Goodbye and good-riddance

I think I speak for all of us when I bid 2024 a wish to not go away mad, but to just go away! Oh, there were some good things that came out of 2024, but on the whole, it’s been a hell of a year. Here is hoping that the new year brings you and yours a better ‘worst day’ than the best day of 2024.

Now come on in and let’s talk while the Pork Roast finishes cooking. There will also be Kraut, and black-eyed peas, because I’m taking NO chances. The booze is in the slide out cabinet next to the fridge, help yourself. Please notice the cup at the tip jar Where we restock the bar. We’re currently in Delphos OH with some of our extended family. Sunday, we head for TN and a land hunt.

We have a running comment set in our family called the “cookie system” that was invented by my son, when we were driving to Pensic (the largest SCA event in the world) one summer. It works like this. If you do the courteous thing while driving, things like pulling over to a faster lane to allow this lead sled to merge into traffic, “You get a cookie.” If you do something especially notable in the way of courteous driving, “you get a home-made cookie.” Miraculous behavior gives you a Cinnabon. On the other hand, marginally courteous gets you a Hydrox or some equally nasty store-bought cookie, and bad behavior gets you anything from “no cookie for you,” to “You, you have forfeited all your cookies for LIFE. Give them all up, now.”

I’m pleased to say that outside of the cities, we’ve given more cookies than we’ve taken away. Cities are, well, cities. They suck, and bad traffic makes assholes of us all. Still, a thank you for everyone that understands that a big ass RV towing a four door Jeep is basically a semi when it comes to getting on and off the highway. It’s not exactly going to accelerate like a cop car.

Oh, while I’m thinking about it, Raves for a restaurant we found by accident. Who would have thought that you could find great Tai food in Bloomington Indiana? My Tai Cafe, just of the freeway, in a strip mall, behind a Shell Gas station! Great Tai food, good service, good prices! If you find yourself in the area, stop in. Get the Drunken Noodles (I don’t remember the Tai words for it.)

Now, on to the events of the week.

In something that the US press is amazingly silent on, <strains tongue because it’s so firmly pressed against cheek> the Taliban has apparently declared war on Pakistan. https://www.india.com/news/world/pakistan-vs-afghanistan-war-taliban-unleashes-terror-on-pakistan-killed-many-soldiers-now-planning-to-reason-behind-enmity-is-7500429/ The reason the US press is so silent, is of course, because the Taliban is using all the cool toys that the US military was forced to abandon to their tender mercies when Biden fucked up the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Right now, I suspect the US press is straining to figure out who we should enter the war on the side of.

Personally, the right answer is “Sit back, eat popcorn, and hope for a long, bloody, and inconclusive fight, ending in a lot of dead bastards.” Make no mistake, we have no friends in this fight. Pakistan was aiding the Taliban when they were fighting us. Let them die, and hope they kill a bunch of those evil crazy bastards in the process.

Speaking of Joe, and his handlers, even that partisan rag “Politico” admits that Joe’s legacy is one of failure, massive spending to no effect. biden-spending-unfinished-business among the cookies in this piece: “A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household.” That’s a Destroyer or a Submarine worth of waste right there. And it’s just the beginning.

“$1.1 trillion for Biden’s big climate, clean energy and infrastructure programs. More than half of that spending — at least $561 billion — has yet to be obligated or is not yet available for agencies to spend, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal data.” All of this (and a LOT more) is money that we don’t have, and if it must be spent, it could be better spent on preparing for the war that is almost inevitable between us and the PRC. More on that in a moment.

Of course if you do give that money to the Navy, someone has to ensure that isn’t wasted on bullshit like Cdr. Sal writes about in the article naval-war-college-a-gender-studies Go take a read on this, Sal covers it more accurately than anyone else.

The only good thing, is Joe no longer has to contend against Jimmy ‘peanut’ Carter, for the worst living president, and arguably the worst president in history. With the death of Peanut Boy, Joe has it in the bag.

As usual dying does great things for your press, J.C. is suddenly being rehabilitated by people everywhere… Articles left, right, and libertarian are all proclaiming that “J.C. wasn’t as bad as everyone painted him.”

Bullshit.

Jimmy was a great Ex president. The things he did after he left office were admirable, and worthy of praise (for the most part, he was still a commie lover, never met a dictator he didn’t admire {except Pinochet} and really wanted ‘big government’ to run everything, in a top-down economy. He pushed for that to his dying day.) Still, what he did in office was a disaster of the first water, and the only thing he did right was make sure that Ronnie Regan got elected, by being the well-meaning moron that he was.

In case you are somehow of the belief that the PRC is anything but a future enemy awaiting the right moment to attack, there’s this: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-treasury-says-computers-hacked-chinese-threat-actor-rcna185809

No one hacks your fucking TREASURY if they aren’t lining you up in their sights for a bullet to the brain. This is stuff that will go down in history as “events leading up to total war” in the chapter on WW IV (WWIII was the cold war.) The only way we keep this from being a shooting war, is by arming up, FAST and showing the green eyeshade boys in Beijing that starting that dance is just going to be too expensive and it’s liable to end in a mark in the loss column. The time to do that is running out. The only thing more expensive than winning a war, is losing one. Detering one isn’t cheap by any means, but it’s cheaper than millions of dead troops in the first month. That’s the reality we’re staring down the barrel of folks.

In brighter news, the funny five sided building is poised to stick one in the eye of the political aperatchnics in CA. /us-pushes-to-bypass-regulator-ok-more-starlink-launches-at-space-force? If you don’t remember, Commiefornia voted to deny Starlink permission to up the number of rocket launches out of Vandenburg, admitting they were doing it because they didn’t like Musk’s politics. It seems that the Space Force has decided that as the Federal government, they don’t have to listen to said commies. (Hint, they don’t.) Finally, someone is developing a brain.

Finally, in the “OOPS” column, we have this: oops-missent-email-reveals-wa-senate-dems-tax-plans

When you’re planning on major new taxes on people and plotting how to spin it so that people don’t see the knife until it’s in their heart, it’s better if you don’t accidentally send it to your political opponents!

Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, failed that test. She mistakenly sent it to everyone in the Senate and House, instead of the “confidential, for Democratic members only, NOT for public dissemination” as the message was labeled. The Republicans, of course, gleefully forwarded the message to the press. This included two slides on how to spin the tax increases so that it conceals the goals, full of “do say” and “don’t say” talking points.

QOTD: Senate Democrats are also coached to avoid phrases like “tax the rich.” Instead, they’re supposed to say people should “pay what they owe.” Don’t focus on the state’s “budget hole,” the presentation added. Instead, Democrats should talk about “proposed solutions” that “will make people’s lives better.” Jim Brunner, writing for the Seattle Times.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman