Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Miles to empty: Another psyop – surely Anthony Fauci behind it

My wife and I drive a 2018 Toyota Tacoma, our Taco. Yesterday we drove down to Lakewood to a park called Bear Creek, which has nice flat trails so I can practice this skill I have lost called “walking” On return, I noticed that the Taco registered that I had 17 miles left on my tank of gas.

I decided to go to the gas station near our home, where we get a discount based on grocery purchases. As I drove the miles kept going down, and I confess I was a bit nervous even as I knew there was reserve behind the indicator. As I pulled into the station I had “1” mile left to empty.

I filled it up, and it took 19.01 gallons, and I thought this to be the perfect opportunity to get a read on how much fuel is in reserve when the indicator says empty. I looked up the specs on the truck, and it said that it has a 21.1 gallon fuel tank. In other words, when it said empty, we had 2.1 gallons left, or maybe 50 miles in reserve.

Maybe this is useful information to you. Maybe not. Maybe you knew that already. Continue reading “Miles to empty: Another psyop – surely Anthony Fauci behind it” →

My Bad

I am cursing myself now for (only somewhat) buying in to the election nonsense.

There once was (and it is still running old strips) a cartoon strip called Peanuts, featuring Charlie Brown, a hopeless loser with a good heart. Each year his pal Lucy would offer to hold a football for him to kick. She had to talk him into it, as in every year prior at the last moment she would pull the football, as seen above. That’s me, thinking that while we nominally have two major political parties, we really have but one. The purpose of the “other” party, no matter your alignment, is to prevent the rise of a true second party.

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Time flies

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” (Groucho Marx)

Five weeks ago I underwent surgery on my right ankle to repair a torn tendon. It turned out to be two tendons and, apparently, one was mis-located, that is, congenitally in the wrong place. That explains why, even before the skiing mishap, I always had pain in that ankle when working on our hillside.

If I were fifty instead of seventy, the accident would not have happened. It is simply a product of aging, that joints, tendons, bones and ligaments are hardened and more easily damaged.

Today the boot is removed, and I will be wearing an ankle brace. I have no idea what that will look like. Full healing of the tendon takes about three months, so that by January I will be skiing again. I should add, it is cross country skiing, not downhill. Growing up with just the change in my pocket, I could never afford downhill skiing, oh poor me. Cross country over the years has taken me to places I never otherwise would have seen. Downhill skiing, while exciting and dangerous, is repetition, the same hill all day long. I have done it on several occasions, and enjoyed it. Once Red Lodge Mountain offered a free day to the public, and I took my kids there – they all took to it right away. It was a fun day. After that, I stuck with XC.

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Pelosi details

I don’t wish to jump on someone else’s wagon here, as Mr. Mathis has written a 13-page paper on the alleged attack on Paul Pelosi. He covers everything quite well, and I am only here to report on what the media is saying in addition to his remarks concerning the Capitol Police.

This article in the LA Times answers some questions not asked, at least by news media.

  • One, is the family of Nancy Pelosi covered by Capitol Police? The LA Times article is vague on this matter, saying that since the speaker was not at home, but rather in DC, that the Pelosi home was not covered.

This sounds like nonsense. Suppose there really were terrorists like David DePape intent on harming Pelosi. He could as easily kidnap her husband and demand concessions. Imagine, for just a second, that Obama is president but while he is traveling, White House security for his wife, children and dog is suspended. It just does not work that way. The Speaker of the House, second in line for the presidency after the Vice President, gets full protection, she and her family, no matter where she is located.

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An open letter to Dave Worstell of the Billings Gazette

I penned the following letter to Dave Worstell, head honcho of the Billings (MT) Gazette, not intending to send it. After all, it would never get read. Anyway, Worstell is a journalist, and in my life I have never known a more smug group. They presume (without evidence) that they do good work, and so turn inward to their group for validation. They hand out awards to each other like candy to trick-or-treaters. David Crisp, once owner of the Billings [MT] Outpost, a smaller newspaper, once took issue with me on this blog for saying that journalists are smug and do not do good work. He said, and I would quote if it did not take an hour to find it, that the reason they do not respond to criticism is because the criticism is stupid. I answered him … isn’t that a bit smug?

I paid $1.00 for a six month subscription to the Gazette – Billings is my home town and I lived there until 2002 or so. I like to keep up. Honestly, it is not a bad newspaper, lots of coverage of lots of stuff. But the letter below addresses some real issues in their coverage. Read it, see if it agrees with your own experience.

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Overwrought by Paracelsus

I read What Really Makes you Ill a couple of years back and found it useful. Today when I went to my bookcase to get my copy, I found it missing. It doesn’t matter as I took copious notes, but generally when a book goes missing here, I means that I have either taken it to 2nd and Charles, a used book store down in Littleton, or tossed it. If I did that, I must have been a little fed up with Dawn Parker and David Lester, the authors.

I think I probably took it to 2nd and Charles. The authors now have an expanded website that includes a newsletter, some interviews they have done, and talks.

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Climate Change is backed, of course, by billionaires

Thanks to Paul Homewood, whose website is Not A Lot of People Know That, I was linked to TCW: Defending Freedom, and an article entitled The Global Climate Change Cult and the War on the Mind – 1. The “1” indicates that this article is the first in a series of four, three to follow. I will summarize the first, and the other three you are on your own to follow.

I have long known that the objective of the people behind the Climate Change movement has nothing to do with climate or CO2, but everything to do with fossil fuels. They underlie our wealth and are the key to breaking the back of poverty in the third world. One key to understanding this cult is that while they pretend that CO2 (which they call “carbon”) is a harmful gas that they are trying to save the planet from, they oppose nuclear*** and hydroelectric power, both of which are CO2-free. This unmasks them for all to see – they are against free and abundant energy. Their real objective, then, is unstated, but not hard to fathom: Anti people, growth, and prosperity in the third world.

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Some optimism checked by reality

This morning and yesterday I stumbled upon two legal proceedings I knew nothing about, one because I read WattsUpWithThat, Anthony Watts’ remarkable website that acts as a clearinghouse for skepticism about climate change and global warming. The other was a newspaper I received in the mail, and I have no idea which mailing list placed me on the list of recipients. (It could be that I subscribed to National Review, a conservative outlet, for a brief time a couple of years ago.) It is a newspaper, that is, large pages using real paper, pages that can be turned and folded. It is called The Epoch Times. (It is online, of course, but they sent me a real newspaper.)

Continue reading “Some optimism checked by reality” →