Friday, July 19, 2024

Monday, July 1, 2024

SHOULD BIDEN STEP DOWN?

 


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


Thursday, June 27, 2024

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AND TOAST

 


 


 


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


Monday, June 24, 2024

WALMART GETS A BUM RAP

 





 

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














Saturday, June 22, 2024

THE CHRISTIANS ARE COMING TO GET YOU !

 






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.  

 

 the Ol'Buzzard

 


Thursday, June 20, 2024

THIS COUNTRY HAS BECOME MORE DANGEROUS !

 

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

Friday, June 7, 2024

IN THIS WEEK CELEBRATING WAR, CAN WE IMAGINE?

 




please enlarge to watch

You can show respect for the young men who fought and died in wars without agreeing with it.

the Ol'Buzzard


Wednesday, June 5, 2024

THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR ALL AND ONE WHO DIDN’T

 



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.


Thursday, May 16, 2024

WILL RUSSIA USE A NUCLEAR WEAPON TO BRING ABOUT AN END TO THE WAR WITH UKRAINE?

 



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

 


Wednesday, May 15, 2024

WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST

 





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. 




We share 98% of our DNA

 

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

 

 

 

 


Sunday, May 5, 2024

I AM NOT OUTRAGED AT THE PROTESTS GOING ON IN COLLEGES

 




 

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

 


Sunday, April 7, 2024

FUCK ME SILLY WITH A HANDY BILLY - THE OL' BUZZARD HAS FINALLY LOST HIS MIND

 





“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. 



the Ol'Buzzard 



Wednesday, March 13, 2024

THE ORIGIN OF THE MAGA MOVEMENT

 

 

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



TO THIS
 



TO THIS




Trump may win the 24 election.  If he does, Dems wont like it, but they will accept the results;

But you have got to admit: the fucking MAGA movement is retarded. 








Tuesday, March 12, 2024

REMINISCENCE

 


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.

 

the Ol'Buzzard