Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Celebrate Black History Month......last licks...so to speak.

I think I am going to be a lawyer.....



Dr. Joe Gannon: Well let’s see what’s the matter. You seem very hot under the collar.
OJ: You would be too if you wife was a chalk faced whore.
Dr. Joe Gannon: Now that can’t be right.
OJ: It’s true she be fucking everything in sight. The pool boy. Her divorce lawyer. Even her doctor. You ain’t her doctor are you?
Dr. Joe Gannon: Who me? No, no OJ I think she goes to Marcus Welby. You know there is a vein throbbing in your neck. That can’t be good.
OJ: I just know one thing. If I ever catch her fucking a waiter I am gonna cut both their throats.
Dr. Joe Gannon: You know I always wanted to be a lawyer. Or at least a Law Professor. Or an adjunct. Or something. But I won’t be doing any more doctor stuff.
OJ: Ok Doc don’t lose your shit. Do you validate parking? I have the White Bronco.

The Benghazi Rules of Engagement.....


I haven't commented much about the latest school shooting. It appears that everyone is playing their assigned roles. The NRA and law abiding citizens are the bad guys. The media, the crisis actors, Hollywood and the looney left are all beating the drums to take away our guns. Of course in New York we don't have any guns. At least in NYC. At least as far as they know.

I read a tweet that the big uptick in the purchase of firearms is a manifestation of the low grade civil war that we are engaged in these days. I think that is very perceptive. The liberals want to disarm the populace to assert  control of the deplorables.

What is ridiculous is that this tragedy could have been prevented. Or at least ameliorated by law enforcement. The Sheriff's Department and the FBI were warned about this kid. The tragedy is how the Coward County Deputies stayed outside and let this kid shoot. Nobody went in. Nobody tried anything until the Coral Gable cops showed. Now the rumor is that these deputies were told to stand down. By the Democratic hack Sheriff.

What the fuck did he think? That these kids were Ambassadors or something.

Marco......Polo

Brooklyn eatery with mob ties mysteriously shot up

Waiter, there’s a bullet in my bolognese.
A mob-linked Brooklyn restaurant may need to check its macaroni and gravy for shell casings after someone shot up the eatery’s facade early Sunday to send a “message” to its owners, according to a law-enforcement source.
An employee arriving for work at Carroll Gardens’ Marco Polo Ristorante just before 8 a.m. found the front window and door riddled with bullet holes, police said.
Co-owner Marco Chricio, whose dad opened the eatery, told The Post that the restaurant was caught in the crossfire between battling gangs from neighboring Gowanus and Red Hook housing projects, but cops said the restaurant itself was the target.
“It’s obviously some kind of message,” a law enforcement source said of the shooting.
Police recovered 10 shell casings across the street in front of the Body Elite gym.
A worker there said surveillance video captured by the fitness center shows a lone, hooded man on the stalking around outside around 6 a.m. when the bullets started flying.
The 35-year-old trattoria is a mainstay for players on both sides of the law — judges and attorneys regularly sup at the Court Street institution, but its mob ties run deep.

Mayor of Oakland warned of ICE operation on her Twitter account

Here is Libby Schaaf's twitter account.

I realized all my arguments about why this is so terrible can be used against me on my position on marijuana laws. And I don't have a dog in either fight.

people leaps

The dog leaping on the perp was impressive but no more so than what people do.




Got a few minutes to kill? Possibly a few hours. Your Daily Dose of Internet.  That's where I saw the first video. I cannot find the video now so I searched the individual clip independently and it came right up. 

I used to be able to jump very well. Not nearly good as this, though. And now I cannot even hop one inch. The muscles simply do not coordinate even for that. My brother thinks it's hilarious. I still can't get over him laughing at me.

It forces me to recall. 

My mind casts back to the beginning when the degradation started. I was surprised how immediate compensations developed automatically. I had balance then but at home I couldn't judge how high to lift my legs for the steps. I put my fingertips on my knees and that told me where my feet were, and I could continue to race up the steps. I brought that compensation to work. Then months later I was in hospital and saw a ballerina on t.v. and I thought, "I used to like to dance. Hey! What, do you just say goodbye to dancing just like that? Fine. No more dancing for me. Some things you just outgrow. I guess."

From age five, every relative I had told me directly face to face, holding my shoulders imparting something urgent, "enjoy your good health while you have it because it doesn't last forever." I know. I know. I know. I know. I KNOW! But that concern is so far away.

I feel no jealousy. Just joy watching natural athletes glory in extending their own physical feats. There is no Olympics for his dribbling two basketballs or jumping a stacked bin and box but he is no less impressive.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Greg Gutfeld: Trump is having a ball and maybe so should you



Incidentally.

Throughout Egyptian art scale conveyed the relative importance of the subject's social position. The lord of property is drawn larger than the workers, the king is painted larger than the lords. Gods larger than kings. But not always.  Sometimes scale was a matter of composition, sometimes the people are children, but mostly difference in size connotes importance.


In Greg Gutfeld's case in relation with Trump the difference in size is real. And also means difference in importance.


It's funny listening to people speak as if their importance is equal.

President Donald Trump announced today his intention to run in 2020 and names Brad Parscale his campaign manager.

I read about this all day today all over the place. It's considered exceedingly early and provocative. Professor Jacobson writes about this on Insurrection and his take is the most thorough I've seen. He goes mathematical and keeps adding. He says "add it all up" a couple of times. Where I see a simple announcement of intention, Jacobson sees Trump addressing the resistance. Jacobson says Trump is telling them that thoughts of impeachment are a pipe-dream, he's not resigning. He's not done yet. He sees psychological warfare and Trump demoralizing his opposition. 

Chosing Parscale says, "the guy who beat you last time will beat you again." 

It a thumb in the eye because there were rumors of Parscale colluding with Russians. 

It's a message to Mueller, according to Jacobson. The message is that in trying to take down President Trump he will also be taking down candidate Trump who will fight to the bitter end.

The bitter end. That sounds great.

Lastly, it's a message to Republicans that this is Trump's party now. 

Again, Jacobson says, "add it all up." 

I had no idea there was so much to add. 

This is mere recap of what Jacobson says

Comments recommended. There is a real wad over there who likes to argue with smart people every day. Nothing more than annoyance. He never manages to change anyone's mind. He never brings anything insightful. And he's ossified so he's incapable of learning anything useful. He can be skipped without loss while return comments to him are interesting. 

Leap of joy

Gus Kenworthy

Something Olympics, something 12th place or something. Something kiss, something Ivanka, something Pence.  Puppy something. Something boyfriend. Something Trump. Something about P&G, whatever that is. Head and Shoulders something. Everyone's making a name for themselves, having a great time. Or something. Din't watch 'cause I was busy goofing around. Someone explain this to me.


And didn't you always sense Olympics are gay? It's like historic. They should just get real with themselves and do everything nude. Isn't that what this is really about? 

Hey! Wanna hear something that's more interesting to me than a losing skiers sex life and political views?

Total change of subject, right here.

I bought 4 of those Japanese knifes on sale at Amazon and gave one away already. To a woman whom I had a conversation with about cooking and about sharp knives. I said, "I bought you a gift based on a conversation we had, can you guess what it is?" I'm holding out a long thin black box that could be a necklace or a watch. Women think in terms of jewelry. I think. She was stumped. In that moment she racked her brains but couldn't imagine and those things compounded her surprise. She genuinely flipped out. Man, that was fun to watch. It's unimaginable. A dude bought her a very nice knife. Who even does that? I saw her later as she was leaving and she told me thank you again and she's eager to get home and try it.

I tried mine. It's balanced nicely. Well constructed. The blade goes almost to the end of the handle. Shortened so its weight is  balanced  right where the blade emerges from the handle, so if you threw it, it would flip nicely, and the handle curves up slightly so knuckles don't hit the cutting board. But it has a significant flaw. In my view. The blade is flat on one side and beveled on the other. It's sharpened on only one side. And that causes the blade to curve into whatever it is that's being sliced. It does not tend to slice straight downward. To slice straight downward you have to force it. It's like a Belgian sheepdog cannot run a straight line. Even a short recall, they cut a noticeable curve. Like a gyroscope in their head that forces them to curve. The blade's bevel does that. I didn't know that about knives. But it sure is sharp. It cut my cornbread very nicely. It's wicked sharp. 

Psychiatrist Bob's parrot

A friend goes by the name Bob. He has an acquaintance who is a psychiatrist also named Bob. I was named after Uncle Robert. Some few people call me Bob. This psychiatrist friend of a friend is a bit odd as you might guess by his trade. He is tall as he is old and he has a pet parrot.

The parrot has his own bedroom on the twenty-second floor of an apartment building off the mall on Larimer St. downtown Denver. His very large square cage dominates the center of the room. You can walk around the cage but that's about it. Psychiatrist Bob talks to his parrot in baby-talk. To witness very large six-foot six old man do this is creepy, to be honest. I don't like that parrot.


The psychiatrist knew that I painted Egyptian frescos but he wasn't interested in buying one. A downtown department store named Joslin's took down a window display that incorporated life size cutouts of Egyptian figures that were blank. Now, this is very odd because Joslin's was right next door to the Federal Reserve Bank where I worked and I did not see the window display. If I did, it would have appealed to me immediately. The store discarded the life-size cutouts and Psychiatrist Bob asked the people in charge if he could have them. So Bob ended up with these cutouts.

The window display coincided with the Denver Museum of Natural History exhibition of Ramses. It was a very big deal for the city. It was a large show with monolithic statues, even the Ramses mummy. I went to that show five times. I produced posters for the Federal Reserve employee's club that hosted a tour to the exhibition. Another individual named Dennis is a dentist who lives directly across from the museum on Colorado Boulevard. Dennis the dentist lives in a very large brick house by himself. He hosted a party for professional people to visit the Ramses exhibition. Through the original friend Bob, Psychiatrist Bob asked me to come to his downtown apartment to help him paint these two cutouts to contribute to Dennis the dentist's party. It was a very large party, all professional people.

Fine.

I show up to Bob's downtown apartment and he's got that goddamn parrot chained to the balcony railing. So now the parrot is part of the deal. There are three doors that lead to the balcony. One from the living room, another from Bob's bedroom on the opposite side, and one from the parrot's bedroom, the main door in the middle, a large patio door. The cutouts are leaning against the glass to the parrot's bedroom door.

Bob had everything set up and ready to go. Acrylic paints, water, brushes, cloth, all set up on a small wooden table directly under the parrot.


The parrot kept grabbing brushes from the table and chewing them. It kept dropping brushes over the balcony until there weren't any left. Bob and I had to go down to the alley and collect the brushes that the parrot gnawed on and dropped. The parrot was a giant pain the butt. 

Then Bob pulled something that I did not appreciate. 

We were painting the cutouts side by side working together each to our own cutout. He invited me over so that I could show him what to do with these things, how to even approach it. What colors to use. How to get a face on it, how to make white silhouettes into cartoons, he ignored my advice and totally f'd up his cutout. He messed up the eye, messed up the color fields, messed up the necklace, messed up the bracelets, messed up the placement of the ear, the hair and the outline. He messed up everything. Then right in the middle of the project he said, "I have dentist appointment downtown here, just a few blocks away." (Not with Dennis the dentist) He said he'll be back in an hour. 

Now I'm at his apartment by myself. And I don't even know this guy. 

I set my mind to the task at hand. I'm painting the necklace and keeping it simple. The jewels will be simple primary colors, like rows of jelly beans. I get in real close. It's tedious. Goes like this: line line line line line line line line line line, at least a couple hundred times. Time stops as I draw rows of lines. As my mind stays focused at the tip of my brush the rest of my mind free-associates. My mind flies around the whole universe. It goes back into time. It goes forward ahead. It thinks about other things that aren't about painting a life-size cutout. I plan the rest of my day. I imagine my next meal. I think about work that is a few blocks way. I think about the party these cutouts are for. I don't think about Bob I don't think about the parrot, I don't think about being twenty-two floors up, I don't think about being on a balcony, or in somebody else's home. I just fly around the whole world and stay at the tip of my brush.

My mind is a million miles away from here, and it's right here at the same time. Suddenly, in a very clear voice, perfectly enunciated and loud, a definitive statement, "Hello Bob!"

S-t-r-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-k. 


It scared the living shit out of me! It sounded like a swat team flipping over the balcony. That bird had not said a single word until he called out my name. Twenty-two floors up! The bird had gone so quiet I had completely forgotten it was even there behind me. I didn't even know it could talk. 

And now I could kill that f'k'n bird. 

He wasn't even talking to me, he was just repeating what his owner taught him. 



Monday, February 26, 2018

KLEM FM

Rive Talkin'


The Kevin de Leon/Dianne Feinstein schism in the California Democratic Party actually represents a chance for a Republicans to challenge the political status quo in California, particularly Senate politics. There are a couple names that come to mind.

Lien Of The Senate

So the Dems in California have backed out their support for Dianne Feinstein in favor of Kevin De Leon for US Senate. Leon you see is the future of California politics. And so goes California, goes the nation.

Just to remind you how far down the La Raza pathway de Leon is, recall this juicy quote:
Responding to President Trump’s suggestion of 'withholding federal funding' from California, de Leon said: 'Half of my family would be eligible for deportation under the executive order, because they got a false social security card, they got a false identification, they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB 60, they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification.' link
If forged documents and ID's are as common as de Leon asserts then why not voter fraud? Gives credence to Trump's assertion.

If de Leon is elected to the US Senate, he will be far to left of Kamela Harris. He will be a lien on US sovereignty, asserting his "right" to keep possession of property belonging to another person until a debt owed by that person is discharged.  That debt being the US possession of California. This could easily happen with fraudulent, unchecked votes in California.

Trump Kids

I was talking to a woman a few days ago about how well small kids can read. She told me about her grandkids picking up things from YouTube unsupervised and appearing to be advanced about things that kids shouldn't even be thinking about. It's there. They see it. They imitate what they hear and see. She told me she watched kids do some surprisingly good imitations of Trump.

This video is dated July 22, 2017. Tons of stuff like this on YouTube.




Is The Godfather: Part III The Worst Movie Ever Made?

There are probably worse movies, but in terms of being a hackneyed, clichéd, poorly directed disappointment, it is certainly up there. Did I mention poorly acted? It was. Did it have horrible casting? Why yes, yes it did. Was the script good? Yep - good for wrapping fish. Speaking of fish, this movie should have slept with them.

I could go on, but I think you understand where I am coming from. I hadn't seen that movie since I saw it in a theater when it was released, then I watched it last night. It didn't magically improve when I wasn't looking. In fact, scenes like the shootout at the street festival were so poorly done that I was embarrassed for whoever directed that - hold it - what's this? It was Frankie Ford Coppola! I thought he knew how to direct those kind of things. This one was so clunky, so poorly blocked, so badly shot (I KNOW!) that he should go to his room and think about what he has done.

But that's not what I am here to talk about. What this post is about is much more topical. I read a lot about Russians and Civil War and other boogie men (no, not Dr. John) and this morning I saw a movie that mashes those themes into one neat package. But before we get there, because poetry is so beloved around here, first a poem by Ogden Nash:

To Barbara Frietchie
I bet she scratched
When she was itchy.
That is the proper setup for the following:


Nunes, Media is dead



Johnathan Chait, New York Magazine


Zach Beauchamp, VOX

Gabriel Schoenfeld, Daily News






Sunday, February 25, 2018

fried chicken and watermelon.

I'm reading the story on the Daily Wire about the sophomore who complained about the menu at NYU during Black History Month and got the two employees fired for planning the menu.

I'll bet $10.00 they conferred with their black friends.

A second year student at a school where tuition and fees and room and board cost $68,400 and most likely has exposure to some pretty good food gets people fired who probably earn about half that. I don't know. It's just what I'm thinking.

I love fried chicken and I love love LOVE watermelon and I'll sit on the porch and eat watermelon and spit out the seeds and drink Kool-Aid. And whoever made that a racial thing, I'd like to punch them right in the nose.

As I read, I thought it reminded me of a dream that made me wake up cross. But it wasn't a dream. It was the Netflix television show Ugly Delicious hosted by David Chang. I never heard of Chang. Apparently he's wicked successful. His cooking style has evolved from a kind of Korean fusion to doing his own thing. He's not interested in preparing precious plates with tweezers, nor having everything shine with gloss. He makes what he finds delicious. His show is enlightening. It's useful. It's very funny in spots. It has quite a lot of creative elements. His show takes viewers where they are unlikely to go.

He's also an incredibly shallow Democrat spewing every infuriatingly shallow trope. And he's racist as all hell. Every single episode is about his perception of race and everybody else's problem with race. Without the element of race his show would be diminished by 50%.

Once you realize what you are in for then his show is viewed like this: watch, skip, skip, skip, watch, skip, skip, skip, watch, skip, watch, skip, watch, watch, watch, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip.

He's second generation Korean and completely obsessed about being Korean.

He shows his politics immediately. In the first ten minutes someone says, "this is my reality" and Chang answers oh so very cleverly, "Like Trump. Trump's alternate reality." And by that you know right off that you're in for a slog.

Were it not for the good bits then I wouldn't bother at all. Chang is they type of person I'd like to learn from but never meet.

In another episode he goes to the home of other Korean immigrants. All the other actual immigrants, and 2nd generation immigrants are more balanced than he is. Chang is trying to get them to disagree with Trump's crackdown on Muslim immigration. Chang's heart is so open and pure and accepting. The other Koreans are trying to get Chang to understand that some immigrants don't come here to work. Their dialog was about work, not about assimilation as your dialog would be. As mine would be. Next scene on the street away from the family Chang is sad that he couldn't change their minds to be more open to heavy Muslim immigration so they can have the opportunity his parents had.

Then in another episode the discussion turns to fried chicken where we learn some very good techniques from southern cooks and Tokyo cooks and Indian cooks, and of course racism takes up 3/4 the episode, analyzing black comedians, stories about innocent people being snared by not understanding other people have this hangup about chicken and watermelon like one of Chang's friends and like the the two innocent menu planners at NYU. Someone's offense where none is intended. Someone's hangup where no hangup is valid. It's not even real, but still perceived, by the likes of the NYU sophomore and by Chang who imbue this imaginary racism with such destructive energy and taint glorious combinations like fried chicken and watermelon.

If you can stand all of that then I recommend his show. I have a very low tolerance for racially obsessed people and that makes this show difficult for me to watch. Nevertheless, I watch anyway to get the good bits. It really is good.

I want fried chicken and I want watermelon and I don't care who you are or what month it is or what the celebration is about. I don't even want to think about what race anybody is. I don't want to think about anyone being offended. I don't care about the history of it. I just want fried chicken and watermelon.

vocabulary, since the last time.

Words encountered online, used by smarty-pants writers showing off their superior vocabulary and worldly knowledge. Mostly lawyers who should know better. And in Yahoo group emails by linguistic experts who cannot help themselves. And YouTube videos about food. Heard on t.v. on such shows as The Last Kingdom and NCIS, two shows fond of bizarre words. And in books.

Speaking of books, care to hear something funny? Yesterday I showed Reinhart's pop-up book Disney Princesses to two new ladies working downstairs. I don't like the book because of its content and I think it's too complex mechanically for little girls. It's too clever by 500%. I told one woman that flipping through the book the Disney princesses seem awfully white. Without looking up from the book she said, "Oh, I don't know."  Then she rattled off Jasmine, Pocahontas, Tiana, Elsa, Mulan, Queen Kida, Moana. I was stunned that a grown woman, a grandmother, knows the names and races of Disney Princesses. "Boy, you sure know your Disney Princesses." They both laughed. In their world Disney princesses are common knowledge, and they both really like the book.

104 words follow, plus a few more within definitions.

* amerce: to punish by inflicting any discretionary or arbitrary penalty.

* anadem: A wreath or garland for the head.

* anhedonic: a psychological condition characterized by inability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable acts

Like his Guardian colleague Oliver James - another anhedonic hypocrite stressed by the contradictions of being a well-heeled middle-class lefty – Mr Monbiot wants us to believe that “wealth causes misery.”

* ankled the agency: left the agency

...as we all know, in advance of that vote, assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe ankled the agency yesterday

ankled the talent agency, ankled the shop, ankled the company, ankled the standard route to success, ankled the show,

* anschluss: Union, especially the political union of Austria with Germany in 1938.

* apotropaic: designed to avert evil.

Greek, apotrepein "to ward off" from apo, "away and trepein "to turn" is a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye.

The lion combined all physical forces with which the deceased wanted to get equipped and played an important role as an apotropaic symbol for warding off evil.

* approbation: An expression of warm approval; praise. Official approval.

After all, they're the Respectable Ones who crave leftist approbation, and they're the ones the left likes to quote in reaction to any political development involving Trump

(I thought the word was negative)

* Ariadne's thread: named for the legend of Ariadne, is the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes.

The reason why I tried to find a hypothetical Ariadne's thread is
that it may be used as a tool
in filtering, in context, the various possible translations,
linguistic pathways of meanings,
so that one might see the forest, not just the trees.

* auteur theory: Theory of filmmaking in which the director is viewed as the major creative force in a motion picture.

* Autres temps, autres mœurs: other times, other customs.

Before there was Warren Buffett and his secretary, there was Rockefeller and his. Autres temps, autres mœurs.

That's it for the As.


Border wall project begins at Calexico, CA

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Customs and Border Protection is replacing a little more than two miles in downtown Calexico, a sliver of the president's plan for a “big, beautiful wall” with Mexico. A barrier built in the 1990s from recycled metal scraps and landing mat will be torn down for bollard-style posts that are 30 feet high, significantly taller than existing walls.
Landing mat are the padded mats that gymnastic athletes land on. And they're also flat metal grating that be rolled up for airplanes to take off and land on when tarmac is damaged or nonexistent.

Bollards are structural phallic symbols. So, a row two miles long of 30 feet-high phallic symbols. Take that, Mexico.

More significant details at the link including legal challenges expected by one particular judge who Trump ridiculed during his campaign.

Comments at the San Diego newspaper are a lot more supportive than I expected considering San Diego is in California. They don't fit my comprehension of the state as a whole.

They're on par with the comments to the post made on Legal Insurrection. Except for one guy. Boy, lawyer types sure can get shrill when they feel themselves backed into a corner. The anti-Trumpite is triggered by the remark, "promise kept." That launches him in to litany of promises Trump promises unkept, while disallowing any extenuating circumstances such as his own resistance.

Sunrise


(Click to enlarge)

Got to see another one - for that I am grateful.

House Intel Committee Releases Democrats’ Dossier Memo

Democrats say their document clarifies the FBI and DOJ's application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page who was President' Donald Trump's campaign advisor at the time. (Their real target was Trump)

They dispute Republican claims that FBI and DOJ relied on unverified Steele dossier to obtain the FISA warrant and also failed to disclose it was funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC. (Without mentioning why FISA Judge Rudolph Contratas was forcefully recused, not self-recuised as we were told)

Democrats also claim the FISAs against Page allowed FBI to collect valuable intelligence, that portion of their evidence is largely redacted. They rebut Republican claim that FBI and DOJ omitted material facts about Steele in th eFISA applications. (Saying so doesn't make it so, they're lying again.)

Nobody sensible believes a single doodle.



House Republicans Release Rebuttal To Democratic Intel Memo


Republican rebuttal to Democrat rebuttal concentrates on ignored and omitted information notably Michael Isikoff's Yahoo News article, Christopher Steele's credibility, Hillary campaign and the DNC. They say the Democrat memo is unpersuasive and attempts to distract from the Committee's key findings. They say the heavily redacted details supposedly corroborating the Steele dossier leaves many questions. 



More interesting than all this Democrat hogwash that works only on Democrat dummkopfs is Devin Nunes speaking at CPAC who makes universal sense.  Well worth your time.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Part III, The Scheme Team

Who -- This third video put together by the Conservative Treehouse shows the primary players within the scheme to discredit Donald Trump and secure the election of Hillary Clinton. Failing that, to lead to the impeachment of President Donald Trump.



Why -- The first video, Federal Contractor Spying, covers the background of DOJ / FBI FISA Court abuses.
How -- The second video, Assault on the Constitution, shows how the DOJ and FBI used false information given the FISA Court to go obtain a Title-1 surveillance warrant


This one is for Spinelli

I decided to watch "Let it Go", a comedy special done by Bill Burr in 2010. My first impression is that ol' Bill has a few anger issues, just sayin'. Fortunately he works it out through comedy. Boy is on edge to say the least. His standup routines are very good, he manages to stay agitated for an hour - what discipline! As a pet owner there was one bit I could relate to, about getting a dog from a pound. In an alter ego voice Burr says "This is my dog, he's a rescue, I rescued him!" Then, as himself "You rescued it? You pulled it out of a burning building? You jumped into a river with your wingtips on? With no concern for your own safety? No - you went to the pound and got a free dog!"

Of course his over-the-top delivery contributes to that sketch. Mere words alone just can't convey the contempt he expresses for people's virtue signaling.

The reason I liked that bit is because I actually did rescue a cat a couple of years ago. The building she and her 6 kittens were in was not on fire, more like very slow motion oxidation. It was a shanty that was returning to the earth. Every system was failing - the field stone foundation - falling down. The floor and porch joists - rotten. The roof - well, I guess it was a roof once. Anyway, the mooks that lived there, in squalor, with no power, weren't really taking care of the animals so a friend of mine, who had been delivering food to them one day decided to go over and remove all the cats from the premises. We walked up, she kicked in the door (holy cow - even I might have been reluctant to do that), she grabbed the kittens which were inside while I grabbed the momma cat out on the front porch.


I documented that moment just in case there was some action taken against us, we loaded the 7 cats into my car and took them to the pound. After all the necessary tests, operations, vaccinations and whatnot were done, I went down and adopted that very same cat. It's been nearly two years now and while she will never be as calm as a cat raised around actual humans, she is doing okay.

The junkies moved away, all of the related cats found homes, and I was successfully able to resist the urge to burn down the shanty. Yeah, people who mistreat pets make me angry, but I try to keep things in perspective - the cats are safe and that's what matters.


This is a picture of how she looks these days - amazing what having regular food and no kittens will do for an old girl.


Crank up the volume to feel the power of this composition played on that instrument.

knife

I just want to point out this sale because I think it's a great opportunity. The knife is rated 4+1/2 stars from 111 reviews on Amazon. Usually $100.00 (they say, pffft) on sale for $15.40


I bought one yesterday. And I don't even need another knife. I just really love sharp knives. It's just that I wouldn't forgive myself for passing up the opportunity.

I bought a knife last week. Another of these massively reduced ones on Amazon. Similar thing, 100 dollar knife reduced to 15.50.  I wasn't expecting much. I expected it to fall apart or get dull very fast, or be cheap in some way. But it's automatically become my favorite knife.

It's not so cheap as it was last week. Now it's 30.00. So I'm not recommending it, just showing. It's flaw is my knuckles hit the cutting board due to the angle of the handle and the blade. I must use it at the edge of the cutting surface so my hand is not over the cutting board. 


The box it comes in is very good too. It has little magnets on the side to keep it shut. This knife was certainly worth more than the $15.00 I paid. And I realized that I could have bought more of them and passed them out as gifts. Such a small price for such a great gift. 

Imagine it, "Here. Have yourself a knife." And give them a knife that turns out to be their favorite. I think I just convinced myself to buy a few more. Then next week, who knows, Amazon will put another knife on sale like this.

Kimbal Musk

Sara Silverstein for Money Insider interviews Kimbal Musk about his food empire.

 This is the first that I heard of this guy. I like this interview a lot. I like her interviewing style, her questions are simple and she allows his exposition, and I like what he says. Plus he's given me two places in the area that I must check out. One is within walking distance, if you're a good walker.

Trudeau invites a terrorist to dinner then disinvites after the uproar

Trudeau ignited a firestorm by inviting convicted terrorist Sikh separatist, Jaspal Atwal, to dinner. The Canadian government claims a vetting process failure was responsible for the invitation.

Jaspal Atwal and three others were convicted of attempted murder of Malkiat Singh Sindu, who another team of Sikh militants eventually did kill. Atwal later admitted to a parole board that he was trigger man in the first attack. The attack occurred on Vancouver Island.

The group that Atwal belonged to remains a terrorist group in Canada, India and the United States.

Worse, Atwal had already attended an event and was photographed with Trudeau's wife, Sophie.

There's even more damaging information at Breitbart. It's all wearisome and familiar. More liberal politics and its affection for violent disruptive elements.

The thing that amazes me is the vehement hatred of Trudeau to 100% seen in the comments. I have trouble understanding this. Why are Americans so worked up about Canadian politics?

And behind all this and going unmentioned, at least through the comments that mention everything else, Trump is dealing Canada (and Mexico) a very serious economic blow. Actually, Trump is holding back their their straining arms and telling them both, "stop punching yourself," and simply letting go of their arms. Boom. They both punch themselves right in their own face. A real master is smacking around an unserious student. Nobody mentions that. Have you ever seen a larger breed dog, say, a German shepherd attack a smaller breed dog, pick them up by the neck and shake it violently as if the smaller dog is a rodent? That is what Trump is doing to Trudeau economically by disengaging from NAFTA. The situation reminds me of my nephew playing tick-tac-toe where he can see only his immediate move. It is not possible for the young nephew to imagine what my next move will be. He cannot think one tic-tac-toe move ahead. That is Justin Trudeau. Trump tells Trudeau that U.S. will withdraw from NAFTA if the backdoor to American markets for China (and others) is not closed through renegotiation. Trudeau sees it as chance to exercise his own art of the deal by tacking on a whole list of absurd liberal conceits. Same thing with Mexico. They both responded poorly to a simple insistence on closing a loophole. They could not view the situation from American point of view. They're enjoying the immediate increased industrialization from China. But when America pulls out of NAFTA that advantage to China closes and China has no use for continued industry positioned in Canada and Mexico, so those two neighbors lose it all instead of cooperating with the U.S. to repair the loophole in the treaty that makes our market available through manipulation and removes the power of the U.S. to do anything about it. Trudeau thinks that signing onto TTIP will compensate but it will not. He's terrible at simple tic-tac-toe. (Apologies, three analogies in one paragraph.) And America is not the enemy here. Trump simply wants the treaty to be fair. America and its market needn't be patsy to international trade. Free trade is fine and outstanding but that does not mean our market is wide open while all markets available to us remain protected. What is it with liberal thinking that prevents them from comprehending this?

I was speaking with a friend, trying to speak, about Trump, but that is not possible. The friend says what he feels about Trump in unassailable but disjointed bursts, all wrong, then states flatly the subject is closed because his blood pressure rises, "Look. I'm shaking." I mention Trudeau and he lights up, "Boy, the Canadians sure love him."  Well, yeah. And no.

I did not understand the stink about Trudeau wearing traditional Indian apparel. He looked fine to me. I read quite a lot of complaints but nothing was clear about why that was so bad. I read a lot of nattering things that people wrote. Everything that I saw was negative. None of it was supportive. Then yesterday I saw a gif of series of photos with text. More of all the same thing all over again. All the same things.  Then the text on one frame showing Trudeau family in Bollywood costume read:
"Imagine an Indian diplomat showing up in Canada dressed as a Royal Canadian Mounty, or a lumberjack, or a hockey player."  
*ding* Now I get it.

Imagine an Indian diplomat showing up in Washington D.C. dressed as cowboy, or wearing a Hawaiian shirt, or as an American football player, or an American farmer or plantation owner.  Dressed in Levis, and Nikes, or Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, or Tom Ford. Wait. Those don't work, they're popular internationally. What else is there that would be ridiculous? An Indian dressed as a Native American. That would be hilarious!

Breitbart. The comments are rich as the article. 

Hillary walks into a restaurant and the patrons stand up and applaud her

It's New York. And they're not even interesting.

However, the comments to the article at the Daily Caller are amusing. (The trolls there are very low quality.)

Sample:

* She gets a standing ovation and Donald Trump Gets the presidency. I can live with that.

* I thought someone so far past menopause was no longer capable of ovation

* They were applauding because she didn’t hack on anyone’s food as she passed.

* Check please!

* She goes there to soak up the vodka a bit before going out drinking.

Man discovers Fed spy camera on his land and removes it. They demand it back, he refuses and sues

The man Richardo Palacios is 74-year-old lawyer. His ranch is in Encinal, Texas at the 35-mile marker north of Laredo, relevant because were his ranch within 25 miles of the border then he wouldn't have a case.

Palacios is unhappy with Boarder Patrol because his relationship with them has not been nice. The run roughshod and act they own the place and they roughed up his sons.

More details at arstechnica. Where we learn the cameras cost $300 each and there are estimated 4,000 of them surveilling continuously, possibly more.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Rooted

r



Weird. I finished drawing this and opened the blog to upload it and saw Lem's post below and had a moment of confusion like ))) wah wah wah ((( But I recognized their square root symbol. It's more perfect than mine. 

We're on the same wavelength. Like this:


Amend the rule: If you see something, you might want to check first

Students in Louisiana thought this math symbol looked like a gun. Police were called



Sourdough bread

Brother Green's sourdough starts with starter. But how is the starter started?

The yeast is already on the flour. Starting the starter is the same as feeding the starter, equal amount of water and flour by weight. That's twice as much measured flour as measured water. Say, one cup water, and probably 1 + 1/2 cup flour and just let it sit there unattended for three days. Boom. There's your sourdough starter.

Then it needs to be cultivated. That's fed twice a day at the same time each day. Like a pet. To keep it active. If you stop and put it in the refrigerator then it must be brought back to life again, back to full activity by regular feeding.

You can manipulate this with warmth. The warmth of your personality and an incandescent lamp, but mostly a lamp. 



And you can manipulate this with chill. He ferments in the refrigerator overnight. To slow the activity. The next day it's allowed to warm up. You'll notice a great difference in flavor when you ferment your loaf for three days.

Or ferment the dough chilled for three days and form the loaf before baking. 

Autolyse is the process of enzymes in wheat breaking down wheat molecules once the flour comes in contact with water. The flour has begun destroying itself. 

The Left's obsession with your guns

The left has their act down. Honed over decades. They want the 2nd Amendment reversed and they're not going to stop until they get it. Each gun related incident is their opportunity to advance their position. Their power to do this is emotion. So each incident the emotion is escalated to deafening levels and coverage that is total. Their single answer is give us your guns. They'll settle for this takeover in increments.

The right has its act down too. Dealing with this gun-grabbing obsession for decades. They know this political gamesmanship top to bottom through and through. Just as the left is locked and loaded, they too are prepared to immediately dig into every single element surrounding the incidents and expose the entire environment that allows such catastrophes to happen. They've heard their one time AG say "never let a catastrophe go to waste" and they respond.

Today Oregon Muse summarizes. Parkland shooter was known to local police, known to the FBI, known to teachers and school administrators, who all did nothing. The armed guard at the school allowed six minutes of shooting as he cowered outside the building. At every level of government top to bottom, law enforcement, schools, public services all failed to do their jobs, and still the answer is clamp down on guns. Not a single one of them accepts the responsibility of their own jobs.

The left insists on a national conversation but shaped and directed by them to drive their gun grabbing agenda under the wording of sensible laws. They are not capable of discussing their own policy and behavioral failures. Compare national conversations between CNN scripted version and Trump's own of actual listening.

Yesterday Tucker Carlson tried to interview Florida state Senator Gary Farmer specifically about this stacked failure, but Farmer's idea of government failure is its failure to successfully clamp down on guns. While filibustering his own script, the single thing he can discuss and with no variation, he actually says, "you're not listening, Tucker, that why you have two ears and one mouth." As usual, guilty of the thing he is charging. Tucker is trying to get him to respond to known government failures at several local points of responsibility and national level of FBI, but Farmer cannot even hear that. Farmer cannot allow that to be discussed, so he bathers and accuses Tucker of interrupting his filibustering.

If you're not on blood pressure medication, I recommend these three short videos. This is what you're in for if you're interested in engaging conversation. Better, I think, to just beat them to death electorally until they can face the futility of exercising their obsession, their manipulation of traumatized young people, and their emotion-based methods to eliminate your Constitutionally protected rights. There really is no point in talking.

Tucker Carlson attempts to interview Gary Farmer.

Disclosure: I don't own any guns and I don't want any. All of the gun owners I know are Democrats. In their view they are being reasonable. They're not interested in busting a move Constitutionally protected rights. They just don't see a point in allowing such fierce weapons. They would disagree with this characterization.

I don't understand Trump. I acknowledge he's more clever than I am. He's offering to make bump stocks illegal and raise the age for allowing gun ownership. I wouldn't budge an inch. He says that he's willing to accept those restrictions while also hardening soft target schools. Maybe he knows the restrictions will not pass Congress. Maybe this is his art of the deal. I don't know, but he sure is fascinating to watch. His listening session was real. He had his own handwritten list of points he wanted to be sure to make, including, "I hear you" while he had no idea what his invited guests would say. And it was heart wrenching. For some reason, he wanted his list shown. He showed his card. He knows what his opposition will do with whatever they see. CNN's contrived Town Hall was scripted, and they used the children for maximum emotion and for national indoctrination. They do know how to put on a show. But so does Trump. And Trump does it better. CNN's show works only for CNN viewers. Trump's show works for every reasonable viewer. Trump's audience grows while CNN's audience diminishes.


Perception vs reality

I learned fairly early to not have sympathy for people with dementia. By having it. And having to rely on the judgement of others. That was the difficult part, because everyone else had worse perception and judgement than I did, and now I have to rely on theirs. I automatically lose every argument. Oh well. That's not so bad. They're the ones totally distressed seeing me lose it. The demented are not the ones suffering. Sympathy goes to the people around them who love them.

Even in that state there were still traces of the old me and the old situation. An incident comes to mind as I'm writing. We collected everyday for breakfast with our parents at one or another of their favorite restaurants. This was my dad holding his family together. I could no longer drive in that period. My younger brother drove from his house to my house to pick me up and we'd rendezvous with my parents. Over breakfast Mum told us a story about about her being a child and taken to visit her remote relatives. She describes them as hillbillies. They live in a wooden shack with no windows. Then when dinner time came one of them reaches through the window and grabs a chicken by the neck. The whole thing seems improbable and made up. First there are no windows and then there is a window to grab a chicken. I query this discrepancy.

My mother cannot explain the no windows then chicken window change in her story. My dad lights up, "See? See what I deal with all the time?" Now it's me and my dad questioning the sanity of my mother. Back in the car to drive me home, my brother is very cross with me. Livid, actually. He dresses me down for troubling Mum, and really angry with Dad for supporting my attack.

I said, "Look, I was paying attention to her story and trying my best to comprehend what she said. You should give me points for paying attention to detail and following along not attack me for questioning. I did not understand her." He said, "I understood her. She meant there was no glass in the windows. They were all busted out. What's so hard to understand about that?"

"Oh."

"Well, she said 'no windows,' not, 'no glass in the windows.' I visualized a hut with no windows then the next description boom, there's a window. It didn't fit. My question was for clarification, where you're facile enough to not need it. I'm not so facile as you. My visualization was frozen at a no-window hut."

Eventually I recovered. By way of surgery. Decades later I still have a hole in my skull from that. You can push your finger in it if you want. Come on. Try it. You might be surprised the number of people who do want to feel the hole in my head. It's closing very slowly but still there. I ended up being better off than before the whole degradation. And I could tell by NYT crosswords. I got to the point of not being able to understanding anything about any of the clues. Not one. Far less multiple solutions to pick from, or discerning misdirection. I gave up on them. Then after surgery all that was restored and significantly better than before. I could tell because I had little problem with Friday and Saturday level difficulty.

Yesterday a post on Ace about CNN being useless for news and malevolent as propaganda didn't say much itself, it just linked to a Twitter thread. But when you read down the thread then you see other members supporting CNN as valid and useful. And they are vehement in their support. These are the demented, no trouble to themselves, but trouble the people around them. I look at the member's picture and she appears a frumpy librarian type and I feel pity for her being so thick. Then I think, no, she's fine. It's everyone else who suffers. CNN is for her. And there are a lot of people like her. The rest of us suffer them.

One time I was in hospital and right off I saw something pleasing that I never saw before, an opaque plastic box filled with lollypops attached to the wall near the door out of reach of children. I wondered why it was labeled with a hazardous materials symbol. It didn't fit. Must be a hospital joke. I mentioned this to the first nurse I saw and she said, "that's a hypodermic needle disposal container."

There sure were a lot of needles in there. The whole atmosphere of the place went from cheerful and childlike and playful in an instant to dreadful and medical and heavy. I liked it better as lollypops.

My brain told me that my eyeballs see lollypops. That's what my brain wants to see.

That same thing happened again. A few days ago Legal Insurrection put up a post titled The Diseased Streets of San Francisco fronted with photo of a bin of lollypops. The post written by Leslie Eastman begins with a description of her wonderful time in Memphis, the fun family-oriented things that she did. So the box of lollypops fits. I visualized someone bringing a whole bin of lollypops to disperse among children. I visualized everyone there with a lollypop in their mouth. But I was wrong again. It's actually a bin full of needles.


My dad was such a stud. But I did not know that. My friends told me. They saw a photo of him in uniform that I grew up with and discerned his studliness from that single photo. When he was the  age of that photo he drove his whole family from one side of the country to the other. He was in the Air Force then. We could have flown. It would have been a lot easier and less expensive. He wanted us to see the whole country. And he wanted his automobile with him in Japan. In March we went from sloggy melting filthy season-long snow in Pennsylvania, to bright happy colorful sailboats on blue sea, and window gardens and flowers in the streets of San Francisco and gentle temperate clime. Now, that's my kind of town. Such a lovely beautiful energetic and happy interesting place. 

Decades later I have no desire whatsoever to go there anymore. The last visit was dreary and monotone gray. The weather itself cast a pall and veritably said, "stay away." Filthy in every aspect with rats visible in the restaurants. The street trash is the least of it. Vermin everywhere and with wires looped on the poles in expectation of a gigantic shakedown. The whole place anticipates biblical devastation. I think of my friends there and wonder what keeps them.

Happy birthday, George!

We can Handel it.


But wait, there is more!


That's a picture of my back yard back in the early 18th century.

Site stats

This is weird. For the last seven days, the post that received the most views, and mostly from Google search, was made June last year. The post about the White House bronze statue of bison with wolves that I spent all day trying to identify looking through literally thousands of bison statues by the customary western artists and Annie C identified in two minutes with three ways of finding it.


This last week

How it compares in its place with others way back then.
It's still getting views while the others are not.


And that goes to show that you cannot predict anything. It's all random.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Keep America out of Dutch!

This is not the usual Seldom Sene I listen to. This is something completely different.


Armed police officer at Florida high school stayed outside the building during the shooting.

Scott Peterson, a police officer present at the school during the shooting has resigned after an investigation found he never entered the building as Nikolas Cruz was shooting.

More detailed information summarized at the Hill.

Better, different, in-depth information about how this happens at Conservative Treehouse.

Vikram Vij, wild salmon

Small Dead Animals has a post up dogging Trudeau under one of their favorite new rubrics They Admire His Basic Prictatorship in which Kate decries Trudeau wearing Indian costumes. The post has an update to it about celebrity chef Vikram Vij being flown to India on the taxpayers dime to cook for a group of diplomats.

So?

Celebrity Chef? Never heard of him. I wonder what he is like.

We're going to learn something.

I watched this already. To play along, to cook like a celebrity chef that gets flown to India to cook wild salmon for a group of diplomats you will need:

Small chunks of wild salmon.

Marinade
* oil
* salt
* lemon juice
* red chile powder
* masala:
  ** cumin
  ** coriander
  ** ginger
* paprika

Sauce
* clarified butter
* hing (asafoetida)
  ** Wikipedia information on asafoetida
  ** Duckduckgo pictures of asafoetida plant
  ** Amazon buy asafoetida
* roasted cumin
* green onions
* green chiles
* tomatoes diced
* coconut milk
* potato broth (starchy water with ginger)

Skip to 1:00


Nellie Ohr: Woman in the Middle

The article is by Diana West published on the Spectator.

It's long. Words from one end of the screen to the other and tightly packed.

West explores the paper trail left by Nellie Ohr and discovers a "revisionist," academic lingo for Marxist. Much of the paper is about the books written by Ohr, the forwards she's written for other books, her description of Stalin's purges as "excesses," and what this all means.
To one side of Ohr, there is the Fusion GPS team, including fellow contractor Christopher Steele. To the other, there is husband Bruce Ohr, who, until his “dossier”-related demotion, was No. 4 man at the Department of Justice, and a key contact there for Steele. 
As central as Nellie Ohr’s placement is, her role in the creation of the “dossier” remains undefined. For example, the House Intelligence Committee memo on related matters vaguely tells us that Nellie Ohr was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump”; the memo adds that Bruce Ohr “later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research.” Senator Lindsey Graham more sensationally told Fox News that Nellie Ohr “did the research for Mr. Steele,” but details remain scarce. 
Still, relevant facts have emerged. These include Nellie Ohr’s study in the USSR in 1989; her fluency in Russian and Ph.D. in Russian history in 1990; a 2010 CIA affiliation, which practically makes her former MI6 agent Steele’s “opposite number”; and the extremely curious detail, harkening back to earlier eras of spycraft, that on May 23, 2016, around the time she came on board Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr applied for a ham radio operator’s license.
Notably, the “dossier” men in her life have tried to shield Ohr from public scrutiny, even at professional risk. Her husband, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reports, failed to disclose his wife’s employment with Fusion GPS and seek the appropriate conflict-of-interest waiver, which may have been an important factor in his demotion from associate deputy attorney general late last year.
Under Senate and House questioning, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson consistently failed to disclose Nellie Ohr’s existence as one of his firm’s paid Russian experts, let alone that he hired her for the red-hot DNC/Clinton campaign Trump-Russia project.
Even Christopher Steele may have tried to keep Nellie Ohr “under cover.” Steele, put forth as the “dossier” author ever since its January 2017 publication in BuzzFeed, does not appear to have let on to his many media and political contacts that he had “dossier”-assistance from at least two fellow Fusion GPS Russian experts, Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. Baumgartner, interestingly, was a Russian history major at Vassar in the 1990s when Nellie Ohr taught Russian history there.
Thus, Nellie Ohr’s exact activities inside one of the great Russian-American disinformation campaigns of all time remain opaque. What most observers don’t realize, though, is that we already have a window onto her thinking through her strongly-etched, ideological view of Soviet history.
More at the link, mostly about Russia.  Comments are also interesting.

Personally, I'd like to see her tried, convicted and hung as traitor. But I'm old school and deplorable.