San Francisco Debates Whether to Sue Stores that Want to Leave

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That’s right.  If you have a store in San Francisco, you might get sued for trying to close down or relocate it outside of the city.

Now if I had a business in San Francisco that was only getting by marginally and I heard about this law being debated, wouldn’t I shut it down immediately to protect myself from litigation?

Of course the city could decide to restore law and order and begin prosecuting shoplifters and make the streets safe again for law abiding citizens.  But that wouldn’t be progressive.

Good work San Fran.  Way to shoot yourself in the foot.

 

 

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 10APR2024 – End of Empire

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Manipulation by our “betters” is a long standing tradition, ever since the first gathering of hominids there was a Bernie Sanders/Karl Marx to tell people what they were owed for the privilege of being in charge, and the penalty for being productive. When the Roman empire stopped expanding, and became unworthy of defending by Roman citizens, they were forced to hire the barbarians as mercenaries, and began to play games with the currency.
The practice of embedding veterans into captured territory, and wedding them to the natives, producing a new generation of Roman soldiery to take up arms for the empire, and reducing rebellion because no father in law wanted to destroy their grand children’s inheritance.
This stopped with the ceasing of expansion by the empire. We have now reached the point in our history where we are at the limits, defined by our neighbors, and the global community, of our expansion, and now begins the first stage of ossification. We have a citizenry that no longer is learning to love our country, believes JFK got it backwards with ” Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, emotionally crippled, sexually confused, and financially abused. Debasement of our currency was inevitable, it just seems that we get to live through the cashing of the checks our government wrote.
The hiring of barbarian mercenaries has begun as Los Angeles has just graduated a class of LEO cadets , that are here illegally, not legally allowed to own a firearm, but are now sworn police officers, a judge in Illinois just ruled that citizens must have FOID cards, but illegals can not be required to obtain them. I have no problem with “Dreamers” enlisting in the military to earn their citizenship, and actually encourage such programs. They come out of the shadows and are then legal, complete with the Responsibilities and privileges that come with citizenship, but draw the line at creating an armed organization that has less loyalty to the US, the. Constitution, and the people of the US than the agencies we already have in our borders.
I don’t always agree with Michael Weiner/ Savage but his statement that “Any country that doesn’t protect its borders, language, and citizens is not a country anymore” rings true.

Of Civil War and Moe the Crow

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What a beautiful day.  It hit seventy with almost constant bright sun, almost no clouds and, for once, no wind.  Walking around the yard today was idyllic.  The daffodils were mostly open and everywhere the tree buds looked ready to burst.

Now the calendar says it’s the middle of April but in New England that translates to the beginning of Spring.  And based entirely on my subjective criteria I hereby declare today the first day of Spring 2024 in the photogian calendar!

 

A raven has taken to chasing off Camera Girl’s pet crows (Moe the Crow and his stooges) and eating all the scraps that she puts out for them every morning.  Now, I’ve been a fan of ravens ever since I read a book called Ravens in Winter many years ago.  And after camping in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, my admiration for them has increased.  Now that they have made their way to Compound, I am excited to have them around.  But I do feel bad for Camera Girl.  Moe has become a friend of hers.  When he sees her come to the water he comes down to the ground and she feeds him peanuts from the ground in front of her.  Ah, well.  Survival of the strongest.

Alright, enough of all that.  Had to get it out of my system.

I spent today catching up with some projects that had languished during my recent busy spurt.  I’ve got a contractor waiting on a contract and a check to repair the damage done by a 120-foot White Pine that flattened a part of the upper driveway fence.  A very sad story.  The highway crew cut the tree up on Friday and managed to cut the electric fence wire that keeps our canines from rampaging over the countryside.  The timing of the electric fence malfunction made it possible that it coincided with the earthquake.  But afterwards the physical evidence said, road crew.  I have so many enemies!

I saw some early reviews for the new picture “Civil War.”  The claim is that the movie isn’t just a hit piece against Trump.  I’d like to believe that but I don’t want to see it until it’s been reviewed by someone on the right side of the political divide.  I’ve been burned too often and refuse to pay to be insulted by Hollywood.  I’ve watched about ten reviews so I’m starting to believe it could just be a movie about how bad a civil war would be.  But the other factor that could keep me away is the heroes being journalists.  After all, how many good journalists have we seen in the last ten years or so?  One, two, maybe three?  Anyway, my research continues.  If anyone finds a right-wing movie review for it, please pass it along.

So, Sunday night I did surgery on my laptop.  The internal battery was dying so I had to figure out how to open the back on my computer and replace the battery without frying the system or cracking the motherboard.  As I mentioned a few days ago I bout my very own geek tool set and watched a few YouTube videos for similar (but not identical) laptop models and then bit the bullet and went in.

Everything went relatively easily until I attempted to pop the back off.  Most of it released but near one side of the hinge the damn thing was stuck.  Stuck good!  And this is just plastic so I was afraid if I put too much force on it the damn thing would crack apart.  So, I attempted to extend the pry bar deeper into the interior to give me better leverage but I was afraid that some internal component could be damaged and turn the whole computer into useless junk.  After what seemed like forever the stuck spot sprang open.  Afterwards I checked to see if I had broken anything.  I did find something that looked like part of a female coupling that broke loose.  I couldn’t find where it came from so I chalked it up to being one of those pesky “extra parts” that they put in complicate equipment and moved on.

Well, from there on everything went smoothly and the whole thing was back together in five minutes.  A few hours of charging and the thing was working flawlessly.  So now I am officially an IT worker.  I feel an irresistible urge to write a haiku in DOS.

There, I’ve gone about seven hundred and fifty words without mentioning the 2024 elections.  That feels pretty good.  I’m trying to figure out a good approach to write about the political situation strictly from a humorous perspective.  Since I have almost precisely zero practical effect on the outcome of the election, I feel that to entertain is the correct strategy.  But honestly, I’m still searching for the format and angle that pleases me creatively and would also provide enjoyment to the readers.  A work in progress.

So, I think I’ll go watch something fun.  Maybe Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.  I like that movie.

Brought To Its Logical Conclusion

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Political Science is, as far as I can tell, a misnomer. Since Plato and Aristotle first attempted to define the various forms of government, I doubt that science has ever been a fair word to describe what goes on. Maybe it’s because humans are inherently irrational or maybe it’s the nature of large groups of people that they defy the attempt to establish a stable social order. But whatever is the basic reason, history demonstrates that human society only infrequently and temporarily provides happiness to the majority of its citizens.

For most of human history a small royal or hieratic minority enjoyed the lion’s share of the wealth and resources of great nations and empires like Egypt, Sumer, Babylon and Persia. The great mass of the people in these places were dirt farmers or slaves who survived on what the priests and kings left them after the taxes were collected. It only seems to be the case that for short periods after the breaking up of an empire or when new territories are first occupied or if a migratory people manage to remain independent of the settled systems of control that you see freedom and some measure of human happiness.

The Dorian tribes maintained their independence after the downfall of the Mycenean civilization until the Macedonians under Philip and his son Alexander conquered them. The Roman citizens/farmers/soldiers were free men until the patricians figured out how to use foreign slaves to drive the small farmers into bankruptcy. After sacking and pillaging the Roman Empire the various Germanic tribes probably had a thousand years before the industrial revolution rendered them all wage slaves or worse. And the United States had the 1700’s and 1800’s when their government mostly left Americans alone to enjoy their lives.

But eventually, some group figures out how to game every political system to monetize people’s misery. So, I guess there’s no surprise that we are currently staring into the jaws of the latest empire to appear. But I think this one is different. I think they’ve decided they don’t need serfs. At least not many. I think the plan is to just get rid of us altogether. Now, they don’t mean to liquidate us. They just plan to impoverish us and make it so we don’t produce children. And it seems to be working quite well.

So maybe what we are seeing is the first real instance of political science. Of course, happiness for the masses isn’t what they were calculating. Someone ran the numbers and said, “Hey, guess what? I’ve found a stable government. We get rid of everybody but the elite and we let robots do all the work and we live like kings forever! Sure, we’ll need a few Morlocks to keep the machines working and keep the robots in line but we can put them underground or in China so nothing will disturb us while we eat pineapple, passion fruit and papaya in the Garden of Eden.”

So, we’ve been sentenced to extinction by Amazon/Google/Microsoft and our executioner is Joe Biden. The ignominy! I’ll have to say, it’s a little humiliating to be genocided by the Eloi. Things like being hectored about climate crimes by Al Gore, John Kerry and Greta Thornberg are almost as bad as being bankrupted by green energy madness. Being browbeaten about white supremacy and white privilege by an army of AWFL Karens is almost as bad as being told that things like usable highways, reliable electric power and freedom of travel will soon be things of the past.

They do seem to be organized so they may succeed. I hope at least that the Morlocks start eating them before we’re gone. That at least would be a consolation.