Laugh, Smile?

 

Low Humor

Heartland mixed marriages. Bride comes from a farm family that runs John Deere. The Groom comes from a farm family that runs Case-New Holland. Later their daughter marries into a farm family running Massey Ferguson.

Meanwhile, in Yellowstone.

And Cheyenne Frontier Days.

(I’ll go to my room now)

Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Circus Train

Last run ever, 2017, headed to Denver. The locomotive is UP 3985 “Challenger” 4-6-6-4 on the last run it made. After that, the UP used a 4-8-4 “Northern” #844 until bringing back the Big Boy, currently on tour in the eastern states. The #844 is still operational though seldom used. It was the very last steam engine delivered to the Union Pacific and never retired.

Yes, I have a minor interest in steam engines.

Car Insurance

Colorado consistently has high car insurance rates (5^th highest in the country). The cost means more uninsured motorists (many are undocumented immigrants), perhaps a third on the roads daily, and the associated cost of accidents they are involved in. The following article is long and technical. My superficial take? The current system provides a lot of opportunities for attorneys, government functionaries and asset recovery companies (repo men). YMMV

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How Blue States Work

Nothing to see here folks, move on! 

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For perspective, the adult population of Colorado is approximately 4.7 million. Assuming all are taxpayers, this one nonprofit received approximately $1.40 from each taxpayer.

 From Google AI.

An estimated 2,111 nonprofits in Colorado receive federal, state, or local government grants. This figure is based on IRS Form 990 filings that track government grant funding. Overall, approximately 34,251 registered nonprofits operate in Colorado, meaning about 77.4% of the organizations that file detailed tax returns report receiving some form of taxpayer-funded government grants.

Immigrants

Legal immigrants historically were screened for health problems. The Biden mobs were not. 

The consequences are part of this article.

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Tuberculosis was a scourge in the 19th and early 20^th Century. Many came west hoping the clean air and dry climate would help. Notable examples include Ed Johnson who represented Colorado in the US Senate and as Governor.  Eventually, TB became a rare disease in the USA. Not the rest of the world as this article highlights.

 The facility in question is a Federal operated property. Just what power Colorado law has is a question for lawyers? What is apparent to this former Adams County resident is the deep blue functionaries aren’t going to pass up a chance to “fight ICE”.

Side note. 7/16 employees were trying to enter the facility to work. Protestors were blocking them. A protestor was shot and an employee was arrested. FAFO

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Car Story

This is from the way back machine.

“Sorry officer, you didn’t see the boot on your undercover car as you tore off in ‘hot pursuit’?”

Days after graduating from high school in 1961, I did what hundreds of rural young people did; I moved to Denver for opportunities. I wanted more than cutting brush in the summer for the Forest Service and plowing snow in the winter for the County. I arrived in time to witness the Denver Police Department scandal.

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This was just part of the corruption; perhaps a minor part. The Sheriff’s Department was involved at some level.

I came to know Deputy C----, who drove around in a station wagon immobilizing cars of drivers with unpaid tickets. To my knowledge, he never arrested anyone nor let himself become involved in any other police work. Execute the President in front of him? Shrug, but he would boot an ambulance parked in a red zone.

His second activity was dealing marijuana out of his official car. That was an open secret other cops must have known.

Back to the top. The undercover officers would use impounded cars.

Deputy C--- spotted a car on his list, booted the car, and drove off. When the officer came back to the car and attempted to drive off, hilarity ensued.

Later I learned in Paris they called the immobilizer, “the Denver Boot”.

For clarity, I never used nor was involved with drugs. They were around me but I stayed at arm’s length.

I worked a lot of different jobs, sometimes as many as three at a time. One was working security at professional wrestling shows, Denver Bears (AAA baseball) and Denver Bronco games for a Denver policeman’s side business. While he personally wasn’t corrupt, he knew what was going on and helped us steer clear of entanglements.

For a time I worked nights part time running a parking lot across from a hotel with a nightclub in the basement. Several hookers worked out of the hotel.  He strongly urged me to drop the job. Nothing dramatic to report but who knows what a dumb country boy might have been sucked into keeping that particular job.

The Denver Police Department was corrupt from day one, 1859. Does the Department still have an element of corruption? Does a bear………

As always, YMMV

Stupid is, More if You are Rich

 

Don’t Fly into Terrain

2/13/2026 an Epic 100 with four aboard flew into the crest of Emerald Mountain near Steamboat Springs, CO. Why my interest? That airport is where I first learned to fly. The best analysis I’ve found is here. 

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There is a perfect good all weather airport just twelve miles to the west at Hayden. Low terrain, full ILS, and a wide well lighted runway that will accommodate nearly any commercial aircraft. Still, the pressure of rich people wanting to do “The Boat” has led to putting lipstick on a pig. The Steamboat strip was “upgraded” enough to handle DHC-6’s.

Add people with more money than capability buying airplanes they aren’t trained enough to operate properly (think doctors/lawyers and V Tail Bonanzas) and shit happens.

Wind is seldom a factor at that strip and few locals ever landed or took off to the North. Off the South end you immediately have 200’ of elevation and a right hand turn takes you down the river and lower terrain. Straight ahead is a 9,000’ mountain.

So, WSF, you never took chances as a pilot? I most certainly did. One difference; I was always solo.

ICE

Personally conflicted describes my feeling about the mass deportations underway. On one hand, I’m all in favor. My reservations are based on actions allowed now can be used for other purposes later. What happens if/when the (P)regressives take back the Presidency? Will I get a pallet next to the stove at the reeducation camp?

Our on-line left wing newspaper, self proclaimed as unbiased, covers part of the question.

Bias? Early in the article we read, “mostly of people who have no criminal record”.  Ignoring that entering the country illegally is a criminal offense. Liberal logic? 

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From the article.

Dionisio Castillo, 53, tearfully recalled how two ICE agents arrested him at his construction job site in January without asking him any personal questions. Had they asked, they would have known he has lived undocumented in the U.S. for 30 years, has three U.S. citizen children and no criminal history. He spent 48 days at the ICE detention facility in Aurora. His family had to pay a $2,500 bond for his release.

“I was standing next to my truck and I turned to the right and I saw that the officers were walking toward me,” said Castillo through an interpreter. “They handcuffed me with my hands behind my back.”

Been here 30 years and needs an interpreter?  Been here 30 years and did nothing to gain legal status? Sorry, no sympathy from me.

ICE +Voting

Twenty Blue States demanding ICE pledge to not have agents near voting stations? Why, do they expect illegals to show up and vote? 

Up Yours, Gun Grabbers

Concealed carry in Colorado.

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Every legislative session more gun grabber bills get passed. I’m sure I violate some law someway every time I leave my apartment.

To the North, Wyoming lowered the age for concealed carry to eighteen.

Iran

I’ve put variations of this on other blogs and FB as comments.

PDJT has stated his goal is to insure Iran never has a nuclear weapon. OK, we probably know where all the facilities are, bombed or not bombed. Send in Sea Bees and/or Army Combat Engineers, backed up by combat units to protect them as they work, and utterly destroy these facilities. Salt the earth, so to speak.

Once that is done, get the hell out and let Southwest  Asian people go back to slaughtering each other as they have for millenniums.

 Oh, WSF, that is too simplistic. OK, why?

Car Story

 Montana Molesters

Among the very best retail car sellers I ever worked with were five men from Kalispell, MT. All had worked at the same store in Kalispell. They drifted over to Washington State for larger opportunities.

 They quickly became monthly sales leaders and greatly upset the old guard. I welcomed them. The more successful the store became, the more opportunities were opened for me. Let them be salesman of the month! Let me continue to be “grossmonster”. 

(We were paid on gross profit. Bonuses were paid on number of sales regardless of gross profit. One guess as to which, over time, put pleasing numbers on the end of the month check?)

 Their personal lives were chaotic. The parade of girlfriends, wives, infidelities, and after hour adventures earned them the name, Montana Molesters. Not my problem, I wasn’t a manager.

As always, YMMV

Road Closed? Don't Think So

 

Scofflaw

Mt Bross, NNW of Alma, CO has a road that goes to the top. ¾ of the way there is an old collapsed mine with a surviving building. Use of the road is strictly forbidden. Some 20 years ago I drove up to the mine in my all time favorite vehicle, a 1984 Turbocharged Diesel Powered 4x4 Mitsubishi Mighty Max. At about 270,000 miles, the truck started losing compression and spitting oil. I sold it, and have regretted it since.

Bigot

Recently a 2^nd cousin called me a bigot on Facebook. This is Gemini’s definition.

big·ot

/ˈbiɡəta person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

What set him off was a satirical cartoon I put on Facebook under my frequent, “Stirring the Pot”.

After I responded to his first accusation, “Your opinion may be important but not to me”, he became very upset.

 His parents have my admiration and I enjoy his siblings. This highly educated (attended university classes in Taiwan) young man has chugged the Kool-Aide, IMO.

Am I conservative or liberal? Probably neither.  My bigotry is aimed at parasites. People who are drawing nice salary and benefits that don’t do anything productive.

A comment lifted from a blog: at what point do people wrest control of their government back from those bent on our demise while feathering their own nests on our backs?

What gets my blood boiling is stealing under the color of law. The situation in Minnesota with the Somali is the most blatant. What is less obvious is the practice of passing legislation to help those in need and then diverting the funds via NGOs, by bloated bureaucracy, and consultants.  Those in need are still in need and still not helped in any measurable way.

Over the course of my life, my family has been among the ones needing help. I’ve hit bottom and worked my way back via my Dad’s “Belly Flapping Principal” (If you are hungry enough you will do anything).  

In contrast to the parasites, I admire my sister and my niece.

Colorado has a community health organization now over fifty years old. It was started to help migrant farm workers get basic health care. Now it serves several Colorado communities. My sister has devoted over thirty years of her time to the organization. She receives no compensation other than occasional expenses, nor does she seek monetary compensation. She does it out of love.

My niece has spent her adult life in public health care. She usually works a second job as her primary employment isn’t lucrative. She is out on the mean streets of Reno helping those who have nothing, danger be damned, while raising two remarkable children.

These two women believe in helping underdogs and walk the walk.

(P)regressive Mindset

Blue State Colorado has a big budget problem brought about by reckless and unnecessary spending.  What follows is an apt analysis of the root cause, IMO

Just as a person with bad spending habits does not suddenly fix all their problems by winning the lottery, a $3.6 billion tax increase from a progressive tax structure would not suddenly fix the legislature’s addiction to overspending, and if anything will only make the problem worse.  

 We don’t have a Minnesota sized problem but we have the same problems. Parasites.

Stupid, not bad, to the bone

Career drunk driver.

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What we have here, is a failure to communicate. I hope that driver gets a chance to learn communication. (cue Cool Hand Luke)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WUyZXhLHMk

 Got Ice

Local (P)regressives are clutching their pearls over plans to open a closed prison as an ICE facility. In all the years the place was open few people even knew it was there.

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Car Story

Impressive display

A customer was interesting in buying a ½ ton pickup and wanted the see underneath. We had an elevated display ramp. After removing the vehicle on display, I drove the pickup, check, attempted to drive the pickup and tipped it on the passenger side when I miscalculated. The pickup landed at a 45° angle bending the outside mirror.

 With the assistance of employees the manager managed to back the truck off the ramps.

 We made the sale, with a discount for the broken mirror. The customer enjoyed saying,” I wanted to see underneath and I sure was able to do that”.

 Dirty Al was upset because he wanted to take a customer on a test drive and the pickup was blocking access to the car he wanted to show,

 A lot of teasing over the years has come my way for that oops.

As always, YMMV

Points of View

 

I See Some Merit

We should recognize the old, “what goes around comes around” , pearl of wisdom. ICE methods today may be used by Democrats in the future. I see some merit, out of thousands of arrests, a few can be cherry picked as wrong.

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Other consequences, good or bad depending on your point of view, the Denver Public Schools report a sharp decline in enrollment.

The article is behind a pay wall.

DPS warns of financial "catastrophe" after unexpected enrollment drop, possible funding cuts. DPS is down 1,200 students — mostly immigrant children who had offset the impact of falling birth rates — and, in turn, will receive $18.5 million less annually in per-pupil funding.

 Is faint hope better than no hope?

A chance Colorado can go red?

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My Bad

$40 poorer after receiving a speeding ticket from a speed trap. WCR 49 is a four lane connector between I-76 and US 34. Traveling North, the speed limit goes from 65 to 55 and then 45 as you approach US 34. The Town of Kersey has an automated radar/photo setup as a revenue generator.  I was caught doing 57 just where the limit becomes 45. The good news is the ticket doesn’t go on my driving record.

As always, YMMV

Your State Will Be Blue

 

The Blueprint

How Colorado went from a solid Red State to forever Blue. Most of this is behind pay walls or for sale on Amazon, etc. A brief account from the Rocky Mountain Minute.

 In the early 2000s four ultra wealthy progressives, Jared Polis, Tim Gill, Rutt Bridges, and Pat Stryker, launched a plan called The Blueprint. Their goal was to flip Colorado from red to blue and lock it down for good. They did not just focus on big elections. They targeted small local races, poured millions into “nonpartisan” nonprofits that were actually Democrat recruitment machines, and built a web of think tanks, activist groups, and friendly media outlets to control the narrative year round.

 Jared Polis, our current term limited Emperor, has his sights set on the Presidency.

 This blueprint is being replicated, allegedly, in many other states. Will it continue to work? In Colorado’s last election the (P)regressives spend a lot of money trying to elect county Sheriffs and failed.

 They have more success with District Attorneys.

 More “Settled Science” B.S.???

Always the cynic, these studies often lead to conclusions the researchers want to reach. 

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 Democrat Dog and Pony Show – ICE Edition

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 Repo Man

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You can run but you can’t hide forever. A smart lawyer kept his Mercedes in a controlled access garage in downtown Denver. He lived in a gated community with security guards. One evening he and his spouse parked in a shopping center garage. Ten minutes later the Mercedes was on the way to the dealer’s locked back lot. Got paid a thousand for that snatch.

 A Charger we owned

We had a 1973, same color and roof treatment, for a few years. Other than replacing the OEM voltage regulator with one that lasted, we had few problems. Only had a 318 c.i.d motor but that was enough.

As always, YMMV

May Their Mouths Overload Their Asses

 

Grumpy Old Man Rant

You may want to skip this Colorado specific bloviating.

 The rejection of the (P)regressive agenda that swept the nation and put PDJT back into the Oval Office barely touched Colofornia. The past Legislative session saw the gaggle of Front Range Karens and mountain town trust fund snots push the full gender bending agenda, curtailing parental control, odious unconstitutional gun control, eroding free speech, and more environment fallacies.

While “helping” the underdogs (which I support) they perpetuate dependency while creating well paid jobs for their chosen few to ‘administer’ the programs.

In Colorado, tax increases from the state level to a water district, by our constitution, require voter approval. So, let’s just label them “fees”. No problem with the courts as our state Supreme Court judges are 100% (P)regressives.

Fix our roads? No, it is more important to take $4,000,000 from that budget and create a war chest for Emperor Polis to fight Trump.

 One glimmer of hope lies in the Democrats abject failure to elect county commissioners in the rural counties and pickup any federal Congressional seats.

Hurrah!

Sorry, wrong picture

The environazis lose again. Outside of the Front Range sprawl, EVs are of limited use in Colorado. To forcible shove them down rural Coloradoan throats is an abuse of power. Said abuse has never deterred the environazis. Their feelings will always overrule mere facts and/or what harms ‘lesser’ citizens.

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Wolves 

They are getting closer to Aspen.  Maybe they will develop a taste for trust fund snots.

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Wolves will be wolves, much to the disappointment of their advocates.

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The same wolf advocates are pushing to re-introduce grizzles to Colorado.

Uinta Basin Railroad wins, Environazis lose 

Previous posts have mentioned the effort to move heavy crude from one of the poorest places in the country to refineries that can process it. A win for Northeast Utah and a loss to Venezuela is always worth cheering, IMO. For the trust fund snots infesting Eagle County, their NIMBY asses can kick rocks.

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Once again, the Supreme Court has put unelected bureaucrats on notice their overreach won’t fly anymore. An 8-0 decision? I’m amazed.

Hunting with Lone Star Parson

Apologies to VM

Damn it, this is wrong

Zip tying children is, to me, abhorrent. Their parents, yes. I recognize ICE is doing their job; one that I support.

All these immigrants didn’t get here without help. When will those who aided this mass lawbreaking be held accountable? (not holding my breath)

As always, YMMV

Rambling and Unfocused

 

Wyoming Farm Kids

Farms kids everywhere are driving at an early age. I’ve had a license since age 14 and was driving far earlier than that.

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Starting age 11, I worked hay fields in North Park every summer. When school started, my parents 22 acres were waiting for me to buck the bales into the barn. We had a flatbed pickup that I would put in granny gear, step out, and buck bales on the bed as it idled along.

When Sisty got bigger, she would “drive”. About the time she was nine, by sitting on the very edge of the seat, she could reach the gas pedal. Ever so slowly she would push. I would go from a slow walk, to a fast walk, to a trot and, “God damn it, Colleen!” Back to an idle then rinse and repeat.

Solyent Green News

Ever notice thr grocery store spaces devoted to plant based food are seldom empty?

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Emissions

The new broom at the EPA and the slap down of California’s CAFÉ’s standards may improve our economy in ways that may not be apparent. Cars and pickups have become less reliable over the years, in part, because of engineering compromises to gain fuel economy and/or reduce emissions. It appears DEF for diesels may go away. Ending rerouting exhaust back through turbochargers will eliminate many problems. 6.7 Power Stroke operators will rejoice.

YouTube is buzzing; everyone is an expert! Clarity will come in time.

 What is not clear is how this will affect other state programs. The Californication of Colorado has a large swath of the Front Range requiring near California standards.

 What may not be immediately apparent is the impact on West Coast ports. Getting shipping containers moving again, for example, should improve. The trucks used to move them, just in the terminal areas, are highly regulated. If that goes away, shipping costs will go down.

Many truckers will not make California runs. If that changes, costs will go down.

Prior to moving from Seattle in 1997, I knew several independent operators using old trucks, no longer reliable for long hauls, to move containers around the Seattle area. They were wiped out by the environazis with impossible to meet regulations. 

Coal

A deep water coal terminal will be a financial boon for this country. Hello, Puget Sound. Of course, all the environazis will get their panties in a bunch.

Keystone Pipeline

Too many people don’t realize building this will almost start at ground zero. The Biden goons have made that a priority. For one thing, the piping may have gone elsewhere. In November 2024 a company agreed to purchase 180 miles of the steel pipeline.

 Big Winds

While a mere zephyr compared to the tornadoes ripping the Midwest from the huge winds this past week, one property owner had a shed (one of six) fly away.

AutoPen Uproar

A concise discourse by a favorite YouTube lawyer.

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Twice deported Alien with enough ammo for an infantry company load out

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Rare Earth news from left field

Despite all of the woke bullshit distractions, some universities do produce valuable work, in spite of themselves.

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DOGE casualties

A government program is created. People are hired to manage the program. They are good, even great, managers. Now they are getting hammered. Fair? Hardly, but here we are. This is personal, affecting extended family members.

It brings to mind company commanders carrying out orders issued by generals.

 AS always, YMMV