Just one more night of this shit, and then it's supposed to warm up into the positive teens tomorrow, then the 20s on Saturday, then the 30s on Sunday, and finally the 40s on Monday. Then it starts going back down again, but not below zero for awhile. We only got down to zero this morning, but it stayed in the single digits all day with wind chills well below zero. It was only supposed to be six below tonight, but we've already got 13 below at 10:30. The schools have been closed all week, and we still haven't gotten any mail delivery. I've been saying all along that it must be worse in the open country than it is here in the swamp, but I had to go to Indian River today and the road, while not perfect, didn't seem all that bad. Everything has been plowed, but they can't use salt on the roads when it's this cold, so there is a bit of a snow pack, but it's not too slippery, again because of the cold. Indeed, the snow was so dry that the cars were kicking it up like a cloud of dust. Not a problem if you don't follow too close, which some people do, the idiots. Of course that was only 20 miles on a state highway, I don't know what kind of shape some of the back roads are in.
I've been saying all along that they should have some kind of single payer health care like Canada has. As Uncle Ken pointed out, it shouldn't be any more expensive than what they've got now. Back when Obamacare was being debated, I read that about half the people in this country are already on some kind of government assisted health care: old people, poor people, veterans, active military, Indians, and I don't know who else. Like Uncle Ken said, we are paying for all of it, one way or another. So why not make it unanimous?
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Chillin'
The parties never look good in a primary fight.
No argument from me on that one, Uncle Ken. Look back a few years to all those folks that ran in the 2016 Republican primary; some of them weren't half bad and Trump wasn't given a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Maybe the Democrats will find their own unqualified and incapable candidate who can win and take home the marbles; they have plenty to choose from. And it's not impossible that Pelosi runs as the incumbent with Trump and Pence having been shown the door because of the fallout from all the Mueller hoopla. Keep your scorecards handy, folks.
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I haven't heard the term Chiberia before but it's a clever play on words and apt this season. Yes, it's cold but what do you expect in the winter? The Chicago River freezes a lot, so does the lake, but maybe people have short memories. I had to go out yesterday to the T-Mobile store to add money to my "pay-as-you-go" phone and I thought, Yep, it's cold! But it was only (!) half a mile, I was warmly dressed and found it quite tolerable as long as I was moving. All for naught; the store was closed because of the cold weather.
I tried again today with the other T-Mobile store near me, a half-mile in the opposite direction, and had success; they were open. Today was supposed to be colder than yesterday but it didn't seem like that to me but yesterday was windier. Once you start getting below 10F it all feels the same to me, it's just cold. Another ten or twenty degrees lower don't make much difference to me as long as I can stay warm. Uncle Ken asked if food tastes different since I've given up smoking and I can't tell yet; my tongue had a tingly feeling for a while, though. But I think that my blood circulation has definitely improved; no discomfort at all in my hands or feet wearing the same boots and gloves that I always wear in the winter.
And is there anything more satisfying than returning to a warm home after a frigid foray? I mentioned a while back that my apartment's windows were replaced with insulated ones and, by golly, they are doing the trick. Even with a couple of windows cracked open an inch the indoor temperature is 80F, a little too warm for my taste.
I've been monitoring the temperature with a dandy IR thermometer I have. It's pretty accurate (according to the manufacturer and I have no reason to doubt them) and the lowest I've measured was -31.2F very early this morning. I'm not checking the temps that often but they are always way different than the reported temperatures on TV. And none of this matters since it's supposed to be a lot warmer (or less cold) in the next few days. But fun while it lasted.
No argument from me on that one, Uncle Ken. Look back a few years to all those folks that ran in the 2016 Republican primary; some of them weren't half bad and Trump wasn't given a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Maybe the Democrats will find their own unqualified and incapable candidate who can win and take home the marbles; they have plenty to choose from. And it's not impossible that Pelosi runs as the incumbent with Trump and Pence having been shown the door because of the fallout from all the Mueller hoopla. Keep your scorecards handy, folks.
-----
I haven't heard the term Chiberia before but it's a clever play on words and apt this season. Yes, it's cold but what do you expect in the winter? The Chicago River freezes a lot, so does the lake, but maybe people have short memories. I had to go out yesterday to the T-Mobile store to add money to my "pay-as-you-go" phone and I thought, Yep, it's cold! But it was only (!) half a mile, I was warmly dressed and found it quite tolerable as long as I was moving. All for naught; the store was closed because of the cold weather.
I tried again today with the other T-Mobile store near me, a half-mile in the opposite direction, and had success; they were open. Today was supposed to be colder than yesterday but it didn't seem like that to me but yesterday was windier. Once you start getting below 10F it all feels the same to me, it's just cold. Another ten or twenty degrees lower don't make much difference to me as long as I can stay warm. Uncle Ken asked if food tastes different since I've given up smoking and I can't tell yet; my tongue had a tingly feeling for a while, though. But I think that my blood circulation has definitely improved; no discomfort at all in my hands or feet wearing the same boots and gloves that I always wear in the winter.
And is there anything more satisfying than returning to a warm home after a frigid foray? I mentioned a while back that my apartment's windows were replaced with insulated ones and, by golly, they are doing the trick. Even with a couple of windows cracked open an inch the indoor temperature is 80F, a little too warm for my taste.
I've been monitoring the temperature with a dandy IR thermometer I have. It's pretty accurate (according to the manufacturer and I have no reason to doubt them) and the lowest I've measured was -31.2F very early this morning. I'm not checking the temps that often but they are always way different than the reported temperatures on TV. And none of this matters since it's supposed to be a lot warmer (or less cold) in the next few days. But fun while it lasted.
the dem primary
18 below now, should get down to 23 below by midmorning and after that we will be slowly, degree by degree crawling out from under the vortex. I went out yesterday to get a photo of the frozen river, but my phone froze up, or something, I'm not sure, my fingers were too frozen to deal with it. I stepped out of one door of the towers and came back in another. Was out for about 3 minutes. I could have probably done ten but my body screamed why in the name of God do that, and that was a good enough argument for me.
They send that icebreaker down the river regularly when it freezes over/ There's hardly any commerce going on on the river this time of year but I think it is some maritime regulation. Kind of interesting to watch, it thrusts over the ice then crashes down on it humping its way down the river.
I've been watching the dem candidates of late. The themes from the left seem to be Medicare for all and soaking the rich (2% surtax on income over 50 million, something like that). Doesn't sound too bad.
The Medicare for all is getting flak because of how much it will cost, but the fact is we will spend that much caring for the sick anyway. This way the money will come out of taxes instead of the pockets of consumers or of the companies who now pay for insurance for their employees. And of course we should be able to save all the middleman costs that the insurance companies take from the process. They of course are not going to like that so this will not be an easy thing to do.
The surtax on the rich seems simple enough. They have plenty, and they recently got a windfall from the latest republican tax cut, so why shouldn't they fork over a lousy two percent. don't they owe something to the country they live in? Of course they are not going to like this either so that will be another big fight.
Joe Biden is riding high from name recognition and may become the hero of the moderates, but what do the moderates stand for? More of the same, just not so Trumpy?
The parties never look good in a primary fight. Sometimes I think the dems should put all the names in a hat and pull one out and all kumbaya up behind them.
They send that icebreaker down the river regularly when it freezes over/ There's hardly any commerce going on on the river this time of year but I think it is some maritime regulation. Kind of interesting to watch, it thrusts over the ice then crashes down on it humping its way down the river.
I've been watching the dem candidates of late. The themes from the left seem to be Medicare for all and soaking the rich (2% surtax on income over 50 million, something like that). Doesn't sound too bad.
The Medicare for all is getting flak because of how much it will cost, but the fact is we will spend that much caring for the sick anyway. This way the money will come out of taxes instead of the pockets of consumers or of the companies who now pay for insurance for their employees. And of course we should be able to save all the middleman costs that the insurance companies take from the process. They of course are not going to like that so this will not be an easy thing to do.
The surtax on the rich seems simple enough. They have plenty, and they recently got a windfall from the latest republican tax cut, so why shouldn't they fork over a lousy two percent. don't they owe something to the country they live in? Of course they are not going to like this either so that will be another big fight.
Joe Biden is riding high from name recognition and may become the hero of the moderates, but what do the moderates stand for? More of the same, just not so Trumpy?
The parties never look good in a primary fight. Sometimes I think the dems should put all the names in a hat and pull one out and all kumbaya up behind them.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Chiberia
That's what they are calling Chicago now. I saw it on television, so it must be true. They showed a shot of the Chicago River frozen over. They said an icebreaker went through earlier in the day, but the river froze right back up. It looked kind of patchy to me, I wouldn't recommend walking on it just yet.
We only got down to two below last night, and it stayed in the positive single digits all day. They predict that tomorrow will be the same, except it won't feel as cold because there is supposed to be less wind. I did some snow plowing today, and it wasn't so bad here in the woods, but it must have been brutal in the open areas. I've only been plowing for a half hour or so a day, and that will have to do. We both have 4WD, so we can get in and out regardless, but I like to keep it clear in case somebody else needs to get in. Our garbage pickup was a day late, and we haven't gotten any mail delivery yet this week. I always plow the part they use first, but again, it must be worse out on the open road. It seems that everybody in Michigan has been getting lots of lake effect snow, but we haven't gotten anything to speak of here since the eight inches or so that we got on Monday.
I don't have a cell phone, but I think I can access the Cloud from my desktop computer. I've never gotten around to looking into that because I'm happy with the way I store my photos now. Anything that I care about gets backed up on a CD. I suppose that won't help me if our house burns down but, if that happened, losing my photos would be the least of my problems.
We only got down to two below last night, and it stayed in the positive single digits all day. They predict that tomorrow will be the same, except it won't feel as cold because there is supposed to be less wind. I did some snow plowing today, and it wasn't so bad here in the woods, but it must have been brutal in the open areas. I've only been plowing for a half hour or so a day, and that will have to do. We both have 4WD, so we can get in and out regardless, but I like to keep it clear in case somebody else needs to get in. Our garbage pickup was a day late, and we haven't gotten any mail delivery yet this week. I always plow the part they use first, but again, it must be worse out on the open road. It seems that everybody in Michigan has been getting lots of lake effect snow, but we haven't gotten anything to speak of here since the eight inches or so that we got on Monday.
I don't have a cell phone, but I think I can access the Cloud from my desktop computer. I've never gotten around to looking into that because I'm happy with the way I store my photos now. Anything that I care about gets backed up on a CD. I suppose that won't help me if our house burns down but, if that happened, losing my photos would be the least of my problems.
phone photos
Twenty below as I seat myself at the keyboard, maybe it will drop a few more degrees, then it will rise a tad, drop once more Thursday morning and sometime later that day the vortex will move along, nothing to see here. I will make a brief foray out at some point, just to experience the wonder. I mainly want to see how frozen over the river is. When it's completely frozen over and covered with a light coat of snow it is a thing of beauty.
I don't remember ever experiencing frostbite or anything close to it. As an old guy I marvel at the young lads and lasses going about bareheaded. I'm pretty sure I wore a hat at that age though I can't remember specifically what kind. I guess future generations will know what they looked like when young because they will have volumes of selfies to look back on.
Or will they? We had photos taken on special occasions and they were put into albums and the albums were bequeathed to us. That's the way it worked for me. Sometime in the early 70s I owned a camera for a few years and I have a box of photos from then, and I guess I have just some random photos that came into my possession. I have a Pentax camera from when I started taking up art. Maybe eight shoeboxes full of photos from then that lay dormant because who wants to go through that. I've had a couple digital cameras and their cards would only hold so many photos so you had to download them to the computer and I was pretty good about putting them into various folders.
The smartphone on the other hand stores them in the cloud and you never have to do anything, and in fact giving the files names and storing them in some kind of order is very difficult and most people don't bother. Myself I am a little better because I regularly download to my computer, and when you connect with a cable you can control the photo storage on your camera through your computer.
But to my knowledge hardly anybody else does that, The phone stores them by date and various categories like people and places which the camera itself decides which is which. At this point I am going to have to do some kind of research on how people know where those photos are. My experience indicates that when they are searching for a photo they just go willy nilly through their accumulation knowing roughly where they are just from doing it so often, but I will have to check. But what of when they have like thirty years of accumulated photos? What happens then?
I was having a conversation a week ago with a friend who pointed out that Trump hadn't come up with a mocking moniker for Nancy, and I said oh, he will think of one soon, but as Old Dog points out he hasn't. I'm loath to ascribe to him the intelligence to be afraid of anybody, so we will have to wait and see. He is rather like a lion in the winter since the shutdown cave isn't he? Even his proud tweets have gone from brash to whiny.
Glad to hear that Old Dog is succeeding in kicking the weed. Another effect of not smoking is that food is supposed to taste better. Has he noticed that?
Twenty-one below now with the sun rising. Well this is the worst. It can only get better. Just like us.
I don't remember ever experiencing frostbite or anything close to it. As an old guy I marvel at the young lads and lasses going about bareheaded. I'm pretty sure I wore a hat at that age though I can't remember specifically what kind. I guess future generations will know what they looked like when young because they will have volumes of selfies to look back on.
Or will they? We had photos taken on special occasions and they were put into albums and the albums were bequeathed to us. That's the way it worked for me. Sometime in the early 70s I owned a camera for a few years and I have a box of photos from then, and I guess I have just some random photos that came into my possession. I have a Pentax camera from when I started taking up art. Maybe eight shoeboxes full of photos from then that lay dormant because who wants to go through that. I've had a couple digital cameras and their cards would only hold so many photos so you had to download them to the computer and I was pretty good about putting them into various folders.
The smartphone on the other hand stores them in the cloud and you never have to do anything, and in fact giving the files names and storing them in some kind of order is very difficult and most people don't bother. Myself I am a little better because I regularly download to my computer, and when you connect with a cable you can control the photo storage on your camera through your computer.
But to my knowledge hardly anybody else does that, The phone stores them by date and various categories like people and places which the camera itself decides which is which. At this point I am going to have to do some kind of research on how people know where those photos are. My experience indicates that when they are searching for a photo they just go willy nilly through their accumulation knowing roughly where they are just from doing it so often, but I will have to check. But what of when they have like thirty years of accumulated photos? What happens then?
I was having a conversation a week ago with a friend who pointed out that Trump hadn't come up with a mocking moniker for Nancy, and I said oh, he will think of one soon, but as Old Dog points out he hasn't. I'm loath to ascribe to him the intelligence to be afraid of anybody, so we will have to wait and see. He is rather like a lion in the winter since the shutdown cave isn't he? Even his proud tweets have gone from brash to whiny.
Glad to hear that Old Dog is succeeding in kicking the weed. Another effect of not smoking is that food is supposed to taste better. Has he noticed that?
Twenty-one below now with the sun rising. Well this is the worst. It can only get better. Just like us.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Hunkering Down
So far the worst of this thing seems to be missing us. We have had near zero temps for the last week or so, and that is predicted to continue for the next couple of days. Today was almost pleasant for this time of year, temps in the teens and little wind for a change. It's supposed to go below zero tonight and not much above that tomorrow. We have eight above right now, which is a couple degrees higher than it was a few hours ago. Other parts of Michigan have been getting way more snow than we have, but that's normal because Cheboygan isn't in the usual lake effect impact area.
Youse guys in Chicago are predicted to be colder than us for the next two days, which is unusual but not unheard of. I seem to remember that you got down to 35 below a few years ago, but the Weather Channel says that your all time record is like 25 below. I suppose it depends on where they take the reading. I remember that, often when they gave the forecast for Chicago, they used to say "Cooler near the lake." Most official weather reports come from the nearest airport, but I think that Cheboygan still gets theirs from the waste water treatment plant. Long before we had a real airport there was a guy that worked at the waste water plant who used to keep accurate weather records. I don't think anybody paid him to do it, it was just a hobby thing and he had bought his own equipment. I understand that he left his equipment in place when he retired and that somebody else carried on the tradition. The plant is located right on the straits near the mouth of the river, which might explain why they often get different readings than we do down in the swamp.
Hunker down and stay safe. This too shall pass.
Youse guys in Chicago are predicted to be colder than us for the next two days, which is unusual but not unheard of. I seem to remember that you got down to 35 below a few years ago, but the Weather Channel says that your all time record is like 25 below. I suppose it depends on where they take the reading. I remember that, often when they gave the forecast for Chicago, they used to say "Cooler near the lake." Most official weather reports come from the nearest airport, but I think that Cheboygan still gets theirs from the waste water treatment plant. Long before we had a real airport there was a guy that worked at the waste water plant who used to keep accurate weather records. I don't think anybody paid him to do it, it was just a hobby thing and he had bought his own equipment. I understand that he left his equipment in place when he retired and that somebody else carried on the tradition. The plant is located right on the straits near the mouth of the river, which might explain why they often get different readings than we do down in the swamp.
Hunker down and stay safe. This too shall pass.
Cooling off
Since the weather is a popular topic these days I must ask about frostbite, easily preventable but not when you're hanging out with the cool kids. Back in high school none of the guys wore hats, caps, or any kind of headwear. If it was really cold we might break out some earmuffs but then your hair would get caught in the metal bands. Since we were all pretty active and weren't outside for more than a half hour or so at a time frostbite was never an issue but there was one time I got nailed pretty good. Back in the day, roller skating rinks were popular and I was at a party that included a visit to the Hub on Harlem Avenue, We got a ride from the party to the Hub but had to walk back, a couple of miles, and it was cold, very cold. We were laughing at each other because our ears were turning gray and were amused that despite how hard we rubbed them we couldn't feel a thing. Ah, the follies of youth! The next day my ears were red, swollen, sensitive beyond belief and very painful. It looked like I had a slice of tomato slapped on each side of my head and it didn't take much for me to convince Mom to call the school for a sick day, The redness lasted a couple of days and to this day my ears are more sensitive to the cold than any other body part and that was the first, and last, time my ears were frostbit. My toes were mildly frostbit a few times but I think it comes with the territory, living in Chicago and waiting for a bus or train.
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I think Trump is scared shitless of Pelosi. Instead of the type of disparaging nicknames he gives to his adversaries he refers to her simply as "Nancy." I was expecting something like "Pitiful Pelosi" or "Nancy Nobody" but Donnie is being very careful with this one. Perhaps he is working on a dignified exit strategy, something she may be more than happy to give him.
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The tobacco-free experiment continues, and it is brutal. One online resource states that nicotine craving becomes intense, peaking at two to four weeks after quitting smoking, and after three weeks I must agree. Too much is out of whack at that same time; appetite, sleep patterns, ability to mentally focus, and general mood. There is one nice thing, though. A prolonged and vigorous stroll in the frigid air is very refreshing and something I wouldn't have enjoyed a month ago. I'm looking forward to tomorrow; it may be a record-breaker but my ears will be well covered.
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I think Trump is scared shitless of Pelosi. Instead of the type of disparaging nicknames he gives to his adversaries he refers to her simply as "Nancy." I was expecting something like "Pitiful Pelosi" or "Nancy Nobody" but Donnie is being very careful with this one. Perhaps he is working on a dignified exit strategy, something she may be more than happy to give him.
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The tobacco-free experiment continues, and it is brutal. One online resource states that nicotine craving becomes intense, peaking at two to four weeks after quitting smoking, and after three weeks I must agree. Too much is out of whack at that same time; appetite, sleep patterns, ability to mentally focus, and general mood. There is one nice thing, though. A prolonged and vigorous stroll in the frigid air is very refreshing and something I wouldn't have enjoyed a month ago. I'm looking forward to tomorrow; it may be a record-breaker but my ears will be well covered.
short and meandering
I dug into my can of Dinty Moore last night. I don't know where I got the idea that the meat was gristly, it was just fine. The perfect sustenance for this polar vortex which we should be smack dab in the middle of come Wednesday, by Friday we will be in the positives, just above freezing Saturday which will be Ground Hog Day, less than two weeks after that will be Valentines Day and two days after that pitchers and catchers will be reporting, and two weeks after that the month of March which as I recall comes in like a lion and leaves the same way, will be upon us. Easter is April 21, could still be some snow then.
And, and I guess that is all I have to say. If I were like the dawgs I reckon I would just snap on that Looney Tunes trailer, Th-Th-That's all folks, and be about my day.
How about a nice hot war with Venezuela? Milk Mustache has been brandishing a notepad on which he has jotted down "5000 troops to Columbia." I wonder if they will be coming from the border where they have been sitting around tossing cards into hats.
What are the military doing these days? They are getting piles of money while other agencies are starving and yet what war are they winning, what enemies are they keeping at bay? At the darkest point of shutdown when our country was at its weakest no enemy struck at us. Maybe we don't need so much defense.
I reckon we won't see any more shutdowns in awhile. I think the dems are working on a bill to eliminate them entirely. I don't know the mechanics of the bill, but it doesn't seem like the founding fathers ever thought it would be a good idea to put something into the machinery so that when any branch of the gummint got a stick up their ass they could shut the whole thing down.
Th-Th-That's all folks.
And, and I guess that is all I have to say. If I were like the dawgs I reckon I would just snap on that Looney Tunes trailer, Th-Th-That's all folks, and be about my day.
How about a nice hot war with Venezuela? Milk Mustache has been brandishing a notepad on which he has jotted down "5000 troops to Columbia." I wonder if they will be coming from the border where they have been sitting around tossing cards into hats.
What are the military doing these days? They are getting piles of money while other agencies are starving and yet what war are they winning, what enemies are they keeping at bay? At the darkest point of shutdown when our country was at its weakest no enemy struck at us. Maybe we don't need so much defense.
I reckon we won't see any more shutdowns in awhile. I think the dems are working on a bill to eliminate them entirely. I don't know the mechanics of the bill, but it doesn't seem like the founding fathers ever thought it would be a good idea to put something into the machinery so that when any branch of the gummint got a stick up their ass they could shut the whole thing down.
Th-Th-That's all folks.
Monday, January 28, 2019
You Know its Cold When........
I have heard that some people will give you the shirt off their backs, and I have heard that a really good coat might cost you an arm and a leg, and now (drum roll here) some people in Chicago are resorting to armed robbery to acquire coats that are both functional and fashionable. As a wise old philosopher once said, "Every time I think I've seen it all, I find out that I ain't seen nothing yet."
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBSREc4?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
We got down to 24 below last night, but the temp had climbed to around zero by morning. It struggled up into the single digits after that, and there it remains at present. Lots of wind and blowing snow as well, but I don't think we got all that much accumulation on the ground, maybe six or eight inches. They are predicting another three days of this shit before the weather returns to normal for this time of year. I blame the Democrats. It seems like every time they win an election we have a record cold winter. I remember when Obama was first elected, after promising to do something about global warming, we had two record cold winters in a row. Coincidence? I think not!
I quit making predictions about Trump a long time ago. I don't think anybody, including Trump himself, knows for sure what he might do next. Meanwhile the Hispanic invasion continues unabated.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBSREc4?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
We got down to 24 below last night, but the temp had climbed to around zero by morning. It struggled up into the single digits after that, and there it remains at present. Lots of wind and blowing snow as well, but I don't think we got all that much accumulation on the ground, maybe six or eight inches. They are predicting another three days of this shit before the weather returns to normal for this time of year. I blame the Democrats. It seems like every time they win an election we have a record cold winter. I remember when Obama was first elected, after promising to do something about global warming, we had two record cold winters in a row. Coincidence? I think not!
I quit making predictions about Trump a long time ago. I don't think anybody, including Trump himself, knows for sure what he might do next. Meanwhile the Hispanic invasion continues unabated.
is the emperor gelded?
It strikes me that perhaps Mitch may have been somewhat in the Beagles mode of not being in the camp of either the sucks or the rebels, since it seems they both disliked him, but again, that does not mean that he wasn't an asshole. Maybe he was like one of those ancient Greek philosophers who behaved so as to outrage the populace to get their attention. Or maybe he just had B O.
There is also a matter of tribes, the sucks and the rebs, the dems and the reps, they all have specific issues that separate them, but they are also different groups of people, like Cubs and Sox fans. If the sucks wanted to paint the lunchroom red, don't you think the rebs would wanted it painted blue?
Anyway I think my tribe has landed a fatal blow on Trump. I was surprised that he caved. I thought he would hold out until the republican senators were forced to go against him, but I have noticed that there are rare instances when the clear light of reason filters past those blondie strands. I was watching before he made the announcement and they had the cameras trained on the rose garden for like half an hour before he showed up. I expect there was plenty of browbeating going on.
While it is a balmy 17 degrees here, it is eight below in Cheboygan. We can expect that weather Tuesday and Wednesday with lows around twenty below. And still all of feb to go. I wandered down to the little store yesterday to buy a bottle of pop, and their tv had some golf tournament, all green and wavy grass and folks in shortsleeves and shorts. Whole nother world my friends. You know it's not so hard to remember something twenty, thirty years ago, but look out your window now and try to remember when it was summer out there, it seems like it was in another lifetime.
You know I seemed to remember Spaghetti O's as Franco-American, but when I googled them in came up Campbells so that's what I went with. I reckon Campbells bought out Franco-American, too bad, a nice little irony there, the French making Italian food which is really just American food that no Italian would eat. But those French, you know, they love Jerry Lewis, so who knows.
My can of Dinty Moore (I bought the thick squat can which is how I remember it in my youth) is sitting on my shelf awaiting the tasting on one of those upcoming twenty below days I think, maybe a stale roll to go with it. Which makes me think of hardtack. Isn't that some Alaskan thing, the gluten version of beef jerky?
I've never noticed a peculiar taste in canned goods, but I do remember sandwhiches wrapped in waxed paper, and maybe especially inside a brown paper bag with things like maybe an apple and a small bag of chips and siting in a locker all morning on a hot summer day. I have to say I grew rather fond of that particular taste, like aging a rare cheese maybe.
There is also a matter of tribes, the sucks and the rebs, the dems and the reps, they all have specific issues that separate them, but they are also different groups of people, like Cubs and Sox fans. If the sucks wanted to paint the lunchroom red, don't you think the rebs would wanted it painted blue?
Anyway I think my tribe has landed a fatal blow on Trump. I was surprised that he caved. I thought he would hold out until the republican senators were forced to go against him, but I have noticed that there are rare instances when the clear light of reason filters past those blondie strands. I was watching before he made the announcement and they had the cameras trained on the rose garden for like half an hour before he showed up. I expect there was plenty of browbeating going on.
While it is a balmy 17 degrees here, it is eight below in Cheboygan. We can expect that weather Tuesday and Wednesday with lows around twenty below. And still all of feb to go. I wandered down to the little store yesterday to buy a bottle of pop, and their tv had some golf tournament, all green and wavy grass and folks in shortsleeves and shorts. Whole nother world my friends. You know it's not so hard to remember something twenty, thirty years ago, but look out your window now and try to remember when it was summer out there, it seems like it was in another lifetime.
You know I seemed to remember Spaghetti O's as Franco-American, but when I googled them in came up Campbells so that's what I went with. I reckon Campbells bought out Franco-American, too bad, a nice little irony there, the French making Italian food which is really just American food that no Italian would eat. But those French, you know, they love Jerry Lewis, so who knows.
My can of Dinty Moore (I bought the thick squat can which is how I remember it in my youth) is sitting on my shelf awaiting the tasting on one of those upcoming twenty below days I think, maybe a stale roll to go with it. Which makes me think of hardtack. Isn't that some Alaskan thing, the gluten version of beef jerky?
I've never noticed a peculiar taste in canned goods, but I do remember sandwhiches wrapped in waxed paper, and maybe especially inside a brown paper bag with things like maybe an apple and a small bag of chips and siting in a locker all morning on a hot summer day. I have to say I grew rather fond of that particular taste, like aging a rare cheese maybe.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
I thought about it all weekend, and I have decided that I don't want to go into Mitch's personality quirks on this forum. The whole point of the Dorr-Oliver story was that I was surprised that people would vote against a nuts-and-bolts proposal for social reasons, and I don't see what good can come from me going into a detailed description of the very social issues that I considered to be irrelevant at the time.
Our paper mill is actually pretty small as paper mills go, which is one reason why it was eventually shut down. I understand that it now uses re-cycled raw material exclusively, and I don't know how it compares in size to other re-cycling plants. P&G originally bought Charmin to get its facilities in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the Cheboygan plant, which had only recently been bought by Charmin, came with the deal. A lot of people were surprised that it lasted as long as it did, some 30 years. The current owner has operated it for about 23 years now. He tried to sell it some years ago, but the deal fell through.
We have had our share of sub zero temps this year, and winter is not half over yet. We live only a few miles out of town, but our temps commonly vary 5-10 degrees either way from Cheboygan's officially reported ones. We got down to 24 below the other night and Cheboygan reported only eight below. We are already at 23 below tonight, and Cheboygan is reporting 10 below. I'm sure that I said this before, but there ought to be a law against anything below zero. Zero is plenty cold enough to ice the lakes over so people can go snowmobiling on them, and we don't need it to be any colder than that.
Our paper mill is actually pretty small as paper mills go, which is one reason why it was eventually shut down. I understand that it now uses re-cycled raw material exclusively, and I don't know how it compares in size to other re-cycling plants. P&G originally bought Charmin to get its facilities in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the Cheboygan plant, which had only recently been bought by Charmin, came with the deal. A lot of people were surprised that it lasted as long as it did, some 30 years. The current owner has operated it for about 23 years now. He tried to sell it some years ago, but the deal fell through.
We have had our share of sub zero temps this year, and winter is not half over yet. We live only a few miles out of town, but our temps commonly vary 5-10 degrees either way from Cheboygan's officially reported ones. We got down to 24 below the other night and Cheboygan reported only eight below. We are already at 23 below tonight, and Cheboygan is reporting 10 below. I'm sure that I said this before, but there ought to be a law against anything below zero. Zero is plenty cold enough to ice the lakes over so people can go snowmobiling on them, and we don't need it to be any colder than that.
Chow Time
I don't know about doctoring up Dinty Moore, if you are going to go through all that work why not start from scratch?
Good point but I think time is the big factor. Stews are usually made with the less desirable cuts of meat and simmered for many hours on a low heat. I've never made stew myself but I recall there was an additional step of browning the meat first in a hot skillet but my memory may be faulty. Seeing a big pot of stew simmering on the stove was always a welcome sight in the winter time and one of the few times I ever saw a bay leaf being used.
There are a number of canned beef stew comparisons online and the winner is usually Dinty Moore but it's often described only as acceptable and not good or excellent. I thought there would be a lot of recipes for Dinty Moore variations but I was wrong; very slim pickings. There was one recipe that may interest Uncle Ken, though. You bake the Dinty Moore with cornbread batter on top, and it sounds good.
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SpaghettiOs (no hyphen) is a trademark of Campbell's but I think it was originally made by Franco-American. There are imitation products, one made by Chef Boyardee, but they are called "spaghetti rings." SpaghettiOs are usually the highest rated version of that type of canned pasta product, which isn't saying much for the other competitors.
Useless trivia: Chef Boyardee was a real guy whose real name was Ettore Boiardi. He changed the spelling of the name so Americans would know how to easily pronounce it.
I wonder why so much canned food has a weird taste or texture; everything tastes a little off. Freeze-drying might deliver a better product but could be too expensive which is why you seldom see such foods in supermarkets. The military is the biggest customer of freeze-dried food with their MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat) and every nation has its own version. YouTube has plenty of reviews and I should check them out. Are Japanese MREs tastier then their Chinese counterparts? And is there a military version of Dinty Moore Stew that blows the canned version out of the water? A good use for our tax dollars, I think.
Good point but I think time is the big factor. Stews are usually made with the less desirable cuts of meat and simmered for many hours on a low heat. I've never made stew myself but I recall there was an additional step of browning the meat first in a hot skillet but my memory may be faulty. Seeing a big pot of stew simmering on the stove was always a welcome sight in the winter time and one of the few times I ever saw a bay leaf being used.
There are a number of canned beef stew comparisons online and the winner is usually Dinty Moore but it's often described only as acceptable and not good or excellent. I thought there would be a lot of recipes for Dinty Moore variations but I was wrong; very slim pickings. There was one recipe that may interest Uncle Ken, though. You bake the Dinty Moore with cornbread batter on top, and it sounds good.
------
SpaghettiOs (no hyphen) is a trademark of Campbell's but I think it was originally made by Franco-American. There are imitation products, one made by Chef Boyardee, but they are called "spaghetti rings." SpaghettiOs are usually the highest rated version of that type of canned pasta product, which isn't saying much for the other competitors.
Useless trivia: Chef Boyardee was a real guy whose real name was Ettore Boiardi. He changed the spelling of the name so Americans would know how to easily pronounce it.
I wonder why so much canned food has a weird taste or texture; everything tastes a little off. Freeze-drying might deliver a better product but could be too expensive which is why you seldom see such foods in supermarkets. The military is the biggest customer of freeze-dried food with their MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat) and every nation has its own version. YouTube has plenty of reviews and I should check them out. Are Japanese MREs tastier then their Chinese counterparts? And is there a military version of Dinty Moore Stew that blows the canned version out of the water? A good use for our tax dollars, I think.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Dinty Moore and the Aurora Borealis and leftover big bang
All this Dorr Oliver talk got me to wondering where that old paper mill was, so this morning I was driving my googlemobile through Cheboygan (it was summertime there, very pleasant while here it is minus two before the wind-chill (a positive 8 for Cheboygan, what is with that (I think we are closer to the center of the vortex))), and came across the Great Lakes Tissue Company which must be what it is today, huge but not tall, rather plain when seen from the outside.
I still wonder about Mitch. What kind of crackpot was he? A beady-eyed one who made people nervous, or a loudmouth who everybody laughed along with, but once he left the room everybody was rolling their eyes and shaking their heads?
And I think Beagles makes a good point, an issue should be decided on its own merits, not on the source, It's not something we see in these heated political times when the first response to a proposal is to bad mouth the proposer and the proposal never gets discussed, hardly reasonable discussion by reasonable people.
I'm pleased to see that Old Dog has taken on the Dinty Moore challenge, and that he found it well, pretty good. I'll be venturing out to the Jewel in the heat of the day (positive three) and I'll be sure to bring home a can of Dinty Moore. But I am confused about the difference between Spaghetti--Os and Spaghetti-O types of canned pasta Is the former the Campbells product and the latter stuff like Da Chef's cheese ravioli? If so I would have to disagree, I much prefer the latter.
It's been sometime since I've tasted the wonder of Spam. I used to chop it into cubes and put it in my Ramen soup, but I think it was best fried in slabs between slices of hearty bread. I don't know about doctoring up Dinty Moore, if you are going to go through all that work why not start from scratch?
Apparently the subject of the sound of the Northern lights is a big topic on the internet. Well it is light of which radio is one frequency so there is probably some way to transform them into some kind of sound, but not the same as hearing it straight from the Aurora Borealis's mouth, which I see described as crackles and muffled bangs, not as something like the song of the humpbacked whale which would be nice huh?.
Incidentally back in the days before cable, back in the days when tv used to sign out around midnight, the stuff that came on after the Indian shed his tear and the cool test pattern faded away consisted in part of the leftover radiation from the big bang.
I still wonder about Mitch. What kind of crackpot was he? A beady-eyed one who made people nervous, or a loudmouth who everybody laughed along with, but once he left the room everybody was rolling their eyes and shaking their heads?
And I think Beagles makes a good point, an issue should be decided on its own merits, not on the source, It's not something we see in these heated political times when the first response to a proposal is to bad mouth the proposer and the proposal never gets discussed, hardly reasonable discussion by reasonable people.
I'm pleased to see that Old Dog has taken on the Dinty Moore challenge, and that he found it well, pretty good. I'll be venturing out to the Jewel in the heat of the day (positive three) and I'll be sure to bring home a can of Dinty Moore. But I am confused about the difference between Spaghetti--Os and Spaghetti-O types of canned pasta Is the former the Campbells product and the latter stuff like Da Chef's cheese ravioli? If so I would have to disagree, I much prefer the latter.
It's been sometime since I've tasted the wonder of Spam. I used to chop it into cubes and put it in my Ramen soup, but I think it was best fried in slabs between slices of hearty bread. I don't know about doctoring up Dinty Moore, if you are going to go through all that work why not start from scratch?
Apparently the subject of the sound of the Northern lights is a big topic on the internet. Well it is light of which radio is one frequency so there is probably some way to transform them into some kind of sound, but not the same as hearing it straight from the Aurora Borealis's mouth, which I see described as crackles and muffled bangs, not as something like the song of the humpbacked whale which would be nice huh?.
Incidentally back in the days before cable, back in the days when tv used to sign out around midnight, the stuff that came on after the Indian shed his tear and the cool test pattern faded away consisted in part of the leftover radiation from the big bang.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Since You Asked
The generic name for the Dorr-Oliver was "save-all", but we commonly called our equipment by the name of its manufacturer. The Dorr-Oliver was part of our water clarification system. Paper machines use a lot of water, and most of that water is clarified and re-used. When water comes off of the paper machine it's all clouded up with bits of paper stock. That stock has to be filtered out before the water can be re-used or it will plug up the showers. What the Dorr-Oliver did was separate the stock from the water, return the stock to a stock chest to be re-fed to the paper machine, and send the water to another piece of equipment called the Sveen, which further clarified the water by a different process. The stock that came off the Sveen was unfit for re-use and was sent to another piece of equipment to be de-watered further and discarded. The water was as clean or cleaner than it was when it was originally pumped out of the river, and could either be sent to the paper machines or sent to the surge chest, where it was held until needed or returned to the river if there was way too much of it.
The Impco sat next to the Dorr-Oliver and worked on the same principle, but it was much bigger and better. When I first came to the beater room, the Impco was having some issues and couldn't handle all the water, so the Dorr-Oliver was being used to handle the surplus. During an extended period of down time, we worked on the Impco and resolved all its issues. Now it could handle all the water, but the Dorr-Oliver was kept in reserve just in case. The Dorr-Oliver was made of old fashioned carbon steel, not stainless steel like the Impco, and it went to rust during its idle time. By the time of my story, the Dorr-Oliver hadn't been used in years, and we probably couldn't have used it if we needed to.
The committee I was on had nothing to do with the union. It was a multidisciplinary task force that was brought together to plan and implement an extensive upgrade of our control system. They wanted some operators on the team, as well as the usual managers and engineers, to provide input so the new equipment would be more user friendly than some of the crap machines they had bought in the past. All the beater room operators were not on the team, so I was tasked with getting their input about what to do with the old Dorr-Oliver. I don't know why the Dorr-Oliver was never scrapped out. Perhaps the money that had been appropriated for its disposal got siphoned off into another project, or maybe it was because Mitch was indeed a crackpot and nobody took his idea seriously. When I conducted my poll, I refused to divulge the name of the originator of the idea, as was recommended by my colleague George, but everybody on the committee knew it was Mitch. The whole point of my story was that, even a crackpot can come up with a good idea now and then. I have always believed that a practical idea like that should be judged on its own merits. Like I told George, "This is about 20 tons of scrap iron, not somebody's girl friend." I guess I always thought that most people were like me in that respect, and I never realized how unique I was until Bruce pointed it out to me.
The Northern Lights generate a faint hissing sound that can only be heard under ideal conditions. Other people besides me have reported this, so it's not just in my head.
I have eaten Dinty Moore beef stew a few times since my Alaskan odyssey. It's okay, but nothing to write home about. The reason I chose it for my trip was it represented a somewhat balanced meal that was easy to prepare and didn't need to be refrigerated.
The Impco sat next to the Dorr-Oliver and worked on the same principle, but it was much bigger and better. When I first came to the beater room, the Impco was having some issues and couldn't handle all the water, so the Dorr-Oliver was being used to handle the surplus. During an extended period of down time, we worked on the Impco and resolved all its issues. Now it could handle all the water, but the Dorr-Oliver was kept in reserve just in case. The Dorr-Oliver was made of old fashioned carbon steel, not stainless steel like the Impco, and it went to rust during its idle time. By the time of my story, the Dorr-Oliver hadn't been used in years, and we probably couldn't have used it if we needed to.
The committee I was on had nothing to do with the union. It was a multidisciplinary task force that was brought together to plan and implement an extensive upgrade of our control system. They wanted some operators on the team, as well as the usual managers and engineers, to provide input so the new equipment would be more user friendly than some of the crap machines they had bought in the past. All the beater room operators were not on the team, so I was tasked with getting their input about what to do with the old Dorr-Oliver. I don't know why the Dorr-Oliver was never scrapped out. Perhaps the money that had been appropriated for its disposal got siphoned off into another project, or maybe it was because Mitch was indeed a crackpot and nobody took his idea seriously. When I conducted my poll, I refused to divulge the name of the originator of the idea, as was recommended by my colleague George, but everybody on the committee knew it was Mitch. The whole point of my story was that, even a crackpot can come up with a good idea now and then. I have always believed that a practical idea like that should be judged on its own merits. Like I told George, "This is about 20 tons of scrap iron, not somebody's girl friend." I guess I always thought that most people were like me in that respect, and I never realized how unique I was until Bruce pointed it out to me.
The Northern Lights generate a faint hissing sound that can only be heard under ideal conditions. Other people besides me have reported this, so it's not just in my head.
I have eaten Dinty Moore beef stew a few times since my Alaskan odyssey. It's okay, but nothing to write home about. The reason I chose it for my trip was it represented a somewhat balanced meal that was easy to prepare and didn't need to be refrigerated.
Canned goods
I've seen the Northern Lights a couple of times but solar activity must have been weak; they were barely visible but still pretty cool looking. I was disappointed that there wasn't any accompanying sound like you have with lightening and thunder but instead of thunder there would be electronic sounds like you get with a theremin. Are the Northern Lights completely silent or is there some kind of sound, like static, that you can hear as you approach the magnetic north pole?
Anyhow, in another bit of synchronicity there was a recent post at the Hackaday site about the Carrington Effect. This effect deals with solar flares, coronal ejections, and the effects on the atmosphere, i.e., Northern Lights. Another result of solar activity is the disruption of telecommunications, something that we aren't well prepared to deal with.
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It's funny that Uncle Ken just mentioned Spaghetti-Os. A few weeks ago one of the YouTube channels that I follow did a comparison of Spaghetti--Os and Spaghetti-O types of canned pasta; no surprise, the real Spaghetti-Os won. But I don't think I've eaten them, or if I did it was so long ago that I had no memory of it. Same thing for Spam; I surely must have eaten it at some point in my life but I have no recollection of it. So, I got some Spam and Spaghetti-Os; I wasn't expecting much and I wasn't disappointed. Spam was much too salty, hiding any pork or ham-like flavor and the texture was weird. I ate it cold, right out of the can, so it might be better after soaking it in cold water to remove some of the salt and then frying strips of it in a skillet. If the Maillard Reaction can work it's magic and carmelize some of the proteins you might have a tasty snack, but that's an experiment for another day.
The Spaghetti-Os (with meatballs!) were nondescript but the meatballs had a little flavor. My best description of it would be tomato soup with soggy pasta pieces and tolerable meatball-like formed pieces of protein product.
But those meals were a couple of weeks ago and today I took the big step with another canned food that I don't recall ever eating. Yes, I bought a can of the infamous Dinty Moore Beef Stew today and was pleasantly surprised and found it more than edible. I used a sauce pan to heat it up instead of Uncle Ken's can-in-the-boiling-water trick; I think it heats up more quickly and is easier to stir once you add some fresh ground pepper. The quantity and quality of beef was fine, as was the flavor, but it could have used more potatoes and carrots. As it was heating up and I seasoned to taste I was thinking that it would make a fine base for a more complex stew. A little prep work could work wonders; start by sautéing some onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, or what have you and you could end up with a killer stew. Or a nice pot of chili; there are a lot of directions you can go in with using Dinty Moore as a starting point. Have you guys done any experimenting?
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After reading Mr. Beagles' tale of the Darr-Oliver, it seems to me that his paper mill had a management problem. I found this: Dorr-Oliver, founded in 1910, manufactured systems and equipment for the pulp and paper industry based out of Orillia, Ontario Canada.
The machines are still in use and can be repaired and seem integral to the operation of a paper mill. Somebody "upstairs" should have made the decision to either fix it or get rid of it. They get paid to make those decisions and shouldn't have shirked their responsibility but that's just my opinion; talk is cheap and I wasn't there.
Anyhow, in another bit of synchronicity there was a recent post at the Hackaday site about the Carrington Effect. This effect deals with solar flares, coronal ejections, and the effects on the atmosphere, i.e., Northern Lights. Another result of solar activity is the disruption of telecommunications, something that we aren't well prepared to deal with.
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It's funny that Uncle Ken just mentioned Spaghetti-Os. A few weeks ago one of the YouTube channels that I follow did a comparison of Spaghetti--Os and Spaghetti-O types of canned pasta; no surprise, the real Spaghetti-Os won. But I don't think I've eaten them, or if I did it was so long ago that I had no memory of it. Same thing for Spam; I surely must have eaten it at some point in my life but I have no recollection of it. So, I got some Spam and Spaghetti-Os; I wasn't expecting much and I wasn't disappointed. Spam was much too salty, hiding any pork or ham-like flavor and the texture was weird. I ate it cold, right out of the can, so it might be better after soaking it in cold water to remove some of the salt and then frying strips of it in a skillet. If the Maillard Reaction can work it's magic and carmelize some of the proteins you might have a tasty snack, but that's an experiment for another day.
The Spaghetti-Os (with meatballs!) were nondescript but the meatballs had a little flavor. My best description of it would be tomato soup with soggy pasta pieces and tolerable meatball-like formed pieces of protein product.
But those meals were a couple of weeks ago and today I took the big step with another canned food that I don't recall ever eating. Yes, I bought a can of the infamous Dinty Moore Beef Stew today and was pleasantly surprised and found it more than edible. I used a sauce pan to heat it up instead of Uncle Ken's can-in-the-boiling-water trick; I think it heats up more quickly and is easier to stir once you add some fresh ground pepper. The quantity and quality of beef was fine, as was the flavor, but it could have used more potatoes and carrots. As it was heating up and I seasoned to taste I was thinking that it would make a fine base for a more complex stew. A little prep work could work wonders; start by sautéing some onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, or what have you and you could end up with a killer stew. Or a nice pot of chili; there are a lot of directions you can go in with using Dinty Moore as a starting point. Have you guys done any experimenting?
-----
After reading Mr. Beagles' tale of the Darr-Oliver, it seems to me that his paper mill had a management problem. I found this: Dorr-Oliver, founded in 1910, manufactured systems and equipment for the pulp and paper industry based out of Orillia, Ontario Canada.
The machines are still in use and can be repaired and seem integral to the operation of a paper mill. Somebody "upstairs" should have made the decision to either fix it or get rid of it. They get paid to make those decisions and shouldn't have shirked their responsibility but that's just my opinion; talk is cheap and I wasn't there.
spinning yarns
That story left me confused, I'd really like to know what the Dorr-Oliver did? Was it used only on certain occasions, or had it not been used in years? Was this the union voting on it? The union can't tell the company what to do with its equipment can it? Is that why it was never removed, even though the vote was unanimous against it? And was it a poll or a vote?
How come nobody liked Mitch? Was he a slacker, a drunkard, had poor social norms, or was he a crackpot? Did Talks with Beagles tell everybody it was Mitch's idea? If he didn't, whose idea did he tell them it was?
The thing about being mistrusted by both the radicals and the big sucks reminds me of the politicians who are criticized by both the right and the left and boast about that because they think that shows that they are doing something right, but I think maybe it means both sides see what an asshole you are.
But that's not the case with Beagles. Beagles is issue oriented and most all of those issues are on the right of the current political spectrum. Most all of Trump's agenda is also on the right, so naturally Beagles goes along with that, and dare I say, seems often to be saying that is why he supports him and will tend to vote for candidates who support him. Let's say that there are two kinds of conservative republicans. Mitch McConnell types and Jeff Flake types, and it seems like Beagles is a Mitch McConnell type.
I guess it's kind of a tempest in a teapot. I don't believe our readership ever goes much above three. I have urged others to read it, but none of them has ever read it very long. I wonder if either of the dawgs has ever tried to get their buddies or relatives to see the wonder?
I'm still kind of pushing for iconic trips. I had this friend once who told stories, not lies, but events in his life that he had told often and in the telling he had polished them, tossed out irrelevant details, boosted certain important parts. If you asked him, what was the story of him getting fired from some job, he wouldn't go like let's see, first this than that, but it was more like he was leafing through the book of Ed's (I'll call him Ed) stories and finding that particular one, began to recite it with time trusted words.
I guess Beagles does that with those stories dredged up from the days of that old site that went down, but we never get to see any new ones. Old Dog seems me to be a natural born spinner of yarns and I'd like to see more from him. Well I am not the boss of you guys or even of this blog, so carry on gentlemen.
How come nobody liked Mitch? Was he a slacker, a drunkard, had poor social norms, or was he a crackpot? Did Talks with Beagles tell everybody it was Mitch's idea? If he didn't, whose idea did he tell them it was?
The thing about being mistrusted by both the radicals and the big sucks reminds me of the politicians who are criticized by both the right and the left and boast about that because they think that shows that they are doing something right, but I think maybe it means both sides see what an asshole you are.
But that's not the case with Beagles. Beagles is issue oriented and most all of those issues are on the right of the current political spectrum. Most all of Trump's agenda is also on the right, so naturally Beagles goes along with that, and dare I say, seems often to be saying that is why he supports him and will tend to vote for candidates who support him. Let's say that there are two kinds of conservative republicans. Mitch McConnell types and Jeff Flake types, and it seems like Beagles is a Mitch McConnell type.
I guess it's kind of a tempest in a teapot. I don't believe our readership ever goes much above three. I have urged others to read it, but none of them has ever read it very long. I wonder if either of the dawgs has ever tried to get their buddies or relatives to see the wonder?
I'm still kind of pushing for iconic trips. I had this friend once who told stories, not lies, but events in his life that he had told often and in the telling he had polished them, tossed out irrelevant details, boosted certain important parts. If you asked him, what was the story of him getting fired from some job, he wouldn't go like let's see, first this than that, but it was more like he was leafing through the book of Ed's (I'll call him Ed) stories and finding that particular one, began to recite it with time trusted words.
I guess Beagles does that with those stories dredged up from the days of that old site that went down, but we never get to see any new ones. Old Dog seems me to be a natural born spinner of yarns and I'd like to see more from him. Well I am not the boss of you guys or even of this blog, so carry on gentlemen.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Issue Oriented
I didn't feel like flogging any dead horses tonight, so I dug up the old story that I told you about in my last post. I think it explains why I support some of Trump's agenda even though I don't like the guy's personality.
THE DORR-OLIVER AFFAIR
THE DORR-OLIVER AFFAIR
by Talks With Beagles
When I used to work at the paper mill, back in the beater room, we had this piece of equipment called the Dorr-Oliver. Some people referred to it as "The Dinosaur"; because it was big, and old, and didn't work any more.
Now in those days, I was on a committee that was working on a project to bring some new equipment into the plant. Whenever we did a project like this, there was always some money in the budget for site clearing, which means getting rid of all the old junk that is in the way. Now the Dorr-Oliver was not exactly in the way of this project, but the electrical power source for it was, and had to be site cleared to make way for the new stuff. This meant that we would never be able to start up the Dorr-Oliver again, even if we wanted to fix it up and make it work, which nobody seemed interested in doing anyway.
One of the committee members was a guy we’ll call "Mitch". He came up with what I thought was a pretty good idea: Why not site clear the whole Dorr-Oliver instead of just the electrical part? Was there enough money in the budget to do this? Yes there was. Nobody had said a good word about the Dorr-Oliver in years, so I was surprised when a number of people objected to Mitch’s proposal and we argued about it for a long time. Finally, I suggested that we take a poll of all the people who worked in the beater room and just go by majority rule. Everybody said that they didn’t have time to take this poll, so I volunteered to do it, but they still weren’t exactly thrilled about it.
After the meeting, a guy who we’ll call "George" came up to me and said, "Talks With Beagles, if you really want to get rid of the Dorr-Oliver like I do, don’t tell anybody that it was Mitch’s idea. Nobody likes Mitch, and they will all vote against the proposal regardless of what they really think about the Dorr-Oliver." I replied, "What are we, in high school here? This is about twenty tons of scrap iron, not about somebody’s girlfriend." But George seemed really sure of himself, so I agreed to do as he said, just to prove him wrong. But George wasn’t wrong. Everybody I polled refused to vote at all unless I would tell them who originally came up with the idea. I had promised George that I wouldn’t’ do this, but I had also promised the committee that I would have the poll done by the next meeting. Now a poll in which everybody abstains from voting isn’t much of a poll, so what was I supposed to do now?
It just so happens that there was one guy who had been on vacation while all this was going on, let’s call him "Paul". Now Paul wasn’t exactly what you would call a morning person, so I caught him first thing in the morning when he came back and asked him if he wanted to get rid of the Dorr-Oliver. Paul mumbled" Sure, whatever", and I took that as a "yes" vote. Then I want back around to everybody else and told them that all of the people who had voted so far had voted "yes". This wasn’t exactly a lie, but I felt a little bad about it anyway. It came to pass that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy because, after I told them that, everybody voted "yes" anyway.
Some time later, I was telling somebody all about the Dorr-Oliver story because he had been working in a different department at the time and didn’t know about it. I think we'll call this guy "Bruce", since that was his name. To that very day, I still hadn’t understood exactly what had happened, and I told him that too. "Talks With Beagles," said Bruce, "I’ve always known there was something strange about you, and now I know what it is. Did you ever wonder why half the people in this plant call you a "radical" and the other half call you a "big suck?" ( Actually, I had tried to tell people when I first hired in that I was really a reactionary, not a radical, but nobody seemed to get it, and I finally gave up trying to explain it to them.) Anyway, back to Bruce: "This is because sometimes you support management in their efforts, and sometimes you oppose them. Sometimes you stick up for your fellow union members, and sometimes you don’t. I always wondered about this myself, and now I know the answer: You are issue oriented rather than people oriented. If somebody comes up with an idea, you support it if you think it’s a good idea, and you oppose it if you think it’s a bad idea. At no time do you consider whose idea it is and whether you like the person or not."
"Well," said I, "Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?"
"Well," said Bruce, "Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do, but you are the only person I know that actually does it, and I know a lot of people."
Bruce was right of course, but I had never really thought of it that way before. It sure explains a lot of the difficulties I’ve had dealing with people over the years. That doesn’t mean I intend to change anything about myself. After all, what’s more important here, getting elected King of the Homecoming Dance, or getting rid of the Dorr-Oliver?
Funny thing, though, we never did get rid of the Dorr-Oliver after all. It was still sitting there when they closed the mill back in 1990, and it was still sitting there when they opened up again under a new name in 1993. This was supposed to be a totally different company, but the same people were running it as before. They just changed the name on paper.
I worked for this "new" company for ten weeks, and then they kicked me out for some unknown reason. They wrote it up as a layoff, rather than a termination, which meant I could go back on unemployment compensation. The bad news was that I would have had a hard time appealing this action as an unjust termination. ("Layoff" means they have run out of work for you to do, which was not true in this case. "Termination" means you did something wrong and got yourself fired, which wasn't true either.) There would have been nobody to appeal it to anyway, because this "new" company didn’t have a union like the "old" company did.
I felt pretty bad about being kicked out of the paper mill the first time, but the second time didn’t bother me nearly as much. What bothers me the most, though, is that the Dorr-Oliver is still sitting there, all rusted out and useless, while a whole lot of people like me, who still had a few good years left in them, are out in the street. TWB
the girl in the dirndl and the rain
I know that Beagles disapproves of Mr Trump, but the phrases fellow traveler and useful idiot, and that thing about walking like a duck all come to mind. His susceptibility to caravan hysteria is well documented in the annals of The Institute. I kept bringing it up because, well, Beagles thought it would become an invasion and his armed boy scouts would have to fire on the horde to protect the unbussed tables of Cheboygan, and when that never happened I guess I supposed that Beagles would sheepishly admit to having been taken in by tomfoolery, but that never happened and likely it never will, so I'm happy enough to let the issue lie for the nonce.
Sad to think that after that long voyage the pee green Ford was left to be scavenged for parts, well I guess old cars cannot be put out to stud. I believe Beagles never did finish off that case of Dinty Moore beef stew, and maybe my memory is faulty, but I believe he swore off the stuff for life. Ever since hearing that story I have been thinking about picking up a can myself. It had a special place in my heart during my days of eating out of cans. (Put the can in a pot of water and boil the water until warm enough and then eat out of the can. No muss no fuss, and nothing to wash because you will have licked that spoon clean). Spaghetti- O's and Da Chef's ravioli were fine for everyday fare, but when you wanted to feast like a king, nothing fit the bill like a big old can of Dinty Moore.
How prized were those big chunks o' beef in my youth, but now I seem to recall that they could be a bit gristly. I'm willing to set up a Dinty Moore challenge, but if neither dawg wants to go along I guess I won't feel too bad.
I'm disappointed to not get a yarn out of Old Dog on the subject of iconic trips. And scourge that he is he wants to know what exactly I mean by that. Rite of passage is acceptable if interpreted loosely. I think it is something that you still remember in your golden years and maybe are a little amazed at yourself for having done it. Maybe it marked a turning point in your life that was taken or not taken.
I don't think motoring up to Sheboygan (the lesser Cheboygan. Perhaps there is a story, do they come from the same root? Why did one get the C and the other the S, did one defer to the other? The C seems a little more Frenchy. Wiki sez Sheboygan was incorporated in 1846 and Cheboygan in 1871) to get a brat counts as an iconic trip. Maybe if you met a girl in a dirndl and married her but shortly after the honeymoon you got a taste for a Chicago hot dog and told her you were going out for a pack of cigs one rainy night and never came back, that would be close to being, well some kind of story.
We're old, we are allowed to fabricate a few details because how can people look it up, and why would they care. And if we are not going to make stuff up now then when?
Sad to think that after that long voyage the pee green Ford was left to be scavenged for parts, well I guess old cars cannot be put out to stud. I believe Beagles never did finish off that case of Dinty Moore beef stew, and maybe my memory is faulty, but I believe he swore off the stuff for life. Ever since hearing that story I have been thinking about picking up a can myself. It had a special place in my heart during my days of eating out of cans. (Put the can in a pot of water and boil the water until warm enough and then eat out of the can. No muss no fuss, and nothing to wash because you will have licked that spoon clean). Spaghetti- O's and Da Chef's ravioli were fine for everyday fare, but when you wanted to feast like a king, nothing fit the bill like a big old can of Dinty Moore.
How prized were those big chunks o' beef in my youth, but now I seem to recall that they could be a bit gristly. I'm willing to set up a Dinty Moore challenge, but if neither dawg wants to go along I guess I won't feel too bad.
I'm disappointed to not get a yarn out of Old Dog on the subject of iconic trips. And scourge that he is he wants to know what exactly I mean by that. Rite of passage is acceptable if interpreted loosely. I think it is something that you still remember in your golden years and maybe are a little amazed at yourself for having done it. Maybe it marked a turning point in your life that was taken or not taken.
I don't think motoring up to Sheboygan (the lesser Cheboygan. Perhaps there is a story, do they come from the same root? Why did one get the C and the other the S, did one defer to the other? The C seems a little more Frenchy. Wiki sez Sheboygan was incorporated in 1846 and Cheboygan in 1871) to get a brat counts as an iconic trip. Maybe if you met a girl in a dirndl and married her but shortly after the honeymoon you got a taste for a Chicago hot dog and told her you were going out for a pack of cigs one rainy night and never came back, that would be close to being, well some kind of story.
We're old, we are allowed to fabricate a few details because how can people look it up, and why would they care. And if we are not going to make stuff up now then when?
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
A Nation of Immigrants
Of course we are a nation of immigrants, and look what those immigrants did to the indigenous inhabitants. Do you want the next wave of immigrants to do that to us? Okay, our specific ancestors came relatively late, after the damage had been done, so "predecessors" might be a better word for the people who screwed over the Indians than "ancestors". Either way, it all happened before we were born, so it's not our fault and we shouldn't be punished for it.
I thought I made it clear that I do not get my political opinions from Donald Trump. I have been concerned about illegal immigration for as long as I can remember, and the first time I ever heard of Trump was when he got divorced from his first wife. I didn't care about Trump's divorce, but it was in the news so much that I couldn't help but notice it. In those days, if anybody had told me that Trump would become President of the United States some day, I would have been surprised, and I was really surprised when he eventually did. I have said before that I don't like Trump's personality, but I do like some, but not all, of the things he has tried to do. I have also said before that I am more concerned about issues than I am about personalities. One of my old stories explains that, and I will dig it up and post it when I get time, maybe this weekend.
In the old days, I was concerned about illegal immigration because I have long believed that a law should either be enforced or repealed. Keeping an unenforced law on the books just breeds disrespect for the law in general. I think I got that idea from one of my elementary school teachers. Now I am more concerned about the sheer number of illegals pouring into this country every day. As I said in my last post, the caravans are only the tip of the iceberg. I read somewhere, probably in National Geographic, that there are now more refugees on the road worldwide than any time since World War II. I don't blame the refugees, they are just trying to survive as best they can, but the present system for dealing with them is inadequate. We have talked about Ellis Island before. They were able to process their immigrants in an orderly fashion because it's an island, which is probably why the facility was located where it was. Shiploads of immigrants had to wait at anchor and be admitted one at a time. I don't know how they could duplicate that situation today, but they need to find a better way of controlling the influx than they now have.
I think the prefabricated barriers they have been installing along the border are replacements of existing fencing, so they wouldn't count towards building Trump's wall. They do need to do something about those long stretches of border that are under fenced and under guarded. They are mostly in remote desert or mountain terrain that must have been adequate to discourage illegal crossing in the past, but not anymore.
The car in the picture than Uncle Ken posted seems to be the same color as my old Ford was when it was new, but mine was far from new when I bought it. You had to wax your car in those days to keep it looking like that, and mine had not been waxed in a long time, maybe never. That car was 11 years old, which was considered a clunker in those days. You could pick up a car like that for $50 in Chicago at the time, but I paid $250 for that one, so I figured it would be more economical to drive it home than to try to sell it. It got me home all right, but it only lasted a few months after that. It became really hard to start, and our mechanic neighbor said that the engine was shot, no compression left. I sold it to a guy for $25 dollars. He had one just like it that ran and he wanted mine for parts.
I seem to remember that he had to tow it home.
I thought I made it clear that I do not get my political opinions from Donald Trump. I have been concerned about illegal immigration for as long as I can remember, and the first time I ever heard of Trump was when he got divorced from his first wife. I didn't care about Trump's divorce, but it was in the news so much that I couldn't help but notice it. In those days, if anybody had told me that Trump would become President of the United States some day, I would have been surprised, and I was really surprised when he eventually did. I have said before that I don't like Trump's personality, but I do like some, but not all, of the things he has tried to do. I have also said before that I am more concerned about issues than I am about personalities. One of my old stories explains that, and I will dig it up and post it when I get time, maybe this weekend.
In the old days, I was concerned about illegal immigration because I have long believed that a law should either be enforced or repealed. Keeping an unenforced law on the books just breeds disrespect for the law in general. I think I got that idea from one of my elementary school teachers. Now I am more concerned about the sheer number of illegals pouring into this country every day. As I said in my last post, the caravans are only the tip of the iceberg. I read somewhere, probably in National Geographic, that there are now more refugees on the road worldwide than any time since World War II. I don't blame the refugees, they are just trying to survive as best they can, but the present system for dealing with them is inadequate. We have talked about Ellis Island before. They were able to process their immigrants in an orderly fashion because it's an island, which is probably why the facility was located where it was. Shiploads of immigrants had to wait at anchor and be admitted one at a time. I don't know how they could duplicate that situation today, but they need to find a better way of controlling the influx than they now have.
I think the prefabricated barriers they have been installing along the border are replacements of existing fencing, so they wouldn't count towards building Trump's wall. They do need to do something about those long stretches of border that are under fenced and under guarded. They are mostly in remote desert or mountain terrain that must have been adequate to discourage illegal crossing in the past, but not anymore.
The car in the picture than Uncle Ken posted seems to be the same color as my old Ford was when it was new, but mine was far from new when I bought it. You had to wax your car in those days to keep it looking like that, and mine had not been waxed in a long time, maybe never. That car was 11 years old, which was considered a clunker in those days. You could pick up a car like that for $50 in Chicago at the time, but I paid $250 for that one, so I figured it would be more economical to drive it home than to try to sell it. It got me home all right, but it only lasted a few months after that. It became really hard to start, and our mechanic neighbor said that the engine was shot, no compression left. I sold it to a guy for $25 dollars. He had one just like it that ran and he wanted mine for parts.
I seem to remember that he had to tow it home.
Road worriers
What's the deal with that color green and cars of the early 50s? I remember when my father took me for a ride in his first new car, a '53 Chevy in two-tone green, that same piss green with forest green accents, quite a snazzy combo as I recall. The car was so new it had brown paper on the seats to protect the upholstery and it was my first exposure to that elusive "new car smell."
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I don't know what Uncle Ken means by his reference to an iconic road trip unless he is referring to rites of passage, like something Kerouac or Joseph Campbell would expound upon. I've read some Kerouac and have always enjoyed road trips but never considered them anything special. Although I preferred motorcycle journeys, the road trips in a car were a lot easier, especially if you had a buddy along to kill the time with. Solo journeys can be mentally taxing if you don't have a radio to listen to.
Mr. Beagles' trip from Alaska sounds iconic to me, particularly when you consider it's length. I don't think I've ever driven or ridden more than three straight days without a break of a day or two. At least he had the foresight to stock up on food, something I usually entrusted to the Fates, depending on what places were open and how much cash I had.
The only way I can describe some of my trips is "I must have been nuts!" An awful lot can go wrong but I lucked out; except for a few flat tires on the bike and a dead battery there were no real emergencies. Rain and bad weather don't count as they are to be expected. A good rain suit is worth it's weight in gold, keeping you dry and warm.
What constitutes an iconic road trip, anyhow? Is it the age at which you take it, learning valuable life lessons? Are difficult trips more iconic than the easier ones? It seems to me that there is a kind of journey that is taken for no real purpose except the journey itself, like when you crave a bratwurst and decide that a trip to Sheboygan Wisconsin is the perfect answer for that craving. The unanticipated flat tire was an added bonus.
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I don't know what Uncle Ken means by his reference to an iconic road trip unless he is referring to rites of passage, like something Kerouac or Joseph Campbell would expound upon. I've read some Kerouac and have always enjoyed road trips but never considered them anything special. Although I preferred motorcycle journeys, the road trips in a car were a lot easier, especially if you had a buddy along to kill the time with. Solo journeys can be mentally taxing if you don't have a radio to listen to.
Mr. Beagles' trip from Alaska sounds iconic to me, particularly when you consider it's length. I don't think I've ever driven or ridden more than three straight days without a break of a day or two. At least he had the foresight to stock up on food, something I usually entrusted to the Fates, depending on what places were open and how much cash I had.
The only way I can describe some of my trips is "I must have been nuts!" An awful lot can go wrong but I lucked out; except for a few flat tires on the bike and a dead battery there were no real emergencies. Rain and bad weather don't count as they are to be expected. A good rain suit is worth it's weight in gold, keeping you dry and warm.
What constitutes an iconic road trip, anyhow? Is it the age at which you take it, learning valuable life lessons? Are difficult trips more iconic than the easier ones? It seems to me that there is a kind of journey that is taken for no real purpose except the journey itself, like when you crave a bratwurst and decide that a trip to Sheboygan Wisconsin is the perfect answer for that craving. The unanticipated flat tire was an added bonus.
the pea green chariot
Does this look like it? Strangely the first car I remember our family getting was a 1953 Ford in just this color. It was called pea green which is not so far from pissy green, My dad had had a car when he was courting my mother, but had to give it up I assume when us kids came along. This was the first car we had as a family and our first tv came a little before or after that. The Schadts were moving on up.
I think I reject that we are drowning in refugees. I mean come on we have been accepting refugees since the time our forefathers were stepping off the boat in Ellis Island, and I don't see where the country has gotten weaker because of that. I think the national debt (which we should be paying down in these boom times. I reckon that's how we paid off the car dad had a pretty good job and was making money and instead of buying fancy gifts for rich people he paid off his debt to whoever loaned him the money to buy the car. Way to go Dad.) is a bigger problem. Another thing that I see as way more pressing than people coming across the border is our environmental degradation and the way that our coastal cities are getting closer and closer to being underwater. Either one of these issues is more important than illegal immigration.
And if illegal immigration is Beagles' big worry why doesn't he just that instead of harping on these relatively harmless caravans?. If he really has distaste for Trump why does he dance so readily to his tune?
I believe that the border has been reinforced since, I don't know, the time of Ronald Reagan, and parts of a wall have been built. I have consistently heard that no part of the wall has been built under Trump, and when I googled that I came up with about a dozen links which say none at all, to not very much.
My point about these state and local gummints is that it won't be long before Beagles is railing against them. After all won't Michigan's laws be written by those elected by the the state and just under half of Michiganders live in the Detroit area? And locally what if the commies in oh, Petosky make laws he doesn't like?
I'm a little anxious to hear about about Old Dog's motorcycle trip or what ever he considers his iconic trip.
Monday, January 21, 2019
The Tip of the Iceberg
The caravans themselves are not the total problem, they are only the tip of the iceberg. The total problem is that there are too many refugees worldwide desperately trying to save themselves and their families. It's like when the Titanic went down. Once the lifeboats were loaded and launched, they were ordered to pull a safe distance away to avoid being sucked down with the ship. After the ship had sunk, the occupants of the lifeboats could hear lots of people crying for help in the darkness, but it was decided that there were so many of them that they would swamp the boats and everybody would go down together. After the cries of the doomed subsided, the boats went over and did save the last few survivors. It sounds cold hearted but, if they had tried to save them all, they would have saved nobody including themselves. I was concerned about the big caravan that came last fall because I thought they were intended to try to break through in a big mob like they had already done when they crossed from Guatemala into Mexico. As it was, there were a few failed attempts to do just that, but the Border Patrol had anticipated them and were able to prevent their success.....One life boat still afloat, for now. Meanwhile, the asylum seekers have already overwhelmed the system that was never designed to handle so many of them at once....One lifeboat down.
Be that as it may, we were talking about the current upgrades to the border barriers that have been going on for some time when Uncle Ken introduced the concept of bollocks. I believe he also said something about fake news. Uncle Ken, are you saying that the borders are not being reinforced as has been reported in recent news articles? If so, what is the basis for your assertion? Did you read or hear something to the contrary, or have you come under the influence of President Trump, who reflexively calls anything he doesn't like to hear "fake news"?
I don't know if I would rather live with a crappy government than no government. I suppose it depends on how crappy. I am not advocating the overthrow of the federal government anyway, I'm just saying that they keep threatening to shut it down bit by bit, and I'm daring them to just pull the plug already. As I have said, if the fed goes down, we will still have state and local governments, so it wouldn't be the end of the world.
The car was a '52 Ford 4-door sedan. I once described its color as "pissy green" in a letter to my parents. My mom chided me for my vulgarity but, when she saw the car later, she couldn't come up with a more accurately descriptive term.
I saw the Northern Lights a few times in Alaska, but I've seen much more elaborate displays of them in northern Michigan over the years. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't have to be cold to see them, they are likely to display any time of the year when conditions are right. They are caused by electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, which increases when there are solar storms or "sunspots". I think they appear occasionally as far south as Chicago, but you'd probably have to get away from the city lights to see them well.
Be that as it may, we were talking about the current upgrades to the border barriers that have been going on for some time when Uncle Ken introduced the concept of bollocks. I believe he also said something about fake news. Uncle Ken, are you saying that the borders are not being reinforced as has been reported in recent news articles? If so, what is the basis for your assertion? Did you read or hear something to the contrary, or have you come under the influence of President Trump, who reflexively calls anything he doesn't like to hear "fake news"?
I don't know if I would rather live with a crappy government than no government. I suppose it depends on how crappy. I am not advocating the overthrow of the federal government anyway, I'm just saying that they keep threatening to shut it down bit by bit, and I'm daring them to just pull the plug already. As I have said, if the fed goes down, we will still have state and local governments, so it wouldn't be the end of the world.
The car was a '52 Ford 4-door sedan. I once described its color as "pissy green" in a letter to my parents. My mom chided me for my vulgarity but, when she saw the car later, she couldn't come up with a more accurately descriptive term.
I saw the Northern Lights a few times in Alaska, but I've seen much more elaborate displays of them in northern Michigan over the years. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't have to be cold to see them, they are likely to display any time of the year when conditions are right. They are caused by electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, which increases when there are solar storms or "sunspots". I think they appear occasionally as far south as Chicago, but you'd probably have to get away from the city lights to see them well.
Living on the road my friend was gonna keep you free and clean
I was indeed speaking of Beagles' long drive back to civilization with the case of Dinty Moore. In my imagination I turned his vehicle into a pickup truck. What kind of car was it? What color was it, not that it matters but it feeds my image of Beagles rolling out of the mountains,
I used bollocks because it sounded a bit like bollards and I think the British use it the way we do bullshit, as in Ah bollocks, and I guess it's obvious that that's the way I feel about this idea that the caravans are some major threat to the USA. When I look up a word I just go to google and begin typing it in and half the time google will spell it out for me before I get half way through. Tintinabulation of course comes from Edgar Allen Poe's The Bells, and I believe that Edgar is credited with with inventing the word. I like to spread a bit of poesy around because I think perhaps the Dawgs could use a little more Literature in their lives. You will note the way I paraphrased William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming in my third paragraph, though I should have written pitiless as the sun rather than pitiful
As Beagles notes I too can get into high dudgeon about the gummint, but even then I would rather have a crappy government than no government at all, which is what Beagles wants.
I never thought about it, but I guess I am not of a man of nature. I don't like to be anywhere were I can't walk a mile or two and buy a newspaper. I would love to see the Aurora Borealis though and one night many years ago I was drinking beer in the cornfields with some kids from Mason City Illinois and I leaned my head back and there was the Milky Way. I have never seen it again since.
I was thinking how iconic was Beagles' drive to civ, and wondering if I have anything similar. The summer of 1966 I had a roommate who was an airman from Chanute. I got a ride from him to Eureka, then hitchhiked down to San Franciso where Ferlinghetti had his bookstore and all the beatniks were I imagined. I stayed in some cheap hotel above a topless bar. At some point I hitchhiked down to Los Angeles where I knew somebody I couldn't find. On the way down there I got a ride from some guy a little older than me whose passengers were a couple teenagers. They were going through the glove box and throwing things out the window. When they got a flat they just drove on the rim. I got out right away when they turned onto an off ramp, and a cop car with its siren on came down the road right after them. I don'know for sure if he was going after them, but I reckon I could well have spent some time in some local jail.
Maybe that is my iconic journey. I remember Old Dog talking about some motorcycle trip where he met a girl in like Idaho but he had to leave her behind like that little girl the Calypso singer had to leave in Kingston town. Maybe that is his iconic journey.
I was thinking how iconic was Beagles' drive to civ, and wondering if I have anything similar. The summer of 1966 I had a roommate who was an airman from Chanute. I got a ride from him to Eureka, then hitchhiked down to San Franciso where Ferlinghetti had his bookstore and all the beatniks were I imagined. I stayed in some cheap hotel above a topless bar. At some point I hitchhiked down to Los Angeles where I knew somebody I couldn't find. On the way down there I got a ride from some guy a little older than me whose passengers were a couple teenagers. They were going through the glove box and throwing things out the window. When they got a flat they just drove on the rim. I got out right away when they turned onto an off ramp, and a cop car with its siren on came down the road right after them. I don'know for sure if he was going after them, but I reckon I could well have spent some time in some local jail.
Maybe that is my iconic journey. I remember Old Dog talking about some motorcycle trip where he met a girl in like Idaho but he had to leave her behind like that little girl the Calypso singer had to leave in Kingston town. Maybe that is his iconic journey.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Life on the Open Road
I think that Uncle Ken was talking about my trip back from Alaska in 1963. I had flown to Alaska the day after my high school graduation and stayed there four months. My job ran out in October and the boss said that he would be happy to hire me for another season next spring, so I planned to go visit my parents back in Chicago for the winter. I had recently paid too much for an old car and I doubted that I could get my money out of it if I sold it, so I blithely decided to drive it back to Chicago, some 5,000 miles, one thousand of it on unpaved road.
I rigged up a sleeping platform with scrap lumber across the top of the seats from the dashboard to the rear window, which took up the whole passenger side of the vehicle. For provisions I bought a case of Dinty Moore beef stew, a loaf of French bread, and a jar of apple butter. I camped out for the first six nights of the trip, cooking the stew in the cans it came in over an open fire and eating it right out of the can with a plastic fork. The stew was surprisingly filling. One can in the evening and a thick slice of bread and apple butter in the morning was all I needed to keep me going all day. I slept all night and drove all day down that lonely mountain road, conversing with other people only when I stopped for gas a couple times a day. I was starting to feel a little funny in the head by the time I broke out onto the plains of Alberta. There I came upon a truck stop where I got a decent meal, a hot shower, and a bunk for the night, after which I felt much better. I never did make it back to Alaska, but I think the experience was part of what made me the man I am today. It appears that Uncle Ken thinks so too.
Speaking of Uncle Ken, maybe he will explain to us what testicles have to do with border security in tomorrow's post.
Bollix bollocks
Bollocks is a vulgar term for testicles and its usage is favored by our English cousins; we are still separated by a common language, don'cha know. If a situation becomes pear-shaped they are apt to exclaim "Dog's bollocks!" and if not, Bob's your uncle.
When Mr. Beagles mentioned he couldn't find bollocks in his dictionary I thought I should look for mine, a new-ish copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and see if it was in there. Not a chance, as the dictionary isn't as new as I had thought. It's the 10th Edition, dating from 1995; more time has slipped away than I had thought. Still a good dictionary but online resources are more up to date.
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I get the impression that Uncle Ken isn't much of an outdoors type, what with his latest dismissive comment on the Aurora Borealis. Really, what's not to like about the Northern Lights? And sitting in a truck bed eating Dinty Moore stew? Where the hell did that come from? There may be good reasons why certain non-urban things are such a fat topic for mockery and scorn but I have no idea what they may be. Oh well, different strokes and all that; we all have our own quirks.
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Way back in the 20th century, before the internet was a gleam in Al Gore's eye, there was a thing called the spoken word recording. These vinyl records were audio documentaries, covering many topics, and a whole bunch of them have been digitized and are available for downloading. They are interesting slices of history, and it's kind of cool to listen to Walter Cronkite describe the 60s. You can find out more by starting here.
When Mr. Beagles mentioned he couldn't find bollocks in his dictionary I thought I should look for mine, a new-ish copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and see if it was in there. Not a chance, as the dictionary isn't as new as I had thought. It's the 10th Edition, dating from 1995; more time has slipped away than I had thought. Still a good dictionary but online resources are more up to date.
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I get the impression that Uncle Ken isn't much of an outdoors type, what with his latest dismissive comment on the Aurora Borealis. Really, what's not to like about the Northern Lights? And sitting in a truck bed eating Dinty Moore stew? Where the hell did that come from? There may be good reasons why certain non-urban things are such a fat topic for mockery and scorn but I have no idea what they may be. Oh well, different strokes and all that; we all have our own quirks.
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Way back in the 20th century, before the internet was a gleam in Al Gore's eye, there was a thing called the spoken word recording. These vinyl records were audio documentaries, covering many topics, and a whole bunch of them have been digitized and are available for downloading. They are interesting slices of history, and it's kind of cool to listen to Walter Cronkite describe the 60s. You can find out more by starting here.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
What Are Bollocks?
I couldn't find that one in my dictionary, but I did find "tintinnabulation", which means the ringing of a bell. I'm not sure what that word was doing in that context, maybe Uncle Ken was trying to say that Trump's pronouncements are noisy, but the ringing of a bell is usually not an unpleasant sound.
Be that as it may, the more I think about it, those pre-fab panels they are using to reinforce the border are not called bollards, they are being used to replace the bollards that were originally installed to exclude vehicles as well as various other types of fencing that were intended to exclude pedestrians. These new things, whatever they are called, are supposed to exclude both vehicles and pedestrians. Here's a link to a story that features a picture of those things being constructed:
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBSn0uc?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare The story goes on to say that walls alone will not keep determined people out, which is what I have been saying all along.
"Like I said two minutes after the feds disappeared Beagles would be raising the roof over those awful state governments. And he knows it" - Uncle Ken
Yup, that's what Americans do, they criticize their government when it does things of which they don't approve. Uncle Ken is certainly not shy about criticizing everything that Trump says and does, so how can he fault me for criticizing the actions of other government people?
Be that as it may, the more I think about it, those pre-fab panels they are using to reinforce the border are not called bollards, they are being used to replace the bollards that were originally installed to exclude vehicles as well as various other types of fencing that were intended to exclude pedestrians. These new things, whatever they are called, are supposed to exclude both vehicles and pedestrians. Here's a link to a story that features a picture of those things being constructed:
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBSn0uc?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare The story goes on to say that walls alone will not keep determined people out, which is what I have been saying all along.
"Like I said two minutes after the feds disappeared Beagles would be raising the roof over those awful state governments. And he knows it" - Uncle Ken
Yup, that's what Americans do, they criticize their government when it does things of which they don't approve. Uncle Ken is certainly not shy about criticizing everything that Trump says and does, so how can he fault me for criticizing the actions of other government people?
Friday, January 18, 2019
The Wall is just a formless dream
It my be imperceptible in our current roiling days but I do believe that there has been a steady increase in the tintanabulation of our affairs. Were we to travel back in time a couple years I think we would find our outrage at the behavior of Fuckhead a bit quaint. Why is that all he said, our present day selves, travelling back to the past ( I recommend dressing up in vaguely Star Trek attire because that is what people of the past expect people from the future to look like), would comment, tut tut, that is not so bad.
I do not fear future Prez's under Putin's thumb. None of them, not even the republicans. are that dumb, that heedless of anything beyond themselves, or have the emotional growth of a rather slow four year old. Generally if a politician is successful at something you see other politicians imitating that behavior, you know, like becoming Kennedyesque. I've seen some senatorial candidates trying it, but they haven't been able to bring it off. When they shoot themselves in the foot they get hurt, but when Fuckhead shoots himself in the foot he only becomes stronger,
I think its his thirty-five percent who are the guys who when it came to long division just couldn't hack it, who saw some of their classmates just whip it out with all that multiplication and subtraction going on in that long tail underneath the little house and those integers appearing above the roof and what the hell is this remainder crap? Someday they would get their revenge on those classmates who just kind of snickered and sighed when asked what is this remainder crap? And now, their hour has come round at last, they have slouched their rough beast, with the eyes as blank and pitiful as the sun, into the white house.
Much is made of how his supporters wanted the wall. They only wanted the wall because they thought He wanted it. Interest in the wall steadily dropped as he went on to rant about other things. but now that He has turned back to the wall their interest in it has shot right up.
He will never fold on the wall. He doesn't care if drugs get across the border, he doesn't care about our national security. All that matters is that His name is on all our lips and the day begins with his tweets. Whether the coast guard has a full stomach patrolling our shores is small potatoes to His Trumpness.
Like I said two minutes after the feds disappeared Beagles would be raising the roof over those awful state governments. And he knows it This ranting for the formless void, I don't see how a good Gage Parker, and an ROTCer at that, comes by this nonsense. Maybe one can too many of Dinty Moore on the long road back to civilization under those eerie northern lights did it.
I fucked up on that English stuff. I mean to say bollocks but bullocks. And that Common Market European Union stuff, I'm embarrassed to say I get them mixed up.
Which brings us to the alleged efforts of the Russians to destabilize the Western democracies. Well, the US seems to be pretty unstable right now, and it's mostly being caused by the shenanigans of the federal government.
The reason the US seems destabilized right now is that the Russkies have been successful in putting their man in the white house and the shenanigans are part of his effort to keep Himself in power. Where has Beagles been these past few months? In a truckbed spooning Dinty Moore into his mouth while the northern lights buzzed his brain and caused him to dream the impossible dream of the formless void?
I do not fear future Prez's under Putin's thumb. None of them, not even the republicans. are that dumb, that heedless of anything beyond themselves, or have the emotional growth of a rather slow four year old. Generally if a politician is successful at something you see other politicians imitating that behavior, you know, like becoming Kennedyesque. I've seen some senatorial candidates trying it, but they haven't been able to bring it off. When they shoot themselves in the foot they get hurt, but when Fuckhead shoots himself in the foot he only becomes stronger,
I think its his thirty-five percent who are the guys who when it came to long division just couldn't hack it, who saw some of their classmates just whip it out with all that multiplication and subtraction going on in that long tail underneath the little house and those integers appearing above the roof and what the hell is this remainder crap? Someday they would get their revenge on those classmates who just kind of snickered and sighed when asked what is this remainder crap? And now, their hour has come round at last, they have slouched their rough beast, with the eyes as blank and pitiful as the sun, into the white house.
Much is made of how his supporters wanted the wall. They only wanted the wall because they thought He wanted it. Interest in the wall steadily dropped as he went on to rant about other things. but now that He has turned back to the wall their interest in it has shot right up.
He will never fold on the wall. He doesn't care if drugs get across the border, he doesn't care about our national security. All that matters is that His name is on all our lips and the day begins with his tweets. Whether the coast guard has a full stomach patrolling our shores is small potatoes to His Trumpness.
Like I said two minutes after the feds disappeared Beagles would be raising the roof over those awful state governments. And he knows it This ranting for the formless void, I don't see how a good Gage Parker, and an ROTCer at that, comes by this nonsense. Maybe one can too many of Dinty Moore on the long road back to civilization under those eerie northern lights did it.
I fucked up on that English stuff. I mean to say bollocks but bullocks. And that Common Market European Union stuff, I'm embarrassed to say I get them mixed up.
Which brings us to the alleged efforts of the Russians to destabilize the Western democracies. Well, the US seems to be pretty unstable right now, and it's mostly being caused by the shenanigans of the federal government.
The reason the US seems destabilized right now is that the Russkies have been successful in putting their man in the white house and the shenanigans are part of his effort to keep Himself in power. Where has Beagles been these past few months? In a truckbed spooning Dinty Moore into his mouth while the northern lights buzzed his brain and caused him to dream the impossible dream of the formless void?
Thursday, January 17, 2019
Who's Faking the News Now?
I was not familiar with the term "bollard", but I was pretty sure that a bullock was another word for a steer (castrated bull), so I looked both words up. I was right about the bullock, and I found that a bollard is either "1:A post of metal or wood on a wharf around which to fasten mooring lines." or "3: Any of a series of short posts set at intervals to delimit an area (as a traffic island) or to exclude vehicles." Definition 2 just said "BITT 1", which doesn't make any sense to me. The structures I saw in my news app didn't seem to resemble any of that, but they did say that they were being used to replace barriers that have previously been installed to exclude both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. If you have seen any of the border photos that have been recently been published, you might agree with me that those things look like jailhouse bars, but by no stretch of the imagination do they look anything like bullocks.
I don't think the Brits want to get out of the Common Market, they want to get out of the European Union, which subsumed the Common Market a long time ago. Perhaps they want to go back to the old Common Market days, but the EU people won't allow that. Teresa May seems to have negotiated some kind of compromise deal, but I understand that she's having a hard time selling it to Parliament. In the British system, if a Prime Minister can't get Parliament to approve one of their important agendas items, they dissolve Parliament and resign. Then a new Parliament is elected, and they appoint a new Prime Minister. If we had something like that here, Trump would be history by now.
For a long time there has been a movement among the Yoopers to secede from Michigan and form a new state, which they intend to call "Superior". I don't know if anybody is serious about it or if it's one of those tongue-in-cheek things, but I think it would make more sense for the UP and the Northern LP to join together and kick the Southern LP out of Michigan. Either move would be illegal under the US Constitution, but there would be nothing to prevent it if the federal government went out of business. Another way we could shut them down is by calling a constitutional convention, but it would take 2/3 of the state legislatures to do that, and 3/4 of them to ratify anything the convention comes up with. If we could get that many people in this country to agree on anything we wouldn't need to shut down the feds.
Which brings us to the alleged efforts of the Russians to destabilize the Western democracies. Well, the US seems to be pretty unstable right now, and it's mostly being caused by the shenanigans of the federal government. Shutting it down for real might make us more stable not less. If not, we could always call a constitutional convention and start all over again.
I don't think the Brits want to get out of the Common Market, they want to get out of the European Union, which subsumed the Common Market a long time ago. Perhaps they want to go back to the old Common Market days, but the EU people won't allow that. Teresa May seems to have negotiated some kind of compromise deal, but I understand that she's having a hard time selling it to Parliament. In the British system, if a Prime Minister can't get Parliament to approve one of their important agendas items, they dissolve Parliament and resign. Then a new Parliament is elected, and they appoint a new Prime Minister. If we had something like that here, Trump would be history by now.
For a long time there has been a movement among the Yoopers to secede from Michigan and form a new state, which they intend to call "Superior". I don't know if anybody is serious about it or if it's one of those tongue-in-cheek things, but I think it would make more sense for the UP and the Northern LP to join together and kick the Southern LP out of Michigan. Either move would be illegal under the US Constitution, but there would be nothing to prevent it if the federal government went out of business. Another way we could shut them down is by calling a constitutional convention, but it would take 2/3 of the state legislatures to do that, and 3/4 of them to ratify anything the convention comes up with. If we could get that many people in this country to agree on anything we wouldn't need to shut down the feds.
Which brings us to the alleged efforts of the Russians to destabilize the Western democracies. Well, the US seems to be pretty unstable right now, and it's mostly being caused by the shenanigans of the federal government. Shutting it down for real might make us more stable not less. If not, we could always call a constitutional convention and start all over again.
Coast is clear
Jeez, how the time does fly by. It hasn't even been two years since the inauguration of the big crybaby and look at what we've been through. Not so surprisingly it keeps getting more convoluted, the latest bits of information are indicating that polls were being manipulated, at no small expense, to favor the Trumpness. Dirty tricks are common at the highest levels of political intrigue but not with so many foreign fingerprints. According to my scorecard the Russians are winning the early rounds of the social media battles but much is yet to come.
Many names are being bandied about for the 2020 presidential campaign but, based on the foreign influences in 2016, who can we really trust? I doubt that Trump is the only name on Putin's list of useful idiots. Vlad plays a pretty shrewd long game and it wouldn't surprise me if he had a few Democrats in his pocket. It's going to be a long grueling trip to the next election, I fear.
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I think that Trump is going to soon fold regarding the government shutdown and he has himself to blame. With all of his yammering about the borders and national security he seems to have overlooked one small detail, the role of the Coast Guard. Look at the US/Mexican border and then look at the US coastline. How many illegal incursions been prevented by the Coast Guard, how many lives have been saved by the Coast Guard, and what quantity of drugs have been intercepted by these same guys? And because of the shutdown they are no longer being paid for the jobs they have sworn to do. They'll probably still show up for work but will they be able to buy food for their mess halls or fuel for their boats and aircraft? I can't think of a greater threat to national security than Donald J. Trump.
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Mr. Beagles seems to favor the dissolution of the federal government, a position I do not hold. Isn't the destabilization of Western Democracies something that our friends in the Kremlin are seeking to achieve?
As far as reconstructing state borders, I don't know. An interesting idea but not viable; too many compromises would be required because nobody wants to give up their land. What would happen if the folks in the Upper Peninsula petitioned to flee Michigan and join Wisconsin; think it would fly in Lansing or Madison?
Many names are being bandied about for the 2020 presidential campaign but, based on the foreign influences in 2016, who can we really trust? I doubt that Trump is the only name on Putin's list of useful idiots. Vlad plays a pretty shrewd long game and it wouldn't surprise me if he had a few Democrats in his pocket. It's going to be a long grueling trip to the next election, I fear.
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I think that Trump is going to soon fold regarding the government shutdown and he has himself to blame. With all of his yammering about the borders and national security he seems to have overlooked one small detail, the role of the Coast Guard. Look at the US/Mexican border and then look at the US coastline. How many illegal incursions been prevented by the Coast Guard, how many lives have been saved by the Coast Guard, and what quantity of drugs have been intercepted by these same guys? And because of the shutdown they are no longer being paid for the jobs they have sworn to do. They'll probably still show up for work but will they be able to buy food for their mess halls or fuel for their boats and aircraft? I can't think of a greater threat to national security than Donald J. Trump.
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Mr. Beagles seems to favor the dissolution of the federal government, a position I do not hold. Isn't the destabilization of Western Democracies something that our friends in the Kremlin are seeking to achieve?
As far as reconstructing state borders, I don't know. An interesting idea but not viable; too many compromises would be required because nobody wants to give up their land. What would happen if the folks in the Upper Peninsula petitioned to flee Michigan and join Wisconsin; think it would fly in Lansing or Madison?
as the world turns
Cold spell a coming, saw it right on the tv news last night. But of course I didn't need to hear it there. Cold spell means the wind is coming out of the north and that means that all those dope puffing Canadians are sending their exhaust right down the Mackinac/Mackinaw Straits and straight into the freehold where Beagles has dreams of bringing back the federalism which the USA gave up maybe 250 years ago because it wasn't working out so well.
Who can doubt though after maybe two weeks of living in the brand new state-aglomoration of Yooperloopertonia Beagles would be railing against that state government, than the county. the city, and I expect that Mrs Beagles does not take as much yap as we of The Institute endure in the cause of reasonable discussion by reasonable people, so eventually he would have to come down on himself and the petty and unreasonable rules he sets down in the freehold.
Speaking of petty and unreasonable, what the fuck is going on in Merrie Olde Englande? It seems as if this May woman, who everybody in England appears to hate, but that's okay because she seems to hate all of them, but for some reason they don't vote her out, has come up with some plan to get out of the Common Market which they all hate because I think it doesn't go far enough, but the only alternative is to break with no ties which will leave Britain truly an island with nothing to eat except what it grows which I think is not that much, or they could just decide what the hell, we were in a peckish mood when we held that vote and now that we realize what folly that was (as most Britons do) and just sidle back into the Market pretending the whole thing never happened.
I see that Beagles is picking up on the fake news that we have planted in his news app, although bullocks seems to have been mistranslated into bollards. Well that's fine, as I established here last night (after I solved the shutdown, but before I solved Brexit, which I just did this morning), the actual building of a wall is kind of inconsequential to Fuckhead, it is merely the victory over his enemies which matters to him.
So I don't know this Barr guy, seems genial enough, and I believe the reps have enough power to ram him through regardless of what the dems think so I guess we will have to settle. This notion though that maybe the reps will only release a doctored version of the Mueller report is disquieting. Kind of the way the reps refuse to bring a vote to the senate floor saying something like Trump cannot fire Mueller, and their excuse is, oh, we don't need that, he'll never do that. We did have a bill to keep sanctions against some Russkie muckety muck pal o' Fuckhead's, which attracted ten rep senators, not enough to pass it, but pretty darn close.
Oh and this just in, Rudy the Gnome is now saying that he never said there was no collusion between the Russkies and the campaign. Getting up in the morning is getting easier all the time.
Who can doubt though after maybe two weeks of living in the brand new state-aglomoration of Yooperloopertonia Beagles would be railing against that state government, than the county. the city, and I expect that Mrs Beagles does not take as much yap as we of The Institute endure in the cause of reasonable discussion by reasonable people, so eventually he would have to come down on himself and the petty and unreasonable rules he sets down in the freehold.
Speaking of petty and unreasonable, what the fuck is going on in Merrie Olde Englande? It seems as if this May woman, who everybody in England appears to hate, but that's okay because she seems to hate all of them, but for some reason they don't vote her out, has come up with some plan to get out of the Common Market which they all hate because I think it doesn't go far enough, but the only alternative is to break with no ties which will leave Britain truly an island with nothing to eat except what it grows which I think is not that much, or they could just decide what the hell, we were in a peckish mood when we held that vote and now that we realize what folly that was (as most Britons do) and just sidle back into the Market pretending the whole thing never happened.
I see that Beagles is picking up on the fake news that we have planted in his news app, although bullocks seems to have been mistranslated into bollards. Well that's fine, as I established here last night (after I solved the shutdown, but before I solved Brexit, which I just did this morning), the actual building of a wall is kind of inconsequential to Fuckhead, it is merely the victory over his enemies which matters to him.
So I don't know this Barr guy, seems genial enough, and I believe the reps have enough power to ram him through regardless of what the dems think so I guess we will have to settle. This notion though that maybe the reps will only release a doctored version of the Mueller report is disquieting. Kind of the way the reps refuse to bring a vote to the senate floor saying something like Trump cannot fire Mueller, and their excuse is, oh, we don't need that, he'll never do that. We did have a bill to keep sanctions against some Russkie muckety muck pal o' Fuckhead's, which attracted ten rep senators, not enough to pass it, but pretty darn close.
Oh and this just in, Rudy the Gnome is now saying that he never said there was no collusion between the Russkies and the campaign. Getting up in the morning is getting easier all the time.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
No Money, No Workey
It's not that I don't care about the fake shutdown, I just wish it was real and that the federal government would go out of business. What good are they anyway? All they do is bother people and tell them what to do. They have troops stationed all over the world and they can't even defend their own borders. Most of the important services are already handled by state and local governments, and they could do more if the feds got off their backs. They might have to raise their taxes, but that shouldn't be hard since nobody would be paying federal taxes anymore. Each state would have to print their own money, which might prove inconvenient, but there would be nothing to prevent some or all of the states from joining together to form a common economic system, something like they have in Europe only without all the other crap they have devised over the years.
Speaking of the states, this might be an opportunity for them to redraw their borders in a more logical fashion. For instance, the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin could join together and detach their southern parts, which might be happier joined with the northern parts of Illinois and Indiana. The southern parts of Illinois and Indiana certainly have more in common with each other than they have with their own northern parts. All those tiny New England states could join together and make one decent sized state out of themselves. California could join with Mexico since the Mexicans have pretty well taken it over anyway.
One way the fake shutdown might end, or be converted into a real shutdown, is if all those federal workers who are not getting paid would quit their jobs. It is illegal for them to go on strike, but there is no law that says they can't just quit. I think they are still paying all the branches of the military except the Coast Guard. They can't just quit, but they can refuse to re-enlist when their current enlistment expires, and new recruits can stop joining. In four years there would be nobody left to guard the coasts, so the states that have coasts would have to form their own coast guards, which they could just spin off of their National Guard organizations. They couldn't call it the National Guard anymore, but they could go back to calling them state militias like they used to.
Of course this is just wishful speculation on my part. All things are possible, but not all things are bloody likely. What will probably happen is they will eventually work out some kind of temporary compromise deal that nobody will be happy with.
As for that "fake news" about the Wall already being built as we speak, I don't think it's entirely fake. I read on my news app a month or so ago that they have been replacing the existing border barriers for some time now with something called "bollards", which are prefabricated steel panels that look like jailhouse bars. These things are supposed to be unclimbable, but I have seen pictures of people climbing all over them like monkeys. It said that the Border Patrol guys prefer the bollards to a concrete structure because they can see what's happening on the other side so they know where to direct the tear gas.
There was a political cartoon in our local paper yesterday where a bunch of Indians were watching the Mayflower approach their shore, and one of them said, "We should have built a wall." Good point! If the Indians had kept the Euro-trash out of their country, it might still be their country. We should learn from their mistake.
Speaking of the states, this might be an opportunity for them to redraw their borders in a more logical fashion. For instance, the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin could join together and detach their southern parts, which might be happier joined with the northern parts of Illinois and Indiana. The southern parts of Illinois and Indiana certainly have more in common with each other than they have with their own northern parts. All those tiny New England states could join together and make one decent sized state out of themselves. California could join with Mexico since the Mexicans have pretty well taken it over anyway.
One way the fake shutdown might end, or be converted into a real shutdown, is if all those federal workers who are not getting paid would quit their jobs. It is illegal for them to go on strike, but there is no law that says they can't just quit. I think they are still paying all the branches of the military except the Coast Guard. They can't just quit, but they can refuse to re-enlist when their current enlistment expires, and new recruits can stop joining. In four years there would be nobody left to guard the coasts, so the states that have coasts would have to form their own coast guards, which they could just spin off of their National Guard organizations. They couldn't call it the National Guard anymore, but they could go back to calling them state militias like they used to.
Of course this is just wishful speculation on my part. All things are possible, but not all things are bloody likely. What will probably happen is they will eventually work out some kind of temporary compromise deal that nobody will be happy with.
As for that "fake news" about the Wall already being built as we speak, I don't think it's entirely fake. I read on my news app a month or so ago that they have been replacing the existing border barriers for some time now with something called "bollards", which are prefabricated steel panels that look like jailhouse bars. These things are supposed to be unclimbable, but I have seen pictures of people climbing all over them like monkeys. It said that the Border Patrol guys prefer the bollards to a concrete structure because they can see what's happening on the other side so they know where to direct the tear gas.
There was a political cartoon in our local paper yesterday where a bunch of Indians were watching the Mayflower approach their shore, and one of them said, "We should have built a wall." Good point! If the Indians had kept the Euro-trash out of their country, it might still be their country. We should learn from their mistake.
predicting the end of the shutdown
Old Dog is correct about just voting for the money for the wall does not mean that it will ever be built. Lots of complications would occur after that and Fuckhead has no use for complications. Actually he probably doesn't care about whether the wall is built or not, it is only interesting inasmuch as it is another triumph for Trump. Once the bill was passed he would quickly lose interest and find some another enemy (or what the hell, friend) to fight.
There has been some talk among some wags about posting fake news stories about how the wall is being built right at this moment and leaking them into the Fox network. I wonder how cheaply Hannity could be bought. I suspect he would be cheaper than you would think,
You know I too am surprised that Fuckhead didn't have his guys from his nearest hotel fix up some fancy dancy chow and shlep it over to the white house and leave Uncle Sugar a nice big tab. On the one hand you would think that Fuckhead would be a big sports fan, but on the other hand I can see where he would quickly get bored with stuff like rules and strategies and really the only hero is Hisself.
But unlike Beagles, who is apparently still getting his social security checks and I imagine they are still plowing and servicing his highway and keeping the Mad Maxes from sweeping into Beaglesonia and shooting all his deer and burning down his rye,so he doesn't see any problem, more and more people are being effected by the non-nothingburger of the shut down. You know people don't get paid so they don't go out to dinner and they don't buy that new car so the restaurants and the car dealers take a hit, and the people who they patronize take a hit and so on and so on.
So where does it all end? One, Fuckhead won't budge. Two, the dems probably won't budge, not unless they are seen as taking the blame, which is far from happening right now. See if we had a democracy, like back before the Hastert (remember Denny?) Rule, the house bill would get heard in the senate and some weak-kneed reps would help pass it and it would go to Fuckhead's desk and he would veto it of course, but eventually more knees would tremble and it would pass over the veto.
Which sounds improbably, but what other scenario, voiding the meteor with Earth's name on it, is possible?
There has been some talk among some wags about posting fake news stories about how the wall is being built right at this moment and leaking them into the Fox network. I wonder how cheaply Hannity could be bought. I suspect he would be cheaper than you would think,
You know I too am surprised that Fuckhead didn't have his guys from his nearest hotel fix up some fancy dancy chow and shlep it over to the white house and leave Uncle Sugar a nice big tab. On the one hand you would think that Fuckhead would be a big sports fan, but on the other hand I can see where he would quickly get bored with stuff like rules and strategies and really the only hero is Hisself.
But unlike Beagles, who is apparently still getting his social security checks and I imagine they are still plowing and servicing his highway and keeping the Mad Maxes from sweeping into Beaglesonia and shooting all his deer and burning down his rye,so he doesn't see any problem, more and more people are being effected by the non-nothingburger of the shut down. You know people don't get paid so they don't go out to dinner and they don't buy that new car so the restaurants and the car dealers take a hit, and the people who they patronize take a hit and so on and so on.
So where does it all end? One, Fuckhead won't budge. Two, the dems probably won't budge, not unless they are seen as taking the blame, which is far from happening right now. See if we had a democracy, like back before the Hastert (remember Denny?) Rule, the house bill would get heard in the senate and some weak-kneed reps would help pass it and it would go to Fuckhead's desk and he would veto it of course, but eventually more knees would tremble and it would pass over the veto.
Which sounds improbably, but what other scenario, voiding the meteor with Earth's name on it, is possible?
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Shut it ALL Down!
I do not get my political opinions from Donald Trump. I was saying that we needed to do something about illegal immigration long before I ever heard of Donald Trump. I suppose Trump was calling it an invasion before I did, but I didn't know that at the time. The regular old fashioned illegal immigration would more properly called "infiltration", but I thought this caravan thing looked more like an invasion since there were so many of them coming at once. It might have been, too, if our guys hadn't reinforced the border in anticipation of the caravan's arrival. I saw something on TV a long time ago where a bunch of illegals rushed through a border crossing in between the vehicles that were waiting in line to cross legally. Our guys shut the crossing down at least twice to prevent the current caravan people from doing the same thing. They also turned back the mob with tear gas at least twice. I suppose it would be more accurate to call it a "failed invasion attempt", but I doubt that Uncle Ken would accept that term either. My reference to "hundreds of thousands" came from that link I posted last Friday. I was surprised at the numbers myself, but maybe they were counting all those visa people that Uncle Ken mentioned. Of course the way to remedy that would be to stop issuing visas.
Way back when Trump was talking about his wall during the election campaign I said, on this very forum, that the ancient Romans proved that a wall cannot be effective if you don't post guards on it. I didn't know at the time if Trump was taking that onto consideration, and I still don't. Even if the border could effectively be sealed, you'd still have people coming in by sea and air, so something would have to be done about that. I don't know if Trump has considered that either. In short, I doubt that Trump's wall would solve this problem, but it certainly would be better than doing nothing.
Another thing they need to do is repeal that asylum law and any international treaties associated with it. That law was originally intended to help people escape from Communism, and the Cold War has been over for a long time. I believe the first time that refugees were put into detention camps until they could be sorted out was when all those Cubans came over at once in the Mariel Boat Lift. It was nothing personal, there were just too many of them to process at once so they had to do something with them. Now the detention facilities have been overwhelmed, and they can't build new ones fast enough. It's beginning to look like the only solution is to keep them all out, at least until our guys figure out how to deal with them. One way to make that legal would be to declare war on all the countries that are sending their people to invade our country.
I call those shutdowns "fake" because I would rather see them really shut the federal government down, all of it. No more abortions, no more gay marriage, no more foreign wars, and the states would be free to defend their own borders any way they saw fit. What's not to like about that?
Way back when Trump was talking about his wall during the election campaign I said, on this very forum, that the ancient Romans proved that a wall cannot be effective if you don't post guards on it. I didn't know at the time if Trump was taking that onto consideration, and I still don't. Even if the border could effectively be sealed, you'd still have people coming in by sea and air, so something would have to be done about that. I don't know if Trump has considered that either. In short, I doubt that Trump's wall would solve this problem, but it certainly would be better than doing nothing.
Another thing they need to do is repeal that asylum law and any international treaties associated with it. That law was originally intended to help people escape from Communism, and the Cold War has been over for a long time. I believe the first time that refugees were put into detention camps until they could be sorted out was when all those Cubans came over at once in the Mariel Boat Lift. It was nothing personal, there were just too many of them to process at once so they had to do something with them. Now the detention facilities have been overwhelmed, and they can't build new ones fast enough. It's beginning to look like the only solution is to keep them all out, at least until our guys figure out how to deal with them. One way to make that legal would be to declare war on all the countries that are sending their people to invade our country.
I call those shutdowns "fake" because I would rather see them really shut the federal government down, all of it. No more abortions, no more gay marriage, no more foreign wars, and the states would be free to defend their own borders any way they saw fit. What's not to like about that?
Off the wall
There's not much I can add to the immigration/caravan/Wall discussion except to suggest that it has become Trump's "Wag the Dog" moment. The Wall has become the center of Trump's political reality; everything that means anything to him depends on that damn wall. I suggest that the Democrats offer him a deal, give him the wall only if Trump resigns and takes Pence with him. A fanciful notion, especially since the Speaker of the House would be the next in line.
But the whole Wall business is nothing more than a pissing contest between the Democrats and Trump; nobody wants to look weak or lose face. But consider the realities of the political process. Suppose the Democrats, in a gesture of comity, approve the funding and give the big crybaby what he wants. That does not mean the wall will ever be built; a lot can happen between the planning and execution. Countless legal issues will have to be resolved, such as land acquisition. Property owners along the border are not likely to be amenable to having their land seized by the Feds or to be unfairly compensated. And what happens if no construction companies bid on the project? No federal agencies have the capabilities of undertaking such a project, as far as I know. The Wall, eventually, will be another nothingburger, an idea whose time will never come.
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And speaking of nothingburgers, how about that fancy dinner buffet in the White House for that championship football team? Fast food served on silver platters is a pathetic sight. I can understand the unavailability of staffers and cooks due to the government shutdown but doesn't Trump have a hotel down the street? He could have had a nice meal catered instead of serving up room temperature Big Macs and Whoppers. Sad!
But the whole Wall business is nothing more than a pissing contest between the Democrats and Trump; nobody wants to look weak or lose face. But consider the realities of the political process. Suppose the Democrats, in a gesture of comity, approve the funding and give the big crybaby what he wants. That does not mean the wall will ever be built; a lot can happen between the planning and execution. Countless legal issues will have to be resolved, such as land acquisition. Property owners along the border are not likely to be amenable to having their land seized by the Feds or to be unfairly compensated. And what happens if no construction companies bid on the project? No federal agencies have the capabilities of undertaking such a project, as far as I know. The Wall, eventually, will be another nothingburger, an idea whose time will never come.
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And speaking of nothingburgers, how about that fancy dinner buffet in the White House for that championship football team? Fast food served on silver platters is a pathetic sight. I can understand the unavailability of staffers and cooks due to the government shutdown but doesn't Trump have a hotel down the street? He could have had a nice meal catered instead of serving up room temperature Big Macs and Whoppers. Sad!
invasions, infestations and 'fake' shutdowns
As you know these caravans have been going on for some time. The reason Trump chose the preposterous term invasion was to get the people all fired up. The idea that a bunch of people are crossing hundreds of miles to get to the border maybe kick up a little ruckus and peaceably apply for asylum does not get a lot of pulses pounding the way the prez likes to them to be. The English language is rich and varied, surely you can find a more appropriate word, if your attention is to cast light rather than heat that is.
Infestation is a word that many used when our Bohunk forebears came here. Had I been around then I would not have liked it and I do not now. Infestation implies a disease and a weakening of the body. I don't think the American body was weakened by non nordic types crossing the ocean.
I was taken aback by mention the hundreds of thousands crossing the border, but I see here where the subject has been changed from caravans to the regular daily illegal immigration. By a half million to six million this takes place by overstaying visas rather than crossing the border illegally. I mention this because it sounds like Beagles is endorsing the big beautiful wall, but in all fairness he has not brought up the subject so perhaps I am mistaken.
Another topic Beagles brings up is the 'fake' shutdown, by which I assume he means that he personally is getting his social security payments, and doesn't give a fig for national parks and does not care if people he doesn't know personally are having to work without a paycheck.
You know all they had to do was pass a clean bill with no riders and there would have been no shutdown. Trump could have continued with his fight for the wall, though it's hard to see how he could have gotten it with a democratic house when he couldn't with a republican house. Even now if McConnell would let one of those house bills onto the senate floor there is a good chance it would pass the senate and perhaps Trump seeing the whole nation watching him would sign it. Okay a slim chance of that, but it's even possible, seeing how those senate reps are being blamed for this shutdown which most of the nation, unlike Beagles, really hates, might override his veto. Isn't that the way our government is supposed to work?
Infestation is a word that many used when our Bohunk forebears came here. Had I been around then I would not have liked it and I do not now. Infestation implies a disease and a weakening of the body. I don't think the American body was weakened by non nordic types crossing the ocean.
I was taken aback by mention the hundreds of thousands crossing the border, but I see here where the subject has been changed from caravans to the regular daily illegal immigration. By a half million to six million this takes place by overstaying visas rather than crossing the border illegally. I mention this because it sounds like Beagles is endorsing the big beautiful wall, but in all fairness he has not brought up the subject so perhaps I am mistaken.
Another topic Beagles brings up is the 'fake' shutdown, by which I assume he means that he personally is getting his social security payments, and doesn't give a fig for national parks and does not care if people he doesn't know personally are having to work without a paycheck.
You know all they had to do was pass a clean bill with no riders and there would have been no shutdown. Trump could have continued with his fight for the wall, though it's hard to see how he could have gotten it with a democratic house when he couldn't with a republican house. Even now if McConnell would let one of those house bills onto the senate floor there is a good chance it would pass the senate and perhaps Trump seeing the whole nation watching him would sign it. Okay a slim chance of that, but it's even possible, seeing how those senate reps are being blamed for this shutdown which most of the nation, unlike Beagles, really hates, might override his veto. Isn't that the way our government is supposed to work?
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