Summer Doldrums
21/08/22 07:01
Here we go again, folks. Let's do this. Or, as they say in the deep south, let's git er done. I've got to get a lot of ink down on paper between now and next Sunday, so there's no time to waste. It would help if I could find some good music to have on in the background. Even that seems to be hard to find this morning. It's a cool morning, though, so that's a relief. I won't say that we've seen all we're going to see of the hotter days one typically sees in the summer, but we are in mid-August, so we should expect to see temperatures moderate somewhat. I have this grammar checker on in the background, and it keeps throwing in commas here, there, and everywhere. One too many, in my honest opinion. Not that I have any other kind of opinion, mind you.
This summer seems to be one for the ages regarding technology issues hereabouts. An electrical storm blew two of my Apple TVs, and it fried a couple of ports on my router. A few days ago, I noticed that my Ooma Telo had died. The lights went out, and if you are familiar with Ooma devices, you know what I mean. No amount of powering and repowering would bring it back to life. I figured she was dead and just set about replacing the device. I don't think the problem had anything to do with the same electrical storm that killed my TVs, but we used the telephone for a while after the storm, so maybe it was a delayed reaction. Maybe not. Anyway, the Ev man had a spare Telo device that he wasn't using, so I swapped it out, discussed switching the devices with Ooma tech support, and we're now back in business.
I have a few traps out for Mr. Mousey, but he's avoided them thus far. He's one lucky little fuck, if I do say so myself. I've set a few traps outside the room where I'm sitting, but I've seen no action. That suggests to me, wrongly perhaps, that my mouse problem is contained and I don't have a more significant problem on my hands. I'm still unsure how this little fella got into my house, so I'll need to give that one a little more thought. Is there a hole somewhere that needs plugging? Did he come in with a load of laundry I brought in off the line? Maybe he nestled into what he thought was a snug rug and a place to rest his weary little head while nobody was looking. If he thought he would go undetected for long, he has another thing coming. I've got news for you, little guy. I've got your number. It's just a matter of time now.
The missus and I just finished watching an Apple TV series entitled "Black Bird." It's a six-part series about a convicted drug and gun runner (Jimmy Keene) who is offered a deal of commutation by the FBI if he agrees to go undercover to elicit a confession from a serial killer who is about to be released from prison on a technicality. It's based on the true life story of Larry Hall, who, despite never having found the bodies of his victims, is allegedly responsible for the disappearance and deaths of 21 young women. It is not the kind of show the missus is known to enjoy watching, so I suspect she closed her eyes for much of it. The production quality was quite good, though, and the undercover aspects of the story were believable and well done.
Performances by Greg Kinnear of SNL fame and his FBI counterpart, whose name escapes me at the moment, made the show all that much more realistic and intriguing. The kicker is that Hall was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and not murder since he never revealed where any of his victims were buried. Keene offers his services to law enforcement these days as a serial killer profiler. However, I'm not sure that doing what he did as an undercover informant qualifies him as a profiler. It was a little unclear in the show as to just how long it took Keene to extract the confession, and you have to consider that when looking at the bigger picture. He had been sentenced to ten years in prison for his drug offenses, so, all things considered, was what he had to endure as an undercover agent worth it? Would he do it all over again? Anyways, not a bad show. It was a little hard for the missus to watch, but she got through it.
Today is Primary Day in Alaska and Wyoming. I'll be pulling for Liz Cheney's and Lisa Murkowski's opponents. The Alaska race is a little more complicated because the two candidates with the most votes get on the ballot in November. Wyoming is cut and dry. Either you win, or you lose. Both races are in western time zones, so I'll likely not be awake when the races are called. This is one of those nights, though, where I can see myself getting up in the middle of the night so I can go online to see if my candidates won. The latest polls have Cheney's opponent up by 30 points, so maybe I don't need to worry about that one. That bitch will likely reappear on some liberal network as a conservative talking head. Good riddance. I believe Murkowski's challenger is ahead as well, so only good things can happen if that's true. We'll have to wait until the general election in November to celebrate.
We sure could use some rain hereabouts. It's dry as a bone out there. I can't remember the last time it rained. We don't have a problem with forest fires in my little corner of the world, but if we did, this would be ground zero. Sometimes, I like rainy days because they give me an excuse not to get out and about on my bike. Conversely, days when we have no rain push me to go riding if for no other reason than to take advantage of the good weather while it's there for the taking. Our lawn is predictably patchy given the relentlessly hot days we've had as of late, so mowing the lawn, while still necessary, will not take as long because there will be less area to cut. Is this too much nitty gritty? Too much detail? Despite the heat and the lack of rain, seasonal changes are underway here along the seacoast. Certain trees have already begun to shed their leaves, and other ground-covering vines and plants are turning various shades of red, orange, and yellow. Is there any doubt that September is right around the corner?
I watched Tucker (FOX) last night, and he was rattling off the number of people in Trump's orbit who have been arrested or accosted since Trump came down the escalator in 2016. It was an astoundingly long list. The point he was making was not necessarily about Trump. It was about one political party using our Justice Department to wage a Jihad against their political opponents. It was about the lack of a double standard of applying justice based not on the crime allegedly committed but rather on the political party of the "criminal." He was clear about which party was at the heart of this deception and what we stand to lose as a country should this be allowed to continue. We are no better than a banana republic without free and fair elections. Those are my words, not his. Tucker was also clear in making the point that any indictment of Trump by Biden's Justice Department was more about preventing him from becoming president than any crime that Trump may or may not have committed.
Tucker was also clear about the remedies available to the American people. To paraphrase, he said that people could make the necessary changes at the ballot box. If we carry that thought to its logical conclusion, we should see a red wave, the likes of which we've never seen come election day in November. Republicans, by and large, do not vent their anger in public and prefer to let out their frustrations in the voting booth. In primary after primary this season, we've seen Trump's candidates win repeatedly. This may explain why Biden wants to put Trump behind bars so badly. He doesn't care that it looks political. He's dead-man-walking in terms of the number of days he has in office until the end of his first and only term. We also know that Biden is just a figurehead. He's the proverbial fool on the hill who gets to read his cue cards and return to his vacation home in Delaware after working a four-day week. Pathetic.
Just a quick update on Liz Cheney. She got her butt kicked last night in the Wyoming primary. Trump can now claim credit for taking down the Cheney, Bush, Clinton, and McCain dynasties. It's pretty damn impressive any way you slice it. Cheney isn't giving up on her goal of ensuring that Trump never gets the chance to sit in the Oval Office again. In her concession speech, which I've only heard people making a passing reference to, she said something about running for president as an independent if that is what it takes to take Trump down. She's just a bitter old twat. Trump gave her the spanking of her life, and she wants her revenge. I hope her old man, Dick Cheney, is also taking notes because he didn't help his daughter's cause by doing television ads for her. It looked desperate, and it was desperate. I want to be careful here because Trump's work isn't finished as far as the primaries are concerned. Short term, we need to unseat Murkowski. Longer term, Mittens Romney.
The Ev man and I went to Staples yesterday to buy a chair for his desk here at our house. Staples had a pretty good selection, and we settled on just the right chair after trying out various chairs on the floor for ten to fifteen minutes. The one he liked the most was on sale, marked down to $109 from $179. I'm not sure it was the chair I'd want to sit in for hours on end, but he's not usually at our house for hours when he visits. An associate on the floor tipped us off on how to download an app to get a $10 discount, so we went back and forth with that until we got it downloaded. Well, if we save an additional $10, why not apply that to the $20 fee they charged to assemble the chair? Right? After paying at the register, we popped next door to Trader Joe's. Ev has never been to Trader Joe's, so I think he found it interesting. I also think he experienced a bit of sensory overload, which I totally understand. I could see it in his eyes. Restless. Uneasy. Anxious.
I can't decide if this hack I have is a known reaction to an ace inhibitor or just a garden variety cough. I was sorely tempted to have a good shot of Nyquil last night before bedtime to quell what I thought was a cough I had developed. Nyquil is some nasty shit, so I talked myself out of it. I envisioned what it was probably doing to my internal organs and decided that my cough was not far enough along to warrant taking any of the medication. Don't get me wrong. When the going gets rough, you don't give a shit what you put in your body. You want relief, whatever that looks like. Nyquil will provide you with a good night's sleep, and it will suppress the hell out of any cough that you might be experiencing. I know because I have used it over the years. Not a lot, but certainly when and where I needed something like Nyquil to help me get a good night's sleep. We'll see where all of this goes.
It bears mentioning that many democrats changed their registration to republican so they could bolster Cheney's chances of winning her primary in Wyoming last night. They sang her praises from the rooftops for all her hard work on the January 6 Committee. She was doing her best to indict Trump and his associates for their roles in the January 6 insurrection. Thankfully, there aren't enough democrats in Wyoming to make a difference even if every last democrat in the State changed their registration. The liberal media has never been a fan of the warmongering Cheneys, but they embraced Liz Cheney like a long-lost cousin when she joined forces with the democrats to take down Trump. It was a decision to save our democracy, or that is what she told anyone willing to listen. Liz Cheney was going to save the republican party and the world at large from people like Donald Trump, who she and her never-Trumper soulmates view as an existential threat to our republic. She'll be doing that from the outside starting in January of 2023. Thank you, Wyoming!
Finally. some rain. But, is it enough to give my garden a good watering? I just don't know. I'll have to see if we're expecting more rain today. I might actually be done watering my zucchini. I've had so much zucchini this year that I've had to throw a few of them away. I hate to throw away food, but what else was I going to do? Have them sit on the counter in my kitchen until they turned bad? I thought a little bit about donating the zucchini to a local homeless shelter, but truth be told, what the hell would they want with zucchini? There are only so many zucchini dishes that you can make, and none of them would be at the top of anyone's list of "gotta haves." I'm going to have to rethink zucchini next year. The plants take up too much space in the garden, and nobody wants the damn vegetables once they become available. So, that's that.
I'm trying to log on to a few things this morning, but I'm finding that the things I'm trying to log onto are offline, down, or otherwise not available. One or two things I can understand, but this seems to be more widespread. Then again, other things are totally available. It's starting to feel very personal. I'm seeing no tweets about the overall electrical grid, so it's not likely that we're under some attack by the Chinese or the Russians. If they're coming after me in particular for some reason, they're going to have their work cut out for them. Now you see me, now you don't. I'm only kidding. I'm making this stuff up as I go along because I have very little else on my mind this morning, and I'm needing to get at least three paragraphs down on paper before moving on with my morning activities. It is true, though, that I can't access a couple of online things that I look at every morning. It's probably nothing. Maybe the missus forgot to pay a bill somewhere.
There are a lot of stories in the news these days about alligator attacks. I'm talking about attacks in Florida, where alligators and humans quite often live in close proximity to each other. Every other senior living facility or golf course has an obligatory pond on the premises that is sufficiently large to conceal one or two 11-foot alligators. You ask the question, where do alligators live? The answer is obvious. Wherever the hell they want to, is the quick and easy answer. The same answer applies to the question, what do alligators eat? That's right, anything they want to. That includes dogs, cats, raccoons, small children, and the occasional senior citizen out for a stroll at dusk. Just because you can't see the critters doesn't mean that they aren't there, just beneath the surface, waiting for just the right moment. This is what they do. Read the fucking signs.
The missus tells me that my coughing at night is keeping her awake. Do you think that it's time for me to get my affairs in order? When I think about all the things I'm going to have to put together so the missus can get along without me once I'm gone, it's just crazy. I'm such a reliable crutch around this joint that the missus doesn't even wake up when our smoke alarm goes off anymore. Johnny Boy will take care of it. He knows how to do all those things. Will she post an ad in the local paper for a Mr. Fixit once I'm no longer in the picture? The Ev man will need to step up and lend a hand here and there. That's what children do in a pinch. Right? We're talking about things like turning the computer on and off and replacing batteries in flashlights and handheld television remotes. God help both of them if there is anything more demanding or more complex that needs remedying. There is only so much I can do from the great beyond.
The missus is in high cotton this time of the year. The Little League World Series is playing on ESPN, the sweetest corn on God's green earth is now available at roadside stands, watermelons are plentiful, and the beach is just a stone's throw away. I don't share her passion for any of the abovementioned items, but I am eating more corn this year than I have in years past for whatever reason. I should also say that I don't actively dislike any of the abovementioned either. I avoid watermelon because it is too sweet, and I avoid the beach because I'm not crazy about getting sand between my toes. I've given up on trying to get the missus to make sure that she doesn't drag beach sand into the car, but one look at the car mat tells you all you need to know about just how successful I've been at doing that. The sand is so fine that it gets into every damn nook and cranny, and it's impossible to eliminate altogether. Some wars just aren't worth fighting.
Tucker (FOX) was ringing the alarm bells last night about some Republican Senatorial candidates running for office. Many of them are polling poorly, and Tucker seems to think that they are not talking about the things people in America are concerned about, like crime, immigration, etc. He played one ad being run by Dr. Oz out of Pennsylvania that had to do with inflation as an example of what not to do. The ad was a bit of a flop, not because people aren't interested in inflation, but because Dr. Oz mispronounced the name of the popular store. It was a little akin to the ad run by George Bush a couple of decades back when he didn't know how much milk cost when asked by a reporter. The common man or woman looking at that ad couldn't relate to the reality that Bush was selling. Does anyone really think that Dr. Oz does his own food shopping? Anyway, let's hope someone in the various camps of these candidates was listening to Tucker last night. There's still time.
Mitch McConnell, the Minority Speaker of the House in the Senate, went on television and said something about winning back the House on Election Day in November but that the Senate was likely out of reach due to the quality of the candidates running. The senatorial candidates winning primaries across the land have been largely MAGA, and McConnell seems to think that MAGA isn't going to sell well in the general election. Of course, if MAGA does sell well on Election Day, his days as leader of the Senate are likely numbered. All Mitch wants is candidates that he can work with and who are willing to work with him. That means voting the way Mitch wants them to vote and towing the establishment line. Fuck the establishment, is what I say. We've had enough of "establishment," and "establishment" has not served us well. I hope that the American people agree with me and, thus far, these MAGA senatorial candidates are winning their primaries, so it's a good start.
I hope there's some truth to the rumor that fourteen FBI agents have come forward anonymously to tell Senator Grassley of Iowa all about the political shenanigans going on in their departments. I want these guys outing these rotten mother fuckers in their ranks until the cows come home. If the upper echelon in the FBI is hiding or suppressing intelligence reports on the Bidens as it relates to their crimes, then we need more whistle-blowers and not fewer whistle-blowers. I want them singing their little hearts out. I'm guessing that we're talking about the Bidens. Who else could it be? MIght it concern who or who isn't making decisions in the White House? Might it concern those parties in the White House that are really running the show? Maybe we can start with the fact that there is no way on God's green earth that Bumbling Joe Biden got eighty-one million votes. Just humor me here.
Say good night, little mousey. It took me a few nights, but I finally got it right, and now your little ass is mine. Could I have found a more humane way of dispatching a little fuck like you? Maybe. Did I want my pound of flesh at the end of the day? You bet your ass I did. I don't have anything against little mousies, per se, but I'll not tolerate one or more of them in my living quarters. How he got into our house is something I'll need to investigate further. Is there a hole or an entrance behind a couch, television, or maybe a bookshelf? How do I explain the fact that there is only one mouse? Well, one mouse that I know of. I've kept the door closed in the room I saw his sweet little face on day one so that he couldn't disappear into our house somewhere. That would have made his capture and death a more prolonged ordeal. I probably wouldn't have slept well knowing that he was out and about doing what little mousies do. The missus will be pleased to know he's dead and gone.
Governor DeSantis is going to state after state giving speeches on behalf of Trump's endorsed gubernatorial and senatorial candidates. I watched and listened to his speech on behalf of the gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, and I thought he was more than engaging. He's pretty good on his feet. I'm not sure what I expected to see, but Trump is the gold standard, so that was the yardstick I used when watching DeSantis. I found myself asking the following question: If DeSantis didn't have bragging rights the way he has to all the good things that have happened to Florida on his watch, would he hold the kind of sway that he does within the Republican party? Would he be doing what he's doing to assist Trump's picks? And, if he's thinking about running for the presidency, why is he doing everything he can to help Trump's picks? If Trump's picks prevail, that helps Trump. Why would DeSantis want to help the man he wants to take down in the primaries? Or, does he?
The dirty little secret is that DeSantis is really out speaking on the stump to bolster his image as a national candidate. The fact that most people east of the Mason-Dixon line have never heard of DeSantis is something he needs to remedy. One way to do that is to get out on the stump and talk to the people who can elect you to the office one day. I thought his speech was about his record in Florida and a lot less about the candidates he was there to stump for. Did anyone else notice that? If he was supposed to be talking up Trump's candidates, why did he have so little to say about Trump's candidates? Maybe the idea was to simply roll out a template or blueprint that new governors could and should follow should they be elected. Perhaps the idea was to talk to people about what was possible, and who better to talk about it than the guy who has done it so successfully? This is what you're getting if you elect Trump's picks, and this is what success looks like.
It's hard to believe that Pennsylvania would send a clown the likes of John Fetterman to represent them in the US Senate. I mean, look at him. He's a hulk of a man, fully tattooed, bald, really just a lumbering progressive toadie for the left, and someone who lived in his parents basement until he turned fifty years old. It gets worse. He was also the mayor of some pee hole in the snow town in Pennsylvania with an annual salary of somewhere in the vicinity of $150 a month. His parents provided additional support to him in the amount of $50k a year. I'm not sure how he ended up as lieutenant Governor of the great state of Pennsylvania. This was all before he had a massive stroke. In recent videos I've seen of him on the stump, he's a stuttering mess. Not unlike Joey Bumbles Biden, I suppose. I read somewhere this morning where he released criminals from prison while in office. The article painted Fetterman as a Dukakis style nut job. I think the anti-Fetterman war is just getting started.
While we're on the subject of politics, I'm a little concerned about their being a third party on the 2024 ticket when we all get to go back to the polls to vote for president. I'm talkiing about someone who can siphon off enough votes to prevent Trump or DeSantis from beccome president. I don't know who that would be at this point but, were it to happen, I'd like to see the republicans work behind the scenes to find someone who can whittle away at the democrat vote instead of the other way around. Wasn't it Ross Perot who put Bill Clinon in office? That's the extent of my historical knowledge on such things. I know I'm getting out over my skis on this seeing as it's a while off but it will be here soon enough. Shorter term, we need to make sure that Oz beats Fetterman in Pennsylvania this Fall and that republicans beat the tar out of their progressive counterparts in any number of other races so we republicans can get back the majority in the Senate. That includes my man, Herschel Walker, in his race against Warnock in the great state of South Carolina.
Mrs G got out and about in her car this past week. This is the first time she's been behind the wheel in months since her surgery earlier this year. We kept her car at our house during her recovery and we drove it every few weeks just so that it didn't sit for too long. If we put a hundred miles on it, I'd be surprised. The only time I put gas in it is when we returned the car to her this past week. That little car of hers drives like a truck so it's not like we enjoyed taking it here and there. Anyway, Mrs G was feeling pretty good about the fact that she got out for a drive even if it was just a short drive. She also said something about the fact that her little walker was heavier than expected and it wasn't as easy putting it in her trunk as she thought it would be. Nobody said that any of this was going to be easy. It doesn't help that time isn't on her side.
Summer is getting a little long in the tooth hereabouts. I was hoping to see some amelioration in the number of cars (traffic) and people when I was on my bike ride yesterday but no such luck. I had to do the usual weaving and whirling just to get through the area down around Jenness Beach. Cars parked along the roadway present all kinds of dangers including children escaping the grasp of their parents and coming onto the roadway at inopportune times. It's the cars that are coming and going along the boulevard that make matters infinitely worse since you can never quite predict what they are going to do when come up on you from behind. Will they become distracted and put you in danger? Will they slow down as they should and look for just the right opportunity to pass you by? A week or two more of this madness won't kill me, or will it?
This summer seems to be one for the ages regarding technology issues hereabouts. An electrical storm blew two of my Apple TVs, and it fried a couple of ports on my router. A few days ago, I noticed that my Ooma Telo had died. The lights went out, and if you are familiar with Ooma devices, you know what I mean. No amount of powering and repowering would bring it back to life. I figured she was dead and just set about replacing the device. I don't think the problem had anything to do with the same electrical storm that killed my TVs, but we used the telephone for a while after the storm, so maybe it was a delayed reaction. Maybe not. Anyway, the Ev man had a spare Telo device that he wasn't using, so I swapped it out, discussed switching the devices with Ooma tech support, and we're now back in business.
I have a few traps out for Mr. Mousey, but he's avoided them thus far. He's one lucky little fuck, if I do say so myself. I've set a few traps outside the room where I'm sitting, but I've seen no action. That suggests to me, wrongly perhaps, that my mouse problem is contained and I don't have a more significant problem on my hands. I'm still unsure how this little fella got into my house, so I'll need to give that one a little more thought. Is there a hole somewhere that needs plugging? Did he come in with a load of laundry I brought in off the line? Maybe he nestled into what he thought was a snug rug and a place to rest his weary little head while nobody was looking. If he thought he would go undetected for long, he has another thing coming. I've got news for you, little guy. I've got your number. It's just a matter of time now.
The missus and I just finished watching an Apple TV series entitled "Black Bird." It's a six-part series about a convicted drug and gun runner (Jimmy Keene) who is offered a deal of commutation by the FBI if he agrees to go undercover to elicit a confession from a serial killer who is about to be released from prison on a technicality. It's based on the true life story of Larry Hall, who, despite never having found the bodies of his victims, is allegedly responsible for the disappearance and deaths of 21 young women. It is not the kind of show the missus is known to enjoy watching, so I suspect she closed her eyes for much of it. The production quality was quite good, though, and the undercover aspects of the story were believable and well done.
Performances by Greg Kinnear of SNL fame and his FBI counterpart, whose name escapes me at the moment, made the show all that much more realistic and intriguing. The kicker is that Hall was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and not murder since he never revealed where any of his victims were buried. Keene offers his services to law enforcement these days as a serial killer profiler. However, I'm not sure that doing what he did as an undercover informant qualifies him as a profiler. It was a little unclear in the show as to just how long it took Keene to extract the confession, and you have to consider that when looking at the bigger picture. He had been sentenced to ten years in prison for his drug offenses, so, all things considered, was what he had to endure as an undercover agent worth it? Would he do it all over again? Anyways, not a bad show. It was a little hard for the missus to watch, but she got through it.
Today is Primary Day in Alaska and Wyoming. I'll be pulling for Liz Cheney's and Lisa Murkowski's opponents. The Alaska race is a little more complicated because the two candidates with the most votes get on the ballot in November. Wyoming is cut and dry. Either you win, or you lose. Both races are in western time zones, so I'll likely not be awake when the races are called. This is one of those nights, though, where I can see myself getting up in the middle of the night so I can go online to see if my candidates won. The latest polls have Cheney's opponent up by 30 points, so maybe I don't need to worry about that one. That bitch will likely reappear on some liberal network as a conservative talking head. Good riddance. I believe Murkowski's challenger is ahead as well, so only good things can happen if that's true. We'll have to wait until the general election in November to celebrate.
We sure could use some rain hereabouts. It's dry as a bone out there. I can't remember the last time it rained. We don't have a problem with forest fires in my little corner of the world, but if we did, this would be ground zero. Sometimes, I like rainy days because they give me an excuse not to get out and about on my bike. Conversely, days when we have no rain push me to go riding if for no other reason than to take advantage of the good weather while it's there for the taking. Our lawn is predictably patchy given the relentlessly hot days we've had as of late, so mowing the lawn, while still necessary, will not take as long because there will be less area to cut. Is this too much nitty gritty? Too much detail? Despite the heat and the lack of rain, seasonal changes are underway here along the seacoast. Certain trees have already begun to shed their leaves, and other ground-covering vines and plants are turning various shades of red, orange, and yellow. Is there any doubt that September is right around the corner?
I watched Tucker (FOX) last night, and he was rattling off the number of people in Trump's orbit who have been arrested or accosted since Trump came down the escalator in 2016. It was an astoundingly long list. The point he was making was not necessarily about Trump. It was about one political party using our Justice Department to wage a Jihad against their political opponents. It was about the lack of a double standard of applying justice based not on the crime allegedly committed but rather on the political party of the "criminal." He was clear about which party was at the heart of this deception and what we stand to lose as a country should this be allowed to continue. We are no better than a banana republic without free and fair elections. Those are my words, not his. Tucker was also clear in making the point that any indictment of Trump by Biden's Justice Department was more about preventing him from becoming president than any crime that Trump may or may not have committed.
Tucker was also clear about the remedies available to the American people. To paraphrase, he said that people could make the necessary changes at the ballot box. If we carry that thought to its logical conclusion, we should see a red wave, the likes of which we've never seen come election day in November. Republicans, by and large, do not vent their anger in public and prefer to let out their frustrations in the voting booth. In primary after primary this season, we've seen Trump's candidates win repeatedly. This may explain why Biden wants to put Trump behind bars so badly. He doesn't care that it looks political. He's dead-man-walking in terms of the number of days he has in office until the end of his first and only term. We also know that Biden is just a figurehead. He's the proverbial fool on the hill who gets to read his cue cards and return to his vacation home in Delaware after working a four-day week. Pathetic.
Just a quick update on Liz Cheney. She got her butt kicked last night in the Wyoming primary. Trump can now claim credit for taking down the Cheney, Bush, Clinton, and McCain dynasties. It's pretty damn impressive any way you slice it. Cheney isn't giving up on her goal of ensuring that Trump never gets the chance to sit in the Oval Office again. In her concession speech, which I've only heard people making a passing reference to, she said something about running for president as an independent if that is what it takes to take Trump down. She's just a bitter old twat. Trump gave her the spanking of her life, and she wants her revenge. I hope her old man, Dick Cheney, is also taking notes because he didn't help his daughter's cause by doing television ads for her. It looked desperate, and it was desperate. I want to be careful here because Trump's work isn't finished as far as the primaries are concerned. Short term, we need to unseat Murkowski. Longer term, Mittens Romney.
The Ev man and I went to Staples yesterday to buy a chair for his desk here at our house. Staples had a pretty good selection, and we settled on just the right chair after trying out various chairs on the floor for ten to fifteen minutes. The one he liked the most was on sale, marked down to $109 from $179. I'm not sure it was the chair I'd want to sit in for hours on end, but he's not usually at our house for hours when he visits. An associate on the floor tipped us off on how to download an app to get a $10 discount, so we went back and forth with that until we got it downloaded. Well, if we save an additional $10, why not apply that to the $20 fee they charged to assemble the chair? Right? After paying at the register, we popped next door to Trader Joe's. Ev has never been to Trader Joe's, so I think he found it interesting. I also think he experienced a bit of sensory overload, which I totally understand. I could see it in his eyes. Restless. Uneasy. Anxious.
I can't decide if this hack I have is a known reaction to an ace inhibitor or just a garden variety cough. I was sorely tempted to have a good shot of Nyquil last night before bedtime to quell what I thought was a cough I had developed. Nyquil is some nasty shit, so I talked myself out of it. I envisioned what it was probably doing to my internal organs and decided that my cough was not far enough along to warrant taking any of the medication. Don't get me wrong. When the going gets rough, you don't give a shit what you put in your body. You want relief, whatever that looks like. Nyquil will provide you with a good night's sleep, and it will suppress the hell out of any cough that you might be experiencing. I know because I have used it over the years. Not a lot, but certainly when and where I needed something like Nyquil to help me get a good night's sleep. We'll see where all of this goes.
It bears mentioning that many democrats changed their registration to republican so they could bolster Cheney's chances of winning her primary in Wyoming last night. They sang her praises from the rooftops for all her hard work on the January 6 Committee. She was doing her best to indict Trump and his associates for their roles in the January 6 insurrection. Thankfully, there aren't enough democrats in Wyoming to make a difference even if every last democrat in the State changed their registration. The liberal media has never been a fan of the warmongering Cheneys, but they embraced Liz Cheney like a long-lost cousin when she joined forces with the democrats to take down Trump. It was a decision to save our democracy, or that is what she told anyone willing to listen. Liz Cheney was going to save the republican party and the world at large from people like Donald Trump, who she and her never-Trumper soulmates view as an existential threat to our republic. She'll be doing that from the outside starting in January of 2023. Thank you, Wyoming!
Finally. some rain. But, is it enough to give my garden a good watering? I just don't know. I'll have to see if we're expecting more rain today. I might actually be done watering my zucchini. I've had so much zucchini this year that I've had to throw a few of them away. I hate to throw away food, but what else was I going to do? Have them sit on the counter in my kitchen until they turned bad? I thought a little bit about donating the zucchini to a local homeless shelter, but truth be told, what the hell would they want with zucchini? There are only so many zucchini dishes that you can make, and none of them would be at the top of anyone's list of "gotta haves." I'm going to have to rethink zucchini next year. The plants take up too much space in the garden, and nobody wants the damn vegetables once they become available. So, that's that.
I'm trying to log on to a few things this morning, but I'm finding that the things I'm trying to log onto are offline, down, or otherwise not available. One or two things I can understand, but this seems to be more widespread. Then again, other things are totally available. It's starting to feel very personal. I'm seeing no tweets about the overall electrical grid, so it's not likely that we're under some attack by the Chinese or the Russians. If they're coming after me in particular for some reason, they're going to have their work cut out for them. Now you see me, now you don't. I'm only kidding. I'm making this stuff up as I go along because I have very little else on my mind this morning, and I'm needing to get at least three paragraphs down on paper before moving on with my morning activities. It is true, though, that I can't access a couple of online things that I look at every morning. It's probably nothing. Maybe the missus forgot to pay a bill somewhere.
There are a lot of stories in the news these days about alligator attacks. I'm talking about attacks in Florida, where alligators and humans quite often live in close proximity to each other. Every other senior living facility or golf course has an obligatory pond on the premises that is sufficiently large to conceal one or two 11-foot alligators. You ask the question, where do alligators live? The answer is obvious. Wherever the hell they want to, is the quick and easy answer. The same answer applies to the question, what do alligators eat? That's right, anything they want to. That includes dogs, cats, raccoons, small children, and the occasional senior citizen out for a stroll at dusk. Just because you can't see the critters doesn't mean that they aren't there, just beneath the surface, waiting for just the right moment. This is what they do. Read the fucking signs.
The missus tells me that my coughing at night is keeping her awake. Do you think that it's time for me to get my affairs in order? When I think about all the things I'm going to have to put together so the missus can get along without me once I'm gone, it's just crazy. I'm such a reliable crutch around this joint that the missus doesn't even wake up when our smoke alarm goes off anymore. Johnny Boy will take care of it. He knows how to do all those things. Will she post an ad in the local paper for a Mr. Fixit once I'm no longer in the picture? The Ev man will need to step up and lend a hand here and there. That's what children do in a pinch. Right? We're talking about things like turning the computer on and off and replacing batteries in flashlights and handheld television remotes. God help both of them if there is anything more demanding or more complex that needs remedying. There is only so much I can do from the great beyond.
The missus is in high cotton this time of the year. The Little League World Series is playing on ESPN, the sweetest corn on God's green earth is now available at roadside stands, watermelons are plentiful, and the beach is just a stone's throw away. I don't share her passion for any of the abovementioned items, but I am eating more corn this year than I have in years past for whatever reason. I should also say that I don't actively dislike any of the abovementioned either. I avoid watermelon because it is too sweet, and I avoid the beach because I'm not crazy about getting sand between my toes. I've given up on trying to get the missus to make sure that she doesn't drag beach sand into the car, but one look at the car mat tells you all you need to know about just how successful I've been at doing that. The sand is so fine that it gets into every damn nook and cranny, and it's impossible to eliminate altogether. Some wars just aren't worth fighting.
Tucker (FOX) was ringing the alarm bells last night about some Republican Senatorial candidates running for office. Many of them are polling poorly, and Tucker seems to think that they are not talking about the things people in America are concerned about, like crime, immigration, etc. He played one ad being run by Dr. Oz out of Pennsylvania that had to do with inflation as an example of what not to do. The ad was a bit of a flop, not because people aren't interested in inflation, but because Dr. Oz mispronounced the name of the popular store. It was a little akin to the ad run by George Bush a couple of decades back when he didn't know how much milk cost when asked by a reporter. The common man or woman looking at that ad couldn't relate to the reality that Bush was selling. Does anyone really think that Dr. Oz does his own food shopping? Anyway, let's hope someone in the various camps of these candidates was listening to Tucker last night. There's still time.
Mitch McConnell, the Minority Speaker of the House in the Senate, went on television and said something about winning back the House on Election Day in November but that the Senate was likely out of reach due to the quality of the candidates running. The senatorial candidates winning primaries across the land have been largely MAGA, and McConnell seems to think that MAGA isn't going to sell well in the general election. Of course, if MAGA does sell well on Election Day, his days as leader of the Senate are likely numbered. All Mitch wants is candidates that he can work with and who are willing to work with him. That means voting the way Mitch wants them to vote and towing the establishment line. Fuck the establishment, is what I say. We've had enough of "establishment," and "establishment" has not served us well. I hope that the American people agree with me and, thus far, these MAGA senatorial candidates are winning their primaries, so it's a good start.
I hope there's some truth to the rumor that fourteen FBI agents have come forward anonymously to tell Senator Grassley of Iowa all about the political shenanigans going on in their departments. I want these guys outing these rotten mother fuckers in their ranks until the cows come home. If the upper echelon in the FBI is hiding or suppressing intelligence reports on the Bidens as it relates to their crimes, then we need more whistle-blowers and not fewer whistle-blowers. I want them singing their little hearts out. I'm guessing that we're talking about the Bidens. Who else could it be? MIght it concern who or who isn't making decisions in the White House? Might it concern those parties in the White House that are really running the show? Maybe we can start with the fact that there is no way on God's green earth that Bumbling Joe Biden got eighty-one million votes. Just humor me here.
Say good night, little mousey. It took me a few nights, but I finally got it right, and now your little ass is mine. Could I have found a more humane way of dispatching a little fuck like you? Maybe. Did I want my pound of flesh at the end of the day? You bet your ass I did. I don't have anything against little mousies, per se, but I'll not tolerate one or more of them in my living quarters. How he got into our house is something I'll need to investigate further. Is there a hole or an entrance behind a couch, television, or maybe a bookshelf? How do I explain the fact that there is only one mouse? Well, one mouse that I know of. I've kept the door closed in the room I saw his sweet little face on day one so that he couldn't disappear into our house somewhere. That would have made his capture and death a more prolonged ordeal. I probably wouldn't have slept well knowing that he was out and about doing what little mousies do. The missus will be pleased to know he's dead and gone.
Governor DeSantis is going to state after state giving speeches on behalf of Trump's endorsed gubernatorial and senatorial candidates. I watched and listened to his speech on behalf of the gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, and I thought he was more than engaging. He's pretty good on his feet. I'm not sure what I expected to see, but Trump is the gold standard, so that was the yardstick I used when watching DeSantis. I found myself asking the following question: If DeSantis didn't have bragging rights the way he has to all the good things that have happened to Florida on his watch, would he hold the kind of sway that he does within the Republican party? Would he be doing what he's doing to assist Trump's picks? And, if he's thinking about running for the presidency, why is he doing everything he can to help Trump's picks? If Trump's picks prevail, that helps Trump. Why would DeSantis want to help the man he wants to take down in the primaries? Or, does he?
The dirty little secret is that DeSantis is really out speaking on the stump to bolster his image as a national candidate. The fact that most people east of the Mason-Dixon line have never heard of DeSantis is something he needs to remedy. One way to do that is to get out on the stump and talk to the people who can elect you to the office one day. I thought his speech was about his record in Florida and a lot less about the candidates he was there to stump for. Did anyone else notice that? If he was supposed to be talking up Trump's candidates, why did he have so little to say about Trump's candidates? Maybe the idea was to simply roll out a template or blueprint that new governors could and should follow should they be elected. Perhaps the idea was to talk to people about what was possible, and who better to talk about it than the guy who has done it so successfully? This is what you're getting if you elect Trump's picks, and this is what success looks like.
It's hard to believe that Pennsylvania would send a clown the likes of John Fetterman to represent them in the US Senate. I mean, look at him. He's a hulk of a man, fully tattooed, bald, really just a lumbering progressive toadie for the left, and someone who lived in his parents basement until he turned fifty years old. It gets worse. He was also the mayor of some pee hole in the snow town in Pennsylvania with an annual salary of somewhere in the vicinity of $150 a month. His parents provided additional support to him in the amount of $50k a year. I'm not sure how he ended up as lieutenant Governor of the great state of Pennsylvania. This was all before he had a massive stroke. In recent videos I've seen of him on the stump, he's a stuttering mess. Not unlike Joey Bumbles Biden, I suppose. I read somewhere this morning where he released criminals from prison while in office. The article painted Fetterman as a Dukakis style nut job. I think the anti-Fetterman war is just getting started.
While we're on the subject of politics, I'm a little concerned about their being a third party on the 2024 ticket when we all get to go back to the polls to vote for president. I'm talkiing about someone who can siphon off enough votes to prevent Trump or DeSantis from beccome president. I don't know who that would be at this point but, were it to happen, I'd like to see the republicans work behind the scenes to find someone who can whittle away at the democrat vote instead of the other way around. Wasn't it Ross Perot who put Bill Clinon in office? That's the extent of my historical knowledge on such things. I know I'm getting out over my skis on this seeing as it's a while off but it will be here soon enough. Shorter term, we need to make sure that Oz beats Fetterman in Pennsylvania this Fall and that republicans beat the tar out of their progressive counterparts in any number of other races so we republicans can get back the majority in the Senate. That includes my man, Herschel Walker, in his race against Warnock in the great state of South Carolina.
Mrs G got out and about in her car this past week. This is the first time she's been behind the wheel in months since her surgery earlier this year. We kept her car at our house during her recovery and we drove it every few weeks just so that it didn't sit for too long. If we put a hundred miles on it, I'd be surprised. The only time I put gas in it is when we returned the car to her this past week. That little car of hers drives like a truck so it's not like we enjoyed taking it here and there. Anyway, Mrs G was feeling pretty good about the fact that she got out for a drive even if it was just a short drive. She also said something about the fact that her little walker was heavier than expected and it wasn't as easy putting it in her trunk as she thought it would be. Nobody said that any of this was going to be easy. It doesn't help that time isn't on her side.
Summer is getting a little long in the tooth hereabouts. I was hoping to see some amelioration in the number of cars (traffic) and people when I was on my bike ride yesterday but no such luck. I had to do the usual weaving and whirling just to get through the area down around Jenness Beach. Cars parked along the roadway present all kinds of dangers including children escaping the grasp of their parents and coming onto the roadway at inopportune times. It's the cars that are coming and going along the boulevard that make matters infinitely worse since you can never quite predict what they are going to do when come up on you from behind. Will they become distracted and put you in danger? Will they slow down as they should and look for just the right opportunity to pass you by? A week or two more of this madness won't kill me, or will it?