Current Events – Page 10

January 7, 2021January 7, 2021

It Was Nice Knowin’ Ya, America!

It is January 7, 2021 and this country has survived rioting that was incited by the soon-to-be-EX-President of the United States.

I’m going to shove all my commentary on the events of the last few days into one big post. Starting with the GA runoff elections, which were WON by Democrats, thereby flipping GA to a BLUE state.

I’ll admit, I had low expectations for the Presidential election and expected the hillbillies to keep their Saviour in office. But when we managed to stave that off, it gave me a little bit of hope. I held low expectations for the GA runoffs for Senate, but yet again, we all pulled together and made it happen. Of course, I knew the hillbillies and their fascist leader would try to say it didn’t happen.

Well, hillbillies IT DID HAPPEN and WE now have control. So FUCK YOUR FEELINGS. Isn’t that the response we got four years ago?

Then the POTUS calls the GA Attorney General and tries to coerce him to “find votes”. It was recorded. It is FACT. Here is the WaPo story AND the audio file.

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

Transcript and audio file is here also.

On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the Congress gathered to count the electoral college votes and make the election final. Meanwhile, the POTUS is inciting violence on Twitter (all the inciting violence tweets have already been removed, sadly):

The hillbillies descended upon our Capitol and were met with zero resistance. They rioted and stormed into the Capitol more or less uncontested. Cops moved barriers for them and there were no rubber bullets or tear gas. Why? Because they are white and they are MAGAts, that’s why. Most cops and military are MAGAts, remember. Capitol security were taking selfies with the rioters:

All T**** had to say was:

It took HOURS for any sort of law enforcement to arrive – and it wasn’t from DC, either, it was from VA. The request was initially DENIED (because T**** filled the DoD with his toadies):

Finally, law enforcement started cracking heads and gassing the terrorists out of the capitol. Four were killed and only about 50 were arrested (because: white). One hillbilly [reportedly, still looking for sources] tased himself to death IN THE BALLS while trying to steal a painting. Which is hilarious. ::cackle::

Peace was reinstated late January 6 and into early January 7, this morning. Here is a good article about the whole incident.

The rest of the world is looking at us like “What the ACTUAL FUCK, America??” And I am deeply ashamed to be an American. All republics fall, eventually, and this one is on its way down. No doubt about it. We are no longer leaders in producing goods, military, education, healthcare or overall standard of living. We have a fascist Hitler wannabe POTUS and he’s got millions of devotees who’ll riot for him. The country is divided and this is not going away.

The slobbering masses of intellectual zeros who are terrorizing our Capitol and our country will not be dissuaded by logic, facts or figures. They are slavishly devoted to their Saviour and there’s little we can do about it. They will continue terrorizing this country. Last week, one of them blew up a city block in Nashville, TN. There is little press coverage because it was a white guy and he is not being called a terrorist for the same reason. This sort of thing is going to continue.

I’ve said this before, but seriously, as soon as we are allowed to enter other countries (can’t now, because on top of the civil unrest, Covid-19 is running rampant) anyone who CAN leave, SHOULD leave. Things are not going to get better around here.

I am ashamed to be American. There is nothing I can say that would make any of the events of the last four years and especially the last few months sound sensible or civilised to anyone. NOTHING. I live in a country full of ignorant assholes who think Hitler was a hero and will resort to violence to prove their point. It’s too late for the guillotine. The madness has infected the populace. We’ve gotten political control back to the left, but I really think that T**** has pushed the hillbillies too far. They have a taste for it, now.

I sincerely hope that we can get the fuck out of here before true civil war erupts. It could be a year or it could be 10 years, but I believe it will happen. Gilead is a real possibility. As is a new Nazi regime. I just don’t want to live my twilight years in a fucked up bullshit country. Is that too much to ask? I want healthcare and QUIET. It appears that this country is not the place for either of those things any more. Such a disappointment.

December 29, 2020January 9, 2021

The Death of Intellect

in·tel·lect
/’in(t)l,ekt/
noun
The faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, especially with regard to abstract or academic matters.

Every single day I see the severe lack of intellect of humans on this planet. OF COURSE it’s obvious in the US with hillbillies running rampant with their conspiracy theories, science denial and cultish behavior. But it’s not just here, it is endemic.

Facebook is the shining star of showing just how fucking idiotic people are and NextDoor is the shining star for old people who think it is FB. Every single day I see stupid posts, stupid comments and just overall mournfully moronic evidence that the human species is definitely on the downward trend.

If I had a dollar for every comment that asks for information that is in the goddam post, I’d retire to the South of France and never be heard from again.

I weep for the complete lack of intellect that I see daily. People who cannot understand even the simplest concept. People who cannot discern blatant lies from truth. People who cannot discriminate between reality and unreality.

Lack of intellect encompasses all the people who refuse to find out information on their own. Every day, I see people who are begging for help from everyone else, yet they have done absolutely NOTHING to help themselves. Example:

There is a guy on ND, begging for help and money for his bizarre health condition. He’s run up $600k of medical bills for nothing more than TESTS. He has not had ONE SINGLE THING done about the condition. Just tests. And he’s begging for money for MORE tests. He simple does what the Drs tell him to do – over and over again – never once questioning the redundant tests or the lack of ACTUAL treatment. The particular ailment has a LARGE psychological part to it, that I found in a 10 second Google search that sent me to NIH documents. Of course this guy has never even googled the ailment. And of course he’s not seen a shrink for anxiety because he’s been too busy getting medical tests done. I gave him the search link to the NIH, which contained MANY medical research excerpts about this ailment. My comment was completely ignored by the myriad people busily advising him to get more insurance and get more tests.

This guy has no desire to help himself. Clearly. He’d rather whine and have the other intellectual zeros whine with him. Not being able to discern the difference between continuous, redundant TESTING and getting actual MEDICAL CARE is a perfect example of zero intellect. It is rampant in this country, which is why horrible medical care is still happening. Americans are too intellectually stunted to understand that our system is FUCKED and we should dump it. Immediately. I still see people who say insurance is the only way! Why? Because they don’t even understand that large companies SUBSIDIZE insurance, so you pay only a fraction of the actual cost of premiums and they think that medical care actually costs what the insurance companies SAY it costs. They do NOT.

Another example: Willful ignorance. Being willfully ignorant does not absolve anyone from supporting that fascist, racist, misogynist piece of shit T****. And YES you are willfully ignorant if you STILL support T****. Voting for him once MIGHT get a pass, but voting for him twice is just plain stupid. Voting for him TWICE shows that NONE of his bullshit is a deal breaker for you, therefore, you are complicit in EVERYTHING that has happened. You condone everything T**** stands for and you are an ignorant asshole. Period. You are an intellectual ZERO.

It feels like it is getting worse, but I have to cut young people slack for being young. Young people have been raised in shitty schools with nothing more than multiple choice tests, which does nothing for learning to THINK, but they are also young and have no experience, either.

But people who are my age (Gen X, I’m looking at YOU) should have enough experience to overcome shitty schooling and should have a bit more intellect to call upon. Alas, I don’t see that. Gen X seems to be about as bad as Boomers for being unable to navigate information and discerning truth from fiction.

I have no fixes for any of this, mind you, I just felt the need to bitch about the morons I see online every single day. I struggle to keep my own intellect intact while withstanding the onslaught of DUMB.

It’s obvious the human race is on the decline. We’ll end ourselves, I’m sure of it. And I really think the Earth will be better for it. The Earth will carry on, repair the damage we’ve done and perhaps a new species will arise that has more sense. Perhaps it will be dolphins and they’ll appreciate all the fish.

October 17, 2020November 4, 2020

Dear Hillbillies

I’ve not had much to say about T**** and the election. It’s been said by, well, EVERYONE and I didn’t feel I had much to add. For straight up good info and commentary, I recommend Jim Wright (StoneKettle.com). This is more of an open letter to all hillbillies out there who are going to vote for that lying, cheating, misogynistic, racist, fascist piece of shit.

First, let me explain my definition of hillbilly. I grew up in hillbilly E TN, so I know the typical definition. MY definition is much wider and includes anyone anywhere who is militantly ignorant, backwards and generally hateful to any people that are not just like they are. So, pretty much that encompasses MAGAts and the whole of the wacked out conservative Christian right.

Now that we are all clear on my definition of hillbilly, let me tell you why I have such a high level of contempt for them. I got into it with my asshole hillbilly neighbor and he got seriously butthurt. The best way to piss off a hillbilly is to call them one! He planted his T**** sign in his yard in response to my Biden/Ossoff signs and I called him a hillbilly on FB. He then sent me a threatening text (“Who the fuck you calling hillbilly?”) so I promptly blocked him from my phone and all media. Then he got another T**** sign and put it facing our house right on the lot line. SO mature.

He then left Nick a whiny VM wanting to know why I was being so mean and if we could “fix this thing”. Nick texted him back, explaining – not apologizing for – our contempt for people who vote for that piece of trash and that if he (neighbor) wants to vote for more hate, division and fascism, he should expect some push back from the rest of us. All the hillbilly could say to that was “Oh, I guess we disagree.” CLASSIC. Yeah, no, we disagree about football, this is far beyond a disagreement.

Why is it that MAGAts cheer when T**** trashes people and they wear Fuck Your Feelings T shirts, but get totally butthurt and whiny when you turn it back on them?

I have NOTHING but contempt for anyone who STILL thinks that fatass moron is good for the US. Clearly you are militantly ignorant and don’t give a fuck about anyone but yourself. These are the things that you think are fine and dandy if you vote for four more years of this shit:

– Immigrants in cages, with babies taken from mothers and women being sterilized without their consent
– Police shooting black people while they sleep in their beds and get no punishment
– Police shooting black people for walking, standing, driving, whatever with no punishment
– LGBTQ+ rights being stripped
– Women’s control over their own bodies stripped (undoing Roe v Wade)
– Putting a hard core conservative Christian on the SCOTUS (Under His Eye)
– White supremacists being supported and called “good people”
– Gun toting teenagers who shoot people are held up as good examples
– Allowing the pandemic to continue on and on when the rest of the world is mostly done because they actually had leadership, unlike here
– National debt has increased by $6.6 TRILLION (with a T)

Graph of T**** debt compared to other presidents and the forecast:

And SO MUCH MORE.

My contempt for hillbillies runs very deep. These are the people that supported Hitler’s Nazi regime. These are the people who will gleefully cheer as this country burns. They take pleasure from watching others suffer. They shit on everything good. They hate ME and ALL my friends, since none of us are “straight”. They don’t believe in science. They are fine with black people being shot in the fucking face for existing. They are fine with people in cages and forced sterilization. SOUND FAMILIAR? It should, this is Nazi Germany happening right in front of our faces. The Handmaid’s Tale is not far from happening if the crazed Christians like the SCOTUS nominee Amy C Barrett get control. Gilead is the goal of these crazy people. Do not doubt that. But hey, hillbillies, it’s FINE as long as the jackboot is on someone else’s neck, right? RIGHT?

So piss off, hillbillies. You are scum. I hope there are enough of us left to stop you from destroying the US. If not, I’ve got my passport, which I can hopefully use one day when the fucking pandemic calms down. T**** has fucked that up, too.

NONE of this is acceptable. I will call out the fucking hillbillies at every opportunity. And, hey, here’s a handy form for you to fill out if you feel butthurt about any of this (you’ll have to write in FB, this is an old form):

Please fill out this form to report your Butthurt!

October 4, 2020

Gratitude and Motivation

We had our weekly gab session last night. It’s a thing we do every weekend, usually on Fridays, but we started drinking too much, so we decided to stop the Friday thing and have a gab another time. This week, it was last night. It’s like an after action report, we talk about the week and anything else that is on our minds.

Anyway, we were talking about money and how grateful we are that we got assistance for the pandemic. I am particularly grateful that I got into the system, since SO many of my hospitality friends got zip. Thanks to the pandemic money, we not only made it through, but we managed to get money into savings and this helped us rebound from the pub losses as well as keep us afloat for the couple of months neither of us had work. This incident has proven that universal basic income WILL WORK. If people have basic income covered, then they have the ability to SAVE and create longterm wealth. For the first time in decades, people have savings! OH, but the rich fucks call that ‘milking the system’ or being lazy. Yeah, that’s easy to say when you’ve never NOT had a fat savings account.

We strongly believe that universal healthcare and universal base income is the way to create a healthy populace and economy. It’s unfortunate that this country is controlled by rich fuckers and their corporations. This will be the end of the US as a republic. If you don’t have a passport, GET ONE.

But this post isn’t about the fucking government, there’s plenty of that shit all over the internet. This post is about personal gratitude and motivation.

We are grateful to have the cushion of savings and wealth of investments. We firmly believe that anyone can have these things – you do NOT have to be rich. We are certainly not rich by any measurement, but we have created wealth from what little we had. I’m trying to teach my niece how to manage money and it’s not going well. She has been raised by poor people and she is deeply steeped in the ways of poor people. She and her husband do not balance their accounts, they spend until it’s gone and live paycheck to paycheck. MOST people live like this because money management is not taught by schools or parents. Nick and I have taught ourselves how to manage money and save and invest. It’s not difficult! But you do have to stay on top of it and it requires effort and motivation. Which brings me to the motivation part of this post.

Every single thing one does is sparked by motivation. It’s the core of how we operate. The trick is to tap into that well of motivation and stay tapped in to get what you want. It requires effort to stay motivated, trust me, I know. The issue with my niece is not the money, it’s the motivation. She and her husband are not motivated by the carrot of wealth because they truly believe that it is not something they can ever have. They believe that money will always be finite and that’s that. LOTS of people think that way. Hell, I’d say MOST people think that way. I’ve even seen well off people with the attitude that money is finite and you’d best hoard it or it’ll get away. That is not the truth, I wrote about this in another post recently.

Motivation to get out of debt and create wealth is necessary to do the work. You simply must commit to the mundane tasks of logging your spending (we recommend using Quicken) and being in control of your money. Once you know where your money is going, then you can fix it, right? Seems pretty simple. But it doesn’t matter how simple it is if there’s no motivation to do the work.

We have been motivated to start over after the pub debacle. So we did bankruptcy to erase the pub debts and started over. We have zero debts and we control 100% of our money. That’s all you need to start creating wealth – well, that and motivation! We are motivated to create wealth because we are middle aged and we’d like to have a large cushion of wealth for our later years. I don’t say retirement, because retirement is not something that any of us beyond the fucking boomers will ever get. We’ll work until we die. But our motivation is to have enough wealth built up so that we can at least eat the fancy cat food, yanno? ;)

Our conversation last night was about what we want to do now that the pub is off the table. YES we’d love to work for ourselves, but that is not going to happen. Nick’s boss is going to give them raises and bonuses as business comes back this year, so that mess is a little more palatable, at least. We were sitting downstairs with all the games going and I told Nick about MY personal motivation to get every possible game that we have working for MomoCon next year. I am FIERCELY motivated to bring a shit ton of games to Momo to a) show them we have great games and we’re improving our selection and b) ensure that WE will be THE vintage gaming vendor for that convention. I want my beach head. They already treat us great, they pay us, give us unlimited passes and they give us a con room, too. I love them for that. But I want them to feel like we are really working for it and deserve all they are doing for us. I’m sick of sitting around while there are 10 games waiting to be finished. With this year off, I feel that if we roll up on Momo with the same selection we had in 2019, that is just lame. There’s no excuse for us to not have new games with a whole year off.

The issue, of course, is that Nick must do the majority of the work on the games. I can do arts and crafts (cabinet refurbing) but he must get the damn things working. And he’s been fighting a deep depression. I have too, but not as bad as his. So I have to have enough motivation for both of us. I think I do! But it’s tough to keep oneself up while dragging along another. But I’ll do my damn best. Because we have GOT to get motivated and get working. I want that beach head at Momo. Period. I gave the biggest motivational speech I’ve ever given last night. I hope it worked. It seemed to. Nick was certainly moved by it, so I hope that I can kindle his motivation to get this game business back on track. ::fingers crossed::

In closing, the whole point of this post is to perhaps prod you a little bit to find your own gratitude for what you have and your motivation to get past this fucking year and DO something. Just keep swimming! :)