Something is rotten in Denmark

 Today is Saturday, the 19th of November.  The general election was the 8th.  Yesterday I read somewhere that “the Republicans had gained control of the House.”  Apparently there were several races around the country that were still being tallied. Among these was the race in Colorado for Representative Boebert’s seat. Surprisingly there is no court filing from the challenger.

A Red Wave was predicted, and I think one occurred. Look at Florida. The state of Florida restricts vote by mail to ten days prior to the election.  Drop boxes are also restricted. Third party organizations are restricted from registering voters. There are no same-day voter registrations.  Everything that was placed in effect in so many states during the campaign of 2020, is restricted in Florida. 

Florida made strides toward securing the election.  Florida had a red wave. Other states did not make any effort toward securing elections. Other states did not have the wave. 

All the poling prior to the midterm indicated that Republicans were going to have a landslide in the House and were favored to take the Senate.  They did not take the Senate and have one of the slimmest majorities in the House in the history of the country.  

How is this possible? Voting machines are used in every district in the country. Outside of a few remote villages in Alaska, why aren’t these results known within a tiny fraction of a percent in just a few hours? Reporters exhilarated over the continued counting, “the (Democrat) continues to close the gap…” This, after days of counting and no mathematical possibility of victory. Even here in Kansas, the race for Attorney General should have been called far earlier than it was, all because the Democrat was moderately close.  I don’t even think it was within a margin of error, though it would have been within a margin of fraud (if it had been a race worth noticing outside of Kansas). 

This nonsense started with the first "motor voter" laws.  Simply enough, you could register to vote when you got your driver's license renewed.  The problem is that not all who have driver's licenses are eligible to vote.  States issue those to both legal and illegal aliens. Anyway, this passed as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and things have pretty much gone downhill since.  The left fights any attempt to secure the elections, including purging voter rolls. And don't mention requiring identification. Here are a few things identification is required to do: open a bank account, apply for a credit card, cash a check, drive a car, get on a plane, get a passport, buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, buy a gun, get on a military post, apply for benefits, write a check in a store, use a credit card in a store (at least when the cashier cares enough to ask). But somehow, requiring one in order to vote brings accusations of racism and Jim Crow. 

The only rational reason to NOT tighten up the security of the vote is to make cheating (aka FRAUD) easier.

This is exactly why so many in the country no longer trust the elections. 

Uncertainty

 Seasons are turning...

It is mid October and autumn has arrived in full force her in Leavenworth along the  river. The last couple of weeks have witnessed the changing of the leaves, two hard freezes in the last two mornings, and the changing of the light.  There is a discrete change in sunlight this time of year.  Light appears dimmer and there is a different hue in the blue of the sky, foreshadowing the winter to come. I’ve always enjoyed the changing of the seasons and this one is no different. 

Other seasons change as well.  I don’t recall when I first looked in the mirror and saw my father looking back at me. But it does seem I resemble him a bit more every day, in appearance, if not personality. 

My father was a hard man. Born into poverty in the souther Appalachians of North Carolina at the very start of the depression, was the youngest in the family. Life was hard. Grandfather was a stone mason which supplemented the subsistence farming of corn and tobacco along the French Broad.  At fourteen, my father as he put it “had his growth in” and ran away to join the US Army. It was 1944. He was in for a while, until they caught up to him and sent him home.  A few years later he joined again and then stayed for a career.  Hard times make hard men.

However, it was the hard men of that generation that won the war and made for the good times after. The next couple generations did well and could always expect to do better than their parents. Today, I don’t know if that is still true. The communist hippies of the sixties ended up being the elder leaders of the country today. In fact the Democrats of today are little more than communists themselves.  Their party promotes economic envy and racial division, and worship of an all powerful State. Not to mention their unfathomable, absolute disconnection from reality about gender.  

Yesterday I listened to a clip of LGB on the radio. I have no idea what he might have been talking about. I’m not certain he knew. What words he spoke were slurred and not connected in any coherent fashion. He seriously sounded like some of the clients I worked with thirty years ago who were afflicted with serious mental illnesses. There are so many examples of this available on the internet I will not go into them here.  The point is, this is supposed to be the Leader of the Free World, as the position was called in the Cold War. How did this...idiot...end up in charge of the military and executive branch? Someday, I hope to read an insider’s account and see just how far gone he is.

The point is, with this guy nominally in charge, we are not better off as a nation. Inflation is running at 8% or so. Their answer: spend more.  An invasion of illegal aliens across the border. Their answer: “the border is secure” (and spend more). Fighting a proxy war with Russia whose leader now threatens the use of nuclear weapons? Well, I haven’t heard an answer for that.  But spend more, and send weapons. 

The world is more dangerous and the country less safe. I want to think that my countrymen are up to the times ahead. But I am not convinced.

Hard times are coming again. 

Prepare.

Another Early Morning

October 12

It seems to have been particularly difficult coming off this last work cycle.  Even with a four day weekend attached to the end of it.  It is almost 3:30 a.m. I managed to slip out of bed without waking Household-6.  As I write this a mild thunderstorm is rolling through the Leavenworth area, a window open to better listen to it. 

There is a stillness in these early mornings which I enjoy, but many do not understand.  In a way, it is even more still as the cable modem is indicating an outage.  Too often this would be prompting me to try and troubleshoot the problems (well I did unplug it, wait, and plug it back in), but not this morning.  It is better to avoid the cacophony of the Facebook and the outrage of the polemics, at least for the moment. 

Recently I heard a new term: Doomscrolling. As I understand it, the reader scrolls through articles written by thousands of Chicken Littles, and finds it difficult to stop. Perhaps Chicken Little is a bit unfair, but these are both on the political Right and Left. The reader ends up going down the rabbit hole soaking up more and more Doom! 

 I think it may be especially for users of social media accounts who go on to create their own echo chambers, never allowing themselves to hear an opposing thought.  Many who do hear one, immediately scream racism, intolerance, hate, (and don’t forget the phobias!), and go on to block those who have offended. How do you learn to think that way?

Vicodin Brain Fog Musings

 How old is too old?

I think lately I’ve been feeling my mortality. An underlying anxiety about the future and my place in it. Concerns of taking care of aging parents and my wife. Of course the political polarization since the 2000 election hasn’t helped much. Now we have rising Fed interest rates, simply out of control spending, rampant inflation, border crises, politicizing the DoJ to pursue political enemies, and a POTUS with dementia who got lost three times on stage last week.  But this week, I think this feeling was brought to the foreground by the death of an acquaintance I’d only met once. 

Early in the double-00s, I began running again. To supplement this I joined an online running forum hosted by the venerable “Runner’s World” magazine. Several years later this group moved to a private server, which is now defunct. I got to know a number of members in person and have made some friends there. It was a pretty tight knit community.

One of the members, Tim O’Brien, I met at a trail race in Georgia. The Twisted Ankle, which was organized by Becky Finger as a fundraiser for The Sloppy Floyd State Park. The first year was 2005 and only a handful attended. I think I met Tim in 2010, when we shared a cabin. Didn’t get to know him well that weekend, but over the years through Facebook, we became somewhat well acquainted. 

Tim was, to my reckoning, a fairly soft spoken man. Dedicated to his wife and children. And he was a dedicated runner. Hard core, any weather. He was also a semi-competitive runner at Boston. Online he was kind and encouraging. He’d had some tragedy in his life.  His wife committed suicide a number of years ago. He married a young widow who he met through a widow/widower support group and ended up with five children (three his and two step).

I went looking for Tim on Facebook a couple weeks ago, I don’t remember why. It was shocking to find his obituary. Last November, either during or right after a race, Tim had a heart attack and died immediately. He was only 50 years old, rather unusual for a man of his athletic ability and age.  I will not speculate as to the cause of the heart attack, vis-a-vis vaccinations, that is not my purpose here. 

Tim was seven years younger than me. I guess today, I’m thinking of a few people I’ve known from high school who have passed.  Steve Jay, 54, cancer. Tony Luyet, 39, aneurysm. Larry Schlesselman, (47), suicide. Terry Borman (19), motorcycle. All younger than me, though the same age at death. 

Perhaps what is bothering me is a loss of a sense of purpose.  I think I used to have one, but it seems to have been lost by the wayside and I do not recall what it was. I used to have somewhat of an academic bent, but that seems to have gone. What am I doing with my life and where should I go on from here? (Cue the BtVS musical). I have given thought to another advanced degree (probably history) but the ROI is not there at my age. I’ve wanted a small observatory, perhaps to make some small contribution, but that will require somewhere with fewer lights. I’ve thought of some English classes at the local university and possibly trying my hand at some writing. 

I joined the Writer Dojo (a FB group), which I thought would be for aspiring writers of various types. But it seems everyone is publishing or has published a half dozen books, minimum. I’m not certain that is for me.  And then, what would I write? Have I had appropriate experiences to weave into a believable story? Have I had a life worth living?  Well, yes, but is it one to create a fake life to write about?

Perhaps also driving these musings…I had a minor surgery today. Finally got a deviated septum repaired in the hopes of being able to more easily breathe.  Vicodin for pain.  The blood is seeping from my nostrils as much as the words are flowing. Is it the meds? Wasn’t Hemingway a lush? Is that the key?

What did I want?

“What did I want?

I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get you feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur–I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.

I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon.

I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be–instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.” 

– Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

Just Past the First Day of Summer

The problem with slow blogging, as I’ve been doing here, is that I forget where I was or where I want to go. I keep a handwritten journal also, which is primarily for me to refer to events at a particular date. 

The last couple of days have certainly been interesting.  

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion affirming the Second Amendment as an individual RIGHT, striking down the onerous concealed carry law in New York.  This effectively strikes down every “may issue” jurisdiction in the country.  

This was followed by calls from the left for dissolving the court (Leftist Keith Olberman).  The idiot Governor Hochul of New York said she was willing to “go back to muskets.”  What a tool! How has the education system failed so badly?  How do these morons get elected or in to positions of influence?

Today the Court issued an opinion effectively reversing Roe v. Wade. Good, it was bad law to begin with.  Maxine Waters, once again, is calling for violence on the steps of the court.  She sounds almost…insurrectiony… Why is she not in shackles? 

The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left is amazing.  And sweet. 

Will we have another summer like 2020? 

Weston Bluffs Trail Kona Rove

Sun trapped

 

Snownami?

 Two years into “15 days to flatten the curve,” COVID finally made an appearance at my home.  First Pam was a bit sick and then me a couple days later (now a week ago). Hopefully we got Mom out of the house in time.  We both came back positive on a PCR test, prompting a call from the State.  I called back and the person wanted me to help them fill out a form.  She had no good answer when I asked “Why do you think I want to help you do that?”  Statists gonna State. 

I’ve had cases of the flu—actual influenza—that were much, much worse.  A week later, I’m mostly just congested and extremely tired. Fortunately, we were able to have my sister pick up the elderly parent for a few days relocation. This could have been much worse.

We had snow overnight.  Originally forecast for 1-3 inches, there is over six in the back yard.  And it is coming down sideways, which is always nice. 

 

Fox 4 reported that this was a record snowfall for KCI.  Several places around the metro are reporting up to 10 inches. It appears to be all but over.  I really wish we’d had more of a winter this year, but Monday and Tuesday are forecast for the 60s.  Ah, well. 

Blue Springs Milk Cartons

 The local news just reported that today, the Blue Spring, Missouri school district went on “lockdown” for fear of “shots fired.”  The Blue Springs police responded. The news report did not say how long the lockdown lasted. Though I imagine it was probably several hours.

Apparently the “shots fired” was merely a milk carton popping. 

How have we come to this?

My father was a young man, really a boy, when he joined the Army in 1944. Underage, at 14 he had his “growth” in already as the Appalachian denizens would have put it.  He told me of changing his birth certificate with ink eradicator and enlisting.  Of course, he was discovered a year later and sent home, but that really isn’t the point.  

The World War 2 generation is only one removed from some of us.  I was born in 1965, so the first of Gen X, not really a Boomer, but I believe I think more like a Boomer.  One generation, possibly two, from the men that stormed Point du Hoc and fought in the Pacific at places like Pielelu and Iwo Jima. 

 A milk carton.

The late Rush Limbaugh referred to this type of cowardice as the “new castrati.”

I think he was right.

New Year

 January 1, 2022

I’m up early as I often am.  Usually I cannot stand to lay in bed for too long.  Over night a storm system moved into the area and there was a pretty steady sleet coming down earlier. We seem to be right on the edge of the ice-snow boundary, with accumulations increasing as you go north. (Well that seems obvious). Temperatures have already hit the high for today and will drop to below zero by morning. The Kansas City forecast for this area predicts three to six inches of snow on top of the accumulated ice. 

I sit here in the warmth enjoying fresh brewed cup of coffee.  I’ve no idea where the beans for my cup of “go juice” came from, South America? Africa? It occurs to me that the comforts that we take for granted in modern civilization are a fragile indeed. Thousands of people, huge sums of money, and expenditures of great energy were required to bring this simple cup to me this morning. 

Of course, it isn’t just the coffee. I look about my living room and consider what would be left if the technological clock were turned back a century or a bit more. Only two items would remain: an Antebellum armoire and a ceramic coffee cup. The existence of everything else, down to the sheetrock and paint, is dependent upon a complex network of economic and industrial forces. The bases of those two things is the dollar as reserve currency and oil as the engine of modern manufacturing. There is a hard push from the Left to change this.  I listen to people talk about a “green economy” and they have no idea what that means.  They have no understanding of physics or how the real world functions. Their goals appear to be driven by some sort of childlike magical thinking.

Just as the Lefty ideas of a green economy and cars running off of unicorn farts and fairy dust are a fantasy, so are the ridiculous ideas of total self-sufficiency of many survivalists. Even the Amish communities are not completely self-sufficient, though they get closer than any survivalist stockpiling five gallon gas cans with stabilizer added. I have no problem with the idea of preparedness—I do the best I can toward this. I do stock up on “beans, bullets, and band-aids,” as well as other things.  However, I’ve never lost sight of the fact that it is primarily a stop-gap measure for short term disaster or political and economic disruption as seen in 2020 and 2021.  I’ve followed a number of survivalist type writers for about twenty years now and I’ve never seen one say what to do once you’ve consumed the last can of beans. There is a reason that dystopian fiction portrays a 95% population loss.

Robert A. Heinlein, the acclaimed Dean of Science Fiction, wrote about the signs of a society in decline. High taxation, deficit spending, restriction of liberty, violence, Balkanization (though that term had not yet entered the lexicon), were all mentioned.  Additionally he included interpersonal rudeness in small matters. That is blatantly evident today, particularly online.  I would include a coarsening of the culture.  A moment ago an advertisement for a new TV show was on.  Apparently it centers around several middle aged women. One referred to another as a “Tik-Tok ho.”  The person did not see this as an insult, but something to which to aspire. How has this happened?  I think we may be well beyond the tipping point to the fall. 

I hope I’m wrong.