NYC…

Posted on by February 2, 2026

Is getting what they voted for…

Zohran Mamdani has only been the Mayor of New York City for a month, and on his watch, at least a dozen homeless people have died in the freezing cold after Mamdani implemented a policy prohibiting the clearing of homeless encampments and forcing sheltering. Now trash is piling up in the city, and the streets aren’t getting cleared.

Full article, HERE from Townhall.com

But according to Mamdani it ‘couldn’t be better’…

Those scenes remind me of Italy when the garbage strike went on for a couple of weeks over there in 2010. Literal two story tall piles of garbage, the stench, and the rats. OMG, you didn’t even want to drive down the street with the windows open, either the stench or the rats would get you. But at least they weren’t killing people…

I wonder how long Mamdani is going to last? Much less his ‘administration’. I saw that he’d apparently appointed a former inmate as the new head of corrections for NYC. One wonders how ‘that’ is going to go…

Oh well, I’m west of the Mississippi and don’t have any family up there, so I’ll happily sit down here and watch the meltdown continue. I think the Big Apple has a few worms in it now. Just sayin…

A little humor…

Posted on by February 1, 2026

To start the week.  An oldie but a goody!!!

A good laugh for people in the over 60 group !!!

When I bought my Blackberry, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, my 13 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it’s red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dashboard, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, “Re-calc-u-lating.” You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn instead. Well, it was not a good relationship…When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven’t figured out how I lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions, checking bathrooms, and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden “Paper or Plastic?” every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, “Paper or plastic?” I just say, “Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual.” Then it’s their turn to stare at me with a blank look. I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do fart a lot.”

P.S. I know some of you are not over 60. I sent it to you to allow you to forward it to those who are… I figured your sense of humor could handle it…If not… find a sense of humor…. We all need to have one of these !!!.

 

We senior citizens don’t need any more gadgets. The TV remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle.

 

 

Coffeeeeee…

Posted on by January 31, 2026

Or 10 ways Veterans drink coffee, in or out of the military.

1. Black – Because additives are a luxury and suffering builds character.

2. Black – No cream, no sugar, no feelings.

3. Black – Drank it this way downrange. Never changed back.

4. Black, but aggressively hot – Skin graft temperature. Must burn.

5. Black, reheated three times – Microwaved until legally questionable.

6. Black, from a mug older than the marriage – Chips add flavor.

7. Navy Sludge – Thick, burnt, oily, and somehow alive. Drinkable by law, not by choice.

8. Black, in a Yeti that’s been through hell – Coffee tastes like memories.

9. Black, brewed too strong on purpose – “If my eye isn’t twitching, it’s weak.”

10. Black, but cut with enough sugar to make Pablo Escobar proud – Still technically black. Don’t argue semantics…

100. Shitty Army Coffee (warehouse-aged, 3+ years). It’s black.

Milk/canned cow/powder is fine, if you have it.

Sugar is fine, if you have it.

My crew would go through TWO of these pots in a 12 hour flight. And woe unto the idjit that actually CLEANED the ##@$%@) coffee pot!!!

And any leftover coffee was used to clean up the galley!

h/t Mike K and Don C

Snort…

Posted on by January 30, 2026

Been there, guessed that…

65 dB down in the left ear, 55 dB down in the right ear now. With TWO hearing aids…

Sigh…

Corruption and $$$…

Posted on by January 29, 2026

From datarepublican, via Director Blue Substack, HERE.

The ties are there, but took a huge amount of digging to find all of them. Kudos to datarepublican for the work to find all of them.

The only thing better would be the actual names, seeing them arrested, and then tried in a court of law for what they have perpetuated!

These people have blood on their hands and SHOULD be held accountable!

This…

Posted on by January 28, 2026

Scares the crap out of me. Especially considering yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster (O-ring failure that was known/predicted), HERE.

The target launch date for the Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts on a trip to orbit the moon, is Feb. 6. Early next week, top brass at NASA will gather for a “go /no-go” decision on whether to launch.

It’s been a long time coming. NASA has been developing the Space Launch System (SLS), which includes two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and the Orion capsule, for 20 years. Development costs have exceeded $29 billion (excluding the Orion capsule), and the entire Artemis campaign cost $93 billion through FY2025.

There has been exactly one SLS launch in all that time. An unmanned Artemis 1 was launched in November 2022, traveling to the Moon and back. It was mostly successful.

I say mostly because there was a slight problem with the Orion’s heat shield. In its efforts to save a little money, NASA redesigned the heat shield “to increase manufacturing and installation efficiency.”

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

You would ‘think’ NASA would be more concerned about the heat shield, since that is a live or die proposition, rather than simply redesigning it and not testing it…

But I’m not in charge…

Oh, and let me add the whole CF surrounding the Boeing Starliner fiasco. It is, no it’s not safe, well, maybe. But they finally decided to bring it home on auto (after rewriting the software), and had to send SpaceX up to bring the astronauts home almost 8 months later, but at least they came back in one piece.

Personally, I think NASA is just throwing good money after bad with the whole SLS concept, but they have enough ‘friends’ (read congresscritters) feeding at that government tit that want the money to continue, especially in an election year.

I wonder how many of them would volunteer for that flight if it was offered???

Your thoughts?

Quotes…

Posted on by January 27, 2026

I’m tired of the BS, so you get quotes…

But that first one hits home, especially now!

To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth. [Teddy Roosevelt]

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. [Douglas Adams]

Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity. [Nelson Mandela. Fighter, Prisoner, President, Revolutionary]

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. [Mark Twain]

Eleven teens die each day because of texting while driving. Maybe it’s time to raise the age of Smart Phone ownership to 21. [unknown]

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the establishment authorities are wrong. Voltaire]

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But the I repeat myself. [Mark Twain]

Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are right now, and we will never be here again. [Homer, The Iliad]

After a 25-cent breakfast of canned bacon and powdered eggs in a tar-paper shack on the field at Dahar, . . . [Omar Bradley, Feb 1943]

In my youth I was often called lazy. In rather successful adulthood I was called efficient. Same behavior, different times. [Bob Fiegel]

Man is the only creature disposed to kill huge numbers of members of his own species, and his instrument is usually the state. [Joseph Sobran]

I’m not afraid of the media. Why should anyone listen to the media? Who are these people? What makes them experts? What have they accomplished? [Dana White]

There’s one thing worse than change and that’s the status quo. [John Le Carre]

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens… Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. [Leo Tolstoy]

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. [Mark Twain]

You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk. [Conor Barnes]

A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer. [Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher, 4 B.C. – A.D. 65]

If gun control laws actually worked, Chicago would be Mayberry, USA. [unknown]

If enough data is collected, a Board of Inquiry can prove anything. [Unknown]

All middle-class citizens of education have a common belief that the tendencies towards centralization and paternalism must be halted and reversed. [Dwight Eisenhower July 1949]

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. [Franklin Delano Rosevelt]

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. [Ronald Reagan 1986]

There are two ways to go to the gas chamber: free or not free. [Viktor Frankl]

The fatal fallacy of gun control laws in general is the assumption that such laws actually control guns. Criminals who disobey other laws are not likely to be stopped by gun-control laws. What such laws actually do is increase the number of disarmed and defenseless victims. [Thomas Sowell]

When immigration is done by single individuals, it is immigration. When done by groups, it is invasion.” – Nassim Taleb

Why???

Posted on by January 26, 2026

Is it that only blue states and certain blue cities seem to be having ‘issues’ with ICE?

Much less the CF in Minneapolis right now? Funny how ‘this’ has knocked the fraud/Somali corruption off the front pages…

I’ve gotten this from a variety of folks yesterday, so I’m presenting it in full, and my comments are below…

Eric Schwalm
@Schwalm5132

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops–both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations–I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction–or worse.

This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.

The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers–complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal–you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.

I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.

Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.

We either recognize what we’re actually looking at–or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.

Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore.
It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.

When you look at this, and the Signal software they appear to be using coordinate, HERE, it’s fairly obvious that this is NOT just a bunch of random protesters. They are PAID by somebody(s), and definitely have an agenda.

And the Dems are now all in on another .gov shutdown to ‘prevent’ funding for ICE.

IMHO, this is collusion between the Dems, the ‘protesters’ and is insurrection, and is directly against the administration, without a doubt. Past time for the administration to step in an stop this.

In other news, Bud has dropped their new Super Bowl ad- Presented here to ‘cleanse your palate!

Slip sliding away…

Posted on by January 25, 2026

Well, we’ve got a skating rink…

1 1/2 inches of snow over 1/2 inch of ice. A predicted low of 4 degrees last night, and more snow predicted.

I went out yesterday afternoon to take a bag of trash out and almost went on my ass, it was that slick! I tippy toed out and back as quickly and safely as I could and didn’t bother going back out for anything!

So far, still have power and no burst lines, knock on wood! Reports yesterday were 50,000 without power between north and east Texas, and over 1 million nationwide. My heart goes out to those folks.

TX Dot is doing what they can with the main roads, but us peons out in the sticks have had nothing done. I saw one truck all day and it was sliding around. Saw two ATVs one was pulling a saucer with a little kid yelling his head off! I’m glad ‘he’ was having fun, and I hope he didn’t frostbite his nose!!!

It appears we’ve once again escaped the ‘big’ snowfall, and I, for one, am not complaining! Friends up in Amarillo shoveled more than they should have, and are going to be sore today!

Looking at the long range forecast, this crap may hang around until next Friday!!! So much for an in/out in three days… Grrrr…

Re the CF in Minneapolis, I’m doing the usual 72 hour rule…

Really???

Posted on by January 24, 2026

Soooo, the snowmageddon is all Globull Warming’s fault…

“It’s cold because it’s hot.”  

Today Show weather presenter, Al Roker, said that the reason it has been so cold in the U.S. over the last several weeks is not in spite of, but rather because of global warming. 

His explanation is riddled with numerous unforced errors. First, he confuses the tropospheric polar vortex (TPV) with the weakening of stratospheric polar vortex (SPV), the latter of which has been strong all winter (i.e., donut-shaped ).

From Chris Martz on X, HERE.

Among other things, I ‘like’ how the TV weather types, especially in Europe show cooler temps, but in RED to scare the public.

It’s the frikkin WEATHER people! Weather doesn’t read the papers, it does what it wants, when it wants to do it! Yes, we’re in a La Nina situation per NOAA, HERE. Of note, even the so called experts at NOAA cannot actually explain ‘why’ La Nina weather patterns change like they do…

We were ‘supposed’ to have a low of zero last night, but when I went to bed it was only 9 degrees, and the weatherguessers were saying a low of 5 degrees Sunday night! So everything is shifting to the right. And we’d had less than an inch of snow (not that I’m complaining) over 1/4 to 1/2 inch of ice.

I only saw one vehicle out yesterday, and that was a 4WD pickup that stopped at the stop sign (surprised the hell out of me), and took a while, spinning all four wheels to get going. As he went down the street, he was dancing side to side on the ice.

We still had power when I went to bed, and no burst pipes, so I’m a happy camper. Yes, I know a lot of folks have it worse than we do, but I dare say they are better insulated and better prepared (like real snow removal equipment, snow blowers, etc.) than we are. Everybody in the group is okay so far, and we check on each other routinely.

Oddly, the phones have been ‘weird’ all day, a lot of no connections, some really scratchy vox when it does connect, but texts are getting through fine. I can’t help but wonder if the ice on the tower ‘petals’ is having a blanking effect???

Anyhoo,  y’all stay safe and hunker down. The way this storm is extending, it may stick around through the middle of the week! Sigh…