Personal Musings category archive
Tax Relief 0
My tax returns are done and mailed and I won’t have to use MS Windows again for another year.*
Afterthought:
If Microsoft succeeds in foisting Windows 10, Spyware Edition, on me, I’m buying a Mac just to do my taxes.
__________________
*Commercial manufacturers of tax return software support only Windows and MacOS. Excellent FOSS accounting software exists, but not tax prep software.
Dreamers 0
I rather get a kick out persons who talk about a “real” Republican Party as if such a thing magically mystically exists on some plane separate and distinct from actual voting Republicans.
My real car is a 2016 Lamborghini. The 13-year old pickup truck is not my real car. It’s just not.
Stray Question 0
If you built a grain elevator shaped like Aphrodite, could you call it “Venus de Silo”?
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
One element that seems to be missing in discussions about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is this: Supporting Bernie Sanders does not ipso facto mean repudiating Hillary Clinton. I suspect that the great majority of caucus- and primary-participating Democrats could vote quite happily for either one in November.
The “repudiate Hillary” meme seems stronger amongst Sanders supporters, but is not, in my opinion, indicative of any quality unique to them or their candidate. Rather, I think it’s reflective of his position as a long-shot underdog.
Supporters of long-shot underdogs tend to see themselves as crusaders. They are more likely to “crusade” than to “campaign,” and “crusading” tends to excess.
“He Don’t Know His Place” 0
As regards the Supreme Court vacancy, any Southern boy can tell you what’s going on.
Republicans are punishing President Obama for being uppity.
How To Get Nevada and SC Results Instantly 0
Spend a quiet evening.
Tomorrow morning, get out of bed, bring in your newspaper, and look at it.
You will see the results in an instant. I promise you, they will not change overnight.
Stray Question 0
Just what exactly are “polar bear plungers” trying to prove?
Stray Thought, Igloo Dept. 0
At the grocery store yesterday, I overheard the person ahead of me telling the clerk that she had heard several forecasts of snow. She seemed quite concerned.
None of what she said is supported by the weather link, over there, on the sidebar.———->
I have become convinced that telly vision weather forecasters are not happy until they induce panic.
Panic is their friend. Panic is click bait.
Reality is their enemy.
Leave Her Alone 0
Oh, for Pete’s sake.
Paying a grand for a puppy is stupid too, but, if the lady wanted a collie, let her have the damned collie.
I wouldn’t say I love animals, but I like them okay and have housed more than my share. I do contemn cruelty, but fanatical “animal lovers”–well, words fail me.
The Climates They are a-Changing 0
It’s February.
I’m running the air conditioning to dehumidify the joint.
Don’t you dare tell me that it’s a fluke of weather and not somehow related to climate.
Ground Hog Day 0
How would you like being dragged out of a nice sound sleep, pulled out into the light, then stuffed back in your bed, all just so a bunch of old white men can have their picture taken with you?
Where is PETA when they could do some good?
Facebook Frolics 0
Aside:
In case you are not aware of it, you can indeed have a very nice much better online life without Facebook and other social leeches media.
Stray Thought, Election Dept. 0
Vote in the real world.
If you are not willing to vote for the lesser of two evils, you will most certainly end up with the evil of two lessers.
Trumped 0
Christian Schneider, a “conservative” columnist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, wonders what went wrong. Here’s part of his lament:
For instance, a conservative who listens to talk show radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin or Sean Hannity likely has a far different assessment of the Republican Party than those who curl up with copies of National Review or the Weekly Standard, or even my regular column. While ostensibly working for the same goals, these groups might not even recognize each other if they walked by each other on the street.
Missing from his tua culpa is any recognition that his vaunted Republican intelligentsia has been complicit in rationalizing Republican lies, such as trickle-on economoics and the Great and Glorious Patriot Lie for Irag, and Republican bigotry, such as the right-wing culture war, mass incarceration, and the war on black and brown people drugs.
The difference between the “conservative intelligentsia” and Rush Limbaugh is a difference in style only.
Genteel venality is still venality.
Stray Thought 0
The buffoons on the Weather Channel seem perpetually surprised that, in a snowstorm, snow that falls from the sky lands on the ground.
Dis Coarse Discourse, He’s a President, Not a Dictator Dept. 0
Have you noticed that folks who talk about what President Obama hasn’t done almost never mention what Republicans have been doing?
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Amongst collective nouns, there’s a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a pod of whales.
I propose a new collective: A bray of Trumps.
Stray Thought 0
I really don’t need my bank’s ATM to wish me a “Happy Birthday.”
(No, today is not my birthday.)
Afterthought:
It certainly doesn’t make me think more warmly of my bank, which is, at best, a necessary annoyance and, at worst, a corporate beast in service of mammon.