News, Stupid Commentary, and Greg Abbott Declares War? [Updated]

It is late afternoon on a miserably rainy day outside the window of my Hunker Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound in Seattle.  The kind of day when the weather man says rain is at 100 percent, he isn’t talking about the chance of rain, he’s talking about how much of the day it’s going to be raining.  But still not enough rain for an actual, native-born Seattleite would be caught carrying an umbrella for…

You can always tell someone is NOT from Seattle — they carry an umbrella and complain about the rain.  Not me, I LOVE the rain.

I’ve done a bit of work on the backup version of this website and it should be ready for the time that this server finally goes kaput under the weight of its obsolescence.  When it happens, the server will still be up and running, and capable of serving up straight html pages, but not php pages like WordPress.  With each security update, the coding on this page will no longer be read by the server and will create critical errors causing the site to crash.

This has already happened twice this week, and I’ve managed to modify the coding a bit to handle the change.  But because these are security updates, it means that the longer it goes without being patched, the more opportunities become available for bad actors from Russia, China, and elsewhere to find and exploit those holes.  So I’m either going to have to let it happen or shift to a more secure location for the code.  In other words, I will have to redirect the traffic to a more secure server until Misha can come in and upgrade his server.

The plugin I wrote to redirect this site is written in a fail-over coding that will take over if the rest of WordPress fails.  It’s pretty slick, if you ask me.  It will allow anyone with administrator access to the backend to redirect the site back to the original server (or anywhere else) simply by logging in.  Like I said, this is only a temporary measure to keep this ship afloat…

Okay, now for the regular show

Headlines that Caught My Jaundiced Eye This Afternoon

Item 1:  Governor Abbott Issues Statement On Texas’ Constitutional Right To Self-Defense

“The little wheelchair that could” has decided that the two-thirds uber-Conservative Supreme Court is immaterial, and has basically declared war on Joe Biden and the United States of America.  He has also declared that the laws of Texas supersede those of the US.  One small problem:  his National Guard can be federalized at any moment and taken away from him.

I suppose the members of the Texas National Guard could decide to ignore the federal orders, which would put them individually at odds with the US government once this little charade is over, but that’s going to have to be a decision not to be taken lightly.

It was only a matter of time before some government entity decided that the US Supreme Court was full of shit and cast their rulings  aside like a used up wad of toilet paper.  Honestly, I was surprised it was a Rightwing government that took that first step.  I’d been assuming that one of the more liberal states would reach that conclusion first.  But here we are…

You can read the statement here

But once again, the anger is misplaced.  Joe Biden — and before that Trump — really has their hands tied on immigration.  There is NOTHING in the current laws that can deal with the massive influx of migrants seeking asylum at any of our borders.  This is — and always has been — the duty and sole responsibility of the US Congress to fix.  No amount of Executive Orders can solve this problem — the Court will almost always knock them down and tell Congress to do their fucking jobs.

Want something done about immigration?  Let’s vote in some people who will actually DO that instead of trying to fight each other while trying to preserve their jobs.

If that means completely shutting down the borders — then that’s something that has to come from Congress.  Get with the program here.  Do I have to show you the Schoolhouse Rock How a Bill Becomes a Law?  There is nothing in there about Executive Orders becoming laws…

Item 2:  More than one-third of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide, poll shows

Hell, more than half of Americans believe the government has been in contact with aliens in flying saucers.  Almost a third of Americans believe to this day that Trump won the 2020 election and that the 1/6/2001 insurrection was just a tourist trip and/or Antifa pretending to be “Trump supporters”.  So you will have to excuse me on taking for granted what some poll of Americans says.

That said, the longer Israel continues on the way they are, the higher that percentage is going to climb.  I mean already the global percentage is above fifty percent and climbing.  It will not surprise me to hear the World Court rule next Friday that Israel is guilty of committing acts of genocide.  Any adverse decision of that court will almost certainly be vetoed by the US in the UN Security Council.  But still, sympathy for Israel is limited and fading fast.  Netanyahu has played this out about as far as he’s going to go before he finally has to put an end to this.  The ONLY real reason he’s been going on for as long as he has is that he knows his time as a leader is pretty much over after this thing is done.

He will never reach his goal of eliminating Hamas.  He still hasn’t figured out that he’s played right into their hands.  The media is no longer talking about the horrific attacks that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th 2023.  Instead they are focusing on the killing of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children.  If you are losing the messaging, you are losing the war.

One-third seems a bit low.

Item 3:  Putin’s Decree Triggers Ominous Alaska Calls

Putin not only wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, but is also wanting to reclaim territory it once held at any time in history.  He is now considering the 1869 sale of Alaska to the US “illegal”.

This is Trump’s best friend in the world.  Why?  Because he considers Putin to be the richest man in the world, worth whatever Russia is worth — and he may be right.  Putin’s money and Russia’s money seems to be one and the same, and Trump is jealous of that.

It’s pretty much a given that if Trump becomes president again, and Vlad comes calling after Alaska, Trump is liable to hand it over to him.   Anyone who doesn’t believe this just hasn’t been paying close enough attention.

Item 4:  The U.S. economy grew at a 3.3% pace in the fourth quarter, much better than expected

This can’t be good news for those of you who think the economy is doing terrible under Joe Biden.

Item 5:  Trump: Presidents Should Be Above the Law So They Can Drop Nukes

So basically, what he’s saying is that he HAS committed crimes while in office and that he should be allowed to continue committing crimes.

What is interesting is that while most Republicans tend to agree with Trump — as long as the president is Trump — but if you wanted to apply the same to Biden, then y’all would lose your minds up in here, up in here…

Item 6:  Trump’s White House Pharmacy Handed Out Drugs Like Candy: Report

A Department of Defense report found an obscene lack of control over the handling of controlled medications while Trump was in office

It is an interesting report.  I read the whole thing.  While no specific individuals were named or alluded to, I am of the unlicensed opinion that Trump was probably one of those taking advantage of the Adderall supply there.  Before you protest, let me tell you, ‘game recognizes  game’.   I know an addict when I see one.  You can tell when he’s starting to crash.  It’s like a beacon to all addicts.  We know.

For example, there’s this fun little video of Donald Trump Jr from two years ago:

I think that most people could tell this guy is blitzed.  It’s a rare video because he took it down about twenty minutes after he posted it.  Funny thing about the Internet, there is a record of EVERYTHING, if you know where to look.  The archives of this site are stored there, if you need a place to start.  The Internet is an infinite bitch sometimes… Not even talking about the so-called ‘dark web’.  *shudder* cue ominous music.

I digress, mainly because of the bong hit I just took.  It’s medicinal, trust me. I just came from a beam session at SCCA.  I can remember as a kid literally wishing I had a ‘condition’ that would allow me to smoke pot.  But actually being in that kind of a situation now, and actually needing something like pot to steady me a bit?  Not such a cool after all.  A whole different mindset from 1967 and now.

I must feel how most of that White House felt — while in the West Wing or the Residence and beyond.  Kind of like having a giant medicine cabinet with just about anything you’d want and who’s to stop you?

“A president can do anything,” right?

Honestly?  If I lived in the White House with that kind of a mindset, then I don’t know what I would do — and it honestly scares me.

On a related note,

We find out about this kind of stuff usually years after an administration has left office.  Reagan’s records weren’t released until just recently, showing that he had been in onset dementia since before the 1984 election.  That stayed buried for a LONG time.  Now look at the two candidates at the top of their tickets in November.  Can you sit there with a straight face and not admit that BOTH of these guys are … slowing down, to put it politely?

I hate to admit it, but Nikki Haley is looking pretty sane to me.  By ‘sane’, I mean stable.  I like stable.  I’ll settle for stable if I have to.

What I don’t like is to have to choose between someone who is 81 and out of touch with a lot of things, but surrounds himself with people who can manage and keep things going /

versus a 77-year-old with onset dementia and doesn’t accept it because he doesn’t feel it happening to him.  But you can see it if you look.  Compare him from 2017-2019 and how he presents now.  His speech patterns, his posture — I’ve seen a lot of people go through the same thing.  I have a couple of close friends right now who are drifting away.  Trump is there.  Biden is probably not far behind him.  Actuarial data would predict that both are dead within five years, if not sooner.

Yeah, I may not be voting this time around.

Just my stupid commentary for this evening.

Memes From the Meme Box

I receive dozens of memes in my Meme Box on a daily basis from people all over the landscape.  Some are political, some topical, but most are just everyday events with a little fun inserted.  My absolute favorite are just photos that will speak those thousand words clearly.