WARNING WARNING WARNING WILL ROBINSON!
HE WHO?
Like climate change - we have been warned.
the Ol'Buzzard
WARNING WARNING WARNING WILL ROBINSON!
HE WHO?
Like climate change - we have been warned.
the Ol'Buzzard
After the
debate between President Biden and Donald Trump, there are calls for Joe Biden
to step down as the Democrat nominee for President in 2024. It wasn’t just a bad debate performance we saw
on CNN, Joe Biden’s performance brought into full display a man struggling with
aging senility.
Biden’s
mental decline was on full display during the debate. Biden froze, he could not carry a train of
thought, and he was unable to mount the simplest retort to the flagrant lies
Trump was spouting; after the debate his wife led him onto the stage at the
Democrat after-debate gathering, she had to speak for him while he stood there
giving thumbs up. It was pitiful, and it
hurt to watch.
In my
opinion, Biden has been an excellent President with great accomplishments
despite a divided Congress. He seems
capable of delivering a cogent response when reading off a prompter, but his
responses ramble when speaking off the cuff.
And the sight of him wandering off to give the paratroopers a thumbs up
at the G-7 summit was disturbing.
I believe
Biden should step down. There are plenty
of Democrats capable of speaking coherently and carrying the fight to Trump. I
fear running Biden, whose fitness to govern for the next four years is
questionable as the Democrat choice, may throw the election to Trump.
The choice
of Biden/Trump brings to center stage the importance of flipping the House of
Representatives to Democrats as a critical election strategy. If Trump were to be elected it would require
a Democrat House majority to keep him in check
the Ol'Buzzard
When I turn
on the news this morning the speculation about the Presidential debate between
President Biden and Trump consumed the cable news outlets. All this
speculation is ridiculous as we only have to wait until nine o'clock tonight
and all will be revealed.
As there is
nothing I can do to affect the outcome of the debate tonight, so I made toast,
a boiled egg, and tea – these I have control over.
Actually, I
have little control over the way my toast comes out of the toaster.
I must have owned a dozen toasters over the
years and have always complained about uneven toasting or toast darker on one
side than the other.
The last
toaster I owned was a Cuisinart. It had
a shiny stainless steel body, but it toasted no better than the twelve-dollar
toaster from Walmart. The wrapped wire heating elements made in China in the twelve-dollar toaster at Walmart are likely the exact same Chinese
wire heating elements we find in Cuisinart.
After going
on YouTube if found that Dash was listed as one of the best toasters by
America’s Test Kitchen.
For the last
two years, I have owned a Dash toaster.
Though not perfect, it is the best toaster I have ever owned – and it
comes in colors.
Instead of the wrapped wire element, the Dash
has four ceramic rods, one on the top and one on the bottom of each side. These rods glow red hot and toast the bread
fairly evenly.
Dash also has a window so you can watch the toasting process. The Dash has defrost, reheat, and bagel buttons.
I have never used the defrost
or reheat -perhaps they are for Poptarts and frozen waffles - but the bagel
button lights the rods on one side of the toaster, toasting only the cut half
of the bagel.
So this
morning instead of watching the bed-wetting, speculation, and hype about this
evening’s debate, I made a piece of toast, a boiled egg, and a cup of tea, and
decided to post about the Dash toaster that gave me a nice dark, evenly toasted
bread this morning.
I don’t post
for any company or product; but when I find something I like I will pass it on.
the
Ol’Buzzard
Walmart
hires a lot of disabled and handicapped people.
When I enter the Walmart here in town I see several people who wouldn’t
be able to hold a job elsewhere, yet they have employment at Walmart.
The local
Super Store is a large employer in our area.
I know that pay scales and conditions often get highlighted by I-Hate-Walmart-People,
but in a rural area where jobs are scarce, especially for older and less employable
workers, Walmart is an option. And they
are always hiring.
Almost any
product I buy now, I buy through Walmart online. The reason is, that if I receive the product
and have a problem with it, or just decide I don’t like it, I can drive down to
Walmart and return it for a full refund on the spot, no questions asked: no repackaging,
shipping labels or dealing with some customer service department.
All the
surrounding small towns in our county depend on the local Walmart for products that
would not be available locally otherwise, as our nearest big box stores would
be an hour or more drive away – and for people physically unable to shop,
Walmart delivers.
ALSO
The store is airconditioned and so what better place for people watching?
You can always see something great at Walmart.
the Ol'Buzzard
For decades
Christians have been subtly moving to establish a Christian Caliphate in this
country – to declare the United States ‘A Christian Nation’ under
Christian rules and doctrine, and under a Christian Sharia law.
Future punishment for abortion? |
Now it is
not so subtle. Christian Nationalists,
through the Republican Party, have dismantled Roe vs Wade, they are coming for contraception
by declaring fetus personhood. Women’s
sexuality (original sin) is in their crosshairs, along with the LGBT+
community.
In Louisiana
Gov. Jeff Landry has signed a bill requiring all public classrooms to display the
Ten Commandments.
This is just
the beginning.
It is not enough that a person can walk into a gun shop or gun show and walk out with a military-style semi-automatic high-velocity weapon with an extended magazine. Now the conservative Supreme Court has nullified a ban on bump stocks, which can turn semi-automatic weapons into rapid-fire mass killing machines like the ones used in the Las Vegas shooting that killed sixty people and wounded five hundred.
Just wait
until the next mass shooting….
This country is fucking nuts
the Ol'Buzzard
SEMPER FI
This is an historic week in American military history.
This week commemorates the battles of Belleau Woods in the First World
War and the assault on the Beaches of Normandy in World War Two.
On June 1,
1918, the Battle of Belleau Woods in France was a dramatic moment that enshrined
the valor of the United States Marine Corps.
Badly outnumbered and badly supplied the Marines defeated a superior
German force preventing the capture of Paris.
Eighteen,
nineteen, and twenty-year-old Marines charged into Belleau woods with fixed
bayonets assaulting dug-in German machinegun emplacements
The battles
were so hard fought that Marines often found themselves in hand-to-hand
combat. The United States Marines fought
so fiercely that the Germans referred to them as Devil Dogs.
President
Biden is traveling to France to visit the cemeteries of the Americans lost in
the battles at Belleau Woods and Normandy.
In Juen 2018
a 100-year commemorative service was held at a cemetery in France to recognize
the United States Marines killed in World War 1 at the battle of Belleau Woods.
It was
raining the morning of the service and President Donald Trump decided not to
attend the ceremony.
According to
four people with first-hand knowledge, Trump rejected the visit because he
feared his hair would get soaked
Speaking to
senior staff members Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery?” “It’s filled with losers.”
Later Trump
said that the 1800 Marines killed at Belleau Woods were suckers for getting
killed.
Trump claimed he canceled his attendance at the last minute because the helicopter
couldn’t fly in the rain and the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him.
Of course,
neither was true. Helicopters regularly
fly in the rain. General Kelly and an American delegation attended the service
in Trump’s absence.
Semper Fi
Marines
the Ol’Buzzard
USN ret.
Yesterday in
my car I was listening to Maine Public Radio’s discussion on Russia’s threat to
use a nuclear weapon in the Ukraine war. The consensus was that we are closer than we
have ever been since Nagasaki to another nuclear weapon being used against a
civilian population.
The question
was posed, what would happen if Putin dropped a nuclear bomb in Ukraine in
order to bring about immediate surrender and an end to Russia’s war?
The answer
was unanimous: Nothing.
The United
States and other Nuclear nations would be afraid of escalating into an all-out
nuclear holocaust. There would be talks
and sanctions and condemnation, but there would be no military response.
Russia has
the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, and the largest yield nuclear
weapon: the Tsar thermonuclear bomb. The
United States has the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, but enough
to bring about a mass extinction.
When I read American
Prometheus, the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the first
atomic bomb, a small paragraph stood out to me.
The mathematicians had decided that there was a small chance that the
nuclear explosion could cause a chain reaction that would ignite the atmosphere
rendering earth a dead planet. When
pressed for a statistic the answer was “not zero.” Yet Oppenheimer and the scientist pressed
ahead. Just before the bomb was exploded
the scientist were taking bets as to the yield, but Enrico Fermi, in a little
graveyard humor, was taking bets the atmosphere would ignite.
Where am I
going with this? Fucked if I know.
But a
Casandra warning: There are enough nuclear weapons stockpiled on this earth to
bring about a mass extinction – many times over. What could possibly go wrong?
The Ol’Buzzard
God damn, I’m
old – but against the odds, I’m still here.
The avatar for old men is Homer Simson’s father - and that pretty much
suits me.
I have seen
it all, and it all replays over and over again.
War in the Middle
East, so what’s fucking new? The only
other species that regularly make war and genocide against its kind are
Chimpanzees, our first cousins in the animal kingdom.
In the
United States, peace is just the interval between wars. We spend more on our military than the next
five major militarized countries combined, yet we haven’t won a war since World
War Two.
We stalemated
in Korea, and we lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan; and all the scrimmages
in between produced nothing.
The root of all wars can be summarized as:
My God is better than your God, and my dick is
bigger than your dick (women don’t start wars.)
I despise
Donald Trump, especially because of his disrespect for the military. Among other things, he called the dead at
the Arlington National Cemetery losers. But tangentially, these young men and women died, before they had a chance to live and love; meanwhile,
politicians move us on to the next war, and the next, and the next…
I spent 22
years in the military, a Vietnam vet. I
have seen what the war shredder does to young men and women psyched on patriotism
and glory. I was one of them. They too
often die young and are mutilated physically and mentally.
Life is too
precious. We are here by chance and only
go around one time. Young people have a
right to grow old, to have adventures, to love and be loved, and to bask in the
beauty of nature. Wars and the military can
steal the right away. No country and no God is worth dying for.
War! What is
it good for? Absolutely nothing.
the Ol’Buzzard
Protests
have brought women the vote; protests have brought an end to segregation;
protests have brought an end to wars…
When my tour
ended in Vietnam one hundred and fifty of us were flown back to California on a
civilian airline in an attempt to disguise our return and avoid protest.
When we landed the airport there were young people protesting. We were in our jungle fatigues and we were harassed. There were dead military bodies aboard our flight.
I was
furious but we had been ordered not to react.
For years I was resentful.
But now I
realize these protests, as distasteful as they were to me at the time, brought
an end to an unjust war. The government
knew the war was not winnable but continued to send our military into the jaws
of the war shredder. After 58,479
deaths, hundreds of thousands of wounded, and hundreds captured, held prisoner,
and tortured, we surrendered Saigon to
the North Vietnamese and retreated.
Nothing had been accomplished!
Those
military deaths and wounded vets were for nothing but political chess.
This war
would have gone on longer except for the outrage, mostly by college students.
High schools
teach you information. Colleges encourage
you to think. College classes encourage
a diversity of thought and professors like to be challenged.
College students
are most often young and naive - they haven’t been jaded by the adult world. They see things in black and white and do not
yet realize that the human world operates in shades of grey.
The Middle East
is a complex place of religious fundamentalism, and the human race is a violent
organism.
The students
want an end to war – a peaceful solution to what they feel is genocide. I can’t fault them for that.
the Ol’Buzzard
“Diddling - or
the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle – is sufficiently well
understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the
thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, a totally distinct
conception of the matter in hand, by defining – not the thing, diddling, in
itself – but man, as an animal that diddles.”
-Diddling
Considered as One of the Exact Sciences
Edgar
Allen Poe
Diddle
Verb:
1 cheat or
swindle someone
2 pass time
aimlessly
3 have sex
with someone.
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley where you been?
Around the
world and I’m going again.
Hey Diddle
Diddle the cat and the fiddle…
Diddle Diddle
Dumpling my son John
Diddle Definition:
1. To cheat or swindle
2. To Pass the time aimlessly
3. To have sex with
THE
CONJUGATION OF DIDDLE
She diddles
He is
diddling
She has
diddled
He has been
diddling
She diddled
He was
diddling
She had
diddled
He had been
diddling
She shall
diddle
He Shall be
diddling
She shall
have diddled
He shall
have been diddling
The word diddle is almost archaic. It dates back to the 16th century - to trick; the 17th century to totter; the 18th century to swindle; the 19th century to have sex with; and the 1950s to masturbate.
The word
diddle is too good a word to lose.
Diddle - it just sounds good. Don’t
diddle around. Let’s add the word diddle
at least once a day in our vocabulary. It can add your own meaning. Be creative.
DILDO NEWFOUNDLAND
I diddly
diddly do wish to diddle today if only I would quit diddling around.
MAGA people aren’t bad. They represent about thirty percent of the country. They have worked hard and raised and supported families on meager incomes, their pleasures are simple, and they are likely religious fundamentalists who have always voted Republican because of the party's stand on God, guns, and gays.
But they are
low information. They don’t read newspapers, they get their limited news from
Facebook or one or two entertainment-propaganda channels disguised as news
networks.
For years they have been the drones that were almost invisible to the world of finance and politics.
This all changed when a black man (Obama) ran for President and found a large following.
The
mega-wealthy Koch brothers, big movers and shakers in the Republican party,
decided to raise protests against the election of the first black
president. The Koch organized the Tea
Party rallies, even chartering busses to carry in protesters. People who had
been invisible grabbed the opportunity for fifteen minutes of fame, to yell and shout and prance in front of a camera: they hung
tea bags from their hats, dressed in funny costumes, and paraded with signs of
protest that were provided.
Without
realizing it, the Koch had formed a network, and soon the inmates took over
the asylum; ten years later the Tea Party became MAGA.
After the election, MAGA proclaims the election was stolen:
HOWEVER
· The governors and Secretary of
States of the five contested states confirm Joe Biden won the election.
· Multiple recounts in each state
confirm Joe Biden won the election.
· A special council appointed by
Trump’s Attorney General investigated the election claims of interference and
confirmed Joe Biden won the election.
· 61 lawsuits were filed by Trump
Attorneys and 60 were dismissed because of lack of evidence of any interference
- One allowed on a technicality.
· Joe Biden won the popular count by
seven million.
BUT MAGA PROCLAIMED:
· Trump says the election was stolen
and that he won by a landslide, so it must be true.
· Heating thermostats controlled by the
Chinese switched voters from Trump to Biden.
· Jewish satellites used lasers to
switch votes at voting sites from Trump to Biden
· Vietnamese printed up absentee
ballots for Joe Biden on paper made from bamboo and stuffed absentee voting
boxes.
· Mules stuffed ballot boxes with fake
ballots of dead people for Joe Biden.
· Venezuela’s dead President Chavez
rigged voting machines to elect Joe Biden.
· Everybody on Facebook says the
election was stolen and Trump won.
· Trump says the election was stolen
and that he won by a landslide.
FROM THIS
I don’t
sleep well, usually about six hours a night.
The cat gets me up early to feed her – sometimes I go back to bed, but
more often I stay up.
Usually, I
am semi-awake for about an hour before I get up, and my mind tends to
reminisce.
I am not thinking about my childhood in a narrative, like Truman Capotes in To Kill A Mocking Bird.
I tend to reminisce about the drastic differences in the world of
yesterday - compared to today.
I don’t think the young people today have any knowledge, or even care about life before cell phones.
My youngest
years were in Kentucky. My grandmother raised me, and I was preschool age
during the Second World War. Times were
hard. Basic staples like sugar, coffee,
and certain food groups were rationed.
You had to have ration stickers to buy automobile tires and other items
that were deemed necessary to the war effort (Of course, we didn’t have a
car.) People hung small flags in their
windows with stars to represent family members in the war – a gold star meant
the family member had been killed.
When I started school we lived in a house that
had no heat except for fireplaces. My grandmother would start a fire in the
hearth by pouring kerosene on coal to light it. She dressed me in front of the fire. When I was eight we moved to a small town
in the Mississippi Delta..
If you did
not own a car the mode of travel during the 1940’s was by train or bus. We took a Greyhound bus from Kentucky to Mississippi.
We moved into a two rooms apartment between the train tracks and a Chinese grocery store. The place was clean, but run down – a low-rent type of apartment. The front room was the bedroom with one bed a wooden chair and a dresser, a small bathroom was attached, and the small back room was the kitchen. The Kitchen had an ice box. The top door opened to a metal box to contain ice and the bottom door had one shelf for food that required cooling. We could use an ice pick to chip off ice for cold drinks. There was an ice house in town and they delivered ice once a week: they offered a twenty-five-cent block and a fifty-cent block – probably ( I am not sure) a penny-a-pound.
There was also a kerosene cook stove that had a one-gallon glass jar of kerosene inverted into the fuel catch. I believe there was probably a pilot light but it was turned off because of the summer heat, so my grandmother had to light the burner with a rolled-up piece of paper.
The
train came through twice a day, once around mid-morning and again just before
dark. The house shook as the train went
by.
We only stayed there one month and then moved across town (three blocks) into one half of a shotgun house owned by an older couple.
A hall ran from the front door to the back door and on each side of the hall were three rooms. Each room had a door. The house faced north and we had the three rooms on the east side. The front two rooms were our bedrooms, I slept in the front room and my grandmother in the middle room. The back room was a kitchen. The ceilings were high, and a cloth-covered electric cord hung down about three feet from the center ceiling in each room with a bare lightbulb on the end. The lights were turned on by a push button switch by each door. The top button was white and the bottom button was black.
The bathroom
was off the back kitchen. It was barely
large enough for a hot water tank, a toilet, a sink, and a tub – probably about
eight feet by eight feet. Town water
was from an artesian well, located beside a creek which ran through the center
of town. When you filled the tub the water was yellow, sometimes nearly
brown.
Each room
had a gas radiant stove for heat. The
ceramic squares above the gas jets would heat up and glow red and transfer heat
into the rooms. In the winter we only
heated the center room and the kitchen.
Temperatures rarely dropped below freezing in the Delta, so keeping
water pipes from freezing was not a problem.
There was a
screen porch across the front of the house and we were across the street from
the Baptist Church, so on Sunday mornings we could sit on the porch and hear the
preacher yelling hell and brimstone at his congregation.
The greatest thing about the apartment was the large Philco radio in the front room.
School was released at four o'clock each day and I would rush home to be in front of the Radio at five for the children’s hour. I would listen to Sky King, Wild Bill Hickok, or Sargent Preston of the Yukon and his wonder dog King. On Saturday mornings from nine to eleven, I listened to Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, Straight Arrow, The Adventures of Superman, or Buck Rogers. Straight Arrow was my favorite. Nabisco Shredded Wheat offered Straight Arrow Indian cards in their box - I didn't like Shredded Wheat but I ate the cereal to get the cards.
Sunday nights were programs for adults, but I would listen to Amos and Andy, The Saint, The Fat Man, Inner Sanctum, or The Shadow. My early childhood revolved around the radio shows. Listening to the radio required imagination.
Children
today do not have imagination. I wonder what Darwinian DNA modification is
taking place as young children play video games and watch videos on their cell
phones.
Instead of videos, we had comic books. GI Joe, Battle Brady, Superman, and Captain
Marvel were my favorites.
For young
boys, porn was the women’s panty and bra section of the Sears Robuck
catalog – it was a more innocent time.
We had a
telephone on a party line and our number was 26 ring two. As a
child, I had no reason to use the telephone, but sometimes I would ask the
operator for the correct time to check our clock.
In the
summertime, our windows were always open.
We used a window fan and an oscillating fan to keep cool. Of course, cool was a relative thing, as the
summer temperatures were always around ninety, often moving into the low
one-hundreds. Air conditioning did not
exist.
To
communicate with people far away we wrote letters. A postcard was a penny and a stamp was three
cents. It would take a week for a
letter to arrive at a destination and a week for a return letter. Life was slower.
There was no
TV. People walked in the evenings and
visited neighbors. Houses were hot and
people sat on their front porches, smoked, and talked until bedtime.
I spent much
of my time in the summer at the town swimming pool. It was across the street and no more than
fifty yards from the creek. The water in
the pool looked like dark tea and you could not see the bottom of the pool past
the four-foot level. A black man
cleaned the restrooms each morning and made sure there were no snakes in the
pool. Of course, the pool was for whites
only – this was Mississippi during segregation.
The world I was raised in has no resemblance to today.
Today,
everyone is stressed and in a hurry to get nowhere. Gun violence is an accepted norm. People are psychologically grafted to their
smartphones. Technology is doubling
every eighteen months. AI has increasing
control over our lives. Innocence is gone.
Children can watch explicit porn
on their computers or cell phones.
Climate change has reached a point of no return. Our country has not been this divided since
the Civil War and our democratic government which has existed for two hundred
and fifty years may be on the cusp of imploding.
UFologists
are always looking for aliens visiting Earth.
The truth is that people my age are aliens. We come from another planet in spacetime.