Sadly, one of the last few survivors of Pearl Harbor has passed away…
https://x.com/NavalInstitute/status/1867348183233228969
With his death, I ‘believe’ there are around fifteen actual survivors left.
Fair Winds and Following Seas to Robert Fernandez, one of the Greatest Generation!
To start the week!
2. The closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood alcohol content.
3. I live in my own little world but it’s OK, everyone knows me here.
4. I saw a rather large woman wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Guess’ on it. I said, “Thyroid problem?”
5. I don’t do drugs ’cause I find I get the same effect just by standing up really fast.
6. A sign In a Chinese Pet Store: “Buy one dog, get one flea.”
7. Money can’t buy happiness but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
8. I got a sweater for Christmas. I really wanted a screamer or a moaner.
9. If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the “terminal”?
10. I don’t approve of political jokes. I’ve seen too many of them get elected and re-elected.
11. The most precious thing we have is life, yet it has absolutely no trade-in value.
12. If life deals you lemons, make lemonade. If life deals you tomatoes, make Bloody Mary’s.
13. I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
14. Shopping tip: You can get shoes for a buck at bowling alleys.
15. I am a nobody; nobody is perfect, and therefore I am perfect.
16. Every day I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I’ve stayed alive.
17. That Claudia Schiffer must be a genius because I told a friend my plan to attain world peace, and he told me I have “Schiffer Brains.”
18. No one ever says, “It’s only a game!” when their team is winning.
19. Ever notice that people who spend money on beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets are always complaining about being broke and not feeling well?
20. How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you’re on.
21. Isn’t having a smoking section in a restaurant like having a peeing section in a swimming pool?
22. Marriage changes passion… suddenly you’re in bed with a relative.
23. Why is it that most nudists are people you don’t want to see naked?
24. Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.
25. Every time I walk into a singles bar I can hear Mom ‘s wise words:
“Don’t pick that up; you don’t know where it’s been!”
I don’t normally ask things like this, but a good friend’s son who is barely in his 20s has cancer.
His third Chemotherapy is this coming week.
If you would take a minute and say a prayer for him, I know he’d appreciate it.
Thank you.
USPS at its ‘finest’???
“The Postal Service Electric Truck: A Comedy in Two Acts” is not the name of an off-broadway musical. But if someone writes it, I want royalties.
The story is a familiar one when discussing the efficacy (or lack thereof) of EVs. Joe Biden, bless his departing soul, thought that the United States Postal Service should set an example for Americans by using electric trucks to move the mail around. He and the Democrats stuffed $3 billion into the farcically misnamed Inflation Reduction Act as a down payment to force the postal service to purchase 60,000 electric postal trucks at an eventual cost of $10 billion.
What happened next was worthy of Buster Keaton or the Keystone Kops.
Defense contractor Oshkosh got the contract and not only proceeded to screw it up but also kept the bad news from the Postal Service brass for more than a year.
Full article, HERE from PJ Media.
Soooo, 3 billion has got 93 trucks delivered… That’s a ‘tad’ expensive…
Like new fighter expensive…
And they are building ONE a day, not the 80 they were supposed to be doing. Seems to oh, a ‘bit’ of a problem here, or is it just me?
We know EVs are a failure in rural areas, extreme cold, etc. but USPS is supposed to use these things in ALL climates and locations.
Something tells me our mail is going to be even slower being delivered than it is now…
Posting this from my iPhone.
Go read the folks on the sidebar. Hopefully, I’ll be back tomorrow.
Posted from my iPhone.
This will set the cat among the pigeons…
Days after his acquittal in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, lawyers for Marine veteran Daniel Penny are floating the possibility of a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who secured an indictment against their client days after police let him go, then failed to convince a jury he committed a crime.
Penny, 26, was on his way to the gym after class when Neely, 30, barged onto a subway car and started threatening to kill passengers. Penny grabbed him in a headlock and held him as other riders called 911. By the time police arrived, about seven minutes later, Neely had lost consciousness. He never woke up.
“It’s not necessarily even about breaking the law,” attorney Steven Raiser told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. “It’s blurring ethical boundaries and failing to act in the manner in which you are expected, because of your office.”
Full article, HERE from Fox News.
It’s about time somebody took these idiots to task for their BS politics and political ‘statements’…
I would sure as hell contribute to a GoFundMe for that lawsuit! The previous one for his defense raised right at $3000000, and he might have a little left over after that one got him acquitted.
NYC and other ‘blue’ cities/states have tromped all over the little folks rights for a long time, and it should come to an end! Maybe this will be part of the fallout from the election too!!!
One hopes!
Is STILL biting the Navy in the butt…
Nearly half of the amphibious warfare ships Marines need to deploy often are unavailable due to maintenance, according to a government watchdog. How the Navy currently manages those repairs means jarheads will continue to deploy late to the fight.
The Dec. 3 Government Accountability Office report, which detailed an audit from April 2023 to December 2024 at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, and Naval Base San Diego, California, provided a decade’s worth of data regarding underperforming amphibious warfare ships.
In the report, Marine Corps data from 2011 to 2020 showed that the specific class of ships were available for operational tasks only 46% of the time.
Full article HERE from Navy Times.
Amphibs have always been ‘second hand’ children of the surface community, not a premier CO billet. And they have historically been rode hard and put up wet, spending a lot of time underway, with limited maintenance availabilities.
Half of the amphib fleet is not expected to make it to their service life, even with maintenance, but all of the fleet have to exceed their service life to maintain the current minimum amphib support requirements. Also, a revision to the ‘availability’ rules when in maintenance have resulted in more ships being put in a not capable of going to sea classification.
When sequestration hit with a vengence in 2013, they fell even further behind in maintenance, and the class replacement ships slid two or more years further out on construction. Also, you have to add in the administration’s distaste for using Marines as the striking force they are, so they spent a lot of time on ‘float’ at sea with no real mission.
Now, with maintenance periods running longer and longer due to the amount of work required to get ALL of the fleet back to basic capabilities, and lack of shipyards capable of doing the work, I cannot see any way for this situation to improve any time soon…
Grrrr…
Seems Bragg et al in NYC were a little TOO sure of themselves…
The Manhattan jury tasked with deciding Daniel Penny’s fate has acquitted the 26-year-old architecture student of criminally negligent homicide, a Class E felony that carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley agreed on Friday to dismiss the more serious charge, manslaughter in the second degree after the jury deadlocked repeatedly. Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran, who is prosecuting the case, had requested the manslaughter charge be dropped so the jury could take up the lesser charge. The 12-person panel has now acquitted Penny of the lesser charge.
Full article, HERE from PJ Media, and another from Fox News, HERE.
Once again, Bragg et al bowed to public pressure and indicted Penny, a good samaritan 10 days later, for murder because he was white and the other guy was black. The judge bent the rules, just like in the Trump case, but this time, the jurors didn’t ‘listen’ and acquitted Penny! Yay!!!
Maybe, just maybe, a few folks up there are starting to take a hard look at what is going on in NYC and other blue cities… And they also have a ‘little’ illegal problem they’re also trying to deal with…
However, they have destroyed Penny’s life, and he will always be second guessing everything about helping others going forward. I feel for him, as this is going to make his life very difficult.
But hey, a win for the ‘little guys’, so I’m happy he beat the NYC ‘system’!!!
Now he just has to fight off a civil suit from the estranged father… sigh…
To start the week…
This one is from 2013…
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!
+++++++++++
This is an article submitted to a 1999 Louisville Sentinel contest to find out who had the wildest Christmas dinners. It won first prize.
As a joke, my brother Jay used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them.
What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay’s kids’ stockings overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty.
One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of an inflatable love doll. They don’t sell those things at Wal-Mart. I had to go to an adult bookstore downtown.
If you’ve never been in an X-rated store, don’t go, you’ll only confuse yourself. I was there an hour saying things like, ‘What does this do?’ ‘You’re kidding me!’ ‘Who would buy that?’ Finally, I made it to the inflatable doll section.
I wanted to buy a standard, uncomplicated doll that could also substitute as a passenger in my truck so I could use the car pool lane during rush hour.
Finding what I wanted was difficult. ‘Love Dolls’ come in many different models. The top of the line, according to the side of the box, could do things I’d only seen in a book on animal husbandry. I settled for ‘Lovable Louise.’ She was at the bottom of the price scale.
To call Louise a ‘doll’ took a huge leap of imagination.
On Christmas Eve and with the help of an old bicycle pump, Louise came to life.
My sister-in-law was in on the plan and let me in during the wee morning hours. Long after Santa had come and gone, I filled the dangling pantyhose with Louise’s pliant legs and bottom. I also ate some cookies and drank what remained of a glass of milk on a nearby tray. I went home, and giggled for a couple of hours.
The next morning my brother called to say that Santa had been to his house and left a present that had made him VERY happy, but had left the dog confused. She would bark, start to walk away, then come back and bark some more.
We all agreed that Louise should remain in her pantyhose so the rest of the family could admire her when they came over for the traditional Christmas dinner.
My grandmother noticed Louise the moment she walked in the door. ‘What the hell is that?’ she asked.
My brother quickly explained, ‘It’s a doll.’
‘Who would play with something like that?’ Granny snapped.
I kept my mouth shut.
‘Where are her clothes?’ Granny continued.
‘Boy, that turkey sure smells nice, Gran,’ Jay said, to steer her into the dining room.
But Granny was relentless. ‘Why doesn’t she have any teeth?’
Again, I could have answered, but why would I? It was Christmas and no one wanted to ride in the back of the ambulance saying, ‘Hang on Granny, hang on!’
My grandfather, a delightful old man with poor eyesight, sidled up to me and said, ‘Hey, who’s the naked gal by the fireplace?’ I told him she was Jay’s friend.
A few minutes later I noticed Grandpa by the mantel, talking to Louise. Not just talking, but actually flirting. It was then that we realized this might be Grandpa’s last Christmas at home.
The dinner went well. We made the usual small talk about who had died, who was dying, and who should be killed, when suddenly Louise made a noise like my father in the bathroom in the morning. Then she lurched from the mantel, flew around the room twice, and fell in a heap in front of the sofa. The cat screamed. I passed cranberry sauce through my nose, and Grandpa ran across the room, fell to his knees, and began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
My brother fell back over his chair and wet his pants.
Granny threw down her napkin, stomped out of the room, and sat in the car. It was indeed a Christmas to treasure and remember.Later in my brother’s garage, we conducted a thorough examination to decide the cause of Louise’s collapse. We discovered that Louise had suffered from a hot ember to the back of her right thigh. Fortunately, thanks to a wonder drug called duct tape, we restored her to perfect health.. I can’t wait until next Christmas…
While this talks about fast food chains, there are the little restaurants that were also seriously impacted…
California’s fast food industry shed more than 6,000 jobs after Democratic lawmakers passed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage for most fast food and counter service restaurants in the state, according to a new analysis of labor data.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that between September 2023, when California governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, and June 2024, Golden State fast food employment dropped from 570,909 jobs to 564,743. That’s a loss of 6,166 jobs, or 1.1 percent, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Employment Policies Institute.
Full article, HERE from National Review.
I don’t believe this takes into account the delivery drivers like the pizza companies and others let go.
Some of the chains closed stores in their entirety, like Inn-n-Out closing the last store in Oakland, but that was also due to crime, but others closed from a few to dozens of stores.
And this doesn’t count the small restaurants that have closed their doors, some over 30 years old, because they could not stay in business at $20/hr, especially in San Francisco, LA, and San Diego. I’m sure there were/are others in smaller towns that are doing the same thing, but they don’t get the media coverage.
The other thing this is doing is pushing more of the fast food companies to go to ‘bots’ or ‘order screens’ so that they can dump employees. Yes, those systems are expensive, but they don’t draw a salary, take time off, or fight with other employees/management.
But the ROI on them is fairly quick at $20/hr…
But what is the ‘human’ toll?
Kids no longer have an entry level job to ‘learn’ to work. And those ‘low income’ workers who WOULD take a fast food job to have a job. Where do they go now?
What about the elderly that take those jobs to supplement their social security? What do they do???
I know I don’t have any good ideas…