I'm not the only one. "You dress like you're going to a pimp convention!"
And because the First Amendment protects that right--have someone with brains explain "freedom of expression" to you, in words of few syllables--you can't just up and decide to "prosecute" people for maknig fun of congresscritters. Congress-dicks. Congress-shitheads. Congress-assholes. Totalitarian-wannabe-badly-dressed-congr
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The goons of antifa and their plans to throw muriatic acid at people.
Kim du Toit comments on the "go back to throwing bricks" twiddle.
And then there's this.
There is a political sector that firmly believes they can initiate an avalanche just because they have deluded themselves into believing they can control their direction or at least stay out of its path. That is going turn out to be a grave miscalculation with bloody consequences.The politicians won't be exempt. No one will. That's why it is greatly desirable to avoid the confrontation.
In the meantime, I am gonna fortune teller and give you a prediction: There will be a confrontation and there will be corpses after it is over. If the politicians think they will be able to come in and swoopingly pass new laws restricting liberties, they will find themselves paying for the gross miscalculation.
But yeah, if antifa's actions aren't checked, it will lead to very bad things.
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Twenty years?
A few years ago, a RAND Corp. study found the three F-35 variants had drifted so far apart during development that having a single base design may prove to be more expensive than if the armed services had built separate aircraft tailored to their own requirements from the get-go. That, unfortunately, was more than 20 years into the program, when most of the people who thought this was a good idea had retired or gone into consulting.It didn't take Lockheed twenty years to develop the SR-71. It didn't take 20 years to develop the Saturn V and the Apollo spacecraft. And those things were made by people who were using slide rules and drafting by hand! What the fuck.
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Sixty people were shot in Chicago in a single weekend and the new mayor is yodeling something about that stupid chrome bean being vandalized. Well, after all, none of the people who got shot was a Democrat machine politician....
*rolleyes*
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Well, it rained last night, but it's sunny today. The pool needs a bit more chlorine but it's looking pretty good, and I think we'll be able to have a swim tomorrow if the weather holds.
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Pretty sure I told this story before--
I can remember there was a 4th of July when Dad found some old firecrackers in his closet and gave them to my brother and I.
My brother grabbed an aluminum water tumbler from the kitchen and we went outside.
I can remember how hot it was that day. I'd been indoors, and the curtains were all drawn to keep the sun (and the heat) out. I think this was before the bunker had central air conditioning, though it would not have been long before if that's the case. But it was cool and dark inside the house.
In those days the street was basic oil and limestone pea gravel--nothing as elaborate as actual asphalt--and they'd done a layer earlier that year, so it was still white. In the noonday July sun it was blinding white, and it was hot and humid. This was years before there were houses across the street, too, so a hot wind blew the spicy scent of wild grasses across the road.
My brother took four firecrackers and twisted their wicks together, and put them under the cup, in the street. He lit the fuses and backed off.
And POOM, the cup rocketed skyward. From my perspective it looked as if the thing went twenty feet in the air, but there's no way it could possibly have gone that high. It probably went four or five feet up at the most.
..but when it clattered to earth we saw that its formerly flat bottom was bulged outward. Exactly like the green one in this image. In fact, that looks exactly like the set we once had here. Pretty sturdy. Not very light--yet four firecrackers in the mid-1970s were enough to send it skyward and push out the bottom.
These days, four firecrackers wouldn't even lift the thing. They make the same amount of noise, but they don't have any force behind them.
...which is one of many reasons why I take the whole "fireworks are dangerous!" nonsense with a grain of salt. If you're messing around with high explosives (the so-called "M-80", which is 1/8th stick of dynamite) then sure, you can hurt yourself pretty badly. It's also true that you can get some burns mucking about with package fireworks if you're not careful.
But if you're lighting packs of firecrackers and roman candles and fountains, and not sticking them in your pants or nose or other orofices, and not holding them in hand, and lighting fuse and getting away, they're more than safe enough.
Mortars do scare me a bit. I still love 'em.
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Well, on to the rest of the day.