Actually Got Lobbied

Got a random call from a 703 number yesterday.

It was someone working for the Republican candidate running against Don Beyer Volvo. This part of Alexandria has been a Democrat stronghold since the Northern Aggressors finally left in 1877, so there’s absolutely no chance he’ll win. I plan to quietly vote for Mr. Torres, but I don’t hold a lot of hope he’ll win.

The absentee ballot I don’t remember requesting is sitting next to my sinister hand. Actually planning to be out of town for Election Day, anyway, so it’s good.

I’m lining things up for what’ll be a busy month ahead.

I am going to write, but I have no idea what I should cover.

  1. Start
  2. ???
  3. ???
  4. ???
  5. ???
  6. ???
  7. ???
  8. Birthday recap
  9. Recap
  10. ???
  11. ???
  12. ???
  13. Thanksgiving plans
  14. ???
  15. ???
  16. ???
  17. ???
  18. ???
  19. ???
  20. ???
  21. ???
  22. ???
  23. ???
  24. ???
  25. ???
  26. ???
  27. ???
  28. Thanksgiving Football
  29. Thanksgiving recap
  30. Wrap-up

But I think I’m pretty much, actually, wrapped up with medical stuff for the year. Next year is one thing after another

Should I do “Dry January” since I’m already going to have to go get my insides scoped?


I should go do work.

Both Sides Are Bad

That’s a nicer than saying they’re both stupid.

After bailing on Trump’s interview with Sharyl Atkisson after hearing again, nothing worthwhile, I stumbled across Neil Cavuto interviewed Mark Cuban about his support for Kamala

They had a back-and-forth about Trump’s bad monetary policy…..without any mention of how really bad Biden/Harris have been.
Both candidate are relying upon just ungodly amounts of circulating money. Nobody ever expects that the spigot will ever close.

But it will. It has to. The maths don’t work otherwise.

Trump came out either yesterday or the day before with a proposal to limit credit card interest rates to 10%. Much like his pitches for no taxes on tips, and Social Security Income sounds good at initial listening, but they don’t fix anything.

Stop taxing tips? The deficit in Social Security gets worse; the “trust fund.” (That doesn’t exist because no politician has been willing to raise the retirement age even though life expectancy is now probably close to twenty years more than it was they bumped it the last time…) Social Security Retirement is out of money, and there’ll be mandatory cuts very soon, now. Taking off contributions on tips.

Meanwhile, nobody is willing to actually reduce spending, raise taxes, and raise interest rates.

No, NeoHips, the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!1! didn’t have a damned thing to do with every single TSA agent being a Federal employee.

But Kamala, and Alsobrooks are going to make sure grocers don’t soak consumers in pursuit of their 1% margins.

Nobody has a plan. That’s worse than it’s ever been.

Digging For Topics

It’s a Wednesday night, and I’m trying to figure out what I’d like to write about in November.

I should be figuring out what to do with lining up various medical appointments. Or fixing this NetBSD host. Or…

I did try to watch another interview with Trump, and failed to get through it.

I was very interested in this today. All sorts of interesting implications regarding law. The treaties, including Trump’s NAFTA replacement, all rely on Mexico having an independent judiciary. The changes being made right now really call that into question. Do the treaties still apply if the other country isn’t keeping up its end of the bargain?

It also speaks to treaties with the former USSR. Do they matter?

I’ve come to think, lately, that there needs to be more temporality to basically every single law/treaty/regulation.

Hmm.

Don’t Push Me

Because I’m close to the edge.

Of the weekend.

So many more things happened this week that I’m just letting slide by.

In the WTF Substack group, saw a link to this.

There’s interesting parallels with what’s happened recently in the LP.

In fact, there’s even some of the same participants.

Reason’s hit before “the takeover” is still very accurate.

Still keep having Johnny Sunshine by Liz Phair floating through my scarred brain.

You left me nothing

Oh well.

Less busy week ahead, I think. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll have some time to write.

I do need to corral some topics for November.

Another Saturday

I’m bothered this morning by people for whom love for Officer Harris has become the new faith.

.

That’s almost as bad as the people praying outside abortion clinics.

Ofc. Harris will fix it all

—– *OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM* —–

Excuse my skepticism.

But there is a pang of sympathy to Rex Kramer in the video, there.

I don’t want your promo for the Party of the Klan. Really. You’ve done nothing to convince me.


Other stuff….

Different frustrations with work. I don’t even know what to say at this point.

I kind of would like to go see this. I don’t know if I can juggle the schedule enough to make it happen. Kind of a significant event the day before. Lots of stuff with work around that time. Then PCP appointment the next week.

Starting Sunday

The NFL came back on Thursday night. Very good game, and my strategy for my primary fantasy team worked very well.

I actually, kind of by accident, ended up drafting bth Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes.

The latter ended up getting traded for a couple of wide receivers who may provide good numbers for the year.

The Ravens-Chiefs game Thursday night was very good. I wrote last time about the situation with the game in Brazil.

I’d considered scribbling down the names of the companies that supported the debacle, but why? I don;’t care about either of the teams, and, probably most of the companies advertising aren’t things I’d typically buy, anyway.

Still, if you think what’s going on in Brazil is a good thing, or any of the stuff they’re doing, I really don’t want anything to do with you.

If you’re a politician who speaks out in favor of penalizing jailing murdering people who disagree with you, there is absolutely zero chance I’ll ever vote for you.

Sorry, Officer Harris.

Sorry WLAF Commissioner Walt.


So. What’s on tap for the week?

Probably a ton of work. No medical stuff, thankfully, though things start again in earnest next week.

ComXfinity has an AI app I can use. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to make it work for Fantasy Football.

Sleepy Saturday

I’m still doing too much — my sore hamstrings are an invisible testimony to that.

I had started writing a response to the interview with VP Harris, and SMA Tim Walz.

(Yeah, he was a pinned on CSM, but retired as an MSG, so I’m actually retroactively inflating his achievements more…)

While I was underwhelmed, I was trying to be indifferent about it. Whatever. I’m not going to vote for her, and my opinion of President Trump gets lower pretty much every time he speaks. There also won’t be a Libertarian on the ballot in Virginia, so I’m not sure if there’ll be anything worth writing in. Glenn Youngkin, maybe?

The folks on The Fifth Column were actually harsher towards the performance than I was.

#442 – Kamala Speaks! Tim’s Gr – The Fifth Column – Apple Podcasts

I admit that I had it on in the background while I was working, but I don’t think it allayed my concerns any more. I went from oh-hell-no to no, and I’m back to oh-no.

Looking at the Senate polls, though, there is some points of reassurance. I think it probably ends up being pretty much tied again. Could be a surprise here and there; Larry Hogan could win in MDDR, and maybe the filibuster stays.

And a few more years of running on continuing resolutions because there’s no way to fix the broken mess that is the Federal Budget.

But what I was trying to do with what I’d started assembling was to write down little bits piece-by-piece, then write to those after having some time to reflect.

But i wanted to consume. Maybe i shouldn’t have done that, and waited to consume anything else until I’d spit out what I was trying to put together.

I suppose that that sort of approach might work better for things that are more settled. With something as fleeting as an election, maybe it’s impossible.


So, what else?

I think we finished up Hard Knocks last night. I actually do kinda like the staff that Eberflus has assembled in Chicago. I was really happy when he came in that they got back on the 4-3. Less enthused about the dink-a-lot “West Coast” offense, but it’s better than the stuff that’d been there the before.

But, on Hard Knocks, one of the interesting parts of the show was seeing who’d make the cut week-to-week.

“Bring Your Playbook” will lose all meaning.

We also started in on the Steve McNair thing on Netflix.

I was tired, so we stopped after the first episode, but it sounds like they’re going to get into some conspiracy stuff later on. Guess we’ll find out. But it seems to come down to advice an elderly, reserved southern gentleman once provided; “don’t go to sleep with someone crazier than you.”

To reword in a style closer to what my friends would say, “don’t stick your d— in the crazy.”

Staying with the NFL, my reaction to the stuff in Brazil with the Twi^H^H^HX ban is that the NFL should pull the Iggles-Peckers game scheduled for Sao Paulo.

*Searches the F’n Web*

Good.

The league can reimburse the teams for whatever costs might stem from it. Want to be a part of the free world, you have to allow things you don’t like.

That was the reaction I had almost immediately after reading the news.

That’s enough for now.

Reel It Back

I’d started writing a long thing on my impressions of Officer Harris’s DNC performance.

I had a good headline written about Ofc. Harris’s speech, “Fears Allayed.” There was a marked departure from some of the stupid things that have been done leading up to her aborted candidacy in 2020, and things done by the Biden Administration.

Does that mean I’d ever vote for her? Hell to the NO.

She is, and will always be, a Cop Who Wants To Be President. That she backed down from some of the authoritarian impulses seen during the first two years of the Biden Administration don’t change what she and many members of her party did.

I understand that I’m supposed to be feeling JOY, but I don’t.

Even more so when I think about her choice of a running mate.

Some call it Authoritarianism, in Minnesota, they call it disease control.

The stuff with his National Guard service is also concerning. Do I think it’s really “stolen valor” that he portrayed himself as a CSM when he never finished the course, and retired as an MSG? No.

The 1995 DUI/DWI arrest really, really, really bothers me.

If he’d been on active duty, he would have faced very harsh penalties under the UCMJ. That he skated as a Guardsman is incredible.

So, too, is his continue employment with a school district.

I can remember my mother working for Fairfax County Public Schools and being nervous about having a glass of wine with dinner because of their policies regarding staff consumption. That would have been in about 1990?

Microsoft’s inline punctuation check is annoying.

Scads of speeches laying out standard Democrat talking points, but, largely her speech was made to erase the memory of what she, and her party, did since Obama left.

The things I’d wanted to write about also got derailed by some of the stuff from the Libertarians, and the RFK Jr. “drop-out.”

I listened to the SoHo Forum debate with Art Laffer and Chase Oliver. I could pick out a few things from each where I disagree, but the chances of me voting for Trump are about as close to zero as they’ve ever been, and Oliver probably won’t be on the ballot.

Even if he was there, I’d have trouble filling in the circle next to his name.

So march it on. I’m ready for the fall.

Finding Your Faith

But not a traditional faith.

I’ve kind of been in a vacuum all week between physical therapy and a class I needed to take for work.

For too many of my acquaintances, it’s faith in one particular slice of a particular political persuasion.

Kind of coming out of my hole, and consuming information that’s been consistently accurate.

Where is that? Reason. their coverage of the authoritarian the Democrats picked as Officer Harris’s VP has been outstanding. So, too, has been their coverage on Venezuela.

My takes on the various topics?

Venezuela, and the rest of South America. I haven’t checked a lot of real news aside from a lot of derision from the world about the “election.”

That the ruling party, but the count presented by the government agency he controls, said that he got almost exactly 51% of the vote, when there’s other observers who say that the opposition got something like 70%. Even the rulers in the US have questioned the official result.

So have many of the other, even more left-leaning, South American leaders. But there’s not going to be any deep examination of that because there’s a genocide happening in Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry.

But they’ve been right about everything all the time.

And they’re doing incredibly well because of the amount of petroleum they’ve got.

That pretty much only places that don’t care about the environment will burn.

Argentina seems to be getting lost in the blurbs about Venezuela and Brazil. Milei has kind of come out against dollarization. I do kind of understand his reticence on this. The US dollar, in spite of the stupid spending coming from the other side of the Potomac, is still relatively stable. El Salvador, Panama, et. al., have all kind of stabilized on USD. Chile, with its Chicago School-educated politicians, and many other countries have chosen a different strategy.

The Canuckistania have based their currency on a variety of other currencies, and the price of petroleum. That oil is still going down in price. OPEC has cut production how many times in the past two years?

Bubuhbut, PETRODOLLAR~~`~

You can take a bunch of it out of the ground, but it’s not being bought and burned, it doesn’t matter.

The USD has value for a variety of reasons. Convertibility to either gold or petroleum really isn’t the big reason anymore. Maybe it was different in 1976, but….

I guess I understand the energy behind the attraction to the Austrian School, but, the hard realities of international relations, and running a country, have slapped him in the face hard.

But let’s run stories about how the Peronist who was there before Fernandez wriggled her way back in was chatting on his wife.

So he’s a piece of garbage, but at least he didn’t try to get the economy back on solid footing.

The past few days, the folks who’ve destroyed the Libertarian Party, reached an agreement with reached some sort of funds-sharing agreement with RFKJ.

Um.

And some notable public people have now endorsed RFKJ.

Okay, Rogan. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The polls don’t really clearly show what kind of effect RFKJ’s candidacy is going to have on the election.

i really do wonder what the vote totals are going to look like. The more I see, the mor I’m seeing signals of 1992.

I don’t have a good segue way to American politics, unfortunately. Robby Soave, and others, over at Reason have pretty convincingly brought out his glaring weaknesses.

For the record

  • He retired as an E-8.
  • He didn’t finish the school he needed to be a CSM.
  • He was popped for a DUI in 1994. That sort of conviction would have pretty much killed any career you’d have had as an active duty enlistee.
  • His inaction during the riots was incredibly apalling
  • that COVID hotline.

So, kind of disgusted by everything at this point.

Lazing Saturday

Writing because I have a few minutes.

And refusing to work. I really feel like there’s things I ought to be doing.

Actually, no, I should be doing what I’m doing.

Looking at probably five straight twelve-hour days this week.

But I think I’m ready. TV viewing has kind of been offset by Olympics being on. I watch a bit, but it’s really not something I’m terribly interested in.

I could dive deeper into the mess that is politics, but that might be more disappointing than many other things.

Watching the sputtering economics happening. NYSE started deflating. What’s Trump’s solution? Stop taxing Social Security income. What’s Harris’s solution? Tell the world that Trump is worse than Hitler because he doesn’t want to raise taxes on corporations. (That don’t even pay taxes, anyway…..)

1-2-3 Plan. Set interest rates to 1% above inflation. 2. Halve discretionary spending. 3. Triple all tax rates and fees.

Not Voodoo Economics.

Anyone?