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Sick fucks

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

“Who controls the past controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to hate it, too.

Jeffrey Tucker of the libertarian Brownstone Institute said Saturday that “the whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation. People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.” That’s exactly the goal, Mr. Tucker: make Americans sad and demoralized and vulnerable to those who would have them believe that this nation has been evil from the beginning and is in drastic need of a thorough overhauling of its political system and society in general. Tucker added that when he was at Monticello, his guide was “surly and dismissive” of Jefferson’s remarkable achievements.

Monticello is no longer about Mr. Jefferson’s achievements. According to the New York Post, Monticello’s “new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said.” “Balance the historical record”: that’s a calculated and clever way of saying “Do everything we can to denigrate Thomas Jefferson and make those who admire him enough to visit his home come out hating him.”

Accordingly, the Post reports, “visitors complain that employees go out of their way to belittle Jefferson and his life.” One visitor wrote on Facebook that “the tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man.” Another wrote: “Always enjoyed visiting Monticello in the past. The workers are super friendly and helpful. Unfortunately on this guided tour, we were lectured more on slaves and Sally Hemmings than the man himself. Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical. I expected for, the price, to have enjoyed it more. Even my 11 yr old daughter noticed the bias. We all are aware of the tragedy of slavery during the early part of this country’s history. Please center your presentations on the man and his accomplishments rather than promoting guilt.” Not a chance.

A third visitor said: “Visited a few years ago and had a great experience and got to learn a lot about Thomas Jefferson. This time every video slandered his name and the entire focus was on his mistress. Very disappointing and shocking to see how they are trying to rewrite history to make it seem like the founding fathers were terrible immoral creatures that happened to start a country.” Ah yes, now you’re getting the idea.

At this point, Monticello might as well be renamed Guilt Plantation. The Post noted that even the ticket booth to the place gets into the act: it’s “decorated with a contemporary painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves.” In Jefferson’s music room, “a grim modern painting of a faceless figure with a matte black head now looms over the room, positioned so that it directly confronts visitors as they enter the mansion.” This masterpiece, according to Monticello guide Susan Woodward, was “commissioned in honor of Juneteenth” and was intended to be “quite provocative.” A card next to this painting explains that its “hands and face of featureless tar” are meant to signify “the faceless lives of all who served in bondage, witnessing but never recognized.”

I’m sure you’ll all be every bit as shocked as I was to learn who’s behind this vile desecration.

Not surprisingly, “The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Dem donors and former Democratic officials.” Monticello’s descent “has largely been funded by left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward that effort in 2015. Rubenstein is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” Now it’s beginning to become clear why all this is happening.

The endgame is not just to make Americans despise Thomas Jefferson, but to make the average American ashamed of being American. That’s what this has been about from first to last.

But of course. It’s who they are. It’s what they do. The bottom line:

Jefferson is just the sort of man whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist utopia, and their moneyed backers would despise and fear. They want a docile American populace, frightened into submission to their authoritarian vision. The example of Thomas Jefferson could inspire Americans instead to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve our hard-won freedoms. Can’t have that. Jefferson’s name must be made anathema to Americans.

The scumsuckers will never get it done—not here, they won’t. Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, I’ll see every last man Jack of them in Hell first.

What’s in a name?

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Everything, as it turns out.

It is easy to forget the new XYZ 2.0T – or whatever the alpha-numeric designation of the last transportation appliance you owned was. Who remembers the model number of their last microwave? Who even knows the model number of the microwave in their kitchen, right now?

After all, it’s just an appliance.

And so have cars become.

Not all, not yet. There are still a few – that are new – that have names. Not coincidentally, they are the only ones with personality – and thus deserving of the individuation that comes with naming a thing as opposed to categorizing it.

Mustang, for instance. Say that name and everyone knows what you mean – irrespective of the particular model. The same goes – well, went – for Beetle. Say that name and practically everyone has a story, a memory.

It is hard to remember where you parked your XYZ 2.0T – especially if it is painted appliance white. There are so many just like it. Probably why, at least in part, the push-button key fob was invented. Not so much to unlock your appliance but to help you find it, among all the others.

Naming cars was once a big deal, even though less attention was not infrequently paid to the naming than should have been. Even as regards some of the great names, in terms of the automotive Hall of Fame.

Nova, for instance.

That was the name of Chevy’s new (at the time) compact (mid-sized, by the standards of our time) economy car, which made its debut in 1962 and became as common a sight on American roads back in the ’70s and ’80s as XYZ 2.0Ts are on our roads, today. The problem arose when the Nova was exported to Spanish-speaking countries such as Mexico, because Nova sounds a lot like no va, which means (roughly) it doesn’t go.

Which, at least among the Novas I had any experience with, was perfectly accurate.

Then there was Banshee – a Pontiac that never made its debut, because GM higher-ups weren’t about to let Pontiac offer a two-seater with gull-wing doors that looked a lot like a Corvette take away any Corvette sales. So the Banshee was shelved, which avoided what would have been a big problem if anyone decided to look up the meaning of that name. It means harbinger of death in old Irish idiom.

Some names were just numbers. Z28, for instance. It had emotional mojo as much as Trans-Am, another name almost everyone remembers even though no Trans-Ams have been made in the last 20 years. Both worked because each was individual. Chevy never intended to use “Z28” as a car name. Rather, it was – originally – the ordering code that people in the high-performance know used to spec out a Camaro with an ensemble of road-racing equipment, which was what the original Z28 (in 1967) was all about. As word got out – and lots of orders were being placed – Z28 became a name rather than a number.

Trans-Am was a name that became a car.

One almost inevitably gets attached to things that have names, because by naming them they subtly become something more than just things. This is probably why people who raise animals for food generally don’t name them. It is easier to eat a thing than it is to eat Bessie.

Ahh, but therein lies a chicken-or-egg kind of question: do we get attached to them because they have names, or do we give them names because we’re attached to them?

ZFG—about you, me, or anydamnedbody else

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Gee, ya don’t say.

WH Finally Admits Biden Doesn’t Pay Attention to the Pain His Policies Cause Americans
In Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitted what most Americans already know to be true: prices on everyday goods are still surging amid inflation that surged to forty year highs under Biden’s economic policy.

“On Wednesday we will have new CPI inflation data and we expect the headline number — which includes gas and food — to be highly elevated,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. For context, May’s Consumer Price Index jumped one full percentage point from April, hitting 8.6 percent year-over-year. For the White House to be trying to manage expectations ahead of Wednesday’s release for June suggests there’s much worse yet to come.

As usual for the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre’s warning was also accompanied by the obligatory refusal to accept any responsibility for the spend and print economic policy that Biden has embraced and which has spurred red-hot inflation to continue setting records despite Biden’s initial denial that any issue existed or was merely a “high-class problem.”

When asked in a separate question about a new poll showing that 63 percent of Democrats believe the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction under Biden’s leadership, Jean-Pierre again proclaimed that President Biden knows what Americans are feeling.

Using the White House’s past playbook for dealing with runaway inflation as a guide, calling the economy “strong” is only further evidence that the economy is diving into a recession. The question then becomes who Biden and Jean-Pierre will blame for that mess right before the midterms?

Inflation, again, is at 40-year highs. More than 353,000 Americans left the labor force in June. The U.S. economy is still down 200,000 jobs from where it was before COVID hit. There’s 700,000 more Americans who aren’t in the labor force but want to work compared to February 2020. We’ve already logged one quarter of GDP shrinkage, and projections for Q2 are already down as much as 2 percent — which would mean a definitional recession for the United States.

What Karine Jean-Pierre finally confirmed on Monday was the simple truth that too many Americans have been forced to confront: President Biden and his administration know that the economy is trash, they know Americans are hurting under Democrats’ agenda, but they won’t pay attention to the pain — made evident by polling — or focus on mitigating it because to do so would be to abandon their dystopian leftist policies. They won’t give up their “transition” away from fossil fuels, end to coal-fired power, or woke social spending that contributed to and kickstarted inflation in the first place.

No, Biden and his team are all-in on their harmful policies, and they’re going to blame everyone but themselves, no matter how bad the polling gets or how bad their midterm losses turn out to be.

Of course they will. And why not? The one and only thing they give a shit about is the same as it’s always been: implementing the hard-Left agenda; cementing it firmly into place so that it can never be undone; and enriching themselves personally in the process. They’re so supremely overconfident at this stage of the game, they don’t even seem to care whether anyone outside the environs of the Swamp buys their squalid blame-shifting routine or not.

Deep State defiant

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Being what they are, doing what they do.

The Administrative State Moves To Show Who’s Boss On Energy Policy
Last Thursday, June 30, the Supreme Court issued its decision in West Virginia v. EPA, holding that, absent a further explicit statute from the Congress, the EPA did not have the authority to orchestrate its planned fundamental restructuring of the electric power generation sector of the economy. More generally, the Supreme Court stated that in cases involving “major questions,” including regulations that affect large portions of the economy, the government must demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” to support a sweeping effort to regulate.

Do you think that such a Supreme Court decision might cause the various regulatory bureaucracies to slow down and reconsider a little before plowing ahead with other dubious plans for fundamental economic restructurings? That’s not how these bureaucracies work. And such is most particularly the case with regard to regulators of the energy sector, sometimes known as “climate change” arena, where the bureaucrats are burning with a righteous religious fervor that they believe entitles them to cast the evil sinners into the fires of hell.

And thus, contemporaneous with the Supreme Court’s decision, several agencies promptly doubled down on efforts to strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory restrictions, essentially daring the courts or anyone else to stop them. Thousands of pages of statutes give them thousands of arguments to claim they have the “clear congressional authorization,” any one of which arguments might stick. They are now out to show who’s boss.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan wasted no time in getting a statement out on the afternoon of June 30. Excerpt:

[W]e are committed to using the full scope of EPA’s authorities to protect communities and reduce the pollution that is driving climate change…EPA will move forward with lawfully setting and implementing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm.

In other words, we will just have to find other ways to implement the restrictions that we want to implement.

Oh, I can think of at least one really good one right offhand, although things might get a little messy, so to speak, before all’s said and done. Alas, the EPA is hardly alone in their lawless defiance of the Supreme Court. That’s life under a power-drunk government gone rogue, believing itself to be above all sanction, restriction, or oversight.

One can only stand back in slack-jawed wonder at the sheer, unmitigated gall of the EPA’s brandishing of the word “lawfully” up there, waving it in our faces like a billy-club even as they’re so arrogantly disregarding its meaning. All under the holy “climate change” rubric, natch; honestly, is there ANYTHING it can’t do at this point?

Via BRM, who adds:

That’s typical of bureaucrats, of course. Don’t like a Supreme Court ruling? Defy it. Circumvent it with every paper-shuffling, buck-passing trick at your disposal. Deny, delay, obfuscate. Ignore complaints. It’s not just Democrat administrations that do it, either. The entrenched bureaucracy that implements (?) the decisions of every administration (the so-called “Deep State”) plus the political appointees of every President have always sought ways to do what they want to do, rather than what they should do or what the law says they must do. Lincoln’s abrogation of the right of habeas corpus comes to mind, to cite just one example.

I don’t know what can be done about this. The courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, can issue rulings and injunctions for all they’re worth; but if the powers that be are determined to ignore or circumvent them, there’s no immediate remedy for that. The rule of law is already honored more in the breach than in the observance in many ways in these formerly United States. Nowadays, it all too often depends on one’s politics to determine whether or not the law will operate in one’s favor.

Just don’t expect the Biden administration to be bound by the rule of law, or the decision of courts of law, from the lowest to the highest. It’s partisan in the extreme, and ruthless in its determination to do whatever it wants to achieve its objectives. It won’t be stopped by laws or lawsuits. It’ll need stronger measures than mere words.

Indeed it will. As the filthy bastards go from bad to worse to worse still, they make those “stronger measures” look less dreadful and more and more appealing.

Right ho, Jeeves!

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

An appreciation of one my all-time favorites, the incomparable Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

Evelyn Waugh said of the fiction writing of fellow English author P. G. Wodehouse: “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

Ours are indeed irksome times, so take Waugh at his word and treat yourself to some Wodehouse this summer. The page-to-smile ratio is about one-to-one; the page-to-guffaw ratio is not far behind. It’s Wodehouse, that undisputed master of similes, who first made me fall in love with the literary device that conveys so much with so little.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then consider this my salute to the great P. G. Wodehouse generally and his penchant for similes particularly:

Rye believed he wasn’t at fault but, as surely as naming a daughter Alexa contributes to feelings of inadequacy in a world she feels asks everything of her, he was mistaken.

Like leaving a massive inheritance not to an underserved but undeserving community, Lou learned the hard way that attention to detail matters.

Jeff read the critic’s surprisingly charitable review of his atrocious one-act play and sensed, like a dollar-store customer in an inflationary environment, he was making out like a bandit.

Paisley’s news was received poorly not because it was bad in itself but, like hearing steel drums in the dead of a Montana winter, the timing was off.

As I’ve mentioned here before, Wodehouse once famously described his creative process thusly: “I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.” A little biographical info on the great man:

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (1881–1975) was a prolific English author, humorist and scriptwriter. After being educated at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life, he was employed by a bank, but disliked the work and wrote magazine pieces in his spare time. In 1902 he published his first novel, The Pothunters, set at the fictional public school of St. Austin’s; his early stories continued the school theme. He also used the school setting in his short story collections, which started in 1903 with the publication of Tales of St. Austin’s.

Throughout his novel- and story-writing career Wodehouse created several renowned regular comic characters with whom the public became familiar. These include Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the disaster-prone opportunist Ukridge; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tales on numerous subjects from film studios to the Church of England.

Wodehouse also wrote scripts and screenplays and, in August 1911, his script A Gentleman of Leisure was produced on the Broadway stage. In the 1920s and 1930s he collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton in an arrangement that “helped transform the American musical” of the time; in the Grove Dictionary of American Music Larry Stempel writes, “By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy.” His writing for plays also turned into scriptwriting, starting with the 1915 film A Gentleman of Leisure. He joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1930 for a year, and then worked for RKO Pictures in 1937.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, and while living in northern France, Wodehouse was captured by the Germans and was interned for over a year. After his release he was tricked into making five comic and apolitical broadcasts on German radio to the still neutral US. After vehement protests in Britain, Wodehouse never returned to his home country, despite being cleared by an MI5 investigation. He moved to the US permanently in 1947 and took American citizenship in 1955, retaining his British nationality. He continued writing until his death in 1975.

Wodehouse wrote more than 300 short stories. Many of these stories were originally published in magazines and subsequently published in short story collections. Wodehouse also contributed other works to periodicals such as articles and poems, and some of Wodehouse’s novels were originally serialised in magazines as well.

There is a well-documented and accessible collection of his published, autobiographical and miscellaneous work. There are transcripts available of the five broadcasts he made, available online, including through the PG Wodehouse Society (UK).

Prolific? I’d say so, yeah. I have a great many of Wodehouse’s novels and short stories, having been an avid collector of them ever since my Aunt Ruth gave me her battered, dog-eared copy of Laughing Gas when I was but a wee bairn. The Jeeves series entire; the Psmith stories; even his side-splitting Golf! anthologies—I’ve read and re-read ’em all, and still enjoy them tremendously to this very day. In fact, I have I don’t even know how many Wodehouse ebooks on my phone.

If you’ve never read the man, take my word for it that this is some truly brilliant writing, purest gold which will never lose its luster. For me at least, his stuff just never gets old or stale. Go grab a book or two of his from Amazon and then just try to tell me I steered you wrong. You won’t regret it, believe you me; verily, there’s never been another quite like him. A little taste for y’all:

After breakfast I lit a cigarette and went to the open window to inspect the day. It certainly was one of the best and brightest.

“Jeeves,” I said.

“Sir?” said Jeeves. He had been clearing away the breakfast things, but at the sound of the young master’s voice cheesed it courteously.

“You were absolutely right about the weather. It is a juicy morning.”

“Decidedly, sir.”

“Spring and all that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove.”

“So I have been informed, sir.”

“Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I’m going into the Park to do pastoral dances.”

I don’t know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky’s a light blue, with cotton-wool clouds, and there’s a bit of a breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I’m not much of a ladies’ man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something. So that it was a bit of an anti-climax when I merely ran into young Bingo Little, looking perfectly foul in a crimson satin tie decorated with horseshoes.

“Hallo, Bertie,” said Bingo.

“My God, man!” I gargled. “The cravat! The gent’s neckwear! Why? For what reason?”

“Oh, the tie?” He blushed. “I–er–I was given it.”

He seemed embarrassed, so I dropped the subject. We toddled along a bit, and sat down on a couple of chairs by the Serpentine.

“Jeeves tells me you want to talk to me about something,” I said.

“Eh?” said Bingo, with a start. “Oh yes, yes. Yes.”

I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn’t seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner.

“I say, Bertie,” he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.

“Hallo!”

“Do you like the name Mabel?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You don’t think there’s a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?”

“No.”

He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.

“Of course, you wouldn’t. You always were a fatheaded worm without any soul, weren’t you?”

“Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.”

For I realised now that poor old Bingo was going through it once again. Ever since I have known him–and we were at school together–he has been perpetually falling in love with someone, generally in the spring, which seems to act on him like magic. At school he had the finest collection of actresses’ photographs of anyone of his time; and at Oxford his romantic nature was a byword.

“You’d better come along and meet her at lunch,” he said, looking at his watch.

“A ripe suggestion,” I said. “Where are you meeting her? At the Ritz?”

“Near the Ritz.”

He was geographically accurate. About fifty yards east of the Ritz there is one of those blighted tea-and-bun shops you see dotted about all over London, and into this, if you’ll believe me, young Bingo dived like a homing rabbit; and before I had time to say a word we were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher.

I’m bound to say I couldn’t quite follow the development of the scenario. Bingo, while not absolutely rolling in the stuff, has always had a fair amount of the ready. Apart from what he got from his uncle, I knew that he had finished up the jumping season well on the right side of the ledger. Why, then, was he lunching the girl at this God-forsaken eatery? It couldn’t be because he was hard up.

Just then the waitress arrived. Rather a pretty girl.

“Aren’t we going to wait—-?” I started to say to Bingo, thinking it somewhat thick that, in addition to asking a girl to lunch with him in a place like this, he should fling himself on the foodstuffs before she turned up, when I caught sight of his face, and stopped.

The man was goggling. His entire map was suffused with a rich blush. He looked like the Soul’s Awakening done in pink.

“Hallo, Mabel!” he said, with a sort of gulp.

“Hallo!” said the girl.

“Mabel,” said Bingo, “this is Bertie Wooster, a pal of mine.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Nice morning.”

“Fine,” I said.

“You see I’m wearing the tie,” said Bingo.

“It suits you beautiful,” said the girl.

Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner.

See what I mean? Now if that ain’t just like Mother used to make…well, I’m all flustered myself, albeit not with gratification.

Spicier ‘n’ spicier

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Simply unbelievable.

DC Service Industry Workers… If you see Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett or Roberts DM us with the details!

We’ll venmo you $50 for a confirmed sighting and $200 if they’re still there 30 mins after your message. https://t.co/xXWZ5JZiE7

— ShutDownDC (@ShutDown_DC) July 8, 2022

Divemedic knows the score as well as you do.

The reason for this, at least to me, is completely obvious. They WANT some looney to assassinate one or more of them. Such an act would allow Biden to name their replacement. This is nothing more than a group of people who want to commit murder but don’t have the balls to do it themselves. They know that there are people in their movement whose screws are loose, and are hoping that they can spur them into action by broadcasting the location of their desired targets.

I am willing to be that there will be a serious assassination attempt on a SCOTUS justice before the end of the year, with more copycats, and I would give you a 50% chance that at least one of those attempts will be successful before the 2024 election.

I must confess, I’m kinda surprised one of these filthy scum hasn’t had a go at offing the great Clarence Thomas long before now. Another of these depraved groups, Now or Never, boasts that “conventional tactics are not enough” and that they feel it’s “time to escalate.” For my money, I can only agree with them: it’s time, and past time, for Real Americans to “escalate” right on up to killing these baglappers in job lots.

Update! Ted Cruz lets ‘er rip, most righteously.

US. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said attacks against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife after the court overturned Roe v Wade are “despicable.”

“The racist hatred directed at Justice Thomas and his family is despicable,” Cruz said. “Absolutely vile.”

The senator made the comment in response to a photo published on social media of a protestor’s sign reading, “Ginny Thomas is a 21st cent. slave owner,” referring to Thomas’ white wife.

Cruz, a former Supreme Court clerk, warned in May that President Joe Biden’s refusal to condemn activists’ targeting of justices’ homes was “literally threatening the lives of these justices.”

Since then, some have called for Thomas to be assassinated and threats and disparaging remarks continue to be made about him.

A female protester recently called Thomas a “swine” and “illegitimate pig.”

And a politician, media personality and actor have called him “an Uncle Tom,” conservative commentator and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder noted. He told Fox News LA that using the racial slur is “outrageous. You can disagree with somebody without making a racial slur like that. It’s unfair what he’s been called.”

Well said, Ted, and good on ya for having the stones to come to our greatest Justice’s defense this way.

Oof!

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Mike

Also: OUCH.

This summer’s weather is perfect now in the Hudson Valley: warm, sunny days for primping the garden and cool nights that invite deep sleep. Zucchini and cukes are coming on, along with currants, gooseberries, blueberries. Unseen underground, the potatoes swell. The chickens range happily over their daily smorgasbord of bugs. At midnight, fireflies blink in the orchard. On the human side, though — commerce, culture, and politics — nothing works. At least not here in America. Sigh….

The solar electric I installed on the house nine years ago is down. It’s supposed to feed that monster called the grid. Since April, I noticed that the electric bill is creeping up way beyond the usual seventeen bucks that the electric company charges home solar producers for the privilege of feeding their system — which, let’s face it, has a downside for them because the intermittency of so-called alt-energy disorders their operations.

It’s counter-intuitive. Many people, I’m sure, assume that the more solar units feeding the grid, the better. Strangely, not so. Electric companies work much better when the production and flow of current is absolutely predictable and under their control — like, when they decide to fire up the natgas on generator number three or tune down the hydro turbines. It’s much harder to run the system with little dribs and drabs of electricity trickling in from hither and yon. But alt-energy is good PR for the government, so they do whatever they can to promote or even compel its use.

I got a whopping folio of tax breaks and subsidies from the state and federal government when I decided to put solar electric on my house in 2013, though it finally still cost a lot: $35-K. I had intimations of living through a chaotic period of history, and the decision was consistent with my general theory of history, which is that things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. Getting a home solar electric rig seemed like a good idea.

So, last week, after considerable hassle with my solar company setting up an appointment for a techie to visit and evaluate the problem here, the guy came up (at $150-an-hour) and informed me that my charge controller was shot. The charge controller processes all those chaotic watts coming from the solar panels on the roof into an orderly parade of electrons. He also told me that my back-up batteries — for running critical loads like the well-pump during grid outages — were at the end of their design life. Subtext: you have to get new batteries.

There are four big ones in a cabinet under the blown charge controller and the inverter (for turning direct current into alternating current that is the standard for running things). The techie had some bad news, though. New building codes forbid his company from replacing the kind of batteries I have, which are standard “sealed cell” lead-acid batteries. Some bullshit about off-gassing flammable fumes. Now the government requires lithium batteries, which would cost me sixteen-thousand dollars ($16-K) more to replace than new lead-acid batteries.

Now, it’s theoretically possible for me to replace the less-expensive lead-acid batteries — they’re still manufactured and sold — but the catch is: I’m on my own getting them and installing them. I’m in the middle of that learning-curve right now. These particular batteries cost about $850-each for the four of them, plus a hefty charge for “drop-shipping” about three hundred pounds of lead and plastic. I will almost certainly go that way, though. A new charge controller will run about $2-K. All together, replacing these components represents a big chunk of change.

At the risk of sounding like some kind of pussy, I confess that this whole business of repairing my solar electric system has put me into a welter of anxiety and fury. I am trapped in the cage of sunk costs, a.k.a. the psychology of previous investment. Not only do I have $35-K (in higher-value 2013 dollars!) tied up in all this equipment — the solar panels themselves, the wall of electronic devices, the conduit, control panels, and digital read-outs — but now I have to dump thousands more into it after only nine years. It pisses me off because I should have known better. I walked with eyes wide shut into the pit of techno-narcissism.

All I can think to say is, better you than me, Bill. Ahh, but bad as that surely is, his pain only gets worse from there.

In a low-grade epiphany while going through this ordeal last week, I realized that back in 2013, instead of getting the solar electric system, I could have bought the Rolls Royce of home generators and buried a 500-gallon fuel tank outside the garage, and had a manual water pump piggy-backed onto the well, and maybe even purchased a fine, wood-fired cookstove — and had enough money left over for a two-week vacation in the South-of-France. Silly me.

Heh. Good to see Kunstler still has some semblance of a sense of humor left after all that suffering and horror, I suppose.

Extremism rulez, moderation droolz

Posted on July 11, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover Barry Goldwater again.

In his 1964 acceptance speech at the Republican Convention where he had been nominated to run against Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater famously said:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Great words although Goldwater would be blown out by LBJ 486 electoral votes to 52, facing as he did an impossible task of overcoming the national grief over the assassination of JFK and being stabbed in the back by his own party (a recurring theme in the GOP).

Many of the things said about Goldwater were also said about Ronald Reagan but by that time it stopped working, the disastrous incompetence of Carter made him the anti-LBJ with nothing to run on. Reagan was bold and brash compared to other Republicans and he won both elections handily. He was also the last really strong Republican candidate for decades to come. George H.W. Bush, Dole, Shrub W. Bush, McCain, Romney? What a pack of limp noodle pussies. It is a small miracle that Shrub won his first election, he won the second by virtue of riding that “War On Terror” bullshit but he would have been clobbered if he was able to run a third time.

Republican “leadership” from the top down has been lackluster, milquetoast, uninspiring wimps for as long as I can remember. Would you follow “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell anywhere? Or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who is so useless I had to look him up because I for the life of me couldn’t remember his name? McCarthy is one of many political figures who has never had a real job of any sort in his life, I need to do a post about that one of these days.

In fact Republican “thinkers” and “strategists” have been counseling moderation for as long as I can remember and to the surprise of absolutely no one this strategy has led to a series of pussies running the show for the GOP. I still remember the VP “debate” between Sniffy Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Biden ran all over Ryan, insulting him and talking over him while Ryan just smiled and took it. You see where taking the “high ground” has gotten the GOP. Principled loss after principled loss for years on end, until Trump got the nomination and all of the same people preaching moderation flipped out and told conservatives why they couldn’t support Orange Man Bad. The same NeverTrumpers who now are crowing about “their” victory over Roe v Wade.

What got me thinking about this was the Zman’s latest podcast, An Angry Return. His first segment was about dimwit Kevin Williamson of National Review fame talking about the triumph of moderation over fanaticism.

As Z pointed out, the Left has been consistently winning precisely because they appeal to their most fanatical zealots.

It isn’t a big leap to say that the “right” has the better arguments on virtually every topic. Libertarians can argue all day long in favor of all sorts of stuff but it generally falls on deaf ears. The right doesn’t lose because their arguments need to be a little better, they lose because they don’t appeal to people where it matters: their emotions.

Let’s look at the two recent wins for the “right” in America:

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that overturned Roe and the “right” to an abortion

The NYSRPA v Bruen case that set the precedent for a right to carry a firearm outside of your home

It is hard to express as someone who has lived for 50 years under legalized abortion and the endless infringements on the Second Amendment how earthshaking those two decisions are. They will likely be temporary wins but after decades of no wins, it is incredible to see Roe go down in flames and the SCOTUS repeatedly affirming the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Why did those two issues win when so many other “conservative” issues have been steamrolled over the years?

Quite simply, they were based on emotional arguments made by absolute fanatics.

The arguments for banning abortion cover a lot of ground but ultimately it comes down to this:

Abortion is murdering a baby.

That’s it. That’s the argument. An unborn child is still a child, abortion kills that child. Therefore abortion is murder, straight up infanticide. Every argument against abortion centers around the fact that an abortion kills an unborn child.

Gun rights? Just as simple, just as emotional. Said nowhere better than from Charlton Heston.*

The rest of the saying is well known:

You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

That fit nicely on a bumper sticker and it captures the spirit. I am not giving up my guns. Not ever. It isn’t a nuanced position. It says something quite plain: if you try to take my guns, I’ll shoot you.

It is simple, it is emotional. American gun owners, tens of millions of us, have a very deeply personal relationship to our firearms. To allow myself to be disarmed is to be made into a slave, subject to the whim of my masters in D.C.. No. Fuck you, no.

For decades pro-life and pro-2A zealots have fought tooth and nail for their causes. They never wavered, they never gave up. In the end they won these victories not because they made the better argument to the rest of the American people but because they refused to back down. They won, and I count myself among them on both issues, thanks to a loudmouth lifelong Democrat appointing people to the Supreme Court that he knew would vote to overturn Roe and to support the 2A.

In the end it wasn’t the better argument, it was the zealous refusal by my people to let go of these issues even when it seemed like they would never win. In short it was emotional.

Arthur’s closing line is worth its weight in gold, more or less echoing an argument I’ve been making for years myself. Commenter Xzebek puts it bluntly:

Anyone who understands the circumstances in which we find ourselves and intends to act based upon those circumstances will be labeled an extremist. May as well accept the label and get used to it. And act on it.

Precisely so. If this be extremism, then I’m all in for extremism, and so be it.

* Here, Arthur embeds an image from the renowned NRA convention where Heston waved the antique rifle he’d just been given, a gift from the organization for his stellar service as its chieftain, over his head and declared, “From my cold, dead hands!” It was a truly beautiful moment; need to see if I can’t find vid of it to embed here.

Update! Well, that was certainly easy enough.

I just happened to be watching on TeeWee as it happened, and it still gives me a shiver every time I see it again. What an incredible moment.

The United States Vs America

Posted on July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 by Mike

TL makes a crucial distinction.

I am pro-American, that does not mean pro-United States. America is a different thing from the United States. To whatever degree the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution support my God-given rights as an American, I’m all for it. When the U.S. Government, founded around those principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, openly works against those principles, punishes those who seek to comply with those principles, I do not see the United States of America as a viable, working form of government.

The whole and sole purpose of the United States Government, as founded and clearly stated, is to secure individual rights and the principles of freedom. The problem is, the people have been coerced to accept miniscule violations of those principles over a period of time and each insignificant violation, on its own, impact those rights on a similarly miniscule level. However, when that process of requiring miniscule violations become the manner in which government operates, it ceases to be a minor exception and becomes a process of eliminating those rights and principles, delegitimizing the whole. It has done so.

That’s how we got to lockdowns and police enforcing unconstitutional, anti-American dictates from obscure “health officials.” It continues today, just in different ways. Some vaccine mandates have never been lifted. The United States Government is in the process of using all the tools of the federal government to destroy any claim or expectation of those rights and principles. That’s new, that’s revolutionary, that’s treason against that which provides the power to achieve it.

I began to recognize the federal government as illegitimate as far back as 2001 with the passage of the Patriot Act, something that those who participated in the documentary Lies of Omission 2021 (please watch it free on Tubi, our biggest supporter) directly address. Then, in 2008 and 2009 I became politically activated for the way in which it handled the banking crisis with a Republican president at the helm and especially because there was a Republican president at the helm.

All over the world people are coming to their senses and demanding a dissolution of their governments for failing the people, not without a great deal of pain and punishment that we have not felt in America as yet, but the signs are there. The holding of political prisoners, the J6 detainees, should be a much bigger deal than it is. The very idea of it is counter to the principles declared by our judicial system. They called it an insurrection, but only after the feds orchestrated, enabled and coerced it into one by leaving doors unlocked and instigators encouraged peaceful protestors to enter. Many of those who entered were part of the instigation and coercion, but only the innocent rubes that fell for it were apprehended and/or charged. That’s classic entrapment, for which the whole of it should be dismissed, but that would be an American response.

Nothing in the United States works along the lines of its design. Nothing. Your freedom, no matter how much of it you think you retain, is not freedom at all. It’s no more freedom than wandering from the southwest corner of one’s prison cell to the northeast corner is freedom. Your movements from beginning to end of your day are tracked, your phone calls recorded, your emails monitored, blogs like this kept for the day they need to bring me before their tribunals, insanely enough, for un-American activities. I don’t expect to live that long and not because of age.

All of TL’s anquished cri de coeur is tragic, the moreso because it’s all too true. As I’ve long insisted, any “right” you have to get a permit from the goobermint to exercise isn’t really a right at all—by definition, it’s a privilege. Hats off to little Sri Lanka, for showing the rest of us how it’s fucking DONE.

Sri Lanka president captured on video fleeing as protestors storm Colombo residence
Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was captured on video escaping via ship on the day protesters stormed his official Colombo residence.

In the video, President Rajapaksa is seen running and rolling his luggage onto a large navy ship. His escape comes after the storming of his official Colombo residence and the burning of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s home, which occurred on Saturday — now deemed D-Day. The large viral demonstrations took place despite the president’s attempts at a 36-hour state of emergency and ban of social media.

Upon the storming of the residence, Sri Lanka’s 26-member cabinet resigned en masse at midnight. Initially, the exceptions were President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

However, Wickremesinghe resigned soon after, stating on Twitter, “to ensure the continuation of the government including the safety of all citizens I accept the best recommendation for the Party Leaders today, to make way for an All-Party Government. To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister.”

The large-scale takeover by the demonstrators comes after months of protests on the streets of Sri Lanka and its worst economic crisis in history. Inflation in Sri Lanka has risen to above 50 percent, leading to crushing food and energy shortages. It led the country to run their foreign currency reserves into the ground and significantly increase foreign debt.

In addition, Sri Lanka police and military have been accused of using violence to push back demonstrations. With at least 55 people injured during protests, there have also been accusations of torture, tear gas use and the application of an “illegal” police curfew.

Further confirmation of my maxim, as if any were needed: At some point, enough is fucking enough.

Douchebag of the Week all Eternity

Posted on July 11, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

A total shoo-in—a perennial favorite, selected by unanimous acclimation, no doubt. Time now to retire the title, I should think.

If one were to look up the word “bland” in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Mitt Romney next to the definition.

If one were to imagine that “obsolete” had a face, it might look like Mitt Romney.

If one were to investigate the origin of the term “non-entity”, Mitt’s name might come up more than a few times.

There is no better indication of a man’s decline — in the moral, ethical, and practical senses — than the following statements:

“Ann and I both extend our congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris. We know them both as people of good will and admirable character. We pray that God may bless them in the days and years ahead.” (November 7, 2020)

“America is in denial. Too many Americans are blithely dismissing threats that could prove cataclysmic…President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man…” (July 4, 2022)

In between those two gems of delusion there are a spate of quotes that describe Joseph Robinette Biden as everything from a man of integrity to the best thing since penicillin, and I could be here all day reprinting slobbering love quotes from Romney all attesting to the character and all-around swell-ness of the man who once stood on a stage and accused Romney of wanting to reintroduce slavery, of being a misogynist, and of personally giving another human being cancer.

If Dingbat Joe is your BFF, Mitt, he certainly has a strange way of showing it.

The safest place on Planet Earth, it would be appear, is in Mitt Romney’s face, insulting him. In the event of nuclear war, I intend to find the Senator and take cover under the shelter of his enormous lack of good sense.

And you, Mitt, will always have the singular distinction (one could make the argument that Hillary Clinton may be co-title holder) of having lost to two men who will forever occupy positions 1a and 1b on any future “Worst Presidents in American History” list.

In retrospect, the best quality of Barack Hussein Obama is that he at least showed no interest in doing the work that came with the job, and so the damage was limited to bloviation, race-hustling and going on taxpayer-funded vacation every other week.

In the case of the Delaware Dullwit, however, the fact that the man couldn’t tie his own shoes, on a good day, has made him the perfect catspaw for a slew of destructive and incomprehensible policies and pronouncements that have begun the paving of the proverbial road to Hell.

If only…IF ONLY…you had managed to defeat perhaps the weakest candidate EVAH to run in 2012, Willard, we might have managed to dodge this particular runaway torpedo. You couldn’t beat a Barack Obama saddled with a poor economy, the baggage that resulted from the ObamaCare fiasco, the apparent lack of enthusiasm for the job, the Mussolini-like venality and arrogance, and a track record of busted NCAA brackets, to achieve the highest office in the land, and all that idiot had to run on was that you were somehow worse?

Even with your own, Massachusetts brand of government-not-provided healthcare to your credit?

And that he had Usama bin Laden shot in the fucking face?

If only Dick Cheney had been around…

If anything, the presence of such ineffective people — including yourself — sitting in the US Senate is a glaring piece of evidence that perhaps the institution has outlived its usefulness.

Indeed it is—one of all too many. Bad as all the above has to smart, there’s still a bounteous plenitude of stinging, painful opprobrium directed Mitt-wards at the link.

Update! I inadvertently omitted the greatest Mitt-related quote of all time, from the same source: “Mitt Romney is like a hemorrhoid: easily forgotten when it stays in its place, infinitely irritating when it decides to make its presence felt.” Heh.

Screwed, blued, tattooed

Posted on July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 by Mike

So imagine my dismay when I found out that my nice new/refurbed iMac, being a late 2012 model running OS X Catalina, has itself a serious shortcoming: the Adobe Creative Suite, elements of which I’ve relied on for years and years now, WILL NOT RUN on the blasted thing.

I find this absolutely stunning, seeing as how Apple computers have always been THE premier machines for graphic design, found ubiquitously in every design shop absolutely everywhere. Likewise for the Adobe CS software; hell, even my lowly job at Art & Ink Publications/Outlaw Biker depended absolutely on Macs running the latest CS iteration.

Macs and Adobe have always gone together like beans and cornbread…and now all of a sudden, the beans have divorced themselves from the cornbread? What gives here? Why in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world would Apple release an OS incapable of playing nice, or at all, with P-shop, Illy, InDesign, and the rest of the hallowed Suite? Even Acrobat isn’t compatible with it.

After doing a little digging, I learned that the fault lies not with Apple but with Adobe: the Adobe products, inexplicably, still contain 32-bit code elements, which the Mac OS did away with years and years ago in favor of an exclusively 64-bit build. Thankfully, there are alternatives available out there, one of which I already downloaded and installed: Gimp, with which I’m moderately familiar from my many years of casual piddling about with Red Hat Linux. Even so, I feel my shit-luck situation calls for a cpl-three appropriate music embeds.

And one more, apropos of nothing and just for the sheer hell of it.

Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Adobe!

The truth, it hurts

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Mike

Joey Rapefingers’ wife gets straight pWnEd.

Retired Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky, who won a Silver Star in Iraq and previously served as the Army’s top spokesperson, was suspended from his $92-an-hour consulting contract and placed under investigation after apparently mocking first lady Jill Biden on Twitter.

“For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Today, that right was stolen from us,” Biden wrote on June 24 — the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and returned the issue of abortion to the states.

In response, Volesky mocked the first lady’s support of transgenderism in a now-deleted tweet. “Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” he wrote, according to a USA Today report published Saturday.

Lots of these FemiNazi-type broads are rediscovering that simple, readily-apparent distinction after the Roe smackdown. No surprise that the ever-vengeful and vindictive Bidens would deem it necessary to screw over the good General Volesky for having the outrageous audacity to speak the plain truth right out loud.

Gimme a bang, not a whimper

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Mike

The J6 Inquisition and its scores of innocent victims must not go unavenged.

Americans are witnessing something unprecedented: a congressional committee handpicked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi working seamlessly with a highly partisan Justice Department to criminalize political dissent. Contrary to the solemn insistence of known liars like Schiff and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), none of it has anything to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill more than 18 months ago but everything to do with dragging America into banana republic-style territory complete with political prisoners, kangaroo courts, secret police, forced confessions, and nonstop propaganda under the guise of “news.”

As this Democratic Party crusade has unfolded over the past year and a half, most Republican officials have been silent as the regime flagrantly flouts the Constitution and the boundaries of decency and tradition. Some leaders, most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have embraced the description of January 6 as an “insurrection” and blame Trump for what happened that day.

While congressional Republicans bury their heads in the Democrats’ latest pit of political quicksand, their voters are not as gullible. According to a report this week by Axios, a GOP-led House is planning to retaliate for the conduct of the January 6 selection committee by launching an investigation into the committee itself—not necessarily because top Republicans have the stomach for the fight but because they are getting an earful from their constituents. “The base is out for blood on subpoenas,” tied to investigations of January 6, Hunter Biden, the coronavirus response, and the Afghanistan withdrawal, a House Republican aide told Axios.

One would be hard pressed to find McCarthy criticizing the FBI even after agents arrested Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport and placed him leg shackles on a contempt of Congress charge: ditto for FBI harassment of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump campaign lawyer John Eastman. Yet McCarthy was quick to call for Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) to resign after a California jury found him guilty of lying to federal investigators in a clear case of FBI entrapment. (Fortenberry is appealing the verdict.)

Some members of McCarthy’s caucus, thankfully, are taking a more aggressive approach. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and a few others are demanding justice for the January 6 detainees and condemning D.C. correctional officials for harsh treatment of Trump supporters in custody. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who lost his Republican primary last week, asked Capitol Police and Pelosi’s office to preserve all documents pertaining to January 6, accusing Pelosi of obstructing “Republican access to House records relating to the security preparedness of the Capitol complex.”

But sternly worded letters and empty promises won’t do the trick this time around; rank-and-file Republicans won’t be fooled again. After a much-hyped Durham probe ends with a whimper, House Democrats ratchet up their public pursuit of Trump associates, and the Justice Department continues to arrest Capitol trespassers and seek lengthy jail sentences for minor offenses, the base’s appetite for political blood will only increase. GOP leaders will need a cutthroat approach if they retake power next year.

I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting on it, Jules. One thing we can say about the Vichy GOPe wing of the Uniparty: once they’ve been bought, they stay bought. Which means that if Real Americans truly want to see justice done for this monstrous travesty, they’re gonna have to stand up on their hind legs and do it themselves.

Ruh-roh!

Posted on July 9, 2022July 9, 2022 by Mike

This time for REAL.

Editor’s Commentary: Because of the original “Plandemic” of Covid-19, I have been extremely skeptical of new diseases being fearmongered as “the next big one.” We are skittish as a society when it comes to diseases thanks to over two years of Pandemic Panic Theater. The last thing I want to do is promote more fear when it’s unwarranted.

Marburg Virus Disease is at the top of the list of actual threats. The bad news for those who get hemorrhagic fever is good news for the rest of us; it kills the vast majority of those who contract it and they die quickly, meaning it’s very difficult to spread on a wide scale. But there’s a challenge with Marburg that makes it worrisome. It incubation period is up to three weeks, which means someone can be infecting a whole lot of people before they even experience a symptom.

Moreover, this story caught my attention because two people I trust and respect, Dr. Li-Meng Yan and Lt. General Thomas McInerney, have both been on my show this year to warn the Chinese Communist Party has worked on hemorrhagic fever as a bioweapon in Africa, which happens to be where the latest outbreak is centered. So while I do NOT want to spread fear if it’s unwarranted, I’m posting the article below by Michael Snyder because if there’s even a slight chance this could spread, we have to pay close attention to it. Unlike Covid-19, Marburg Virus Disease is a real threat to humanity.

That’s the preface to a chilling news article about an apparent outbreak of Marburg in Ghana. As it happens, I read a truly horrifying but really good book a while back called The Hot Zone, which provided quite an education on hemorrhagic-fever type diseases such as Ebola and, of course, Marburg. If you’re unfamiliar with it, just take my word for it that if that stuff ever does get loose on a planetary scale, humanity is well and truly fucked.

OOOH NOOOOOOES!!!!!!

Posted on July 8, 2022July 8, 2022 by Mike

SO. After dicking around for two (2) days with Fucking FedEx, including more than one phone call to Customer “Service” on which I waxed quite damned rude and nasty over their having lost my damned new computer, I finally learned EffEx had delivered the new/old/refurbed 27″ iMac to my neighbor-lady, whose palatial single-wide abode is much too far from here for the world’s greatest one-legged blogger to be able to hop or crawl over there. Had my brother go and retrieve the precious item, and have spent the hours since trying to get the thing all set up and functional.

SO. After trying repeatedly without success to get the iMacs to shake hands and play nice together so’s I could transfer all my software, documents, and miscellaneous info from the old to the new, I said hell with it and downloaded my favorite third-party blog-posting app, Ecto. I unzipped it, double-clicked, and…and…and…

SO. Imagine my deep, deep, chagrin to learn that, Ecto being a long-since deprecated application which hasn’t been updated in years, the app is a 32-bit one.

Which, the new iMac cannot run. Only 64-bit software is compatible with these newer-fangled devices, see.

Downloaded the Scribefire extension for Brave, my usual old fallback for situations like this. It’s not bad, really, not bad at all. Maybe the best thing is, it doesn’t rewrite the HTML to add in a buttload of superfluous cruft to the code, like the native WP post editor does. But, I mean, well…just dammit.

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