s really, for the idea that ‘everything happens for a reason’ (which smacks of predestination), and that you can believe yourself into the life you want.

    (in spite of my personal cosmology having a bit of both those ideas)

    nick

  23. Greg Norton says:

    Roseanne’s whole CAREER is about being offensive. To suddenly go “oh wow, that’s offensive” especially if you’ve HIRED HER, is far beyond disingenuous.

    I think Barr knew what she was doing this weekend. I’m old enough to remember that she would fire producers entire writers rooms at the end of every season of the old show, including, at one point, the same creative team that put together the new show.

    Barr was probably bored and wanted to clean house again. The problem this time around is that, as an Executive Producer, Sara Gilbert called the shots about staffing the writers room and retaining Bruce Helford.

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    “Lots of code words and a lot of diversion also.”

    I see it all the time with radio users. The less it sounds like a radio (with static, sputters, etc), and the less disciplined the users technique (no acknowledgement, readback, or call signs), the more they forget that they are using a radio, that everyone can hear.

    Modern digital and narrowband FM radios sound great. They sound better than my phone most of the time. And there is an intimacy involved in some radio use, the voice of someone on your team, that you trust, is whispering in your ear.

    It’s very easy to forget.

    n

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    Dang, whole plan for the afternoon shot.

    I’ve got to pick up my 7yo from school for flipping off a kid, and lying to her teacher. It’s long enough from now that I can’t get anything real done between now and then, and half the stuff would be more fun than punishment for her if I did it later.

    Jeez.

    n

  26. Nick Flandrey says:

    “Only a matter of time……”

    seems to me that time + energy = matter…….

    n

  27. CowboySlim says:

    No one wants to use their life insurance. No one wants to use the fire extinguisher in the cabinet. No one wants to even use their medical insurance, preferring instead to be healthy. But almost everyone would agree that people should have these things. In fact the law insists on it for many people and places.

    HUGE ROGER THAT!!!
    Furthermore, at 79 I refuse to have anymore birthdays. I was only born with so many, but I just don’t know how many. Consequently, by not celebrating those anymore, hopefully, I am not using up the unknown remaining.

  28. JimL says:

    I cannot count the times I’ve started posts, here and elsewhere, only to delete them before posting. There are things that are important, and things that need to be said. Often, a public forum is NOT the place to say them.

    Opsec – operational security. I learned it in Basic Training, and I’ve never really forgotten. It takes an effort to be abundantly clear when clarity is required. It takes more effort to not say anything when silence is the best course.

    That old saw about “better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove any doubt.” It applies more often than we think.

  29. CowboySlim says:

    Roseanne’s whole CAREER is about being offensive. To suddenly go “oh wow, that’s offensive” especially if you’ve HIRED HER, is far beyond disingenuous.

    If Roseanne twixticated about me like the characterizations in these videos, I would be at Gloria Allred’s in a flash:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8dFdz78yxw

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3iVHxP8FQ

    Yes, @ 2:30 PDT, today, I will be here having a ontap PBR sliding down my %%%neck!
    https://www.facebook.com/MothersTavern/

  30. CowboySlim says:

    YUUUP, I got really lucky….went through now that which is one of the worst rated public school systems in the USA. Didn’t have any STEM advice as it had not yet been fabricated by the edufrauds. Golly, gee whiz, how did I make all those decisions on my own without those such as appointees of Obamanous and Gov. Moonbeam?

  31. lynn says:

    And my 2005 Expedition is in the Ford dealership out in Rosenberg. No forward gears. Stranded my butt two miles away from the office, we were headed to lunch. I am hoping that the column shifter failed as the reverse gear works just fine. This is the first time in 193,412 miles that I have had to have this vehicle towed. I am also going to get them to service my a/c as it probably needs freon after 13 years.

    The dealership has a Enterprise rentacar in it. They rented me a Corolla for $30/day plus taxes. The service department pays the first day (gotta get you hooked!). Plus I got the $15/day damage waiver, because, Texas.

  32. Nick Flandrey says:

    Wah, wah, wah, no one will give me a job…..

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5788133/What-DONT-tell-stay-home-dad-No-one-job-afterwards.html

    Make your own job, punk.

    n

  33. MrAtoz says:

    lol! Look at the front page of Drudge:

    Trump Meets Rump

    Where’s the outrage, snowflakes!?

  34. Greg Norton says:

    Wah, wah, wah, no one will give me a job…..

    I hated being stay-at-home parent, and I didn’t realize that my wife was too trusting and naive to make real money in medicine until *after* I blew up my career and we landed in WA State.

    I worked my a** off to get us and my career out of that Vantucky hole, however. For now, Texas is more sane than the Northwest.

    Not everyone is entrepreneurial.

  35. lynn says:

    “Little Scalia”
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/how-gorsuch-became-the-second-most-polarizing-man-in-d-c.html

    “Watching Neil Gorsuch, a mild-mannered good boy from Denver, become the second-most-polarizing man in Washington.”

    This is such a great article. Everything the author sneeringly says just lifts me to a new high.

    All I wanted from Trump was a conservative SCOTUS justice. Everything else is gravy.

    Hat tip to:
    http://drudgereport.com/

  36. Nick Flandrey says:

    Come on JimL, create a burner username and SAY IT!

    There are things and places I won’t post under my real name, and I’ve said so in some of those places. I feel cheated that youtube tricked me into linking my persona there with my real life gmail account. I tried for a long time to keep those separate, but every time they would ask to link, and at some point I must have. So, no commenting on youtube vids for me. Only ever wanted to one or two times anyway.

    I quit posting in a forum I really liked, (top rating for posts too), because it was easily traced back to me and I was bleeding personal info in the posts.

    When it comes to work, I’m free of the concerns that I gave occasional nod to when I had full time corporate work. No company to be horrified, or to excoriate me. Even when I worked there, I would often say things that others couldn’t, because I had options and fallback positions. Sometimes I’d get coworker emails saying thanks, but usually they just expressed shock that I’d say that thing.

    Free your mind, and the rest will follow. Be color blind, don’t be so shallow….

    nick

    (now when it comes to my kids, I’ll do what I can to separate this public persona from them, because the internet is forever, although I know I haven’t been diligent, or separate enough to prevent a doxing if 4chan or something similar got involved.)

  37. Nick Flandrey says:

    “Not everyone is entrepreneurial.”

    Yes, this is true. But even for those looking for full time work, all the advice is to ‘treat it as a business’, develop your personal brand, and actively engage in managing your career. This guy did 15 applications in SIX MONTHS. He’s a lazy whiner.

    And the other one? 32 years old and doesn’t think he’s got the energy or drive to start fresh? Hah!

    I’ve had 4 careers in partly related but generally different fields. The absolutely critical thing for success is the people who know you. You still have to do the work, but the people you know, who trust you not to let them down, are the ones who will advance your career. You will not meet those people sitting on the couch at home. You only meet those people if you are out there, where they can see you. Why else would someone intern on a movie or tv show production?

    That guy needs to start working his phone list. He needs to get out and become known to others. He needs to let everyone he knows know that he’s looking to reenter the workforce. And he should be reading trade magazines, learning about whatever he wants to do. Journalist who quit. Phttth…..

    Personally, I think he’s nuts. Kids are finally at school, so they’re younger than mine, and he can’t wait to go back to being a wage slave? Forget that.

    The barriers to entry for starting a company or selling your services have never been lower.

    n

  38. lynn says:

    A totally good thing happened on this crappy day, the wife got her wheelchair bound dad down to the Texas DMV and got him a new photo id today. She finally found his birth certificate and took his utility bills. Plus his old drivers license that expired 5 or 6 years ago. And her 6’2″ and 300 lbs dad is just not wheelchair bound, he has to be strapped into the wheelchair so he does not fall out of it since he cannot feel anything below the high waist. Someday his myocitis will move up to his lungs and that will be it.

  39. Nick Flandrey says:

    Wow, I’m betting that was a production…

    But why does he need a photo id?

    n

  40. Nick Flandrey says:

    “This is such a great article. Everything the author sneeringly says just lifts me to a new high.”

    I agree.

    n

  41. Greg Norton says:

    All I wanted from Trump was a conservative SCOTUS justice. Everything else is gravy.

    Fix the Supreme Court and be a grown up about Russia. I knew immediate repeal of Doh-bamacare wasn’t possible.

    And I’m not disappointed about Russia. I think whatever has gone on between Trump and Putin is schtick designed to keep the Iranians and Chinese from getting ambitious.

    Gorsuch was intended to be a 1-1 replacement for Scalia. If Ginsberg or Kennedy resign/die, the replacement will be more moderate. In the case of Ginsberg, Trump may even call Ross Perot.

    (Ginsberg is the wife of one of Perot’s tax lawyers. I’ve always believed that to be political payback for 1992.)

  42. Nick Flandrey says:

    “Ginsberg is the wife of one of Perot’s tax lawyers”

    Interesting.

    It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it.

    Just gets more interesting the more you learn.

    n

  43. JimL says:

    Come on JimL, create a burner username and SAY IT!

    Nope. Not gonna do it. I have two reasons.

    1. You’re NEVER anonymous. If someone wants to find something, they will. I’m not going to give anyone ammunition.

    2. What you say affects what you do and think. I don’t believe myself to be racist. I won’t say racist things. I won’t say anything that can be easily construed to be racist. Why? Because I don’t want to cause my thinking to shift. Saying things affects what we believe. This was a hard lesson I learned long ago.

  44. Nick Flandrey says:

    ” I won’t say anything that can be easily construed to be racist. Why? Because I don’t want to cause my thinking to shift. Saying things affects what we believe. ”

    Good points. I’ll say that I spent my 20’s systematically working on just that, training myself out of the use of a certain word that I grew up with. Not in my thoughts, or my voice. And it worked.

    30 years later, instead of things being better, things have gotten worse. As the real racism (everyday and casual, and the bits left in the law and culture) decreased, the imagined slights have become more common, people more strident, more sensitive, and more strident. [Did I say more strident?]

    And my thinking HAS shifted.

    I look around, I hear screeching about ‘white priviledge’, micro aggressions, ‘eye rape’, toxic masculinity, and a wide variety of made up maladies. They are DESIGNED to shift your thinking. The progressive left has consciously and deliberately warped the language, introduced concepts, and invented this cr@p specifically TO change the way people think.

    They want to control the language so they can control the conversation and control your thoughts. THAT is the most insidious part of this. When words are verbotten, when concepts can’t even be discussed, when people are forced to act as if they believe what they KNOW to be lies, you control the culture.

    I’ve decided to push back.

    I’ll speak plainly when I can. I’ll ask questions designed to provoke. I’ll remind people where we came from. I have a lot less to lose than some people, and age and security gives me a ‘privilege’ others don’t have. So I use it. I’ll freely admit that in America, it’s just easier to avoid discussion of anything that touches on race.

    The great uniter, the Light Bringer himself, a half black man born out of wedlock, was elected to the most powerful position in the world, and it still wasn’t enough. I look around and ask myself, what WOULD be enough for the Farrakans, Jacksons, Rev Wrights? And I’m faced with a situation like the gun control advocates want, nothing will ever be enough, until we’re all gone. We know what that looks like- Liberia, Detroit, Lagos, DRC, Ivory Coast, DC.

    That is not a future that my kids can be successful in. It’s not a future western civilization can survive in. And I’ll fight against it, in whatever tiny way I can.

    n

    (I’ll add that ‘the world turns’, ‘the pendulum swings’, the rubber band stretches until it snaps, etc. When you push and push into extremism, the eventual reversal is just that much more dramatic. Just wait for the destruction that a return to nationalism in Europe brings, as a generation rages at what their elders gave away.)

  45. DadCooks says:

    @Nick +a whole lot

    Stand tall, stand your ground. Stand for what is truly right.

    Sorry folks, that means getting back to the basics, The Ten Commandments (they’re not the 10 suggestions). And if you cannot understand what they truly mean and how they apply then you have a lot more reading/learning/understanding to do.

    There are no shades of gray, it’s black and white (and I’m not talking skin color). Understand what tolerance really means. It does not mean tolerating the intolerant. If somebody starts spouting something “biblical” (lower case for a reason) then they are showing that they are no better than “authorities” that have given us a bazillion versions of the “bible” and a bazillion religions that each claim to be “the one”. (My Evangelical* Pastor Nephew reluctantly agrees with me.)

    Dad has a headache today.

    Edit/Add *Evangelical

  46. JimL says:

    @Nick – good words & thoughts. You’re right. Maybe I’m taking the easy way out.

  47. Greg Norton says:

    “Ginsberg is the wife of one of Perot’s tax lawyers”

    Interesting.

    It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it.

    I have a long memory.

    And anyone living in Tampa in the early 90s knows that Perot running for President was not as spontaneous as ol’ H. Ross deciding to run on “Larry King Live”. Perot has (or used to) a big house and yacht off the coast of Fort Myers on Useppa Island, and one of the Tampa high schools was regularly rented for trial “Perot for Presidet” rallies for at least a year prior to that “spontaneous” announcement.

    Something was definitely cooking politically in the early 90s.

  48. brad says:

    What Nick said. I was – and am – of the view that we should treat each person as an individual. One of my best students at the moment has very dark skin. I’m not sure what his background is, and I don’t particularly care – he’s active in class, he’s talented, and that’s all I care about.

    However, at the level of society, groups exhibit group behaviors. To take one example, since most of this forum is in the US: American blacks are incredibly racist. Of course, other groups respond to that, and why shouldn’t they? At the group level, it becomes a matter of self-defense. Which is precisely why there is more racism today than there was, say, 20 years ago. It’s just weird that the racism in the US is being driven by the minority groups themselves.

    The pendulum does swing, but it never goes back to where it was. Away from the current extreme, but towards some new point. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a swing away from progressivism and multiculturalism. Lots of people are fed up with progressivism. And multiculturalism is being killed by the racism of the minorities, plus things like the masses of unassimilable immigrants.

    In 10 years, “progressive” will be a dirty word. So we’re leaving progressivism, but that leaves the open question: where will we go from here? It won’t be back to “Leave it to Beaver”.

  49. Nick Flandrey says:

    ” It won’t be back to “Leave it to Beaver”.”

    (I picture a Foucault pendulum, not the one in a regulator style clock, each swing passes thru a different but ultimately repeating area.)

    That’s for sure. You need uniformity in the population and the culture to get there, and we’re not gonna get back to that.

    I think we’re headed for a brief but violent spasm of nationalism, world wide. There will be regions of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (another prog newspeak pc nonsense word- in this case for mass murder and genocide.) There will be areas lost to the invaders. There will be increased Balkanism (which does not have to be bad, if the resulting areas are homogeneous and self ruling.)

    Unfortunately for our interconnected, JIT, and intrinsically fragile networked world, the resulting disruptions are going to destroy the world we know. Cheap sushi in Vegas? Probably not so much. Chilean Sea Bass at every mid priced restaurant? Nope. Chilean and mexican lettuce in the stores? Nope. $200 flights cross country? Nope. Will there be riots in the streets? Certainly. There are now when the ships still load and unload, the peasants still pick the veg, and money is still exchangeable for goods. When the trucks can’t roll, or there is nothing to put on them, when no one can get spare parts for the machines that make the machines, or process the goods, or move them, then we’ll see REAL riots. Maybe not here, but certainly elsewhere.

    (I think our traditions of independence, hard work, and creative problem solving will help us as they always do, vs. the much more passive, let gov or biz handle it attitude elsewhere.)

    n

  50. lynn says:

    Wow, I’m betting that was a production…

    But why does he need a photo id?

    So a notary could witness him signing the three timeshare quit claim documents. The notary requires a current photo id. Just about any legal document requires notarization. While the wife has POA, she does not want to sign the timeshare documents for him to forestall any future legal problems.

    The wife also got the title on his minivan fixed while they were out also. He bought the minivan (used) in Oklahama a decade ago and never got the title transferred to Texas. But somehow he got Texas plates, probably since he is a disabled vet. The wife gave his minivan to her nephew (his grandson) back in January and has been trying to transfer the title all this time.

    BTW, the POA that he signed is no good at any of the five banks where he had accounts. They want THEIR POA signed in the bank. I have been telling the wife that she needs to get legal guardianship over him but she has been delaying. He raised her very harshly and she is still afraid of him. Until she gets royally pissed off and she is very close to that point.

  51. dkreck says:

    A POA that’s been signed, notarized and filed with the county clerk’s office is perfectly okay, but then again we aren’t in the same state. Was the POA drawn up by an attorney? Tell the banks they can accept an authorized POA or send a notary out to him at their expense. Mention lawyers.
    Two weeks ago I took my mother to the attorney’s office to sign some deed transfer papers on her trust. The notary noted if we had waited a day her driver’s license would have expired on her 91st birthday and we would have had a problem. I had already called the DMV and inquired about changing her DL to an ID and they insisted unless she was totally unable to come to an office she had to come in. Next appointment at local DMV is June 25th. I made it but I might a small town nearby.

    Fucking bureaucrats.

  52. Ray Thompson says:

    A POA that’s been signed, notarized and filed with the county clerk’s office is perfectly okay

    And such document will not be accepted by the IRS. You have to a POA specifically for the IRS by the IRS to handle another person’s taxes as their representative.

  53. Lynn says:

    Or a legal guardianship.

  54. dkreck says:

    Well I’ve never had a problem and I’ve done a few. I do usually use and attorney as well.
    Or maybe I just come across as more honest than some 🙂

  55. lynn says:

    Here is the main reason I want my wife to get a legal guardianship over her dad, “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights”.
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

    I am worried that someone might do this to her dad, even though he is already in a nursing home. He might even say yes if they asked him if they could be his guardian. His judgement is very cloudy for the last 20 years and he reboots every five minutes or so. After all, what competent person buys two more timeshares for $11,000 and $12,000 when they are 75 ? And what 77 year old person buys a used minivan in Oklahoma City and then transfers his old license plates to the new used vehicle in Texas without registering it in Texas ?

  56. paul says:

    Hmm. My Mom is in a nursing home. Strokes… and just old. Sleeps a lot. I have POA. I can’t sell her house or van while she is alive or Medi-whatever gets the money. I don’t have a problem with that rule. They take all of her monthly income less $60.

    I put myself on the van’s title…. just to make it easier for get car insurance. Bluebook, etc. says it’s worth all of $600. Even with 25,000 miles. Um. A set of tires, a coil-pack and spark plug wires, and I replaced the AM/FM radio with an AM/FM/CD changer (factory), added cruise, and the buttons on the steering wheel for cruise and radio. It’s worth $600 just for what I’ve added. Except for the coil pack, it was all fun.

    I got Dad off of the deed to the house and put myself on. Mom saw no need to bother probating his will. 🙂 The tax folks down there say the place is worth about $48,000. I don’t know… I’m sure Dad went and did the Senior Exemption to freeze the taxes the day after his birthday. Which would be a bit over 30 years ago. So, I don’t know if the annual bill is for the locked value from when Dad was 65 or if it is the current value. *shrug* I’ll find out someday.

    Not trying to defraud anything. Just trying to make it easier for me when she dies.

  57. lynn says:

    I got Dad off of the deed to the house and put myself on. Mom saw no need to bother probating his will. The tax folks down there say the place is worth about $48,000.

    Is this the house with 2 ft of water and rats in it ? If so, I wonder what the bulldozer will cost.

  58. paul says:

    Just 3 inches of water. Concrete slab, cinderblock walls. No bulldozer needed.

  59. lynn says:

    Just 3 inches of water. Concrete slab, cinderblock walls. No bulldozer needed.

    Ah, a hundred gallons of bleach then.

    We lived in a cinder block house in 1972 in Lake Jackson, TX, three doors down from my grandparents. We lived with my grandparents for six months first until we could afford a rent house. I’m not sure how much insulation cinder block is but I doubt much at all.

  60. paul says:

    I’m not sure how much insulation cinder block is but I doubt much at all.

    Other than dead air space, about as much as a brick? It’s in Edinburg.

Comments are closed.