It occurred to me today that maybe the problem is that I’ve become hard boiled.
Which is a problem, of course, since my favorite mysteries were always cozies. But you see, we have been watching a hard boiled mystery series on TV every night, and I know the tropes: every authority is corrupted, everything turned against the newcomers, the idealistic, those who are clean.
And I realized me, the cozy writer, have come around to a complete hard boiled world view.
For instance, all the people who throw fits about forgiving student loans don’t realize they are standing on the side of giving the government debt-slaves. Or maybe they do. Under Obama there was talk of not letting people leave the country who owed student loans. Think on that a minute. You’ll see what the plan see should they get fingers on levers again.
They don’t seem to realize to what an extent our money is fungible and being taken out of our pockets — continuously — by inflation. And how much of the money the government actually collects goes to…. oh, let’s look at the unroll, shall we, even without looking at the USAID schemes to fund insurrection against ourselves and the burning or our own cities, there is stuff like they’ve been funding each and every illegal to the ridiculous tune of 100 and some k per year, at least. Though a lot of those moneys come from city and state, you know where the money comes from ultimately. Printing press goes brrrrr. Sometimes we funded them higher through other programs, like the ones that gave them start-up money or house buying money.
Where did that money come from? Why from your pocket, brothers and sisters. printing press goes brrrrr.
I’m not going to worry too much about that, because my taxes, all the ones I’ve paid, the ones I will pay, all of them, have gone to the Taliban, left in pallets of cash in the ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Forgive me if I don’t think anyone should give them any cash. Not one more cent until we know where every cent is going. And you know d*mn well even with Doge, even with everyone doing deep dives, you know we don’t know everything they’re wasting.
But it’s not just that, oh, no. It’s everything else. Everything is stacked up against the new, the outsiders, those with no pull.
But even those who are supposedly at the top and have pull? Remember the healthcare CEO gunned down by Luigi whatshisname? And how the whole left say he had it coming?
Look, I’ve shared here — I think — about my own issues with our insurance. For instance, they don’t cover the expensive daily inhaler my doctor prescribed, which is part of the reason I keep getting sick. Underlying inflamation from low-level continuous asthma. And I had to fight them to get the meds my husband needs for diabetes.
I understand the anger at the insurance companies. And to an extent I have some problem sympathizing with them because the dumb bastards were all in on the Obamacare push. But– But what is happening to them is the same screwing at the hands of government we’re all getting.
Obama care mandates the coverage of gender transition — you wondered where so many cases came from? Why it became the first go to to push on autistics and mal-adjusted and, well, Odds? Easy peasy. You get more of what you pay for — and when cases multiplied by 400 or so, the companies paying for it, particularly the medicine insurance part are spending themselves bankrupt to pay for girls becoming boys and boys becoming girls. Diabetes? They ain’t got no money to treat no stinking diabetes.
All of this goes unnoticed. We notice that the insurance companies are dicks, but we don’t see the fed revolver at the back of their heads.
Like … No one speaks for the voiceless.
One of the situations is with people who are infertile. Can’t have kids. I was there. Back then already I ran into people telling us to “just adopt.” Back then we knew people who adopted. They had way more money than we had. They adopted from abroad: China, Eastern Europe. Even Western Europe, sometimes. Okay, Portugal, but that–
Why did people do that? Why the expensive process? The left says it’s because we want ethnic kids. The same left says a bunch of kids are in foster care because white people won’t adopt children of color.
The truth? Adopting in the US is all but impossible. You need a lot more money, you need to open your household and yourself to fantastic intrusion. And you kid can be taken from you at any time, even if you’re the only parents he’s ever known, because the US adoption system is in thrall with Rosseau’s idea that somehow “natural” is better, that there is some mystical bond between the child and the parent who held him for half an hour (if the mom wasn’t hopelessly addicted and even realized she had a child) before surrendering him.
Also, speaking of outdated notions, the US also believes that it will materially damage the child to be adopted by someone who tans a different shade. This is baffling to me,a s someone whose child is darker than her — and much darker than her husband — despite looking like both of us.
Which brings us to where we are now. There’s hundreds of thousands (millions?) of children in foster care, while hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who long to have a family can’t adopt. At this point foreign adoption routes have closed. (Except Africa, and given what Africa is — poor fucked up Africa — you might be adopting a kid who was kidnapped or who knows?)
Most people don’t know. As with student loans where the decent people don’t talk about it, and slowly sink under an impossible payment system that would be outlawed if they were payday loans on the corner? As with insurance denying medicines we need because they’re too expensive, because the insurance has to pay for all the things that Obamacare says you can’t dispute, those affected don’t talk about it. What’s the point? And if they did, they’d talk about how the insurance is screwing them up.
Everywhere I look, things are crooked, people are caught in a system they can’t fight which is screwing them coming and going.
Even us, how often do we forget the swallowing up of Hong Kong? Oh, that wasn’t us? Sure it wasn’t. Because it was ignored and China was allowed to do what she would, and we didn’t even give any aid or offer of asylum to those who had fought against China.
How often do we talk about the way that the attempt at freedom in Iraq was ignored and by being ignored thwarted by Obama.
How often do we forget that there are three hundred thousand kids missing, give or take ten thousand, who crossed the border as… mules, as disguise, as heaven knows what, a lot of them children kidnapped or bought South of the border, and who just…. vanished.
Where are they? A system that can’t be trusted to make sure innocents aren’t handed off to the worst of the worst? It’s corrupted beyond belief.
As corrupted as it needs to be to lock up an entire country, destroy an economy, try to make us all conform to ridiculous pointless measures, let the old die alone and the young be maimed forever by isolation. And we know they did that.
I could go on. [Pours two fingers of Devil’s Cut. Swirls the glass.] Oh, boy, I could go on.
But I won’t. It’s not my job to blackpill you. (Lights virtual cigarette and takes a puff. Look, bud, with my lungs, virtual cigarette is all I can have.)
Yes, this is the chasm we stand at the edge of. This is the precipice we could fall down.
But–
This has been a time of miracles, the last 2 years. We’ve seen miracles. And the miracles have gone our way.
And Trump 2.0 has gotten smart about a bunch of things. Take the whole vexed issue of the student loans, which are still controlled by the government and still ridiculous and where people are still fell into the cement vat.
He didn’t rescind that on day one. Maybe because he couldn’t, because it’s tied to something else (Obama dealt dirty.) Or maybe he simply hasn’t got there, yet. However it might be simply he hasn’t got to it. So much to do, so little time. On the other hand… On the other hand….
On the other hand I think there’s some obstacle in the way, because he’s doing things. What things? Well….
I realize this lynch pin involves a lot of things more than this, but one of the things his EO on disparate impact means that tests for jobs are back on. And that means not only is the goose of colleges cooked, it tumbles a whole lot of pins, like people actually having to know what they’re doing, not just getting credentials because they know someone.
Blows rings on the imaginary cigarette and smiles at the dark night sky.
Yeah, the crooked judges are fighting back. What? you expected them to lie down and let us have our way. Nah. They’re going to fight every step of the way. The dirtier they are, the harder they’ll fight.
It’s going to be a fight in these mean streets. And, oh, the streets are mean.
But we’re fighting back. Not just Trump. There’s something awake and aware and fighting back.
And there’s us. Yeah, puny, powerless us.
But we can be voices for the voiceless. We can be connections for those without them.
And we can have each other’s back.
The system of the hard boiled requires that everyone, everyone be dirty, but the one upright man, and that the upright man be isolated.
Dome now. There’s too many of us. And we’re not isolated. We got each other.
We don’t have much, but we have each other. And we’re not crooked. And we’re going to keep at it.
Right?
We’re going to keep at it. Until we clean it up. It’s impossible to achieve perfect justice, but we should be able to clean this utter darkness and mess a bit. Just a bit. Give good a chance to flourish.
Give a chance to people who want to marry and feed themselves and have fat babies. Give a chance to people who want to build and create things that benefit us all. Give a chance to everyone else who isn’t utterly corrupt and evil.
We’re going to keep at it, right? And you’re too, right?
Finishes the virtual bourbon, stubs the virtual cigarette, puts on her fedora and walks out into the velvety dark night.
We’re going to keep trying.
And we’re going to win.
According To Hoyt 
Yeah, the Adopt Child of a Differing Shade carousel – if you’re not adopting a child of a different presentation as you you must be racist and/or X-phobic and thus eeeevil, but wait, waaait, if you do adopt such a child you are separating him from his ‘authentic’ culture and some kind of supremacist and thus eeeevil. You can’t win.
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“We notice that the insurance companies are dicks, but we don’t see the fed revolver at the back of their heads.”
This. THIS. “Oh, it’s big oil.” “Oh, it’s the corporations.” “Oh, it’s the insurance companies.”
Yeah? Who is who has the red tape and the Russian roulette pistol pointed at these outfits’ heads? Who do they have to pay protection to?
Ask the right questions. You may just get the right answers. But you need to ask the right questions first, or you won’t get anything like the truth. Just a half-truth, and that’s no help at all.
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Even the right questions won’t get you the truth from either the corporate media or the remaining vestiges of the leftist government. But the waffling and lies you do get may contain hints to point you to where the truth is being held incommunicado.
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It’s not all so bad as that. Well, sometimes it’s worse, but sometimes it’s better, too.
Is the whole world so utterly, irredeemably corrupt? Nah, don’t think so. It’s pretty bad. Infected with Commiescum. Rewards anticivilizational behaviors. Yeah, I get that. But the world, from my myopic little perspective here, what it is, is LAZY.
It’s easy to be Commie, if you don’t know any better. Easy to be lazy, do the minimum, expect somebody else to take the heavy side of the load. If you carry it at all, that is. It’s easy to be a face in the crowd, getting free stuff. “Free” stuff. Heh.
The average lefty, of which they are many, don’t think this way. They think they are virtuous. That’s if they bother to think at all, but leave that aside for now. In their heads, they’re paladins. Righteous folk, preaching the gospel of Marks with an X. Everybody tells them that. Everybody that matters. Those that don’t? They’re not people. They’re just evil.
And the great thing about it? They don’t have to do anything to be good. It’s easy, like I said. The lazy way. Everybody understands. You don’t have to sacrifice anything, really. Just pretend you did. Be leftist, and for most of my life, all sorts of doors open to you.
Even if you’re a deadbeat bum that still lives with their parents with no job because you’re too lazy to work, you can get a check from the government. If you can claim some sort of victim or minority status, score! Instant win. You get the bennies, no problemo.
The way things work, though, is the gravy train eventually has to stop. TANSTAAFL. Leftism is supported financial by theft. Theft on a grand scale. Steal $20 and you’re a thief, unless in California, where you’re a hero (temporarily, but I’ll get to that). Steal $20Trillion and you’re a Congressman. The left has been stealing our money at gunpoint, calling it “taxes” and laundering it back to themselves through happy sounding programs that they’ve trained their minions to agitate for.
But that theft depends absolutely on a growing, healthy economy. Brothers and sisters and little kittens, I regret to inform you that the patient is gravely ill. There is hope for a recovery- but that hope depends on a lot of things going not just right, but very, VERY right (pun intended).
There’s a short window between the parasite form of leftism and the jackboots and gulag camps. Ours is longer because let’s face it, we’re big. We’re America. Big economy, big dreams, lots of bigly bigness to go around in the bestest of ways. Our system of government as originally formed has been a thin dam against leftist expansion, and they’ve all but crippled it. But we’ve a chance.
As to why? Why to do we have this chance? It’s because they boiled the frog too fast. The left put in a puppet, not just once, but tried it several times in a row. That absolutely screams shadow government (conspiracy theorests: eleventy. Doubters: zilch). The economy tanked too fast. The reliable default lefty normies felt a pinch. And then the bad Orange Man showed them it didn’t have to be that way.
Like I said before, it’s better, too. We’ve got friends that don’t know they are our friends yet. Folks waking up to the reality of the woke mind virus. Folk finally annoyed enough to actually do something different for once. And folk who aren’t in any real way good, but are just savvy enough mercenaries to switch sides once they see which way the wind is blowing.
That’s fine. I can accept such mercenaries fighting under our flag. So long as they fight for us (the US), so be it. Better that than quislings and agents provocateur agitating against what is right and good whilst only nominally anticommie. Y’all know who they are by now.
Thing is, we have to be in this to win it. That means the long game. Generations long. Teach your children well, and all that. Have children, too- got to do that before you teach them, right? And be as loudly, entertainingly, and convincingly anticommie as you can, forevermore. May the coming generations learn from us, and fight all the harder for it. May they know the blessings of liberty well, and realize the threats to it that by its very existence will appear.
There will always be bandity types. Monsters in human form. Not even the littlest child needs to be convinced of this- he already knows. Teach the children how to combat Commiescum. They’ll need it.
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Amen.
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Need more coffee. 🍵🍵
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Hard boiled?
I’ve been hard boiled for so long that the shell is cracked, the entire yolk is that icky green, and a sulphur smell is starting to linger.
Trying to stay healthy and positive while still tilting at some windmills.
Backed off on election integrity, that has plenty of eyeballs now. The regional group of autistics is deleving into public schools covering up sexual assult of children by teachers and staff, scandal much worse than any church could scheme. Apparently fsking kids is considered legal by many school districts. Makes me feel great about paying my property tax. Really need to defund the current education system and start over.
People still don’t show up for local city and county elections so we get it good and hard from idiots with a mandate from less than 5% of eligible voters. Texas GOP is 60% hard left RINOS, back by Big Money, that don’t recognize the constitution. (They can pry the Memes from my dead body!)
In other news, guns and ammo are still selling well. New gun ranges are opening locally. :D
Still dodging tornados and hail storms in Texas while dealing with spring allergies. (Stupid plant sperm in my sinuses!)
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Everything that’s happening was forecast in the late seventies, and early eighties, by people that were hounded, and crushed by government officials. Those with even the smallest of followers were either bankrupted by the IRS, or subjected to jail time to punish. The only thing different at this time is available information, but that’s a tenuous advantage.
Am I hard boiled. Yes, but I’ve been that way for almost my entire adult life. These are different times, but there are many more unwilling to lay down and give up. How things change will be seen, but they will reveal the enemy, and who they are will be an uncomfortable realization. Defeating the enemy will require harsh methods, and the winner will be remarkably changed.
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I’ve become hard boiled, and getting more so, thankfully. I have to watch the process and refuse to become so cynical I just hate everyone and everything and despair of ever making an impact.
I choose impact. I’m going to take the place of Iris Apfel in the fashion world, now that she’s dead, and wear 100 bracelets and bright yellow every day.
My big push now is writing stories, creating videos, and destroying the VA as we know it.
The VA is so fecklessly, destructively, horribly bad and inadequate it makes the hackles rise on my neck. Suicides are epidemic among vets because we’ve been lied to–about everything to do with service. And it’s the youngest and oldest vets who are killing themselves at the greatest rates. I’m not too cynical to contact the new VA chief with some plans I have.
No quitting. Not now. Our forbears walked barefoot into battle in winter.
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Hear, hear!
While you are at it tell them that women need hormones, too. And catch up with the research! 20+ years out of date is no bueno.
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We get better healthcare advice off YouTube and podcasts. Time for a change, including hormones and legitimate treatment for women.
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The VA is the model for the ‘socialized medicine’ Bernie Sanders et. al. seek to impose on us all.
The final irony is, B.S. was in charge of the VA for more than 10 years, during which time it only got worse.
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I’m hopeful we can eliminate it entirely and give vets the choice to see doctors that only the wealthy can now afford, like functional medicine doctors.
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As opposed to dysfunctional doctors? :-P
Actually, I know most of the doctors are doing the best they can, it’s the fossilized bureaucracy that makes the V.A. suck. And it just keeps getting worse.
It’s why 0bamacare was such an abomination. It drove thousands of doctors and nurses plumb out of medicine, ushered in hordes of bureaucrats, and they all wondered why health care got more expensive and less available.
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Sorry, but I don’t know that anymore. Especially not in the mental health area.
I got really great people in Idaho, but even there it was substandard compared to what you could purchase on the economy.
Totally agree that the bureaucracy destroys people’s ability to provide decent care. You get the ambition beat out of you.
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Loan thread, I think the key points, maybe entirely unmentioned, were/are money supply, electronic loans between reserve banks, and the normal banking instrument process of consequences to the lender’s lender when the last borrower in chain does not repay.
So when we have evidence that the student loan process is not discriminating against borrowers, and is not capping total loans, that is evidence that the lender’s lender should be taking a loss. Lack of notice there means that the government is not privately borrowing the money.
The accounting process for SSA almost certainly means that we would need to audit the feds to be at all confident that they are paying the losses from tax receipts, not when they can pressure banks to give unsecured electronic loans to each other, with the losses as the cost of being allowed to do business.
Therefore, the money was ‘printed’, and went to inflation, and the tax payers are not the lender, the currency users are. Which is apparently also what a reading of Obamacare indicates.
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That’s what I SAID. Should I have shown the steps?
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Sometimes we have to talk it through to get it to stick. Much as I love the English language, there are days I don’t understand things too well, too. That requires backing up and going over it like a two year old sometimes. Bob’s okay, I think.
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I know it was what you were trying to say. Because I have heard you on this topic before, and BGE on the money supply.
I have not had a lot of extra to spare, so I may well have missed those points (the extra steps) being made this week, instead of alluded to.
But, I did throw away a couple of essays, trying to express these points, these past few days. What I saw looked like more heat than light, but my own efforts to write ‘the missing steps’ felt too wordy to me.
I think most people are used to money being conserved in accounting, and are not used to having coercive power over a bunch of large banks.
(One more essay on this, I may keep if I wind up having the sense to edit a bit. The other promises made, that may need to be written off, are a bit interesting.)
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Thank you for laying it out. I’m not complaining. If you can lay out in an essay WHY the debt doesn’t actually exist, I’d love it Bob.
As Steve showed, the weasels want to enslave us all to it.
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I really need to write Orc Job…
You ever get the feeling of accumulating more stories than you have time or energy to write?
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No. It’s inevitable, because they show up fully formed every six months. And sometimes they’re six books. SIGH. And I’m OLD.
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Fully formed? Lucky you. I get story ideas that look at me like starved orphan waifs, begging for a Plot, with a Climax and an Ending.
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Introduce them to each other.
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That doesn’t work for me. Either nothing happens, or else they produce even more starveling waifs, begging for Plots, Climaxes, and Endings.
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Ok, there is that. My stories do not stalk me like Jason from Friday the 13th demanding to be written, or else.
They merely occasionally wander by and ask if I forgot about them…
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That was… 15 years ago. Now they wake me in the night and drag me to the computer and force me to type.
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Nah. They just bomb into my head like an elephant into the swimming pool. I’ve got a bunch of stories that need EDITING. Or whole rewrites. And I’m not even touching the early horror stories, that sort of thing is just not what I write these days. I’m more HFY than horror now.
Just sit down and blitz out a page or two, here and there. It’ll add up. Add it to your schedule, maybe twenty minutes to an hour every weekend or so if you can. You’ll eventually start finding time to write.
Me, I’ve not gotten much time in the last YEAR to write, but I still try. Between health and hospitals, family and work, the few things that aren’t those don’t get much time. But I do try.
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THIS THIS THIS THIS
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That feeling is “life.” I do not remember a time when that was not just life.
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Best I can find on hormone modification costs for transgenders is about $1700 per year average, for those not using insurance. I think there’s some serious under estimates on that.
And yeah, when Obozocare kicked in, the number of people getting GD hormone modification took off like an F15 on afterburners, and then even more so when the anti-discrimination bill went through.
Maybe we should send you come candy ‘cigarettes’. Great for the lungs, but not so great for your blood sugar.
DOGE – take names, kick ass, take more names. Rinse and repeat.
I love it (okay, it actually drives me nuts) when the Lefties or foreigners object when I say that we pay taxes at the point of a gun. Total ignoramuses.
It’s HARD getting conservatives to act in concert for anything. Most of them are understandably the, “Leave me alone” crowd. Trying to get them to realize that we’ll all hang separately if we don’t all hang together is a sisyphean task.
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My blood sugar is fine. And Dan can’t get higher blood sugar from kissing me. THOUGH I prefer chocolate cigarettes and can’t find them here.
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I am now making it my life’s mission to bring chocolate cigarettes to missus Hoyt.
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Dip straight pretzels in melted chocolate. Yum
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I remember bubblegum cigarettes as a kid, and possibly chocolate ones (circa early 1960s), but I suspect they fell off the market after the 1964(?) Surgeon General’s report on tobacco cigarettes.
I smoked the latter from 1970 off and on into 1983. Ruined my gums (smoking a pipe was probably worse, but…) haven’t screwed up my lungs. OTOH, I smelled somebody smoking the other day. Had to suppress an urge to buy a pack. On the gripping hand, the last pack I bought was $0.75, and I’m cheap, so lung/heart/kidney health gets no fresh challenges, and $SPOUSE won’t try to kill me.
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“I love it (okay, it actually drives me nuts) when the Lefties or foreigners object when I say that we pay taxes at the point of a gun.“
I would suggest they ask Gordon Kahl (complete A-hole from what I’ve read) about taxes being taken at the point of a gun, but he’s been unavailable for comment now for four decades because he “violated his probation” by…talking to people about not paying taxes, after being convicted of not paying taxes on income that didn’t meet the threshold for required filing.
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–
Doubt mom knows about this example but she still files every year even though she hasn’t paid federal or state income taxes decades. Federal gets electronic filing (because we get 5 filings through Quicken, hers, ours, sons, so two left over). State gets snail mail filing. She does not trust the feds or state not to come after her for not filing. Now, at least she is proving she is alive at 90. Filing on her SS so alive.
Mom has no problem with the whole concept of “proof of life”, especially for those pushing 100+. Just have to keep reminding her, they won’t call or contact her directly to ask for personal information. At worst she’ll need to go on the SS online site and will get notified of that, but do not use the link in the email. Go to the actual page manually, then check for messages there for what to do.
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I have a lot of comments but I’ll limit myself to two.
The sad thing about student loans is that not only were the young people duped into over paying for what was advertised as a guaranteed way to get a high status well paying job. No, they can be excused for lack of life experience. What is sad is their middle aged parents bought it hook, line, and sinker and signed off on backing the loans. Both generations are somewhat innumerate and bought an obviously defective sales pitch.
The other is that what they call insurance is another lie by changing the definition of insurance. They do this with other things too. They changed the definition of what is a vaccine. They try to describe democracy as something that bears no relationship to the original concept. Insurance is for covering unusual events you can’t pay for yourself. A tornado destroying your home or a crash totaling your car. Having an annual wellness visit with your doctor isn’t anything you should need to insure against. Same thing with having your teeth cleaned. If this was how insurance worked your home insurance would pay for cleaning out your gutters and oil changes for your car. There are so may lies in everyday news and speech people don’t even see them anymore.
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Mackey, on that first? No. We weren’t duped. WE KNEW THE SCORE.
You couldn’t get a job AT STARBUCKS without a BA.
Yes, in MY day it was a “high status job” but in my kids day? “A job.” Beyond the increasingly hellishly managed retail.
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That is what I call ‘every scratch and sniffle’ insurance. Abusing insurance to pay for the most common, trivial medical expenses. Because if it’s Covered By Insurance it’s all free, right? </sarc>
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I remember when there were protests about the injustice of health insurance not covering birth control pills. Aside from birth control not being treatment of a medical problem, it’s a routine monthly expense that’s entirely foreseeable and can be budgeted for, and insurance companies will just pay for it and then add it to the cost of your policy, plus administrative overhead. And the monthly cost was less than the monthly cost of buying Starbucks every workday. It’s entirely affordable and there’s no good reason to charge it to insurance. (Though I suppose under current legal rules it’s a way for sexually active women to get the cost paid for by men, and by sexually inactive women, and by women who are choosing to have children. I’ve no objection to their having that option—well, I have increasing doubts about the medical and psychological prudence of hormonal contraception, but it’s their bodies—but I don’t especially see why it should be subsidized.)
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Ah, I remember the good old days when I was growing up and health insurance was for trips to the hospital and stuff. You paid your family doctor every time you needed them. Now I get “free” trips to the gym on my Medicare Supplement plan. Watcha’ gonna’ do?
Also I have no idea whether I really need to pay the medical bills that trickle in half a year after treatment. Are they just billing for what my insurance didn’t pay because of the negotiated price of the treatment? Not sure.
Also note the Orwellian system here in Commifornia. https://notthebee.com/article/watch-this-guy-learn-that-his-medical-bill-is-actually-bigger-once-his-insurance-plan-was-applied?utm_source=Not+The+Bee+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04292025
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I have basic Medicare and a decent Medigap policy. No dental, no prescriptions (though Oregon has some form of mandatory(?) coverage for most of those I take. The outlier isn’t covered, and I get it through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus pharmacy. Service is OK, and I can refill on my schedule.
After Medicare was active, there was a fair amount of delayed maintenance on my body; a year before, I was diagnosed with a retina issue that didn’t need immediate treatment. Once coverage started, I got both eyes fixed, and (of course!) a cornea issue that the retina doc found.
There is an “annual wellness exam” that I don’t care for; skipped it last year when a complaint for a torn knee meniscus revealed a few other items that needed attention (and more CT scans). Haven’t seen Dr. Mengele in a year, going to see one of the clinic’s minions (my call; the doc is slammed–part of the fun of rural healthcare) for followup on the other items.
The only time I get a bill is for the regular prescriptions or for the very rare procedures that aren’t covered. Used to get charged for eye exams (refraction test), but that’s been zeroed out the past couple of years.
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Same.
All my glaucoma tests and treatments are covered under medical, not eyes. But the prescription eye exam seems to have a deductible.
OTOH get glasses prescription coverage, which is new from before medicare + medicare advantage. Used to be every year, now every two years (rarely get new prescription every year so can live with that). Through Costco, I can get two pairs (regular glasses and sun glasses for driving) of progressive prescription of poly with anti scratch, anti-glare, blue light filter, one pair that is transition lens, the other pair tinted, for a out of pocket of about $140. Anywhere else it is $750 out of pocket (even the “preferred” locations).
Contacts are possible too but, while I need to use progressive glasses now for reading because of eye strain, for the longest time I didn’t. Especially when I was working. So I wore glasses to drive, and maybe TV, but took them off to read, programming (work), and exercise. Not wearing them all day. But during this time if I wore contacts I had to wear reading glasses to read or program. So I ditched the contacts almost 20 years ago now.
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I understand both sides of the student loan scam, but I propose a different solution. I saw the whole screw up coming, just as my wife did with the 2008 housing debacle. It’s easy to see these things coming if you just use common sense. In the 80’s, there were a bunch of stories about greedy assholes who had just ignored their student loan debts, and when confronted with legal action, simply declared bankruptcy. Since they were still young and didn’t have much in the way of assets, it was no big deal for them. The Fed’s solution to this was to make student loans non-dischargeable by bankruptcy. The banks were now happy to loan any amount with no bother to calculate whether it was prudent. They were guaranteed the money after all. The universities seized the opportunity to launch tuition into the stratosphere. Having more money than they were able to spend productively, the universities created an enormous, bloated, self-justifying, administrative empire to guarantee all their fellow-travelers cushy jobs at great cost.
Now, those of us who saw what was happening, and steered clear of the craziness, and those who actually felt a moral obligation to work to pay their way, and pay off the loans, find ourselves outraged at being asked to bail out the miscreants and suckers, just as we did in the 2008 disparate impact housing loan fiasco even though we realize the hopelessness of their plight. I propose a solution other than a government bailout though. The universities should be forced to repay the loans they coerced from their student victims via this fraud, maybe through legislation, maybe through a RICO action, but let’s put the blame where it belongs.
“But It would bankrupt the universities!” To which I reply, “You say that as if it were a bad thing.” :)
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I will go for that one.
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Note the stories in the eighties were all fake, like the razor blades in apples. NOT A SINGLE CASE. So, everything that comes from that is bullshit.
And yes, I saw it coming, but it was impossible to get a job without it, and we couldn’t pay for TWO kids. Because we’d thought they’d get scholarships in the sense of “Attached to them and portable.” NOT “Half” (or even full, but that he’d have taken if we’d known it was offered. he didn’t want to move, so he hid it. He was 16.) “tuition on the other side of the country, amounting to same expense between housing and tuition as right there, at home. Or even more expense, because half tuition private is a lot.” SIGH.
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I’m one of very, very few in a very large corporation doing a highly technical role in a niche domain that doesn’t have a degree.
Freaking miracle and blessing from God!
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Dad was a Project Engineer, working his way up from draftsman (before computers). But wasn’t paid as a Project Engineer because he didn’t have a degree (’70s and ’80s until his stroke forced medical retirement).
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Daughter did the same thing to me. She wanted to go elsewhere for college, so I never got to see that she got invited to the big wine ’em and dine ’em event the local university put on for students that get their top-tier scholarship offers. (Extra kick in the pants: I worked on the marketing collateral for that thing and won a regional award for it.) She did get a pretty good scholarship at the school she went to, but only for two years instead of a four-year full ride. And she could’ve had free room and board with that full ride, because she wouldn’t have had to move.
(head:desk…but I’m sure my parents thought the same of several decisions I’ve made over the years…it all comes back around, I guess)
So now here we are wondering if we can afford to help pay her loans in addition to mine, AND help her cover rent and groceries, in a market where 80% of the advertised job openings are just data collection scams and she’s been looking to no avail for almost a year. But hey, at least her girlfriend has a job…working the floor at Target. They could’ve done all that without spending a single second on a college campus, let alone getting a degree. In fact, it’s exactly what they both were doing before they went to college, and only one of them can manage it now.
What the hell was it all FOR?
Sometimes I have moments of sadness when I think about universities being metaphorically burned to the ground, but then I remember that the thing I’m sad about is just an ideal that was murdered and skinsuited decades ago — or, heck, maybe never really existed at all, like honesty and objectivity in news reporting or decorum in politics — and I’m back to Carthago delenda est.
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Marshall does have a job. PURE stroke of luck. not using his engineering training at all, but he loves it. SO.
I need to finish books and pay both their loans. His brother’s will be harder.
Look, it’s likely my parents die in the next ten years. They’re in their 90s. And it’s likely they leave enough to pay older son’s loans, but…. well. I’d like them to at least have a CHANCE at kids.
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A job that pays the bills and doesn’t grind your soul down for fertilizer, let alone one you actually like, let alone work you *love*…that’s a lucky thing. A literal blessing from God in any time, I’d say, doubly so given the way things are now. (I managed to find a reasonable fascimile of one five years ago, and I count my blessings for it almost daily.)
I don’t suppose they’d believe you if you told them they don’t have to pay the loans before they have kids. The having of children is by FAR the more important thing, and loans can be dealt with somehow. (Even if it’s just mostly putting them off and delaying the reckoning, having and raising children can be done with and in spite of the loans. Ask me how I know.)
Anyway…I hope the daughter manages to find work. Not much I can do to help, unfortunately. BUT she’s going great guns on a novel right now — and is a very talented writer and storyteller, if I do say so myself — so I’m hoping she can somehow turn her writing into a job that feeds the soul and pays the bills.
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WP just told me my comment could not be posted. What?
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WPDE
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At a reunion of the College Science & Math alumni some years ago, a fellow student (now a Mayo surgeon) related that he found his daughter with the kitchen table full of college literature. “What are you doing”? “Picking a college”. He swept them into the wastebasket. “You’re going to the U (Univ MN)”.
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I gave a moment’s thought to one of the least insane of the Ivies, (Dartmouth), but the full scholarship waiver at U of Redacted sealed the deal for me. $OLDEST_BROTHER graduated from there, and I rather liked the location.
The waiver meant that I could go the full four years at U of R. ($OLDEST did 2 years at the local junior college, with the attendant fun of “your course in XXX doesn’t meet our standards, so you lose credit hours for that”.)
I elected not to get a masters there; fortunate, since the 1974 recession caused my job to shift; went from the chemistry-heavy process engineering job to the headache-inducing product engineering job. Not a fun task of $DEFUNCT_SEMICONDUCTOR, at least not with the people involved. Did a lot better elsewhere.
“What’s product engineering? Sounds fuzzy.” quoth the questioner.
“Right, and it’s supposed to be”, sayeth the retired product engineer. Describing the job to parents was my first major use of handwavium.
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Back in the 80’s when I got a job in GFND, a neighbor asked my day what I did. “I can’t exactly explain to you what he does, but they are paying him too d— much to do it.
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I wonder how many of those “stories” were people like us who got letters stating “we need the money to loan out, pay off this $X discounted amount on your loan to get the money flowing!” FWIW we declined and continued paying our $19/quarter and $29/month payments (too good to be true). Doubt the people who did so got dinged (wouldn’t put it past PTB now, but for sake of argument …) for taking up the offer. But bet went into the statistics of “not paid fully back loans”. Truth and lie.
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So the entire intent of the stories was to make the loans non-dischargable, eh? So a combination of TPTB wanting a pool of debt slaves, that I could see. As I recall (never had first hand experience with college loans), the non-discharge was part of the Feds taking over the program, so the colleges would have figured they could raise costs without lenders saying “Hey, this doesn’t make sense. The kid won’t be able to pay this off.”
Clever, if you care to appreciate evil at its most insidious.
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Yep.
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As to the stories about avoiding student loans through bankruptcy being fake, I never considered that although I, of course, knew nobody who did that. I love that you bring up the razor blades in apples though. I always was amazed that anybody could push razor blades into apples without leaving obvious wounds in the apples and somehow getting the razors to turn around once inside the apples so the sharp edges pointed outwards. Now that must have been some magic trick!
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I think if you were going to put razor blades in apples, the key would be to take the really thin ones out of disposable safety razors and push them in by the narrow end.
The would make a smaller wound in the apple’s surface – one which could be dismissed as from rough handling – and allow the blade to point in a hazardous direction.
….
….What?
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I’m all in on bankrupting universities. It’s going to happen anyway, let’s just hurry it up.
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Democratize the learning. Take a la carte classes. Do it all online. When the credentialed prof in his cushy little tenure has to compete with Weasel, the hillbilly from Appalachia who has been reading Washington’s letters and has every Federalist paper and publication from the period memorized but no college degree, things’ll change. Turn those campuses into museums. I like a good museum. We could call them “that time America tried Communism and not even we could make it work.” I think it could catch on!
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So much this! Democratize the learning! Make Autodidacts Great Again!
Even now, there are catalogs for the great lecture series available. And books — so many great books!
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Was it Aristotle who remarked that a university is a log, with a teacher on one end and a student on the other? Mark Twain? Whoever it was, smart guy, that.😉
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In Aristotle’s day, a school literally was the instructor and his students, so he wouldn’t have needed to say it.
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Yes. This is an amazing time to be alive, where the unrealized potential in tertiary schooling opportunity is considered.
I’m against the universities, personally, in many ways.
But I am am abstractly, but not concretely, in favor of just replacing the things for many practical purposes. I want it to happen, but I do not want to do the hard work myself.
But, STEM is one of the few ‘good’ categories of academic fields earning income for schools with degree programs and research. Absolutely all of basic STEM education is ripe for disruption. The material is available to homeschool a basic mathematics, physics, or engineering degree. The problem is, nobody who might want that knows where to look, or how to put the pieces together. By the time one has the ‘how to put together’ via a traditional path, one is a graduate student, and maybe invested in some narrow niche where it actually makes sense a bit to continue in a traditional school because of a few institutional opportunities.
The math and mental tools for just about every modern technology are mature, and also fairly available. The combination in practice, in a way that you can tell what is going on, is a little harder.
The schools and the idjits have made it a bit difficult to teach as many people as possible inside of the formal system.
But, in theory we can bypass that, help other Americans and people in general push thier own personal limits of know how, and maybe let a technically sophisticated American population win the technological wars of the future again by accident, without relying on the top men being able to find their rear ends.
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Because teaching requires an ‘Education Degree’ — but not any knowledge of the subject being taught. Mathematicians can’t teach math, but an innumerate buffoon with the ‘Education’ credential can.
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That actually works (after a fashion) when it’s grammar school and one teacher for all subjects; all basic stuff with no advanced knowledge required When it’s expanded to high school and beyond it’s a recipe for disaster.
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Again, long ago, some neighbor kids (supervised by the oldest) would come over on a hot summer day to “swim” in my shallow pool. There were two inflated pool toys – Ali the Alligator and Charlie the Crocodile. I explained the difference in the noses of each and noted that alligators are only found in the SE US and SE China. Because the two continents had been once together long ago. A little girl of the neighbors wistfully asked “Why don’t you teach school”?
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An alligator will see you later, and a crocodile will see you in a while.
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In my experience, mathematicians can’t teach math, period. Not that an innumerate buffoon with the ‘Education’ credential can either.
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The things my husband considers obvious.
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Recalling math classes at BS and MS level, I can recall one counterexample. Had a senior-level complex variables course. The instructor a) knew all or most of the students were engineers, not mathematicians, and b) taught it for engineers.
He did a good job. Other math classes, not so much. I learned far more about differential equations one semester later in an electronic circuits class where we had real-world examples to go from. Not that the diffyQ text was any help. Reviewed it years later. One of the few STEM textbooks that deserve a walling. (Texts ranging from the early 1970s to late 1980s. YMMV.)
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And with Bob, in his basement, who can make computer code sing, too.
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iirc Harvard has more in endowments than they get from Fed money. They need to spend their own money, If it’s so great a thing then even more $ in endowments will come in, right (~_^)
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I’ve repeatedly thought of E.E. Smith’s First Lensman. The climax of the story is a North American presidential election, in which, in the first place, the Galactic Patrol officer who’s running has to deal with the fact that the party Boskone favors has made plans for massive corruption of the voting process. But in the second place, before the election takes place, the Patrol’s lawyers bring out a massive dossier of evidence that roughly a third of the North American government is actively corrupt. Of course nothing is done immediately because the system isn’t set up to handle trying such a large body of its own personnel.
And you know, we can’t realistically expect science fiction to predict the actual future. But wow, that sounds amazingly like Smith was looking in a crystal ball, doesn’t it?
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You do realize the politicians were just as corrupt in E.E. Smith’s day to an equal or greater percentage?
:D
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I think Smith was just reading the newspaper. Same as Ayn Rand. This stuff has been apparent since WWI, slowly grinding away until here we are.
Looked at from a jaundiced angle, WWI and WWII were staged as excuses to drive up inflation and increase government. We put up with stuff now that my Scots grandfather would have rioted over.
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Recall his solution — heavily armed Lensmen at every polling station. Wouldn’t that make the Leftroids squeal!
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Smith had a twp-pronged defense. First, Jill Samms ran a “Voter’s Protective League,” which apparently audited the records in every precinct in North America before the election. Second, it was regular Patrol men hanging out at the voting places, in uniform. To the Patrolman and his friends/family, his Lewiston was just part of the uniform. To the crooks…
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Yes, at that point, there weren’t more than 50 Lensmen total. The massive Academy hadn’t even started.
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“Everywhere I look, things are crooked, people are caught in a system they can’t fight which is screwing them coming and going.”
Um, yeah. You’re not getting cynical, Sarah, you’re just seeing what’s in front of your face.
Let me tell y’all Americans something. In the USA all this business Doge is digging up is illegal. In -Canada- we have all the same things, except here they are the law off the land. For the most part, all this goes on without any ‘laws’ being broken, because they’ve so utterly subverted the legal and parliamentary system.
And Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver just voted for MORE of it, knowingly, because #OrangeManBad.
To the point where in Alberta and Saskatchewan (and Ontario outside 416/905 area code) the #Fiberals pretty much didn’t get a seat.
It has taken me a few days to pick my jaw up off the floor and screw it back on again. I mean, are you kidding me, Toronto? What the f- are you people thinking?
But after having my little hissy fit and getting some IV CalmTheF-Down juice in the old vascular system, two things of note have come to my attention.
First, guess where all the government employees live? Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec City. That’s where the #Fiberals got all their seats. Iron rice bowl voters.
Nobody else voted #Fiberal, when you get looking at it. In fact, the #CPC got more of the popular vote than they have in 40 years.
This is because -ALL- the money in Canada flows to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. MTV. Long story short, house-flipping to escape the tax code is what got us here. Boomers with money vote to keep their money, which is all in their house.
What’s the only thing in Canada that’s not tied up in real estate? Oil. That’s literally it. We basically have nothing else here, thanks to Greenies shutting down everything in mining and forestry. Farmers make zero money. Industry all went to China. I mean everything except cars comes from China. Cars are made by robots. Getting the picture?
So on reflection, the Conservatives have a very hard sell, because every voter knows that a job brings you nothing. Only a house brings you money. And that is only true because all the treasure in the entire nation comes to Toronto to support your house.
So the biggest number of people live all in one place, and they vote to take the money of everyone who doesn’t live there. Duh. Obviously they do that.
Bringing us to the second point. Being a greenie is fashionable in MTV. They vote global warming. What’s the only thing of value in Canada outside MTV real estate again? Yeah, oil. They voted to shut down oil. They always do, and have for 40 years or more, but this time things are getting very harsh out here in Flyover Land because we all work but we don’t get anything for it. All the fat and most of the muscle has been starved away, and now we’re getting down to the bone.
It has become starkly apparent that people in Oil Country and Flyover Land are not going to let MTV destroy their lives. The Premiere of Alberta just gave a speech a couple days ago which basically told Ottawa and all the people of MTV to shove it. Alberta will vote to separate from Canada, just like Quebec has been threatening to do since I was a boy.
They’re not going to take it anymore. They can’t, because they’ll literally starve. Everything else is gone, this is all there is left. The Freedom Convoy was truckers protesting that they were going to starve. Alberta separation is the oil patch protesting they’re going to starve. If Ottawa keeps squeezing farmers across the nation the way they have been, you’re going to see tractors on the 401 driving to Ottawa, dumping manure on the front lawn of Parliament. You’re going to see that pretty soon. Because they’re going to starve.
The difference between the USA and Canada is you American boys and girls woke up and started fighting 20 years ago, before the starvation threatened. The MTV voters are still asleep. They think it’ll still be alright if they just wait for housing prices to go back up like they always do, even though there are literally families tenting in the parks because they can’t afford rent. Not immigrants! Canadians, in the park, broke.
So no, it isn’t just you. Yes, this is what’s up. One way or another, it’ll come around.
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I think I saw this scenario in The Hunger Games.
“I used to be a farmer and I made a living fine
I had a little stretch of land along the C.P. line
But times went by and though I tried the money wasn’t there
And bankers came and took my land and told me ‘Fair is fair.'”
— The Arrogant Worms, “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”
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Hank Van Essen, a small-scale egg farmer in Alberta, Canada, was arrested by the RCMP for selling eggs outside the quota system.
Yeah, arrested for selling eggs. But it gets better, because “arrested” is code for they sent five cop cars full of RCMP to bust this guy at gunpoint, and they tossed his farm, over EGGS.
Best part, it turns out that he’s in compliance with the Egg Law after all. He’s done nothing wrong. He has less than the maximum number of birds specified by the regulations. Always did. Somebody doesn’t like him and they’ve been harassing him with court orders. Five cop cars and long guns, my friends.
I’ve been saying for quite some time now, pretty much the whole #Let’sGoBrandon administration, that everything in media feels to me like the Hunger Games was a documentary and Caesar Flickerman was a real guy.
May the odds be ever in your favor, my friends.
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“He’s done nothing wrong.”
But that’s the most worstest crime of all!
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Dear LORD. Alberta MUST become American.
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And y’all thought Trump was kidding about Canada…No the American revolution just takes time to spread, sooner or later it’ll get everywhere. But the thing is Canadians you have to do it yourself, or it’s meaningless, good luck and God Bless.
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Hmm, American…
https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/08/drop-milk-and-come-out-with-your-hands.html
The Rawesome Foods SWAT raid by… wait for it… the Department of Agriculture SWAT team.
Those criminals were selling MILK! MILK, I tell you! And cheese!
There’s an update where it turns out the DoA and LA county was surveiling those hippies for two years before the raid.
And there’s the infamous squirrel murder to consider…
Doge has an awful lot of work ahead.
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“…pretty much the whole #Let’sGoBrandon administration, that everything in media feels to me like the Hunger Games was a documentary and Caesar Flickerman was a real guy.”
Yep.
Meanwhile, I’ve got people burning 25-year friendships and even people who live in my own gorram house stopping only justhislittlebitshort of literally calling me…a small-L libertarian whose politics have always boiled down to “please just leave me alone”…a Hitler-saluting Nazi. People are losing their forking minds. I don’t know where this is going to end up, but I hope it’s someplace better than where we’ve been. I do know it can’t go on.
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I’m pretty much an outcast, I don’t have much in the way of social connections for people to burn so it doesn’t bother me as much.
I did get quite the shock during Covid to see how many people I knew and formerly respected had not a fricking clue and were running around with their underwear on their heads.
But what’s happening here in Canaduh and I guess the USA as well is that people are picking sides. They’re not going to be reasonable, they’re going to be UN-reasonable and probably violent.
Don’t care, myself. They can be all the idiot they want, over there and off my lawn.
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Sounds like what happened at Maralago a few years back …
On the ag side in the US there is now a new web page setup for ag to people being legal warfare against by environmental groups, dept of interior, dept of agriculture, etc., all of because what happened to the *Mundo family. Charges dropped (hopefully with prejudice, deed changed to match on the ground reality, legal lawsuit for financial losses, and overreach and other charges).
Environmental lawsuits can be warranted. But too often used a petty overreach harassment.
(*) A fence that was not on the property line and into public land. Started as impeding wildlife migration (specifically elk, I think). So the farm/ranch property boundaries were surveyed for proper fence mitigation for the wildlife. Fence was on the wrong line (barely). So they were sued, prosecuted, individually. The other part of the story was this fence was 70 years old. Had been the fence line since 1910 (probably before but that is when the “family” purchased the homestead ranch), last replaced 70 years (before this all started) ago, before the current (inheriting) parent and spouse were even born (for that matter before the prior inheriting parent was born).
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“Just because you lot have made it legal, doesn’t mean it’s not corruption.”
You are in a similar situation to the American South. Your enemies have gained complete control over the federal government. Not a single Southern state voted for Lincoln in 1860, but he still won by a wide margin.
When you can’t vote your way out of tyranny, what’s next?
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“When you can’t vote your way out of tyranny, what’s next?”
In my crystal ball, gazing into the misty depths, I see the shifting shapes of bouncy castles on the front lawn of Parliament…
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And barbecues. Lots of barbecues, filling the air with the smoke of charcoal and sizzling pork ribs.
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I’ve been seeing (well, my beloved has been looking for it, actually) a lot of, “Alberta is on the edge of secession,” videos. I’ve been taking them with considerable salt, but I’m seeing it starting to hit our, “alternative media,” as well.
I’ve also seen some acid comments on the depressing state of the Canadian military. So if Alberta officially says, “We’re outta here,” how does Ottawa expect to respond?
I’m also getting the impression that Carney, aside from being a globalist to his toenails, is basically a competent version of Trudeau. Ick.
And the part about, “all wealth is in the houses, so of course they’re voting for the party of houses, ” sounds very Chinese, doesn’t it?
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I keep hearing “Canada as the 51st state”. Nope, the 51st (Alberta), 52nd (Saskatchewan), 53rd (Manitoba), and 54th (western Ontario). Dunno about the NWT and Nova Scotia; depends on their politics.
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Actually Saskatchewan should become part of Texas.
Far, Far, Far North Texas….
:P
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😁😁😁
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Hmmm, future story in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe?
”Screw the U.S.! Let’s ask for annexation by the Republic of Texas!”
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Sounds good to me, but there’s only one person who can make that decision, and that is…
Oh, wait! That’s you!😉😁😁
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Yes.
US isn’t going to invade Alberta or any of the others. Ya all gotta ask.
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I’d buy that book. :)
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The Reader doubts that any province in Canada would welcome the ‘you must have a rifle in every household and know how to use it’ part of the Republic of Texas constitution.
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Well, one thing is crystal clear: Nobody wants Ontario.
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Sorry, QUEBEC. Nobody wants Quebec.
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We need to figure out a way to get the Maritimes as well. They seem like decent folks, the few I’ve met. I wouldn’t feel right leaving them in a country with Quebec right next door and no other counterbalances. Although they’re probably ornery enough to handle themselves.
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Yeah, I mentioned Nova Scotia, but I actually had all three Maritimes in mind. And add Newfoundland and Labrador.
No idea how Nunavut shakes out; can a state have a population of three?😉😜😜
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Not even the Quebecois, apparently; they keep talking about leaving, but they never do it, I guess because they’d have to live in Quebec permanently.😉😎
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It’s because they’d have to give up all the free money from Ottawa. They can’t be a country on their own, their economy would evaporate in weeks. Selling wood carvings and butter to each other is not a nation.
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The Reader doesn’t want either. They should be stuck with each other for eternity.
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I’d add Yukon and possibly the northwestern part of Bring Cash, too. (Well, that’s what the nice young lady at the Alberta Pavillion in Glacier International Park told us was what they call British Columbia).
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Sounds like the motto in Ft. Liquordale when I was in HS there: “Keep Florida Green. Bring money.”😁
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When I was in HS and governor McCall said “Welcome to Oregon. Spend your money. Go home.”
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Um, “American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands” might want to get on the ball if they want those 51st – 55th state slots!
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I wonder about BC outside of the Vancouver/Victoria area. Too small a population to make a state, but if Greater Idaho can become a thing, perhaps Greater Alberta could, too.
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Send a Mountie?
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Like the Texas Rangers’ motto, “One riot, one Ranger”?:
“One secession, one Mountie”
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“So if Alberta officially says, “We’re outta here,” how does Ottawa expect to respond?”
They’ve got nothing. Canadian Forces is great for special ops and small air support roles. That’s about it. And Alberta is BIG. It’s big, and empty. No choke points, nothing to grab.
I really don’t feel that #CarkMarney has thought this thing all the way through. If the provincial governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan tell him to shove it, they can make it stick and he can’t do jack.
Unless his bros in China land a couple of divisions and march across the West from BC…
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–
On the single highway into Alberta from BC?
–
A lot of big mountains and big prairies.
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It’s like if you stuck Ukraine and Switzerland together, doubled them in size and then moved them to the Arctic.
Super fun to drive a tank across.
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Plus those not-farmed prairies are NOT flat. Granted, flatter than say the mountains of east BC/western Alberta. I can visually see tanks getting stuck in the almost V shaped prairie gullies. Temporary bridge platforms across every gully? Every 100′ or less? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Not as bad as the “flat” lands of eastern Oregon, or lands across Nevada, or Utah, etc., where suddenly there is just this very deep gorges. (Bane of the wagon trains headed west.) Still, prairies are not flat.
How much popcorn should the Alberta population invest in?
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The craziest ruling I’ve seen lately is the judge who said CBP/ICE need a warrant to arrest any illegal aliens. I don’t know, maybe keep showing up at his/her door at all hours of the night to get a warrant signed might show how insane that is considering the law on the books says they don’t need a warrant.
On a personal note, I saw my oncologist earlier this week and got a clean bill of health. I’m due for a colonoscopy and, lucky me, there was a cancellation in early October. Otherwise I’d have to wait at least a year.
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Yep.
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And congratulations on the clean bill of health.
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Thanks
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Her husband has some sort of business connection linked to illegal aliens. Conflict of interest big time.
(Who writes these plot points? These people are as stupid as Florida Man and not as entertaining…)
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Speaking of clean bill of health …
Hubby’s PSA test came back as “undetectable” (< 0.04 since that is the lowest the labs can test for). Three months and another test. I suspect tests every 3 months now forever (for all I care).
BIL has a clean bill of health with his cancer. Just needs to have blood tests to test for red blood cell recovery after the two shots of JIC chemo after the part with cancer was removed.
Congrats on your clean bill of health!
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I last saw Dr Mengele at the end of May last year. Sort of expected him to call me in for the usual tests in December, but nothing. I made an appointment request, and am seeing one of his(? The clinic’s anyway) minions in June. The local medical complex is part of the Oregon health education system (whee) and Mengele is in it up to his eyebrows. OTOH, that means he won’t be able to nag me about vaccinations, flu/shingles/Clotshot, or whatever. I’m current on tetanus, so OK.
I want a followup on the “while you complained about your knee, let’s look at the edema in your legs, and the lump on your adrenal gland, and by the way, you have an enlarged prostate.” So, I’m going to get the PSA blood test, and ask about the adrenal lump. It was 1/4th the size for action stage, and the funky tests seemed to have come out OK, but I assume sooner or later they’ll want to do a retest. (Mengele never bothered to explain–DIY medical research is better than nothing, but sheesh).
A second clinic in part of the medical complex has openings for patients. One of those docs did my colonoscopy in early ’20 and read my “it’s not a flu, but we’re not saying COVID because the state won’t give us the test kits” medical test. I like him… It would be nice to have a doctor who doesn’t come across like a nerdy Prussian.
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Lump and prostate found while looking at the edema. Yeah, they looked at the leg, and it got fixed as much as removing the shards and cleaning up the inside could do. Just took forever. (I’m banned from MRI for reasons, and CT is suboptimal for soft tissue diagnostics.)
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OUTSTANDING news!
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Why doesn’t anyone look at the situation before these messes started? What changed? Not what new band-aid can the government slap on the oozing wound?
Rather than ask whether student loans, (and one of these days: consumer credit card debt), should be enforced or forgiven, ask why they were excepted from bankruptcy. If I have a business and I fail, then I can apply for various forms of bankruptcy. I fight it out in bankruptcy court with my creditors, and the financial damage is restricted to us. I get my credit damaged, and the creditors are penalized for making a bad loan. The taxpayers and the inflation victims who have nothing to do with it are not hurt.
Without bankruptcy, which was removed by congress in the case of student and credit card debt, the debtors are likely to be trapped for the rest of their lives, or else the government will indulge another pressure group at everyone else’s expense. The creditors have a cash cow because the debtors can’t escape, the interest keeps flowing and the principal can, if desired, be sold. Gee, I wonder why Congress and the banks were in favor of this?
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DEBT SLAVES. I disapprove of slavery. I double disapprove of slavery to government. Let my people go.
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Not generational debt at any rate. Granted the creditors will take *almost everything. Pennies or dimes on the dollar.
(*) Almost because turns out the estate pays up front for funeral, and court costs, including lawyer fees and a reasonable estate executor percentage fee depending on asset value determined by the court. The court then determines what the creditors get per dollar owed. (Which really pisses them off.)
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Good post, Sarah.
But I still think we have a problem of scale, now greater than ever in human history. Trying to run a national government on a continental scale, with a federal budget of $6.75 in 2024, means that rules, norms, and money are going to leak like a sieve. And your opportunities for dipping, double-dipping, triple-dipping your little paw into the streams will be too great to resist. It’s a mad circus that keeps rolling down Main Street day after day.
Oh, yeah, I’m hard boiled, too.
Tom Thomas
>
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“Down those mean streets a man must walk who is not himself mean.”
Couldn’t help thinking of that.
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Whoops to my last: a federal budget of $6.75 TRILLION. Numbers are hard.
T.
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I’m thinking that we need to keep moving forward in fixing the system.
The bigger the screams, the more desperate the hostage puppies, the harder the attacks on us for what we claim is wrong..means that we’re getting close to the core.
(As an aside, I’m of mixed emotions on Obamacare. There were some structural fixes that were necessary, I wouldn’t have health care through MediCal after losing my job without Obamacare and the COVID mandates, etc, etc, etc…but there are so many issues, including the damned near “say you think you’re trans, we start whacking” treatment of people that need therapy, medication, and probably the occasional slap upside the head.)
More repairs are needed; we need to go through the worst agencies and demand accountability and billing. People need to go to jail for breaking the rules. And we have about two years, minimum, to keep the ball rolling.
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The word is maximum, I think.
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I’m hoping minimum. That means we have MORE space to work in; the sooner we can get the low-hanging fruit of corruption cleaned up.
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Fingers crossed the democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot and 2026 means a better majority in the legislature. Good enough to get all the Executive Orders of #47 codified into law. Code reversals by DOGE engineers requiring valid budget tags and uploaded receipts will be harder to reverse.
Note, just because valid budget numbers and receipts are required does not mean everything is on the up and up. Trust me I should know. I wrote on and supported a governmental cost accounting program (county, city, native reservation, *departmental levels). Can run reports showing budget charges and balancing. Can prevent billing against budgets without enough money, which can prevent payments to the budget charges (good step). But cannot determine if it is a valid entry to be paid. OTOH the program really, really, helps auditors and those who want to do right by tax payer money. Point is, even as a much smaller scale, too much information happens.
(*) A few clients were an entire county or reservation. Mostly because of the (population) size. Other counties had multiple installations of the system. Each of the latter county example installations data sizes dwarfed the former.
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Going through that mass of data and pointing out anomalies is what AI is good for. Unfortunately, someone has to track down what produced those anomalies — “CORRELATION != CAUSATION”. Most developers and managers in my experience omit that tracking, and those who don’t are not taught what to look for.
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“someone has to track down what produced those anomalies”
I know.
Why I said “auditors love the program”. Especially *state auditors and state road boards. OTOH the system was originally built (per insider gossip) in conjunction with one state auditor associated with that state road board. Subsequent states the various boards get involved as the first county comes on board. You’d think all the states would be the same … Right? **Nope.
Regarding support I avoided the questions on what I called “Accounting, Controller, and Auditing” questions. I could tell them how something was calculated. How various percentages were used, how to set the percentage. I would NOT tell them what percentages to use. Um, “avoided” is wrong. What I said was “That is an accounting question I can’t answer that.” (Can’t, not Won’t. Won’t implied I had an answer but won’t say.)
(*) Oregon was an exception? Why? Because state auditors endorsed a “free” program available to counties who paid to be part of the state county association. Good, for what it was. Better because online and phone access could be setup (not guarantied to have access, as Oregon has a lot of “no coverage”). Not as extensive. Would have sunk one client’s problem because they wouldn’t have been able to provide the information needed in time (per public works manager at the time).
(**) Different Fiscal Years aside (Calendar, Federal, Fiscal: June – May). Is labor overhead estimated (based on percentage)? Or actual? Not the only differences. Then there were the county differences, custom forms aside. Some of them the only answer was a silent “Whatever” and figure it out. Not too many. But they were a source of humorous “Been that way for 10 years. I left documentation. Not my problem (anymore).” When I retired.
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I’m trying to see why this would be a bad idea….
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The location for the pilot episode has already been found:
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*Blinks*
…Okay, I’m Team Vlad on this one. Time to start sharpening….
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I remember reading somewhere that if you considered what the Ottoman Empire actually got up to, Vlad was a bleeding heart liberal.
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By and large he only impaled people after they were already dead. The ottomans executed them that way. It wasn’t QUITE as bad as crucifixion. Quite.
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I have read up. Consider among other things Vlad grew up as a royal hostage tortured on a near-daily basis, while one of his younger brothers ended up as… well, let’s just say that location for the pilot episode could have had him as a prequel victim.
On top of that the whole “we will take all your pretty and smart children for either our harems or our Jannisaries” – yeah, Vlad had ample reasons.
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yep.
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And the left wonders why so many people voted for Trump…
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The temptation is to say:
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
But yeah, it’s a time of miracles. And boy, do we need one.
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A time of miracles, like AI, but…
If you want to read something long and at the end frankly scary about what is emerging to be really going on under the hood of LLM AI, wherein AI exhibits unconscious biases (think about that for a minute), see:
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/your-ai-hates-you
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It’s almost as bad when your AI loves you…..
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The funny thing is it appears this AI “thinks” it does love the article author, and appears somewhat surprised that it’s “unconscious” biases cause it to basically hypothetically decide to off him.
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There was a link in that comment. WPDE.
https://x.com/buttonslives/status/1918415961041916161
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AAARRRRGGGHHH!! Wrong link. Probably on me.
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2025/05/01/the-ai-problem-no-one-is-talking-about-n2188581
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The bias is either in the algorithm or the data. I suspect the data is mostly or entirely sourced from left-wing propaganda. Alternatively, it could be that conservative sources are less self-righteous than extreme left-wing ideologues. They don’t simply assume that they are Correct and Virtuous.
By the way, I’d call all our current attempts at ‘AI’ LDMs — Large Data Models. Because some of them are not based on words at all. See MidJourney.
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The author actually addresses this question, taking an informed guess, at the end of his Substack article (bold is my emphasis):
…so “it’s the data” appears to be sort of correct, as skewed by the programmers training biases. But the point is these “values” and “unconscious biases” are evolving under the hood, where even the models themselves are not “aware” of them.
If that process, hidden evolving biases, does not sound scary I don’t know what would.
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hard boiled?
Now I want more Rhodes…
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ALMOST. if I can get THIS novel out and stop getting sick.
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May it please God!!!
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in the meantime, I was able to find a bit of light reading:
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You and me both.
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Note to self: Reading ATH while drinking coffee could be hazardous to your keyboard. Not quite this time, but it was close.
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More good news.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/gun-training-courses-experience-surge-in-sign-ups-people-dont-want-be-victim-anymore#&_intcmp=fnhpriver_37
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“We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.”
— Malcolm Reynolds
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i said a few years ago, we have 30 trillion in debt
so what’s the difference if it’s 31 trillion?
forgive the student loan debt.
We spend so much giving housing and EBT to riff raff,
why balk at tossing a few bones to the dogs
that actually pull the sled?
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We spent as much, I BET you, on illegals.
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You may be hard boiled, dear Hostess, but you are a good egg.
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aw. Thank you.
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