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blogging every day since January 14, 2004
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That does not look skater-friendly.
There is a young man, maybe in Alaska, that hunts rats withTerriers and mink. Also check out the fellows in England hunting at night with PCP airguns and infrared scopes.
Nice pics, especially the top one!
Something is working it's way to the capitol.
Did they get the ATV out?
This won't happen, but I think DJT and R's should do this. Cut the Social Security Employee and Employer rate to 5% from 6.2 %, but take the cap off. The cap in 2025 is 176.1 k. Gives working poor, working class, middle class, and chunk of upper middle class a SS tax cut. Wealthier folks will pay more in total into SS. I speculate in net the government take is unchanged. Employee future SS benefits are not impacted because future benefits are based on earnings. This plan is MAGA.
Sargon of Akkad via YouTube: The Metaphysics of Slop
Or why are India street food preparation videos so easily viral fare?
"In actuality people consume slop all day every day, and it is a completely normal aspect of everyday life".
Political Junkie-
Not MAGA.
Socialism (lite).
SocSec is already taking from rich and giving to poor.
Taxes capped at 176k because benefits are capped there; a lot of effort has been expended to make people think it's just not another welfare program but at its heart that is what it is.
Employee future benefits are even more impacted if cap is lifted (unless benefits are also lifted).
It's an actuarily impossible program/Ponzi scheme that has finally found its mark generation (millennials). They know it, and seem resigned to their fate. Once the millennials get through being shafted by the Boomer generation, SocSec can go on for a few more generations until the next imbalance occurs, but by then the memory of the millennials will be lost.
I'm a Boomer, we're getting ~76K/year inflation adjusted every year to wake up, so I'm happy. My millennial kids are both doing very well financially, but many of their cohort are not. If we try to make a fundamentally unsound government program "fair," buckle up.
"Once the millennials get through being shafted by the Boomer generation..."
The Boomer generation had no say in the implementation of SS and, in fact, are the first generation to be taxed their entire working lives to pay for it + Medicare. Which they had no say in regarding its implementation, too.
Just sayin'.
Have you noticed all the new currency? I pay for all of my in person purchases with cash. For the past couple of months and this month especially I have been getting my change back in new bills as well as in my withdrawals from the bank. I’ve been wondering why.
Today I think I got my answer. A delivery driver, who makes the majority of his deliveries to Mexican businesses told me that all of the businesses are doing very poorly - not ordering any merchandise. Why? Mexican customers are hoarding cash, not buying anything. Everyone worried about our immigration policies.
So, my theory is: with so much cash taken out of circulation, the Treasury has to print more money, hence the new bills.
Impressive sun pillar in #3.
They did. Spoke with them yesterday afternoon just after extraction. Used a chainsaw to free it from the ice and then winched it up and out near the park bench that faces the capitol. No one hurt, just wet and cold. The vehicle is amphibious and floats.
Glad to hear it. Who did the work? The owners? FD?
The owner, who reported having a very unhappy wife due to the fine he has to pay on top of the expenses he’s already sunk in the vehicle itself. I said well I’m sure she’s just glad you’re safe and alive and he gave me the old more-or-less hand gesture. 😂
"Just sayin'."
Yep. I'm kind of tired being bad mouthed for something I had no control over.
Why a fine? He got it out.
"I'm kind of tired being bad mouthed..."
Something else I'm tired of being bad mouthed for...
If I retire, I'm bad mouthed for collecting a SS check and if I don't retire, I'm bad mouthed for not getting out of the way so the someone younger can have my spot at work.
Good question
I can remember sitting in jail in DC for a prolife protest and seeing Rep. Henry Hyde come down to visit us. Seeing his shape through the bars and knowing that one person in Washington had made his way all the way down to where we scorned prolifers were. He smiled and told us we'd be out soon, which I knew anyway but, again, at least someone in power wanted us free and happy and came to say so.
At least one of the people I was in jail with that day is in jail again near DC, again for non-violent protest. I hope and pray that she and the other prolifers who tried to draw attention to the illegal killing of children who survive late-term abortions in DC will not be forgotten. These prolifers got five years; they shouldn't have gotten five minutes. The Thomas More Society represented them.
I did not mind being in jail for the prolife cause and yet I always almost cry when I remember being there with the others, singing:
Peace is flowing like a river,
Flowing out of you and me,
Flowing out into the desert,
Setting all the captives free.
And future benefits are capped- which is why SS tax is capped. Pretty hard to sell it as an old age insurance program for the high earners if they're guaranteed a negative return.
You're just an inconvenience to the State.
In Australia, they want the geezers to sell their homes and move abroad to ease their housing shortage. I kid you not. A bold new housing proposition calls for older Australians to leave the country to help fix a major crisis.
I'm not sure that would be the right way to go about it, and Medi/ is really the elephant in the room, not SS. But I think the chance of Trump taking action on it directly is near absolute zero. More immediate fish to fry. My hope is he starts a national conversation (something he seems to pretty good at :) that Vance or DeSantis can follow up on. While there are so many boomers left alive taking on these entitlements would be like sticking your fingers in a wall socket. Not logical given the immediacy of the problem, but a lot easier if the political winds are in your favor. There's a lot riding on how the next four years go. A lot.
At least you're allowed to leave, breathing. Move to Canada and chances are you'll be 'invited onward' with MAID. 7% of the deaths in Quebec province last year were at the hands of doctors euthanizing people. Good interview on TriggerNometry on this.
I read recently that China is producing a lot of amphibious landing craft. If China invades Taiwan I don't think we are up to fighting a military war in the South China Sea and never will be. Our only weapons would be international sanctions. Hong Kong was a different situation but we couldn't do shit about that either.
Looking at Trump's choices for filling major positions in his Cabinet and executive agencies, I'd say the left's mindless chants about the "Republican War on Women" are going to fall on deaf ears.
At best, they'll get the Nelson Muntz treatment.
“ If China invades Taiwan . . . “
Scott Adams says that one option would be to take out the chip manufacturing facilities. (No more Pringles for you!)
By Taiwan law they can't manufacture chips abroad unless they are 2 generations removed from current tech. The chips to be manufactured in AZ (2028) would be 3nm and 4nm (China can do 4nm at present). The machinery for manufacturing first and second generation 2nm chips is the prize and that doesn't come from Taiwan. Just saying I don't think the chips are what China is primarily interested in.
Well, here in the Eastern Time Zone it’s almost midnight. One last calendar day for Joe Biden to drop another turd or two in the punch bowl before he’s outa here.
If we get in a shooting war over Taiwan and we're losing, I can't imagine we wouldn't take it out. I tend to think China will not invade, because they have to know they'd be getting a bombed out husk. They may feel they have to do it for pride, but I don't see them gaining economically. And add to that they'd lose the western markets they're dumping all their excessive production into and they would come out of the war much poorer.
Should read "machinery and processes"
I know I'm going to get dumped on by folks a lot more knowledgeable than me about chip manufacturing, but the point is the chips are not the reason China wants Taiwan.
@OM
Taiwan is making half the chips in the world. Bombing those factories isn't going to make us very popular, but you're right, if we could sanction effectively it would be a Pyrric(sp) victory for them.
OK, now discuss oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, Quinoa and Grits. Compare and contrast. IOW why pick on India? (And, I might add, making mega-quantities of food for a congregation is NOT "street food.")
China would do its level best to take over those world-class fab Taiwan facilites, not take them out.
And for the record , we and the Dutch have the most-advanced such fabfacilities on the planet. HEAVILY GUARDED.
If the ChiComs tried to take all of them out, they would be pissing in their own Moo Goo Gai Pan.
From what I've read, without state of the art maintenance available only in the west, (specifically, a firm in the Netherlands which make the fabrication equipment) the chip factories won't be operating past 6 months anyways.
All of your photos are good. At first glance the last (third?) one is great but upon consideration the first one has a gravitas that is worthy.
ZH had story about China looking into German car plants
where do food truck fit in ??
Oatmeal and food trucks (apparently) don’t have viral 👀 ingredients.
“chips are not the reason China wants Taiwan”
Chips are the reason, we don’t want China to take over Taiwan (according to Scott Adams) We would be destroying the plants to make sure China doesn’t sabotage the chips.
Oatmeal, in viral terms represents a Biden photo op. No offense. Whereas food trucks run the gamut. In NJ there for example they have festivals. It’s a big deal. Not slop at all.
It’s a question of virality virility. Not to belabor the point.
Advice from the weather bureau:
Avoid the subject event as per the instructions
@Mason G: The Boomer generation had no say in the implementation of SS
Indeed. Still, they came of age before the Social Security funding system became too top heavy with input vs. payouts. The first SS recipients came away like bandits. The Boomers got a generally fair deal. Generation X and later got shafted, but the Boomers then in Congress did nothing to fix it.
Kick the can down the road. Kick the can down the road.
Taiwan is next door to China; think of the logistics of the US invading Cuba versus China invading Cuba. Also, China has 1.4B people while the US has 340M people.
The only way of 'winning' by combat would be nuclear, but that's not winning per se.
This will not be the first time Social Security has been 'unjust', and likely not the last. Google "Notch Babies"
SCOTUSblog publisher and co-founder Tom Goldstein was indicted on federal tax evasion charges.
Between 2016 and 2022, Goldstein allegedly schemed to “evade the assessment of taxes, file false tax returns, and fail to pay his tax obligations when they were due,” according to the indictment filed in the District of Maryland. The 22-count indictment lists four counts of tax evasion; 10 counts of aiding and assisting the preparation of false and fraudulent tax returns; five counts of willful failure to pay taxes; and three counts of false statements on mortgage loan applications.
Goldstein has hired attorneys John Lauro of Lauro & Singer and Christopher Kise of Continental Attorneys-at-Law to represent him. Lauro and Kise have appeared in previous media coverage concerning their representation of President-elect Donald Trump.
In a familiar-sounding Trump-like statement to CNBC, Kise and Lauro said: “Mr. Goldstein is a prominent attorney with an impeccable reputation. We are deeply disappointed that the government brought these charges in a rush to judgment without understanding all of the important facts. Our client intends to vigorously contest these charges, and we expect he will be exonerated at trial.”
Fine due to potential pollution, maybe?
It's in the news. https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/health-and-safety-alerts/no-one-hurt-after-atv-breaks-through-ice-on-lake-mendota-mfd-says/ar-AA1xkD1N
I know someone who bought an inaugural package, soup to nuts. She’s going to be disappointed.
China wants Taiwan because it is the centerpoint of an island chain controlled by the US and allies that could effectively form a blockade to Chinese shipping lanes. If China controlled Taiwan it would have unfettered access to the western Pacific. It is also would be able to control Japanese shipping lanes. If China gains control of Taiwan it's projection of power is greatly expanded in the North and South China sea as well as the western Pacific.
Yes, Taiwan is economically important because of it's chips, but it's geostratigic location is what China wants more than anything.
Not the best analogy (in fact a pretty poor one) but think Russian nukes in Cuba.
Btw. The best slop can be had at AA celebrations meetings down here in GA. 🤤🤫
I have been following Sheriff Grady Judd for years (a friend lives in his district). This man is a BAD ASS. We need a lot more Sheriff Judds, and a lot less Merrick Garlands.
Western Lensman
@WesternLensman
🔥Polk County, FL Sheriff Grady Judd runs down list of illegals who committed violent crimes in FL because they weren’t deported by the Biden admin:
“Florida needs to set the example for other states to support the President, to get rid of these criminals who are victimizing our people."
The “snapshot" list includes:
- Illegal who k*lled a 21 year-old American fleeing the scene of a crash.
- Illegal who was arrested 4 times that ICE never deported. He then ran over someone on a scooter and k*lled them.
- Illegal who caused a car crash; two people died.
- Illegal who was deported twice, came back, drove drunk and committed manslaughter.
- Illegal committed a hit and run, k*lling a 5 year old girl.
- Illegal who murdered a 74 year-old woman.
- Illegal who committed home invasion and attempted m*rder.
- Illegal who committed m*rder.
- Venezuelan professional crime ring that was arrested in NY, not held accountable then came to Florida. They targeted Asian-owned businesses for burglary.
“None of these people should have been here….The Biden administration didn’t care."
“We have to set the state model that supports the federal model so we get the illegal criminals out of this country."
This is how it’s done.
https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/1880713786547642536?
People charged with crimes often hire...lawyers. It's a thing, Gadfly.
Most of the time the lawyers have other clients as well. Ethical lawyers represent and defend people who may or may not be "guilty" notwithstanding their political popularity or lack thereof.
It is only the Left which demands that lawyers reject other clients based on politics, and harass and hound lawyers lawyers when they don't. This is a truly despicable form of lawfare, and the fact that that the ABA has not condemned it in the strongest terms tells you all you need to know about the ABA.
The "Trump-like statement" is the same statement every white-collar crime defense firm says about every single one of its' clients.
It was really cold for Nixon's 2nd inauguration . I was visiting a sister who worked in a senate office. She was going to the anti-inauguration. I'd just arrived from Tampa and it was way too cold for an inauguration much less an anti-inauguration. She went, I sayed on the couch.
It's usually not a good idea to consume street food in the countries that have no toilet paper or use night soil to fertilize their crops.
Enigma. The number of citizens is irrelavent to the invasion. It's the number of soldiers you can fit into a narrow doorway. How big is the landing beach? only so many landing vehicles can be landed at the same time. It comes down to logistics. Not really Chinas military strong suit. Taiwan should have been building its defenses like Switzerland. Every crossroad and path an aiming point. Every tunnel and bridge capable of being destroyed in seconds.
Hubris is the reason China wants Taiwan.
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