It's the last day in August, and the tropics are fairly quiet. The National Hurricane Center can provide details.
But, it has been since 1997 that we have had no named storms in August. I am counting my blessings and hoping that these trends continue through September.
Evidently, he was a mid-level manager who had a hyper partisan political bent, and he tweeted about it. Some sources say he was the guy who stopped the Hunter Biden laptop investigation.
For the first twenty years of my cop career, I worked in a state agency under civil service rules. There were certain things we could and could not do in the political sphere, and we knew it. We were allowed to have an opinion, and to vote, but that was about it. Any political activity would get you disciplined or fired.
Many cops today don't have Twitter accounts or Facebook accounts, because of several concerns, one being that embarrassing the agency will get you fired. We all know the rules, and some things are what we call "career moves". You do things A, it's a career move. You do thing B, it's a career move too. Thibault made a career move. Several of them, from all accounts.
Some wags are saying that Thibault is a symbolic Judas goat, the guy they will blame the sins of the agency on. And, they are trying to do that, whether he was fired or resigned, he is the public face of the rot in the Bureau. But, it goes deeper than that. The higher-ups in the agency tolerated Thibault's partisan activity until they could no longer wink at it.
Thibault was not the problem in the FBI. Thibault was a symptom of a larger problem. With many calling for the Bureau to be either drastically reformed or abolished altogether, he was the sacrificial goat to be trotted out before the media.
Joe Biden says us MAGA Republicans are fascist. I don't think he knows what the word means. So, what is fascism?
1. often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
That's a pretty good working definition. So, let's explore.
How about when Biden, in April 2021 tried to extend his eviction moratorium, knowing that it was unconstitutional? Breaking the law by executive fiat. Does that sound like fascism?
Or, how about ignoring our immigration law and allowing unrestricted illegal migration? Ignoring the law and using executive fiat. Does that sound like fascism.
How about weaponizing the FBI and using it as a cudgel against political opposition? Can you say stasi? That sounds like fascism.
Or, how about quietly beginning a program to counter something called domestic misinformation? This, from Auguest 2022.
When Joe Biden talks about fascism, he knows from whence he speaks. But, it's projection. He knows fascism first hand, because he is in charge of it.
Former President Donald Trump is asking for a special master to appointed by the Court to go through his documents to make sure that his presidential privilege is protected.
But, the FBI tells the Court that they have already been through the documents. They appointed a team of agents not associated with the investigation to sift through the documents, looking for privileged communications. They found a few.
"[T]he Privilege Review Team … identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information, completed its review of those materials, and is in the process of following the procedures set forth in paragraph 84 of the search warrant affidavit to address potential privilege disputes, if any," the DOJ filing said. Those procedures included asking the court to make a determination on potentially privileged material, asking Trump's team if they are asserting privilege, or acting on its own and keeping the material away from investigators.
They found privileged documents, and they didn't run them through a copy machine? You believe that, right? On, yeah, I believe that the FBI is completely trustworthy. I wonder how long it will be before those very documents get leaked to a friendly news outlet?
I heard a while back that Dr. Tony Fauci was planning to retire at the end of Biden's term.
Then, more recently, I heard that Fauci had set a date in late December to retire.
I wonder if he knows something the rest of us don't?
Belle and I will be busy tomorrow, getting up a the crack of dawn to travel to Atlanta, TX for a Cowboy Fast Draw event. So, I thought I'd check NOAA to see what the tropics are doing. Not much, as it turns out. Here is the 5-day tropical map.
I was watching Jor Rogan yesterday on YouTube. Rogan was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg on his podcast. Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook throttled information on the Hunter Biden laptop for a week leading up to the 2020 election, based on a request from the FBI.
…Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.
There is more at the link, but basically the FBI put their finger on the scale to tamp down damaging information just before the election. We all know now that the Hunter Biden laptop is a real story, and we are all wondering now why the FBI hasn't arrested Hunter. It's bad enough that we now have what appears to be a two-tiered system of criminal justice in the US, but now it appears that the FBI is actively trying to pick winners and losers in a presidential election.
It's been raining for what seems to be a week. We are inundated. Luckily, I live on the side of a big ridge, so it runs off fairly quickly. The ditches are full, but that won't last forever.
We have trash bins in this neighborhood. Lots of places use them, and I'm sure that they are fairly standard across the US.
That's mine, close, with the neighbors across the street. Fairly standard. The garbage men pick up our trash on Mondays at daylight. And, invariably, the leave the lid open. No big deal. his morning I went out to drop a bag of trash, and found over a foot of rainwater in the bottom of the bin. So, I can say with some certainty that we've gotten a foot of rain the past 48 hours.
According to Instapundit, you get suspended for wrong-thought.
CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL: Impermissible Notions. Or, Things That Will Not Be Tolerated On Twitter. “The thing in question this time is a cartoon, an illustration of an idea. It was shared, briefly, yesterday by biologist and Quillette contributor Colin Wright, and was promptly censored by Twitter’s moderators. Mr Wright has apparently been suspended from said platform until a confession of hateful wrongdoing – as yet unspecified hateful wrongdoing – has been extracted. Given the cartoon’s scandalous properties, I’ll reproduce it below the fold. Do feel free to grip the arms of your chair.”
Just boosting the signal here.
I just spent the past several hours filling out something called the American Community Survey, a product of the US Census bureau. Our address got picked for some un-Godly reason, and I decided "what the hell" and started taking the survey. Oh, it was supposed to be quick and easy, and would help the Government with vital data about changes in population and demographics.
About an hour into the survey, I started making shit up... using rough estimates. At one point, they asked about my primary duties as a cop, and had a little block for my answer:
Putting assholes like you in jail.
I hope they got the vital information they needed in the first few pages, because the last hour was an exercise in frustration. Hell, I don't know how many hours in the past 52 weeks my grandson has worked. So, I gave them some very rough estimates.
But, that is done now, and if everyone who was asked to take the survey put as much time, effort and accuracy into it as I did, the Census bureau has no idea what is happening across the country.
Four years ago today, August 22, 2018 was a hot August day in central Louisiana. I was still working as a sheriff's deputy. I had already planned to retire on April 1, 2019, but hadn't told anyone except for Belle.
That afternoon, a snow cone truck pulled in to the parking lot, and I could not resist.
Has it only been four years? Yeah, but it seems like I lived a lifetime since that day. Since then, I've run an ill-fated political race, lived through Covid, and increased my volunteer work.
That may be the last snow cone I ever ate. The flavor? Blue bubblegum.
The White House is trying to take credit for way too much. They have done a lot to destroy America since taking over in January 2021. Now that gas prices are falling a bit, they want to take credit for that too. However, some of us have memories.
This photo is a compilation of two photos I took in January 2021 and March 2022. From the same station and the same gas pump.
I learned to like these things when I was deer hunting from a box stand. On a cold, frosty morning I'd get in the stand before daylight, turn the heater on, and in a few minutes I was comfortable. I had two of them, but they were given away when I quit deer hunting. In the winter time, I heat the shop with propane and there are cool spots, especially around Belle's feet.
I checked Amazon for no particular reason this week, and these little heaters are on sale. It came in today, so I loaded a one-pound bottle on it and gave it a test run. We're good now, till the winter and Belle's feet get cold.
I may order an adapter hose so that I can hook it directly to a 20 lb propane bottle.
