More Assorted Random Ramblings

Man…I’ll sure be glad when Neil and Connie hitch up ol’ Big Red to the rig and blow this popsicle stand…they ain’t really doing anything that remotely sounds like it meets the definition of Fun Stuff©…which means that ya keep getting random life and gross stupidity posts.

Anyway…lessee what’s happened since my last post. ‘Bout the only thing was that we went out to dinner with our friends Frank and Gail and Joe and Kay from the Elks…Friday night we went down to the Cape Coral lodge and had dinner with them. Then Saturday night it was Casino Night at our Fort Myers lodge…we sponsored a table which included tickets for 3 to the event, we gave the extra one to Frank so Gail only had to buy one for them to attend. We visited with them as well as with Wes and Carol…again more Elks friends, we’re all in the Lodge 2742 refugees group along with at least a dozen others who transferred from 2742 recently. We ate too much and Connie gambled while Neil sat around and talked. Connie did successfully bid on a nice silver necklace and earring set from the Silent Auction…and she won a bottle of wine in the Chinese Auction with her winnings from the slot machine and blackjack tables.

Neil’s continuing to crank away on our pre-departure list…he’ll be done in plenty of time at this rate. He’s got an appointment this week to get his new Navy retired ID card…his old one expires next month due to turning Medicare eligible so it’s a trip up to Tampa to the Air Force base there to get it done. Connie’s runs out in December so she will sign up for Medicare on September 1 and we’ll get her card once we get back here to North Fort Myers.

We got our awning fabric replaced as well as the seal on our bedroom A/C which had developed a leak.

Let’s see what else happened…lots of things in the news lately.

I guess ya saw that the State Attorney up in Chicago dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett…he’s still claiming he was the victim but he apparently forfeited his $10,000 bond and did 8 hours of voluntary community service…and the DA decided that dropping all the 16 felony charges…and then had the record sealed in an emergency court hearing. Turns out she didn’t actually recuse herself from the case as she announced 3 weeks back…her office issued a statement that said it was a colloquial recusement only. An actual recusement would have resulted in the requirement to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case…which means that she would have lost control of the investigation. She was in frequent text message contact throughout the investigation with Mr. Smollet’s family who “had concerns about the investigation”…and had a mysterious meeting/text/phone/call/something like that with Mrs. Obama’s former chief of staff.

After all of that…and despite the mountain of evidence the police collected…she decided that there were “problems with some of the evidence” and she “couldn’t guarantee a conviction”…so the only “just thing to do was drop the charges. She didn’t bother to either discuss it with or give a heads up to either the mayor or the police commissioner.

So apparently…Chicago is still as corrupt as it was back in the day…according to some reports the FBI is investigating the dismissal of the charges and I’m pretty sure they’re still investigating Mr. Smollet for mailing himself a threat through the mail with mysterious powder in it.

Michael Avenatti…he of Christine Blasey-Ford and Stormy Daniels lawyer fame…he got himself arrested by the Feds for trying to extort $20 million from Nike…guess he’ll be in jail since they have him on wiretap.

AOC…well, she almost did the right thing this week…but then had to ruin the effect. She was on an MSNBC Town Hall earlier this week discussing her Green New Deal…when one of the audience members called a former Republican member of the House a moron during a discussion about whether the Green New Deal could be adopted and signed into law during a single Congressional session and whether it was even possible to achieve the 10 year mandate in the plan. The good thing was that she immediately jumped on the audience member and told him that language like that was unacceptable. So she got some points for being reasonable there…but then went ahead and lost those points when she followed up with “And that’s the difference between me and Trump.” Then she went on and talked about how opponents of her Green New Deal were “making total fools of themselves” by criticizing her proposal. She’s also proclaimed that the recent vote in the house to consider the deal…which was voted against by all Republicans and 4 Democrats but all the other Democrats just voted present…represents a great victory for the plan as it shows that the Republicans are climate change deniers and don’t care about people. Nah…they just realize that (a) it’s not possible to fix it in 10 years in any event, (b) many of her ideas are not scientifically possible anyway, and (c) unless we involve the entire world then all that would result is the bankruptcy of the US and it’s economy as China, India, and Brazil aren’t participating in her deal…so even if the US cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions to zero that would only delay her “in 12 years the world will end because of climate change” by a couple of months.

One positive example…and I can’t really believe I would ever say this about either the wildly conservative Tucker Carlson or the wildly liberal Tulsi Gabbard…anyway she’s one of the many Democrats running for President but unfortunately she doesn’t toe the socialist line quite firmly enough for those on the far left…so they’re criticizing her. Mr. Carlson said on a recent show “If you don’t like her foreign policy views, let’s just say so. But no one ever really wants to debate what our foreign policy should be. They just attack anyone who deviates from their own dumb ideas.” In other words…he’s saying they’re wrong for refusing to debate the issues with her but just attack anybody who disagrees. I think what really irritated the other socialists was her statement that now that the Mueller report has been released and there is no collusion…which if you’ll recall from last time isn’t illegal anyway but most Democrats aren’t interesting in letting that stop them as their chief goal here is to undo the 2016 election…that the Democrats need to just sit down, shut up, and do what they were elected to do instead of demanding more investigations. Me…I don’t think all that much of most of her positions…but sitting down and trying to work with the other side rather than obstructing sounds like a so much better idea…mebbe our congress critters should try it.

Speaking of the Mueller report…the AG and Deputy AG are currently reviewing it and redacting material that…by law…in fact by law that was voted on and signed into law by Democratic administration…is required to be redacted. No matter though…even though they’re not done yet and the report hadn’t been released the Democratic leadership in Congress has already seized on the proven obstruction of justice in the report. They’ve demanded the full report be released…unredacted…by April 2…even though their demand would require the Justice department to violate federal law. Now as I said before…I have no idea what the report says…BECAUSE IT”S NOT BEEN RELEASED YET…but those who haven’t seen it, don’t know what the AG is redacting, haven’t read or understood applicable federal law, and have political axes to grind have conclusively stated that the President is guilty.

Frankly I think they would be a lot better off by…instead of pandering to the socialist ultra-liberal fringes of the party…to find a more centrist mainstream candidate to run against the President in 2020 and try to win on the issues. I don’t see how any of the announced candidates can possibly win a national election in what is still a center-right country.

In other Democratic Presidential nomination news…Joe Biden, who isn’t even officially running at this point…anyway he’s the leader in the polls by far and is being described as the “mainstream” candidate…even though he’s not really mainstream, he’s pretty liberal but he’s like the Tea Party compared to Sanders/AOC and the other socialists in the race. So naturally…since he’s ahead…he’s now been #metoo’ed…he’s been accused by a former Nevada legislature member of inappropriate behavior by “hugging her and kissing her on top of the head…and get this…it was 5 years ago and amazingly enough nobody else that was there recalls seeing it, she never said boo about it until this week, and we’re supposed to just believe her because she says it happened. He says he doesn’t remember it either…and that nobody has ever complained about his hands on political style…but that women should speak out on these issues. Stay tuned…there might be video or photographic evidence but she hasn’t produced any so far.

Over in Europe…a Turkish citizen owned oil tanker was asked by the Libyan Coast Guard to rescue some people who were trying to illegally immigrate to the EU. Once they were rescued from their unseaworthy craft…the illegal immigrants preceded to hijack the tanker and force the crew to sail it to Malta. Fortunately…the Maltese military boarded and arrested the criminals.

Brexit…we’ll it’s pretty much up in the air still. The Prime Minister got an extension to mid April but then Parliament voted the deal down again…along with voting down another referendum, a customs union, a no-deal exit, or remaining in the EU…in other words Parliament disapproved all possible ways forward. Now…apparently…the PM is going to ask for a longer extension but will decline to have the UK participate in the EU Parliament elections in mid May…which the EU has already said is a non starter. The EU has also refused to renegotiate the departure deal, the folks in Northern Island (part of the UK) refuse to vote for any deal which puts a hard border between the UK’s Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland…so there’s no clear path as to what will happen at this point. My personal opinion is that eventually the EU will just refuse to approve any extension…which takes a unanimous vote…and that refusal will result in a no-deal exit. In that case…the UK will just then have to arrange trade deals with other countries…just like they used to have to before the days of the EU. What those who are not in favor of Brexit are completely ignoring…is that the UK is a large market for countries in the EU and a large supplier of goods to countries in the EU…so the EU and it’s member countries need a trade agreement with the UK just as much as the UK needs one with them. However…so far the EU has been playing brinksmanship in my opinion in order to keep the UK aligned economically to the EU…because that is to the EU’s advantage over having to negotiate trade and border agreements with the UK.

The moons around Saturn…well they’re actually shaped like little ravioli’s according to NASA.

Saw an article today about a dinosaur fossil site up in North Dakota which…according to the scientists who’ve investigated it and who refuse to let other scientists do research there to confirm or deny the claims…conclusively proves that the asteroid that hit in the Gulf of Mexico near what is now Yucatan about 66 million years ago was singly and solely responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and that it happened in a day due to a combination of finely debris and a 1000 foot tall tsunami that went across what is now North Dakota. Unfortunately…they’re completely ignoring the fact that the debris and tsunami would not have gotten there on the same day…physics just don’t work that way…and that dinosaurs were all over the w world not not just in North Dakota. While it’s likely that the impact actually resulted in the extinction of most dinosaurs…as indicated by what is known as the K-T boundary in the earth’s crust…it’s much more likely that it took thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to happen. An impact that large would have forced many cubic miles of dirt into the upper atmosphere…for example the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in 1883 resulted in 11 cubic miles of material becoming airborne and reducing temperatures by about 3 degrees worldwide…that blast is estimated at about 200 megatons. A stadium sized asteroid hit Alabama way back when and it was estimated at about 50 megatons. The asteroid that hit Yucatan was about 9 miles in diameter and while I can’t find an estimate of it’s megatonnage since it was thousands of times more volume than the 50 megaton one in Alabama the size of the blast has to be up in the 1000’s of megatons…and instead of 11 cubic miles as from Krakatoa it had to be up in the thousands of cubic miles of debris. So that much dust would have had a much more severe effect on both temperature…remember most dinosaurs were reptiles and hence cold blooded…as well as pretty much blocked out sunlight for years to centuries to millennia…which would result in most plant life dying…which would result in herbivorous dinosaurs dying…which would result in carnivorous dinosaurs dying…which would result in mass extinction…but it didn’t happen in day. How long did it actually take…who knows but awhile anyway and not a day. Unfortunately…from what I’ve been able to find out about it…the scientists who’ve concluded this are doing exactly what the climate change folks do and we should just agree with them rather than have things like peer review, additional confirmatory research, and scientific debate. Just like the climate change folks who trumpet that “it’s settled science”…any good scientist knows that there is no such thing as settled science, just as settled as we can get right now until we get better information or develop more sophisticated techniques and understanding of how things work. For these folks to claim that they can conclusively prove something that happened 66 million years ago seems a bit of a stretch to me.

On to interesting things found on the net.

Beer is one of the oldest drinks humans have produced, dating back to at least the 5th millennium BC in Iran. This is a 4,000 year old beer receipt recording a purchase from a brewer, c. 2050 BCE from the Sumerian city of Umma in ancient Iraq.

Alulu 4000 Beer Receipt

Petco has a policy that your pet is welcome in their store as long as it’s on a leash. This guy has a pet African Wadius…which he brought in on a leash and pretty much everybody in the store came up to pet it.

AfricanWadtusiPet