Current Events: Kavanaugh Circus

I am so tired of this sideshow.  Just vote and get it over with.  If the Republicans cannot get this “Boy Scout” onto the court, then the Democrats are declaring that they “own” the Supreme court and Republicans shouldn’t even try to get anyone appointed to it.

1.  There is no reason for the claims of this woman from 35 years ago to be taken seriously.  NONE.  It is a non-provable claim with no evidence, no witnesses and no consequences.  it doesn’t matter if it is true or not so there is no reason to waste any time on giving the claim a “fair hearing”.
2. If I hear one more radio commentator telling me how “real women who have been molested behave” I am taking a hostage.  Real women who have been molested run the full spectrum of emotions and reactions from shrugging it off to full mental collapse.  There is no “typical” for such cases.  The fact that some women remember every detail does not invalidate the claims of a woman who forgot everything.
3. To put things into perspective, the accuser wasn’t raped, molested, or sexually assaulted.  By her own claim, he tried to remove her swimsuit, failed, and left.  Only in the most twisted definition of feminist lawyers does this rise to the level of an “assault”.
4. The congress does not need to put on a show trial for the sake of validating the claims of the accuser.  It is a 36 year old accusation with no evidence or witnesses.  The proper conclusion is, “this claim is unsupported”.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that it didn’t happen exactly the way she claims.  It does mean that it doesn’t matter.  It is a false dichotomy to cast this as a he-said-she-said event and forcing everyone to pick a side.  The proper side for anyone with an IQ above 75 is “I don’t know and I don’t care”.
5. Republicans need to grow a spine and stop this circus.  Not every accuser “Needs to be heard”.  In a country of 350 million people, there will always be at least several hundred who are willing to commit crimes (like perjury) in order to get an agreeable political outcome.  For example, look at the lies told by every Democratic candidate and office holder.  Look at Code Pink who mysteriously disappears for 8 years while Obama is president then remembers that they are anti-war after Trump gets elected.  Look at AntiFa and Black Lives Matter and the mayhem they are willing to cause just to stir things up.
6. Modern psychology, such as it is, clearly understands now the concept of false memories and that they are VERY common.  The older the memory is, the less anyone should trust it.  It doesn’t mean that all old unpleasant memories are invalid or that the accuser in this case has invalid memories.  Hint:  If you need a therapist to help you remember an old memory that coincidentally helps you establish yourself as a victim so you can blame something that happened 35 years ago for why you are a bitch and people don’t like being around you, then your “memory” is likely not valid.

Bottom line:  I don’t care.  The Democrats don’t care.  The Republicans don’t care.  This isn’t about Kavanaugh or the accuser’s credibility.  It has nothing to do with changing the minds of committee members.  It is about delaying the process until after the election and beyond, hoping that the outrage over this will stir up voters and if the Democrats take the Senate, there will be no more Republicans seated in any court.  Republicans in Congress had better start caring.  If they don’t have the stomach for being in the majority, they should go home.

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Arts and crafts: mysterious wet stairs.

These stairs are wet.

Originally, there was a leaky water heater and I thought that was the source. Fixed the water heater but stairs are still wet. Then suspected leaky toilet wax ring from upper floor but as I peeled away all the wood surrounding the stairs, they are STILL wet and nothing above below or beside them is wet.

I figured it out. Any of you want to play along at home? Put your guesses in the comments.

Good news travels faster than good reality

I see this all the time.  I have been seeing it for years.  And I’m pretty tired of it.

Produce, then crow.

That is the order of things.  You do not get to crow about your results until you have results.  I see this all the time in stories about cures for AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and aging.  Some new miracle breakthrough is always just a few years away.

Now we are applying this to politics.  Vox is telling us that there the release of redacted documents is going to blow the lid off of something.  I heard this same thing in a 1-hour monologue last night on the radio.  I heard the same thing about how Pizza-gate was going to finally get out into the open and how one scandal after another was going to finally put Clinton and Obama and their friends behind bars.  Here we are two year later and we have NOTHING.

So, I will believe this stuff when I see someone with handcuffs getting put into a squad car.  Until someone goes to jail, this isn’t real.  Until at least one Clinton/Obama/Kerry crony is seen in an orange jumpsuit, NO ONE IS PANICKING. Nor is there any rational reason to believe anyone is panicking.  Until there is a visible consequence to decades of corruption, there is no reason for any of the corrupt actors to think the system has changed in any measurable or observable way.

Stupid Sea Huggers

It seems there is a huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean.  That’s bad.

It seems there is a solution.  That’s good.

But the solution is stupid.  That’s bad.

This article tells us that there is a project to collect up the garbage from the ocean and do some unspecified thing with it.

1.  The trial will take it only 250 miles off the California coast.  The big garbage patch is thousands of miles away.
2. The garbage will be taken ashore and recycled.  If there were any market for this garbage, it wouldn’t have been thrown into the ocean in the first place.  So what you will really see is some sort of “disposal” either by burning it or selling it to China, who will dump it back into the ocean.
3. The amount expected to be collected is minuscule compared to the amount added each year.  It will NEVER catch up or even make a qualitative difference.  Wave action and natural UV light will break up the plastic far more efficiently than “dredger boats”.
4. Who is paying for this and how much does it cost?  From reading the articles, this is a farcical idea of the type that only the US government would have any morons willing to fund it with other people’s money (stupid taxpayers).
5. The problem is China and India dumping all of their trash into the oceans.  unless we are willing to blockade all their rivers and harbors, no amount of ships will solve this problem.

Providing this foundation is only using their own money to pollute the air with their carbon-intensive Fuel-oil -burning ships while they take hundreds of European interns on unpaid Ocean trips, I wish them well.  It will be just another thing that people can throw their money away at and feel smug for “being part of the solution”.   Just like the idiots who outlaw plastic straws.

 

What I hate about 9-11

Every year, the same people come out of the woodwork with their ideas about what really happened.

At Vox’s site, they are saying, “it’s the JOOS”. As if that’s something new. The Arab world has been saying that since day one. Remember the conspiracy that all the jews took that day off because Mossad warned them ahead of time? And the Islamic world view was that the USA and them were the best of friends and they would NEVER do anything to rile us up like that, so it must have been JOOS. And finally there was the story that Mossad did the double false flag (sneaky JOOS) and “tricked” AL Qaida into attacking.

Other sites are trotting out the old “it was a missile”, story with “new evidence”. We have seen all of this before and it showed nothing. Folks, I work at the Pentagon. It was a Boeing passenger plane. Really. The construction company was hauling airplane parts out of there for months. Big 40 ft long vans of parts. And that’s not counting all the aluminum slag from melting.

But the only thing you really need to know is that our government employees are not smart enough, evil enough, or motivated enough to pull that off. Neither are the Israelis.

Disloyalty drips from the Left

The Left take oaths to defend the constitution and faithfully execute their offices, but they don’t mean it,  not even the Left in the Republican Party, lately captained by the Late John McCain.  The story in the NYTimes this morning is that there is a disloyal aide to President Trump, who spins lies, deceit, and obstruction to the very president he swore to serve.

It is a sad condemnation of the current state of the Swamp that what has become known as the Deep State is indeed so deep.  Rush Limbaugh mentioned this last week, that every politician has to depend on others to get things done.  They simply don’t know enough people personally to fill every high office with people that they know and trust.  They don’t even know and trust enough people to hire all people that are needed to fill all the high level jobs that are essential to steer the ship of state.    It isn’t one big steering wheel.  It’s more like 500 oars dipping into the water from a Roman Galley.  If they refuse to row together, the ship just spins in circles, or even goes backwards. There can be no doubt that this is happening in the Trump administration.

There are some people who think that the NY Times editorial is nothing more than typical NYT creative writing and not at all written by a high-placed Trump official.  It’s just a wild coincedence that Washington Post employee Woodward just released a book critical of the Trump administration, again quoting many people with similar stories about Trump being off the resevation and everyone around him fighting behind the scenes to keep things together.

I know exactly how things like this can happen.  I find it so discouraging that there are tens of thousands of highly competent people who could be hired by Trump to help manage the executive branch and would be loyal to the Trump agenda (American agenda), but there is no credible way to put those people in touch with the management layer under Trump to get those people hired and put in place.

I volunteer.  I would gladly accept the circus that passes for Senate confirmation.  I would accept the national press and taxpayer funded FBI digging through my trash to do opposition research for the Democratic party.  I would accept all my secrets being exposed to public review (I do have a few doozies).  I would do all of that to help Trump drain the swamp and make America Great.  But I am safe and will never be called on to grab an oar.  It’s just how this place works.  The government is so hopelessly big and Byzantine, that no one can run it.

On the Plus side, every day, it seems Trump is winning something.  Every single day.  And he is winning it for America.  The press only tells us a small fraction and then only if they can spin it as proof of Trump’s incompetence, or evil.  The insiders and “resistance” keep dragging their oars and backpeddling and the ship keeps moving forward anyway.  It’s as if Trump is moving it by his personal will.

Arts and Crafts

Here is a list of all the things I am not qualified to do, but will be doing anyway:

1.  Framing.
2.  Changing the roofline of a conventional gabled house.
3.  Breaking up brick wall and removing it.
4.  Removing block wall.
5.  Extending house onto carport.
6.  Moving HVAC handler and ducts hoses, pipes, power and low voltage wiring from attic to basement.  And repair HVAC system to change from R22 to R407.
7.  Break up basement concrete floor to remove old plumbing and add in plumbing for new bathroom location.
8.  Repour concretebasement floor to make it level.
9.  Remove basement framing.  All of it.
10.  Remove insulation.  Most of it and replace it.
11.  Remove all plumbing pipes and replace with PEX.  All of it.
12.  Rewire entire house.  Remove all exisiting wires and replace with wires that are in the right places.
13.  Remove old baseboard heaters and wiring.
14.  Add new bedroom, bathroom, closets, and laundry room to basement. Includes new insulation and drywall.
15.   Do it again in the main level, removing every existing surface and wall and replacing them to create an open floor plan with few large rooms instead of several small rooms.  Larger modern master suite, bath and closets.  Modern kitchen. new floors, drywall , wires, and plumbing.
16.  Raise the interior ceiling height by raising the ceiling joists in the attic.
17.  New deck (hire out).  Run electric service for hot tub.
18.  Remove existing doors, wall up the spaces, cut new spaces in better locations and add new doors.
19.  Add new, larger windows to make better use of light, views and (on nice days), ventilation.
20.  Repair and restore the cedar siding including patching and staining.  Due to new window and door locations, siding may need entire replacement.

 

I will not be asking anyone’s permission, applying for permits, or getting professional help for anything on that list except the deck, and that’s just because I don’t feel like doing it.

I looked for this house specifically so that I could take on a project of that scope.  If I didn’t want to do that much work, I would have just found a new house that didn’t need anything.  When I am finished, there won’t be a single surface, oriface or utility that won’t have my fingerprints on it. For better or worse, It will all be my fault.  My pride for a job well done everywhere I gaze, or my searching eye adding things back to the to-do list for “warrantee work”.

And as I noted in the last post, these are things that people living in most communities are already forbidden from doing, or at a minumum requiring large bags of money to pay trained professionals and permit fees.  I am guessing that I will live to see a day when no one is allowed to do most of the things on that list without government permission and government licensed professionals turning the wrenches.  So, I better get cracking now and get it done.