Knots

It’s a beautiful new Saturday, with a beautiful new hurricane forecast, depending on where you live. Dorian’s projected path has moved even farther away from Florida.

Right now, the GFS and ECMWF computer models are predicting maximum winds of 14 knots at my location. By that I mean the model which predicts the highest winds predicts 14 knots. The GFS model tops out at 11.

The new track is so far off the coast, you have to zoom out on the computer to see it.

As I keep saying, I don’t pay any attention to TV heads when it comes to hurricanes. They have a conflict of interest. They need to attract viewers more than they need to disseminate correct information, and they usually do what’s best for themselves. They’re still hysterical over Dorian. To watch TV and read stories, you would think Florida was doomed, when, in reality, there probably won’t be any severe weather anywhere in the state.

I took a look at the Weather Channel’s site today. If I ran the Weather Channel, I would hope my forecasters were saying things like, “Great news for Florida today. It appears very unlikely that Dorian will cause any major problems there. Keep taking reasonable precautions and watch the projected path, but be glad the outlook has improved so much.” That’s not what I’m seeing, however. They’re still fanning the flames of panic.

I saw something really disgraceful at Windy.com today. A meteorologist named Marshall Shepherd (from the Weather Channel) posted a full-blown berserker rant yesterday morning, and it’s still up on the website.

Some quotes:

Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard. The most urgently worded hurricane update.

Note the certainty. Dorian “is” going to hit, and it’s going to hit “really hard.” How can you justify that kind of propaganda, with a projected path as wide as it was when he wrote that? And aren’t these the same people who keep telling us forecasts are uncertain? How can forecasts be uncertain when a storm is definitely going to hit?

Totally unjustified.

Urgent, urgent hurricane update (Friday 7:00 am)

This probably going to be my most urgently worded update in some time.

So…wait while I try to understand this. I feel that you’re trying to be urgent here. Is that right, or am I taking something out of context?

Why would a weather professional tasked with informing the public talk like this? Is generating panic part of his job description?

Not “urgent”; “urgent, urgent.” Who writes like that?

You know what? I just remembered where else I’ve heard that.

The east coast of Florida, much of the state, and coastal GA/Carolinas face a major and life-threatening and sustained threat.

Again, from a person who has been through a bunch of storms, a hurricane is not a “life-threatening threat” unless you’re disabled or utterly irresponsible. Get into a strong building and wait a few hours. When you come out, don’t grab any downed power lines. You’ll be safe. I promise. If I’m wrong and you die, I’ll give you fifty dollars. But you have to ask for it in person.

A lot of people died in New Orleans during the Katrina mess. They died because they stayed where they were, at or below sea level, in structures that couldn’t protect them. Their mayor, who later went to prison, didn’t let President Bush help them. The feds sent buses, and they sat unused. You can still find a photo of the buses sitting in deep water. What happened in New Orleans had nothing to do with the dangers of hurricanes. It was all about unbelievably poor decisions made by politicians and private citizens who were fully informed. Hurricanes are not very dangerous to people who have even a sliver of common sense.

It’s not just possible to get complete protection from a hurricane; it’s extremely easy. Get in car. Drive to shelter. Wait. If no car, take bus or walk. Done.

You can go online and see photos and videos of cars in New Orleans, under water in front of houses. People had cars and still stayed where they were.

New Orleans has hosted generations of people who were trained by the left to depend on the government for everything. Many of them stayed home because they were afraid they wouldn’t be there to receive their welfare checks. You can look that up. Leftism trains people to be helpless, and this surely contributed to the death toll. People sat and waited for Uncle Sam to swoop in wearing a cape.

The same mentality was on display later at the Superdome and (after the Superdome’s flaws proved it unsuitable) the Astrodome, two stadiums where “survivors” were sheltered.

It’s amazing that the word “survivors” was used at the time. This is a great example of snowflakespeak. If you live through a hurricane, you’re not a “survivor.” That word should be reserved for things like shipwrecks and nuclear attacks. If you live through a hurricane, you’re really…nothing. You’re just a person who experienced a storm.

People at the stadiums fought and littered. They stole from each other. They raped and stabbed. They kept their surroundings filthy. One shot a National Guard soldier. They had to put barbed wire between the “survivors” and the National Guard, for the National Guard’s protection! The “survivors” stayed much longer than they should have. They kept complaining and demanding things long after they should have gone to work and gotten back to the affairs of normal life.

This is what social programs teach people to do. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese cleaned up after Fukushima in a few weeks, and we didn’t see angry Japanese citizens brawling in stadiums and demanding more help.

When Andrew came, I put my car in a concrete warehouse. I also protected my vehicles when other severe storms hit Miami. When Irma passed by the coast at my latitude, I put the vehicles in the garage and workshop. Do I deserve a patent or a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Even a goat is smart enough to head for shelter when it rains.

We have thunderstorms where I live. They are life-threatening…to people who stand outside waiting to be hit by lightning. I stay in the house. So far, I have survived. Life is full of risk. They key to survival is taking obvious steps to mitigate it.

I don’t know what more I can say about this. Either it’s already obvious, or you will never understand it.

I have two other significant concerns. First, the storm is projected to slow significantly once it makes landfall (overnight argh) around Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. The models then show it slowly meandering up the Peninsula, which means every Part of peninsula Florida would eventually be affected.

Every part of the peninsula would be…”affected.” Is that really a responsible way to put it? Yes, if the storm lands in Boca and then moves up to Georgia, it will at least rain everywhere on the peninsula. Some areas will get a real disaster, and others will get puddles. Isn’t a little nuance in order?

This slow meandering storm will pose a significant wind and storm threat but we could also see 2 to 3 feet of rain and life-threatening flooding.

Two to three FEET of rain? FEET? That has to be a typo. One foot would be a great deal. Hurricane Barry rained like crazy and didn’t hit two feet anywhere.

Are floods life-threatening? Yes. If you don’t evacuate or you try to travel in them. Otherwise, no.

I truly hoping people are making those inaccurate, cliche jokes next week (actually forecasts have a high degree of accuracy people just tend to remember the occasional miss like they do a rare field goal miss in a big game by a really good kicker), but there is nothing at this point that suggests that anything is going to change.

Actually, the forecast changed greatly ten hours after he published this conniption.

This mess is dated 7:00 a.m. on Friday, and by 5:00 p.m., the path was looking much better.

Was the information leading to the change unavailable to this connected Weather Channel employee, or was he just making things up?

It’s hard for me to understand how a grown male could get this emotional and lose his composure to the point where he ended up inciting panic instead of spreading information.

Here are two shots of computer models forecasters rely on. In these pictures, the storm is moving north. Try and reconcile them with, “Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard.”

This storm may actually end up farther offshore than the current forecast suggests, so “about to hit” was not a very responsible thing to say.

I just checked the 11:00 report, and Dorian’s path has, in fact, moved farther out to sea.

Here’s a great question: why is Marshall’s cry of distress still up, a day after the forecast changed? Where is the correction?

I hate to be the bearer of good tidings, but come on. Can we please take a minute and admit that the press is deliberately spreading terror?

I know things can change. I’m not stupid. They already have changed, and I’m writing about it. Right now, Dorian could start moving right toward my house at 50 mph, it could be a category 5 when it arrives, and it could sit here motionless for a week, erasing all traces of human occupation. Sure, that could happen. But shouldn’t a forecaster talk about what’s likely to happen and not obsess on the absolute worst and least likely case?

The NHC is a little less flaky, and here is what they now say:

Although the latest guidance has shifted a little bit eastward again this morning, there are still ECMWF and GFS ensemble members that do not forecast the northward turn so soon. On this basis, NHC prefers to shift the track forecast just a little bit to the right of the previous one, and the new official forecast lies along the western edge of the guidance envelope. This will allow for further adjustments in the track during future forecast cycles.

Translation: “This thing is really unlikely to hit Florida, but it could, so we are not moving the cone as far east as most models predict.”

Here is what Marshall Shepherd meant to say, I’m sure: “Dorian MIGHT hit Florida really hard, or it could blow off into the ocean and upset a bunch of shrimp.”

I guess I write like this every time a spot pops up on the weather maps, but it’s upsetting to see these people agitate the public. They’re like fire-and-brimstone preachers, screeching at the drunks in the back of the church in order to save them from hell. Their message is totally inappropriate for most of us. They treat all of us as though we were idiots. They exaggerate and threaten as if the truth wouldn’t motivate us at all.

People are reacting, Weather Channel. You can get off the soapbox now, believe me. Try buying a loaf of bread in Florida right now. Try buying bottled water. Stores are picked clean. You can relax and start telling the truth. The people who won’t prepare are never going to listen, and you’re just scaring the others.

You’re also blowing your credibility, such as it is. You blew it with me years ago. I wouldn’t trust Jim Cantore if he told me it was Saturday.

Because my dad had dementia, he was easily upset by things he saw on TV, and he really flipped out when he saw hurricane stories. I was trying to care for him, and he would badger me over and over about preparation and so on. I would reassure him, and he would forget, and I would have to do it all over again many times. The news heads know there are people who will get unnecessarily worried by their prancing and shrieking, and they do it anyway. That’s not right. They make life hard for caregivers and the people they look after, just to sell more ads. I suffered because of their thoughtlessness, and so did my dad.

It’s time for a great video classic. Remember the guy who pretended the winds were blowing him over while people walked around unconcerned behind him?

That’s Mike Seidel. Remember that name, if you insist on watching weather news. It might save you a stroke.

The Weather Channel published a ridiculous, completely dishonest defense. They said he had a hard time standing because he was tired and situated on wet grass. Okay. It’s really hard to stand on grass, isn’t it? And he had a great, yet hidden, reason for standing on something he supposedly found slick, when pavement was a few feet away.

Here’s another gem. Anderson Cooper stood in waist-high water to show how bad hurricane flooding was, while his crew filmed him from much shallower water a few feet away. The really wild thing about this is that he got indignant and tried to defend himself, making the whole situation even worse.

Why would an honest person do that? Imagine getting dressed and going to work, and having to deal with waist-deep water. Would you jump in and mess up your clothes and shoes, or would you stand on dry ground and say something like, “That water over there is waist-deep?”

Do I have to ask that?

Put down your drink before you watch this beauty. A reporter named Michelle Kosinski got in a canoe to show how deep flood waters were, and while she was talking to Matt Lauer (I will not go down that rabbit trail), a couple of guys walked by. The water was only up to their ankles. The woman put a canoe in ankle-deep water to fool the public.

It’s sad that people keep defending the panic apparatus.

If the storm comes here and gives Ocala a pounding, will it prove I’m wrong? Of course not. The nervous Nancys on TV would still be at fault for exaggerating, lying, and mischaracterizing. If their baseless predictions came true, it would just be a random thing, and we already knew that could happen.

Look at the models. Read the NHC site. Avoid TV at all costs. You can handle this just fine, because you’re not stupid. Mike Seidel and Anderson Cooper are not the kind of people you want talking to you during an emergency.

Here I am, loaded down with survival food, and the storm is becoming less of a threat by the hour.

Maybe I threw myself on that box of Pop Tarts for nothing.

UPDATE

The models now show Dorian missing Florida and Georgia entirely. One model shows it hitting South Carolina and continuing up the coast. The other shows it missing every state except for a brief blow to North Carolina.

The models predict winds in the area of 40-50 knots when the storm lands. Hurricanes start at 64 knots. Just saying.

The last measurement I saw for Dorian’s eye was 10 nautical miles. Small, small, small.

Latest Forecast not Comforting to Pessimists

Because it’s raining and I am stalling, and because it’s hard to stop looking at hurricane updates, I am here to report on the latest projection.

They are moving the projected track of Hurricane Dorian to the east. Is this a good thing? Yes. If you’re me. If you’re not me, then no, it’s not good at all.

The new projected track takes Dorian straight up the coast. People in Florida like to be near the water, so a big long scrape up the coast will cause problems for lots of Floridians.

It could be worse. Once you get north of Palm Beach, the population thins out, which is a remarkable thing, really. Why are so many people cramming into the Miami-Palm Beach corridor when they could be living in nice places like Sebastian?

People love cities. It’s like loving dysentery, but there you go.

If the eye of the storm is close to the coast, it will be at least 50 miles from me, meaning nearly nothing will happen here.

Here’s a funny thing about storm tracks. Not only is there a trend in the expected locations the storm will occupy; there is a trend in the shape of the projected track. The track is curling up like a finger over time, as if beckoning toward the Atlantic. I wonder if that means anything. I don’t mean supernaturally. If a track tends toward a certain shape, does that mean it’s likely to keep transforming into that shape? Will it have a sort of momentum that keeps pushing it to assume that form? I guess so.

Dorian’s cone of death used to be sort of a wind sock, without much of a bend in it. Now it has a pretty good bend in it. If it keeps bending, it will miss the coast. The ECMWF model now shows Dorian missing the coast. The GFS model shows it staying close to the water.

What if it misses the United States entirely? There’s a good chance it will. That would be really funny. I get tired of the Chicken Littles who revel in despair and worry. They nibble at me like ducks every time a hurricane appears. Some get irritated when I dismiss their dire prophesies. It’s pretty clear they actually get angry when disasters fail to materialize. Like Jonah, when Nineveh was spared. They definitely get mad when you refuse to join the anxiety fest. It would do them good to see their hopes for Dorian dashed.

It would do everyone in Florida a lot of good!

I’ve made some people extremely angry by criticizing hurricane hysteria. I actually quit an online forum because of it. Many people are legitimately in love with pessimism. That’s not an exaggeration. They hold it close and cuddle it, and they lash out at anyone who doesn’t want to pet it. All I can say is this: that’s not a baby you’re holding; it’s a stinking ball of pus, and I’m not getting any on me.

God tells us not to worry. That’s actually a commandment. It may well be my favorite, although I should really prefer the first commandment.

More news as it fails to develop.

You Can do a Lot with a Dirt Bike Engine Strapped to Your Back

Today has been wonderful.

My new leaf blower arrived. Finally, I know what a real leaf blower is like.

I got a handheld Husqvarna when I lived in Miami, and it was okay for blowing stuff off the porch, but it wasn’t right for a farm, so when I moved to Ocala, I got what I thought was a serious blower: a 56-volt Ego from Home Depot. The specs were right up there with their big gas jobs, and I wanted to be spared the aggravation of dealing with yet another carburetor choked by ethanol-polluted gas.

I tried to blow my oak leaves with the Ego, and the leaves actually dropped closer to the ground, as if to hang on, when the air hit them. I concluded that my leaves were impervious to blowing. After all, I was using what was supposedly a very strong blower, and the leaves went nowhere.

Last week, I ordered an Echo that puts out about 1100 CFM at over 200 mph. The Ego comes in at 600 CFM and 145 mph. Anyway, I put the Echo together and fired it up, and just as one Internet reviewer said, it was strong enough to dig holes in the yard. It ripped up thick mats of half-composted leaves and blew them through the air. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t put it down.

It didn’t remove every leaf, but it probably got 80% of them. I ended up with a huge pile in my driveway. It was so big, I quit trying to push the leaves. I got the utility cart and a snow shovel and filled the dump bed. I made several trips into the woods and dumped the leaves there. Beautiful.

In that photo, you can see my little freshly trimmed hedges. They look nearly normal now.

My yard has been ravaged by dead leaves I couldn’t move (without taking a rake and a shovel to the whole place), but now the grass has room to grow, so I expect to see some green soon. I’ve been uncovering areas using a harrow and a leaf sweeper, and they’re already coming back, so I expect the blower-cleared areas to do the same. In any event, the leaves won’t be a problem any more.

The blower is so strong, you can move limbs with it. You have to love that. I was blowing little branches all over the place.

My leaf problem has been a big weight on my back. It was a real stronghold. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get anywhere. Then I had some success with a harrow and yard sweeper, and now I have a blower that makes using the sweeper unnecessary. It may seem strange to see someone so relieved about a yard problem, but I feel like I just got released from prison.

I got that done, and I also sprayed a bunch of Spanish moss with a solution of baking soda, water, and Dawn. I put it in the pressure washer and let fly. I also hosed some algae on my chimney. Now we’ll see if it works. My cattle tenant says copper sulfate will do the trick, so I’ll try that if the baking soda fails.

My last achievement: I took care of some business involving the title of a house I’m selling.

I’m very, very happy. I feel like I’m a Champagne bottle and God just pulled out the cork.

Tomorrow I hope to get my moonroof fixed. God is very kind, and I think he will continue to help me.

Probate About to Begin

Today I decided to see if the court clerk would allow me to deposit my dad’s will. I had it with me, and I figured I should give it a shot even though I did not have a death certificate. The clerk has a sign that says they don’t give legal advice. But of course, they did.

They advised me against giving them the will at this point, and they mentioned various concerns regarding the way his property had to be treated. I took their advice, but I was a little disappointed. I don’t like having a will anywhere except in the hands of the court clerk.

I don’t mind getting legal advice from clericals. Sometimes they know things lawyers do not, even though they’re not qualified to practice. There is no point in being stuck-up and pretending you know everything.

I had been very concerned about the will, fearing it would be lost or that some other problem would pop up. Then I thought about it. As far as I know, the only thing that will go through probate is my dad’s car. Everything else has legally passed to me already, even though it won’t be fully documented until the death certificates are sent out. It appears that the will is relatively insignificant.

His attorney is a lifesaver. She showed me how to remove all of his real estate from probate during our first consultation, which was free. I did the work myself after I left her office. I was afraid to wait for our next meeting. The work took about half an hour and cost nothing at all.

I can’t help feeling bad because she got to do so little work. If I were a layperson, she could have billed me for more time. Those are the breaks, though. She has done some research for us since I last saw her, so she will definitely be compensated.

Today her secretary was talking about setting me up with a probate paralegal, but I don’t think I need one. To transfer a used car? Surely I can handle that. I really am a lawyer.

I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do with the car during the probate process. I plan to keep driving it, probate or not, unless the highway patrol comes and tells me to knock it off. My mom died, and nobody came and put a boot on her car. Same for my grandparents. I assume no one cares.

I got so used to ferrying my dad around, I quit driving my own vehicle. I still have it, but I have gotten really comfortable with his SUV. My vehicle is an enormous diesel pickup. I don’t really want to use it every time I leave the house.

There is no other beneficiary, so it’s not like I’m embezzling the use of the car from anyone. Maybe I’m embezzling it from myself. I probably won’t press charges.

Maybe I could blackmail myself and get money for not turning me in.

I donated his shower chair and the remaining medical supplies from his closet to the ALF, and I took all–ALL–of his clothes to the Salvation Army. I want all of that stuff GONE GONE GONE. It was depressing to see his favorite houseshoes on a shelf and his suits on hangers. When I put the suits in bags for the Salvation Army, I could smell him on them. They smelled the way his closet did when I was a kid. I don’t need that. This process is hard enough as it is.

While I was at the thrift store, I looked to see if they had anything good. Thrift stores are great places to buy cast iron cookware. The store was small and had very little that would interest anyone. I went next door to the Humane Society thrift store, and it was much larger. It was packed with merchandise. That upset me. People care more about dumb animals than they do about human beings. They should be ashamed. It’s despicable.

If it turns out the work I did on my dad’s real estate is sound, probate should be a snap. I was hoping to confirm it with the attorney this week, but my dad died before I made it to her office. I think we’re in the clear, though. It wasn’t a difficult legal problem to understand or solve. I’ll find out when I talk to her.

Because estate stuff isn’t my field, I will not take a chance and say I’m sure everything is fine. Good lawyers don’t shoot from the hip. They do research, or they refuse to issue firm conclusions.

This may be much easier than I had thought.

That’s all that’s happening right now. I still have a lot of pain, but it’s not like it was before. I love my dad very intensely. I feel like I lost a child. The last two days were hard, but no matter how strong grief is, time wears it down.

I was much closer to my mother than my dad, and she adored me. Somehow, losing her hurt less. Maybe it’s because my dad was so dependent and because he became so effusive with his love.

Today was good. I think tomorrow will be better.

I Will Find You, and I Will Apologize to You

I have an important warning for everyone. When it becomes public knowledge that you have worn blackface in the past, and it will become public knowledge, because apparently everyone has done it…stay away from Liam Neeson.

What a crazy news week. The governor of Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam, was accused of wearing blackface or a Klan hood in an ancient yearbook photo. His defense was remarkable: he said he wasn’t either of the men in the picture, but he did work up an act in which he applied shoe polish and impersonated Michael Jackson (a black man who worked in whiteface, and come to think of it, girlface). We also learned that one of his medical school nicknames was “Coonman.” This was also in the yearbook. I think calling yourself “Coonman” is considerably worse than moonwalking in black loafers, but no one has ever cared what I thought.

I can’t figure out what Northam’s defense theory is. It’s as if he were accused of stealing his neighbor’s silver, and he defended himself by saying it couldn’t have been him because he was busy shooting his neighbor’s cat.

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, a black man, got excited because it looked like he was in for a promotion. Then a woman from his past popped up and made a credible accusation of rape. His defense is that the woman doesn’t want him to become governor. I may be mischaracterizing that a bit, but that’s the impression I got.

To compound the scandal even further, the next person in line to become governor, Attorney General Mark Herring, says he, too, appeared in blackface. To make matters worse, I got this information from an article written by Fox reporter Alex Pappas, who, according to the latest Twitter buzz, likes to darken his face with Nutella and go shopping dressed as Diana Ross.

It’s possible that I made up that last part. I make things up, and George Soros doesn’t pay me a dime.

Is there anyone in America who hasn’t worn blackface? Can we all just get it out on the table and be done with it?

It’s notable that left-wing activists Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal never appeared in blackface. They have that going for them. They did, however, get jobs as professional black people simply by telling employers they were black. Evidently, they don’t check things like that. Both activists are white. I’m trying to figure out whether they got their jobs through white privilege, but it’s making my head hurt.

What’s next? Remember when John Kerry debated George Bush in a heavy coat of orange paint? Why wasn’t he excoriated for appearing in orangeface or Oompa Loompa face or circus peanut face? President Trump always looks a little orange. Maybe they should both be exiled. Or maybe they could form a mime duo and call it Orange Man Crew.

There is a purportedly black model named Winnie Harlow, and she has cashed in on vitiligo. She has de-pigmented patches of skin which just happened to arrange themselves in an attractive pattern. Isn’t she appropriating my culture, at least partially? I think she’s guilty of at least partial whiteface, or maybe Holsteinface.

I can’t believe we care about this stuff. If Ralph Northam were currently appearing as Coonman at a local cabaret, I would understand why people were upset, but he committed his crimes over 30 years ago. It is conceivable, to most of us, that a person could change in three decades. For instance, just to make up an example, a terrorist who mailed people bombs could become a close personal friend and ghostwriter for Barack Obama, as well as a tenured university professor. Why isn’t anyone considering that? Besides, things were very different back when Northam did his act. In the 1980’s, many human beings had what scientists call “a sense of humor,” so by today’s standards, their perceptions were quite warped.

You know who’s not talking about this very much? Jimmy Kimmel. The man who helped bring us “Girls on Trampolines” has become a respected advocate for female dignity, so somehow, he is capable of getting a pass from leftists when almost no one else can. Nonetheless, he isn’t going out of his way to remind people of the videos in which he painted his whole body brown and pretended to be NBA great and confirmed negro Karl Malone.

It wasn’t just blackface. It was blackbody. If blackface is a felony, blackbody should be a capital offense.

Leftists are blowing it. If they went after Kimmel, we would finally have a capital crime for which whites were punished disproportionately. Other than driving golf carts across greens.

Not only did Kimmel suit up in Shinola; he tried to sound black and pretended to be very stupid. But it was all in good fun. Whereas Coonman was making a serious political statement when he moonwalked drunk at parties.

We have gotten so crazy, it’s no longer possible to guess what will upset us next. You can’t alter your behavior to avoid persecution, because no one really knows where the boundaries are or whether they still exist.

I’ll bet we see a wave of blackface photos and memes now. Offenders will be exposed right and left. If I were Robert Downey, I’d move to Australia as a prophylactic measure. I’d rather live in the most physically miserable country on earth than be in America with the nut horde after me in earnest.

I don’t know who the governor of Virginia will when everything shakes out. By the time they weed out all the blackfacers in the line of succession, they may have to install a guy who paints center lines on highways. And by “guy,” I mean a human being who, as of this moment, believes…themselves?…itself?…zeself?…to be male.

If the earth were a train, I’d be pulling the brake cord right now and looking for a good place to jump off. I spend a lot of my time in a memory care facility these days, surrounded by people who don’t know their own spouses any more, and I would really like to be among the rational the rest of the time. How long will it be until they vanish like the passenger pigeon? In the future, asylums will be obsolete, because the behavior inside and outside them will be nearly indistinguishable.

I appeared in blackface once. I might as well close with that confession. Many years ago, when I was in junior high, a friend of mine helped me get made up as a gorilla from The Planet of the Apes. It was Halloween. Freaked the neighbors out good. I realize gorillas aren’t people, but we all know that when white people say “gorilla” or “monkey” or even “chair,” they’re really thinking the N-word.

I don’t know what will happen to me now, but one thing is for sure. I will never be the governor of Virginia.

I think this is my stop. Hold my beer while I jump.

Big Day Draws Near

This is a former draft I published months later. The publication date, January 9, 2019, is approximate.

Things are heating up here. My dad is determined not to go to assisted living, and I have started speaking very bluntly to him about the necessity to get it done. All his life, people have walked on eggshells around him, so he is not happy to hear me lay things out for him without flinching. In the past, he could shout people down or threaten to fire them, but now he has to engage and be confronted just like the rest of us mortals. There is a lot to tell him, because he has deteriorated so much. There are many clear indications that he needs to move.

When a parent first shows signs of dementia, caring for him isn’t a big deal. Maybe you put his pills in a dispenser for him, and you help him when the computer confuses him, but he still pays his own bills and drives to stores. That’s the left end of the spectrum. On the right end, just before death, there is an area in which you become a lot like a zookeeper. Maybe 30% of your effort is dedicated to things like managing finances and driving him to doctors. The other 70% of the time, your activities involve cleaning and sanitizing, and I don’t mean sweeping up cracker crumbs.

It’s stressful. Having to remove offensive materials and sanitize everything by yourself over and over takes its toll over time. To use a popular word, the lifestyle is not sustainable. Ways have to be found to end it before the caretaker has a nervous breakdown.

We are pretty far off to the right now. He can still talk. He knows who I am. He is still capable of a certain level of reasoning. He can’t look after himself at all, however. No driving. No using the PC. No using the cell phone. No walking except in the house and at medical facilities. No cooking. No cleaning. No laundry. Nothing business-related at all. He no longer has the ability to do any of these things.

I can’t take him out to lunch any more. I was taking him to restaurants three times a week, and sometimes I took him grocery shopping, but there is just no way now. It would take him 10 minutes to walk from the car to a table, and awful things might happen while we were out. I never put him in the car unless I have no choice. I have gear to protect his seat, and I have a big gym bag full of disaster supplies, including a complete change of clothes for him.

He sleeps fourteen or more hours a day. It seems like it depends on the medications he receives; I think some drugs keep him awake. The other day I had to get him sleeping pills. It seems strange, getting sleeping pills for someone who sleeps as much as he does, but when he can’t sleep, he wanders around at night and in the morning. He wakes me up, and he’s likely to get into mischief or fall.

He got up early a couple of days ago, and he kept asking me if he had any obligations to take care of. He said he was worried about his schoolwork. He was afraid he might have exams coming up. I couldn’t convince him that he didn’t have exams any more. I asked him about it the next day, and the whole thing seemed crazy to him. The delusion had passed. There will be others, though.

He made me very nervous when I gave him his first sleeping pill. To say it worked would be an understatement. It didn’t just make him drowsy. He seemed like he was stuck halfway between sleeping and waking. I had to take him to his bedroom in a wheelchair and roll him into bed. I was afraid he would quit breathing during the night, but that didn’t happen. Evidently it didn’t affect his breathing at all.

Unfortunately, he is still able to argue energetically (in well-worn circles). The main thing he argues about is his impending departure. He doesn’t want to go live with “old people” at an ALF.

I had to let him know that a lot of the residents were in better shape than he was. He can’t see himself as he is. If he were living at the ALF, he would be around people who are stronger and peppier than he is. After all, they’re not all demented. He would draw energy from them. He’s not interested. He says he will stay here until he dies. He doesn’t understand that this isn’t an option. Unless he dies suddenly, he will get so weak I’ll be able to have him moved to a facility without any real resistance.

My friend Mike, the hospice exec, says he will be much better off if he’s already in an ALF when he reaches the point where he has to go to a live-in hospice. The ALF will be able to warn me that his needs are changing, and I’ll have time to pick a nice place and work things out. If it happens while he’s still here, there will be a rush, and the choices may not be as good. Fortunately, barring a sudden change in the very near future, that’s not going to happen. He’s going to an ALF as soon as I can get him to submit.

It’s disheartening to hear the things my dad says about me now. He says I’m selfish and that I don’t love him. He says I’m obligated to be his caregiver because I’m inheriting from him.

Mike compares dementia to drunkenness; he says alcohol is truth serum, and dementia works the same way. He’s right. My dad keeps getting worse at hiding the disappointing parts of his personality. His less-laudable thoughts pop out more often now.

I am now very direct with him. I don’t berate him, but I no longer worry about offending him. When he tells me I’m a bad son whose job is very easy, I remind him that he has never taken care of anyone in his life. He had two children, and he has never changed a diaper. When his mother’s health fell apart and caused her to move into a home, he did nothing for her, apart from giving advice on getting government money. He didn’t pay her bills. He only visited twice. He never did her laundry or changed her bed or paid anyone who did.

He didn’t take care of my mother while she was dying from cancer. He didn’t bathe her or take her to the toilet. He went on business trips and left her by herself. While I’m on the subject, my mother said my sister never came by to help. She wrote about it in a diary, which my sister stole and threw out. My sister is actually proud of that. She bragged about it.

If I left my dad alone, he would die in a week.

When my sister got lung cancer, he gave her financial help, after securing a mortgage on her house, but that was all he did. He never went to the hospital with her or met her doctors.

When I was born, he was out playing pinball. He didn’t feel like waiting in the hospital, so he left.

When he tells me I have to be his full-time caregiver forever in order to be a good son, I remind him of these things. It’s very good to clear the air. There is still enough of him left to gaslight me, so it’s important to me to let him know I’m not taken in. You shouldn’t harangue parents about their failings, but when one tries to gaslight you, you need to state the truth. Ordinarily, I don’t dredge up things from people’s pasts and throw them in their faces, but when they gaslight and try to make innocent people out to be the villains, they obligate me to respond.

Referring to my status as the only beneficiary of his will, he told me I was well-compensated for the unpleasant work I do. That was ugly, somewhat ruthless, and untrue. I asked him if I had to continue cleaning up after him and waiting on him in order to inherit from him. I reminded him that I inherited from my mother’s side of the family without doing anything at all for them. My grandparents never demanded anything from me in exchange for what they left me. Who does that? It would be sick.

He told me it sounded like I didn’t enjoy spending time with him, and he asked me if that was the case. When I was younger, I flinched when he said manipulative things like that. Abusive people count on their victims to back down and let them promulgate their fantastic versions of the truth. Today when my dad asked me that question, I gave him what he asked for. I said I didn’t enjoy spending time with him. I said that when I was with him, I was always cleaning, working, or being yelled at. I said this was the result of his refusal to let me find him better care. When you’ve spent the day having someone curse at you and make revolting messes you had to clean up, you don’t feel like getting together in the evening for s’mores or family meals (which I would have to cook).

One great thing about these conversations is that he forgets them. Some of the sense of what we talk about may stick in his unconscious mind, but right now, he doesn’t remember the discussion we had this morning. Not unless this is an exceptional day. Sometimes he gives me ultimatums and makes threats. Sometimes he tries to get me to agree to ridiculous schemes in which we will sit down with a yet-to-be-named “expert” who will tell me he doesn’t need an ALF. It doesn’t bother me, because I know his plans are like sandcastles. They collapse in short order and leave no traces behind.

It may seem strange that I argue with him at all, given his memory problems, but there are two good reasons for telling him the truth. First, it does me good to confront him and shut down the gaslighting. Second, even though he forgets conversations, it’s still possible to have a little influence over him. If you repeat things enough, little things may soak in. He needs to hear about the benefits of assisted living and the untenability of our current situation, because it may push him toward a different mindset.

I try not to have long talks with him. One way to end a conversation is to tell him we’ll do whatever it is he wants to do, as long as he reminds me the next day. Because he tells himself he has no memory problems, he agrees. He feels like he got a concession out of me, and I feel good because I know we’re done.

Sometimes I just walk away and tell him I’m all done talking with him, but I prefer to work things out so the conversation ends in a more normal manner. I don’t really enjoy leaving the room and waiting for his shouts die down gradually.

I think most people lie to the demented. It’s more efficient. I don’t do that. I could tell him he’s right about everything. I could take him to the ALF for “the weekend” and then leave him there for good. I don’t believe a Christian should lie. If I choose to be truthful, God will help me.

I am hoping to hear from the ALF people tomorrow, and if God is with me, my dad will be a permanent ALF resident before the end of the month.

I wish things had turned out better for him, but I can’t help looking forward to the end of the distasteful behavior and disgusting jobs. As his abilities have declined, I’ve been getting little tastes of the future, and they are tantalizing.

I got out of the habit of reading newspapers because he likes to read in the bathroom and throw them on the floor by the toilet. After that, who would want to touch them? Now I’m reading them again. He can’t walk to the mailbox easily, and he gets up very late. I get the papers before he gets up, and I read them myself.

I do the puzzles. I missed that. He used to do them himself, but now he can’t get through them very quickly, so he doesn’t need all of them. I keep an eye on his puzzle backlog, and when he runs low, I pass on a puzzle and give it to him when I’m done with the paper.

I don’t mark up the Jumbles. I do those without writing anything, so I don’t have to mess them up.

I can go to the grocery alone now. I love that. I don’t have to stop over and over in the aisles and let him catch up. I don’t have to worry about him falling in the store or having some kind of hygiene problem.

Some day soon, I’ll be able to use the living room. I’ll be able to burn the two chairs we got from my late aunt in 1994. Right now it’s part of his domain. He has a lift recliner and a TV table. He eats his meals there. When I go anywhere near the living room, he shouts, “STEVE!”, and insists that I drop everything to attend to some whim. In the future, I’ll be able to sit down there and relax. I’ll be able to get a couch.

I’ll be able to leave home for more than three hours. I’ll be able to travel without the ordeal of finding him temporary care. I’ll be able to go to Miami to wrap up our affairs there. I’ll be able to have friends over without making them come to my upstairs lair. They won’t have to worry about being insulted or hit on when they see my dad. They won’t have to deal with him monopolizing the conversation as though they were his friends and not mine.

The house won’t stink. I won’t have to wipe the kitchen down with alcohol, glass cleaner, and sanitizing wipes every time I go in. I won’t have to worry about stepping in mucus or worse. I’ll be able to take his mattress to the dump.

His shadow over things has been receding for some time. First he lost the ability to jump into business affairs and cause problems. Later, it became hard for him to deal with stairs, so I got the second floor of the house all to myself. Then the other things started to fall into my hands.

Maybe once he moves, we’ll be able to restore our relationship to a degree. It will be nice to be able to sit and talk with him without a mop in my hand. I’m assuming he’ll cooperate. He may be too consumed with vengeance to have a normal conversation, or, if he resists too long, he may have no idea who I am.

It’s too bad he isn’t declining with more grace. Not my fault, though. And it was inevitable; he ordained it himself. Even now, I think he could do a good deal better if he wanted to.

When you’re an extremely angry, domineering person with a huge ego, and other people have spoiled you all your life, you are pretty much guaranteed an awkward descent toward death. You can spend your youth and middle age in denial all you want, and you can push other people to accommodate you, but there is no denying disability, death, and the reduction in clout that accompanies them.

The only important thing left to do in his life is a rapprochement with God. I am hoping Christians will work with him at whatever facility takes him. God keeps telling me he will be saved, so I know there is a plan.

Misgivings are Inevitable

My dad’s transition to the ALF may be happening tomorrow. We’re buying a one-week trial that I intend to turn into a permanent stay if at all possible.

I’m not all that thrilled with the way things are going.

They offered two choices: plain old ALF care and memory care. I want him in plain old ALF care because memory care is not as appealing to new residents. The other patients are in worse shape, and there are doors that keep the patients from wandering around. It would be easier to sell him on the main area, and he would enjoy it more.

I thought the best thing was to put him in the main area at first. Then, if necessary, he could be moved to the memory care unit. They didn’t agree. Evidently, his last stay gave them the idea he might run off, so they want him in memory care from day one.

Memory care covers a wide spectrum of mental states. Some patients are nearly vegetables. My dad is in bad shape, but he can talk and read. He knows who he is. He’s not rolling a wheelchair in circles, repeating the same nonsense syllables over and over. I think he would be fine in the main area for at least a few weeks.

I’m afraid the memory care unit will hit him in the face like a brick. Passing through their special red doors may feel like walking past the sign at the entrance to Dante’s vision of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

I don’t want him to suffer. On the other hand, I cannot continue caring for him by myself. I can’t exchange my life for his.

I find myself wondering if there is a better place. I suppose I’m grasping at straws. I should think about what I’ve told other people: I have learned that there is no good solution, so I need to be satisfied with the least bad solution available.

He could stay here a bit longer. I could spend $15,000 per month on 24-hour assistants until he finally sank to the point where there was absolutely no choice. Am I wrong to choose not to do it? It’s his money, after all.

I would still have no life, though. I would be policing the assistant every day. I would still have to put him in respite care over and over in order to travel for business, and he would fight. And there would be the extremely unpleasant experience of having employees share a house with us.

The big problem isn’t a lack of money. It’s a lack of relatives to share the burden. Maybe a gigantic sum of money could overcome that, but based on what I’ve seen of the elder-care industry, I doubt it. I think if you spent a hundred thousand dollars per month, hired help would still give you the same problems you get for three thousand. They just don’t care as much as relatives.

It seems I’m stuck with the ALF. There is a nicer one farther away, but it seemed impersonal, and the drive will make visiting him inconvenient.

I want to visit a lot. I hope to go every other day. Since he agreed to try it, I have come to realize his departure gives us an opportunity to have a normal relationship. Right now, he misses me even though he lives downstairs. I come down to clean up messes, drive him to appointments, and be insulted and yelled at, and then I go back upstairs. I don’t spend any more time with him than I have to. Once someone else is doing the dirty work, I’ll be able to sit down and have a normal lunch with him. We’ll be able to have conversations of a sort. Today we went for a short walk, and the sensation of novelty and relief made me realize how abnormal our relationship has become.

If it doesn’t work out, I can always look for another way.

It doesn’t matter that much. He keeps declining. If memory care is overkill right now, the situation will probably be very different in a month or two. If I make a bad choice, it probably will not affect him for long. That which is overkill today may be completely appropriate in March.

This stuff seems very real now. I used to read about the short life expectancy and the severe problems that come with the progression of the disease, and I believed what I read, but it’s different to see it coming to pass. It’s as if a long, hot summer I thought would never end is over and the first frost has come.

This is a nasty illness. It’s better to go from cancer or a heart attack. Where is the closure with dementia? You never settle anything. You battle the disease and the patient, all the way to the end.

This is how it is. It’s not good, but I accept it, and I’m glad I won’t be a full-time caregiver any more. I can’t prevent other people from reaping what they’ve sown. I’ll do my best, and if there is pain involved, I’ll keep on living. I’ve seen misfortune before.

I’ll keep reporting on things as they develop.

Plugin Eats Comments

I installed a new plugin to prevent spam comments. It sort of looks like it has been killing ALL comments without telling me. It has been deleting them, so I can’t tell how many comments have been wiped out.

I have made changes, so now it will hold comments it doesn’t like.

If you tried to comment recently and never saw your comment posted, sorry. I am working on it.

Counting his Chickens Before the Eggs Have Been Laid

I have a couple of interesting things to write about today.

First, Michael Avenatti keeps whiffing at the plate. He is coming apart like Charlie Sheen at a Mormon retreat.

Avenatti represents porn actress (“star” is not an appropriate word to use for people who compete for the worst jobs in the movie industry) Stormy Daniels. She has sued Donald Trump based on two legal theories. One is that Trump defamed her by suggesting she lied about him. The other is that a nondisclosure agreement Trump got her to sign is invalid.

When you’re a public figure, which, regrettably, Daniels is, it’s hard to sue for defamation. Not only do you have to prove someone lied about you; you have to show they did it with malice. Daniels couldn’t even clear the first bar. Her suit was rejected because Trump’s remarks concerning her were just bloviation, or “rhetorical hyperbole.” True or untrue, his remarks were not serious statements of fact.

Daniels has to pay about $300,000, including money for filing a meritless claim. No matter how you look at it, this reflects more harshly on Avenatti than Daniels.

Avenatti went to a very good law school and graduated first in his class, yet somehow, he wasn’t able to get a run-of-the-mill tort case before a finder of fact. The case never got off the ground. He should have seen that coming. A law student shouldn’t screw up this badly. I know. I did better work, before federal judges, when I was in law school.

I don’t get Avenatti. Doesn’t his academic success mean anything? How can a person who did so well in law school do such a poor job? As far as I know, the most successful lawyers are not all top students, because law school and the practice of law are not the same thing, but you would still expect a valedictorian to be able to read and apply the most basic rules of defamation law. The problems with Avenatti’s case would come up, literally, within the first four or five minutes of research.

Maybe he’s a bad lawyer. It looks that way. It’s hard to see how a good lawyer could do something this stupid. He has made a lot of money, but successful lawyers are not always good lawyers. Look at Michael Cohen. The world is full of terrible lawyers who got rich fast by chasing ambulances, running firms that were really referral services, lobbying, and so on. Maybe Avenatti is like John Edwards. Maybe he’s just an ambulance chaser with a lot of gall.

Here’s the other thing I find interesting about the legal fees award: Avenatti committed a gross, public ethics violation in a ludicrous attempt to defend himself. Responding to Twitter users who were ridiculing his failures, he called Trump’s lawyer (who beat him) “dishonest.”

Here is the text of his remarkable tweet:

Charles Harder and Trump deserve each other because they are both dishonest,” Avenatti tweeted. “If Stormy has to pay $300k to Trump in the defamation case (which will never hold up on appeal) and Trump has to pay Stormy $1,500,000 in the NDA case (net $1,200,000 to Stormy), how is this a Trump win?

It is unethical for one attorney to insult another. That may be hard to believe, if you think TV shows are a good guide to what goes on in law practice, but it’s true. Take a look at what the Florida Bar says about it:

Whether orally or in writing, lawyers should avoid vulgar language, disparaging personal remarks, or acrimony toward other counsel, parties, or witnesses.

One idiot in Florida got suspended for two years, simply because of his rudeness. It’s not a joke.

Avenatti works in other states, but I’m sure the rules are the same there.

How can you be at the top of your law school class and be unfamiliar with a basic rule of ethics?

I can’t figure out how he did so well. Did he blackmail his professors to give him good grades? It’s a mystery.

In his unethical attack on Trump’s lawyer, Avenatti said something else that was bizarre. He suggested Trump had actually lost. You just read it. He asks how Trump can claim victory if he gets $300,000 in fees in the defamation case and loses $1.5 million in the NDA case. The big problem with this argument is that Trump has not lost the NDA case, and there has been no $1.5 million verdict.

What on earth is Avenatti talking about?

He reminds me of a scene from an Albert Brooks movie. In the movie, Brooks and his wife sell everything they have, buy an RV, and start touring the country. They plan to live on their savings. At their first stop, Las Vegas, the wife loses everything playing roulette. While Brooks is yelling at her, she says, “I’ll win it back.”

Avenatti is saying, “I’ll win it back.” Actually, it’s worse. He’s basically saying he already won it back.

Meanwhile, Daniels says she was not behind the defamation lawsuit. She said he filed it without her consent. That’s unethical, too.

I admit, I don’t know the rule he broke, and I don’t remember being taught that it was unethical to file suits without getting permission, back when I was busy getting an easy A in Ethics, but come on. The rules also don’t say it’s unethical to show up in court naked, but it’s still pretty obvious that it’s a problem. He created a giant debt for this woman. She may have to take her clothes off 50 or 60 times to square it. You can’t do that to a client!

Some things are so obviously unethical, it’s not necessary to draft a rule to prohibit them. Putting a bomb in opposing counsel’s car is unethical. Hitting on a judge to get favorable rulings is unethical. Filing a lawsuit without asking your client for permission is so far out of bounds, I doubt ethics experts have even considered the question.

No, they probably have. There are so many crazy, untalented, desperate lawyers; I’m sure Avenatti isn’t the first to pull this trick.

I predict Avenatti’s other lawsuit will fail, and I can more or less guarantee that he, not Stormy Daniels, will be paying the $300,000 that just got awarded. If he doesn’t, she may hire a real lawyer and sue him. If she does, I hope he hires a real lawyer instead of trying to represent himself.

Unbelievable. How did a public figure this strange even come to exist?

Second thing for today: my dad is enrolled in hospice care.

If you have an older relative who has a serious medical problem that MIGHT be fatal soon–just MIGHT–you may be able to get a lot of free hospice stuff from Medicare. I’m surprised at what we got. We’re getting a social worker, nursing visits, possible CNA help, an oxygen concentrator (which he doesn’t need), a box of emergency morphine, and a lot of other things I can’t remember.

They’re going to work with him for a few weeks, and if it appears that he’s declining badly, he’ll stay in the program.

The only question now is this: will it make my life easier or harder?

My dad’s care is going to be pretty good no matter what. The real purpose behind the effort I’m making is to save my own life. I need backup and rest. When people come to your house to help a disabled relative, it’s not helpful unless you can stay out of it. If you have to sit and watch, or you have to answer questions, or if you have to participate in any way at all, it adds to your burden.

We’re going to see what happens. If they make things worse, I’ll send them packing.

Meanwhile, he’s all set up for a brief ALF stay. I’m going to drop him while I travel for a couple of days. I may give him up for more time than I have to. Why not live a little? Anyway, he’s going to give it a try, and this will help him get used to the idea.

He’s going to be in an ALF eventually, unless he dies suddenly. Within a few months, he will have to go, so he might as well start accustoming himself.

I’m surprised they’re bringing emergency drugs. They like to have such things in the house in case he has a sudden need. He’s very lucky I’m the one caring for him. I’m not going to break into the stash on the first day, turn off the phone, and take all the morphine. Not everyone in the family has my self-control.

When my mother had cancer, we had to buy a locking box for her Dilaudid. The day after she died, my aunt showed us the box. It was open and empty. That didn’t take long.

I’ve been reading about the nonexistent “opioid crisis.” There is no crisis for responsible people, unless it’s the crisis of being unable to get drugs they need. The crisis people are the addicts. The government is taking a gun control-type approach, attacking law-abiding people in order to control the lawless. They’re cutting back on prescriptions and even counting people’s pills. Sounds smart, but in reality, addicts will still get whatever they want. I say that as the brother of an addict. You could seal my sister in a steel box on Mars, and within an hour, she would have at least two bottles of Vicodin.

Addicts are phenomenal networkers. Addiction is an incredible motivator, and they learn fast. They have networks of friends and doctors with foreign-sounding names. They know who will write prescriptions and who won’t. They know which pharmacists are friendly and which ones are smart. They have a remarkable underworld the rest of us never see.

A whole lot of the opioids addicts take are coming in from China. Tormenting the rest of us at CVS won’t have any effect on their supply. If I were an addict, I would bypass the medical system entirely. It’s expensive, it requires a lot of acting, and it leaves a paper trail. No one ever gets prosecuted for doing fentanyl or heroin they bought on the street, and when you buy it, you don’t have to wait in line at the pharmacy.

In view of the idiotic restrictions we are now seeing, I am shocked to learn that someone is about to bring me morphine in a box. I didn’t even ask for it, and I have no idea what I would use it for. They didn’t check to see if I was an addict. They just said, “Here it comes.”

The world has never made much sense. I should learn not to be surprised so easily.

I hope hospice works out. In any case, it will be good preparation for the future, because he WILL need it before long.

It’s nice to get “free” stuff from Medicare, but I still hate socialism. I would much rather have the crazy taxes he has paid throughout his life. We could pay for his medical problems and have enough left over to buy a big house.

I’m sure I’ll write about our experiences.

More

Someone must have reminded Avenatti about the rules of ethics and the elements of defamation, because he deleted the tweet in which he called Trump’s lawyer dishonest. My bet: Trump’s lawyer called him up and gave him a law lesson plus the threat of a severe paddling.

Avenatti has spent the day firing off desperate, frenzied tweets trying to shift the attention to other people’s supposed shortcomings and misdeeds. It’s not a good look, and it doesn’t work. All he’s doing is calling attention to the blood in the water.

If You Investigate Anyone Long Enough, You Will Find a Crime

For a long time, I’ve been critical of the non-thinking extremists who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment, but it’s starting to look like they might finally have a hook to hang their hopes on.

One of the unfortunate characteristics of the impeachment enthusiasts is their lack of familiarity with the law and the concept of due process. They seem to think you can impeach a president simply because you don’t like him or because he does things you disagree with. Of course, this is not the way it works.

The Constitution says, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Leftists need to be aware that this list does not include things like getting a draft deferment for bone spurs, banning travel to the US from Muslim countries, being rich, enforcing immigration laws, marrying models, or calling backward African countries mean names. You have to do something illegal in order to get in trouble. For example, Bill Clinton committed perjury.

It’s also important to point out that impeachment is not removal from office. If it were, Clinton would have been forced out. Impeachment is like being indicted. The House impeaches and refers the matter to the Senate, and the Senate functions as a court and holds a trial.

A lot of people who know virtually nothing about the law think Trump should be impeached based on “collusion” with Russia prior to the election. That’s wrong. Collusion is not a crime. If Trump had wanted, he could have made a promise to collude one of his campaign planks, and no one could have done anything about it.

Robert Mueller is investigating collusion; that’s true. But that’s not because collusion itself is illegal. It’s because it’s a public policy concern. We don’t want the Russians or anyone else deciding who wins our elections, even if they do it legally. We were okay with it when Obama put up websites that allowed the Chinese to contribute to his campaign without security checks, but now, somehow, we care.

Several people have been indicted, but none of them have been indicted for collusion per se. They have been indicted for illegal acts which are not collusion.

Some of those acts were not even committed until Mueller applied skillful pressure.

Mueller can’t prosecute anyone for collusion, so it’s a little weird that he was appointed in the first place. Why appoint someone to investigate something which is not a crime? I don’t know the answer. One would expect Congress to take up such matters, just like they get involved in things like protecting kids from music albums with dirty lyrics.

Here’s something else that’s weird: we don’t have a complete description of the things Mueller is allowed to investigate. Why is that? The secrecy is disturbing. Isn’t this the kind of thing the Bill of Rights was supposed to prevent? It reminds me of The Count of Montecristo.

We have some snippets from Rod Rosenstein, indicating that Mueller is allowed to see if Paul Manafort “committed crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.” That makes it seem like there is a crime called “collusion,” but there isn’t. The wording is unfortunate. It should say, “committed crimes while colluding.” As far as I know, you can collude all you want, but if you commit crimes while you’re at it, you have a problem.

Rosenstein may have the mistaken belief that collusion is a crime. Let’s assume he thinks it is. The fact that he mentioned it in a memo to Mueller doesn’t mean anything at all. Rod Rosenstein doesn’t write our laws. He may have made a huge blunder.

Collusion could involve things like bribes, fraud, illegal contributions, and so on. On the other hand, it appears it can be done without committing any crimes at all. Banning collusion itself would probably be unconstitutional, based on all sorts of issues, including the right to free expression and the right to free association. It would also be awfully hard to define collusion well enough to put it in a written statute.

If I were wrong about this, surely someone would have pointed to an applicable law by now. The left is jam-packed with people who desperately want collusion to be a crime, and many of them are attorneys, but if anyone has come up with such a law, it has not made the news.

I’m no expert, and I have done no research, but I do have a little common sense, and besides, Alan Dershowitz agrees with me. He’s a pretty sharp guy, and I have considerable faith in him.

No one has been indicted for “collusion.” All the people who have gone down have been indicted for other things Mueller discovered while he was supposedly investigating collusion.

That’s where Trump’s problem comes in.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen got himself indicted for a number of things. None could be considered collusion. Mueller had some issue with Cohen, which has not been revealed, and somehow the FBI was able to turn it into a warrant of astounding reach. Generally, law enforcement can’t grab all your files and then go through them to see if there’s anything incriminating. The Constitution calls that “unreasonable search and seizure.” They have to come up with evidence that you may have something juicy, and they have to limit the scope of their warrants. This is especially true when they go after a lawyer’s files, because lawyers and clients are entitled to confidentiality. In Michael Cohen’s case, they were able to barge in and take everything he had.

The feds have Cohen hanging by a hook in his nose, and Cohen knows just about everything about Trump’s dumbest move.

Trump apparently slept with Stormy Daniels, an aging porn star, and he directed Cohen to pay her to go away. The feds say this is a violation of federal campaign law, because it constitutes a contribution.

It’s a little odd. If Trump paid the money, the payment was legal, because you can spend whatever you want on your own campaign. If Cohen footed the bill, it’s a felony, but Cohen, not Trump, is the criminal. We are now being told that Cohen paid and Trump reimbursed him secretly. That brings up a question: is it legal to contribute to your own campaign through a straw man? I have no idea.

What if Trump expected Cohen to absorb the loss? Is there such a thing as “conspiracy to make an illegal campaign contribution”? Maybe that would be a crime. Still, Trump was relying on a licensed attorney’s advice. Is making a bad decision based on bad legal advice, and then committing a highly technical violation of obscure laws, something that would ground a felony conviction?

Dinesh D’Souza went to prison for straw man contributions, but he was contributing to another person’s campaign, and his scheme was his own idea. He didn’t have a leg to stand on. Trump spent money on his own campaign, which is legal, and he did it on the advice of an attorney. Can he get indicted for telling Cohen to pay, when he secretly intended to reimburse him? Is this something election law expressly prohibits? Does it fall under the general scope of catch-all laws againt fraud? If so, impeachment may be on the table after all.

Trump arrived on the scene as an amateur politician. When his campaign started blowing up, he had no idea what he was doing. He was probably amazed to see himself succeeding, and he had to rush around to find a team to guide him. In all likelihood, he knew very little about campaign laws when he paid Daniels off. He probably thought it was completely legal. Obviously, he did not consult a qualified attorney. Cohen is a fixer; he went to the country’s worst law school, and he is probably not an expert on anything. Election law is a specialty, and Cohen is not someone you can rely on to help you avoid violations.

Dershowitz (a Democrat) actually does research, and he thinks Trump has not committed any crimes. He knows much more than I do, so maybe I should just listen to him and leave it at that. Still, I have not seen anyone discussing the issues I’m bringing up, and they seem very obvious to me.

If I were on the impeachment bandwagon, I would be trying to find ways to go after Trump for fraud or conspiracy. If I were Mueller, I would be exploiting this angle. If I were a New York state prosecutor in Manhattan, I would be waiting for Mueller or other federal prosecutors to come up with something, and then I would see if I could do anything under state law (because if I were a New York state prosecutor, I would almost certainly be a leftist).

Let’s see. What would I ask?

1. Was the payment to Daniels a campaign contribution? If not, everyone goes home. If so, on to question 2.

2. Did Trump direct Cohen to make the payment? If not, Trump goes home, and maybe Cohen goes to prison. End of story. If so, on to question 3.

3. If Trump directed the payment, did he say up front that he would reimburse Cohen? If so, things look pretty good for Trump, and maybe Cohen has an out because he didn’t actually make a contribution, but we still have to ask question 4.

4. Is it illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man? If so, trouble for Trump and Cohen. Now comes question 5.

5. If it’s illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man, can you be held accountable, as an ignorant layman, when you do it on the advice of your inept attorney? If not, Trump goes home, and Cohen faces the bar association and the feds. If yes, Trump has a problem, and impeachment may happen, if Democrats decide that alienating 50% of the country and focusing America’s attention on Trump and not their own message are good ideas.

6. If Trump is impeached, will he leave office? No. Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t care at all. It’s barely conceivable that he might step down under immense pressure, in order to allow a more viable candidate to run in 2020, but that doesn’t sound like Trump. Impeachment might make him more viable, because angry Republicans would make an unprecedented effort to get to the polls to teach Mueller and the Democrats another lesson.

7. If he doesn’t leave office, will be be convicted in the Senate and forced to quit? No. The GOP controls the Senate.

Whatever the law and facts turn out to be, it doesn’t seem likely that Trump will be impeached. It’s a bad political move for the left. I think they’re stuck with him until at least January of 2021, no matter what.

It’s interesting to see the disastrous effect the ill-advised special counsel appointment has had. At the start, you would have thought Mueller would look for evidence of illegal tactics used in collusion, and that would have been the end of it. Far from it. Mueller has turned his mandate into an excuse to attack every close Trump associate with regard to every misdeed they have committed in their entire lives. I didn’t see that coming. It didn’t happen in Watergate or the Ken Starr investigation. Think of the people Ken Starr could have put away, had he been as ruthless as Mueller.

When Mueller was appointed, Trump associates who had nothing to do with Russia must have felt safe. They didn’t realize he was going to do his best to get them prosecuted for everything they had ever done.

Imagine being a Trump associate who did wrong in the past and then cleaned up his act before getting caught. Think how you would feel. At first, you would feel wonderful about cleaning up your life, and you’d be looking forward to a life of atonement and safety, Then after Mueller started taking people down for things completely unrelated to Russia, you would realize your neck was on the chopping block after all, simply because you decided to work with Trump.

The Mueller investigation is a dream come true for deep state Democrats who work for the feds. They have carte blanche to investigate people they hate, in just about every area of their lives, and they’re doing it. They’ll get some people indicted, and they’ll ruin the rest financially, because they have to pay lawyers.

Think how discouraging this will be to other conservatives who may want to work for GOP candidates. If you’re a big wheel, by the time you hit 45, you will probably have done something a prosecutor can work with. At the very least, you will have done something a deep stater can use as justification for investigating you and making you sink your entire net worth into attorney fees. There go your kids’ college funds.

When they can’t find old crimes, the investigators can create new ones. They put people in front of microphones and ask them hard questions requiring supernatural recall, and when they make mistakes, perjury charges become a threat. Once that happens, the feds make the terrified witnesses sing for their freedom. It’s a very nasty business.

The Mueller appointment was a stupid move. Congress could have handled this just fine, and they should have. After all, they’re the ones who make the laws. If reform is required, Mueller and the FBI are powerless to implement it. It requires legislation. Collusion is not a crime. If we need laws to limit it, Congress, not the FBI, will have to make them.

Wouldn’t it have been something if Ken Starr had acted this way? Federal prisons would have had to stay open late to process Clinton cronies. Whitewater, Hillary’s illegal enemies list, the corrupt use of Arkansas state troopers to procure women for Bill…the prosecutions would have gone on for years.

I hope we’re not seeing a pattern for future special counsels, but I guess we are. They will all want to measure up to Bob the Terrible.

Planning to run for office some day? I admire your guts. Maybe you should just stay in the private sector.

Glimpse of Freedom for Me

Today I passed a milestone. I took my dad to visit an assisted living facility.

People in my shoes refer to assisted living facilities as “ALF’s,” so I will do the same.

Back in September, I checked out a few places because I knew my dad’s condition was going to force him out of the house before long. I went to several places in the Ocala area, and I also visited one farther south. I learned a lot. None of the places I visited were bedlam-style asylums, but I saw that the system was tiered. The bottom tier is somewhat grubby. The top tier is made up of resorts that would be fine places for able people to visit, were the old people to be cleared away.

I thought my best bet was the top tier. The nicest place I visited was beautiful. It has very high ceilings, lots of windows, and an abundance of new paint and tile. It seemed to be run well. I felt that a person of my dad’s means, accomplishments, and social standing might be best served by an institution of this grade.

ALF’s are divided into sections for advanced dementia patients and individuals who are merely old and in need of some help. The main sections are a lot like retirement communities, except there is more of a communal atmosphere. They have common rooms for things like TV, reading, and puzzles, and they have dining halls. The memory care areas are less like apartment buildings and more like hospitals. If my experience is any indication, they are more likely to smell.

The worst place I visited was the memory care section of a lower-tier facility. The inhabitants were in a bad way. The attendants were busier than they were in the main area, because they had to watch the patients constantly. It was more closed off than the main area, because the patients had to be confined for their own good. My dad doesn’t need that level of care yet, thank God.

I called around this week, and I decided to take another look at the second-nicest ALF, which is close by. It’s not as new or fancy as the ritzy place down south, but the people are very nice, and it’s easy to get to if I want to take him to lunch or a doctor’s appointment.

It’s better than I remembered. The dining room, in particular, made a good impression. It looks like a restaurant. They have nice furniture, tablecloths, and waiters. When mealtimes roll around, he can plop down and boss people around, ordering whatever he wants as long as it’s on the menu. I wouldn’t mind eating there myself. It would be more convenient than doing dishes.

The rooms are nice. They’re just like hotel rooms. He would have a fridge and a giant TV. One nice thing about it is that they don’t have DirecTV, which is what he has now. Don’t listen to Rob Lowe. DirecTV is a nightmare. It’s torture even for a person of sound mind. The system is maddeningly slow, most of the channels are pay-per-view or shopping channels, the receivers have to be cycled over and over because they quit, and the picture disappears when it rains hard. The ALF has a normal cable system with 80 channels.

I can’t tell you how many times my dad has bellowed for immediate help with DirecTV. We had two sessions today, and one lasted about 15 minutes.

The more I think about it, the more I think it will work. The nicer place is nicer, but the half-hour drive would be a nuisance. If he goes to the ALF we visited today, it will be no trouble at all to visit him or take him out to do things. That’s a huge plus, because his main gripe is the he won’t see me as much. He doesn’t say it, but I know.

I can understand why he’s upset. If I had a son who jumped up and catered to my unreasonable whims seven days a week, day and night, I would want him around, too. I hope there is more to it than that, but in any case, I am a gigantic convenience to him.

I don’t care if he’s here nearly every day, as long as I can take him back in the afternoons. The ability to dump him and go home and clean up and sleep, all by itself, is worth the cost of the ALF. Until today, I had been thinking of ALF’s as places where people become separated from relatives and go on to live separate lives, but I have realized that it doesn’t have to work that way. You can use an ALF as a place to deposit a parent most of the time, to preserve your sanity, while taking him out regularly to keep him from feeling abandoned.

I don’t know how hard it is to put up with a routine of checking a parent out and taking him back. Maybe it’s too stressful for them. I hope not. You don’t want to jam someone into a home and then wait at a distance while he dries up and dies.

The cost is not that bad. Somewhere in the thirties. Obviously, we have to spend whatever is appropriate, but money is money, and getting good value for what you spend is always a blessing. The general rule in life is that one does not want to spend more than one takes in, and if one can observe that rule even in retirement, without cutting corners, it’s a great thing.

He is still unhappy about the ALF plan, but as of the moment, he is willing to do it. He has to do it, so he needs to adjust. Things are going to get worse and worse. It’s not like his doctor is going to give him a pill next year, cure his dementia, and turn him into Brad Pitt. He is going to have to have an ALF. Before long, he’ll have to move to the memory care section of an ALF. I don’t really know what comes after that. Maybe it’s the last stop. Anyway, he keeps saying he doesn’t like it, but often you have to shut up about what you like and choose from what’s available. When he was drafted, he didn’t get to stay home because he didn’t like it. You make tough choices, or someone makes them for you.

I’ll send him for a short stay when I travel this month, and we’ll see what he thinks. If he likes it, we can sign him up, and then we’ll be all set. Afterward, I’ll spend several days dancing in the front yard. The house will be clean. I’ll be able to have a coherent thought once in a while. I’ll still be able to see my dad, but I’ll be able to send him back to his comfy room (which someone else cleans up) before the sun gets low in the sky.

I won’t have to do 10 extra loads of laundry every week. I’ll be able to use the refigerator in the kitchen instead of the special, clean, locked fridge in the laundry room. I’ll be able to sit in the living room instead of hiding upstairs. The inside of the car won’t have to be cleaned with bleach and disinfectant wipes all the time. I won’t have to sit in the upstairs room cringing as I listen to the sound of him blowing his nose over and over on the living room floor. I may not be able to stand the freedom.

I could conceivably have a guest. I could get on a plane and visit someone. I remember doing things like that.

My dad likes to nag me about marriage. The other day I told him no woman would move into this house with me with things as they were. He said she could take over cleaning up after him. He really said that.

Truthfully, I am not interested in romance with women in my age group. I feel like I missed the marriage boat. I’ve seen my dad surrounded with the paraphernalia of old age and decrepitude, and I am not eager to start a marriage with a woman who already has the starter kit. It’s one thing to marry a young woman and get old with her. It’s another thing to start out with a first wife who reminds you of the time your grandmother forgot to close the door while she was getting dressed for church. With sex and reproduction off the table, I’d be better off splitting a house with a close male friend. We would have the same tastes in everything, and each of us would have someone close by in case he had a heart attack or a stroke.

When you live with another man, you never get the silent treatment because you used the special decorative soap or said you didn’t want to go to the cat show. You don’t have to ask if it’s okay to spend $1500 on a third rifle in the same caliber. You don’t have to tell people they don’t look fat when they are clearly obese. Another man will never say nice things to you and then stare at you, waiting for you to say the same things back even though you don’t mean them.

Another nice thing about men is that they forgive, for real. We are too lazy to carry grudges. I would say maybe 20% of women are able to forgive.

Men who live together don’t have to recycle or eat salad. Cans, bottles, newspapers, batteries, motor oil…it all goes in the kitchen trash, and you never have to eat arugula.

I think men and women look at marriage very differently. A woman can be very happy with a man who is completely unattractive, as long as he gives her financial security and a face to talk to. Men are not wired for that kind of relationship. Women, to be honest, are a pain to put up with as live-in companions. You have to have something beyond friendship to make it work. Romance helps you forget the sacrifices and annoyances. It can even make the irritations seem charming.

Women are harder to get along with than men, and that’s why they can’t stand each other. Men would feel the same way about women, but for romance.

I can write these things because I’m not married. If I had a wife, I’d have to sleep in a hotel tonight. Even though I’m right.

To get back to the point, I feel that my dad was mistaken to hope that a woman would marry me and then cheerfully assume all responsibility for his messes. I don’t think that kind of assumption has been reasonable since about 1750.

If things work out, I may have something resembling a life by the end of January. It may be a permanently celibate life in a house with no pictures on the walls and no special decorative soaps, but I expect to enjoy it all the same.

Neil DeGross Tyson?

I guess everyone on earth will eventually be accused in the #MeToo frenzy, and then, having run out of scapegoats, we will have to start accusing each other’s pets.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is currently in the grip of the feminist thumbscrews. The accusations don’t look all that exciting.

The first one came in October of last year. A woman who used to know Tyson claimed she was drugged and raped.

The alleged victim bills herself as a “renowned musician, healer, and teacher.” As soon as you read that, the bells start to go off. It’s not the kind of thing stable people tend to put on resumes. If you are renowned, you don’t have to tell people. That’s what “renowned” means. If you’re a real musician, you will generally identify yourself with an instrument instead of making a vague claim that looks like puffery. If you’re a doctor, you will say so. “Healer” sounds like someone who hangs around health food stores and has a collection of magic crystals. If you’re really a musician and healer, can you possibly have time to be a teacher? Maybe. If you’re a substitute teacher.

People who have actual careers can usually come up with unambiguous titles for themselves. Someone I went to law school with put up a self-worship website that listed his qualifications something like this: “attorney, warrior, scholar, poet, humanitarian, activist, inventor of the doorknob, Navy SEAL, 93rd-degree black belt in all known martial arts, astral projectionist, minor deity, leaper of tall buildings in a single bound, and close personal friend of the Pompatus of Love.” In reality, he was a failed attorney on his way to an endless suspension based on a complete refusal to do any work or respond to bar inquiries. He has been on suspension for around eight years, which is maybe seven years and nine months longer than they usually last.

The accuser has a music page on Amazon. I looked up one of her CD’s, and it has 4 reviews. Enough said. I can’t find anything online identifying her as a working teacher.

She says he gave her something to drink, and that all she remembers is finding herself back at work the next day. Look at this:

The ONLY way you could EVER be with a Black Goddess, a true Celestial Being, not just one that talks about them, would be by DRUGGING HER, THEN DRAGGING HER TO YOUR BEDROOM, WHILE FULLY UNCONSCIOUS, TAKING OFF HER CLOTHES, AND THEN, WHO KNOWS WHAT WITH HER, OR FOR HOW LONG, WHEN SHE AWAKENS, UNABLE TO MOVE, YOU CONTINUE YOUR DEMONIC ACTS.

Okay.

He gave her something to drink. She indicates she doesn’t know what happened after that. Somewhere else, she said she woke up naked with Tyson on top of her.

She says she doesn’t know how she got home, and she doesn’t recall waking up. She just remembers enough to get Tyson in trouble.

So you’re unconscious because you’re on some substance or other, you come to briefly, and then you pass out again. Then you tell your story and think people will find it so credible they’re willing to go along with the destruction of a man’s career and marriage. I dunno. If you had a good story, and you were willing to go public, why didn’t you call the police and have evidence taken?

How do you know you didn’t get drunk deliberately, black out, and then imagine the battery? Grad students have been known to drink and take drugs.

I feel like a person who is willing to make a rape accusation has a responsibility to preserve whatever evidence she has. “Believe the woman” is a fun slogan for non-thinking individuals to toss around in order to get social media likes, but in reality, life can never work like that. Our legal system runs on evidence, and it has to be that way. The alternative is deliberate systematic injustice on a nationwide scale.

Here is something she wrote about herself, for her website:

Tchiya is a “Keeper of the Dream”. The healing energy of her life is illuminating her music. Her natural singing voice & lyrics embody the spirit of beauty and variety as well as metamorphosis of rebirth, love & hope. The lion is her ally. Tchiya embraces the lion and learns to balance power, intention and strength with the feline grace and majesty. Her heartfelt change is transformational, leading the way to rebirth and clarity – that we are all related to one another.

Wow. I think she got a hearty dose of the liberal education complex’s self-esteem Kool-Aid.

I’ve seen this a lot. Educators tell minority kids they’re brilliant and handsome and as talented as Mozart, regardless of what the truth is, and the kids start to believe and repeat it. It makes adjustment hard when real life hits them in the face and tells them they need to think about managing Taco Bells or becoming x-ray technicians.

Hey, maybe he’s guilty. I don’t know. But this is not the kind of evidence that convicts people. My best guess is that this woman is seriously mentally ill. Whatever the truth is, her accusation is worthless, so it shouldn’t count against Tyson.

As a Christian, I suspect this lady is a witch, so she may have all sorts of problems. She is into astrology and mysticism.

What about the second accuser?

Her name is Katelyn Allers. She has a large tattoo that wraps around her upper body. She says she showed it to Tyson. While he was looking at it, he lifted part of her dress off her skin to expose more of it. There are photos, and she is smiling.

This is pretty weak. She consented to his exam, and she cooperated physically. She says it was not assault (“battery” is the correct word, but still). If it’s not battery, why are we hearing about it?

This may seem rude, but it’s pertinent: in the photos, she is a very unattractive woman. Very. Yes, women who aren’t beauty queens are often victims of sexual mistreatment, but lustful men at social gatherings are not all that likely to lose control and grope women who are not appealing. It brings no pleasure and serves no purpose. The most plausible interpretation of the story is that Tyson actually wanted to see the tattoo, and that Ms. Allers fell under the spell of #MeToo and raised a stink. If we were talking about Scarlett Johansson, and she were frowning in the photos or punching Tyson in the face, there would be a story here, but as it is, I find the allegations (or Allersgations) incredible.

The third accuser is the first one to come up with anything disturbing, unless accusing someone without solid evidence is disturbing. She says she was Tyson’s assistant. She says he invited her to his home at 10:30 p.m. to drink wine and unwind.

Okay; this is not proper employer conduct. Granted.

She says he took off his shirt and lounged around in a sleeveless T-shirt (sorry about the mental image), playing sex-based music on his stereo and replaying the dirty parts. She claims he said something about needing “release” and not wanting to hug her because it would leave him wanting more.

Not good. He’s married, for one thing. Also, an employee shouldn’t have to be concerned about gross, inept overtures from a superior. Still, she could have said “no” and left at any time, and for all we know, things would have been fine. This is not Weinstein or Spacey territory. It may not even rise to the level of harassment. It’s a bad idea to try to commit adultery with a subordinate, but it’s not necessarily grounds for a lawsuit, and it’s not even close to criminal.

Do I even have to say it’s a little weird to see leftists getting upset over attempted adultery? Aren’t they in favor of all types of fornication? Here’s a quick question: does anyone remember who was president in the 1990’s? Has anyone heard the name “Lewinsky”?

The fourth accuser should never have made it into the press. Essentially, she says Tyson was drunk and propositioned her. She was at a party with her boyfriend, and Tyson tried to get her to go to his office for what he said, or she presumed, was sex. This is not sexual misconduct. It’s a very normal effort to get consensual sex.

Ever hit on a coworker at a Christmas party? Congratulations. Now you’re a sex offender.

Here’s what I think, as a former sort-of physicist: Tyson is not a hit with the ladies. This is normal for physicists. When I was a grad student at U.T. Austin, one of the other guys said that when the told girls he was a physicist, they took off so fast they left skid marks. Tyson has probably had many awkward interactions with women during his life, because that’s typical for members of his occupation.

Physicists tend to be socially incompetent. Maybe Tyson simply isn’t able to discern and deal with boundaries like most successful men. When he goes overboard, he may simply be trying too hard to imitate alpha males he has observed.

It’s 2018, and he wears Jheri curls. Cut him a little slack. He may be a bit lecherous, and maybe he needs a lecture about fidelity, but he’s not Bill Cosby. Not unless the lady who says the lion is her ally is actually telling the truth.

I am not a Tyson fan. He seems supercilious and contemptuous to me, particularly with conservatives and Christians. I’m not the kind of person who would defend him reflexively. But #MeToo is a movement with no safety catch, and when people are targeted, others should stand up for their right to a defense, and they should also be willing to point out weaknesses in the accusations.

Now watch him turn out to be a serial rapist. I may be totally wrong about him. I’m just looking at the material we have in front of us right now. Based on that, I think he ought to be encouraged to act his age, and that should be the end of it.

Also, maybe he should be a little slower to get self-righteous with Donald Trump, whom he threatened to grab by the crotch because of his amorous proclivities. A sleeveless T, Luther van Dross, a single woman, and a married professor don’t add up to moral authority.

Here is Your Reward for Serving Your Country

As much as I admire people who serve in the military, sometimes I wonder what they were thinking when they signed up.

Lots of us want to defend our country. Lots of us are willing to make sacrifices. What would drive me crazy, however, would be dealing with the bureaucracy, the waiting, and the foul-ups. It’s unbelievable.

Military people are slaves. They don’t call themselves that, but it’s true. If you have a job you can’t leave, in which your superior can command you to perform a task which probably includes being killed, you are a slave. Military people are always at the mercy of the people who run their services. When those people screw up, which happens all the time, there isn’t a whole lot our servicemen can do. They have to put up with it and suffer.

My dad was a soldier in the Korean War. He got very lucky and avoided combat. His platoon or whatever was on the way to Korea, and he was called aside to play in a band. Nonetheless, he’s a veteran, and he is entitled to stuff from the government. Now that he’s demented, I need to find out what they will give him.

In order to get this information, I have to sign my dad up for the VA website. In order to do that, I have to have his service record. In order to get that, I have to sign up for a site called Milconnect.

Signing up for Milconnect is basically impossible unless you served recently. My dad served quite a while ago, and the DoD, in its wisdom, decided not to put his records in their online system. Because, you know, who seriously expects Korean War veterans to need benefits? That could never happen.

I tried to sign up at the VA site. They sent me to the Milconnect site, which gave me an error. That sent me to a site called Iris something or other. That site told me to call a number. I called that number. The rude lady who answered told me 1) she could not do anything to help, 2) I should call the people at DEERS (the organization that handles the online records, I think), and 3) she had no supervisor I could talk to.

Evidently, she is the President of the United States. She answers to no one.

Of course, she was lying.

I called DEERS. They assured me the people at the first number could help. I called the first number again. I went around and around, back and forth. I spent 45 minutes on hold. Finally, someone connected me to a woman who had the answer.

Everything was fine then, right? No, because the last lady kept telling me she couldn’t help me. I kept asking new questions and rephrasing things, because I knew how the bureaucrat mind works. You can’t tell them what you need and expect them to figure out what to do. You have to ask THE EXACT QUESTION THEY ARE PROGRAMMED TO RESPOND TO. Until you guess that question, they squirm to get free, because getting free is their only real goal. I felt like I was wrestling with Proteus (look it up). Finally, she sent me to a website that allowed me to request my dad’s records. By FAX.

I am not kidding. I guess no one who works with the government will be surprised. The government, in 2018, insists on using fax machines. This technology went bust in what? Maybe 2010?

I have a fax, but why would I connect it to a phone line in 2017, when I moved to this house? The land line barely works, and NO ONE FAXES ANY MORE.

The website was amazing. They had nice forms I filled out online, and then instead of processing the forms online, the way every other organization on earth (outside of the government) does, they made me print it and fax it.

I had to scan the printout, turn it into a PDF, and pay a fax website to send it in. I could have mailed it, but that would have added days of waiting.

Shouldn’t the mere existence of fax websites suffice to let the world know that faxes have been replaced by computers? Faxing things from a website is like putting your riding horse in your car.

All of this only took around 4 hours. Should have taken 10 minutes. My guess: business as usual for military people. I have heard their stories. Constant screwups.

My dad told me a story once. The Army made his platoon crawl through ice water for some reason. They did this outdoors in the winter. Then they didn’t provide shelter or dry clothing. Everyone had to stand around in wet clothes, trying not to die. They stuck their arms straight out, like gingerbread men, trying to keep their freezing fatigues from touching their bodies.

Then they got good news. The Army was sending hot onion soup. The trucks arrived, and out came the soup. Boiled onions in plain water.

I feel like I got a tiny piece of the military experience today. I am so lucky I never got drafted.

My dad served during a shooting war, and he witnessed atom bomb tests. Maybe that will get him special stuff. I don’t know. Often, GI goodies are tied to income and net worth, and the thresholds are not high. Whatever. One way or the other, we will find out. I think.

They say Donald Trump is shoving his boot in the VA’s rear pretty far, forcing it to shape up and treat people better. I hope that’s true. We treat former soldiers like aborted babies. No one wants to look at them or deal with them.

I can’t figure out why the websites are so bad. The government always overpays for things and gets shoddy work. Good websites aren’t that expensive. If they were, little online retailers wouldn’t survive. If we can pay almost two million dollars for every Tomahawk missile, you would think we could manage to spring for two or three websites that work.

If memory serves, I have been told we can get $1800 per month. I have a feeling it will turn out not to be true. If it is true, I expect them to make mistakes and turn us down several times at first. Then I expect them to tell me it can’t be done. Then I expect to locate the one competent person who makes it happen. You always find that person if you hold out long enough. In the entire US government, there are approximately three.

Meanwhile, a few thousand disabled veterans will die listening to hold music. The Iraqis and Afghans couldn’t get them, but our bureaucrats will put them in their graves with Chuck Mangione.

I’m all done. Let’s not think of the 400 other things I needed to get done today. My dad will have frozen ziti for dinner, and I may have ice cream and a Powerade. The dump closed 21 minutes ago, so it looks like the garbage will ferment in my garage for another 48 hours.

If you served in the military, God bless you and keep you. He better, because no one else gives a crap about you.

Trump Finds Support in Tijuana

This is too funny. Mexicans are angry because Central Americans in the infamous “caravan” are in Tijuana, and their complaints are just like ours.

They also complained about how the caravan forced its way into Mexico, calling it an “invasion.”

Juana Rodriguez, a housewife, said the government needs to conduct background checks on the migrants to make sure they don’t have criminal records.

Honduras has a murder rate of 43 per 100,000 residents, similar to U.S. cities like New Orleans and Detroit.

It’s amazing. First, I’m amazed that Mexicans are willing to out themselves in this way, after so many have worked so hard to help illegals get here. Second, I can’t believe the Associated Press has hired reporters who would tell the world instead of censoring the news.

Real Indian?

I am stuck on the phone with the guhmint. I have nothing to do but blog. I have to ask them something about corporations, and I fully expect whoever answers to tell me I called the wrong person. That’s how the government works. You wait half an hour to find out the main goal of the person you reached is to get rid of you regardless of whether your urgent need has been addressed.

The political right got a major disappointment today. It appears that the criminal who sent fake bombs to prominent liberals is, in fact, a conservative. I thought it was more likely that it was a hoax. Leftists pull hoaxes all the time, trying to make themselves look like victims, and in general, they are much more violent than conservatives, so it seemed likely that a leftist was behind the bombings.

Of course, leftist journalists and politicians will want to turn the alleged bomber, one Cesar Sayoc, into a visual aid. They will want to tell us this is what a Trump voter looks like. They won’t mention the Antifa characters who riot and beat innocent people as a matter of policy.

If there is a bright side to the story, it is Sayoc’s ancestry. He claims he’s a Seminole Indian. He is not white; that’s for sure. His photos reveal a man who could pass for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and his first name is Hispanic. Someone has dubbed him “the Magabomber” in an Internet comment.

Now leftists have to attack an Indian. An actual Indian; I always feel like I have to say that when I discuss leftists who claim to be Indians. I don’t mean he’s a whimsical individual who identifies as an Indian on this particular day.

Of course, he may not be an Indian. If current indications pan out, this guy will turn out to be a very strange bird, and pretending to be an Indian would not be outside his wheelhouse.

Judging by his very poor English skills, Sayoc (graduate of North Miami Beach High) is either mildly retarded or afflicted with a serious learning disability. He may have more than one mental issue.

Whatever he is, he is not white, so he will make the stomachs of liberal pundits churn this weekend.

Maybe they’ll say he was driven crazy by broken treaties and 19th-century massacres.

It’s very disappointing to see anyone commit vicious, cowardly crimes like this, but as a conservative, I am particularly disconcerted to see a perpetrator turn out to someone on my side. What this man [allegedly] did is beneath contempt, and it pushes us one step closer toward a state that resembles a never-ending riot. It shoves us in the direction of socialist Venezuela. The bomb mailings, with or without functioning bombs, were heinous crimes, and because of them, leftists may well succeed in using him against us successfully in the imminent elections.

It will be a catastrophe if we let ourselves sink into anarchy and routine political violence. Life will be intolerable in cities and many suburbs. The only places where there will be peace will be rural areas like mine, where minorities and leftists are relatively scarce. It’s impossible to have a riot without leftists.

What a place America will be, if we don’t rein the anger in. Nuts accosting each other in restaurants and stores, riots over nothing, and it will all be considered acceptable.

Maybe I should invest in body armor companies. Maybe everyone will be wearing it in a couple of years.

The incredible thing about increasing political violence is that it is taking place in an atmosphere of extraordinary prosperity. Ordinarily, leftist rage boils over in countries where poverty is unbearable. What’s our excuse?

Score one for the left. I hope we aren’t seeing the beginning of a tide of conservative violence. When leftists get us to adopt their tactics on a broad front, we will be as toxic as they are.