Nothing much new going on. Connie came down with a kidney infection last Sunday so Neil ended up cancelling his Monday morning eye appointment for new contact lens prescription to take her to the urgent care clinic. She got a shot of antibiotics there and some oral ones and is on the mend…still having a few bladder related symptoms similar to those with a UTI but they’re reducing day by day.

She was the cantor for today’s Saturday afternoon Mass…and that’s about all we’ve done in the past week. We did have several inquiries about our rig that’s for sale but no real news to report on that front as yet.

Let’s see…political Bovine End Product (BEP)…although media BEP or liberal BEP is probably more accurate. 

So…apparently the Democratic Senate candidate in NC has been sexting with a consultant…he’s married with children and says he’s really, really sorry but he won’t drop out of the race. My question…where is the outrage from the WAMM over his sexual misconduct? Seems they’re only outraged when folk in the other party are out of line…it’s one of those do as I say, not as I do things I guess.

Beyond that…I’m getting so tired of all the spin and outright lies that the media spouts…and while the conservative media does it as well the vast majority of the major media seems to be liberal so their lies get amplified.

Specifically…the brouhaha over the SCOTUS nomination…all I keep reading is about the McConnell Rule that says no SCOTUS nominations during an election year…despite the fact that isn’t what the man said. I know the media and Democrats keep trumpeting it ad nauseam…but if you actually listen to the whole quote instead of the carefully selected portion the media and Democrats are using…what he said was that same party White House and Senate SCOTUS nominations were confirmed and opposite party ones were not. The numbers vary depending on what time period you choose to analyze…but something on the order of 29 (the maximum number I’ve seen) SCOTUS seats have come open between January 1 of an election year and Inauguration Day in the following year…and 29 times the sitting President has nominated a replacement…and even the recently departed RBG stated that a President’s powers extend into his 4th year in office and that packing the court with additional justices would politicize it even worse than it has become the past 20 years or so. Of those 29…19 were like party nominations and 17 were approved…10 were opposite party and only 2 o those were approved. Them’s the facts…but one would never know it from reading the news.

The worst part…is that most people in America believe the Democratic/liberal/media statement and are convinced that the Republicans are trying to ‘steal’ a SCOTUS seat…even though the Democrats have said that if the situation were reversed they would be doing precisely the same thing…talk about hypocrites.

I’m appalled at how the SCOTUS confirmation process has deteriorated in the past couple of decades…for an awful long time Justices were approved by pretty bipartisan votes in the Senate but ever since Bork things have gone to hell. If you look at the numbers
here…you’ll see what I mean. Up through and including RBG…the votes are strongly bipartisan as seen from the numbers…because up until lately most Senators believed that if the person was qualified then the President should get his way. Starting with Justice Thomas in 1991 the votes have gotten more and more party line up until Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh which were almost exactly on party line.

Now I realize that the Democrats don’t like Judge Barrett…and I personally think that when Garland was nominated Senator McConnell should have given him a vote…but the problem with that from his point of view is that he likely figured out that enough of his fellow Senators would have agreed with the “he is the President’s choice and is qualified” argument and voted to confirm. Given that would have replaced a conservative justice with a left of center one…I can see how politically he might come to the conclusion not to allow a vote. I think the Democrats would have a point if they were to make that argument…but at the time he was running the Senate so his rules…and he’s still running the Senate so still his rules. That doesn’t negate the discussion above about the lack of truth in news articles and Democratic leadership speeches…but I understand that every politician will always for all time spin whatever the truth is to match what he wants today…and then they’ll not blink an eye at stating the exact opposite opinion tomorrow.

There’s the old story about how you know when a politician is lying…when his lips are moving…and there’s a whole lot of truth in that one.

A few images from our RV life…since we’re not able to get out and get any new ones…these are all from our last summer on the r road in 2019.

Waterfall in eastern Oregon

Mountain goat.

Pronghorn outside Cody WY…remember it’s not an antelope and it’s closest living relative is the giraffe.

Red Tailed Hawk at the Raptor Rescue Center in Cody. All the birds there are injured or can’t fly and thus can’t be released to the wild. This one has lost it’s eight eye.

Peregrine Falcon at the Raptor Center…wing injury prevents flying. Healthy specimens prey on the wing on other birds and stoop (dive) onto their targets in excess of 200 mph (320 kph for our metric oriented readers). National Geographic says that the fastest recorded speed is 242mph/389kph…making it the fastest animal on earth.

Connie’s favorite moment of the year…the classic Grizzly vs Wolf standoff in Yellowstone NP in WY. A bull bison was killed during a mating season fight over the lady bison nearby a few days before this and the grizzly was camped on it eating his fill for days…the wolves kept sneaking in and grabbing a bite at a time. Unfortunately…it was about over a quarter mile from the road and the rangers wouldn’t let you get any closer. Even with the bird lens this is still a crop to about 20% or 25% of the frame so a lot of the detail in the predators just isn’t there…so it’s not as great a shot as it could have been…but still pretty darned good. Turns out we missed a similar confrontation just this past week…although it was a grizzly vs grizzly standoff but the carcass was an injured elk that the first one dragged into the river and drowned then feasted on it until it was driven off by the larger bear. Lots of people standing there watching both the feasting and the fight…but fortunately it was just about 50 or 60 yards away from the road across the river. Darn…would have been some good shots there.

Then there’s
this article…and this one isn’t political…just stupidity. As you may know…currently the folks in Armenia and Azerbaijan are shooting at each other in some sort of border dispute. In the article…there is this image of a resident of Karabakh holding up what he claims is a shell fragment from artillery shelling of the city.

Unfortunately…I think he’s mistaken for a couple of reasons. First…when an artillery shell explodes it ends up in a whole bunch of little fragments and not big ones like that. Second…the thickness of the piece is pretty thin for an artillery shell. Third…if it was a shell then a fragment that size would weigh up in the 100+ pound range and wouldn’t be easily held up in your hands away from your body. Frankly it looks a lot more like a stove pipe or something but likely not a piece of an artillery shell.

Speaking of the Electoral College…our buddy Gary talked about it on his daily podcast this week and included a couple of interesting observations. 

Few democracies have direct election of their leader by the population…indirect election by voting for Parliamentary candidates or EC electors is the norm. At no point back in the 1780s was direct election of the President proposed by anybody at the Constitutional Convention…because the founding fathers were worried about mob rule and majoritarianism. 

It is true that the EC sometimes elects a President that didn’t win the popular vote…but so what? It’s how the Constitution is written so it would require an amendment to change it. Again…this is too hard for the WAMM…so there’s the National Interstate Vote Compact which would…again…be an end run around the Constitution. The trouble is that 16 states representing 196 EC votes have approved it…and the remaining states are unlikely to do so since it would essentially be giving up their Constitutional rights. Even if it did get to 270 EC votes…it would end up at the SCOTUS for a ruling since the Constitution…yeah, that pesky thing…again says that states cannot enter into compacts with other states without the consent of Congress.

Why can’t we just follow the laws as written.

OK…let’s see what else might be interesting. I got this story from my friend Bill yesterday and thought ya might find it amusing.

A RETIREE’S LAST TRIP TO KROGER’S.

 

Yesterday I was at my local Kroger’s buying a large bag of Purina Dog Chow for my loyal pet, Jake, the Wonder Dog, and was in the check-out  line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. 

What did she think….I had an elephant?

So because I’m retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again. I  added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in the hospital  last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way  that it works is, to load your pants pockets with Purina Nuggets and  simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was  now enthralled with my story.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the food poisoned me. I told her no, I stopped to pee on a fire hydrant  and a car hit me.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard.

Kroger’s won’t let me shop there anymore.

Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say.

This just in…

On October 6, 2019…Tyler Moon who lives in Eden Prairie MN was running in the Twin Cities 10 Miler foot race and being a Christian he was running in a T-shirt that said “Jesus Saves” on it. He doesn’t remember much about the face after seeing his wife on the side of the road at about the 1 mile marker but as it turned out the 25 year old experienced a bout of ventricular tachycardia, an irregular heartbeat that caused reduced blood flow at about the 8 mile point in the race…and he ended up collapsing just before the finish line and would have died except for the quick reaction of medical staff at the race including a nurse anesthetist who happened to be watching from the side of the road who was the first to respond. Mr. Moon’s heart stopped and the nurse anesthetist started CPR immediately which kept him alive until the EMTs got there and stabilized hi. Mr. Moon has completely recovered from his ordeal at this point.

And now…cue the theme from “The Twilight Zone” by Rod Serling…the name of the nurse anesthetist who saved Mr. Moon’s life…you guessed it…Jesus Bueno.

Interesting things found on the net.

This isn’t actually a photograph of a leopard and it’s shadow…it is a photograph of a female leopard named Cleopatra and her black panther mate Saaya…he’s actually just a melanistic color variation which occurs in about 11% of leopards across their range. They live in India and have been mated for 4 years.

OK…see the island in the image here?

The name of the island is Vulcan Point…which by itself isn’t much. It is located in Crater Lake which is located on Taal Volcano Island which is located in Taal Lake which is located on the island of Luzon which is the main island in the Philippine Islands chain. So…it’s an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.

Or…at least it used to be…but during the eruption of the volcanic Mount Taal in January of 2020 the  inner Crater Lake apparently boiled away or was breached so that the water ran out…no telling when or if the former Crater Lake will get filled again.

An accurate weather map.

And finally…a map made by the original poster’s teenage son…note the names of the various stops on the route.

Cyas.