Serenade from the stars - Steve Miller Band

Another one I like.

Evening feast

Do you remember the breakfast feast?

Well, I made a concoction that went with roasted chicken that was deeee lish.

There was a salad with a blue cheese premium dressing.  That was necessary because of all the cheap dressings had too much of the wrong stuff in them.  I had to go premium, even though I would have preferred something cheaper than this.

Anyway, I am on a budget see, so everything is kept cheap.  Roma tomatoes, a bit of lettuce, and the dressing made the salad.  I got my baked chicken on sale, two for five bucks.  I divided it into seven pieces for each chicken, and put it all in the freezer. 

To prepare the chicken, I just took out a piece, and microwaved it on low for several minutes.  After it thawed out a bit, I cut it up into smaller pieces.  Ready to eat.

Not bad eating, I'd say.  Especially since it was cheap, except for the dressing.

Re-writing history has begun... and it isn't the Democrats

None other than the big cheese, or shall I call him the big dummy?  That would be Rush Limbaugh  Oh, yeah.  He's quoting the Ace of Spades blog, and using a term called a "McGuffin" for what the hero wants.  So, if Obama wants Obamacare, the McGuffin is Obamacare, because that's what the hero wants ( meaning the hero is Obama in this case).

The media follows the hero's story, meaning Obama.  They never challenge what he wants, or whether or not it is good for the country.

So, that is the summary of what a McGuffin is.  So far, so good.

He then goes off into the weeds and compares Trump to Obama, and that's where I have to call bullshit.

I don't know about other Trump supporters, but I do know about myself.  I didn't start supporting Trump because he was the hero, and I wanted to follow his story in order to see if he got his McGuffin or not.  The McGuffin meaning the nomination, of course.

No, I was skeptical about Trump for the most part, and what turned me against Cruz was the dishonesty that the Never Trump people displayed.  Rather than go back over all that garbage, you can read this friggin' blog.  It is all chronicled here.

This is more of the same garbage.  Shame on Rush.  It is a disgrace.  He's going on the fecal roster.

NOT Born That Way

NOT Born That Way



summary:



Homosexuals are not born, but made.  How?  An individual's earliest experiences may shape him/her into thinking they were born that way, but nobody is born that way.



comment:



Not only is there no "gay gene", it makes no difference anyway.  If Bruce Jenner  can be a girl, then genes ( or chromosomes )  don't matter.

The most hated candidate usually wins

Sort of goes against conventional wisdom.  But what most of what these people say is bravo sierra anyway.

Dick Morris podcast

Morris lays out the fundamental strategy for a Trump victory in the general election.

Don't know that Trump will follow it or not, but there is one thing that Morris has going for him:  they know each other pretty well.  They grew up together, as Morris' father was Trump's father's attorney.  They practically grew up together.

When I heard about the female latino veep idea, I wasn't too thrilled, because it reeked of PC.  But combined with a prosecutorial campaign against Hillary, it may have a certain logic to it.

The war on Trump is not over

After seeing this on Instapundit, which links to a claim that the war is over, and the party should unify, I see a link to Thomas Sowell, who wants a third party candidate to run and throw the election into the House.

Anybody who runs on a third party ticket is bound to lose.  Ross Perot didn't even win a single electoral vote.  George Wallace only won the formerly Solid South.

If you go all the way back to Lincoln, who didn't get a single vote in a Southern State, minority presidents can still win.

There has been only one president chosen by the House, and that was Thomas Jefferson.  This was before the Electoral College was reformed.  There have been none since.

They should support Trump, Hillary, or stay home.  Drive this one into your skull-- YOU LOST.

Update:

In order to force an election into the House, a third party candidate must win some states.  If Cruz ran on a third party ticket, maybe he wins Texas.  But since the vote was divided up, even though in Texas, there's a good chance that Hillary would win Texas, of all places.   Cruz is probably your best regional candidate.  Any others?  I doubt it.

Really dumb idea.

Spacex does it again

A much more difficult attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 has been successful.

Video here.

One can almost overlook the primary mission, which was to deploy a satellite into Geosynchronous orbit.  Golly, is it becoming too routine???

This was no mean feat.

Kiss him goodbye

Glenn Beck still grieving over Cruz's loss, so I have read.

Beck is just another one of the losers that we can just as well do without.

Buh bye Beck!

Here we go again, JFK assassination conspiracy theories

It might have been well for Trump to leave this one alone.  Not that there is something there, but the whole conspiracy theory thing should have been laid to rest with Bugliosi's book.

I posted a bit on that book on this blog.  While I don't always agree with Bugliosi, I do agree that there most likely wasn't any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Here are the posts I made:

• Reclaiming History and The Zapruder Film
• A few thoughts on Bugliosi's Book
• Reading Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History"

I researched the JFK assassination after watching Oliver's Stone's movie on the subject.  Stone's movie turned me hard core anti-Democrat, because it was deeply dishonest.  I could swear that I am seeing a lot of that again, with respect to this reaction to what Trump said.

Now, here's a bit of what I can recall about Oswald.  This may have been in Bugliosi's book, or it may have been somewhere else.  The thing about Oswald is that, with respect to his activities in New Orleans, he pretended to be anti-Castro for awhile.  When the anti-Castro people found out that Oswald was really a communist, they became angry, and there was an altercation.  What I am saying here, is that Cruz's daddy might have known Oswald, and might have been fooled by Oswald.  This is how he might have ended up in a picture with Oswald.

But that is all rather fuzzy.  The most important point is that there wasn't any conspiracy.

It is unfortunate that Trump got into this.  It is better to leave it alone.

Mixed up affair? Only in appearance.

There's still a lot of grousing about Trump's victory.  A Trump supporter may worry about that, because if the GOP remains divided, Hillary will win.

However, what if their influence was not nearly as great as they imagine?  In other words, does Trump even need these people?

Just saying here that they need Trump more than Trump needs them.  For if Hillary wins, all of their pet peeves are going to multiply.

The left will get virtually everything they want.  It will happen fast, too.  We'll get gun control, "climate" legislations and regulations, and more social degradation, such as we've already seen with homosexual marriage.  Foreign policy will continue to deteriorate.  None of this can be considered as a good thing, provided that you are sincere about your "conservatism".

If anything, this opposition to Trump is pushing the nation to the left, even while claiming the right.

I have a hunch that most people in this country don't want more leftism.  It is an elite phenomenon.  So, this opposition to Trump is mostly coming from a noisy minority.  Once enough people understand that, they will start making the correct conclusions, and act accordingly.


Update:

Third party run?  Go for it.  Cruz won about ten percent in the Northeastern states.  Maybe these clown will get five percent in the general.  Go for it, numbnuts.  Be happy to see you lose again, since that is what you do best.

Who should be Trump's VP pick?

Morris says it should be a woman and a latino.  I think that would be a mistake.  Unless it has better reasons than what Morris gave.

I think Gingrich could be a good pick for what Trump says he wants.

Dana Milbank is gonna eat his own words

If you remember that one, he said that if Trump won the GOP nomination, he would eat his own words.

Evidently, he's going to do it.  But he's going to dress it up as nice meal so he won't be actually eating the paper as is.  I think he's cheating.  Maybe he should join the now defunct Cruz campaign.  Since I predicted that he wouldn't actually do it, this means my prediction is wrong.  But since he's cheating, I'm at least half right.


bon appétit!

Home again, home again. 5.4.16

That one is an oldie, but goodie.  Back home after running around town.  Traffic is horrible.  Just horrible.

But I'm feeling good, within the limits, so to speak.

On the way home, I recalled that there were those who thought that we didn't have problems here in the good 'ol USA.  I wonder how they feel now?  Trump won.  Now they got a problem.

Bwah, hah, hah!

Cruz drops out and the wusses whine

Boo-hoo!  Cruz drops out and "surrenders" to that mean bully Trump.  Wahhh!   Sniffle sniffle.

Man, I've had it with these whine-o's ( a pun ).  They call some of the GOP'ers "Rinos", well these guys just whine and cry.  So, I'll call them "whine-o's".

Trump didn't take advantage of me, like some of these whine-o's keep saying.  I can prove it.  I have had it with these clowns for over a year, back in 2014, I wrote this.

Conservatives don't deserve to win because of their total lack of ...  well, I don't know how to put it.  Maybe they just don't have a pair.

Trump was too nice to them.  He ought to start rubbing it in.  I mean, if you can't make these sissies mad enough to fight, then they ought to go do a Bruce Jenner instead.  They remind me of that part in the movie (Blazing Saddles) when Dom Deluise said they sound like steam escaping, because of  their lisping.   One of the obvious effeminates complained about a "bully".

Instead of manning up, these wusses wuss it up.  You got beat.  Have a good cry, and get over it, ladies.

Article V convention of the states

Dick Morris mentioned yesterday that there are now 29 states that have authorized the convention for the purpose of submitting an amendment to require that the Congress balance the budget.  The webpage for that is here.  I have looked at the page and have concluded that it is somewhat lacking in what I would think would be desirable in promoting its cause.

This leads me to a writing a post in which we can look at the article in detail, word-by-word if you will, and then war-game it to speculate what could happen in such an event should it occur.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.[ emphasis added]

In order for a convention to take place, it must follow the Constitution itself.  It cannot deviate from it, or it can be declared illegal, and its delegates may be arrested and charged.  Certainly, an attempt to overthrow the Constitution cannot be entertained, unless that is the intent.  If such was the intent, why bother with legal technicalities?

Thus, two thirds of the states must apply to Congress for such a convention.  The Congress can choose the means of ratification.  Consequently, the Congress cannot initiate it, but can choose the means by which any changes can be ratified, amongst them being only two means from which to choose.

If there were a "runaway Convention", whatever they produce must be ratified by the means that Congress specified.  If a rogue Convention proposes any other means, this reverts back to sedition, and they could be arrested and charged for that.  Does anyone believe that the US Government is going to idly stand by and watch its authority being stripped away, and not offer any resistance to this whatever?  Any deviation would at least be stopped in the courts, and in short order.  I'd say that whatever comes out the convention will be challenged to the hilt, as any attempt to rein in the power of the current government is not likely to go unnoticed, and their attitude towards this is not likely to be indifferent.

Three fourths of the states must ratify.  No other way of ratification can be legal.  If there is any attempt to implement changes by any other means, it can be stopped, and most likely will be stopped.  It is highly unlikely that anything revolutionary is likely to come out of the process.

The states will have control over the selection of delegates.  Reliable people are likely to be chosen.  If they turn out not to be, then the results will not likely be accepted ( see above).

In my opinion,  a runaway convention is unlikely, and even if it did occur, it won't achieve much, if anything at all.

What if the worst occurs, and a runaway convention completely rewrites and changes the Constitution, and nobody did anything to stop it?  Then I would submit that this is already happening anyway.  The assumption is that we have something to lose.  Actually, we have nothing to lose, for if we do nothing, the Constitution will be usurped anyway.

Water calcs revisited

Eight square feet can produce one gallon of distilled water per day, says this dude in a video.

Let's see.  Assuming 100 watts of solar energy strikes every sq. ft. of surface, then that would be 800 watts times the number of hours of effective sunshine.  Let's say six hours.  Then we obtain 4800 watt hours per day, or 4.8 kilowatt hours in order to produce 1 gallon.  That compares with six in my own water experiment.   Since I didn't bother to get an energy rating on the stove I used, then I can conclude that my numbers may have been off a bit.

It seems to me that you can use this dude's idea of a water distiller.  I can use a glass top on a table, and fill the lower side with dirty water and collect the water from the glass.  He says it needs to be airtight.  I can buy that ( with a dollar ).

Incidentally, I think the ideas I obtained before are better than this.  I probably won't try this one.

Update:

Maybe I might try this one.  He goes into detail into how to build it.

A Tale Of Two Candidacies

It was the best of campaigns and the worst of campaigns.

The best of Cruz is where he stands as a lone knight in the Senate who stopped amnesty.  He introduced a poison pill amendment that scuttled Rubio's Gang of Eight amnesty gambit.  If he would have continued in that vein, he might have done better as a candidate in the polls, but since he didn't, he really lost me with his off-the-rails campaign that it has become.


Here's Cruz going up against Fox, when Fox was in full Rubio mode.  She is trying to give aid and support to a failing Rubio candidacy.  Cruz did a lot to take out Rubio, and good riddance too.  Note, however, that blocking amnesty is no long term solution to the border issue.  Only a wall and a refusal to grant amnesty will do that.  Cruz only has a temporary solution.  Perhaps it is no solution at all, but a delaying tactic.  It will only delay the inevitable unless the tide is turned with this influx of immigrants.

Cruz is better than Rubio, but not by much.  I don't believe he will build that wall.




In this video, Cruz seems to be playing the race card.  He sound his just like a Democrat here.  It is Cruz at his worst.  Sure, he needs to find a way to beat Trump, but how does it go with the above video?



Will the real Ted Cruz please stand up?

I see the light!!!

Trump is gonna win!   Bwah, hah, hah!

Bill Gates wants to raise capital gains taxes

Free Republic

comment:

Not very popular amongst the Freepers.   I say tax the crap out of corporations, and go easy on the individual.  Nothing leftist about that.  Why?  Corporations overwhelm the individual.  It used to be the case that the government could be run on taxation on imports.  The idea of taxing entities, such as importers from foreign countries, is not much different from taxing corporations.

Freepers don't have their thinking caps on.

Why do these so-called conservatives, who plan on helping Hillary, get a pass?

They want to be considered pro-capitalism, pro-freedom; but if you are that, then why be against Trump?

Do they really expect anyone to believe them why they say that they will vote for Hillary over Trump?

Why do you find so-called conservatives like George Will, who want to pull out all the stops in order to dump Trump even if it means electing Hillary ; and then not find them when it was time to deep-six Obama?

Who are they trying to kid?

Obligatory, 5.2.16; On the themes of the blog

This is a type of post that once again states my original purpose here: to figure out what the heck has gone wrong with this country.  But now, more than this: as it appears to me to be a case of what's gone wrong throughout Western Civilization in general.

A continual theme here as well is the saying that "the truth is a slippery thing".  This is particularly important to note when the subject matter is of such vast scope.  It is beyond the capacities of just one individual to understand what has gone wrong in all of civilization.  But it may not be too ambitious to say that finding the truth should be the beginning point.  However, there aren't many of these out there that I can tell.  Most people will say they are for the truth, but does that make it so?

The blog initially explored topics in which I had already made a determination.  Yet hasty conclusions do not a truth make.  It is almost as if I have to back up and start all over from the beginning.  It wasn't political, nor material, but a spiritual problem I found.  At least, that's where I think I am at this time.

Certain things didn't play out.  Cold fusion was explored, but that seems to have hit a dead end again.  Rossi's device didn't seem to work out.  He gets accused of fraud, but what if he's innocent?  I decided long ago to stop following that, and followed Kirk Sorensen's work instead.  There are other things in the works that I follow as well, but as of now, nothing besides fracking seems to be working and producing at this time.  Not saying that it couldn't, though.

Who I conceived of being the bad guys seem to be winning a lot of the battles.  How do you know who the bad guy is?  Some of the guys who seemed like good guys are now looking like bad guys.  That theme about truth being slippery strikes again.  If you don't know who to trust, then what?  Where do you go for the truth?  Can you depend upon anyone, even your own self?

Troubling questions, these are.  Answered, they must be.

I do not trust the left wingers.  They lie.  But they are not alone.   I think a number of others who I believed to be good guys seem to have a credibility problem.

I've gotten on Limbaugh's case because I think he loves money a bit too much.  That seems to be another theme.  A foundational type of theme.  Money is a corrupting influence.  If you can get free from the dollar sign, the credibility factor goes up a notch.  Liberals love their money, perhaps even more than the conservatives, because the liberals are primarily materialistic.  But that doesn't free conservatives from that influence.  Conservatives give lip service to the spiritual, but how sincere is it?

Those who are willing to die ( or suffer )  for what they believe have more credibility than those who must be paid for their support.  Yet this is not a determinant of what is truth.  Only the truth of what someone believes and to what degree.  If money is required, then the sincerity of those who required it can be questioned.  If blood is shed and the faith kept, then the sincerity of that sacrifice is not likely to be questioned.

History matters too, but there is hazard in that.  The victors write the history books.  Little remains of defeated and lost causes.  The victors will try to erase any memory of what those defeated were like, and if they were persuasive in any way. 

An example in the field of energy was with the molten-salt reactor.  Once that was defeated politically, it was nearly forgotten.  It is now being remembered, but that remembrance has not brought triumph.  The same could be said of cold fusion.  Can the defeated remain defeated?  One must take care not to be defeated then. 

This reminds me of another theme.  Being right isn't enough.  In Aesop's Fable, the lamb always loses the argument with the wolf.  In this world, force has the better of any argument. There can be no force greater than God, but if you don't believe that, then what?  We are all merely wolves and lambs.

Drilling holes in steel

In order to use a steel container for distillation, will need to drill some holes for the steam to escape.  Here's how to do this.

For liberals, two plus two equals five

Liberalism is all about arguing against reality.  Take something which should have no controversy in it at all, and liberals will find a controversy.

For example, men can be women, and women can be men.  However, such a thought cannot be, unless those who utter it have lost their minds.  But that's liberalism for you.  If Bruce Jenner wants to be a girl, and a daddy too, why, what's wrong with that????

Another example is this notion of equality.  The  main problem with liberals, though, is that they think you and I are equal; they themselves on the other hand, are special snowflakes.  As everyone knows, the snowflakes are not to be offended.  The snowflakes cannot be challenged.  The snowflakes cannot be contradicted.  If you commit such an offense, be aware that hell hath no fury like an offended snowflake.

Bill Whittle once wrote an essay called Tribes, in which he described two different Tribes in our culture today.  One tribe, known as the Grays, are the ones in which two plus two equals four, and that's it.  The other tribe, known as the Pinks, can have two plus two equaling any doggone thing they want.  If they cannot get it, then they will raise hell until they do get it.  After 9.1.1.  Whittle said, the nation went Gray.  Since then, we have gone Pink.  We have gotten so pink, that Lenin may be blushing out there in the afterlife.

We're the country that landed men on the moon, but we can't get a man into orbit these days.  In engineering and science, two plus two always equals four.  It is a Gray thing, not a Pink thing.

Once upon a time, we believed in progress.  We still do, only thing is that the kind of progress today isn't progress, unless it is the progress of a fatal disease.  We're going backward, and calling the backwardness "progress".  Going to the moon, therefore, was progress.  Failing to  graduate engineers and scientists, on the other hand, gives you only the kind of progress that can declare AGW as a science to be taken seriously, whilst at the same time forbidding any kind of activity, such as implementing the molten-salt reactor technology that could actually solve that problem, if that problem indeed existed.

To get molten-salt reactors and space travel, you need two plus two to equal four.  When it is otherwise, you get liberalism.  When you get liberalism, you lose it all.  It is just a matter of time.

Obligatory, 5.1.16; Not so random thoughts in the morning

This post may be a rather somber one, so be forewarned.  If that kind of thing is not your cup of tea, then leave now.  I'd rather not bother anyone unnecessarily.  Yet, I think being bothered a bit is not necessarily such a bad thing.  But if you can't bother about being bothered, then you might want to go someplace else.

Right off the bat, I am feeling my age.  Just five and a half years ago, I was in much better health than I'm in now.  Back then, I'd get to feeling bad for a few days, and that was it.  Now, it seems like the normal thing to be battling one ailment or another every single day.  It makes me want to reflect upon the end, if you catch my drift.

Life is short.  Once you see an end to it all, you may want to get things in order.  However, while things are still good, and you have your health, getting things in order may be the last thing on your mind.  I know that has been true for me, anyway.

One thing to do is to clear away old grudges.  How many times have I heard that "life is too short for grudges", only to turn around and start nursing one.  My last grudge was against my Mom for what she said to me.  This wasn't terribly long before her death.  I had barely reconciled with her when she died, and I still felt the sting of what she said.  Now it seems not to matter at all, and it even seems silly to have felt that way anyway.

But that grudge was nothing in comparison with one that might have gotten me killed.  If that sounds melodramatic, perhaps it is.  Especially for a character like myself, who could have been conjured out of the poem by T.S. Eliot.  It was a sexual rivalry of sorts, two dudes squaring off because of a girl, and I backed down.  But not without some very bad feelings.  I have never said this before, but murder entered my mind.  I don't know about him, but it did seem like for awhile there that I was getting death threats.  As a consequence of this, I bought a pistol.  Never before had I felt like I needed a gun, but if the right circumstance had occurred, I just might have used one.  That circumstance may have been just a hair from occurring.

What about now?  Well, that was perhaps the most bitter moment of my life.  I had to swallow it down, but it was bitter as gall.  After all these years, I'd still like to get even with that dude, but it may be better to just forget about it.  Life is getting short for me, sure enough.  I don't have time for this.

If anyone is reading this, what do you get from it?  Maybe most people who read it may get a small bit of entertainment value out of it.  It is so exciting, some may think.  Others may think it rather amusing.  Still others may be horrified, yet they won't look away.

I have tried on this blog to give my thoughts to whoever may listen.  But that is not the road to popularity.  In the final analysis, there doesn't seem to much you can do about the bad things in the world.  In the end, maybe you can do something about your own messes.

That is all.