OK. I know the last post said I was back (May 2023? Seriously?), but I’m going to try harder this time. Part of the issue has been the tools. WordPress has been updated to the point where it’s almost an entirely new product (think Microsoft Word 1.0 vs Whatever the latest version of Word is). Also, I’ve long since dropped the Adobe Creative products that I was using at the time (mostly Photoshop and DreamWeaver). So now I’m trying to figure out how to use Gimp as a Photoshop replacement. There’s bound to be a learning curve.
Another issue has been that when I’ve had time, I’ve been playing around with home lab stuff — and I’ll probably be posting on that stuff at some point.
In any event… here we go…
The 2024 Election
How crazy was that?
- Biden reneges on his plan to be a “bridge to the future” and decides to run for re-election — after not being physically or mentally capable of being President in 2021
- DeSantis looks like he will be the front-runner — right up until Manhattan Prosecutor Alvin Bragg decides to give Trump an improperly documented campaign contribution by charging him with a misdemeanor magically turned into 34 counts of improperly documented campaign contributions. Or something.
- Biden gave a special speech to announce his indignation to the accusation that he is incompetent, by immediately mixing up Egypt and Mexico
- Like one of Elon Musk’s failing Starship rockets, the Biden campaign experienced a “rapid, unscheduled, disassembly” on national TV when he proudly declared, “We beat Medicare!”
- After spending three and a half years complaining about Trump and an attempted coup, Nancy Pelosi and a handful of Dems decide to re-enact Act III, Scene I of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with Joe Biden in the role of Caesar.
- Trump is almost taken out by an assassin after the Secret Service pointedly ignored a guy walking around with a ladder, a gun, a bipod, a spotter scope, and a drone, while wearing a t-shirt with the message Sic Semper Tyrannis.
- Trump is almost taken out by another assassin, who had been parked on Trump’s golf course in a sniper blind so long, his Verizon Wireless bill was getting delivered there.
- The Kamala Harris campaign decides that the best way to attack VP candidate, Vance, by having him be called “weird” by the biggest weirdo they could find.
- In a weird attempt tot not be outdone by the raging dumpster fire that was Joe Biden at the Biden-Trump debate, Tim Walz refers to himself as a “knucklehead” on national TV.
- In a bizarre contest of “Who Wants to Lose this Campaign More?”:
- Kamala Harris decides that best way to address the voters’ concerns over the Biden Administration’s failures at the border and in fighting inflation is to proclaim that she would do nothing different. This was followed by
- A comedian at a Trump rally potentially insulting millions of Americans with Puerto Rican backgrounds by calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage. And this was followed by
- Joe Biden crawling out out a burrow to placate millions of insulted Puerto Ricans by calling tens of millions of Americans garbage.
Israel-Hamas War
The first thing that should be noted about this war that kicked off on October 7, 2023:
“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,”
— Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, September 29, 2023
The second thing to note: Wokeness on college campuses has reached peak stupidity
The third thing of note is that if Hamas is not utterly obliterated (and it looks like they will not be), then this will all be repeated again. The hostages recovered by the peace deal will be paid for by the lives of future victims.
California Wildfires
There’s really not much to say on this one. Especially not until the fires are all out. But there are a couple of things to be pointed out, going forward
- As a former California resident, none of the “mistakes” made by leadership surprise me. Not the empty reservoirs, nor the missing hydrants, nor the uncleared
tinderbrush, nor the lack of fire insurance among many, nor the budget cuts to the fire department, nor the missing-in-action leaders, nor the power lines that are still above ground even though they cause wildfires just about every single year. All of these issues were well-known decades ago - And like the Israel-Hamas War, above, if the lessons of this fire are not learned (and that is likely to be the case), this will be repeated again — this Summer or next year, perhaps. And with much of the same clueless leaders looking as befuddled and out of their depth as they currently do.