Putting A Stop To It

Prime Minister Carney came up with a plan to help the GOP think a little more about its actions.

https://www.adammockler.com/p/canada-silently-killed-trump-with?publication_id=3506104&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&r=2c5x1i

Laundry Box Collage

As I wrote in the Youtube "Description," Albuquerque is a cultural wasteland; youse gotz tuh make yer own entertainmints.

Collage!

If The Insurrection Act is called into play

 

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/04/what-to-do-if-the-insurrection-act-is-invoked/

Dr. Cali

Young fellow. Aware of the CIIS program for psychedelics.  Aware of their potential for reducing anxiety around death.

He was reassuring as far as pain management. Didn't push MAID. Said all they really have is morphine though. He acknowledged the drawback of it being befuddling. 

I described the subtle deterioration. He said it's par for the course; I'm on course...

with a faire breeze.

       and only a little flatulence. 🥸

           Beans, beans, the musical fruit...

34th Anniversary

 

We married in '93. Then, when I became aware I was going to have a heart attack, we made it legal in 2018. The only thing that changed was after 9 months she could inherit my social security.

https://newmexnomad.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-squidges-get-married.html?m=1

Their New Rig

They got a lot of use out of their 16' Casita, but there came a time when it needed to be sold. Then the Volvo died. On their way to the Volvo dealership they saw an Alto. Made in Montreal, they managed to squeak one through to Durango, Colorado before the tariffs. They'll pick it up sometime next month with the new V60.

The Tow Car

Granted Hospice

It's bestowed, like a benediction. We got a 9 x 12 envelope with a strong magnet for the refrigerator.

7:30 pm - 1st dose of morphine to relieve the pain of angina. 

The morphine takes effect quickly; there's a slight euphoria. Having signed my death warrant - the agreement to receive services - the relief from pain reminds of Faust's pact w the devil.

When asked about religion I affirmed my commitment to sybarism.

Esmerelda was the best!

Bedside Komode

They're Not Waiting For Summer

My stomach, encroachingly substantializing over the last 20 years, has, this last year, ballooned into a prodiousness that April, my weekly massuese, is convinced is octuplets.

The angina flares as I hobble to the ceramic defecatorium less than 15 feet away. Thank the gods for indoor plumbing! Meds are needed every five hours, augmented with ginger capsules to help stave off the nausea.

Life infuses around 5 pm in time for a baaahth; to assemble dinner or a cake. On a good day I "exercise" as April has encouraged by swinging my legs backward; forward motion being constrained by arthritis in both hips. 

Almost completely bedridden, I read and play the stock market. If I'd held QBTS last week I'd be $400.00 richer. But I'm studying William J. O'Neil's method & sold when it dropped below 14% (O'Neil says SELL at 7%). I watched with chagrin as it picked itself up, dusted off and at the end of the week clambered back up leaving me $60.00 poorer. 

And last week my cardiologist washed her hands of me. When I asked about further pain management she said when things get bad I should goto the E.R.  I called a couple of E.R.s and they said they'd need to use an I.V. to administer anything and since my Advance Directives clearly state NO INVASIVE TECHNIQUES, I'm out of luck. 

I recently got a deal on a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Market Watch and Investor's Business Daily -- all for seven bucks a month -- and read with interest of Dr. Kahneman going to Switzerland to "check out."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-american-nobel-laureate-daniel-kahneman-revealed-to-have-died-by-assisted-suicide/amp/

I'm considering it. My sister lives in Bad Kreuznach, Germany and would, I think, help me navigate. After all, it's obviously time to leave the country. 

Resignation

Someone, perhaps it was Laura Huxley that said: the challenge of olde age is adaptation. 

Then there's resignation. 

DIAPER DISPENSOR

Every Mens' Room Should Have One

Drawing by Michelle Cook

Musk: To the Polish foreign minister

Be quiet, small man. There is no substitute for starlink.

My god!!!! Unbelievably rude!! 

Ben Meidas

Phoebe's Wishful Thinking

The Volvo died as they were leaving for The Springs. She got excited about car-shopping and settled on the new Lexus GX-550 Trailtuff. 

Gearjunkie article

Bryon Dorr of Gearjunkie has a 2013 he added Scheelmann seats to. Now Phoebe wants one. There's only the driver's so it's not that much to ask.

Bryon's 2013

Photos are UNattributed but

Imma gonna surmise Byron took it.

Here're some gallery shots of a CJ. The 8+ photos give the idea. 

https://scheel-mann.com/pages/60-series

Carol's 80th

 

Sunnyside Up

 The unchanging zeitgeist of the town...

Gallup - Non-partisan

 The Gallup poll on duh gubmint...from Feb 6 - 13th

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656891/trump-job-approval-rating-congress-jumps.aspx

A DOGE Cancelled Contract

Listed on DOGE's site under SAVINGS is this contract for a cool 7.5 million with

https://hcnglobal.com/

Here's the contract as seen on FPDS. The amount is upper right. Forest Service below & left of amount and Hispanic Communications Network LLC at lower left. 

I'm woke, but this looks like pork barreling. 

My guess is Bud drinkers don't wanna hang out w people who drink Corona beer. I mean, a corona is the ridge around the head of a penis, ain't hit?

DOGE's Unconstitutionality Index

The Unconstitutionality Index is under REGULATIONS on the DOGE.gov website. 

Here's the url:

https://doge.gov/regulations

Each screen shows -- on the left -- the number of WORDS in each agency's rules. On the right are the number of rules each agency is expected to know and abide by.

At the very bottom, the last line is a link to the "Unconstitutionality Index."

The "Index" is the work of Mr. Crews, Jr.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2025/01/09/the-2025-unconstitutionality-index-exposing-congresss-abdication-of-power/

The Cato Institute was founded by

Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard & Charles Koch

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Social Security

In the early oughts I was involved w a millionairess. She and her husband had a "factory" that made gold & platinum flutes for the premier flautists of the world. When we weren't exploring the B & Bs of New Mexico or at the opera, we frolicked in her 3,700 sq ft home in Sandia Hts, near the base of the Sandia Mountains overlooking the city.  

This relatively (relative to Mar a Lago 'n' such) small abode had at one end a single large bedroom with its own jacuzzi and large walk-in closets. I slept at the other end of the house in the two-bedroom wing designed for guests. 

She kept a modest $5k in her checking account for day-to-day needs while accumulating frequent flier miles on our overnight jaunts and other entertainments. Her S.S. check was a barely note-worthy addition to her retirement income. But for her avarice, she'd never have missed it. 

Here's an article from last year that gives some interesting insights. 

https://larson.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/60-days-2024-and-millionaires-are-already-done-paying-social-security

Underpants!

Michelle has never outgrown her inner 6 year old. Thus, it was w delight she discovered Dav Pilky's Captain Underpants series. 

For years I've gone forth & back between Haines & FOTL. Finally, a definitive difference. This tear has occurred in each of the most recent batch. 

Canadian Trade Deficit

A Canadian deficit of $53.5B. This is nothing. Big-cap stocks are those whose capitalization ranges from $10B - 200B. Canada is LAST on this 2020 graph  

The report below, citing data from 2021 & 2022, from The Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President shows  

Canada Trade & Investment Summary

U.S. goods and services trade with Canada totaled an estimated $908.9 billion in 2022. Exports were $427.7 billion; imports were $481.2 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with Canada was $53.5 billion in 2022.

Complete Report

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/canada

Art Fools

Recent exp suggests these are

the same folks giving stock market

advice on Yahoo Finance. 

A Failed Experiment

Capitalism has won out. Democracy has shot its wad. The rich have gotten richer and the poor we still have with us. The under-educated are fed up w having to kow-tow to the colordz and kweerz.  

"We don't need no stinkin' catalytic converters, seatbelts, helmets or vaccines! Alluz we need iz guns, grabable pussy, football and cheap beer."

Waving Goodbye

It's taken 50 years to move manufacturing out of the country. You'll recall the clothing tags citing Bangladesh, and others until now, finally...China. Tariffs aren't gonna rebuild the economy. The manufacturing businesses of tomorrow will be, as they are already, run by robots. The working-man's day is over. Your guess is as good as any as to what we'll do with the milling multitudes. Let 'em eat cake; or war amongst themselves as they do in the ghettos.

The obvious solution is to invade Venezuela. With 500 BILLION barrels of oil, we wouldn't need to drill the arctic or Greenland. Besides, Chevron is already onsite and the country is used to oligarchy. And we could easily control access to and egress from The Canal! OMG!!

Do it! For the bears!

(Of course, with the greenhouse gas effect, the bears'll fade out with all the other "losers." But then, have you really missed the dodo or passenger pigeon? Google "Recent animal extinctions.")

WOKE - Defined

 Vivek Ramaswamy says it...

Methinks we may have lost a voice that might've tempered some of the lack of forethought. 

Robert Lepage's *Ring*

A *superb* documentary.

Maga Mentality (non-existent)

Reading Collision of Power by Martin Baron. 

On p. 102 he offers this observation of an incident covered by a Post reporter during Trump's 2016 campaign:

Why the Dems Lost the Working Class

We all know classical is elitist, socialist & woke! YAY!

Somehow, the youtube performance got juxtaposed with The New York Times. Don't think the internet doesn't have a sense of humor.

Bruce! Bruce! BruuuuUUUCCEEE!

Work of Practical Beneficence

It was an osmotic process: finding something to do. I'd signed up for June's Senior Cat Rescue's newsletters and was impressed by the writing. It was a natural extension of my stock market research to researching grant opportunities -- the search money, donchyuhknow?

This morning, it's 4:14 a.m., I've been reading about Mackenzie Scott's philanthropy and found her essay: No Dollar Signs This Time. 

In these times where acquisitiveness and avarice are rampant, it offers some perspective...that recognizes a variety of expressions of kindness and generosity. And it's nicely written, besides.

https://yieldgiving.com/essays/no-dollar-signs-this-time?q=Anima

Schemenlaufen

Jon Klassen's artwork in The Three Billie Goats Gruff led to his retelling of the Tyrolian story of The Skull. In it the protagonist tells of collecting the masks worn in that region. Delving, we found the pre-Lenten festivals of Schemenlaufen and Blochziehen Fiss.

Schemenlaufen

Blochziehen Fiss

Aphorisms

 Michelle's mom descended from one of the Robber Baron families in Goshen, Indiana. 

This evening she imparted these two tidbits that i feel shiuld not be ploughed under. 

If at first you do not fricassee, fry, fry a hen. 

Chick inna car and the car won't go. That's how you spell ChiCAgo. 

One should emphasize the 2nd syllable in Chicago in order to impart the full measure of nuance.

Illustration by John Tenniel. (Public Domain)

If these don't suffice, you might contemplate the dearth of oysters on the beach after the passing of the carpenter & the walrus. 

Kiffness

The Kiffness is doing a worldtour! Here's his website with the places & dates.

https://www.thekiffness.com/

June 10th at Meow Wolf in Fanta Se. Only $25.00

Here're several of my favs

Warby Parker & Buckminster Fuller

Warby Parker's eyeglass emporium's aesthetic is dominated by books. 

Waiting while Michelle perused the selection, I pulled out Virtual Words.

Tap image to goto Amazon listing

Virtual Words is a "dictionary" of terms associated w the Web & cyberscience. He gives the etymology of qubit, a word i've recently encountered w my research of quantum computing companies and wondered about its numerical value. 

Another of Mr. Keats's books, also from Oxford University Press, is a reprise of Buckminster Fuller. It's available here for free from the Internet Archive or you can tap the image to goto Amazon's listing.  .

Of the thousands of books in the store, what were my chances? 

I got out of RGTI at $19.24 just before it fell 47% to around $10.50. One of the pundits commented "It's smart to not be greedy." Lucky Herrmann!

RGTI closed 10.Jan at $8.93 

America's Mediocrity

On 26.Dec.2024 at 9:06 a.m., V. Ramaswavy (the other DOGE leader) posted on  X

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

 

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 

I'm skeptical. Dad, who was a double-agent in the 2nd WW, ostensibly on the American side, used to say w scathing sarcasm, "Americans think culture is a hamburger."

The veneration of mediocrity has been going on a lot longer than the '90s.

A country that elects an avowed pussy-grabber deserves what it gets. Now that I'm playing the stock market, I'm looking forward to Trump lowering or DOING AWAY WITH!! the tax on capital gains. 

MAGA!  MAGA! MAGGOT!!

LET's GO!!!

WAY TO HUSTLE!!

Let 'em eat cake.