Tag: Politics

Government, Politics

Fair And Balanced

If you’re new here, let me add some context to how I think. If you didn’t read the sidebar, I am a Contrarian. So much so, I offer an on-line course teaching Contrarian skills. $29.99 a month will earn you a certificate as a registered Contrarian (I jest… or am I?) As a Contrarian, my view of 99.9% of politicians starts with the word tar and ends with feather. I have no allegiance to any political party. I look at all of them with equal scorn. Why am I telling you this? Well… I was going to stay away from politics for a while, but I couldn’t resist this latest example of bias. I promise we’ll get back to some exciting weight loss news shortly.

We’re going to start by going waaay back to 2016. Don Trump Jr had a meeting with a Russian attorney in his office at Trump Tower, along with other Trump campaign folks. The premise was that the attorney was offering damaging info on Hillary Clinton. The event itself isn’t important, other than the media coverage it spawned. Weeks/months of wall-to-wall, 24×7 analysis by the talking heads on cable “news” and approximately 5 billion words written by print journalists (those are the serious journalists, if you didn’t know). The event even has its own Wikipedia page.

Fast forward to present day. The FBI has produced a document in which a whistleblower alleges the President of the United States, and his son Hunter Biden, were paid five million dollars apiece by a Ukrainian energy company. The FBI was forced to release the document following a game of political chicken and threats of contempt of congress. The document itself is unclassified. Even so, what the FBI produced was heavily redacted.

Yesterday, a US senator went to the floor of the senate and stated that the whistleblower in the FBI document also has audio recordings. 15 of Hunter and 2 of the President, supposedly discussing something about the alleged bribes. I mean, come on, audio recordings are the holy grail of bringing down cover-ups and corruption. For juicy stories, it doesn’t get much better.

Here’s my point – in a normal world, that would be news. Even if it eventually turns out to be nothing more than some sort of Sydney Powell, release the Kraken nonsense, it is news.

In a fair and balanced world, a world of unbiased journalists, this would have wall-to-wall coverage similar to the Don Jr story. Journalists would be racing to be the first to scoop some sort of corruption involving the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and his family. Instead… crickets.

All the major news website coverage is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, DeSantis, Trump, Trump, Ukraine counteroffensive is winning. Virtually zero about this story. Memory holed faster than the Hunter Biden laptop story.

I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on – this should bother you. I get that you want your team to win. But a media that so blatantly suppresses news for one side is scary. The entire point of journalism is to hold the monsters in power at least semi-accountable. When one side can operate consequence-free, bad things happen.

I urge you to check your political affiliation at the door. Become a Contrarian. Be suspicious of EVERYTHING. Be extra wary when there’s a concerted effort to not report something.

Given everything going on in the news, I’m going to double down on my earlier predictions, with one change:

  • Trump will continue running until the bitter end, even if it’s from a jail cell.
  • Trump’s continued campaign will effectively create an RNC split ticket. The MAGA folks will go down with the ship, especially with the latest indictment. They won’t vote for DeSantis. The Never Trumpers are, well, never Trump. Game, set, match. DNC win.
  • The change – Biden is officially out. He’ll either have an unspecified “health issue” or the DNC will hang him out to dry with the alleged bribery allegations. He’ll drop out of the race.

Welcome President Newsom.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

It’s All About Equilibrium

equilibrium noun a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces.

Our world will do everything in its power to achieve equilibrium. Fluids, gases, nature, economics, politics, relationships – everything needs balance. Fluids move in and out of cells due to unequal pressures. Remove all the predators from a habitat and the deer population will explode. Our financial markets can’t survive extreme highs or lows indefinitely. Humans don’t thrive without a healthy work/life balance. The world constantly strives to be at a steady state. It’s one of the immutable laws of nature.

The 1950’s ushered in an unbelievable level of prosperity in the United States. That prosperity trickled out to the rest of the world and raised the economic prospects of most nations. The political world, broadly speaking, does everything possible to maintain that prosperity and balance. How it does that is the subject of untold numbers of history books. The Deep State, The Enterprise, The Cabal – whether you think there’s a coordinated group that controls the levers of power or just simply individuals hungry for power and money, the end result is the same. The desire to enforce US hegemony has resulted in a hundred years of the United States pulling the strings and levers of the world.

We’ve initiated coups, fostered wars, manipulated the media, tweaked monetary policy, and controlled industry. All of that is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. It’s a system trying to maintain what it considers as equilibrium. It’s the nature of the world – if we weren’t in control, someone else would be. You and I have been massive beneficiaries of that system. You may not like how the sausage is made, but most people don’t complain about how good it tastes (sorry vegans). There’s a reason a million people a year are streaming illegally across our borders.

So, here’s what’s interesting. Despite the States never ending efforts to prevent you from seeing the sausage making process and maintain what it considers the status quo… we have just enough freedom to question things without fear of the Stasi showing up in the middle of the night and disappearing you (mostly). Recently, the fourth generation of the internet, coupled with Moores law, has enabled the population to share pesky, unpopular, information outside of the mainstream press at a level and speed never before imagined.

We’ve seen it in fits and starts. Alternative, fringe, conspiracy blogs. The Drudge Report (early days). Alex Jones. But now… now we’re seeing non-traditional views carve out a sizable chunk of the mainstream information landscape. I’d argue Joe Rogan was the pioneer. A source of information and views from every side of the spectrum. Uncensored and fed to a massive audience. It’s fair to say he spawned the podcast revolution. More recently, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter further changed the information landscape. A sudden, shocking dismantling of what was a government influenced censorship tool, to something that has quickly evolved into what looks like a true public square of discourse.

You may not like the discourse – but it’s hard to argue against it being much closer to multiple sides freely shouting whatever they think is the truth (or whatever version of the truth they want to push). I want you to be able to scream whatever cockamamie theory you have at the top of your lungs. What I don’t want is a Ministry of Truth deciding what truth I get to hear.

And now we have the climactic moment of this film. A recent grand trifecta of events. First up is Tucker Carlson. Fox fires him. He quickly starts a new “show” on Twitter. Now you may not like him or anything he says. But his first episode has 110 million views. His just released second episode is at 30+ million views in the first nine hours. Fox News, the highest rated cable show for years, rarely hit more than 2.8 million views for any show. That’s a staggering difference in reach.

Next the FBI just released, under threat of a congressional contempt order, info about allegations that indicate President Biden took a 5-million-dollar bribe from Ukraine. Prior to the new Twitter, that would have been memory holed out of existence instantly (see Hunter Biden laptop). And finally, cough, cough, coincidentally on the same day as that FBI release, former president Trump and the current leading presidential candidate, was indicted for the same thing Hillary and Biden did (possessing classified documents). Hmmm nobody’s above the law, right? The avalanche of online outrage right now is at a level I haven’t seen before.

So what’s my point? I don’t care if you do or don’t agree with Tucker, Trump, DNC, RNC, Elon Musk, the FBI, or the DOJ. Up until this point the State has been able to exert enormous pressure to control the narrative. That dam has been breached. Tucker’s new platform signals the official end of the mainstream media as the primary information source for millions upon millions of people. Tucker and/or his new platform may or may not survive, but it’s a clear sign we no longer have to rely exclusively upon the various news talking heads to feed us the official party line.

The State, and the mainstream media, have pushed the scale of information control so far out of whack, something is going to happen. A very large portion of the population are angry. They’re tired of a narrative being forced upon them. They’re tired of being lied to. I think we’re about to see an absolute flood of information reach the population that is different than what they’ve been told. An angry populace is craving to hear something closer to the truth. You are about to see the field of “non-traditional” journalists explode. Thousands of people jockeying to leak the latest bit of government overreach and corporate manipulation without fear of censorship.

Truth, rumor, scandal, targeted misinformation – all of it is going to be sucked up by millions of people craving something closer to the truth like a dry sponge in a glass of water.

An angry, unsettled population is a dangerous population. The more details about how the sausage is made are made public, the more there will be shouting for accountability and lashing out in frustration. And the more unsettled the population becomes, the more likely it is for the State to crack down. The State will not give up its power and control without a fight. And that my friends, is a recipe for scary times. There might be one or two historical precedents for such scenarios if you wanted to look.

Part of me craves the idyllic 80’s and 90’s of my youth. Oh, the same crap went on behind the scenes… we were just mostly oblivious to it. If Ted Koppel or Dan Rather didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. But now – as the famous saying goes, do you want the blue pill and wake up happy in your bed, or do you want the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Nature craves equilibrium. People are slowly waking up to how unfairly the game is rigged. A whole lot of folks are about to take the red pill for the first time. For good or bad, the scale will eventually find a way to swing the other way.

Let’s just hope we don’t overcorrect.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

Are You Better Off?

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon on Facebook. I had to put up with about five plus years of non-stop wailing and gnashing of teeth when the bad orange man was running, in office, and immediately post-election (INSURRECTION!). Virtually every day one of the liberal/democratic folks on my feed would post something about how horrible Trump was and/or how ashamed of the country they were. Day after day. Every word he uttered or tweeted was mocked and pointed to as an example of disaster and impending doom. If you engaged with or disagreed with these folks, you were quickly shouted down as a MAGA loving, xenophobic, right-wing extremist.

But the last year… radio silence. Crickets chirping. Oh, there were a few things posted after the Roe decision and the start of the Ukraine war but for the most part very little political content shows up. Why is that? Inflation hit 9.1% today (probably more like 12%-15% realistically). Not a single mention of it from the left leaning side of my feed. Isn’t that curious? Did the entire left suddenly decide they were no longer interested in politics?

Let me ask an honest question. If you trend more towards the left side of the spectrum, can you point to something the current administration has done that you’d consider a success? What have they done that’s gone well? Are you better off now than you were during the previous administration?

I’m doing my best to be objective, but I can’t point to one thing the administration has done that has moved the country in a better direction. Not one. Literally every single thing that affects the average person in this country has gotten worse. The economy, prices, supply chain, the border… it’s all bad. And don’t get me started on global/foreign engagements. This administration is, to be blunt, a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Mrs. Troutdog actually asked the other day if we should stock up on food due to the looming food shortages. It now costs me $130 bucks to fill up my truck. Replacement parts for the motorcycle and some construction materials either can’t be found or are on indefinite backorder. The market and our retirement account have taken a hit that will take years to crawl back from. Is this really Build Back Better?

My point is not to claim the right side of the isle is better. 90% of them are as useless as tits on a bull. The bulk of the left and right are a giant uni-party. While I liked many of the things the bad orange man “said”, he was a horrible judge of character whose massive ego led him to spending most of his time in petty twitter spats rather than following through with campaign promises (see, border wall). When the R’s take back congress, I have little faith anything of substance will change. More arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

So, the point… if you were one of the left-leaning folks shit posting bad orange man memes as fast as you could go, why the silence now? Why aren’t you publicly praising the daily actions of the President? Is it that you’re now embarrassed by your political choice? There must be something you can point to and say, “whew, thank God Biden is President”. Isn’t there?

Maybe, just maybe, the takeaway from this period will be a realization that blind partisanship is stupid. Following your party like a lemming leads to… well, where we are today. A barely functioning grandpa propped up and controlled by unknown and unseen forces behind the curtains. But hey, no mean tweets right?

Now, more than ever, it’s time to join the church of Contrarianism. Become a Contrarian. Question everything. Dump your party loyalties. Trust me, they don’t care about you. It’s a hard thing to really examine your opinions, do some actual research, and admit you’ve been duped. It’s a little painful, but just ripping off the Band-Aid is really the best medicine.

Because if we don’t become an army of Contrarians soon… I fear the lemmings are going to reach the edge of the cliff sooner rather than later.

Confirmation bias

Why Is Everything So Complicated?

We are the generation of the soundbite. The Tweet. The meme. We consume our information in tiny little pieces. And most of the time, that’s probably just fine. I don’t need to have a deep understanding of the cattle futures market to decide if I can afford the rib-eye this week or only cube steak. The price is the price and I either have the quan or I don’t.

But every once in a while, big events happen that raise questions. Politicians and pundits jump on these events and start spewing one-liners and soundbites that reinforce their echo chambers. Pretty soon we’re in a full-scale soundbite and meme war that leaves everyone confused and angry. What’s the truth?

I was thinking about this as I read snarky Twitter comments about energy independence, buying Russian oil, and gas prices. Everyone has an answer. Because I’m a dork, I decided to do some light reading on the energy sector and politics. Whew – there is no such thing as “light reading” about this subject! It is a deep, deep rabbit hole. It is hard to describe how many moving parts and global players there are in the energy world.

There are a whole variety of types of crude oil, all coming from different places in the world, all used for different things. Much of the recent increases in our purchase of Russian crude are due to fallout from previous sanctions on other countries like Venezuela, hurricanes in the gulf, and African countries not being able to ramp up production after Covid. We import foreign crude to the East and West coast because we lack the domestic infrastructure to transport our own oil. It’s actually cheaper to purchase non-US crude, than it is to send US crude to the East and West coast from the Midwest or gulf. We often purchase Russian (and other) crude because it has a higher sulfur content than US crude, which is needed for some specific refining processes. The worldwide crude oil market is a very interdependent and complex system. Even when we declared we were “energy independent”, that is a fuzzy interpretation with many moving parts that changed from month to month. We’d offset US products produced from crude and sold, against crude imports and for some quarters and depending upon what the meaning of “is”, is, we’d declare we had greater net exports vs. imports.

This led me to the issue of the current administration shutting down oil and gas leases. Come on, man – drill baby, drill! Well, they did attempt to put a moratorium on new leases in some areas. The courts shut that down. And currently… the Biden administration has outpaced the Trump administration in issuing drilling permits on public lands. Wait, wut? For example, just last fall the Biden admin completed the largest oil and gas lease in US history – 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Sigh, I’m so confused.

What’s my point? I don’t care what the Fox, CNN, or Twitter pundit says… virtually every issue you’d like to discuss is infinitely more complex than you think it is. Nothing is black and white, yes or no. It takes years for industry and policy experts to develop a real understanding of their domain. I did a tiny bit of reading this morning beyond Twitter, and quickly realized I know absolutely zero about the energy sector. It has tentacles in transportation, logistics, commodity markets, politics, money supply, production, jobs, and on and on. I think it would take at least a semester equivalent class to have at least a beginners grasp on the entirety of the market. And I think that holds true for most things in life. Geopolitics, military strategy, history, everything…

All of which is to reinforce my standard saying… Question everything. Be a Contrarian. It’s ok to endorse the Left or Right’s approach to the world. Just don’t do it blindly. They’re both equal manipulators of the narrative. And under the surface, things are often more complex than you realize.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple

Oscar Wilde
Government, Politics

Shuffle The Deck

Enjoying the clown show? It might almost be funny to sit back and watch this administration flail about if the consequences weren’t so dire. I do not underestimate the ability of these clowns to blunder us into an actual, serious armed conflict involving U.S. forces. Now don’t think I’m just blaming the democrats for where we’re at. It’s taken decades of incompetence, grift, and arrogance from both parties to get to this point. And along the way, we’ve managed to create a fourth branch of government that is unelected, unsupervised, and unchecked – the Federal Bureaucracy. a.k.a. the deep state.

As the old saying goes, while Putin and Xi are playing 3D chess, we’re playing checkers. Well, to be fair this administration is playing tic-tac-toe. Russia and China plan the long game. We plan for the latest news cycle. The EU worshiped at the Church of Climate Change. They now need Russia’s oil and gas. Germany is fully in bed with Russia. You’ll notice that Europe is doing virtually nothing about all this. Putin correctly judged that our economy is in trouble and we’re too busy arguing over pronouns and which bridges are the most racist. In all likelihood the sanctions will end up hurting us more than Russia. We’ll do nothing (hopefully), and he knew it. Game, set, match. Russia will now have a heavily defended buffer zone against NATO. Meanwhile, the US spent billions trying to set up yet another puppet state in the name of “democracy” that failed. Sound familiar? It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. How come we never learn? Since WWII, we have failed at every single foreign policy intervention we’ve attempted. All at the cost of trillions and thousands upon thousands of lives. And yet we continue to listen to the same foreign policy “experts”.

And now we’re at the brink of a serious inflection point. I’m honestly surprised that China hasn’t moved on Taiwan yet. That’s the big test. What would we do? Are we going to get into a shooting war with China? I’m pretty sure that won’t go well. I’m sorry if I sound skeptical, but the same people who planned the Afghan withdraw, fired SOF folks for refusing the jab, and seem more worried about white rage and DEI in the military, are still in charge. It’s ok though, just like with every conflict, the UN will write a strongly worded letter.

So, what are we to do? Create a new, third party like Andrew Yang thinks? Term limits? I think term limits absolutely needs to be a part of any change. The corruption and self-interest in Washington (and state politics) is endemic. These people are dug in like ticks on a hound. If we have any hope of staving off our total demise, we need to start getting rid of the political establishment. But how do you get someone to vote for something that’s not in their self-interest?

It’s time to shuffle the deck. How? VOTE THEM OUT. Who? ALL OF THEM. Every single one of them. Both parties. Regardless of party, choose someone new. Do not re-elect the same clown. Everyone gets primaried. Even if the same clown gets re-elected, make them fight for it. Demand accountability. And next election cycle – do it again. We need to keep shuffling the deck until we get the hand we want.

Is that realistic? Nope. Is it going to happen? Nope. As negative as that sounds, I do see a tiny sliver of hope. There is a sense of frustration in the country. People are getting tired of the authoritarians. They’re pushing back against CRT and mask mandates, and censorship. At the moment, it looks like the next election cycle will be a bloodbath for the left. Will the right do something with it, or revert to politics as usual? If the new congress starts behaving like representatives of the people, AND, if we elect an actual leader (no, not Trump) with the next presidential cycle… there’s a small chance we can start to right the ship.

I give it a 10% chance. I fear that it’s probably already too late. History shows that once you start that downslide, it’s pretty hard to fight momentum. Realistically it’s not an issue for my generation – this will be for the next generation to live with. Unfortunately, this new generation aren’t much for learning from history. Because, like, you know, history is all racist or something.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

 Upton Sinclair

Government, Health

Let’s Go Brandon

“Let’s Go Brandon!” It’s currently trending on twitter. I think it’s hilarious and an absolutely perfect representation of where we’re currently at as a country. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, stop being selfish and get yo’self plugged into the social medias. ‘Cause you ain’t gunna hear this reported in the mainstream news. Anyway… if you’ve watched any large sporting event in the last few weeks, a curious event has been taking place. The crowds, tens of thousands strong, have been erupting into long chants. And what are they chanting? “Fuck Joe Biden!”.

Pro sports, college sports, doesn’t seem to matter. Once started, chants go on for quite a while. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before for a sitting president. Not once, not twice, but every single weekend at multiple events. It seems to be gaining momentum.

What’s this have to do with Brandon? At a recent NASCAR race, driver Brandon Brown won. As he was being interviewed, the crowd in the stadium broke out in an enthusiastic Fuck Joe Biden chant. The NBC reporter tried to cover for the expletive filled chant by saying “As you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon’,” she said. LOL

I think it sums up perfectly the current mood. Literally everything this administration has done or touched has been an unmitigated disaster from day one. And it’s getting harder and harder to cover for the continuing errors, missteps, poor decisions, and incompetence. Each attempt to explain away the disaster of the day is more and more doublespeak, deflection, and finger pointing.

So “Let’s Go Brandon” perfectly fits. Of course that’s what the crowd was chanting. And if you don’t believe it, then you are clearly part of the right wing disinformation machine. And you probably watch Fox News.

Meanwhile, my digital scale indicated that I’d lost a significant amount of weight. Far more weight than the previous scale. I reject any characterization of the number displayed as being inaccurate. I’m not going to get into the technical details of the scale, I’ll refer you to the manufacture for that. I don’t want to get too far ahead of the data. Perhaps we should circle back on the topic. With this tremendous weight loss, all indications are that I can clearly afford to eat nachos tonight. Besides, I went for a run yesterday which means the calories are paid for so the net caloric cost is zero. Works for me. Let’s Go Brandon!

Government, Health, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

I Want The Data

A short one today. The local hardware store in our little town just reimplemented a mask mandate to shop there. The city council is contemplating reinstating the city-wide mask mandate. I’m sure cities across the country are evaluating the same thing with the new delta (sshhh, don’t mention the country) variant of the virus which shall not be named.

For roughly a year every city, county, state, and federal public health office has been collecting extensive data on Covid cases. We know exactly how many new cases we had for every single day in every corner of the country (and world). Every single person in the country has seen multiple instances of the bell-shaped curve graphs showing the current state of Covid case counts.

So here’s my question – with all that data it should be very simple to show a strong correlation between the implementation of a mask mandate and the reduction of case counts, right? The entire point of the mask (as we’ve heard ad nauseum) is that they protect you and others from transmission of the virus. So, across the country the data should easily show the date of a mask mandate and shortly afterwards case counts dropping. Seems like simple science, no?

I have yet to see any data that shows a mask mandate having any impact whatsoever on case counts in any part of the country. Have you? Don’t you think the powers that be would be hammering the news talking heads every night with these charts to prove how effective their mask mandates were? Instead, the CDC’s strongest case for masks seems to be a report on two hairstylists who were positive and saw a bunch of clients. They all wore masks and nobody else was infected. So there you go – based upon two hairstylists, we all have to wear a mask.

We’ve had a real world, year long experiment with extensive amounts of data. Before you force me to wear the damn mouth diaper again, I want to see the data. Not theory, not anecdotes from hairstylists or isolated lab experiments attempting to measure droplet velocities. We know the date we started wearing the damn masks. Can you correlate a drop in case counts afterwards? It doesn’t seem like a hard question, does it?

Cool, Daily Life, Politics

Radio Silence
  • As we traveled through the Trump years, there was always one constant. A never ending social media stream of negative comments, snarky one-liners, memes, linked articles, and virtue signaling over how horrible the former president and anyone associated with him was. I rarely checked Facebook because it was always an avalanche of negativity and Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) postings. It was truly toxic at times. Here’s the part I find curious. Now that Trumps out and Biden is in, I’d have thought we’d start seeing a flood of positive posts bragging about how much better, more competent, and smarter this new administration is. I was expecting a deluge of self-righteous gloating over how superior the Biden team is at handling the reigns of power. For God’s sake, we finally have a woman of color as vice president – her deft political skills should be trumpeted at every opportunity! But… nothing. Complete radio silence. I don’t think I’ve seen a single post praising anything the Biden administration has done from my friends on the left. I find it puzzling. Where is the vigorous defense and support of Biden from the left-leaning members of the public? Y’all were screeching like scalded cats for four plus years at the mere mention of the bad orange man. Why the sudden lack of interest in politics? It’s an interesting phenomenon. I will admit, I find it refreshing to not be bombarded with TDS every time I open up Facebook. It’s mostly returned to what I think it’s original purpose is – keeping up with day to day remote family and friend events and happenings. Oh, and never ending password phishing schemes masquerading as fun quizzes and questionnaires.
  • The last few days I’ve had the all-time worst (or at least in the top three) patient you could experience. A truly vile and horrible human being. Never ending berating, screaming at, and cursing every staff member who went in the room. Crying, manipulating, tantrums. Non stop accusations that she was being tortured, abused, and being denied her rights. At least one staff member was reduced to tears after one of her tirades. It’s overwhelmingly mentally exhausting to deal with that for twelve hours. I drove home last night wondering how someone could have turned into such a miserable person. What a waste of a life.
  • It was dumping snow a few days ago. It’s now nearly a hundred degrees. Must be due to climate change.
  • I spent way too much time this morning going through this list of lists. I was looking for a list of the Game of Thrones characters. We started re-watching the series and I’d forgotten how complex and convoluted (at times) the story lines could be. I didn’t find my list because I got side tracked by all the other lists.
  • I took a pretty good picture of a tree the other day. I’m proud of it, not because it’s anything special, but because it helped remind me that good pictures come from putting yourself in a position to take good pictures. I trudged up this hill in full motorcycle gear and crested the top only to be greeted by at least 30 school age kids on some sort of field trip. I was going to head back down since there was no way to get a picture without at least two of the kids being in the frame at any given time. For some reason, I decided to wait. I milled about and helped take pictures for several tourist couples. Suddenly, the crowd all started back down the hill. I ran over to the spot I’d been looking at and took a few pictures of the tree just as some rain started falling in the background. I had the spot to myself for about two minutes before a new crowd swarmed the hill. The storm blew out about 15 minutes later and the skies went clear. A few moments of patience (rare for me) paid off. Lesson learned.

Song of the day: B52’s – Private Idaho

Daily Life, Government, Lists, Politics, Solving the wrong problem, Travel

The Ex Post Facto Study
  • As humans, we really like passing new laws, creating processes and procedures, and establishing new rules to solve the problems we’re experiencing. What we don’t do a very good job of is any sort of analysis of our newly created bureaucracy to see if it actually did anything useful. Laws and processes, once created, tend to stick around forever. For example at the start of the pandemic that shall not be named for fear of woke xenophobia, my hospital started a screening process for anyone entering. They purchased fancy stand alone scanners that let me scan my badge and take my temperature. I never use it because I have to log into it the night before (a software system the hospital had to purchase), answer the same stupid four questions, and then the next morning my temperature never registers with the automated machine because I just walked across the parking lot in 40 degree temps. The backup to the automated station is an employee who asks the questions, manually checks my temp (which still fails), and then gives me a sticker to put on my badge to “prove” I’ve been screened that day. When the ‘rona started everyone was panicking and I’m sure this process seemed reasonable at the time. It’s been in place for quite awhile now, so a retrospective study seems appropriate. Has this system actually “caught” any cases of Corona? I doubt it. How many people with 104 degree temps and difficulty breathing actually go to work or randomly show up to visit aunt Sally in the hospital? Or, they are asymptomatic and would have passed the screening anyway. Naturally the in-person screeners are only going through the motions at this point. I walk up say “no changes”, they try to scan my temp for 0.2 seconds, I grab my sticker and go. So in retrospective, is it worth continuing this? What made me think of this was something Grandpa Joe said during his weird state of the union speech last night. He dredged up the standard we need more gun laws rhetoric, saying we need to ban ghost guns and pass universal background checks. Ignoring what drivel that is for the moment, this seems like a prime opportunity for a retrospective study. We have tons of historical data in the form of crimes committed with guns. If we looked backwards and applied the new proposed laws, how many of those crimes would have been prevented? e.g. how many shootings have occurred with “ghost guns”? How many people went through some sort of firearm purchase at a flea market or gun show, bypassed a background check, and then went on to commit a crime? It seems pretty simple to look backwards to see if something would work moving forward. But that assumes you actually want the answer.
  • Spell check is a wonderous thing. Without it my writing would look like a five year old’s. Spell check elevates it to at least sixth or seventh grade. But the problem with spell check is you have to be roughly in the ballpark for it to give a suggestion. Take for example “bureaucracy”. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it right first time. Unfortunately I never even get close enough for spell check to offer a helpful hint. I end up Googling things to stumble across the right spelling. Which brings me to my new phone. I like using the “swype” keyboard rather than entering in individual letters. The default swype implementation on the old Pixel phone was marvelous. I only had to get semi-close to the actual letters and it somehow knew what I was trying to type. It often had the correct contextual suggestions for the next word and the next word… magical. Samsung’s implementation on the other hand is very disappointing and more often than not I have to go back and type everything out. Sigh. I know you can download other swype keyboards, but that would take actual effort.
  • I violated my newly vowed rule to simply pay a professional to install things rather than me spending 10x the amount of time to do the same thing. I got some parts for the new ginormous motorcycle but the idea of waiting for an appointment and then paying someone $75 an hour to do what I should be able to do just killed me. And sure enough… two and a half full afternoons, many expletives, phone calls to customer support, and two new one-time use tools and everything is installed. But at least I feel good about my manliness. Cue Tim the toolman grunt.
  • This past weekend was very rainy and outdoor stuff wasn’t an option. I was bored and decided to conduct research and do an actual experiment. I’ve been needing a navigation solution (long story) for the backcountry while on the motorcycle. I wanted to use my phone rather than purchase a $600+ GPS device. I ended up spending the better part of a day researching options, downloading software, creating routes and maps, and really learning the systems. And the pièce de résistance, I created three custom routes and then went out and drove them to see which system performed the best. An actual experiment. I am a dork of huge proportions. But, at the end of the day I think I have a system that’s going to work.
  • I don’t think there’s much to say about the weird state of the union last night. Grandpa Joe is not a gifted orator. For all his flaws and ignoring content, Obama could deliver a good speech (as long as the teleprompter was working). Clinton too. For speechmaking ability I’d rank the presidents in the following order: Obama, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43, Bush 41, Biden. As far as content goes, all SOTU speeches are stupid. They’re long whish lists of crap that never gets done. If you’re a fan of everything big government, you loved Biden’s speech. If you’re a minimalist government type, it was abhorrent. I don’t think there was much in the middle for this one.
  • I’m going to ride the ginormous motorcycle a fair number of hours north today, then come back on Saturday. Sort of a pre-travel trial run. I’m waiting for my soft luggage panniers to arrive and then all the pieces will be in place to hit the road! Interesting how much effort, planning, and research it’s taken to be able to experience the “freedom” of the road. LOL.

Song of the day: Sugar Ray Fly 1997

Government, Politics

Weekend At Bernie’s

Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. I don’t care what you thought of them personally. I don’t care what you thought of their policies or political bent. What is undisputable is that all of these men were leaders. Type A CEO’s. When they came into a room it was clear who was in charge. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Grandpa Joe falls into that same category. Yesterday’s press conference was an embarrassment. The few answers he actually gave he read directly from prepared notes given to him. When he tried to speak extemporaneously he wandered off on tangents and lost track of what he was saying or what point he was trying to make. The hand picked press core (complete with a handy dandy cheat sheet. With pictures!) were complicit in this farce by lobbing a few softballs at him. A stark difference from a Trump press conference. I have two thoughts about this disaster.

The first is an observation about the reaction on social media and by the press. I have a fair number of links to fairly liberal folks on social media. The last year (and more) my feeds have been inundated with a non-stop barrage of Orange Man Bad postings. Daily I’d see postings from various friends lamenting the outrage of the day that Trump had committed and dear god will we ever return to a time when we had a “real” president? Well… that time, in theory, is now. And what do I see on my social medias? Nothing. Crickets. Radio silence. I expected to see never ending, nausea inducing, praise of how eloquent, smart, and serious a president Biden is. I was sure I’d see non-stop memes comparing how well Biden is doing vs Trump. There’s nothing. It’s refreshing, but I find it odd the folks so desperate for him to win are so quiet. CNN, as of this morning, did not have a single story about the press conference on the top of their site. I find that strange. Where are all the liberals singing the daily praise of Biden?

My second thought is one I’ve posited before. Given that Grandpa Joe is clearly not in charge, who is? Who’s really running the show at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? It’s not Kamala, she came to the game late and was selected by whoever’s in charge. Is it Klain the chief of staff? That would make the most sense since he was a long time “senior advisor” during the campaign. Is it Susan Rice? Perhaps it’s a coalition of them plus the DNC brass and Obama in the background? Doesn’t it seem like something the public should know?

Independent of “who’s in charge” I do find in odd that there’s almost zero coverage of the overall White House staff and cabinet. During the Trump administration there was wall to wall coverage of virtually every member of the administration and how evil/incompetent/racist/etc… they were. Many in the administration were household names. Now, I’d wager that many of you had never heard the name Klain or even knew that Susan Rice was part of the administration. I bet, until the China meeting gone bad, you had no idea who the new Secretary of State was. Why is that? The only reporting seems to be around the edges, mostly centered on the diversity aspect of some rarely seen cabinet post.

No, I don’t think it’s some giant conspiracy. I simply think it’s a press corps that’s reluctant to give negative coverage to team Biden. They tread carefully around the edges and don’t press too hard so they can tell themselves they’re providing fair and equal coverage. Maybe that’s for the best. If the majority of the public loses confidence in their government, bad things tend to happen. The most worrisome part of this, in my opinion, is that world leaders respond to strength and confidence. They will take advantage and exploit any signs of weakness, as bullies and strong nations are prone to do. We will be tested. Who is going to make the decisions about how we respond? Two months in and this administration has been already been steamrolled and/or thrown shade by China, Russia, North Korea, and Mexico. We finally wheeled out our President in an attempt to show he’s mentally sharp and in command. What came across is that he’s a confused old man who clearly does not belong there. This does not bode well. The next four years do not fill me with confidence. But hey, at least we will have sorted out the proper pronouns and saved the climate!