The tree is up…
Not so much… my actual tree… all 2 feet of it. Hey, I don’t have kids or an SO that cares…
So cue up all those Christmas movies…
Miracle on 34th Street
White Christmas
It’s a Wonderful Life
Die Hard
A Christmas Story (and Ralphie!)
Gremlins
The Muppet Christmas Carol (the kids loved it)
The Santa Clause (kids loved that one too)
Holiday Inn
A Christmas Carol (original version)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (one of my favorites)
What say you? What was/is your favorite?
To start the week!
An oldie but a goody!
Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas – no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people’s feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a ‘Holiday’.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe’s the word Christmas – was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny’s and Sears
You won’t hear the word Christmas; it won’t touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
; Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate ‘Winter Break’ under your ‘Dream Tree’
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!
Do YOU spend on subscriptions every month???
The Hatch Restore alarm clock, which retails for $169, can light up your bedroom in every hue, soothe you to sleep with audio meditation sessions, and keep you in a REM cycle with a full catalogue of white noise options. To utilize these features, though, you need to pay an additional $4.99 per month, in perpetuity.
Welcome to the age of subscription captivity, where an increasing share of the things you pay for actually own you.
<snip>
Subscription-based business models are great for businesses because they amount to consistent revenue streams. They’re often bad for consumers for the same reason: You have to pay companies, consistently. We’re effectively being $5 per month-ed (or more) to death, and it’s only going to get worse. Industry research suggests the average customer spent $219 per month on subscriptions in 2023. In 2024, the global subscription market was an estimated $492 billion. By 2033, that figure is expected to triple.
Full article, HERE from Mother Jones and additional from CBS HERE.
Grumble… I went through my subscriptions last night and I’m spending almost $150 a month between Amazon, Adobe, Weather.com, and Apple… dammit…
But my vehicle is old enough that nothing on it requires a subscrip…crap…forgot about Sirius, make that $168 a month… Well, that one I’ll keep.
My magazines are all based on life memberships, so at least that’s not a monthly and I dropped all the normal mags I used to get.
But I wonder about how many people are paying for all the apps on their phones? I only have the weather app on mine that has a subscription. Apparently most of the games DO have subscription hooks in them, along with a lot of the ‘shopping’ apps that require subscriptions.
Subscriptions is also one of the reasons I didn’t buy into a lot of the ‘writing’ programs, because I do well enough with MS Word.
What say you folks?
(Sorry, this ‘should’ have posted this morning)
Don’t lie!!!
Chiraq is really that bad…
Let’s talk homicides in Chicago. After all, the city has a reputation for a reason, right? We wanted to get to the truth about murders in the Windy City, and wrote a report comparing it to other cities, while also analyzing trends over the years.
We also compared Chicago to smaller cities and analyzed the most dangerous neighborhoods. Please read the report and share it with others who may be interested.
Study HERE at Ammo.com
Many thanks to Sam Jacobs and the folks at ammo.com for putting this together. For those who followed 2nd City Cop, we heard the stories from the inside, and routinely checked on the weekend body counts in Chiraq, we ‘knew’ it was bad. Folks poo pooed our comments, saying it wasn’t true, it wasn’t that bad, yada, yada.
Well, now we have the proof, and yes, it really IS that bad. Funny how the top three cities with the worst rates are all blue cities…
And if you go to the bottom of the page, they have a list of their previous infographics you can look at or link to.
In other news, the projections are this will be the most heavily travelled Christmas in years, so if you are travelling, please take care out there! Be safe, and enjoy the time wherever you’re going!
I was watching this one to see which way it was going to go, it is Wisconsin after all…
A jury found Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of obstructing federal immigration agents during an attempt to serve a warrant at a courthouse earlier this year.
She faces up to five years in prison on the felony obstruction count.
Dugan was arrested in April after helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz avoid plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who were trying to serve him a warrant. Prosecutors said Dugan helped Flores-Ruiz and his attorney exit her courtroom through a back door on April 18, after learning that ICE agents were in the building to arrest him.
Full article, HERE from Fox News.
I know the verdict will be appealed, but maybe, just maybe, this will be a wakeup call to the judges/DAs/others that you can and will be taken to trial and the jury may find you guilty when you try to play games with ICE/CBP!
Now if they would do the same to these protesters that think they are above the law…
According to the AIs, it’s NOT a Christian memory aid…
But I learned this in church as a youngster, so here ya go.
Believe what you will!
DC, Bondi Beach, Brown University…
A jihadist shot two WV National Guard troopers who were just walking foot patrols because he could in a ‘gun free’ zone. Sadly the young lady died. It was terrorism, plain and simple.
At least 16 dead at Bondi, in a ‘gun free’ zone, in a country that already has very restrictive gun laws. Australia has been ‘afraid’ to confront the whole Islamic set of issues, not wanting to ‘excite’ their muslim population. This is, I think, the THIRD terrorist attack this year. The Aussie government response? Another gun law… Why???
2 dead, 9 or 10 injured at Brown University, another ‘gun free’ zone. And apparently a lightly trained campus police, cameras not connected to any police department, not much if any surveillance of the campus, and slow reaction time. As of last night, the shooter was still apparently in the wind. The only thing we don’t know, yet, is what drove the shooting…
Folks in the know in government estimate there are up to 18,000 ‘military’ aged muslim males, who are known or suspected terrorists, in the USA tonight. How many of them are jihadist? How many are radicalized? How many are already on some LEO ‘radar’, but are not being hauled in or shipped out of America?
All this brings me to my initial question, what’s next? Do we need to not attend any Christmas celebrations? We know that is a sore point with muslims. Do we not get together with our friends, attend Christmas parties, or do we hunker in our houses and go nowhere?
I know the old saw, “Don’t be around stupid people, go stupid places, or do stupid things”, but what does that really mean in this day and age? What does that definition mean now?
I’m old, grumpy, and carry every day. ‘I’ am not willing to go hide in my house, just in case, something might happen, but I’m also very cognizant of where I am, who I’m with, and who is around me. Let’s say pretty much constant Condition Orange. Do we do as the bible says? And if so, which verse???
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
Security folks say there are indications of plans by ISIS/Al Qaeda for up to five mass casualty attacks in the US between now and February.
Each of us has to make up our own minds what is important to us, and how we will respond to what is coming…
Or unexpected. It was actually brought up at least 15 years ago.
On the heels of 12 major mishaps in the last four years, the military’s first tiltrotor aircraft program must take “immediate and decisive action” to avoid more loss and tragedy, a new comprehensive review released Friday by the U.S. Navy finds.
The V-22 Osprey, which the Navy uses for aircraft carrier onboard delivery missions, is overdue for a midlife upgrade, spending far too much on unscheduled maintenance and contending with undertrained maintainers — all of which spell increased risk for a platform that has faced intense scrutiny since its earliest days in the air. The 33-page review recommends the establishment of a readiness and safety steering board to report annually to top officials on the Osprey’s status; initiation of the overdue midlife upgrade; and changes to establish a “proactive safety system” to identify and address mechanical issues before mishaps occur.
Full article, HERE from Military Times.
The V-22 is a touchy beast, VERY complicated, and has always been a maintenance nightmare, exceeding the ‘standard’ of less than 15 manhours/flight hour.
Another issue is training and retaining maintenance personnel who can actually fix them. Standard ‘fleet’ training really doesn’t apply, due to the multiplicity of complex systems to make the V-22 basically fly sideways in its ‘helicopter’ mode.
Yes, there were pilot training issues, most of those have been ironed out over time, but another issue is that the USAF tends to not cooperate with the Navy/Marines on investigations, maintenance issues, etc. We always referred to it as the Air Force playing ‘I’ve got a secret’…
But something needs to be done before we lose more troops, crews, and aircraft!
In other news, I nominate the combined USMA/USNA glee squads to do the National Anthem at the Super Bowl!
To start the week…
Bumper snickers!!!!
* Horn broken. Watch for finger.
* Keep honking…I’m reloading.
* Your kid may be an honors student, but you’re still an idiot.
* All generalizations are false.
* Cover me. I’m changing lanes.
* I brake for no apparent reason.
* Learn from your parents’ mistakes – use birth control.
* I’m not as think as you drunk I am.
* Forget about World Peace…Visualize using your turn signal.
* We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart?
* He who laughs last thinks slowest.
* I love cats…they taste just like chicken.
* Rehab is for quitters.
* I get enough exercise just pushing my luck.
* Sometimes I wake up grumpy; Other times I let her sleep.
* Jack Kevorkian for White House Physician.
* I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
* Sorry, I don’t date outside my species.
* No radio – Already stolen.
* OK, who stopped payment on my reality check?
* Few women admit their age; Fewer men act it.
* It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.
* A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.
* Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
* Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.
* Be nice to your kids. They’ll choose your nursing home.
* There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count & those who can’t.
* Caution: I drive like you do.
That keeps on giving…
Rep. Jasmine Crockett decided to run for the U.S. Senate in Texas on Monday, and things aren’t going well. She had an embarrassing launch featuring a joke of a campaign video, and then, despite her high profile, a stunning lack of endorsements from Senate Democrats. Well, things just got worse.
According to a report from Axios, a whole bunch of her House colleagues are privately seething, convinced she’s about to blow what could be their best shot at flipping a statewide seat in Texas in decades.
“She might win a primary, but she ain’t winning a general in Texas,” one senior House Democrat said, speaking anonymously so he or she could be blunt. A second lawmaker echoed the anxiety, calling Crockett’s decision “concerning” for swing districts and “a bad decision” overall. A fourth member put it this way: “There’s a lot of concern she won’t win. If you have Paxton in there, particularly, it seems like a good target. I hope Texas picks someone that can get us a seat.”
Full article, HERE from PJ Media.
Honestly, this is just flat funny. She ‘somehow’ thinks she’s actually popular with the people of Texas. But what she doesn’t realise is it’s because she is comedic relief…
But, bless her heart, let her go down that road. Texans will thank you!