food for thought – Page 5 – The Boring Old Man

On Voting.

I don’t make a habit of discussing politics, and I don’t plan to spew a bunch of nonsense here about any particular party or agenda. This is just my two cents on the subject overall, and how I came to my individual stance on things.

Growing up, political discussion was not something that happened in my house. I knew my father was a Republican and that my mother was registered as such as well. Later I came to know that Mom sometimes “voted differently” than Pops. But that was pretty much it. My father and I had exactly ONE conversation about party affiliation, after I’d come home at 18 and told him I’d just registered to vote. “Who’d you register with?”, he asked. “The Democrats”, I replied. “Oh. Your Grandfather would be proud of you.” he said in return and walked away. Thus ended our only political discussion.

Considering there was virtually no political discussion in the home when I was growing up, and that I grew up in the SF Bay Area, it’s not surprising that I’d be drawn towards the Democrat party. Keep in mind that my first real exposure to national politics was with Ronnie Reagan, which I thought was a joke…until he won. Then I started to see him as dangerous and a phony. Everyone talked about how wonderful he was, calling him “the Great Communicator”, but to me – just entering my teens – I got the same feeling watching him as I did watching the TV Evangelists that were so prevalent at the time. It all seemed like an act. His folksy, down-home demeanor was a schtick. The “just say no” campaign his crypt-keeper of a wife kept cramming down everyone’s throats was absurd. His coziness with “the Moral Majority” was concerning to say the least, but his “I don’t remember” line of gratuitous lies during the Iran-Contra hearings cemented him in my list of charlatans.

It was mid- way through his second term when I was of legal age to vote, and my first presidential vote was against Reagan’s VP, George H.W. Bush who sadly won. I loathed that president, to the point of considering leaving the US when he started his money laundering scheme in Iraq. I was not about to die for oil.

Bill Clinton was the first presidential candidate that I actually got excited about, so much so that I took time off from work to go see a campaign stop. (I never did see him BTW, waited for 2 hrs AFTER the scheduled start time of his appearance, and he still hadn’t shown up, so I left feeling let down, but I still voted for the guy.)

I was elated at first with Clinton. Energy and enthusiasm were high. The nation seemed to be changing, moving in the “right direction” and for the first time in my life I had some financial stability. Things were looking up. Then the bottom fell out. Scandals, impeachment, “it depends on what your definition of the word is, is”… life as I knew it was over. Another charlatan.

It was during the Al Gore campaign that my world view was shattered. A good friend of mine at the time, a fellow Democrat – and one the smartest people I’ve ever known, to this day – opened my eyes to the corruption of “our side” and I was never able to be a “party line” voter after that, even though I still considered myself a Democrat.

When George “Dubya” Bush was elected I first became suspicious of the whole elections thing. Remember the ‘hanging chads’ in Florida? It was inconceivable to me that the nation would choose Dubya over VP Gore, even in spite of his own flaws. Nevertheless, I was still firmly on the Dems side. My view of the Republicans was that they were liars and warmongers (Dick Cheney, anyone?) and cared only about power and money.

Thus far in my life , I’d felt firmly on the “losing” side politically, and honestly it was disheartening. The *other side seemed so corrupt and out-of-touch, I didn’t think it was possible that the elections were honest and true. I felt there HAD to be corruption, that somebody behind the curtain was making selections and just letting us poor saps think we had a voice.

Just as things were becoming so bleak, we suddenly had the bright light of “Hope and Change”! I was suspicious as could be about Barack, he seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and had virtually no experience. But I freely admit, I was won over by his rhetoric. I truly BELIEVED in what he was saying. I believed in America. When he won the election, I actually believed it was going to usher in a new ” enlightenment” period in our history and we would finally see a return to reason and national pride.

Yeah, that didn’t exactly work out as I thought and I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him a second time. Where I had felt letdown by Clinton, I felt absolutely betrayed by Obama.

I was during Obama’s presidency that I was frequently on a few different forums online that leaned to the right. My thought being “know thy enemy” kinda thing. I wanted to see behind the scenes, I wanted to know what the right leaning people were saying, not the so-called leaders. And it was a huge eye opener. I soon realized that I had a lot more in common with the right side than I ever could have imagined. And it gave me a completely different view of what was going on with the left side as well. I was starting to wake up to the fact that I’d been bamboozled my entire life. I was opening my mind to different points of view once I got off the steady diet of MSM “news”.

When the Clinton vs. Trump election was held, I “held my nose” and choked down the bile and voted D once again. I could not vote for yet another phony, whom I viewed as a Grade A Bullshit artist and a vulgar egomaniac. To be honest, when Trump won, I thought well, “its nice poke in the eye to the establishment, and how bad could it be? That’s what happens when you try to ‘anoint’ a president that isn’t wanted.”

All in all, I don’t think Trump was nearly as bad as he was made out to be. Yes, he’s crass, he’s a bit of a bully, and I do believe he was out of his depth in a lot of ways, but as far as the Country performed, it wasn’t all that bad. And if the obstructionists hadn’t been on his heels and in his grill 24/7 since before he was even inaugurated, he might have actually been OK.

When he ran again, I didn’t vote for him once again, but I would not, could not vote for Biden. I did a write-in vote for the first time in my life, for Tulsi Gabbard. My own personal poke in the eye to the establishment. What the DNC did to her during her primary run was unconscionable and vile. While I don’t think she’s the be-all, end-all candidate I did believe she was the best chance our country had to get past the Trump era.

A combination of things happened along the way that finally convinced me to abandon the Democratic Party, and I did so prior to the last Presidential election. I registered as an Independent in 2018, and I am glad I did.

What I thought was their ideals – looking out for the ‘little guy’, fairness, live and let live policies, funding social needs over military industrial complex priorities… it all turned out to be a bunch of lies.

I don’t know if the “left” has just drastically, dramatically changed course over the last 35 years, or if they were always like this and I just didn’t see it, but I cannot stand with pretty much anything the Democrats stand for these days.

I’ve been on the losing side most of my voting life, and that never really bothered me. I figured small victories here and there would push us eventually to a “better place”.

I don’t know about you, but what I see in the news, what I see with my own two eyes every single time I go to San Jose or to San Francisco…it’s pretty much all bad news.

The powers that be always say if they just had some more money, then they could finally fix things…but they’ve been taking more and more, year after year, and the problems compound year after year. What they are doing clearly isn’t working. On any level.

I recognize that this post has focused only on the Presidential races, and tomorrow has nothing to do with that. Nonetheless, the point remains. The people that are currently “running the show” are doing a terrible job. Tomorrow is their performance evaluation, and YOU are their boss. Don’t forget that.

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but for the last 6 years or so, the only squeaky wheels have come from the extreme fringes of our country. It’s time us “normal”, everyday folks that work for a living start squeaking. And loudly. The first step is to ignore your “party”, and LOOK at the evidence of the job your incumbents have done. If they bear any responsibility for the current state of affairs we’re in, it’s time to terminate their employment. They can always learn to code, right?

For me personally, I’ll be voting against any and all propositions that require so much as .001% of a penny in tax increases. I don’t care what the “cause”, our government have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are incapable of both managing a budget AND getting positive returns on OUR investments. Likewise, I will be voting against any and all candidates and propositions that are endorsed by any, and I do mean any, trade union.

That’s just me. Vote your own conscience, based on your own conclusions. Just please, for the love of all that is Holy, abandon “party line” voting. It’s leading us to ruin.

Thanks for stopping by. Now go vote.

Caught unprepared…

Well, this was embarrassing!

As anyone that knows me knows, I’m a bit of a fanatic about preparedness. It started way back in my Boy Scout days, but had been kicked up to a “way of life” for the last 15 years or so.

Well yesterday I had a lapse and it came back to bite me!

Long story short, we’ve got an “extra” car that I’ve kept around for those times when a car is in the shop or for hauling duties (it’s a station wagon, roughly the size of a mini truck in the back with the seats folded down).

I’ve been “planning” to sell it, as I don’t use as much as I thought I would, but as with most things I’ve got more plans than time, so it sat for a while. Then it wouldn’t start due to a dead battery (purchased in February 2022, so it wasn’t old). I took the battery in for an exchange on Tuesday and Wednesday I decided to drive it to work (26 miles each way) to get the fluids working through the engine and transmission. The trip to work was without issue, but coming home the dash lit up with red warning lights about “low coolant” and advised me to stop the car.

I pulled off the highway, into the nearest gas station and steam started blowing out from under the hood- uh oh!

I went in to the store (this was NOT a “service station”) and bought a gallon of water to top off the coolant (yes, I know this isn’t correct, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that…) and when I went to pour it in, I discovered that my upper radiator hose had come completely detached and had spewed coolant all over the engine. D’oh!

Now, had I been in my regular ride, I would have had fluids and tools, flashlights, etc. But because this was a “spare” I planned to sell, there was NOTHING in the car. Nothing.

Luckily I had a Leatherman multi-tool on me and with it’s little screwdriver I was able to get the hose reattached and limp the car home – still low on coolant, but it never got hot on the remaining 10 miles home.

I kicked myself all the way home for leaving so unprepared. Thank goodness I was able to sort things out with a $10 bill and a multi-tool, at least to get home. It certainly could have been a lot worse.

So, let this be a lesson for you that you don’t have to learn the hard way! Problems rear their ugly heads when you least expect them, which is why you should ALWAYS be prepared. Even if all you’re doing is going to work, just like any other day…

Thanks for stopping by! Be safe out there!

Some good advice…

I saw this comment recently in a drum forum I frequent, and it really struck a chord with me…

<QUOTE>The best definition of anxiety I ever heard was, “Anxiety is starting rumors about yourself in your own head, and believing them.” Don’t listen to that lying asshole who lives in your skull. He’s a dick. He’s always trying to ruin your fun and deprive you of anything good with his bullshit. I’ve got one of those living in my own skull myself. What an asshole.<END QUOTE>

I’ve most certainly had my run-ins with anxiety over the years. Sometimes it was near debilitating. Sometimes it’s just enough to make you act like a jerk towards people that don’t deserve it, or make stupid, rash decisions that make matters worse, sooner or later.

I have yet to find a circumstance in which anxiety produced positive results.

What’s worse, just as the commenter suggests, it’s all in YOUR head. We do it to ourselves.

Clearly, I don’t have any answers to combat this as it’s a condition I’m all too familiar with, but the next time it flares up I’m going to do my best to remember this sage (if off-colour) advice. I suggest you do the same, should you find yourself in a state of anxiety. It just might work!

Thanks for reading!

She’s not Wrong…

I found this in a comments section beneath some news story – I don’t recall which one as it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the bad news nowadays and frankly isn’t really relevant one way or another to what this lady had to say…and I took the liberty of editing for brevity.

“I keep saying the same thing, if you do not want to live in this country, leave, I am so tired of being told I have to adjust to their ways, I will not. I grew up in a society that had dress codes, codes for grooming, codes to live up to to get a decent job, codes to conduct myself like a lady and expect others to treat me like a lady, I will not stop using the codes I grew up with, life was better then, life had meaning then, we as a society treated each other better then, so I will refuse to accept the life that people are pushing on me now. I will not stop expecting a man to open a door, I will not stop teaching my grandchildren and great grandchildren to say yes ma’am and no sir, and if this society expects me to change then they have another thing to think about. This is not the way we are supposed to live with children killing old people, this country is better than that, and we as a people need to demand that this does not go away…<snip> I grew up in the country not in the city, so that might have been the difference, but I don’t believe that, it is up to the parent to teach the child no matter where they live. If you teach a child to disrespect by disrespecting that is what they will learn no matter if you live in the country or the city.”

She’s not wrong. Although I’m not a grand or great-grand parent and thus quite likely a couple generations behind this commenter, I too remember the “good old days” of manners, decorum and general decency.

I miss those days.

Sure, we’ve got all kinds of whiz-bang, newfangled ideas and services these days, but I would happily lose “streaming”, endless options of home delivery, social media and cell phones (just for a start!) to go back to when the vast majority of people were decent and the minority with their peculiar proclivities weren’t trying to shove their lifestyle down the throats of everyone else.

And while I am all for, and encourage “free expression” in one’s appearance, I think people need to understand, and ACCEPT that there are consequences for letting their freak flag fly.

If you are one of those folks inclined to get, say a face tattoo, more power to you. But if you come into my place of business looking for a job with a face tattoo? You won’t make it past the reception desk. We have a very particular clientele, that we deal with face-to-face, day in and day out, and they pay a boatload of money for the privilege. These people don’t care for face tattoos, (or long, unkempt beards, torn clothes, huge fake fingernails, ear gauges, etc.) and if we want to keep their business, we hire people our clients are comfortable with and confident in. End of story.

Some people will hear that and exclaim “that’s not fair!”, but I’d submit that it would be equally unfair to put employees in place that make our clients uncomfortable, especially when they are paying for a service.

For my 5+ decades on Earth, the saying ‘life isn’t fair’ has been widely acknowledged and accepted as truth, but over the last few years the very idea of what is or isn’t fair has been turned upside down.

Look, I get it. I am about as ‘anti-authority’ as they come, and I firmly believe in one’s right to choose THEIR own path, whatever that looks like (short of harming others, of course) however, just like with anything in life, choices have consequences. Just because I support your freedom to dress/talk/behave in the manner of your choosing, it doesn’t mean I have to like it, much less support poor behavior. At best, you’ll receive tolerance. At worst, I may openly laugh at your ridiculousness. That’s the cost you pay for freedom of expression. Some people will think you express the absurd.

I was a punk rock kid back in the early 1980’s, long before Hot Topic stores in every mall, and just walking around looking like my friends and I did back then was enough to get us harassed by the cops, ridiculed and mocked by the adults, refused service and/or entry to establishments and beaten up by the jocks. But did we go crying about it, looking for sympathy? Did we demand acceptance and special treatment because we were under represented? Hell no, it was the fire that forged us into the adults we became. It taught us to pick our battles, it taught us to make the difficult choices that had to be made, it taught us how to stand up for ourselves and for each other. It taught us that not everything and every place is for everyone, and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

What I see today is one adult after another, throwing tantrums and making demands. That’s not the way it works in real life, and anyone over the age of two should already know that.

If the 1970’s already has claim to the “Me Decade”, I’d have to say to 2020’s are shaping up to be the “Only Me, Scew You Decade”.

You see it everywhere, every day. Rudeness, inconsiderate behavior, a complete lack of awareness of the others around you. I’ve seen so many people lately being rude to wait staff and check-out clerks, it’s unreal. It’s a contagion.

We can, and should, be better than that. Holding open a door for someone is a simple kindness, it has nothing to do with “the patriarchy”. A smile or a friendly hello can go a long way. That is just common courtesy. If you see someone struggling for the top shelf in the market and you have the reach, offer to lend a hand! After all, if you were on the receiving end of any of those things, wouldn’t it give you a little glimmer of hope that our humanity for one another is still there?

Negativity begets negativity, perhaps courtesy and kindness can be contagious too. We ‘commoners’ have the cards stacked against us as it is, I think it’s in our best interest to make things a little less hostile, a little less vulgar.

You can be an outsider, an underrepresented-whatever-who-cares-what-your-kink-is and I say do your thing, but you have no place to demand I or others don’t think you’re a weirdo. And throwing fits because people don’t celebrate your “specialness” is no way to get them on your side. And it certainly doesn’t give you a pass to be a prick.

Accept others as you would be accepted. If they don’t like you because of your lifestyle/creed/tribe/insert. infintylist.here, give them something TO like you for. Kill ’em with kindness, as the Mrs. likes to tell me. As the old saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Manners, good hygiene and courtesy will get you a lot further in life than a hissy fit will. Nothing will turn a person off more than badgering them with your unsolicited dogma. Like it or not, we’re all in this together, might as well make the best of it. Just something to think about.

Thanks for stopping by.

Closed for Maintenance

This past Monday afternoon, I underwent a pretty significant oral surgery. As of this morning, it still feels like I was hit in the face with a baseball bat… Good times.

This mouth rebuild was supposed to take place prior to the Plague, but as with everything it was pushed out by a couple years…

So consider this a Public Service Announcement…in light of how terribly sideways things seem to be going these days, if you have medical/dental/wellness needs, take care of them now. While you can. I was lazy and more than a little fearful facing what I needed to do, so I kept putting it off. Then the Plague hit and I couldn’t do what I needed to do, even if I wanted to.

Now, I’m two years older, healing more slowly than I would have two years ago and it cost me a lot more financially than it would’ve two years ago. Luckily, things didn’t get (much) worse before I was finally able to get treatment. Live and learn!

Take care of yourselves. I should be back shortly, with something a little more fun to read.

Thanks for stopping by!

Got I.D.?

As we head into this July 4th weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of our country, and the state of our populace. These last couple weeks (and let’s face it, years!) we have seen and heard much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and some spectacular twisting of logic by both our so-called representatives and media pundits. America these days is in a sad state of affairs.

The America I was born into was still widely considered to be a “melting pot”, which to my adolescent mind meant just that – the people of the world were all mixed together-melted into a big pot of America, to become American.

To me, American people didn’t have a color or a religion. They had ALL the colors and religions, and that was all good. One nation under God, INDIVISIBLE.

I can vividly remember the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, yes there were certainly problems in our country (the Nixon/Ford years) but as Americans, we all came together to celebrate the duration – against all odds, I might add – of our country for 200 years! It is hard to describe the general feeling of the time; it is so completely foreign to how people operate in America now, it would come off almost as a fairy tale. But yes, there was UNITY. We were celebrating America and proud to be American. I’ve haven’t seen or felt any such unity as Americans since then.

Growing up there were of course cases of ethnic pride. You’d see bumper stickers, t-shirts and ball caps with things like “Proud to be Italian” or “Kiss me, I’m Irish”… little things that pointed to something that made the wearer of said things stand out, or to just show pride for their ancestors and in their ancestry. But above all, we were all AMERICANS. If you asked Eddy Spaghetti (a made up, fictional name to make a point) “what are you?”, you would get something along the lines of, “American, but my family came over from Genoa 3 generations back”, or some variation of that theme. Most people seemed proud of their roots, but they identified as Americans of “x” ancestry.

It wasn’t long after that “political correctness” and the dreaded hyphen began to rend the fabric of America. We’re now 3, maybe 3 1/2 decades into what I’d consider the American Identity Crisis.(c)

I’ll be honest and say I don’t understand the ubiquitous “Hyphen-American”. In the mid to late 1980’s, when we as a nation were first admonished to refer to all black folks as “African-American”, I thought, “well, that’s dumb…” What about black folks from the U.K.? What about black folks from the Caribbean? From Brazil? But what really started rubbing me the wrong way, was when everyone under the sun jumped on the bandwagon. Before you know it, we were cajoled into using only Mexican-American, and then Asian-American to add to the mix. But that wasn’t “good enough”, they cried, it isn’t DEVISIVE ENOUGH!! Evidently referring to someone as Asian-American is offensive, so they need to be sub-divided into Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Filipino/Indonesian-American categories… And then there are all the rivalries amongst the Central and South American folks, that don’t want to be lumped in with the “Mexican-American” moniker, and whatever you do, don’t refer to them as Latinx! Or maybe ONLY refer to them with that term? It changes so often, it’s hard to keep track of all the infighting. And to what end?

I’ve been watching all this for decades now, and I swear it gets stupider every time you turn around. The exact same thing that happened with “African-American” happened with LGB, which morphed into LBGTQ and now I believe contains nearly the entire alphabet, and some punctuation marks added for good measure. Every little obscure niche demands to be included in every stupid club. Again I ask, to what end?

I don’t mean to be offensive, I really don’t. I’m sure if anyone is reading this, then someone is offended. It seems virtually impossible to utter more than a single syllable these days without offending somebody, somewhere. But I’m not sorry for saying it. The media and government have been pushing division for a long time now, and rather than reject it, most people not only embraced it, they started throwing fuel on the fire, until we find ourselves in the place we are now as a nation. And what have ANY of these “marginalized” groups gained from this, aside from the animosity of every other group? Zilch. Zero. Nothing.

Honestly the entire thing just seems silly to me. If you are American, why do you need to use the little extra descriptive words? Especially if you were BORN here. If you consider yourself whatever it is they call folks from where your ancestors came from, then own it and just drop the American part. “American” isn’t a race, a color, a religion. America is a belief in personal freedom. America is a place to shape your own future. America is the place where you can speak your mind without fear of punishment. At least, it USED to be before basement dwelling SJWs, their Karen parents and social media came along… But I digress.

America only provides an OPPORTUNITY to WORK for whatever in the world makes you happy. America doesn’t owe you, me or anybody ANYTHING.

Our government, for the last few decades, has been decidedly un-American in its pursuit to divide the populace and we’ve been falling for it, hook, line and sinker. We can be better as the HUMAN RACE, without being crammed into a bunch of little separate boxes. The thing is, while each and every one of us is unique as an individual, you aren’t “special”, because of what you “identify” as. Likewise, if you ACCOMPLISH something that does indeed make you a standout, someone actually “special”, your race/ethnicity is completely, utterly irrelevant. Should someone discover say, a cure for cancer, does that discovery become more important because the scientist was blue, green, or purple? Of course not, the discovery is the important thing, the person that discovered it IS special to all of mankind, but the race/gender/orientation is irrelevant TO the discovery.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure everyone has their “something” that sets them apart, that makes them feel special…but in the big scheme of things? Not so much. We all have more in common than not. We all need air to breathe. We all need food and water. We all feel discomfort when too hot or too cold, we all get sick from time to time. We all are looking for security in our person and home. We all laugh, we all get angry… We all want our kids to succeed and have a strong future. We all want a better, cleaner world. I could keep going but I think I’ve made my point. There isn’t one single thing listed above that has anything to do with ethnicity, religion, orientation or any other “marker” you want to try on.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always considered myself a mutt, with a varied assortment of ancestry, that I don’t ascribe to identity politics. But the bottom line is, I was born in this country, my folks and their folks were born in this country, and I am an American, full stop. Not a Dutch-American, not a French-American, not a German-American, nor any of the other crumbs I’ve got swimming around in the ol’ DNA. And really, what difference does it make anyway? Other than (maybe) to persons in your same “group”, I’m pretty confident that NOBODY cares what you “identify” as. Unless they are USING YOU as a tool for their own purposes, that is. Don’t be a sucker. Be American, think for yourself, forge your own path, and make your own decisions. If you’re feeling so insecure in yourself that you feel compelled to align yourself with one of these identity politics groups, STOP. Take a breath. Then focus on things you can do to build YOUR self-esteem. That’s what you’re looking for after all, a way to feel better about yourself and your place in this crazy world, right?!?

Take a minute over the holiday weekend to reflect on what WE are celebrating. We are celebrating INDEPENDENCE DAY. The 4th of July is but a date, the reason for the celebration is INDEPENDENCE. We’ve forgotten that thanks to the “marketing” over the last few decades. Independence Day isn’t ABOUT BBQ, beer and fireworks. It’s about standing up against tyranny, it’s about bravery, it’s about self determination.

Labels are for products. You are not a product.

Identity politics are for imbeciles.

Do yourself a favor, ditch the hyphen!

Thanks for reading!

More “training”…

So last week (give or take – been so busy it’s all a blur these days) I wrote a blurb about going through CPR/AED training. It was great to get my recertification, and even if the instructor was less than stellar, the material was VALUABLE and I felt it was a really good use of my time.

Today, I had to go through – and I swear I’m not making this up – “Unconscious Bias” training.

Suffice it to say, 2.5 hours of my life I will never get back and not only did I not learn anything of value, I’m actually irritated that I was forced to go through this excersize for no other reason than to check yet another box on the Home Office’s “woke corporations” checklist.

Hmm, I’m both male and Caucasian…I wonder what I will be taught in this class?

They gave us this disclaimer:

So I gave them these responses:

“Allyship”? Really? We’re co-workers, not family, not friends. Certainly not allies.

And:

And since they asked:

Long story short, “everybody has unconscious biases”… these things happen “automatically” when your brain is essentially on auto-pilot. BUT, even though it is automatic and “unconscious”, you need to think about your unconscious biases all the time, so you can keep them in check. Oh, and if you are a woman or non-BIPOC person that hires or promotes a woman or BIPOC person, don’t think that lets you off the hook, you are still biased. And always will be.

Isn’t Science awesome?!?! Now that they can graph our biases, all our problems are solved!

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!

The department I run has 12 employees, aside from myself. In addition to me, there are exactly TWO other Caucasians in my department. (and one of them is literally in his 2nd week on the job-the ONLY applicant in the last 4 months that both showed up for his interview AND passed the background check) The entire facility has a tad over 300 employees and I would be hard pressed to locate 20 Caucasians. Yeah, we’ve got 99 problems, but diversity ain’t one.

As a nation, I’m afraid we’ve reached peak stupidity. At least I HOPE this is the peak.

But hey, kudos to the two ladies that put this grift together, packaged it up all nice and pretty and sold it to Corporate America. I’m sure it beats working for a living!

I need a drink…or three.

Thanks for stopping by!

Who are these people?

I get it, Real Estate prices have gone through the roof…especially here in the Bay Area. But seriously, I cannot wrap my head around this:

One hundred MILLION dollars for a home? Don’t get me wrong, Atherton is really nice but…

Even the “bargain basement”, luxury listing is just shy of 20 million. In SAN FRANCISCO!?!

In “traditional” terms, a mortgage for the “cheapest” listing would require a 20% down payment of nearly $4 million. I have a really well paying, Director-level job, and at my current salary, if I saved 100% of my take home pay (after taxes and health insurance, in other words), it would take me 62 YEARS to amass a 4 million dollar down-payment. Sixty-two years of full time employment. Of course, someone that can buy a 20 million dollar home probably doesn’t go through traditional routes, meaning “cash” deals…

Who are these people that keep this insanity afloat?

The Top 10 on this list equal nearly half a BILLION dollars ($448,600,000)!!! I imagine the county treasurers salivate at the skyrocketing property tax revenues, but it pushes the armies of people these wealthy folks depend on for EVERYTHING from mowing their lawns, cleaning their pools, to cooking their meals, cleaning their homes, to raising their children and everything in between further and further away. With fuel in this area right at $7/gallon, a lot of ’em aren’t going to want to commute 100 miles a day for a Housekeeping job at $15-17/hr.

I can’t imagine this can keep going, and I can’t imagine a scenario that ends well…

Something has got to give.

Thanks for stopping by!

Don’t be Fooled…

I write this as an American that was raised with firearms, taught to respect firearms, and also to respect “the Law”.

We have been enduring an onslaught of talking heads and politicos telling us we have a GUN problem in the USA. Anyone espousing such nonsense is either a complete moron or they are a liar. My money is on the second one, but it’s entirely possible some of these people could be both…

Firearms, and more specifically the dreaded semi-automatic firearm have been around a hell of a lot longer than “mass shootings” have. And more importantly, they do not shoot themselves.

When Cain killed Abel, God blamed Cain, not the rock. For my entire adult life, all you ever hear about is how evil the “rock” is…

There are a lot of “reasons” why somebody might go off the rails and kill someone, too many to list. Some even justified, in my opinion. But a gun is simply a tool, it isn’t the reason somebody does what they do. If somebody REALLY wants to kill someone, they’ll find a way to do it, regardless of the access to a firearm.

And if you happen to be the poor bastard on the receiving end? You’d better hope you’ve got more than 911 on your cellphone for help, or your ticket is gonna get punched.

There are only two reasons the political class gets involved in gun control – neither of them being care for their constituents – money and control.

On the money side, pols that “take a stand”, either for OR against, can count on “donations” to their election campaigns from the various gun organizations for toeing the line. If you want to get “endorsed” by anti-gun orgs for example, you better not say ANYTHING about the responsibility of the criminal or mental health – ALL your ire must be directed at the gun. “Guns are bad, mmm’kay?”

As for the control side of things? Does that REALLY need to be spelled out? Every despot over the last 100 years disarmed their populace before visiting unspeakable horrors ON said populace. China. Russia. Cambodia. Cuba. Germany. The list goes on, you get the idea. I’m curious to see what happens to Australia and New Zealand over the next decade or two… Judging by the gratuitous strong-arm tactics employed by the cops during the Plague, I’d guess the general population is basically under complete “iron fist” control down under, which is bad news for the citizens.

Seriously, think about how bad things are right now, half way through 2022. Think back to the unbelievable restrictions /they/ put their people under during the Plague. And that’s what /they/ did knowing we have more weapons than PEOPLE in this country…just imagine what they might try to roll out on us if we were unarmed?

If, and that’s a BIG if, the politicos tried everything at their disposal and we still had a problem with violence, then maybe, just maybe it might be time to see if there are in fact some “common sense” solutions around the guns themselves but we are a looooong way from that. That isn’t the place to start, making the law abiding sitting ducks for the lawless. All you ever hear about “justice reform” involves leniency for repeat offenders, and all you hear about mental health care on a National level is…zip, nada, ziltch.

I believe anyone charged with a felony crime committed with a firearm should have 20 years added to their sentence and no “gimmes” for juvenile offenders. Make the penalties that much harsher. If they can add on “hate crime” penalties, why NOT? Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows a loaded gun could go off in someone’s hands, especially in a heat-of-the-moment situation. Why not consider every brandishing of a firearm in the commission of a crime, attempted murder? If you actually kill someone in the commission of a crime – I say you should get the death penalty. No 20 years of appeals, no legalese nonsense, you just get your lights turned off, forever. Maybe 90 days for a post-trial review, to make sure no glaring mistakes were made. Felons caught with a firearm? 20 years, hard labor. If that firearm happens to be stolen? 20 years AND your thumbs removed… When getting caught up in “the system” is seen as a right of passage and not a deterrent, clearly things aren’t working and you’ll never have a civil society, much less a safe one.

As for the whole mental health angle? That’s a whole different ball of wax, but yes I’d wager that ALL mass shooting events were due to seriously disturbed INDIVIDUALS, that may have been stopped with the proper mental health affirming intervention. Duh. But since that didn’t happen, and likely never will because our government is far too corrupt to help its citizens, we get whackos going off instead of simply being put to sleep for the benefit of society. Yes, I know, very non-PC there. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; we as a society are doing ourselves an unforgivable disservice by allowing so many mentally deficient people to run rampant over our country. Hell, some of ’em even get elected to office!

And now, in this day and age, knowing what we do about these sub-human wretches that do these things, I also believe any “news” outlet that publishes photos of these killers should be fined substantially at the very least, and publishers jailed if they make a habit of it. Same for social media. No more “press darlings” made from psycho/socio-pathic cretins, please and thank you.

In short, crazy people are gonna do crazy stuff, guns or no guns. How many maniacs have gone on knife attacks in the last decade or so, racking up double digits of victims? How about the bombers? Or the twisted sacks of excrement that drove vehicles into crowds to rack up a nice, high body count? Or the dealers cutting their product with Fentanyl, killing untold thousands? There are myriad ways to take someone’s life, guns are just one. The flip side of course, is that a gun is the BEST self defense tool you can own. And with all the ways someone else can try to ruin your day and/or end your life, I think being a responsible gun owner is the smart way to go for strictly defensive purposes. “If it saves one life”, right?!?!

Compassion and empathy are very valuable traits, but when your compassion leads to actually endangering your society on behalf of the criminal element, it’s past time to reassess. If there is a truly “revolving door” in prison and recidivism is really as bad as they say it is, that’s your low hanging fruit right there. Put a hard stop to that, and watch violent crime decrease. How many times do they let a dog bite before it’s deemed a dangerous animal and euthanized? We should follow the same guidelines for “career criminals”. We need to face up to the reality that some people are just no damn good, and deal with them as the problem they truly are, not some sociological experiment.

I’m no scientist or social worker, but I’d guess that IF criminals are locked up, or buried, the chance of them committing violence against an innocent victim are pretty slim…regardless of how many guns are in the hands of responsible citizens.

Of course, this is just my 2 cents on the subject…

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A Bird in the Hand…

It has been said by many who know me, and I will admit it’s true, that I am predisposed toward paranoia. Well, that makes me sound like a whackadoo, so let’s just say I’m drawn to pessimism.

I’ve never had a day so bad that it couldn’t get worse.

I guess it all started as a young Boy Scout and my introduction to their motto “Be Prepared”. I took that to heart at a very young age (12, I think??) and it has stayed with me these last 4 decades or so.

After the panic of Y2K (what a nothingburger that turned out to be!) I was seriously lulled into believing that we were beyond catastrophe. Sure, we’d have earthquakes and hurricanes from time to time, but “end of the world” stuff? Pfft… That was crazy-talk.

Part of it, for me personally, was the final nail in the coffin of my religious upbringing and beliefs. I had been so indoctrinated with Penecostal “End Times” rhetoric growing up, that part of me still believed the the Millineum was going to be Game Over for humanity. When NOTHING happened, the weight of the duplicity I’d carried my whole life finally fell away and I felt like life was good and I had nothing to worry about.

Then we had the events of 9/11. Then we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Then al Quaeda. Anthrax scares. George “Dubya” Bush at the wheel was enough to give you nightmares, throw in Cheney and Rumsfield and Holy moly, the Rapture seemed like a WAY better option, but alas! No Jeebus was coming back to save us from those lunatics.

On top of all the swell news of the day, there was also the fallout of the “dot com bubble” bursting and causing untold havoc in our country. I too was a victim of that bubble bursting…lost my job, lost 70% of the value of my investments and had to cash out what was left to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads because jobs were non-existent. But I digress…

So in my life so far I’d gone from lower middle-class as a kid, to “working poor” as a young adult, to borderline destitute when I hit my early 30’s, with a wife and child I was also responsible for.

At some point, the dust settled and I was able to see clearly for the first time in a long time, and I realized the ONLY person that would look out for me and mine, was myself.

There was no “luck” coming my way. Thinking “everything will work out OK” was nonsense. Believing in the Government was beyond fairy tales. No, it was time to make some serious changes and get my family in a better position.

All of this is taking the long way ’round to explain WHY I firmly believe in personal preparedness and why I came to believe in its importance.

Well my friends, at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, some sort of Chicken Little, screaming the sky is falling, I have a feeling, a deep unshakable feeling, that we’re in for a rough ride over the next two or three years.

I’m not speaking about politics (a pox on ALL their houses!), or even a resurgence of the Plague. My biggest concern (that has been keeping me up at night, literally) is the food supply.

I believe everyone, and I do mean everyone, should have – at MINIMUM – 3 days of food in their home. I don’t care if you need a cookbook to boil water, you NEED to have food in your home.

But all that aside, just consider the following:

1. US farmers were paid to plow crops under last year.

2. A significant portion of the world’s wheat supply comes from Ukraine. I suspect this is going to be an issue come harvest time.

3. A significant amount of the world’s fertilizer comes from Russia. Do you think they will want to sell it to the US? Will the .gov even ALLOW farmers to buy it, if they could?

4. Crop yields in the US are expected to be lower this year.

5. Numerous food plants in the US have sustained damage in the last year, closing them down or at the very least diminishing their output. This one is very suspicious. More food plant fires in the last year than in the previous 10 years, combined?

6. Pressure from the .gov to divert grain (corn) to ethanol, to lessen the fuel problems we’re currently experiencing.

7. Millions of livestock fowl have been culled this year, supposedly to deal with yet another “bird flu” epidemic.

8. The clarion calls are already ringing out with news of another Covid surge fast approaching. How many more food plants will we see closed down due to the Plague?

9. The cost of diesel has skyrocketed to unseen levels. “But what does this have to do with food?” you may ask? Well, the tractors that plow, seed and harvest crops all run on diesel. The trucks and trains that get the crops to the processing facilities run on diesel. The same, or similar, trucks and trains burning diesel then deliver the processed goods to distributors who load even more diesel trucks and trains to get those processed goods to your local retailers. Do you really think the farmers, the truckers, the rail lines, the distributors…are all going to simply give away any small chance of a profit by NOT charging more along each and every step of the process to cover THEIR expenses? Not bloody likely. Oh, and just in case that isn’t bad enough, a lot of places use diesel to run generators when the power is out to keep the food from spoiling. Lest anyone tell you otherwise, the cost of diesel fuel is DIRECTLY RELATED to everything you eat that you didn’t grow, hunt or harvest yourself. Period.

10. Weather is wreaking havoc on crops this year. We had flooding that caused problems with planting in the US, then cold snaps/freezes that damaged crops in the ground. I read recently that California strawberry farmers lost 80% of the first crop this year due to a “late freeze”. Eighty percent!?!?! Of course, better we lose strawberries than grains in the big scheme of things, but grains are in serious trouble too, world-wide.

None of these things are fringe ideas or “conspiracy theories”, you can find stories on all this stuff all over mainstream media. And frankly, that what freaks me out. If there were only stories about these things on the crackpot websites, or it was only one “personality” talking about it I might be able to dismiss it, but these things are no secret.

Preparedness has many facets- water, food, medicine, shelter, self-defense… but for right now, it’s all about food people.

If you have nothing in your house, get something.

If you have a little, get a little more.

If I had the space, I would happily store 2 year’s worth of food, but in our tiny apartment we can only do so much. But seriously, anything you can do to put yourself and your family in a better position with food, do it. Now.

Once the harvest season is upon us (just a few short months away!) and the reality of the situation becomes more clear, expect prices to soar and availability to dwindle. Then things will start to get nasty. You do not want to be brawling at your local grocery store over the last bag of noodles!

In all honesty, I hope I’m completely, utterly wrong about all this. I would love nothing more than to have y’all back here in a year, making fun of me over my crappy, outlandish predictions. But look it this way, if nothing happens and all the crops turn out great, Russia, Ukraine and NATO all hold hands and sing Kumbayah, and several million gallons of diesel suddenly appear out of nowhere, you’ve still gotta eat, right? You might as well “buy when the market is low” and try to stay a little ahead of inflation. When people are getting “cart-jacked” in grocery store parking lots or standing in line for hours for a government handout, you’ll be glad you did!

That’s just my 2 cents on the subject. Take it or leave it, we’re all adults here. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live or what to believe.

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