A few Words about the election

Posted on October 26, 2020 by No One
  1. It’s getting closer. Reports say that tens of millions of people have already voted. That is a LOT.
  2. Vox this morning posted the rumor that something big happened, to either the “big guy” or to Hunter Biden. Then nothing happened. But it brings to mind a question. What happens if Joe Biden can no longer carry on the election or take office if he wins the election?

— You know that Democratic party insiders have already thought through this. They would be foolish to not have a contingency plan already in place. I have always said Biden was just a paper cut-out stand in for a candidate to be named later. A candidate who never had a chance to be elected on his or her own merits. Hint: It is NOT Ms. Harris.

— You cannot substitute a new name on the ballots at this point. As I said, tens of millions of people already voted. What happens to all those suddenly non-viable votes? Do they get a “do-over”? The laws in the various states do not cover this possibility.

— It is obvious that the Democratic party will throw someone in at the last minute, and there is legal precedent for doing it in governor and Senate races. But there is no precedent or law to regulate what happens in the big game. Ms. Harris does not automatically take over as the headline. Votes cast for Biden do not automatically get credited as “Democratic party candidate to be named later”.

— If Joe cannot finish the campaign, or take office after winning, we are in a place we have not been before. There is no way the Democratic party or their in-pocket judges will let stand a Trump victory on the basis of Biden not participating. The law only allows Harris to take Biden’s place AFTER he is already president and she is already sworn in as VP. She can’t take his place after the election as if she won, and not Biden.

— My own idea is that Trump should call for a special election to be held within 30 days with whatever new candidate the Dems choose, so that Trump can either continue in office or leave office on time in January. But there is no law to support this. Trump does not have the legal authority to call a special election. If Republicans and Democrats were smart, they would be working on legislation for this eventuality BEFORE they have to use it. Like next week. Even simple minded people must have considered that with Biden, this is a real possibility.

3. I have a theory that the Democratic party has no intention of Biden actually winning. His participation is purely for fund-raising so that the campaigning apparatus and professional campaign staff can get paychecks. While they are at it, the Democrats are running a sideshow to gather data on just how many votes and funds they can count on, even if they run a nearly dead candidate with zero “curb appeal”. They are looking to see where the absolute minimum floor is in every precinct so that they can make good investments next time. Biden is the Democrat’s version of Bush-McCain-Romney. There is a metaphor about being a “Yellow Dog Democrat”, as one who would rather vote for a Yellow dog than vote for a Republican. Biden is a Yellow Dog and the party is counting how many yellow dog voters exist and where they are.

[EDIT] The Trump campaign should definitely Tweet the suggestion that they are looking into contingency plans if frail old Biden does not survive long enough to take office. Even if they aren’t, it will remind voters that Biden is frail and unlikely to serve as President, even if they vote for him. And if he does serve, he will be nothing more than a captive puppet for “unseen hands”.

[EDIT2] The Biden campaign has called a halt to campaigning. Seriously? They were only phoning it as as it was. Now they are cutting the pretense. Hillary was thrashed for failing to campaign in Wisconsin, and Biden is throwing in the towel without campaigning anywhere. Are the Democrats going all in on data collection, uninfluenced by even their own campaigning? Are they trying to prove that with the internet and TV they can craft a better Biden candidate than the real life person is? Is in-person campaigning a thing of the past that isn’t coming back? Trump didn’t get that memo.

Posted in Current Events, Politics | 2 Comments

A Few Final Words About George Floyd

Posted on October 26, 2020 by No One

I was lurking around the internets this morning while “working from home” and stumbled upon Peter Grant’s web site. He had a very old post about Floyd and it triggered me strongly enough to write something that may get me banned for hate-speech, and shit.

  1. Floyd died of a drug overdose. The police were merely present for his suicide. They did not cause it. The police may have triggered it just by being present since Floyd may have seen them coming and decided to swallow his stash. It’s not the police’s fault that Floyd was irrational and made a bad choice.
  2. The prosecutors should have known it almost immediately, if they have any experience at all with policing in that jurisdiction. The fact that they charged the police anyway with crimes tells me that the prosecutors were using their offices for political activism and sacrificing the lives of good men to boost their own careers.
  3. On Glenn Beck just yesterday, and also on previous occasions I have heard people say words to the effect that after watching the Floyd video, they were horrified and that everyone with a conscience would be. And further that “EVERYONE” was on Floyd’s side and agreed the police were reckless. Um… last I checked, I had a conscience and it is good working order. I watched that video and saw nothing at all horrifying. What makes the video “horrifying” is the narrative subtitles that the media provided about watching the police kill a man. The video itself only shows a group of police doing a very average job of just another encounter with a drugged up junkie, the sort of thing they handle exactly the same way 5 times a week. I saw and heard a guy who was uncooperative, being treated humanely and politely. I saw additional police arriving to assist in controlling the scene. I saw EMT being summoned and Floyd being placed into EMT custody. There never was anything “horrifying” in the video and absolutely zero reason for anyone to be “horrified” by watching it. I put this on the same level as people who eat meat from the grocery store every day and never consider that there is a slaughter house involved in there somewhere. You all live nice pleasant lives because the police are out there “interacting” with people like Floyd every day so you don’t have to.
  4. Criminals lie. They lie about everything. They lie to everyone. They especially lie to police. Police deal with criminals every day and get tired of being lied to. They are lied to so often that they KNOW with certainty that they are being lied to so they stop listening to the words coming out of the criminal’s mouth. So when one say’s “I can’t breathe”, it’s just another lie to manipulate the officer. This is what life looks like in a low trust society. The police have to go about doing whatever they need to do no matter what the criminal says. When they eventually restrain the criminal, they don’t stop restraining him just because he goes limp. “Going Limp” is just another lie criminals use to evade restraint and possibly cause injury to the police or his co-workers. ANY experienced policeman would continue the lowest energy restraint until the criminal is passed to another type of restraint. You can bet your farm that criminals now know that “I can’t breathe” is the new get out of jail free card.
Posted in "Journalism", Crime, Current Events, Police | Leave a comment

Arts and Crafts: Demo post-mortem, 2

Posted on October 25, 2020 by No One

I’m tearing out more drywall. This is the last of it in this house.

You can see from the picture above clear daylight in the gap between the window and frame. This is an obvious entry point for rain, insects, and cold drafts.

Notice also that every 2×4 in the frame has a black stripe on it. This was used in every wall of the house, including the thin veneer wood paneling in the basement. It worked well in the basement but throughout the house, it had ZERO adhesion to the inside surface of the drywall. So I’m wondering if they applied it when it was too cold outside or let it dry before the drywall went up. Either way, I’m questioning why they bothered.

In the picture above you can see dirty pink stuff in a cell of the wall. The wall is full of dirt, debris, and evidence of water damage. Every exterior cell in the house is the same. The black adhesive should have stopped air migration from one cell to another, but it did nothing at all. Cold air and warm air migrated all through the wall cavity as clear evidence that the window installers just didn’t care and the homeowners paid far too much in heating and cooling costs.

Posted in Arts and crafts | 4 Comments

Who does number 2 work for?

Posted on October 22, 2020 by No One

The Hunter Biden laptop hints at someone at the top who collects the benefits of all these payments. Various sources claim it is Joe Biden. No one seems to be considering it is someone else.

I suspect that “the big guy” is actually Barrak Obama.

Let’s face it. Joe is too simple minded to put together and control an international criminal enterprise. Nor would the Biden clan care if Joe was collecting a tithe, since they stand to inherit it all very soon anyway. Any money they gave to Joe would just be like putting it into a savings account. The emails made it seem that the Biden clan resented paying this tax on their revenues. Thus, the big guy was someone other than Joe.

Joe was never smart enough to be the leader, but he is smart enough to be a good pasty if this all goes sideways. There is no way a former VP and obviously senile man would ever be prosecuted. He would just lose his internet privileges and access to the remote control.

This international revenue stream is set up to endure much longer than just Biden’s lifetime, with one foot in the grave already. It takes someone much younger and more connected to run it and to derive the benefit from it.

Posted in "Journalism", Crime, Current Events | 4 Comments

Highly Skeptical of Hunter Biden Laptop Claims

Posted on October 19, 2020 by No One

As one looks around those parts of the internet that have not been totally locked out, one finds certain claims about what was really on the laptop that likely belonged to disgraced and corrupt son of demented and corrupt Presidential candidate, Joe Biden.

Claim 1: The Laptop contains video evidence of child porn. I discount this entirely. Kid porn is the one area of the law where possession of evidence is in fact a crime itself. So, no computer repairman would make copies of it and distribute it to the press. He would go to jail. Everyone he sent it to and viewed it would go to jail. The deep state would mercilessly hunt down anyone who was in possession of such things. So it very likely isn’t true.

Claim 2: The highly inept and corrupt son of the highly brain damaged and corrupt Joe Biden had smoking gun emails linking Joe to payoffs the entire Biden family was getting. (yawn). No one cares. Everyone on the right has already heard Joe confess to this and the result of it was the House of Representatives impeached TRUMP for even mentioning it in a phone call. But I highly doubt that Joe is really raking in all that money into his personal accounts. Hint: Joe is almost dead. His kids already know who is really going to get all of those personal accounts contents. There is nothing to fight over. Even Joe knows that creating vast wealth for himself is pointless.

Claim 3: October Surprise that really blows the lid off the opposition party and knocks them on their ass. HIGHLY unlikely. The democratic party and their supporters seem immune to shame, immune to hypocrisy, and most of all, immune to the law. We have been hearing every week for 4 years that certain people were finally going to get stuffed into the back of a police cruiser, but at this point exactly zero people on the democrat side have been. At this point, I will believe it when I see it and not before. I’m tired of the lies and the unsupported speculation. The proper order is to first achieve something, then tell me about it.

Claim 4: Hunter Biden likes him some hookers and coke. Yes. We already knew this. and thanks to his family corruption, he can afford a few self-indulgent hobbies. This will have zero effect on the election. Most democrats will never hear about this. Most democrats who do hear about it will believe it is just Republican dirty tricks. And everyone who knows Hunter will believe it is true and not care.

The real issue of this election is that one political party hates America and wants to burn it to the ground and replace it with something else that they like better. Personally, I don’t want my government, ANY government, to have that much power over me. I want a government that pretty much just stays the same from year to year and runs on autopilot. Fix the potholes. Pass the budget on time. Pay the employees and services. Keep the lights turned on. And stop trying to re-engineer the whole country like it is a live action version of SIMCITY.

Posted in "Journalism", Current Events, Politics | 10 Comments

FBI does it again

Posted on October 17, 2020 by No One

According to news today, the FBI broke up a plan by a “militia” to kidnap the governor of Minnesota.

If you read the details you see that, once again, the only “terrorists” the FBI can catch are the ones they create. They infiltrate a harmless group, then feed them ideas about Patriots and watering trees. The next thing you know, they buy a gun, at a good price and that gets used as evidence that they were really going to do it.

Every. Single. Time.

I wonder why the FBI hasn’t managed to “break up” anyone in Antifa.

I wonder why no professional “journalists” have ever noticed this pattern and written a story about it.

Posted in "Journalism", Current Events, Police, Terrorists | Leave a comment

Arts and crafts: rib joist.

Posted on October 17, 2020 by No One

New one is in. Had to use leverage and persuasion to make it fit since the floor above must have sagged a little.

There! Chew on that, ya little bastards.

Construction supervisor deer is unimpressed.

Posted in Arts and crafts | Leave a comment

Arts and Crafts: Deck Post-mortum.

Posted on October 16, 2020 by No One

Learning about this house.

1. The back rim joist is home to a colony of carpenter ants. They thrive in damp wood. They don’t eat it, just make tunnels to live in. They were only interested in the non-treated damp wood parts of the house.

2. Carpenter bees liked the pressure treated deck handrails and had a long system of tunnels there. Half inch smooth round holes.

3. The house exterior is cedar. Cedar claims to be “insect and rot resistant”. That’s like saying plastic sheets are “water resistant”. In all the cedar I looked at, I saw no signs of insect or rot. Not a nibble. Even in the parts that had surface damage from the sun and no longer had a protective stain coating. That is not to say it repels insects. Many kinds of various thing were living just under the cedar. As well as I can tell, this is the original siding that was on the house in 1970. Possibly it was applied during the 1990 remodel. So, it is 30 or 50 years old and still holding up fine. Just a few cracked pieced here and there that need replacement and then a good heavy stain treatment to shield it from the sun. Only two sides of the house get direct sun exposure and you can tell a huge difference in the condition of the remnants of stain between shaded and sunny sides.

4. The tarpaper under the cedar was hung vertically. That’s strange. I would have thought a nice horizontal hanging, would repel water best. As I understand it, tar paper in the heat of the summer melts slightly and bonds to adjacent layers, so it likely didn’t matter either way. In places where I need to expose the tarpaper, I will replace it with modern house-wrap like Tyvek or Lowes Tyvek, or 84 Lumber Tyvek, but not Chinese Tyvek off the internet. It probably contains lead.

5. The back part of the house, over the carport, was evidently a screen porch or a later addition. It is supported by four 8 foot high columns that look like this at the top:

Fascinating and strange design. The column is stacked cinder block coated with stucco paint. The two 2×10 beams you see in the picture are not attached to the columns. There are two 2x6s laying flat on top of the columns that the 2x10s nail onto. The floor joists then lay on top of those 2x10s and the flat tops of the 2x6s. I don’t know much about engineering, other than every single video on YouTube warns me to not do what they are doing without consulting an engineer, but one would think they would use the beneficial combination of gravity plus vertical 2x10s on top of the columns to carry the weight and distribute it downwards. There must never have been a room full of fat people upstairs doing bunny hop line dancing.

I strongly suspect the columns themselves are on top of nothing more substantial a foundation than 4″ unreinforced concrete driveway slab. This accounts for the 1-3/4″ of settling the back of the house has seen.

At least all those visible dimensional lumber are in good and dry condition. Before I put the cedar back on them, I’ll give them a good heavy insect spray, just to keep the bugs honest.

Posted in Arts and crafts, Crazy | Leave a comment

Arts and Crafts: Deck Demo

Posted on October 14, 2020 by No One

I need a new deck. Step 1: Get rid of old deck.

Why? The old deck is moss covered, insect infested, rotted in some places and really more of a fire escape than a deck.

Plus, it has so many code violations that it is obvious no county official ever signed off on it.

The flashing on it was improperly installed, letting water collect inside the house and causing significant rot around the door.

The picture above shows the general size. The original has two sets of stairs to the ground. I have already demolished one set. You can see the 4×4’s holding up the “deck”. Guess how those 4×4’s connect to the ground…

…wrong.

They are connected only by resting on a cinder block. Just gravity holding it in place. The other 4x4s are only resting on the ground, no cinder blocks.

The good news is that the rot is all just surface rust. When I replace that door with a larger glass sliding door, I will cut away all the rotted boards and plywood sheets and not need to replace it. All the floor joists and band boards behind the ledger board are in good condition. No rot, water saturation or insects. I am sure some of then are living in that space below the floor, since it has been open to the elements for YEARS.

The ledger board is held on with modern construction screws that are just right for that application and the deck joists were attached using metal joist hangers, attached with 1 1/2″ galvanized nails. But they used them in the “toe nail” holes that drive in at an angle, so they give no strength to the joint. They needed to be longer nails. The short ones are only good for driving in straight.

The 4x4s are mostly salvageable. Most of the rest of the wood is not. It’s a shame I can’t burn it. It is a whole winter’s worth of wood. I can’t burn it because it is saturated with water, but also because it is pressure treated, with means, it is infused with arsenic. Burn it and risk poisoning yourself. So, it has to go to the land fill.

EDIT: Not so fast. I just removed the ledger board and under the rubber flashing was significant insect damage to the outside band boards on the house. This will need to be replaced to make a solid foundation for the new deck ledger board.

Posted in Arts and crafts | 4 Comments

OMG!!! Trump to host Rush Limbaugh show.

Posted on October 8, 2020 by No One

Tomorrow, 9 October, 2020, the sitting president of the United States of America, Donald J. TRUMP will do something no other president has ever done. He will host the Rush Limbaugh show.

There has been no announcement if Rush will be running the executive branch in a power swapping arrangement.

So much for speculation that Trump is on a ventilator and drugged to the gills.

Posted in "Journalism", Current Events, Entertainment, Politics | 2 Comments