All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Salena Zito always has a good read. This one is a feel good account of breaking down in small town America. Nothing profound but it might brighten your morning or remind you of a similar moment.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/11/finding-america-at-a-back-roads-gas-station/
After you’ve read enough sexbot articles on Drudge maybe switch to something interesting
A man named Philip Redfield is travelling by car with his English Sheepdog Rollie when he pulls in to a small town called Peaceful Valley to refill his nearly empty gas tank. The attendant doesn’t seem to know much about cars and seems distinctly unfriendly and tries to convince Philip to leave town as soon as possible. But while the attendant is laboriously counting out change for a ten-dollar bill Rollie catches sight of a little girl holding a cat and leaps out to chase it.
When Philip catches up to the dog and the cat, he’s just in time to see the little girl point a small electronic device at Rollie causing him disappear. When Philip interrogates her about his dog she rushes into the nearby house and shuts the door. Philip pounds on the door and the girl’s father (played by James Doohan, Scotty from Star Trek) emerges and refuses to believe his story but maintains that Rollie just ran behind the house. He tells Philip to head one way around the block and he’ll go the opposite to find the dog. As soon as the father turns the corner, he takes out a similar device and triggering it causes Rollie to reappear. The father maintains that Rollie just ran away and Philip goes back to his car very confused but convinced that something strange is going on in Peaceful Valley.
Failing to find a place to eat, Philip decides to drive out of town but as he approaches the town line his car crashes into an invisible barrier and Rollie is killed in the wreck. Several townsmen appear immediately and insist that they will get him to medical help. When Philip is escorted away from the scene of the accident one of them who stayed behind uses one of the mysterious devices to resurrect Rollie back to life.
Instead of being brought to a doctor, Philip is escorted to the town hall and there he is introduced to Dorn, the mayor of Peaceful Valley. Dorn learns that Philip is a reporter but has only come to Peaceful Valley because he ran out of gas. Now Dorn reveals the town secret. Peaceful Valley was visited a hundred years previously by a scientist who was either from another planet or because he was unimaginably brilliant made breakthroughs in physical science that allowed him to invent machines that can rearrange and transmute physical things in almost any way imaginable. Their science allows them to disassemble and reassemble living creatures instantaneously. They can even run time backward for someone who has been injured or for any other reason. And Dorn shows him the original scientific papers used to create this miraculous world and puts them in a place where Philip can find them.
Dorn tells Philip that this secret is so important that anyone discovering it must make the choice of either staying thereafter forever in Peaceful Valley or be put to death. He claims that such incredible power would be used by the outside world to produce weapons unimaginably more powerful than even atom bombs.
Faced with a life or death decision Philip tells Dorn he chooses to stay in Peaceful Valley. Dorn hands Philip over to a young woman named Ellen Marshall who prepares a house for Philip to live in and tries to orient Philip in his new environment. But Philip finds out that the house he lives in is surrounded by a force field meant to keep him trapped. Philip appeals to Ellen to help him steal the scientific secrets and break out of Peaceful Valley and bring these wonders to the outside world. She agrees and using her own devices she frees Philip and joins him as he heads to the town hall to get the book. When he reaches the control room, he uses the transmuter to crate a pistol and when Dorn and his men catch him stealing the book Philip shoots them down with the gun.
He and Ellen flee but when he reaches the town line, he looks in the book and finds that it is blank. Ellen was a part of a test that Philip has now failed. A resurrected Dorn and his men soon return Philip to the town hall where Dorn explains that Philip has proven the point that mankind would use this almost godlike power to wage war on each other. Philip is defiant and claims that given the chance he would do it all again the same. And he blames Ellen for her false claims of love for him. But she claims that she did have feelings for him. Dorn declares that the death penalty will be needed. But he makes a vague reference to more than one kind of death. He puts a helmet on Philip, hits a button and the scene ends.
In the next scene we see Philip reenacting his first scene with the gas station attendant and acting confused when he sees Ellen walk by. Instead of actual death, Dorn has reversed time for Philip and he has no memories of the events in Peaceful Valley. He and Rollie leave with Philip feeling only vague misgivings about Peaceful Valley.
This is an actual science fiction story. Hurrah! Despite some slightly hackneyed conventions and plot devices it’s nice to get some good old fashioned sci-fi. The acting is pretty good and even the ending is relatively happy. Ray guns, time travel, a goofy dog and even Scotty! B+
I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.
Andrew Jackson
In the last few years Drudge has become an unpleasant and messy site to visit. They are decidedly anti-Trump and loaded up with leftist clap-trap.
I found WhatFinger News a while ago and I find it a welcome relief. As an aggregator they keep the leftist stuff to a minimum and even label it so you can skip it if you don’t have a high tolerance for crap.
https://www.whatfinger.com/
Their motto is “The Relentless Pursuit of Creating The Greatest Aggregate Link News Site On Earth.”
And if that’s not enough, they have even shown the good taste to link to several of my humble blog posts!
After you’ve read enough sexbot articles on Drudge maybe switch to something interesting
After eight years as President I have only two regrets: that I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.
Andrew Jackson
The Mexican government on Wednesday arrested 350 Central Americans, including two prominent “migrant rights” activists, who were part of a large group headed toward the United States. Mexico is also planning to deploy an additional 6,000 national guard troops to its border with Guatemala.
The day after those activists were arrested, the Mexican Finance Ministry froze the bank accounts of 26 individuals for their alleged involvement in facilitating migrant caravans to the United States from Central America.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/09/trumps-america-no-country-for-illegal-aliens/
Sounds like the real deal and not just lip service. President Trump’s threat of tariffs is brilliant indeed. When he said Mexico would build the wall this is how he meant it. Leverage.
Of course, you always have to add, check back in a couple of weeks and see if it sticks but it’s definitely a winning strategy to use financial leverage to tame your enemies.
What makes President Trump so effective? It’s actually two things together.
Let me elaborate
1)
Donald Trump has looked behind the curtain and he knows the wizard is a fraud. He has spent his life dealing at first hand with the frauds and thieves who run the government in places like New York City and he knows that they’re corrupt and he knows they’re vulnerable. The Democrats have used their identity politics so successfully for so long because the Republicans will accommodate almost any compromise so long as their personal privileges are maintained. Both sides have abandoned the middle classes in exchange for Wall Street money and an identity politics charade in which each side plays its assigned part. The Left stokes the resentment of minorities and women and the Establishment Right mouths its platitudes about the Constitution and promises its constituency that half a loaf is better than nothing and someday the new Americans will see the light and forsake the Democrats.
Donald Trump could see from a mile off that JEB! and the rest of the Kabuki Theater crew were setting up to hand Hillary a rather easy win and he decided to pull the curtain aside and let the people see the truth about the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, that he was a fraud. He showed us that everything they said was a lie and the only missing ingredient needed for winning was wanting to win.
And even when the Deep State has thrown literally everything including the kitchen sink at President Trump and his supporters, he is inexorably pushing them back in every direction he has applied force.
2)
Now this is not a risk-free enterprise. People like the Clintons have made the politics of personal destruction a veritable art form. When you add in the operatives that Obama and Hillary staffed the Justice Department with you are talking about a recipe for high powered railroading of anyone standing in their way. Just look at the victims of the Mueller investigation, some of them were men whose only crime was agreeing to talk to the FBI without a lawyer present.
But President Trump has demonstrated that he knows how to navigate the swamp and now it looks like he has come out on the other side of this cesspool and is positioned to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Being capable of successfully confronting the coordinated offensive of the Media, the Democrat Congress and the Deep State is almost unprecedented. Nixon was forced to resign. The Bushes were chewed up until by the end of their tenures there was nothing left of either. And they were career politicians. Trump can do it because he’s not afraid of them. In fact, he enjoys punching back. His ability to get his message out and draw blood from his adversaries is his trademark. Low Energy Jeb and Crooked Hillary and Nervous Nancy. He always draws blood and he keeps on jabbing until he’s made his point.
And that’s the secret of President Trump’s success. Not only does he know his enemies’ weaknesses but he’s not afraid to go after them and make them afraid of him. And this is only the beginning. Once the Comeys and Brennans start to cut deals to get leniency we will see some bigger fish get fried. I’m of the opinion that by 2024 he’ll have retired or imprisoned most of the current big names in Democrat politics. Who knows, could Hillary be on that list?
So that’s what I think is the formula responsible for the political jiu-jitsu he does so well. He knows their tricks and he’s not afraid to mix it up with them. The other Republicans lack part or all of this combination. The knowledge and the courage. Let’s be thankful he came along. Let’s hope he trains his successor. We can’t afford any more Bushes.
In 1963 a US Navy Destroyer is on routine naval maneuvers near Guadalcanal. Sonar picks up a large metal object on the sea bottom about the size and shape of a submarine. And their underwater microphone picks up a banging noise coming from the object. Captain Beecham orders one of his divers, McClure, to go down and look at the object. Meanwhile the ship’s Chief Petty Officer Bell starts acting strangely and is taken to the sick bay with something like a panic attack.
McClure confirms that it is a submarine and markings identify it as an American submarine that was sunk twenty years earlier by the Japanese in WWII. And McClure also confirms that the banging noise is coming from the sub and seems to be someone inside trying to communicate with those outside. Finally, he finds a set of dog tags on the hull and when he returns to the ship, they are found to be Chief Bell’s from his time as a crew member on the sunken submarine.
Captain Beecham questions Bell about the sinking of the sub and Bell relates a story about how as a signalman he was charged with replacing the infrared filter on a signal light and when he dropped the filter the unfiltered light of the signal gave away the submarine’s position to the surrounding Japanese naval forces that attacked and sank the sub. He was washed off the sub during the attack and was later rescued by a passing American warship.
Now Chief Bell starts hallucinating that he sees his long dead shipmates gesturing to him to join them below. Captain Beecham tries to convince him that he is suffering from survivor’s guilt and that he should calm himself and wait for the attack to pass. But Bell works himself up into a frenzy and yelling that his crew is calling him to muster he jumps overboard and disappears under the surface never to be seen again. And as Master Diver reminded me in the comments, the Corpsman found wet seaweed near the sickbay where Bell saw his dead shipmates.
A diving team is sent down into the submarine and McClure tells the captain that a metal shaft was swinging free inside the sub and could have been responsible for the banging. But he also adds that one of the dead bodies was holding a hammer in its bony hand.
This is a straight up ghost story. Chief Bell was a little too crazy for my taste but it wasn’t bad, just a little thin. It’s right on the cusp of C+/B-. Alright, for the Navy I’ll go B-.