Ribbit

Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound from West Seattle. It is a cloudy Sunday morning which may or may not become scattered clouds off and on throughout the day. It looks like tomorrow will be the last sunny day for a while.

I am trying to get into a coding frame of mind this morning. I’ve taken a week off from working on my Asset Tracking Base. I was working a few graveyard shifts last week and I was too tired to focus on coding. In fact, I am just now back on an even keel.

Once again, I tried to search for news and/or memes that wasn’t related to the election. More specifically, I wanted to find news/memes that did not mention Donald Trump or JD Vance. I would have welcomed some Kamala Harris memes — if they weren’t so blatantly racist and/or misleading.

Okay, where to start…

JD Vance doesn’t quite get it

JD Vance Confronted on Putting Constituents ‘At Risk’ With Haitian Claims

Bash asked him, “once and for all, can you affirmatively say that the rumors about Haitians eating dogs and cats have no basis with evidence?”

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance responded.

Bash called out Vance over his stunning admission.

“You just said this is a story that you created.”

“Yes!” Vance said.

“So the eating dogs and cats thing is not accurate,” Bash said.

“Dana, it comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents,” Vance responded. “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. Her policies did that. But yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’s policies.”  — [emphasis mine]

So it is perfectly alright to make up disturbing stories to pretend some ethnic group is doing some kind of horrific harm to the property, pets, and possibly women and children of ‘ordinary (white) folks’ in Springfield? Even when there is demonstrable evidence that these stories have caused bomb threats and threats to the safety and well-being of the Haitian community in Springfield?

Just to get the mainstream media to pay attention to you?

“And now, the rest of the story…”

I miss Paul Harvey.

Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up

When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

“They came to us for one reason: they were looking for ways to find out how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter, said of those who came to the Ohio city from Haiti.

“So we got together immigration lawyers and interpreters to figure out how to help them work. We are getting them online and getting them to apply [for work permits]. We wanted workers here [in Springfield] – they want to work.”

Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents. A popular Haitian radio station has been broadcasting for several years. And every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day that’s celebrated at a local park.

But this doesn’t sit well with the White Nationalists, does it? JD Vance talks about hearing “these stories (about Haitians) from my constituents”. What he’s not telling you is that these “constituents” are neo-Nazis and other White Nationalists who have an agenda to rid their lands of the ‘filth’ of non-white immigrants. The typical “otherizing” these fucks engage in.

Both Trump and Vance are running to fill the two highest positions in the nation. You would think they would take just a moment to do the bare minimum of due diligence on a story before amplifying it to the world. Something like this is BOUND to come back on them, and it only makes them look even stupider when they try to side step it.

But to come out and admit that they are making it up and basically, a “SO WHAT IF I AM?” This is the pure dishonesty that some of you will be voting for.

Donald Trump cannot keep from losing

Trump loses Electric Avenue song legal fight

Former US President Donald Trump has been found liable to pay damages to London singer and songwriter Eddy Grant for using his song Electric Avenue without permission.

It has taken Mr Grant, 76, more than four years to sue the Republican candidate in this year’s presidential election in the US courts, over his 2020 campaign video that used a 40-second clip of the song.

The video was viewed 13.7 million times before Twitter, now known as X, took it down.

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Mr Trump breached Mr Grant’s copyright for his 1983 hit, and is now liable for damages as well as paying for the singer’s legal fees.

The bigger question will be: Will Trump ever PAY? He has a long record of not paying off his judgments.

And for no reason at all, a pygmy hippo from Thailand

C’mon, you know you needed to see something different today…

Back in the day…

Then there were the “party lines”… Remember those?

Like Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Playing the ass tuba.

This would not be complete without a Laura Loomer meme

I feel the need to mention that since all the rumors and memes swirling around about Trump and Loomer bumping uglies, (get your own brain bleach) today’s news has a couple of stories about Loomer threatening to sue someone over the rumors, another story about Loomer giving the ‘best blow job Trump ever had’, and Trump trying to distance himself from Loomer. Not to mention the open cat fight going on between Loomer and MTG, and MTG and Loren Bobblehead.

Now Imagine this being 1996. Strange how far we’ve devolved, huh?

Losing My Religion

“At least four…” Hell, I’d find a way to hit all ten just for GP.

Volkswagens Rusting in the Woods

I have probably owned close to 300 VW bugs and 150 VW buses before the age of twenty-five. None of them newer than 1969. Most of them I had between the ages of 12-20. I’d make a crapload of buggies to sell to friends. I’ve made several different engine/transaxle swaps — my favorite go-to was the Corvair engine conversion.

It’s probably considered to be ‘criminal’ to some VW collectors that I’ve destroyed some VERY valuable bugs in my life, without a concern or care about preserving history. Now I kick myself in the ample ass.

I forget where this junkyard is. It is supposedly “abandoned”, but there’s really no such thing in this world. Someone owns it.

My current YouTube obsessions…

A couple of months ago, I bought a brand new 65″ Smart TV. It has a GoogleTV receiver, so YouTube is a prominent channel on the menu. Up until I bought this TV, the only thing I used YouTube for was to watch a repair video. With this new TV, I started to do some exploring, and… wow.

For example, I now subscribe to Friday’s with Frank.