Font Size:     

Category: politics

Tuesday, 30 August 2016

09:21 – We did a lot of work on science kits yesterday. More today.

We’re down to four containers of ninhyrdrin crystals for forensic kits, so I ordered more ninhydrin late last week. It’s supposed to arrive today, so I’ll have Barbara labeling and filling ninhydrin containers. Same thing on ascorbic acid (vitamin C) tablets, which are included in all our kits. We’re down to five containers of those in stock, so I just ordered 5,000 more 500 mg tablets. We normally maintain at least 2,000 of these in stock, either refrigerated in their original bottles or repackaged for kits. Yet another example of a science kit inventory item that’s also a useful prepping item. I also need to make up another batch of Kastle-Meyer Reagent, which involves refluxing (simmering) a caustic brew to convert the bright magenta phenolphthalein to colorless phenolphthalin.

Barbara and I are re-watching Heartland. We just started season six the other night. There was a story thread about fostering children and the rules for that in Alberta. I decided to check the rules in North Carolina, not that we’re considering fostering/adopting. About the only requirement in North Carolina is that an adoptive parent must be at least 18 years old and, bizarrely, that a fostering parent must be at least 21. So, they’ll give you a kid if you’re at least 18, but they’ll lend you one only if you’re at least 21. Hmmm.

While I was on the North Carolina fostering/adopting website, I also looked at their gallery. I expected it to be almost exclusively black and Hispanic kids, but there were a fair number of white kids as well. Some of those were no doubt orphaned, but I suspect a lot of them came out of nightmarishly abusive homes. The young kids at least have a chance of being adopted. The ones I really feel sorry for are those in their mid-teens, like this one, who have little chance of finding a new family.

And I’m still wondering what emergency the German and Czech governments are telling citizens to prepare for. I doubt they seriously believe that Putin is about to invade, and the only other thing I can think of is that they’re expecting a widespread muslim uprising.

Read the comments: 82 Comments

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

09:38 – Lori arrived with our mail at 0840 this morning, which is an hour or more earlier than her usual time. When I commented that she was running early, she said she was running only half her route today, with her sub running the other half for her. She has to get back to her farm today in time to put up hay for her cattle.

The KFC secret blend of 11 herbs and spices has been all over the web for the last few days. Someone actually tried it and reported that indeed it appears to be the genuine recipe. Here it is, for future reference:

KFC secret blend of 11 herbs and spices
Mix the following spices with two cups of white flour:

2/3 Tbsp salt
1/2 Tbsp thyme
1/2 Tbsp basil
1/3 Tbsp oregano
1 Tbsp celery salt
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tbsp dried mustard
4 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp garlic salt
1 Tbsp ground ginger
3 Tbsp white pepper

Barbara does fried chicken frequently. She coats the chicken with plain flour before frying it. I’m not sure what herbs and spices she adds to the flour, if any. I figured I’d make up a jar of this mix to try the next time she fries chicken.

I don’t even attempt to predict elections any more, but it looks to me like Trump has Clinton and the progs on the run. To say that Clinton is frail, sickly, and brain-damaged is only to state the obvious, but as usual the progs are furious at anyone who states the obvious.

As I said in the comments the other day, we’re Normals, and we can’t allow the progs to define the narrative. We have to keep hammering on the fact that we’re Normals and they’re not. We have to mock and ridicule them at every opportunity, and we have to speak out to let other Normals, who are in the large majority, know that they’re in fact Normal, while the progs, BLMers, muslims, and so on are simply gangsters and terrorist scum. In other words, we need to do everything we can to make sure that other Normals are not embarrassed or ashamed to be Normals and to know that not only are they not alone, but they are part of a very large majority.

Read the comments: 130 Comments

Monday, 22 August 2016

09:40 – We picked up only two 36-roll packs of toilet paper at Costco yesterday, both because our cart was already getting full and there wasn’t a coupon for it this month. Barbara said all 72 rolls fit under the cabinet in the master bathroom. According to industry figures, Americans use an average of one roll of toilet paper per week. Women use more, for obvious reasons, but on average a year’s supply for two people is 100 rolls. I’m planning for four people, so I’d like to get up to at least 200 rolls. I’ve spoken to preppers who have 500+ rolls stored per person. They obviously REALLY don’t want to run out of toilet paper. No matter how much you decide to store–assuming you’re not at the 500 rolls/person level–it’s a good idea to have personal cloths and bleach or HTH powder stored against the day you eventually run out. It sounds gross, but it’s what most of the world uses, at least those who aren’t using a handful of leaves. In any emergency, the first things to disappear from store shelves are bread, milk, and eggs. After that, toilet paper.

I want to be as prepared as possible by election day. No matter which candidate “wins”, I suspect supporters of the other candidate will cry foul and assume their candidate lost because of election fraud. Who knows? They’ll probably all be right. If Clinton is declared the winner, I don’t really expect Trump supporters to be rioting in the streets, looting, and burning down buildings. If Trump wins, I wouldn’t be surprised to see many Clinton supporters doing all of those things, not to mention shooting cops of all colors and white people in general. BLM supporters are gangsters and terrorists. They’ve already made it clear that they consider cops and white people to be fair game. If their candidate loses, I don’t think it would surprise anyone to see widespread violent civil unrest in the cities.

So my advice to anyone is to hope for the best come election day, but expect the worst and be prepared for it. If you don’t have at least a couple weeks’ worth of water and shelf-stable food stored, now would be a good time to address that lack.


Read the comments: 57 Comments

Thursday, 21 July 2016

09:22 – Barbara just left for Mt. Airy, where she’s meeting her friend Bonnie to walk around the arts/crafts places and have lunch. She should be back by dinner time, but Colin isn’t happy about her leaving him here.

We got a new batch of chemical bags made up for chemistry kits yesterday. Today, I’m building boxes for those chemistry kits, which’ll take our finished goods inventory on those up to about four dozen. Once we finish those, we’ll get to work on making up chemical bags for biology kits and then making those kits up, which’ll again take us to about four dozen in stock. That’ll total about 12 dozen total of all types of kits in stock, which should suffice to get us well into August, based on prior years. But of course we’ll keep building more kits, because after August comes September, which is always another big month.

Email from Jen. Rather than stocking up on millions of tampons for herself and Claire, she decided to give the Diva Cup a try. There are two models of the Diva Cup. Model 1 is for women who are under 30 years old AND have not had a child via vaginal delivery or C-section. Model 2 is for women who are over 30 OR have had a child. So she ordered a Model 2 for herself and a second one for Claire. She pointed out that Angela Paskett (who’s also the author of an excellent food-storage book) has a YouTube video about it that’s worth watching for women who are considering this option.

She and Claire had pretty much the same reaction to the Diva Cup. The first month, they hated it. It was gross and completely different from using disposable tampons. Over the following months, they both decided it wasn’t so bad, and after five or six months they’ve both decided they actually prefer it to tampons. So they ordered spares for each of them and are keeping their remaining stock of tampons on the shelf. Jen recommends it in the appropriate sizes for any household with a girl or woman of menstrual age or one who will soon be of menstrual age.

It’s a sad commentary on the current state of affairs, but I’m kind of surprised that no one has assassinated Donald Trump yet. I’m not sure if there’s a bigger threat from the Clinton camp, whose enemies are known for disappearing or dying in strange ways, or the GOPe/RNC, who hate Trump about as much as the Democrats do. Throw in other groups like BLM and other SJWs and progs, muslim terrorists, Mexican cartels, and just about everyone other than normal people is out to get Trump. I’m in no way a Trump supporter–I consider him nearly as bad as Clinton–but I sure don’t wish him harm. But a lot of people do. If I were he, I’d supplement my SS protection detail with private security that I’d hired and paid for myself. If someone does kill Trump, there’ll be joyous celebrations among the RINOs and neocons, who will then be able to run one of their own against Clinton.

The next four months are likely to be interesting times, in the Chinese proverb sense.


Read the comments: 65 Comments

Thursday, 9 June 2016

11:16 – Kit stuff all day today. We checked in the components I’d ordered last week. Everything arrived safely, other than some stuff that was back-ordered. As usual, the stuff that was back-ordered were the things we were completely out of. Barbara’s building kit subassemblies at the moment, while I process kit orders.

I haven’t been commenting about the political crap going on, because thinking about it raises my blood pressure. I was going to comment that that POS Clinton appears to have locked up the nomination for the progs, but then I realized that the comparison would be unfair to pieces of shit everywhere. And just writing that, I feel my blood pressure going up, so I’ll refrain as much as possible from political commentary between now and the election.

Read the comments: 48 Comments

Friday, 15 April 2016

13:02 – We’re doing a few things around the house today, but otherwise taking it easy.

I just read an interesting article by Jack Perry: The End is Not Near, It has Begun

“The end is not near. The end has begun. You wanted to know how it will end? Well, take a look around. You’re living in it. If you live in a major city, you already know this or suspect this. If you live in a rural area, you already know the federal government could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect you that much. We’re not going to fall into some dystopian dog-eat-dog future. We’re going to cease to be the United States and become a collection of different countries..”

Read the whole article. It’s not unlikely that things will begin to unfold as Perry predicts, although I think his prediction that the federal government will be able to keep things together for 10 or 20 years is probably much too optimistic. More likely, things will catch fire at some point and then the whole thing will go over like a row of dominoes, in a matter of weeks or at most months rather than years.

Read the comments: 34 Comments

Wednesday, 6 April 2016

09:48 – Barbara is off to the gym. When she gets back, we’ll go back to work on science kit stuff. Our goal is always to have about a month’s worth of each type of kit in stock, so we’re building them in relatively small batches now. Come the mid-July to mid-October period, we’ll be shipping so many kits that we’ll have trouble avoiding back-orders, but for now things are (unfortunately) rather calm.

I see that the odds-makers are now predicting a high probability of a Trump-vs-Clinton general election, with Clinton hugely favored to win. Historically, these folks have been far more accurate at predicting elections than the media, probably because they have actual money riding on the results. That outcome wouldn’t surprise me, given that the GOP establishment would far rather see Clinton elected than either Trump or Cruz.

On that basis, I continue to expect a slow (or not-so-slow) slide into dystopia rather than a sudden collapse. Of course, a Black Swan event remains a real possibility, in which case all bets are off. So I’m quite happy that we’re now living in a rural area a good ways from major population centers.

Read the comments: 52 Comments

Saturday, 26 March 2016

09:27 – I see that David P. Goldman believes that Ted Cruz is our last, best hope. Wishful thinking, boy. I agree that I’d rather see Cruz as president than Trump and certainly than Clinton or Bern the Commie. But I don’t believe it would make much, if any, difference to how things unfold over the coming years. Things might be a bit better under a Cruz presidency, but all it would really mean is that our slide into dystopia would be a bit slower. Nothing can stop it now.

Barbara is going to cut my hair this morning, and then we’ll do more work around the house.

Barbara’s drink of choice has always been sweet iced tea, which she makes up in gallon pitchers. I’d always drunk mostly Coke, but I’ve cut way down on that. I used to go through maybe ten 2-liter bottles a week, and now I’m down to more like one a week. Instead, I’m drinking iced tea, so Barbara is now making at least twice as much as she used to. One of the things she picked up at Costco the other day was two boxes of tea bags, 624 total bags. That’s enough to last the two of us three to four months at our current consumption rate. It also cuts down on our cost for Coke by about $500/year. From Barbara’s point of view, the major advantage is that we won’t be adding to the hundreds of empty 2-liter bottles that I save for LTS food and water.

14:21 – What a relief! I can finally work normally again. I now have Linux Mint running on a new hard drive in my old Core i7-Extreme system, with all of my data migrated over and all the programs I use installed. The sticking point was these damned powerline Ethernet adapters, which I simply couldn’t get to work between the WiFi router and my little corner in the dining room that’s now my office. Just now, I installed the D-Link DWA-140 USB WiFi adapter, which Linux Mint recognized automagically. All I had to do was enter the password for the WiFi AP. Our Internet service is nominally 20 megabits/s down and 2 up. I just ran the HTML5 speed test from bandwidthplace.com, which tells me I’m getting a 21 ms ping with about 11 Mb/s down and 4 Mb/s up. Not bad, given how far I am from the AP.

We finished watching the final season of Justified the other night. Like the other seasons, it’s set mostly in Harlan County, Kentucky, which is only about 160 miles WNW of us in Sparta. As Barbara said, she’d be as careful back in the hollows around here as she’d be if we were living in Harlan. My attitude is that pretty much everyone around here minds their own business, so if we mind our own business we should be fine, but Barbara does have a point.

Read the comments: 57 Comments

Tuesday, 22 March 2016

10:09 – A little excitement this morning. Barbara was trimming Colin’s claws and got a bit too deep on one. We didn’t have any styptic powder available, so at the recommendation of the vet, Barbara used some cornstarch. That didn’t stop the bleeding, so Barbara just took Colin over to see the vet. I’d actually thought about taking him to the vet last week, so Colin could meet them and they could meet him. We need to get a relationship set up with them anyway.

The electrician hasn’t returned my call yet. It’s not urgent, but if I don’t hear back from him in the next day or two, I’ll call a different electrician.

As I watch the level of civility between the Democrats and Republicans continue to degrade, I’m afraid we’re reaching the point where the two are no longer opponents, but actual enemies. We’re already seeing political violence, and we’re still in the primary season. How much worse is it likely to get in the run-up to the general election in November? We’re not at the point where Weimar Germany found itself in the late 1920’s, with street battles between gangs of Communist thugs and gangs of Nazi thugs, but with BLM leaders and other prog proxies calling for actions like the wholesale slaughter of cops and white civilians, we’re not all that far away from it, either. The inner cities are tinderboxes, and it wouldn’t take much of a spark to set off an inferno. I’m very happy that Barbara and I are well away from the Triad, with its population of 1,000,000+, many of whom are underclass. And if the November general election is widely perceived to have been stolen by one or the other party, things may get lively.


Read the comments: 53 Comments

Wednesday, 9 March 2016

09:58 – Barbara hit the gym this morning. We worked hard yesterday getting stuff moved up to the attic, installing shelves and tool racks in the garage, and so on. We had a nice sunny day for it, with a high around 70F. Today is to be the same.

I don’t understand why all the news outlets are wasting so much space on the primary caucuses and elections. It should be clear to anyone by now that voters are utterly fed-up with more politics-as-usual. They’re ready to throw out the baby, the bathwater, and the tub itself. How else could anyone explain how well lunatic-fringe psychopath demagogues like Trump and Saunders are doing? The only thing they have going for them is that they’re not more-of-the-same, or at least they claim not to be. But with the possible exception of Cruz, not one of them has a shred of integrity. Cruz may be different. I believe that he’s a man of his convictions, unafraid to stand up and speak for them no matter how popular or unpopular they may be with the electorate or the party hierarchy. Unfortunately, I don’t share his convictions on many issues. But at least I believe that he means exactly what he says, which is refreshing for any politician.

Read the comments: 44 Comments
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // end of file archive.php // -------------------------------------------------------------------------------