I while back I was emailing back and forth with a lady who lives in Cody, Wyoming, business related, and mentioned to her that on a trip to Yellowstone National Park last June our grandson (then age 12) wanted to see a dam. We drove by Boysen Reservoir, and when we got to the head the boy was disappointed that it was an earth-fill dam. Meh. So I made it a point on the way home to make a right turn in Cody and head up the highway to Buffalo Bill Dam, a real one. There was so much snow in the mountains last year that during the winter they had drained the reservoir so that it would not overflow. Even so, last June both floodgates were wide open and an amazing torrent of water was entering the Shoshone River down below.
Author: Mark Tokarski
Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.
The One
OK, it is time to fess up here. I have a Facebook account and check it daily. I watch TV, though not news. I like intrigue and good acting, and there is not much to be had. I am currently watching Season Three of Bosch, the detective created by Michael Connelly, and played sort of okay by Titus Welliver. (I think the lead character should be taller and have more muscular legs. This guy is supposedly a former Green Beret but looks more like a Lt. Detective Fife. [Now that I published that I realized it is false. Welliver is a very muscular man.]
This has nothing to do with Bosch. It’s not like Game of Thrones, where they routinely kill off lead actors. Bosch always wins. Boring. What I notice, and I know we all do, is that every time Bosch ends up in court, the judge is either going to be a woman, or a black, usually both. Why do they do that? It is so predictable. If I ever see a white male judge on TV, as we have in real life, I think it will signal end times.
POM Search Engine
When this blog was redesigned I had a search engine installed. It works very quickly and very well. You can search for a name or a post title, or even just a word, and it returns quick results. I use it quite often to find older posts.
Bastard Jon Snow joins the Matt Damon Batch
Take a moment to analyze the two faces above. The left is a young Matt Damon.
Continue reading “Bastard Jon Snow joins the Matt Damon Batch”
Is Obamacare dead? Hurray! Long live Obamacare!
One of the most unsavory remnants of the Obama era is known as the “private mandate,” a requirement that every citizen purchase health care insurance from a private corporation, or face a severe penalty. This requirement led to a new bureaucracy that tracked every American to make sure we had insurance. It was suffocating and onerous – the health insurance industry (“Americas Health Insurance Providers,” or AHIP for short) bullying us into buying their crappy products, using Obama as a sock puppet.
The Affordable Care Act, ACA, or “Obamacare” (as if) was challenged in court on this basis, and was spared by a 2012 ruling that said that the penalty is a tax, and Congress has the power to tax. I do not know if this was an unintended consequence, or if the people around Trump are really that clever, but in late 2017 as part of a broad tax bill, Congress eliminated the penalty. The Fifth Circuit recently held that 2017 act constitutional, and here is the catch: The “attributes that saved the [ACA] statute because it could be read as a tax no longer exist.” The writing on the wall says Obamacare is dead! Long live Obamacare!
Continue reading “Is Obamacare dead? Hurray! Long live Obamacare!”
GoT
As we settled in here for a long winter, with heavy snow in late October followed by a couple of lesser storms, I realized we had many long nights ahead of us here in the Colorado Rockies. I decided to subscribe to HBO. In so doing, Game of Thrones became available to us. I was one of those who had never watched an episode in all of its eight-year run, but I did recall seeing some naked blond woman (Daenerys Targaryen played by Emelia Clarke) standing in front of a burning building one time. We must have been in a motel.
So, we settled in this winter to watch one episode per night.
Bloggers hiring lawyers?
I am somewhat in hibernation, as ideas for posts are just not happening. But I did happen on this story wherein one blogger is suing another for defamation, written by a man who defamed my late older brother, a Catholic priest, by implying (or stating outright) that he was part of the pedophile scandal. For that I put a permanent ban on him, the only time I have done such a thing.
Greta busted
This is hilarious, and thanks to Motorhead who supplied the link.
If you are at all attune to hoaxes, it is revealing. Greta Thunberg in the (professionally staged) photo above looks forlorn, sitting with baggage at the doorway of a rail car as she rides through Germany. As Deutsche Bahn, the operator of the railway, Tweeted after Greta made her suffering public …
“Dear #Greta, thank you for supporting our railway in the fight against climate change! We are happy that you travelled with us in the ICE 174. And that with 100 percent eco electricity. It would have been even better if you had also mentioned how friendly and competent the team [was that] looked after you in your seat in First Class.”
Greta Got Nuthin’
I thank commenter Big Swede for bringing this one-minute video to us under another post. I knew it existed, I had heard it discussed on a podcast or something, and then forgot about it. In it we see the real Greta Thunberg, clueless, uncomfortable, and having no script to read. She’s got nuthin’.
Afterthought on Cosby
I did some research into the matter of Bill Cosby and his alleged drug-induced rapes in an earlier post, and thought the whole matter to be a hoax, though Cosby’s participation left me scratching my head. Recently Miles Mathis added a twist, suggesting that perhaps Cosby is deep in dementia, and so had no clue what was going on around him. That has legs, in my view.
